Sleight Malice

by Vicki Tyley

  Fergus noticed Desley shivering and propelled her toward the front door, the overlapping finger and palm prints obvious in the fine black dusting powder near the opening edge. “Grant can freeze if he wants to.”

  Inside was only marginally warmer. Using his foot, he pushed the door to, far enough to block the chill air, but not enough to snib the lock.

  Desley stood in the doorway to her home office, arms folded across her chest. “I don’t understand, Fergus. Why would anyone break-in if not to steal something?”

  “Perhaps they couldn’t find what they were looking for.”

  “Yes, but what? Besides, it doesn’t look like anything’s been touched. And if they were that fastidious, they wouldn’t have left the front door open like that. I think whoever it was wanted me to know they’d been here.”

  That thought had crossed Fergus’s mind: a follow-up on the email threat, a reminder to Desley she wasn’t invincible. “In which case, you should move out for a while. At least until—”

  “What? And let them win? No bastard is driving me out of my own home.”

  “It’s not a matter of winning or losing. I wish you could see that.” He sighed. “If you don’t care about what happens to you, think about the people who do. Whether you like it or not, I’m not letting you stay here on your own until you have the locks changed, a monitored security system installed and new deadlocks fitted on all the doors and windows.”

  She saluted him. “Yes, sir!” The twinkle in her hazel eyes faded. “Talking about monitoring…” Her gaze darted between the door and stairs. “How can I find out if the police are tapping my phone?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “If not mine, then Helen Escott’s.”

  He frowned. “Should I ask?”

  “Earlier today I went to see Helen. One problem: your police mates were there first. Seems they knew all about Paul contacting her. And since I was the only one she told about it, she blames me. Which means that either the police were eavesdropping or…”

  The words hung unsaid between them.

  “Did you tell Helen you thought she might be being bugged?”

  “Of course not. I wanted to be sure of my facts first. So, is it possible?”

  “Oh, anything is possible. But is it likely?” He scratched his jaw. “They would’ve had to have had good grounds to apply for a warrant. Grant’s outside; why don’t we just ask him and see what sort of reaction we get?”

  Desley shook her head. “There must be another way. I can’t have him thinking I’m paranoid on top of everything else.”

  “Okay then, plan B: I get one of my guys to check out your lines, phones, jacks and wall outlets. Keep in mind though, that even if he finds nothing, we still can’t be sure your calls aren’t being intercepted. Surveillance technology is getting more sophisticated all the time.”

  “Knock! Knock!”

  “That’s Kim.” He touched Desley’s forearm. “Leave it with me, okay?”

  She nodded, her dark eyelashes flickering, her eyelids translucent. All the color had leached from her face.

  He greeted Kim.

  “Grant’s been called away, but I do have some good news,” she said with a smile in Desley’s direction. “Your car’s been recovered.”

  Desley’s face brightened. “Where?”

  “Can you believe parked in a clearway less than two blocks from here?”

  “And my bag, wallet and phone?”

  “Except for your keys it’s all there, but you’ll need to check the contents to be sure.”

  Letting out a loud sigh, Desley backed toward the stairs and sank onto the bottom step, hugging her knees. “Why abandon the car, but take the keys?”

  “Who knows what goes through some people’s heads. Even if your keys do turn up, you should still get your locks changed to be on the safe side.”

  “I’m amazed you found it so fast. Thank you.”

  “All part of the service. Your mobile phone helped. We were able to triangulate its position to within a hundred meter radius.” Kim chuckled. “The local parking inspector almost beat us to it.”

  Desley’s fingers kneaded her temples, the corners of her mouth remaining downturned. Kim glanced at Fergus, one eyebrow cocked. He shook his head. He wouldn’t be laughing either if he were in Desley’s shoes.

  “Okay,” Kim said, “I’ll leave you to it. Where’s the forensics technician hiding?”

  Fergus pointed upstairs. Like a zombie, Desley rose from the bottom step, letting Kim past, and shuffled toward the kitchen.

  He followed. “I know a good locksmith. I’m sure he’ll be able to fit you in today: he owes me. Let me ring him, okay?” He scrolled through his phonebook until he found the number and glanced at Desley.

  She nodded, opened her mouth, and with a shake of her head closed it again.

  He pressed Call anyway. Thomas Black, locksmith extraordinaire, answered on the third ring.

  “Yow, Fergus, me old mate, how’s it hangin’?”

  “Good, good. We must get together for that beer soon, but this isn’t a social call. How busy are you? Is there any chance you could fit in a job for me?”

  “How many beers was that?”

  Fergus laughed. “If you can do it today, as many as you like.”

  “Sold! Pen ready: give me the details.”

  Fergus told him what was required and gave him the address.

  “Number eight, are you sure?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “What’s that sheila doing? That’s the second time I’ve been called to that address today.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Desley couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “A woman impersonating me called a locksmith to help her break into my house?”

  Fergus nodded. “That’s certainly the way it looks. Brazen, I know.”

  “That’s one word for it. Surely they ask for ID before picking someone’s locks.”

