The Problem with Perfect

by Megan Mayfair

  Finn closed his eyes. “I’d never do anything that compromised him. He was a good bloke.”

  “Well, don’t forget that, mate. We’re all in it up to our necks thanks to that bloody do-gooder and their tittle-tattle. Stick to the original line. That signature was legit.”

  “But—” Finn began. He’d doubted Matt’s account on this matter.

  “Legit,” Matt growled. And the line went dead.

  Finn replaced the phone on the table. How often he’d wished he’d not been there that day, and more importantly, how he wished he’d stayed in complete ignorance of Simon’s actions. It would have been easier for everyone. Too much information could be dangerous.

  He returned to his notes, remembering his initial warning to Marigold. Perhaps it was better not to know the truth. But Marigold wasn’t an ‘ignorance-is-bliss’ sort of person.

  And, if he was honest, neither was he.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Marigold

  Marigold stood in the door of Julian’s study. It wasn’t really a study. Just a small room off their bedroom. When they’d bought the house, Julian had suggested she take another room with a view of the street as her home office, and he’d take this.

  She bent down and started to move the boxes, newly-delivered following her shopping trip with Rose earlier in the week. She was looking forward to getting stuck into assembling these, but paused when she heard a knock at the door.

  “What’s with the knife?” Finn gave her a puzzled look when she opened the door.

  She looked down at the Stanley knife in her hand. “I’m opening boxes. Furniture delivery.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “No, thank you. Any news?”

  “I’ve some updates for you on the Sydney trips,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  “He was coming and going a lot.”

  “Define ‘a lot’?”

  Finn hesitated. “On average, he was up there one day a week for the last ten weeks before he died.”

  She could see why he had hesitated. That was strange.

  “What? He made ten trips to Sydney and it never came up in conversation? No.” Marigold shook her head and started walking upstairs. She looked back. Finn was still standing in the hallway. “Follow me. Walk and talk.”

  He obeyed his instructions. He was good with orders. It must be all that police training. “What’s all this?” he asked when they reached the room.

  “Shelving. I’m turning this room into a shoe closet.”

  “What was it before?” He looked at the desk and then back to her. “A study?”

  “Julian’s study.”

  “You’re turning his study into a shoe closet?”

  His tone suggested it was too soon to turn her late husband’s office into a shoe closet. But he didn’t know the half of it, and she wasn’t going to be judged. “It’s my house and I’ll do with it what I please.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did.”

  “I didn’t.” Finn sounded adamant.

  Marigold rounded her shoulders slightly. Was it possible she was projecting her own doubts onto him? “I’m sorry. I feel that a lot of people have been questioning my choices since Julian died.”

  “I’m not doing that. It’s your house. Do what you want.”

  “I will. I don’t need your permission.”

  Finn raised his eyebrows at her. “I’m not playing this game. Let me help you move the boxes, then we’ll work out what to do with this information.” He removed his jacket, loosened his tie and started to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. “Are you waiting for a carpenter to help you construct these shelves?”

  A carpenter? She essentially ran a large transport and logistics company. An Allen key was not that complicated. “It’s from IKEA, any idiot can put it together themselves,” she scoffed.

  “Any idiot? I don’t think so.” Finn gave an unexpected grin that shocked her for a moment. It was mischievous and dazzling. He could turn it on when he wanted. Active Wear Girl Leonie was probably putty in his hands. He’d gone from mildly handsome to devastatingly gorgeous in a matter of a second. How did he do that?

  “Any idiot,” Marigold repeated, putting his good looks out of her mind and returning her focus to the cabinets. He was being incredibly condescending. How hard could it be? There were instructions and everything.

  “Good luck with that.” He folded his arms. “Sure you don’t want a hand?”

  She gave him a look that she hoped was as disdainful as she felt. “Would you ask Frederick that? Or my Dad, or any man for that matter?”

