by C. A. Larmer
Of course if that didn’t pan out, there was always the champagne flute. Alicia would wager a bet that the unknown fingerprints would turn out to be Maz Olden’s. After all, it was really Maz who had bought that sparkling wine, not poor Kat.
Meantime, with all that subtle shifting and shoving—by Eliot in the first half and Maz in the second—it’s no wonder Kat’s camisole strap was torn and her skirt was out of place. They had probably not even factored that in, but it worked in their favour, adding an element of menace that pointed away from the loving husband and towards a nefarious stranger.
That was just good luck for Eliot.
By the time the film was over and Eliot was making his presence known, chatting to the book club about the plot, Maz had morphed back into a heavily pregnant woman, sitting up on her pink blanket, looking sickly and glum.
After saying his goodbyes to the club, Eliot then returned to wake up his wife, pretending to discover her dead body and reeling back to begin Act 3: A Man in Shock.
“He played that part brilliantly,” said Indira now, shaking her head as she polished off her beer. “If what you say is true, both Eliot and Maz are the most accomplished actors I’ve ever come across.”
“I think desperation will make you do anything,” said Alicia. “And Maz was desperate. She clearly believed that Brian was going to kill her and her baby, so she acted to save her life and the life of her unborn child.”
“Fat lot of good that’s going to do either one of them when she’s locked up in prison,” said Claire. “I can’t believe she agreed to do it.”
“Eliot can be pretty persuasive,” said Jackson, “batting his big brown eyelashes and stroking his handsome jaw.” He tried not to direct that comment at his colleague, who had seemed a little too quick to believe the victim’s handsome husband. “He obviously convinced Maz that they had to work together to save themselves. In any case, I’m sure Maz felt she had little choice. Maybe she really couldn’t escape Brian and thought it was the only way to save her baby. Or perhaps she was just seeking retribution.” He shook his head. “Perhaps Reverend Joves got it half right. Except Maz was the real Jezebel here, not Kat.”
At that stage the plan was less Agatha Christie and more Alfred Hitchcock, Alicia noted.
Indira nodded. “Yes, Strangers On a Train, we were saying that yesterday.”
“Except it wasn’t so much that they killed each other’s partners as helped each other out,” explained Jackson. “We still have to get our heads around that. Personally, I suspect Maz arranged to meet Brian at the deserted rooftop of that old shopping mall the afternoon of the film night. I don’t know how she lured him there, but I suspect she had a peace offering for him, a chocolate milkshake that had been laced with sleeping pills—Scelosi found both among the contents in Brian’s stomach when he did the autopsy. Maybe Maz told him she’d get rid of the baby or something, I don’t know. In any case, she must have left him when he got drowsy then dashed off to Balmain. Perhaps she had already loaded up his syringe with a double dose of heroin, so when he woke up, groggy, he would give himself the fatal dose while she was giving herself an alibi at the film night.”
“Or maybe she left him there and Eliot snuck in and administered the fatal dose while Brian was sleeping?” suggested Alicia. “Remember, Eliot and Kat got to the park later than everybody else.”
“He was cutting it close,” said Indira.
“That’s true,” said Perry. “If he did do it, he would have been rushed. Remember, he had to get back to his wife, somehow ply her with alcohol and then turn up to the park just late enough to ensure a grand and noisy entrance.”
“Yeah, I’ve got my money on Maz doing it,” said Lynette, but Jackson was shaking his head at himself.
“If only I’d given that man the courtesy of investigating his death properly. If I’d looked into his background better I would have learned there was a brutalised fiancée with a motive for murder. There’s probably CCTV footage of Maz at the mall, buying that chocolate drink. Scelosi insists it’s a chocolate Frappuccino from Starbucks—that can’t be hard to check.”
“Hang on,” said Lynette. “The coroner can pinpoint the brand of drink?”
He smiled. “Yeah, it took him a bit longer, but he was able to work it out from the concentration of ingredients. Something to do with the mocha-flavoured sauce, apparently.” He laughed. “I think Scelosi was just looking for an excuse to test milkshakes all day. In any case, he was very bloody proud of himself.”
