Digging Up Dirt

by Pamela Hart

  ‘Hello?’

  I could imagine what Chloe was saying from the expressions on Patience’s face.

  ‘Yes. I’m fine. No. No, I don’t want to talk to them!’ Her voice was rising. ‘No, I’m not going to tell you where I am! I don’t want to talk to anyone!’ She practically threw the phone back to me and ran off to her bedroom.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Prudhomme?’ I said sweetly. Calmly. Trying to sound like a responsible adult. ‘Patience is fine, but she really doesn’t want to go home. She is safe. She has somewhere suitable to live for the moment. She is over sixteen, so she has the right—’

  ‘I know all about her rights, McGowan. The question is, what does she know?’

  I hesitated, but I wanted Julieanne’s killer caught as much as Detective Chloe did.

  ‘I don’t know. Something. If we leave her alone for a while, I think she’ll tell us.’

  ‘Tell you, you mean. There’s no exclusive for the ABC on this one. If she knows anything, I need to find out.’

  ‘I thought Gerry was chief suspect.’

  Detective Chloe sighed. ‘He’s got an alibi,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t trust Jake—’

  ‘No, you can’t, which is why he’s been charged with interfering with a police investigation. He was lying. But Collonucci got him to lie because he was at home liaising with his Italian buyers—not an alibi he wanted to share with us. We’ve got computer logs, Skype records … one of the buyers even taped the conversation. So he’s clean as far as Julieanne is concerned.’

  I noticed, even through my disappointment, that ‘Dr Weaver’ had become ‘Julieanne’. Because she’d been pregnant?

  ‘So if Patience has information …’ Detective Chloe prompted.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell the Carters who she’s with.’

  ‘Okay. You stick with her. If she wants to talk, she can ring me any time.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  She hung up. I turned my phone off immediately. I vaguely recalled giving Carter my card and I didn’t want to be contactable.

  Fifteen minutes later, a newsflash reported that Patience Carter had been found. The subtext from the news anchor was that there was some deep scandal waiting to be uncovered here. I thought he was right.

  Then I thought about my position at the ABC and Tyler’s expectations. I wasn’t about to give him Patience, but maybe I could deflect him. Instead of calling Tyler, who would ask too many questions, I called Gina Kirikis, the police rounds reporter, and told her about Gerry’s alibi.

  Kirikis was grateful for the information.

  ‘Guess that puts the spotlight back on the boyfriend,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Or it might turn out to be one of those ones where they never solve it—or at least never prove it.’

  ‘Gee, that’d be great,’ I said.

  She remembered it happened in my house, but police reporters have hard noses and live by black humour. ‘I know a good exorcist if you need her ghost laid to rest,’ she said.

  ‘So kind.’

  She laughed and hung up.

  I went to the spare room and tapped lightly on the door.

  ‘Patience? Detective Chloe says you can ring her any time you want to talk to her. Just ask me.’

  Leave it at that, I thought.

  Sure enough, a minute later the door opened and Patience peered around the edge, eyes red.

  ‘Do you think I should?’ she whispered.

  ‘If you know anything about how Julieanne Weaver died, you should.’

  Her eyes filled again, and her breathing quickened. She was close to panicking. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  Time to calm things down.

  ‘You don’t have to decide anything now,’ I said. ‘Get some sleep.’

  A flicker of some other emotion went across her face. ‘I suppose you think it’ll all seem better in the morning?’

  I had hopes for Patience. That kind of cynicism is what gets you through the tough spots.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’ll seem just as shitty. But it’s easier to deal with shit when you’re not exhausted.’

  It may have been the first time she’d ever heard an adult she knew use the word ‘shit’. Her eyes widened and she half-smiled, then tucked the edges of her mouth in as if she was going to get in trouble for being amused. I grinned.

  ‘I don’t promise to be able to help you. I don’t promise to keep secrets for you. But I promise not to bullshit you.’

  She searched my face and whatever she was looking for, seemed to find it. She took a breath in and whispered, almost hissing, ‘I think my mother killed her.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Patience closed the door—closed it, not slammed it—and I heard the lock click.

