Lynette stared at her sister like she’d just spoken gobble-de-gook. “Are you saying someone is targeting book club members? Is trying to kill us?”
Alicia blushed. Now that she put it like that she could see how absurd it sounded. “No, no, of course I’m not saying that! It just seems a little odd that’s all.”
“It’s a little coincidence, Alicia. And completely unrelated. You heard what Missy said, hers was a stupid accident, some rev-head lost control. Barbara has simply gone AWOL, and we don’t even know why. She might be perfectly fine.”
“No, you’re right. I know that. I just can’t help thinking the worst. I got such a strange vibe last time we saw Barbara. She was so nervous and weird.”
“Maybe she’s always like that. We hardly know the woman.”
“I know, I know...”
“What is it?”
Alicia scrunched her lips to one side. “What if Arthur’s done something to her?”
“Sorry?”
“You know, chopped her up into little pieces and buried her in the garden or something.”
Lynette looked at her sister pitifully. “Sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock plot to me. And why would he do that, pray tell?”
“I don’t know. But they’re not exactly the Brady Bunch over there. I reckon he knows more than he’s letting on.”
“There you go again.”
“Yeah, yeah, my imagination is a killer, I know. But how strange is it for someone to just disappear and their husband and child to have no clue where they are? For 24 hours. It’s just very suspicious.”
“What would we know? Maybe it’s normal practice for miserable married types to go walkabout.” Lynette bent down and checked the pizzas. Stood up again. “But either way you’ve got to stop trying to relate this to Missy’s accident. It’s a totally separate matter.” Alicia nodded, her sister was right. “So what are you going to do now?”
“I know what I’m not going to do,” said Alicia.
“Oh?”
“I’m not going to give up on Barbara until I know she’s safe and sound. And I won’t apologise for that.”
Even as she said the words, Alicia had that sinking feeling again. Despite what Lynette said, she felt a sense of doom sweep over her and wondered how safe any of them really were.
Chapter 9
“Of course she’s safe!” snapped Arthur at the front door of his house.
It was 8:00 a.m., the morning after book club, and Barbara’s husband did not look happy to find Alicia on his doorstep so early asking what he called ‘impertinent questions’. He was obviously dressed for the office, a grey suit on and a tie hanging loosely around his thick neck.
“How do you know that?” she persisted.
“Because, dear, my wife is a drama queen of the highest order. But of course you wouldn’t know that. How long have you known her, what, five minutes?”
“A few weeks.”
He scoffed and began fiddling with the tie. “Let me fill you in on barmy Barbara shall I? This is not the fist time she’s walked out on me and probably won’t be the last. No doubt she’s somewhere right now having a good chuckle.”
“Like where?”
He gave up on the tie. “I don’t know. Um, like a friend’s place or something.”
“What friend?”
He paused. “I don’t know, maybe she’s at, un, Wanda’s. Bitching about me as we speak.”
Alicia frowned at him. “And what if she’s not? What if she’s in danger or, I don’t know, suicidal or something.”
His jaw dropped. “Suicidal? Now you are getting carried away. If Barbara wanted to kill herself, she wouldn’t slink away quietly, she’d do it right here in some dramatic fashion for all the world to see. Not to mention my future constituents!”
“Well, the police might have other ideas about that. What are they saying about it all?” He looked at her blankly. “You have called them, haven’t you?! It’s been two days now. You need to report her missing.”
Arthur sighed heavily and looked at his gleaming gold watch. “I haven’t got time for this bullshit. I have to get to work, somebody’s got to pay for all her bloody designer clothes.”
What designer clothes? Thought Alicia. Both times she’d seen Barbara, she was modestly dressed, fashion didn’t seem of any interest at all.
“Look,” he was saying, half shutting the door on her. “I’ll call back at lunch time, if she’s not in, I’ll get in touch with the local police. Happy?”
“For now,” she said as the door slammed in her face.
