Smoke and Mirrors (Sloane Monroe Book 8)

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  “I’m sorry your family is grieving,” I said, “but I’m not sure what I can do to help. I’m not a licensed private investigator in your country.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  Too late—I already was, and the last thing I wanted to do was to end up on the wrong side of the law in a country where I wasn’t a citizen.

  “Is there a way I can help you from here in the States?” I asked.

  “No. You must come to Cairns. It makes the most sense. You didn’t seem to have a problem working in Australia before, hmm?”

  He was right. I didn’t, and I justified my actions because I was helping Nick find answers about what happened to his wife. That was personal. This wasn’t.

  “I’m not sure, Senator Ashby. It’s not that I don’t want to help. I do. I just don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to—”

  “Look, Sloane, all I want you to do is to do some digging around. I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about my sister, and now I believe I was mistaken. I don’t know who did this to her, or why, or if it has anything to do with me, or if it doesn’t. The police have been remarkable. They’re doing everything they can. But I’m impatient, and I want the killer found—now. The longer this goes unsolved, the less the chances are that we’ll find out who did this. I need you. Will you come?”

  Guilt often caused people to break from the norm, shredding their ethical rulebook and creating one more suited to the situation, like he was doing now. And even though I was principled and tried to do the right thing in most situations, it was something we had in common. His comment about whether Caroline’s murder had anything to do with him meant the idea was weighing on him. I was familiar with that particular kind of weight, what it felt like, and how far it had dragged me down when my sister died at the hands of a serial killer several years before. Until he had answers, the weight he felt would eat away at him like rust on a sunken ship, and I didn’t want to add to that.

  “Let me see what I can do,” I said. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Two days later, I touched down at the airport in Cairns. An older man in his late sixties wearing a weathered bush hat and a bright, tropical, button-up shirt—only the bottom four buttons were fastened, so his white chest hair poked through the top—was waiting next to the luggage carousel. He looked like a senior-aged model for Tommy Bahama. He introduced himself as Froggy and said he would take me to meet with Senator Ashby, but I had somewhere else in mind I wanted to go first.

  On the way to the car, I made my intentions clear, which didn’t seem to please him.

  “James has been waiting for you to arrive,” he said. “It’s best not to keep him waiting, all right.”

  “I just want to make a quick pit stop. It won’t take long, and I feel the senator would appreciate me getting right to work.”

  He frowned, so I presented him with another option. “If you don’t want to drive me, I can grab a cab or an Uber and meet up with the senator once I’ve finished.”

  Froggy sent a quick text message, which I assumed went to the senator. He received a reply moments later and said he’d drive me where I wanted to go, then afterward would take me to see the senator.

  Twenty minutes later, a freckled, redheaded Victoria Bennett glanced up at me from her desk, giving me a look that made me feel like I was expected. Victoria was the coroner for the North Queensland region, and although we hadn’t spent much time together on my last visit, she was a straight shooter, and I hoped she’d be willing to fill me in on what she knew so far.

  “Nice to see you again so soon, Sloane,” she said.

  “You too,” I said. “Your hair is different.”

  She blushed. I assumed it was because the last time I was there, she was sporting a Pulp Fiction type bob. Now her hair was as short as mine and styled much the same.

  She brushed her bangs to the side with her hand and said, “I hope you don’t mind. It’s just ... when I saw your pixie cut the last time you were here, I finally got up the nerve to chop my own hair. I’ve been wanting to do it for years.”

  “Of course I don’t mind. It looks great on you.”

  And it did.

  She was even more stunning than I remembered.

  “James told me you were stopping by,” she admitted. “News travels fast in this place.”

  “Did he tell you why I’m here?”

  “Not at first, but I know what you do. It wasn’t hard to figure out. When I asked him, he didn’t say much, but he didn’t deny it, either.”

  “I was hoping we could talk about what you’ve learned about Caroline’s and Hugh’s deaths.”

  She stared at me for a moment but didn’t respond, and then her gaze shifted to something behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Froggy hovering by the door. We made eye contact, and he started whistling, like piping out a tune was going to make his eavesdropping just fine and dandy. It wasn’t fine ... or dandy, and I wondered if he was really a driver or someone the senator had sent to shadow me during my visit, as his casual attire suggested. If so, he’d soon learn I didn’t work that way.

  “Can I help you?” I asked. “This is a personal conversation.”

  “Oh,” Froggy said. “I ... uhh ... just wanted to know how long you think you’ll be here.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say. As long as it takes. I’m aware the senator wants to meet with me today, and I will, just as soon as I finish talking with Victoria.”

  “It’s just ... you’re expected, and you shouldn’t keep him waiting for too long.”

  “I’m jetlagged, sweaty, and in dire need of a shower, but I’m here, already working, doing the job he hired me to do. He should be happy about that.”

