throat. “You coming to check up on me?” I joked.
Max looked a little pale. “You should see what we found down in the wash a couple hours ago. I knew you lived close by, so I thought I’d stop in and tell you myself.”
I was cautiously relieved; it didn’t sound as if he’d instantly connected me.
“Sit down, Max,” Carlo said. “Can we get you some coffee?”
Max took his time getting settled on the high wooden stool that Carlo directed him to, and slowly placed his hat on the breakfast counter without noticing the rocks that had been set there to dry. The same rocks I had picked up the day I killed the guy he was going to tell me about. The rocks I had forgotten to move into the yard like I usually did. Why did I leave them on the counter? I tried not to watch the rocks while trying to keep the carafe from knocking against Jane’s Bavarian china coffee cup as I poured his coffee. Instead, I watched him. Even at his most excited Max was so slow and somber your first inclination was to comfort him even if you were the one in trouble. He might have seemed a trifle intense just now, but with Max it was hard to tell. Despite his apparently not being here to arrest me, I nevertheless curled my fingers and imagined them black with fingerprint ink.
He looked doubtfully at the cup and saucer I had given him, as if his only problem was whether he could get his wienerlike fingers through the handle. After some deliberation, he wrapped his whole hand around the cup and took a solemn sip, heightening the drama of what I hoped wouldn’t be bad news.
Making a small show of bravely hiding chronic back pain, a woman incapable of committing homicide, let alone staging a vehicle crash, I pulled myself up onto the stool next to his.
He ran his hand through his perfectly combed dusty-dark hair, as if the hat had mussed it, which it had not. “Wait till you hear this.”
Before Carlo could profess curiosity, or I could force myself to breathe, Max spotted the rocks on the counter between us. “Did you get these from your usual place?”
He knew I went down to that part of the wash. I’d often left him and Carlo at the dining room table for one of their poker and philosophy sessions and come back before he was gone. I had to answer the question honestly or Carlo would know I was lying. Pointing to the rocks, “You bet. Look at the new specimens for my rock garden.”
No “Did you see an overturned van?” just “Hm.” Max turned the rocks this way and that with a rising excitement usually not given to rocks. “When were you there?”
Always tell as much truth as possible, but no more than necessary. Liars always want to embellish and it gets them into trouble. I looked at the clock, stupidly. I told myself it must be time to inhale. “The other day. Why, what’s up?”
“Don’t you die in this heat?”
What was his game? “I try to keep under the bridge where it’s shady. Isn’t it funny how the temperature changes drastically when you’re in the shade here?”
“I told her not to keep going down there,” Carlo added inconsequentially and reached over the breakfast counter to push my hair away from my forehead to expose the faint remains of my bruise, while I jerked slightly, annoyed at being a specimen. “Look, she fell.”
That qualifies as more information than necessary. Thanks, Carlo. Now I’d have to incorporate the fall into my story.
Max squinted at the spot Carlo indicated. More interested than usual, I thought, but maybe it was just the guilts working. I tried to look vulnerable.
“That must have been a bad knock,” he said.
“Oh, it’s okay, I’ve had worse. That looks good.” I got off the stool to get my own coffee. I used the action to get control over my pounding pulse, hiding lips that threatened to twitch incriminatingly behind the coffee cup, trying to anticipate Max’s questions and where they might lead: Did you see anyone driving a white van? Where are the clothes you were wearing when you tripped? I waited, mentally calculating the number of holes in my story. Why was he toying with me like this?
Regretting what Carlo might be about to hear, I still had to pretend ignorance. “So tell us what you saw. From the look on