by Morgana Best
Delilah shook her head. “That was it. The call came on the club phone. She was surprised that someone would call her on the club phone, and when she came back, that’s when she said she had to go straight outside.”
I bit my lip. “Do you have any suspicions at all as to who it could have been?”
“At first I thought she was giving Harper more money, but then she wouldn’t need to do that furtively. Lotti and I knew she gave Harper money all the time. It made Lotti really angry, because she thought that was the only reason Harper wanted to date Jezza-Belle rather than her.” She waved one hand in dismissal. “Anyway, I’m not getting into all that.” Delilah stood up. “I hope that was some help to you.”
I thanked her, and apologised once more for being so late.
Delilah nodded, but before she left the table, she turned back to me. “One more thing. It’s probably nothing, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I heard Jezza-Belle had been murdered.”
“What was that?” I asked her.
“I thought Harper had asked her to pay off the people he owed money to, and she didn’t have all the money, so they murdered her as a warning to Harper.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I told the police.” With that, she nodded to us and then left the café in a hurry.
Jezza-Belle raised her eyebrows at me. “What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s time for coffee and cake,” I said, as a waitress approached our table. As soon as the waitress left with our orders, I said, “If she was right about you being murdered as a warning to Harper, surely the police would be all over it.”
Jezza-Belle did not seem to share my opinion. “I don’t know. It does kind of make sense.”
“Is it jogging any memories?”
Jezza-Belle stared off into the distance, clearly thinking it over, but then I heard a loud hymn.
“Who’s playing church music around here?” Jezza-Belle asked me.
“It’s Mum’s ring tone,” I told her. “Don’t answer it.”
Jezza-Belle pulled the phone out of her purse and slid it across the table to me. “It’s Ian,” I said. He rang five more times, which was irritating, but there was no way I would let Jezza-Belle answer it.
Just then my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognise so I answered it with a tentative, “Hello?”
“Laurel?” said a female voice.
I answered in the affirmative.
“Oh, thank goodness it’s you. It’s Audrey. I wasn’t sure this was your number, but I found it on my phone records from when you called the other night. There’s a problem with Ian. Ever since he drank that non-alcoholic wine the other night, he’s had a speech impediment.”
I knew that she had said ‘non-alcoholic’ for the benefit of Ian, so I realised he was listening to her call. “A speech impediment?” I said. “Oh well, he did drink an awful lot, and he’s probably never had a drink before.”
“That’s for sure!” Audrey said. “Anyway, I’ve been unable to placate him, so he wants to speak to your mother. He just tried to call her several times.”
“Perhaps her phone was turned off,” I lied. “She’s right here. I’ll put her on.”
Jezza-Belle glared at me, but I simply shrugged. The phone was on Loud, so I could hear everything. “Thelma, if that you? I’m poffeffed by the fpirit of improper fpeech.”
Jezza-Belle and I exchanged glances. “I’m sorry Ian, what did you say?” she asked him.
Ian sobbed a little before answering. “It’f my fpeech! I can’t fpeak properly. I’m forry to call you, but Paftor Green ifn’t anfwering hif phone fo I can’t fpeak to him.”
I took the phone from Jezza-Belle and spoke to Ian. “Ian, could I speak to Audrey please?”
“Yef, fure,” he said. “Here fhe if.”
When Audrey answered, I said, “Did he somehow find out the wine was alcoholic?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said. “He felt quite sick, so he went to the doctor who told him he had a hangover. Ian insisted to the doctor it was non-alcoholic wine, but the doctor told him there must’ve been a labelling mix-up. I think he’s having some sort of reaction to the thought of drinking alcohol.”
I agreed with her. “I’m so sorry about that.”
Ian spoke again. “Yef, the labelf were mixed up, fo that’f why the Jezebel fpirit got into Thelma. Fhe waf drinking the alcoholic wine thinking it waf non-alcoholic.”
