by June Whyte
And then I heard smooching and giggling in the back seat, and sang la la la la la in my head so I couldn’t picture what was going on behind me.
To celebrate, we’d stopped at the Gawler Arms hotel for a drink and a meal after signing the register so it was now almost seven o’clock. Consequently, when we reached Megan’s cottage on the outskirts of Cockatoo Valley, the sun had set and warm welcoming lights blazed from the front windows.
I parked the car beneath a large gum tree at the side of the house and leant over the front seat. “Did you want to come in?”
“Oh, no. You go ahead.” Smiling at Henry, Mum shook her head.
“Okaaay. Won’t be long.”
I angled myself out of the car, stood up and took in the peace and quiet of Megan’s country property. After spending so many years in a crowded apartment while working, she loved it here because her cottage was so isolated. No near neighbors to watch any comings and goings, which meant she could still continue her profession with a few rich, selected clients on a cash-only basis and laugh while giving the tax department the finger.
“No need to hurry, dear,” Henry told me, his face flushed as he fumbled with his seat belt and then pulled Mum towards him. “Gwen and I will be just fine out here.”
La la la la la…
Leaving the two lovebirds to their canoodling, I loped up the graveled path and knocked on Megan’s door. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be out in the dark, surrounded by trees and shadows and potential killers. Blame the sinister happenings of the last couple of days. And why hadn’t I insisted Megan tell me about Sweet Lips over the phone? All this cloak and dagger stuff wasn’t helping my insecurities. In fact, I wouldn’t feel safe until I settled Mum and Henry into the honeymoon suite at The Lodge and drove home. Once there, I’d lock my front door, ring Simon to remind him not to forget his handcuffs, and hibernate until the killer was caught and incarcerated.
“Hi, Dani, I’ve been waiting for you. Come in.” Megan, her clothes, makeup, and hair immaculate, as usual, opened her front door and stepped aside for me to enter.
Geez! Didn’t this woman ever just kick back in comfortable daggy clothes and chill out while scoffing a box of soft-centered chocolates?
“Can’t stay long,” I told Megan and followed her into the kitchen. “You said you’d found something interesting about Sweet Lips. I’m all ears.”
“Mary Foster was a bitch,” snarled Megan and her beautiful face darkened. “A lying, cheating bitch. Always has been. Only two weeks ago she came to see me. Standing right where you are now, laughing and boasting about how I’d never have her husband while she was alive. She didn’t want him—wouldn’t even have him in her bed—but would she let anyone else have him? No way. And when I tried to tell him what Mary was really like, he wouldn’t believe me. Called me a whore and a liar and said he didn’t want to see me anymore.”
Whoa…what had I just stepped into here? Had Megan been drinking? When I first asked her about Mary Foster she’d told me she didn’t know the woman. Yet here she was talking about her as though she not only knew her intimately—she hated her guts.
“Um…Megan, you said you had something you wanted to show me,” I reminded her. I’d check out the surprise, tell her it was great and then bolt back to my car and drive like hell. The Megan I knew and loved had been invaded by a body-snatching monster.
“Oh, sorry Dani,” Megan said, shaking her head and giving me a rueful grin. “I got a bit carried away there. Forgive me. Would you like a cup of coffee? A glass of wine?”
“No, nothing for me, thanks. I really can’t stay long,” I told her and frowned. “What’s this surprise you want to show me? I hope it’s worth coming all the way out here to see.”
“Oh, it is. Believe me…it is.” Smiling, she picked up a large key from the kitchen table and moved towards a closed door on the other side of the room. A door I knew led into a guest bedroom. I knew because I’d stayed in the room one night when one of our research sessions had gone on past midnight. “Come with me,” she said, beckoning with one long, black-taloned finger. Seeing me hesitate, her smile widened. “Hey, it’s a good surprise, Dani. You’ll get a kick out of this.”
When she unlocked the door, I followed her into the room and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place—bed made, pictures dusted, antique comb and brush set in place on the dressing table. The only difference from when I’d last been in the room was the naked man tied to a chair. A two-inch-wide strip of grey insulation tape covered his mouth. His long legs, gouged and bloody, were attached to the chair legs with what appeared to be barbed wire. His pale skinny body was covered in bruises and cigarette burns. And his arms were fastened behind his back.
