Sentinel Rising: The Reardon Files #1

by Andrea Drew

  He headed for the kitchen where he found Gypsy in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and Mark propped up in his high chair. He walked over and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  "Morning, lovely," he said.

  Gypsy frowned at the frypan where a couple of egg yolks had burst. Her perfectionist nature wasn’t doing her any favours.

  "Morning." She didn't or wouldn't look at him. "Have you ever wondered if our abilities passed down to our son?"

  Connor halted halfway to the kitchen table. "What are you talking about? Did you see something?"

  "Let's not talk about it now. Maybe after I come back from kindergarten." She rolled her eyes toward Mark, a signal that she shouldn't talk about it in front of their son.

  "Yeah, okay," Connor said, and sat at the table. He looked across at Mark, still in his pyjamas.

  "Hi, gorgeous," Connor said, with a smile.

  "Da-da," Mark said, eyes bright and mouth wet.

  Connor reached across to brush his cheek. "I love you, son. You know that, you bundle of cuteness?"

  "Da-da," Mark said again, raising his hands as he did so.

  Gypsy brought the platter of eggs and bacon across to the table. Damn it smelled good.

  "This is nice," Connor said. “Thanks."

  She smiled. "It happened this morning. I heard Mark babbling upstairs in his room and realized he was awake.” They both looked at Mark who still had his hands in the air.

  "Pway," Mark said, still smiling.

  "Yes, honey, we'll play later," Gypsy said, taking a bite of her bacon.

  "What's on the agenda for you today, lovely?" Connor stabbed his fork into a piece of fried potato.

  "Actually, only few hours today. I've almost caught up on my writing so I might lash out and do some admin."

  "I might be out on the road today, depending on what comes up this morning. Want to go for a ride in Black Betty?"

  "The other woman?” she smiled faintly “Yeah, I'd like to get out of the house for a while," she said, finishing off the last of her eggs.

  "Well, I’m just taking a quick look at something before we leave " Connor said, pushing up from the table.

  He headed toward his office. His thoughts turned to the investigation. What did he have so far?

  A mother and sister missing, possibly murdered. A grieving husband, a senior sergeant moved to a new department coincidentally just four months from retirement. Large sums of money landing in his account for a supposed home renovation. An unfaithful husband, a possible closet bisexual, who didn't want his wife to know about his other life, but his secret had been revealed.

  The link between the two cases?

  Blackmail.

  He knew that once he followed the money, it would lead to the worm who had killed Lauren Whitehouse. He wouldn't give up, not a chance in hell. He walked back to the office with a renewed sense of purpose and determination surging in his chest.

  He slid into his chair, making himself comfortable. He took the file from its place at the top of the perched on the corner of his desk and opened it. He flicked through the pages until he found the time line of events he started just two days earlier.

  So far he had:

  November 12th – Jarrod Whitehouse requests move to Missing Persons Unit – Date for retirement from police force set at 1st March

  December 3rd – Jarrod and Lauren Whitehouse take out a loan against their home for $150,000 with the purpose of renovations

  Thursday Feb 10th – Lauren calls her sister Elizabeth distraught asking if she and her daughter Juliette can stay with her for a while – trouble in the marriage?

  Saturday 13th Feb – Elizabeth visits Lauren. Car in driveway but Lauren nowhere to be seen. Has been missing for just a few hours.

  Sunday 14th Feb – Elizabeth calls Connor distraught, suspecting Jarrod, her brother-in-law, has killed her sister.

  Monday 15th Feb – Elizabeth visits Connor promising to report her sister as missing with police.

  Connor rubbed at his lips, pen poised over the paper. He became aware of Gypsy hovering at the top of the three steps facing his desk. Mark wriggled in her arms.

  "We just wanted to say goodbye." She smiled vaguely.

  Mark extended his chubby sausage arms, encased in a Spiderman t-shirt. Connor pushed off from his chair and headed over to them, Mark's dark pools of eyes matching Gypsy’s.

