Where There's a Will

by Virginia Hale

  The woman licked her lips and smiled. “Thank you.” She released a deep breath and followed Dylan inside.

  Dylan stepped around the counter and up onto the low platform. She looked down as the woman pulled out her wallet. Her hands shook around the small leather clutch. God, one of those anxious types. Why did they insist on coming to the homestead? It was as though they had something to prove to themselves. Was a local therapist prescribing Blaxland Homestead tours in lieu of Prozac? Dylan needed this therapist’s number. She wanted to give their clinic a call and ask them to cease fire.

  “I hoped to make it in time for the last tour?”

  “You sure have,” Dylan said. “That’ll be ten dollars.” As she watched the woman dig through her wallet for coin, she stared at the crown of Blondie’s head, at her dark roots, and like a charge of voltage, the epiphany seized her.

  Since receiving her copy of the will, Dylan had spent a total of three minutes Facebook-stalking Dr Elizabeth Hordern. Armed with just a name and location, Dylan had found her profile in seconds. She’d only been able to access four pictures and a cover photo of a Sydney beach, but that was enough to identify the former brunette digging through her wallet right here in front of her.

  Dylan stood stock-still, watching as Elizabeth Hordern counted coins. What the hell was happening? Was the doctor a few sandwiches short of a picnic? Dylan looked down at her name tag to check it hadn’t fallen off—there it was, big and bold. Unmissable. Blondie had to know who she was. They both had copies of Elma’s will. Surely Dylan’s name played on Elizabeth’s mind just as much as Elizabeth’s played on hers. So why the fuck hadn’t she introduced herself? What the hell was this? Was she being auditioned by her co-owner?

  Elizabeth slid five dollars’ worth of gold coins across the glass counter and continued to hunt for silver, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  Dylan slid her tongue along her teeth. There were so many things she could say. Gee, Lizzie, you look good on a laptop screen, but real life really brings out the blue in your eyes. Or, So, when did you decide to go blond? Before, or after your trip to Bali in May of 2015? Instead: “We have an EFTPOS machine if that’s easier. But I mean, don’t worry if you don’t have the full ten. Nobody’s going to go hungry if you’re short seventy cents.”

  Elizabeth’s gaze shot up. “Oh no, I have it, it’s just in shrapnel if that doesn’t bother you…”

  “Not a problem. Counting ten-cent coins is my favourite way to relax on an evening.”

  Elizabeth chuckled, the laugh lines at the corner of her mouth deepening. Dylan leaned her elbows on the counter and watched as she slid silver coins across the glass counter. “There you go,” Elizabeth said. “Double-check it but that should be five.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan swiped the coins from the glass like breadcrumbs and without counting, poured the handful into the till. She stared pointedly at Elizabeth as the coins rained loudly from her palm.

  Elizabeth averted her gaze. “I’m…I’m glad I made it in time.”

  “Mmm, plenty of time. Last tour’s not ’til five.”

  “Google says that the last tour is at four. I rushed over here.”

  “That’s what the previous owner had up on la interwebs, but we lost her a month ago.” As I’m sure you’re aware. “I run my own race now, you know? I like to invent my own summer hours. I’m pretty dedicated to the job.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, why ruin someone’s day just because traffic was bad on the M1? Most only come to Jembala Lakes to see our homestead. It’s my way of paying it forward—especially since the owner left it to me.”

  Dylan paused. There it was, a chance, the perfect opening for Elizabeth to introduce herself.

  “Well…that’s considerate of you.”

  Dylan clicked her tongue and ran her gaze over Elizabeth’s features. God, she was gorgeous. Gorgeous and strange.

  “Yeah, I’ve been employee of the month for five months now. I’m on a real roll. If I keep it up all the way to Christmas, I win a free dinner at the bowling club bistro.”

  “You have other people working here?” Dylan noticed the hint of surprise in Elizabeth’s voice.

  “No, I’m kidding again. I’m the only one here. And my parents run the bowlo bistro.”

  Their gazes locked. Dylan stared, unabashed, waiting.

  Elizabeth danced her nails on the counter. “So, is it just me for the tour then?”

  “There’ll be others. Next tour isn’t for another forty minutes.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “Forty minutes?”

