Chameleons and a Corpse

by Ruby Loren

  When we walked in, Georgina popped through to check on the cleaners. When she’d done that she came back to find me still standing in the hallway. It might sound crazy, but I’d needed a moment. Walking in had brought back the feeling of unspeakable dread I’d had when we’d found the door unlocked, and some sense had warned me that what lay inside was nothing good.

  “So, what happened?” the lawyer asked and I forced myself to snap out of it. Timmy was dead and there was nothing to be done about that, but I was here to help - mostly for the dog, but perhaps my retelling Georgina would help reveal the person responsible for Timmy’s death. Being back here could throw up some key detail I’d forgotten or overlooked.

  “Auryn looked through the rooms downstairs. I think it took him a while to get to the kitchen. I went upstairs. I looked around in the bedroom. To be honest, I thought…” I trailed off. She knew exactly what I’d thought when the front door had been unlocked. “Anyway, there was nothing up there. The shower hadn't been used recently. Then Auryn called and I went back down and discovered he’d found Timmy.”

  “Let’s go look for the dog,” Georgina said with an encouraging smile, realising that I was being sucked back into the dark memory of that day. She kindly led the way back out of the front door and then in through the side gate, so that the remnants of the clean-up job wouldn’t be visible.

  Once outside, I focused my mind on the task at hand. “Auryn and I let him out through the patio doors. Auryn knew that there was a fence at the bottom of the garden, which theoretically kept Rameses in. But when the police were told there was a dog on the loose, they couldn’t see any sign of him.”

  “How do you think he got out?” Georgina asked as we walked down the grassy field. “I think with all of the police around, there’s a good chance he either managed to go back through the house or, more likely, someone left the side gate open. All the same, I would have thought at least someone would have remembered seeing him…” We reached the fence with its gate in the centre. “Well, the gate is closed at least, but maybe it was open when we let him out. Someone could have come up the garden…” I looked out across the thick woodland and the dirt track that led past it. The thought of the killer in the woods looking back made me shiver.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard hoofbeats coming closer. There was a loud whinny. We both turned to see a large bay gelding prance around the corner, before continuing its canter towards us. I realised that the footpath was a bridlepath - as evident by the number of hoof marks on the solid mud.

  “Of all the bad luck…” Georgina muttered under her breath as the rider approached.

  “Gina! Whatever are you doing here?” the man on the horse called over as he drew up beside us. The large horse danced sideways and then lurched forwards. The man cursed at the horse and pulled it up. During that time, I was able to place where I’d seen him before. He’d been at The Lords of the Downs club.

  “I’m here on business, Harry. I see you’re not at work,” the lawyer said, her voice like ice. It was the polar opposite of the unnervingly warm woman I’d been speaking to thus far.

  “Oh, you know how it is. I’m cutting back on all of that these days. The company runs itself - especially now that we employ that new law firm from London,” the man on the horse replied. There was something barbed about the way he said it. I looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure it out.

  “Harry is my ex-husband,” Georgina confirmed, although I had guessed as much.

  “No one’s good enough for our Gina,” Harry added, and it wasn’t said with affection.

  The woman opposite me merely tightened her lips but said nothing further on the topic. Even lawyers had their limits when it came to arguments it was impossible to win.

  “You’re the one who came in to the club with Auryn Avery, aren’t you?” Harry asked, apparently finding it preferable to address me now.

  I nodded.

  “Where the devil is he? Around here somewhere?” The man looked back up the field towards the house. It crossed my mind that the fence along the bottom of the garden, although a decent size, could be jumped by a horse fairly easily - especially a horse whom I assumed was bred to be a hunter.

  “He’s working at the zoo,” I told him.

  “How’s he holding up? I heard he found poor old Timmy.”

  “He’s fine.” I said it with a little less decorum than I might have done if he’d included me in his sympathetic observation. I’d been there, too! Perhaps it’s a club thing to only care about other members, I sarcastically thought.

  “Who on earth would want to do the old boy in? I know he was a bit of a wild one at parties, but he wouldn’t have hurt a fly!”

  “Well, he was hardly innocent…” I said, goaded into saying it. “I mean, he wasn’t the most faithful of husbands.”

  Georgina made a noise of disgust and Harry snorted in a more horse-like way than the horse he was seated on. I’d evidently hit a nerve.

  “Was he definitely dallying with the ladies?” Harry pressed. “More than one? It could harm the club if something like that gets about.”

  “Why? He wasn’t even a member. He was supposed to be inducted on the day he was murdered,” I pointed out.

  “Indeed. Murdered that very morning…” Harry replied. I realised that the man on the horse was a deeper thinker than I’d initially given him credit for being. That, or he’d masterminded the whole thing. I frowned and wondered if someone really could be concerned enough about the negative impact on the club’s reputation to dispose of an unsuitable member. Perhaps even more than one someone…

  I was still thinking about that when we all heard the sound of splashing.

  “I see Ethan Pleasant is in his hot tub again. Do either of you know how the heck he has so much money? I swear he never seems to do any work,” Harry commented, craning his neck to look over the hedgerow.

