by Morgana Best
I sighed and refilled my wine glass. “Let’s go and sit in the living room. I mean, we’ll have to watch Starsky and Hutch. The only alternative is the porch, but that internal affairs man might catch you.”
Max sighed in obvious resignation. “Starsky and Hutch it is then,” he said. “I had to hide the car around the corner. Okay Goldie, tell me what you’ve already found out.”
I feigned innocence. “What do you mean?” When Max simply stared at me, I said, “Okay, I confess. Oleander, Athanasius, and I went to see Laurence Pattinson-Smyth yesterday at Tamborine Mountain.”
“Tamborine Mountain? Lovely place.”
I agreed. “Anyway, it turns out he’s the last survivor of the Great Bank Robbery of 1955 gang, but he did say something very interesting.”
Max set down his cup on the coffee table. “What is it?”
“One of the newspapers recently ran a big feature article on East Bucklebury. There was a photo of Doug Greer’s house with an old photo of his father sitting on a stockhorse. It had his father’s real name, Ben Parrish, in the caption. Laurence had seen the article, so I figure whoever murdered Angus Burns had seen it too.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Max said.
I tapped myself on the side of my head. “Silly me! I forgot you didn’t know about the gold bars. You know how the victim and Doug’s father, Ben Parrish, were involved in the Great Bank Robbery of 1955?” Max nodded.
I continued. “The victim, Angus Burns, was by far the youngest, so the others gave him some of their gold bullion to hide until they got out of prison. They trusted him, but apparently he kept it and went into hiding.”
“Are you thinking that’s the motive? Someone paying back Angus Burns for stealing their loot?”
I nodded. “So if someone were to find out if Chris Coleman and Martin Deakin had any living relatives, then those relatives would likely be top of the suspect list.”
Max tapped his chin. “Okay, I’ll look into it.”
“Are you allowed to look into it?” I asked him.
“No more than you are, Goldie, but that hasn’t stopped you.”
I shot a guilty look into my wine glass.
Max looked off into the distance. “I wonder if any of the detectives on the case back then are still around. I might follow up on that lead, because the detectives on the case would likely know if anyone had any other motives to murder the victim. That is of course, if the motive was related to the Great Bank Robbery of 1955.”
As soon as Max was out the door, I leant back against it. And people said life was boring in a small seaside town! My life was anything but boring. My ex-boyfriend, Thomas, was after me. Oh how happy I would have been months earlier. Now, as it was, I could barely stand the sight of the man. How times had changed. In fact, I remembered friends from long ago telling me that men who broke up with them eventually wanted them back. I nodded slowly to myself.
And then there was Max. He certainly was an enigma. I didn’t know if he was sending mixed signals or if I was the one whose signals were mixed. Either way, he had not asked me on a date yet. I knew there was an internal affairs investigator hanging around, but then Max just had a drink of coffee and it was just as illegal to drink coffee as it was for an East Bucklebury police officer to date a resident.
Now that Max had left, I turned my attention back to my vinegar bottle spell. I opened the doors to my altar room after first ascertaining that Persnickle wasn’t going to follow me. I didn’t know why that wombat liked to run away with candles when they were alight.
I shut the doors behind me. The candles had already burnt down. They weren’t big candles. They were about the size of five tea light candles stuck together. I carefully broke the wax remains into two old wine bottles, one for Power and one for the investigator.
After I dropped all pieces of wax in, I folded the name paper with Detective Rick Power’s name on it away from me three times before poking it into the bottle. I folded the paper that had been under the candle just enough to make a funnel for the copper sulphate, black pepper, red pepper, and salt. After it was in the bottle, I folded the paper away from me and pushed it in as well. I fetched the vinegar I had waiting for me and filled it halfway. I replaced the lid and gave the bottle a good shake while focusing on myself and the detective having nothing to do with each other any longer.
I then repeated the entire process for the internal affairs investigator. It was a laborious process but an effective one.
I’d had great success with vinegar separation bottles in the past. On one occasion, a colleague of mine in Melbourne was upset because her boyfriend always took his female business partner with him on overseas so-called business trips. She was distraught and the female business partner was horrendously mean to her. I did a vinegar bottle for them, and in a short space of time, he had parted ways with his business partner.
I walked out and put the vinegar bottles on the windowsill in the kitchen. I intended to shake them and focus, every time I walked past.
I smiled with satisfaction and walked back to my wine. I could hear Persnickle snoring gently. I looked down and saw my phone vibrating. I must have turned off the sound by mistake. The Caller ID told me it was Oleander. I picked it up, but before I could say ‘Hello,’ she shrieked, “Goldie, come over right now. It’s an emergency!”
Chapter 8
I put on Persnickle’s harness, attached the leash, and tried to make him hurry to the car. Still, I had learnt some time ago that trying to hurry a wombat is an exercise in futility. With the help of carrot treats, I managed to encourage him to amble a little faster. When he saw the car, his pace increased somewhat. “We’re going to see Oleander and Athanasius,” I told him.
I drove to the retirement home as fast as I legally could while constantly pressing the green button for Oleander’s name on my bluetooth screen. Oleander did not pick up. Had there been another murder? Could something have happened to Athanasius?
