by Vicki Tyley
The ex Mrs Mullins was not at all what she had expected. Only the athletic physique part of Chris’s description fitted. Nor did the madwoman image Fen had painted tally with the gentle-faced brunette stood before her.
Kerry gave her a warm smile. “Pleased to meet you. You look familiar. Have we met before?”
Jemma shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve only just moved to Melbourne.”
“Oh, so where were you before?”
“Brisbane,” she said, saying the first place that popped into her head. No doubt, Kerry would have studied her adversary and known Tanya had hailed from Perth. Jemma didn’t want to give her any reason to put two and two together.
“Why don’t we finish that paperwork in my office? This way,” Kerry said, guiding Jemma toward an open door at the end of a short corridor.
Thanks – or maybe no thanks – to a skylight, the office was suffused with natural daylight. No hiding anything with light that bright.
Kerry closed the door, oblivious to the fact her potential new client was the sister of the woman who stole her husband. Or at least, by all accounts, that’s how she had perceived it. She waved her hand at the electronic scales next to the desk. “Let’s start with those vital statistics, shall we?”
Sucking in her stomach, Jemma stepped up and closed her eyes, not opening them again until Kerry told her to get off. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Kerry said with a light, tinkly laugh. She tapped something on her keyboard. “Your body mass index – BMI for short – is 23.8, so well within the healthy weight range.”
Jemma pulled a face as Kerry picked up a pair of menacing looking calipers.
Kerry’s hazel eyes twinkled. “I promise it won’t hurt a bit.”
That wasn’t what she was worried about, knowing her body fat percentage was another matter. The results, Kerry once again assured her, weren’t too grim. “Of course, there’s always room for improvement.”
Kerry wrapped the cuff of a blood pressure monitor around the top of Jemma’s left arm. “So what inspired you to come today?”
Jemma’s pulse quickened. She mumbled something about her move prompting a reassessment of her lifestyle, willing her blood pressure to come down.
“Hmmn, it’s a bit higher than I would like.” Kerry removed the cuff and entered the figures into the online form displayed on her monitor. “We’ll check it again before you leave. Could just be the stress of being here.”
By the time Jemma completed the strength and stamina tests, she felt like she had done a full workout. Puffing, she dismounted from the exercise bike and wiped her brow. “No pain, no gain, right?”
Against her better judgment, Jemma found herself signing up for a week’s trial – not that she couldn’t do with the exercise. What perturbed her was that she actually liked the Kerry she had encountered. Maybe even worse, though, was that she was the sort of person Jemma could easily imagine becoming friends with.
CHAPTER 25
Hot and sweaty after her fitness appraisal and bonus workout, Jemma called in for a cold drink at the Lego-inspired café around the corner from the apartment. Stood at the counter, waiting for her change, she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t phoned Ethan the previous evening like she meant to. Somewhere between the time spent going from shop to shop hunting for gym clothes that didn’t consist of belly-baring crop tops and clingy bottoms, and falling into a semi-comatose stupor on the couch, her good intentions had become waylaid.
She pocketed the coin the cashier handed her without looking at it and left the café. Out on the street, she unscrewed the cap from her bottle of water and took a long swallow. Curious to why Ethan had been looking for her, she thought about dropping in at the property manager’s office on her way past. That was before she glanced down at her baggy T-shirt. It was bad enough that people she didn’t know were witness to her anything but flattering get-up. A shower and change of clothes had to be her first priority. She took another swallow.
“Hello again.”
She choked, spluttering water everywhere.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” Ethan’s inky-blue eyes looked her up and down, the corner of his mouth lifting.
“Please, not a word.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Along with her gorgeous attire and red face, she knew frizzy wisps of hair – escapees from her ponytail – rimmed her face.
He held up his hands. “I didn’t say a thing,” he said, not trying hard enough to conceal his mirth.
“What was it you wanted to see me about?” No point in drawing out her embarrassment any longer than necessary.
His grin faded, a pink tinge creeping into his face. “I… um… I just wanted to check that everything was okay now that the apartment locks have been changed.”
“If you mean have I had any more phantom visitors, ones that can bypass security without leaving a trace, then the answer is no. Talking of which, have you spoken to your ole mate, Gerry, lately?”
“No, should I have?”
She flicked her hand. “Sorry, ignore me.” If the security bully hadn’t mentioned the incident with the keys to Ethan, then she wasn’t about to. “Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a cold shower with my name on it waiting.” She went to walk off.
“There was one other thing.”
She paused mid-step.
“I was wondering,” he said, stumbling over his words, “if you’re at a loose end one night, if you would like to meet somewhere for drinks?”
Her throat constricted, her ears not quite believing what she was hearing. “But…but…” She coughed. “You mean just the two of us?”
He lowered his eyebrows. “You can bring a chaperone if you like.”
“I wasn’t thinking about me.”
“Sorry, I’m not following.”
“I was thinking about your wife or girlfriend or whoever the blonde woman I’ve seen you with is?”
His eyes flickered with comprehension. “Oh,” he said, “you mean my sister.”
“Sister? But I…” Jemma shut her mouth before she could make any more of a fool of herself.
