Note Before Dying (Ghostwriter Mystery 6)

by Larmer, C. A.

  “Welcome to my humble haven. I’m Bindi Harbor. You must be Roxy Parker and friend?”

  Roxy had e-mailed to make sure there was a vacancy, and she nodded as she handed over her credit card.

  “The stars must be in alignment for you, young lady,” Bindi said, taking the card from her. “We had two cancellations just this morning, otherwise we would have been full.”

  “Oh lucky, lucky us,” said Gilda, who clearly still had her heart set on the beach.

  Roxy scowled at her friend then thanked Bindi. “You’ve got such a beautiful place here.”

  The older woman smiled. “We built it with love and blessings and we wish that for your stay. This is an eco-resort and a native animal sanctuary, so you may come across koalas if you take a walk through the forest, and you will certainly see plenty of birds and wallabies at dusk.”

  Roxy thought of the local Greens Party councillors. They should make this their headquarters.

  Bindi turned and pulled two keys from a rack behind her, then waved a hand in the air motioning them to follow. She led the way up the wooden staircase to the next level then handed one key to Roxy and the other to Gilda.

  “Rooms 4 and 5. Please help yourself. Breakfast is served at 7:00 a.m., just after yoga with Chaitanya by the pond. Chaitanya is also holding a meditation session this evening at five, should you want to join us for an hour of mindfulness in the living room, downstairs, to your right. Just wear something comfy. If you can.” She glanced at Roxy’s skinny jeans then down to Gilda’s high-heeled boots. “No shoes, please.”

  “Thank you,” Roxy said, stifling a smile as the woman swept back down the stairs.

  “Mindfulness?” Gilda hissed. “I’ll give her a piece of my mind. I haven’t got time for that kind of nonsense.”

  “Don’t be so harsh, Gilda. The woman means well, besides, it might do you some good. Might be just what you need to crack the case wide open.”

  Gilda snorted. “Good old-fashioned police work is what’s going to crack this case open, if indeed there is a case.” She snorted again. “Bloody hippies.”

  Now Roxy laughed. “You sound just like Sam.”

  “Do I? I’m starting to like the sound of him, then.” She plunged her key into the door and opened it. “Okay, you’ve got five minutes to dump your stuff and freshen up, then let’s meet back out here and get going. We can take my car, it’s bigger than yours.”

  “Bigger is better?”

  “On those bloody potholes, you bet it is.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ve got a suspicious death to investigate, remember?”

  “And you want me to come with you? I thought I had to stay out of it.”

  “Well, what else are you going to do until Houghton calls? Meditate?”

  Roxy narrowed her eyes. “You’re really letting me help you investigate?”

  “Nobody said anything about helping. You can just tag along. For now.” She winked then disappeared inside.

  Roxy unlocked her own door and swung it wide open. The room was small but had a high ceiling and was brightly decorated. There was a double bed in the centre of the room and a wide window looking out over the pond. A ceramic Buddha sat on the windowsill and above the window, colourful Tibetan flags hung down.

  Roxy headed for the bathroom, which was small but adequate, and stared at her reflection, a little startled. She’d forgotten to put makeup on that morning, and her overgrown black bob looked more like a beehive. She quickly ran a comb through her hair, straightening it down, then whisked her glasses off, gave them a rinse and placed them back on top of her head. Next she applied some tinted moisturiser and lipstick from her handbag and repaired the damage before inspecting herself again. Okay, that was better; the old Roxy had returned.

  “So where first?” Roxy asked as Gilda keyed in the quickest route to Tweed Heads on her vehicle’s GPS.

  “Copshop first. I want to get hold of Sunny’s file and take a really good look at it.” She chuckled as she started the car. “Quick is going to be overjoyed to see my ugly mug again.”

  In fact Detective Quick was nowhere to be seen when the two women were buzzed into the Command headquarters, an old weatherboard building situated behind a fence at one end of the Tweed Heads township.

  “So where is he?” asked Gilda, speaking directly to the duty officer seated at the front desk.

