by Sandy Vaile
“Sir, can I also request a Banker’s Record? I want to look into the financial records of someone involved in the case. I’m not sure if she’s a suspect or victim yet.”
“Sounds interesting. You can have the form, but you’ll need to have it approved by a magistrate.”
“Will do.” Luca stood.
Right, that was the easy part of his plan. Now for a potentially boring afternoon in his car. His primary objective now was to find out who Melanie Lane and Kevin Barnes were.
• • •
Luca unwrapped greaseproof paper from around a chicken salad roll and bit into it. Tangy mayonnaise and Dijon mustard combined to form a creamy dressing. It was four in the afternoon and his stomach had been growling for a while. He washed it down with a swig from a carton of chocolate milk. Not a gourmet meal, but very satisfying. He had been sitting in his car across the street from the entrance to Rich Haven since his meeting with Moss.
According to the work schedules Beverly had provided, Melanie Lane should be finishing work about now. He planned on following her home. Kevin Barnes would finish at four thirty and Luca couldn’t be in two places at once, so he’d have to come back tomorrow. He didn’t know what cars they drove, but he had both photo IDs on the seat beside him. One way or another he was going to find out where they lived and what they were up to.
The thefts he’d originally followed at Happy Vale Nursing Home had ceased when he started asking questions. But had they really stopped, or did the thieves just get smarter and replace the jewelry with replicas?
He screwed the sandwich paper into a ball, tossed it on the passenger floor, and dusted sesame seeds from his lap. With teeth bared at the rear view mirror, he checked for seeds. The white scar he got playing backyard cricket with Quinton and Gabe radiated from the corner of his lip like a faint vein.
At ten past four, a ginger-haired woman wearing the Rich Haven uniform approached the roadway on foot. She carried a large black handbag. He glanced at the photo of Melanie Lane—definitely one and the same.
Melanie strolled along the Rich Haven driveway, through the pedestrian gate, and sat on the bench at the bus stop, 100 metres away. She bent to rub the side of her ankle. Why did that seem familiar? He ran a finger down the margin of Kate’s notes as he scanned the lines. There it was—Melanie was a registered nurse who’d had an accident at work fifteen years ago. It left her with permanent damage to the lower right leg and a limp.
Luca knocked back the rest of the chocolate milk and compacted the carton as he Googled the bus timetable on his mobile. The next one was due at four twenty. Right on time, a bus squealed to a halt across the road and sunk closer to the ground with a hiss of expelled gas.
Luca put the folder on the passenger seat and started his car. As the bus pulled away from the curb, he put the Corolla into first gear and rested his fingers on the handbrake. The bus groaned from first to second gear and … Melanie was still seated at the bus stop. He had no idea what was going on, but turned the car off, hoping the noise of the bus had masked the engine noise.
If Melanie had made him, she might be waiting for his next move. He sunk lower and watched her in the side mirror. She pulled a compact from her handbag and applied lipstick, mushing her lips together to set the colour.
Fifteen minutes passed and his lower back ached from the slumped position he held. He could abandon the stakeout, but the woman had to leave some time.
At 4 thirty-seven a white Holden Commodore turned out of Rich Haven and pulled alongside the bus stop. Luca sat taller and looked over his shoulder. Melanie smiled and, without hesitation, got into the passenger seat. It was clear she knew the driver and was probably waiting for him, rather than accepting a random lift. Interesting.
Luca jotted down the registration number and waited until the Commodore pulled away from the curb before restarting the Corolla and pulling a U-turn.
• • •
“Thanks, Miss Ballinger.” Mya held the plate of blueberry muffins higher to show her gratitude.
“Oh, call me Doreen, dear. And you’re most welcome. Perhaps those Masons will think twice about terrorizing the neighbourhood now that you and Mr. Patterson have showed them who’s boss.” Doreen dabbed gently at her stiff, white hair as she backed out of Mya’s broken gate.
“Well, I’m not sure it’ll be that easy,” Mya told her.
