The Practice Baby

by LM Ardor

  Dee kept going; she checked all the pockets and pulled out the drawers to see if anything was attached to the backs or underneath. There was nothing. She bent over to check the shoeboxes on the floor. They were all frustratingly filled with perfectly cleaned shoes, nothing more. Any life must be associated with more detritus than this. Where would someone as obsessive as Tom hide things? The edges of the cheap synthetic carpet in the room were firmly sealed down but an earlier version, dark orange and brown, covered the floor of the wardrobe. It was hard to see in the shadows but the edges looked as though they could be loose.

  In the cramped space between the bed and the wardrobe, Dee crouched and twisted to reach the spot where she saw the carpet didn’t quite reach the wall. Her fingers struggled to catch the sharp edge of the hard synthetic carpet. Her fingernails couldn’t make it move.

  ‘Damn,’ she said out loud. As she spoke she heard a tap on the front door.

  She froze, instantly guilty; everybody, except of course Leah, wanted all this over with, wanted it to be left at ‘natural causes’. Dee felt like an intruder into the grief of others, interfering, making trouble. She was about to be sprung.

  The sound came again. Who would be here? Hopefully they didn’t have a key. If she stayed still, they’d go away. Who would be interested? Not the killer surely. Why come back after all this time? Gruesome scenes of a killer with a knife flashed through her brain. She decided to be brave and pushed herself up onto her knees. It would be useful to know who was hanging about. Perhaps Leah. Once they stopped knocking, Dee could look out the peephole and see who it was as they went down the stairs.

  The sound of the door opening sent a chill through her. Was she about to find out who had caused Tom’s death? She dropped back to the floor and wriggled under the bed. It was a squeeze; her bottom only just made it under the low bedrail.

  The bedspread reached almost to the floor, it was displaced where she’d slipped under the bed. She kicked it straight with her foot and pulled her skirt away from the edge. The person was opening and closing kitchen cupboards. Then she heard a creak on the stairs; only three stairs up to the bedroom. Her heart made so much noise surely whoever was in the flat would hear it if they came into the bedroom.

  Her handbag was slung across her chest and something hard was pressed into her hip—her phone. She stiffened. Don’t let me be one of the idiots in the scary movies who dies because their phone rings and gives them away. She flicked the switch to silent. She wanted to swallow but her mouth and tongue were too dry. She was rigid and held her breath. The footsteps were at the bedroom door. How long could she hold her breath or her bladder? Whoever it was must be deaf if they couldn’t hear the thump of her heart. They wouldn’t look under the bed. Who looks under beds in scary movies? She hadn’t looked under the bed. Why would the killer?

  A murderer, someone who had already killed one person, was a couple of feet away from her. She heard the drawer of the bedside table opened and then closed. The feet were scratchy on the carpet. They came around the bed towards the wardrobe. At the end of the bed the bedspread was tucked in and a foot came into view. An emerald green boat shoe with a bare black ankle sticking out of it.

  Raj. She was about to yell at him for frightening her but had a better idea. She waited till both feet were facing away from her and reached out to grip her fingers around his right ankle.

  There was an enormous scream. Raj jumped several inches up in the air and fell down onto the bed. Dee threw the bedspread back and scrambled out as Raj positioned himself Ninja-style against the bedhead, arms up—ready to fight.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s only me,’ Dee said as she knelt against the bed.

  ‘You nearly killed me.’ Raj panted with his eyelids pulled back and his mouth open to gulp in air. He was barely able to speak.

  ‘Sorry, oh I’m so sorry, Raj—I thought you were the killer. I was terrified. When I realised it was you I couldn’t resist the temptation. Sorry.’

  ‘You don’t look sorry. Stop smiling. It’s not funny.’

  Dee got up onto the bed. Raj’s breathing had slowed.

  ‘It was a bit funny,’ she said as she leant against him. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Janelle said you were doing a home visit here. I thought I might catch you. You haven’t been easy to get hold of, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that. It all seems hopeless and I didn’t want to bring you down too. But how’d you find me here?’

  ‘Your car’s outside so I waited, then had a wander and recognised the way to Tom’s flat. The key was in the lock. You must have left it there.’

