As soon as the police officers had established it wasn’t a prank—and the human foot made short work of convincing them—they seemed more concerned with getting us out of there than learning all the details of how we’d come across it. They warned us about the dangers of shock and offered to organize a ride home for us if we needed one. Their solicitude might’ve had something to do with Etta adopting a version of her “harmless old lady” persona in which she appeared rather “shook up” by the ordeal.
Yeah, right. Lucky they didn’t spot her gun.
I was climbing into the car, about to make my escape, when the press showed up. Neither Connor nor I wanted publicity, so we directed them to Etta as the one who’d found the crocodile and called the police. Etta seemed more than happy to handle the spotlight.
“What were you doing when you stumbled across the dead crocodile?”
“Well see, dear, I’m here all the way from America. I always wanted to see Australia, and I’m so glad I got a chance to before I die. It’s very beaut— Sorry, what was it you asked?”
I would’ve expected her stylish hunting outfit to spoil the effect of her harmless old lady persona, but somehow instead it seemed cute. Like a toddler in a tux—it came off as if someone else had chosen her outfit, and she was playing hunter dress-up.
The reporter smiled indulgently. “What were you doing when you first came across the crocodile?”
“Oh, that’s right. I was sightseeing.”
Sure. Sightseeing. With a gun. And a HiLux with a tray big enough to fit a ten-foot lizard in.
“What happened when you saw the crocodile?”
“Well, I have some experience with gators back home, so I could tell it was dead. And I’ve always wanted to see a crocodile up close, so I took the opportunity.”
She’d probably planned to shoot it until she realized it was dead.
“How did you spot the finger in the crocodile’s jaws?”
That part puzzled me. Maybe she really had been sticking her head inside for a selfie.
“I was taking a photo to show how big the teeth are for my grandson. He’s turning four this month, and he loves dinosaurs more than anything, so I thought he’d like it.”
I was ninety-nine percent sure this grandson didn’t exist.
“Imagine my shock when I zoomed in to check the teeth were in focus and saw that nail polish!”
And I was a hundred percent sure the correct word for her reaction was excitement.
“Yes, it must have been quite the shock. How are you holding up?”
Etta lifted a trembling hand to her face and pushed some nonexistent loose hair out of the way.
Funny how her hand had been perfectly steady on the gun.
“Goodness. Well, thank you for asking, dear. I’ll be all right. Or I should be after a nap anyway. I just feel terrible for that poor, poor girl. What a way to go.”
The reporter thanked her for her time, and the cameraman shifted to take in the panoramic views of the crime-scene tape, the crocodile down the embankment, and the police looking serious and important as they went about their work.
Etta made a great show of tottering up to me. “Would you mind driving, dear? I’m feeling quite faint, you know.”
I got the HiLux into gear and maneuvered back to the road without hitting the police car, press van, or Connor’s rental.
Etta shed her little old lady persona like a snake sheds its skin. “So does this mean your missing-person case has turned into a murder investigation?”
The public version of the case was that Connor had been hired by a “large pharmaceutical company” to locate their missing courier. Etta knew that much, and it didn’t surprise me she’d cobbled together enough from my and Connor’s reactions to realize the finger belonged to our missing person. Etta didn’t miss much.
But I wasn’t in the mood to enable her preoccupation with playing detective today. There were times when I found her unquenchable appetite for excitement—unwavering even in the face of death and tragedy—disquieting. I was filthy, sweaty, exhausted, and distressed after finding Amy’s remains.
Etta was enlivened.
I made my tone flat. “We don’t know if the deceased was our missing person, and we don’t know if she was murdered.”
Both were technically true. We couldn’t be a hundred percent certain it was Amy without DNA confirmation, but I would eat that crocodile’s tail if it wasn’t her.
“But—”
“What were you really doing on that riverbank?” I asked to cut off further questions.
She eyeballed me to make it clear she knew what I was up to. “Not looking for your missing courier, that’s for sure.”
In other words, if you aren’t answering my questions, I’m not answering yours.
That was still better than her interrogating me, so I persisted. “Then what were you looking for?”
“Like I told the reporter, I was sightseeing.”
Etta was great at answering without giving you any information whatsoever.
“With a gun?” I asked.
“Damn straight. If you’d read about all the dangerous creatures in Australia like I have, even you’d have to admit a gun’s a good idea. Frankly, I’m appalled more of you don’t own one.”
Aware our conversation was going nowhere fast, I lapsed into silence. My mind returned to the scene we’d left behind.
It appeared that Amy Cooley’s death may well have been a tragic accident. The police didn’t seem to suspect foul play, and the Taste Society vials had not been stolen—or not noticeably so—which ruled out the most obvious motive. Maybe she’d just unwisely driven onto the flooded crossing in an attempt to catch her flight, and that was all there was to it.
But if Amy’s death was an accident—then what had killed the crocodile?
8
We arrived back at the hotel to find Mum, Lily, and Herbert on the couch watching TV. “Have you eaten?” Mum enquired.
“Not yet.” I didn’t feel particularly hungry either.
“Excellent, because we’ve found a fun-sounding place to go to dinner tonight.” She took in our varying states of grime. “Maybe after you’ve had a chance to shower and change?”
