by Sarah Kelly
India wondered whether it would be this straightforward: They’d watch the video, see Maurice go in the house in the middle of the night and come out again, then take the video to Maurice himself, and finally extract a confession, recorded on a covert dictaphone or iPhone app. They’d watch as the cops swarmed around his house, then dragged him out in cuffs, his head hung low. Within a day or two everything would be back to normal, case closed. Maybe a couple months’ later they’d see the latest in his trial in a newspaper, and find he was sentenced to life.
But as Joey started playing the video, saying, “Let me find the right part,” India wondered what his possible motive could be. Even if he had been there at the time so had the opportunity, India wondered why he would do such a thing. On reflection, she remembered there did seem to be some contention about Jim Quinn’s tourism plan and the two acres in back. But why had he dragged the body out and hauled it onto Mark’s truck? In fact, that sounded like such a heavy job – Jim Quinn had surely not been the type to stick to salads and water – she wasn’t sure Maurice could even do that alone. It would have had to be one great hulking guy, like Eric, or two people working together.
“Look. Look,” Joey said, jamming his finger at the screen. “See?”
Sure enough, Maurice was there, illuminated mostly by the silvery moonlight, though a streetlamp a little way off bathed part of his back in orange. His thick blond hair made him instantly recognizable. He looked around the street, to check no one was following him, then went around the side of the house, the side that bordered with a fence and thick bushes.
“What in the heck is he doing?” Xavier said.
Joey nodded, his lips pressed together. “Right.” He sped up the video again. “He doesn’t come out for like twenty minutes or so.”
“That’s a long time,” India said. “Surely if you were going to murder someone you’d want to be in and out real quick.”
Joey shrugged. “He’s about to come running out, let me just find it.”
India spotted the tiniest movement out of the corner of her eye. “Wait!”
Joey hit the pause button. “What?”
“Go back a little,” India said, slow it way down. The view of Mark’s truck at the right side of the house from where they were looking was partly obscured by a tree, but peeks of red came through, illuminated by the street light. “Yes, look!” she said, when Joey had brought it back far enough and she caught the movement again.
“I saw that,” Xavier said. “But what is it?”
“Beats me.” Joey squinted and played it again, then again. “I can’t work that out at all. Maybe it’s just a bird or something.”
India got closer to the screen to watch, and then her breath caught in her throat. “Oh my gosh, does this recording have sound, Joey?”
“Sure,” he said. “I just muted it.” He clicked a button and the distant sound of crickets came through the speakers.
“Go back to the movement again,” India said.
Joey did, and just after the movement, they heard an almighty crash, distant, but unmistakeable.
“I knew it!” India said. “That’s the noise me and Nadine heard in the night.”
Xavier’s eyes were wide. “But what is it?”
“Okay, this might sound a bit crazy... but I think Jim Quinn fell from the balcony into your dad’s truck. That’s what made the sound.”
Xavier nodded, brow creased. “Let me see it again.”
Joey took it back and played it again. “Yep. I think that’s right. Look, if you watch you can see a tiny bit of movement on the balcony as well, then the movement is down there, then the crash.” He flopped into the computer chair. “Whoah.”
“That must be it,” Xavier said. “Especially as no one comes out dragging the body to the truck, do they?”
“Nah,” Joey said, “I’d have noticed that for sure.”
“And they couldn’t have gone round the back because there’s a fence between the back of the Quinn’s property and the road,” India said. “I saw it yesterday.”
“Look, watch,” Joey said. A few minutes after the crash, Maurice ran out of the bushes, in a half-sprint half-creep across the front lawn and past the truck, back toward his home.
“Is there a side door into the house?” India asked.
“Yes,” Xavier said. “It’s where he keeps all his gardening tools, I think. I’ve seen him go around the side and come out with secateurs and stuff.”
India kept her eyes locked on the video, though there was nothing to see right then. “He does, I mean did, his own gardening?” She’d imagined a man with such delusions of grandeur would think any type of manual labor to be beneath him.
Xavier shrugged. “Said no one could do it as good at him.” Then he put his hand on Joey’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take this to the police, bro?”
Joey swung around in his seat, then nodded at the bed. “Sorry, you can sit down there. Police aren’t interested.”
“Huh?” India said, taking a seat and sinking a little into the soft mattress.
“Yeah, some guy was around earlier. Little dude, real short hair, kind of almost shiny. A mean face.”
Xavier and India glanced at each other.
“Detective Morgan,” Xavier said, one side of his lip drawn up.
“I ran up to him as soon as I saw him out the window, told him everything I told you, and the guy’s just like, ‘Let the police do their job, sonny,’ and didn’t even look at me.”
India folded her arms. “What a jerk.”
“Uh huh.”
They fell into silence after that. “So what should we do?” Xavier said.
“We?” Joey said, incredulous. “I’ve done my job, and I don’t want to get involved any deeper than that. I don’t know anything about solving murders or whatever. When this is all through, I’ll make a documentary about it, though. Yeah,” he said, suddenly excited by his own idea. “That would be awesome.”
