by C. A. Larmer
Now there are universal shrugs, but Tessa is more interested in beating herself up.
“If only I could remember where the Mays stay when they visit the hospital. Can’t be that many hotels in Dubbo surely?”
“Why don’t they just call their mobile?” asks Roco.
Ha, ha, ha. I laugh at that one. We’ve been together for ages, and he still doesn’t know my folks are Luddites? I did get them a spanking-new Samsung Galaxy once, but I’m pretty sure it’s still sitting in its box in a kitchen drawer somewhere.
“If someone wants to chat, they’ll call us on the landline,” my mother always said.
“But what if they really need you and you’re not home?” I asked.
“If we’re not home, it means we’re out and busy so we’re not much use to them, are we?”
Can’t argue with that logic.
I see Una pull out her own phone and check her messages. “I’ve called David’s iPhone half a dozen times, left three messages, but it’s obviously switched off.”
Hang on, what’s she on about? Is she referring to my dad, David? I didn’t even realise he had an iPhone, let alone gave Una the number. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.
A sudden snaky hiss catches my attention. It’s coming from the sidelines again, from the crazy people near the light. It’s quite horrific to think they’re still there, watching me like stalkers.
“Go away!” I call out to them.
Why aren’t they getting this? I look nothing like Whoopi Goldberg; they can pass on their own creepy messages.
“Come to the light!” one of them calls out, and I balk at that.
Forget about it, folks. There’s no way I’m crossing over yet. Come on, Death, I need more time! The party hasn’t wrapped up, and my body’s not even cold yet.
Back in the study, Michaelia is crouched down low on one side of me, using what looks like a cocktail swizzle stick to prod my gaping head while Ruth crouches near the gun, staring as if mesmerised. She looks up as Craig approaches.
“Any word yet on the next of kin?” she asks.
He waggles a hand in the air. “We’ve been informed that the older brother is staying at the InterContinental, the one in Double Bay, but we still haven’t been able to track him down.”
“Not back in his room?”
“Not there at all according to the receptionist. Says he’s a frequent visitor, but he didn’t book in this trip. They haven’t seen him there since last Christmas.”
“Well that’s bloody inconvenient. And the other brother?”
“We’ve located his home address, on Dulwich Road, just nearby, but there’s no sign of life there.”
“He’s out? At this hour?”
“Not sure where he is, but there’s a Sold sign out the front of the house.”
“What does that mean?”
He doesn’t dare ponder a guess, and she looks even more irritated.
“Okay.” She blows a puff of air through her lips. “Keep on it.” Then she directs her gaze back to the weapon. “While you’re questioning everyone, find out if any of them know anything about this firearm. I want to know who owns it. We can’t make any assumptions yet. Oh and ask who has experience shooting. The shooter is an expert shot.”
That’s a brilliant idea! Most Australians wouldn’t know how to fire a gun even if their life depended on it.
Kelly rolls his eyes for some reason—it’s becoming such an annoying habit—while Craig returns to the living room (how apt is that name on a night like this?) and Ruth now stares at the hole in my head.
“It’s amazing the damage a bullet can do,” says Michaelia, reading her thoughts.
“Seen many?”
“Not enough. Hendo spent a month in LA a few years back. The wounds he saw, wow, amazing.”
Amazing? You’d think they were discussing a trip to Space Mountain, but Ruth is nodding like she gets it.
“So, gun to the temple? Pop?” She makes a fake shooting motion with her fingers.
Michaelia nods. “Looks like it.”
“Dare I ask?” Ruth says, and I get a creeping feeling.
Don’t do it, I think. Don’t go there, Ruth.
And then she does.
She says the thing I know you’ve all been considering.
“Suicide?”
The word hangs in the air like a disgusting stench.
Chapter 7
Before Michaelia gets a chance to answer, Ruth redeems herself and adds, “Or could it be murder?”
The pathologist stares down at me as if weighing it up while I feel a flash of red-hot anger.
Oh give me a break!
I know it’s been the elephant in the room since this whole saga began, but it isn’t suicide, folks, I can assure you of that. I wouldn’t do that to myself. More importantly, I wouldn’t do it to my parents. I might have been in a low patch, but I wouldn’t take my own life, knowing how cruelly that would ruin the lives of everyone else. That’s not the kind of person I am. Or at least the kind of person I was. Now… well, now…
Thankfully Michaelia’s not so quick to judge.
“Wish it was that open and shut,” she says. “The proximity of the weapon certainly works, but it could be a setup. I’ve seen a few of those.” She takes my hand into her gloved fingers, and it feels like a touching gesture until I realise what she’s up to. “I’ll check for gunshot residue and call the blood splatter specialist in, but we may not know for sure for some time.”
Ruth nods. “Can you at least give me a time of death?”
Now Michaelia raises one thickly pencilled eyebrow. “Well, I’m not here for my gorgeous looks.”
I think Kelly might beg to differ. He’s gone suspiciously quiet since she arrived and has been watching her work a little too intensely. Either he’s considering a career change, or he’s got a major crush.
Mickey continues. “She’s been dead at least an hour, I’d say, maybe an hour and a half, max.”