Alicia made her way to the office but couldn’t help wondering why she seemed to be the only one who cared about Barbara’s whereabouts and safety. By the time she parked her car and hurried in, however, she realised she was not alone. Every single member of the Book Club had contacted her mobile, enquiring about Barbara.
Alicia waved a quick hello to Ginny, the receptionist, who was pretending to shoot herself with two fingers as she listened to someone on the other end of the phone, and headed straight for her desk, dropping her stuff down and then preparing a group text on her mobile phone:
Hi ACBC. No word yet on B. Hub calling cops this pm. Will check in after that. Fings crossed! xo AF
She sent it off and then tried hard to focus on her work, but failed miserably.
“You alright, sweet pea?” said Ginny over the espresso machine in the tearoom later that morning.
Alicia was frothing some milk for her coffee and Ginny had just placed a bowl of noodles in the microwave.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Alicia. “You?”
“Urgh, just the usual irate subscribers, missing magazines, that sort of stuff. Really, they just need to build a bridge and get over it.” She raised an eyebrow. “So how’s your new book club going?”
The tilt of that eyebrow and the sarcasm in her tone indicated that she expected the answer to be negative, and Alicia didn’t have the heart to tell her about Barbara. Ginny had thought the whole book club idea a ludicrous one when Alicia first broached it a few weeks earlier, scoffing at the suggestion that she might like to sign up.
“I’d rather pull my fingernails out then sit around discussing some ancient English broad,” she’d said. “Besides, I don’t know anyone who would. You have to face facts, Alicia. There’s just not that many readers anymore. It’ll probably take Kirsten three months to replace you in the Monday Night Book Club, if she does at all. People just do not read books. Period. These days they’re all glued to YouTube watching some dumbarse guy tossing his baby about. Good luck finding eight people who not just read books, but like Agatha ‘Yawn’ Christie.”
Alicia had not been convinced. “She is the bestselling crime writer of all time you know.”
“Irrelevant,” said Ginny. “People don’t admit to liking her for God’s sake!”
“They don’t?”
“Christ no, how positively provincial. Besides, she was big in, what, the 1800s?”
“She didn’t even start writing until the 1920s, actually, but what’s a century between friends?”
“Same diff’. Does anyone even read her anymore?”
“Well, obviously I do. Lynette does.”
“My point exactly.”
Then, as if to emphasise that point, Ginny had swept her smudged black eyes down Alicia’s outfit, to the flowing peasant top she was wearing over fitted blue jeans and back up to her face, shrugging her shoulders as if she’d just rested her case.
Luckily, Ginny’s words had not been prophetic and she had found six people who adored Agatha Christie as much as she did. Perhaps that was why she was so worried about losing one of them.
As she frothed away, Alicia couldn’t help feeling renewed anxiety.
Had something terrible happened to Barbara Parlour?
“Come on, what’s eating at you?” Ginny asked again, impatiently eyeing her noodles in the microwave, and Alicia sighed and proceeded to tell her about the missing book club member.
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Much to her surprise, Ginny just laughed it off. “She’s done a runner. That’s all it is.”
“What do you mean?”
The microwave pinged and Ginny grabbed an oven mitt and pulled the steaming bowl out. “She’s been to one meeting, right? She obviously loathed it and hasn’t got the guts to tell you, so she’s a no-show for the next one.”
“But her husband says she hasn’t come home...”
She snorted. “The husband’s probably just pulling your chain. They’re too embarrassed to tell you your little club is loser one.” She made the letter L with her fingers and placed it on her forehead.
“Very mature,” Alicia said drolly, spooning some froth into her cup and giving Ginny’s suggestion some thought. “I really don’t think that’s it. Barbara seems way too polite—and grown up—to just slink away without saying anything. Now you I would believe that of.”
“Hey!” Ginny retorted. “I did not slink away from the Monday Night Book Club. I just didn’t get a chance to tell Kirsten that I wasn’t coming back, and then you said you’d take my place and all was right with the world.” She paused. “Until you deserted, too. I can not believe you walked out on them! What did Wilfred the Whinger say?”
