Words Can Kill (Ghostwriter Mystery 5)

by C. A. Larmer

  “I have not!” she screamed back. “He’s my brother, Roxanne!”

  “So you keep telling everyone.”

  “Well at least I’m happy to admit it. You can barely say his name without flinching.”

  “That is not true.”

  “You never call him your boyfriend.”

  “That’s because he’s not my boyfriend. We broke up, six months ago, remember?”

  “No!” She stopped and swung around then, her eyes blazing, her hair flying about her face. “You broke up with him, you broke his heart and now he’s ... he’s ...”

  Caroline looked as though she was about to burst into tears and Roxy tried to reach out to her again but she shook her off and continued storming up the road. Roxy followed silently, spotting their apartment owner, Hugo, standing at one side in front of a small convenience store, a mobile phone at his ear, a frown on his face.

  “Ciao, bella!” came a voice to one side and Roxy glanced around to find Monty at his usual post, his smile wide. He clearly didn’t realise the women were mid-fight.

  Caroline ignored him completely and Roxy managed a small, weary wave as she followed her into their building and up the stairs to their apartment. When Caroline reached their door, she swung back to Roxy with a huff.

  “I haven’t got the key.”

  Roxy grappled through her handbag and felt a renewed surge of anger swell up inside. For days now, Caroline had been behaving like a narcissistic airhead, barely bothering to blink when Max’s flatmate had showed up murdered in his apartment. Ever since they’d arrived she’d been more interested in looking good than finding her brother and now she had the hide to say Roxy was the blasé one. She was infuriated but she could also tell exactly what was going on and it helped douse the flames of her anger.

  She looked up at her friend. “I know what you’re doing, Caroline, and you can cut it out.”

  “Oh really Miss Smarty Pants, what am I doing?”

  “You’re hurting so you’re lashing out.” She took another calming breath while Caroline folded her arms defiantly and refused to meet her eyes. “But you’re picking on the wrong person, and if you weren’t so bloody terrified, you’d see that. If you want to find your brother, get a grip. I don’t know if Donald Marlow has anything to do with this but I’m not going to point fingers until we get some more evidence. Real evidence. In the meantime, pull yourself together. Max’s disappearance is not about you or me. And it certainly has nothing to do with whether or not he’s my boyfriend!”

  Still Caroline refused to look at her and Roxy’s mood turned dark again. “Listen, Caroline, we don’t know why Max has disappeared but we need to find him and we’re not going to do that by screaming at each other in the middle of Rio-bloody-maggiore! Got it?!”

  Before she could reply, Roxy threw the keys at her and flung herself back down the staircase, two steps at a time, leaving Caroline blinking rapidly behind her.

  By the time she got out to the street, Roxy was gasping for air and shaking with indignation. She tried to take some deep, gulping breaths to calm herself down. Like Caroline, she was hurting, too, and terrified to the core, but she couldn’t lose her head, not now. She had to find Max. That was all that mattered. She whipped around and spotted Monty again but this time he was pretending to be deeply interested in an Adidas cap.

  She strode across to him and without any pleasantries said, “You need to direct me to your local police station. Now.”

  Chapter 20

  The Comando Stazione Carabinieri, Riomaggiore’s Police Command Centre, was less than a ten-minute walk from the main drag, on the northwest end of the town, just below a crumbling church and across from a boutique hotel.

  The front door was open when Roxy arrived and she stepped inside to find the room empty, a long, high desk cluttered with forms and brochures, some in Italian, most in a variety of other languages. There was a bell on the desk and she rang it just as a muscle-bound, uniformed officer stepped out from an internal room on one side.

  “Benvenuto,” he sang out then, checking her further, added, “Can I help you?”

  Roxy produced Max’s photo. “Yes, I’d like to report a missing person.”

  “Another one?” he said, and she nodded, holding the photo closer.

  He looked at it carefully and then at Roxy. “His name?”

  “Max Farrell.”

  “Ah. We have been expecting you. Please come with me.”

