Devastation Road

by Joanna Baker

  His next comment was a mumble that I couldn’t hear, and then there was movement. I pictured her putting away the pies and then taking him by the arm and pushing him out. I was amazed at this new side of Chess. She was treating him like an invalid, or an idiot. She was repeating things. There was kindness, but it was clear who was in charge in this family. Even at the end, when her voice had become gentler, there was an edge to it that would have got obedience out of the Terminator.

  ‘Half an hour, Dad. Have a shower.’

  Chapter 10

  When Chess came out, I pushed myself into a relaxed position and prodded at a super-interesting scratch on my left hand. Chess would be ashamed of Alec and I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, and it didn’t matter. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I’d even been there. But at the same time I thought saying anything might make it worse. So I just kept pushing at my hand, pretending it hadn’t happened.

  Chess watched me for a while, to see how long I could keep it up, then she sighed and sat down beside me. Her chair creaked and twisted. Almost immediately she sat up as if something had spiked her. I was glad I’d chosen the metal one. She took a cushion off an old card table and put it on the seat. Then she noticed that one of her geese was on the steps pecking at her pot plants and had to chase it away. It was all done without speaking and it gave me time to think up a sympathetic comment.

  But by the time she sat down again, Chess seemed to have forgotten all about her father. ‘Let’s run through it,’ she said, briskly. ‘We now have two dead girls.’

  I blinked at her helplessly. I didn’t want to just rush on with Chess’s murder puzzle. I wanted to say something nice. I still had no idea what the words were going to be but I was going to have a go. I got as far as, ‘Chess —’

  ‘Come on, Matt. I haven’t got long.’

  Suddenly I was mad at her.

  ‘Jeez!’

  She looked at me blankly. ‘What?’

  This was typical Chess. I hissed out some air. OK. She didn’t want to talk about it.

  Well, it was her problem, not mine. I tried to think back to where we’d left off. ‘So … Now you’re saying this whole thing is about Jeanette Carmody. She’s got something to do with Debbie’s death.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Chess.

  This was too vague for me. ‘Maybe?! Debbie writes a note saying she knows who killed Jeanette, and Debbie turns up in a creek. It has to —’

  ‘Matt!’

  It had sounded pretty off. I was annoyed with her, but I didn’t have to talk like that.

  But Chess wasn’t bothered about the way I put things. She just wanted to lead the discussion. ‘We’re not ready to draw conclusions. I take it you agree now that it’s a possibility Debbie’s death wasn’t an accident, and we should try to find out exactly what happened to her?’

  ‘Well, we sort of have to, don’t we?’ Now I was sounding like a sulky kid.

  Chess allowed herself a small smile. ‘Good. Then let’s spell out what we know so far and see how it looks. We’ll have to do it methodically, start right at the beginning.’

  Reluctantly, I realised it was a good idea. The whole Debbie issue was pretty confused, and Chess was good at sorting things out. I was being feeble and cranky for no real reason. If she didn’t want to talk about her father that was her business. And even if she was going to do the clever-smug-teacher routine, I could just choose to ignore it. I tried to sound more enthusiastic. ‘Yep. OK. Let’s do that.’

  Chess wriggled happily back into her chair, but before she could start, I got a question in.

  ‘There’s a problem, right at the beginning. If Deb wrote that note, what was it doing in the rubbish?’

  Chess shrugged. ‘Maybe it was a rough copy and she wrote it out again, or maybe she decided not to send it at all, just put it in the bin. It doesn’t really matter how it got there. She definitely wrote it. What is important is that she did know, or thought she knew, who ran over Jeanette Carmody, eight years ago. She was interviewed a lot by the police, remember. You said that. But she wouldn’t tell them anything.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘That afternoon in the bakery, Debbie said she knew three things. One was good — she was secretly engaged. One was about the fire at the Rolands’ café. She used to work there part time. And the other was very bad, and she said something about a death.’

  ‘That’s it, then. She knew who was driving the car that killed Jeanette. She must’ve been around at the time and seen something and never said. That person had a licence eight years ago, so they are now over twenty-six. They got away with it at the time. But suddenly, eight years later, Debbie turns up with Jeanette’s necklace. We don’t know why she put it on then. But it was her way of reminding someone that she knew a secret.’

