by Vicki Tyley
Chris yanked her out of their path, throwing a few expletives after the two Lycra-shorted boy-racers. “Inconsiderate pricks,” he muttered under his breath, before turning back to her. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll live,” she said, laughing off his concern. “Nothing that a picnic lunch couldn’t fix.”
At the end of the bridge, they carried on along the trail for a short way and then veered off into a treed clearing. Dry grass crackled underfoot as they made for a weathered timber picnic table under the shade of a eucalyptus tree. Other than three women eating sandwiches at a table far enough away to be out of earshot, they had the spot to themselves.
Jemma waved a fly away from her face. “I’m impressed,” she said as Chris started unpacking a selection of antipasti, cheeses and breads onto the table.
“So you should be,” he said, adding a bottle of Chianti and two wineglasses to the mix. “I slaved away in the kitchen for hours to make all this.” He glanced at her and grinned. “No, that’s bull. The credit has to go to my local Italian deli. Best coffee this side of the divide.”
“I’m still impressed.” In the whole time she had been with Ross, he had never once surprised her with a picnic. Victorian men were a different breed altogether to the Western Australian variety. But perhaps she was being unfair, considering she had only ever dated three men in her life.
“Good. Now sit down and eat.”
This was one time she didn’t mind being told what to do. Over lunch they didn’t talk about anything in particular, Jemma careful to avoid any subject which might break the spell. They ate their fill and some, the occasional flick of the hand enough to keep the flies at bay.
The combined effect of the hot day, the food and the wine made her almost forget why she was in Melbourne. For a short while anyway. If it weren’t for the ants, she might have even stretched out under the tree for a siesta.
Her bag sat on the seat next to her. She laid her hand over the zippered pocket where she had stowed the autopsy report on Tanya’s death.
“Okay, I can tell you’ve wanted to ask me something ever since I picked you up. Spill. I don’t bite.”
“Did the background check on the security guard throw up anything?” she asked, buying herself some breathing space. “I mean if you’ve had a chance to do it, that is.”
He smiled. “I called in a favor and had one of my colleagues look into it. I wish I had something to report, but as I suspected, nothing untoward showed up. If the bloke is involved in something shady, he’s staying well below the radar. Also, now that he’s aware of your interest in him, he’s going to be extra careful. That’s assuming, of course, that he has cause to.”
“Thanks anyway. It was worth a shot.” She dropped her gaze to the tabletop, tracing the woodgrain with a fingernail. “Chris, were you involved in the police investigation into Tanya’s death?”
“Not directly, no. Obviously, I was interested in the case.”
“So you know what was in the autopsy report?”
“I know there was nothing in it to suggest foul play, no bruising, no signs of a struggle. Don’t you think if there were—”
“Why didn’t you tell me she was pregnant?” Jemma looked up.
Chris’s eyebrows drew together, the furrow on his forehead deepening. “You didn’t know?”
“Not until an hour or so ago.”
He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I’m sorry, I assumed you already knew. I thought sisters shared everything.”
She bowed her head. Admitting to Chris that her relationship with her sister had deteriorated to such a point that even sharing a hello had been too much, let alone intimate secrets, wouldn’t be easy. With Ash it was different; he identified with her torment, felt it. Chris hadn’t been that close to Tanya nor estranged from her.
He leaned across the table and covered her hand with his. “Maybe she didn’t know herself.” He lowered his voice. “My wife didn’t find out she was pregnant until she miscarried. The doctors estimated she was eight to ten weeks along.”
She sat upright. Chris’s eyes had glazed over. Oblivious to the fly crawling across his eyelid, he didn’t blink for what seemed like an eternity.
A shake of the head dislodged the fly and brought him back to the moment. He blinked. “Sorry, what was I saying?” he asked, removing his hand from hers to brush his face.
CHAPTER 12
Not everything was about her. Jemma spun her chair around and gazed out at the black-windowed office towers; high-rise buildings colonized by faceless workers. People with lives, families and troubles of their own. But she didn’t know them and they didn’t know her. Chris, on the other hand…
So caught up in her own dramas, she hadn’t thought about what others around her might be going through. She wasn’t the only one ever to lose a loved one. Chris and his wife had lost their unborn child and then their marriage. He had tried to gloss over it, but his face and eyes had betrayed the pain still raw below the surface. Something changed in him after that and she was almost grateful when he suggested he take her back to the apartment. She only wished she knew how to help him. He had already done so much for her.
She swung back to her laptop. The Norton Internet Security icon appeared in the system tray, her indicator that everything had finished loading. She launched her email program and sat back, watching as new messages dropped one by one into her Inbox. Her face felt flushed and her head throbbed. The result of too much sun and a little wine, no doubt. Or was it too much wine and a little sun?
The next email made her sit upright, her headache all but forgotten. She double-clicked on the subject line, opening the message to full screen. The login recovery service had delivered as promised. She was always telling people to use passwords they could easily remember, but that others would have trouble guessing. Tanya had definitely done that: Jemma would never have thought to try Tanya’s ex-husband’s name spelled backwards.
She powered up Tanya’s notebook, drumming her fingers on the desk, waiting for it to boot.
