Instantly the doorman’s gaze snapped up to meet Max’s. “Good afternoon,” he said. “May I help you?”
Max walked up to the impressive mahogany desk behind which the much smaller man stood. Taking a quick look around the lobby area, Max spotted the mailboxes for the tenants and smiled to himself. Just as he’d thought. The doorman would have had a good view of whoever might have slipped a blackmail letter into Julia’s mail slot.
Rather than answering the man’s question, Max gave him a tight smile and said, “You’re Henry, right?”
The doorman looked surprised. “Yes, sir. Henry Brown.”
“My fiancée lives in this building,” Max said, and realized that it was getting easier to say the word fiancee. “Ms. Prentice.”
There was a flicker of surprise in Henry’s dark brown eyes, which disappeared a moment later. “Are you here to see her, then? She’s not at home at the moment, but I’d be happy to deliver a message for you.”
Trying to get rid of him? Max wondered. “No,” he said, “actually, I came to talk to you.”
“Me?”
Max had made it a point over the years to learn how to read people. It came in handy in negotiations and was invaluable when meeting new clients or prospective business partners. And every instinct Max had told him that Henry was nervous. It didn’t show clearly, of course, and if he hadn’t been looking for the signals, he might have missed them himself.
But Henry’s gaze was furtive, darting around the lobby as if looking for help that wasn’t going to come. His right hand was fisted on his desk and the fingers of his left hand tapped restlessly against a pad of paper with 721 in elegant script across the top.
Interesting, Max thought and smiled inwardly. “Yes, Henry. I want you to think back on the last few days.”
“About what?”
“Have you seen anyone in here who didn’t belong?” Max leaned one arm on the desktop. “Anyone who might have dropped an envelope into one of the mailboxes?”
Henry blinked as if he was stepping out of the shadows and into the light. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he swallowed hard and shook his head. “No, sir, I haven’t. And nothing like that would happen without me seeing it. I’m on duty right here. No one would get in who didn’t belong.”
“I did,” Max pointed out.
Henry licked his upper lip, blew out a breath and said, “What I meant was, no one could stay inside who didn’t talk to me first. And no one but the mailman and the residents go near the mailboxes.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Henry lifted his narrow chin, met Max’s gaze with the direct stare of an honest man and said, “Absolutely.”
Max was sure about something, too.
Henry was lying.
Max couldn’t prove it, but he knew it down to his bones. And that made him wonder what exactly was going on at 721. The old place looked quiet, dignified. But there were undercurrents here and Max didn’t like it. He didn’t want to think about Julia staying here. One woman was dead and Julia herself was being blackmailed.
Something was very wrong in this building.
“You’re pregnant?”
Julia winced as her mother’s voice hit a particularly high note. She’d known this was going to be an ugly meeting. She had to face her parents not only with the news of her pregnancy, but her upcoming marriage, as well.
She sighed a little as her mother stood up from her silk-brocade chair and stared down at Julia as though she were a particularly appalling bug. Just imagine, she thought, what this scene would have been like if you hadn’t been able to tell them you’re getting married.
The sting of their only daughter being an unwed mother was something her parents might never have recovered from. All her life, Julia had been a disappointment. She knew that. Her parents had made sure of it. And all of her life, a part of Julia had tried to make them proud. To make them love her. Despite her efforts, nothing had changed.
She looked up at her mother and felt…nothing. No connection. No bond. No threads of affection or familial loyalty. Just…nothing. As sad as that made her, Julia realized that accepting this was the first step in finding her own kind of peace. The first step in building her own family. Her own world, separate and apart from the people who’d made her.
“Yes,” Julia said, smiling into her mother’s disapproving gaze, “I am. And my baby’s father and I will be getting married in just a couple of weeks.”
“That’s something, I suppose,” her father muttered from the chair where he sat glaring at her. “As long as you’re married quickly, no one will have to know the reason.”
Julia glanced at him and noticed that his bushy gray eyebrows were drawn together in a too-familiar frown of disgust. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life when her father had held her, hugged her, told her that she was pretty or that he loved her. How strange it was to sit here in this place and realize the sad truth of her life.
She didn’t have a family. She had biological parents. That was all.
And because she knew that they would never approve of her or give her the kind of love she’d once longed for, Julia was free. Free to speak her mind. To tell them what she’d feared telling them only days before.
Straightening in her chair, she clasped her fingers together tightly in her lap and said, “People will know I’m going to have a baby, Father.”
“Eventually,” he conceded with a shake of his head.
“Donald, you’re missing the point here,” Margaret Prentice snapped. “This will make us grandparents. For heaven’s sake, I don’t want people thinking I’m old enough to be a grandmother. This is a disaster.”
“Thank you,” Julia muttered.
“You will not speak to us in such a fashion, Julia,” her mother said as her cold blue gaze fixed on her daughter. “At the very least, you owe us civility and respect.”
“Respect is a two-way street, Mother.”
Margaret laughed shortly. “Respect? You expect us to respect you for being stupid enough to get pregnant? You ask too much.”
“Having a baby isn’t stupid,” Julia argued.
“You’re not even married,” her father said.
“I will be soon,” she responded, feeling a fire begin to build inside her. For years, when there were “discussions” like this one, she’d kept her mouth shut, done what was expected of her. But not anymore. She owed her child more than that. She owed herself more than that.
“How could you do this to me?” Margaret’s voice shrieked a little.
“I didn’t do anything to you, Mother…”
“None of my friends are grandmothers,” her mother said hotly. “How will this look to people? How can I face my friends?” She crossed her too-thin arms over her narrow chest, but not tightly enough to wrinkle the cream-colored silk blouse she wore tucked into the waistband of linen pants the color of wheat. Margaret’s elegantly styled hair was short and dyed honey-blond every four weeks. Her manicure was perfect, her makeup expertly applied, and her unlined face was a billboard for the best cosmetic surgeons in the city.
“Mother—”
“Don’t speak to