Kate Carlisle - One Book In The Grave

“Yes, I wonder, too,” I said, bemused as always by Angelica’s logic.

“She warned me to leave town or go into hiding because Solomon had gone off the deep end and was threatening to kill me again.”

“Were you still living in Sonoma?”

“Yes. I’d planned to move to San Francisco, but then I met Emily. She taught first grade at a school near Santa Rosa, just a few miles away, so I stayed in the area. Probably my biggest mistake.”

“Get back to the phone call,” Derek said, his voice professional, crisp. “What else did Angelica say about Solomon?”

Max shook his head. “She was frantic. She said Solomon was convinced that she and I were still sleeping together. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was the one who’d put that thought into his head. She was always playing games like that with me, testing to see how jealous I could get.”

“What a witch,” I muttered.

“Yeah, she was. She told me Solomon had threatened to come after Emily, too.”

Derek leaned forward. “Did you suspect she was trying to cause trouble between Emily and you?”

“Absolutely. That was my first thought,” he said. “But that night, I parked across the street from Emily’s and when I stepped into the street, a car gunned its motor and drove straight for me. I was grazed and thrown backward. I must’ve hit my head on the sidewalk, because I was unconscious for a little while. When I woke up, I called the police. I’d recognized the car. It belonged to Solomon.”

“What did the cops do?”

“Nothing.” Max gritted his teeth in disgust.

“Why not?” I asked, outraged.

“Because Solomon was an esteemed professor at the prestigious Art Institute and by then I’d quit the institute. As far as the cops were concerned, I was just another local artist who’d once been busted for smoking pot.” He shrugged, though I could see it cost him. “There were no witnesses. Just my word against Solomon’s, and guess who they believed?”

“Oh, that’s great,” I muttered, then explained, “The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t exactly known for its enlightened views a few years back. They have a new sheriff and things are much better now.”

“Lot of good that did me,” Max muttered, then shook himself out of his brief bout of self-pity. “So, anyway, I decided to write off the hit-and-run as one of Solomon’s drunken rants and ignore it. But over the next five or six weeks, there were a number of disturbing incidents. The brake line in my car was cut, Emily’s tires were slashed at school, and then one of her six-year-old students was kidnapped.”

“He kidnapped one of her schoolkids?” I cried. “That’s horrifying. Are you sure it was Solomon?”

“I know it was,” Max said flatly. “The boy was returned unharmed after twenty-four hours. He told his parents and the police that a nice, tall man in a mask took him to a house in the mountains, gave him hamburgers, and let him watch all his favorite TV shows. His only complaints were that he was blindfolded during the drive and that all the lights were out in the house.”

“So they kept the kid happy and in the dark.” Gabriel shook his head in disgust.

“Did you suggest to the police that they investigate Solomon for the kidnapping?” Derek wondered.

“Yeah. And I was warned that I could be sued for slander for dragging a good man’s name through the mud.”

“What happened when your brake line was cut?” Gabriel asked.

“I was lucky,” he said. “One of my neighbors was also my mechanic. He would check out my car whenever he had time, and he noticed it before I’d driven very far. But later, I was able to use the brake-line story to stage my death.”

“But why was Solomon doing this?” I shook my fist, appalled at the injustice. “What was the big deal? Not that you were, but even if you had been screwing around with Angie, why would he go to these lengths? He needed to snap out of it and get a life. Damn fool.”

Derek reached for my hand. “People have killed for less.”

“True.” I guess I was getting a little overwrought, but, really, that guy was a nut job.

“Solomon was obsessed,” Max said, “and he was getting worse all the time. And every day or so, Angie would call and warn me again.”

“I’ll bet she was in on it,” I grumbled.

Gabriel nodded. “She was getting off on the danger and the drama.”

“One of the last straws,” Max continued, “was when I got into my car one morning and heard ticking.”

“You’re kidding,” I whispered.

“No. I tore out of there and called the police. They wouldn’t even come and check my car. They just blew me off, pardon the pun. I was completely on my own.”

I reached over and touched his arm. “Poor Max.”

“What happened to your car?” Derek asked.

Max paused, then forced himself to answer. “The following morning, I went out to the car and found an envelope tucked under the windshield wiper. I opened it up and a card slipped out. It said BOOM .”

“Oh, what a creep.” I rubbed my arms. “That gives me chills.”

“I was half insane by now,” he admitted. “The police were certain I was a deranged troublemaker. I probably was. Deranged, anyway. I was desperate but helpless. I’d never felt like that before.”

“I can imagine.”

“Mostly, I was scared to death that something horrible would happen to Emily. The kidnapping had almost destroyed her.”

“I’m so sorry, Max.”

“It had been going on for about a month when Emily’s mother, Laura, was attacked.”

“Emily’s mother was attacked?” I couldn’t take it all in. Who would carry out such a relentless campaign against another human being and his loved ones? And how had I not known about it while it was happening?

“Laura made the mistake of coming to visit my place the day Solomon tricked up my stairway with an electrical-wire device. She took a bad tumble and wound up in the hospital with multiple injuries, including electrocution.”

“She could’ve been killed,” Derek said.

“Yes. By the time the police arrived, Solomon had managed to whisk away the wire, but Laura told me what happened. She’s not a flighty person. If she said she was tripped and electrocuted at the same time, I knew it was all true. I swear, Brooklyn, by then I was considering hiring a hit man to kill Solomon.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said darkly.

“The only thing that made sense was to fake my own death. So I took Robson into my confidence and he helped me clean up my affairs, write up a will, and arrange my own death.”

“Did my father help you, too?” I asked a little too sharply.

Max frowned, then admitted, “Yes, and I was damn grateful. After I told Robson the whole story, he called your father first thing. He’s the one who met me in Big Sur and helped rig my car to drive off the cliff. Then he drove me up to Oregon and we camped out in the Columbia Gorge for a few weeks until Robson completed the purchase of this house.”

It was my turn to frown. “But I remember Dad attending your memorial service.”

Grinning, Max said, “Your father would make a great spy. He drove back and forth from the campsite to Dharma at least three or four times, just to keep anyone from suspecting anything. And he and Robson spread the word around Dharma and Sonoma that my brakes had malfunctioned. I guess my paranoia was contagious, because they were both determined to cover my tracks completely.”

“And so they did,” I muttered. Guru Bob had found him a safe place to live and Max became Jack, a goat farmer in Point Reyes. And my father had known all along. How did I feel about that?

“Did Dad ever come visit you here?” I asked. “Had you thought about returning to real life at some point?”