“She threatened you?” Derek looked aghast. “You can’t be serious.”
“It was usually vague,” I said, “but basically she warned me not to hang around Max and their friends, or she’d make me sorry I was ever born.” I took a sip of wine. “Now that we’re talking about it, I remember being scared to death of her. I was afraid she would slip something into my drink someday, so I stopped going to the department parties.”
“I’m sorry,” Max said, then slid into a thoughtful silence.
“It’s not your fault,” I said after a minute.
“Yeah, it is.”
We all ate quietly for a while, each of us absorbed in our own little worlds.
“This pasta is incredible,” I said, trying to coax Max back to the conversation.
“Thanks,” he said, tearing off a slice of toast. “It’s funny now to hear your side of things, Brooklyn. You’re right: Angie was too possessive. I knew it all along. But she was gorgeous, wildly talented, and larger-than-life, so I put up with it. I thought she made me look good. And, I’ll admit, I enjoyed the wild side of her.”
“Men,” I muttered, not for the first time.
“A man will put up with a lot of grief for a beautiful woman,” Gabriel murmured, swirling his wine.
“She was a gorgeous disaster,” Max admitted. “And it didn’t hurt that Solomon was jealous of my relationship with her.”
“No, that wouldn’t hurt,” Derek said, flashing me a quick grin. “Men can be ridiculous sometimes.”
“I can see now that I was a complete idiot,” Max said cheerfully. “As Brooklyn would probably concur.”
“Well, I would now,” I said, and everyone laughed. “But back then, Max was like a celebrity. He had a huge following in the book arts world. His techniques for making paper were considered revolutionary and groundbreaking.”
“Okay, now you’re getting carried away,” Max drawled.
“No, really,” I said, looking at Derek and Gabriel. “He had groupies.”
“They were my students,” Max protested.
I laughed. “No, they were your fans. Solomon absolutely should have been jealous of you. You were years younger, taller, and better-looking than him. He was your boss, so I guess he could have fired you, but he couldn’t afford to lose you. I’m sure a decent percentage of people enrolled in classes at the institute because of you.”
“Thank you for the positive PR, Brooklyn, but Solomon was mainly jealous of my relationship with Angelica, not my work. After we’d been together awhile, Angie confessed that she and Solomon had dated briefly in the past, before I came to work there. She often mentioned that he wanted her back. But for some reason, she was in love with me.”
“Do you think she was seeing Solomon on the side?” I asked.
“Ah, a love triangle,” Derek mused. “Murder would be a natural outcome.”
I couldn’t help but smile when he talked like that. Clyde the cat wound his fuzzy body around my ankles, then planted his entire body on my feet.
“We were hardly in a love triangle,” Max demurred. “Angie told me about her earlier fling with Solomon only to keep me on my toes. She insisted she didn’t like him anymore, but tolerated him to keep the peace. At the time I thought she was sincere, but now who knows what the truth was?”
“The institute sounds like a hotbed of thrills and intrigue,” Derek said dryly.
“Apparently, it was rife with drugs and promiscuity,” I said, then laughed ruefully. “And I was completely in the dark.”
Gabriel wound a small amount of pasta around his fork, then looked at Max. “So why do you think the shooter might be Angelica, if she professed to love you so much?”
We gobbled up pasta as Max collected his thoughts.
“I’d been thinking of quitting my job because Solomon was making my life miserable,” he said. “His rantings had increased and he was making the strangest departmental decisions. He’d become a petty dictator. One night after we’d been drinking for hours, Solomon suddenly threatened to kill me if I didn’t stop seeing Angelica.”
“That’s bizarre.” I stared at him, shocked.
“You have no idea,” Max said. “Solomon fancied himself a warrior and he was well-known for collecting exotic weapons. He told me he knew of ways to kill me that wouldn’t leave a trace. I took the threat seriously.”
“How did I not know this?” I wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t get one. But none of it was fair. “He was your boss. You should’ve reported him to the school.”
“Your naivete is charming,” Max said dryly, then faced Derek. “Solomon practically ran the school. He was on the faculty board and they made the decisions concerning scheduling, hiring, firing, which teachers got which classes. All of that.”
“So Solomon was starting to lose it,” Derek prompted. “Where did Angelica fit in at this point?”
“She was becoming more jealous and irrational with every passing day. I finally accepted that our relationship had run its course and I broke up with her. She wasn’t happy about it. She called and e-mailed constantly. Left messages for me everywhere.”
“What kind of messages?” I asked.
Max took a bite and chewed slowly, thinking. “She wanted to get back together. But then I would run into Solomon on campus and he would gloat that he and Angelica were dating again. Then I’d get another phone call from Angie denying it. They were both making me nuts. A few months later, I quit my job.”
“While I sympathize,” Derek said finally, “I still wonder how this relates to you faking your own death.”
Max smiled. He’d grown more relaxed as the meal went on. The few sips of wine he’d had must have helped. “About six months after I broke up with Angelica and quit the institute, I met a woman. We fell in love.”
“Emily,” I said.
“Yes.” He sighed. “Emily was wonderful, adorable, kind. She loved children and animals and represented everything that was good in the world. I was crazy in love with her. We announced our engagement and planned a great party to celebrate. A week or two before the party, my cell phone rang. It was Angelica. She’d gotten back together with Solomon a while before this, so I wondered why she was calling.”
“Yes, I wonder, too,” I said, bemused as always by Angelica’s logic.
“She warned me to leave town or go into hiding because Solomon had gone off the deep end and was threatening to kill me again.”
“Were you still living in Sonoma?”
“Yes. I’d planned to move to San Francisco, but then I met Emily. She taught first grade at a school near Santa Rosa, just a few miles away, so I stayed in the area. Probably my biggest mistake.”
“Get back to the phone call,” Derek said, his voice professional, crisp. “What else did Angelica say about Solomon?”
Max shook his head. “She was frantic. She said Solomon was convinced that she and I were still sleeping together. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was the one who’d put that thought into his head. She was always playing games like that with me, testing to see how jealous I could get.”
“What a witch,” I muttered.
“Yeah, she was. She told me Solomon had threatened to come after Emily, too.”
Derek leaned forward. “Did you suspect she was trying to cause trouble between Emily and you?”
“Absolutely. That was my first thought,” he said. “But that night, I parked across the street from Emily’s and when I stepped into the street, a car gunned its motor and drove straight for me. I was grazed and thrown backward. I must’ve hit my head on the sidewalk, because I was unconscious for a little while. When I woke up, I called the police. I’d recognized the car. It belonged to Solomon.”
“What did the cops do?”
“Nothing.” Max gritted his teeth in disgust.
“Why not?” I asked, outraged.
“Because Solomon was an esteemed professor at the prestigious Art Institute and by then I’d quit the institute. As far as the cops were concerned, I was just another local artist who’d once been busted for smoking pot.” He shrugged, though I could see it cost him. “There were no witnesses. Just my word against Solomon’s, and guess who they believed?”
“Oh, that’s great,” I muttered, then explained, “The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department wasn’t exactly known for its enlightened views a few years back. They have a new sheriff and things are much better now.”
