Good News, Bad News

by Maggie Groff

  I had made a new box headed Leila Leary and noted in it, Why would she need a reference to work for Mick? and Why is McCormack investigating her?

  For ten minutes I focused on these issues, swivelling my chair from side to side. Finally I decided the reference could have been required to secure alternative work during the holiday off-season. And Leila wouldn’t have been the first person to have left a job with some of the firm’s stationery—always handy if a glowing report should be required in the future.

  I also surmised that her second job could be where Dandy McCormack had his story, hence his interest in her reference.

  The Whitsunday area, where Splash Charters plied its trade, is large in size but has a relatively small resident population. It was on the cards that most people who had been there a long time knew each other. Assuming Leila had found work locally, either at Airlie Beach or on the Whitsunday Islands, I looked up the resorts and made a note of their phone numbers. Someone, somewhere, had to know where Leila was working.

  Next I studied the registration applications, hoping intense scrutiny would elicit what had been bugging me since Tuesday. I didn’t think it was anything to do with numbering systems, or the fact that the registrations hadn’t been renewed. This was something intangible that I couldn’t grasp. An indication that information on the applications linked in to a bigger picture.

  Then a thought struck me. The registrations were part of a timeline that identified when Mick had used the name O’Leary. Maybe that was the bigger picture?

  ‘Okay,’ I said at length to Chairman Meow. ‘Leila worked for Siliphant for a couple of years and the Longfellow girls inherited $100,000 each in 1982. According to Siliphant, Leila would have known about this. And at that time Leila and Mick were already married as Mr and Mrs Leary.’

  I leaned over and scratched between the Chairman’s ears.

  ‘Anything so far?’ I asked him.

  He looked stoned, an expression he had perfected while I was away.

  ‘In January 1983,’ I continued, ‘Mick arrived on the Longfellows’ farm and presented himself as an itinerant worker seeking employment. Big coincidence there: husband of the woman who works for the executor of a will, turning up on the farm of the beneficiaries and saying he needed work.

  ‘Then Mick is sacked by Hermione for playing the farmer wants a wife with Nemony in the lavender shed. Nemony runs after Mick and they marry in March 1983, by which time Mick had to have already altered his birth certificate to O’Leary.’

  Hands on hips, I paced around the study talking and glancing intermittently at the whiteboard. ‘In July 1983 Mick buys and registers two yachts in the name of O’Leary. Then as O’Leary he disappears in a storm in November 1983. Leila also disappears from Siliphant’s firm in November 1983.’

  But hang on, I thought, staring at the floor and mentally backtracking. Hermione had told me that Mick was called O’Leary in January 1983 when he turned up on her lavender farm, so he must have already decided to change his name before then.

  That was it! That was the beginning of the progressive timeline of using the name O’Leary that, along with other evidence, led unequivocally to the conclusion that Mick and Leila had planned the whole deception from the beginning.

  I wondered if Mick and Leila had bided their time while Leila worked at the solicitors until a suitable mark came along. The large inheritance bequeathed to the unmarried Longfellow sisters would have been too delicious to overlook. Mick must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven when he arrived on their lavender farm and discovered the beautiful Nemony.

  The storm, I realised, had been a perfect opportunity to disappear. Maybe Mick and Leila had even planned to carry out his disappearance during the next available bad weather, and not knowing when that would be was why Leila had had to disappear without giving notice to her employer. This, however, was opinion and not fact.

  I posed myself a question. Had Mick planned to toss Nemony overboard if she had accompanied him on that stormy Sydney evening? It was an unpleasant notion, but a salient one. Perhaps Nemony had been right and the miscarriage, which had left her too ill to accompany him, had saved her life.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, I strode across my study to the door, calling out to Chairman Meow, ‘Fetch my lightsaber, we’re going sleuthing!’

  Chapter 39

  I carried Chairman Meow to the public phones in Jonson Street as I didn’t want to stop and wait while passers-by went gooey over him. Besides, there was an unusually chilly wind blowing onshore and, despite the sunshine, I was cold and he was warm to cuddle.