  “Thomas did, but she batted her eyelashes at him and spun some story about her handbag being inside the house. Where a pretty woman is concerned, he’s a pushover. Though, from what he tells me, it was an envelope with your name and address on it that swung it.”

  She gasped. “So not only did she enlist the help of your locksmith friend to break-in to my house, she stole my mail, too? It just gets better and better.”

  He gave her a wry, almost apologetic smile. “What’s more, she was wearing leather gloves, so dusting for prints is a pointless exercise.”

  “Great.”

  “Not all is lost. Thomas is certain he would recognize the woman if he saw her again.”

  “And what are the odds of that, do you suppose?”

  “Here, let me do that.” Fergus removed the open coffee tin from her hands.

  She leaned against the bench, watching but not really seeing what Fergus was doing. Who was the woman? What did she want with Desley? If the break-in had been meant as a warning, why hadn’t the house been ransacked, furniture vandalized, anything less subtle than an ajar door? Why steal her car, if only to abandon it a couple of blocks away? And the hoax phone call to Fergus: how did the woman know to call him? Just lucky, or something more calculated?

  The rich aroma of coffee tickled her nostrils. Fergus was waving a cup under her nose as if it were smelling salts. She blinked and he stopped.

  “How did your locksmith mate describe the woman again?” she asked, taking the cup from him.

  “You mean besides being a bit of alright?”

  “Does that mean she has big boobs?”

  He laughed. “Knowing Thomas, yes.”

  “How old did he think she was?”

  “Somewhere between twenty and forty. He’s not good with ages.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What else did he say about her?”

  “Shoulder-length straight black hair with a long fringe that almost covered her eyes. Now her eyes, he remembers well. He said they were the most unreal deep blue. However, in between the hat and s
carf she was wearing that’s about all he saw of her face.”

  “Height? And please don’t tell me he said average.”

  Fergus nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting. “I did manage to pin his average down to a head shorter than him, which would put her around the 170-centimetre mark, give or take a few centimeters.”

  Compared to Desley, she was a giant. Then again, everyone was. She didn’t know any dark-haired, blue-eyed busty women, tall or otherwise. She also realized hair color was easily camouflaged with dye or a wig. And tinted contact lenses could well account for the vividness of the woman’s blue eyes.

  “Could it have been Selena in disguise?” Fergus asked, obviously thinking along the same lines. The height and big chest matched Selena’s physique.

  Desley shook her head, dismissing the possibility. “If you were going to disguise your appearance, wouldn’t you at least choose a hair color different to your own?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “I still don’t think it was her. Anyway, you would’ve recognized her voice on the phone.”

  “Unless…” He paused.

  “Unless that was disguised, too,” she said, finishing his sentence. “But why would she want to harass me? I’m no threat. I’m not trying to steal Trent away from her or anything.”

  “No, but reality and perception are two different things.”

  She sipped her coffee, the heat from the cup warming her cold fingers. Her gaze met Fergus’s pensive stare. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

  “Promise me you won’t bite my head off?”

  Frowning, she gave a half-nod, not sure what was coming.

  “Have you considered the possibility it could’ve been Laura?”

  It had crossed her mind, but only for a fleeting moment. Not that she was about to admit it. “What possible reason would she have to break-in to my house, steal my car and then call you on the pretext of being a good Samaritan to tell you I was near death?” She paused for breath. “And that’s supposing…” Her voice trailed off: she didn’t want to go there.

  He shrugged. “We have to look at every possibility, however remote.”

  “Well, I hope it was her. It would mean she’s free and still very much alive.”

  Fergus raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Every possibility,” she reminded him, yet knowing at the same time her missing friend wasn’t the mystery woman. No matter the reason, Laura would never torment her like that. Anyway, her willowy friend wasn’t big busted. Far from it.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later, Kim appeared. “Sorry,” she said, hooking Fergus by the elbow, “but I need to borrow Fergus for a minute. Outside.”

  Still nursing her coffee cup, Desley drifted into the living room and across to the glass sliding doors. She stared out at the brick-paved courtyard, bare except for the wrought iron garden bench in the corner: like her, alone and imprisoned behind a glass wall. Fergus and Kim were mere meters away outside, her brother and parents only a phone call away, yet she had never felt so isolated, so cut-off from reality. It all had to be some horrible nightmare. She felt so, so tired. If only she could wake up…

  CHAPTER 30

  A photo of Laura and herself in holiday mode and grinning like loons floated into view, paused for a second in the centre of the screen and then faded away. Desley pressed the spacebar, interrupting the screensaver slideshow. Was that all that remained of her friend: pictures and memories?

  She leaned back in her chair, her face tipped up and stared at the white ceiling. Fergus had made all the right noises about not giving up hope and the rest, but she sensed that’s all it was: noise. She couldn’t blame him. None of Laura and Ryan’s bank accounts or credit cards had been touched, there had been no credible sightings of the couple and the body of the man found in the fire had yet to be identified. With no new leads or evidence to work with, the case had stalled, the police scaling down their investigation.

