Aside from a variety of birds enjoying a sunny day in the tropics, I appeared to be alone. I glanced in the direction I thought I’d seen movement before. If someone had been there, they weren’t anymore. Or perhaps no one had been there, and my habit of overthinking everything had reared its ugly head.
Adelaide walked outside and stood beside me. “Now what are you doing?”
“Before you came into the house, I could have sworn someone was back here.”
Hands on hips, she glanced around. “Well, no one is here now, and I doubt anyone was here earlier. People in this neighborhood have been running scared ever since those two were killed, and I can’t understand why. The killer won’t strike here again. If he decides to kill again, he’ll move to new ground.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I watch those crime shows. Only an idiot would return to the same place twice. That’s just asking to get caught, in my opinion.”
It depended on the idiot. Serial “idiots” had a strange fascination with reliving the murder by returning to the place it happened. But I wasn’t interested in engaging her in a debate. Not after what I’d just put her through.
“Grace came to your house the night her mother was killed,” I said.
Adelaide nodded. “She did. Never seen a girl so scared as she was that night. She kept repeating herself, babbling on about her mum on the floor surrounded in blood. It’s just so crazy, isn’t it? She escapes that house and minutes later, Hugh gets murdered too. Lunatic who killed them must have been sitting there, lurking in the shadows, waiting. It’s any wonder she made it out alive. Poor thing. Her life is challenging enough. She didn’t deserve the hell she’s gone through.”
“Challenging because she has Down syndrome?”
“That too, but also because she’s a teenager, and she’s just learning what being her age is all about.”
“Did something happen to Grace recently?” I asked.
“She had her little heart broken.”
“How?”
“Grace became friends with a boy at school this year named Tommy Walker. She was sweet on him, and as far as I could tell, he felt the same way she did. It was cute, seeing the two of them together. She loves cheese pizza, and he used to bring a box around, and they’d sit on the front porch, laughing and carrying on. One day, Caroline looked out the window to check on them, and she saw Tommy give Grace a kiss. It was innocent enough, but Caroline sent Tommy home straightaway. She told him he couldn’t come back—not for a while, at least. Broke Grace’s heart. Caroline was always a tad overprotective when it came to Grace. Guess I couldn’t blame her, though.”
“When did this happen?”
Adelaide glanced to the side, thinking. “Oh, about three months ago or so, I’d say.”
“Did you ever see Tommy at the house after Caroline told him not to come around?”
She shook her head. “As far as I know, they only saw each other at school.”
“You seem to know a lot about Grace.”
“I do know a lot about her. She used to come over sometimes after school, and we would watch Mastermind Australia. You ever see it?”
“I haven’t.”
Adelaide shook her head. “You’re missing out. It’s a game show. They ask trivia questions. It’s kind of like that show you have in the States. You know the one. What’s it called?”
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
“Oh, no. It’s much more intense than that. Let me see now. I believe it’s called Jeopardy.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious at the house since the murders happened?” I asked.
She winked. “Besides you, you mean? No. I haven’t.”
“What did you think about Caroline’s boyfriend, Hugh?”
“Seemed all right. You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who just popped around to pick up Grace’s clothes. How do you know James, anyway? Are you two dating or something?”
“I’m married.”
She shrugged. “So what?”
“I met James on my last visit to Australia. It was the week he was supposed to be married. I knew one of the bridesmaids.”
Adelaide leaned in and lowered her voice, even though no one else was around. “That was some nasty business. Rumor was he called his wedding off because his fiancée had an affair the week of the wedding. Back when all this was going on, I’d asked Caroline about it, but she wouldn’t give me any details. Is it true? Did his fiancée have an affair? She’s a complete arse if she did. That man’s as steamy as one of those Fifty Shades novels.”
“It’s not my place to talk about it.”
She nodded. “Right. Better you didn’t, then.”
“Do you know of anyone who wanted to harm Caroline?”
“It’s like I told the police. Caroline was a good person, well-respected in the community. Everyone seemed to like her. But you never know about people. There’s a lot of crazy in the world today. Can’t be too careful.”
On this single topic, we agreed.
She glanced at her watch, gasped, and then bolted toward the back gate. “Oh, my. Look at the time. I have to get going. I have a meat pie on the counter that needs to be put into the oven. Nice meeting you.”
Adelaide headed back to her house, leaving me deep in thought about the conversation we’d just had and where to take my investigation next. Caroline’s office seemed like the most logical idea, and I hoped I’d get lucky somehow. On the way to the car, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I thought I saw in the backyard and why the troublesome feeling I had was lingering, even now. It had felt like someone was there, camouflaging himself behind the shrubbery. I couldn’t shake how real it seemed.
Something else was bothering me too. Tommy Walker. I wondered how he’d felt after being told he was banned from seeing Grace at the house. If he had been angry with Caroline about being sent away, was it possible his anger was enough to drive him to kill? And why hadn’t James spoken of him?
Although I didn’t relish the idea of spending more time with Adelaide, she seemed adept at knowing everyone’s business. I wondered if she would know who Evan Hall was and where Tommy Walker lived. Figuring it was worth an extra five minutes of my time to ask, I crossed the street and headed to her house for answers.