“Not a lot as it happens,” Alicia said. “He just kind of looked constipated.”
“Oh he always looks constipated. But still, sculling their vino—and before official drinkies time! You anarchist!”
Alicia took a sip of her cappuccino. “Anyway, that’s all beside the point, I’m worried about Barbara.”
“Yeah, well, stop worrying, it’s not going to get you anywhere.” Ginny took a slurp of her noodles and yelped. “Shit that’s hot! So, what’re you working on this month? More bumper Sudoku books? A Justin Bieber pull-out poster mag?”
Alicia scrunched up her face. “Worse. You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“Kittens. An entire magazine devoted to the glory of kittens.”
Ginny burst into laughter again, her ruby red lips wide, her smudged eyes delighted. “Honestly, you get all the dodgy jobs. Don’t get me wrong, kittens are cute, but I’m not sure I’d want to create a whole magazine about them. No wonder you love murder mysteries! I’d be looking to kill someone when I left work each day, too. Speaking of which...”
She glanced at the doorway where a middle-aged man with shaven grey hair, baggy jeans and a black hoody was standing. It was Hamish Keener, the editor of a raunchy men’s magazine down the hallway. He had a thick cockney accent, a breathtaking beer gut and an ego the size of Uluru.
“Oh what a bloody surprise, Ginny’s gasbagging in the tea room.” He glanced at Alicia and smiled. “How are your pussies going?”
She shook her head sadly. “You’re really quite revolting Hamish, you know that, don’t you?”
He winked. “That’s why I get paid the big bickies.” He glanced back at Ginny. “Hate to break up your party, sweetheart, but the freakin’ phones don’t pick themselves up. D’ya think you can find five seconds in your clearly busy schedule to actually do your job?”
Ginny sneered back at him. “Fuck you, Hamish.”
“No thanks, sweetheart, we’ve been there, done that.”
He promptly disappeared leaving a gasping Ginny behind him. She raced to the doorway and screamed after him, “Yeah and I hardly noticed you! Size of a tadpole!”
She turned back to Alicia and smiled, clearly unruffled by the exchange.
“I suppose I’d better get back to it before Hamish dobs me into Head Office.” She picked up her bowl. “I got five bucks on your missing book club member reappearing by close of day.”
If only, Alicia thought, returning to the overcrowded office she shared with a motley collection of other one-off editors and part-time sub-editors who couldn’t quite fit in with their respective publications. This was the Sydney headquarters for international magazine publishing group Arial and, apart from Hamish’s lads title Lout, there were 14 others in the three-story building, including women’s lifestyle, teen and computer magazines, as well as random one-offs like the Kitten Quarterly that Alicia was currently editing. She worked alongside a graphic designer who helped her put these editions together in a matter of weeks, sometimes days. This one, however, was proving more laborious than usual, probably because she had no affinity whatsoever with anything feline. Now, a magazine about dogs, that would write itself...
Alicia slumped across her desk, worried and, now thanks to Ginny, confused. Was the receptionist right? Was Barbara just trying to wimp out? It seemed a rather odd way of going about it, but then she had seemed a rather odd person.
Alicia sat up. There was only one way to find out. She glanced around knowing she should be focusing on 20 Purr-fect Tips for Playful Kits, grabbed her handbag and headed out. She was determined to get back to Barbara’s house and see if Arthur had made good on his promise. The feeling of dread that had been welling up inside her for almost 24 hours had now reached a crescendo, and she’d already decided that if Arthur hadn’t called the police by now, she would.
With her brightest smile in place, Alicia pressed the buzzer outside the Woollahra mansion where Barbara Parlour lived. This time, a small Filipino woman of indeterminate age opened the door. She was wearing a simple floral summer dress, with an apron over it and her long, black hair had been dyed a lurid shade of orange down one side. Probably a bleach job gone wrong, Alicia thought. Her make-up, too, was shockingly applied—garish red blush, thick pink lip-gloss and startled black lines where her eyebrows once sat. She looked almost comical but her frown was anything but. She was madly chewing some gum and there was an iPod Touch hanging around her neck and connected to one ear.