But it was the look of sheer terror in the man’s eyes that undid me.
“Derek?” I gasped and felt the chicken schnitzel I’d eaten for dinner flutter its wings.
“Yes, it’s Derek,” agreed Megan, her voice flat and unemotional. “My snake-in-the-grass ex-lover. The man who, after promising to divorce his wife and marry me, laughed in my face when I begged him to give her up. He told me he’d never leave his wife for a filthy whore like me. A filthy whore? When his holier-than-though wife shagged more men in a night than there are days in a week.” She chuckled and my blood froze. “So, of course, when I killed Mary, the last laugh was on him.”
“Megan, what—” I turned around and my words stuck in my throat, threatening to choke me. Megan had produced a gun from inside her designer label, suede, Versace jacket. A black gun. A black gun with a mother-of-pearl handle.
She smiled a wide, crazy smile and aimed the gun at Derek Foster’s head. “This is what I wanted to show you, Dani,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
23
Friday, 7:15 p.m.
When the bullet splattered a hole through Derek Foster’s brain, my own brain went into cerebral arrest.
Open mouthed, I stared into the dead man’s wide eyes and thought—Now that’s weird! When Megan pulled the trigger, the gun didn’t go bang…it went phsst.
And it took me another full second before reality kicked me in the stomach like a mean old mule and changed my thoughts to: Holy Shit! Megan just killed Derek!
With a silent scream hammering at the tight knots setting up immovable road blocks in my chest and throat, I eyeballed the perpetrator of the crime. Megan. Legs wide, gun-arm outstretched, the Oracle of Death, posing in her sexy six-inch stiletto Manola Blahnik black suede boots.
Was the next bullet for me?
Bile, more sour than green lemons, flooded my mouth. I tried to protest at what my definitely ex-friend had done, but all that came out of my mouth was a garbled, “Huhn….”
Evidently taking that remark as admiration for her brilliant display of marksmanship, Megan lowered the gun to thigh level and switched her attention back to me. “Yes, I am good, aren’t I?” she said and I watched her 90% silicon chest expand until it threatened to burst from its restraints. “I can shoot a sheep’s eye out at twenty paces,” she informed me.
I took a deep breath and watched the insanity blossom in her eyes.
“But enough of me. Let’s discuss you,” she went on, and her botoxed forehead shimmered in displeasure. “You’ve been a disappointment to me, Danielle. A right pain in the butt. Didn’t I warn you to keep out of the investigation and concentrate on your love life? I even set up a hot date for you, but no, you continued to play the amateur detective—asking questions, sticking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. You and that hot-shot, ex-cop friend of yours, Simon Templar.” She shook her head and the gun with the pearl handle inched upward until it pointed at the middle of my forehead.
Ohmygod!
Okay, my whole life didn’t pass before my eyes—probably because there weren’t enough highlights to warrant such a sad boring parade—but I thought how unfair it was for me to die the day before my birthday.
Now I’d never know what it felt like to be fifty.
I stared at
Megan’s gun and could almost see the phsst deep inside the barrel, quivering, itching to get out. I took a deep steadying breath. My fear was turning me into a jelly-kneed zombie. Not good. For any chance of survival, I had to stay alert. Prevent terror from spreading its crippling tentacles into my brain cells.
“Of course I asked questions,” I countered quickly—anything to stall that deadly phsst. “Why should I go to jail for something I didn’t do?” I paused, forced my eyes to slide away from the lethal black weapon and settle on Megan’s face. It was like gazing at a beautiful sculpture. Stone cold. Remote. Perfect bone structure, but empty of emotion. How could this be the same woman I’d met at Tamali’s coffee shop every Tuesday for the last six months? Shared letters? Laughed at her funny stories? “I thought we were friends and all this time it was you corrupting my column and setting me up. You used me, Megan. Why?”