Really? Time sure flies when your friends are having fun.
“You sure?” This is Craig, and it earns him another raised eyebrow from Mickey. I’m learning it’s her trademark—the raised eyebrow, a slight tilt of those luscious curls. One that says “You dare to question me, you vermin?”
“Sorry,” he says quickly, “it’s just that we only got the call through about forty minutes ago. So what were they all doing for the forty or so minutes before that?”
“That’s for them to know and you to find out,” she replies, her eyebrow dropping as she waves someone over.
It’s a tattooed woman in a blue jumpsuit who’s been hovering by the doorway. She has a digital camera in her inked hands.
“Get both angles of the head and the hands, thanks, JJ,” Mickey says.
“And I want the position of that gun before I bag it,” adds Ruth, who then turns to Craig. “When exactly was this called in?”
He checks his notes. “Twelve seventeen p.m.”
“Caller still here?”
“I believe, er, yes. Yes he is.”
“Get him in here now.”
Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome strides into the room, the confidence of a police commissioner in his swagger. It seems odd that he’s such a key player in all this, considering I only just met him tonight. He doesn’t seem to find it odd at all. It feels like he’s done all this before, or maybe he’s been preparing for this instead. How’s that for a sinister deduction?
“I’m Detective Sergeant Ruth Powell. I’m in charge of this investigation,” she begins. “Thanks for your time, Mr…?”
“Vijay Singh,” he says, politely filling the space. “Doctor Vijay Singh.”
We’re both looking at him sideways now. Ruth says, “Have we met before? You look familiar.”
Something flickers behind those dark eyes of his. It’s the first crinkle in his otherwise smooth demeanour, but he recovers quickly and shakes his topknot. “I don’t believe so, no.”
Sh
e nods slowly, eyes squinting. She’s making a mental note to look him up.
“You’re a GP?”
“A doctor of philosophy.”
Her eyes relax again; she looks suitably unimpressed. She is thinking, Doctor of bad hairstyles more like. And I am thinking she’s hilarious. (I don’t know why I can hear Ruth’s thoughts and not others’, but I’m grateful that I can. It’s like she’s keeping me in the loop.)
Ruth asks about his phone call, and he tells her what we already know. Hottie started screaming, everybody came running, he called the cops.
“And you dialled triple zero immediately?”
“Give or take a minute. There was some discussion about calling an ambulance, but I knew that was unnecessary. She was clearly deceased.”
Ruth’s eyes squint again. “We believe she may have been deceased as long as forty minutes before she was discovered. Any idea why no one heard the gunshot?”
He shrugs like it’s obvious. “It was a party. Insanely loud music, lots of laughter. Usual stuff.”
“Okay, how about the body then. The office is not that far from the front door. It’s just near the inside guest bathroom. How could no one have spotted her on their way in or out?”
“Good question, Detective Powell. You’ve got me there.” He checks his hair, as though worried the topknot might have taken off. “Except, well, I do believe the door was originally closed, although you’d have to confirm that with the first witness. Jonah, I think his name was. Something like that. And the party had primarily moved to the pool by then anyway. I can only assume that most people used the facilities out the back. There’s a small loo to the side of the pergola. There’s also a gate out onto the laneway from the back garden. A better way to exit if you don’t want to drip through the house.”
She nods casually, but I’m looking at him twice again. He seems creepily familiar with the property layout, don’t you think? I have a hunch he’s been here before. I have a hunch he’s not who he says he is.
Perhaps it’s time we take a closer look at Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome, Vijay Singh.
At a party with almost one hundred guests at its peak, many of them friends of friends, some clearly gatecrashers, it’s only natural I didn’t know all of them, including Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome. (Do you mind if I keep using the moniker? I think it suits him better.) But there was something suspicious about him from the start.
I’m not even sure we were properly introduced. I do know he was by Una’s side for the first half of the night, and so I assumed they were together. As you do when you see people clinging to each other like soggy lettuce. Yet he kept sneaking glances at me, over his wineglass, his dark lashes batting lazily, a coy smile on his lips.
He was incredibly flirtatious.
I let him have a good long look at one point, hoping that would satiate his curiosity and put him off. I mean, I can bat eyelashes with the best of them, but I’m not into stealing other people’s men.
I’m not Tessa McGee, for instance.
So, Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome—sorry, Doctor Tall, Dark and Handsome—a man that everybody else seemed to know except me, approached at one point and asked how I was.
I said, “I’m fine, thank you. How’s Una?”
He smiled as if I was an amusing imbecile. “We’re not together. Is that what you think?”
Then he took my hand into his own and started inspecting my palm like he was about to read my future as he said, “I was wondering if you want to go somewhere more private, maybe upstairs?”
Urgh. Yuck! I snatched my hand back.
“Don’t be like that,” he said.
And I said, “Like what?” before turning away and smashing straight into Una’s breasts.
She’s super tall, did I tell you that? Well over six foot, with legs up to her ears a la Darryl Hannah from that movie Splash.
