Connor and I excused ourselves for a quick stroll along the beach. Before it got too dark, we claimed.
I took the satchel with me.
“Don’t wade in the water,” Kirk cautioned. “It’s still stinger season this far north.”
Ah, the joys of northern Queensland. Not to mention crocodiles had been known to occasionally snatch someone wading through the waves.
Even so, it was a pleasant spot for a stroll. The off-limits ocean crashing against the sand. The cool breeze coming off the water. And most importantly, it gave us a chance to talk strategy.
Connor took my hand, and I wasn’t sure if it was for the onlookers or for us. “It’s a shame they already know we’re investigating Amy’s death,” he said. “But they don’t know that we know about the smuggling, and I’d like to keep it that way. For tonight at least.”
“I’d been thinking the same thing. Keep it casual. The more we learn about them now, the more ammunition we’ll have when we do ask the hard questions.” Past cases had shown me how crucial leverage was when trying to get information someone was reluctant to share. Especially as a private investigator with no real authority to back you up.
Connor squeezed my hand. “You learn fast.” He tugged me to him, and we stood in the circle of each other’s arms on that windy, isolated beach. “I guess we didn’t need to go for a walk after all,” he murmured against my ear.
Now I wanted the beach to be a whole lot more isolated. I shot a glance up toward the camp. Damn, there was a clear line of sight. With a reluctant sigh, I withdrew. “I don’t know. A walk is probably what I needed after a beer and two lamingtons.”
“One and a half lamingtons,” Connor corrected. “Don’t forget you choked and spat up a good mouthful.”
And now I was wishing again that I had some gumnuts to put down his trousers.
Then I realized I had something that would annoy him even more. “One other thing. I think Norma might’ve been the thief.”
“What? Why?”
“We’ll talk later,” I promised airily and hauled him back to camp.
When we made it to the semicircle of chairs, Mum and Kirk were missing. “Where did Mum go?” I hissed at Etta.
“Into that caravan with Kirk.” She gestured at the one she meant and took a sip of her wine. “For a tour, apparently.”
I eyed her in suspicion. “Why didn’t you go with?” Etta was the curious type. Snooping around in someone’s van was right up her alley.
She checked her watch. “I was going to head over in another couple of minutes. See which of us was correct about Kirk’s intentions.”
Unease filled me. Kirk had been nothing but courteous as far as I’d seen, but what if Dad had the right of it? I squelched my annoyance at Etta. It’s not like I’d told her about Dad’s concerns. But I gave her a withering look anyway. “Well then, you’d better hope your own guess is wildly off base.”
I hurried to the van. Connor fell into step beside me. Etta followed. I rapped on the door.
Kirk, Mum, and Herbert opened it. Herbert’s presence reassured me somewhat. If only so I could technically tell Dad we hadn’t left Mum alone with Kirk.
Mum seemed fine. “Oh good, you came for the tour? It’s very impressive.”
Kirk looked pleased. “Wendi is too kind.”
He sounded a little smug, I thought. They stepped back to let us in, and Herbert bounded down the length of the narrow walkway and leaped onto the bed.
Kirk looked a lot less pleased.
Mum noticed as well and rushed over to pick up her young charge. “Maybe I’ll hold on to this troublemaker.”
Our host unbunched his fists and gestured at the sleek, modern interior. “I was just telling Wendi how everything in here can be run off the solar panels on the roof or my portable generator. I can camp out anywhere in this thing and still catch the news on TV or run the air conditioner overnight if I need to.”
I smiled. “That sounds like my kind of camping.” Then I tuned out his detailed boasts about equipment, fuel efficiency, and security so I could snoop.
The interior of the caravan was one of the nicest I’d ever seen. Lots of large windows—not that you could see out of them now. Wooden floorboards or something that looked like wooden floorboards. Clean, white paint. And modern, well-coordinated furnishings in charcoals, blacks, whites, and woodgrains.