  Buds of heat crinkled in his chest. He put one arm around Gypsy's shoulder and kissed her softly. Mark stretched his neck to look up at them both, and brought his hand up to Connor's cheek, resting it there.

  This was what life was all about. The soft gentleness of his two-year-old son’s palm rubbing on his cheek, gazing into his eyes. Mark had the soft look of a child yet also a piercing gaze of wisdom, one that had seen and heard many things, good and bad. As Connor held his son in his gaze, he vowed that nothing or no one would ever come between him and his family.

  "Bye, lovely," he said to Gypsy, "and thank you."

  "For what?" she said.

  He didn't care if she was fishing for a compliment. He'd give her what she wanted or needed to hear.

  "For this. For you, for my son. Thank you." His voice sounded more hoarse than usual to his own ears.

  Gypsy bowed her head and hoisted Mark's kinder bag further up her shoulder but not before her eyes misted over.

  "Let's talk when I get back huh? About that thing..."

  "I remember." He said. "I might need your help if I can, too."

  "Sure," she said and headed outside.

  Connor scuttled back into his chair, eager to carry on where he left off.

  He began writing questions on the page below the timeline of Lauren's disappearance.

  1. Why didn't she take her car with her?

  2. Why didn't her husband or her sister report her as missing immediately?

  3. What happened to the $150,000 loan?

  4. If she has been murdered, where is the body?

  Connor decided to focus on the money trail first as potentially offering more answers. He reached across the desk to activate the mouse and fire up the investigatory software. He'd installed it around the time he acquired a lucrative contact with an insurance company investigating the validity of various claims, and the tailor-made software had proved unfailingly useful.

  His first stop was to find out where the $150K went. He tapped in the details for Jarrod Whitehouse. The bank account was a joint one in both Lauren and Jarrod's name, and thankfully hadn't yet been frozen. Funds landed in the bank account December 19th. Next, he clicked on a new search, setting the filter for outgoing payments of ten thousand dollars or more leaving the account.

  The egg timer invaded the screen for around ten seconds as the software performed a search. Connor sat up straight in his chair, pulling it closer to the desk as the program pinged to notify him of search results.

  At least six payments had been made, the first for twelve thousand dollars, the second for fourteen thousand, and then increasing in both amount and frequency. In total close to ninety thousand dollars had been paid from the account of Lauren and Jarrod Whitehouse to Paradise Bay investments, the last payment for twenty-two thousand made just a week prior to her disappearance. The date of the first payment was January 12th, and the last payment on February 15th, the same day Elizabeth Metcalfe visited Connor.

  All eight payments were to the same recipient: Paradise Bay Trust Investments Pty Ltd.

  Interesting.

  Connor minimised the financial search software and clicked to open the online search engine. He searched for Paradise Bay Trust. Nothing.

  His next stop was the ASIC website, Australian Securities and Investment Commission. All trusts and companies needed to list their details with the governing body. He typed in Paradise Bay Investments Pty Ltd in the search field. Within seconds, results appeared.

  Hugh Fraser owned Paradise Bay Investments.

  The name sounded familiar. Hugh Fraser was either a public figure o
r had been mentioned in the media. Connor's fingers almost became tangled amongst themselves in the excitement of tapping the keys; the thrill of the hunt was real whether it occurred in a dark suburban street, the hills and valleys of various rural areas, or an online search for perpetrators of fraud, blackmail, and possibly murder.

  His heart thudded a little faster, knocking against his ribcage.

  He paused, frozen in position, as he read the media article from eight months prior.

  Hugh Fraser, you dirty dog.

  Hugh, in a former life, had been a property developer, and for a while, he'd ridden the wave. He invested in multiple developments of units and apartment blocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He bought the land cheap and stacked tiny units on it, modern and faceless, each one exactly like the other.

  They'd sold off the plan in record time, young urban professionals flocking to Hugh's company, Elite and Beyond Property Group. The cashed up and trendy buyers had been lured by loopholes in tax law, negative gearing the properties as investments and hoped to reap the rewards.

