Woke Up Dead Read online

  “Maxine, still feeling weak or dizzy?”

  She shook her head. “It’s…it’s nothing. Really.” She grasped the white railing and took one step, then another. Well, she was smiling. She couldn’t be that hurt, he supposed. When she reached the top of the landing, she turned around and looked behind her. “I did it.”

  Then she turned and gave him the prettiest smile he’d ever seen on her, and he was having a hard time pulling his gaze away from her. She met his eyes squarely, her smile softening to something more intimate. His stomach tightened involuntarily. There was something about the look in her eyes, something—

  “The room is in here,” Armand broke in, taking Maxine’s hand again and leading her into a room on the left.

  The man was positively clingy, but Sam remembered Maxine being into that touchy-feely stuff when they were married. Well, she’d found the perfect guy then.

  The windows themselves were some fancy-dangle things, and Sam had to have Armand open them. Sam leaned out the window and looked at the brackets that had held the flower box. They were rusted to nubs.

  “There’s the problem,” he said, turning to Armand and Maxine. “The brackets deteriorated to the point where they couldn’t hold the weight anymore. Maxine, you must have just had bad timing to walk under at the exact moment it gave out.”

  Maxine leaned out to look, too. The wool pants tightened over the curve of her buttocks, and Sam chastised himself for even noticing.

  “I guess you’re right,” she said, pulling herself back in. “Bad luck and miracles. They seem to go hand in hand.”

  Sam turned away and headed out of the room. “Why don’t we take a look at the other flower box just to make sure it doesn’t need to be taken down.”

  “That’s Sally’s room,” Armand said, opening her door. He squinted as he took a step inside.

  Sally’s suite of rooms was a blitz of color. Flowered wallpaper with a matching comforter, mauve carpet and silk flowers everywhere. It was a striking change from the stark white everywhere else.

  Sam stepped over piles of clothes and magazines to the window, opening it with less hassle than the first time. The metal was cold on his bare hands as he lifted the heavy box filled with dirt and looked at the bracket holding it up.

  “Yep, this one’s beginning to give way, too. Better have it taken down right away.” He turned to Maxine who was looking out the window. “See, just an accident. Nothing to worry about.”

  She breathed out in relief. “Thank goodness.”

  Sam headed down the stairs again. Usually in a strange place, Romeo followed literally on Sam’s heels. Now the darn dog was Maxine’s shadow as she slowly walked back down the stairs. And they called them faithful beasts. Humph.

  At the front door, Sam turned to Armand. “Well, good luck. I wish you and Maxine the best.” Maxine was looking pale again. “You’d better lie down. Get lots of rest.” To Armand, he said, “If she feels dizzy or disoriented, take her to the hospital immediately. I trust you’ll take care of her.”

  Armand had her hands tucked in his. The only time he’d let go of them was when she’d gone up and down the stairs and used the railing. “I won’t let her out of my sight.”

  Sam swore she cringed at that, but he was probably imagining it. She tried to wriggle free. “Sam, won’t you stay for dinner?”

  “No, thank you. Romeo and I have two TV dinners with our names on them at home. New and improved with honest-to-goodness dairy cheese.” He smiled, because he didn’t want her to feel sorry for him.

  “You and Romeo?” Armand asked.

  “He doesn’t like dog food. I just feed him whatever I’m eating.” At Armand’s surprised expression, Sam added, “Hey, would you eat that stuff?”

  “Well, I…you…no, of course not.”

  “How about a drink then?” Maxine broke in, giving him an imploring look.

  Why did she sound so desperate? Armand looked a might irritated.

  “No, I really have to get going. Besides, the cab is outside.” He felt compelled to touch her arm for some reason, but held back. Armand had her firmly secured anyway. Not even a tornado would have wrenched her out of his grasp. “Everything will be fine. Take care of yourself, Maxine.”

  Their gazes held for a moment, giving him that strange tingling sensation in his stomach again. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and headed out the door.

