Ghostly Hitchhiker Box Set

by Rodney Strong

  (She is so cool.)

  A sentiment shared by Rose and Reed who were disappointed not to see Alice again. By the time Jennifer expressed her admiration for the old lady that evening he was feeling decidedly unappreciated. The children’s disappointment that it was his turn to put them to bed didn’t help. He understood that they only saw their mum for a couple of hours at the end of the day, but it didn’t stop him feeling any less like the hired help.

  When he finally sat down with Jennifer he had to admit that what he was really feeling was worried about Amanda. He’d tried calling several more times, but it always went straight to voicemail. The last time he left a message pretending that she’d posted about her lost cat John and he thought he might have seen him.

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ Jennifer said. ‘And until you know differently you have more pressing matters.’

  He sighed and stretched his neck from side to side. ‘I know. And like Alice said, it’s starting to point in one direction, but there’s still some pretty important information missing.’

  Jennifer picked up her tablet and began playing the game that she and Oliver had become addicted to. He felt no hypocrisy at all in telling the kids to restrict their screen time, while sneaking away to hide in the bedroom to play this stupid game. It was easier when Reed and Rose were in bed.

  ‘You’ll figure it out,’ Jennifer said. ‘I have complete confidence in you. And on a positive note no one has tried to kill you.’

  ‘Yet,’ he replied automatically in an attempt at humour.

  His wife turned her head and in one silent response managed to convey that A) she didn’t find him funny, B) no one better try and kill him, and C) as penance for his poorly conceived joke he could get her some cheese and crackers. Although the last bit was mostly done with a pointing finger and a bit of interpretation on his behalf.

  (It’s like when Brigid and I would know what each other was thinking. Like this one time when I wanted to borrow one of her jackets and I didn’t even have to ask and she just gave it to me. I think I looked as good in it as she did. In fact if I had my hair down we almost looked like sisters.)

  Oliver sat bolt upright. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ Jennifer replied.

  (This one time I borrowed one of her…)

  ‘Just the last bit, Debbie.’

  (We looked almost like sisters. More than Beth and I did, and definitely more than Jill and Brigid did.)

  Oliver’s mind raced with possibilities.

  ‘What is it?’ Jennifer sat up in her chair, a mixture of curiosity and concern plastered on her face.

  ‘When did you borrow her jacket, Debbie?’

  (I can’t remember. I borrowed lots of her jackets. The last time was… the day I…Oh.)

  ‘You know I can’t hear what she’s saying,’ Jennifer said with a scowl.

  ‘We’ve been working on the basis that the two deaths were linked.’

  ‘A sensible hypothesis.’

  ‘But what if there were never supposed to be two deaths? Debbie just told me that she and Brigid looked alike and she had borrowed Brigid’s jacket on the day she died. What if Debbie was never supposed to die? What if Brigid was the target all along?’ Oliver jumped to his feet, too excited to remain seated. ‘I’ve been focussing on who when I should have been worrying about why.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What if the killer thought they were getting Brigid, but murdered Debbie by mistake? They couldn’t go after Brigid again straight away because of all the police, so they waited a week then managed somehow to get their intended target.’

  He felt eyes on him and turned to see the cat staring from the dining table, a spot where he knew he wasn’t supposed to be, and equally knew he had a fifty/fifty chance of Oliver actually bothering to remove him.

  (I told you I wanted you to find out who killed Brigid.)

  ‘So the question is why target Brigid? She was only eight-years-old which usually rules out arch enemies.’

  Oliver looked at his wife, shrugged, then slumped back onto the couch next to her. ‘Good question. From what I can tell Brigid and Debbie spent almost every waking moment together, so you’d think if one knew something, the other would as well.’

  (I told you everything I know.)

  Like you and Brigid looking alike?

  (There’s things that you know and things that you know. Like I know that the capital of Australia is Sydney…)

  Canberra.

  (What? Oh. Like I know that the capital of Australia is Canberra because I learnt it, but I know that Brigid and I looked like each other because I’ve always known it. Get it?)

  ‘Not really,’ he muttered.

  He checked his watch and did some quick calculations, then leapt off the couch again.

  ‘Where are you going now?’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘To talk to Jill. I have an idea.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  He picked a cushion up from the chair and flung it in her direction, immediately feeling a twinge in his shoulder.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘So it did hurt,’ she laughed.

  TWENTY FIVE

  Jill wasn’t thrilled to hear from him again, and even less so when he made his accusation.

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘For a fifty-year-old perhaps, but not for a ten-year-old who found her sister and sister’s friend annoying. And my gut feeling is you weren’t in on it alone. If I asked Beth whether she knew what was happening what do you think she would say?’

  ‘Beth?’ The woman looked off camera and licked her lips nervously. ‘I barely knew her.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe. Your sisters were best friends, it was a small community and you and Beth were roughly the same age, so it’s not inconceivable to think that the two of you knew each other.’

  Jill looked around, seeming to be searching for something on her desk, perhaps a convenient disconnect button. Being on video meant she couldn’t pretend to be driving through a tunnel.