  However, Hugh's greed had driven him to new extremes. He'd sold 60 apartments and due to a dispute with the builder, the properties had never got off the ground, quite literally.

  Numerous creditors, including sub-contractors led by the high-profile builder, not to mention the many property investors, had lost their dreams. They’d cashed in all they could lured by big promises, and lost thousands of dollars on a deal big on promises and low on follow through.

  Hugh had gone into hiding, laying low at his property in Upwey, based at the foot of the Mount Dandenong ranges. Of course, given time, several of his creditors had tracked him down and turned up seeking satisfaction.

  One of the builders, Greg Newham, had a gun and wasn't afraid to use it.

  Hugh had retreated to his underground cellar, via a trapdoor at the rear of his property. By way of a small and fortuitously placed underground tunnel, he'd followed it through to the end, which emerged at the boundary fence on his property which backed onto a school. As several furious creditors fired at the property they thought he was in at that time, demanding he come out and show himself, Hugh was already in his vehicle and heading for the hills.

  Greg Newham was charged, and the matter died a slow death in the media.

  Hugh Fraser had filed for bankruptcy a few weeks after the shooting. Of course, several of the more desperate media outlets had found him, chasing him with cameras and mics, but Hugh had simply responded with the perennial fallback position of 'no comment.'

  The farce had occurred nearly nine months earlier.

  Six months ago, however, Hugh Fraser had formed a new company, Fraser Family Trust, otherwise referred to as the Paradise Bay Fund.

  Interestingly, Jarrod Whitehouse was making regular payments to a disgraced builder’s family trust account. The key was to learn whether this money was for renovations which to Connor's untrained eye, hadn't occurred, or whether these were payments to either keeping Hugh Fraser quiet, or were payments for services rendered.

  Such as murder for hire.

  The quiet hum of the silver seven seater vehicle increased in volume until Gypsy parked at the end of the double driveway, right beside his black coupe, Black Betty, before turning off the engine to the family car she drove.

  Connor shifted his gaze past his computer screen, watching her through the front window as she turned the car off, got out, ran her fingers through her hair, and then activated the electronic lock. She headed up the steps to the front door, purple handbag slung over her shoulders and two coffees in her hand.

  She had coffee. The woman got more attractive with every passing minute. Between the sight of his beautiful fiancé carrying coffee and the sunlight shining off the paint job on his black charger coupe, he wondered if this was heaven.

  The front door clicked open, and then there she was, standing at the top of the three narrow steps that lead to his office. Her cheeks were flushed and her deep bright eyes adjusted to the light and became aware of his expression, and the opened folder on his desk.

  She stepped down and sank into a seat opposite his desk.

  "Best part of the day." She smiled and slid one of the coffees across to him.

  "Thanks," he said. He paused to take a sip of the coffee, leaning back in his chair before placing the cup in front of his keyboard. "I've made some interesting discoveries while you were away."

  "Oh, yeah, like what? We've won the lotto? You're quitting your day job and you've bought tickets to the Bahamas?"

  "Not quite," he said. "Most crimes are motivated by greed, lust, jealousy, or money. I decided to follow the money and pulled a few strings to see what was at the end. I found something interesting. I'm just not sure yet exactly what it means."

  "Oh, yeah. Where did the yellow brick road lead then?" One of her eyebrows wriggled upwards.

  "To Hugh Fraser, a former property developer."

  "Hugh Fraser? Where have I heard that name before?"

  "Probably in the media. He owed more than half a million bucks to investors for properties they paid for and never got. The builder and some of the creditors tracked him down. The builder fired shots, and Hugh escaped out of a secret underground tunnel."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yeah, seriously. Greg Newham was charged, and Hugh Fraser went bankrupt. Hugh formed a family trust a few months ago, and Jarrod Whitehouse has been making regular payments into it to the tune of ninety thousand dollars, spread out over six payments."

  "Dodgy bastard. Those poor people." She crossed her arms and turned away, lips pressed together until they were almost white.

