Murder and Mayhem

by Hamilton, B L

  “We certainly can. But the boys are shaping up nicely. If only we could knock that damned Y chromosome out of them we’d have ourselves a couple of real men,” I said, but with my scant knowledge of science I knew I was on shaky ground here. “Or is it the X?”

  Rosie’s eyes flew open. “Hey! Do I look like a scientist?”

  “Don’t bite my head off. I don’t know what you do in your spare time.”

  “Remind me to tell you when your calendar is clear. But let’s not transgress into those muddy waters and spoil what would otherwise be a nice day. So, tell me, what did our girl have to say?”

  “She sends her love of course, and wanted to know how you were doing.”

  “She is such a caring person.”

  “Well, she certainly didn’t get that from me,” I said as I wiped my hands on a cloth and adjusted Rosie’s clothes to make sure she was warm.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Bubbie you’ve got your good points.”

  I couldn’t figure out where she got that idea from but decided to humor her anyway.

  “She said I should start with Danny on Bondi Beach. You know, add a bit of Aussie flavor to the story. At first I wasn’t too keen on the idea but then I thought about it, and I think I may have come up with something that just might work. Would you like me to read what I’ve written so far and you can let me know what you think?” My sister has always been my greatest fan even if it was only rude words on the school’s toilet block walls.

  She whooped excitedly and gave me a shove. “Well, don’t just stand there go get your laptop.”

  I hurried across the hall to the guestroom and was about to grab my laptop off the desk when I noticed the open bathroom door beckoning me in. Our mother, God rest, always counseled the family, “Never bypass a whistle stop because the train might whizz right on past the next one–and before you know it you’ll be up the creek without a paddle!” Wise words indeed to fashion our lives on!

  As I zipped up my jeans and hit the flush button I heard my sister’s voice calling from across the hall.

  “What are you doing in there, writing a novel? I haven’t got all day to wait for you to get yourself into gear.”

  “I had to make a bathroom stop,” I told her as I climbed onto the bed and opened the laptop. “Remember what Mum always said.”

  “Yeah, well, Mum said a lot of things–but we rarely listened.”

  “True. But ignorance is a hard thing to grow out of,” I reminded her as I shuffled my backside into a comfortable position and hit the start-up button. We watched as the screen morphed into life with a hum of flashing lights and cyberspace words. Can anyone tell me, who reads that stuff?

  “Just give it a minute, and don’t go getting too excited. You need to remember this is just a rough draft.”

  Rosie swatted the air impatiently.

  “I haven’t got all day; will you just get on with it?” She glared at the screen–and sighed loudly. “That computer of yours is so slow it’ll be Thanksgiving before it powers up.”

  I chewed on a hang nail.

  “Christmas, more like.”

  “Why don’t you let go of the purse strings and buy something decent. They’ve got all kinds of whizz–bang fancy ones these days that’ll do everything except make a hot pot of tea.”

  “Well when they come up with one of those you be sure and let me know. In the meantime I’ll just stick with old faithful. It has served me well…and knows all my secrets.”

  When I opened the file words morphed onto the screen in a haze of blue light that reflected off my glasses and made me blink.

  I looked at my sister… and grinned. “Are you ready?”

  “Do you really want me to say it?”

  “Nah, I get the picture… there’s no need for words.”

  *****

  Prologue

  The mercury rose with the promise of another hot summer and even though there had been good rainfalls recently they only served to create more fuel for the bushfires that were sure to come if this past summer in Santa Barbara was anything to go by.

  Danny Richards sat on the promenade outside The Breaker’s Café overlooking Bondi Beach, grateful for the large umbrella that protected him from the hot midday sun. A half-eaten sandwich lay drying on a plate pushed to one side while he sipped iced latte from a tall glass and mouthed the words of an old Beach Boys’ song that drifted out through the doors.

  Danny’s eyes swept over the landscape and came to rest on that far line on the horizon where the sky meets the sea, and thought how that same body of water ebbed and flowed on the western shores of America, like a giant umbilical cord connecting the two continents.

  He shook his head in an effort to deny the memories that threatened to surface and turned his attention to yachts skimming waves out past the headland−and daredevil surfers riding their boards too close to the rocks.

  As Danny watched small children dig holes in the sand and build sandcastles that melted like ice-cream into the encroaching tide, his thoughts strayed to another time on another beach, half a world away, where another child had built sandcastles and dug holes with much the same determination–and outcome. Different time… different place… different life…

  Danny took another bite of the almost dried-out sandwich and sipped the now warming latte as his fingers drew patterns in the crystals of sugar spilled across the glass top of the wrought iron table. He remembered every detail like it was yesterday.

  He looked up as a teenager in board-shorts raced past, the steady beat of the base from his iPod spilling around him in a loud repetitious beat. The air was suddenly filled with youthful exuberance as a group of adolescent boys chased each other down to the beach narrowly missing a young mother as she bustled past with a small child in tow, dripping ice-cream along the pavement.

  Two young women wearing brief bikinis roller-skated past, their warm brown arms swinging in tandem with their feet as their cascading hair danced about their shoulders, lifting and twirling with each fluid movement.

