by Grace York
Judging by how attached people were to the little contraptions these days, Addison anticipated a long line at the police station this morning.
The coffee machine announced its readiness to serve, and Addison put it to work immediately. Ordinarily she was more of a mid-morning coffee drinker, preferring to start the day with a cup of tea and a piece of toast, but today was no ordinary day. She figured she was going to need the stronger kick-start coffee would give her.
"Morning Addison," said Adam, as he descended the back staircase into the kitchen. The beach house had two staircases, but this one was by far the most used. Everyone tended to congregate in Addison's large kitchen with its worn but solid table and chairs. Dinner was the only meal they ate at the main dining table out in the great room at the front of the house.
"Good morning, Adam. You're up early." Adam O'Loughlin was the first boarder Addison had taken on when she'd decided to turn the beach house into a retreat for writers and artists. There had been three others not long after him, but things hadn't worked out very well with them. She'd almost given up on the whole idea, but Adam had talked her back into it.
"I'm guessing we'll have a lot to do," said Adam, helping himself to coffee. "After last night, I mean." He could barely contain the glee on his face. Adam had been itching to help the police since Addison had signed on as a police volunteer earlier this year, when a murder at a travelling carnival had created an opportunity for her to help out the understaffed locals. After Addison had helped crack the case, Isaac had reluctantly signed Adam on as a volunteer as well, but since then things had been quiet in the Getaway Bay crime stakes.
Until now.
"When do you want to go?" Adam asked.
"Go where?"
"To the police station, of course. Come on, Addison. This is the break I've been waiting for."
Addison popped two slices of bread into the toaster, then held up another two in Adam's direction.
"Yes please," he said, and she dropped those into the other side.
"I thought getting a publishing deal was the break you'd been waiting for," Addison said, the right side of her mouth turned up in half a smile.
"You know what I mean." Adam had sent his first finished manuscript off to a publisher in Sydney, and had last month received an offer from them. It was only a small advance, but he'd been unbearable ever since. Maybe helping out Isaac and his team was a good idea after all.
"Let's wait until the others are up, then we'll go," said Addison. "I need to get my phone back, anyway."
The others were Addison's cousin, Layla, and new boarders Lenny and Brooke Lozano. Both in their mid-thirties, Lenny and Brooke had been married for ten years, and writers for even longer. They'd answered Addison's advertisement in June, and had arrived from Western Australia in July. Brooke, a romance author, was writing a series of books set in a small Queensland town and was looking for inspiration. Lenny wrote science fiction, and apparently got his inspiration from the stars, which he reasoned he could see from anywhere.
Layla had been staying at the beach house since her own home and art gallery burned down in January. She was having it rebuilt, and it was just about finished now. In fact Layla had said something last night about the grand opening. Addison checked the calendar she kept on the fridge.
"Layla's opening is this Friday," she exclaimed. "That's come around quick."
"No it hasn't," said Adam. "She's been shopping for furniture and things for weeks. You've known about it for a long time."
He was right, of course. Despite the circumstances, Addison had loved having Layla living at the beach house. She was going to miss her cousin when she moved out at the end of the week.
Maybe this murder would provide a distraction, she thought, then realised how horrible that sounded. A man had died.
Addison turned back from the fridge just as Lenny and Brooke entered the kitchen. They always seemed to be together, which Addison thought was lovely. They'd taken Patrick's old room, which wasn't so lovely, but Addison was grateful to them. She hadn't been sure she'd ever let that room again, considering what had happened there. But they didn't seem to mind; Lenny even said he thought it was cool. That was writers for you.
"Good morning," said Lenny. He was so tall he had to duck at the bottom of the stairs to avoid hitting his head. He was also one of the thinnest people Addison had ever met, which was even more surprising considering he gave Adam a run for his money in the eating stakes.
"Morning, Lenny. Morning Brooke," said Addison.
Brooke raised a hand in greeting and went straight to the coffee machine. In the four weeks the couple had been there, Addison had never once heard a word out of Brooke before she had drunk at least half a cup of coffee.
The toast popped, and Addison handed two slices to Adam then set about spreading hers with butter and honey. Lenny pulled four more slices of bread out of the bag and put the toaster back to work.
"Did you hear about the murder?" Adam asked Lenny. The couple had retired to their room before Addison got home last night, so she'd only been able to talk to Adam and Layla about the death at the dog show.
"You told us when we moved in," said Lenny. "Some guy died in our room. It's cool, we don't mind."
"No, not that murder. There's been a new one. At the dog show dinner last night."
Brooke turned to face them.
"What? Another murder? I thought this was a peaceful little town?"
Addison and Adam exchanged glances, both doing their best to suppress a giggle. Addison felt guilty laughing about murder, but she couldn't help it. Since she'd moved to Getaway Bay there had been three murders, one of them right here in the beach house. Last night's death – whether it was murder hadn't been established yet – would make four in less than a year.
"It is beginning to feel a little like Cabot Cove here," said Addison.
Now it was Brooke's turn to laugh, while Adam and Lenny both looked confused.