Jackson looked at Indira. “Eliot and Maz must have thought they were very clever, luring Brian to that old rooftop where there are no cameras, but I bet they didn’t figure on Frank. I’m sure Starbucks would have working CCTV. Can’t be too hard to check the footage and see if Maz purchased a Frappuccino on the day in question. I just can’t believe I didn’t join the dots faster.”
“Oh don’t beat yourself up,” said Indira. “You joined them in the end.”
“Still,” Jackson said. “Still.” And he left it at that.
Indira was standing up now to stretch her legs out. She said, “This is all very clever, guys, but we have one slight hitch.”
“Evidence,” said Jackson.
“Evidence,” she repeated.
“I’ll get that footage from the shopping mall. Maybe we’ll get extra lucky and see Eliot entering the mall. It’s a start.”
“And that’s all it is. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to prove the rest.”
She glanced around. They were virtually the last group left at the park, just a few stragglers still lolling about.
“Come on, the security guards need to get their beauty sleep, and so do we. That’s a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ to substantiate tomorrow.”
Then she flung her hands to her hips and said, “And I’m talking about the homicide squad now, people, not the Agatha Christie Book Club!”
They laughed and gathered their things, then headed for the exit. By the time they reached their cars, the group was exhausted and the thought of finding evidence was beyond most of them, but Indira was brimming with ideas.
She suspected that Alicia was right and would seek a search warrant for Maz Olden’s apartment first thing in the morning. She was determined to find those Gucci glasses and hoped Maz had been greedy enough to hold on to them. She had assumed young Ezekiel had stolen them, and that was a lucky break for Maz. Another red herring, in fact.
Glasses or no glasses, it still left Eliot in the clear, but she had an inkling that a young woman with a baby onboard would quickly roll over if offered the right incentive.
“What are you smiling at?” Jackson asked as he leaned in her car window.
“Oh just plotting the next move,” she said, then nodded her head towards the book club friends who were giving each other goodbye hugs. “You’ve got a nice bunch of mates there, you know, and a smart bunch at that.”
“Really? You want to say that a little louder so they can hear it from the horse’s mouth?”
“Who are you calling a horse?” She winked. “Nah, wouldn’t want them to get too cocky and start applying for jobs. Cripes! Tell them thank you, but we’ll take it from here. They can go back to their fiction and leave the facts to us.”
“I think I’ll just leave it at ‘thank you,’” Jackson said, and she laughed as she drove off.
Epilogue
The letter had been beautifully handwritten on thick blue paper, and Alicia read it aloud to the book club as they sat on recycled furniture in Missy’s new lounge room.
She had found a place to rent just up the road from the Finlays, and while it was on the small and shabby side, she had done her best to brighten things up with cheerful furnishings that had been begged, borrowed and stolen. Yet the mood in the room was now subdued.
By the time Alicia had finished reading, several of the group were teary and most were lost for words.
Eventually Perry said, “Well, it’s his loss, not ours.”
Alicia s
hook her head firmly. “I, for one, will miss him.”
Perry sniffed. “Yeah, I guess I will too. At the very least he was lovely eye candy.”
“Anders was so much more than that!” Claire retorted. “He was switch-blade bright and slapped us with cold water whenever we needed a dose, which is often I might add.”
“Sometimes that water was scalding hot,” Missy said, then smiled despite herself.
Anders had always been a little impatient with her, but she understood why and would miss him as much as the others.
It had taken the good doctor over an hour to construct his resignation letter to the Agatha Christie Book Club, and he was not lying when he said he would miss them and wished them the best. But the truth was he hated being the voice of caution. He hated always trying to apply the handbrake.