It had seemed to me an inordinately long day already, but I dragged myself obediently into the shower. Connor claimed the other bathroom, and Etta was clean enough after removing her shoes that she could join the others on the couch.
A minute later, I was back in the living area. Dripping wet. With only a towel for modesty. Trying very hard not to shriek.
It turned out that as I’d traipsed around the roadside today, I’d picked up an unwanted passenger.
A leech.
The repulsive sluglike creature was black and bloated with my blood and apparently unconcerned by the commotion. It just kept sucking from both its mouths.
The fact it wasn’t painful in the least didn’t help one iota.
“Get it off,” I pleaded. “Burn it or salt it or do whatever the heck is needed to get the darn thing off!”
Lily scrunched her eyes like it would help her unsee the foul creature and clapped a hand to her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She rushed to the bathroom I’d vacated.
Mum pursed her lips. “Hang on, darling. I’ll google how.”
Etta shook her head. “Don’t. Half the search results will tell you the wrong method.” She put down her mug and poked the leech experimentally. “They’re easy enough to remove. You just…” Her gaze moved past the hideous parasite to the TV screen. “Look, we’re on the news!”
My frenzied glance showed Etta looking small and serious as she lied her heart out to the reporter.
Where was the justice? Why hadn’t the leech attached itself to her?
Then again, she’d doubtless have found the whole experience fascinating.
I stared at the bloodsucker drinking from my flesh and tried to pretend it was on TV. Nope, still horrifying rather than fascinating. Had it
gotten bigger since I’d first spotted it?
My ever-faithful mother hadn’t been distracted by the evening news. She returned with a salt shaker and bug spray. “Which one?”
Good question. Our apparent expert’s attention was glued to the screen, so I pointed at the bug spray. It was probably the more efficient option, and the faster we got rid of the bastard, the better.
Mum sprayed it on the offending freeloader. The leech curled in on itself and dropped wriggling to the floor.
I stomped on it. A poor instinct when I didn’t have shoes on. The sluglike body popped. Blood squelched between my heel and the tiles. My ankle was streaming crimson too.
Gross.
Fighting nausea, I fixed my eyes on the TV screen for distraction from the gore. The news story was wrapping up. The victim had not been named, but they’d mentioned police were investigating connections between the deceased and a vehicle found farther upstream. A photo of Amy’s silver Mazda was shown for a few seconds.
As the reporter made his closing remarks, the camera footage showed a final sweep of the scene, including the cluster of vehicles that had parked on that lonely stretch of riverbank. My heart sped up when I noticed the passenger door of our rental car was open—and on the footwell in plain sight was the satchel we’d taken from Amy’s car.
Before we’d known we were dealing with her death rather than her mere absence.
But the royal blue leather was unmarked, except by mud. What were the chances someone would put two and two together?
The news anchor switched to talking about flu season, and Etta leaned back against the couch. She took in the bloody mess on the floor and then gestured at the bug spray and salt shaker on the coffee table. “Uh-oh. You didn’t use those, did you?”
My heart—which had been slowing under the weight of my reasoning—sped up again. “The bug spray. Why?”
“Because if you salt or spray a leech they vomit the contents of the stomach and all the bacteria with it into your bloodstream before detaching themselves. I told you the right way to remove them—”
“You didn’t! You got distracted.” I wished again that Etta had been the one to pick up the gruesome critter.
“Oh.” The oh felt ominous to me. But then Etta shrugged. “Never mind. I’m sure it was only the one person who lost their leg to a flesh-eating disease.”
I gaped at her. “You let yourself get distracted by the TV when I’m in danger of losing my leg to some flesh-eating disease?” I might’ve gotten a tad hysterical by the end of that question.
Etta picked up the mug of tea she’d abandoned a few minutes earlier. “Now that I think about it, it might have been a different type of bloodsucker anyway. Maybe even from a different continent.”
I ground my teeth together and stormed back to the shower. The intended effect somewhat inhibited by the towel clutched around my torso and the blood dripping down my ankle.
Behind me, Etta sipped her tea.
The IronBar was a pub on the main street of Port Douglas with the dubious claim to fame of hosting nightly cane toad races. “Amphibian debauchery at its finest,” they proclaimed proudly. Lily had witnessed this absurdity before but insisted it was something everyone who visits Port Douglas should experience once.
Etta was hopping with excitement and bought five tickets for the chance of being one of the toad “jockeys.”
“I’ve been reading about cane toads,” she said. “Did you know they were introduced not far from here to deal with beetles in the sugarcane fields, but they ignored the beetles, hopped on their merry way, and have been multiplying and spreading across the continent ever since?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said. They were so prolific it was estimated that two hundred tons of toads were squashed on Queensland’s roads alone every year, and they were notorious for devastating the native species in their path. It was safe to say I felt less enthusiastic about interacting with the poisonous, leathery, wriggling creatures than Etta did.
Still, the food was good pub fare, the ambiance was loud and lively, and the conversation was the simple, everyday banter that I’d missed so much.