  Even the discovery of Ryan’s Nissan Patrol in the Murray River had raised more questions than it had answered. With no evidence of foul play, the police were satisfied the dead driver, a 24-year-old unemployed man with a history of car theft, had stolen the vehicle. But where from? If only dead men could talk, Desley thought, sitting upright again.

  Her hand closed over the mouse. She wanted to see that photograph again, but before she could open the folder containing all her personal pictures, the phone rang. She hesitated, waiting to find out who it was before answering.

  “Desley, it’s Fergus. If you’re there, please pick up.” He paused, then added, “I have some news.”

  She snatched up the phone. “What news? A breakthrough?”

  “Of sorts, but don’t get too excited. The police have tracked down your Maureen Carmel McKeown.”

  Her grip tightened on the phone. “And?”

  “And you could say she’s an absentee owner. Maureen McKeown died twelve years ago, three years before the property was purchased.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Quite simple really: proof of identity is not required to purchase a property. Obviously, it’s different if there’s a mortgage involved, but the Howqua cottage was bought for cash.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  He laughed. “Nothing gets past you, does it? Maureen McKeown is, or rather was, Ryan Moore’s grandmother on his father’s side.”

  Desley closed her eyes, trying to gel what she had just heard with what she already knew. “Hang on. If it’s Ryan’s paternal grandmother, shouldn’t they share the same surname?”

  “Her husband, Ryan’s grandfather, died in his fifties and she remarried, taking her new husband’s name.”

  “Am I right in thinking then, that for whatever reason, Ryan bought the property in his dead grandmother’s name?”

  “That’s the theory at this stage. Proving it is another matter. With the property not in his name, Laura wouldn’t have been able to make a claim on it if they split. Unless, of course, she could prove his ownership and that’s assuming she knew he owned it in the first place. It would also mean that if he had a business go into liquidation, creditors wouldn’t be able to call on the asset even if he had offered personal guarantees. Although going on his past dealings with Paul Escott, that seems highly unlikely.”

  Laura had told her a friend of a friend owned the cottage. Had it been a line fed to her by Ryan, or had she known the truth all along? But what difference did it make? “How is knowing Ryan owns the cottage going to help find Laura?”

  “You’re asking me? You were the one preoccupied with finding out who owned it.”

  “Yes, well…”

  “Someone, whether it be Ryan or not, didn’t want you digging. That much is obvious.” Fergus’s voice softened. “You’d tell me if you had received any more threats?”

  “If you’re asking if I’ve received any more anonymous emails or if my house has been broken into again or if my car has been stolen, the answer is no, thank God. But go back for a minute. Are you suggesting Ryan might have been behind that warning email?”

  “Or someone else who thinks you were getting too close for comfort.”

  “Too close to what, though?” Desley didn’t need to see Fergus to know he was shrugging his shoulders. She cupped her hand around the receiver and dropped her voice. “Are you sure my phone isn’t being tapped?”

  “I can have Tim check again,” he whispered back, making her feel foolish, “but he’s 99.9 per cent sure you’re clean, besides…”

  She cleared her throat. “Besides what?”

  “I have a small confession to make. I spoke to Kim about your suspicions…”

  Knowing what was coming, Desley mouthed the words with him.

  “…and she assures me you are not and have never been under electronic surveillance.”

  Why wasn’t she surprised? She wouldn’t have expected the police to admit to tapping her phone even if they had
been. “I thought we agreed—”

  “However,” he said, talking over the top of her, “you were right about them tapping Helen Escott’s phone line.”

  She gasped.

  “But whatever you do, you can’t tell her. I know you like Helen, but you have to remember why they’re doing it. For some reason, which may or may not be associated with your friends’ disappearance, Paul Escott has gone to ground. He certainly has the motive to want revenge on Ryan.”

  “Ryan, yes,” she said with a sigh, feeling like she was stuck in a loop, “but not Laura. Quite the opposite if what Helen told me is true. She tried to help him.”

  “Sometimes we hurt the people we least mean harm.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m talking collateral damage. I’m not saying that’s the situation here, but I’ve seen enough of the dark side of human nature to know what people are capable of. Revenge is a powerful emotion. We also don’t know what his state of mind was. Remember, his wife turned him away from seeing his own son on his birthday. How do you suppose that made him feel? We have to stay objective.”

  She propped her elbows on the desk, rubbing her eyes with the back of her left hand. Fergus was right. She couldn’t let emotion cloud her judgment. What made her think she could predict the behavior of a man she had never met? What she would do and what someone else would do in any given circumstance wasn’t the same. She couldn’t even be sure, put in the same situation, how she would react.

  “Point taken,” she said distractedly, her mind backtracking to Ryan’s late grandmother. “Hey, have they managed to track down a next of kin for Ryan? A living one I mean. What about Laura’s family? I know her parents are both dead, but surely she has to have at least one relative, even a distant one.”

  “In answer to your first question: not yet. Ryan’s parents are both dead. Likewise his grandparents on both sides. He does have a younger sister – Nicole. She lodged a final tax return in 1996, citing she was leaving Australia permanently. Interpol have been alerted and the Red Cross and other tracing agencies have feelers out, but so far they haven’t managed to locate her.”