The Woman Who Didn't

by HC Michaels

  The list of suspects for Theo’s murder was long. As usual they were starting with the spouse. Sadly, far too often that was also where they ended. It was depressing to think the person who was supposed to love you the most could end up being the one to kill you. It was just as well he was no longer married. Unless he counted his job—it was the last thing he thought of when he fell asleep at night and the first thing to plague his thoughts when he woke in the morning, it had a habit of calling to nag him whenever he sat down to watch the footy and somehow it ended up being where he spent all his special occasions, including Christmas and birthdays. Yep, he was one big cliché. A detective married to his job. It didn’t exactly keep him warm at night, but in a strange way it satisfied him.

  He looked at the frail woman sitting across from him. He knew nothing about fashion, but it was obvious her clothes were the expensive kind. For someone so unwell, she was extraordinarily well put together. Even in his prime, he couldn’t have attracted a woman like her.

  “Well, if you’re sure you don’t want a lawyer, we’ll get started in just a minute,” he said.

  She nodded, wringing her hands together in her lap. Was that a nervous tick? Was she guilty? He decided to stall a bit longer and let the tension build. This was one of his favourite tactics. People hated silence. It primed the suspect, so by the time they finally broke the silence, they’d be ready to spill their guts—anything just to fill the air with words.

  Skye didn’t look like she had murder in her. She had cancer, for goodness sake. He could usually pick a killer from a mile away and his gut told him it wasn’t her. Still, he couldn’t let her go just because of his ever-expanding gut.

  He’d taken on the case given how high profile it was going to be. It hadn’t taken the media long to arrive at the scene and start reporting on a crime they knew nothing about. Not only was Theo a well-known identity in Melbourne, but his wife was the poster girl of every woman in the country. That looked set to change. Murder charges didn’t normally do much for popularity.

  “Well then?” said Skye, stretching her hands out in front of her and tapping her manicured fingertips on the table.

  “Just a moment.” He shuffled his papers, taking his time.

  She shifted in her seat and he hid a satisfied smile. It was working. The tension was building nicely. Just a little longer and he’d start.

  He glanced down at the medical report in his file. Theo had been poisoned with thallium, traces of which had been found on a plate of brownie crumbs on the kitchen counter. Brownies that had been baked by Skye and fed not only to her husband, but to his twin brother. He was fairly certain they’d also been fed to her mother. She’d had blood tests taken recently when her nursing home staff noticed her hair had been falling out. He’d put a rush on the results yesterday when he visited Skye’s mother for a chat.

  The poor old woman didn’t seem to know what was going on. Although, she was certainly exhibiting enough symptoms of thallium poisoning. Not only was her hair falling out, but her extremities were numb and her carers had reported several recent incidences of vomiting. He was toying with the theory that Skye had been trying to poison her mother with the brownies and Theo and George had eaten them by mistake. Except George had been very clear about the fact Skye had offered them the brownies, insisting they eat them.

  Maybe she’d been poisoning her mother, then decided things were going so well she’d branch out and bump off her husband and his brother while she was at it. That didn’t feel right either. Theo was a bull of a man next to Skye’s mother. It was strange the poison had been enough to kill him and not her. Just another mystery to add to the case.

  George had gotten to hospital in time to be saved thanks to a text message from a mobile phone paid for in cash, then switched off. The message had gone to his wife instructing her to tell the doctors to give him Prussian Blue, the antidote for thallium. Finding that phone was a major part of the investigation, but so far, they’d turned up nothing. It was probably sitting on the bottom of the Yarra River.

  He flipped through the pages in his file, looking for his notes on thallium. It was an unusual poison these days, due to its difficulty to obtain. Back in the 1950s it was readily available as rat poison and had been the housewife’s murder weapon of choice, earning the nickname inheritance powder. It was odourless, colourless and tasteless. The perfect poison indeed. He could only hope it wasn’t making a comeback. Where on earth had Skye obtained such a thing?

  This should be an open and shut case, yet all his years of experience nagged at him. He was missing something. If Skye was the killer, why would she leave the plate of brownie crumbs on the counter? It was too obvious. Someone must be setting her up. But who? There might be a long line of people wanting to bump off Theo, but who would want to kill Skye’s mother? What possible motive could anyone have for killing a harmless woman in a nursing home? The fees to keep her in the home were chicken feed to someone like Skye and it wasn’t like she’d be hankering after any measly inheritance. He hadn’t looked into it yet, but he doubted Clara Butterford had more than a few dollars to her name.

  “You think I killed him, don’t you?” said Skye, unwilling to let the silence continue.

  “Did you?” He set down his papers and glanced at the recording device to make sure it was working. He could almost taste the beer he’d have later at the pub with the boys to celebrate breaking this case.

  “Everyone thinks I did it.” She wrung her hands in her lap once more, then put them to her head, threading her fingers through her long hair. Despite knowing it was a wig, he was surprised at what he saw underneath when she pulled it from her head. She wasn’t completely bald as he expected. She had a full head of shortly cropped hair. More hair than he had in fact.

  It was amazing how the wig had transformed her appearance.

