The Secrets that Lie Within (Taylor's Bend, #1)

by Elisabeth Rose

  This type of activity could escalate into violence but she wouldn’t take kindly to a suggestion to move into the motel. Maybe someone could come to stay with her. A friend or relative. He’d casually mention it over dinner.

  By the time the gate swung smoothly on its hinges, the sun was sinking rapidly behind the hills across the valley. He’d called in at Stuey’s garage and got him to weld the lock to one end of the chain and now he fastened the chain securely to the post, looping it under the supporting beam. He closed the gate but left it unlocked so he could leave. Abbie should hang a spare key on a nail in a tree nearby, just in case.

  A mouth-watering smell wafted in the air as he approached the verandah; fried onions and garlic, the start of many a delicious feed. He knocked at the door and moments later it swung open. She must have been waiting close by, or checking who had driven in.

  ‘All done,’ he said.

  She’d changed from paint-stained jeans and T-shirt into a patterned skirt and a white blouse that enhanced the brightness of her hair. Thank goodness he’d thought to bring a clean shirt and jeans to change into.

  ‘Thank you very much. Come in.’ She stepped back, holding the door wide. As he passed her, the cooking smell mingled with a dash of perfume, something vaguely spicy, very alluring.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom, please? I need to wash and change.’ He held up the plastic carry bag he’d been clutching.

  ‘Of course. You can have a shower if you like.’

  ‘No, I’m not that dirty, I don’t think. A wash will be fine.’

  ‘Bathroom’s second on the right. I’ll get you a towel.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She opened a cupboard in the hallway while he went to the bathroom and took his clothes from the bag, placing them on a white painted chair. A potted fern sat on one corner of the large old bathtub, implying Abbie used the shower recess, which had shampoo and sundry other plastic bottles stuffed into a wire basket on one wall. He turned the tap to fill the hand basin with warm water. A worn cake of white soap sat in a dish, same brand as his own. Functional. A toothbrush and toothpaste stuck out of a holder on the wall.

  ‘Did you find your mail?’ he called.

  ‘Yes.’ She appeared in the doorway and handed him a deep blue towel. ‘It was in my office. In a drawer.’

  She was hanging on to her calm by a thread.

  ‘Unopened?’ He made his tone casual so as not to tip her over the edge. Someone putting food in the fridge was bad enough, but opening a desk drawer was far more personal and begged the question, what else had been pried into? Her private papers? Her bedroom?

  ‘Yes. Still in the bundle Laurie gave me, held with the elastic band.’

  ‘Tidying things away,’ he said, almost to himself, thinking.

  ‘Why?’ Her voice bounced off the tiled walls of the bathroom, loud and demanding an answer. He didn’t have one.

  ‘I don’t know. Yet.’

  She glared at him for a moment. ‘Have your wash,’ she said and turned away.

  When he joined her ten minutes later in the kitchen, she’d opened the wine and poured two glasses. A dish of nuts sat on the bench and he took a handful. She was stirring something in a deep pan on the stovetop.

  ‘That smells great,’ he said.

  ‘Tastes good too. Noodles and salad okay?’

  ‘Yep. Can I help?’

  ‘No, thanks. The chicken will be a little while yet and I’ve made the salad.’ She finished with the pan and put a lid on it. ‘Sit down.’ She handed him a glass of wine.

  ‘Can I look at your paintings, please?’

  ‘Sure.’ She picked up her glass and led him to the studio end of the room. She’d drawn curtains across the swathe of glass, something he doubted she usually did except in the depths of winter to retain the warmth.

  The large easel had a drop cloth over the current project and she didn’t remove it. Not many artists were happy displaying unfinished work. He’d learned that from Benita. He’d learned lots of things from Benita, things he’d never forget about loving and sharing and the immeasurable nature of true happiness... and how fragile it was.

  Stop thinking about her. Abbie was talking but he had no idea what she’d said.

  ‘Rupe?’ Fingers brushed his arm gently. ‘Are you okay?’