Great, now half the neighbourhood expected her to perform some vigilante service. There had been two jars of cloth-covered homemade jam on her doorstep in the morning, and now the muffins.
“Hi, Mya.”
Mr. Reiner from next door dodged a geranium bush that overhung the footpath. The scrawny old bloke had a fistful of tools and a goofy grin.
She smiled. “Hey, my lawn isn’t long enough to hide snakes yet.” She tried to sound indignant.
“It can go another week,” he replied jovially, “but that gate is going to trip one of your fans.” His bony shoulders jiggled as he sniggered.
“Yeah, just what I need, a bunch of old folks thinking I’m going to save the neighbourhood.” She met him at the gate and extracted a handful of paper from the letterbox.
“Don’t worry. I don’t expect such heroic deeds every week.” Bert grinned and knelt to work on the broken gate hinge. “Besides, I reckon it was that strapping young man from the other side of my place who did most of the work.”
“Way to flatter me, Bert. And don’t think I didn’t hear about the cricket bat. You shouldn’t be getting yourself involved in scuffles like that, you know.”
Bert lined the end of a screwdriver up with a loose screw and started turning it clockwise. Mya flicked through junk mail. There was a sale at the local car yard, it was time to treat herself to a facial at Belinda’s Beauty Barn, and if she bought fish and chips for six dollars, she’d get a free soft drink.
“There. Good as new.” Bert stood and, with hands on his lower back, stretched backward. “Damn these old bones,” he mumbled. “Your fence is going to need a paint before long, too.”
She nodded agreement and scraped at a sliver of peeling paint.
“I saw Mr. Patterson leaving your place this morning.” Bert smiled hugely. “That was nice of him to take care of you all night.”
She swatted him with a take-away brochure, hoping her cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt. “Don’t be such a gossip. Hey, you want a blueberry muffin?” She shoved the plate at him and peeled back the ClingWrap.
Bert left, stuffing his mouth. There was one drawback to living in a street of old people. They were snoops.
With the plate of muffins balanced in the crook of her arm and junk mail between her lips, she opened the front door and an envelope at the same time. Halfway to the kitchen, the plate nearly came a cropper, so she put it on the dining table. She spit the junk mail on top and shook out the thrice-folded paper. It was jagged down the left margin, and her heart skipped a beat. The same backward slanting writing confronted her. Not another one!
Did you miss me, Mya? Living it up in that nice house, with that big motorbike you ride. I’ll bet it cost a small fortune.
Can you feel me breathing down your neck yet? It won’t be long before it’s time to pay up.
Mya’s hand went limp and the paper glided to the floor. She couldn’t suck air into her lungs, so she gasped short, unsatisfying breaths.
Suddenly she didn’t feel safe in the house. She ran to the front door and checked the bolts, then sprinted from room to room checking window locks. She turned the stereo on loud and checked the front door again.
When she’d finished, she stood in the hallway panting and concentrated on clenching and unclenching her teeth and breathing in and out. Her heart still beat faster than before. Shit, she was dealing with a psycho. What had she ever done to this woman?
Was Mya in real danger—or her mum? The thought of Rosalie sitting, quiet and non-responsive in her floral armchair, squeezed her lungs tighter still. Who the hell knew what this crazy woman was cap
able of, or if she was a puppet for someone else.
“I’ll change our names and move again.”
Overreact much? Take a chill pill! Besides, changing names takes ages, and getting Mum into another nursing home would take eons.
No, she’d wait and see how things panned out. She could take care of herself.
She glanced at a photo on the bookshelf of her mum in a floral summer dress, eating ice cream by the beach. It couldn’t hurt to make enquiries about moving her to another nursing home and changing their identities. After all, they only had each other.
Chapter 16
Luca wasn’t sure how long he planned to sit in his Corolla watching, what may or may not be Melanie’s house. He swigged water from a two-litre bottle that he kept on the passenger floor for emergencies. Spending a whole afternoon and evening in his car definitely constituted an emergency. After fossicking in the glove-box, he located a stick of chewing gum wrapped in green paper and wished he’d bought a second chicken roll and chocolate milk at the deli.