I clutched my sides and did my best not to burst into a fit of giggles.
Chapter 15
I hadn’t slept well the night before. I was worried because no one suspect was coming to the fore. Several people appeared to have a motive—it was doing my head in.
I showered, dressed, and then headed to my coffee machine. I drank one cup of coffee quickly, and then made a second. I took it downstairs into my office, wanting to see where I was up to with the bookings. So much had been going on lately, that I didn’t want to let things get out of hand with my work. A quick look through my appointments reassured me. Everything seemed under control, after all.
I jumped with fright when the doorbell sounded. To my delight it was Basil, but he didn’t waste any time. He kissed me soundly, thrust a newspaper at me, jabbed his finger at one of the pages, and then left, saying he was running late.
After he left, I took the newspaper to my office. A small article in the middle of the paper said that Liliana was the sole heir to a multi-million dollar inheritance. I jumped to my feet, snatched up the newspaper, and hurried over to Mum’s house.
Mum—or Jezza-Belle—answered the door as soon as I knocked. “Come in,” she said, standing aside.
I didn’t know which one it was, so I said, “Thanks,” and followed her in.
“Why are you acting weird?” she asked me.
I then realised that she was Jezza-Belle. “Jezza-Belle, I didn’t know if it was you or Mum, so next time, could you say, ‘It’s me, Jezza-Belle.’”
Jezza-Belle laughed. “Sure. What are you doing with that newspaper?”
I handed it to her, and then walked into the living room and sat on a chair. Jezza-Belle followed me in. She handed the newspaper back to me before likewise taking a seat. “It says Liliana inherited millions, but didn’t we already know that?”
I shook my head. “I thought perhaps a million or so, but not multi-millions of dollars, and it says she’s the sole heir, so she gets everything. For all I knew, she had five or so brothers or sisters.”
Jezza-Belle bit one fingernail. “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”
“I’m surprised they had such a cheap funeral.”
Jezza-Belle snorted. “Is that it? You think they should have spent more money on her father’s funeral?”
“I don’t know. Something’s worrying me about this. Okay, hear me out.”
Jezza-Belle waved me on.
I took a deep breath. “Phil married Liliana not long after his first wife died. Liliana was the heir to a multi-million dollar fortune. We know he killed his first wife. What if he murdered her to get her out of the way so he could marry Liliana?”
Jezza-Belle stood up, stretched, and then sat back down again. “Couldn’t he have simply divorced her? Divorce would be much easier than murder.”
“True. I actually hadn’t thought of that. So we know he murdered her, but we don’t know his motive. Anyway, I hadn’t got to my point. Let’s just say he murdered his first wife so he could marry Liliana, and what if he’s intending to murder Liliana so he can get all her money?”
Jezza-Belle clasped her hands. “It makes sense! I see where you’re going with this, Laurel. With two murdered wives on his hands, of course the police would look closely at his first wife’s murder. Since the hospital records now state that she suffered from sleep apnoea, her death won’t look too suspicious to them.”
“Yet if the hospital records didn’t state that,” I said, “it would look awfully suspicious. I figure he murdered you because you were the one loose end he
had to tie up.”
Jezza-Belle walked into the kitchen, and I followed her. She made herself a cup of tea.
“Tea? Is that really you, Jezza-Belle?”
“Don’t panic, Laurel, it’s me. Your mother’s body can’t handle too much coffee.”
I held up a hand. “No details, please.”
“I am puzzled by one thing,” she said. “Why would he have to murder Liliana? Couldn’t he just live off her millions?”
I shrugged. “I’ve heard she’s a terrible spendthrift. She’ll probably go through that money in no time. I think we need to look more closely at his first wife. That should give us the answer.”
Jezza-Belle let out a shriek. “Please tell me you’re not going to drag me back to see that weird old doctor with his ferrets.”
I laughed. “No, I thought we’d consult Dr Google. Let’s go back to my office and see if we can find anything.”