“You didn’t think…” He laughed. “You did think. That explains a lot. Nic’s had a hard time of it of late. She’s—”
“Please, it’s none of my business.”
“But I want to tell you. It might help explain why I may have come across a bit distracted at times.” He drew her back into the shade of a shop awning. “The short version is she’s not long separated from her brute of a husband and is embroiled in an ugly dispute with him over the custody of their two sons. I’m trying to help her through it. The long version I’ll tell you over those drinks, assuming you want to, now you know I don’t have a wife on the side.”
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You forget you’ve ever seen me looking like this.”
“Why? I think it’s very becoming.” He stepped back out of striking distance.
Sense of humor and sex appeal. She chuckled. “Wise move.”
“Are you free tonight?”
Her mind went blank for a moment. “Yes, I think so.”
“How about I call past around seven and we take it from there, then?” he asked, walking backwards in the direction of the café.
She nodded, her power of speech deserting her.
With newfound energy, she made it back to the apartment in no time, pausing only long enough in the foyer to clear the mailbox. She had misjudged Ethan not once, but twice. Much to her relief, he was neither gay nor married. But that was about all she knew about him.
Once inside, she dumped the mail, her keys and purse on the kitchen counter and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged clean and revitalized, ready to take on the world again.
Or at least a spot of housework. The dust bunnies were breeding, a reminder of her neglect. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and set to cleanin
g. When she had finished, the apartment looked and smelt fresh, unlike her. She needed another shower, but it could wait until nearer the time she was due to meet Ethan.
She made herself a belated but healthy lunch of a salad-filled wholegrain roll and fresh orange juice and carried it to the table, along with the unopened mail. Chewing on a mouthful of roll, she rifled through the mail, sorting it into addressed and junk piles as she went. The addressed mail amounted to only two items, a window-faced DL envelope addressed to Tanya and a printed white envelope addressed to her. She turned over the one sent to her. No return address. Frowning, she ripped it open and withdrew the contents, a single sheet of paper.
The message, typed in Arial and aligned to the top of the page, read:
Dear Jemma
You don’t know me, but I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. You are not safe here. These people that you think you can trust aren’t what they seem. You need to be careful, very careful. Don’t end up like your sister. Go home before it’s too late.
Yours
Someone Who Cares
She reread it. What did it all mean? She studied the postmark on the envelope. Though it was faint and hard to decipher, she could just make out the word Melbourne, not that that helped. She turned back to the letter. Someone who cared? Someone who she didn’t know, but who knew her? Someone who not only knew her first and last names and the address of where she was staying, but someone who knew her movements.
A thought struck her. She jumped up and collected the note fragments she had found under the washing machine from the kitchen counter. “E who cares,” she read aloud. Was the author of that, the same as the letter sent to her? She laid the scraps of paper on the table and studied them.
HOW WELL DO
YOU KNOW YO
AT?
E WHO CARES.
She took a swig of orange juice, her gaze fixed on the typed text. ‘How well do’ what? ‘How well do you know’ sounded right, but the torn edge suggested the words after ‘do’ ran across the page and not down. Had the writer tried to warn Tanya? She had obviously not taken whatever it was seriously, tearing the note into pieces.
Jemma stared at the wall, her hands on her head, elbows splayed. Her inclination to take what she had to Chris was offset by the fact that she knew he would insist on making it official. She couldn’t do that yet. She needed more. Enough to prove she wasn’t crying wolf. Ash then? No, he would tell her to forget it, pretend it didn’t exist. If anyone was in denial, it was him. Fen was also out of the question, not while she was so highly strung, anyway. For all Jemma knew, one or more of them was behind the letter. A shallow attempt to keep her from delving further into the shadows? If the envelope had been unstamped, she might have suspected the security guard, Gerry, had had a hand in it. He still could have, of course. For what purpose, though, who knew. Sighing, she dropped her hands from her head. Whatever and whoever, she didn’t scare that easily.
She went through the motions of eating the rest of her lunch, chewing and swallowing but not really tasting it. The way she felt, she wouldn’t be good company for herself, let alone Ethan. She needed to do something to perk herself up before then. A bath would sooth both body and soul.
Leaving the mail where it sat, she collected up her empty plate and glass, depositing them in the sink en route to the bathroom. She ran a bath, tipping a cap of bath foam under the hot running water, and another for good measure. She stripped off, leaving her clothes in a heap on the tiled floor near the door. Testing the temperature first with a toe, she climbed into the tub and eased her body through the bubbles into the warm, perfumed water. She sighed in pleasure. The sweet scent of Jasmine filled the air.
She lay in the bath in the half-dark, the only light in the room that spilling through the doorway from the hall, trying to clear her mind, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the anonymous note and its significance. Its author wanted Jemma to believe she couldn’t trust anyone around her, but what about the nameless person who sent it? Weren’t his or her motives more questionable? But then again, was this person privy to information she didn’t have? Could he or she know the identity of Tanya’s mystery man, the father of her unborn child? She sat bolt upright, suds slipping from her shoulders and breasts into the water. What if the writer was that man? Groaning, she slid back down into the water. She had always had an overactive imagination.