“You’re a very clever, underappreciated bunch,” he wrote, “and you don’t need someone like me to hold you back anymore. I just can’t help myself. I’m clearly too cautious for this club. I’ve tried to fit in, but it’s been, frankly, terrifying. Maybe it’s because I’m a doctor or because I’m an official police consultant, maybe I’m naturally conservative or have a reputation to uphold, but I feel the time has come to move on. I was hoping Margarita could take my place. She studies literature, and I thought you’d all get along, but I learned pretty quickly after that first get-together, that she’s even more cautious than I am, so I apologise for that. I do wish you all the very best, and I hope we can stay in touch.”
“I knew she was a plant!” said Lynette, and Alicia scoffed.
“You thought she was a paid escort!”
The others looked at her, astounded, and she shrugged one tanned shoulder high.
“I just knew he’d brought her along under false pretences that’s all.”
“He was trying to audition his replacement,” said Claire. “Which was very decent of him if you think about it, and the question still remains: Who will replace Anders? Our numbers are getting low, folks.”
“That’s right!” said Missy, putting an evil tone to her voice: “and then there were five!”
They all laughed and agreed it was time to recruit a few more members to plump up the club.
“How are we going to find the right people?” asked Lynette, but Perry was shaking his head wildly.
“Hold your horses!” he cried. “Before we get into that, I’m still waiting to hear how the case is progressing.” He turned to Alicia, his eyes wide. “So did Eliot Mumford do the right thing and confess everything?”
“What do you think?” She laughed. “Sadly, this ain’t no Agatha Christie novel, folks. He’s got himself a top barrister, of course, and is settling in for a fight.”
“What about Maz?”
“Oh, she’s been an easier nut to crack. It’s just as Indira suspected—she’s desperate to talk in exchange for a plea deal. Maz says it was all Eliot’s idea, every last bit of it apparently—even the lethal dose of heroin. She says Eliot gave her that to pass on to Brian. The problem was, Maz couldn’t be sure he’d even take it that night, and after she hadn’t heard from the police, she was terrified he was still out there somewhere, alive. It’s no wonder she looked so relieved when Jackson and Indira informed her of Brian’s death. Jackson thought she was acting, but she was genuinely relieved to hear he’d died.
“She also didn’t know about his parents and says if she knew they were still alive, she would have gone and pleaded with them to pull their son into line. Insists she would not have taken Eliot up on his plan to kill Brian.”
“What a load of nonsense,” said Claire. “She could easily have gone to the police at any time.”
“She did, several times, but was too terrified to press charges. Even if he was convicted, she knew Brian would be back out one day and angrier than ever. She thought he might take it out on her boy.”
“So how did Eliot convince her?” asked Perry. “He must have been very persuasive.”
“He timed it beautifully, by the sounds of it. Approached her soon after Brian had thrown her down a stairwell and landed her in the Emergency Department, apparently. The baby survived, but she was now so desperate she was prepared to do anything.”
“Humph!” said Claire. “So she robs another innocent life to save the lives of herself and her unborn child? I’m sorry. I’m still not buying it.”
“You don’t know what you might do when pushed to the point of desperation, Claire,” said Perry before he turned back to Alicia. “So did it all happen as you said, at the film night I mean?”
She nodded. “More or less.”
“They were bloody lucky then. It strikes me as very risky. How could Eliot be sure that none of us would spot his little switcheroo? How could he be sure that you and Lynette would not realise that Kat was Maz and vice versa? I mean, if you had started fighting with Jackson at the bar, Claire, Indira would have known immediately that it wasn’t Alicia. She would have heard her voice, seen her profile. Sorry, but it takes more than a wig and glasses to impersonate somebody.”
“This ain’t no Agatha Christie novel,” echoed Claire.
Alicia smiled. “You have to remember, guys, they had it easier than we did. None of us had ever seen Kat Mumford before, and if we had, it was probably only on a YouTube clip on a tiny device, or at least that was what he was banking on. Remember, too, when they first arrived at the park, the film had already started and it was very dark. He had planned for that. So even though that was really Kat at the start, she was huddled under Eliot’s shoulder so none of us got a really good look at her when she was alive. All we really saw was long blond hair, white glasses and a hat.”