  “He’s gone to the airport to collect the detective from Sydney.”

  “Rightio. Did he tell you I was to be given free access to the Sunny Forrest case?”

  “No, but Chief Commissioner Houlihan just sent authorisation through.”

  “Great. If you’ll point me in the direction of the file, I’ll get onto it.”

  The officer looked at Roxy. “And who might this be?”

  “This is Roxanne Parker, she’s with me.” Gilda’s tone indicated this was nonnegotiable and in case he was thinking of questioning it further, clapped her hands together and said, “Come on then, I haven’t got all day.”

  Five minutes later, the two women were seated in plastic bucket seats under harsh fluorescent lighting, peering into a relatively empty cardboard box that had been dumped on the Formica tabletop. It was marked Forrest. S.A.

  “This is it?” Roxy said. “This is all they’ve got?”

  “Looks like it.” Gilda said, pulling out a folder. She spent a few minutes reading through various pieces of paper including a police statement and a crime scene analysis report, none of which shed any more light on the subject.

  The witness statement, however, was more enlightening. After studying it briefly, Gilda handed it across to Roxy saying, “FYI.”

  Roxy took the page and began to read it to herself. It had been handwritten with shaky, old-fashioned loops, and signed by a Mr. John Holloway as well as two police witnesses, one of whom was R.J. Quick.

  “Holloway must have been the one who discovered Sunny’s body,” Roxy said. “He describes finding her lying in the Wilson’s River at around dusk on the same day they believed she died.”

  Roxy proceeded to read the statement out loud now to Gilda.

  “It had been raining heavily all day and I would not have gone that way except that my dog kept barking and I wondered whether some of the cattle had strayed. I was shocked to find the girl. She had her face half under the water and she was not moving. She had one arm twisted up behind her back, and she looked fully clothed. I went to get her out and then realised she had passed, so thought I should best leave her be. I walked straight back home and got Deidre, my wife, to call 000. I did not see the body again. I did not know who it was at the time.”

  Beneath the statement, in red ink, someone had added the words, “No suspicious circumstances.”

  A typed copy of the statement had been stapled to the back of the original and also signed.

  “You ready for this?”

  Roxy looked up to find Gilda holding a plastic sheet with what looked like an A4-size print inside. It was a photo taken at the scene. Roxy nodded and Gilda handed it across. Bracing herself, she looked down and saw what must have been Sunny’s lifeless body, lying as the witness had described, face down in the creek, one arm twisted up. She was dressed in a long flowing skirt, pinkish brown jumper and knee-high boots. There were twigs and leaves all over her, through her clothes and entwined in her knotted blonde hair. You could not see her face and she looked just like a Barbie doll that had been left out in the rain, weathered and broken. It was a miserable image and Roxy handed it straight back.

  “I have more,” Gilda said, “but you don’t need to see these. Her face is pretty swollen, there’s lots of bruising and discoloration. Looks like her nose has been broken and she’s missing some teeth.”

  Roxy shuddered. “Done after she drowned, I hope.”

  Gilda plunged her hand back into the box. She pulled out the only remaining item, a copy of the Valley Times with a yellow Post-it note stuck to one page. Spreading that page open o
n the desk, they both leaned in to take a closer look. The free local newspaper had scored a scoop of sorts, and the item featured a grainy photo of the same creek bed where Sunny’s body had been found. Thankfully Sunny had been removed, but you could still make out the indentation on one side of the bank where she had lain, and there were two paddlepop sticks with numbers on them, which were clearly used to identify forensic evidence. Beside the photo was a small snippet that bore no byline.

  The body of a young woman was found washed up in a creek on rock star Jed Moody’s property last Wednesday. The woman, a twenty-one-year-old local from Byron Shire, is believed to have drowned while attempting to cross the swollen Wilson’s River during the recent downpour. Jed Moody, of the legendary rock band the Moody Roos, was not available for comment; however, Local Area Commander Rodney Quick said, ‘This is a timely reminder to everyone to avoid crossing creeks and causeways during heavy rain.’ The woman’s family has been notified and have requested privacy at this time.”