  All the phones were occupied by young travellers, some of whom were perched on overstuffed backpacks, and all of whom could have done with a good scrubbing.

  I had quite a wait and spent most of it looking suspiciously across the street and in every passing car, but there was no sign of the corduroy man. I could probably have safely made my intended call from home, but risk management is sacrosanct, and the public phones were fast becoming my de facto office when I wished to remain forever anonymous.

  Eventually a young man with dreadlocks and a ring through his nose put down the phone nearest me and I quickly grabbed it. It smelled strongly of marijuana and pungent sweat, but needs must.

  I settled Chairman Meow on the footpath and took the list of the islands and their phone numbers out of my pocket. Starting at the top, I called Amherst Island first. I saw no need to engage in elaborate subterfuge and when a young woman answered, I simply asked, ‘Can I speak to Leila Leary?’ For dramatic effect I used my best Irish accent.

  ‘Hold please,’ the woman said. There was a click and loud music banged in my ear.

  I had a plan. If my call was put through to Leila I would pretend to be a charity seeking donations. The aim of this exercise was to establish where she was working, and as it was off-season I was hopeful the staff would be locals.

  The music stopped. ‘Are you there?’ the woman asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Leila isn’t on the island today. Did she say she was coming over here?’

  ‘Er, no. I thought she worked there.’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong island. Leila’s bar manager on Silver Gull. She’ll be there or at Splash Charters.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and hung up.

  Score one for Dick Whittington and Puss in Boots!

  The bar manager was a senior position, and one that would handle large amounts of money, especially on a resort island where there was no competition for the drinking dollar. Was Leila Leary doing a spot of creative accounting? Was I wrong to assume criminal shenanigans?

  I didn’t think so. Leila had participated in a conspiracy to defraud Nemony, had likely forged a job reference, and the corduroy man was asking questions about her. It was enough for me.

  Scooping Chairman Meow into my arms, I headed for the travel agency. I’d never heard of Silver Gull Island before today, and the easiest way to find out about it was to pick up a holiday brochure.

  There is a price to pay for the benefits of living in a community where everyone knows you, and that price is time. No way could I just drop into the travel agency and ask for a brochure. Trust me, dropping in could take half an hour by the time you’d discussed the usual pleasantries and caught up on personal news—theirs, yours and everybody else’s.

  Of course I could always go straight home and look up Silver Gull on the net; I’d do that as well, but I wanted the brochures in my hand. I prefer reading hard copy whenever possible, and holiday information is far more exciting displayed in a glossy colour brochure than on a computer screen. I mean, you wouldn’t drink wine out of a mug, would you?

  Fortune was indeed favouring me this afternoon and the travel agency was packed. I made finger-waggle waves at the girls, Sunny and Romola, who were busy behind their desks, and helped myself to brochures, including one for Splash Charters. Curious, I flicked through it to see if there were any pictures of Mick, which there weren’t,
and then hurried home.

  Chairman Meow, who tires easily when we’ve been working in the field, headed for his Windsor chair in the study and curled up for some alone time.

  I made a beeline for the kitchen, prepared a pot of Punkah Chi, loaded up the tea tray, took it to my bedroom and placed it on the bed. Climbing carefully beside it, I plumped up the pillows, pulled a throw rug over my legs and, while waiting for the tea to brew, called Daisy.

  ‘How’s Peppy settling in?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d think he’d lived here all his life,’ she said happily. ‘He’s lovely, Scout. Thank you so much for collecting him.’

  ‘Any time,’ I said, and meant it.

  A thought suddenly struck me. Daisy might not want to leave Peppy during his settling-in period. Still, there was no harm in asking if she wanted to come up to the reef with me. I didn’t need help with the case, but there would be time outside the investigating lark, and it would be fun to share that with a friend.

  ‘What have you got planned for the next couple of weeks?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing in particular. Why? Do you require the assistance of a first-class private detective?’

