Ashes to Ashes

by Campbell, Jamie

  He heard the shower stop running and opened his own backpack, extracting a change of clothes and a toothbrush. He was ready to have a shower by the time the door opened and Jasmine walked out. She put away her wash bag and sat on the bed watching the weather

  report. It was going to be a sunny day tomorrow with highs of thirty-two degrees. Perfect weather for a stakeout, she thought to herself. Nothing better than sitting in a hot car all day, at least there are lots of trees for shade.

  Caleb took only half the time in the shower. The weather had only just finished by the time he was replacing his clothes in the backpack.

  He crawled into bed. Jasmine turned off the lights and television and followed suit.

  “Goodnight Jaz.”

  “’night Caleb.”

  Chapter 7

  The sun poured into the little motel room in Sunnybrook early the next morning. Caleb checked his watch; it was 5:30am. The room was hot already. He looked over to see that Jasmine was still asleep.

  He went into the bathroom and had a shower before getting ready for the day. Jasmine was still asleep by the time he was ready. He checked his watch again; 5:50am.

  Their flight was booked for four o’clock in the afternoon. He considered what they should do that day. They needed a result as quickly as possible, so they didn’t go home empty handed. He sat back on the bed and gave Jasmine a nudge. She didn’t move. He tried again a little harder.

  “Caleb, what are you doing up?”

  “Wake up sleepy head, it’s morning, we need to get going. We’ve got to find this elusive mayor of ours.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost six, come on.” Jasmine rubbed her eyes and got up. She had a shower and dressed. She repacked her bag and followed Caleb to the car, placing their room key in the drop-box by reception. They drove back to McDonald’s for a quick breakfast before going back to Sunshine Way, making sure they parked in front of a different house. They settled back and started to watch number forty-eight again.

  After about an hour, the front door opened. Jasmine nudged Caleb who had closed his eyes. They both sat upright and watched. An older man, wearing shorts and a green polo shirt, walked down to the front of the lawn and picked up a newspaper. He shook it to get the condensation off and went back into the house.

  “Oh my God, that’s him Caleb. That’s Winston Reynolds!” She looked at Caleb, he showed the same excited expression. “What do we do? I think we should go to the door and talk to him.”

  The mayor had aged since Jasmine had last seen him, but time had generally been good to him. He’d had white hair when he was in Avalon, now it was thinning a bit more, and he was also wearing glasses which she didn’t remember that he used to.

  “And what do we say to him? Hi, aren’t you supposed to be missing?”

  “I think we should tell him the truth. I’ll tell him who my mum was and that we just wanted to ask him a few questions.”

  “You know him better than I do, do you think he will just invite us in for a cup of tea?”

  “I don’t know, but we can’t just sit here. We have to do something!” Caleb reluctantly followed Jasmine out of the car and up to the front door of the house they had been watching for the last day.

  She knocked on the door and waited. After a time, an elderly woman with bright blonde hair answered. She was wearing a velour tracksuit and her skin had a tanned leathery look to it. She still carried a few kilos too many and reminded Jasmine of a purple grape in her outfit.

  “Hello, are you Gladys Smith?” Jasmine was cautious that she didn’t mention the name Reynolds. She needed to at least get in the front door.

  “I might be. Who are you? What do you want?” she answered abruptly, looking from Jasmine to Caleb. In the background, Jasmine saw Winston sitting on a lounge suite reading the newspaper. He looked up to see whom his wife was speaking to.

  “Gladys, who is it?” He got up and started towards the front door, still holding the newspaper in one hand.

  “My name is Jasmine Parker, I was hoping to speak with your husband. My mother used to work for him, they were good friends.”

  At the mention of the word ‘Parker’, Gladys slammed the door shut as quickly as she could. They could hear voices and running behind the closed door.

  Jasmine and Caleb looked at each other, taken aback from having the door slammed on them. Caleb knocked on the door. “We just want to speak with you, that’s all. We don’t want anything else.”

  There was now silence from the house. They walked down the steps towards the footpath, disappointed at their encounter.

  From the distance, they could again hear running. This time it was outside. They turned around and saw the mayor running down the road in the opposite direction of their car. Caleb took off after him.

  He chased him down the block until they rounded the corner. For a moment, Caleb thought he had lost him. He was nowhere to be seen. Then he caught a glimpse of the hedge at the front of one of the houses. It was rustling violently as if it had just been flung back into place. He ran over. Behind the hedge was a fence into the neighbour’s backyard. In an instant, he had pulled himself up to the fence and swung his leg over it. He saw the mayor, jumped down to the ground and started running again.

  At the back of the yard was another fence. The mayor took a running leap at it and his grip slipped. He tried again, this time hanging onto the fence long enough to swing his leg over and fall down the other side. Caleb followed, he managed the jump without slipping and losing precious time.