  I stopped. ‘What exactly is the deal with this necklace? It’s the eye of some Egyptian God or something? And the God is that little bird-guy on the page in Debbie’s envelope?’

  Chess started to get excited. ‘The God is Ra. I haven’t had time to look him up.’ Neither Chess nor I had a smartphone. ‘I could do it now …’ She glanced at the door.

  Once she got on her computer she’d go on for hours. I said, ‘Let’s just get on with the …’ I waved at the table where I’d dropped Deb’s envelope.

  ‘All right. I had a glance at Debbie’s pages and they say Ra is a Sun God, hence the bit about riding a boat across the sky for the twelve hours of daylight, and then going through the underworld for twelve hours of darkness.’

  ‘Right. So Ra is the sun.’

  ‘Sun God.’ Chess reached for the envelope. ‘I’m going to read you this because I think it’s important.’ She started ruffling through the pages. There were five or six of them. Just in the walk from the Wilsons’ to her place Chess must’ve managed to skim-read them all, and then remember roughly what was on them. And she’d spent most of that walk talking to me. The girl was a freak.

  ‘Here he is. This is Ra.’ She handed over the picture of the skinny Egyptian with the falcon head. ‘That red circle above his head represents the sun, which is the Eye of Ra … where is it? … Oh, here we go.’ She read from another page. ‘The sun pours down light. Light is vision, the carrier of awareness. Light is visible magic. It has no substance. It can cross the mysterious boundary of flesh separating the inner and outer worlds.’

  I scratched my chin.

  ‘You see? The sun is like this big eye. It travels across the sky and can see everything, even into people’s heads and hearts. No one can hide from the sun, The Eye of Ra.’

  I was starting to make connections. ‘And that’s what Debs and Annie both said about her necklace.’

  ‘Yes. It says that here.’ She flicked to another page. ‘Amber is condensed sunlight and can hold the powers of the sun. So Jeanette said that wearing the necklace gave you the power of the Eye of Ra.’

  ‘You can see right into people’s brains.’ I sat back in my chair and pulled a face. ‘That’d be handy. If we were going to investigate Debbie’s death. Kind of the ultimate detective tool.’

  Chess pointed a finger at me as if I’d made a good point. She squinted her eyes and nodded and I could see the beginnings of a smile. She did a funny pommy voice. ‘Here, Watson, there seems to have been a cold-blooded murder. Pass me the Mind-and-Heart X-ray Necklace.’

  We both did a short quiet laugh and then drifted into silence. For a minute we both just sat there looking out at the garden.

  ***

  There wasn’t much to look at. There was one misshapen bush with leaves that went right to the ground. In winter it had dark pink flowers, but now it was just a big ugly block. Behind that the land sloped away to a swampy area with metre-high lilies and a couple of very old fruit trees.

  There was more rain about and it was very still. The smell of moisture reminded me of another afternoon a long time ago. I found myself looking at the goldfish pond.

  Chess’s goldfish pond was really just a pud
dle, choking with water weed. There’s nothing in it now, but five years ago it had fish. One afternoon I’d been left out at Chess’s and we’d been playing Monopoly on the verandah. It’d been OK. I’d been enjoying it mainly — the chairs were stronger then — but Monopoly isn’t that good with just two people and I remember getting bored. I made her show me the fish. I asked her their names and she’d pointed out the two white ones.

  ‘They’re Super and Dooper.’

  ‘What about that one?’

  ‘Pooper.’

  I pointed out another.

  ‘Scooper.’

  We’d both grinned like we had today, and then I’d started laughing, partly at the stupid names, but also because it was nice to both think the same thing is funny, without having to worry about how dumb it is. You can’t do that with everyone.

  Then I’d seen a fifth fish. ‘OK,’ I’d said. ‘What’s that one?’

  Chess had looked at me very seriously. ‘John.’

  I squeaked like a poked pig. It was just one of those things that is extremely funny and you can’t say why. Just something to do with when it happened and how you are feeling. Chess and I had laughed and laughed, lying back in the grass (there weren’t as many geese then). Since then John has been the funniest name either of us knows. Just the mention of it makes our eyes meet.