  Roxy reread Quick’s quote and stared up at Gilda. “That’s all he had to say?”

  She nodded then glanced back into the box. “And that’s all there is on the case. The rest of the file is empty.”

  “Nothing about her missing Moody Ring? The Moody Roos posters and stuff being ripped up back at her cottage?”

  “Quick probably never got that far or didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “So one witness statement, a couple of dreadful photos and a small newspaper article. That’s all her death amounted to? So what do we ... I mean you do now?”

  Gilda stood up. “I’d like to have a chat with this witness,” she glanced back at the sheet. “John Holloway.”

  Roxy smiled. “Luckily for you then, I know just where to find him.”

  Chapter 22

  Annika Moody was no longer holding court on her spacious veranda when Gilda and Roxy returned to the house but Houghton was there. He informed them that farmer John Holloway and his wife, Deidre, had departed hours earlier.

  “Probably milking cows or something,” he said, dismissively, as he flicked through various pages on a silver laptop he’d set up on the cluttered table. Roxy caught sight of a webpage for the Sydney Entertainment Centre before he whooshed it away.

  “You’re aiming high,” she said, nodding her head towards the screen and he chuckled, almost nervously.

  Gilda ignored this and said, “I doubt anyone would be milking cows this late in the day. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure milking is a morning enterprise.” She glanced across the lawn. “Which is the quickest way to his place?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Who’re you looking for?” Alistair Avery had just stepped out onto the veranda and was looking a lot more relaxed than he had two days earlier. His white cotton shirt was opened to reveal a small beer belly, and he was nursing what looked like a glass of iced tea, although it could have been a large whisky for all Roxy knew.

  She introduced him to Gilda, adding, “Gilda’s a detective from Sydney, she’s looking into Sunny Forrest’s death.”

  Both men appeared to recoil at those words, and Houghton said, “You never told me you were a copper.”

  Gilda smiled. “Yep, guilty as charged.”

  “But why Sunny?” asked Al. “Isn’t Jed the priority here?”

  “Absolutely he is. Another more senior detective, Inspector Brent Wiles, has been assigned that case. I’m just here to look over Sunny Forrest’s death and make sure that was all in order.”

  “She drowned in the creek, didn’t she?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out. You’re Alistair Avery?” He nodded warily. “Were you around at that time?”

  “Me?” Al looked stunned. He began doing up his shirt buttons. “Yeah, but it had nothing to do with me. I mean I barely knew the chick.”

  “But you did know her?”

  “Yeah, blonde bimbo, had a hard-on for Jed.”

  “That ‘blonde bimbo’ was somebody’s sister,” Roxy snapped, and he glanced at her then back to Gilda.

  “Oh, I see what this is about. Sam’s tantrums have finally worked. Forced you to reopen the case, has he?”

  Gilda stepped towards him. “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t, Mr. Avery?”

  He shook his head quickly and reached for a cigarette packet that was sitting on a wicker table. “I don’t give a shit about that,” he said, plucking out a cigarette. “Like I said, I barely knew her, nothing to do with me.”

  “Good, then you won’t mind telling me how to get to farmer John’s place. The neighbour.”

  “I can tell you how to get there.”

  They all swung around to find Annika standing at the French doors. She looked like she’d just crawled out of bed, her bun now tufted up to one side, her kaftan heavily wrinkled.

  She stepped out and towards Alistair who was just handing her his lit cigarette. She took it without so much as a thank you and dragged on it for a few seconds, before throwing herself on the lounge beside Houghton.

  “Give us a foot rub, darling. Feet are killing me.”

  He promptly obliged, pushing his laptop aside and focusing on her right foot. Roxy noticed a tattoo on her ankle with two letters that looked like JM in cursive script.

  “So, you’re a detective?” she said, and before Roxy could do the introductions, added, “My husband has just died, and all the police are worried about is a case that’s what, two years old? Three?” She dragged on the cigarette again.