  Roxy felt that familiar wave of nausea again but managed to nod and follow him as he opened a small trapdoor at one side and then led her into the room from which he’d just come. Inside, there was a table with several chairs, no window and a rickety fan leaning like an old drunk in one corner. Leaving the door open, he indicated for Roxy to take a seat across from him and watched as she did so, his dark brown eyes cool and steady. He looked like something out of central casting—chiselled jaw, bulging biceps, empathy enveloping his handsome face. His uniform was stylish and militaristic, a dark blue jacket with silver braiding around the cuffs and collar and edges trimmed in vivid red with silver epaulettes. His matching blue trousers had long scarlet stripes down both sides, and Roxy was grateful Caroline was not around. She’d be dribbling all over him by now.

  “You can call me Officer Giuseppe,” he said, offering her a plastic water bottle, which she took gladly. “Commander Rossi is currently occupied but you can talk to me.” He pulled a pad of lined paper and a pencil from a drawer below the desk, sat down and opened it to a fresh page. “Okay, so, your boyfriend’s name is Max Farrell—”

  “Friend,” she corrected then blushed. Caroline was right on that score at least.

  “He was staying at Ola’s Villas?” When she nodded, he asked, “What is your name?”

  She told him. “I’m here with his sister, Caroline, on behalf of their parents who are back in Australia.”

  “And where is this sister?”

  Drowning herself down at the jetty, I hope, thought Roxy. “She’s back at our apartment. I can call her, if you like.”

  “That is not necessary at the moment. If you can answer some questions?”

  “Yes. But, can I ask ...?” He stopped writing, looked at her expectantly. “I heard you’d found a body.”

  He gave a quick, dismissive shake of his head and continued writing. “It is a woman.”

  She felt the nausea dissipate and her shoulders relax before a ping of guilt. “The missing Australian woman?”

  “Identification is still under way.” He looked up from his paper. “Do you know Mrs Marlow?”

  “No, I don’t.” She hesitated. “But I think Max did.”

  Roxy took a long sip of her water and then tried to outline the facts as best she could. She told Officer Giuseppe about that strange call Max had made to his mother a week ago, how he had checked out of his Swiss hotel early and promptly disappeared, and how she and Caroline had caught the first plane to Europe to try to track him down. She explained how the Hotel Bellevue staff told them they had spotted Max and Candy together and how he must have followed Candy to Riomaggiore where he booked a room at Ola’s Villas with another man. She went on to point out that Max’s luggage was still in his room and he had not been seen or heard from since Friday morning when Ola believed he had breakfasted at Ted’s Trattoria.

  Glancing up from his pad where he’d been scribbling away, he said, “Really? Maria’s place?”

  “Yes.” Giuseppe looked intrigued by this but waved her on. “Here’s the most baffling bit. We think the man Max checked in with was his Berlin flatmate, Jake Conway. According to Ola, that man fit the description of Jake—a skinny American with lots of tattoos. Anyway he also disappeared on Friday morning, and his things are gone, so Ola assumed he left, but that Max is coming back. In any case, we don’t know for sure if that was Jake who stayed with Max, but what we do know is, sometime between late Friday and early Saturday morning, Jake was murdered back in his apartment in Berlin, and Max hasn’t been se
en since.”

  She bit into her lower lip, knowing how bizarre it all sounded, and the look on the officer’s face reflected it back to her. He had stopped writing and had a deep frown line between his eyes.

  She didn’t know if he was confused or simply thought she was insane, but eventually he pushed the notepad aside and said, “You must speak to Commander Rossi. Where are you staying?”

  “Oh, I don’t actually know the name of the street. Or the number.” Duh! “It’s an apartment above a hat shop that—”

  “Hugo’s place. Okay. Do you have a cell phone number?”

  She gave it to him and he made a note of it, then stood up and walked her out. “Commander Rossi will call you at his first opportunity.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, you come back if you find your boyfriend.”

  Friend, she thought sadly. Friend.

