by C. A. Larmer
Alicia squinted. “So you really never met Kat? She never came to the Rozelle group?”
“No, I told you that.” Then it must have hit Zara, and she said, “Oh, you thought I was fibbing? Protecting your friend? God, I’m not Trevor! I couldn’t care less if anyone knew I was attending AA. In fact, I use it to my advantage, darling.” Her eyes twinkled. “Gets a lot of sympathy votes from the guys. Some are just glad they don’t have to spend a fortune buying me expensive cocktails.”
She laughed, then remembering what Alicia said, added, “I’m sorry about your friend, really I am. But I honestly never met her.”
She took another sip of her juice, then had a fresh thought. “You know, I hate to speak ill of the dead and all, but maybe your friend was the one fibbing about AA. Lots of people do. We had an intervention for my bestie, Hannah, about oh a year or so back. She promised to attend meetings. Swore to get help. Never did of course. Told everyone she did, but I know otherwise. I’ve just let it go for now. You can’t push people, honey. They have to push themselves. You can’t save people from themselves.”
She said it like it was a mantra, and Alicia nodded along.
“Reminds me of poor Mary,” Zara continued.
“Mary and Brian, Mary?” she asked.
Zara frowned. “Oh, Mary and Brian aren’t a couple. Goodness whatever gave you that idea?”
“Just the way you were talking the other night. You said they’d both dropped out…”
“Pure coincidence.” She chuckled. “Mary would have a fit if she heard you say she was with Brian! No, Mary’s all class. Brian, well, he’s just a violent thug.”
“Yeah, about that. How do you know he’s violent?”
“He told us! Boasted about it, in fact, like it was some badge of honour. Said he was only at AA to get off some domestic violence charge, said he was told it would stand up better in court or something. But he seemed to hold it against his poor wife, like it was all her fault he was sitting there, listening to us lot.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t stand the odious little man.” She smiled wistfully. “I mean, I know what Trevor was saying, ‘You can’t stop violence with violence,’ but I was secretly glad when Eliot beat him to a pulp. Brian deserved everything he got.”
Alicia dropped her coffee cup with a clunk. “What?”
“What?” Zara repeated, batting her eyelids.
“Did you just say Eliot?”
Zara reached a hand to her lips. “Oh God, there I go again. Don’t mention that to Trevor, he’ll have a coronary! I shouldn’t be talking out of school, but, well you’re one of us now, aren’t you?”
“Eliot Mumford?” Alicia was still trying to catch up.
“Well, I don’t know his surname. I mean, I might be liberal with first names, but surnames? I draw the line at that.” Her eyes squinted. “You know him, huh?”
“He was married to the murder victim I was just talking about.”
“Your friend? Wow, okay, so that was what Trevor was going on about last night. We knew there’d been a death in the family, but he didn’t give us the deets.” She thought about it. “Small world, huh? That must be why your friend’s name sounded so familiar. Eliot used to call her his ‘little kitten.’ I never met her though, not properly you understand? None of us socialise outside of AA. That would be sacrilege!”
Alicia held up a hand. “Hang on, now I’m really confused. So Kat was a member of the Rozelle group, right?”
“No, I told you that.”
“So how do you know Eliot?”
Zara looked as mixed up as Alicia felt. “Through AA! He’s the member of our group. Didn’t he tell you that?”
Chapter 29
“No, he did not tell me that,” came Jackson’s grumpy reply when Alicia repeated this conversation over the phone to him an hour later.
She was back at work, attempting to catch up on some content for a parenting website this time, but could not get Zara’s words out of her head, and after unsuccessfully calling several book club members (all busily catching up on work too, she imagined), she finally got a return call from her boyfriend.
He was not happy to hear about her clandestine trip to AA with Perry and told her as much.
“Look, you can stick me in the naughty corner later,” she had said, cutting him off. “But what I’ve discovered may change your mind.”
“Go on then. It better be good.”
