by C. A. Larmer
Back at home, Roxy put a call through to Anabell Lorrier. This time the assistant made no effort to hide her displeasure, barely grunting hello.
‘I need to speak with William,’ Roxy announced casually.
‘He’s not actually available now Miss Parker. I don’t think you’ve quite cottoned on but he’s a very busy man.’
‘Well, you know what, Anabell, I’m busy, too and I really do need to speak with him.’
‘Impossible. Can I take a message?’
‘I’m after his son Fabian’s address. He dropped by my place the other day and left his jacket,’ she lied.
‘Fine, I’ll organize for a courier to come and collect it from you.’
‘No, no, I think it’s best I speak with William.’
‘There really is no need—’
‘I’ll call back if you like. Say, ten minutes? Oh, better yet, I’ll just drive in now, bring you the jacket in person. Maybe even run into William while I’m there. Won’t that be fun for us all?!’
There was an impatient sigh on the other end and the assistant finally said, ‘235 Thomas St, Paddington. That’s Fabian’s address, you didn’t get it from me.’
‘Get what?’
‘Good day, Miss Parker.’ She hung up with a thud and Roxy grinned to herself. It was very easy to annoy information out of people, she had learnt that trick from her mother.
After quickly downing a tuna sandwich and several glasses of water, Roxy grabbed her bag again and in it she placed her phone, a small tape-recorder and a personal security alarm she had found on eBay a few years ago. It was a small device that emitted a giant sound, a kind of piercing siren that she could activate should she ever feel under threat. Of course she’d never had to use the portable device, only trusted that it worked, but it was still reassuring just knowing it was there. She gave herself the once-over in the hall mirror, applied a little lip gloss, removed her dangly earrings—they were way too ditzy for this particular assignment—and made her way outside.
It was close to 4pm by the time Roxy’s old Golf turned off Oxford Street into the thin, winding back streets of Paddington. She was not even sure if Fabian Musgrave would be home now but she had to try while her courage was up. She spotted Thomas Street and, noting that its narrow gutters were cramped with cars, drove down several blocks until she found a spare spot. She reversed the car in with some difficulty and frowned to herself. There would be no quick getaways today.
It took some minutes to locate No. 235 and not because most of the terrace houses along Thomas Street were unnumbered or had lush vines covering them up. It was because Fabian Musgrave’s house was not at all what Roxy had expected. Rundown and unpainted, the old terrace was in desperate need of repair and was hardly the kind of place you would expect to find the heir to a giant department store chain. She wondered briefly whether Anabell had given her a bum steer, but doubted the assistant would risk another pesky phone call.
The front door was crammed with waterlogged junkmail and cobwebs, and looked like it hadn’t been used for years so Roxy made her way along the side towards the back of the house from which music was now emanating. It sounded like a Smiths tune. Bit retro for Fabian, she thought. There was a small, overgrown garden back there and an old outhouse, but not a soul about. She opened the screen door and knocked hard. No answer. As the ’80s band sang about suffering children, Roxy banged again, to no avail. Half relieved, she turned to leave and came face to face with Fabian Musgrave. He was holding a bag of groceries in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and he did not look pleased.
‘Roxanne isn’t it? What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Oh, Fabian, good you’re home. Can we chat?’
He hesitated. ‘Why?’
‘It’s important.’
He stubbed out his cigarette, unlocked the door and led the way in.
A damp, musty smell hit Roxy’s nostrils as she followed him inside and she noticed that he had to switch several lamps on to lighten the place up. Terraces were notoriously dark but this one was cavernous. He dumped the groceries on the kitchen bench and then led her through to a dank living area with fading wallpaper and a motley collection of second-hand furniture. He cleared a chair and offered her a seat. Roxy noticed that he was less self-assured now as he lit up another smoke. The ashtray on the table was cluttered with old butts and an empty gin bottle was lying on its side next to a collection of candles and incense. Roxy looked into the young man’s eyes and sensed something else, too. It looked a lot like embarrassment. She wondered if he ever brought his dad back here, and doubted it. As if reading her thoughts, he growled, ‘How’d you get my address?’
