by Joanna Baker
Wando sat on the ground against a log. The girls stood looking at each other.
‘Jeez. Fathers,’ I said, leaning back casually on the cart. I smiled around at everyone, planning my next sentence. Tara turned her shoulders slightly away from Chess and towards me. For a second I thought I was going to get the warm look again, then Chess interrupted.
‘We want to hear about Jeanette Carmody.’
Instantly Tara’s eyes went dark and hot. You could see the blood rise up her neck to flush her whole face, and her mouth twitched into an ugly shape. It was so different from what I’d been hoping for, and somehow so frightening, it made me look away. Chess was staring at her innocently, as if she hadn’t even noticed the reaction. What a moron! Just to come out with it like that. I didn’t dare look at Tara, but I could sense that she’d gone very still. She was about to tell us to get stuffed and then stomp off.
‘What do you want to know?’ said Tara quietly.
Without moving I swivelled my eyes back to her. She was perfectly calm and was a normal colour again. Her lips had softened, and she was standing exactly the way she had been before, holding Chess’s gaze with no emotion at all. I must have imagined the big reaction before.
Or not. I realised that now she’d taken on that super-stillness she always showed when Devastation Road was talked about. And she wasn’t the only one who was stirred. Slowly Wando pushed up from the ground onto the log. The whole atmosphere had somehow gone thicker.
‘Matt says she was your babysitter,’ said Chess.
I corrected this urgently. ‘I said she was my babysitter.’
‘She was ours, too,’ said Tara, nodding towards Wando to include him. ‘She was minding us while our parents were at a wedding.’
There was a pause. Chess stared at Tara. I held my breath. Even if Chess had been good at reading the expressions on people’s faces, she wouldn’t have seen much in Tara’s now, and at this point Wando drew the attention to himself by making a strange sucking sound. Chess swung her gaze to him and slowly something dawned on her.
‘Do you mean she was killed while she was looking after you?’
‘Yes.’ Tara was watching Wando and he wasn’t moving.
‘In this house?’
‘Yes.’
Chess looked back at the house as if it held a clue for her. ‘Then she should have been inside. What was she doing out on the road?’
‘We went for a walk.’
‘We? You and Wando too? You mean you found her?’
Tara lifted her big eyes to Chess. In the green light they were the colour of lavender.
‘We saw her killed,’ she said.
***
Tara hadn’t lowered her voice or tried to sound sad, as other people might have. Her voice hadn’t cracked with horror. She just stated it, as a simple fact.
She and Wando had seen a person die.
Wando had pushed his stiff yellow hair up into spikes. His breath was shallow and fast, as if, after years of silence, he was excited by the opportunity to talk. The trouble was, he obviously had no idea what to say. And Chess seemed to have suddenly run out of questions. Without taking her eyes off Tara, she edged back to the cart, pushed herself up and started swinging her feet.
Fortunately, Tara didn’t need any more prompting. ‘Wando and I were about eight.’
‘Seven,’ shouted Wando. ‘I was seven.’ His voice had come out way too loud.
Tara rolled her eyes towards him and then away again. ‘Well, anyway.’ She wanted to get the story finished. It came in a rush. ‘I lived here and Jeanette was minding us and we went for a walk up on the hill and then down to the road and she got run over.’
Wando was angry about something. ‘There was more to it than that.’
Tara focused on him for a while, keeping herself more still than ever. Then she went on. ‘We were being naughty.’ It was a strange word for her to use. She drew a breath and leaned back against the willow, realising it was going to be a long story. ‘Mum and Dad had gone to a wedding, right? I was supposed to go. But they’d bought me these new shoes and I’d wrecked them sliding down a gravel bank with Debbie Wilson, and I’d shredded a pair of tights too. The olds were very big on discipline at the time and they chucked this major wobbly and said I had to miss the wedding. Wando came out and we were babysat together. I was really pissed off. I had wanted to go.
