by Morgana Best
I knocked on the back door and waited, and then waited some more. There was no answer, although there was a car parked in the garage. I knocked again, more loudly this time. I was about to turn away when I heard footsteps.
The woman who answered the door had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and her face was pale. “Emily?” I asked her.
She wrung her hands. “Yes?” she said in a small voice.
“I’m Narel Myers,” I said. I thrust the box of chocolates into her hands. “I heard the terrible news about your poor husband being arrested. I figured that terrible Bob Jones was the one who told the police, and he ripped me off badly. He ripped me off over my bathroom and over my outdoor dunny. I was the one who found his body, you know. I’m surprised the police don’t suspect me, because I certainly had the motive.” I was exaggerating, of course, but I didn’t feel bad about it. The police saw Carl as the main suspect, and I was prepared to do anything I could to clear his name.
Emily brightened somewhat. “Come in.”
She opened the door, and I almost fell over a cat. I saw another five cats, all of various shapes and sizes and colours. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked me.
“That would be lovely,” I said, and then wondered if she might poison my tea. I hadn’t thought of that.
The hallway at the back of the house opened onto a kitchen. We walked through her kitchen and then into a little sitting room. “Would you prefer wine to tea?” she asked me.
I thought it over for a moment. Wine might be safer if she poured it from an unopened bottle. Still, I had no idea whether she would or not, so I opted for tea.
When she left the room to make the tea, I followed her. I thought she could hardly poison me if I watched her make the tea. The kitchen was stark, with not much natural light, but it had been renovated. All the appliances were stainless steel, and the benchtops were granite. It still retained a country feel, and there was a large and expensive looking kitchen dresser on one wall. I couldn’t help but notice the china display it contained—it looked like Limoges, quite expensive.
“Many people in town were ripped off by Bob,” she said tearfully. “He wasn’t a very nice man.”
“It’s sad that your husband was arrested just for burying his mother on your land,” I said. “Surely people have the right to say where they want to bury their loved ones.”
Emily’s shoulders shook as she spooned loose leaf tea into a teapot. “It wasn’t just that; it was that we were collecting his mother’s pension money after she passed on.”
“Well, I’m sure Scott’s mother wouldn’t mind,” I said. “She didn’t need it where she went, and I’m sure you needed it.” I certainly hoped I sounded convincing.
My words seem to cheer Emily considerably. She poured the boiling water into the teapot and then rotated it five times. “Yes, that’s exactly right. I know we should feel guilty, but we paid taxes all our lives. This is an old place, and the roof needs replacing. That’s going to cost at least ten thousand dollars. There’s a problem with the hot water, too, and this area is bad for termites. Those termite stations are expensive, and the pest inspector told us we’d need to install five.”
I murmured my sympathies.
“And we went on a cruise recently,” she said. “When we were away, the water pipes burst and flooded the back of the house. It’s because of the rise in the land out there.” She pointed out a window. “The front of the house is on piers, but the back of the house, which is in addition, is on a concrete slab. This whole new section, the renovation, was underwater because of that Bob Jones.” She all but spat his name.
Emily put the teapot on a tray and took it back to the little sitting room. She sat down, and then removed the cat that was currently spread across half the sofa so I could sit next to her. “I hope you don’t mind cats,” she said.
“Not at all,” I assured her. “I have a rescue cat.”
“Only one?” she asked me.
I nodded. “I don’t know if my cat would be very sociable with other cats,” I said with a grimace. There was no telling what Mongrel would do, although he did get on quite well with Louis the Fourteenth. I figured that was because Louis the Fourteenth ignored him. I had no idea how Mongrel would react to a cat that wanted to get up close and personal with him, and I didn’t want to find out.
Emily poured tea into a china teacup and handed it to me. I thought of Linda’s teacups. At least I was sure Emily had not procured hers from a pile of rubbish at the town rubbish dump. I tried to get the conversation going again. “Do you think your husband will be in much trouble with the police? Does he have a good lawyer?”
Emily dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “Yes, he has a good lawyer. Still, he is facing some nasty charges, fraud charges and stuff like that. If he goes to jail, I don’t know how I’m going to manage by myself, and the lawyer said there will be a big fine.” Her voice broke. “We spent all his mother’s money. Where are we going to find any more?”
I didn’t know what to say. I sipped my tea and sat in silence for a moment. Finally, I said, “If only that Bob Jones had minded his own business. He sure caused a lot of trouble in this town.”
Emily readily agreed with me. “The police told Scott that Bob Jones left a note with his lawyer saying that if anything happened to him, that Scott probably did it. Bob had written out everything, everything about Scott burying his mother in our yard. He even drew a diagram of where she was buried. Can you imagine that? What a troublemaker!”
I nodded, and sipped my tea.
“Bob found her, you know, when he was digging up the pipes when we were on the cruise. We had all the cats at a boarding cattery when we were away, but we had someone coming in once a week to check on the sheep. They saw the place flooded and called Bob. He had to dig up the pipes and reroute them, and that’s when he discovered her.”
“Did he know about her pension money?” I asked her.