  His eyes were moist. Idiot. He blinked. ‘Sure.’ His random gaze locked on a group of small watercolours propped against the wall. ‘What are these?’ He walked across and squatted, looking more closely, carefully displaying each of the four in turn. ‘That’s the Arts Centre Hall, the old bridge out on Taylor’s Creek Road, the pub. And that’s that monster gum tree just near the town limit.’ He straightened. ‘These are really good, Abbie. Was Laurie’s one of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they for sale?’

  ‘I suppose so. I was going to do a couple more and send them off to the gallery that displays my work but I have something else to finish first. With a deadline.’ She pulled a face. ‘I don’t like deadlines. Especially now this … thing.’ She stopped and took a swig of her wine.

  ‘Have you painted anything else that is identifiable as being Taylor’s Bend? For the gallery, I mean.’

  Her expression stiffened as though a coat of glue had set her features in place. When she spoke, it was a hoarse whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I did an oil of the pub just after I got here. It’s such a typical old country building. Louise said it sold quite quickly so it can’t have been on display for long. Do you think that’s how this person tracked me?’

  Rupe shrugged. ‘Doesn’t mean anything. You’re not exactly in hiding, are you?’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Abbie, you haven’t changed your name, have you? You were in the paper for that art prize as Abigail Forrest.’

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my name.’

  He wandered over to her workbench. Sketches were laid out on the wide surface. Landscapes of the countryside around town and in the bush.

  ‘Is this what you’re working on now?’

  ‘Yes.’ She drew a deep breath and came to stand beside him. ‘I need six large pictures. I’ve sent away three and just started number four. These are ideas for it and the next one.’

  ‘That’s a lot of work.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t need any distractions,’ she said harshly.

  ‘Abbie, would you feel better if someone was staying here with you?’ She clearly wasn’t leaving the house.

  To his surprise she almost laughed, snorting into her wine as she took another sip. ‘Are you offering?’

  ‘No!’ He ran a hand through his hair, pushing back the annoying lock that kept dropping into his left eye. Needed a trim. ‘No. I thought there might be someone you could invite. A friend? Family member?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No-one at all?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t want anyone. I’ll be fine. I’ll get a dog.’

  She’d dug her heels in like someone on a tug-of-war team.

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ she asked, her face brightening.

  ‘Yes, dogs are good company. You know what the best guards are?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Geese. They’re incredibly territorial and set up a hell of a racket if anyone shows up.’

  ‘Really? I was thinking of getting chooks but geese would be twice as good.’

  ‘They attack too.’

  ‘Wow. Where can I get some?’

  ‘I’ll find out.’

  ‘Refill?’ Abbie headed for the bottle of wine in the kitchen. Rupe followed and sat at the table, luckily not on the chair with the wonky leg that she kept meaning to fix. She set the nuts and the bottle in front of him and pulled out a chair.

  ‘Our neighbour had a flock when I was a kid,’ Rupe said. ‘I was terrified of them. There was a big drake who was the boss. His name was Captain Mainwaring and our neighbour called the flock
Dad’s Army.’

  ‘Like the old TV show.’ Abbie smiled. ‘I saw reruns when I was a kid.’

  ‘Me too. Funny.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Silence settled like a gentle, comfortable feather quilt. Abbie turned the stem of the wine glass slowly, focusing on the liquid inside.

  Rupe hated to break the mood but he was a policeman and this wasn’t a social visit, not a date. Not really.

  He drew breath to speak but Abbie spoke first. ‘Were you ever married?’

  It wasn’t the question of a woman trying to find out if her choice of man was available; this was something else. She sounded like someone wanting to find shared ground. Shared sadness.

  He swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  She waited.

  ‘I’m … she died. Two years ago.’ The shaft of pain twisted his gut. Still raw, still deep.

  ‘She must have been young—way too young.’

  ‘Thirty-nine. An aneurism. One day she was there, the next …’ He couldn’t raise his eyes from the wood grain in the table top.