  “Feel better?” he asked, wondering why she’d chosen to remove her wig now.

  She made a small noise as if swallowing some words that had begun to escape from her lips.

  “What is it, Mrs Manis?” he prompted.

  “Oh ... I just ...” She patted the wig sitting in her lap.

  “You just what?” he asked. “You know there’s no point lying to me, don’t you? The truth’s all going to come out. It always does.”

  She inhaled, threw her shoulders back, but still said nothing.

  “Come on, Mrs Manis.” He sat forward in his chair. “It’s time to tell the truth.”

  “Fine. Look, it’s no big deal. Really, it’s not.” She looked up from the wig to stare him in the eye. “There’s just something I thought you should know. Just in case it makes me look bad ...”

  There she was trailing off again.

  “Yes, Mrs Manis. What is it?” he asked.

  “See how my hair’s growing back?” She ran a hand over her head.

  “I do.” He frowned, trying to connect the dots.

  “Do you know why it’s growing back?” she asked.

  He shrugged, waiting for her to explain.

  “It’s growing back because it never fell out in the first place.” She coughed, nervously. “I shaved it off.”

  “Okay, but what does this have to do with Theo’s death?” He was struggling to make the connection here.

  “I don’t have cancer,” she said, her trailing to a whisper. “I made it all up.”

  He sat up straight in his chair. “You made it up?”

  She nodded, locking eyes with him as if trying to drag his thoughts from his mind.

  How could she make up such a horrendous lie? He’d heard a lot of fibs in his time, but this one took the cake. She lied about… cancer?

  She leant in closer. “I’m worried when people find out, they’ll think I’m also lying about killing Theo. But I didn’t kill him. I didn’t. I loved Theo.”

  “Let me just get this straight,” said the detective. “You told the world that you have cancer when you’re actually perfectly healthy?”

  She nodded
.

  “And you’re also saying that you’re telling the truth about not poisoning your husband, despite the fact you baked those brownies?”

  She nodded again.

  Oh, boy! Well, this changed everything. It also went to prove his theory. You never could know what lurked beneath life’s murky depths. The surface of this case hadn’t just broken, it had shattered into a million fragments.

  “Why don’t we take a step back and go through this again?” He sat forward and pushed all thoughts of a beer from his mind. Getting to the bottom of this stinking pond was going to take all night.

  After The Break

  Skye twisted her hands in her lap, determined not to be the first to speak.

  Dr Addison also seemed in no hurry to start the session, just like that frustrating detective. Did all these people really have so much time on their hands? He sat forward in his chair, his face as blank as the desk in the corner of the room.

  Skye wondered if that particular facial expression was taught in psychology school. Or counselling school. Or whatever school it was this strange man had attended.

  He coughed and stretched his lips across his face into a thin smile. She realised they had something in common already. He didn’t like his teeth either.

  He was older than her—maybe Theo’s age, but certainly not cut from the same cloth. Where Theo was sexy, Dr Addison was geriatric. Where Theo was brash and confident, this man was dull and staid.

  Her lawyer thought it would look good for her if she saw a shrink. If things didn’t go well with the police, she was going to need a psychological assessment, so better to get talking to someone now.

  She’d balked at the idea initially, just as she’d resisted the idea of getting a lawyer. Although, after being married to Theo, she knew she’d be foolish not to have someone on her side who knew the law.

  She ended up opting for Carlos Tagliatori, not because his name sounded like a pasta dish, but because Theo hadn’t liked him. She was aware that a large proportion of people Theo disliked were those he was intimidated by. An intimidating lawyer seemed like a good choice.

  She’d known within five minutes of her first appointment she was right. Carlos was ten years younger than Theo and outrageously good-looking. It was no wonder Theo had been intimidated. He was the Brad Pitt to Theo’s George Clooney—a smooth talker with a head of blond hair so full it was incredible that all those individual strands were able to find a free bit of scalp to grow out of.

  He said he referred all his clients to Dr Addison as he was the best of the best.

  “So, what brings you here?” Dr Addison asked, making Skye jump.

  “Carlos Tagliatori.” She smirked, not ready to give into the process just yet.

  “And what did he want you to talk with me about?” He crossed his legs and rested his face on the palm of his hand, giving the impression he had all day to wait for her to give him a serious answer. Would he sit there for the full session in silence if she decided not to speak? There wasn’t much point in that, she supposed.

  So, why was she here? A simple question with an exceptionally complicated answer.

  “I told a lie,” she said, deciding to dive straight into the heart of the issue.

  Dr Addison nodded and rubbed one of his bony fingers on his chin. It made a scratching sound on the grey bristles bursting at the surface of his skin.

  “Go on,” he encouraged, raising his eyebrows.

  She remained silent.

  “Perhaps you could tell me what the lie was,” he suggested.

  She nodded, despite the feeling he already knew exactly what her lie had been. She was all over the newspapers, being called every awful name in the dictionary—and many that were far too crude to warrant a place in such a book.

  “I lied about having ovarian cancer.” She crossed her arms and analysed his reaction.

  His face remained non-judgemental, although she’d bet his mind was anything else. Everybody had judged her, friends and strangers alike. What made this man so special he was immune to passing judgement?