Adelaide’s front door was slightly ajar when I reached it. Not comfortable walking in like she’d just walked in on me, I tapped on the door screen.
“Adelaide?” I said. “It’s Sloane. I have a couple questions I forgot to ask you before.”
If she heard me, she gave no indication of it. A television was on somewhere inside. The volume was high enough that it may have masked my voice. I called out to her again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
I tried the latch on the door. It was open. I walked inside.
“Adelaide. It’s Sloane. I’m coming in.”
I followed the foyer to the kitchen and glanced around. The oven was on. The meat pie she’d come home to fuss over was still resting on the counter. Dishes were soaking on the left side of the sink, and the faucet was running on the right. I switched it off. I turned around, and my shoes squeaked. I glanced down, seeing a few splotches of water across the floor next to the mat in front of the sink.
For a woman who looked to be in her eighties, she appeared sharp and intelligent, like there wasn’t much in life that got past her. Intelligent people didn’t leave their faucet running and their front door unlocked. Even in a place as safe as Cairns.
I entered the living room. She wasn’t there. I grabbed the remote control to the television and pressed the mute button. I walked through the house, calling her name, but there was no sign of her anywhere.
In the bedroom, a plant had tipped over, and the terra-cotta pot had shattered onto the tile floor, scattering soil everywhere. The sliding glass door to the backyard was open. I stepped outside and spotted a torn piece of fabric resting on the grass. I picked it up and recognized it. It was fr
om the orange-and-white floral dress Adelaide had been wearing. A stain in the corner of the fabric was red and wet. I rubbed a finger across it and then held the finger in front of me.
I was almost positive it was blood.
I took out my phone and dialed.
When James answered, I said, “I stopped at Adelaide’s for a minute on my way out, and I can’t find her. I think something’s wrong.”
“Why?” he said. “What’s going on?”
“We were talking at Caroline’s house, and she said she needed to put a pie in the oven. She left. About ten minutes later, I walked to her house to ask her a few more questions. The pie was still sitting on the counter, both doors to the house were open, the kitchen faucet was running, and a plant in her room is scattered all over the floor. And that’s not all. Outside on the grass, I found a piece of fabric from the dress she was wearing. There’s a red stain on it. It looks like blood.”
“I’ll call the police,” he said. “Get out of there, Sloane. Right now.”
“I’m not leaving. I need to know what happened to her.”
“Until we know one way or another, you need to leave.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m staying. Call the police. I’ll get back to you when I know something.”
I ended the call and headed toward the side of the house. Rounding the corner, I found the rest of the dress. A vast majority was soaked in blood.
Adelaide was dead.
Eavesdropping without getting caught had always been something the man had excelled at. As a child, he’d hated it when his mum put him to bed earlier than she should have so she could watch movies with Uncle Frank in the living room. His father worked late as a nighttime construction supervisor. But his mum was predictable, and her ritualistic mannerisms were almost robotic and rarely changed. On those early bedtimes, she would put him to bed, wait ten minutes, and then check on him. If she thought he was asleep, she wouldn’t return again until she retired for the night a few hours later. It took practice to create a believable illusion, but over time, he’d learned how to change his breathing pattern just enough to make it appear he was sleeping, even though he was wide awake.
Uncle Frank was his father’s brother, and he liked to drink beer, especially on Sunday. For a long time, he’d stopped by on Sunday morning with a twelve-pack of Corona Extra, and by noon, he’d have consumed all of them while his mum polished off a bottle or two of wine. Then they’d sober up for the afternoon, go for a swim in the pool, and start in again after dinner.
The man hadn’t minded his uncle coming around because his uncle made his mum laugh, and most of the time when his uncle wasn’t there, she seemed melancholy and depressed. She’d say things like, “I hate my life,” or “I wish I had money so I could get the hell out of here.” As a child, he’d always thought it was his fault that she was unhappy, so he’d tried extra hard to be a good boy. But no matter how good he was, it never made a difference.
Then one night, everything changed. He’d snuck out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs to the fifth step down on the staircase. It was the perfect one because it allowed him to see what was going on in the living room but still be able to get back to his room in a hurry if his mum decided to head upstairs earlier than scheduled.
What he saw that night had startled him.
It was something he wasn’t supposed to see—something he wished he’d never seen—his mum sitting on Uncle Frank’s lap. And she wasn’t just sitting ... they were kissing.
When their lips parted, his uncle looked at his mum and said, “I’m going to take you out of here, take you away from all this. We’ll start a new life in a new place and leave the past behind. Just you and me, baby.”
Just you and me?
Just YOU and ME?
What about him?
Surely his mum would never leave without him.
Would she?
Trembling and worried, he’d watched the tears stream from his mum’s eyes as she stared at his uncle and said, “Let’s not wait until next month. Let’s go, Frank. Let’s go tomorrow. Can we? Please?”
But the tomorrow she’d hoped for would never come, not in the way she expected.