  But that’s not the end of the story. After that Chess had got out the cards and I’d got sick of being there. I rode my bike round and round her little garden and bashed at the apple tree with a stick, until Alec came out of his shed and told me to stop. Then I just sat by the gate, wishing I had someone else to play with and waiting for Mum and Dad to come and get me.

  That’s what Chess just doesn’t get. A joke is great, but it’s never enough.

  ***

  Chess looked as if she was still thinking. I closed my eyes to look as if I was thinking too. But now I couldn’t help listening for sounds from inside the house. It was a bit hard to sit out here, knowing Alec Febey was inside, having a shower or whatever. Soon Chess would have to go in to him.

  We had to get on with it.

  I said, ‘It’s definitely a pattern, isn’t it? Jeanette has the necklace. She runs around saying she knows people’s secrets and she gets run over. Then Deb somehow gets the necklace and hides it. And eight years later she suddenly decides it’s time to put it on — to stir something up.’

  Chess interrupted me. ‘Why now?’

  I said, ‘I don’t know.’

  But Chess had only asked me so she could tell me her theory. ‘Personally, I suspect it has something to do with the fire in the café. Otherwise it’s a big coincidence. But it remains unclear. Debbie might have known who did the robbery and the fire, but that’s not directly connected with Jeanette’s necklace. Mmm.’

  ‘Debbie puts on the necklace, like Jeanette. She says she knows secrets, and she writes a note to someone saying she knows they killed Jeanette …’

  I botched it again. At the back of my mind I was still aware that Alec might come out, and that was making me rushed and tense, and suddenly I heard myself talking like a gangster. ‘So Debs threatens to talk and Debs is offed.’

  This time Chess did crack — not because it was a gross way to talk about a friend — because it was bad English.

  ‘I don’t think you should say ‘offed’. It’s a term that belongs in Mafia movies.’

  ‘Never mind the Mafia. If we’re saying the reason for Deb’s death comes from eight years ago on Devastation Road, then we need to find the person who ran over Jeanette Carmody. Or better still, we should just give up and go straight to the police.’

  Chess curled a lip in superiority. ‘And tell them what? That Debbie had a magic golden necklace? That a muddy note fell out of a rubbish bag? They’d laugh at us.’

  ‘But we can’t handle this. It’s too … serious.’

  ‘At least we should find out a bit more. As soon as we’ve got something tangible to go on, we can take it to the police then.’

  I hated it when Chess used words like that. ‘Tangible? I’ll tell you something tangible. It’s not that hard to work out the bad guy in all this. People said Jeanette was run over by a dark blue car. Craig Wilson had a blue car. We saw it in that photo. I reckon we start with him as prime suspect.’

  ‘Yes well I know it might look like that, but you’re not thinking. The second victim was Debbie! He’s her brother.’

  ‘He’s a complete psychopath. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Yes, but all the same.’

  ‘OK. I see what you mean. But let’s just go with it for a minute. Jeanette’s been round at Wilsons’ playing with Debs, saying she knows people’s secrets. She might’ve known about all the fires out that way. Craig definitely lit them. Everyone says so. So, what if Craig was out on the road one day, driving along, and he sees Jeanette. It’s a good chance. He runs her over. And then, maybe Debbie saw him, even though she told everyone she didn’t. And then eight years later she threatens to talk. I mean I know it seems too gross even for Craig, killing his own sister, but it is possible.’

  Chess said, ‘Well if it was Craig who ran over Jeanette, the police failed to prove it. We’d have to find evidence.’

  Looking back, I can see that we were acting and sounding like complete idiots, a couple of try-hard private eyes. But at the time I didn’t notice. I’d got caught up in the drama.

  ‘Okay. If we’re looking for evidence, we need to know more about him. What did he do? Who did he associate with?’ I liked that. Only criminals associated with people. The rest of us had friends. ‘Or even if it wasn’t him, we still need information. We need to talk to people who were around the place at the time.’

