No one had to say anything, all three of them making their own summations. Personally, Jack thought they’d called in too close proximity and Hush knew something was off.
Of course something was off; it’s not every day your dead girlfriend rings you.
Perhaps it didn’t even matter who Hush was, Jack thought. There was something larger than just a boyfriend hovering behind all of this. If Hush was her murderer, why give them the phone at all? Perhaps hiding in plain sight was the plan. Curtis such a plum suspect that he’s behind bars before anyone takes a closer look. Evidence overgrown with time.
After all, the last time, a closer look had taken four years.
No one seemed to have any more ideas. Curtis went to the kitchen and came back with a beer. He didn’t sit, just stood there sipping at it. Jack took the initiative and rose.
“I should keep this,” he said, pointing at the phone. No one objected. He slid it into his jacket pocket, looking at Curtis for an objection that didn’t come. He defended anyway: “You can trust me.”
“We can’t.” Curtis took a sip. “But okay.”
“Thank you, Jack,” said Lauren. She lay on the couch, wrist on her forehead. Spent.
“Walk you out,” offered Curtis.
“I’m fine.”
“Walk you out,” he said again. He was already following Jack into the hall.
Outside, the sun was just down. The sky was a translucent navy, rather than black, the color still siphoning from it, the chromatography between night and day. Jack had thought it would be later. He stepped off the deck without saying goodbye to Curtis. He heard crunching behind him. Curtis was following him, a few steps behind.
“Jack,” Curtis said, and Jack turned. “You never told me what it was you found.”
To their left, the Freemans’ silos turned from glittering steel beacons to shadows stretched across the fields.
“I didn’t,” Jack said.
“So?”
“You said it was planted,” Jack reminded him.
“Yes. Someone planted it.”
“It doesn’t matter, then.”
“So.”
“So?”
“What was it?”
Jack consistently failed to give Curtis enough credit. He’d obviously figured out that now the investigation was suggesting a copycat, Eliza’s real killer remained open to scrutiny. That he remained open to scrutiny. Sitting in the circle, in anticipation of the ringing phone, Curtis must have been frantically spinning through the evidence in his head—how this could support his being framed not once but twice. Eliza still lay alone, stark naked, in the middle of his own vineyard. Two dead women and Curtis Wade the only thread between them. Double jeopardy was his ally, but it was a fragile one. Especially if Jack had some unknown evidence. Another reason to keep him around: Curtis wanted to know what Jack had on him.
Jack stayed silent. If he had any advantage over Curtis, this was it. Curtis blinked twice quickly, a muscle in his cheek jumped. There was a violence lingering under his skin, something crawling.
“Does Lauren know?” Curtis said eventually.
“No.”
“Is it safe?”
“Yes.”
Curtis sighed, took a pull on his beer. “That’ll have to do for now,” he said.
Jack looked over and up the hill to the Freeman place. He imagined again that bleeding hill.
“Tell me something,” Jack said. “Why’d you do it?”
“Fuck you, Jack.”
“Not the murder.” He pointed to the silos. “That.”
“Oh.”
Curtis looked up as well. Remembering. “We didn’t fit in here; you know that. You’re either born here or you’re fucked. Like spurting out of a rich ball sack counts as skill, but try telling them that. Grapecism, Lauren coined it.” He laughed. “They smashed our windows, yeah, there was that. But it wasn’t really one single thing. It’s just the general attitude here. You felt it?”
Jack thought about Brett Dawson’s mockery at the pub. Mary-Anne’s five-star breakfast. Alan Sanders’s overpriced meals.
“The town’s got a vibe, yeah.”
“Well.” Curtis shrugged as if that settled the matter. “That’s it then.”
“What’s it?”
“The vibe. That’s why I did it. Besides, I didn’t know it would be so”—he searched for the word—“dramatic.”
“That’s not much of a reason to soak a town in wine.”