  Holy family, Batman! Eliza.

  I stood there like a stunned mullet. I could hear the house settling around me and the Arabic music from next door. A plane went overhead. I reached out and touched the door, wishing I could see through it and into Patience’s mind.

  Carter had an alibi. But Eliza—she had all the motive Carter had, and more. Real hatred. Real zealotry. I was pretty sure she believed in Carter and the party a lot more than Carter himself did.

  Fiona was making a cup of tea, which I badly needed.

  ‘How’s she going?’

  ‘She’s got the worst of it off her chest,’ I said absently, taking the mug she handed me. ‘But if she’s right, she’s facing some terrible stuff.’

  ‘So many kids do.’ Fiona sighed. ‘Abuse?’

  ‘No, no, not that. Unless you think that preaching the prosperity gospel to developing minds is abuse.’

  ‘Comes close.’ Fiona is anti-capitalist, anti-global and pro- just about any social cause you can name. She deals stoically with my meat eating, which is the real test of our friendship. She herself eats only fair trade, organically grown, fresh-from-the-farm vegetables. She won’t even wear silk because they kill the silkworms to get the thread. Prosperity gospel to her was like communism to a McCarthyite.

  I let her rant a bit. It was reassuring to hear someone else who hated the idea as much as I did. The familiar soothing anger in Fiona’s voice washed over me. Should I ring Detective Chloe? I hadn’t promised to keep secrets for Patience—in fact, I’d warned her I wouldn’t. Didn’t that mean she wanted me to pass it on?

  I wrestled with the problem. And with the urge to call Tol and ask his advice. That was just stupid. Surely I could make up my own mind? So I asked Fiona instead.

  ‘Find out why she thinks so first,’ Fiona said with an air of having heard it all. ‘Girls her age jump to conclusions like frogs in a fire pit.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I had no idea where she got that metaphor from, and I didn’t want to know. But I rang Mum and Dad and told them I’d be staying at Fiona’s, in case Patience felt like talking in the middle of the night. I slept on the sofa, which was old and soft and smelt faintly of cat.

  In the morning, Patience emerged tousle-haired and wary when she heard Fiona in the shower. I’m not that competent before I have my morning coffee—which I never got at Fiona’s unless I brought my own fair-trade beans—but after a cup of organic tea I was alert enough to watch Patience assemble her own breakfast of toast and honey. She was used to doing it, that was clear. So, her mother didn’t wait on her hand and foot. Too busy looking after the males in the household, no doubt.

  The cats demanded to be fed, even though I happened to know that Fiona fed them at the crack of dawn when she got up for her morning walk and to let them out for the day.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I advised, but Patience gave them little nibbles of toast with butter.

  Fiona left with a ‘Close the door behind you, there’s a spare key for Patience on the fridge.’

  Patience sat at the kitchen table opposite me, but didn’t meet my eyes.

  What the hell. I could tiptoe around her all day and not get any further. Besides, I thought she wanted to talk.

&nbs
p; ‘I haven’t told the police what you said,’ I started.

  She looked up, shocked. ‘Oh, no, don’t do that!’

  ‘But if you have evidence that proves your mother is the killer, the police need to know.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t have evidence,’ she said with relief. ‘I just—’ She faltered to a stop, and took a bite out of the toast so she couldn’t speak.

  ‘You just think she did it.’

  She swallowed with difficulty and looked at me earnestly. I could almost see the thoughts: Was I trustworthy? Was she betraying her mother?

  ‘She lied to me,’ she said eventually. She spoke as though reciting a lesson. ‘She said she was going down to the church. I thought she was taking food down to the meeting Dad had gone to. She often did that. I put the boys to bed and did my homework and she still wasn’t back. I went to bed. She didn’t get home until after midnight. Dad wasn’t back until three, but he’s often out late. Mum never is.’

  ‘Are you sure she wasn’t with him?’