  Abbie shook her head. ‘It’s too sad. Happened to a friend’s mother when I was at school—over a weekend. She was alive on the Friday and when we came to school on Monday she’d died. Shocking. What was her name, your wife?’

  He looked up sharply, frowning. How long since he’d spoken it aloud?

  ‘Benita.’ It fell from his tongue with surprising ease.

  ‘What was she like?’

  Such a simple question and one he suddenly, desperately wanted to answer. Benita deserved to be spoken about and Abbie was the first person, apart from those in his old life who knew already, he wanted to tell. ‘Smart, beautiful, gentle. She taught me about art. I was a total ignoramus where the arts are concerned until I met her. She made me go to galleries and concerts and I discovered a whole world I hadn’t known existed.’

  ‘Was she an artist?’

  ‘No. She had a degree in fine arts. She worked for a magazine as arts editor.’

  ‘She sounds really interesting.’

  ‘I think you would have got along well together.’ He smiled and some of the tension in his stomach eased. Talking to Abbie was easy, talking about Benita was like turning on a tap and releasing a build-up of pressure.

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘Mutual friends. She knew the wife through her job, I knew the husband from sport and we met at a barbecue. They’d set her up with some bloke but she ditched him pretty fast.’

  Abbie smiled. ‘Why didn’t they set her up with you?’

  ‘Gail told me later she thought Benita wouldn’t go for a policeman.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Basically she was saying I was an uncultured country boy with no great prospects.’

  ‘What a charming friend. Benita obviously didn’t think that.’

  He shook his head, smiling at the memory. ‘We were married within the year.’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘No kids?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. She waited, unsure what to say. By his tone it was a touchy subject.

  ‘No. The time never seemed right.’

  Abbie got up to check her pan of chicken. Rupe had opened up very quickly, which surprised her a lot. He’d seemed such a self-contained man but perhaps he was lonely, nursing that grief by himself. Maybe he’d come to this small town to hide himself away from well-meaning friends who’d try to make him ‘move on’. She took a saucepan from the cupboard and filled it with water. Who did that remind her of?

  ‘Your turn, Abbie,’ he said. ‘Tell me about you.’

  Abbie set the pot on the hotplate and turned. Fair enough. He deserved some answers.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I know you’re divorced. Any kids?’

  True, up to a point.

  ‘One daughter. She’s twenty-two.’

  ‘You must have been young.’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘So we’re the same age.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘I bet I’m older. My birthday’s in January.’

  ‘Hard to beat that.’ She smiled in return. ‘March.’

  ‘What’s your daughter’s name? What’s she doing?’

  ‘Her name’s Georgia and I have no idea where she is or what she’s doing.’

  She remained standing, rigid, watching Rupe process her statement. To his credit, he didn’t react with shock or dismay, or offer a platitude. He’d have seen all sorts of horrors in his line of work. But still …

  ‘Rupe, no-one in town knows about … my family.’

  ‘No-one knows about my private life either.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How long since you’ve seen her?’ he asked.

  ‘You sound like a cop,’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘I am, but at the moment I’m asking as a friend.’

  Abbie licked her lips, rubbed suddenly clammy palms on her skirt. The urge to blurt out everything, lay herself bare the way he had, was almost overwhelming. Almost. But he was a policeman and she didn’t want her life exposed to any more scrutiny, benign though his would be.

  ‘A couple of years. She was in her first year at university, studying. An arts degree.’ She kept her voice steady, making sure to keep the tone light, her gaze even. ‘When our family fell apart, she went her own way, dropped out of uni, disappeared. She blamed us both, even though her father was the one at fault.’

  ‘Took it hard.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Does she keep in touch with him?’

  ‘He died very recently. Before that … I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not. What he did …’ The bitterness was impossible to hide. ‘He meant nothing to me by then—he was a complete stranger. I felt as though I’d never known him. I still do.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Drowned. They think he was washed off rocks down at the south coast.’ Suicide was bandied about but accident was the final verdict. She didn’t much care.

