by Morgana Best
“Whatever makes you say that?” Carl said with a chuckle.
I smiled. “You should have seen the look she gave me.”
“It seems we have too many suspects now rather than not enough,” Tom said.
Carl chewed on the end of one fingernail before speaking. “Okay, let’s look at this methodically. We need to find out about Graham Gibson’s alibi. If it does check out, then we can exclude him. Linda Forrester is a suspect. Daryl Andrews, Valerie’s husband, is a suspect, and so are the Fowlers, either together or individually.”
“That’s way too many suspects,” I said. “How on earth are we going to investigate them?”
“We can start with Daryl Andrews.” Tom pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped it, and then showed it to me. I was too far from it to see clearly, although I could make out the outline of a cow. I nodded. “Daryl Andrews has an Open Day at his Hereford stud farm tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve cleared my bookings for the day. Narel, can you shut the shop for the morning?”
“The customers won’t like it,” I began, but when I saw Carl’s face, I quickly added, “but who cares about that! Clearing Carl’s name is what’s important here.”
Chapter 17
Over dinner the previous night, we had made a plan. We would attend Daryl Andrews’ Open Day and ask questions of anyone who would speak to us, in the hope of someone mentioning Daryl’s wife’s affair with Bob Jones. We needed to find out if Daryl knew about it. It was a tenuous plan, given that it was unlikely anyone would tell us, but we couldn’t think of anything better. We had also decided that I would go to see Emily Fowler and act sympathetic. I would mention that Bob had overcharged me, and see if I could draw her out.
Tom, Carl, and I arrived at the Andrews’ Hereford stud farm at precisely nine the following morning. I was still glowing after spending another night in Tom’s house, and for the fact that Tom had given me a quick good night kiss after Carl had left. I had hoped for a real kiss, but I suppose he was waiting for the right time. I hoped that right time would be soon.
The Andrews’ place looked expensive. Far from the typical affluent farm, this was downright posh. The house would not have been out of place on Sydney’s North Shore. The fences around the house and barns were all post and rail, and nicely painted white. It was a far cry from the standard barbed wire. The outbuildings were all immaculate, and each one was bigger, better, and nicer than my own house.
“Wow, I think I’d like to be a cow.” Carl pointed to the luxury accommodation of the nearest bull.
“Remember that you’ll end up on someone’s plate if you’re a cow,” I pointed out.
Carl grimaced. “Oh, I forgot about that.” He leant over the fence to the bull, but I pulled him away.
“What are you doing?”
“I was covering his ears,” Carl said sheepishly.
I sighed. This was going to be a long morning. “I see they’re selling food here. I wonder if they have coffee?” I pointed to a tent with a blue and white awning.
When I was halfway to the tent, I was overpowered by the smell of steak and onions. It even managed to overpower the persistent and pungent scent of cow manure and dust. “They don’t sell coffee there,” Carl said. “Come on, surely they sell it somewhere.”
I shooed away some loud and persistent blowflies and followed Carl to another tent. It also sold steak sandwiches, but mercifully, coffee as well. It wasn’t instant coffee, much to my relief. “I’m buying,” Carl proclaimed. “Is anyone hungry?”
“I won’t be hungry for a week after that delicious meal Narel cooked us last night,” Tom said, rubbing his stomach. He shot me a smile that made my toes curl.
“I’ll have something to eat,” Carl said. “I am a little peckish. All that police interrogation does that to someone.” He ordered the coffee and then said to the person at the booth, “I’d like a salad sandwich, please.”
The woman looked as if Carl had just asked her to hand him a poisonous snake. “We certainly do not sell salad sandwiches here,” she said, visibly affronted.
“Can I buy a steak sandwich without the steak?” Carl said.
The woman smiled. “Sure.”
I did my best not to laugh. When we had our coffees, and Carl had his lettuce and tomato sandwich, we huddled under a tree to have a conference. “What do we do now?” I said. “We don’t know anyone here. Why would anyone speak to us?”
