Words Can Kill (Ghostwriter Mystery 5)

by C. A. Larmer

  “No, but …” began Rossi.

  “It does not mean he was not with her,” finished Carmela.

  Yes it does, Roxy wanted to exclaim. The last time they went on a walk, up at Mt Pilatus, they took a stack of photos together. Why would this walk be any different? Instead she asked, “Did you find any pictures of anyone else with Candy?”

  Carmela glanced at Rossi as if getting permission to answer and when he nodded she said, “Not on the day in question, no. But there were several shots from that day, taken around the time we believe she fell off the pathway.” She paused, glancing at Rossi again. “They are of the deceased. Alone.”

  “But someone must have been with her, to take the shots,” said Roxy.

  “Could’ve been selfies,” said Caroline.

  “Selfies?” asked Rossi and Carmela hissed at him.

  “You know selfies!” She slapped him across the shoulder, lighter this time. “All the youngsters they take the selfies all the time.” She held the phone up in front of her and turned her wrist around as though about to take a photo of herself. “She could have done this.”

  “Can I see?” asked Caroline and Carmela handed the evidence bag over.

  Caroline flicked through with her forefinger, passing across a range of images as she did so. At one stage she glanced up at Roxy, a surreptitious look in her eyes, before continuing through the shots until she found the ones Carmela was referring to on the hills around Riomaggiore. They sent a small chill through her body. Each one was slightly different but they all showed Candy standing on the edge of a cliff with a bright yellow cap on, squinting slightly into the sun. In one she was holding her arms wide as if presenting the view, in another she was pointing down towards the stunning blue sea, the same sea that would soon claim her life. Caroline noticed she wasn’t smiling as widely in these pictures as she was in the ones with Max at Mt Pilatus. If she was with someone, she wasn’t nearly as happy.

  “I don’t think these are selfies,” Caroline said. “There’s too much distance between Candy and the lens, and see this one, with her arms out, she’s not holding the camera in that one at all. Of course, she could have set the camera up on a rock face somewhere, but it’s not so easy to do with an iPhone. I bet somebody else took them for her.”

  “Which means somebody was definitely with Mrs Marlow on the track,” Rossi said.

  “Or she could have asked a passing tourist to take them,” said Carmela, scrunching up her nose, “but six shots? I doubt that. No, no, I agree, someone was with Mrs Marlow on her walk and they were very careful not to be photographed.”

  Roxy stared at her for a minute. “You think that person was Max, don’t you?”

  “We do not know. We have no evidence at this stage. He did not send you any messages telling you where he was going? Telling you about Mrs Marlow?”

  Both women shook their heads and Caroline said, “The last time Max spoke to my mother he was in a hurry and didn’t say much. Mum misheard where he was going but she says he never mentioned anybody else. We’re as surprised as everyone to learn that he started up an affair with Candy Marlow.”

  “And nothing about Donald Marlow?”

  “No. We never even heard the name Marlow until we got to Mt Pilatus. Why?”

  The detectives shared a glance but did not answer the question.

  Now Rossi asked, “Has your brother ever come to Riomaggiore before?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t think so.” Caroline glanced at Roxy who nodded agreement.

  Rossi reached out for the phone and said, “Officer Giuseppe has told me that you have located Mr Farrell’s car. If you will hand over the keys, we will make an inspection.”

  Roxy did so, explaining how the smart key worked. He looked confused and Carmela snatched it off him.

  “He’s useless with technology. I will do the opening!”

  Now it was Rossi’s turn to give his partner a light whack across the arm. “I am not so bad, you know!” He turned back to Roxy. “Okay, Ola’s room key, too, please. I think this one is easy to work, hey?”

  “Just a boring old door key,” Roxy told him, handing it over. They had already relinquished the pink cap and Rossi had given it to Giuseppe to take into evidence. Roxy had explained their concerns that it had been planted, and asked about Sofia, yet neither detective knew whether she worked for Ola. Giuseppe had been ordered to look into it.

  “And you have received no more word from your brother?” he asked of Caroline. She shook her head. “No more pictures on the Twitter?”