“Well, that’s fair,” India said, getting up. “I guess you could send that video to one of our emails?”
Joey chuckled. “The file is enormous, it would never send. I’ll upload it to this website right, and then give you a password, then you can access it anywhere, as long as you have enough data allowance to watch it.”
“Sounds good,” Xavier said.
Soon Xavier and India were stepping out onto the street, the password saved in his text message draft folder. The crowd was just as thick as ever.
“I’m so hungry,” India said. “I hope the pizza’s coming soon.”
Xavier looked at his watch. “Shouldn’t be too long. We were in there a little while.”
“Should we walk down to where we’re going to meet them? This crowd is making me feel nervous.”
“Okay.” Xavier took her hand in his and they walked away down to where the street was quieter. An intersection way down joined it up with a busier road. “Why nervous, though, In?”
“I dunno, I’ve always been like that,” she said. “It’s not like I think anything’s gonna happen or anything, it’s just… well, it makes me feel anxious for some reason. I don’t really like crowds at all.”
“I get what you mean.” He flashed her a smile and squeezed her hand. “Normally Cherrytown would be right up your street. It only happens that today there’s a crowd. It’s normally dead as a doornail round here.”
India grinned. “Sounds like my kinda place. Benton Point is perfect, too. The less people there are, the better. I could never live in a city.”
“What about a private island?” Xavier teased.
India couldn’t lie – she’d absolutely thought about that before. “Sounds like heaven. But it has to be in the Caribbean, though. Not some cold Canadian island or anything. I’ve had enough cold for life thanks to Wisconsin.”
“Aww, but what about cuddling up with a roaring fire and hot drinks and warm cookies?” Xavier asked. “And I don’t care what anyone says, Christmas on the beach ju
st isn’t right.”
He said it so emphatically that India couldn’t help bursting out laughing. “Palm trees and turquoise waters and lush green hills and me sweating all over Christmas in my bikini will do me just fine, thank you very much.”
“Sacrilege,” Xavier said, shaking his head and pretending to frown. “I’m so disappointed in you. I thought you were a better person than this.”
India gave him a playful slap. “If being on my own private Caribbean island all year round is evil, then just call me Cruella De Vil.”
Xavier pushed his hand ever so gently along her shoulder and his fingers traced gently over her ear. That always made her shiver, it felt so nice and comforting. “But won’t you be lonely, Cruella?”
She grinned, and was about to reply but his phone buzzed into life. “Hello?... Perfect…”
They had decided on a rather unusual dining arrangement. India reached over from the passenger seat to the dashboard, where the pizza box rested. “You have good pizza here,” she said. “I think I could live with that.”
Xavier smiled as he took another slice. “This is where my love affair with pizzas began.”
The Ford was still parked up in the driveway. The evening was beginning to darken, and many of the crowd had lost interest and left. A few remained, but they were gradually trickling away. Xavier and India were waiting, watching for Maurice. They could see from where they sat his driveway was empty.
“Maybe he’s done a bunk,” Xavier said.
India shook her head, taking a bite of pizza. “Nah. He’ll come back.” She didn’t know if her certainty was from wishful thinking, or from the intuitive thinking Luis had shown her, part of all witches’ psychosorcery arsenal. She glanced over at Xavier, feeling a pain in her chest where her secret was hidden. His eyelashes were dark against the porch light behind them, and she felt the ache intensify. For some reason, the curl of his lashes made her think of his vulnerability. Because no matter how strong, brave or powerful a man was, India knew there was a gentle, vulnerable part, too, thirsty for love and acceptance. India knew that part of herself and Amy and her other friends well, but men seemed to hide it pretty skilfully. She could see it in Xavier, though, and it made her love him more than ever. It made her secret ever more difficult to bear, too. How could she hide anything from him?
She tried to regather herself, and think about the case. “So you’ve got the video streaming already?”
Xavier glanced down at his iPhone. “Yep. It’s buffering. But Joey’s cut out most of it, so we’ll just get the bits where Maurice is around.”
“Perfect.”
They enjoyed their pizza, talking a little about the case, a little about Amy, and a little about going on vacation together and him meeting her parents. Eventually an old style convertible pulled into the street, its electric blue paintwork flashing in the street light as it turned.
“He’s here,” Xavier said.
India hadn’t recognized him at first, because a black beanie hat covered his signature blond hair. “Let’s go,” she said, wiping her hands on a tissue.
Xavier looked in her eyes, and in that moment she felt they were a team more than ever. “Let’s do this.”
Maurice swung the car into his drive and jerked up the handbrake. He set the roof in motion to close, and was startled to see India and Xavier in his driveway. He jerked backward. “Jeez, don’t sneak up on people like that. You killed Jim now you’ve come to kill me, too?”
He started to walk toward his front door, and Xavier hurried to stand in front of him. “Accusing someone of murder without any evidence is pretty despicable,” Xavier said.
“It was a joke,” Maurice said. “Now you obviously want to say something, so cut to the chase before I call the cops. You’re trespassing on my driveway.” He nodded at India. “Looks like she’s a bad influence on you, Xavier. I’ve never seen you act up before.”