  “You have something in common then,” Georgina sniped, but it bounced straight off.

  “I just want to know how he’s rolling in it. I think the bounder has more cash than I do! Hullo Ethan!” he called, raising his voice.

  There was the sound of more splashing and then the five bar gate between properties opened and a young man with pale skin and dark hair that hung down to his ears walked through.

  “Harry, Georgina, what brings you here?” he asked the lawyer and then shut his eyes in sudden understanding. “Of course… you’re working for Scarlett. I forgot you do more than just finance, you over-achiever,” he said with a smile that turned his face into something appealing.

  Georgina practically preened in front of Harry. “I hear you’re doing very well for yourself, too, Ethan.”

  “Can’t complain,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug. “Business is as good as it’s ever been. I might need to get you to look at a few more things for me. New contracts and so on. Got to make sure I’m on the right side of the law, eh?” he said, smiling all around at us.

  “We’re here to look for Rameses. Have you seen him around?” I asked, when the conversation seemed set to deviate into barbed words barely concealed by false pleasantries. Georgina wasn't the only one who’d taken against Harry, although having met him for all of a minute, I could definitely see why.

  “The dog?” Ethan looked thoughtful. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was missing.” (I ground my teeth at that. So much for the police looking hard for him. They hadn’t even bothered to ask Timmy’s neighbours to keep an eye out!) “I think I heard barking down in the woods the other day, but I just assumed it was someone walking their dog. I’ll let you know if I see him, and please let me know if you find him.” He looked at the fence at the bottom of the garden. “Do you think he jumped over the back?”

  I considered the fence a little more carefully. “It was built to keep him in. However, dogs can jump a lot higher than people think when they want to. Especially if there’s something motivating them to jump.”

  “Do y
ou think he went after the killer?” Ethan asked, his jaw dropping open. “That would be pretty cool!”

  I shook my head. “Timmy was already dead when Rameses was let out and then went missing. The killer was long gone by then.” I thought about it for a moment, wondering if I was correct to think that. Yes, Timmy had been long dead. Rameses had had blood on his side, and it had already been congealing. I didn’t know the time of his death, but I assumed it had been when we’d been at the meeting and not long after I’d been on the phone to Timmy. I remembered he’d said something had come up. What was it that had distracted him?

  I realised I’d zoned out and everyone was looking at me. “Sorry. It’s possible he jumped the fence. If there was a female dog in heat calling, it’s more than plausible that he could have cleared the obstacle and gone running off to find her. The important thing is that we find him… hopefully safe and sound.” Time was already short on that front.

  “I’ll definitely let you know if I see him. He’s a nice dog. I hope he comes back,” Ethan said, inclining his head at me. All of a sudden, he frowned. “Hang on, are you Madigan Amos? I can’t believe I didn't see it before! Your face is all over social media.”

  “It is?” I asked, feeling a little sick.

  “Absolutely. You’re with Auryn Avery, aren’t you? He’s one of the good ones,” Ethan said nodding his head. I tried to smile gratefully whilst wondering about the rather strange statement. It was with some surprise that I took in Ethan again and realised he was closer to Auryn’s age than mine. I couldn’t help but wonder if what everything Harry had implied about him being loaded was true. He was so young to have done so much! You’re rich, too! the little voice in my head piped up and I realised with some surprise that it was correct.

  “It’s terrible that this has happened. How’s Scarlett holding up?” Ethan asked Georgina, continuing to rather pointedly ignore Harry.

  “She’s fine,” Georgina said, a little too quickly. The knowledge that Scarlett Marsden was none too cut up about her husband’s sudden death passed between us.

  “The police asked me if I saw or heard anything on Sunday, but the whole idea of the hedgerow is for privacy. Our houses aren’t even that close together. I’m not sure when it happened, but I was in the tub for some of the morning and then went out to grab some lunch.” Ethan shrugged. “When I came back, the police were everywhere and I heard what had happened.” The solemn mood settled upon us all for a moment. “I should be getting back. I do actually have some work to do.” The sparkle in his eye clued me in that Ethan may have been listening to the conversation for longer than he’d appeared to, or perhaps he was simply well aware of the thoughts of some of the people present.

  We said goodbye and then watched him go back to the other side of the hedge.

  “What exactly does he do?” I asked, realising I didn’t have much of a clue beyond what Auryn had said about him being a cyber whiz kid.

  “He’s one of those internet gurus,” Harry muttered at the same time as Georgina gave a more sensible, and probably more accurate, answer.

  “He offers branding and marketing advice to some significant businesses. I believe he first attracted attention by creating a slew of websites designed to compete with the businesses he was targeting. Then he beat them on the search engines and put an ad for his services on the site. It was a crazy stunt, but it got him work, and then he just went from there. I brokered a contract between Suck-It-In and his company when they used him for some marketing and search engine optimisation services. It went well, I think. That’s how I know Ethan,” Georgina explained. “He’s a successful guy, but he has worked a lot harder for his success than some people realise.”