  Her finger pushed the last triangle of toast around the plate. She nodded. Her hair fell forward and she tucked it behind her ear automatically. She was embarrassed about something.

  ‘I—I checked. She used Dad’s car because he’d taken the big one.’ She stopped as though she’d explained something.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Um, well, Dad’s car belongs to the electoral office. And you have to fill in a log book when you use it.’

  ‘Your mother filled in the log book?’ That was taking civic responsibility a bit far, I thought.

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were angry. ‘No, she didn’t. That’s why I knew she’d been somewhere … else. But I looked at the distance meter thing and the log book had the kilometres from when she started and I worked out she’d driven forty-one kilometres.’

  The round trip from Annandale to North Hughes was about that.

  ‘And the next morning, she looked terrible. When the news came on that a body of a woman had been found in Annandale, she went so white. She knew. I know she did.’ Patience’s eyes filled with tears. ‘And she was happy when that man was arrested. Relieved. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So yesterday, after service, I asked her where she’d been that night. She said she’d been to Aunty Sally’s, but they only live two kilometres away. She lied to me!’ It was clear that this was her mother’s real sin. ‘And I just couldn’t take her getting up in front of the other women and preaching about honesty and kindness! I just couldn’t!’

  ‘But why would your mother kill Julieanne Weaver?’

  ‘Dad … Dad looked at her a lot,’ she whispered. ‘I heard him on the phone, once, to someone, while Mum was giving the boys their bath. He said, “You know I only want to be with you.”’

  ‘You think he and Julieanne were having an affair?’

  ‘He made me go to a purity ball and everything!’ she said, grief-stricken. I realised that the last few weeks had undermined everything Patience had ever been taught. As for purity balls—how icky were they? Formals where fathers escorted their pre-pubescent daughters and promised to look after them forever—as long as they stayed ‘pure’. Erk. Freud would have a field day.

  ‘He’s—he’s—a whited sepulchre!’ she almost shouted. Good. She should be angry.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. It stopped her as nothing else could.

  ‘But—’ Her mouth opened and closed, and opened again. ‘He tries to do good, doesn’t he? Maybe she tempted him.’

  ‘I’m sure she did tempt him,’ I said. ‘But everyone gets tempted, Patience. Doesn’t mean you have to give in.’

  All the energy seemed to drain out of her and she slumped in her chair. ‘They’re all liars,’ she said dully. ‘The whole lot of them. I don’t believe in anything any more.’

  I was very, very glad that she was pulling away from Carter and his cronies, but I didn’t want her completely demoralised. Completely bereft. Besides …

  ‘Just because some humans have made mistakes and chosen badly,’ I said carefully, ‘doesn’t mean that God is false.’

  ‘My father’s always talking about trust in God,’ she said. Ah, that touch of cynicism again.

  ‘Even liars say something true sometimes.’

  The idea startled her so much that she laughed, and finished her toast. Confession may or may not be good for the soul, but it’s great for the appetite.

  ‘Chloe Prudhomme needs to know all this, Patience,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’ she said bitterly. ‘I can’t go home again. I might as well betray them completely.’

  That adolescent sense of drama had returned full force, but I knew I had to take advantage of it straight away. I called Detective Chloe from the house phone.

  ‘I think Patience would like to talk to you,’ I said. ‘But maybe not at the police centre.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  I suggested a nearby café.

  ‘Too public. Clovelly Beach—at the kiosk.’

  She hung up before I could respond.

  I smiled at Patience. ‘Time to get dressed, kid, we’re going to the beach.’

  It was still early, but I was going to be late, so as Patience got her things together I rang Jennifer Jay and told her I’d be working from home, setting up recces for the recycling episode we’d be shooting next. I would, too. Later.

  I retrieved my emergency spare clothes from the car, took a quick shower and was ready to drive Patience to her appointment with betrayal. Poor little possum.