The next day, he’d gone hiking with his father and uncle in the rainforest. It was a quiet day—so quiet they’d only passed one other couple on the trail. After a while, they came to a lookout point, one that allowed them to look down and see across the ocean. His uncle held up a camera to snap a photo, but before he could take it, he slipped on a patch of loose pebbles. His father leaned down to help Uncle Frank, but he was too late. Uncle Frank slid over the side, smacking his head against a boulder, his body tossing and turning like a ragdoll as it tumbled down the rocky ravine.
The fall had killed his uncle instantly.
That’s what his father had told the police, at least.
His dad had said it was an accident—a horrible, unfortunate accident.
Only it hadn’t been.
He’d watched his father reach for his uncle. But instead of grabbing him and pulling him to safety like he could have done, his father did something else.
He pushed him.
When news of Uncle Frank’s death reached his mum, she’d locked herself in her room, sobbing. She emerged the following day, saying she was going for a swim in the pool. At the time no one had noticed the empty bottle of pills she’d left on the dresser. Twenty minutes later she was found dead, floating facedown in the pool. And he was the one who’d found her.
The man had never been fond of pools after that day—or hiking, for that matter. An hour earlier when he’d sat in silence behind the shrubs surrounding Caroline’s pool, trying to listen to the conversation between the foreigner and Caroline’s neighbor, the pool had been so distracting, he had to squeeze his eyes shut and silently count to ten to calm his nerves and stop the flashes of horrific memories of the last day he’d seen his mum alive.
When his mind calmed, he’d overheard the foreigner asking a lot of questions, just like she had the day before in the park. Even if she had met the senator right before his wedding, it didn’t explain what she was doing back here now or why she was so damn nosy. And before the neighbor arrived, he watched the foreigner snoop around Caroline’s room.
What was she doing?
The old woman had talked to the foreigner about Caroline and the night of the murders. Some of what she said was factual. Other details were lies, which angered the man. He was tired of false truths and false people, and as the weeks since Caroline’s death ticked by one thing was becoming clear: something had to be done.
Fifteen minutes earlier, Adelaide and I had been talking in Caroline’s back yard. Now she was face up in the center of her flower garden, dead. I called for an ambulance. When the call ended, a feeling swept over me, the same feeling I’d had before at Caroline’s house. My eyes darted around. I saw no one, but it didn’t mean the killer wasn’t there, hiding, as I believed he had been before.
In the most stable, confident voice I could muster at a time like this, I said, “If you’re here, why don’t you come out and face me? Don’t be a coward.”
I wasn’t sure I was ready for a confrontation, but if he was there, I was better off knowing where he was and what I was up against. A flickering motion in the bushes sent shockwaves through my veins. I whipped around and pressed a hand to my chest, taking a lengthy, much-needed breath.
Calm yourself, Sloane. It’s only a butterfly. He’s probably gone now.
And he may have been, but he’d left a noticeable signature for all to see. The knife he likely used as the murder weapon had been stabbed upright into a mound of soil next to Adelaide’s body like the sword in the stone. Leaving it behind was bold and sent a message of its own—only this time it wasn’t the only one. Across Adelaide’s forehead, a single word was written in a dark shade of red. From its texture, I could tell it wasn’t blood. It was waxy, like lipstick, and given the humidity of the day, it was melting.
&
nbsp; The word was LIAR.
Assuming the word wouldn’t remain intact until the police arrived. I snapped a photo and sent it to James. Then I stood there, staring down at Adelaide, wondering what she had lied about, or if she’d lied at all, and if the killer had falsely accused her as part of what seemed to be becoming an evolving game.
Could there have been any truth to his accusation?
If she had lied, had it been to me?
The sound of a vehicle skidding to a stop in the driveway diverted my attention. Thinking it was the ambulance, I walked into the front yard but was met by two police officers instead.
The taller of the two said, “Are you the woman who called for an ambulance?”
I nodded.
“Who are you?” he continued. “And why are you here?”
I told him. Well, I didn’t tell him, tell him. I casually mentioned I was in Australia to visit with James.
The two officers exchanged glances, and the shorter one said, “Where is Adelaide Wiggins?”
I pointed. “Over there in the flower garden on the side of the house.”
The shorter one requested backup, and the tall one told me to stay put and not to go anywhere. A minute later, James arrived, followed by Victoria, followed by the ambulance. Victoria offered a slight smile and nodded at me as she speed-walked past, which I understood. She was there to do a job, and it was better for her to act like we were nothing more than acquaintances, which, for the most part, we were.
James tilted his head toward the back of the yard, indicating he wanted me to follow him. I did. We reached the edge of the property, and in a lowered voice, he said, “The police are going to have a lot of questions. Let me handle it, all right?”
“I’m not worried,” I said. “I can answer their questions. They know I exist now, and telling them I stopped by after grabbing some clothes for Grace shouldn’t seem that suspicious.”
“To them, everything is suspicious, and when you’re questioned, they’ll want to know everything about you—who you are, why you’re here, and maybe even what you know about the case. If by some miracle they don’t look into you further, we need to keep the private-investigator part to ourselves, for now. Understand? I’m not asking you to lie. I’m asking you to be vague with the details you offer.”
Smoke and Mirrors Page 5