Cold Deception

by D. B. Tait

  “Rez is out there at the end of the garden. Julia says he’s dead.”

  Blossom cried out. “No! He can’t be. He was only here an hour ago.”

  Eleanor stared at her aghast. “You invited him back here again?”

  “No, no! He tried to convince me to let him in but I wouldn’t. I showed him where I’d thrown the drugs and he disappeared into the bush.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Eleanor said.

  “I… I… didn’t want to worry you. I made it very clear I didn’t want to see him and I was pretty sure he got the message. I just didn’t want the police around here again.”

  “Well, not much choice about that now,” Julia said. “They’re on their way.”

  “How… how… did he die?” Blossom asked.

  “I don’t know, Bloss,” Julia said, crossing to her. She put her arm around her and hugged her. “Maybe it was an accidental overdose. It happens sometimes.”

  Blossom shivered. “I… I’m cold. I need to put something warmer on. I can’t face the police again in my pyjamas.” She disappeared upstairs leaving the others to stare at each other in dismay.

  “I wonder if he’s been around before,” Dee said. “I mean, in between when we last saw him and tonight.”

  Julia frowned. “I don’t think so. She seemed very committed to not wanting to see him.”

  Eleanor pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and collapsed into it. “What a disaster this all is. And it’s all my fault.” She ran her fingers through her hair then rested her head in her hands. “If I’d been anything like a decent mother, my daughters wouldn’t have to have gone through this horror.” There was a sob in her voice that cut Julia to the bone.

  She sat beside her. “That’s not true, Ma. What happened to me had nothing to do with you. I made decisions as an adult. It was my responsibility.”

  Eleanor patted her hand. “Nice of you to stay so, but I think I had something to do with it too.”

  A rap at the door made them all jump.

  “No sirens this time,” Eleanor said. “I guess we can be thankful for that.”

  She pulled herself up from the chair while Julia went to let them in. Two uniformed police, a man and a woman, stood at the door. Behind them was Dylan.

  Julia felt blood rush to her face. This was not the time to recall steamy interludes with inappropriate men.

  She ushered them in and gave them a brief recount of what she found. The two uniformed cops pulled out their torches and made their way to the back garden.

  “Are you okay?” Dylan asked her softly. She didn’t think he was just referring to finding a dead body.

  She nodded. “Although I can’t say the same for Eleanor. She’s taking it badly. Blaming herself for everything.”

  He stroked her arm briefly as he passed her to enter the kitchen. She felt his touch like a warming balm on her soul. He murmured something to Eleanor and patted her shoulder as he made his way out the back. Standing next to her mother as she watched him walk down the garden path, Julia’s sense of dread returned. She was fairly certain it wasn’t an accidental overdose. There was blood on Rez’s face. A lot of blood.

  She moved to the back door and peered into the night. Torches bobbed around and a low murmur of voices could just be heard. Eventually, Dylan started to returned to the house. She met him halfway along the path and saw the puzzled frown on his face.

  “We’ll have to get the site covered. Hard to do anything in the middle of the night. The forensic team is on the way and can do the basics, but we need better light. I’m afraid you’re in for a sleepless night.”

  Julia nodded. “How do you think he died?”

  Dylan glanced sharply at her and shrugged. “Not sure, but it wasn’t an overdose.”

  One of the other officers called to him. “Chief. Over here.”

  Dylan turned back to his officers and Julia watched all of them peer at something on the ground. The light from the torches spread out in a fan as they searched for something. To Julia it looked like a track or trail as they focused on a particular spot and started following it up to the house. They stopped at a point just under Blossom’s window.

  Dylan noticed her and pulled her away. “You need to go back into the house and don’t come out. Keep the others inside. Constable, go with her.” The cold, impersonal tone of his voice sent shards of terror through her. She was on parole and someone had just been murdered in her backyard. This was not good.