  “Well, he only posted messages on Twitter. The pictures were on Facebook.”

  Carmela hissed again but said nothing as Rossi pushed away from the desk and stood up. “That will do for now. You are staying in town in case we have more questions?”

  “We’re staying in town until we find Max,” Roxy corrected him.

  “Okay. Maybe we can help you with this. We will check out your friend’s hotel room and his car. Maybe you lucky and he just go away for a few days and he be back, all will be happy days, no?” He didn’t sound convincing and they weren’t buying it. “You can go now, ladies, but first, please see Officer Giuseppe. We need to get your fingerprints.”

  “Ours?” they said unison.

  “Not to worry,” said Carmela with a smile. “You have put your prints all over everything, we need to discount them from the evidence.”

  Before they left, Roxy asked, “Do you have any idea what happened to Candy? Whether she fell accidentally or was pushed?”

  The two detectives shared another look and then Rossi said, “That is the sixty-four-dollar question.”

  “Sixty-four-thousand, you silly man!” interjected Carmela, giving him a final smack across the arm for good measure.

  Chapter 24

  Half an hour later the two women were wedged tightly together in their apartment bathroom, swiping at their fingertips with tissues soaked in heavy duty eye-makeup remover.

  “See, it pays to bring plenty of crap along,” Caroline said.

  She was having a dig at Roxy but her heart was not really in it. Hearing Max’s voice again and seeing his face on Candy’s iPhone had sent her emotions into freefall right alongside Roxy’s. “Why do you think Max left that emergency phone message? Did he suspect that Candy was going to be killed? Is that what he meant by a crime?”

  Roxy thought about this as she squirted more remover onto a second tissue. “Obviously he suspected something was going to happen. Maybe he got some bad vibes off Donald, or maybe Candy told him she was worried and maybe that’s why he followed her down here in the first place.” She sighed, exasperated. “If only he’d given more details before he got cut off.”

  “And why did he get cut off, that’s what I want to know? Do you think maybe he was overheard? Maybe Donald followed my brother to the police station and spotted him using the phone, so he ... so he ...”

  The two women stared at each other in the reflection of the mirror. It was too unbearable to even contemplate. Roxy lobbed her used tissues into the toilet and returned to the lounge room where she slipped off her shoes and dropped onto the sofa with a loud sigh. Caroline went directly from the bathroom to her handbag where she located her cigarettes and lit one up.

  Stepping across to the open shutters, she said, “You won’t believe who else I saw photographed on Candy’s iPhone.” Roxy looked up. “Go on, guess!”

  Roxy dropped her head to one side. “I don’t know. Sophia Loren?”

  Caroline looked at her, confused, then took an interminably long time to exhale before saying, “Maria, from Ted’s.”

  Roxy sat up with a start. “What? Really?!”

  She nodded. “After that police woman gave me the camera, I was flicking through the images and there were a stack of Candy and Donald, obviously taken here in town.”

  “As you’d expect. They were here for a few days before Candy disappeared.”

  “Right, well, several of the shots were cle
arly taken at Ted’s Café, I recognised the patio out back.”

  “So you saw Maria in the back of some shots, then?”

  “Not the back, no. She was sitting between Candy and Donald looking all chummy, chummy, smiling like nobody’s business. They were holding cocktails up as though about to do a toast or something.”

  “Like friends?”

  “Like best friends.”

  Roxy couldn’t believe it. “So why did I get such a strong impression that Maria didn’t even know Candy before she disappeared?”

  “Dunno, but she obviously did.”

  Roxy tried to recall her first conversation with Maria, at the back of Ted’s. She realised she had only assumed Maria didn’t know Candy because she’d spoken of her in terms of “another Australian woman”. She had never used her actual name.

  But why?

  Had she done that to deceive Roxy or was it because she didn’t want to go into it with a total stranger. She frowned and said, “Still doesn’t explain much. I mean, why would Maria want to kill Candy? And how? She’s pretty bloody small. I doubt she could throw a Chihuahua over a cliff, let alone a grown woman. We’re also forgetting that Candy went on a walk with a man, not a woman.”

