Pecking at his meal between sips of soda water, Jack thought about Andrew Freeman’s property, his cellar, his in absentia wife. Jack’s documentary had painted the conspiracy against Curtis Wade as being mostly led by the Freemans, without ever directly accusing them of murder, no matter what he’d had to deny afterward to prevent libel suits. What if his story was actually right, and Andrew had killed her and made Curtis the scapegoat? He shook his head. Maybe that was plausible for one murder—Eliza’s—but not two. Andrew had no motive to kill Alexis. Neither did Curtis. Sitting next to him in the car last night, too exhausted and broken to be terrified by the veiled threat purring from Curtis’s lips, Jack realized something else: he believed him.
Lauren thought it was the same killer. But maybe he was chasing a new killer, someone who just used the opportunity to murder Alexis. He thought about the threats Alexis received. He assumed the police were sifting through them. He called Ted Piper’s office phone. If someone was going around threatening lawyers, that was the next best place to start. But he couldn’t get through. The line must have been inundated with calls. The office phone rings endlessly, Alexis had told him. We’ve had to switch it off. No surprises there. It didn’t bother Jack. Even if he had got through, Ted would’ve hung up on him, he figured.
Jack was getting used to the double take you had to do when exiting a building in Birravale, the squint, flat hand raised against the sun. Outside the Royal, a woman was crouched in front of a Forester, back door open, picking up cans and jars from the gutter. A broken plastic bag flapped in the breeze.
Jack walked over, knelt next to her.
“Need a hand?”
The woman looked up. Her light-blond hair was wisped with stress, from running her hand through it, strayed across her sweaty brow and cheeks. Sarah Freeman. She was swiping brown dust off her groceries, running a finger down a bottle of milk where the dust was lumpy with the condensation. Jack picked up an orange, brushed it. It wasn’t dust, Jack realized. There was a broken glass jar in the bag. She’d cracked a jar of cinnamon. They rescued the rest of the groceries: a few more escaped oranges, some lemongrass, and another bottle of milk that had thankfully kept its lid. Sarah shut the car door with a thunk. She threw the plastic bag into the bin outside the Royal.
“Well, thanks,” Sarah said without looking at him, and hopped in the car.
Jack walked back to the B and B. Fuck this town, he thought, lying on the bed. He picked his nose, and the cinnamon under his fingernail made him cough. He went to the bathroom to wash his hands. The toilet was beside him, the lid still up. He flipped it down. Chicken nuggets were a bad choice. Fried food. Fuck. Jack lay on the bed, feeling it inside him. He tried to doze but couldn’t. He felt heavy, a snake lazily digesting food, a lump inside him. His head hurt. He got up, looked for Mary-Anne in the hallway, decided it was safe enough. He went out to his car and flipped the floor covering in the trunk, pulling out a toolbox he’d never used. He went back to his room and sat the toolbox on the bed. He chose the right size screwdriver and set to work on the hinges. He did the bottom first, tiny bits of wood spiraling out from the frame like pencil shavings. When he’d finished the top hinge, the door fell inward and he caught it, shuffled backward, and propped it against the window. He lay back on the bed. The bathroom was open before him.
It wasn’t much. A reminder not to lock himself away. A small touch of home. The back of a bathroom door, hooks and hanging towels, and, sometimes, a handle jiggling had been an image he’d lived with for too long. It was pointless, he knew, taking the door off the frame. There was always another door to shut yourself behind. All the same, he felt a little more comfortable. The door’s new position blocked out the sun from the window, and the coolness of the bathroom tiles tempered the room. Jack didn’t remember falling asleep.
He woke after dark. Looked at his watch. Lauren.
Chapter 19
The glass door to the Wade restaurant was ajar.
Lauren was inside, behind the long rectangular service window that cordoned off the kitchen. She was cutting something. Meat. Jack caught a whiff. She had two out of eight gas burners going, blue flames in a grid, like a domino spotted with fire. She hadn’t heard him come in. Her black hair was pulled into a ponytail, her shoulders rolled as she chopped, and her hair flicked and swung like a horse’s tail. He noticed a string of knives across the back wall. They’d tested all of them. No matches. They hadn’t expected a match anyway. Jack had learned a lot about killing: knives meant you had to saw through bone. Mangled as they were, Eliza’s fingers came off quick. A meat cleaver, much more suitable, hung on the other side of the kitchen. It had also been tested. No match.
Jack thought about calling out to Lauren but decided instead to ding the silver service bell.
“Four fish for table fourteen,” he said.
Lauren wiped a forearm against her brow. She smiled, cranked the gas knob nearest her off. Then she used the flat edge of her knife to scoot potatoes into her palm and flipped the potatoes onto two plates like a gambler rolling craps. She slid the first plate hard across the steel bench. Jack didn’t realize he was supposed to catch it until it was almost at the edge—part of him was tempted to let it fly—but he blocked it with his hip and grabbed it. A potato made a break for freedom; Jack returned it to the plate among the others. He looked at the food: steak, a nice cut. Boiled broccoli on the side.
“Chef’s out. So no fish,” said Lauren. “Fuck table fourteen.”