  During the cab ride back to the office, he mulled over the scene of the accident. It looked harmless, but something didn’t sit right with him. It was because of Maxine, that was all. That personal involvement thing tended to throw things into a different perspective. There was no reason to think it was anything but an accident.

  Armand patted her hand as soon as Sam closed the door. “Well, that’s done with. Do you feel better, darling?”

  She was finally able to pull her hands free of his, using the excuse of pulling her hair off her neck. “Yes, I do.” She wanted to go to the window and watch the cab drive away, but that seemed inappropriate. With Sam gone, she felt terribly alone.

  “You don’t think he was serious about things living in our eyelashes, do you?” He was rubbing his nail over his eyebrow and looking at it with narrowed eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, looking around the room. Exactly fourteen pairs of eyes looked back at her. Were they Maxine’s or Armand’s? Since this was probably Armand’s house before Maxine moved in, she had to guess the puppets were his, since he’d had special niches built into the house for some of them.

  “You didn’t show Sam your collection of puppets,” she ventured to confirm. She walked over to one of the glass cases where large blue eyes stared back, an open-mouthed smile of perpetuity on its face. She hoped they weren’t hers.

  “The man wasn’t a guest, kissums. He was here on business. Now, please, can we stop talking about him?”

  She turned to Armand from the safe distance of the puppet case. “Did I really talk about him a lot?”

  “Yes. I know this probably isn’t the best time to bring it up, but it has bothered me for a while now. Are you hungry?”

  She wanted to keep talking about Sam, but obviously Armand wasn’t into it. “A little.” That kitchen was awesome. She was eager to whip up something exotic and complicated, something to take her mind off being here alone with Armand. Did Maxine cook?

  “Why don’t I make something for us?” She could think up a dish that she’d have to go out to get the ingredients for. Why, she could drag this dinner thing out the entire evening, going to the store, keeping busy in the kitchen and needing her hands to work so he couldn’t grab them. In fact, if he got too close, she could create a flour dust storm to send him away.

  His laugh was almost a sputter. Unfortunately, her comment was somehow interpreted as an invitation for him to come over and take her hands into custody again.

  “You must have bumped your brain, darling. You are the same Maxine who told me on our first date that all the cooking you do is toast, aren’t you?”

  She tilted her head. “Well… “

  “Come, darling.” As if she had a choice, with him pulling her along as if she was some child. “Aida,” he said, walking into that kitchen that made her fingers itch to pull down some of those copper pots. “Are the children due in soon?”

  Children? Yipes, she hadn’t thought about his having children. Well, they could be a pleasant distraction, too.

  Aida glanced at the clock. Yep, the white clock. “They should be home any time, Mr. Santini. They called from the city about half an hour ago.”

  Armand rubbed Maxine’s hands. “Good. What do you feel like eating tonight, kissums?” He walked to an enormous refrigerator that only had one door. It turned out to be a freezer crammed full with packages wrapped in cellophane. He pulled one out and read the label. “Ravioli?” He pulled a few more out. “Beef kabob. Beef burgundy. Chicken cordon bleu.” Above each label was the name, ‘Anatoli’s Gourmet Meals.’ Beneath the f
ood type was cooking directions, both microwave and oven.

  She glanced around at the fancy kitchen, then at Armand. “Nobody cooks in this kitchen?”

  “Of course we cook.” He lifted one of the packages. “These. Darling, you love our meal plan.” He grinned. “Remember, you said it was one of the reasons you were marrying me, though I certainly hope you were kidding.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then touched one of the cold packages to it. “Weren’t you?”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sure I was kidding.”

  Well, if Maxine-the-first didn’t like to cook, then she could understand why the frozen meals appealed to her so much. “Ravioli is fine, but why do you have such a well-equipped kitchen?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Because I like the illusion of being able to cook. Maxine, really, I wonder if that cut on your head didn’t do more damage than you think.”