“This is a small country town,” Carl pointed out, “and therefore it’s full of gossip. Let’s split up and see if we can overhear anything. If anyone does speak to you, try to bring the subject around to…”
I interrupted him. “To Valerie having an affair?”
Carl laughed, but nodded. “Exactly. Look, I know we probably won’t find anything out, but it’s a plan.”
I anxiously walked away, clutching my coffee and navigating stretches of mud and lots of blowflies. I saw a group of elderly women in jeans and oversized shirts huddled together in deep conversation. I hoped they were indulging in gossip, so edged closer to them. They were talking about dominant cow families, good muscle and moderate frames, and other matters that were beyond my understanding. So much for stereotypes.
Daryl Andrews himself was hanging around with a group of farmers. I knew I would get no information from him. I certainly hoped Tom and Carl were faring better than I was. I was about to give up when I turned around and nearly ran straight into Linda Forrester. “Linda!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
She appeared to take offence at my words. “Why shouldn’t I be here? Just because I’m a cleaning lady, it doesn’t mean I’m a second-class citizen. I have just as much right to be here as anyone else.”
I hurried to reassure her. “No, I didn’t mean that, not at all. I just meant I didn’t know you were interested in Hereford cattle.”
She looked at me through narrowed eyes, probably trying to ascertain whether or not I was telling the truth. In the end, she gave a little nod. “Daryl Andrews invited me,” she said. “I clean for him.”
“Do you?” I said, trying to act impressed. She had already told me that she cleaned for him. Linda was my best chance at finding out gossip, so I thought I might as well launch straight into it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Just as I was thinking of something to say, she spoke. “Are you here with your boyfriend, Carl?” Her tone held a degree of malice.
“Carl isn’t my boyfriend,” I said.
“Does he know that?” she said with a sneer.
“Carl’s gay,” I said.
She looked shocked. “Gay, gay?” she stammered. She clutched her throat. “I didn’t know such a thing went on in our town.”
I did not know how to respond, so I simply gaped at her. It took me a moment or two to gather my wits. “Did Daryl Andrews know about Valerie’s affair with Bob Jones?” I asked her.
Linda’s expression at once relaxed. We were back to her favourite subject—gossip. She leant forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh no, I don’t think so. He would be furious if he found out. He used to be married to that model, Guinevere Gosper. Have you heard of her?”
I had to admit that I hadn’t.
“She’s famous, famous!” Linda said with relish. “Everyone’s heard of her.”
Everyone but me, I thought.
“They were married for a few years, and then Daryl found out she was having an affair. He divorced her just like that!” She snapped her fingers.
“I suppose that’s what happens when someone is caught cheating,” I said dryly.
“She didn’t get a penny.” Linda said with relish, obviously enjoying the opportunity to gossip. “He’s from an old family you know, Daryl, a very old, important family. The Andrews family used to own some big stations in the area. They owned one of the large stations at Walcha, too, one of the historic homes. He’s from a very wealthy family,” she said once more. “That’s why he made Guinevere sign a prenup. She didn’t get a cent, I
tell you, not a red cent. Rumours were she was so broke after the divorce that she had to move to Sydney. She became a call girl at Kings Cross.” Linda’s face lit up at delivering that juicy piece of gossip.
I didn’t believe a word of that. I had figured by now that Linda was prone to over exaggeration. Nevertheless, I nodded encouragingly.
Linda clicked her tongue. “Daryl has a terrible temper. He’s always yelling and he’s always angry. Of course, he’s never rude to me because I do such a good cleaning job.”
This was the second time she had told me that, but I nodded and smiled as if I had never heard it before. “Who does he yell at?”
“His staff, of course. He’s always screaming at them. Even when he’s outside and I’m cleaning inside the house, I can still hear him yelling.”
“Does he yell at his wife?” I asked her.
Linda shook her head vigorously. “No, never. At least, not in front of me.”
“I wonder if Bob was the only one Valerie was having an affair with.”
“As far as I know,” Linda said. “If Daryl finds out, he’ll divorce her, too. We had a conversation about it one day, we did.”
