by Sally Andrew
‘Georgie!’
‘Yes, her.’
‘I’d like to talk to her.’
‘I’ve typed up what you said about Ousies and Johannes. It just needs your signature.’
‘She might be willing to talk to me. We’re quite friendly.’
‘The threesome admitted they were satanists and said they had an evening of religious discussion with her. But it’s obvious they’re lying. They don’t even hide their smiles.’
‘It can’t do any harm. Maybe I’ll find out something.’
‘I know by now that I can’t tell you what to do, Maria.’
When I put down the phone, I sat down at my desk to think. Getting Georgie to talk was not going to be easy. I’d need help. I glanced down at my recipe for the pear cake. I was not a religious woman, but I knew that the recipe had come to me for a reason. The cake had a purpose, and I had a plan.
‘Jessie,’ I said. ‘I need your help.’
When I told Jessie my idea, she googled the vegan ingredients that could replace the butter, eggs and cream cheese in my recipe. Then she followed my bakkie on her little red scooter, and we shopped at the health store and the Spar. While I popped in to sign my statement at the police station, Jessie bought chicken pies from the Route 62 Café. We left her scooter outside the café and drove together in my bakkie to my house. We ate the chicken pies on my stoep, then got down to making those cakes. We made a vegan one and a normal one, and when they were ready, we tested them. Both were excellent.
As I ate a mouthful of nutty pear cake, I looked out onto the Karoo veld and the big blue sky. That cake was just what I needed. There had been another murder, my boyfriend might still be in love with his late wife, and I had secrets that I couldn’t share with him. The cake knew all this and somehow convinced me that everything was going to be okay. Jessie licked ginger icing off her finger and then stroked the gecko tattoo on her arm.
Now we had to test the cake on Georgie. We travelled in my bakkie across the veld, back into town. My car’s the colour of the Karoo sky that surrounded us, and as I drove with Jessie at my side I felt that we had no beginning or end, and that together we could do anything.
We parked in front of Georgie’s house. It was one of those rectangular ones that were built in the seventies and did not have the charm of the Victorian houses. But it was nice enough and had a little garden. Georgie and her husband had been amongst the Seventh-day Adventists who had stayed on in Ladismith after the failed ascension. But after a short while, her husband had left her. The rumour was there was another woman involved, but I wasn’t one to listen to small-town gossip, though it’s hard not to hear it. It goes on all the time in the background, like the sound of the trucks that travel along Route 62.
As we opened the garden gate, I saw a curtain in the front room twitch.
‘She’s home,’ said Jessie.
We walked up the path that crossed the neatly mown lawn and knocked at the front door. On either side of us were flowerbeds. There were pink roses that looked thirsty and tired, and ericas and proteas that looked healthy. Fynbos likes the dry soil and empty skies of the Karoo. It was brave of Georgie to plant her roots in a new place.
She took a while to come to the door. Perhaps getting herself ready. She wore a clean white shirt with one of the buttons done up wrong. Her reddish-grey hair was freshly brushed and her face washed, but she looked a little wilted. Her eyes were red; I suspect she’d lost some water from crying.
Jessie smiled at her, and I said, ‘Georgie. We’ve come for tea.’ I held the cake tin in front of me.
She stepped back to let us in, her eyes a bit wider than they should be, and I realised it was sleep that she’d lost as well as water.
‘The kitchen’s this way,’ Georgie said.
We followed her through the lounge and along a short corridor with a beige carpet, passing a bedroom with the door slightly open. In the kitchen, she turned on the kettle, and Jessie helped her lay out cups and saucers.
‘How are you, Tannie Maria?’ she said, but she didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Sugar? Sorry I only have soy milk.’ She didn’t eat dairy, but the kitchen counter was the colour of cream, the walls were butter-yellow and the curtains a cheddar-cheese orange.
‘Sit down,’ she said. But there was only one seat at the kitchen counter. ‘Oooh wooo.’ She blushed a rosy-pink colour. ‘The chairs are in the bedroom. I’m sorry.’ Her hands shook a little as she poured soy milk into a small jug. ‘I’ll fetch them.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Jessie. ‘We’ll get them.’ I followed Jessie.
We walked down the corridor to Georgie’s bedroom.
