Trust Me When I Lie

by Benjamin Stevenson

  Worried that the documentary might shine an extra light back on him, it wouldn’t have been hard for Andrew to slip Eliza’s shoe in the bushland. Then there’d be no need for the cops to crawl over his counterfeit operation. Probably the only thing Andrew hadn’t counted on was Jack covering it up.

  Sarah made sense now too. She’d had to stand by and watch Andrew disassemble her family business. Forced to keep his secrets while the man that married her for the view bled her legacy dry.

  The fingers in Eliza’s mouth. That worked too, he supposed, if construed as a message. Maybe after slamming in a very heavy hydraulic door. Don’t speak my secrets.

  And then Alexis must have found out. Andrew had only one way out then, again. Someone had to die, and the suspect, again primed and perfect for him, fresh out of prison. Jack had once asked Curtis, What’s the point in framing you twice?

  “Heads up,” Lauren yelled, and Jack looked up in time to see an empty plastic bottle sail toward him. He couldn’t catch it without dropping the rifle, so he let it hit his hip and ricochet to the ground. Lauren walked over, picked it up, and held it out to him.

  Diethylene glycol.

  He looked at Lauren and shrugged. Didn’t mean anything to him. Alcohol is chemical, Sarah had said. I’m not cooking meth.

  “It’s brake fluid,” she said.

  “In the wine?”

  “It’s used to give cheap wines a richer flavor.”

  “Poisonous?”

  “Unlikely in these quantities.” She turned the bottle over. “But you wouldn’t want brake fluid in your glass if you knew it was in there, I’m guessing.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Lauren shot him the same withering and exasperated glare as back at her house. Five percent. Jack had no desire to get into an argument about his lack of teamwork, so he let her have her moment.

  “Someone used this in Austria back in the eighties,” she said. “No one got hurt. But the entire wine industry was fucked, because you just don’t know, you know? It took decades to recover.”

  “Andrew’s serving people brake fluid?”

  “Looks like.”

  “This is worse than cinnamon.” Jack turned the container in his hands. Laymen didn’t give two fucks about a counterfeit ’61 Grange; they weren’t the ones drinking it. Brake fluid, though, that was another level entirely. That would have mums stopping in the supermarket, seesawing over that bottle of cab sauv. Vanessa Raynor’s show would be a jubilant verbal massacre. She loved the dodgy ones. Discover! magazine made much more sense. “At least it’s not actual poison.”

  “Still. It might be just as deadly.”

  Behind them, at the house, there was the clatter of a door closing. They both turned. Andrew was standing there, cracking his neck; he hadn’t noticed them yet. When he did, he paused a second. Jack felt his shoulders tense. The gun came up. An accident. A reflex.

  Andrew saw the gun and ran.

  Lauren and Jack bolted after him. Jack didn’t know about Lauren, but he knew he’d be spent on the foot chase quickly. Especially after last night. His knees wobbled in their joints, calves trying to find the energy to push himself forward. Luckily, Andrew hadn’t gone far. He was by the silo, only twenty meters away. He seemed to be levitating, which was odd. Then Jack realized he was standing on the ladder and reaching up. He was unlocking the grate to the top. It fell open with a clatter. Andrew pulled himself into the chute, then stooped and pulled the grate back into position. He pulled the padlock inside the grill and locked it.

  Lauren and Jack were under him now. Only a meter below but unable to get to him.

  “Andrew, come out,” Lauren said.

  Andrew looked down at them. He seemed tired, scared, behind the bars. An animal in a cage. He kept looking at Jack’s gun. It was harmless at his side now. Harmless if raised to sight too, but Andrew didn’t know that. Andrew seemed to be debating something with himself. Then he started to climb.

  “Fuck,” Lauren said, “should we shoot at him?”

  “What? Jesus. No.”

  “I said at him. Not in him.”

  “I’ll miss.”

  “You’ll miss trying not to shoot someone?”

  “He’ll come down.”

  “Give me the gun.”

  “He’ll come down.”

  “What if he jumps?”

