But he did miss female company. He had considered hiring a professional for a few hours. But the nearest brothel was in Whangarei almost two hours away. Legalizing prostitution in New Zealand in 2003 was a marvelous thing as far as Doug was concerned. A few hundred dollars got him everything he would ever want from a woman, less the nagging. It was perfect. Unfortunately his last wife had not taken kindly to his costly pastime. Now he was free to do what he wanted, when he wanted. But tonight he would have to do without. Then his mind wandered to the blonde woman owner. She was a little heavy for his liking and a little old but she had great tits and nice legs. After four or five drinks she would look even better.
Doug poured himself another glass from the wine bottle. He would pop over and ask her if she would like to join him in the hot tub over a glass of wine. After all, this was the boondocks and he couldn’t be too particular. Too much trouble, he thought. I will ring her, and he picked up the phone and dialed the office number.
C H A P T E R 7
She answered the phone “Good evening, Three Suites.”
“Would you like to join me for a glass of wine and watch the sunset from the hot tub? This is Doug in Suite C.”
Audrey smiled. Now, that was more like it, she thought. “OK,” she said “I will change and join you in a minute or two.” She hung up the phone and walked upstairs to her bedroom and chose a simple black suit. No suit could disguise her large breasts. She slipped into a matching black wrap to cover her body as best she could and made her way across the terracotta colored courtyard to the deck of Suite C.
He was waiting at the table in his bathrobe, drinking wine and looking at the sun setting over the water. Colors of orange, reds and yellows adorned the horizon. The few clouds captured the colors and rays of light reflected their warm glow onto the surrounding landscape. It was breathtaking.
Audrey almost forgot that she was angry and disillusioned with life as she sat quietly beside the man in the calm evening light.
As the last of the sun disappeared below the hills in the distance Audrey stood and switched on the deck lights. Doug removed the lid from the hot tub and Audrey stepped into the warm, scented water lowering herself gingerly until only her head and shoulders were exposed to the cool evening air. She watched as Doug removed his robe and then it happened. All the anger she had been feeling for the past few days exploded in her mind. She closed her eyes to hide the monster building inside her. Doug stepped into the tub. His soft flabby penis hung shamelessly between his legs. His protruding belly was covered in dark curly hairs that matched his pubic hairs. Naked! Always naked, thought Audrey. Why do these men have no decorum, no shame? They flaunt their manhood as though it is a winning lottery ticket. Don’t men know that nakedness is not attractive over fifty – unless they have the body of younger man?
Audrey blamed legalized prostitution for the way men behaved today. They actually believed pretty prostitutes when they told them they were handsome and virile. The women took global vacations on money they took from stupid men.
A few months ago, an owner of a chain of brothels had stayed in Suite A. Audrey had been fascinated by her chosen profession and asked. “How many women actually liked having sex with strangers? The owner had confessed that in her twenty years of running brothels in New Zealand only one woman had ever admitted she actually enjoyed her profession. “The women do it for the money” she had said. “Nothing else.”
Audrey knew that New Zealand men didn’t date. Not like American men did. They preferred a sure thing and a prostitute was a sure thing without any complications. Married men, single men, it didn’t matter. Prostitution gave them what they wanted. Sadly New Zealand women suffered the consequences. Romance didn’t exist and chivalry went out with the prehistoric moa.
Audrey realized that Doug was talking. At least his mouth was moving and she strained to hear him over the loud hum of the jets. She kept her eyes level with his. Not daring to look down in case she glimpsed his soft penis that she knew would be bobbing in the clear blue bubbles. How Audrey hated penises. If only she could be gay then penises would not be an issue. She decided to get out of the hot tub and return to her suite. Tonight was not the right time for what she had in mind - maybe tomorrow night. She said that she had work to do, grabbed her towel and wrap and walked barefoot across the courtyard to the comfort and privacy of her suite.