“This ain’t a town, mate,” Curtis said. “It’s Andrew Freeman’s winery and a cluster of brownnoses at the bottom, bending over and opening their mouths for the money to run downhill. His wine’s fucking awful too. I’ll tell you how it went; I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
“I’ll try.”
“I was up there, you see, and I turned on one tap. Just enough to piss them off, you know?” Curtis raised his eyebrows in expectation, as if pissing off the Freemans should be an everyday activity. “I didn’t plan anything else. And then I saw the view, looking down on this rubble of buildings that calls itself a town. And I looked at the dribble of wine, which was starting to run down the hill. And I thought about all the uptight pricks below. And it just came over me.”
“What did?”
“I thought to myself, Fuck it, someone needs to buy this town a drink.”
Chapter 26
When buzzing woke him, Jack was convinced it was the murderer calling him back.
“Jack.”
A familiar voice. Jack opened his eyes. He popped his ears by grinding his jaw. Light rimmed the border of the disconnected door over by the window. He pulled his phone away from his ear to check the time. Morning. Just.
“Ian.”
“Sorry to wake you. Question for ya.” McCarthy was abrupt, as curt as Jack had ever heard him. It also sounded like he was driving; there was a hum underneath everything. Jack’s first thought was grim: Ian knows about Alexis’s phone.
“Okay. Shoot.” Play it cool.
“At the funeral.”
“Yeah.”
“You take something?” Not the phone. This was worse.
“From the funeral?”
“From my truck.”
“Jesus, Ian.”
Jack shook himself properly awake. He’d watched enough interrogations to know he needed to buy himself some time. He needed to give noncommittal answers. Let Ian lead. The fatal flaw in most criminals: no patience.
“I know,” Ian continued, “and I’m sorry to ask you, mate. But listen. I lost something. I need it back. If you took it and you just give it back, no harm done, okay?”
Jack had already read the files. He could copy them, return the originals. McCarthy was his final ally. Even now, while accusing Jack of a serious crime, he was offering an out. But what if it got back to Winter?
Jack sighed. The lie formed on his lips. Truth, edited.
“I wish I could help you, Ian.” You’re a piece of shit, Jack told himself. “But I made a fast exit before Ted doubled the church bookings with my own coffin.”
“All right.” Ian spoke on an exhale. Was Jack imagining the disappointment? “Sorry to ask. Had to, you know? I gotta go. You still out this way? Drink soon?”
“Yeah. I’m out here. Sure.”
There was silence then. Nothing but the road purring under McCarthy’s tires. Something broken between them. McCarthy hung up.
Jack’s mornings were becoming ritualized. Stuck in the cycles of this town. Dress. Shower. Step over black banana in the doorway. Out to the street.
He walked into the center of town for no reason but an abstract gravity, stood at the single traffic light. It was too early to go back to the Wades. Besides, he had nothing new to tell them. He’d scrolled through the phone last night and nothing more had re
vealed itself. It was too early for anything really; there was a layer of mist still on the ground. It was cloudy too. The town’s buildings were shadows behind gray, slowly coming into focus with proximity, sharp features materializing bit by bit, as if buffering into existence. It wasn’t raining; that would come later. His face was damp, the moisture in the air pervasive.
Jack kicked at rocks as he kept walking nowhere in particular. Andrew Freeman still bothered him. That vertiginous restaurant. That mine shaft of a cellar. Birravale Creek had been a healthy business before he’d married into it, Alan Sanders had told him, but not a behemoth. But the money it was making now must be staggering. Sufficient enough not only for renovations, but also to ignore a multimillion-dollar insurance claim. Andrew had brushed it off the other night as overvalued. Out of all of his oddities, that was perhaps the worst: honesty to an insurance company.
Jack was past the pub again now. With its useless cautionary signs through the window. GAMBLING: KNOW WHEN TO STOP. ALCOHOL: AUSTRALIA’S MOST EXPENSIVE DRUG. All while inviting you in to drink and gamble. Something niggled.
His brain was addled with theories. He had to simplify the facts. He needed clarity, a calm sounding board. He pulled out his phone and dialed.