“But what if someone in the bar queue knew her?” Perry persisted. “It could’ve happened; it’s a smaller world than you think.”
“I’m not saying he wasn’t lucky,” Alicia said. “His stars were certainly in alignment that night.”
“All except for the bit where he came and plopped down next to us, of course,” said Missy. “He wasn’t counting on the Agatha Christie Book Club now was he?”
“Well, we’re very good at theories,” countered Claire, “but what evidence have they got against Eliot? Won’t he just point the finger back at Maz and say it really was his wife at the bar with him at intermission, and Maz is just making the whole thing up? It is all rather outlandish when you think about it.”
Alicia smiled. “They do have evidence, actually. They have proof that the woman Eliot was pretending to argue with at the Booze Bar could not have been his wife, and he must have known that. Which means he’s part of the charade.”
“The fingerprints on the champagne flute?” prodded Lynette.
“Actually, no. Turns out the third set of prints are from the wholesaler who sold the flutes to Brandon about three days before the film night. They believe the smudged set belong to Maz—she must have tried to wipe them off—but they’re just not clear enough to pin on her. Doesn’t matter though. They have something much better, something I never thought of.”
She smiled wickedly and made them wait a beat before saying, “The chicken satay!”
The book club stared at Alicia blankly, and she laughed.
“Remember, after their fake fight at the Booze Bar, fake ‘Kat’ went and bought a satay stick at the snack bar? I saw her eat it and then drop it into the champagne flute before she laid down.”
“You can’t get fingerprints off a skinny little satay stick, surely?” said Claire.
“No,” said Alicia, “but you should find traces of chicken satay in the dead woman’s stomach.” Her smile widened as the fact dawned on each of them. “The coroner found none. All she had in her stomach was orange juice and alcohol. Indira’s kicking herself for not picking that up earlier. It means the woman Eliot was pretending to argue with at the bar, the woman who then walked off and bought a chicken satay, could not have been his wife. So he was lying. Even better, there’s saliva on the stick, and they’re testing for DNA now.”
“Hook, line and sinker!” said Perry, delighted.
Lynette’s mouth widened. “Eliot must be furious with Maz for eating that chicken!”
Alicia agreed. “I’m sure he is, and I’m sure that wasn’t part of the plan, but Maz was pregnant, so who could blame her for getting the munchies.”
“Can I just clarify,” said Missy. “Maz is really pregnant, right? Tell me they checked that!”
“Yes, just not suffering from morning sickness and not nearly as pregnant as she looked that night. Remember most of us recalled a ‘heavily pregnant’ woman, yet by the time Indira and Jackson interviewed her at her home a few days later, Indira was surprised to find she still had a good six weeks of her pregnancy left. She wasn’t nearly as pregnant as the witnesses had claimed. That’s because she no longer had a wig and jacket squished against her stomach.”
“Why did she even hang around at the film night?” Claire asked. “Why not run off with Mo Man, and who is Mo Man anyway?”
Alicia shrugged. “They haven’t found him yet. Indira thinks he’s a random stranger who had nothing to do with any of it. Jackson thinks they lured him to the film through a dating website so Maz would have someone to pretend to be sitting with. They’re still investigating that. As for why she hung around? My guess is, she didn’t know if her violent fiancé had taken his hot shot yet and probably wanted to stay away from home as long as possible to give him a chance. She was probably terrified she’d get back and find him sitting there, fists clenched.”
They all shuddered a little at that. They felt some sympathy for Maz Olden, but it didn’t begin to excuse what she had done. It didn’t come close to compensating for Kat Mumford’s life.
“Okay,” said Alicia, forcing a smile onto her lips and reaching for her handbag. “Enough of all this horror. We have more positive things to think about!”
She smiled more convincingly as she produced a notepad and pen.
“Claire’s right—it’s time to inject some fresh life into this book club. I think we should put another ad in the local classifieds, like I did last time, calling for new members. What do you all think?”
