A Plot to Die For (A Ghostwriter Mystery)

by C. A. Larmer

  Roxy shuddered. “It sounds grotesque. So are you saying you really do believe a local did this?”

  “Not necessarily. This... er, death ritual, it was written about in several books on the region including one down in the library.”

  “Ah, I think I know the one. Myths & Legends?”

  “That’s right. Anyone could have read about it in there or been told by a staff member. But it’s not only the way my poor mother was buried, Roxy. It’s the fact that someone knew that she would be walking that way at that exact hour. They knew that there was a mighty great hole already in the ground to throw her into. It’s all too fortuitous for them. No, I’m sorry, but someone had to have planned this, to a T, and I need to find out who.”

  She brushed her hair back from her face, more irritably this time.

  “Look, my mother and I didn’t have the best relationship in the world, everyone here knows that. But I stand by what I said in the dining room this morning. Oh I know I shouldn’t have said it the way I said it, but the fact is there are several people on this island who have had a very good run thanks to my mother’s generosity and heart. For her to die, like this, it’s beyond cruel. It’s wicked. And it’s incredibly cynical. It’s a travesty to her memory. I need to solve this, Roxy, I need to make sure it’s done right, that whoever did this to my mother doesn’t walk away, scot-free. And I’m terrified that with Davara in charge, they just might.”

  Roxy studied Helen’s face and could see she was being sincere.

  “Before I say yes, I have three questions.” Helen looked at her eagerly. “Firstly, I still don’t understand your dismissal of Chief Davara. He seems genuine, to me; he seems competent, too.”

  “He’s a local, Roxy. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Help me.”

  She leaned forward. “These people, they have this tradition, it’s difficult for us detached white people to even grasp. It’s to do with village and kin. They help each other out. And when I say ‘help’ I mean really help. If one can’t have children, another will hand hers over. No questions asked. And if one is accused of a crime... well.”

  Roxy looked at her, incredulous. “You honestly believe that if Davara discovers it was Josh or even one of the local staffers, he’s unlikely to press charges?”

  “That’s exactly what I believe. He might seem professional and Westernised to you, but there’s a kinship amongst these people that runs deep. It’s tribal, it scares the hell out of me sometimes and, quite frankly, it makes me lose all faith in our trusty Chief of Police.”

  “Okay, I see that, kind of. Question two, then: how do I know it wasn’t you?”

  Helen seemed genuinely taken aback. “Me?”

  “I’m sorry, Helen, but I have to ask. How do I know you didn’t do this? You said yourself, I’m only new here. I don’t know any of you, not really. You also said you didn’t have the best relationship with your mother.” She tried a different tack. “Who stands to benefit by Abi’s death?”

  Helen’s expression turned frosty. “If, by benefit, you mean, financially, then, yes, that would be me.”

  “You’ve seen the will?”

  “Just now, in the hotel safe. I showed Davara. It hasn’t changed in a decade. There’s a generous provision for Joshua, of course, and most of the staff, two or three local charities, but for the most part Dormay is all mine.”

  Roxy stared at her, waiting and she said nothing.

  “Helen, if I’m going to look into this then I’m going to look at it from every single angle. Unlike Davara, I don’t have any allegiances. I just look at the facts and quite frankly, it’s not looking too good for you.” She began counting with her fingers. “One: I may have the least to gain, but you have the most. You get this place all to yourself, to do with as you like. That’s motive, and a pretty strong one. Two: you knew about your mother’s walk, you knew about the pergola pits, about the burial ritual.”

  “And three,” Helen said, interrupting her, “I have absolutely no alibi.”

  “None at all?”

  “I was in bed. Alone. I woke up to a terrible kerfuffle downstairs and came out to find Joshua and Maya distraught.”

  She placed a shaking hand at her throat. Swallowed hard.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t look good for me at all and maybe that’s why I need your help. Maybe I’m being as selfish as everyone else. I need to clear my name, it’s true, but I didn’t do it. You have to believe me. I couldn’t... not like that!”