“Hey, Dad,” Jack said, “can you put me on speaker?” Then, before his father could react: “Please, I want to talk to him.”
There was a short pause, and then the familiar soundscape of his father’s trudge up the stairs. Then more silence, a short scuffle, and Peter said, “Right,” and retreated to his armchair. Jack heard the leather creak and the pencil start to scrape away at a crossword.
“Hey, Liam. What’s up?” The first few words were always the hardest. His voice caught. “I’ve been working that case for us. Can you give me a hand sorting through some stuff?”
The soft beeps in the background audio were almost an errant Morse code. It was a comforting thought that maybe Liam was, in some way, talking back.
“Look, so I know that Curtis—he’s the bad guy, remember, buddy?—didn’t swing the ax that killed Alexis.”
Beep. Beep.
“And I know that someone stole that ax, so they could plan the murder and a cover story to go with it, until I busted them trying to put it back.”
His father’s pencil rustled in the background like someone whispering. Jack ran his pointer and his thumb down his temples until they met at his nose.
“And I know that Alexis had a second phone. One that she used for a secret…” He paused. “No, you’re right, Liam. I’m speculating there.” Maybe not secret, but still a discreet relationship. What kind of relationship required discretion? Someone she shouldn’t be seeing. Like Curtis had said, that was almost everybody. An affair? On her end? Was she a mistress, or he a cuckold? Sex isn’t murder, but the two went hand in hand more often than not. Jack clicked his teeth. Liam’s machine continued its rhythmic beat. Maybe not Morse code, but an artificial heartbeat. A small sign of life that proved he was there.
“You’re right,” Jack said. “That is the real question. Who is the worst person she could be sleeping with?”
Jack looked up and answered his own question. The hilltop beyond the town was shrouded, as if blowing smoke rings. He could see the two silos, the windowed shoebox. Andrew Freeman had struck Jack as leading him around the circumference of the truth. Andrew knew more than he was letting on, and it was time to find out what.
“Yeah, don’t rub it in. I know,” Jack said. “What would I do without you?” He ended the call.
The road had thinned underfoot without Jack noticing, his walk taking him to the edge of town. He’d got the gravity of the town wrong. It didn’t pull into Birravale proper. He looked up at the Freemans’. Like everything else here, the gravity ran uphill.
Chapter 27
Andrew’s Forester wasn’t in the drive. Jack lifted the bronze knocker and rapped on the front door, his shoes leaving moist prints on the stained deck. In the city, at this hour, it would be almost criminally rude; he’d be greeted by electroshocked hair, a bathrobe, What the fuck do you want? Out here, though, only silence. Farmers and early risers already out for the day. Jack knocked again.
Fuck it, he thought and clomped off the deck. He walked around the side of the house, past a row of overflowing recycling bins, plastic tubs with science-y names—ethyl, glycol—peeking from under lids, and across the grass to the Freemans’ silos. He trailed his fingertips along the cool corrugated steel; droplets pooled and ran down his wrist. He looked down at Birravale, the sparse collection of buildings now dark spots in the gray mist. He tried to feel what Curtis had when, up here, his knuckles strained around the handle of an ax: contempt for those beneath him. It wasn’t so hard to empathize.
Past the silos, Jack came to the cellar door. He stooped and yanked at the handle. Locked. That catacomb of a cellar, with its safe-like doors. Who knew how deep it went into the hillside? The perfect place for secrets.
Eliza had picked here for six months. Had she found something? What had she said on the voicemail? Might even be, I don’t know, illegal?
Jack walked over to the trellises of grapes. There was a gouge in the dirt, lawn scuffed, from where he’d grappled with the intruder. He continued up the hill. In the light, it was an easier trek. White trunks—bones in the mist—flanked him. Sleeves of bark hung down, swinging shadows like peeled gloves from branched hands. Jack took careful steps over rotting logs and branches. Brown leaf litter swathed his ankles, slicked and dewy like dead tongues.