  23.

  Raj found a single bottle of beer in the fridge. He and Dee sat at Tom’s kitchen table with half a glass each. All the things—the packet of sugar and the three cans of Rosella tomato soup in the cupboard, the jar of marmalade which Tom had once used—were now just objects. They were second-hand junk, devoid of the purpose infused in them by the needs of a living human. Tom’s absence was profound. Neither of them could speak of it.

  ‘Assuming you’re right and it was murder, what do we have?’ asked Raj after a long empty pause.

  ‘Tom was onto something last time he saw me. And Leah said he’d been to Orange for research in the week before he died.’

  ‘And it couldn’t be asthma?’

  ‘There’s no way he’d let it get so bad. Tom always had his medications plus backups. He checked and charted his breathing at least three times every day. If there was a problem he knew exactly how to control it with extra medications, inhaled and oral corticosteroids.’

  ‘What about the autopsy report and the sedatives in his blood? Couldn’t they make him too sleepy to take his medications?’

  ‘That’s one of the things that makes me sure it wasn’t asthma. Tom hated drugs. There’s no way he’d take anything and he never got a script from me.’

  ‘Dee, they sell that stuff on the street in the Cross—maybe he was depressed and wanted some relief.’

  ‘He was excited. He had a girlfriend who wanted to have his baby and his work was going well. No, I know him—he wouldn’t take drugs.’ Dee caught herself saying ‘know’ not ‘knew’. If she didn’t do something this unbearable grief would be all she had.

  Raj, ever logical, went on. ‘So we have several mysteries: one, why didn’t he take the extra medications; two, why were there sedatives in his system; three, what was he on to; and four, who didn’t want that exposed? Five, who would profit by his death or be protected by it?’

  Raj typed as he spoke, keeping notes on his iPad.

  ‘And six, how did Tom die?’

  ‘I’ll search out his medications,’ said Dee, ‘see if there are any sedatives; you try to find where there’d be hidden documents.’

  ‘Tom wouldn’t have physical documents. They’d be on computer, backed up and encrypted. Encrypted properly—the level of encryption that can’t be broken. If there were physical documents the killer would have removed them. I’ll check the computers, but I don’t think I’ll get anywhere.’

  Dee checked the fridge. Out-of-date milk with yellow broccoli and mouldy carrots in the crisper were the only perishables. Next to the fridge the bottle of prednisone Dee had seen when they found the body was still on the bench. She tipped out the plain white tablets to count them: sixty, they were all there. She checked the label. These were dispensed the day she’d last seen Tom. Why would they be opened but not used?

  ‘Here’s the rest of his medications.’ Raj was bent down to the bottom kitchen drawer. Inside Dee could see several boxes of Ventolin with other bottles and packets.

  ‘Why use an empty inhaler when there are three spares here?’ asked Dee. ‘And the yellow powder on the puffer and the pillow look like pollen. I got a sample.’

  ‘Even if it’s something he’s allergic to, it doesn’t prove how it got here. Tom could have brushed against it, not noticed. There’s any number of possible explanations.’

  The quest
ions were piling up. Raj sat the drawer on the kitchen bench.

  ‘Stop,’ Dee called out and handed him gloves. ‘That could be evidence.’

  ‘I don’t think what we find will be accepted as evidence.’ Raj rolled his eyes.

  ‘Just wear the gloves.’

  He put them on. Dee picked up the Ventolin packets. All of them were sealed. Tom had spares. Why didn’t he get a full puffer?

  Dee took a photo of the sealed boxes and the prednisone with the tablets spread out to show that there was a full complement. There were no rohypnol or empty packets anywhere. No unwashed dishes or glasses on the bench.

  ‘If he took sedatives wouldn’t he wash them down with something? I know he was obsessive but …’ Raj said.

  ‘There’s a water bottle in the fridge. Even Tom might have drunk straight from that.’

  ‘And it might have been drugged …’

  ‘In which case whoever drugged the water would have cleaned it out and replaced it.’

  ‘Or removed any other contaminated item.’

  ‘Okay, okay. The possibilities are endless,’ Dee said finally.

  It felt like a dead end.