C H A P T E R 8
What is her problem? One minute she is sitting happily at the table watching the sunset and the next minute it was like she saw a ghost. Bloody women! You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.
Doug climbed out of the hot tub, had a shower, dressed and drove his truck down to the local waterfront restaurant. He noticed how dark it was in the country. The sky was a landscape in itself. The Milky Way was breathtaking. The Southern Cross was easily recognizable. Doug had never seen such a night sky before. This truly was a piece of paradise. He decided to eat outside to enjoy the evening air and the vastness of the evening. He could hear morepork owls in the distance. Their cry “more pork! more pork!” gave them their well-earned name. It was a loud call for a reasonably small owl. Their yellow round eyes watched for flying bugs attracted by porch lights of neighboring houses.
He had ordered fish and chips and was pleasantly surprised at the freshness of the fish. New Zealanders knew that if you could smell the fish then it wasn’t fresh – the same with meat. Farmers cannot stand the smell in a butcher shop. “Rotting meat,” they would say. “Fresh meat does not smell”.
Doug was interested in the local farming. New Zealand used to have over seventy million sheep. Now, due to strong international demand, there are seven million dairy cattle, four million beef cattle and a marked reduction in sheep numbers to thirty million. Most beef farms were in the North Island and Doug noticed during his drive up north many of the farms were now cattle farms with just a few sheep added to the mix.
He liked this area. Seemed like a good group of guys in the Club. Mostly standing around tall tables drinking beer and discussing the weather as most farmers did. “Looks like a long dry summer.” He heard a rugged faced, tall skinny guy announce as he ordered another beer. “Hope the grass holds out”.
Doug drank his second beer and decided to head on back to the Chalets. It was getting a little chilly and the hot tub would be just the ticket. He might even get blondie to take another dip. No women in the bar. He glanced at the pub across the street. It, too, was full of men. Most of them spilled outside smoking cigarettes and clutching a beer - their voices rowdy and raucous in the still night air.
C H A P T E R 9
Constable Driver headed out into the dark night to check on things. All seemed pretty quiet. A couple of burglaries were reported on Wainui Road not far from the fishing club. He would check out the area to see if anyone was acting out of the norm. He drove the eight miles down to the waterfront turnoff. He liked Whangaroa Harbour. He had heard that it was a main tourist spot years ago. The tourist buses used to stop there. Now the buses missed the turnoff and drove straight up the ten highway to Manganui where they stopped for fish and chips on their way to the northern tip of Cape Rienga. There they could see the joining of both the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea. Now Whangaroa Harbor just had its docks, a small club restaurant, a bar, a few local residents, a couple of motels and a dairy. The docks were pretty full of local boats. Further down the road there was an old jetty and a boat ramp. Locals fished for kahawai, terakihi, trevally, and snapper off the dock.
Driver pulled into the fishing club car park and noticed a guy getting into his truck. He didn’t recognize him as one of the locals but it was dark and he couldn’t be sure. The truck was a black Toyota with heavy tires. It didn’t look like a farmer’s truck it was much too tidy. Looked as though it belonged to city type guy. Most likely up here for the fishing. Driver decided to go back to the fork in the road and make sure that the locals were not driving over the legal limit. He had found a spot at the Wainu
i Road turnoff where he could watch the traffic in three different directions. Everything seemed pretty quiet it was going to be a long night but he had no one to go home to. At least not until his family arrived. As he parked the car and reached over to grab the coffee thermos and the sandwiches he had packed for his dinner he noticed the black Toyota heading up Wainui Road towards Tauranga Bay. Not much up there, thought Driver - just the chalets and a few rental cabins at the bay. He watched the truck tail lights disappear around a curve in the road. All fell quiet again.