  “These things are hard for anyone. Believe me, I helped my sister kit out her place in IKEA furniture, and it nearly killed me. Besides, if we’re talking about your brother, I like him, but he doesn’t exactly strike me as a handyman. I’d take your skills over his.”

  “He’s domesticated now.” Marigold shrugged, but she could see Finn’s point. “But no, I wouldn’t trust him to assemble furniture either. But you must be busy. You don’t have time for this.”

  “I have time.”

  Marigold pulled open one of the boxes, noting that the instructions did indicate that two people were required for assembly.

  “How many shoes do you have?” he asked.

  “One hundred and forty-four, pairs that is.” She extracted a panel that appeared to be a door.

  “One hundred and forty-four pairs of shoes?”

  She gave a contented nod. She’d never taken much pleasure in hobbies or collecting things, but her shoes were something she enjoyed. “One hundred and forty-four pairs of shoes.”

  “But when do you wear them all? That’s an average of wearing each pair 2.5 times per year.”

  She was impressed with his shoe economics. “Not bad. 2.53 in a year, 2.54 in a leap year.” Julian had worked out that calculation once. He’d updated it several times over their marriage. When they got married she only had 101 pairs. They hadn’t been married that long in many ways, but it seemed even shorter when it was measured in shoes.

  She looked over to Finn as he appeared to be reviewing some instructions for the cabinets. He really was a man of action, and even though she was perfectly capable of doing this herself, it wasn’t a bad thing to have him around for a little while. It made the house seem a little less empty.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Finn

  Finn had never, ever assembled IKEA furniture with a client before. He’d done some interesting things for clients, but this took the biscuit. Strangely enough, it was rather enjoyable, despite the fact she’d commandeered the instructions and bossed him around.

  He’d once tried to assemble a bookshelf with Zara. That had nearly ended their relationship as they’d bickered and clashed over the instructions, but he allowed himself to be ordered about by Marigold. At least she knew right from left and what the parts were called. Zara had only given him vague and unhelpful directions such as “Put the straight screw in that way. No, the straight one! The other way!” Marigold was far more direct and specific.

  “Well, Ms Doyle, this is proving an interesting day,” he said as he tightened the screw on one of the cupboards.

  “Call me Marigold, please.”

  “Ok. Marigold.” He looked up at her, raising an eyebrow. This was new. He’d been consulting to the family for years. She was always Marigold to him, but she’d never, ever said to call her that so he’d stuck with Ms Doyle.

  He liked her name. It was pretty but not cutesy. Sweet but elegant. Her parents had picked the right name for her, that was for sure.

  She looked away, poring over the instructions. “Stand that panel upright,” she said, pointing towards the panel he’d just finished. “It needs to connect to the frame now.”

  “Ok,” he said, following the orders. He bolted it to the frame and stood back to admire his handiwork. “Looks good.”

  “Doesn’t it? Only three more to go,” she said, but suddenly struck a grin.
“But I think I should let you off the hook now, I’ve taken up two hours of your time.”

  Finn glanced at his watch. Two hours? They’d been so focused on the instructions they’d not continued the discussion about the Sydney trips or the apartment. “You sure?”

  “Yes. Now, come downstairs. I’ll make you a coffee and I want to hear what you’ve found out.”

  He followed her downstairs and watched as she expertly made two espressos on a large machine.

  “I still can’t believe these trips? What was he doing in Sydney, and so often? It makes no sense.” She ran her hands through her hair as they sat at the kitchen bench. “Was he seeing someone up there? But why have the apartment here if that was the case?”

  “I don’t know. Have you had any thoughts to why he’d have an apartment in that area? Melbourne has hundreds of thousands of apartments. Why did he choose that suburb?”

  Marigold gave a worried look. “I’ve been thinking about that myself. It’s not an area I’m familiar with. I don’t have any reason to be there. Do you think he was hiding from me? Somewhere he wouldn’t run into me?”

  Finn considered the point as he took a sip of the coffee she’d made him. “But he could have gone anywhere. So why go there?”