  “It was less than eighteen months ago, actually, and the police are very interested in your husband’s death, Mrs. Moody. But unfortunately, that’s not my case. I’m Detective Gilda Maltin. Chief Detective Brent Wiles is running your husband’s investigation and will no doubt be calling in on you this afternoon when he arrives. I’m just trying to get directions to the Holloways’ property.”

  Annika exhaled a long plume of smoke and looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to oblige. Finally she said, “Go back to the main road, turn right, next driveway on your right. It’s about a kilometre along from us. Or you could take the shortcut across our property, everyone else does. You go past Jed’s studio, through the trees and across to the creek. Just follow the sound of bubbling water. I hear it’s quite blissful out there. Quite romantic.”

  There was an edge in her tone, something accusatory, too, and Roxy noticed Houghton and Alistair share a glance.

  “Thanks, but I think we’ll take the main road,” Gilda said.

  Annika’s eyes narrowed. “You obviously think Sunny’s death is linked to my husband’s?”

  “I think nothing, Mrs. Moody, until I get all the facts. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Gilda nodded at Roxy and they were about to make their exit when Annika pointed her cigarette in Roxy’s direction. “I’m sorry if I’m a little dim these days, darling—you can blame Jed for that—but what’s all this got to do with our ghostwriter?”

  Roxy felt a blush rise in her cheeks and stumbled for an answer. “Well, I...”

  “Roxy is assisting with my enquiries,” Gilda interjected. “That’s all I can say at this point in time. I trust you understand?”

  She directed this at both Annika and at Houghton who had stopped massaging Annika’s foot and was now staring suspiciously at Roxy.

  Annika waved her cigarette in the air dismissively, as though she really didn’t care one way or the other, so they took this as their cue and left.

  “She’s a piece of work,” Gilda said as she steered the vehicle back down the Moodys’ driveway and towards the Holloways’. “Did you see the way the guys fawned over her? I’d be disgusted if I wasn’t so bloody envious. How does she do it?”

  Roxy laughed. “I think having a famous husband, and now a fabulous inheritance, might have something to do with it. I should have been fawning, too, now I think about it. I need her approval to write this book. You probably shouldn’t have been quite so dismissive.”

  “Oh,
she’ll approve it,” Gilda said, slapping Roxy on one leg. “How else is she going to stay relevant now Rock Star Hubby is kaput? She probably needs that book more than any of you.”

  Roxy hoped she was right. Now that Gilda was hanging around to look into Sunny’s death, she felt like staying, too. And the book was as good an excuse as any.

  “Did you catch that strange comment, about the shortcut being ‘romantic’?” Gilda said and Roxy’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, I did. Wonder what that was about.”

  Gilda clicked her tongue. “I wonder, indeed!”

  The Holloway driveway could not be in greater contrast to the Moodys’, and the cattle grid was about the only thing they had in common. Their front fence was rundown, the wooden fence posts looking dilapidated and so termite-riddled, it was a wonder they held the old rusty wiring in place. There was a rickety gate open, just before the cattle grille, but it looked as though it hadn’t been shut in decades and was leaning so far to the right, it was likely to never shut again. The driveway itself went for just a few hundred meters before it reached the main house, but it was all loose gravel and heavily grooved in places where the rain had wreaked havoc, causing Gilda to drive so slowly in parts, they would have made faster progress on foot.

  Unlike the Moodys’ property, this one was considerably more barren, with far fewer trees, and dozens of cattle as far as the eye could see. Roxy also spotted several old sheds that looked like they too would topple over if you sneezed on them. There was nothing of the Yuppie-style “hobby farm” about the place. It was definitely a working property, although not a prosperous one judging by the dilapidation.

  The main house, too, was aching for some TLC. Built far too close to the main road and painted white too many moons ago, the house looked unwashed and unloved, and the tinned roof was so rusty Roxy wondered how many leaks they suffered during the wet season.