  “Yeah, but what if Maria was sleeping with Donald, huh?”

  Roxy sat up further. “Go on.”

  “Think about it, he was very defensive about his marriage when we spoke to him, acting like we’d accused him of an affair. I don’t know about Candy and Max, but maybe Donald and Maria have also been seeing each other and Donald bumped off Candy so they could hook up. The woman’s obviously got appalling taste in men, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. So, if you think about it, we could both be right. It could be Donald and Maria acting together.” She paused. “Plus, she’s clearly got a bug up her arse. Did you see the way she spoke to Valentino? She’s a vicious one, that one.”

  Roxy’s head was spinning now as she tried to lock the various pieces into place. It still didn’t explain Jake’s murder, nor could she see either one of them pulling it off. When it came to brute strength, Donald wasn’t much bigger than Maria.

  Caroline finished the last of her cigarette and said, “Oh well, I thought it was exciting.” She glanced at her watch. “Dinner time soon and I need a shower. Desperately. Mind if I go first?”

  It was the first time Caroline had bothered to ask and Roxy tried to hide her surprise. “Sure, go for it.” Then she dropped back onto the sofa.

  That night, despite long showers and a fresh change of clothes, the women felt too flat to move much beyond their apartment and decided on the café across the road for dinner. The Marina was more basic than Ted’s but the food was tasty and they settled on eggplant ravioli and seafood pasta.

  “And a bottle of Peroni,” Roxy told the waiter, knowing only too well how abysmal their wine selection was. Caroline held two fingers in the air, following suit.

  When their beers arrived, the women sipped them quietly for a while just watching the buzz of happy tourists around them, feeling sadder than ever. Eventually Caroline said, “I hope that fat American doesn’t come in. I’ve had enough of her and her sweaty husband.”

  “That’s a bit mean, Caro. She’s harmless.”

  “Yeah, as harmless as a brown snake. And I hope to God we don’t run into that Valentino guy, either. Did you notice he’s wearing a wedding band? What a slimeball. I pity his poor wife.”

  Roxy scoffed. “Bloody hell, Caroline, you’re sick of everyone.”

  “Not true! I haven’t reached my limit with you yet.”

  “So that tiff we had earlier today?’

  She waved a hand in the air. “That was nothing. You’ll know when I’m really over you.”

  “Oooh I’m shaking in my boots.”

  “Your cute, creamy leather boots?” Caroline stared down at Roxy’s feet. “Managed to squeeze those into your itty bitty little bag, I noticed.” Her eyes swept up to the front door suddenly and she groaned. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Roxy glanced around to find the aforementioned American waddling in, a bright floral dress clinging to her enormous curves.

  “Hi, gals,” she said, catching their eye, but this time she didn’t stop at their table, instead brushing her way past them to a table at the back of the restaurant where another couple had been quietly sharing a bottle of wine.

  All that was about to change, Roxy thought, watching as the American burst into loud chatter and sat down to join them.

  “Thank God she’s found some new friends,” Caroline said.

  Roxy wasn’t so grateful. She wondered what other gossip the nosey American had managed to glean during the day. “Did we ever show her the picture of Max?”

  Caroline looked alarmed. “Does it matter?”

  “It might. She goes on about Monty, but I reckon she’s the font of all knowledge around here. I think I’ll ask her if she ever saw him.”

  “Well, do it after dinner, when I’m safely back in the apartment, so I don’t have to deal with her calling me an O-cee again!”

  “Fine. I wonder where her husband is.”

  “Again, does it matter?”

  “Probably not. So, how’s the ravioli?”

  She licked her lips. “Not bad. Yours?”

  They continued swapping small talk for the rest of the meal, both too weary or worried to broach the subject of Max again. Yet it was clearly at the back of their minds. Another full day had passed since anyone had heard from him and it was becoming harder and harder to remain positive. Each passing day chipped away at their optimism and Roxy wondered if they would ever find Max, let alone bring him home alive.