‘So Jeanette came to babysit and whenever she came she used to take us for these walks. And this time …’ For a second Tara went distant, as if she suddenly remembered the day clearly. She glanced at Wando but he was no help. Then she gave a little jerk of the head and went on in the same flat voice. ‘We were just feeling naughty, weren’t we Wando? It wasn’t our fault. We ran away from her. She was following us. And at some point she went over Station Road and a car hit her.’
What I couldn’t get over was the contrast between Tara and Wando. The story belonged to both of them, but they were reacting completely differently. Wando was the colour of watermelon. He was still panting and looked as if at any minute he was going to leap up from his log and run. Tara was pale and unnaturally calm. From up on the cart, Chess was looking from one to the other, fascinated. I was fascinated too, but I hid it better.
Chess said, ‘And you saw it happen.’
‘Yes.’
Chess said, ‘And the car?’
‘Didn’t stop,’ said Tara.
‘A hit and run?’
‘That’s right.’
Chess studied her for a while and then said, ‘So you two were the only witnesses.’
Tara said, ‘The police asked us a lot about whether we’d recognise the car again, but we were just completely blown away. We didn’t remember a thing.’
‘It must have been very hard,’ said Chess.
Wando thought this was sympathy. ‘Yeah.’
‘I mean for the police,’ said Chess. I moaned in disgust at her coldness but she didn’t seem to hear. ‘It must have been difficult, with only two young children as witnesses. And they never caught the driver?’
Tara said, ‘No.’
‘You couldn’t tell them anything about him?’
‘We couldn’t even agree on the colour of the car. Wando swears it was white but I’m equally certain it was dark — dark blue.’
‘And no one else saw anything?’ said Chess.
‘No,’ said Tara.
‘But there was another person around at the time, wasn’t there? Debbie. The police questioned her over and over.’
‘She wasn’t around when it happened. She definitely wasn’t with us. They had it all wrong. It was just that she had cuts and bruises on her legs and broken fingernails and wouldn’t explain why.’
‘Debbie said she didn’t see!’ said Wando, angry again. ‘She didn’t know anything!’
‘It was just the two of you then,’ said Chess.
‘Yes,’ said Tara.
‘How close were you?’
Wando leapt to his feet. He didn’t sound quite human. ‘She went right up and over the car. Hit the windscreen first, then the roof, then the ground. She just kept rolling.’ He paused and swallowed and added quietly. ‘The sound … It sounded like …’ His voice went into a squeak and disappeared.
‘Shit,’ I whispered.
‘She ended up on her stomach with her face towards us. She had blood all over her.’ Wando’s mouth twisted.
‘And you were the only people there,’ I said. ‘Just two poor little kids.’
Chess said, ‘Let me get this clear. Wando says the car was white and Tara says it was dark blue.’
‘It all happened very fast,’ said Tara.
‘Craig Wilson had a dark blue car.’
‘Really?’ Tara half-lowered her eyelids.
‘You weren’t close enough to see the driver?’ said Chess.
‘We weren’t looking at the driver!’ said Wando.
‘You were watching Jeanette,’ I said.
Wando’s eyes filled
with tears. Tara answered for him.
‘Yes,’ she said coldly. ‘That’s right.’
Chapter 12
When they’d gone, Chess and I trudged back up to the verandah and sat there, not talking. The Rolands had offered me a lift home, but I hadn’t felt like being in the car with Tara and Wando. I didn’t really want to be here with Chess either. My detective mood had vanished.
Inside, Alec had gone quiet.
Chess folded her hands and sat staring down at them. ‘What a sickening story.’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s enough for me. I really don’t want to know any more about it.’
‘No.’
Sickening was right. Tara’s story had left my mouth dry and my stomach welded into a hard lump. I curled forward and closed my eyes.
It was about one-thirty. Through the soft air I could hear cicadas, which around Yack in December count as silence, and some kookaburras somewhere were doing that chuckling, humming thing they do when they can’t quite raise a laugh, but there was no other sound.