  “Well, I don’t feel…normal, exactly. I’ll be all right, though.” As soon as she could get out of there.

  She heard a noise at the front door, and Armand rubbed his hands together. “Oh, good. The children are here. Aida, why don’t you start dinner? You know what James and Sally like.”

  Maxine turned to greet the children, aiming her gaze to about knee level. The children turned out to be in their early twenties. The one who must be James looked like a younger version of his father, except he had more hair and was taller. Sally had waves of thick, long, black hair and vivid green eyes. She must have taken after her mother.

  “Maxine, I wasn’t expecting to find you here,” James said, hanging up his coat on a white stand near the front door. His frigid gaze held her for a moment before he shifted it toward his father and forced a smile. “I thought you were both going out for dinner.”

  Armand took her hands in his again. “There was an accident earlier today. We’re lucky to have her with us now.”

  “What happened, Daddykins?” Sally said, walking up to Maxine with concern in her eyes.

  “The flower box fell from the guest bedroom right through the greenhouse roof and hit Maxine on the forehead. It was a miracle she survived.”

  “Oh, gosh. How horrible.” Sally said when Armand lifted Maxine’s bangs to show her the bandage. “How did the flower box fall?”

  “The brackets holding the box seem to have rusted right through.” Armand shook his head. “It was a freak accident. But the future Mrs. Santini is going to be just fine.” He patted her hand.

  “Aren’t we lucky,” James muttered, going up the stairs with terse movements. So, both of the children lived at home still. One of them wasn’t all that thrilled that his father was marrying her. Well, he didn’t have a thing to worry about. She’d play along tonight, and tomorrow she’d break it off with him and find someplace to stay.

  During dinner, Maxine thought about Sam eating his TV dinner while they ate what was basically a gourmet version of the same. She’d much rather be in his apartment than this sterile dining room with these strangers. She smiled faintly when she pictured Romeo sitting at the table with Sam eating his own Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes.

  James and Sally discussed a few financial aspects of opening another nightclub in a newly refurbished area of Chicago. Apparently James managed Temptations, one of the dance clubs. Sally managed Belly Aches, the comedy club right next store.

  Armand cut his ravioli into perfectly sized pieces with his fork and knife. He looked up at his children. “Neither of you called this morning and left a message with Aida about some emergency meeting, did you?”

  James shook his head, setting down his bottle of Coke. “No. I knew you were spending the afternoon with Maxine. I wouldn’t have bothered you knowing how important that was.” His gray eyes alighted on hers for a moment.

  Sally tossed her black hair back over her shoulders. “Besides, we didn’t have any emergencies that I know of. James has everything running smoothly,” she added with a proud smile.

  “As much as I’m allowed to run,” he added in a monotone voice.

  If they were trying to get something across to Armand, it was lost on him.

  “Aida said it sounded like you, James, but that the caller didn’t leave a name. She probably assumed it was you. I got to the offices and no one was looking for me. If it hadn’t been for that call, I would have been here when my kissums had her run-in with the flower box.”

  James shrugged. “Wasn’t me. I was in a meeting all day with the real estate people talking about the new location.”

  “I was interviewing people all day,” Sally said. “Now I have about a hundred people to call for references. I wish there was a way to tell if they were being honest or not.”

  Maxine was going to suggest having Sam look into their backgrounds but decided mixing her past and present any more than she had wasn’t such a good idea. Still, she was concerned about the call that pulled Armand away right before the accident. She couldn’t discount that coincidence. “You mean someone called to summon you for some emergency meeting, and no one was there?”

  Armand waved it off. “It must have been a misunderstanding.”

  Sally chattered on about some of her stranger applicants. “So this guy says, ‘And if you ever have a comedian cancel at the last minute, I’m kind of funny. I can, you know, fill in.’ He sounded like Andrew Dice Clay. I told him that our wait staff never double as our entertainment, club policy. So he walked out.”