  I laughed. ‘No, but I have to go up to the reef for a few days and wondered if you’d like to come with me.’ I explained about the free airline tickets and that it was time I secured my own photographic proof that Mick was alive. ‘But it might be bad timing for you,’ I said. ‘And things could get a little dicey.’

  ‘How so?’

  Before making a decision, Daisy needed to be aware of my discoveries since we’d last discussed the case. It wouldn’t be fair to keep anything from her, so, in relevant detail, I brought her up to date on my investigations. When I’d finished, I thought I’d explained things rather well.

  ‘So Mick could turn nasty if he feels threatened?’ Daisy queried.

  ‘It’s possible, but that won’t involve you,’ I reassured her.

  ‘What, you think I’m going to lie on a beach while you’re having all the fun?’

  I smiled. ‘You can be the official photographer if you want.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she said eagerly.

  ‘Does that mean you’re coming?’

  ‘Oooh, it’s tempting. When are you thinking of going?’

  ‘As soon as I can arrange it.’

  Daisy wasn’t a ditherer. ‘I’d love to come with you,’ she said. ‘Ben will be home soon and he can look after Peppy while Dave’s at work. It’ll give them a chance to bond. Where will we stay?’

  Pleased by her enthusiastic response, I poured my tea and settled back and told her that I had brochures for a small island called Silver Gull, which was where Leila worked.

  Chairman Meow appeared in the bedroom doorway, looked around and then ran towards me and leapt onto the bed, narrowly missing the tea tray. It crossed my mind he may have been making sure Rafe wasn’t in the room. Amused, I stroked him while I told Daisy about Amelia Longfellow.

  ‘That explains why no one ever sees her,’ she said. ‘Poor Amelia.’

  We adopted suitably tragic voices, as one does when discussing such things, and then Daisy changed the subject.

  ‘Have you road-tested your new swimsuit yet?’ she asked, referring to the black costume with blue trimming that I’d bought when we’d hit the end-of-summer sales.

  ‘Yes. But I’ll need a bodyguard if I wear it again,’ I told her.

  ‘You wish,’ Daisy said laughing. ‘I’ll come by in the morning to look at the brochures. Ciao.’

  After I’d hung up I plumped the pillows again and pulled the throw rug a little higher. Chairman Meow snuggled up tight beside me and together we studied a brochure for Silver Gull Island.

  The overly embroidered blurb, which had been penned by an emotionally labile copywriter, described a sleepy little island where time stood still and visitors could relax in tranquil anonymity in a laidback and safe environment.

  ‘Well, we’ll soon fix that baloney!’ I told Chairman Meow.

  As they say, there’s many a true word spoken in jest.

  Chapter 40

  I must have dozed off.

  The phone woke me with a start and I reached over and picked up the bedside receiver. The clock said 6:10 pm.

  ‘Hello,’ I said groggily.

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ Hermione Longfellow snarled down the phone. ‘Nemony and I do not need help from you or anybody else. So keep your nose out of our business!’

  Oh, boy. I screwed up my eyes and squeezed the top of my nose with my fingers to wake myself up. ‘I was thinking of Amelia, not you,’ I said firmly, wondering if Hermione was at that very moment casting a spell on me via Telstra.

  ‘Amelia is fine. Nemony is fine. I’m fine,’ she said, her voice a mixture of indignation and anger.

  ‘Nemony is not fine,’ I replied calmly. ‘You told me so yourself.’

  Touché.

  There was a long silence, so long I wondered if Hermione was holding the phone out and making horrid faces at me through the receiver. I didn’t see why she wouldn’t be. I was certainly doing it my end.

  There was a loud huff. ‘I wish I’d never heard of you,’ she said viciously.

  ‘I’ll take your thanks as implied then, shall I?’ I said, and she hung up.

  Obviously not my number-one fan. But, more importantly, the phone call had alerted me that Hermione was not at all fine. My suggestion to seek additional help had touched a nerve, and a raw one, though this realisation didn’t stop me from wanting to scream and run through the apartment with scissors.