  Chess glanced at me warily, as if she thought I might not like the next idea. ‘Yes we do, and it seems to me there’s an obvious place to start.’ I looked at her blankly. ‘Tara and Wando know something about it, don’t they?’

  This brought me straight back to earth. The mention of Tara was enough to make me see how pathetic we were. I slumped back. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Annie called them “poor buggers”. She said they’d been through a lot over the Devastation Road business. And when your mother mentioned Devastation Road, Wando started acting quite nuts.’

  I wriggled angrily at the way Chess spoke. I had a go at her. ‘I don’t think you should say “nuts”. It’s a term that belongs on Play School.’

  Chess ignored me. ‘Jeanette was run over just near this house. And at the time, Tara lived here.’

  I really didn’t want to talk about Tara. Just hearing her name made me go tight around the mouth. ‘She didn’t know anything. She would’ve told the police.’

  ‘Well, she is definitely worried by this whole thing. She looks so … wound up all the time. And she was very intense about the note in the driveway. She almost asked us to look into it. We should ask her what she knows.’

  This was not a good idea. ‘Chess, she won’t tell us anything.’

  Chess was watching my face thoughtfully. ‘You’re good with people. You could try to get something out of her.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I had to laugh. ‘That just isn’t the way it happens.’

  I was going to explain to Chess that you couldn’t just go up to people like Tara and ask serious questions, but before I could, Chess looked past me, towards the road. She grinned and lifted a hand, like a conjurer whose trick has just come off. ‘In fact, here they are now.’ She made another little sad smile and shook her head at how stupid the world was. ‘They’ve been sent back to make sure I’m all right. I knew they would.’

  The Rolands’ white car was pulling up at the gate. Mr Roland was driving, Tara was next to him, and Wando was in the back.

  Chapter 11

  We started down the steps to meet them.

  ‘Hi, kids,’ said Mr Roland. The cheery voice was phonier than ever. ‘Can’t get rid of us, can you? Ha ha. Kath wanted me to bring a plate of goodies. She said I shoul
d have at least said g’day to old Alec.’ He didn’t mention the fact that he had tried before and Alec hadn’t answered the door. Behind him Tara and Wando got out of the car. ‘Tara and Wando just came along for the drive.’ This was another lie. It was clear from Tara’s face she’d been made to come.

  ‘It’s a lucky break,’ whispered Chess. ‘Ask them.’

  I put my head very close to hers. ‘All right. But you stay out of it.’

  Chess’s scraggly garden had a double row of fence — the original picket one and a higher row of wire webbing to keep in the geese and the goat. Mr Roland was holding a plate and fiddling with the second latch.

  ‘Dad about?’

  We all looked at the house. It was weatherboard, mostly grey-white. One wall was painted a dull yellow. Facing us, almost hidden by a thick creeper, the front door was brown. It was never opened. The dingy window beside it had a piece of sloping net curtain.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen,’ said Chess politely, helping him with the sticking gate. ‘Oh! Cheese scones. They look scrumptious.’

  Mr Roland went past her and round to the side steps where we’d been sitting. As he went in through the kitchen door, we heard him call out, ‘G’day Alec. How’s it hangin’ mate?’

  It was something he never said, and sounded so wrong. We all knew why he’d come. Everyone in town talked about Alec’s binges and how damaging they were for his teenage daughter. People took it in turns to come and check on him. It’d been going on for years.

  Tara watched her father go in and then shook her head at the closed door, ashamed of his behaviour. I’d never seen Tara like that before.

  ‘Sorry, Chess,’ she mumbled.

  Chess shrugged. ‘It’s OK.’

  This was the friendliest they’d ever been. Maybe there was a chance here, to find something out. If we could just get talking, I could try to swing the conversation around to Devastation Road and Jeanette Carmody. But it couldn’t be rushed.

  I led the way towards the bottom of Chess’s garden and stopped before it got swampy, on a higher area of dry lawn. In one corner someone had left a rusty cart with only two wheels, propped up on a pile of railway sleepers. There were also several pieces of concrete pipe and a couple of logs. The place was shaded by a willow and an apple tree and the moisture hanging in the air made everything feel soft. Good atmosphere for a chat.