Chapter Seventeen
THE SEARCH FOR MAXIMILLIAN Shore's theoretical manuscript had been successfully concluded. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had hidden it in his room. Once he had been brought to the police station, Maxie had ignored all advice to keep quiet, whether from his appointed legal representative, the Social Worker hurriedly summoned, or anyone else, and had insisted on telling them the details. As Rafferty had guessed, Maxie had known of his stepmother's pregnancy, and his reaction had been a predictable fury. He had thought she loved him, he told them, loved him best. She had made so much of him that he had thought he was enough for her. But the discovery that he wasn't, that Barbara was to have a child of her own, made his love turn temporarily to hatred and he had decided tha