And it was. So much so, he wanted her to report to his office pronto.
“And bring that ratbag Perry. This needs to go straight to Singho. She’s in charge.” He paused. “And she’ll be furious when she finds out what you’ve done.”
“But we—”
“Look, I’ll try to smooth it over before you get here. How soon can you come?”
Alicia groaned. “You’re not exactly enticing me in.”
“Your fault for sticking that nose where it don’t belong.” He softened his tone. “Come on, it’s time to face the music. I promise she can bark, but she won’t bite.”
In fact, the first thing Detective Inspector Singh did when Alicia and Perry presented themselves at her office door less than an hour later was to snap both their heads off.
“I cannot believe you took it upon yourselves to interfere with a police investigation,” she began, the previous Sunday’s friendly tone now but a distant memory.
“We’re sorry,” Alicia began, but she cut her off.
“I doubt that. Jacko has already informed me of your interference in previous cases. I have a feeling this is standard procedure for you lot. Who the hell do you think you are? Do you have any idea how you may have compromised this investigation? If my perp ends up getting off on a technicality that you guys have brought about, I will throw the book at you both—and I’m not talking a bloody Agatha Christie novel!”
Alicia recoiled, but Perry simply shrugged and stood his ground.
“You’re right, DI Singh, it was terribly remiss of us,” he said matter-of-factly, and she flashed her eyes at him. “Since it was all obtained illegally, we’ll be sure to keep it to ourselves and head back to work.” He glanced behind him to the door.
“Don’t get smart with me, Mr Gordon,” Indira snapped back, then took a deep, calming breath.
Alicia could tell her sense of outrage was wrestling with her natural curiosity, and she was eager to hear what they had discovered.
Indira exhaled loudly and waved them into the two chairs in front of her desk, saying, “You’re not going anywhere. Sit down.”
She then picked up her desk phone and stabbed some numbers in. A second later she said, “Get your butt in here. You might as well hear what your interfering buddies have got to say.”
Then she hung up and turned back to Perry and Alicia, the latter withering further under Indira’s furious gaze.
Over the next twenty minutes, the two friends filled Indira and Jackson in on everything they had learned at AA. They took them through their various conversations, and then Alicia relayed exactly what Zara had told her over coffee earlier that day.
“So this Zara woman says it was Eliot Mumford who had signed up to AA, not Kat?”
Alicia nodded. “She only knew his first name, but it has to be the same Eliot. She said he called his wife ‘kitten,’ so it has to be him.”
Indira looked at Jackson. “So why’d he lie about that?”
Jackson shrugged. “Why indeed.”
“I guess it is kind of embarrassing,” said Perry, and Indira glanced back at him.
“What?”
“Well, it’s hard enough admitting you have a drinking problem, must be even harder to admit you fell off the wagon the night your wife was killed. Maybe he feels bad about that. Maybe if he’d been sober, he could have protected her.”
Indira cocked her head to one side. “Well thanks for that, Dr Gordon. Last I checked you were a palaeontologist not a psychiatrist.”
Perry folded his arms with a huff. He’d had just about enough of th
is snippy detective. He and Alicia had just handed her an extraordinary lead, yet all she wanted to do was bite their heads off.
“You were happy enough to ask for our views last Sunday,” he said, mostly under his breath.
She ignored that and said, “I still don’t see what any of it has got to do with Kat Mumford’s murder.” Then she added quickly, “And I’m referring this question to Detective Jackson now. Thanks, Doc.”
Perry huffed loudly again, and Jackson tried not to smile. He was used to Indira’s temper, it rolled off him like water.
“Well, it proves Eliot Mumford’s a liar for starters. Makes you wonder what else he’s been lying about.”
She nodded. Sighed. “We need to speak to him again.”
“I also think we should get Alicia’s new bestie in,” Jackson said, adding, “Zara from AA. Let’s show her some mug shots of Scotty and Davo. I’m wondering whether one of them might be Brian, under another name.”