  Two can play at this game. Dylan looked down at her watch. “Wait.” She raised a finger. “I stand corrected. Forty-three minutes.”

  Elizabeth huffed. “Well, can I go into the house in the meantime?”

  “Oh, no. No way. Solid nope. Can’t have anybody inside unsupervised. People get a real kick out of carving their initials into the wardrobe that Sarah Blaxland stuffed her stepsister’s body into.”

  Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “Do I look like a thirteen-year-old graffiti artist?”

  “No, but you do look like a fainter.” She winked.

  There was something about Elizabeth’s prolonged stare, the way she wasn’t thrown by Dylan’s obvious flirtation. She didn’t fluster like other women usually did. Dylan knew how good she looked, and Elizabeth hadn’t blinked an eye. Interesting.

  “Well, what do you suggest I do for the next forty-three minutes?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Um, let’s see. There’s a Woolworths in town…”

  Elizabeth’s expression blanked. “You’re suggesting that I go grocery shopping while I wait?” She looked out the window at the empty driveway. “Look, I really doubt that anybody is going to show up now considering that Google says this place closes at four.”

  “There’s no need for negativity.” Dylan pulled down the blinds to block out the blinding afternoon sun. “People always show.”

  Elizabeth pursed her lips.

  “Well,” Dylan said, “Regardless of how you decide to spend the next forty minutes, I need to pop inside for a bit.”

  “May I wait in here?” Elizabeth asked prissily. “Out of the wind?”

  Get a load of Oliver Twist over here. “You may do whatever you like.”

  As she made to leave, Dylan stopped in the doorway. She turned back. Elizabeth was looking through the glass counter at the television memorabilia donated by the director who had shot the Australian classic The Blaxland Files on the property way back in the nineties. The glowing orange light of the heater played on her perfect skin. Dylan bristled. God…what the hell was this chick’s problem? The charade had gone on too long. “I’m sorry,” Dylan tried, “What did you say your name was?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes snapped up to the door. “I…I didn’t.” She licked her lips. “I’m Beth.”

  Dylan smiled tersely. “You look just like a Beth.”

  True to her word, when Dylan returned ten minutes later, a couple from Queensland had joined Beth in the gift shop. Dylan had only had a chance to greet the couple when they were closely followed by two young German women with little English.

  “Okay,” Dylan said, “Is everybody ready to go in now?”

  “You said forty minutes,” Beth said. “It’s only been fifteen.”

  Dylan shrugged. “I guess I changed my mind.”

  Beth knew the house. She knew it well. Dylan didn’t miss the way her shoulders sagged like a soldier returning home when she stepped through the front door, or the way her eyes shot left when Dylan said, “Let’s go into the sitting room,” while the rest of the group mistakenly turned right into the parlour.

  Beth straggled behind the tour.

  Dylan poked her head back into the sitting room. Beth stood in the centre of the room, blanched by the murder scene from the award-winning The Blaxland Files telemovie playing on the TV in the corner.

  “Are you coming upstairs with the rest of us?”

  Beth�
��s gaze snapped to the doorway.

  “Hurry up,” Dylan said bluntly, looking between Beth and the actress portraying Sarah Blaxland on the TV. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  Dylan cleared her throat and leaned back against the Empire antique dresser in Sarah Blaxland’s bedroom. “Now, in her first testimony, Sarah claimed to be reading in this room sometime between twenty past six and twenty to seven—the exact time frame when her stepmother was being brutally murdered outside. Then, after she finished the chapter, Sarah claimed that she grew bored with that book and went through to Aileen and her father Garland’s, bedroom to borrow a poetry book from Aileen’s bedside table. She didn’t notice anything strange. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Because if Sarah had gone into her parents’ bedroom,”—Dylan re-enacted the walk, her feet dragging across the rug as she stopped in the doorway to the hallway—“she definitely would’ve seen the maid’s body at the end of the hall under that window.”

  The group all moved to the doorway to get a glimpse of Dylan’s line of vision. They ohhed and ahhed in agreement. Dylan crossed back into the room and planted a hand on the connecting door to the next bedroom.

