Dying Words (A Ghostwriter Mystery)

by C. A. Larmer

  And so Needy Woman was back. While it might work wonders on Oliver, it only made Roxy feel irritable, but so did a hungry stomach and she was suddenly famished. She glanced at the digital clock on her car dashboard.

  “Fine. Have you heard of Lockies Café in Surry Hills?”

  Lockies was bursting to the brim when Roxy arrived but that didn’t stop the owner, Loghlen, from finding her a quiet table up the back near the roaring fireplace. He’d been a good mate for years and he didn’t let her down today. She was never quite sure how he managed to find a spare table. Did he send newer patrons scuttling, or did he keep one on reserve for his favourite patrons? She liked to think the latter but she wasn’t betting on it.

  “Thanks, Lockie,” she said. “If a pale, jittery woman wanders in, send her over. I’m expecting her.”

  “Ai, will do,” said the gangly Scotsman. “Cane get you a latte while ye wait?”

  “Does the Pope wear a silly frock? Course you can. Thanks.”

  He laughed and dashed off to work his magic behind the espresso machine while she studied the overhead blackboard glancing through the delicious menu, knowing only too well exactly what she’d order.

  He returned with the coffee and said, “Vegie focaccia then?”

  She laughed. “One day I’ll shock your socks off. But can you hold the order until my—”

  “Hello,” came a small voice behind them and they both looked up to see Sondra standing there, hands held in front of her stomach, clutching her brown leather handbag.

  She was wearing a shapely blue skirt today, with a cream silk top, and had left her hair loose around her face, so she looked less startled and severe. Even her crimson red lipstick didn’t look quite so alarming on her pale face, and the way she smiled now, her head held high, suggested to Roxy that the kite was on the way up.

  Roxy did the introductions and Sondra ordered a soy latte from Lockie before taking a seat at the table.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she said. “Did you bring the copy?”

  “Yes, and I really am sorry about the original,” Roxy told her. “But apart from sentimental value for your dad, I can’t see how it would matter much to you or anyone in your family. I’ll show you.”

  She reached into her own bag and produced an orange envelope, handing it across to Sondra. The woman pounced on it, pulling the copied image out and taking a long look at it. She turned it over and then back again.

  “You know, this picture is familiar. I’ve seen it at Dad’s place, I think. I certainly recognise some of these faces. But you’re right. It’s not really of any value that I can see.”

  “Exactly.” Roxy took a sip of her coffee, winced, then reached for the sugar bowl and emptied two sachets into her cup. “What about the names? Recognise any of them?”

  Sondra peered keenly at the typed names and squeezed her eyes shut momentarily as though trying to remember. “Obviously I know Sir Wolfgang, although I note he’s not a Sir here.”

  “He was knighted seven years ago. That picture’s over thirty-five years old. Plus he’s not a surveyor, so I’m not quite sure why he’s even in it.”

  “Oh, Sir Wolfgang does exactly what Sir Wolfgang wants to do,” she replied drily and before Roxy could ask her to elaborate, she quickly said, “C. Holderson has to be Clive Holderson, an old mate of my father’s, but he died, oh, a good ten, fifteen years ago. Cancer, I believe. Um ... this man,” she pointed to the short, stocky man on the right side. “It says his name is R. Brownlow. You know, I’ve definitely heard that name before.”

  Roxy sat forward. “Yes, I have, too, but I can’t work out why.”

  “You didn’t interview him for the book?”

  “No, Sir Wolfgang only asked me to talk to your dad, said the others weren’t important—his words, not mine.”

  Sondra flashed Roxy an inscrutable look then returned to the picture. “As for the two Reillys? They’re obviously husband and wife.”

  “Oh, you think so? They could be siblings. She’s really pretty, he’s a bit shaggy for her I’d’ve thought.” They both stared at the scowling bespectacled man with the oversized moustache and sideburns. “They could even be unrelated.”