‘I have ways and means,’ she replied. She was not exactly fond of Anabell but she wasn’t into betraying her sources either.
He thought about this and said nothing more, waiting for her to speak. He seemed uneasy, too, and she suspected why. She looked about the room and spotted a picture of the woman Max had called Sofia. Her hair was bleached white in this picture and, up close, Roxy could see fine, elegant features. She had a tiny stud in her nose and thick, black eye make-up, not unlike the heroin-chic look of teenage street magazines. Roxy wondered if she was a model. She certainly had the body for one.
‘Your wife?’ she asked
‘Yes.’
‘Very attractive.’
‘So they tell me.’
Roxy got up and wandered about the room, peering at other picture frames placed on the mantelpiece.
‘You don’t happen to have a picture of her brother, Angelo, do you?’
‘Angelo?’ His voice croaked a little then and he shook his head quickly. ‘No, no I don’t think so. How do you know Angelo?’
‘Now that’s a good question,’ Roxy replied, positioning herself between the lounge room and the kitchen, her best exit out of there. ‘Let me think. I guess we first met—not properly you understand—in the city.’
‘Oh?’ Was that sweat appearing above his lip?
‘Yes, Elizabeth Street to be precise. Oh, no, I tell a lie. We first met, indirectly, about a week before that when he sent me an email. A lovely little note threatening my life.’
Fabian’s eyes rolled back into his head and he shook his head several times while Roxy pulled her handbag closer to her. There was an alarm in there and she was not afraid to use it. When he spoke, he sounded surprisingly incensed. ‘What did he say?’
‘He insisted I drop your grandmother’s biography “or else”.’
‘You’re shitting me, right?’
‘’Fraid not.’
He was shaking his head again and his eyes were darting about with anger. ‘The A-class dickhead. I am going to kill that guy.’
‘Hopefully before he manages to kill me. So let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me that you weren’t involved?’
He seemed taken aback by this. ‘Of course I wasn’t!’
‘Well, sorry, Fabian, but I can’t see why a distant in-law of your grandmother’s would care one iota about the book. You on the other hand—’
‘What about me?’
‘Well, let’s think about this shall we? You tried to convince your grandmother not to write the book, and you even came to me, to make sure I wasn’t pursuing it. I think your grandmother had a secret and you didn’t want the world to know.’
‘Yes, that’s true... but I wouldn’t push you into a bus for it.’
‘Who said anything about a bus?’
He sat back in his chair. The radio was now playing a Nick Cave tune and Roxy was feeling strangely unthreatened, despite her circumstances. ‘Look, Fabian, I know about the daughter.’
His eyes darted back at her. ‘What do you know?’
‘I know that Beattie had another child, she told me as much, just before she died.’ His eyes had blanked out. He looked almost detached now. ‘And I know that Beattie wanted to spill the beans about her daughter but that you were against it. Perhaps you were terrified that you’
d get less inheritance if another sibling entered the picture.’
‘It wasn’t that.’ She raised surprised eyebrows at him. ‘Well, not just that. I thought Grandma would be ostracized by the revelation. I thought one scandal in the family was enough.’
‘Scandal? What scandal?’
He sniggered. ‘Damn, you’re not as savvy as you try to make out.’ He pointed one long finger at himself and mocked a smile.
Roxy sat down with a thud. He was a junkie. Daddy’s little drug addict. She should have spotted it from the start, the bad skin, the gaunt look. The truth was she hadn’t wanted to see. This was Beatrice Musgrave’s grandson for Christ sake. She said simply, ‘How long?’
‘Close to three years. I went through rehab two months ago, no thanks to Dad.’
‘He’s thrown you out?’
‘Not so much as a nickel.’
‘Was this before or after you met Sofia?’