  “Now—get this: when Sarah was questioned about this in her second testimony, she suddenly changed her mind on the stand. She clarified”—Dylan put air quotes around the word—“that she didn’t step out into the hall at all, but used this connecting door right here to go through to Aileen and Garland’s bedroom. And here’s the kicker: nobody bothered to check that the door even opened from Sarah’s side. They were so hellbent on not convicting a nineteen-year-old girl of her father, stepmother and stepsister’s murder—and let’s not forget Annie their maid—that the prosecution didn’t question it any further. Only now are modern historians hypothesising that this door had been locked for a long time before Sarah had even thought about picking up an axe and—”

  A voice piped up from the sidelines. “I’m sorry, but that’s actually incorrect.”

  Chapter Three

  Beth watched pointedly as Dylan shifted from foot to foot. “Come again?”

  “That door wasn’t locked at all,” Beth said.

  Dylan’s stare was fixed. “False.”

  Beth could feel the eyes of every person in the room flickering between them. She corrected her posture. “It’s not false. Sarah was furious about the fact that Aileen was always running to Garland and claiming that Sarah spied on them, watched them like a hawk. It explains one of Sarah’s primary motives for murder. Sarah wrote about it in one of her letters to her cousin a year before the murders. She explicitly says that her stepmother wanted nothing more than a lock to that door, but that Garland refused her wish. I’m sorry to step in, but it definitely wasn’t locked. Sarah could have been telling the truth. She wasn’t necessarily lying.”

  Dylan’s expression turned smug. “Hate to break it to you, but that’s old info. Four months ago, a new portrait of Aileen and Garland emerged, taken two months before the murders. If you’re familiar with the set of original photographs—and it sounds to me like you would be—you’ll notice that it’s from the same series, but this new one of Aileen and Garland is taken on the other side of their bedroom. You can very clearly see that the adjoining door is bolted from Aileen and Garland’s side. I’d show you the photo myself, but they’re still restoring it down in Canberra. Anyway, an academic from Queensland thinks Sarah’s brother Jimmy removed the lock sometime during the trial when she confessed to him what she had done. They think he took care of it, made sure that if that line of inquiry reopened, her story would add up. I hear what you’re saying—the letter to the cousin is dated a year before the murders, but the photo is from two months before. So yeah,” she finished, “false.”

  Embarrassment crept hotly across Beth’s neck as the group turned to her. She only had to glance across the room and into the mirror in Sarah Blaxland’s dresser to see that her cheeks were tinged pink. In the reflection, she watched the woman to her right cringe awkwardly at her husband.

  “Well,” Dylan said. “Any other questions?”

  Silence.

  Dylan’s gaze swept across the room. “What about any other contradictions?”

  A hearty chuckle escaped the man in front and Beth wished for the ancient floorboards to part beneath her feet and the house to swallow her whole.

  “Okay then,” Dylan said. “Let’s go downstairs. Watch your head, crew, ceiling’s low at the bottom of these stairs.”

  The last to follow, Beth stopped at the top of the winding staircase at the back corner of the house. She’d taken this flight of stairs each morning, straight down into the kitchen where she’d always find Elma waiting with a hot cup of tea. She turned and looked up the opposite flight of stairs that led higher to the loft—her old bedroom.

  “What’s the hold up?”

  Beth spun. Dylan was waiting, her clear blue eyes gleaming.

  Beth took her in. Dylan’s ashy blond hair was up in a twist, her unblemished face completely devoid of makeup. The baggy khaki cargo pants tucked into Doc Martens and striped jumper combo were…different. It was hard to decide whether Dylan looked like a child who had dressed themselves for the first time, or somebody who had hunted through a Salvation Army bin with her eyes closed and pulled out whatever felt good to the touch. On King Street in Newtown, Beth wouldn’t have looked twice at the unusual outfit, but here? In Jembala Lakes? Beth had watched the tour patrons look Dylan up and down when she’d shucked her denim jacket at the beginning of the tour. Dylan was a contradiction—soft, charming, but obviously prickly.

  “After you, ma’am,” Dylan murmured.