  She and the constable returned to the kitchen and a circle of questioning faces. Blossom had re-emerged dressed in black jeans and a black sweater as if in mourning. Julia shook her head. “It wasn’t an overdose. I think someone killed him.”

  Dee drew in a sharp breath and crossed to Blossom who had gone deathly pale.

  “Sit,” she said.

  Blossom shook her off. “I’m all right.”

  “I’m not,” Julia said and collapsed into a chair.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Eleanor said.

  “The great panacea,” Julia muttered. “Don’t think it’ll help this time.”

  She couldn’t go back to jail. She just couldn’t. But Rez was a known drug user and supplier who’d been found probably murdered on the property where she lived. And she was a convicted murderer, after all. Panicky thoughts crashed around her brain until she remembered the most important fact. She had an alibi. All night she’d been with six other people besides Sally. They met at six thirty, broke up at eight thirty, and then had a meal at a Thai restaurant on Katoomba Street.

  “What time did Rez get here, Bloss?” She turned to her sister who was chewing her nail and had a blank, vacant look on her face. The hovering presence of the policeman in the corner was like an elephant in the room.

  “Bloss?” Julia said loudly, breaking into her trance.

  She jumped. “Sorry. I was miles away. What did you say?”

  “What time did he get here?”

  Blossom thought for a moment. “About nine I think. I was reading and I heard him call me. When I looked out the window, he was standing on the path and wanted me to let him in. I told him to piss off but he wanted me to show him where I’d thrown the pills. I thought he’d cause more trouble if I didn’t show him. You were due home soon, so I went down and showed him. Then he left.”

  She paused as if making sure she had the story straight in her head. “I guess it’s possible he came back. I could smell cigarette smoke so I think he was down there for a while. And Curtis was barking. I peered out again after about half an hour, but he was gone.”

  Julia nodded. A rap on the front door made them all jump. The constable went to find out who it was. Soon the whole kitchen was full of men and women carrying equipment and wheeling trollies. A blinding klieg light was set up in the backyard which lit up the whole area. Soon lights were coming on in neighboring houses.

  “Here we go again,” Eleanor muttered.

  “Ten years of quiet, then I arrive and the neighborhood goes to the dogs,” Julia said.

  Dee snorted trying not to laugh. Soon all of them where giggling, right on the edge of hysteria.

  “Do June and Bill some good,” Eleanor said between laughs. “They need a bit of excitement in their lives.”

  “They’re getting it,” Julia said. “I bet they hope I go back to where I came from.”

  The laughter died as if shut off by a tap.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Dee said, her voice full of worry. “They can’t see you as having anything to do with this.”

  Julia shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not a good look to spend ten years in jail for murder and then have someone murdered in your backyard within a month of you getting out.”

  “But Rez was involved in all sorts of drug-related crap,” Blossom said. “Any one of a number of people could’ve done it.”

  “But why here? Why at our house?”

  A nagging thought inched its way into consciousness. The first time she’d seen Rez she
’d been amazed about how much he and Blossom looked alike. Same clothes, same hair and same build. What if whoever did this was after Blossom? It was dark, it would’ve been an easy mistake to make.

  Julia’s blood froze as realization dawned. O’Reardon. He’d threatened her family if she told anyone about his drug distribution into jails. But she hadn’t. So why was he doing this? It didn’t make sense. Maybe he’d seen her with Dylan. Maybe he thought she was planning to tell Dylan everything she knew about the way O’Reardon did drug drops. But then he’d come after her, not Blossom.

  Her brain ached, trying to put the pieces together.

  Chapter 18

  And continued to ache hours later as Dylan took her yet again through her statement.

  But that wasn’t the worst part. The virtual ransacking of the house was terrifying. She knew they had to do it; anywhere a body turned up had to be thoroughly search for evidence. As the house was turned upside down, the look of misery on Eleanor and Dee’s faces cut her to the bone. Julia had told her mother she’d never leave the mountains; maybe for their sake she should. If this kind of attention was going to follow her, getting out of the mountains might be best for everyone.