  As Roxy returned down the steep cobbled road towards town, she spotted Caroline rushing up towards her. The woman had tears streaming down her face and held her arms wide.

  “I’m so sorry, Rox,” she blubbed as she reached her, hesitant to embrace. “I’m an idiot, I know that.”

  Roxy shook her head and then pulled her into a fierce hug, holding her tight for several long minutes. Eventually, she said, “It’s okay, Caro, you’re just scared. So am I.” She pushed her back, holding her at arm’s length as she stared into her eyes. “But we’re in this together, okay? We need each other. We can not turn on each other.”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry ...”

  Roxy hugged her again. “Shhh, it’s fine. To be honest, I think I prefer you screaming at me than pretending everything’s okay.”

  Caroline sniffed and wiped her eyes. “Miss Super Cool. Who was I kidding, right?”

  “Well, you had me going for a minute there. I was starting to wonder whether you had ice running through your veins.”

  Caroline half smiled. “I just thought that if I didn’t really accept he was missing, that it was all a bit of a lark, well, then it wouldn’t really be real, you know?”

  Roxy nodded, leading the way back down the hills towards their apartment.

  Caroline stopped and Roxy turned back to her. “But it is real, isn’t it, Roxy? He really is missing?”

  “Doesn’t mean he can’t be found.”

  “But what if he’s ...”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it so Roxy said it for her. “Dead?”

  Caroline choked back a sob and Roxy felt her own eyes welling up again. “That’s something we might also have to face.” She reached out and wrapped her arm through her elbow. “But we’ll face it together, okay? No matter what, we will find him and we will bring him home.”

  Caroline nodded and sniffed loudly again. “I’m so grateful you’re here, Roxy. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Normally, Max is the one I call when I need help, you know that. My whole life, he’s been looking out for me. I just have to ring and he jumps. Now ... well ...”

  She flashed Roxy a look that wasn’t quite apologetic, but it was close enough. And as they continued down the road together in silence, arm in arm, holding each other up, Roxy understood more clearly how terrified Caroline must be. She was Max’s spoilt baby sister and he had been looking after her, her whole life. She had grown used to that, knowing she could simply click her elegantly manicured fingers and he’d appear to sort out whatever mess she’d landed herself in. Max was always on hand to pick Caroline up from a drunken night out, scare away an overly zealous admirer or fill up her bank account when she lost interest in yet another ‘career’ and ran out of money again.

  Not this time.

  Now it was Caroline’s turn to sort out Max’s mess, and she was failing miserably. They both were. Roxy, too, felt a lump of guilt. This journey with Caroline had shone a light on her own relationship with Max and she realised, now, why he had chosen her, pursued her so keenly over the past few years. Roxy was the antithesis of Caroline. She was Miss Independent. Miss I Don’t Need Anybody. She had never called Max, not once, to sort out her life. He had loved that about her, but it had irked him, too.

  “You don’t need anyone, do you?” he’d said to Roxy once and she had scoffed because she knew then as she knew now, that she did need someone in her life. She just didn’t like admitting it.

  Eventually Caroline said, “What do we do now?”

  Roxy took out a small packet of tissues from her handbag and handed one to Caroline, then gave her own nose a good blow. “Well, I just spoke to a local police officer and reported him officially missing. That’s a good start.”

  “And the body they found?”

  “Definitely a woman, probably Candy. I told them all we know about Max’s friendship with her, and Officer Giuseppe is now arranging an official meeting with the commander in charge, a guy called Rossi. But he’s busy right now.”

  “So in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, we go back to Ted’s and see what Maria’s got to say for herself.”

  Maria was nowhere to be found when the women returned to her restaurant but the creepy waiter was back and watching Caroline warily, as though she might bite. Roxy didn’t know what Caroline had said to him last night, but she felt for the guy. She’d just experienced Caroline’s bite herself, and it wasn’t pleasant.

  She was about to speak to the man when Caroline grabbed her elbow and held her back.