  She looked up at Roxy, her emerald eyes darting across Roxy’s face.

  “Would I really be asking you to look into this if I did do it? Right now Davara is pointing at some foreign being in a speedboat. He’s not even looking at me.”

  “Yes, but he might. Eventually.”

  “Exactly, and we can’t trust his motives. These people... They believe this island is theirs. They’re not on my side. They weren’t even on my mother’s even though she deluded herself that they were. Davara would not hesitate to lock me up and take this island from under me, hand it back to the locals. You have to help me solve this thing.”

  Roxy felt quite exhausted and confused, not knowing who to trust, but she was also intrigued by this case, it was true. And here Helen was, offering her free license to poke about.

  “Okay, Helen,” she said eventually. “I’ll do it. But I can’t promise you I’ll be successful. I can only try.”

  “That’s all I ask. But you said you had three questions for me. What’s your third question?”

  “What? Oh, yes. I need to know that you’re not hiding anything from me. Is there anything else you should be telling me?”

  Helen glanced away, shook her head. “Of course not, I’ve told you everything.”

  Roxy doubted that very much but let it drop. For now.

  “Well, you’ll need to clear it with Chief Davara. If what you say is true, he won’t be too happy with the idea of a foreigner poking her nose in.”

  “Leave Davara to me.”

  Helen stood up, the colour now returned to her face.

  “Oh Roxy I am so grateful. I cannot tell you. But I have to ask something else of you, too.”

  Roxy raised her eyebrows again.

  “I will tell Davara of your employment but I’d rather you didn’t mention it to anyone else. They may just clamp up on you.”

  “Won’t they be suspicious that I’m asking all kinds of nosy questions?”

  Helen didn’t think so. “You’re a journalist aren’t you? You can’t help yourself.”

  Once again Roxy felt like she’d been smacked in the face by the smiling assassin, but as she was learning to do here, she let it drop. The two women shook hands and Helen let herself out.

  Roxy sat quietly for a moment, reflecting on everything Helen had said. It was all starting to tangle up in her head, and there were loose threads fraying in every direction. She glanced outside then fetched her hiking boots and a small backpack. Now was as good a time as any to make the trek to Abi’s Point, the highest place on the island. Roxy had already been assured the view was better up there. Perhaps, things would be clearer, too.

  Chapter 10

  Roxy pulled on some khaki trousers, a floppy cotton shirt, thick socks and the boots, then lathered her skin in Rid and sunscreen, filled up her water bottle, grabbed a cap, shades and sunscreen, pushed them all inside her backpack and made her way down to the lobby. As she grabbed a few bananas from the dining room she was surprised to find it empty, and relieved, too. Roxy needed a little space now, to think over what Helen had said and try to get some perspective. She didn’t need giggling socialites and inquisitive doctors.

  It was close to midday and Davara and his men had also deserted their post on the main veranda. The only human about was Mary, quietly setting up for lunch. Roxy admired her tenacity and wondered whether anyone would bother showing. At the front desk, Joshua was on the phone and she slipped past him and out the front of the hotel. A groundsman
spotted her and indicated the 4WD but she shook her head. No, she’d rather walk. And so she set off, up the hill towards Abi’s Point.

  It took about half an hour to reach the base of the lookout and by the time she got there Roxy was already panting like a dog and soaked in sweat. She took a good long swig of water and, spotting the mosquitoes closing in, applied more Rid. Then she ploughed on, up through the forest towards the top. As she went she brushed past tangled vines, overhanging palms and spider webs, and resisted the urge to scream when something dropped down in front of her or rustled the undergrowth nearby. Butterflies and other insects busied themselves around her and birds called out to each other in song. There was constant noise and movement in the forest, and Roxy had trouble concentrating on the track as her eyes darted from left to right, to the branches above and back to her stomping feet.