When I reached the retirement home, I was relieved to see no ambulances, fire engines, or police vehicles. Someone was leaving, so the security guard waved me through. I drove straight over to Oleander’s apartment.
Persnickle happily jumped from the car when he saw where we were, possibly as he knew he would be able to eat some delightful weeds in Oleander’s back yard.
Oleander was at her door, waving to me.
“Is Athanasius all right?” I asked her.
“Of course, why wouldn’t he be? He’s inside.”
“When you said it was an emergency, I got worried.”
“You didn’t happen to bring a hidden thermos of coffee or anything?” Oleander asked me hopefully.
“No, because you said it was an emergency,” I said pointedly.
She grabbed my arm, pulled me inside the door, and stuck her head back outside before shutting it. “Goldie, we’ve just made the most incredible discovery.”
“What is it?” I prompted her.
“We have discovered the whereabouts of Martin Deakin’s daughter and you’ll never guess where she is.”
I hoped this wasn’t going to be one of those getting games. “Where is she?” I asked her.
Oleander thumped her fist down on the table. “Here!”
“In East Bucklebury?” I asked, noticing Athanasius for the first time. He was hunched over a laptop in the corner of the room, tapping away at the keyboard. He did not even look up to acknowledge me.
“At the retirement home!” Oleander exclaimed.
I thought that rather strange. “Is she a resident or a doctor? Maybe a nurse?”
Oleander shook ahead. “She’s the new physiotherapist.”
I frowned hard and then remembered I had been doing facial exercises, so I forced the muscles in my forehead into a smooth position. “You’re kidding!” I said.
“And that’s not all!” Oleander sat down with a flourish. “You know how Laurence Pattinson-Smythe told us there was a newspaper article about East Bucklebury?”
I nodded.
“Well, Athanasius found it online. And what’s more, this physio arrived here a few days ago, just before the murder.”
“That can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “How did you find out?”
Athanasius spoke for the first time. “If she was the murderer, we knew she wouldn’t have come here using her real name.”
I was intrigued. “So how on earth did you track her down?”
“I googled Chris Coleman’s son and Martin Deakin’s daughter and found old photos of them online. Then I figured that if the victim, Angus Burns, came to town after seeing the article, then his murderer did too.”
“I’m an idiot!” I said. “That didn’t even occur to me!” I thought for a moment. “Unless the murderer is a local, but you’re right, the murderer had to come here specifically to murder Angus Burns. That means we’re looking for someone new to town.”
Athanasius shut the laptop with a flourish and walked over to join us. “Precisely. I haven’t turned up anything about Chris Coleman’s son. Not yet anyway, but I did a reverse image search of Martin Deakin’s daughter Melissa’s photo from her old Facebook account. Anyway, it showed up an image taken here. One of the residents had taken a photo of her.”
“Are you sure it’s the same person?” I asked him.
They both nodded vigorously. “She calls herself Melissa Fowl these days.”
“Foul? Why would she give herself such a horrible fake surname?”
Oleander made a flapping movement with her arms. “No, not foul as in foul play. Fowl as in a chook or as in Artemis Fowl.”
“I see,” I said slowly. I didn’t think Fowl was a significantly better surname than Foul, but I kept my opinion to myself.
“She was a physiotherapist working in one of those southern coastal towns in New South Wales,” Athanasius said.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It seems a bit much of a coincidence that there’d be a job vacancy here right after the article on East Bucklebury showing Doug’s father’s house.”
“Not at all,” Athanasius said. “And that’s the thing—she is not doing paid work here. It’s voluntary and she’s been here for a few days doing free work.”
I had to agree. “That certainly is suspicious. But how can we question her?”
“I think the first thing we need to do is take Persnickle to Doug Greer’s house and question the victim’s ghost.”
“By ‘we,’ you mean ‘I,’ of course,” I said.
Athanasius waved one hand at me. “We will accompany you for moral support.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks. The police have probably finished with the house by now. I’m sure his ghost is still hanging about, even though he didn’t live in this town.”
“Perhaps we should all go there now,” Oleander said.
“What are we going to do about this Melissa Fowl?” I asked her.
“There’s nothing we can do about her yet,” Oleander said, “but forewarned is forearmed. If you don’t get anything out of the victim’s ghost, then we’ll format a plan, but it’s good to know that we need to keep our guard.”
“It would be good if the police had this information,” I said, “but Max won’t be pleased you turned it up.”
“I’ll call him and tell him what I discovered,” Athanasius said. “He can hardly lecture me.”
“Actually, it would be better if you could give it directly to Detective Power,” I mused, “but he’ll probably ignore you and be angry with you. If Max gives it to Power, then Power will be angry because Max is supposed to be on leave.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Athanasius said. “But for now, let’s go out to Doug Greer’s house. I agree, the police should have cleared the area by now.”
“I hope so,” I said. “What if someone sees us?”
“You do have the listing Goldie,” Oleander reminded me. “You have a perfectly good and also legal reason for being there.”
I sighed. “Yes, you’re right.” I walked out to fetch Persnickle from the back yard. He was most put out that he had been dragged away from a particularly delicious thistle. “Ride in the car,” I told him. He consented to be led along.