  “He is. It’s just ... he shifted his schedule around today to accommodate your arrival.”

  “He never told me he’d moved his appointments,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t. He’s too modest. I’m not.”

  Obviously.

  “For a driver, you seem to care a lot about the senator.”

  He tipped his head back and let out a full-bellied laughed. Victoria followed suit, letting me know I was missing something they both knew and I didn’t.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “I’m not James’ driver. I’m his father.”

  I was starting to feel like I’d been right before in thinking that James had sent someone he trusted to keep an eye on me. Perhaps it was to protect me while I did my investigating. Or perhaps his reasons were entirely different.

  “You could have told me who you were earlier,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I could tell you a lot of things. Doesn’t mean I will.”

  “You can go.”

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “You can go. I have the senator’s address. When I’m ready to see him, I’ll give him a call.”

  “I was just teasing you a little. You know that, right?”

  Victoria seemed to sense the tension between us. She walked over and stood next to me. “Sloane, you’re probably hungry after such a long flight.”

  I had been flown in first-class and had taken full advantage of the upgrade, but she was offering me a way out of an uncomfortable situation, and I knew better than not to take it. “I’m starving.”

  “Great.” She turned toward Froggy. “I’m taking her to lunch, Noel, and then I’ll drop her off to see James.”

  Noel—we had a name. A real name.

  He grimaced, yanked his phone out of the pocket of his cargo shorts, and sent another text. Seconds later, my phone rang. I didn’t answer it. I didn’t need to. I knew who was calling.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Noel asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t like being followed around and spied upon. I’m not at your son’s beck and call just because I’m working a case for him. I’m sure that’s what he expects, but that doesn’t work for me.”

  Noe
l crossed his arms in front of him. “Understood. Just so you know, I wasn’t spying. I was just trying to give you a lift after your long flight.”

  He walked out of Victoria’s office without saying another word. She grabbed her wallet and car keys and said, “Well, that was fun.”

  Victoria and I ordered a couple of lattes at a café in the city, and then we strolled along a wooden walking path next to the pier. We sipped our drinks and soaked up the tropical sun. I thought about how far away I felt from home and how different things were here than the hustle and bustle in the States. In Cairns life seemed to almost come to a standstill at times. The air seemed different because it was. A place like this gave one time to think—really think. To put things into perspective. I thought about the last time I’d been here, and of Marissa, and how she had probably walked the same path I was walking now on the night she had been murdered.

  How fleeting life was, and how fragile. One day we’re alive and free, the next we’re turned to dust, evaporating into an afterlife I wasn’t even sure existed. Some days I felt larger than life, like I meant something and like I mattered. Today I felt small and insignificant, like I could exit life’s door tomorrow, and in a hundred years, there would be little left of me to remind anyone of my existence. Thinking about it now, I vowed to make my mark in some small way. I wanted to be better—to make a difference—not just for myself, but for all those around me.

  I glanced at Victoria who was eyeing me curiously, like she could tell my mind had drifted and she was wondering how far.

  “I was surprised James asked you to come here,” Victoria said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t let many people in—not when it comes to his personal life, and the murder of his sister ... well, I can’t think of anything more personal than that.”

  “It doesn’t feel like he’s letting me in. It feels like I’m just one more card in the deck he’s been dealt recently, and after some thought, he’s decided to play multiple hands to see which one gives him the best results in the fastest time frame.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do. He wants to know what happened, and he wants to know now. The police are doing everything they can, I’m sure, but he’s impatient. He wants another perspective. That’s where I come in. How’s it been since everything happened?”

  “It has been a trying couple of weeks for all of us. He’s not the only one pushing for answers. Everyone is. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure.”

  “I’m sure he feels like he’s in a fishbowl right now,” I said. “Cairns may be a city, but it’s also a small, close-knit community. There was a table of women in the coffee shop discussing the details of the murder while we waited for our lattes, and when we walked outside, a man was showing his wife the front page of the local paper. Have you seen it?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t read the latest article, but I’ve seen the photos they posted of Caroline and Hugh. You don’t miss a lot, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t be any good at my job if I did. Everywhere I look, people are talking about what happened. They’re all speculating and drawing their own conclusions. It’s almost like what happened to Caroline has also happened to them. Whether they knew her or didn’t, it’s still personal to them.”

  “That’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

  It was also an accurate one, and it made Cairns special, different than most other places where I’d been involved in an investigation.

  “You called the senator by his first name a few times today,” I said. “Aside from your forensic work on the case, are you two friends?”

  She bit her upper lip.

  They were connected somehow.

  She stared at her latte. “I feel like I need a much stronger drink if I’m going to talk about it.”

  “Is it that bad?” I asked.