  “Close to the city? Perhaps if he was planning on leaving me he wanted somewhere that was easy to get to work?”

  “Not that close.” It wasn’t far to the city, but there were plenty of suburbs that would be more convenient to access the court district in Melbourne’s Central Business District.

  The suburb was fairly basic. Nothing flash. Median house prices. No great parks or anything that would specifically draw people there. And it was on the flight path. A tad noisy for Finn.

  Julian was taking regular trips to Sydney. The cufflinks retrieved from his desk had propellers on them. Aaron hadn’t been able to shed any light on the cufflinks, but the fact that they had an aviation theme was interesting. Was it just a coincidence, or was it a link?

  That reminded him, Aaron said he’d get back to Finn about some diary dates, but hadn’t. He’d follow him up.

  “And I’ve been through all the bank accounts again, and I can’t see how he was paying for the apartment,” he added.

  “But I received the account number from the real estate agent?” Marigold furrowed her brow.

  Finn shook his head. “There wasn’t anything in it. It was only a transactional account. So, how was he putting the money into that account? He didn’t appear to be taking it from your joint account. He must’ve had another account, as I can’t figure out how any of the withdrawals would add up.”

  “And I saw some of the things in his apartment came from IKEA, but there was nothing on our statements. I checked. He must have paid in cash or from another account.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  If Julian had been up to something dodgy, there may have been money involved, aside from the practical considerations like rent and furniture. And for some reason, Finn couldn’t shake the idea that there was more to this than any simple plan to leave Marigold.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Marigold

  Sitting on her sofa with her quilt wrapped around her, Marigold stared at a television advertisement for frying pans. Apparently, they were carefully constructed from some sort of stone and you didn’t need butter or oil. It was healthier. Less cholesterol. Less fat.

  Julian hadn’t used butter or oil in his cooking, but look where that got him. A massive heart attack at 34 years of age, so bad that another runner on the track that night who was first-aid trained couldn’t revive him. He was deceased before the ambulance even arrived.

  I want those pans. Wish they came in red. Frederick’s message lit up the screen of her phone.

  She texted back. Why red? Black would be best. Still no sleep?

  Erin just threw up all over me, literally, I’m covered in sick but I can’t move as she’s drifted off and I’m mesmerised by these pans. How awesome does that saucepan lasagne look? I could so eat that now.

  What sort of idiot makes a lasagne in a saucepan? Why don’t you put Erin into her cot?

  She’ll wake up.

  Marigold put the phone aside and resumed watching the infomercial. Frederick was right. The lasagne did look pretty good. She looked at the time. It was 2 am and she was starving. She never ate past 9 pm, and even then was fussy what she ate after 7 pm. No carbs, no fat, no artificial sweetener, no caffeine.

  She wandered out to the kitchen and opened the fridge, lounging in front of it. When nothing jumped out at her, she opened the freezer. Nothing in there but a bottle of Vodka and a tub of caramel popcorn ice-cream. Caramel popcorn ice-cream? What a strange combination of flavours. What was popcorn doing in ice-cream? There was no way on earth she would have bought this. She rarely purchased ice-cream, and when she did, she favoured sharp, palate-cleansing sorbets like lemon or Sicilian blood orange. Julian must have chosen this.

  She pulled it off the shelf and checked the expiry date before pulling back the lid. A small amount had been removed and the top was icy. It had been there for a little while, she guessed. She stared at the dents in the ice-cream, made from Julian’s spoon.

  She had mentioned Julian’s weight to him in recent times. He’d put on a few kilograms and could no longer fit into his favourite suits. She thought back to the apartment. There’d been a lot of chocolate in there. She swallowed. She’d made a few comments here and there, but had she been at him so much that he’d gone to binge-eat bars of chocolate in his apartment?

  Was that the secret of the apartment? A place for him to escape her and eat chocolate? But a whole apartment for that? Why not eat chocolate in his office if it meant that much to him? There’d been no chocolate in the contents of his desk.