  She thought of her Crime Catalogues back at home, the scrapbooks that Oliver collectively dubbed her “Book of Death”, and of the various news stories she had cut out and pasted in there over the years. No one seemed to understand why Roxy kept those articles, why she persisted in cataloguing such misery and mayhem, and the truth was Roxy couldn’t really explain it herself. If pressed, she would say it was for research, and in some cases this was true. At least twice in the past two years, the scrapbooks had revealed information that had helped solve real-life crimes. Mostly, though, it was more sentimental than that. Roxy suspected her scrapbooks were there to bear witness, to show that someone cared: a life might be taken, but it lived forever in the scrapbooks in her sunroom.

  The missing people cases, though, were a whole different kettle of fish. Thinking of them now, she realised those stories were the most haunting of all. Amongst the many tales of the dead and mutilated were occasional articles about a missing person, a loved one lost forever in time. Sons and daughters, children and adults, dozens of souls who’d simply vanished without a trace.

  There one minute, gone the next.

  Were their families still searching, she wondered now, still clinging to futile hope? Or had they finally given up and pretended to get on with their lives knowing full well that nothing would ever be the same again?

  Could she and Caroline—the entire Farrell clan for that matter—ever find the courage to do that?

  A loud burst of noise cut through Roxy’s thoughts and she looked up to see the table at the back rollicking with laughter. Caroline, too, was looking around, perplexed, and Roxy wondered if she’d been thinking the same thing, also struggling to hold onto hope.

  “I’m heading back to the apartment,” Caroline said then, her eyes welling with tears.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah!” She swiped at her eyes with a chuckle. “I just need to pep myself up a bit, that’s all! Might pop on a face mask, oil the locks a bit.” She swept a hand through her hair. “I must look a horror! Best tidy myself up before we see that gorgeous copper again.”

  Roxy smiled. She was no longer irritated by Caroline’s self-absorption. You did what you had to do to get by.

  “I’m gonna hang around and see if Mrs America has more info.” Caroline nodded and went to produce her pu
rse when Roxy held a hand up. “I’ve got this one.”

  “Goodo, I’ll see you back up there?”

  “Of course you will.”

  As Caroline left, Roxy ordered another beer then leaned back in her seat, feigning boredom. It took less than a minute for the American woman to holler across the café.

  “On your own there, darlin’? Why don’t you come join us?”

  Roxy turned to face her with a smile, thinking, “Hook, line and sinker.”

  The American woman’s name, as it turned out, was Lily-Anne Wavers—“I cannot believe I never introduced myself, I’m losing my style!” Her husband, Vern, she explained, was back at the hotel, suffering from heat stress. “Poor darlin’, he just don’t cope well here in the tropics.”

  The fact that they weren’t actually in the tropics was neither here nor there to Lily-Anne whose adopted state of Michigan was “cold as a welldigger’s ass”. The other couple, she quickly explained, were from an equally chilly part of the world, Ireland. “But they’re used to the warmth, come here every year, been comin’ forever!”

  “John and Beryl McDonald,” the man announced, rising to shake Roxy’s hand and see her into the spare chair. He was well into his fifties with a mop of orange hair, and his wife was not dissimilar, although her hair was lighter, with silvery streaks through it. They were both well dressed without being ostentatious, he in a long-sleeved blue shirt, a gold Rolex on his wrist, she in a flowing white dress with matching pearl earrings and necklace. “We come every autumn, to be sure,” John was explaining, his Irish accent lilting and melodic. “That way it’s not too hot and we miss the dreaded crowds, ye see.”

  “Oh yes,” said Lily-Anne. “I can’t stand all these tourists! So loud, so obnoxious.”

  Roxy stared at her, not sure whether she realised the irony of what she’d just said.

  “Anyway, enough about that, I’ve got a bone to pick with you, young lady!” Lily-Anne began waggling a fat finger in the air. “Why did you gals never tell me you were also searching for someone?! I just heard that your boyfriend Matt is missing. I am soooo sorry!”