  Julia knew her statement was straightforward and that Dylan hadn’t spent nearly the same time with her as he had with Blossom. For all her anxiety at being an object of suspicion, she’d not considered that Blossom would be considered a likely ‘person of interest’. But of course she would be. She was the last person to see Rez alive. Or at least the last person who admitted to seeing him alive.

  “So you left the women’s health center at eight thirty then went to the Thai restaurant with Sally and some other women. Who exactly?”

  Julia frowned, trying to put faces to names. She’d met them all in one rush at the beginning of the meeting so wasn’t sure she had their names correctly sorted. When she mentioned Jenny, the coordinator of the domestic violence support group, Dylan smiled.

  “You had dinner with Jenny?”

  Julia nodded.

  “I’ll check with her later. She’ll give me a good bollocking.”

  “Why?”

  “She’ll claim I’m harassing you unnecessarily and it’s all part of a conspiracy to keep women subservient and controlled.”

  “She didn’t strike me as being that unreasonable,” she said dubiously.

  “She’s not. It’s a game we have. She tells me I’m part of the fascist, authoritarian patriarchy and I tell her she’s full of left-wing paranoid crap. We have a great time, then we tell each other everything we both need to know about the dropkick blokes who think beating their partners is all part of a good night out.”

  Julia smiled and leant toward him, over the kitchen table where they were seated. “You like that part of your work, don’t you?”

  He lifted his gaze to hers. Everything within her stilled as he looked into her eyes. While she knew a little more about him now, she was aware he was still a man who hid behind layers of protection.

  “It’s important. Protecting the innocent is always important,” he said. They were alone in the kitchen while the constable stayed with the others in the lounge room. He threw his pen onto the kitchen table and leant back in his chair, expelling a breath.

  “Julia, I don’t know what’s going on here. Not with Rez, not with Blossom, and certainly not with you.”

  A chill inched inexorably up her spine. “It was a mistake, wasn’t it?” she asked softly.

  He shook his head, his eyes bleak. “Just bad timing. I know you’re not involved with what happen to Rez but somehow his murder is connected with you getting out.”

  “What about Blossom? You spent a lot of time with her.”

  He dragged his hands through his hair. “She was the last one to see him and she was angry with him. We’ll know more over the next few days. The guys from the homicide squad will be doing most of the work.”

  “You won’t be in charge of this?”

  He shook his head. “We do the preliminary work and they’ll take over. We don’t have the resources for a full-on murder investigation.”

  He glanced at her. “You should try and get some sleep.”

  She snorted. “I don’t think so.”

  *

  The telephone call came just as she was drifting into sleep. Hours of questions, endless cups of tea. The homicide squad arrived as Dylan said. The crime scene was processed and from what Julia could glean, Rez had been stabbed in the back while sitting on the stone wall smoking.

  They’d all been questioned even more thoroughly by the detective from the homicide squad who of course was particularly interested in Julia. He was a no-nonsense, brisk type with sharp green eyes and a deceptively calm questioning style, who seemed resigned to the fact she had nothing to do with the murder. Julia could tell he thought she was involved in something.

  “So. A well-known petty drug dealer, who’d been in a relationship with your sister and had been turfed out of this house some weeks ago, turns up murdered in your back yard. Doesn’t look good does it?”

  “I don’t know, Detective Palmer. I leave that to you. All I know is that I didn’t have anything to do with Rez’s murder and neither did anyone in my family.”

  He grunted, not happy but not able to disagree with her. Julia knew they’d found no forensic evidence in the house. No bloodstained clothing, no trail leading from Rez to the house.

  “You’ll be seeing me again. The investigation’s just beginning.”

  She nodded, weariness falling on her with sudden, crippling force.

  After the body was removed, they packed up and left. At three in the afternoon she crawled into bed and prepared to sleep like the dead. A phone call ended all that.