  “I’ve got this one,” she whispered, stepping forward and swishing her long hair so it swirled in front of her shoulders. “Hi again,” she all but purred and the waiter’s wariness started to drop away. “Have you got a minute you can spare for me? Pleeeease.”

  He glanced around then raised one shoulder lazily. He was still pouting a little but he couldn’t help himself. He had a thing for blondes. “Maybe.”

  Caroline smiled. “We’re still looking for my brother, Max. Remember, we showed you a photo last night?”

  Roxy produced the image and he glanced at it shrewdly again.

  “He no you boyfriend?”

  She shook her head firmly. “We’re so worried. We heard he likes to come here.”

  He shrugged. “Yes-eh. But not-eh today, no?”

  “No, but he was here last Friday, right? The day the Australian lady disappeared?”

  He considered this. “Oh yes, and the day before. He talk-eh to Candy.”

  Both women had to contain their surprise. “Really?” Caroline said. “Candy Marlow.”

  “Of course. I tell-eh the police. He talk to Miss Candy up-eh the back.”

  They glanced inside. “Near the bar?” Roxy asked and he looked across at her and shrugged.

  “Was Donald there, too?”

  He thought about this. “He outside.”

  “So Max didn’t talk to him?” He shrugged again. “Did you hear what Candy and Max were talking about?”

  “No.” He sniggered suddenly. “But he no happy, no? I t’ink he try his luck and she tell him to piss off.” He sniggered again but there was a dark look in his eyes. He had obviously tried his own luck with Mrs Marlow in the past. “Candy bellissimo but she also big-eh tease. How you say, a prick—”

  “Valentino!”

  They all turned around to find Maria staring at them from the back of the cafe. She had a menu in her hand and was waving it in the air, indicating for him to get on with it.

  He glanced at Maria then back at the women, looking completely unfazed. “Okay, I go now. Scusi.”

  As he turned towards the patio, a loud “toot” caught the women’s attention out on the street and they turned to watch a small van attempting to squeeze its way through the thick pedestrian traffic. Apart from emergency vehicles, cars were generally prohibited from the narrow cobbled roads but this one was obviously delivering supplies, most of the tourists ignoring it as it tried to weave its way down.

  “Should we have a word with Maria?” Caroline said but Roxy was staring at the vehicle like she�
��d seen a ghost. “What is it?”

  “The car!” Roxy said. “Whatever happened to Max’s Mercedes-Benz?”

  Chapter 21

  The young parking attendant had a face full of acne and badly dyed white hair cropped short with what looked like a black soccer ball etched into one side. He was leaning out of the toll booth as the women arrived, handing a docket over to a small family in a 4WD the size of a tank, and Roxy wondered as she watched, how the enormous vehicle ever managed to navigate the notoriously narrow roads of the Italian Rivera. She didn’t even like its chances of squeezing into the tiny spaces in the cramped parking lot. It seemed like a pretty silly car to bring to this part of the world and as it proceeded slowly down the road and into the station, the parking attendant watched it go with a snicker that suggested he was thinking the exact same thing.

  After realising they had forgotten all about Max’s loaned Mercedes—where was it? Did it hold any clues to his disappearance?—the two women decided to check out the parking station for themselves, just in case it was still in there, gathering dust.

  Along the way, Caroline insisted they stop at their apartment and, while she dashed upstairs, Roxy waved to Monty but he didn’t see her; he was busy for once, grappling to release a sombrero from a high perch while an eager-looking man with a painfully red face watched on. The sun was now making its way back down again, but he was obviously not going to make the same mistake tomorrow.

  “Ta-dah!” came Caroline beside her and Roxy swung around to find her friend holding one long, tanned leg out for her to admire.

  “You changed your shoes,” Roxy said, noticing she was now wearing bright orange and white trainers.

  “Well, we can’t be glamorous all of the time. Besides, they’re Nike Air Max Lunar 90s.”

  Whatever the hell that meant. Roxy just smiled and said, “Come on then.”