The Murder Suite: Book One - The Audrey Murders

by Leonie Mateer

  Bruce was still upset that someone would steal his letterbox. He had taken it from the dump a year ago. He liked it. It was a little yellow house with a door and he had nailed it to a fence post. He had even painted a makeshift number on the front. They never got any mail but it was a present for Dolly who felt if they had a letterbox they had a home. Now it was gone.

  They looked up and saw the tall dark haired lady from the corner cottage down by Whangaroa Harbor pulling off the road. “Shit” he said. Looks like she is coming here” Bruce didn’t encourage visitors. “Gidday” he called out to Pearl as she lifted her long skirt over the muddy walkway.

  Pearl called back “Just popped by to check if you guys are OK and brought you some biscuits.”

  Bruce noticed she was carrying a plate covered in plastic wrap.

  “How nice” said Dolly who had been dosing happily in the sun and now felt disturbed by the intrusion. “It must be time for a cuppa tea,” she said as she stood to go inside the Caravan.

  Pearl was left standing there holding the plate so decided to follow her inside. The caravan was a nightmare. It smelled damp with rotting wood and puddled floors. Water was still dripping down the walls. Dolly was not a good- looking woman. Years of hard drugs and alcohol had taken their toll on her. She was gaunt and grey. As Dolly boiled the kettle and found three reasonably clean cups from the sink and a sticky sugar bowl from a nearby shelf she asked Pearl, “Whatcha here for? No one comes visiting around here unless they want sumphin.”

  “I was just down talking to Smithy about the bones they found in the ditch opposite his place. He mentioned the cops have been searching properties around the area and have been up here looking around.” Pearl was feeling a little intimidated by Dolly’s abrupt attitude.

  “Yeah, they came around and took a look but there was nothing to find here” she said. “I bet it was that crazy bitch, Audrey. There is something not right with her. I saw her poking around here the other night.”

  “Pearl looked at her as though she was completely nuts. “Audrey?” she said. “Why do you think it was her?”

  “She has become all protective about who goes on her property. My Brucey likes to go pig hunting up on the pa behind her chalets. A couple of months ago, Audrey shooed him off and said it was private property and he had no right being there. She looked like the devil was in her. Screaming and all. Brucey said she is a crazy woman. I wouldn’t wanna be a guest at her place.”

  Pearl couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Audrey? Crazy? No way. Dolly and Bruce were the crazy ones. They walked outside to join Bruce in the sun. Dolly grabbed an old wood crate for Pearl to sit on.

  “Brucey, tell Pearl about when you went pig hunting up at the fancy Chalets.”

  “Yeah. The woman is off her rocker. We have been pig hunting up in those hills for years. She came out of nowhere waving her arms and telling us to get off her property or she would call the police. She said she didn’t want the local riff raff running around her business with guns. We thought were doing her a favor getting rid of the pig, but, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

  It wasn’t until Pearl was driving back home that she wondered if there was any truth to Dolly and Bruce’s insinuations. Could Audrey be a murderer? She laughed, “Of course not” she said out loud. “Audrey is such a lady. She couldn’t kill a flea.”

  She laughed all the way home at the ludicrous thought of it. Dolly and Bruce really had it wrong. They were just trying to take the focus off themselves. Making Audrey the guilty party made them look even guiltier. Of course Audrey would not want guys with guns around the guests. Especially guys like Bruce. He had a reputation for being skitso.

  She had already crossed Smithy off her list. And it couldn’t be Audrey. That just left Dolly and Bruce or someone else she hadn’t even thought of. Back to the drawing board she thought as she pulled into her driveway.

  C H A P T E R 5 6

  It was feeding time on the pa. News had got around. There was food in the pen. A young sow with her little ones could smell the kill from up in the surrounding hilltops. A massive boar with broken tipped tusks, mean and hungry, was in the pen ripping flesh from bones. Pulling at skin with his huge teeth while swinging his head from side to side. Others hung back in the shadows hoping they could partake of the offerings. It was a feeding frenzy. Black furry grunting pigs with bloodied mouths and feet. More pigs came down from the hills. They fought over the bones. They squealed and snorted. The noise could be heard from the Chalets below.

  Audrey awoke to the sound. She had been asleep all afternoon. The early evening light was glowing through the curtains. She felt groggy and her headache was worse than when she fell asleep. She reached over to the bedside table and removed two pills from the bottle and swallowed them with water from her glass. She stretched and waited for the pigs to stop their noise. Then she would go and visit the pen and make sure it was completely clean. If not, she would dig a hole and bury any bones that were left. There would be no chance of any bones being found this time.

  Once dressed in coveralls and gloves, she prepared what she would need for a clean up. She threw a spade, rake, tree saw, pickaxe and a couple of twenty- gallon containers of bleach and water. She knew she would need to break down the pen and take all the corrugated iron sheets and netting to a storage area. First, she would hose everything down. She had rigged up a hose by the top water tank and could store all the materials there. The noise had stopped and Audrey set off down the road, into her next driveway and up the hill to the pen site.