  Sondra shook her head firmly. “I doubt it. Single white women didn’t really go to Indonesia in those days. It’s most likely they were married. I know my mother had to marry Dad before she went. It was the done thing back then. Betty could have been at the Congress with her husband or she could have been a secretary or a clerk or something.”

  “That might explain why she’s in the picture,” Roxy said.

  “Oh yes, she wouldn’t have been a surveyor. Certainly not in those days.”

  “And does her name, Betty Reilly, ring a bell?”

  “Not at all, no. I don’t know either of the Reillys, I’m afraid, or even if they’re still around, although she looks younger than the men so the chances are she will be. Do you have a digital copy of this picture you can forward to me?”

  “Of course, I’ll e-mail you the image this afternoon. That hard copy is all yours.”

  Lockie appeared again with Roxy’s focaccia in one hand and Sondra’s latte in the other. “Sorry about the delay. It’s like a noothouse in here today. Anything else before I take off agin?”

  They both shook their heads and he returned to the coalface while the two women continued to stare at the photo.

  Eventually Sondra took a deep breath and said, “I’d like to ask you something. A favour.”

  Roxy peered at her across the top of her cup. Oh no, she thought, and here I was thinking I was about to make a clean getaway.

  “I’d like to hire you. To investigate.”

  Roxy dropped the cup back down with a thud. “Investigate? Investigate what, exactly?”

  Sondra looked sheepish and began chewing on an already well-chewed fingernail. “I ... I don’t know ... but my father mentioned you for a reason, I just know it. And I’m hoping you can find out why. There has to be something that we’re missing.”

  Roxy considered this. “What are you hoping I will find? Do you think this is related to your dad’s murder?” She indicated the photo that was still in front of Sondra. “Do you think I’m related to that?”

  “I don’t know what to think, but I know it’s important. You’re important. I know that sounds dramatic. My husband and Renata think I’ve completely flipped.”

  “Renata?”

  “My father’s new ... wife.” She spat the word out as though it were bitter and distasteful. “They only got together a few months ago and got married almost immediately. Thank God he didn’t—” She stopped and placed a hand to her lips as though trying to hold back whatever dark thought was about to be verbalised. “Anyway, Tony and Renata seem to think you don’t matter a jot. No offence.” Roxy nodded, showing that no offence was taken. “That’s what the police have told them and so they think I should just let it go, but I know my dad. He mentioned you for a reason, Roxy. He was giving me a message and if I ignore it, then I’m a fool.”

  Roxy didn’t look convinced, so she added, “What you have to understand is, my father was a man of very few words. I don’t know if you recall that from your interview.”

  She thought back to that lovely, seemingly insignificant hour she had spent with Berny just a few months before he died, and she had to concur. He had been pleasant enough, but he wasn’t chatty at all. In fact, she had been secretly annoyed that the restaurant provided crayons to decorate the paper tablecloths because he had seemed more interested in doodling than dishing the dirt.

  “I could never get anything out of my father,” Sondra was saying, her eyes clouded over. “Most surveyors are pretty quiet types, especially those old-timers who were used to endless hours in the bush. It was pretty dry, methodical work they did, often with only a local chainman for company and, even if he could speak English, he was usually a mile away holding one end of the chain. That’s the way my dad liked it. It’s the reason he chose that prof
ession. Solid, no fuss. Yet, the night he died, he made a fuss. He said your name for a reason, Roxy, he said you had it—whatever it is. I want you to find out what he meant by that.”

  “Then you should really hire a licensed investigator.”

  “But you do investigations, right?”

  Roxy almost laughed. “Well, not really, I mean, I’m a journalist but not a proper investigator.”

  “I read that you’ve helped solve several crimes.”

  Now Roxy did laugh. “Yes, because I’m a nosy bloody Parker and I butted in where I wasn’t welcome. I’m not a registered PI. If that’s what you’re after, you really ought to—”

  “I want you,” she said simply, thrusting her hands under the table. “And I will pay whatever you usually earn per hour as a journalist. I’ll match it. I just can’t spare any more time and I know you’re busy too, which is why I’ll pay you. I have some money saved, plus my dad’s inheritance. It’s not much, but it’s enough.”