“But I wanted to watch Days of our Lives,” Jezza-Belle said. “I recorded yesterday’s episode.”
“Is that you, Mum?” I said, horrified.
Jezza-Belle was clearly offended. “Well, there’s no need to make fun of me. I was bored here, so I watched it once or twice, and then I got hooked. Besides, haven’t we already tried to find information on this first wife’s death?”
“Yes, we looked for information on her death, but now I’m saying that we should look for information on her. Maybe we can find something out about her that gives us a clue.”
Jezza-Belle narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”
“No idea, but we won’t find it by standing around here talking.”
Soon we were back in my office, looking through newspaper articles online. Ernie was helping us, although I use the term loosely. He leant over me and pointed to the computer screen at intervals. “Look at that!” he said. “There she is, that photo of her at the National Wool Week fashion show with those two other women. See, their names are on the bottom.” He pointed at the screen a little too closely, and his finger went right through it.
I had already seen the information for myself, but I thanked him anyway. “Have you found anything, Jezza-Belle?”
She shook her head. “And if anyone is going to find something, it would be me. Tell me the names of those women and I’ll see what I can find on them. If they’re still in town, we can go and see them and give them the third degree.”
“Leanne Fitzroy and Janice Piper,” I said. “They both looked quite elderly in the photo.”
I tapped away at the keys for another half hour or so, all the while Ernie leaning over my shoulder, but couldn’t find anything. Jezza-Belle, on the other hand, came up trumps.
“Janice Piper passed away,” she said, “and Leanne Fitzroy is in an aged care facility.”
“Please tell me she’s at the one in town,” I said.
Jezza-Belle looked mighty pleased with herself. “As a matter of fact, she is. She lived in France for a few years with her son’s family, and then they all came back to town. Last year, she moved to the aged care facility.”
I thought it over for a few minutes. “Can anyone just walk in off the street and visit people in aged care facilities?”
Jezza-Belle stood up. “Come on, there’s no time like the present. We’ll just say we’re friends of an old friend of hers, and if they won’t let us see her, then I’ll just hack into their records and turn us into her nieces. If that happens, we’d have to make sure we went there when there was a different receptionist on duty, of course.”
It seemed like a plan. It was the only one we had. The aged care facility looked like a blue brick house from the outside, but when we drove down what seemed like a driveway beside the house, it opened onto a large facility which looked pleasant enough.
To my relief, the receptionist simply asked us to sign a book, and told us that Leanne was either watching TV with the other residents, or was sitting in the rose garden at the back of the facility.
“That was easy,” Jezza-Belle whispered in my ear. It didn’t prove to be so easy finding Leanne, because she wasn’t sitting with the other residents. As we didn’t know what she looked like, having only seen one old, grainy photo, we had to ask several people. No one had seen her for a while, so we walked to the rose garden at the back of the facility.
There, sitting on a wooden bench that was built into the concrete wall, was an elderly lady. She looked frail, except for the fact she was knitting at what seemed to me like an impossible speed. On the way over, Jezza-Belle and I had decided to level with her. After all, we couldn’t think of anything better.
“Hello, Leanne Fitzroy?” I asked her.
She looked surprised, and nodded.
“I’m Laurel, and this is my mother, Thelma.”
She looked at us with shrewd eyes. “Do I know you? I’m not going to your church.”
I suppressed a chuckle. Mum must’ve had that look about her, even when she was possessed by a punk rocker. “I don’t go to church,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind us visiting you, but a woman was murdered recently, and we think you might have some information that could possibly help.”
I had expected her to look dismayed, but she clapped her hands with delight. “What fun. I can’t see that I can be any help to you, but please tell me all about it.”
Jezza-Belle had agreed to let me do all the talking, but she disregarded that and launched right into it. “A woman was murdered recently, not long after Phil Palmer asked her to falsify his first wife’s hospital records. He asked her to change the records to reflect that his wife had sleep apnoea.”