  The implication was petty, but it incensed Jack: We might never know the truth.

  He slung the rifle strap over his shoulder and mounted the ladder. People aren’t scared of heights, he reminded himself. He climbed a few rungs, until he was under the locked cylindrical cage. He leaned out, forced himself to peel a hand from the ladder, stretched out from the wall. He curled his fingers through the side of the chute. It was made of slatted bars, so there were lots of handholds. He repeated the motion with his other hand. Once he had a fair grip, he walked his feet up the silo wall. The corrugation made it easier; his feet found purchase in the grooves. Then, when his feet were high enough, he reached up to new handholds and swung backward from the wall. The soles of his shoes grappled with the metal, then lodged inside the bars. And he was there, hugging the outside of the chute, like a koala hugging a tree trunk. Andrew was above him, halfway up. Jack knew he’d already made the decision to follow him. He started to climb.

  Andrew must have felt the ladder shaking, because he glanced downward. He seemed surprised that Jack was following him by climbing the outside of the safety chute. Jack didn’t look down. People aren’t scared of heights. His heart whumped in his chest. Whump. Whump. It was stupid. But he had to be the one to catch Andrew Freeman. He had to solve this properly. He’d started it. He’d end it. Whump. Whump. The ladder shook, and Jack lost a footing. He scrambled and got it back. Andrew was kicking the chute, hanging on to the ladder. It rattled and shook. Jack clung to the bars, rust biting into his fingers, vibrations shaking up his forearms. Giving up played through his mind. You can still get down safely. Andrew will climb down. He’ll have to. Or he’ll jump. Either way.

  But Jack knew he wanted to be up there. This was his last chance to get the answers. The truth. That shield. His last chance.

  An outstretched hand in his mind: Last chance—you coming up or not?

  Jack gritted his teeth and kept climbing. He countered the shaking metal by making sure he had three points of contact at all times—two feet and one hand, one foot and two hands. In this way, because Andrew was busy shaking the tower, Jack started to gain on him. He grew confident. Get there. Get there. Andrew stopped kicking, turned back to his climb. Jack was almost close enough to reach out and grab the hem of Andrew’s jeans, but he’d have to reach through the bars. Then Andrew disappeared, and Jack realized that they were at the top. The wind was roaring at his ears. He hadn’t noticed the temperature drop, but it cut through him now. He shivered. The entire scaffolding was shaking in the wind. He had to go higher than Andrew, to go over the lip at the top of the cage. His sight line reached the top, and he half expected Andrew to be waiting for him, to push him off, pinwheeling into the void. But Andrew was sitting, hunched, with his back to Jack, on the hatch in the middle. The picnic basket still in the corner. The Brokenback Range behind him, jagged knuckles. Like people’s spines in the clinic. Jack reached over the top. He tried to quickly scramble over the lip and lower himself to the roof but messed it up and fell the last bit with a jolt. He steadied himself, planting both feet flat, though one leg wouldn’t stop jumping, up and down, up and down. He was exhausted, the climb filled with adrenaline and adrenaline only. The wind pushed him around up here, light as it was.

  He stood as far away from Andrew as he could, which was difficult, seeing as he was sitting in the middle of the small roof. Jack steadied himself by the chute, raised the gun, and pointed it downward. At the back of Andrew’s head.

  “Olives,” Jack said. He couldn’
t think of anything else. “You’ve been skimming off the top. I know about the wine.”

  Andrew looked up. His eyes were red. From the wind. From the tears. His face was different from James Harrison’s; he looked like a tire someone had pricked, bled him partly out. Filled him back up again with brake fluid.

  “You don’t need that,” he said.

  “Don’t I?”

  “Are you going to call the police?” said Andrew.

  “I’ll have to.”

  “You don’t. No one has to know.”

  Andrew must know he had the shoe. If he’d left the shoe to be found, and then the shoe had disappeared, and he’d known Jack had been rooting around… He would have known Jack had taken it. Lied. He must think Jack would do it again. For him. That was why he’d been on Jack’s side since he got here. Because he thought they were in it together.