  “But what do you expect me to find? I mean, where do I start?”

  “You can start by trying to track down the original of this picture.”

  “I’ll do that anyway, Sondra, for nothing. It’s terribly unprofessional of us to lose it and we owe it to your father to return it. When I’m entrusted with a client’s personal photos, I always make that commitment.” She took another bite of her sandwich, although she was fast losing her appetite. “But I still can’t see how the original will make any difference. What you’ve got there”—she waved her focaccia towards the print—“that’s exactly what it looked like. Nothing’s been cut off or altered as far as I can remember.”

  “Still, until we have the original, we won’t really know, will we? Perhaps there was something on the back of the original? Or there’s something in this image that we just haven’t spotted yet?”

  “What, an invisible code scrawled across it?”

  Sondra placed her hands back on the table and pushed the photo across to Roxy. She looked at her with imploring eyes. “You don’t understand. I don’t just want the original photo, I want to hire you to track down the people in that photo. Maybe they will know what this is all about.”

  Roxy stared at the picture again and then back up to Sondra. “Do you think someone in this photo is responsible for your father’s death?” Sondra shrugged slightly, a flicker of anxiety sweeping through her eyes. “You think that’s why your dad wanted this picture so badly? To point the finger. If that was the case, why didn’t he just name that person on his deathbed? Why go to all this trouble?”

  Again Sondra shrugged. “Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye. Maybe he’d forgotten their name? Or maybe saying their name would not explain their motive. Maybe someone in this photo has the answers.”

  “We don’t even know where these people are or if they’re still alive.”

  “Which is why I want to hire you. I wouldn’t ask for your help if I could do this myself, but I don’t know where to begin looking and you’re obviously good at this kind of stuff. You already have access to Sir Wolfgang; speak to him first. If he knows nothing, then track down the others. Just talk to them, ask them if they have any idea why my dad wanted the photo so badly. If they don’t know, then so be it.”

  Roxy shook her head a little. She found the whole thing very confounding and was about to reject the assignment with a firm but friendly no, when Sondra said something she couldn’t ignore.

  “Don’t you wonder about the break-in at the publisher’s? And at your house? Don’t you wonder if they’re related and if they had anything to do with this photo? Seems like an awfully big coincidence to me.”

  Roxy squinted her eyes. She had already connected those dots and yes, she did wonder about that. “How do you know about the break-in at my place?”

  “Your agent mentioned it, the morning I rang. He said you were busy with that and couldn’t see me.” She paused. “Did you get a good look at the burglar? Any idea who it was?”

  Roxy shook her head. “He was tall and large, that’s all I remember,” she replied, omitting all mention of Scooby Doo and bunny rabbits. “Okay, but even if what you say is true—and I’m not saying it is—then has it occurred to you that this busy burglar may already have the picture? I mean, it’s not at the publisher’s, it’s not at the scanner’s. Maybe they beat us to it.”

  “And maybe they didn’t,” she replied firmly. “Please, Roxy, I’ve got too much going on at the moment and I promised Tony I would give him some time this week. We have three weddings coming up this weekend, and a flower expo early next week. It’s more than we can cope with. I just can’t spare a second.”

  “You guys run a florist, right?”

  “We have a stall, down at the flower markets at Homebush, mostly roses. Tony’s been covering for me since Dad ... and the funeral ...” She choked back tears again.

  “So you work together? You and your husband.”

  “On and off. I’m actually an accountant, I’m supposed to just do the books, but Tony needs me on hand during the busy times. Things have gone a bit crazy lately, we really need to put on more staff but, well ...” She smiled apologetically and hesitated before she said, “My husband might be tiny, Roxy, the size of a gnome, but he has big plans. Too big sometimes.”