  ‘What about the computers?’ Dee asked. ‘Thank goodness Skye was too grief-stricken to turn off the power.’

  On Tom’s desk was an array of machines, modems, hard drives, a large monitor and two smaller screens all winking with orange, yellow and green lights.

  ‘Tom was a hacker. His passwords would be uncrackable. To even find out if it’s crackable could take months. Where’s his laptop?’

  ‘Leah probably has it. When we were all at the flat, Leah disappeared while no one was watching. She could easily have slipped a laptop under her arm. Tom might have given it to her. I can’t remember if it was here when he …’ Dee didn’t want to say it again. ‘… when we found him, but she disappeared from the scene while no one was looking.’

  ‘We should try to find her and it. He’ll have left clues.’ Raj shook his head. ‘No one as obsessive as Tom would let important information be unfindable if something happened to him.’

  A bubble of hope lifted Dee. ‘You’re right! He was obsessive about backups like everything else. He told me he was a “belt and braces type” when he came to get the forms for the insurance.’ Dee stopped, felt moist around the eyes.

  He’d been so happy that day and later with Leah. He wanted to have a baby—with every precaution of course. Dee swallowed; the picture of him excited when he came to show off Leah was a better one to keep in her head than the not-him-anymore one from the flat. His shy smile as he pushed back his hair to look at his lover—Dee decided to keep that image to block the horrible ones from last week. She was pleased he’d had someone to love him.

  ‘It’s hard to get into his head,’ Raj said. ‘If there was danger, and it seems likely he was concerned there was, then he’s not going to put Leah at risk by giving her the key to everything. We don’t know though how much danger he thought there was.’

  Dee followed on the argument. ‘Leah says she doesn’t know anything but if they both used the laptop he might have given it to her. Maybe he thought it would be safe with her? Or maybe he thought it was safe because there’s nothing on it? She said he wouldn’t talk about what he found after he went to Orange. One thing she does remember, because it was odd, was that he talked a few times about the crisper. Said the crisper was the key.’

  ‘Tom wouldn’t store passwords anywhere so obvious. Also he’d have off-site backup of any important data,’ Raj said as Dee held the door of the fridge open.

  Raj pulled out the plastic vegetable drawer.

  He picked up the dead broccoli and carrots.

  ‘Put them on the counter,’ said Dee. ‘Who knows what he might have done.’

  Raj rolled his eyes but obeyed.

  The crisper was a basic plastic drawer at the bottom of the fridge. Nothing was stuck under the rim. Dee dissected the vegetables into one-millimetre sticks—nothing. Raj looked up the serial number of the part on his iPad and tried the number in the computers but no luck.

  Dee checked the time. She’d been at the flat for over an hour. Raj’s impatient foot tapping and jiggling was hard to ignore.

  ‘Time to give up,’ he said again.

  ‘Okay—if you’ll work on the computers?’

  ‘It could take months to crack his passwords. I’d need access to these for a long time.’

  ‘Would you be willing to buy them from Skye? She’d have no use for them. How about I ring her?’

  ‘Sure but isn’t she pissed off with you about the autopsy?’

  ‘It’s okay, she just needed to be angry with someone on the day. That wasn’t really about me. She gave me the key to get in here.’

  ‘I thought no one else had a key. Maybe it’s Tom’s one?’

  Dee walked to the front door and took the key out of the lock.

  ‘This looks old but it’s not well used. Maybe it was a spare? I’ll ask Skye when I take it back.’

  ‘How did you get her to give it to you?’

  ‘I said I’d lost an earring here.’

  ‘But you never wear earrings.’

  ‘That’s why I thought it was fair play. It’s such an obvious lie that she must be okay with it.’

  ‘Ahhhh!’ said Raj. Then, ‘Yes, I’m fine with buying the computers.’

  *

  ‘Hello, Skye, you were right. There’s nothing here,’ said Dee.

  ‘I know.’ Skye sniffed.

  ‘I think someone should check out Tom’s computer equipment. I’ve got Raj, his old boss, here. He might be willing to buy it from you. I’ll put you on speaker.’