He saw the couple go inside sixty-three Listing Street three hours ago. Now he was bored, and worse, he had time to think. Sitting alone here was much the same as sitting alone at home. Having Mya in his bed made him tired of flying solo. Maybe he was really bad at reading women—out of practice—but she’d made it abundantly clear she wasn’t interested. Then she’d knocked on his front door and … Wow.
Maybe the way she acted and felt weren’t as transparent as he first thought.
She was so different from his late wife. Olivia had been graceful, softly spoken, nurturing. His best friend. Mya was guarded and independent, but it was the passion he liked about her. It was the autonomy that bothered him. Was she acting outside of the law? Willy Mason obviously had a beef with her—could it have something to do with the jewelry?
To pass the time, he radioed dispatch to request a registration trace on the car that had picked Melanie up. Surprisingly, it was registered to a Kevin Walker, not Barnes, at the same address. Surely it couldn’t be that easy. Changing a surname wasn’t much of a cover.
By eight o’clock the sun set and only dusky shadows were left as streetlights flickered on. He alternated between rotating his cramped ankles and stretching his arms over his head.
Then the front porch light went on. Melanie and Kevin jostled one another out the front door and clinched passionately. They trotted down the porch steps hand in hand and took off in the white Commodore again.
Luca’s hand shot to the ignition key, but he didn’t turn it. He watched the red taillights disappear around the corner and sat for another five minutes, clock-watching and thinking. Entering the property without just cause was illegal, but strictly speaking, he wasn’t on duty, and it couldn’t hurt to look around. He needed some concrete evidence to tell him who Kevin and Melanie really were.
The street was dark. He stepped out of the car and searched the boot for his crime scene kit. From it he extracted a pair of latex gloves and shoved them in his back pocket. He swapped his police-issue blue shirt for a less conspicuous black one and crossed the street at the darkest point, between the soft pools of illumination cast by the streetlights.
Searching the footpath and front yards, he strolled toward number sixty-three and stepped over the low iron fence. In the blackness cast by a tall ash tree, he pressed his back against the warm house bricks and listened.
Excessive risk taking, that’s what Moss would say. Luca pulled on the latex gloves and circumvented the porch light on his way to the side of the house.
The gate squeaked and he paused. Nothing and no one came running. There was no turning back now. Melanie and Kevin could be back any minute, so he made a quick visual sweep and moved forward.
Extracting a penlight torch from his trouser pocket, he held it low so the neighbours wouldn’t notice the glow bobbing. He hoped to hell there wasn’t a dog in the yard. All of his senses were alert, and he could smell the dampness on the lawn. He pointed the torch at the path and crept forward. There was only a footpath distance between the house and fence and he had to step over stacks of empty plastic plant pots, half a bag of cement dust, and planks of wood stacked against the house—termite heaven.
The backyard was softly illuminated from a far window. With his cheek pressed to the glass, he saw a dining table. The decor was right out of the ’70s, with orange pendant lights and sliding doors with bubbled-orange glass insets.
Car lights bounced into the driveway and through the front window.
Luca threw himself on the ground and scrambled to switch off the torch. Flat against the ground, he lay still.
The car engine revved. The lights changed direction, and then he heard it reverse. He commando-crawled to the corner of the house, jumped to his feet, and watched the car disappear down the road. Just someone turning around.
His heart tried to punch a hole in his chest and moisture prickled his upper lip. He needed to hurry this up. After a deep breath he peered through the dining room window. A mosaic lamp cast a distorted rainbow across shag carpet. To the right was a speckled laminate breakfast bar with dark wood-look cupboards and lime-green tiles over the sink. On the bench was a pile of opened mail. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands on it.