  “… he had the most gorgeous smile, and all night I kept… Hey! Why don’t you watch where you’re going…?”

  Danny looked up. An elderly man had unwittingly stepped in their path causing the roller-skaters to swerve dangerously and almost collide with a middle-aged couple.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Damn kids think they own the place! There are other people here besides you!” the man shouted. Without missing a beat the roller-skaters picked up the rhythm and continued down the boardwalk taking up the conversation where they had left off–without so much as a backwards glance…”

  “Bubbie!” My sister’s voice stopped me mid-sentence. “That’s not like you to use the F word,” she said in a tone of chastened disbelief.

  “I know, Hon. But it is for artistic expression. Us writers do need to have the parameters of decency widened a smidgen, otherwise how would readers get the feeling of light and shade in each of the characters?”

  Rosie nodded and conceded the point. “Writers probably do need to take liberties the rest of us wouldn’t.”

  They say that integrity is the first thing to go–but I’d kept mine intact–this time at least, and so I continued…

  “…The busy waitress rushed past on her way to the kitchen, her arms laden with the remnants of someone else’s lunch, perspiration ran down her cheeks as she tried to blow an annoying wisp of hair from her face.

  Danny caught her eye and signaled another iced coffee. The waitress nodded and hurried inside.

  As people walked past, Danny unintentionally picked up on snippets of conversation–like surfing channels on a television set. With nowhere to go and only an empty house waiting for his return, he chose to fill the lonely hours surrounded by strangers who existed on the peripheral edge of his vision. He leaned back in the chair and watched foam-tipped waves curl over the sand–the old Beach Boys song he’d been humming drowned out by noisy seagulls squabbling overhead.


  Danny looked up as a tall, thirty-something woman jogged past wearing low-rider black cycle pants and a lilac cropped top that revealed a wide expanse of amber midriff. Her chestnut hair, pulled back in a ponytail that hung halfway down her back, swung from side to side with the momentum of her easy stride; the latest ear accessory iPod plugged into her ears, a cell phone clutched tightly in her palm.

  Danny followed her progress down the promenade as she sidestepped her way through people crowding the walkway, the sun bouncing off her hair in a hazy corona of shimmering jewels. When he could see her no more he smiled sadly as memories came flooding back to the day when he stepped off United Airlines Flight 870 at San Francisco’s International Airport and saw Nicola Madison for the first time.

  He could still remember what she wore the day she made his heart pound, and his head spin…”

  *****

  “Well, what do you think?” I said, but when I looked at my sister I realized she was sound asleep.

  I pulled the covers around her and kissed the soft woolen cap that covered her bare head, picked up my laptop and tip-toed out the room, leaving the door ajar, in case she should need me.

  THREE

  Ross held the door open as I followed my sister into the hospital waiting room. All the usual faces were there. Rosie looked at the people that lined the walls in silent trepidation–and smiled.

  “Hi, everyone,” she said.

  Some people looked up and acknowledged her greeting-while other did not. But that’s okay. We all have our own stuff to work through–those here more than most.

  We wandered down to where my sister’s new friend was hunched over a magazine at the back of the room.

  “Hi. How are you doing?” Rosie asked, real friendly like.

  “All right I s’ppose.” The woman’s eyes cast back and forth like a cornered animal searching for an escape route as she chewed nervously on the side of her thumb. Rosie noticed the poor woman’s anxiety and her mothering instincts kicked in. She looked at the man sitting next to her friend, smiled, and said, “Would you mind moving so I can sit with my friend?” The woman started to protest but my sister would have none of it.

  “I’m sure he won’t mind. Do you?” she said pointedly. The man shook his head and moved down one seat. Well, that’s not going to work now is it? Three of us, one chair, you do the math! Rosie looked at the empty seats at the end of the row and spoke loudly making allowances for anyone with possible hearing defects.

  “If everyone would just move along and make room so we can sit with my friend it would be much appreciated.” We watched as people shuffled down a few chairs until there were three vacant seats beside her friend.

  “There you go, Bubbie, all sorted. Now don’t you girls go talking about me while I’m gone,” Rosie said as she dropped her things on the chair and headed for the change room back near the entrance.

  I looked up at the television perched high on a shelf, and sighed… another re-run of a re-run. Surely the network’s budget could stretch to a few new episodes of the I Love Lucy show!

  I looked at my watch. “What is this rubbish? It’s nearly four-thirty; Judge Judy will be on soon,” I said to on one in particular. I glanced around the room looking for at least one pair of eyes glued to the screen–but no one displayed those zombie-like features.

  “Anyone mind if I put Judge Judy on?” I asked loudly. I didn’t want to change the channel if someone was watching their favorite program and had looked away for a moment to talk to a friend, or rummage through their bag searching for candy.

  There were a few murmured no’s, so I took that as a ‘go for it’ and turned to Ross who by now was engrossed in the latest motorcycle magazine, and said, “Darling, will you change the television to Channel Five so we can watch Judge Judy?”

  Ross glanced up at the screen. “I can’t reach it,” he said, lamely and went back to his magazine.