Type your password
Crossing her fingers, she keyed in ‘tnerb’ and pressed enter.
Loading your personal settings…
Success. She all but jumped for joy. Instead she made do with a quick 360 spin in the chair. It seemed to take forever to load, but a watched computer always did. Pressing her right fist into her left palm, she waited.
She resisted touching the keyboard until the myriad applications in the system tray had loaded, pouncing on it as soon as it had. One click opened Tanya’s email software. Jemma frowned, her initial elation turning to puzzlement. She checked the program list for another email application. Nothing. She opened the My Documents folder. Nothing. She checked the history files, the temp files, the recent files and the system logs. Still nothing.
While she hadn’t known what to expect, it wasn’t that. Someone had cleaned the system. Someone who knew what they were doing, but not enough to have reformatted the hard disk, if erasing all the data is what they’d had in mind. Tanya herself? But why?
Jemma opened the System Tools. The hard drive had also been defragged, leaving little possibility of reconstructing the deleted files. She sat back, arms crossed, and stared at the screen. Why would someone – even Tanya – go to so much trouble? It didn’t make sense, but nothing that had happened made sense.
And what about the surplus cables? Did they belong to a second laptop? Sean’s perhaps? Where was it then? Not in the apartment. She had already turned the place upside down. Or was the answer simply that Tanya had upgraded her laptop, dumping the old machine but keeping its cables as spares?
As much as she wanted to believe that, something told her there was more to it. The man who had let himself in that first night hadn’t done it for the hell of it. He had to have been there for a reason. All she had to do was work out what that was. And who.
She stood and paced the room. Her presence in the apartment had surprised the intruder, which ruled out Ethan
and Chris. Not that she suspected either of them was involved in the first place, but she had to start somewhere. That left…
She stopped and threw her hands in the air. “God, Tanya, help me out here.” Dropping her hands, she plumped back down on the chair. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t helping her sister; all she was doing was torturing herself. Nothing she could do now would bring Tanya back or make up for all the lost months. As much as she wanted to hate Sean Mullins for pitting sister against sister, for destroying the bond that she and Tanya had once thought indestructible, she couldn’t. Hating him couldn’t undo what was done. She felt only pity.
CHAPTER 13
The tram jolted to a stop. Releasing her grip on the pole, Jemma stepped down through the open doors. She waited for a light blue van to pass before making a dash toward the pavement and the shade of a gift shop awning. Out of the direct midday sun, she took a moment to orientate herself. If she had followed Fen’s directions correctly, the café where they were supposed to meet should be about 80 meters from the corner.
Hitching up her shoulder bag, she headed in what she hoped was the right direction. She spotted a sandwich board up ahead and quickened her pace. The sign directed her down an alleyway, where she found Pinot’s tucked behind a wrought iron fence.
She walked through the arched gateway into the grapevine-canopied courtyard, continuing past when she didn’t see Fen amongst the people at the tables.
Inside was dark and cool, a faint berry scent to the air. She paused in the doorway, giving her eyes time to adjust. Except for a sole woman diner in the corner picking at a salad and reading a magazine, the café was empty. She heard a clink of glass and looked across in time to see a blond head bob up from behind the bar, hands full of wineglasses.
The man behind the bar smiled at her, set the glasses down, then wiped his hands. “Table for one?”
“For two, please. Outside, if that’s okay.”
He showed her to a table near the back, next to a raised herb garden, and left her with two menus. A couple of minutes later, he returned with two tumblers and a bottle of iced water.
Fen announced her arrival with a rapid staccato of heels against brick pavers, her sleeveless green-and-white dress swaying as she made a beeline for the table. “So sorry. I got caught up on a phone call just as I was leaving.” She kissed Jemma’s cheek, sat down and picked up a menu. “Order first, talk second. I have to be back in an hour.”
Jemma opted for the house salad: a selection of spinach and baby greens, walnuts, apple slices and Gorgonzola dressed with a raspberry vinaigrette.
“Siciliano eggplant torta, but hold the mayo, thanks,” Fen said, handing her closed menu to the waiter and turning to Jemma. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you look great. Melbourne must agree with you.”
Jemma gave Fen a knowing smile. “The same could be said about you.” Indeed, everything about Tanya’s friend glowed – from her flawless Eurasian skin; to her almond eyes; to her fine, dark hair. Quite different to the last time they had met, when pallid faces and red-rimmed eyes were the look of the day.
Fen glanced over her shoulder and then back at Jemma. “I really didn’t know about Tanya’s pregnancy.”
“I believe you. That’s not why I wanted to meet.” Jemma picked up the water bottle, motioning at the tumblers.
“Please.” Fen waited until Jemma finished pouring. “So why did you want to see me?”
“Insight?” More question than statement. “You were my sister’s best friend.”
“I don’t know that there’s much I can tell you.”
“It might not seem like much to you, but anything – anything at all – you can tell me about Tanya and what was happening in her life in those last few months would mean a lot to me. No doubt you heard all about our bust-up.”
Fen nodded, her finger tracing a path through the condensation on her glass.