Leanne stopped knitting. “Julia? Julia Palmer?”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. We suspect that Phil Palmer murdered Julia. He didn’t want anyone to look into her death, so he paid the recently murdered woman to hack into the hospital records to state that Julia had sleep apnoea.”
“Julia didn’t have sleep apnoea!” Leanne said. “You know, I always thought Phil had done away with her. Are you two police officers?”
“No,” Jezza-Belle and I said in unison. “We’re good friends of the murdered woman,” I added.
Leanne stuck her knitting needles through a ball of wool and set it beside her on the seat. “That’s always bothered me. Although Julia was many years younger, we were firm friends. It was strange how she died, and Phil had her cremated. I thought that was suspicious, as Julia always said she didn’t want to be cremated.”
Jezza-Belle and I exchanged glances.
Leanne was still talking. “I even went to the police, but they just thought I was a silly old woman.”
“So you actually thought he murdered Julia?” Jezza-Belle asked her.
Leanne nodded. “Phil was always money hungry, and Julia refused to divorce him.”
“Why?” I asked her.
“She was madly in love with him, sad to say. She would have done anything for him. When they married, she was quite a wealthy woman. He went through all her money, but she still didn’t see the light.”
“One thing’s been puzzling us,” I said. “If he wanted to get rid of Julia, why didn’t he simply divorce her? He didn’t need her consent to divorce her.”
Leanne shook her head. “It’s awfully sad, really. Julia was quite obsessed with Phil. She knew he had embezzled money from his previous employer, so she blackmailed him to stay with her. She suspected he was having affairs, but that only made her more obsessed with him.”
Jezza-Belle nodded slowly. “So by killing his wife, not only did Phil do away with the blackmail, but it left him free to marry the wealthy socialite, Liliana, as he was already having an affair with her.”
“I like it here,” Leanne said. “I have my own room with an ensuite bathroom, and I even have my little dog.”
For the first time, I noticed a shaggy, little white dog sitting under a rose bush. He was fast asleep.
“The one thing that’s worried me,” Leanne continued, “is Julia’s death. There was no reason for her to
die, a young woman like that.” She reached out a frail hand for mine. “Dear, promise me you’ll call me and let me know if you find out anything.”
Chapter 16
Jezza-Belle and I were sitting in my office at the funeral home with Ernie.
“So you’re pretty sure that’s what’s happened?” Ernie asked us.
We both nodded. “He wanted me to hack into the hospital records and falsify them, five years after Julia died,” Jezza-Belle said. “The death was considered to be of natural causes at the time, so why would he want the records falsified five years later?”
“So we have to consider the possibility that Phil might be about to murder Liliana, and he doesn’t want two suspicious deaths in a row,” I added.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to invite Liliana here?” Ernie said. “How can you break it to her gently? Are you going to come straight out and tell her that her husband might be trying to kill her to get her money and that he murdered his first wife?”
There was no chance to answer, because the doorbell rang. Anxiety suddenly overcame me, and I took several deep breaths to try to calm myself.
I showed Liliana straight into the office, and she nodded to Jezza-Belle. “Why the mystery? What did you want to see me about? You said there wasn’t a problem with the account for my father’s funeral.”
“No, nothing like that.” I gestured to a comfortable chair opposite my desk. As soon as she was seated, I continued. “There’s no easy way to say this, so please forgive me for being forthright. I hope I’m wrong, but I just have to come straight out and tell you what we believe to be the case.”
Liliana pursed her lips and frowned but said nothing.
I let out a deep breath, and then launched straight into it. “Please forgive me for saying so, but we think your husband might have been involved in a recent murder.” Liliana gasped, but did not speak, so I pushed on. “The victim was a close friend of ours, which is why we’re involved. Your husband was a client of the victim’s, and he recently asked her to hack into the hospital records and falsify them to say that his first wife suffered from sleep apnoea.”