Indira held a finger up. “Remind me who Brian is again.”
Perry spoke up. “He’s the ‘violent hothead’ who was beating his wife up.”
“And more importantly,” added Alicia, a little meekly lest Indira jump down her throat too, “he’s the one Eliot had a fight with.”
Indira glanced at Jackson, and he smiled.
“Exactly. Maybe Brian is really Scotty or Davo? Maybe he didn’t like being walloped by a trendy hipster and decided to take his revenge out on the trendy hipster’s wife? Sounds like picking on women was more his style anyway. Maybe he followed them to the park or just spotted them there by coincidence and saw his chance to get even.”
Finally Indira smiled. As far-fetched as it all was, she liked the sound of that.
Unfortunately for the homicide squad, Indira’s smile did not last long. No sooner had Zara Cossington-Smythe been brought in, looking both outraged and delighted by the request to identify a suspect, she quickly informed them that “Bully Brian from AA looks nothing—I repeat, nothing!—like the two men from the film night.”
Jackson had earlier swept Alicia and Perry from the office, telling them it might be best to put a brake on their “meddling.”
“Indira’s not like me,” he said as he shepherded them towards the elevators. “She likes to play by the rules.”
“You think?” Perry spat back at him.
“We’ll behave,” Alicia said more gently, not daring to mention that Lynette was booked to pour beers with Brandon the very next night. She wondered how easily Lynette could cancel that gig and whether she really wanted her to.
Once Zara arrived, Jackson showed her straight to Indira’s office where she produced the mug shots of Scott Jalezic and David Crow.
“Who are they?” Zara enquired.
“We’re hoping you can tell us that,” Indira said. “Do you know or at least recognise either of these men?”
“Hardly,” she said. “Should I?”
Indira’s smile deflated, and Jackson sighed. He was really hoping his hunch would pay off and not just because it would mean case closed. It might also redeem Alicia in his partner’s eyes.
Indira was saying, “So neither of these men goes to your AA? You can tell us, Zara. This is a murder enquiry.”
“I would tell you, honestly. But I’ve never seen either of them in my life.”
“So neither of them is this man Brian whom you say was beating up his wife?”
Zara blushed. “I am going to kill Alicia! She’s going to get me in so much trouble with Trevor. I thought she was a genuine alcoholic. She’s such a liar!”
“Just answer the question please, Ms Cossington-Smythe.”
“No. Urgh. Brian’s like a weedy thing, scrappy goatee. I mean he’s got similar tatts, but he’s super skinny. Was a muso, I think. I guess you’d find him handsome if you were into sinewy Iggy Pop types. Bit too punk rock for me. Can’t say I’m exactly sorry he’s dropped out.”
A bell began clanging away in Jackson’s head. He said, “You don’t happen to know Brian’s surname do you?”
She gave him a pointed look. “We don’t use surnames. Does no one understand how AA works?”
“Okay, but this Brian guy. You say he dropped out of AA? Since when?”
She thought about it. “I guess I last saw him, oh…” She tapped her long nails on the tabletop. “Let me think. He always comes nights. He wasn’t there last night or the Thursday before that. But I think he was there the Tuesday before that.”
“So he’s been missing now for over ten days?”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s missing as such. He’s dropped out. Most people do from time to time. It’s standard procedure.”
Nah, thought Jackson, it’s too much of a coincidence. “And his name is Brian? Skinny, late thirties, you think?”
“Something like that.”
Indira was watching Jackson closely, her eyebrows arched, but he ignored her and asked, “You told Alicia he had a wife. Did Brian wear a wedding band and a fake Rolex?”
She shrugged. “Never got that close to notice.” Then she glanced at Indira. “Thank God.”
Indira was still staring at Jackson. “What’s going on, Jacko?”