"You know, Murder She Wrote," said Brooke. "Cabot Cove is where Jessica Fletcher solved an endless series of murders."
"Oh, right," said Adam. He shoved half a slice of toast in his mouth. "Shall we start calling you Jessica, Addison?"
Addison shot him a look that quashed that idea cold.
"So what happened last night?" Brooke asked with an impatient look at the coffee machine as it slowly heated her milk.
"We're not a hundred percent sure yet," said Addison, "but it looks like one of the judges was poisoned."
"Seriously? A judge at a dog show was poisoned?" Lenny waved a knife around as he spoke. Addison was glad it was only a butter knife. She took it from him and placed it on the bench.
"That's what it looks like, yes. We're off to the police station this morning to see if we can help."
Brooke had finished making her coffee and was now holding the mug in front of her, both hands wrapped around it as if it was the most prized possession she owned.
"How are you going to help?"
Addison explained that she and Adam were official police volunteers.
"Strictly speaking, we're only supposed to help the police with administrative and community-related tasks," she said. "But Isaac is under-staffed, so you never know what we might end up doing."
Lenny turned to Brooke and smiled. "You really want to write romance books, babe? Seems like murder mysteries might be a better fit for this place."
4
Addison and Adam parked outside Hazel's café, opposite the town square. Hazel's was closed, but the rest of the main street was bustling with activity. There were a lot of people out and about for a Sunday morning. Addison figured whoever hadn't been at the dinner the previous evening had probably already heard about the murder by now.
The crime scene tape Constable Diaz had erected last night was still in place, and a uniformed police officer Addison hadn't seen before stood guard. Maybe Isaac's pleas for more staff had finally been answered.
The area was still in disarray, mo
stly due to the dog rampage. Addison couldn't find a single flower bed that hadn't been disturbed. Of course that was the least of the dog show's problems.
Ebony Weir and Lucy McGregor were both standing in the square surveying the damage. There were other volunteers wandering around cleaning up tables and chairs and collecting garbage, but with at least half of the square cordoned off as a crime scene, they couldn't do a lot.
Addison hadn't been wrong to anticipate a queue outside the police station. There were at least a dozen lined up out the door, and another four standing inside in the small public section. Diaz was doing his best to get everyone's phone back to them, but he looked harried. Dark circles under his eyes made him look older than the twenty-something Addison knew he was.
Short was in Isaac's office with Isaac, and neither of them looked happy. Addison managed to catch Short's attention, and she left the office and walked over to them.
"We've come to see if we can help," Addison said before Short could turn them away. As nice as Kendall Short was when not in uniform, she was all business when it came to her job. She wasn't a fan of Addison and Adam helping out as police volunteers, however Isaac tried to spin it, and she made no attempt to hide her disapproval.
"I'll check with him," she said, and turned around, but Isaac was already waving them to come through. Short pursed her lips and reluctantly opened the barrier separating the public from the rest of the police station.
When they rounded the corner, Addison stopped. A wall to the side of the station, out of view of the public, was covered almost floor to ceiling in photographs.
"That's impressive," said Adam.
"Short and Diaz were up most of the night doing that," said Isaac, who'd come out of his office to meet them. He held up a hand to cover a yawn.
"I doubt they were the only ones," said Addison. Isaac was a team player as well as a leader. She knew he wouldn't have left his officers to do the hard work and gone home to bed himself. "Did any of you get any sleep?"
Isaac shrugged. "A couple of hours." He lifted his chin towards the photo wall. "Take a look, tell me what you see."
Addison and Adam both stepped forward to peruse the photographs. There must have been over two hundred of them, all neatly lined up in rows and stuck to the wall.
"How did you—"
"Diaz brought in his colour printer from home," Isaac explained. "He's a budding photographer himself, apparently. Has all the equipment for printing these out. All we needed was the right photo-quality paper, so once we got Forensic Services going on the crime scene Short made a trip into Riverwood. The office supplies place in there opened up for us."
"Cool," said Adam. He was making his way methodically through the photographs, studying each one carefully before moving onto the next. "Are these chronological?"
"Yes," said Short. "We got the time stamps from the cameras and phones and wrote them on each picture as we printed them, as well as the name of the photographer. Then we put them up chronologically."
"Did you find anything?" asked Addison.
"Not yet," said Short. "We're still looking. Still trying to get a complete picture of who's who, as well. We were only able to do preliminary interviews last night, and some people left without speaking to us. We've got a lot of following up to do today."
"Maybe I can help with who's who," said Addison. She lowered her voice so the members of the public picking up their phones couldn't hear.
"That's right, you were there," said Isaac, suppressing another yawn.
"Mrs Jones had Bella in the show," said Addison. "I was keeping her company. Besides, I'd never been to a dog show before. It turned out to be quite interesting. People are very protective of their dogs."
"Protective enough to murder the judge?" asked Adam, eyes still on the photographs.
"I wouldn't have gone that far," said Addison. "But it was definitely eye-opening."
Isaac perched on the edge of a nearby desk. "Okay, tell us what you know," he said.