Now I was confused. “About?”
She frowned at me. “Affairs, of course. Daryl asked me if I was divorced, and I told him that my husband died many years ago. That was when he told me about Guinevere. He said he has a very low tolerance for affairs. He said he could never forgive a woman if she cheated on him. He said it was the unforgivable sin.”
I stood silent for a moment, taking it all in. If Daryl had somehow found out about his wife’s affair, then he wouldn’t take it kindly. I mentally moved Daryl to the top of my suspects list. “How did you find out that Valerie was having an affair with Bob?” I asked her.
She put her fingers to her lips. Before she could answer, a man and a woman dressed like most others in attendance, in matching cream moleskin jeans, leather belts, R. M. Williams boots, checked shirts, and Akubra hats stopped to speak to us. “Do you know where we can buy a catalogue?”
Linda regarded them suspiciously. “What catalogue?”
“The sales catalogue for the stud bull sale this afternoon,” the woman said.
“I’m sorry, I have no idea,” I told them.
They thanked us and moved on. I looked at Linda, but she was looking behind me. I followed her gaze to see Valerie walking away from our direction. Had she overheard anything? I certainly hoped not. At any rate, she was out of earshot now. “You were about to tell me how you found out that Valerie and Bob were having an affair,” I reminded her.
“You can’t tell anyone I told you,” she said wagging her finger at me. “It’s a secret. Everyone else I told promised to keep it a secret. I found out when I was cleaning Bob’s house.”
Well, that was a revelation to me. “I didn’t know you cleaned Bob’s house,” I said in surprise.
“Yes, I thought I told you,” she said. “I cleaned Bob’s house for a long time, years in fact. He always got me to clean his house, two hours a week, for years. I did his laundry, too. It was a mess, you know, all those plumbing clothes of his. Plumbers go in the worst places, under houses and places like that, so their clothes are filthy. He always told me I mustn’t use bleach on his clothes, but of course I did. For some reason he hated bleach and always said I couldn’t use it.” She waved one hand in dismissal. “I used bleach on everything, on all his clothes. It was the only way to get them clean.”
I nodded politely, hoping she would get back to the point. “And so that’s how you found out he was having an affair with Valerie,” I prompted her.
She looked around us once more and nodded. “Yes. She used to push sealed envelopes under his door when he was at work. She probably didn’t realise I was in the house cleaning.” Linda laughed softly. “I steamed them open and read them, and then I resealed them and put them back.”
“What did they say?” I asked her.
Linda stepped close to me, so close that the naphthalene that saturated her clothes forced me to step back and take a deep gulp of fresh air. “They were love letters.”
“Did she sign them?” I asked her.
Linda shook her head. “No, I suppose she was too clever for that. I recognised her handwriting, of course, as I used to look through stuff in her house. Anyway, she came to Bob’s house a few times and I’d often see them kissing.”
“They kissed each other in front of you?” I said, aghast.
Linda tittered with her hand over her mouth. “Oh no, they didn’t know I was looking. I just happened to see them on several occasions. Oh look, there’s Marjorie Boyd. I clean her house. She’s a socialite, you know. She’s on a payment plan for back tax with the Australian Tax Office. She has to pay them one thousand dollars a month.” Linda scurried after Marjorie Boyd. The woman appeared to notice Linda and took off with quick strides in the other direction.
Someone’s arm went around my waist, and I reacted before realising it was Tom. I jumped so hard I fell into Tom, my hand on his chest. We both stood there for a moment until Carl spoke. I hadn’t even seen him standing there. “Any luck?” Carl asked me.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” I said. “I’ve just had a long conversation with Linda Forrester, and she told me she used to clean Bob Jones’ house for him.”
“You’re kidding!” Tom said, finally releasing me.
“And Valerie left love letters for Bob, and Linda often saw them kissing. I assume she was spying on them. Well, whether she was or she wasn’t, she said she saw them kissing. Oh, and there’s one more thing she told me. Daryl used to be married to some model by the name of Guinevere something. I can’t remember her surname. Anyway, he divorced her, and left her without a cent, because he had a prenup.”