  Over the fence was a clearing, not another backyard as Caleb had expected. The mayor obviously knew his neighbourhood. Caleb thought he must have had an escape route planned already. He was getting away too quickly and smoothly for just luck. The clearing was a wooded area with overgrown grass and bushes spread out amongst the trees. Caleb had to concentrate to make sure that he avoided falling over dead tree branches. The mayor ran quickly for a man over sixty years of age. Caleb hadn’t planned on that when he had made the decision to run after him. He thought he would only have to run to the end of the block before the mayor gave up and surrendered to the much younger man.

  They ran swiftly, the mayor chanced a quick look behind him to see how far ahead of his pursuer he was. He was horrified to see him almost within reach. He tried to find an extra burst of energy to pull forward, even just a few more metres between them could make all the difference. He gritted his teeth and willed his legs to move faster.

  They continued their chase through the clearing. It seemed like a never-ending forest and they were both tiring. Suddenly, the mayor hit a loose stick, lost his balance and fell forward into the bushes. It gave Caleb just enough time to catch up and grab him by the collar.

  He tried to wriggle free of the strong grasp, but it was no use. He was tired and his legs hurt from the fall. He had a small cut on his forehead that was starting to seep blood.

  “Don’t hurt me!” he pleaded.

  Caleb was taken aback from the comment and the look of genuine fear on the old man’s face. “I’m not going to hurt you, sir. My friend and I just wanted to speak with you, that’s all. We don’t want anything else from you. Now, can I let go?” Winston nodded and Caleb relaxed his grip.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Caleb Marshall, my friend is Jasmine Parker. You used to work with her mother, Julia back in Avalon.” They started walking back through the woods. Caleb made sure he could reach the mayor in case he decided to take off again. He doubted he would have to, the man had calmed down.

  “How did you find us?” He sounded more curious than angry now. He was still puffing and trying to catch his breath.

  “Jaz is a bit of a detective when she wants to be. She tracked your wife actually. She put her bets on the fact that you’d be together.”

  They walked back in silence. It didn’t seem as far back as it had when they were running in the opposite direction. Caleb could have sworn they’d run ten kilo
metres.

  Jasmine was waiting for them, still standing outside the Reynolds’ house. She had been unsure about just what she should do. So she had just stood there waiting either for them to return, or for Caleb to come back by himself. She was happy it was the former.

  “Mayor Reynolds, will you talk to us? It won’t take long, I promise, I just want to talk.” The mayor nodded and he led both of them inside. Gladys emerged from the second floor shortly afterwards, her face showed concern and puzzlement.

  “You hit him!” She saw the cut on her husband’s face.

  “It’s all right Gladys, I fell over.” Gladys hurried off to the kitchen and returned with a washer and band-aid. She set to work fixing his cut, as they sat down in the lounge.

  “Can I offer you a drink? I think I need one.” He smiled as Gladys took the drinks order and disappeared into the kitchen again, leaving a pink Barbie band-aid on the mayor’s forehead. When Caleb looked at it curiously, he had explained that his granddaughter visited often and she was usually the one who needed them.

  “Now, what do you want to know? You’re Julia’s daughter, right?”

  “That’s right. I remember going to your house for your parties. I always had such a good time. Mum used to speak so highly of you.”

  “She was a good woman; a hard worker.”

  “You might remember that she died in a house fire, shortly before you left town?”

  He tensed up. “Yes, I remember. It was a terrible tragedy. I’m sorry for your loss. It shouldn’t have happened.” Gladys returned with the hot drinks and distributed them, before taking her seat beside Winston.

  “Thank you. I’ve recently come to believe the fire may not have been an accident. It’s caused me to look into it a little further. I’ve been trying to speak with anyone who might remember that time.” She watched his face carefully to see if he gave anything away in his expression. He remained looking weary.

  “You think I had something to do with it?”

  “Not really. But you have to admit, it seems suspicious that you disappeared the week afterwards. Mum was your assistant after all.” She did her best to be polite and unassuming. The last thing she wanted was for him to put his back up again.

  He considered for a moment. “Hmm, I can see that it looks bad. But I can assure you I had nothing to do with the fire. Believe me; it would have saved a lot of trouble if she was still alive.” He gave a short laugh.

  “Why did you leave then?” Caleb interjected. He had planned to let Jasmine do all the talking, but his reporter instincts were too strong.

  “It’s a long story, one that I would rather not tell.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you can’t really think that we would be satisfied with just your word on the matter?”

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you, son. You’re not the police, I don’t answer to you.”

  “No, that’s true, but I’m sure the police back in Avalon would be pleased to hear of your whereabouts. They spent months pouring their resources into finding you.”

  Jasmine didn’t like the way the conversation was going. She tried to go on damage control. “Please Mayor, we won’t tell the police anything. I just need to know what happened. It’s more for my own sanity than anything else.” She looked directly into his eyes.

  “Fine, but you have to promise me that you will not tell anyone, not one soul, that you found us. We have a good life here and do not plan on trading that in for anything.” They both nodded and he continued. “Now, I’m not proud of what I did, but it was a long time ago; I was a different man back then.”

  Gladys interrupted, “Winston, you can’t be serious about telling these kids about that. You don’t know them from Adam. They could be the police for all we know.”