  Eleanor put her head around Julia’s bedroom door. “It’s for you. David Warren from the parole office.”

  Julia groaned and dragged herself out of bed and to the phone in the hall.

  “Get in here now,” he snarled.

  “Now? I was up all night. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

  “Now,” he said and hung up.

  She held the phone in front of her and stared at it, dread making a sick, sour twist in her gut. He couldn’t breach her on this, surely?

  “Are you okay?” Eleanor hovered anxiously at the end of the hall. Behind her, the window showed a day stark with gray skies.

  “Yeah. After the fun of last night he seems to need to see me now. Where’s Blossom?”

  “Gone to see Douglas.”

  Julia grunted and made her way to the bathroom. Maybe a cold shower would wake her up.

  But she became wide awake when she sat in front of David Warren’s desk and listened to his tirade.

  “You are in real danger of being breached. I told you to leave that fuckwit Rez alone and he turns up dead in your back yard.’

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Julia said in cold, precise words. “Check with the police. You can’t breach me for something I didn’t do.”

  “Don’t bet on it. You can be breached for associating with known criminals. So far, you threatened Rez in my office after provoking a fight with him, a fact I’m obliged to tell the police about, and you were seen talking to Vanessa Hunt on the main street of Katoomba. A woman who’s spent the last ten years in and out of jail. What are you playing at, Julia? Off on some vigilante run again?”

  “What? What do you mean?” she said, shock and fear coating her vocal cords.

  “I mean the cops might not be able to prove anything against you but I wouldn’t put it past you to have conveniently organized one of you mates to get rid of your sister’s inconvenient ex-boyfriend who no one would much mourn. Just like the priest. You take the law into your own hands to get rid of scum. That’s it isn’t it?”

  Julia sat in stunned silence. This was bad. This was a disaster.

  “That is so far from the truth I don’t know where to begin. You’re not really serious are you?”

  “I’m deadly serious.
There’s something going on in that head of yours that will get you back into jail if you’re not careful. Okay, I might be wrong and you have nothing to do with Rez’s death. I sincerely hope so. But the only way you’ll prove that is by staying away from known criminals. That means Nessa and any other of your mates from jail. Do you get it?”

  She nodded, the action setting off a swirl of dizziness in her head. She seemed to be staring at him from the end of a telescope. Shaking her head, she stumbled to her feet and swayed, searching for the door. She had to get out of this room.

  “Hang, on, hang on.” He leapt out of his chair and caught her, easing her back into her chair. “Don’t faint on me. Here, have some water.”

  He fumbled with a jug on his desk and placed a plastic cup in her hand. The cool water cleared her head.

  “Who told you about me being seen with Nessa?”

  He shuffled and looked uncomfortable. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “It was that cop, wasn’t it? The one sitting in the car with Dylan Andrews. Did he tell you that Dylan spoke to me afterwards and was satisfied I’d just run into Nessa and was trying to give her some support?”

  He shook his head, avoiding her eyes. “It wasn’t a cop.”

  “The newsagent then.”

  “Look, just drop it. Just stay away from Nessa or anyone like her.”

  She placed the plastic cup on his desk and left without a backward glance.

  *

  “She’s involved someway, Dylan. I don’t know how, but she’s connected.” Palmer sat opposite Dylan in his office and played with a pen, the click-click irritating even against the backdrop of a noisy office.

  Dylan frowned but said nothing. He knew Julia was connected to Rez’s murder too, but unlike Palmer was certain O’Reardon was behind it. Trouble was, he had no idea why. Rez was thought to be a courier for O’Reardon so his connection with the Taylor family was troubling, even though he knew it was an association none of the Taylor women wanted, even Bloss.

  But none of it made sense. It wasn’t like O’Reardon to get himself involved in something like this. He was much more underhand and subtle. Maybe Rez had some kind of rival in the drug trade. Maybe it had nothing to do with drugs.