Trust Me (36 page)

“No,” Carly said quickly. “I don’t want to go. I want to make him understand that I would never do anything to hurt Henry.
There’s been some kind of awful mistake.”

“Hector’s a very suspicious guy. He always imagines the worst. He forgets that sometimes bad things can happen—just by accident—to
good people.”

Carly nodded. She blew her nose and tried to compose herself.

“You really care a lot about Henry, don’t you?” Lori asked. “I can tell.”

“He’s been a very good friend,” Carly said shakily. “I guess some people would think that it was strange for me to enjoy spending
time with an eighty-year-old man, but we always found things to talk about.”

“I don’t think that’s strange at all,” Lori assured her. “Age doesn’t matter when you have interests in common. Carly, look.
I’m worried about you. Hector’s determined to pin this on you. I think that he really believes that you tried to kill Henry
Tremayne.”

Carly’s eyes overflowed. “But I didn’t.”

“I know. I believe you, and I’ll do everything I can to help you. But I need you to be honest with me. It was an accident,
wasn’t it? You were there when he fell. I’ll bet that you tried to carry him into the house to protect him— to help him. Right?”

“No,” Carly protested, shaking her head violently. “He was sitting in his chair when I left. He was fine.”

Lori Roberts looked sad. “Please, Carly. I need to hear the truth. I can’t help you unless you tell me what really happened.”

“But I didn’t…” Carly began passionately, then abruptly fell silent. On the table, the tape machine was still recording.
She looked at it, then looked up at Lori Roberts. It had taken her long enough, she thought numbly, to recognize the oldest
trick in the book. She took a deep breath and stood up. “I was not present when Henry Tremayne was injured,” she said quietly.
“And if I’m not under arrest, I would like to leave now.”

Carly hurried up Fillmore Street, huddling her coat around her. She was cold, despite the gentle warmth of the late-afternoon
sun, and she was still shaking. Detective Roberts had done a good job of concealing her disappointment over her failure to
get a confession, but Carly had seen the blond woman’s lips tighten briefly in frustration when Carly had announced her intention
to go. Hector Gracie was nowhere to be seen as Carly walked quickly out of the building. She wondered if he had been watching
her conversation with his colleague from behind the two-way glass.

Carly had refused Lori Robert’s offer to drive her back to the clinic. She didn’t want any more contact with either of the
detectives until she had spoken with a lawyer. It was a long walk, but she could always catch the bus if she needed it, and
she was in no hurry to get back to the clinic, anyway. At some point, she would need to pick up her car, then go to Henry’s
house to feed the pets, but she wanted to wait until Michelle and the rest of the staff had gone. She didn’t have the energy
to pretend to be normal when she felt as if the world were collapsing around her.

She thought about calling Jeannie and decided against it. How could she possibly explain to her sister that the police suspected
her of trying to kill Henry Tremayne? Jeannie would immediately get upset, and Carly didn’t want to have to soothe her. There
was really only one person in the world who she wanted to talk to, and he was nowhere to be found. Where was Max? She desperately
wanted to hear his voice, to be comforted and reassured, and to feel his strong arms around her. This was more than she could
bear on her own.

She reached into her bag for her cell phone and called her answering machine, but there was only one message, from her mother.
Misery swelled in Carly’s chest, and she stopped walking. She stepped back, away from the crowded sidewalk, and leaned against
the brick wall of a storefront, fighting tears of exhaustion and anxiety. Where
was
Max? What had happened? He had completely vanished, and she didn’t understand why.

And then it came to her, in a rush of comprehension so cold and powerful that she almost dropped the phone. She knew why he
had left her such a terse message yesterday and why she had not heard a word from him since. He had not vanished… no. He
had simply cut his ties with her. Because it was not only the police who believed that she was guilty of attacking Henry Tremayne.
Max believed it, too.

W
hen Max heard the knock on his hotel-suite door, he assumed that it was room service. He had called them an hour earlier,
then again fifteen minutes ago to ask why it was taking them so long to produce a salad and a steak sandwich. In truth, he
didn’t care about the sandwich. He wasn’t particularly hungry, and he had ordered dinner more from force of habit than from
any desire to eat.

He had been trying all day to go about his business as if everything was fine, but his black mood had communicated itself
quickly and completely to everyone he encountered. By the middle of the afternoon, he was fed up with the way people were
tiptoeing around him, casting skittish looks at him out of the corners of their eyes as if they thought that he might explode
at any moment. The nervous deference just made things worse, and Max began to think that he might prove their fears correct.
He had canceled his last meeting of the day and left the office, thinking that he should take himself someplace where he would
not be a danger to anyone but himself.

He had, of course, ended up at the beach. Even his run had felt wrong, though. He had pushed himself through all five miles,
but it had been as plodding and painful as if there were sandbags tied to his legs, and he had been unable to drop into the
mindless state that he craved.

The knock came again, and he got slowly to his feet. He had been lying on the bed, reading the newspaper, still wearing his
running clothes, and he knew that he looked as coarse as he felt.
It’s about time,
he thought darkly, as he walked to the door. The thought of eating actually made him feel nauseous, but dinner was a normal
daily ritual, and he was damned if he was going to let his current state drag him down so far that he couldn’t even eat. That
would be a personal failure.

He opened the door and stopped short.

Carly was wearing an old brown coat buttoned up to her chin, and her hands were jammed into her pockets. Her eyes and nose
were red, and she looked as forlorn as a lost child, but there was also something steely in the way that she held herself.
There was a moment of shocked silence as they stared at each other, then she nodded.

