“Since Haven was about five. We were bake sale moms. Maxi was so young. My goodness. I’ve got almost ten years on her. I felt bad for her. She seemed so lost, and it was clear even then that Charles was a grade-A jerk. No help at all, that one. I did what I could to show her the ropes around school, introduce her to the other moms, help her out with Haven whenever I could. We got to be real close. Stayed that way. Oh God.” She dragged another tissue from the box and caught the tears as they streamed down her face. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Haven, too. That’s the worst part. Maxi wanted everything for that girl. She was right on the cusp of having her independence.”
“From Charles?” Gretchen asked pointedly.
Angela gave a wan smile. “To be frank, yeah. It was easy when Haven was little because he only ever showed her his fun dad side and Maxi was able to act as a buffer between him and Haven whenever he got twisted up over something or in one of his moods. But when she got to be eleven, twelve, there was really no more hiding just how nasty and self-centered he is. I think it was a big disappointment.”
“Did Maxine or Haven ever indicate that he was physically abusive?” Josie said.
“Oh well, they wouldn’t, would they?” Angela smiled sadly. “That would mean admitting just how bad things were, and if Maxi did that, then she’d have to do something about it, and I just don’t think she was ever strong enough to walk away from Charles. Did he hit her? Honestly, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised but I never saw or heard anything.”
“Things between them had become more contentious than usual before Maxine and Haven’s death,” Gretchen said. “Is that right?”
Angela waved a hand in the air dismissively. “More? Well yeah, they were supposedly getting divorced this time. They’d separated. He left so he could carry on with some new, youngwoman who was too stupid to realize he was not a catch by any stretch of the imagination. It was ugly, for sure. The more he messed around on Maxi, the more he came after her—harassing her, berating her, throwing insults at her, belittling her. It was like as long as he was attacking her, she wouldn’t figure out that he was the bad guy in the whole situation.”
“Did Maxine know about Charles seeing someone?” Josie asked.
“Of course she did.” Angela laughed. “That man is about as subtle as a brick through your window. Honestly, I think she was relieved. Until she realized it was only going to make him twice as vindictive.”
“You’ve known Charles for as long as you knew Maxine,” Gretchen said. “Do you think he’s capable of murdering his wife and daughter?”
Angela rocked back in her chair, tapping her index finger against her chin. “I suppose so, but that wouldn’t be much fun for him, would it? I think as mad as he got with her, he’d much rather have her alive so he’d have someone to torture. That said, as much of a bastard as he is, I don’t think he’d hurt Haven. Whatever little bit of nice he’s got in him, it was reserved for her. I’m pretty sure Haven was the only person alive who could get an apology out of him.”
“Charles told us that a few months before she was killed, Maxine lost her job. Did she talk to you about that?” Josie said.
Angela’s lips pressed into a grim line as she considered her answer. Finally, she said, “Maxi didn’t lose her job. She was fired.”
“Yes,” Gretchen said. “That’s what her employer told us. Did Maxi tell you why?”
“She was making mistakes. Big ones. I’m sure they noticed the change in her, same as me.”
“What change was that?” asked Gretchen.
“She was different. Twitchy, paranoid. She lost weight. Stopped sleeping.”
“Did you ever ask her why?” Josie said.
“Of course I did. She told me that someone was after her. Following her. I asked her if she knew who it was and she said she couldn’t tell me. I told her if she didn’t want to tell me, fine, but she should go to the police.”
“She didn’t,” Gretchen said.
Angela nodded. “She said that going to the police would ruin her whole life. That she had too much to lose.”
That was different from what Maxine had told her coworkers. Everyone at the medical practice where she’d worked had said the same thing. When asked why she didn’t go to the police, Maxine had said the police couldn’t help her. Unfortunately, it was a common refrain among many victims of stalkers and domestic violence. In some circumstances, they could get a protection from abuse order, which acted as a restraining order, but a court document was a flimsy defense against someone hell-bent on harming or even killing them. Often it inflamed the situation further.
But why would reporting a stalker to the police ruin Maxine’s life? What would it cause her to lose? She’d already been fired and her husband had moved out. The breakdown of her marriage didn’t exactly sound like a loss. Did it have something to do with Haven? Criminal activity? There was the theory that Maxine had, in fact, been using drugs and that her supplier had been stalking her over an unpaid debt. Had Dani or Cassidy been in the same situation? Had they been taken to repay some sort of debt? There was no evidence of this on any of their phones, other electronic devices or social media. No evidence of illicit drugs in either home. Josie had subpoenaed both women’s bank and credit card statements to see if either of them had been making large cash withdrawals or advances. They would come throughwithin the next twenty-four hours hopefully, though Josie wasn’t sure they’d lead anywhere.
She didn’t think this was about drugs at all. A drug dealer wouldn’t have killed Maxine and Haven but left all of their valuables. He wouldn’t have abducted Dani and Cassidy but taken nothing of value from their home. He definitely wouldn’t have left flowers behind, and rare ones at that.
As she and Gretchen had discussed on the drive to the salon, these crimes were about something else altogether. Something very personal.
“Did Maxine ever talk about why going to the police about her stalker would ruin her life?” asked Josie.
Angela folded her hands over her stomach. “No. The more I tried to get information out of her, the more she shut down. To be honest, I wondered if something else was going on.”
“Like what?”
“When Haven was about nine years old, she came down with a very bad case of pneumonia. Real serious. She developed febrile seizures. Maxine stayed at the hospital for days on end. Charles was no help at all. She really didn’t want to lose her job, so she tried to do as much work remotely as possible. She started taking these herbal supplements that were supposed to provide a natural energy boost. They worked well at first. Her intention was to take them till things with Haven settled and she went back to school, but she kept taking them.”
Gretchen said, “Did she tell you she was taking them while Haven was hospitalized?”