Megan’s smile was thin and her shrug barely there. “Oh dear, now you’re going to get upset and go all prissy on me. Danielle, darling, this isn’t personal. In fact, I even like you in a ho-hum sort of way. You’re terribly naïve and have the most dismal fashion sense, but yeah…you do entertain me at times. Especially when you wear those hideous hoop earrings and flick your head to show them off. Sorry, I lied when I told you they make you look years younger. They don’t. Anyway, when I needed to deflect suspicion away from myself, I thought, why not implicate Dani—change her pathetic little column and send the fuzz in the wrong direction? As I said, darling—nothing personal—just business.” She let out one of those exaggerated, put-upon, sighs. “Unfortunately, after that you started acting like Miss Marple in a cozy mystery so it was time to end our friendship.” She did her frown-shimmer thing again and shook her head. “You’ve been really hard to kill, you know, Dani.”
“Oh dear, have I? I’m so dreadfully sorry.”
Okay, keep her talking. Keep her boasting about how clever she is. While she’s talking—she’s not shooting.
I quickly regrouped. “So,” I said in a conversational tone. “When you planned the hit-and-run thing with the Subaru, who was driving?”
“Me.”
“But…I spoke to you on the phone, so how did—”
“I rang from the Subaru while I was parked behind you on the bridge.”
“But—”
“After that, all I had to do was drive to Derek’s street and wait for you to arrive.” She flicked the gun at me. “It would have worked, except for that stupid cop friend of yours. Templar had to play Superman and knock you and Derek out the way, didn’t he? Spoiled a perfectly good plan.”
“And the pumpkin bread?”
“My mistake. I forgot about your aversion to pumpkins. If I’d made a honey-oat loaf we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.” She cocked her head to one side and smiled. “By the way, did you find it amusing when forensics told you I’d added the aphrodisiac, Spanish Fly to the bread recipe?”
“Amusing?” I snarled and clenched my fists by my sides. Bitch. If she didn’t have that blasted gun I’d let rip and sock her one and smile as she hit the deck. “About as amusing as a one-legged dog trying to cock his leg on a lamp post.”
Megan straightened to her full height of 6’2” in stilettos, and her eyes grew colder than a snake ready to strike. “Enough,” she snapped and reaching into the pocket of her designer, three-quarter-length jacket, drew out a set of handcuffs. “Put these on and secure one wrist to the centre of the bed head,” she said tossing the handcuffs in my direction. When I refused to catch them, she rolled her eyes and gave another half-shrug. “Pick them up, Dani—or I’ll shoot the tip of your ear off. I’m an excellent marksman, but sometimes, when I get overexcited, my hand shakes a little and then the whole ear could go. And I really don’t want you passing out on me. No fun killing you if you’re unconscious at the time.”
My fingers closed around the handcuffs, the metal cold and hard and scary. I closed my eyes. How could this be happening to me? Just when I had a future to look forward to. Just when I’d decided I wanted Simon to be part of that future…
“Move it!” Megan lifted her gun a few centimeters until it pointed straight at my left ear. “One. Two—”
“Okay, okay.” Trying not to shudder, I stumbled past Derek’s lifeless body. His head slumped on his bare shoulder. Blood rimmed the neat hole in his forehead.
A grim reminder of Megan’s insanity.
The king-size antique bed, covered with a lacy white quilt appliquéd with tiny pink rosebuds, was made of heavy wrought iron. Probably cost more than my entire house of furniture. I sat on the bed, putting off the inevitable, and stared at the handcuffs. Once I attached myself to the bed-head there’d be no chance of escape. I’d be signing my own death notice.
Phsst! The sound and the pain in my left ear hit me simultaneously.
I screamed. Clutched at my ear lobe. And when I brought my hand away, there was blood on my fingers.
“Next time, you lose the ear!”
Panting, tears hot on my cheeks, I snapped one handcuff around my right wrist and attached the other to the centre of the iron bed-head.