She came through the swinging kitchen doors, her plate in hand. “Feels good to say that. The entitlement of some of these Sydney tourists that come up for a weekend in”—she adopted a pompous tone, crossed her eyes, and looked down her nose—“wine country.” She returned to normal. “‘The customer is always right,’ they say. Try thinking that after running a winery for two weeks.”
“Vineyard.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
She put her plate on the bar, went behind it, and pulled on a loop in the floor. The wooden board lifted and settled back on its hinges. Beneath, there was a compact wine cellar, the wine all bottled and stored in latticed racks, like Andrew’s, but in units that looked like giant fridges, glass doors inlaid with LED lighting. It looked like the inside of a spaceship, four large, humming units glowing gently. Tacky, the locals would say; Jack now realized that Birravale conflated that word with new. Buried in the past, this town, scared of the future. He imagined the people of Birravale milling around, scratching at lesions. Did you hear Margery’s gone and got the smallpox vaccination? Pfft. Tacky. No respect for history. Lauren emerged with a bottle, eased the cellar door shut, and retrieved her plate.
“Why not just build this over the old site?” Jack said, following her to a table—they were all set up for service, which was eerie—at the center of the parabolic windows. “Surely it’s cheaper to refit the cellar and restaurant than knock it down and rebuild in a different spot?” Not to mention, Jack thought, if you didn’t piss off the old owner making him knock down his pride and joy, he wouldn’t have ruined your land by concreting it.
“Curtis wanted to make his own mark,” Lauren said, pulling out a chair. She shot a glance up the hill and shook her head. “Such boys. Like dogs pissing on trees.”
The night yawned before them, and at first, all Jack could see was black. His eyes slowly adjusted. From their table, he had a panoramic view of the vineyard. Andrew might prefer to look down on everyone, but the view was just as good from here.
There was a small light up the hill, in the air. Almost a star. It was Andrew’s lantern, Jack guessed, on top of the silo. Was he up there? Could he see them?
“Hope steak’s okay. We don’t really have the full menu at the moment. We’ll need a new chef when we reopen.”
“You had to let them go?” His stomach rose as if on a tide, his impact on the town confronting him again, like the win
e stains in all these different houses. You ruined a lot of reputations, Andrew had said.
“Thank God, actually. He was a shitty chef; we wanted to fire him for ages. I suppose that’s one good thing that’s come out of this.” She laughed gently and then quieted, examining Jack, whose face must have betrayed him. “I didn’t actually mean that. Just trying to… I don’t know. Just trying not to think about the worst of it. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I got the joke.”
“Tough crowd.” Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Are you always this jittery? No wonder you throw my brother off balance. Shall I open this?” She stabbed the bottle at him.
“Only if you want. I don’t really drink.”
She thought for a minute and then put the wine to one side.
“Well, eat,” she said. “You’re too skinny. I could drink wine from those collarbones.”
“I’m sorry?” Jack shifted in his seat.
“I think that’s in a poem I read once. If we’re going to work together, Jack, you’re going to have to loosen up.” She started eating. Jack put half a potato in his mouth because she was watching, mushed it against the back of his teeth. Sludge.
Work together? She thought she was recruiting him. Team Curtis.
“You want me to help you prove Curtis innocent?”
“No, actually. I don’t. I said I want us to work together.”
“You’ll help me prove him guilty? You think he did it?”
She shook her head, sawed a piece of steak, popped it in her mouth, and spoke while chewing. “No. But you do. And that’s important. I figure devil’s advocates are the best way to go about something like this. We’ve got different information. Fuck it. I’m opening this. No?” Another jab of the bottle.
Jack shook his head.
“Listen. My family lives under this shadow. I live under this shadow. Eliza, Alexis, they block out the sun. My surname is spit in people’s mouths. You’re not getting anywhere on your own, are you? I’ll give you everything you need. You can come onto the property. You can talk to Curtis. Never alone.” She must have seen the look on his face. “I’ll be there. You can look through the house, the yard, the restaurant. Tear apart the shed if you need to. I don’t care. But in return, I need your perspective and your ear. I want to know what you know. You have more details of the investigation side of things. You’ve got a link to that new detective. I know there’s more evidence somewhere.”
Jack set his face, gave nothing away, not least that his link to Winter was more that he might be arrested by him eventually.
“You can’t fit everything into one miniseries. I need to know everything behind the scenes. And you know you need me too.” She’d rehearsed this speech, Jack realized. She opened the bottle and poured herself a glass.
“Does Curtis know about this?”
She nodded.
“And if he’s guilty?”
“If you prove him guilty. I’ll accept that.”
She was right. He needed her perspective. Her access to the property and her candor. The police had overturned the property with warrants and SWAT teams in tactical vests with assault rifles. But they’d done it four years too late, the case solved so quickly first time around. Maybe the truth was overgrown, covered in weeds. And they’d never had the Wades’ cooperation. Maybe Lauren knew something and didn’t even know it.
“Why are you really doing this?” he said.
“Do you have a brother?”
Jack nodded.
“You know what it’s like then. You’re supposed to stick up for them.”
Whump.
He knew.