  "Which begs the question. Why did Jarrod Whitehouse pay Hugh that kind of money? According to the bank, he needed 150K for a home renovation but as far as I could see when I visited his home, not a stick has been changed."

  "Obviously, he wanted his wife out of the way, and Hugh Fraser knew the right people to get the job done."

  "Maybe, that or hush money. Whitehouse had a secret he didn't want anyone to know, especially his wife. The question is how Hugh Fraser found out about it."

  "What kind of secret?"

  He didn’t want to give her too much information, worried she’d do as she had in years gone by and take an investigation and run off on her own with it.

  "What's more important right now is that I talk to Ryan. He doesn't work in Missing Persons, but he does work in Criminal Investigations Bureau, and whether this was blackmail or murder, or both, he needs to know about it."

  "You can't leave me in suspense like this, Connor. What the hell did Whitehouse do that cost him nearly a hundred grand to keep it quiet?"

  "What kind of things would a cop want to keep quiet?"

  "I dunno. You'd know better than I do. An affair, drug problem, mental health issues, money problems?"

  "Nah, cops run into those problems pretty regularly. This was something out of the box, unusual, not your usual habit."

  "How to put an idiot in suspense eh?"

  Connor opened his mouth, but was interrupted by the land line ringing loudly on his desk. The call number displayed showed Ryan's mobile number.

  "Speak of the devil," Connor said. "It's Ryan. I better take this."

  He answered the phone, keeping his tone direct and to the point.

  "Thought I'd check in and see what's up,” Ryan said. “How's it going?"

  "Oh, you mean the headache? All good, almost back to business as usual." Connor rubbed his fingers across his mouth. "Listen, while I've got you on the phone, has the missing person’s report on Lauren Whitehouse been filed?"

  "You know I can't tell you that." Ryan's voice had reduced dramatically in both pitch and volume. "I'll lose my job."

  Connor let out a breath. Gypsy looked at him, the raised eyebrow making an encore performance.

  "I know, but you can't blame me for asking. I do have information that will affect the investigation of her disappearance, though. I know it's not you
r department as such, but if or when Lauren is found, alive or dead, the information I've discovered could come in useful."

  Ryan paused. "Okay, mate, how about you come by after work tonight? I'd swing by your place but Isabella's teething and Christie's practically tearing her hair out. I reckon she'd like to talk to someone other than me."

  "Right," Connor said. "I'll ask Gypsy and Mark to come along then. Say around 7.30?"

  "Sounds good," Ryan said, and the line went dead.

  Gypsy shifted onto the edge of the seat. "What was that all about?"

  "Ryan suggested we go over to visit later. Christie could do with a friend right now, and I don't think her father will do the job. Plus, this case is moving at a rapid rate and I can't arrest anyone, but Ryan can."

  "Is it really that close?"

  "Close enough that he needs to be involved.” He rubbed at his chin and pursed his bottom lip. “What were you hinting at this morning? Something up with Mark that I need to know about?"

  Gypsy coughed and looked at the floor. "What do you think Mark can do given our abilities?”

  "We’ll find out I guess. Why?"

  "I went up there last night when I heard him babbling away, only I don't think he was babbling to himself. There were beings up there, spirits. I can see them occasionally, transparent figures. When I got to the room, he was sitting up in his cot staring. I saw them too. Mark said 'friends,' and it was clear as day, his pronunciation of it. "

  Connor couldn't speak, so Gypsy continued.

  "Some of the beings in his room weren't exactly friendly. I lay him back down and rubbed his back and calmed him down a bit. I sent a message to his friends to let them know they should go away and come back later. Some of them did but the rest of them......"

  "What are you saying? That he's a psychic, too?"

  "I'm saying we should be more aware of this sort of stuff with him. If Mark did inherit our abilities, now is usually the time when it presents itself. And as I left, the door banged closed. These weren't your average spirits, not the friendly type. I'm worried about our son and what this means."

  Connor rubbed at the frown etched deeply into the middle of his forehead. "What do you want me to do?"