He waved her off. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
She eyed him suspiciously, then turned back to Zara. She had a hunch of her own. “So the guy who runs the meetings, his name is Trevor? Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Does he have grey hair? In his mid to late sixties?” Zara nodded. “Can you tell me, does he have a moustache?”
Now she shook her head.
“Did he ever have a moustache?”
“Not since I’ve known him, and I’ve been going for almost six months.”
Indira said, “Fine, you can go, Zara. Thanks very much for your time.”
Later, when Zara had left and it was just the two of them chewing on Styrofoam coffee cups, Jackson smiled at Indira and said, “So my earlier theory that Mo Man could be Kat’s sponsor doesn’t sound so crazy to you now, huh? You think Mo Man might be this guy Trevor?”
She said, “He could’ve been wearing a fake moustache. That might be why Eliot never noticed him. Only one way to find out.” She stood up.
“AA are big on keeping secrets,” Jackson reminded her. “They’ll just slam the door on you.”
Indira smiled. “Ah but I know someone else who’s pretty secretive, and he wouldn’t dare slam the door on this gorgeous face.”
Chapter 30
Eliot Mumford was happy enough to open his door to DI Singh and barely bat an eyelid when she accused him of lying about AA. Perhaps he had been anticipating her questions, or perhaps it really was of “little consequence,” which is what he insisted over and over as he poured both detectives a glass of water from the dispenser on the front of his enormous, two-door fridge.
He had cleaned the place up considerably since their last visit and looked like he’d finally showered and changed his clothes. He had a woollen beanie on his head, despite the warm weather, and his beard looked freshly trimmed.
Perhaps he was now in the acceptance stage, thought Jackson, eyeing him off.
“So why did you lie to us about AA, Eliot?” Indira was asking as he handed her a glass.
“Why do you think? I was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?”
He pulled out a stool and sat down. “Yes, of course. Don’t you think I haven’t been beating myself up about this all week? I’m a drunk, Indira, an alcoholic. Happy now? And if I hadn’t fallen off the wagon so spectacularly the other night, my beautiful little kitten might still be alive.”
“Why all the secrecy?” said Jackson, whose BS monitor was buzzing loudly. There was something about this guy that was starting to grate.
“Like I said, I was embarrassed.”
“You lied to us.”
He shrugged. “A little white lie.” He smiled sweetly at them both.
“A bloody big fat one I’d say,” said Jackson,
and Indira held a hand up.
She said gently but firmly, “Listen Eliot, we are trying very hard to bring your wife’s killer to justice. We’ve been working around the clock. It really doesn’t help her cause, or yours for that matter, to have people lie to us. I don’t care how trivial or irrelevant or embarrassing you might think it is. You should have told us the truth on that.”
Eliot looked suitably chastened. He dropped his head to the side and looked up at her through thick brown lashes. “I’m really sorry, honestly Indira. It was stupid of me. I get that. I just didn’t think it had anything to do with Kat’s death, so I didn’t want to muddy the waters.”
“Muddy the waters? It’s practically a mudslide!” Jackson said. “We think someone from your AA may have some involvement in your wife’s death.”
He straightened up. “Really? Who would do such a thing?”
“Tell us about Brian.”
“Brian?” Eliot blinked rapidly, his eyes darting between them. “From AA? What’s that dirtbag got to do with this?”
“Is it correct that you got into a fight with him after an AA meeting one night?”
Eliot glanced between the detectives again, looking confused.
Indira said, “Just answer the question please, no lies this time.”
“Sure, I slapped him around a bit. Lock me up if you want, but at least it was a fair fight. I wasn’t half his size like his poor fiancée or wife or whatever she is.”
“Did you see him beat her up?”
He hesitated. “Well, no. I’ve never met the woman, but he told us all about it in the sessions. Bragged about it!”
“So how do you know she was half his size?” Jackson asked
“I don’t. I’m just guessing. He was a bully. Look, I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I just wanted him to get a taste of his own medicine, that’s all.”