  The anxious look was back and she was nibbling hard on her fingernails again. “Please, can I hire you for the week? Just seven days focusing solely on this. Just try to find out what happened to the photo and who these people are.” She glanced back down at the image of the six people beaming out at them from a bygone era. “If you can’t find the original, perhaps you’ll find some clues as to who stole it, and why. At the very least you might get a better grasp on why my father said your name the night he died.”

  I wish he bloody hadn’t, she thought wearily.

  Roxy normally liked a good mystery, but this one was way too obscure for her liking. Still, Roxy had to concede that she didn’t have a large workload at present and could do with the extra money. It’s not like she was going to get cracking on her freelance articles anyway. Her usual routine was to procrastinate (unpaid) until the deadline started looming.

  “I’ll double your daily rate,” Sondra said, pleading. “Just one week. If you don’t find anything, if no one in the picture has any light to shed, then at least I can let it go. I can get on with my life. Do you understand that?”

  Again Roxy thought of her own father’s death, and of the years she held tight to the idea that she could somehow change it, fix it or make it all better. She eventually realised she never could, but it was early days for Sondra. Plus there was a particularly frightening power bill sitting, unpaid, in her in-tray.

  “One week?”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “And that’s all you’ll get because any more would be a giant waste of my time and your inheritance.”

  Chapter 12

  Where do wild goose chases start? Roxy wondered as she doodled idly on her desk diary. It was Tuesday morning and she was now seated in her office sunroom trying to get her head around Sondra Lane’s request. She had spent the rest of Monday planting a few seeds for her future articles and generally clearing away chores so she could focus on the Berny Tiles case for seven full days, as promised.

  Roxy scowled. What on earth was she going to do in seven days? She should have said no. Of course she should have said no. But the woman seemed so desperate and so suspicious. Normally, Roxy was the suspicious one and she did have to agree that all these mysterious break-ins and the picture’s disappearance were rather odd. Then, of course, there was the mystery surrounding Berny Tiles’s death.

  “I’ll start there,” she said aloud, a side effect of living alone for so many years, and put a call through to Gilda.

  “Oh, I’ve had a very interesting chat with old man Leary,” Gilda told her, obviously chewing on something as she spoke. Probably chocolate.

  “What did he have to say?”

  “
Well,” she said, swallowing loudly, “they’re looking for motive, right? Who would want to run down an old geezer? So they’ve been poking their nose into Tiles’s finances, he had no life insurance, few savings, and the only asset of any value was his house, which isn’t exactly a palace, apparently. And according to the will, it goes straight to his daughter who, sadly for Leary, has an alibi.”

  “What about the new wife?”

  “Wife?”

  “Yes, there’s a new woman on the scene. Renata, I think her name was.”

  “Leary didn’t mention any new wife.” She sounded annoyed. “If she’s new, as you say, then she probably didn’t get written into the will in time, but she can certainly demand her share through the courts. That opens things up a bit, but that’s not the interesting bit.”

  “Oh?”

  “Tiles didn’t have a lot of savings, as I said, he was on the pension after all, but there was a recent deposit that has rung some major alarm bells.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep, a tidy sum of $200,000 cash was placed in Mr Tiles’s bank account about eight weeks ago. No explanation, no idea at this point as to where it came from or why, but it’s about the only lead they have, other than the half-blind neighbour, of course, so they’re jumping all over it. We’ll know more about that soon.”

  “Do they think it might be related to his death? Maybe he was blackmailing someone and they’d had enough, bumped him off.”

  “Yes, literally, with a white van,” Gilda said. “I’m sure that’s one angle they’re working. Oh, hang on—” Roxy heard another voice in the background and then Gilda said, “Duty calls. I’ve got to go.”

  “Of course, thanks for that. I appreciate it.”

  “No wuzzers, you owe me a Cherry Ripe for that.”

  “I’ll make it a family-size block, shall I?”

  They hung up and Roxy returned to doodling. Then she clicked open a new computer file and began trying to make sense of the seemingly senseless.