  Skye started sobbing in earnest. In broken words she managed to say, ‘Well you have to ask Leah.’ Skye spat out the name. ‘Apparently the girlfriend he’s known for five minutes gets half the money from his life insurance. Glen reckons she can claim to be next of kin and get everything else he owns because she lived with him for five minutes.’

  Raj raised his eyebrows and Dee shrugged.

  It seemed unlikely that Tom had much to leave beyond the insurance. It was typical of Tom to have all eventualities covered. Even the possibility that something could happen to him. Was there a will? Now wasn’t the time to ask Skye.

  Dee was sure he wouldn’t have died without a fail-safe backup plan for someone to have access to his discoveries. Hopefully Leah would have the information. Or would the information put her in danger?

  In the background they could hear a regular thump, thump, thump. Dee recognised the sound as Charlie repetitively hitting something solid; possibly his own forehead. The phone was put down. In spite of her scattiness, Skye was committed to her autistic son. Dee had some sympathy for Skye’s aversion to the unknown girlfriend who turned up to claim a part in Tom’s life. At the flat, Leah had stood alone and made no attempt to talk to Skye or Dee. She wasn’t easy to like.

  ‘For God’s sake take him into his room and shut the door,’ Skye called to someone else. The thumps receded. ‘No, you stay in there with him,’ she shouted. The phone was picked up again.

  ‘Sorry, Charlie hates me to be on the phone.’

  ‘About Leah—you knew he was close to her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah—$250,000 close. Charlie’s going to need care for the rest of his life and that new-found friend gets as much as his disabled brother. She had him twisted around her little finger.’

  Dee wanted to know when and how Skye found out about the insurance but the subject was too inflammatory.

  ‘Skye, about the computers—is it all right if I get a computer expert to look at them?’

  ‘You can’t open them,’ Skye said with some satisfaction. Tom was her son and she wasn’t about to give away access to him. ‘Glen tried to open them but he didn’t have the passwords. He reckons they’re worth a few thousand.’

  Dee looked at Raj. He nodded.

  ‘Yes, it will be difficult without the passwords. Do you want m
e to have Tom’s boss try? Then he could give them back to you to sell.’

  Raj typed something on his phone and held the screen up to Dee. She read it aloud. ‘It could take weeks, even months to crack the passwords.’

  Dee went on, ‘But unless it’s done no one can use the computers. You wouldn’t be able to sell them.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Skye finally.

  24.

  Christmas Eve was frantic. Everyone wanted to sort out medical problems they’d had for weeks before the holidays. Then, from the mid-afternoon, no one came. The shops would be horrible, desperate people trawling through last-minute tat to find presents that no one needed or wanted.

  Janelle handed Dee the mail that arrived late at 3 pm. She walked back to her room to process it. She loved Christmas but this year it would be a struggle. It was hard to feel good about anything since she had found Tom dead. No more Christmases for him. No baby, no life or love with Leah, no chance to make sure Charlie was okay.

  She had lost the joy of seeing his name in the appointments list, his smile and the toss of his head to move his black curls out of his eyes. The five-day-old baby who looked into her eyes and trusted she would keep him safe was gone.

  This year was Rob’s turn to host the family Christmas but he wheedled his way into having the celebration at Dee’s. The terrace in Chippendale was too small since the twins and he’d promised to do everything and to clean up. Dee agreed rather than have the kids miss out on their father and half-siblings on Christmas Day. The twins were just six months old and cute as kittens. It would be a fuss but fun. Just the kind of gathering Dee had always wanted when she was growing up.

  Once Auntie Alice died, there was just her and Mum at the big dining room table in paper hats from the Christmas crackers, a mass of food spread in front of them. Ham, turkey, homemade Christmas pudding and mince tarts were mandatory. With only two people to eat they were faced with leftovers to New Year and beyond.

  Mum was gone too now.

  All the griefs Dee had suffered in the past came back: her father, who she barely remembered, stuffy old Auntie Alice, even Mami, her friend from uni who drowned when they were in fourth year, but especially Mum. Mum who had struggled for her daughter’s success and then died too young to enjoy it. All the grief was still there strong as when she had first lost them. It felt good to let the pain through—its intensity honoured the importance of the loss.