  One look and Audrey knew her work was cut out for her. First she dug a large hole. The ground was soft after the rain and it didn’t take her long to dig a deep hole. Once the bones were buried and covered with dirt, leaves, branches and rocks, she started to break down the pen and put the materials in the trailer.

  Next, she poured one of the containers of water over the ground where the blood had soaked the leaves and pine needles and poured the other container over the blood-stained sheets of iron in the trailer. It would need a good hosing off she knew. She raked the ground where the pen had been with leaves and needles and threw more branches over the area.

  She drove down to the water tank and removed the materials one by one. Each sheet she hosed completely and stacked neatly in an area in the trees that was not visible from the path. Once all the materials were clean and stacked she went back up to the pen site to check that it looked undisturbed. She pulled a large log over the area and cut off some large gorse bushes and threw them on the ground. The thorns from gorse were vicious. No one wanted to go near gorse. She could see no signs of blood and she was sure she had buried every bone.

  Work finished, she returned the garden tools to the trailer and headed down the hill. She knew that she would need to disinfect the trailer and put a couple of dead possums in it. She went to the three yellow possum traps she had set the previous night and pulled the string releasing their dead plump bodies. They had blood dripping out of their rat-like mouths. She threw them in the trailer and headed back to the chalet.

  After an hour of hosing off the car and the trailer and soaping them down with a solution of household bleach and detergent she was satisfied even the best blood sniffing dog would not be able to smell blood. She threw a dead possum in the back of the trailer and took the other two up to the water tank and the pig site. If a dog smelt blood the cops would just think it was a dead possum. Returning to her suite she removed her coveralls and canvas gloves and immediately put them in the washer machine and set the cycle to hot.

  The phone rang. “Audrey? This is Constable Driver. I popped around this morning but you were not home. I am calling to say that due to the amount of bones found on your property we have obtained a warrant to search your whole property including the valley and up the mountain behind the chalets. The forensics’ team thinks the bones may have washed down from the mountain.“

  Audrey couldn’t breathe Fuck! She thought. Calmly she said. “That will be fine.
What time should I expect them?”

  “Oh, around nine in the morning,” he said

  “Good I will expect them then” said Audrey.

  “Goodnight Constable Driver.” She hung up the phone and collapsed on the bed.

  C H A P T E R 5 7

  He could hear them. Squealing and snorting! They obviously caught some animal. He had to keep Bruiser inside. The wild pigs were making him go crazy. Smithy would take him pig hunting often. The sound of the pigs could be heard across the valley. He was tempted to go over the road and see what the commotion was. But he always felt a little unwelcome at Audrey’s. He could tell she didn’t like the way he dressed or the fact his beard had been left untouched for as long as he could remember. Bathing was not his favorite activity. And he didn’t feel it was necessary to wash his clothes every day, as they just got dirty again.

  He turned up the TV a little louder to listen to the six o’clock news. When the news was over he decided to take Bruiser for a walk. The pigs had stopped squealing and it was a lovely evening. As he walked out onto the road he looked up at the pa. He noticed Audrey’s car coming down the hill. Looked as though she had been checking the possum traps. Not a job for a lady, thought Smithy. Pulling dead possums out of traps. He headed down the road towards Whangaroa. Bruiser was pleased to be out with his master. The couple walked at a fast pace. Smithy was fit for an old guy. He didn’t want anyone to know he would be turning seventy-three on his next birthday. Not that he celebrated birthdays.

  He thought about Pearl’s visit earlier in the day. She seemed to be pretty fixated on the dead guy. He guessed she didn’t have much excitement in her life and a murder gave her a reason for living. Was she right about Dolly and Bruce? He wondered. Somehow he couldn’t see the drugged out couple doing anything so energetic. Let alone diabolical in nature. They seemed pretty harmless. He had seen them many times down at the local pub. They kept pretty much to themselves. He often saw them walking home from Whangaroa. They didn’t work. He figured they lived of a benefit.

  On the way back up the hill Bruiser suddenly started to go crazy. He started digging in the ground and barking his head off. “What the bloody hell!” Smithy yelled, “Get outta there!” He threw a small stone at him and Bruiser reluctantly came back to his side. “Whatcha

  think ya doing?” Growled Smithy. “Have you gone bone mad?” They made it home without another incident. Smithy decided he felt like lamb chops, mashed potatoes and gravy for his tucker. He was a good cook. Meat and potatoes - that was his specialty. The man and his dog looked forward to a good feed.

  C H A P T E R 5 8

  Audrey had been pacing up and down for over an hour. She knew she could not possibly have got rid of all the human blood up the hill. She had only one alternative; she had to kill one of her lambs and dump the body up there. Once the pigs attacked the animal and spread its blood around there would be enough of a mess the cops wouldn’t even suspect the sheep’s blood was mixed with human blood. There was only one problem. Audrey loved animals as much as she hated men. She would have to sacrifice a lamb and it would break her heart. “Fucking Men!” she spat. “They are the cause of everything that has gone wrong in my life. Even dead they cause problems”. She knew she couldn’t let the pigs eat her lamb alive. She would have to kill it first and then dump it at the site. The pigs would smell the kill and come down to feed.