“Does Linda think Daryl knows about Valerie’s affair with Bob?” Carl asked me.
I shook my head. “No, Linda was adamant he didn’t know. In her opinion, if he knew that, he would divorce her on the spot. I assume she’d be out on her ear without a cent just like her predecessor, Guinevere.”
“Maybe Valerie is the one to have a motive then,” Carl said, looking around to make sure no one could hear him. “What if Bob was blackmailing Valerie? If her husband found out and there was a prenup in place, then Valerie would have a lot to lose. Everything, in fact.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You’d think she would have thought about that before she had an affair. Although I do take your point about the prenup. He had one with Guinevere, and she cheated on him, so I’ll bet his second prenup was more ironclad.”
Tom agreed with me. “I think both Valerie and Daryl, although acting individually, should now be considered our main suspects. There would be plenty of redback spiders around this farm, and lots of organophosphates, too. There’s still the possibility of Graham Gibson somehow cleverly arranging a false alibi, and we really need to look into the Fowlers.”
“I think we can exclude Celia Carruthers at this point,” Carl said. “It seems unlikely that she’d murder Bob for a plumbing malfunction, even though it was a bad one.”
I shook my head. “We have too many suspects. Should we abandon plans, and leave?”
“I’m not exactly enjoying myself,” Carl admitted. “It’s dusty and dirty and it smells bad. It smells like cows.”
“It is a cattle stud farm,” I pointed out. “Besides, I find cows cute.”
Carl’s eyebrows shot up. “They look cute, but they certainly don’t smell cute. Let’s go, Narel.”
We walked back to the parking area. I had only gone five or so steps when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel eyes boring into my back. I turned around, but couldn’t see anyone. Perhaps it was my imagination, but for a moment, I could have sworn that I sensed malice directed at me from someone nearby, no doubt the person who had poisoned my food and murdered Bob.
Chapter 18
I was pleased to get back to my shop, although I thought perhaps I should have had a sh
ower first and changed my clothes. I changed from my runners into my heels, and that did make me feel a little better, despite the fact that the smell of cattle seemed to cling to me. Nevertheless, I was relieved to be at work because I had spent so much time away from it, and I hadn’t even done a thing in my online business, not since Bob had been murdered.
As the afternoon went on, I began to feel restless. I still had not questioned one of the main suspects, Emily Fowler. I did not feel I could rest until I had discounted her, or perhaps pushed her to the top of the suspects list.
I finally decided to shut the shop once more and pop over to Emily’s house. I had not had a customer for some time so I thought perhaps I wouldn’t lose much business over it. I selected a nice box of assorted handmade chocolates, and once more that day flipped the sign to Closed. It wasn’t such an unusual thing to do in town. One of the cafés was often shut, with a notice on the door saying that one of their kids was sick. That was just the way of it in small country towns—no one got particularly upset about unreliable opening hours.
Carl had told me where the Fowlers lived. I had noticed the house when driving past it, a lovely old Victorian set well back off the road, on a few acres of land. As I drove up to the house, I saw a small flock of sheep in the front paddock. I didn’t see a goat—maybe they were too heartbroken by their previous pet goat’s demise to replace him.
On the way there, I had gone over what I would say to her, although I didn’t have a clear plan. I supposed I would just have to wing it. I did, however, text both Tom and Carl to tell them where I was, just in case Emily was the murderer and tried to do away with me.
Of course, I didn’t expect her to come straight out and tell me that Bob Jones was blackmailing her, but I intended to be on the lookout for anything suspicious. Maybe she might let something slip.
I drove up her driveway and parked in the gravel area at the back of her house. I got out of the car, surprised that no dogs barked and ran up to me, as was usual in town. I took the box of chocolates out of the car, put my phone in my pocket just in case I had to call for help in a hurry, and locked my car. I wondered if I should have made some pepper spray and brought it. Oh well, it was too late now.