  “Would you like to tell me about that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she replied, trying to buy some time.

  “It can be hard to untangle the beginning of a story, but I’d like for you to give it a go if you can. Take all the time you need.” He smiled again, trying to encourage her to talk.

  Her eyelids fluttered closed as she tried to decide when it began. It all depended on how you looked at it. Did it begin when her father rejected the idea of her? Or when her mother rejected the reality of her? Perhaps it began when Dean died? Or when her first article was published online? It was too hard to tell. Every single moment of her life had led up to her lie.

  “Perhaps you might like to tell me about the first time you told the lie, and we can work backwards or forwards from there?” Dr Addison prompted.

  “I told Theo first. He’s my husband. Was. He was my husband.” She winced, hating referring to him in the past tense. “Before he died.”

  Dr Addison wrote something on a small notepad.

  She tried to make out his words, but his writing was either deliberately illegible or written in some kind of shorthand.

  “And what did you say to him?” he asked.

  “It wasn’t easy to lie to him.”

  It seemed important to convey her lie had been as difficult for her to tell as it had been for Theo to hear. She wasn’t the monster the press were making her out to be. She’d needed to tell the lie. She didn’t do it for fun.

  “It’s not usually easy to tell a lie,” said Dr Addison, using his smile again. “In fact, often it’s quite difficult.”

  Skye drew in a deep breath of lavender-scented air and got comfortable in the high-backed armchair, resting her feet on a small stool. If he really wanted to hear the story, they were going to be there for a while.

  She’d worn her Victoria Beckham tuxedo trousers for the occasion, anticipating she’d be lying down. They looked perfect with her Chloe ruffle crepe top and Salvatore Ferragamo loafers. Casual sophistication had seemed the appropriate dress code.

  “I practised all day in front of the mirror trying to find the words,” she said. “I knew I had to tell him in just the right way. Theo was a lawyer, you see. A criminal lawyer. He listened to lies for a living.”

  And told a few of them himself, she thought. Not to her, of course. Their marriage had been solid, but he’d admitted to her that deception was an important part of his job. He never told direct lies—he’d be thrown off the bar for that—but he frequently stretched and moulded the truth as if it were a piece of clay in his hands.

  “He was very sharp,” she said. “Nobody could get anything past him. He prided himself on being able to spot a player from a hundred paces.”

  Except for her.

  Although, she had a clear advantage over the strangers who’d tried to deceive him in a courtroom. Her lies could be delivered with the touch of a hand or the gentle warmth of her breath on his neck and he’d become so distracted he wouldn’t know what she was saying. Despite men’s balls being located outside their bodies, they sure didn’t know how to think without them.

  “My plan was to plant enough clues to make him suspicious,” she explained. “So he’d believe me when I told him.”

  “What clues?” Dr Addison’s pen was poised over his notepad. She wondered if what she was about to say would be interesting enough for him to make a note of it.

  “One night I faked falling asleep with an ovarian cancer website open on my laptop. I’m not even sure if he saw the notes I wrote in my notepad. Treatment plans and names of specialists, all scribbled in different colours. Then there were all those doctors’ invoices on our joint credit card. I was beginning to wonder if he ever looked at our statements. I ended up having to set up a phoney email address from the bank, asking him to check our accounts. I think that was what must have hooked him in the end.” She took a deep breath, surprise
d at how easily these words had fallen from her lips. It felt good to say all of this aloud.

  “And was it just you and Theo in the house?” Dr Addison paused his pen. “Or did anybody else live with you?”

  “Only Amber,” she said. “She’s Theo’s daughter.” Skye always referred to Amber that way. Theo’s daughter. Never as her stepdaughter. The thought of calling her that made her shudder.

  “And what’s your relationship with Amber like?” he asked.

  “I tried so hard with her,” said Skye, thinking about the concert tickets she’d bought that had the added bonus of getting Amber out of the house for the night. And there was that fabulous white Valentino leather jacket and matching boots, that would at least blend into the house a little when she left them lying around. She’d even had a whole wing of the house decorated for her, so she’d never need to bother them again. “But when it wasn’t reciprocated, after a while I just gave up. You can’t force someone to like you.”

  “Why do you think she doesn’t like you?” Dr Addison gave her one of his thin-lipped smiles.

  “Jealousy. She was so competitive when it came to her father.” Skye knew it wasn’t a fair competition. Amber may have been Theo’s blood, but it was her flesh he craved when he woke each morning rock hard and wanting the taste of her before he headed into court for another stressful day.

  “Did you ever want children of your own?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Who in their right mind would opt of their own free will to have a person live inside you for nine whole months, giving you stretch marks and varicose veins? And that was only the pregnancy part of it. The way babies exited their free ride into existence was positively barbaric. There was no way she was going to let herself be torn in two by the head of a small person destined to make her life hell. Apart from the absolute fortune they cost to raise, children were sticky, messy, grubby humans whose noses and bums needed to be wiped far more times than she was prepared to—which for the record was zero.

  But she wasn’t foolish enough to tell Dr Addison the extent of her feelings.