  Pigs would eat whenever there was food to eat. She had learned that from the pig farmer next door. He would feed the baby pigs copious amounts of milk in a trough twice a day along with pig meal. They would eat and eat and eat. Over feeding meant bigger weaners. Now she was going to feed one of her pet lambs to the pigs. She knew she had no choice. That bloody Constable Driver just won’t let things lie. Now he has to go sniffing around my place. He needs something else to take his mind of Blackmore.

  Something else was worrying Audrey. She needed to move Campbell’s car from the waterfront and dump it over Radar Hill. It had been parked there all day and it would start to cause attention if it was left there overnight. But she would have to deal with the lamb first. She went outside to the garage and filled a bucket with multigrain nuts and headed for the sheep paddock. The farmer next door, Harry Armstrong, had been kind enough to loan her three sheep to help keep the grass down on the lower paddocks. Originally they were wild sheep but Audrey had tamed them with pellets and a regular feeding schedule.

  One of the sheep, Snow White, had a baby lamb. It had a black and white face like her Mother. Audrey loved her sheep. One of her favorite times of the day was when she would walk into the sheep paddock and call them to her. They would come running towards her and eat out of her bucket.

  Tonight she knew feeding time would never be the same again. She would do it quickly and as painlessly as possible and then drive the little lamb up to the pen site and dump her body there. By the time Audrey had laid her pet to rest among the leaves and branches of the forest she had cried her tears dry. She sat down on the forest floor and decided even punishing the crudest men for their crimes was not worth having to kill a little lamb.

  Audrey returned to the chalets and dressed in black jeans, black sweatshirt and donned her black baseball hat. She wheeled her bike out of the garage and started down the driveway and out onto the street.

  It was getting dark. She turned on her bike lights and tucked her blonde hair into her cap. She knew no one would recognize her. It only took thirty minutes to bike to his car parked by the dock. She made sure no one was around and quickly opened up the back of the 4runner and put her bike inside. She opened the driver’s door, pushed the seat forward, and drove out of the harbor and back up Wainui Road to Radar Hill.

  She was pleased that living in a small town with an almost nonexistent population made it easy to come and go in the shadows without being noticed. Twenty minutes later she was at the top of Radar Hill and looking down at the dump area seventy feet below. She had not passed any cars on the road and knew at this time of night it would be unlikely to see any traffic. She hoped the sound of the car veering down the bank would not be heard by distant neighbors and decided it would be quieter to push the car over the cliff without the engine running. She remembered to put the seat back to where it was and with the keys turned on in the ignition, the wheel turned towards the cliff and the car in neutral she walked around the back of the car and removed her bike. As she pushed the car over the cliff she was amazed how easily it rolled down the hill and landed in the bush below. It was completely hidden by the gorse and bush down the cliff. It had made very little noise, much less than she thought it would. The job was done. It was over.

  Audrey felt elated as she biked down the hill, past the caravan, past the Maori marae, past Harry Armstrong’s farm and back home. She felt so good after her ride she poured herself an extra big glass of wine and settled in for an early evening. She would need her wits for the cop search tomorrow at nine. She hoped the dead possums and her sweet dead lamb were doing their job of disguising her wicked deeds. Little did the cops know there were two missing men consumed by local wild pigs. If it weren’t for the little lamb, today would have been another perfect day.

  At eleven o’clock as Audrey reached over and turned out her bedside light she heard the pigs squealing and scrapping up on the pa. Her heart sank. They were eating her little baby lamb. “Fucking men,” she said as she rolled over to go to sleep.

  C H A P T E R 5 9

  Constable Driver had a late start. There were a couple of burglaries down in Kaeo last night and he had not got to bed until the early hours of the morning. With warrant in hand he headed off to the search site at Audrey’s. When he pulled into the driveway he noticed the team had already arrived. Audrey had opened the gates and was talking to the officers. “Thanks Audrey” said Driver “Sorry I am a little late. Here is the search warrant.” He handed her the paperwork.

  Audrey gave it a quick look. “I’ll head up to the chalets. If you need me, you know where to find me.” Aud
rey noticed they had brought the dogs. She wondered if they would be searching inside the suites. Of course they would. When she reached Suite B the phone was ringing. It was Pearl.

  “I saw all the cops heading your way,” panted Pearl. “Are they at your place?”

  “Yes. I can’t talk now I have to run out and get some supplies. I’ll catch you later.” Audrey hung up the phone. Pearl was not what she needed right now. She needed to think.

  Grabbing her purse and headed off to her car. She would drive down to Kaeo and pick up some supplies. As she turned into her other driveway, Audrey opened her window and called out to Constable Driver. “I am off to the shop. I’ll be back soon. You are all welcome to come up for morning tea at half past ten,” she said.

  “Great,” said Driver “That is kind of you. I will tell the boys.”

  The trip into Kaeo was uneventful. The locals were curious about the bones found on her property. Audrey said she was shocked about the findings and would be pleased when the police finished their investigation. She was worried what it would do for business having the police around. She stopped for petrol at the Fuel stop and, again, the conversation focused on the bones. No one wanted to call it a murder and yet an accident seemed less likely. Audrey was pleased when she arrived back at the chalets. No one even slightly suspected her.