  ‘Taylor’s Bend is a good place to heal wounds,’ Rupe said quietly. He’d assumed the man had run off with another woman. If only he had rather than …

  ‘I thought so. Now … I’m not so sure.’

  And so she brought them back to the real reason this kind, deeply sensitive, grieving, handsome man was sitting at her kitchen table waiting for his dinner.

  ‘Could it have something to do with Georgia?’ he asked. ‘Would she do this to you?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  But the idea, now let loose in her mind, began dancing about like a mad thing.

  Chapter 4

  Rupe had locked the gate on his way out after dinner the previous evening, so Abbie, armed with a hammer, a nail and a spare key, went down in the crisp clean air of early morning to open it. The sun hadn’t appeared over the hill behind the house when she set off, and dew seeped into her shoes when she walked across the unkempt grass to the driveway.

  Sleep had been hard come by and she’d woken for the final time before dawn, to lie listening to the first birds calling to each other. She always imagined they woke up alone in the dark and whistled and sang to find out where the others were, their friends, so as to join them for breakfast and the day’s activity.

  A lone cockatoo flew overhead, screeching like a tightly jammed door being forced open. He’d be the lookout. The rest of the flock would be out there marauding and creating havoc with the fruitgrowers’ crops. Secretly, because they weren’t popular round here, they were her favourite of the local birdlife. Bold and brassy, sleek, cheeky and confident as a hoon out on the town. Perhaps she could do a series of bird pictures. Watercolours. When the landscapes were done.

  Rupe’s presence had been comforting, and despite his gentle, and relatively unproductive for him, probing, she’d enjoyed chatting. It was almost like a date except it wasn’t, but she hadn’t had dinner alone with a man for some time. Hadn�
��t had the desire after the Greg experience, or the opportunity if she’d had the desire—a woman in her early forties wasn’t exactly a catch. Looked upon as probably too old to start a family, and too old for a man of a similar age who would look for a woman in her thirties or even younger, she wasn’t inclined to look for a partner in his fifties or up. It was easier to let that side of her life be, concentrate on her work.

  It would be a much smarter attitude, given her form and the ensuing destruction she caused, but a handsome man was a handsome man and if anyone could make her rethink her status, Rupe could. She chuckled to herself as she strolled, remembering how different he looked in his work jeans and shirt. Comfortable and relaxed. A man who could fix things was extremely attractive in her view. What a swag of new information she had about the secretive and universally desirable Constable Rupert Perry. She knew for a fact his widower status hadn’t reached the town grapevine, which in itself was an extraordinary piece of subterfuge on his part, and proved he definitely knew how small towns worked.

  What was particularly pleasing was that he’d trusted her with his revelation and there was no way she would break that trust by gossiping.

  She unlocked the new padlock and hooked the chain behind the post. The gate moved easily and beautifully on the weathered old gatepost now. He’d done a great job, clearing the weeds and accumulated earth from where the open gate had sat for decades, as well as fastening the hinges firmly onto the post. Abbie swung the gate back and forth a few times just because she could, then left it open and went to one of the bigger trees a little back from the gate and off the driveway a metre, as Rupe had suggested.

  On the side of the tree away from the driveway, she hammered the nail in with pleasing accuracy and hung the key on it. She’d have another one cut as well, to leave in the garage just in case. And while she was at it, she’d have spare front and back door keys cut too. Bury one of each in a container in the garden as she had in the city. Keeping track of keys wasn’t her forte, similar to her relationship with sunglasses.

  She turned for the walk back and was blinded by the sun as it breasted the trees on the hill behind the house. She blinked and moved to the side of the track into the shadow. Magical, pale golden light streamed through the leaves sparkling off the dewy drops, which hung like diamonds. That’s what she wanted to capture. She moved faster, taking mental notes as she walked, anxious to get to the studio and transfer the impression to the canvas. More yellow in the sky; not white, a pale, pale yellow with a hint of pink or even orange.