  “It’s okay, Gladys, they’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” They shook their heads again. He didn’t admit it, but he had recognised Jasmine the moment he saw her standing on his front stoop. She was the spitting image of her mother, he would have recognised her anywhere. “I had to leave town because of what I had done. There was no other way around it. I couldn’t just resign and move either – they would have come looking for me. I was dipping my hand into council funds; had been for years. Julia, your mother, was covering for me. When she died, I knew there was no one else to look out for me. It was only a matter of time before I was found out and hauled off to the clinker.”

  Jasmine was shocked at what she was hearing. It was bad enough that the town mayor was stealing money from the community, but her own mother had been covering it up. She couldn’t believe it; her mother had always been honest to a fault.

  He continued. “Now don’t look at me like that, I knew it was wrong but I had to. I would rather have left an enigma, than be handcuffed and shamed.”

  “Why did you steal the money?”

  “Because I needed it! It’s hard work being a mayor and you get paid a pittance. People expect you to set a good example: send your kids off to private schools, live in a mansion, drive a Mercedes. I couldn’t afford any of it. All my money went towards doctors’ bills’; it didn’t leave much for the essentials.”

  Jasmine was confused. “Doctors’ bills’? I don’t understand.”

  “My daughter, Felicity, was very ill. She had a brain tumour that was discovered when she was about thirteen. It started growing when she went through puberty. The doctors took it out, but they found she had cancer. We tried everything the doctors told us to. I don’t know how many rounds of chemotherapy she went through.”

  “Five.” Gladys had tears welling up in her eyes. “She had five rounds of chemo and it was just making her sicker. She begged us to make it stop, said she’d rather die than go through any more treatment.”

  “The doctors in America were trialling a new treatment. It was experimental, but they had positive results in all the lab tests. I sent Gladys and Felicity over there to take part. It wasn’t covered under Medicare or health insurance because it was only experimental, so I had to pay for it. Not that I minded, we would have done anything to get her better.”

  “And she got better?”

  “She did. The treatment worked, thank God. After three years in treatment, both here and in the U.S., she was declared in remission. She has been ever since.”

  “So you stole the money to help fund the treatment?”

  “Yes, and I would do it again. Normally when patients are trialling a new treatment, they go to the public for fundraising, to help cover the costs. I couldn’t do that; I was a mayor. I was meant to be above all that.”

  “I take it my mother knew about your reasons for stealing?”

  “She did. I couldn’t hide it from her. We had worked together for too long for her not to notice that something was wrong. So she did some creative accounting for me and together we managed to hide it from the official records.”

  Caleb spoke up, “But not all the records, right? That’s why some of them had to go missing?”

  “Exactly. When we heard one of the buildings was going to be destroyed, we thought it was a sign. We put all the financial records we could in that building before they started the demolition. Luckily, they didn’t think to check it was clear before the bulldozers moved in.”

  “Out of curiosity, how did you get from Oyster Cove to Sunnybrook?”

  “Bus straight through. How do you know I got to Oyster Cove?”

  “We found the charter boat place, Mr Peter Parker.” Jasmine smiled.

  “I always loved Spiderman when I was young.” He smiled back. “You have done your research. Do you know that you look like your mother?”

  “My grandmother told me once. We don’t really have many pictures of her. We literally lost everything in the fire.” She felt so good to hear someone say that. She loved the thought of being like her mother. She felt like maybe a small part of her mother was still with her.

  “I have some photos. If you give me your email address I will have them scanned and send them t
hrough. I made sure she was at every official event, so there’s bound to be some of her.”

  “Thank you, I’ll write it down for you.” She pulled her notebook out of her handbag and wrote down her address, handing it over. “Just going back to the fire. I know you were caught up in your own events, but do you remember hearing anything about it? Maybe that it was deliberately lit?”

  “I heard a whisper about it. If you ask me, houses don’t just burn like that from natural causes. You’re right though, I was caught up in my own worries at the time. I don’t really remember hearing anything else. Have you asked Sid Frasier about it?”

  “Who’s Sid Frasier?”

  “The head doc at the hospital. He would have been the one to examine the... remains.”

  “I’ll be sure to speak with him when we get back to Avalon.” She looked at her watch. It was almost 2:00pm. “We’d better get going; we have a plane to catch.”

  “Sure, now I have your word that you never saw us?”

  “Of course, thank you very much for explaining everything to us, it’s been a really big help. At least we can strike you off our suspect list now.”

  “Who else is on there?”

  “Umm, just you at this stage. We still have more work to do. Oh, just one more thing that’s been bothering me. Why didn’t the police question Felicity about your disappearance?”

  “We sent her on holiday to Melbourne before everything happened. We didn’t need her to be exposed, not after everything she went through. They didn’t initially interview her simply because she wasn’t there. When she came back, they spoke to her briefly, but worked out pretty quickly that she didn’t know anything. I think they felt sorry for her too, she looked as frail as could be – even then.”