  Beth’s intention hadn’t been to patronise Dylan. For somebody so young, Dylan was doing a fantastic job. She was enthusiastic, and obviously knew the house, its history and the latest research. Beth just hadn’t been able to help herself. While she was quiet, she never shied away from a healthy debate. Once the initial comment had fallen from her lips, Dylan had fired back like she thought Beth was out to get her. Beth hadn’t meant to do that at all.

  “I’m sorry about back there,” Beth said softly. “I think you misread my tone. Honestly, I didn’t mean to—”

  The corner of Dylan’s lips quirked. “It’s fine.”

  Their gazes locked. Beth’s guilt multiplied as the encounter played on a loop in her mind.

  “Really,” Dylan insisted. “Go on.”

  As Beth stepped down, the side of her head slammed into the sharp rim Dylan had warned them about. Bone to timber echoed. In foggy agony, Beth watched Dylan cringe on the step behind as Beth’s expression contorted in a mixture of shock and pain. The vein at the side of her head throbbed so fiercely that she couldn’t even summon the effort to raise a hand to her temple. The pointed lip of the ceiling had hit a horrible sweet spot between bone and nerve. How had she forgotten the way the ceiling dropped on the turn? Her teeth sank into the skin of her bottom lip and she closed her eyes tightly. Don’t cry, don’t cry…

  “Ouch,” Dylan hissed. “Don’t know what did more damage—your head, or the ceiling.”

  The hairs stood on the back of Beth’s neck. “I’m good.”

  “That’ll leave a bump and a half.”

  Beth’s tongue was a paperweight in her mouth. “That edge is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” she managed. She forced her eyes open.

  Dylan scoffed. “Yeah. Somebody needs to do something about that.” Light eyes bore into her own. “Maybe you can let management know, hey Doc?” Her eyes were clear, dancing. I know exactly who you are, she glared.

  Beth gripped the bannister, swaying halfway on the staircase as a wave of dizziness washed over her. Instantly, Dylan’s hands grasped at her shoulders to still her. “Shit. Are you okay?” Her expression was etched with concern.

  “I’m fine,” Beth whispered.

  Dylan’s thumb and index finger were gentle on Beth’s chin as she turned her neck to inspect the tender, reddening spot at her hairline. “If you say so,” she
murmured dubiously, “But it looks like that’s going to turn purple. Sit the rest of the tour out. We can talk later. Wait in the parlour?”

  Nodding, she let Dylan help her down the stairs, her hand cupped at Beth’s elbow. She watched as the guide disappeared into the kitchen and didn’t move from the bottom step until Dylan’s voice was nothing but a murmur.

  Her head pounded as she floated down the hallway, past the dining room, around the grand staircase and into the parlour. The room was warm. Too warm. She shucked off her oversized scarf and coat and sat stiffly on the loveseat, an uncanny replica of the one on which Sarah’s father’s lifeless body had been found sprawled.

  She looked around the room. Nothing had changed. As it had ten years before, the house still smelled of furniture polish and cinnamon. Dylan’s murmurs muffled as they reached the parlour from far away. The setting sun spilled through the windows, across the patterned rug, over the end of the loveseat and up the faded floral wallpaper. The sunlines matched those of the crime scene photographs, slothfully documented twenty-two hours after the Blaxlands’ bodies had been found.

  Beth pressed a hand to her temple and sighed against the pain. So much had happened since she’d left Elma—graduation, girlfriends, grants. But the Earth still revolved around the sun, the afternoon light streaming into the Blaxland Homestead just as it had in 1901, forever a witness.

  Beth reclined against the loveseat and looked over at the three mannequins in the corner, two silicone parents and their murderess daughter standing on sun-dappled carpet. Poor Aileen. Poor Garland. Poor Sarah. Three sets of beady eyes stared blankly at Beth. I’m going to close my eyes, she told the Blaxlands. Just for a moment…

  The grandfather clock struck the hour, shaking the skeleton of the homestead. Beth’s eyes shot open as she sat up. The house was dark, silent but for the tick, tick of the clock in the hallway and the familiar, gentle creak of the floors. Oh god, how long was I asleep? The faint light of the sitting room television—that god-awful murder scene playing on repeat—cast a sterile glow into the hallway. Shivering, Beth quickly slipped her arms into her coat and pulled her scarf from the back of the loveseat. She raked her fingers through her hairline and winced.