“Your brother,” said Jack, “he’s quite a bit older than you. It must be an odd family dynamic.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Lauren said. “I don’t really think about it. You know how some people want to know the meaning of life or whatever? Why we’re here?”
“We’re getting philosophical now?”
“I just mean that I do know why I’m here. Why is any child a decade younger than their sibling?” Jack nodded in recognition. “You got it. I was born to save my parents’ marriage. They hoped I’d help them reconnect. And I know what you’re thinking.” She must have seen the dark glimmer across Jack’s face as he remembered Lauren’s mother hadn’t made it through her birth. “How’s that for an existential crisis? My purpose was to bring my family closer together. Imagine messing up your entire existence before you’ve even opened your eyes.”
“Family loyalty? That’s why you want to help your brother?”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re overanalyzing me. I don’t really know how I feel. But I think last night was evidence in my brother’s favor. Alexis’s killer is out here looking for something. So we need to nail this copycat fella.”
He nodded again. She’d said previously she didn’t think it was a copycat, but it seemed she was coming around.
“Listen, all I know is that women around my brother keep turning up dead.” She paused. “Don’t make me say it. The killer was in my house, Jack.”
And there was the real truth. Lauren was scared. It was so simple. But it was also a subtle guilt trip, part of her polished speech: If you don’t help me, can you live with another dead woman on your hands? Expertly done. She should make TV.
“That’ll go cold, if you don’t start it. Then, I know you’ve been itching to take a walk through here.” She pointed to the window. See what I can offer?
She was right though; he was at a dead end without her. And if he walked away and something happened to her… He ate a few bites because he didn’t want to talk and she’d noticed how little he’d put in his mouth. Two meals today. The tightrope thrummed. Jack’s internal acrobat wobbled, one leg in the air, poised like a wishbone.
“We can try,” he said finally. “But let’s be clear. I think your brother is a monster. I still think he killed Eliza, but I can’t prove it. Alexis, I’m open to suggestion. But he’s a killer. You won’t change my mind.”
“Honesty is all I’m asking. Tell me everything you know. Do we have an agreement?”
Lauren raised her glass. Jack raised an imaginary one in return. They’d work together to work against each other. A deal.
“To innocence,” she said.
“To guilt.”
Chapter 20
Lauren and Jack circled into the vineyard. The temperature in the air had dropped, but the stones on the drive still held the heat of the day. The sky was so clear he didn’t need a flashlight. The small light up the hill was gone now. Jack’s cheeks felt bunched and swollen, his eyes stinging. He’d had too much sun today.
He’d done too much walking too. Far beyond his supervised allowance at the treatment center. Also, more eating than he was accustomed to, managing half his steak in prideful swallows before succumbing to the excuse of a big lunch. A fucking kid’s meal. He could feel the food inside him, acutely aware of where it sat. It swelled, an island, the seas of his stomach sloshing against it. But the cliff faces of that island weren’t eroding and falling into the sea, as they should have been. Instead, they were taking hold, scuttling ships and pulling more rocks into their tide. Clogging him up. He felt it. His acrobat, arms extended, wandered from shipwreck to shipwreck, mast to mast, above the jagged outcrop and vicious seas. Twirling his baton, jester’s hat wobbling, bells ringing. The sea arced beneath the acrobat, spat up, hissed. Understanding the science inside yourself is part of accepting it, the nurses had said, so he tried to think about digestion, about food broken down. Because no matter how you prepared it, if you took away the smells and the colors and the textures, food was just sludge. The shit that went in was the same as the shit that came out, just skipping a few steps. The jester bells kept ringing. A small piece of the cliff crumbled and splashed into the acid. Lauren was talking to him.
“Where we’re walking now, th
is is where the patrol car drove in.”
“The first question is, why was she on your property at all?” Jack asked.
“It’s a public winery. I mean, normally we invite only the restaurant guests to wander around. But there’s nothing to stop someone else.”
“Did she eat at the restaurant?”
“Well, I think we would have noticed if someone who’s been away for eight months came in for a meal.” She put her hands on her hips. “We did check, and no. The police checked our bank records and interviewed the staff.”
“So she isn’t at the restaurant, which means she comes in off the road”—Jack pointed at the junction where the asphalt hooked right and turned to pebbles—“and then walks”—he looked along the fence line, bordered by vines, down to where she died—“this way?”
Jack looked along the fence line for breaks, anything odd where someone could have come in. Lauren followed two paces behind. The grass was short and lush; it folded under his feet. Even if the police hadn’t butchered the initial investigation, footprints would have still been impossible to come by unless it was wet. A few hundred meters along, the fence curved away from the road and then stopped at the patch of bushland where Jack had found Eliza’s shoe. Behind them, the vines ran up toward the restaurant. Halfway between the bushland and the restaurant was where the body had been found.
“There’s no way she could have gotten from there to here.” Jack pointed at the northwest corner, all the way across the yard, where supposedly her footprints had been found. The truth of that was obvious. They both knew she hadn’t been killed there.
“What if she was draped over someone’s shoulder?” Lauren asked.
“It’s possible. Hard to tell, everything was so jumbled. Curtis’s footprints were all over the place.”
“It’s his winery.”
“I know. I’m just making the point.”
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