I let out a sigh of relief when we arrived at Doug Greer’s house. “Thank goodness! Not a police vehicle in sight.”
“That’s good news,” Oleander said. “Hopefully the ghost will be talkative and the whole case will be blown open.”
“He was shot in the back so he mightn’t have seen who did it,” I pointed out.
“You’ll know soon enough.” Athanasius made shooing motions with his hands. “Off you go!”
We all walked around to the back door. The house was on the outskirts of town, and given the fact it was on small acreage, there were no other houses in sight. Keeping a firm hold on Persnickle as we passed the bread store stopper in case he tried to eat it, I headed for the bedroom where the man had died.
As soon as I walked into the bedroom, I saw the ghost. He was pacing up and down and in an agitated manner.
“Hi, you must be Angus Burns.”
“I am and why can you see me?” he snapped.
“I can see and speak to ghosts in the presence of my familiar, Persnickle here,” I told him.
He stopped pacing and stared at Persnickle. “That’s a wombat!”
“Yes, I know most witches have cats as familiars,” I said, “but this is Australia, after all.”
“So you’re a witch?” he screeched.
“Well, not a storybook one, like Hollywood,” I said, and then remembered I had power over the weather. Maybe I was more like a Hollywood witch than I liked to admit. “Anyway, cut to the chase. Who murdered you? And why?”
“If I knew who murdered me, I’d be over there haunting the murderer, wouldn’t I?” His tone was belligerent.
“Look, do you want my help or not?” I said, matching his tone. “As far as I know, I’m the only person you’ll meet who can speak to ghosts. Will you let me help you?”
He appeared to be weighing my words. Finally, after what seemed an age, he said, “This house was owned by Ben Parrish. We were all involved in the Great Bank Robbery of 1955 at a major Sydney bank.”
Of course, I knew all this, but I didn’t want to interrupt him. I stood there, nodding encouragingly.
He continued. “There were five of us in the bank robbery, me, Ben, Chris, Martin, and Laurence. We stole gold bullion, you know, gold bars.”
I continued to nod while Persnickle made grunting sounds, looking for something to eat in the old faded navy blue carpet.
“I’ve been trying to track down Ben Parrish for years. Did I mention he was a simple lad? Quite naïve.”
“I’m the real estate agent selling the house for Ben’s son, Doug. He changed his surname to Greer.”
It was Angus’s turn to nod. “I wasn’t able to track him down. He became very private, no doubt sitting on all his gold. I only happened to find this house when I saw a big article in one of those big Sydney papers. There was a huge photo of Ben riding a stockhorse. I found out he died and left this house to his son. When I saw all the mounds out the back, I figured that was the son looking for the gold. Do you know anything about that?”
“Yes. Doug, his son, told me that his father died suddenly before he could tell Doug where the gold was. Did you ever meet Doug? Did you ever come here when he was home?”
The ghost faded a little before becoming solid again. “No, I never met him. I snooped around and saw the house was empty. I saw the for sale sign out the front and realised he’d already moved out. That’s why I came here on Friday night. I thought I’d lift up some floorboards to look for the gold.”
“What, did you have a crowbar or something with you?” I asked him.
“Yes, I did. I don’t actually remember lifting up any floorboards, but I do remember I was about to.”
“I don’t think there was a crowbar near your body,” I said.
�
��That’s right,” he said. “I remember you. You were with another woman. Why couldn’t you see me then?”
I pointed to Persnickle. “He needs to be near me before I can see or hear ghosts.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. Did you recognise the woman?”
He shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen her before.”
“And did anyone know you were coming to the house?”
“I didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you mean.”
I was disappointed. I was hoping he had seen who murdered him. This conversation was going nowhere. “Well, do you have any idea why anyone would want to murder you?” I said that to prompt him into telling me he had absconded with the other gang members’ gold. I didn’t want to challenge him outright, in case he dematerialised.
He held up both hands in front of him, palms outward. “You know, I’ve never done anything to harm anyone, not since my bank robbery days anyway. No one has ever wanted to murder me. I’m a very nice man.”
Something about his words didn’t ring true. “Look, I’m afraid you’re already dead,” I said, “and I’m trying to find your murderer. Anything you could tell me would be a big help. You of all people would know who had a motive to murder you.”
With that, the ghost vanished.
Chapter 9
The following morning I was giving Persnickle his breakfast when I heard a knock on the door. “Who could that be?” I asked Persnickle, but he just kept eating.
I was surprised to see Detective Max Grayson standing on my doorstep. “Max!” I exclaimed, trying not to look overly pleased to see him.
“Goldie, I’ve tracked down one of the detectives on the case who worked on the Great Bank Robbery of 1955 case, a guy by the name of Bob Phillips. He said he can meet us now, but only if we hurry.”
“Why do we have to hurry?” I asked.
“He volunteers at an animal shelter down south. He can see us now, but we’ll have to leave at once.”
“But I’m supposed to open the office at nine,” I said, looking around the room for inspiration. I tapped my chin. “Well, Oleander and Athanasius did offer to be my receptionists.”