We were starting on dessert when a man approached our table. His gaze was fixed on Mum, and I had just enough time to worry that Lily would take this as proof the baby was already ruining her appeal to the opposite sex before he reached us. “Wendi Wilcox?”
Wilcox was Mum’s maiden name. Someone from her past then.
She stood up, a wide smile on her face. “Kirk Bauer? I don’t believe it. But it’s Wendi Avery now.”
Kirk was tall but thin, with a head that seemed a little too large for his frame. The head itself was attractive enough: a thatch of dark gray hair, a strong beak of a nose that suited the long oval face and equally strong chin, and deep-set but expressive brown eyes which hadn’t left Mum.
“You’re married then?” he asked. “Lucky man. You look great, by the way.”
Mum tucked some hair behind her ear self-consciously. “Thanks, yeah, happily married for thirty-six years now.” She pointed at me. “That’s my daughter, Isobel”—I waved—“and Lily there is practically family too. What about you?”
“No, never tied the knot or had kids myself. But I’ve found my own family of sorts. I retired early and am living life on the road as a gray nomad now.”
Over the past few decades, the great Australian dream had added a second phase. Step one: homeownership. Step two: retire, pull up stakes, and travel around the continent in a caravan or motorhome. The term gray nomads had been coined in response to this growing movement to describe the huge numbers of “gray-haired” retirees taking to the roads in their mobile homes. Back in the 1980s, no one had heard of gray nomads, but now it was difficult to find anyone over the age of fifty-five who hadn’t at least considered becoming one.
I was torn between listening in on Mum and Kirk’s conversation or giving my warm banana doughnut holes with maple syrup custard, chocolate fudge, and macadamia ice cream the attention they deserved. Then my phone vibrated. I pulled it out and looked at caller ID. Dad. If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t have answered.
“Hello.”
“Izzy, darling. Don’t tell your mother, but I’m in a bit of a pickle here. Can you talk? Away from certain ears?”
“Um.” I looked sadly at my cooling and melting dessert. “Sure.” Gesturing to my phone by way of explanation to my companions, I hustled far enough away that I couldn’t be overheard. “All right, what’s up?”
Dad cleared his throat. Not a good sign. “Well, do you remember Mildred Saunders?”
Mildred was that person who exists in every small town who’s somehow at the head of every board, club, and project in the community, whether her role was formalized or not. “Of course I remember her.”
“She stopped by today to pick up some donations for a fundraiser, and I remembered your mother always offers her ginger nut biscuits and a strong instant coffee just the way she likes it. So I did the same, but I forgot she always covers Gertie’s birdcage too.”
I groaned. A covered cage tricked the galah into thinking it was night and usually kept her quiet. “What did Gertie say?”
“Well, when she saw those ginger nut biscuits she started chanting, ‘Crap on a cracker, crap on a cracker.’”
That was one of the phrases she’d picked up at the wildlife park.
“Mildred looked shocked and exclaimed over what a rude bird she was. And Gertie chose that moment to say, ‘Shut up, fatty.’”
I bit my lip to keep from snorting. Mildred was a touch on the chubby side, and she wasn’t my favorite person in Cudlee Creek. Not even in the top twenty. But it wasn’t funny. Mildred could make Mum’s life a whole lot harder if she felt the inclination. And being called fatty and told to shut up by our rude bird might give her that inclination.
Never mind that Gertie had learned that phrase when we’d cared for a neighbor’s plump and very yappy little dog for six months while the neighbor had
undergone multiple surgeries. The dog’s name was, you guessed it, Fatty.
I didn’t ask my father whether he’d managed to refrain from laughing.
“That sucks, Dad. But what do you want me to do about it from here?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you might have a suggestion for how I can fix it. Make it up to her. Sweeten her up. Whatever it takes to prevent her from making your mother’s life miserable.”
We both stayed on the line in silence for a minute.
I spotted a smudge of chocolate fudge on one knuckle and licked it off. Which gave me an idea. “I’ve got it. As prim and proper as Mildred is, she has a weakness for lemon tarts. Fortunately for you, she also holds her money tighter than a camel’s butt in a sandstorm. Buy her half a dozen tarts and she won’t be able to resist taking them, which means she’ll have to make her peace with you.”
Dad laughed. “You beautiful genius. You’re the best thing I ever did with my life, except for marrying your mother, of course. Now, how’re things going up there?”
“Good. We’re just eating dinner and ran into an old friend of Mum’s.”
“Who?”
“Some guy she went to university with. Kirk Bauer.”
Dad cursed colorfully enough to teach Gertie half a dozen new swear words.
“What?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“That man is a piece of work. You have to promise me you’ll keep him away from your mother. He used to prey on her kindhearted nature to pressure her into spending time with him and getting her to agree to whatever he wanted. I always thought he was creepy and manipulative, but she never saw it. So you can’t tell her I asked you to either, because that’ll just make her feel guilty and more sorry for him.”
I looked over at the man in question. Mum had appeared pleased to see him, so I’d lowered my guard and accepted him at face value. He seemed nice enough. Perhaps a little awkward—one of those people that social niceties didn’t come naturally to—but I hadn’t picked up anything sinister.
“Come on, Dad. He seems harmless.”
The Killer of Oz Page 6