I was glad Chess had lost interest in trying to solve murders. I felt exactly the same way.
But there was one thing niggling away at me. I tried to leave it, but after a while I had to ask Chess. ‘Tara and Wando — how do you rate that story that they didn’t see the driver?’
Chess didn’t know what to say. ‘They were very young,’ she began cautiously. ‘It would have happened very fast.’
‘Yeah.’ Fair enough. I nodded as if I agreed. But I couldn’t leave it alone. ‘They couldn’t even agree on the colour of the car.’ I waited for her to explain that too, but she didn’t say anything. ‘Weird, huh.’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’ This was typical Chess. Logical and unhelpful. I made a hissing sound. She added, ‘It depends on how you look at it.’
‘Don’t start.’
‘OK, OK.’ Chess squeezed her hands tighter together and pressed them into her legs. ‘We should leave it. I agree. It’s all too ghastly.’ She allowed another little silence, but had to add, ‘Except …’
‘What?’
‘If Debbie was murdered —’
‘Chess!’
‘No. I know. But the theory was that Debbie was killed because she knew who killed Jeanette. And it still looks that way, doesn’t it?’
I said, ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ to see if it annoyed her as much as it annoyed me. She didn’t react at all.
‘Well, if she was … If the driver of the car was prepared to kill Debbie to hide what he’d done, and if Tara and Wando were there watching it happen … I mean even if they don’t remember anything about the car or the driver, he would think they knew something.’
‘He might.’
‘Well, that would put Tara and Wando in danger.’
I’d been trying not to listen, but these last words got to me. Slowly, without me thinking about it, I realised something. ‘That’s what it is about Tara and Wando.’
‘What?’
‘They’re afraid.’ She looked at me blankly. ‘Can’t you see it? That’s what it is about Tara and Wando. It’s not that easy to see, and they are kind of wrecked over what they saw, but it’s more than that. They’re terrified.’
Chess pushed up her lips. ‘I don’t know.’
‘No, you don’t. That’s right. You’re good at logic problems and pies and stuff, but you’re totally blind when it comes to people. It took me a while to see it, but it’s definitely right.’ I thought for a minute and added, ‘They show it in different ways. Wando is easy to read. He sweats and shakes and goes that amazing colour. And you can hear it in his voice. He isn’t just upset, or even angry, although he tries to sound angry. But his voice — I can still hear it — that tight sound.’ I cupped my fingertips to my Adam’s apple, trying to work out where the tight muscles were. ‘It’s fear.’
‘What about Tara? She isn’t emotional at all.’
‘That’s where you have to be a bit subtle. Empathy, Mum calls it. Look at how she’s sitting and how she moves her head on her neck, and doesn’t move her arms and legs much. She’s so still and tight and — blank — all the time.’
‘She’s always been like that.’
‘Yes. I’ve often wondered about it, haven’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Look, sit like this.’
I pushed Chess back into her chair and wrapped her arms across her chest. I studied what I’d done and then pushed her knees tight together.
‘And now pretend your face is made of wood. Lock it up.’ Chess looked unimpressed, but she gave it a go.
‘Now say something.’
‘Am I allowed to move my lips?’
‘That’s good. Hear it? You’re sounding like her already. Now how does it feel? How do you feel about the people around you?’
Chess dropped out of the pose, looking annoyed. ‘You’re the only one here and I feel you’re away with the pixies.’
‘It’s how Tara sits. Do it again.’
‘No.’
I went back into it for her, tensing every muscle, erasing every expression, except a scornfully raised eyebrow. ‘It’s a wall. A big blank wall.’ I dropped it and sat forward again. ‘She’s holding something in. She’s afraid that if she moves her face or lets her guard down it might slip out. Tara knows something, maybe more than Wando knows, and she doesn’t want to tell. She’s afraid.’