  Chairman Meow looked up at me and yawned.

  ‘Who was it,’ I asked him, ‘who said, “Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart”?’

  He didn’t know, but then neither of us is good at quotations.

  Pushing thoughts of Hermione aside, it was time to attend to medical needs and consider dinner.

  Chairman Meow followed me to the bathroom and watched while I did the necessary and gave myself an evening insulin injection. Looking up, I caught sight of myself in the cabinet mirror above the sink. Good grief! No wonder Vogue hadn’t been in touch lately for style tips.

  I brushed out my hair and retied the side plait, dusted bronzing powder on my face, applied lipstick and then changed into clean jeans, a white shirt and black Bally flats. It’s important to maintain standards when working from home. I’ve often said to the Chairman that if I were prime minister I’d ban tracksuits from the home office. Harper, if she were the Governor-General, would ban leaf blowers. Between us we had the bad stuff covered.

  There was nothing exciting in my fridge—well there was, but I couldn’t be bothered to cook—so I nipped down the back steps and into Miles’s kitchen where I scored Florentine roast pork and a winter salad of oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, green beans and asparagus.

  Through the swing door I could see that the restaurant was already filling with early diners. Thursdays were always busy and it was high time I gave Miles some kitchen help to honour my obligations for my Frequent Fryer plan.

  ‘I’ll come down later and help clear up,’ I told Miles as I gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek.

  ‘No you won’t,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘You need a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Bet you didn’t get much in Sydney,’ Mario chimed in.

  ‘I’m going to let that one go for now, Mario,’ I said and hurried upstairs before my blush set fire to the kitchen walls.

  The food was delicious. I ate at the kitchen table while listening to an episode of This American Life on my laptop. It was the true story of two baby girls who, in a small town in Wisconsin in 1951, were accidentally swapped at birth and grew up with the wrong families.

  The subject matter was thought-provoking and, my thoughts provoked and my meal finished, I brought up the photograph of Andrew and the unknown young woman on the screen and stared at it for a while. Why did she look so familiar?

  I was playing with the
image, zooming in and out on the girl’s face, when I suddenly saw what I should have recognised when I first looked at the photograph on Daisy’s computer.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ I said aloud. I stood up and walked a few steps and then put my head in my hands and said again, ‘Oh, my God!’

  Returning to my laptop, I studied the photograph again. If I was right, I needed to contact Andrew quickly and tell him that he had been seen with a young woman and that Harper thought he was having an affair. Otherwise he couldn’t fix this mess, and the matter would fester and my sister and nephews’ wounds would deepen.

  On the other hand, should I call my sister straightaway and tell her my guess as to the identity of the girl? If Harper hadn’t been pregnant I would have told her, but I didn’t think it would be wise to shock her at the moment. Particularly as she’d told me about the high rate of miscarriage in women over forty-five.

  I went to the study to call Andrew. I was still smarting from Hermione Longfellow’s warning to keep my nose out of her business, and I took a moment to consider if Andrew would make a similar comment, and if he did, was it warranted? As a journalist it’s technically my job to stick my nose into other people’s business, so you see my conundrum.

  Also, I didn’t relish a repeat of our last strained telephone conversation, so I planned to discuss the matter with my brother-in-law in a mature and reasoned manner.

  Despite my resolve, my hands were trembling as I punched Andrew’s work number into the phone.

  Chapter 41

  ‘Blaine-Richardson,’ Andrew said in his usual matter-of-fact way.

  His voice, as always, was a resonating baritone. This told me that Harper hadn’t rammed the broad bean pods up his nostrils and damaged any important nasal structures.

  ‘It’s Scout, Harper’s sister,’ I said, and immediately realised my stupidity. So much for a mature and reasoned manner.

  ‘I do know who you are.’ His tone mirrored my own slight amusement.

  ‘Sorry, Andrew,’ I said. ‘I was nervous about calling. I want to apologise for our last unpleasant conversation. Harper had told me about the row you’d had, and I guess I was taking her side a bit.’