  “It’s not bad. Not really. I ... uhh ... we dated for a while. Well, not a long while. A couple of months a few years ago.”

  “What ...”

  Happened.

  I left the word I didn’t say alone. What happened wasn’t my business. If she wanted to tell me, she could. And though I was curious, I wasn’t going to pry. Not with her love life, anyway.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t mind talking to you about it. We met at a holiday fund-raiser for the city after he became senator. He was single, and I was going through a divorce at the time, and I wasn’t in the right place in my life to start a new relationship. He was, and after dating for a short time, he wanted a commitment. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t give him what he wanted, so I broke things off, even though I can admit now that I really didn’t want to.”

  Years had passed, but from the look on her face, the pain of her decision to end the relationship was still fresh in her mind, even now.

  “Must have been hard,” I said. “I’ve been there before.”

  “I still wonder if I should have done things differently. We weren’t together long, but the bond we shared together was unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since.”

  “Have you ever thought about talking to him or trying to get back what you once had?”

  “I almost called him a few times, but I didn’t.”

  “What stopped you?” I asked.

  “I have no interest being in the public eye the way he is in his career right now. If he were no longer senator, maybe it would be different.” She paused, then abruptly switched subjects. “Hey, you want to sit down for a few minutes?”

  I nodded, and we crossed into a park-like picnic area along the esplanade. I spotted a vacant table nestled under a ficus tree, and we sat down.

  “What can you tell me about Caroline’s death?”

  “She was knifed in the chest.”

  “How many times?”

  “Once.”

  “She died from a single stab wound?” I asked.

  “She did. The knife punctured her abdominal aorta, which means she would have died shortly thereafter. Looking at how specific Caroline’s injury was, I would assume the killer knew where the knife needed to enter her body in order to be fatal. The puncture wound was clean. With Hugh, it was different.”

  “Was the knife recovered from the crime scene?”

  “It was found outside, in Caroline’s back garden. The length and width of the blade are consistent with the wounds found on Caroline, but there were no prints on the knife’s handle. Not even a smudge.”

  “So, someone took the time to wipe their prints off the blade but was careless enough to leave it behind?”

  Victoria lifted a finger. “I’ll get to my theory on that in a minute. Another interesting thing of note is that Caroline had no defensive wounds, but Hugh had a slice on his neck that wasn’t deep, like he had been trying to fight his attacker off before he tumbled down the stairs to his death.”

  “How many cuts did he have?”

  “Only one, and like I said, it wasn’t deep. It was more like a scrape than a stab wound. Hugh is a lot bigger than Caroline, and if he did have the chance to fight for his life, the killer would have had a harder time doing what he’d come to do.”

  “Hugh died from falling down the stairs, right?”

  She nodded. “His neck was broken. From what Grace told us, we know Hugh was still alive when she discovered her mum. And yet, at some point after Grace climbed out of the bathroom window, Hugh was also murdered.”

  “I suppose it’s possible the killer was in the house the entire time, hiding out somewhere,” I said.

  If true, the question was—why?

  And had the killer intended to kill Grace as well?

  “This leads to my theory about why the knife was left behind,” she said. “I believe the police arrived shortly after Hugh was killed. The killer was still in the house, and he panicked. He escaped, wiping the handle of the knife off as he ran out the back door. He dropped the knife, which I believe was an accident. At some point, he would have r
ealized his mistake, but with cops swarming the place, it was too late to go back for it.”

  There was a glaring, obvious question we hadn’t addressed yet. Why had Grace’s life been spared? Maybe the killer had intended on killing all them all, but when Grace escaped through the bathroom window, he lost the opportunity.

  “What do you know about Caroline and Hugh’s whereabouts on the night they died?” I asked.

  “We know Caroline took Grace to a movie around seven. It got over at half past nine, which put them home around ten. Adelaide Wiggins, one of Caroline’s neighbors, corroborated this.”

  “Was Adelaide’s house where Grace ran to after climbing out the bathroom window?”

  Victoria nodded. “Adelaide was in the kitchen, ending a call with her daughter, when Caroline and Grace returned home from the movie. She checked the time of the call and said they would have arrived home a few minutes before ten. She said she watched Caroline and Grace get out of the car and go into the house. She saw no one else, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”

  “What do you know about what followed?”

  “Grace told the police she had fallen asleep in the car on the way back from the movie, and she went to bed as soon as they got home. Not long after, she woke to the sound of her mother screaming.”

  “What time did Grace call the senator?”

  “Half past eleven.”

  “So both murders took place within an hour or so of Caroline arriving home.”

  “Right, and it fits with the overall condition of the bodies when I found them. Both were showing early signs of lividity, particularly Caroline, but there were no signs of rigor mortis yet.”