“Yes, what you want?” she asked impatiently, waving the other earpiece at Alicia who could hear something very loud and very tinny coming from it.
“Hello, you must be Rosa. We spoke briefly yesterday on the phone. I’m Alicia. A good friend of Barbara’s.”
While it was stretching the truth slightly, she did feel a definite bond with the sad housewife and, at this point, felt like one of the few friends Barbara had. The housekeeper looked surprised, gave Alicia the once-over and continued chewing.
“So, has Barbara returned?”
Rosa stopped chewing, squinted her claggy eyes together and said, “Uh-uh. I can leave message?”
Alicia shook her head. “Is Arthur here?”
“He busy.”
“Right. Um, do you know if he’s called the police?”
She looked startled by the suggestion and was about to say something when Arthur’s voice came booming from deep within the house.
“Oi, Rosa baby! Where’s that whisky got to?”
Alicia glanced inside and then back at the housekeeper whose eyes squinted again. She closed the door slightly, as if blocking him out.
“Mr Parlour he busy—”
Alicia put her foot in the doorway. “Doesn’t sound real busy to me, Rosa. Come on, I want to speak to him, and I want to speak to him now.”
The housekeeper contemplated this for a second before frowning again.
“You wait.”
She closed the door and left Alicia standing outside for several minutes before it swung back open and Arthur appeared, a stiff smile on his face.
“Ahh, it’s Alissa again.”
“Alicia.”
“Right, Alicia, that’s what I said. I can see we’re not going to get rid of you so easily.”
“I’m sorry to keep intruding,” she said, “but I just have to ask one question and then you need never see me again.”
He stared at her, waiting and she felt a little foolish.
“This is awkward but, um, is Barbara really missing?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, could she, well, just be avoiding me... that is, the book club?”
Arthur frowned. “No, I told you, she hasn’t been home since Saturday afternoon.”
Alicia’s stomac
h tightened. “Right. Well, that really is a worry then and quite frankly I’m surprised you’re not more concerned. It’s Monday, she’s been missing two whole days now.”
His frown deepened. “Don’t get your knickers in a knot, sweetheart, I have phoned the police and they are on their way over. Happy?”
“I’m not happy about any of this, Arthur. I realise I haven’t known your wife long but when a woman—any woman—goes missing, I hear alarm bells. It should be looked into.”
“And that is exactly what I am doing.” He spat each word out slowly, as if dealing with an imbecile and Alicia was about to let rip when a police patrol car turned into the driveway.
She watched as two uniformed officers get out slowly and strolled up to the house. Arthur gave her an I-told-you-so smirk and then thrust one hand out for the police to shake.
“Thanks for coming officers, I’m Arthur Parlour. Please come inside.”
“And you are?” one of the officers asked Alicia.
“Oh she’s just a friend of Barbara’s,” Arthur said dismissively.
Alicia smiled at the young male officer and held out her own hand.
“A very concerned friend, actually. I’m Alicia Finlay. Barbara was supposed to be at my book club yesterday at 2:00 p.m. and never showed. We’re really worried.”
Arthur sighed loudly beside her but she ignored him and grappled for a business card in her handbag.
“Here are my details if you need to get in touch.”
“And why would they need to do that?” Arthur said.
“You never know.”
Alicia waved them goodbye and headed back to her car. Once inside, she scooped up her phone and placed another group text: “Dear ACBC: Still no sign of B but cops now in the loop. If anyone wants 2 discuss, meet @ mine, 6:00 p.m. xo AF”
Chapter 10
Not only did all the remaining members of the Agatha Christie Book Club want to discuss Barbara’s whereabouts, they each came loaded with their own outlandish theories.
“It’s the daughter!” announced Perry as he pulled off his black and white striped jacket and began rolling up the sleeves of a white business shirt. He’d obviously just come from work. “She’s definitely dodgy.”
The Agatha Christie Book Club Page 7