Xavier got his iPhone from his pocket.
“He’s not acting up,” India said. “You were around Jim Quinn’s house at the time of the murder.”
“Ridiculous.”
“What about this?” Xavier said, holding up the phone with the footage. “Is that ridiculous?”
Maurice sank back against the car. “How did you… how did you get…”
“That’s not important,” India said. “But you might as well confess to the whole thing now, because I can guarantee Detective Morgan’s going to be a whole lot less civil about it than us.” India, under Xavier’s advice, had her finger hovering over the call button on the phone in her pocket. She’d typed in 911. “You murdered Jim Quinn, didn’t you, because he wanted your house and your land?”
“Oh god.” Maurice put his head in his hands.
Xavier shot India a victorious smile.
“That’s what everyone’s going to think, isn’t it?” Maurice said.
India studied his face. “Huh?”
“I was there, yes, I admit that,” he said. “But I didn’t kill the man. Not at all. I was in the house, absolutely. But I didn’t kill him. I heard this huge crash, then I crept out of there as quick as I could. That’s all.”
Xavier crossed his arms. “And what were you doing in there in the first place?”
Maurice looked down at the floor, and then up again, his eyes quite blank. “Messing with the electrics.”
“What?” India said, confused. “Why?”
He let out a long sigh. “It’s kind of out there… but I guess I have to tell you. Otherwise you’ll be all over town, saying I’m a murderer.”
“Go on,” Xavier said, sounding skeptical.
He sighed again, very heavily. “Anita is a very superstitious woman. She has not liked this house ever since they moved in a few years ago, and she says Rodney’s problems, whatever they are, have been made worse from day one. Bad spirits, or bad energy, or something. So I figured I tamper with the electrics, loose up some wires here, some wires there – I did an apprenticeship with an electrician when I was a teen – and it would look like, you know, spirit activity. Flickering at times, lights turning off for no reason, and a new bulb won’t fix the issue. And pretty soon, she’d put so much pressure on Jim that he’d sell up and move on.”
“Hm,” India said, unconvinced. “I don’t think Jim Quinn would have sold up if his wife had begged on her knees and kissed his feet. He looked like the kind of man who did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. And he’d made it very clear he was going to stay, and buy up the whole street, too.”
Maurice shrugged. “You’re probably right, but I was desperate. I would try anything to get that man off my back. It’s been years now, every time he sees me he’s bugging me about buying my two acres. And if it wasn’t him, it was his loathsome ‘project manager’, Becky Goddard. You know, my grandfather used to own a lot of this area and farmed it, then sold it all out. That two acres is all that’s left and it means a lot to me. I’m not selling it for even ten times the market price.”
India was beginning to believe him, and she could tell Xavier was too, by the resigned tone in his voice when he said, “So you can 100% state, with a clear conscience, that you didn’t push him off the third floor balcony?”
“Huh? He got pushed off the balcony?”
“That’s right,” India said. “And fell in Mark’s truck. That’s what the noise was.”
“Oh. What a horrible way to die.” He looked between their expectant gazes. “No, it was not me.”
India and Xavier looked at each other. She got a sense she could believe Maurice, and Xavier’s face reflected that back to her.
“All right,” she said eventually. “But who’s Becky Goddard?”
Maurice’s face turned up into a sneer. “Horrible girl. A glorified housekeeper, nothing more.”
“What’s wrong with housekeepers?” India said.
“She’s so slippery she could be an eel,” Maurice said. “She ‘manages’ the house to give Anita a break sometimes, but she’s the one
who’s pushing more and more for the street to be bought up. And Jim made her think she’s some business hotshot, not just a maid, and she turns up here from time to time in a suit with a clipboard, acting like she owns the world. They make me sick, the whole bunch of them.”
CHAPTER 5
“India, you’ll have to hold this on your lap, inside the plastic box, so it doesn’t get bashed around,” Valerie said. “Could you imagine such an insult, after all that happened to you, to open a box and find a cake full of big old earthquake looking cracks?” She lifted the cake, which was already in a white card container, down into the plastic box, then smiled at it proudly.
“I’ll be careful, I promise,” India said.
“And tell her as soon as she wants to come back, we’ll be around to look after her,” Demetria said.
“I know she doesn’t have a cell,” Valerie said, “so she might not have our number with her. Give her it will, you Xavier?”
“Okay, mom.”
“She doesn’t really have many friends,” Valerie said delicately, explaining to India. “We don’t know her that well but—”
“Any friends,” Nadine cut in. She was standing at the oven, sliding a rack full of cookies in. “Because of that horrible Jim. Who would ever want to go round there with him being in the house?”
Valerie frowned at her. “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” she said, but India could tell she didn’t really mean it.
“Ready?” Xavier said, finishing his breakfast cookie. India didn’t know how the whole family hadn’t ballooned, considering all the delicious baking they did almost every day. Even though the baked goods were for clients, it would be so easy to snaffle one cookie here, one muffin there, until the scales knew about it. Maybe they’d become pretty much immune to sweet, comforting, doughy smells.