  James was looking back and forth between her and Armand, his lips tight and eyes narrowed. He let his fork drop to the tablecloth with a dull thud. Riveting his gaze to his father, he said, “Isn’t anyone going to comment on how strange it is that the flower box decided to fall on Maxine the same way—”

  “No,” Armand interrupted. “No one is going to comment on that.”

  Maxine looked around the table. Everyone had gone silent, their expressions grim.

  “The same way as what?” she asked at last, forcing a light tone in her voice.

  “Nothing, my sweet,” Armand said, patting her hand.

  Now why did she get the feeling that wasn’t so? Sally launched into another conversation about something that happened at work, and the icy tension melted away. Maxine was still stuck on James’s comment. Had there been another accident? Another threat to Maxine’s life?

  Her attention was drawn back to the table when Armand said, “Sally, I’d like to do a show some night. Maybe next weekend. I’m getting the itch again.”

  “A show?” Maxine said, taken off guard.

  “With Mr. Wiggles.”

  “What?” She’d never been to Belly Aches or Temptations, but she didn’t think either place was that kind of club. She didn’t even want to think about the itch part.

  “That’d be great, Daddykins,” Sally said, ignoring Maxine’s look of disgust. “They love Mr. Wiggles. We’ll pick a date and start distributing fliers to build the publicity. We’ll use the same promotion tape as last time for the radio spots.”

  Armand leaned closer to Maxine. “You can be my lovely assistant.”

  She moved away, her eyes widened. “That’s disgusting.”

  When everyone looked at her as if she were the strange one, she put her napkin to the side of her plate. “Excuse me. I’m not feeling all that well.”

  “That’s obvious,” James said, as she stood and turned from the table.

  Not knowing exactly where to go in the house, and not feeling much like taking a stroll through the snow, she walked to the door leading to the greenhouse. She easily navigated the two steps down. She could not tolerate talking about Armand doing some sex show with his…children. Ugh, the thought.

  Aida was sweeping up the dirt where the flower box had been. She’d already dumped the box itself in a large trash bin.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Aida said, grunting with exertion as the shovel scraped along the white deck floor. She looked more like a wrestler than a maid, with a broad torso and thick arms. “Surprised to see you in here, of all places.” The woman nodded
upward where a blue tarp now covered the hole. “I wouldn’t come out here with a ten foot pole if it happened to me. Nope, no way.”

  “Well, it couldn’t possibly happen again, could it?”

  Aida dumped the last shovelful of dirt into the bin. “About as likely as lightning striking twice, I suppose.” She leaned on the shovel, studying Maxine. “You seem different since the accident. More pensive than your usual bubbly self. They say a taste of death can change a person. Is that true?”

  “You couldn’t imagine how much.”

  “Mr. Santini would sure be broken up if you’d gone.” Aida nodded upward, meaning Heaven and not the hole Maxine presumed. “He’s rather fond of you.”

  Aida sure couldn’t figure out why, her tone and expression said.

  “Yes, I gathered. I mean, I’m fond of him, too.”

  “I hope you mean that. He’s a swell guy. You’ll never find another one like him.”

  “Oh, I’m positive of that.”

  “I’d hate to see his little heart broken.” Aida studied her for a moment, then pushed herself upright with the handle. “Well, I’m going inside now. It’s chilly out here. Don’t stay out too long. You might survive the flower box only to catch yourself a death of a cold.”

  Aida passed Armand as he headed out, closing the door behind him. “Darling, what is the matter? You were acting so strange in there. What are you doing out here?” He glanced around, as if the greenhouse should host bad spirits against her or something. His hands deftly found hers again, moments before she’d have tucked them in her pockets.

  Did Maxine know about his little shows? Obviously. “It’s just been a long day, and my head hurts. Terribly,” she added, just in case he entertained any thoughts of bringing out Mr. Wiggles later that night.

  “I’m sorry, kissums. How very insensitive of me; I should have known. Why don’t you lie down? I’ll get you some aspirin.”