  ‘Fine,’ she said staring straight at the camera. ‘We did it, it was just a stupid joke. I wrote the note so Debbie wouldn’t recognise her sister’s handwriting, not that she would have anyway, no one has handwriting at ten. It was supposed to be funny. Debbie would dig it up and run off to find Nick, who of course wouldn’t be there, and even if he was he wouldn’t know anything about the note.’

  ‘That’s cruel.’

  ‘Yes it is, now, but you don’t think about things like that when you’re a kid. I just wanted to wipe that smug smile off her face.’

  ‘How did you get it into the girls’ secret hiding place?’ Oliver asked.

  Her face turned bright red, although she held his eyes.

  ‘It was easy. I got Brigid to do it.’

  Oliver’s eyes widened.

  (She wouldn’t!)

  ‘She didn’t know it was a trick. We told her that Nick wanted to get it to Debbie without her parents finding out. She thought that was so romantic. Like I said, it was easy.’

  ‘And when Debbie went missing? Did you tell anyone about the note?’

  ‘No,’ Jill’s voice wavered slightly before she squared her shoulders. ‘We were afraid of getting in trouble. Besides it wasn’t Nick, we asked him, and he said he had nothing to do with it, so there was no need to tell anyone.’

  (I can’t believe Beth would do that to me.)

  ‘Brigid must have confronted you. She delivered the note to her friend, who then went missing. Surely she would have said something to the police.’

  ‘She was going to but…’

  His eyes flicked across to Jennifer who was sitting just out of camera shot. She nodded encouragingly.

  ‘You persuaded her that it would get Nick in trouble?’ he guessed.

  Jill nodded miserably.

  He tried and failed to mentally stifle some swear words. Debbie was impressed.

  ‘If I thought that he’d had anything to d
o with Debbie’s disappearance I would have spoken up straight away, but I was scared. We were just kids remember.’

  He wondered who she was trying to convince.

  ‘And Debbie snuck out all the time so it was probably just coincidence that it happened when it did.’

  Oliver ran his fingers over his short hair, then gave his scalp a good itch. It was less satisfying than calling Jill a word he’d only used once before in his entire life.

  ‘I’m looking at a different possibility. I’ve recently learned that there was a similarity in appearance between the girls.’

  Jill looked confused at the change in tack, then shrugged and issued a nervous laugh. ‘I suppose, a lot of girls that age look alike. I had a hard time when my girls were that young and all their friends came around. I mean they were always doing each others’ hair the same way and borrowing each others’ clothes. What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘It’s possible that Brigid was the intended victim when Debbie went missing. I need you to think carefully, was there anything that happened before Debbie’s disappearance, anything that Brigid said or did that might be important?’

  ‘I told you last time, no. It was all kids’ stuff, girls they didn’t like anymore, boys they wanted to get in trouble, nothing that warranted murder.’

  In Oliver’s albeit limited experience the list of what some people considered solvable by murder was pretty long and often surprising.

  ‘You know what? I’m getting sick of only being told half the story. If everyone just told me all I wanted to know right at the beginning then I would have solved this thing days ago,’ he said to Jennifer after ending the call with Jill.

  She gave him a quick hug before starting the end of evening search for plates their kids liked to hide from them. ‘I have a lot of faith in you, darling. What made you think of asking Jill about being involved in tricking Debbie?’

  ‘A hunch. Once we started thinking that Brigid wasn’t the target, then the note clearly becomes a red herring...’

  (A red what?)

  ‘It means it has nothing to do with the case.’

  ‘I know what a red herring is… oh, you’re explaining it to Debbie,’ she replied, before delving under the second couch and holding up a plate with leftover toast from that morning. At least he hoped it was from that morning.

  ‘Do you worry sometimes that we’re terrible parents?’ he asked.

  ‘Every day,’ she replied.

  ‘How do you cope with it?’

  Jennifer placed the plate on the kitchen bench. ‘I work on the basis that we’re good parents until our kids tell us we’re terrible parents, and then we know we’re doing a great job.’

  ‘I like the way you think.’

  (You guys are weird.)

  ‘Debbie thinks we’re weird.’

  ‘Then we’re halfway there already,’ Jennifer laughed.

  (Really weird.)

  TWENTY SIX

  Oliver considered calling Beth and confronting her about the note, but in the end decided it wasn’t worth it. The more he thought about it the more he was convinced the note and Nick had nothing to do with the case.

  Instead he picked Alice up from the train station, reluctantly told her that he hadn’t been able to get hold of Amanda, and headed north for the meeting with Jasper and Barbara.

  On the way Alice asked Debbie, through Oliver, a series of questions relating to life after death. Most of which Debbie answered with either not enough information, or far too much. By the time they pulled up outside Barbara Smith’s house Oliver was none the wiser and had a new sympathy for people who worked as translators.

  They parked behind a shiny new yellow Mitsubishi with an L plate in the window. Oliver explained to Debbie that meant the driver was a Learner. His personal opinion was that the scheme should be extended to include an I for Idiot driver, but he didn’t think the government would go for it.

  ‘Interesting that it’s yellow,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It seems Jasper has always had a fondness for the colour.’