‘During. I’ve been hooked on smack since we met. But she stuck by me, yeah? She’s still here. Which is more than I can say for my fucking father. He found out last March and hasn’t spoken to me since. Wouldn’t even pay for my rehab, grandma gave me that. A parting gift I guess you could say.’
‘But there was plenty more where that came from, wasn’t there? The problem was granny wasn’t putting out enough and the sudden appearance of an Aunt was certainly not going to help.’
‘Look, I didn’t threaten you, alright?!’
‘No you got your brother-in-law to do the dirty work for you. He was supposed to scare me off and, when that didn’t work, you had your own grandmother killed.’
‘Hey!’ he jumped up as if he’d been stung and Roxy reached into her bag, the alarm button at the ready. ‘Hang on a minute,’ he was crying, ‘that last bit’s absolute crap.’
‘So you don’t deny that you set Angelo upon me?’
‘Yes, I mean, no!’ He was pacing the room. ‘Look, give me a second to explain, okay?’
‘Take your time.’
He sat back down, lit himself a cigarette and then placed his head wearily in his hands. It was some time before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was considerably calmer. ‘Bet’, my Grandma, called me to her house a few months back. She wanted to tell me about the biography, get my blessing as it were. This made me want to laugh because, as far as the rest of the family are concerned, I don’t even exist anymore.’ He dragged on his smoke for a while. ‘That’s when she spilled the beans about her first child. Man, I thought I was the only black sheep in the family. Who’d have thought old Bet’ed have it in her, eh? No wonder we got along so well.’
‘So she told you about the daughter?’
‘Yeah, said she’d had a kid by someone else, before she met Gramps and, well, the days being what they were, was forced to give it up. Her parents wouldn’t let them marry or something. I think they whisked the baby away before she even saw the bloody thing.’
Roxy felt a pang of grief for the poor woman. ‘So you never knew about the child until then?’
‘No, and as far as I could tell no-one but Beattie did. It was her little secret, and might have stayed that way, had she not caught a sudden case of the truths.’
‘She wanted to reveal all in the book we were writing.’
‘Yeah.’ He scoffed. ‘Made my scandal look a little menial. Terence would have turned in his grave.’
‘So you asked her not to write it?’
‘Yes and she insisted. She said she owed it to “all three of us”. I guess she meant Grandad, as well. So, yeah, I was irate. I tried to get Dad to talk her out of it but he didn’t seem to care.’
‘But why wouldn’t he care? I find that so hard to believe.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. My dad hasn’t much of a heart, I can tell you. It’s all about the business to him, couldn’t care less about the rest of us. To him, old Bet’ was a bore and well, if this “little book”, as he called it, kept her out of his hair, all the better.’
‘But surely the scandal—?’
‘What does he care? He only ever reads the business section of the newspaper. Besides, in this day and age it was hardly going to affect the business. His precious bloody business.’
‘Who else knew about the daughter?’
‘Just Dad, myself and Sofia. Oh and Angelo because Sofia can’t keep her big mouth shut. He came bowling over one day with all these grand plans to shut my Grandmother up; including scaring you off. He said he’d follow you, work out where you worked and give you a fright. He said a little shove would do it, just something to get your attention and get you to drop out. He figured Bet’ed give up after that. I thought it was just bluff, I didn’t realize he’d really do it.’
‘He could have killed me, Fabian. I nearly hit a bus, you know?’
‘I’m really sorry, man, I honestly thought he was all talk. He was just angry about the book, that’s all.’
‘But why on earth would your brother-in-law care?’
‘Because less inheritance for me means less for Sofia... and, I guess, indirectly, less for him.’
‘That’s a little far-fetched.’ Roxy wanted to believe him but she had known some junkies in her time. They could be expert liars when they needed to be.
‘It’s the truth. I tried to talk him out of it and I thought I had. I’m really sorry. He didn’t hurt you did he?’
‘I came close to being mince mint, Fabian. What’s to say he didn’t go all the way with your grandmother?’