  She cursed herself a little as she went, suddenly pining for her small, clean apartment back in the relatively safe confines of Elizabeth Bay in inner-city Sydney. Her home was tiny, just a one-bedder with a neat little sunroom she had turned into her office, and now as she slipped and slapped her way up the hill, she longed to find the door to that cosy unit, step inside, and forget this whole mess.

  Boy, Oliver was going to be proud of himself, she thought. He was right, she couldn’t help attracting trouble, and yet again, she’d landed in the thick of it. Normally, though, the ‘thick of it’ involved inner-city streets or larrikin Aussie towns, not the wilds of the tropics. Here she felt well out of her depth. As she swiped at a mosquito buzzing around her nose, she wondered what was more dangerous, gun-wielding bad guys, or Malaria-infecting insects. She shrugged off her encroaching bad mood and continued on.

  The muddy track was like walking on clay and she slipped several times, grasping at stray branches to break her fall, growling as she did so. It was steep, too, and she wondered how the fatter, less able tourists ever made it. Perhaps Maurice had to piggyback them up.

  Vines grew like imitation plants here, perfect and fluorescent green as they wound their way up the rainforest trees, and if she wasn’t so hot and bothered she might have admitted it was all incredibly beautiful.

  Finally, suddenly, a welcome breeze broke through the growth. She stopped and lapped it up. The more she climbed, the cooler it got, thanks not only to the elevation but to those towering palms and ferns that acted as her umbrella. Eventually, a good 40 minutes later, she brushed aside some branches to step clear of the forest and out onto the side of the hill. A clearing had been etched into the edge of the cliff, and wooden railings placed around the exterior for safety. She doubled over slightly to get her breath back, then stood up and stared out.

  What a view! It truly was spectacular, and instantly Roxy’s foul mood evaporated, just like that, and she felt her spirits soar. Both Joshua and Doc had been right—it really was well worth the hike.

  From here you could see out across the entire northern side of the island, from the churning white caps of Taboo to the shaggy brown rooftops of the local village. And directly below, the hotel, just a miniature white blob in front of that stunning azure sea. You could also catch a distant, hazy glimpse of the mainland, as well as several neighbouring islands; and between them all, smatterings of dark, shallow reef. There were various tiny white blobs heading in different directions, boats no doubt taking supplies, locals or wide-eyed adventurers on their travels. She wondered if the Zimmermans were out there, somewhere, enjoying that serene reef, oblivious to the horror back on land.

  Roxy leaned against a rock ledge and reached for her water bottle again, then slipped her cap off and wiped her brow. After several minutes, once her breathing had returned to something resembling normal, she reached back into her pack and located her journal and a pen.

  It was true, Roxy had stumbled into several murder investigations in her time, mostly like this—in the middle of a writing assignment. And she knew that the best way to make sense of it all was to do write it down, and fast. So she began to scribble the names of every single person present on Dormay at the time of Abi’s death, adding the questions: When exactly did she die? And how? She made a note to ask Davara.

  Next she jotted down the word ‘motive’, and at first she was stumped. On this point, Helen was wrong. Roxy wasn’t the only person who stood to lose by Abi’s death. Just yesterday, Joshua had told her how he loved Abi like a mother. His devastation seemed sincere. Both Doc and Luc also seemed genuinely upset, and their positions on the island were now tenuous at best. Even Maya was less likely to treat the place like a second home now that Helen was in charge. It only took three days on Dormay for Roxy to know that Helen would run the place very differently from her mother. Roxy had a hunch the free ride was about to end for all of them.

  But was it already over for Luc? Roxy circled his name several times and a motive began to materialise before her eyes. Of course! Hadn’t she overheard Helen warning him that Abi was onto him, that she was going to spill the beans to his benefactress? Helen must have been referring to his affair with Maya, surely? In any case, no matter what it was, Luc had been infuriated. Could this spell the end of his cushy sojourn at a tropical resort? Would his benefactress be angry enough to cut him off completely? And was that motive enough to murder?

  I guess it depends how much it’s worth to him, Roxy thought. She wondered about his alibi. Did he have one?