Considering the limited space, he had a lot of books. I leaned closer to peer at the titles—just in case any of them were called Smuggling for Dummies or How to Make Drugs and Influence People. Alas, most of them were field guides on the birds, reptiles, and wildlife of Australia.
Etta leaned in too. “What are we looking for?” she asked in quiet undertones.
“Nothing.” I straightened and pretended to listen to Kirk for a while, hoping she’d take the hint and stop drawing attention.
She brushed past me in the narrow space and groused, “Sure. And water isn’t wet.”
Still, she left me alone after that.
We knew the nomads had been smuggling something overseas through Amy. Kirk’s particular van’s name hadn’t been listed, but maybe it was new, or maybe Amy had handed the money over to the others for some reason. I supposed it was possible he was friends with them all yet unaware of their smuggling activities, but this van looked expensive for someone who’d retired early.
So, if I was smuggling something around Australia, where would I put it? As I considered this, I realized just how wonderfully positioned gray nomads were to transport black market items from one state to another. Or from a manufacturer or dealer to their courier. Gray nomads were a regular part of the Australian landscape, so no one would look at them twice. And every caravan and motorhome had plenty of storage space hidden behind doors and drawers. There was no way the officials responsible for the cursory state border checks or random traffic stops would bother looking through all of them.
Unfortunately, with Kirk’s presence and the close quarters, neither could I.
So what could I learn? Everything visible was neat and tidy, but I wasn’t sure whether that was a matter of Kirk’s personal habits or simply a requirement when your home is mobile. There was no clutter though. The sole piece of artwork, if you could call it that, was a large, box-framed print of a younger Kirk standing next to—but not touching—another man of similar age.
“Who’s this?” I asked.
Mum shot me a reproving look for interrupting Kirk’s long-winded explanation on the advantages of diesel over gas.
Nevertheless, he answered my question. “That’s Darryl. He was a good friend and my business partner for many years before he died.” Kirk frowned. “He drowned too actually—almost a decade ago now. Swept away right in front of me on a rock fishing trip.”
Mum touched his arm. “Oh, Kirk. I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”
Herbert nosed his sleeve and Kirk stepped away. “It was.” He cleared his throat. “But it was a long time ago. Let me show you this cool new leveling info system I installed.”
After a further half hour of Kirk droning on about the wonders of his caravan, we escaped outside. Etta sidled in close as we walked to rejoin the other nomads. “I take back the serial killer thing,” she said. “Unless his MO is to bore people to death.”
I couldn’t disagree.
Misti spotted us and got to her feet. “Good, you’re back. We better make this billy tea and damper before we get too drunk.”
Norma rose as well. “I can do it.”
“Nonsense. You stay there and drink. Ray and I can take care of it.”
“Do you need help collecting wood?” Mum asked.
Gerrie heaved himself up. “Nope, we always gather some if we’re staying for a few days. So we don’t have to go wandering about in the dark like now.” His fluorescent orange shirt and Crocs made him easy to see despite the dark. “I’ll help you lug it over, Ray.”
Ray must have heard enough to get the point. Gerrie’s natur
ally loud and jovial voice was good that way. They ambled off together and brought back a few armloads of mismatched timber.
I noticed the larger pieces appeared to have been cut with a chainsaw. Like that tree branch at Amy’s.
“Wood’s damp,” Ray said. “I’ll get petrol.”
Kirk nodded. “Might as well be generous. Otherwise, we’ll be here all night, waiting for the coals to form.”
Ray disappeared into the same motorhome Misti had gone to, and they came out a few minutes later. Misti with butter and a foil-wrapped slab of damper dough, and Ray with a jerry can.
He poured a liberal amount of it over the logs.
Oh dear. I’d seen enough YouTube videos to know this didn’t tend to end well. I shuffled my chair backward and noticed everyone else doing the same.
Everyone else except Ray, anyway. He was sloshing more petrol about.
I hoped he’d be smart enough to light it from a distance at least.
“I’d say that’s plenty,” I said when I saw Etta grin. Etta grinning was never a positive sign in the face of danger.