“I thought you would be here,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

Max did not move aside, and he did not invite her in. He had known that he would have to confront her sooner or later, and
he had known that it would be difficult, but he had not expected to be assaulted by a mixture of emotions so intense that
they left him weak and speechless. How, he wondered angrily, could he want her so much, even now? Knowing what he did, how
could he feel anything but coldness when he looked into her face? And yet, it took every bit of self-control that he possessed
to keep himself from reaching out to her.

And if he did that, he thought, he would be lost. He didn’t even know what he would do if he suddenly found her in his arms.
He wanted to seize her, to kiss her, to hurt her, to hear her beg him to believe that despite everything, she really had loved
him all along. He wanted to take her beautiful face in his hands and hold her there until he could see the truth in her eyes.

He shook his head. His fingers tightened on the doorknob. “This is not a good time.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”

“You know why.”

She recoiled as if he had slapped her. “No, I don’t. I would like you to tell me, please. I want to hear it from you.”

“Christ, Carly,” Max began, then lowered his voice. “I’m not playing this game anymore. It’s over. We have nothing to talk
about.”

“Wrong. You owe me an explanation.” There were tears in her eyes, but she looked defiantly at him. “Max, do you really believe
that I tried to kill your grandfather?”

He let his eyes move over her. He knew every detail of her face, from the way that her eyes crinkled when she laughed, to
the way that her lips parted when she waited for him to kiss her. He had believed that he also knew her soul, arrogantly dismissing
the possibility that he could be fooled by a false front. But he had been fooled, and he did not know her at all. Even now,
even confronted with all the damning evidence, he simply could not believe that she would have hurt his grandfather. It ran
counter to his every instinct. And that told him exactly how deeply this woman had affected him and how dangerous that made
her.

“Yes,” he said.

A tear ran down Carly’s cheek, and Max looked away.

“You really think that I would do that?” she whispered.

He found it hard to speak. “Yes.”

“But why?”

It was more than he could take. Max knew that he had to end the conversation quickly. “Look,” he said. “I know about the loans.”

She looked blankly at him. “Loans?”

“Stop it. I had you investigated. I know about the clinic finances, about the mortgages, and the debts.”

Her face seemed frozen, suddenly. “Debts?”

“I’ll admit that you had me fooled. All that talk about not being able to leave the clinic because you were protecting your
investment. That wasn’t true, was it? You and Wexler have just been delaying the inevitable disaster as long as you can. And
now that the bank is about to foreclose, you must have been desperate to find a way to keep from losing everything.”

Carly said nothing. Max knew that he was talking too much, but he couldn’t stop himself. “If it makes you feel any better,”
he added coldly, “I don’t think that you would have done it if you hadn’t been desperate.”

She inhaled sharply, in a strange kind of gasp, and turned so white that he was sure she was about to faint. Instinctively,
he moved forward to steady her, but she recoiled, raising her hands. He stared at her. He had never seen an expression like
the one on her face. Her eyes looked huge, and bruised, and stunned.

“Carly,” he said, “What—”

Her hands stayed up like a barrier, keeping him back. “I have to go,” she said, in a trembling voice. “And I don’t ever want
to see you again. Ever. You are not the person I thought you were.”

She took a breath. “I will give you credit for one thing, though,” she said bitterly. “You were absolutely right about Richard.”

She turned and left him standing in the doorway, staring after her. Her stride was purposeful, as if she was on her way to
do something very important. Max watched her until she turned the corner and disappeared. She did not look back.

It was past six by the time the taxi dropped Carly off in front of the clinic. It was only a short drive from the hotel, but
there had been enough traffic to add ten minutes to the trip. She had spent the ride sitting numbly in the backseat, staring
through the window, barely seeing the city around her, barely hearing the rock station on the radio.

How’s your business doing?
Gracie had asked. Now she understood why. Gracie knew, Max knew. Richard certainly knew, damn him.
She
was the only one in the dark. Loans, mortgages, debts—Max had spoken of them in plural. How bad was it? And how could she
not have known? Richard had managed to conceal the truth, but perhaps it hadn’t taken much effort. She would be the first
to admit that she had not paid as much attention to their finances lately as she could have. But she hadn’t been ignoring
them, either. He had obviously been keeping a false set of books, because if things were really as bad as Max had made them
sound, then this charade had been going on for a long time.

She could hear Edie’s scornful voice.
He snorts that stuff like he’s got no bottom in his wallet.
On the contrary, it sounded to Carly as if he finally had hit bottom, and she was right there with him. How bad was it? How
bad? The question played in her mind like a discordant musical refrain. The clinic had almost a million dollars in assets,
including the building and all of the equipment they owned. If Richard had secretly taken out loans, using their assets as
collateral, he could have come up with a staggering sum to squander. Was it really possible to use up so much money on drugs?
She couldn’t believe it. If they really were in danger of losing everything, then Richard must have been channeling their
money—
her
money—into all kinds of personal expenses.

Fury gave Carly back her stamina. How dare he do this? He had the right to ruin his own life, but to casually and carelessly
destroy hers as well? That did it. She had been self-indulgent and stupid with her insistence on trying to see the good in
people. She hadn’t been noble, she had been naive, and look where she had ended up. Well, that unfortunate aspect of her personality
was now officially dead, laid to rest next to any residual sympathy for Richard Wexler. It was time that she started protecting
herself, because it was suddenly very clear that no one else would do it. Not even Max.