Pearl looked out her window at the cop car parked across the road. She made a quick call to the restaurant and the pub to warn them that the new Constable was on the prowl. She promised to call again when he left. She smiled at his naivety. Sometimes the paddy wagon parked there in order to stop all the cars going in and out of the harbor hoping to catch the boozers on a Saturday night. Pearl always warned the pubs and the cops wondered why the traffic suddenly became non- existent. Tonight would be the same. Shame really, Pearl thought. He seems like a nice young cop.
Pearl knew everything that went on in the little Whangaora township. Her cozy, buttercup yellow, one bedroom cottage was neatly fringed with a well- tendered garden of hollyhocks, flowering bushes, bromeliads, and succulents galore. Pearl loved her garden. A little wooden gate led to her front door. She would sit on her patio and watch the locals come and go. If there was a stranger in town, Pearl knew about it.
She had just seen a strange black truck head off up Wainui Road. It was too dark to see who was driving it but she did know he wasn’t from around here. Pearl returned to her knitting. She was making scarves for the library gift shop in town. She liked to keep busy.
Twenty minutes later she heard the police car start up and drive off towards town. She called the pubs to give the all clear. A few minutes later she heard the traffic began to flow.
C H A P T E R 10
Audrey looked at the time. It was ten o’clock. She heard his truck coming up the driveway. She peeked through her curtains as the man turned off the lights, got out of the truck and headed inside Suite C. Guess he just went down to the waterfront restaurant, she thought. Audrey went there some nights when they had their roast dinner menu. The locals knew they could get a good feed for only twenty dollars. Trouble was, you couldn’t go back for seconds. It was a help yourself type arrangement and every now and then a stranger would confuse the set up with a smorgasbord and think it was “all you could eat” and would go back for seconds only to be instantly and curtly scolded for his ignorance. A good crowd would turn out. Tonight was Saturday night and she knew that the restaurant and the pub would just be full of the local drinking crowd, mostly men.
Whangaroa was an older community with the average age of the residents fifty, even sixty and older.
She hadn’t heard a peek out of the honeymoon couple upstairs. They were checking out tomorrow and as she had no-one checking into the suite for a couple of days, she didn’t have to rush around cleaning it tomorrow. It could wait. She had too much on her mind at the moment. She needed a plan.
Audrey had done her research and had been planning this for months. She just had to wait until the right time and place. She was a believer that life was all about luck and timing. Be it bad luck or good luck it didn’t seem to matter it was the timing that was most important. Tomorrow night would be the perfect time. It would only be her and the man here. Her twelve acres of complete privacy gave her all the cover she would need.
She walked over to the door and turned out all the lights. He would think she had gone to bed and not disturb her tonight. Tomorrow he would head off early to get in a full day’s fishing. Audrey stripped off her clothes and hopped into her king size bed naked. She liked the feel of the cool crisp sheets against her body. She also liked sleeping alone. So many years of living a single life had spoiled any possible relationship she might now have.
The sound of an old man snoring beside her was repulsive, irritating and sleep depriving. In her youth she never seemed to notice snoring. She thought it was because she always fell asleep first or maybe it simply didn’t matter then. She turned on her telly quietly so that no one would hear it if they came to her door. She usually went to sleep with the telly on and the sleep mode set for forty-five minutes.
The pa was busy tonight. An off sea wind muffled grunts and squeals from deep in the pine forest.
C H A P T E R 1 1
Audrey awoke to the sound of his truck crunching down the gravel driveway. It was only seven o’clock. She rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour. When she finally awoke bright sunshine was streaking through the curtain gaps into her bedroom. Feeling hungry, she walked downstairs to the kitchen and turned on the jug for a cup of tea and popped a piece of bread into the toaster. She could hear movements in Suite A and returned to her bedroom quickly throwing on her jeans and t-shirt and twisting her hair into a ponytail. In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her face.
“Shit, I look awful” she confined to her reflection in the mirror. Any minute she expected the young boy to knock at her door so she could check them out. They must be leaving early, she thought. The toaster popped out the toast and the jug stopped boiling.