He spotted a hefty cement pot with an insipid palm in it. With a foot on each side of the rim, he held onto the window ledge and pulled himself up, tightening his fingers on the ledge as the pot rocked slightly.
The mail was clearer from this position. Bills, but he couldn’t read them. With one hand he pulled his phone from his pocket and angled it in the direction of the kitchen bench, zoomed in, and clicked.
The flash was super bright in the dark yard. He jumped to the ground and crouched under the window. Besides the thunder of his pulse, he didn’t hear any disturbance. He flicked the torch over his watch. Fifteen minutes on the property. Time to get out.
On the way out he shone the torch into the bathroom window. Although he was the first to admit he was no expert on women, it seemed that there were very few signs of a female living in the house. No woman’s touch, no underwear hanging on the shower rail, no makeup on the sink. Melanie Lane might have her own place.
As he passed the back door his shoulder brushed the silver handle on the screen door and it knocked against the frame. Surely not. He tried it. Unlocked. Seconds ticked by as he stood in the dark, trying to shake conflicting thoughts into a logical order. Nothing he found tonight would be admissible in court, and worse, he could lose his badge or end up in jail.
But he needed to know who these people were.
If they’d set up the same scam at Rich Haven, then the jewelry theft was just a front. Elderly women could die, and no one else was in a position to prevent it. With his gaze fixed on the old-fashioned lever handle, he ran a tongue around his dry mouth.
After another minute of indecision, he stepped back and closed the screen door.
• • •
Mya watched a short man with thick caterpillar sideburns, measure chips into a metal basket and plunge it into hot oil. The surface of the deep fryer turned into an ale-coloured foam, and she regretted her decision to get take-away for dinner. Boiled chips, gross. She leaned against the soft-drink fridge and felt a bead of sweat trickle down her cleavage.
Within five minutes she was headed home, swapping the butcher’s paper parcel from arm to arm to avoid scalding. She alternated it with a cool can of lemonade.
A familiar cricket-like chirping brought a smile to her lips. Her gaze followed a two-tone Volkswagen Kombi as it rattled past. It had a white roof and a pink lower half. Not the same as the one she coveted as a child, but it still reminded her of a happier time, when she was part of a real family. Jack hadn’t always been an abusive drunk.
On the day of her fourth birthday party, Mya sat on the lounge room floor in a circle with five kindergarten friends, playing pass-the-parcel. Jack Roach tousled her hair and knelt beside her.
“Happy birthday, Mya. I got you
a little something.”
The game was momentarily forgotten at the sight of a square box wrapped in iridescent-blue paper. She picked at the sticky tape, carefully peeling and folding it. It was going into her collection of precious things. Inside the plain brown box, she lifted a yellow VW Beetle. The cutest car she’d ever seen, complete with a daisy painted on the bonnet, just like the one she’d fallen in love with on their beach holiday. He’d remembered.
“I’m going to drive one like this when I’m a grown up,” she told him.
“No doubt.” Jack smiled.
Mya blinked the childhood memory away. Jack might have started out kind, but after his mother died …
Her shiver contradicted the humidity. Cockroach spent far too much time in her nightmares to deserve space in her consciousness, so she trudged on.
A full moon hung just above one horizon as the sun melted into the other. People were out enjoying the summer evening: couples holding hands, teenagers smoking and laughing. Mya stepped around a purple-flowering westringia, her gaze on the now grease-soaked parcel in her arms.
The quick footfalls didn’t catch her attention until the last moment. She braced as a pale figure collided with her. Air grunted from her lungs and the momentum knocked her back several steps. The soft drink can thudded to the ground, but she saved the fish and chips.
Wide panda-eyes glared at her. Two eyeliner trails trickled down pale cheeks and there was a small gash at the top of the girl’s left cheekbone. Blood was smudged into her hair as though she’d wiped it with the back of her hand.
The girl’s hand flew up and Mya wrapped her fingers around the exposed wrist to prevent an attack, if it was intended. It was Blondie—Paula Mason’s live-in friend with the multi-coloured hair.