“Lot of good that did me,” Max muttered, then shook himself out of his brief bout of self-pity. “So, anyway, I decided to write off the hit-and-run as one of Solomon’s drunken rants and ignore it. But over the next five or six weeks, there were a number of disturbing incidents. The brake line in my car was cut, Emily’s tires were slashed at school, and then one of her six-year-old students was kidnapped.”
“He kidnapped one of her schoolkids?” I cried. “That’s horrifying. Are you sure it was Solomon?”
“I know it was,” Max said flatly. “The boy was returned unharmed after twenty-four hours. He told his parents and the police that a nice, tall man in a mask took him to a house in the mountains, gave him hamburgers, and let him watch all his favorite TV shows. His only complaints were that he was blindfolded during the drive and that all the lights were out in the house.”
“So they kept the kid happy and in the dark.” Gabriel shook his head in disgust.
“Did you suggest to the police that they investigate Solomon for the kidnapping?” Derek wondered.
“Yeah. And I was warned that I could be sued for slander for dragging a good man’s name through the mud.”
“What happened when your brake line was cut?” Gabriel asked.
“I was lucky,” he said. “One of my neighbors was also my mechanic. He would check out my car whenever he had time, and he noticed it before I’d driven very far. But later, I was able to use the brake-line story to stage my death.”
“But why was Solomon doing this?” I shook my fist, appalled at the injustice. “What was the big deal? Not that you were, but even if you had been screwing around with Angie, why would he go to these lengths? He needed to snap out of it and get a life. Damn fool.”
Derek reached for my hand. “People have killed for less.”
“True.” I guess I was getting a little overwrought, but, really, that guy was a nut job.
“Solomon was obsessed,” Max said, “and he was getting worse all the time. And every day or so, Angie would call and warn me again.”
“I’ll bet she was in on it,” I grumbled.
Gabriel nodded. “She was getting off on the danger and the drama.”
“One of the last straws,” Max continued, “was when I got into my car one morning and heard ticking.”
“You’re kidding,” I whispered.
“No. I tore out of there and called the police. They wouldn’t even come and check my car. They just blew me off, pardon the pun. I was completely on my own.”
I reached over and touched his arm. “Poor Max.”
“What happened to your car?” Derek asked.
Max paused, then forced himself to answer. “The following morning, I went out to the car and found an envelope tucked under the windshield wiper. I opened it up and a card slipped out. It said
“Oh, what a creep.” I rubbed my arms. “That gives me chills.”
“I was half insane by now,” he admitted. “The police were certain I was a deranged troublemaker. I probably was. Deranged, anyway. I was desperate but helpless. I’d never felt like that before.”
“I can imagine.”
“Mostly, I was scared to death that something horrible would happen to Emily. The kidnapping had almost destroyed her.”
“I’m so sorry, Max.”
“It had been going on for about a month when Emily’s mother, Laura, was attacked.”
“Emily’s mother was attacked?” I couldn’t take it all in. Who would carry out such a relentless campaign against another human being and his loved ones? And how had I not known about it while it was happening?
“Laura made the mistake of coming to visit my place the day Solomon tricked up my stairway with an electrical-wire device. She took a bad tumble and wound up in the hospital with multiple injuries, including electrocution.”
“She could’ve been killed,” Derek said.
“Yes. By the time the police arrived, Solomon had managed to whisk away the wire, but Laura told me what happened. She’s not a flighty person. If she said she was tripped and electrocuted at the same time, I knew it was all true. I swear, Brooklyn, by then I was considering hiring a hit man to kill Solomon.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said darkly.
“The only thing that made sense was to fake my own death. So I took Robson into my confidence and he helped me clean up my affairs, write up a will, and arrange my own death.”
“Did my father help you, too?” I asked a little too sharply.
Max frowned, then admitted, “Yes, and I was damn grateful. After I told Robson the whole story, he called your father first thing. He’s the one who met me in Big Sur and helped rig my car to drive off the cliff. Then he drove me up to Oregon and we camped out in the Columbia Gorge for a few weeks until Robson completed the purchase of this house.”
It was my turn to frown. “But I remember Dad attending your memorial service.”
Grinning, Max said, “Your father would make a great spy. He drove back and forth from the campsite to Dharma at least three or four times, just to keep anyone from suspecting anything. And he and Robson spread the word around Dharma and Sonoma that my brakes had malfunctioned. I guess my paranoia was contagious, because they were both determined to cover my tracks completely.”
“And so they did,” I muttered. Guru Bob had found him a safe place to live and Max became Jack, a goat farmer in Point Reyes. And my father had known all along. How did I feel about that?
“Did Dad ever come visit you here?” I asked. “Had you thought about returning to real life at some point?”
Again, Max paused and frowned, uncomfortable with the questions.
That was when I lost it. Jumping up from the table, I said, “Max, were you going to live in hiding forever? Did you guys have an endgame strategy? What the hell were you going to do here for the next twenty years? Was anyone monitoring Solomon and Angelica for you? What about Emily?”
Max threw his napkin down and glared at me. “I did this for Emily! For her parents. For those little kids in her class, damn it! God, how much more damage was I willing to inflict on them? I needed to get out of their lives before anything else happened. I told you I was desperate, Brooklyn. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but I did what I thought was right at the time.”
He pushed away from the table, grabbed his empty bowl and utensils, and put them in the sink.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing him from behind in a hug. “I just…God, I mourned you. I missed you. I’m sick about what they did to you. I wish you would have said something. We have solidarity in Dharma. We could have protected you. We could have helped.”
He turned and returned my hug. “Robson helped. Your father helped. We talked about finding the right time for me to return. We came up with all sorts of excuses to explain why I’d been gone. I decided I would claim amnesia from the dive off the cliff. Your father was the one monit‹?oring Solomon’s activities to figure out when I could return, but nothing had changed so far.”
“My father is quite the little spymaster,” I muttered, realizing now that the three of them had to have been in contact over the past three years.
Derek stood and took his bowl to the sink. “Angelica must have suspected all this time that you weren’t really dead, since she’s the one who suggested you disappear.”
“Yeah, she is,” Max said warily as he carried the two pasta pots to the sink counter.
Derek turned. “But if she is indeed the one behind all this, why did she never do anything about it until recently? Why wait until now?”
“I have no idea.”
I gathered up the napkins. “Do you think she stole the book from Emily?”
“It had to be her,” Max said with certainty. He took the napkins from me, opened a side door to reveal a small laundry room, and tossed them into a basket on top of the washer. “She was so jealous of Emily. Every time Angie called, she’d make some snide remark or take a dig at Emily.” He closed the laundry room door. “Look, I hope you all know I’m not being boastful when I talk about her jealousy and possessiveness. It was sick and twisted, nothing to be proud of.”
“We know that, Max.” I patted his shoulder, then began to clear the rest of the pasta bowls and the bread