“What’s going on?” she said, glancing from Tall, Dark and Handsome (do you mind if I use the moniker? I think it suits him better), then down to me and back.
“Nothing,” I replied, blushing despite myself.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stared hard at the Lothario behind me, but I wasn’t hanging around to deal with the fallout. I excused myself and scurried off towards the kitchen. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t know if she eventually tracked me down and we had a fight and she killed me in the heat of the moment, but I can’t see that playing out.
If Una shot me for “flirting” with her new beau, she’d have to be shockingly insecure, and that’s not a trait that sits easily with Una. She’s the kind of woman who can give a rousing speech at a moment’s notice, who eats meals at busy restaurants on her own without a book, and even goes on exotic holidays todo solo. She’s just back from three days in Bangkok and never even thought to drag someone along. I would have gone, if only she’d asked me and if only I had the cash.
Una’s one of the most confident women I know, as you would be when you have the looks of Daryl Hannah and the smarts of a lawyer—did I mention she’s a lawyer, an actual real lawyer, not a lowly PA? What’s not to be confident about?
Yet, despite that, she rarely has a boyfriend, and I have a feeling I know why. She has dangerous taste in men. They’re never suitable; it always self-destructs. I have a theory about Una, but I won’t bore you with it now. Let’s just say she has commitment issues and leave it at that.
Anyway, moving right along, while we’re on the subject of suspects, shall we tick another one off? Let’s take another look at Tessa. My nemesis.
We’re actually best friends if I’m being honest, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t bring me down from time to time. We’ve been besties for twenty-four years, ever since she popped her head around the paint easel at kindergarten to say “Hawo” or some such thing.
“Oh, darling, you were hiding behind there and shaking like a leaf!” My mother loves to remind everyone whenever she gets the chance. “And lovely Tessa took you by your chubby little hand and dragged you out.”
Tessa always smiles smugly at this retelling, as though I would be cowering there still if she hadn’t stumbled over and rescued me.
Suffice to say, we became “thick as thieves” after that—my mother’s words, not mine. I love Tessa, I really do, but sometimes I wonder whether she’s one of those friends you stay friends with for no real reason other than a shared history, a common neighbourhood and a lot of habit. She lives a few doors down, across the street. We just fell in with each other and forgot to fall out.
Until tonight.
Yep, that’s when everything clicked. She is having an affair with Roco. I just know it. I didn’t need to spot them snogging or groping or anything that crass. It was suddenly very obvious. The way they held themselves. The way they avoided each other’s eyes. The way the air sparked like faulty Christmas lights whenever they got close. Roco never sparked like that for me.
“What are you doing?” I said to Tessa about halfway through the night.
She stared at me blankly. “What?”
I stared back. And then she blushed. Quite literally, she turned a beetroot shade of red. And I thought, Hook, line and sinker.
“Really, Tessa? Really?” I said and then shook my head and walked away. Because I didn’t really want to face the facts. I didn’t want to hear her say “Yes, we’re at it like rabbits” or “Sorry, but we’re soul mates, we just can’t help ourselves” or whatever inane justification was bubbling away in her big fat head.
So I stumbled off to the kitchen where I found Tall, Dark and Handsome deep in conversation with another woman, the aforementioned Arabella. I wondered if he’d tried to read her palm and if she’d fallen for that trick.
They both swept around to stare at me as I walked in, and the look of guilt in Arabella’s eyes was all the answer I required.
I wondered if Una knew just how sleazy her new boyfriend was. I was planning to find her and ask. I was hoping we could lick our wounds together, but Una was nowhere to be fo
und. Until I did find her, ten minutes later, rummaging about in my dad’s study, leafing through the contents on his desk.
What was she doing in there?
“What are you doing in here?” I asked as she swept up and around to look at me. If there was an innocent explanation, her spontaneous babble belied it.
“What? Me? Huh? No!”
A bizarre splutter of words if ever I heard some. She’d lost her usual confidence.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Nothing! No, nothing at all!”
Then she backed away slowly from the desk as though it contained live explosives and sprinted out the door, and I was left to peer at the papers on top to try to comprehend. Apart from some bank slips and unopened junk mail, I spotted light pink stationery, a Qantas boarding pass and a wad of cash, which made me think twice.
My folks wouldn’t leave a fistful of hundred-dollar notes lying about. Did Una just put them there? And if so, why?
I never got a chance to explore that further because Roco suddenly appeared and dragged me by the hand and led me back to the party—it was cake time! Hurrah! Let’s cut the stupid sponge cake! Even though it wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t want a cake, especially not a mushy strawberry sponge one with fake cream filling.
I was going to go back to the study. I was going to store that cash somewhere safe, but someone must have beat me to it because I’m staring at Dad’s desk right now and I can tell you, there’s not so much as a dollar in sight.
And now that I think about it, the pink stationery has also gone walkabout.
Chapter 8
Before I can give that any more thought—and it is super interesting, don’t you think?—Buzz Cut claps his hands and makes another announcement. What is it with him and grand announcements? He doesn’t even have much to impart. Just asks the throng to hurry up and finish giving their statements and bugger off, although he says it slightly more diplomatically than that.