  “Money,” Andrew said, as if that explained it all. So rich that he didn’t even need to beg. Just spat a golden promise into the air. “I can give you—”

  “I’m not here for money,” Jack said.

  “Well, then.” Andrew seemed defeated. “So we talk.”

  “We talk. Are you Hush?”

  “Who’s Hush?”

  “Were you sleeping with her?”

  “Who?”

  Jack breathed. Start at the beginning. He had the gun. He had the time. He knew most of the story; he just needed Andrew to fill in the gaps.

  “Eliza knew about the wine?”

  A pause. Andrew gave a slow nod.

  “She stole a bottle,” he said. “The day she left.”

  Jack imagined the young backpacker, after months of picking, rewarding herself for her hard work with a bottle from Andrew’s collection. A parting gift for herself. Ready to start her next Australian adventure, ill-gained celebration tucked in her backpack, swaddled in a sweater. Turning. Seeing a shadow, backlit by daylight, blocking the cellar stairs.

  If he’d been able to pull the trigger, he might have.

  “Where was she for the next eight months?”

  “I assume she never left Birravale. She was here.”

  Jack would bet any money she’d been underground. In the cellar. Behind so many locked doors. Just another private collection.

  “And Alexis?”

  “Her too.” His voice full of regret. Such shame. Andrew was rubbing his cheekbones with the heels of his palms. “I can’t believe that. Her too.”

  “Were you sleeping with her?”

  “Alexis?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  So Hush didn’t play into it at all. Just some boyfriend. Nothing worth killing over, and only interesting in the light of trying to pin it on Curtis. Sex, passion—those common motives of which Lauren had been so sure, that Andrew had tricked her into believing by clearing the phone to point toward Hush—were void. Hell, he could have even changed the name to Hush to make it seem suspicious. It only came down to Andrew Freeman’s money.

  “Curtis—” Andrew started. He sniffed and stood. Jack levered backward, traced him with the gun, but Andrew went the other way. He stooped over and flipped the knitted wooden lid of the picnic basket. He rummaged and brought out a bottle.

  “Curtis was the perfect suspect,” Jack said. Realizing now Andrew’s compulsion to get Curtis. He needed Curtis to stay in the spotlight, in order to keep him in the dark. He needed Jack to stay focused. “Is that one real?”

  “They’re all real, mate.” Andrew swigged it like a sailor. “The ones up here are for me, so I guess they’re more real than others.”

  “You must have known someone would find out eventually,” Jack said, “the way you flaunted it.”

  “Maybe. I kept thinking I’d stop. You know, at the start, it was a few quick bucks. But then I kept not getting caught. So I kept going. Every time I thought the glass was finally empty, someone would refill it.”

  “She’s dead, Andrew. The glass is empty.”

  “Let’s get it out of the way and then you can leave me up here to drink in peace until they come. I got her killed.”

  “Say it properly.”

  “Eliza Dacey.” He yelled it at the sky. “I got Eliza killed. Happy?”

  “Good. And Alexis?”

  “Well, fine.” He looked inside the bottle, as if it might contain an exit—Jack had a quick glimmer of Andrew smashing the bottle, lunging at him, slashing his throat—but Andrew’s shoulders dropped. “Yeah. Okay. That’s true. Her too, if you think about it that way.”

  “What way?”

  “I guess they’re both my fault, then.”

  “You stole Curtis’s ax. You bashed her skull in. You cut off her fingers. You guess it’s your fault?” He jabbed the rifle between words, as if stamping the punctuation in the air.

  “Whoa, wait.”

  “I’m tired, Andrew. Tell the truth. You’ve already admitted to murdering Eliza.”

  Andrew blinked twice. He chugged the rest of the bottle and examined the empty. Weighing up the price, the value of this one, just like he had previously. But then he shrugged and lobbed the bottle over his head in an arc. It spun in the air, dropped out of view. Jack heard it shatter on the ground below. No point keeping the empties now, he supposed.

  “I said I got Eliza killed.” Andrew locked his red-rimmed eyes with Jack’s. “But I didn’t kill her.”

