“Gotcha,” he said and I heard the noise of a bottle sliding off a refrigerator shelf.
“How’s Bitsy?” I asked, still stirring, waiting for all the cheese to melt.
“Pissed, scared, in shock,” he answered, I heard him moving around then I heard kitchen noises then I saw a wineglass hit the counter beside the dish and Max was at my side with a bottle and bottle opener.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Will be, it’ll take awhile. She isn’t cooperating, won’t talk to the police.”
I looked at him, surprised. “She won’t?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“She’s pissed, scared, in shock,” he repeated and I guessed if my husband was murdered by a contract killer while I was on holiday in Arizona and he was in bed with the town ice queen, I might not feel cooperative either.
“Is that why they need you?”
He looked at me and pulled the cork out of the wine. “Yeah.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him, because I didn’t.
“We’re close,” he said then said no more and I decided not to ask about Max being close to Bitsy, the wife of the dead man who sounded like his arch enemy.
It was strange, very strange, but I was presently dealing with another strange and not unpleasant feeling of moving around Max’s kitchen with Max like we’d done it every night for the last ten years. I didn’t have it in me to interrogate him about his relationship with the unknown Bitsy.
Instead I enquired, “Is she going to talk to the police now?”
“I’m takin’ her in tomorrow.”
I nodded then poured the sauce over the salmon and prawns before informing him, “Your sister came by.”
“Yeah, I hear, Mindy called. Said you tag teamed her but you dealt the death blow.”
I went to the sink and dropped the skillet in it saying, “I wouldn’t describe it like that.”
“How would you describe it?”
“Well, firstly, it wasn’t that dramatic.”
“Kami is all about drama, so I’m guessin’ you’re downplayin’ the situation.” Max finished pouring my wine, seemingly relaxed about the Kami situation, and set the bottle on the counter as I moved to stand in the front of the casserole dish and pulled the towel off the potatoes. He slid the wine close to me and headed to the fridge asking, “She act as big a bitch as Mindy said?”
I pulled in breath and scooped potatoes on the top of the sauced-up fish, uncertain how to answer.
I decided on, “She wasn’t um… exactly pleasant.”
Max sighed and I heard the top come off a beer. “She gets in moods.”
He could say that again.
“She brought you papers,” I told him.
“You look at them?” he asked and my eyes shot to his face.
“Of course not.”
He grinned and, coming close to me, he leaned a hip on the counter. “Why not?”