  Clovelly Beach is twenty minutes from Marrickville, and is one of the curiosities of Sydney. I always think of it as ‘the tame beach’. In the 1930s, when they were trying to make work for men on the dole, they essentially concreted the beach. There’s a crescent of sand at the end, but the long inlet that leads to the sand has concrete banks on each side, with steps leading down to the water. The inlet itself is almost closed off by a breakwater. The result is one of the safest beaches in the world. It’s very popular with Italian grandmothers, because no waves make it past the breakwater, but it’s also popular with snorkellers and divers, because all the rocks piled up for the earthworks have made a fantastic artificial reef which teems with fish life. Most beginner scuba courses in Sydney happen there. There’s also wheelchair access, so you often get groups of disabled kids there for an outing.

  But at just past nine on a Thursday morning, it was deserted except for some dog walkers and a bunch of greyhaired women power-walking along the cliff track that led to Bondi. The kiosk was open and I bought coffee thankfully. Patience started to ask for a milkshake and then realised that she didn’t have enough money. I saw panic hit her and jumped in before she could melt down and decide to run back home.

  ‘I’ll take you to Centrelink later and you can apply for youth allowance—until you decide what you’re going to do.’

  That was the way. Nothing final, nothing definitive. Just stopgap measures. If she was right and her mother had killed Julieanne, I suspected that her brothers would need her back home, but it wasn’t the right time to say that.

  She relaxed enough to accept a milkshake from me. Detective Chloe arrived soon after and I offered to leave them alone to talk. Patience hesitated, but Chloe had her kindest face on, so eventually she nodded. I went for a walk, savouring the sea air. I used to live at Coogee, the next beach over, and I missed the ocean a lot. The sense of space, the vastness of the sky. But I also wanted a house, and in terms of what I could afford, it was a choice between a flat near the beach or a little house with a garden in the inner west. The garden won. Somewhere to sit outside and drink my tea. Somewhere to plant roses.

  I was lost in a dream of David Austin roses spilling over my narrow picket fence when Detective Chloe and Patience joined me. Chloe pulled me gently aside.

  ‘Well. Interesting. This is all off the record, of course.’

  ‘As if!’ I said. ‘For you, not a chance. For her … okay.’

  ‘Why did she come to you, do you think?’


  ‘Because I was the only person she knew who doesn’t like her father.’

  Chloe laughed. ‘Not the only one,’ she said. ‘Will she be all right at your friend’s place for a few days?’

  I nodded. ‘Will it be over by then?’

  ‘One way or another,’ Chloe said grimly.

  ‘It might not be Eliza. Carter was out until three, remember, but his meeting finished at one.’

  ‘Time of death’s earlier, we think,’ she said absently, watching Patience watch the waves. The girl seemed calmer now she’d passed the point of no return.

  ‘By the way,’ Chloe said as she left, ‘I tried to ring you to say I’d be a bit late. Your phone’s still off.’

  ‘Oh, bugger!’ I pulled out my phone and turned it on. It started buzzing immediately. Tyler had called eleven times and left several messages, the gist of which was that I should get my arse into gear and go interview the Carters about their missing daughter.

  I let Patience listen to the least profane of them.

  ‘Are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you want me to? I could take a message for you if you want.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Don’t let them know you know where I am. You’ll get in trouble.’

  She was finding it hard to understand that Matthew Carter wasn’t in charge of the universe, but no doubt she’d learn in time.

  My phone rang. I expected Tyler but it was my mother.

  ‘There’s a very unpleasant man here who wants to find you,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Garry Monahan.’

  Carter’s private eye. Hah.

  ‘Tell him he’s on private property and you’ll call the police if he doesn’t leave,’ I said. ‘And tell him that I’m on my way to see his boss.’ I turned to Patience. ‘Sorry, but your dad is hassling my parents. I have to go see him and call his bluff. Otherwise Monahan will follow me and find you.’

  She was pale. ‘What should I do?’

  ‘I’ll drop you back in Marrickville and then—well, frankly, if I were you I’d have a sleep. Centrelink can wait.’ I pulled out some money and gave it to her. ‘Just a loan,’ I said, forestalling her objections. ‘Until you get yourself sorted out.’