  Next she considered Wade. His alibi was obviously sound—he was at the mainland after all—yet he seemed to have motive stacked to the rafters. She’d already heard how Wade envied Abi’s Retreat, how his own resort was failing. His wife had admitted as much. Perhaps Wade felt that with Abi out of the way, Helen, who was clearly less enamoured of the place than her mother, would be more likely to sell profitable Dormay to him and he could eventually recoup his losses. Roxy shook her head with agitation. But he couldn’t have done it. He got to Dormay after Abi had been killed. They had all seen him arrive. She put a cross next to Wade’s name. Sure, he had the motive, but no apparent means or opportunity.

  Next, Roxy scribbled those words ‘means’ and ‘opportunity’, and several faces began bobbing in her mind, including the local staff, Popeye, Maurice and Mary, not to mention the chef, Patricia, the cleaning women and the groundsmen who also looked after the boats. Not only had Abi been killed on the track to their village, the way in which she had been killed certainly threw suspicion their way (‘perhaps too much suspicion,’ Roxy wrote). And while it was true that any of the guests could have read about the burial ritual from the book in the library—she made a note to look up the reference herself—Roxy had to agree that it didn’t look good. She considered them for a moment.

  She wasn’t sure where Popeye and Maurice were that morning, but she knew that Mary was up and about. The only way Mary could have done it, however, was to run into Abi on the track before day break, bump her over the head, bury her and then make her way to the restaurant to calmly set up for breakfast. Roxy had seen the young waitress that very morning and she had appeared perfectly normal. It all seemed too unlikely.

  She turned back to the word ‘motive’. What possible motive, she wondered, could Mary or any of the staff have for that matter? As far as she could tell, they all adored Abi and she adored them right back. With the hotelier gone, their own positions must also be shaky. Helen had not hidden her disdain for them, for their apparent laziness and unprofessionalism. She particularly had it in for Popeye. Chances were, he at least would be packing his bags and moving off the island within the week. No, thought Roxy, it makes no sense at all.

  Of course there was one staffer who wasn’t exactly bosom buddies with Abi, or at least that’s the impression she’d been given. Roxy wrote the name ‘Willie’ down and placed a question mark beside it. Abi had a problem with this particular staffer, of that she was certain. The question was: why?

  Another thought suddenly entered Roxy’s mind. She remembered that strange conversation she had overheard just the day before, below her bed
room window. It was two people anxiously discussing getting rid of something. She tried to recall exactly what they’d said, knew she hadn’t quite got it right, but it went something like this: ‘What do you mean you want to get rid of...?’ ‘Shut up and calm down, I’ve got a plan.”

  She studied the words, shook her head irritably. If only she knew who was speaking and about whom or what. For all she knew, they could have been discussing getting wine stains out of a tablecloth!

  “Urrghh!” Roxy cried aloud, slamming the journal down on a rock face. The ropes were no less tangled than they had been at the start of this exhausting trek, and she didn’t feel as though she was making any substantial progress.

  Roxy reached into her backpack, pulled out one of the bananas and began eating it, staring out at the view, not really taking it in this time. She couldn’t help wondering whether she was wasting her time. Was this all an elaborate set up; a ploy by Helen to throw suspicion from herself? She swallowed the last of the banana and dropped the peel back into her bag. Even if Helen was up to something, if she was guilty of doing her mother in, did it really make any difference? Roxy had just been given permission to investigate this case, and investigate she would. If that meant bringing the hotelier’s daughter to justice, then so be it.

  Eventually, with the sweat-stained journal secured away and nothing any clearer, Roxy pulled her pack back on and headed down the hill towards the hotel. The return journey, while tricky in the steeper patches, was certainly less gruelling, yet she still had to swallow an entire jug of water to replenish her body when she got back to the hotel. Her fringe was now matted to her forehead and her clothes stank of a heady mixture of insect repellent and body odour. Eau de phew! Yet she had one more thing she needed to do before she would allow herself a reprieve.