Ray smiled at me. The first time he’d done so all evening. “Good call.”
I don’t know what he thought I said, but judging by the way he sloshed even more petrol over the timber, he must have misheard me.
We all moved back some more.
Misti shook her head. “The man’s going to blow himself up one day, but heaven forbid I try to tell him so.” She put the foil-wrapped package and butter on her chair, then pulled the chair farther back. “I’m not going anywhere near that thing until he’s put down that fuel can.”
Ray finally decided there was enough fuel and at least had the good sense to place the jerry can well out of range. Returning to stand a few paces from the fire, he noticed how far away the rest of us now were. “Chickens.”
He picked up a smaller stick he’d saved and held out his hand to Kirk. “Chuck me your lighter, will you?”
Kirk handed him a Zippo lighter and retreated again.
Ray held the flame under one end of the stick till it glowed red and tossed it into the pile of logs.
The fire exploded.
At least that’s what it felt like. Flames erupted so rapidly the whoosh it made sounded like a rocket launching, and fire shot out along the ground at least eight feet in all directions. Ray staggered backward. For a horrifying moment, I thought he was a goner, but somehow he managed to escape the worst of the flame.
His forgotten camping chair wasn’t so lucky. While the fire on the bare ground dispersed as quickly as the petrol did, the chair’s fabric burned on.
“Quick, get some water!”
“Where?” I asked, figuring I’d run faster than our senior hosts. Then, remembering Kirk’s caravan tour, I headed for his sink. Ginger surprised me by almost keeping up, and I realized her motorhome was a lot closer. I veered left. She rushed up the steps, and I followed, then waited uselessly as she filled a jug.
I spied a fire extinguisher near the stove and went to grab it.
Ginger stopped me. “Water’ll do just fine. Those things are expensive to replace.”
She thrust the jug into my hands, and I ran to the fire, spilling some of the precious water along the way. A chemical odor hit me in the face as I splashed the first jug load over the chair. The chair itself was unsalvageable, but we didn’t want pieces of it floating off and starting mini fires elsewhere.
I turned for the motorhome and saw Etta using her purse to smack the top of Ray’s head. Apparently he hadn’t entirely escaped the flames after all. But she seemed to have it under control, so I raced for more water.
Four trips later, the chair was out, and the logs were burning merrily. People were starting to drag their chairs toward the fire and find their abandoned drinks.
Connor came up and slipped his arm around me. Never mind I stank of chemical smoke and sweat. Even with the sun down, the night wasn’t cool enough for a fire or running. I felt a little put out that Connor seemed to have once again come through unscathed. “Where were you when I was ferrying water back and forth?”
He lifted his shoulder, drawing my attention to Amy’s satchel. “I noticed Misti lurking by the chairs, and since the fire wasn’t particularly dangerous, I figured securing the satchel might be a good idea.”
“Fair enough.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “But next time, can we switch jobs?”
Etta appeared by my elbow. “I had the best job.”
I eyed her. She also seemed to have escaped mostly unscathed. Even the purse she’d been using to put out the flames was uncharred. “Yes, it’s lucky you were here. I was too distracted by the chair to notice that Ray had caught fire as well.”
She smiled. “Oh, he hadn’t. I just felt like smacking the old fool.”
An hour later, we’d eaten damper and drunk billy tea, preceded and followed by alcohol. The night was cool enough that the heat from the fire was almost nice. So long as you were in shorts and a T-shirt. The group of us sat encircled around the fire, staring at its dancing flames in a kind of semi-inebriated trance.
Connor waved away another drink Gerrie was offering. “I have to drive.”
“Pfft. Why don’t you let your preggo friend drive?”
My head snapped up. “What? How’d you know?”
“Well, she’s either pregnant or a teetotaler, and she swears too much to be conservative.”
Lily snorted. “I could be a recovering alcoholic.”
I was amused she might prefer the nomads to believe she had a crippling addiction rather than an unborn child.