At quarter to seven, just as she was adding the finishing touches to her makeup, her phone rang. She put the lip wand back together and went to answer the call, except in her housecleaning frenzy she had misplaced her mobile phone. By the time she located it next to the microwave, it had stopped ringing. One missed call. Ethan. Before she could return his call, her phone beeped and ‘1 message received’ flashed up on the display. She retrieved the message, her frown deepening as she listened to Ethan’s cultured voice.
“Jemma, it’s Ethan. Sorry to do this to you at such late notice, but something’s come up. I won’t be able to make it for drinks tonight. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and hopefully we can reschedule. And once again, sorry.”
She looked at the lip wand in her hand and then down at her black-and-white striped Country Road top and black slimline trousers. All dressed up with no place to go. She knew it had been too good to be true. In slow motion, she pressed the End key and set the mobile back down next to the microwave. She didn’t know what to think. Was it her? Did she expect too much of men? As if ‘something’s come up’ was any kind of explanation. If it had to do with his sister and her custody battles, why didn’t he just say? At least then, she would have understood.
Telling herself that an early night wouldn’t hurt her, she went to get changed into something that wasn’t dry-clean-only. She shed the top first and hung it back in the wardrobe. The trousers she tried to do the same with, except when she hooked the hanger back on the rail, they slid straight off. Dressed in nothing but her bra and knickers, she knelt down on the carpet, ending up on all fours as she reached in to retrieve the wayward trousers.
A flash of silver caught her eye as she backed out. Her body contorted into a position she hadn’t realized was possible, she glimpsed what appeared to be a CD or DVD taped to the inside of the wardrobe’s sliding door. She sat back on her haunches and felt for the object, gently prizing it away when her fingers found the edges.
She turned her find over in her hands. Encased in a transparent sleeve, the unlabelled disc gave no indication to its contents. She scrambled to her feet and powered up her laptop, pulling on a T-shirt and trackpants in the time it took to boot.
She inserted the disc and selected Play. The screen filled with moving black-and-white images. She leaned in, squinting, trying to determine what she was looking at. Her eyes widened as the camera panned out. A naked man stood with his back to the lens, his partner kneeling on the floor in front of him. Neither face was visible. Why would Tanya have kept a grainy, silent movie of a couple having sex? More to the point, why had she hidden it? Like a voyeur, Jemma kept watching, hoping to find a clue. Were the man and woman even aware they were being filmed?
Her jaw dropped. It wasn’t a male and a female, it was two males. The man kneeling on the floor lifted his head and winked at the camera. Her stomach lurched. She felt sick. Poor resolution or not, she would recognize that smug leer anywhere. Why would Sean have risked his engagement to Tanya by recording such damning evidence of his sexual proclivities and infidelity? When had the DVD come into her hands? Before or after her fiancé’s death? Why had she kept it, instead of destroying it?
Jemma forced herself to watch the rest. At the end, she exhaled, took another deep breath and replayed it, this time at half-speed. Rather than focus on the act, she concentrated on the room and Sean’s co-star. The lack of personal items on the tables either side of the sheet-strewn bed suggested a hotel room, rather than a private bedroom. A posh hotel room, if the expanse of space and massive bed were anything to go by. From what she could make out, the unknown man
appeared in good shape, tall and broad-shouldered. He had light-colored hair, but beyond that she couldn’t tell, the monochrome images making more detail impossible. She willed him to glance her way, if even for only a split-second.
Then she spotted something she hadn’t noticed before. What she had assumed to be shadow on the man’s right shoulder, wasn’t. The dark pattern moved with his body. She stepped the DVD back to where she thought that part of the shoulder was the most visible and captured a still. Zooming in on the resultant picture, a pixilated image of a large spider emerged: a tattoo. She squeezed the back of her neck. How did that information help her? She didn’t know any men with tattoos, let alone of spiders. And she couldn’t exactly go around asking the males in Tanya’s life if they minded taking their shirt off. Why did she think the man’s identity was important, anyway?
“Because,” she said, thinking aloud, “this is what the intruder was after.” It was the only thing that made sense. But sense or no sense, it still left her in a quandary. What did she do with it now? Did she tell someone else about it – two heads being better than one – or keep it to herself? She shook her head. She needed to sleep on it.
Before she ejected the disc, she saved a copy to her hard drive, only then thinking to check the file properties. Though the Summary Details tab was empty, she at least had a Date Created for the 938 megabyte QuickTime file. Little had Sean known then, that two weeks later he would be dead.
CHAPTER 26
Showered and changed after her first personal training session, Jemma felt invigorated and more alive than she had in a long time. Whilst Kerry must have had to use all her wiles to encourage, coax and push her new client’s recalcitrant body to its limits, Jemma had yet to see the side to Sean’s ex-wife that so freaked Fen. What caused such a dramatic Jekyll and Hyde shift in someone’s personality? Or was it simply that Fen had over-exaggerated, maybe even embellished, the facts? Just as she had when she told Ash that Jemma thought he was treating her like a Tanya substitute.