“That’s better,” cooed Megan, cutting me one of her fully wired smiles. “You know, Danielle, while we’ve been enjoying ourselves in here, I’ve been giving my situation some thought. This crappy rural life isn’t really my style. It’s time for me to move on, and where better than to a big city in Europe? Paris. London. Maybe even Rome. As long as it specializes in shoe boutiques. Yes, that’s what I’m after. A city where I can shop for shoes all day long.” She tossed her head, not displacing one hair in the action. “So here’s what I’m going to do before I leave. First I’ll splash petrol around the room and then stack old newspapers beside the bed. And maybe after that, I’ll light my cigarette and accidentally drop it in the middle of the papers.” Her mouth was sad but her eyes were high on whatever craziness drove her. “Shame you’ll still be alive when the fire starts, Danielle. Fire might be a good way to get rid of unwanted bodies—but I’ve heard it’s a very unpleasant way to die.”
“Megan, you can’t hide forever,” I told her, the cold lump in my chest making it difficult to talk. “Wherever you go the police will find you. And when they do—”
“The flames will grab at your hair and eat into your flesh and you’ll scream and kick and wish the hell you were already dead,” she continued as though I hadn’t spoken. Her smile widened a fraction. “A charred unrecognizable body. That’s all your ex-copper mate will find when he comes looking for you.”
It was around then that I lost the chicken schnitzel, Dianne sauce and little roast potatoes I’d eaten for dinner with Mum and Henry at the Gawler Arms Hotel—a life-time ago.
* * *
I twisted my red swollen wrist one more time, scrunched my fist up as small as I could, and yanked hard. Nothing happened. Again. Megan had left the room five minutes ago and not only were the handcuffs holding up under pressure, but the antique bed-head, made of thick beautifully crafted wrought iron and probably cast over a hundred years ago, was refusing to break.
If only I’d thought to borrow one of Simon’s illegal burglar doohickies.
My mind drifted to Mum and Henry waiting for me in the car. Oh God, please let Mum drive to the nearest phone box and ring the fire brigade when she sees the house burning. Don’t let her try to rescue me.
That’s of course if the newlyweds weren’t so wrapped up in whatever they were doing in the back seat of my car they even noticed when the house caught fire.
Still panting after my battle with the handcuffs, I drew my legs up, slumped forward and rested my chin on my knees. Over the last couple of days I’d been imagining myself growing old with Simon— not dying. Maybe having a heart attack after an all-night sex marathon at aged ninety-nine, but not like this. Not at the hands of a crazy ex-prostitute with a shoe fetish. Not burnt alive like a witch at the stake.
I lifted my head and glared at the handcuffs. No time to sit here and wal
low in my misfortune. Megan would return any minute and then it would be too late. Breath rasping, I twisted so I could face the bed-head and study my stubborn restraints. What would Harry Houdini do in this situation? Before I could develop that idea further, a tap on the window had me looking over my shoulder.
Simon!
Never had I been so pleased to see that untidy hair, that lopsided grin, that ugly old pullover with the paint splatter on the left shoulder.
He put one finger to his mouth, and then proceeded to work on the window with one of his magic doohickies. Thirty seconds later, the window slid up and Simon swung his legs over the sill and landed in the room.
“Couldn’t wait to play with the handcuffs, could you?” he teased, padding across to the bed and hugging me to him.
“Oh, God, Simon. Am I glad to see you!”
He hugged me tighter and then looked across at Derek. “What happened to the poor bugger in the chair?”
“You’ve got to be careful, Simon. Megan’s got a gun. She shot Derek and now she’s getting ready to burn the house down with me in it.”
“Did Megan do that to you?” he asked touching my ear.
“Yeah. You could say she’s a little unhinged at the moment.”
He kissed me and then took a key ring from his back pocket. “I’ve been trying to call you for the last half-hour,” he said slotting a tiny key into the lock on the handcuffs.
“Damn. I switched my phone off at the registry office and forgot to turn it on again.”
“Megan’s prints were on the box the poisoned bread came in,” he said pulling the key from the lock when it refused to turn and trying another. “The police are waiting down the road to arrest her, but I knew you were here so I had to get you out first.”
“Did you stop to tell Mum and Henry what was going on?”
“No. I snuck past the car and came to rescue you first.” He grinned. “They were both busy.”
Thinking I heard a shuffling noise on the other side of the door, I grabbed at Simon’s pullover. “Simon,” I whispered. “Can you hurry it up? What happened to ‘maximum twenty-five seconds’ to unpick a lock? You’re blotting your copy-book here.”