She made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. “Bob figured it out for himself. He came to see us when we got back, and we thought he was coming to apologise for not putting the pipes in deep enough.” She laughed scornfully. “Instead, he told us that he discovered Scott’s mother buried in our yard. He figured that since everyone in town thought she was still alive, that we were collecting her pension money. He figured it out for himself,” she repeated.
“So he was blackmailing you?” I asked her.
Emily started, so much so that she spilt her tea. “Oh what a mess,” she said. She hurried from the room and came back with a cloth. As she was mopping up the tea, she said, “How did you know?”
“Well, I figured that such a person as Bob wouldn’t have kept quiet about it from the goodness of his heart.” I hoped that was the right thing to say.
It seemed that it was. Emily shot me a tentative smile. “Yes, he blackmailed us. We had to give him half her pension money. Can you believe that? Half!”
“That’s dreadful,” I said. To encourage her, I added, “He charged me ten times his written quote for renovating my bathroom.” That, at least, was the truth.
She shook her head, and made a clucking sound with her tongue. “He deserved what he got,” she said angrily. “Please don’t think I’m terrible, but I can’t honestly say I’m sad that he’s dead.”
By now, I really thought that she might have killed him. If not her, then Scott. Yet surely they would appear to be obvious suspects in the eyes of the police. Then why did the police still have their sights set on Carl?
“Your husband must have been very angry with Bob,” I said, hoping to prompt her into giving away some information.
Emily nodded. “Yes, he could have killed Bob with his bare hands, I tell you! It’s just as well we both had an alibi for when Bob was killed, or we’d probably be in custody now on suspicion of his murder.”
“An alibi?” I squeaked. “You had an alibi?”
Emily looked pleased for the first time. “Yes, isn’t that lucky
? We were both at an RSL club meeting. It was in Tamworth, too, so lots of people saw us, and even if someone didn’t see us for five minutes, that wasn’t enough time to slip back and murder Bob, with Tamworth being over an hour away. We have at least a hundred witnesses. And to think we weren’t going to go that night. Just as well we did.”
“Yes, that was lucky,” I said. I bit my lip as the realisation sunk in. No wonder the police weren’t interested in Scott and Emily Fowler—they had an alibi. And while that helped narrow the suspects down, it certainly didn’t help Carl’s case.
“Graham Gibson is lucky, too,” she said. “He’s another obnoxious person. He tries to get involved in the community just to try to find out dirt on people. Do you know he was arrested for attempted assault?”
“Yes, I was the one he tried to assault,” I told her.
Emily sat bolt upright. “No! I didn’t know who it was. That’s terrible.”
“Why did you say he was lucky?” I asked her.
“He was at the RSL club meeting in Tamworth, too,” she said. “If he wasn’t, then the police might have thought he murdered Bob.”
I went cold all over. I really thought Graham had murdered Bob. “He was there?” I said in disbelief.
She nodded. “All night. The police asked us if he left early or if he was missing for any length of time, but no, he was there all night. We arrived early and left late, and so did he. There was no way he could have murdered Bob Jones.”
Chapter 19
I called Tom as soon as I left Emily’s house. It went straight to voicemail, so I left a message about the alibis. I then called Carl, who picked up at once.
Carl was most dismayed to hear that Scott, Emily, and Graham Gibson all had alibis. “Who does that leave?” Carl said in a small voice. “Besides me, I mean.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” I assured him.
“I hope so, Narel. Anyway, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”
When I got back to my shop, a customer was waiting at the front door. I hurried over to apologise to her. “I’m so sorry. Were you waiting long?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m so pleased you’re back. I’d completely forgotten that I had to go to my nephew’s birthday party tonight, so I wanted to buy him some chocolates as a gift. Your chocolates are the best!”
I smiled. “Flattery works for me!”
The customer could not decide what to buy for her nephew, but finally settled on a chocolate gift hamper with chocolate sauce, chocolate biscuits, and dark chocolate gin truffles.
As soon as she left, Detective Thompson and Detective Palmer walked in the door. For a minute I was afraid that they were here to charge me with possession of pepper spray. “Do you have a minute to talk, Ms Myers?” Detective Palmer said.
Okay, maybe they weren’t going to charge me. I let out the breath I had been holding. “I do.”
“How well do you know Mr Camden?” Palmer asked me.
“Carl? I told you before. I’ve known him all my life. We went to high school together and we’ve been best friends ever since.”
“So would you say Mr Camden confides in you?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I knew it was a loaded question; that much was obvious. “Sometimes he does,” I said, after thinking for a few moments. “Carl is a private person.” I hoped that was the right response.
Detective Thompson thrust a bunch of papers at me. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding them.
I read the papers, trying to school my expression into a neutral one. It was an exchange of heated emails between Carl and Bob Jones. I had to read several before I could get the context. It seemed that Carl had paid Bob Jones to do a plumbing inspection on a rundown property on the outskirts of town that he had intended to buy. Bob had passed the plumbing as good, but when Carl had gone to sign the contract, he found that Bob Jones was the owner of the property. Bob had not told Carl. Carl then paid for the services of another plumber, who said the plumbing was in a shocking state.