‘That’s insane. He might be willful but he’s not violent, not really. He wouldn’t have hurt my grandmother. No way.’ His tone wasn’t a hundred percent convinced.
‘What about this secret daughter?’
‘What about her?’
‘Did Beattie tell you who she was?’
He shook his head. ‘Not a word. Grandma promised she’d tell me as soon as she’d spoken to her. I gather she’d located her but hadn’t revealed herself yet. Man, what a nice bit of news: Oh, hello, guess what, you’re my missing daughter and you’ll be inheriting $20 million when I cark it.’
‘So as far as you knew Beattie had not spoken to the daughter before she was killed?’
‘No. Well, she hadn’t spoken to her a fortnight before, of that I’m certain. Who’s to say Grandma didn’t find her, tell her the good news and then the daughter popped her? She was probably feeling pissed off about the adoption anyway!’
‘No,’ Roxy said. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. Why kill Beattie before she revealed your name? Now she’ll have to go to all the trouble of a DNA test to prove her right to the inheritance. No, it can’t be the daughter. It has to be someone else, someone who’d stand to lose by the revelation.’ Roxy got up.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked nervously, following her out and down the side of the house towards the street.
‘I don’t know, Fabian, but I’d appreciate it if you kept your brother-in-law away from me in future. If he didn’t hurt Beattie then he’s in the clear, I’m not after vengeance. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of her murder. That’s all.’ And then she paused. ‘Why haven’t you asked me why I think it’s murder? According to everybody else the verdict is suicide.’
‘That’s crazy talk, man,’ he snorted. ‘Bet’ couldn’t open a can of tomatoes without putting on an apron. She’d hardly split herself open on a pile of rocks below her own house!’
As they reached the street, it occurred to Roxy that Fabian understood his grandmother better than the rest of them, and, in his own misguided way, had probably loved her more, too. She couldn’t imagine him killing her. But then he was a recovering addict and sometimes there was no stopping a junkie in search of his next hit. If he needed money and Beatrice had the means to provide it, nothing would stand in his way.
‘I really am sorry about Angelo,’ he was saying as he leant on the rusty gate. ‘Both Sofia and I begged him to leave you alone. I really thought we’d gotten through.’
She
shrugged, it was no longer the issue. ‘Just two more things,’ she said and he raised his eyes uncertainly. ‘How do you know Oliver Horowitz?’
‘Who?’
‘My agent. Angelo sent him a message, too.’
‘Never heard of him. Angelo must have looked him up.’
‘And the bag lady?’
‘Huh?’
‘The designer-clad derelict. You know? The old woman in Chanel?’ The look of complete confusion that had hijacked his face satisfied Roxy and she waved him goodbye. He clearly didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
Chapter 15: Revelations
The phone rang shrilly as Roxy entered her apartment and she flung the door closed as she ran to answer it. It was her mother.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said sullenly. She wasn’t in the mood.
‘Why haven’t you called Mason?’
‘What?’
‘He’s been waiting for your call all week. Don’t tell me you’ve been too busy.’
‘Alright then I’ll tell you it’s because I don’t like the guy. He’s a pompous prat.’ She dropped her handbag and then slid down the wall to join it on the floor. Her meeting with Fabian had gone well but she was emotionally drained, unable to cope with Lorraine’s meddlesome ways.
‘You seemed to be getting on really well over dinner. Why the change of tune?’
‘Mum, I don’t like him, end of story. He’s not the man of my dreams, we’re not going to end up married, we’re not even going to end up on a second date. If you want me to call him and tell him so, I will.’
‘Oh dear don’t do that, he’ll be devastated.’
‘Somehow I doubt it; too big an ego for that. Was there anything else?’
‘Well, no. But I’ve been waiting for you to call me.’
‘Why?’
‘About Beatrice Musgrave, of course. She died, dear.’
‘Yes I am aware of that. I mentioned it over dinner, remember?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t realize it was suicide.’
‘That’s what the cops say. What did you think it was?’