“Charles brought her whatever she needed from home most of the time—that was the extent of his support,” Angela rolled her eyes. “But Maxine didn’t want to ask him to pick those up for her, so she asked me. I figured it wasn’t my business. They were all-natural, supposedly, but a few months later, she started acting differently. Jittery, anxious. She’d lost some weight. Iasked her if there was something going on at home or if she was still taking those supplements. It was the supplements. She stopped taking them and things were fine, but these last four months or so, even before she got fired, I started to wonder if she was taking them again.”
“Was she acting exactly the same as before?” Josie asked.
Angela frowned. “Not exactly. I mean, this time she was a lot more paranoid and to be honest, I wondered if she was having delusions and maybe there wasn’t anyone following her around.”
“You didn’t believe her when she told you someone was stalking her?” Gretchen asked. There was no accusation in her voice, just curiosity.
“I just think if that was true, she would have told me more. It was too vague. We told each other everything. She confided in me about Charles for years. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to leave him, I didn’t judge. I let her vent, and we tried to come up with ways for her to stay in the marriage and try to manage him better, and her own feelings. I never once judged her, and I kept all of her secrets.”
“What secrets were those?” asked Josie.
Angela gave a sad smile. “I’d never give these up, you know, especially not to strangers, but since Maxi was murdered, it seems like the best thing would be to tell them.”
“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Gretchen agreed.
Maxine’s secrets weren’t all that scandalous. Of the items Angela listed, taking the herbal supplements was the most troubling. The others had to do with times she stole office supplies from work, hit a car in the grocery store parking lot and kept going, and lied to Charles to keep the peace in their house.
“If Maxi knew someone was after her, even if she didn’t want to report it, she would have told me everything there was to know about it.”
“Did you ask her if she’d started taking the supplements again?” Josie said.
Angela rubbed her temples. “Yes. She was very angry with me. Denied it, of course. Things were strained between us for a while after that.”
“When was this?” Gretchen said.
“A few weeks before the festival. I told her that I just wanted her to be happy and whole and that she’d been doing so well before that, it was heartbreaking to see her in such poor shape.”
“Doing so well?” Josie said. “What do you mean?”
“About a year ago, last summer, Haven had just gotten her driver’s license. Charles bought her an old beat-up car to get to her part-time job, go out with her friends and to drive back and forth to school when her senior year started. Maxi had a lot more time on her hands. For once, she started really focusing on her own needs. Self-care. I’d been telling her for years that she needed to pay close attention to it. Especially with a husband like Charles. I told her if she wasn’t going to leave him, then she should find her own happiness in whatever form she could. Pamper herself. God knows, she deserved it. I secretly hoped that if she got strong enough, maybe she would leave him.”
“What did focusing on herself look like?” Gretchen asked.
“Eating healthier, taking up yoga and spin classes. She even started coming in to get her hair done regularly. It was great. We’d go out for a late dinner or a drink afterward. She bought herself some new clothes. She joined a book club at the library for a couple of months but stopped because she said no one ever discussed the books at the meetings. Instead, she started volunteering at the women’s center. That seemed to be much more fulfilling for her and if you ask me, a great place for her tomake contacts. She was doing really well. Happier than I’d ever seen her and then, about four or five months ago, in February or March, she just started to fall apart. At first, I thought she and Charles were fighting again. Maybe he was coming down on her for all the money she was spending or all the time she was out of the house volunteering, but he wasn’t around much. Traveling and working late.”
In other words, he was seeing the woman he’d met.
“I thought Maxi’s downturn was a temporary thing. Everyone has bad days, bad weeks, even, but it lasted for months and it only got worse and worse.”
THIRTY-THREE
“What do you think?” Gretchen asked. She pulled into the municipal parking lot at the back of the Denton PD headquarters. Several reporters milled about the entrance to the building, hoping to get an update or a juicy bit of information on the abductions.
Josie watched as some of the reporters craned their necks in the direction of Gretchen’s SUV, preparing to pounce. “I think that no one believed Maxine when she told them she had a stalker. I know we’re waiting on toxicology, but other than the opinions of a few people around her, there’s no actual evidence that she was taking any type of illicit drugs or even herbal supplements. Not at the time of her death anyway.”
Gretchen turned the vehicle off but made no move to get out. “It was easier for everyone around her to think that she was taking something that altered her mood and behavior than to believe she had some sort of stalker. It’s kind of odd, if you think about it. Angela was the only one who knew about her prior use of that supplement.”
“It’s also odd that Angela didn’t believe her. They were obviously very close. I can see her boss and coworkers dismissing the stalker thing, though,” Josie said. “They neversaw anything. Nothing delivered to her at work. No one lurking around. No one following her. No messages of any kind. Then she’s cagey about the whole thing and refuses to report it.”
Josie felt sweat begin to bead along her hairline. The air conditioning in Gretchen’s vehicle was powerful but already the heat was beginning to chase away the remnants of cold air. Gretchen took a deep breath and threw her door open. “Let’s get this over with.”
They strode toward the building, blank-faced, barking out “No comment” at the shouted questions. The heat in the stairwell was cloying. Silently, they trudged up to the second floor. The great room was abuzz with activity, uniformed officers coming and going, completing paperwork and making calls. The Chief’s door was closed. On the far wall, a sitcom played on the television. Soon, the local news would air, and Dani and Cassidy’s faces would appear in the homes of Pennsylvania citizens. Josie hoped that someone out there knew or had seen something that might lead to their safe recovery. The thought that it might be too late was immediate and instinctual, but Josie mentally packaged it up and stored it deep in her emotional vault.
Gretchen plopped into her chair and waited for her computer to boot up. “There had to be a moment when Maxine realized she had a stalker in the first place. When she sees someone lurking around or following her places, or weird things start appearing on her doorstep or her car. Maybe that’s where we need to be looking. Look more closely at the time frame in which she started to become petrified and figure out what was going on in her life at that very specific time.”
Josie sat at her own desk, but her eyes were drawn to the tiny basketball hoop affixed to Turner’s blotter. “We know what she was doing. Angela told us. Lots of self-care. Salon visits, new clothes, yoga, spin classes, book clubs, volunteer work.”
Even as she listed the items out, something in the back of Josie’s mind whirred to life, thrashing through the scattered facts of both cases so it could claw to the front of her mind.