We lapsed into silence again, listening to the crackling flames and the crashing of waves we could no longer see.
Etta shifted in her chair. “I can’t decide whether Australia’s living up to my expectations or not. I’ve read about so many cool and dangerous things, and yet then that poor girl goes and gets drowned driving to the airport.”
I glanced at Norma in concern, but she merely sipped her wine.
“I told you, Etta,” I reminded her. “It isn’t that dangerous. I don’t know anyone personally who’s been killed by some dangerous Australian element.”
“Well, actually,” Misti mused. “Maybe it’s something about getting old and driving all over the place, but we know a few people who’ve died. Last year there was this tourist we met from Denmark. He talked about this four-wheel-drive trip he was going to take in the outback, then a few weeks later we hear his car broke down and he died out there.”
Yikes. It was hard to grasp just how large and harsh and desolate the interior of Australia really was until you heard stories like that—or the horrific misadventures of so many early explorers. On the flip side, Aboriginal peoples had survived in that same harsh landscape for sixty thousand years.
Ginger chimed in with her own story. “And a couple of years ago, this other nomad we’d met left the screen door of her motorhome ajar and didn’t notice a tiger snake had gotten inside. She came home late, maybe after having a drink or two, felt a sting that she thought was just a scratch, and went to bed. She woke up feeling awful and called an ambulance, but died in hospital a few days later.” Ginger shuddered at the memory.
Ray switched his empty beer bottle for a new one. “Pfft, I’ve been living out of my motorhome for fifteen years, and I didn’t know nobody who’d died in the first ten. Australia isn’t getting any more dangerous. Young people are just getting more stupid.”
Misti flapped her hand in her husband’s direction. “He counts anyone below seventy as young. Plus he seems to have selective memory loss around the foolish things he did in his earlier years. One of the few blessings of growing old, I guess.”
Ray was squinting at her. “What’s that about your abscess?”
Misti glared at him. “Nothing.”
Gerrie ignored that last part. “Yeah, but what about that scuba diver we met a few years back? He did all the right things: went out with a partner, checked his equipment, ma
de sure the weather was fine, told people where they were going, and all that stuff. He’d been diving for forty years and then got snatched by a shark and there was nothing anyone could do. When your number’s up, your number’s up.”
Norma was nodding. “Yes, and that nomad Rachel died when she was stung by a wasp and neither she nor her companions could find her EpiPen in time. We’ve all drank too much, left the door cracked open, misplaced an everyday item, taken small calculated risks, and made mistakes.” As a nurse, Norma would be especially aware of that.
Kirk got up to put a log on the fire. “Right, that’s enough. You’re meant to be making them long for life on the road, not scaring them off! You’re incredibly unlikely to be killed by a snake or a shark or even a wasp. Trust me, I freelanced for the NCIS for a while. Statistically, you’re seven times more likely to die falling off a ladder than from snakes, crocodiles, and sharks combined. And don’t even get me started on the risks of alcohol.” He raised his glass and took a swig. Everyone else chuckled and followed suit.
Except me. Because I was left pondering how little the odds mattered to the victims and their families. How little the odds mattered to Amy and Norma.
Kirk reseated himself and looked in Mum and Etta’s direction. “Now if you guys want to see some really cool Australian stuff, we should give you a tour of the Daintree Rainforest.”
Etta clapped her hands. “Ooh, that’s where they have those giant birds with vicious dagger-like claws on their feet and a super powerful kick, right?”
“Yes, but they hardly ever kill people,” Gerrie said helpfully.
That was true at least. The last time a cassowary had killed someone was in 1926, and the kid had attacked the bird first.
Mum looked wistful in the flickering firelight. “I’ve always wanted a chance to visit the Daintree.”
Which was how we found ourselves with a date to meet the smugglers, thieves, and possibly murderers at noon the next day…
14
Connor had the Taste Society run basic background checks on each gray nomad overnight. The reports were not revealing.
The Killer of Oz Page 11