  “Can’t deny he’s successful,” Harry said, amiably. “He’s going to be in the club soon, you know. His name is next on the list and now that Timmy’s gone... We like to have some diversity.” The pride with which he said it made it sound like the club was giving handouts to the poor - not deigning to let in a young successful entrepreneur.

  Georgina shot him a look filled with disbelief. “Your last member-to-be isn’t even in the ground and you’re talking about who’s going to be in that stupid club! I’m going back to the house to get the things Scarlett wanted.” She shot me a slightly apologetic look, but I couldn’t blame her. I knew all too well what it was like dealing with an ex you would sooner strangle than chat with.

  Unfortunately, that meant I was left alone with Harry.

  “Ethan is a good man,” Harry said, perhaps a little abashed, but about the wrong thing. “He’s got his own dogs, although they’re those funny sausage ones who mostly stay inside. I think he and his wife are big on stopping animal abuse, or something.” His mouth twitched down when he said that. I shrewdly suspected that, quite rightly, their anti-abuse stance extended to bloodsports like fox hunting. Honestly, it was a wonder that The Lords of the Downs were even considering letting Ethan join.

  “I didn’t realise he was married?” I said, just to make conversation.

  “Yes, she’s another one of those go-getters! I think she bakes cakes, or some such. Scarlett told me one time. I think they might be good friends.” My ears sharpened at his mention of Scarlett telling him ‘one time’. I couldn’t help but wonder if…

  “I can’t believe my ex-wife is getting herself mixed up in all of this nasty business, especially considering her personal involvement!”

  “You mean with Scarlett Marsden’s company?”

  The look he gave me said that he meant something quite else. Well, well! They really were all at it.

  “Perhaps it was just something to do with business,” I said, neutrally.

  “You know what? I wouldn't put it past Gina to be boring enough for it to be exactly that. That girl wouldn’t know fun if it hit her in the face with a spade.”

  I looked away from Harry, hoping that lightning might strike, or the ground open up and swallow him - but leave the horse, in some strange twist of physics.

  “It’s good to reconnect with old Ethan. He wasn’t part of the crowd back when we were young.” Harry smiled fondly at the memory. “There were always those fun tussles between our school and the local comprehensive lot. Ah, to be a kid again, eh? But it was all just a bit of fun, of course. No one really got hurt…”

  I silently thought that perhaps Harry was emphasising how fun and harmless it had been a little too much. It sounded to me like there might have been some significant bullying going on. I had a strong feeling that Harry’s memories of ‘fun’ and friendly tussles would likely be viewed as something different if I popped across the hedge and asked Ethan about his views on it. Still, perhaps times had changed - although I certainly hadn’t imagined the frost between the two men.

  “Hey,” Ethan said, leaning back over the gate. “I think I just saw something running through the woods. It might have been a dog?”

  I thanked him - perhaps a little more profusely than necessary.

  “I’d better have a look,” I said, inclining my head to Harry before walking through the gate at the bottom of the garden and stepping around the large horse.

  “Give my best to Auryn!” Harry called before digging his heels in and making the horse jump straight from standing to canter.

  I watched him go with a sour taste in my mouth. Harry seemed to believe he was fast friends with my fiancé. If he was, I would probably think a little less of Auryn - unless he gave me a very good reason otherwise.

  I looked in the woods, even though I didn’t really believe that Ethan had seen anything. I presumed he’d been listening to the awkward conversation over the hedge and had thankfully stepped in to save me.

  It didn’t take me long to see that there was no sign of any dog in the area indicated, and after calling for Rameses a few times and then listening to the silent trees, I returned to the house, knowing there wasn’t much more I could do today. Leaving the gate open and putting food out would probably attract other wildlife. I would just have to h
ope that Ethan would be true to his word and look out for the dog if he came home.

  I really hoped he would come home.

  “What else did he say about me?” Georgina asked when I walked back around the front and met her in the hallway. She was holding a pair of stilettos, which looked to be the grand sum of what Scarlett had asked her to fetch - or at least, that was all I could see.

  “He implied you’d had an affair with Timmy and that you shouldn’t be involved with a personal case,” I said, curious enough to just say it.

  Georgina rolled her eyes. “Oh, who hasn’t?! Everyone has their little flings and it was ages and ages ago.” She caught me looking at her and accurately read my bemusement at her hypocrisy. “Scarlett knows. We used to laugh about some of Timmy’s mannerisms. It was funny.”

  I can’t have looked convinced because Georgina laid a hand on my shoulder and made eye contact with me. “Look… Scarlett and Timmy knew what was going on. I don’t know if they ever spoke about it, but they basically had an open relationship. They still loved each other, but they saw other people, too. Just… sometimes the people they saw might not have understood that. They were never serious with anyone else, you see.”

  “Okay,” I said, once more trying to sound neutral. I felt like I’d dropped into a parallel universe these past few days.

  “By the way, Scarlett said you told her to avoid using her personal lawyer. Was there a particular reason for that, or was it just ‘the usual’?”

  “I’m certain she was involved with Timmy,” I told her, thinking dark thoughts about our doorstep encounter. “But the real reason was that she might have been at the house that morning. I know her husband was…”