Audrey didn’t like mornings. She awoke feeling headachy and sore all over and lived on painkillers. It was a habit to reach for her pills the minute she woke, popping two into her hand and taking a gulp of water to swill them down.
She blamed her headaches on her bra straps digging into her shoulders and causing the constant neck pain radiating up the back of her head. She had weighed her boobs by putting the scales on the kitchen table and placing her boobs on the scale. Forty-five pounds they weighed! Twenty-two and a half pounds each! No wonder she had a constant headache.
Audrey was right. The young boy, all fresh faced and fanciful was knocking at the door downstairs. She welcomed him inside, took his credit card and ran it through the machine.
“I hope you enjoyed your stay,” she said as she printed out his receipt, stapled it to his bill and handed him the copies.
“Thanks,” he said. “It was great. We are heading off to Cape Reinga today. How long do you think it will take?” he asked.”
“It will take you about an hour and a quarter to get to the east coast from here and another couple of hours to the top. But you should stop on the way and visit the white silicone beaches. You can drive legally on ninety mile beach and the sand dunes are great for boogie boarding” she offered.
“We will,” he said as he left. “We left the keys on the kitchen counter.”
“Thanks, Goodbye,” she called back as he headed up the steps.
Alone at last, she thought. As soon as she heard their car driving away she made her way upstairs. Might as well do the linens and laundry she thought as she stripped the super king bed. Everything got washed and ironed. She took armfuls of bed linens and towels down to the laundry and started the first load then made her way upstairs again to make the bed and clean the kitchen. You never knew when someone just might drop by to enquire about a vacancy. Today, however, she would not put up the vacancy sign at the gate. Tonight she wanted privacy- just her and the man.
The day was taken up with cleaning, washing, ironing and changing the water in the hot tub upstairs. She took pride in keeping the hot tubs clean and inviting. No one wanted to bathe in the same water as the honeymoon couple the night before. Each suite had it’s own private hot tub which was one of the major attractions of her business.
Audrey had spent a fortune on her tropical gardens. Thick luscious palm trees bordered the driveways shading hundreds of healthy succulents and native ferns.
The gardens reminded her of the gardens in Montecito, California where she had lived for many years before returning to live in New Zealand. The locals thought she was a rich American when she moved into their town. She wasn’t. She had spent every penny she had ever earned and even borrowed more to create this masterpiece. The business was all she had. Origin
ally she had lived in the South Island which might as well been a different country from the far north. This was something else. It was hard to relate to the locals whose lives had been spent living off the land. Audrey’s life had been spent living off her wits. She had very little education but had been moderately successful using her youth, femininity, intuition and common sense to get her through. Her youth was now behind her and her femininity had only just got her into trouble. Men had been her Achilles heel since day one. Audrey blamed everything that ever went wrong with her life on men. Her Father, her two husbands, her countless lovers, they had all let her down. Now it was time for men to pay. Tonight would be the beginning of her next project and Audrey knew she wasn’t happy if she didn’t have a project.
C H A P T E R 1 2
Doug was feeling quite contented. He had found a great fishing spot and had settled down for a day of fishing and some serious beer drinking. He had stopped at the little grocery store in Kaeo before heading off and picked up some bait and a supply of beer.
It was a great little store, he thought. Had a good selection of beer and wine, which was surprising for a little store in the middle of nowhere. He also grabbed some bread, ham and cheese and a couple of packets of potato chips. The sun was out and the day had nice breeze: all good. Catching a couple of snapper he knew dinner was set. Maybe he would invite the blonde, Audrey, over for dinner. Would be nice to have some company and perhaps he would get lucky. He grinned. Being single again is not such a bad deal. He might even stop over in Whangarei on the way back to Auckland and get himself a girl or two. He had been checking out the girls’ online last night. Some pretty tasty girls; young Maori girls, Asian girls, Pakehas with big tits - quite a selection.
The Murder Suite: Book One - The Audrey Murders Page 2