The density of the trees petered out. Jack stepped into the clearing. There was a blue tarp tethered to a wooden stake on the right side of the clearing. Jack recalled the crinkle of plastic when he’d run through here in the dark. The tarp was neatly pulled back over something lumpy and weighed down with a brick in the far corner. Jack looked at the irregularity of the lumps, tried to guess, worst-case scenarios playing through his head. Lauren. What had she said? Women around my brother keep turning up dead. He picked up the brick, pulled the tarp back. Under it, rather than a dead body, was a small garden. The smell was unmistakable. It wasn’t quite the smell in Andrew’s car. That was something earthier. This was a reason to keep investigators at bay. Especially if there was more growing in that cellar. Marijuana.
But something wasn’t quite right. The garden was too small. Three or four plants. Was it just a sample of what was going on in a lab below? A handful of small plants was nothing to kill over.
“Don’t tell him,” a voice said from behind. Jack whipped around to Sarah. She was dressed for high tea, not for bush walking in the dew. She had black handprints on her white slacks where she’d wiped them. Her trouser legs were slicked, cladded and transparent on her calves. And she was shivering.
Jack clutched the brick.
“You were home, before?”
“I wanted to see if you knew.” She nodded. “Don’t worry, Andrew’s out cycling.”
“Why would I worry?”
“I misspoke. Sorry.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No. Please.” Sarah brushed some water out of her eyes, wrapped her arms around herself. “Keep this as just us.”
Jack stepped toward her. She drew back. Momentarily confused, Jack thought to check behind him. He realized then, she was shrinking from him. His face was bruised and cut, hair plastered to his scalp. Still holding the brick. He must look quite threatening. He dropped the brick.
“Does Andrew—”
“It’s fine. Come back this way. I’ll get you a towel.” She turned and guided him back through the bush.
“How long have you had this?” Jack spoke to her back.
“A few years.”
“And Andrew doesn’t know?”
“He’s the sergeant, for heaven’s sake.” Her voice rose above a sullen drone for the first time. “What kind of a look would that be?”
>
“He’s not the sergeant anymore.”
“Still. A secret kept this long, it festers.”
Jack rubbed the scars on the backs of his knuckles. They were back on the property now, walking past the silos. “Why?” Jack asked.
“Stress mainly. You wouldn’t last one week running this place. Andrew’s a genius; he’s turned this business into a legacy. I think it’s because he didn’t start with it, you know? He respects it, but he’s looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. Nothing tying him to the old ways. So he sees new opportunities.”
“And that’s stressful?” Jack asked, dimly aware that this was the same reason Andrew said he hated the Wades. Imposters.
“He’s a bit of a guru with these things. But the way we do things, it’s not without its pressures.”
Jack thought back to Andrew tossing the expensive bottle of wine back and forth. Telling Sarah to get a different one. That wasn’t a discussion between husband and wife, between business partners; it had been an order. Andrew was intense. If Jack were married to him, he’d probably need some stress relief too.
“Those chemicals…” Jack said.
“Are for making wine,” Sarah said. Jack shrugged; he didn’t know what went into wine. “Alcohol is chemical,” Sarah continued. “I’m not cooking meth, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Do you sell it?” Jack asked. “The pot.”
“To Curtis Wade, is that what you’re asking?”
“Anyone,” Jack said, but she’d correctly guessed his angle.
“You’re trying to turn one marijuana plant into a murder investigation?”
It had started to rain. The clouds were so low that it didn’t so much fall as waft onto them.
“I won’t tell him,” Jack said, but before she could thank him, added, “but I want you to take me into his cellar.”
Sarah flicked the switch and the lights shuddered on, revealing the proscenium chamber that receded into the mountain. The honeycomb-latticed wine racks. The barrels lining the walls. Their footsteps echoed off the walls as she led him onto the clay. It was dry and musty down here. Jack could hear the rain tapping on the top step.
Trust Me When I Lie Page 21