Short took out her notebook, pen poised, and looked at Addison expectantly.
"Well, yesterday the dogs and their owners competed in the different groups," Addison began. "Each group's winner was declared at the dinner last night. Those winners were supposed to go on today to compete for the big prize, Best in Show."
"What are the groups?" asked Short.
Addison tried to think. "The toy dogs is one of them, which Bella won." Mrs Jones had been very pleased with that. "Then there were the terriers, that group was won by a dog named Lola. I remember thinking it was a great name for a dog."
"Who is Lola's owner?" asked Short.
"Oh, I don't know. I mostly paid attention to the dogs," said Addison.
Short pointed to the photos. "Which dog is she then?"
Addison leaned forward and scanned the wall. "There she is." There were half a dozen photographs of Lola being awarded her blue ribbon. Her owner was a woman, but Addison couldn't remember her name.
Short plucked one of the photographs from the wall and turned it over. "This one was taken by Sam Clayton," she said. She checked the rest of the photos of Lola and her owner. "So were most of the rest of them." She flicked back a couple of pages in her notebook. "Sam and Vanessa Clayton," she read out. "Dog named Lola."
"Yes, Vanessa Clayton. That rings a bell," said Addison.
"Easy enough to find out for sure," said Isaac. "What's the next group?"
Addison moved along the photo wall until she came to the next winner. "Diesel," she said, pointing to the Cocker Spaniel. "I remember him. The group is called gundogs, and I remember asking why. Apparently they are the breeds that were originally trained to retrieve either live game, or game that their owners had shot and wounded."
"Diesel's owner?" asked Short, pointing to the sharply-dressed man showing Diesel off to the crowd.
"That's Richard Divola," said Addison. "Josie told me about him. He's a groomer from Riverwood. She said he's been accusing her of poaching his clients, which Josie absolutely has not done. He doesn't sound like a very nice man."
Addison moved along again. "Then there were the hounds. Eleanor Moffett's husband Lionel won that group, with Hubert." She pointed to Lionel and his Bassett Hound accepting their blue ribbon. "And then the last group were the working dogs, which this dog here won." Addison pointed to a photograph near the end of a row.
"Name?" asked Short.
"The dog's name is Bailey. He's a Border Collie. I don't know about the owner. We were getting pretty hungry by then. I'm afraid I wasn't paying too much attention."
Short checked the backs of the photos of Bailey, but they were all taken by different people. "We can find that out later," she said.
Adam stood back, apparently finished with his microscopic inspection of every photograph.
"Anything?" Isaac asked him.
Adam slowly shook his head. "There are only a few that show the table where the victim had been sitting, and none of those offer any clue as to what might have happened," he said. "All these photos, and nothing useful. What a waste of time."
Isaac smiled.
"What?" asked Addison. She was inclined to agree with Adam. There was nothing in these photos that told them what had happened to Perry Abbott.
"I think these photos tell us a great deal," said Isaac. "Or at least they will when we've gathered more evidence. That's what police work is about. Gathering all the evidence and compiling as complete a picture as possible of what happened."
Addison realised what he was saying. "So while this might not tell us anything yet," she said, waving a hand over the photo wall, "it could still prove useful once we get more evidence."
"Exactly," said Isaac. "I'll bet you dinner at the Red Lion that these photos end up solving this case."
"You're on," said Adam and Addison at the same time.
5
They spent another half hour examining the photographs and identifying as many of the people and dogs as possible. By the time they'd fin
ished, Short had as comprehensive a list of dog show attendees as she was going to get.
"Compare that to the list you got from Ebony Weir, and run them all through the system," said Isaac. "See if anyone has a record."
Short nodded and settled at her desk.
"What now?" asked Addison.
"Now we wait for the evidence to speak to us," said Isaac, sounding like some kind of television detective. Addison frowned. "Forensic Services collected all the glasses and bottles from the table where the victim was sitting, as well as the tables nearest him. We should hear from the lab tomorrow with preliminary results. Plus, the autopsy is being carried out today, although I expect the toxicology tests could take a little longer."
"Surely there's something we can do in the meantime," said Adam.
"There's plenty we can do," said Isaac. "We've got at least forty people to either interview or re-interview. And I need to speak to the widow, get a sense of the victim. But none of that involves the two of you."
Adam's face dropped. "But we're—"
"I know, you're police volunteers. Don't worry, I'll find something for you to do. But right now we have a lot to get on with, so if you don't mind…" Isaac stood and held out an arm, herding Addison and Adam towards the front of the station. "Don't forget your phone on the way out," he said to Addison.
"Why can't we help?" Adam asked Addison once they were out on the street.
Addison tucked her mobile phone into her pocket. "We can," she said. "Just not with what they're doing right now. We can't interview witnesses, Adam."
"I get that. But surely we can do something. Aren't the first twenty-four hours after a murder the most important?"
Addison looked over to the town square, where the clean-up was continuing. Someone had handwritten a sign that said: 'Dog Show Cancelled' and nailed it to the tree next to the stage. "We're not even sure it was murder yet," she said, as they made their way to the car.