Now Chess was looking interested. ‘Maybe you’re right.’ She thought about it some more and then started to get really enthusiastic. ‘You are right, Matt. She’s afraid. Like in the driveway when we found the note. She was blank but there was some large emotion behind it. She’s terrified.’
‘Wando too. And they have a lot to be terrified about. If there is a killer out there and they start to let on that they know something … Or he might already suspect it. He might be after them.’
‘Then we have to do something!’
I didn’t like it, but the more we talked, the clearer it became. ‘We don’t really have any choice, do we?’ Chess shook her head. I went on. ‘We have to find out who killed Jeanette ourselves. I mean we’ve got a theory, but we need proof.’
Now Chess was nodding and shaking her head at the same time. ‘Theory’ and ‘proof’ were words she liked. They sounded like science.
I couldn’t feel as excited about it as she was. The whole deal made me sick, but there was no way out now. I drew a breath and stared at the floor again. With the toe of a shoe I pushed some dirt into a crack in the floorboard.
‘So the whole thing hinges around Jeanette Carmody. We need to know more about what she was doing at that time. I mean there are a million questions. Why would Craig have wanted to kill her? She must’ve found something out about him. Had she seen something one day while she was walking on Station Road? Or had someone told her something about him? And how did Craig know she’d be out there running after Tara and Wando?’ I thought for a bit. Chess didn’t offer anything useful. ‘We need to ask people. I wonder who her friends were.’
There was a silence and then Chess said, ‘Jeanette used to babysit you when you were little.’
‘She babysat for nearly everyone.’
‘Did she ever say anything that might be a clue?’
‘I was seven.’
‘What was she like?’
‘I dunno. Pretty normal. Bit of a do-good. All the parents loved her. My parents loved her.’
‘Those Carmodys your Mum visits, are they Jeanette’s parents?’
‘Yeah, well that’s typical Mum, you know. She hardly saw them until Jeanette died, but once they’d had their tragedy …’ I stopped. I didn’t want to sound mean about Mum. ‘I mean there’s nothing wrong with it. She just likes to help people.’
‘And she still goes to see them sometimes.’
‘Yeah. If she thinks she needs to. You know, Jeanette’s birthday and the anniversary of the accident, that sort of thing. And sometimes they come to our place, and Mum makes me sit wi
th them for a while. She thinks they like to see young people.’
‘You went with her to their place once.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been a few times. I try to get out of it.’ The last time I’d only gone because Chess was at our place and I wanted to get away from her.
‘Your Mum should go and see them today. You could point that out to her. Another girl has just died. A friend of Jeanette’s. They’ll be upset.’
‘She’s already on to that. She went last week.’
‘Yes but now, after that sad funeral she should go again. And you could go too.’
Chess had given me a little sideways look when she said this. Immediately I saw what she was getting at. ‘Oh no. We can’t just —’
‘Why not? The Carmodys wouldn’t mind. I bet they like you. Everyone likes Matthew Tingle.’
‘It’s not going to help.’
But Chess could hear in my voice that I was starting to think about it. She said, ‘Do they ever talk about Jeanette?’
‘Well, yeah, but all they ever say is what a wonderful person she was, stuff like that.’
Chess picked up Deb’s envelope from under her chair. ‘What if you showed them the Egyptian pictures? They were Jeanette’s. It might put them on the right track.’ She saw me hesitating. ‘It’s something Jeanette and Debbie did together. And it’s connected with that necklace, which relates to some secret that they knew. It has to be important. Debbie certainly thought so. They might tell you why Jeanette gave the necklace to Debbie.’
She pushed the envelope into my hands. ‘I’ve got to sit here with Dad, but if you really want to go on with this, that’s the place to start. See the Carmodys. Find a way to make your mother go there. You could do that.’
There was a little note of admiration in her voice that got me thinking. It was a typical Chess idea. Manipulate people. Make them move around the chess board. And she knew, and I knew, that I was up to it. I could nearly always find a way to get my mother to do what I wanted. Chess had seen me do it before.