  No, the apartment was for more than just eating the foods on her ‘no-no’ list.

  She put the ice-cream away, turned off the television and decided to try reading in bed.

  On her way past, she paused at Julian’s study. The one shoe cabinet she’d constructed with Finn looked good. She blushed as she remembered his original warning of how hard these things were to assemble, which she’d taken as some sort of insult.

  But he hadn’t meant it like that at all. They had been harder than she was anticipating, but she was determined to finish them. She’d rope Rose in to help her. And perhaps buy a drill. Screwing the bolts in by hand seemed to slow things down, even though Finn had been quite handy with an Allen key.

  She’d quickly tidy the boxes, and as she began, she bumped against Julian’s desk. She heard a gentle metallic chime against the floorboards. Something had fallen from behind the desk.

  She bent over and picked up a key. It was small. Not like a house key, more like a small key from a padlock.

  What locks did they have that were a match for the key? There was one on the gardening shed, but the spare for that was always kept in the laundry for quick access. There were several they sometimes used on suitcases, but they were stored with the cases.

  A thought entered her mind. Had it fallen between the desk and the wall, falling to the floor when she moved the desk, or had Julian hidden it there? She stared at the key again. If he had hidden it there, what did it unlock?

  After a comprehensive search for the lock, to no avail, she climbed into bed.

  As she was finally dozing off, she remembered that the apartment had storage cages underneath the building in the car park. She sat up, her heart thumping. Yes, the storage cages. She had seen them on one visit. The one allocated to Julian’s apartment had nothing in it that she could see, so she hadn’t bothered to look at it more carefully. But perhaps it had a padlock on it.

  She threw back the covers before looking at the clock. It was 4 am. This was ridiculous. She’d call Finn in the morning to let him know about the key in case he’d turned up anything, and then she’d go and try the apartment. It was time to crack the mystery of the key once and for all.
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br />   Chapter Twenty-Four

  Marigold

  At a more respectable hour, with Finn contacted, she was gathering her handbag to go to the apartment to see if the key did match the storage cage – or indeed anything else of interest – when there was a knock at the door. Her mother was on the front step.

  “My dear,” she said, kissing Marigold’s checks. “You look tired.”

  “I’m not sleeping well,” she admitted.

  “I understand.” Her mother gave a sympathetic nod. “Would you like a little sleeping tablet?” She clicked open the clasp of her Louis Vuitton handbag and removed a small pill case.

  “You carry sleeping tablets around with you? Are those prescription?”

  “For when I travel! I’m not a drug dealer.”

  Marigold shook her head. “I didn’t say that. Look, I’m on my way out. I have things to do.”

  “I’ll come with you, let’s have coffee.” Her mother re-clasped her bag and looked at Marigold expectantly.

  She didn’t want her mother tagging along with her to the apartment. Firstly, she didn’t want to explain it, and furthermore, she shuddered at the thought of her mother poking her head in cupboards and offering deductions. “It’s not very exciting,” she said.

  “I’m available for some errands.” Her mother smiled. “Why don’t we go to Chanel? Perhaps we can lift that skin. What are you using, Marigold? Are you toning?” She narrowed her eyes to inspect Marigold’s pores, before jabbing a finger around the side of her jaw. “It looks congested.”

  Marigold realised she wouldn’t shake her this easily, so she agreed and collected her things. The more she resisted, the more her mother seemed to cling to her, so off to Chanel it was.

  “Are you coming to the Gala?” Her mother expertly navigated the city traffic in her luxurious car, opera playing in the background.

  The Doyle family calendar was an extensive and carefully-executed series of events each year. The Spring Arts Party attracted artists, musicians, actors and writers to the Doyle estate. The Summer Garden party was simply a party for close friends and favoured contacts. And then there was the Gala: an elaborate event held each year at the property, spilling from the house into a glamorous marquee.