“So stupid. I still can’t believe how it happened.”
“I can. Our friendship nearly went the same way.”
Jemma’s head snapped up. “Are you serious?”
“You know how besotted your sister was with that man of hers. She wouldn’t hear a bad word said against him, whether it was true or not. I made a passing comment one day about her not seeing him for what he really was. Bad move. She didn’t even give me a chance to explain, just picked up her bag and left. She refused to speak to me for days after that.”
“Only days?”
Fen’s lips twisted in a wistful smile. “I think that when you accused Sean of coming on to you, she felt for some reason that everyone was ganging up on her.” She raised her hand to stop Jemma speaking. “I don’t doubt for one second that Sean did what you said he did. Unfortunately for you – for all of us – he was the one pulling the strings.”
Jemma ran her fingers through the tops of the rosemary growing in the garden next to her chair, releasing the herb’s robust fragrance. “Unfortunate doesn’t begin to describe it. Why do you think she couldn’t see through him?”
“I don’t know. She obviously saw something in him that we didn’t.”
“What about Ash Bartlett? What happened with him and Tanya?” She had heard his take on it, now she wanted to hear a female perspective.
Fen gave a little laugh. “Darling Ash. Honestly, I think he was too nice for your sister’s tastes, not to mention a bit on the young side. She loved him, though, just not in the way he wanted. Sean made it his mission to sever that relationship.”
“Why though? Surely, he didn’t feel threatened?”
“Not threatened: not exactly, anyway. He just wanted to control her, and Ash was a bugbear in that. Like we all were. I just learned to play the game better.”
The more Jemma heard, the more she realized how much of a hold Sean had had over Tanya. She took a breath. “Do you believe Sean’s death was an accident?”
Fen choked on her drink. “Tanya was right about one thing,” she said, setting her glass down. “You’re not backward in coming forward. Are you saying you don’t think it was?”
The arrival of lunch saved Jemma from having to answer. She didn’t have one to give. She didn’t know what to think. Not anymore.
Not waiting, Fen descended on her torta with both hands and chomped into it. Her mouth full, she made nodding motions at the exotic looking salad in front of Jemma.
Jemma picked up a fork and poked at a walnut. She glanced across the table at Fen who was chewing her way through the massive sandwich with gusto, and wondered what rules she’d had to play by to stay in Sean’s game.
In between mouthfuls, Fen quizzed Jemma on her trip to Melbourne, what she had been up to, who she had contacted, what she had discovered. With nothing to hide, Jemma didn’t hesitate, hoping her frankness would encourage Fen to do the same.
Fen dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “So you’ve had the pleasure of meeting the third Mrs Bartlett then?”
“You know her?”
“Not personally, but Tanya talked about her often enough.”
Jemma’s breath caught. She dropped her gaze and stabbed an apple slice, inflicting her hurt on it. The longer she was with Fen, the more she was reminded of how little she really knew of her sister, how little of her life Tanya had shared with her. Even before the Sean incident. “What did she say about her?”
“You don’t know?”
Another stab. “Know what?”
“Danielle accused Tanya of being Marcus’s mistress.” Fen paused, adding weight to her statement. “Ridiculous, I know. If Marcus was having an affair, it wasn’t with his long-time personal assistant. Of course, that didn’t stop the witch doing her damnedest to have Tanya sacked.”
“When did this all happen?”
Fen pursed her lips. “Let’s see, it would be a couple of years back. It blew over fast enough, but the undercurrents remained. Danielle didn’t try very hard to hide how she felt about Tanya and vice versa. Marcus tried to keep the women apart as much as possible. I’m
surprised you didn’t hear about it.”
Jemma pushed a bruised spinach leaf around the edge of her salad bowl. Fen was right about one thing: Tanya had been on the scene for a lot longer than Danielle had. If there had been anything going on between Marcus and his loyal employee, then logic said it had to have been before Danielle’s time. And Sean’s. “Were you aware that Marcus owns Tanya’s apartment?”
“Sure. So what? He’s in the property business.”
“Nothing. Just wondering, that’s all.”
Fen sighed. “Look, Danielle’s allegations were just that and nothing more. Marcus and Tanya? Never.” She gave her head a vehement shake. “He only set her up in the apartment after Sean died. But come to think of it, he owned that one, too. As I understand it, it was part of her-slash-their salary package.”
“I’m not suggesting anything, Fen, just trying to feel my way through a maze and coming up against a lot of dead ends. You see, I can’t believe Tanya intended to kill herself, but if she did, I need to understand why. And why didn’t she leave a suicide note?”
Fen’s expression softened. “Suicides don’t always leave notes. Sean’s death left her feeling as if she had fallen into a bottomless pit. She couldn’t talk without crying. It was heartbreaking to watch.”
Swallowing hard, Jemma fought back tears. “She reached out to someone. Who, Fen?”
CHAPTER 14
Death and sex. If intercourse was life affirming, pregnancy was the ultimate. In her grief, Tanya had reached out to someone, but whom? Fen denied knowing of any post-Sean relationship, but whether she knew of it or not, it had happened. Jemma wasn’t naïve enough to believe in the immaculate conception.