  Barbara answered the door with a resigned smile and led them into the lounge where Jasper and his grandson were seated. Jasper was sipping a cup of coffee, while David was regarding a glass of milk with an expression that suggested he wished it was beer instead. His face brightened when he saw Alice.

  ‘When James told me that you were a novelist rather than a journalist I didn’t believe it. He’s always been the sort that doesn’t like other people’s achievements. But then Barbara called and told me you’d been to see her. I thought this episode was buried, but I’m guessing that won’t happen until I am. So there’s been quite a few different discussions happening and I thought it sensible that we combine them all into a single conversation,’ Jasper said when the two newcomers were seated.

  (He used to talk like that at school as well. Lots of words.)

  ‘Great idea,’ Oliver replied. ‘Perhaps you can start by confirming several things. The two of you were having an affair in 1978, weren’t you?’

  David’s jaw dropped and he gaped at his grandfather.

  ‘David, why don’t you go play in the garden,’ Jasper said to him.

  ‘Granddad!’

  ‘Now, David.’ His tone suggested further discussion was pointless and David had obviously heard it before as he got up without any further protest and walked out of the room.

  ‘Unfortunately I can’t drive anymore, eyes are starting to go, so David is my chauffeur. Sometimes reluctantly. I suspect he’s on the other side of the door listening right now.’

  There was a scuffling sound from just outside the door, and a few seconds later they saw David through the window, casting yearning looks in the direction of the lounge.

  ‘Now, I believe you asked a question. The answer is yes, which you already knew as Barbara already told you.’

  ‘I’ve also had it confirmed by an independent witness.’

  You, he added before Debbie could ask.

  ‘So what of it? It’s not my finest moment, but hardly pertinent to the disappearance of Debbie and the tragic death of Brigid.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Oliver admitted. ‘And I’m sure you have been asked this many times, but where were you that week?’

  Jasper sighed and gave Barbara a look of exasperation. ‘At the time of Debbie’s disappearance I was at my house, with my son James. For Brigid’s accident I was in Auckland for a conference. I don’t have any proof of my whereabouts at that time but the police checked my alibi so I’m sure it’s in an official record.’

  Oliver nodded thoughtfully as if he’d already checked the record and had been wanting to see if Jasper stuck to his story. ‘Are you aware that Brigid and Debbie saw you and Barbara together? If they’d told anyone it could have affected both of your careers.’

  Jasper did his best to appear surprised, but there was a delayed response, and Oliver noted that the man didn’t turn to Barbara.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Really?’ Alice said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ Jasper said, his face saying he was shocked to have his word doubted.

  ‘So you didn’t know, and weren’t worried that it would ruin your career and your marriage; you didn’t track the girls down and remove the threat,’ Oliver suggested.

  Barbara’s face drained of colour and he thought it was a good thing she was sitting down.

  ‘That’s preposterous. The seventies were an old boys club in teaching. At worst I would have received a public dressing down and a private congratulations from the school board. Barbara was younger and vastly more attractive than I was. It would have been different for Barbara, but…’

  ‘No love and loyalty remaining, I see,’ Alice commented.

  ‘Now look here, I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Stop talking, Jasper,’ Barbara snapped. Her cheeks had flushed red, in contrast with the blanched white of the rest of her face. ‘You always talked too much.�
�

  ‘Did you know about Brigid and Debbie?’ Oliver asked her.

  ‘Yes alright, I did,’ she admitted. ‘Well, Brigid. I caught her sneaking away from the office. I assumed that Debbie wasn’t that far away. Brigid swore that she wasn’t but those two were never far away from each other.’

  (I was around the corner. Brigid would never dob me in.)

  ‘What happened?’ Alice asked.

  Barbara blinked. ‘Nothing happened. She promised not to tell anyone.’

  ‘And you believed her?’ Oliver laughed.

  ‘Well, not exactly. But at the end of the day it was the word of two eight-year-old girls renowned for gossip versus the deputy principal and a teacher. No one was going to believe them. So you see there was no reason for either of us to kill them.’ The look she shot Jasper suggested he wasn’t quite as safe.

  ‘I said I didn’t mean it,’ Jasper repeated.

  ‘I heard you,’ Barbara replied icily.

  ‘So there’s no reason to turn your attention in our direction.’

  ‘It would seem…’ Oliver’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He wrestled it out of his pocket and checked the screen before excusing himself and stepping out of the room. Unfortunately it wasn’t Amanda, and Oliver would have normally sent it to voicemail, but he’d run out of obvious questions and needed a moment to think of some unobvious ones.

  ‘Hi, Graeme.’

  ‘I’ve got some good news and some great news, Oliver.’

  Oliver looked through the window to where David was slumped under a tree. He had a small notepad and was either writing or drawing in it.

  ‘What’s the good news?’

  ‘I tracked down Nick Rawlings’ neighbour and she’s got fifteen minutes between exams if you can get to the university by noon.’

  ‘That’s doable.’

  ‘Excellent. Her name is Caitlin and she’ll meet you outside the campus bookstore.’

  ‘Okay, what’s the great news?’ Oliver asked.