  Why is it men give up so easily? If it was left to them nothing would ever get done.

  “Excuse me,” I called to the young man seated below the screen and smiled ever so sweetly. “Would you mind moving so my husband can change the channel on the television?”

  The young man looked around and realized I was talking to him. He nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose, grabbed his things and as he moved to a vacant chair on the other side of the room I noticed the back of his hospital gown flap open. Mmm… nice buns.

  “Thank you,” I said as I glanced at my XXL-sized husband held spellbound by the latest tricked-up Harley Davidson motorcycle straddled by a buxom brunette with breasts the size of basketballs wearing a barely-there bikini. I nudged him in the ribs to get his attention.

  “There you go, love, all sorted.” I watched him slump down the room and climb onto the chair under the screen. As I’ve always said, people are only too happy to oblige, if you just ask them nicely.

  My sister did a pirouette in front of me as she clutched the open-fronted, washed-out blue hospital gown that had lost all its ties. “Love the fashion,” she said.

  “Hon, on you a flour-sack would look like a Bergdorf Goodman gown.”

  Rosie sat down on the hard plastic chair, arranged her gown modestly then turned to the woman sitting beside her and asked her her name.

  It must have been a really interesting article she was reading because the woman’s eyes never left the page when she said, “Linda.”

  Rosie held out her hand. “How do you do, Linda? My name is Rosemary, but everyone calls me Rosie, or Hon. And this is my sister, Bee.”

  “Bea,” Linda nodded her head in my direction, withdrew her hand and tucked both hands up under her armpits. I didn’t think it was that cold in here.

  “That’s Bee, as in honey,” I said wanting to make sure she got the spelling right.

  “That’s my sister, sweet as a little honeybee,” Rosie said, smiling.

  I thought I heard Ross mumble something about a sting under his breath–but I could have been mistaken.

  Not one to mess around with emphatic descriptions or useless innuendos, my sister was always one to shoot straight from the hip.

  “So, Linda, tell me,” she said, “have you come up with a good place to stash a body?”

  Linda shuffled around on the hard plastic seat, her discomfort was obvious.

  I recall how Little Sweetie used to fidget when she suffered with worms. Kids pick up all manner of things once they start school. If Linda was a school teacher, that would explain her odd behavior–and aversion to strangers.

  “No,” she said.

  “But, you are working on it?” Rosie prodded.

  Linda chewed on the side of her thumb, and gave a barely perceivable nod.

  “Good. Then between us we should come up with something suitable.” It was a rhetorical question requiring no answer whatsoever.

  “Mrs. Albertson!”

  “Oh. That’s me up,” my sister said and went off to face what I couldn’t even come close to imagining in the form of burning rays and mind-numbing nightmares.

  FOUR

  I typed furiously, my fingers flying across the keyboard, my mind filled with thoughts I couldn’t get down quick enough…

  *****

  September

  The previous year

  She hurried through the doors into the arrival lounge of San Francisco International Airport, nudged her sunglasses to the top of her head, and looked around. Her eyes scanned the room, stopped briefly on an unfamiliar face, and moved on knowing it was not the one she was seeking.

  From his vantage point at the top of the escalator, he noticed the way the light caught her hair and accentuated the rich chestnut-color. From where he stood he couldn’t make out the color of her eyes, but there was no need–he knew what color they were. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves, wiped his hands down the sides of his jeans and rode the escalator down.

  Nicola looked up to see Danny Richards coming towards her. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a
white T-shirt, his skin lightly tanned, hair bleached blond by the Australian sun and surf. She hadn’t expected him to look so good in the flesh… but did. Her heart pounded, her stomach started doing flip flops and her chest tightened as she thought about the man she was about to meet for the very first time, and wondered why she was here. But as a smile lit up his face, it was a face as familiar to her as her own. And when he spoke, it was with the warm voice of an old friend.

  “Hello, Nicola,” the tall handsome stranger said softly, and smiled.

  Nicola Madison found herself looking into laughing gray eyes and for a brief moment forgot to breathe. Her five-foot-nine-inch height–with heels added–brought her to just a few inches shy of standing eye to eye with this man.

  “Hello, Danny.”

  Nicola took a step closer and held out her hand. She smelt faintly of roses… with just a hint of oranges. Danny took her hold of her hand and smiled into her eyes. They were almond-shaped, almost cat-like, but they weren’t just green, like she had told him, they were the crystal clear green he’d seen in glacial lakes across Canada. He was about to say something but got lost in those eyes, dropping the threads of his thoughts.

  Nicola’s gaze lingered briefly on his, then dropped her eyes and withdrew her hand.

  “How was your flight?”

  “Long.”

  “Did you get any sleep?”

  “A little,” Danny said, grinning. “What about you?”

  Nicola’s fingers tingled from his touch. She felt a slight flush of heat rise to her cheeks.

  “Not much. Have you got everything? Is there only the one bag or are there others to collect?”

  “I travel light.” Danny indicated the black carry-on bag he was holding. “That way I don’t have to stand in the queue to check it or wait at the carousel to collect it.”