  Chapter 34

  “Eliza knew that the bottle she took was a bad one,” Andrew said, “and I knew as soon as I saw the gap in the shelf what she’d done. It wasn’t finished; the flavors were really unbalanced. I was still learning.”

  “Not enough brake fluid?” Jack sniped.

  “Cigarettes contain airline fuel.” Andrew’s rebuttal was swift; it showed he’d spent years rationalizing it. “But we still sell them.”

  “So Eliza figured out your scam. I’m still waiting for how this works against you strangling her.”

  “I’m trying to explain. Like I said, she would have known fairly quickly she had a rubbish bottle, especially after working here. You surprised me. I thought yours was okay.”

  “There was cinnamon on the rim. It got stuck in my teeth.”

  “It’s a three-thousand-dollar wine,” Andrew sighed. “You’re not supposed to swig it from the bottle.”

  “Eliza,” he said, trying to push Andrew back on topic.

  “Okay.” Andrew pinched his temples. “Okay. I bumped into her at the pub. She comes up to me and says she’s going on a little trip up north to do some touristy things. Says she needs some money. Doesn’t say she knows, but she knows. I gave her what I had in my wallet. It was a bit, you know.” Andrew Freeman, thought Jack, was the only man who’d try to slide in a brag while explaining a murder. “Then she left.”

  “When was this?”

  “I know what you’re going to say. Just relax”—his eyes were pleading, looking at the gun—“okay, when I tell you?”

  “The twentieth of March?”

  Andrew nodded.

  “What time?”

  “After five.”

  Jack chewed his lip. Eliza had left her voicemail message to Discover! at 4:52 p.m. on March 20. They both knew that.

  “So she tried to blackmail you.” Jack watched for Andrew’s reaction. “But you overheard her phone call, that she was planning to roll you to the tabloids. A few dollars from your wallet is no big deal, but this—”

  “No! I swear, I didn’t hear the call.” Andrew wasn’t looking at Jack, his eyes instead tracing the slightly wobbling barrel of the rifle. “There were others in the pub. It was pretty quiet, but Ian was with me, because we’d just knocked off patrol. Curtis was there, if you can believe I’m not trying to set him up. I swear he was. And Alan was tending bar—he’s always there. Ask them.”

  Jack reminde
d himself to calm down. His mind was running from him again—he was editorializing and trying to tell Andrew’s story for him, before Andrew had told it for himself. He just had to listen.

  “After she took your money, what then?”

  “What then? Well, I waited for her to come back. I didn’t know how this blackmail stuff worked. But I assumed she’d keep coming back and asking for more. I wasn’t worried about the money, but I was worried that she’d talk. That she’d get drunk and spill to some friend. I could spot the girl some cash—a vacation, rent, whatever. But I was constantly worried she’d tell the wrong person. Maybe someone who knew how to wield the information better, and they’d come back—all Bonnie and Clyde in my head—and they’d both turn the screws. Worse than that, I was worried she’d just go to the cops. It was very stressful.”

  “I feel for your plight,” Jack said flatly. Eliza had been missing for eight months, but maybe she hadn’t been missing? Maybe she had been traveling in luxury thanks to Andrew’s cash? Then what? Maybe she ran out of money. Maybe she came back, Jack’s brain shouted, and Andrew Freeman killed her. No. He didn’t kill her. He got her killed. Apparently. “She came back?” Jack said.

  “That’s the thing. She didn’t. She completely disappeared. She never came to my house, never called me, never emailed me. But all those months later, I saw her again.”

  “You saw her?”

  “It was from a distance. I was up here. But I’m sure it was her.”

  “Where was she?”

  Andrew simply pointed. Jack followed the line of his finger downward, across the lip of the silo and into the Wade vineyard.

  “I was up here,” Andrew said. “And I saw her, running for the fence between our properties. Curtis came out of the house. He followed her down. I don’t think she saw him coming. I had my light on; she would have seen it. She would have known it was me. I brought her up here once. I like bringing people up here.”