I finished reading, but wanted to read them again to get a clear idea. I didn’t have the chance—Detective Thompson took them from me. “Did you know about this?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No.”
“You didn’t know about your friend’s interest in the property or you didn’t know about the emails he sent to Bob Jones?”
“Neither, um, both.” My heart was beating out of my chest. I wiped my sweaty hands on my shirt. Why had Carl kept this from me? It certainly wasn’t like Carl to keep a secret from me. I was flabbergasted. It made no sense. I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that Carl had been going to buy a property without telling me. It wasn’t like Carl to be so secretive. And he had a beautiful new house. Why was he trying to buy a rundown property?
And worse still, Carl’s emails to Bob had been downright threatening. In Carl’s last email to him, he had written, I could kill you for this. And that was the censored version.
I looked up to see the detectives staring at me. I sure hoped my expression wasn’t too surprised, but then again, people always said I would never make a poker player.
“Did you have any knowledge of Mr Camden’s attempted property purchase?” Detective Thompson’s tone was reproachful, as if it were a crime that I didn’t know everything Carl did.
“No,” I said defensively, even though I knew there was no reason to be defensive.
The detectives exchanged glances. “Did you have any knowledge that Mr Camden had threatened Bob Jones?” Detective Thompson pressed me.
I shook my head. “No.” I thought about it some more, and then added, “What I read wasn’t really a threat, though. Lots of people say heated things to each other. I’ve heard lots of people say worse about Bob Jones, because he wasn’t an honest plumber.”
The detectives did not respond. “We’ll speak again, Ms Myers,” Detective Thompson said. The two of them marched out of my shop.
As soon as I saw them drive away, I called Tom. I debated whether to call Carl, but I knew that would only upset him. This time, Tom picked up at once. “Narel, I’ve been trying to call you, but I’m out of town. There’s not much mobile service out here. I’ll be home late. Hello? Narel? Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you now,” I said. “The police were just here. Tom, they think it’s Carl! He wrote threatening emails to Bob! And did you know Carl was buying a property? And I found out that Scott and Emily Fowler have an alibi. Graham Gibson has an actual alibi, after all. Bob was blackmailing the Fowlers, so it stood to reason he was blackmailing others.” I stopped to draw breath. There was so much I had to tell him.
“I’m sorry, I only heard a couple of words of that. What did you say? The service here is terrible.”
“I said I found out that Bob was blackmailing someone. There’s lots more, but I’ll tell you about it when you get home tonight.”
There was no response. I assumed he had run out of mobile phone service. I put the phone down and turned around. There, in my shop, was Valerie Andrews.
My hand flew to my throat. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
She continued to look at me, but after a few moments, walked over to inspect the range of white chocolates. “I’ll have a dozen of those, please.”
“Sure.” I kept a wary eye on her while packaging the chocolates. She seemed to be edgy, angry even. Was she the murderer? Or was it her husband, Daryl? Of course, it could be someone else entirely. I looked forward to getting home so I could discuss it with Tom. I smiled to myself at the thought of staying at Tom’s house. It was all very cosy. I could sure get used to it.
“I thought you’d still be at your sale,” I said to her. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing at the Open Day that morning; R. M. Williams boots, cream moleskin jeans, a blue and white striped shirt with the collar turned up, a fancy rope belt with silver rodeo buckle, and a single string of thick pearls. Only the Akubra hat was missing.
“I’
m not interested in cattle sales,” she said through pursed lips. I thought it strange that she wasn’t at the sale. Even if she wasn’t interested in cattle, it was her family business. She had been at the Open Day in the morning, so I had no idea why she had left before the sale. She clearly wasn’t on her way to her shop dressed like that, especially not with those dirty marks on her moleskins. Her perfume was no longer French, but Cow.
“Have you met my husband?” she asked me. Her tone was accusatory, or so it seemed to me.
I shook my head. “No, never. Why?”
“I saw you at the Open Day and thought you might have Hereford cattle, too.”
I forced a laugh. “No, I only have a cat. I live in town.”
“Why were you at the Open Day?”
“I went with friends.”
Valerie did not respond to that. She paid with cash and then left my shop.
Why the question about her husband? Had she in fact overheard what I’d said to Linda that morning about her affair with Bob Jones? Was she afraid I would tell her husband? It left me with an uneasy feeling, but then again, I was a little on edge.
Chapter 20
When I pulled up outside Tom’s house in the dark, I questioned the wisdom of staying back for late night shopping. I had shut the shop so much lately during normal business hours that I thought I should stay open that night. In fact, the takings had been good. Still, that was no consolation as I sat there in the dark, the car doors locked, the shapes created by the moonlight playing menacingly across the landscape before me.
There were no lights on inside the house. Tom had texted to say he wasn’t far away, so I wondered whether I should sit in the car, or maybe go to Carl’s. If only I had made some more pepper spray. I opened my purse and took out Tom’s keys, which I clutched tightly to me.