The bed was very neatly made, as if it had been ironed. At the foot of the bed, facing it, were two chairs. On the floor were some pieces of popcorn. I looked at Jess and she raised her eyebrows, but we said nothing as we carried the chairs back to the kitchen.
‘Oooh wooo,’ said Georgie, ‘I am very sorry.’ She looked as if she might burst into tears.
‘We brought you some cake,’ I said, opening the tin to show her.
‘Cake,’ she said, gazing at it with longing. ‘I’ve been so hungry since last night. It looks . . . delicious. But I can’t.’
‘It’s a vegan cake.’
‘No dairy at all?’
‘Nope.’
‘No milk, butter, eggs?’
‘Not a drop. We made the cream cheese with almond milk we got from the health shop.’
‘Oh. Oh. You really mean I’m allowed to eat that . . .?’
‘Yes,’ I said, cutting her a big piece and putting it on a small plate that Jessie handed me. It looked very pretty with the cinnamon and the thinly sliced dried pears on top of the white icing.
I put a piece on a plate, and she took a big bite.
‘Aa oo sure ah’m allowed this?’ she said through the cake, before she actually chewed it.
‘One hundred per cent,’ I said. ‘You can ask Jessie. She googled all the vegan stuff and made it with me.’
Jessie nodded, and Georgie closed her eyes and chewed. Then she put her hands to her face and crumpled into tears.
And that is how the whole story came out.
CHAPTER SIXTY
‘I didn’t realise, I didn’t realise who they were,’ said Georgie. ‘The tall man was so nice. So clever. Interesting. And good looking. And interested. In me.’
Jessie and I stayed quite still, like she was a wild animal that we didn’t want to frighten away from a waterhole.
‘In all the fifteen years I was married to Joel he never showed such interest in me.’ She ran a hand down the side of her hip. ‘In my ideas and thoughts.’
She sighed. ‘It wasn’t like I was alone with a strange man. There were three of them. He said he was a priest and the woman was a priestess. The third man was a member of the church.’
She picked up her cup but didn’t drink. ‘They knew the Bible so well. And the priest, the one I . . . the one who approached me in the Spar, he was a vegetarian. Their church doesn’t forbid eating meat, but they don’t believe in harming animals.’
I looked at my tea and cake but didn’t touch them.
‘I confess,’ said Georgie, ‘I’ve been lonely since Joel left me. It was nice to . . . talk. And what with the end of the world coming, I really have been thinking about life. The life we are living here and now. The people in my church prefer to discuss the afterlife.’
She picked up her tea and had a sip. Jessie and I took the chance to drink our tea too.
‘The priestess brought some little vegan cookies; they didn’t taste great, but it was kind of her. We drank tea and ate cookies, and after a short while I just felt so happy and relaxed with them. Especially the priest. He had a smart little beard and sat beside me on the couch in the living room. They were saying that in their church, the body is not a sinful thing. It’s a wonderful thing – to be enjoyed. And my body was agreeing with them.’
She picked up the cake and had a tiny bi
te. Jessie and I did the same.
‘And then what happened afterwards feels like a strange dream. The handsome priest held my hand; he stroked my palm gently. Very gently.’ She licked some icing from the corner of her mouth. ‘And then . . . we walked together to the bedroom. The other two brought chairs and sat down, eating popcorn like they were watching a movie. But it was us, they were watching us, waiting to see what we would do.’
I remembered the chairs at the bottom of her bed and looked at Jessie.
‘And then . . . And then . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘It happened.’
‘What happened?’ asked Jessie.
‘He kissed me.’
‘Oh, jinne,’ said Jessie. ‘Then what?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘They finished the popcorn and went home. But it was quite a kiss.’
She picked up her big slice of cake, and we picked up ours, and we all ate our honey-hazelnut-pear-cake-with-ginger-icing as if there was no tomorrow.
When she had finished her cake, she looked at her empty plate and then at Jessie and me. Her eyes went wide as if she’d just seen us. For a moment I though she might run away, but she said, ‘I can’t understand it. I’ve been so hungry since last night.’
‘Mmm,’ said Jessie, wiping crumbs from her mouth, ‘you might have the munchies.’
Georgie and I both looked at her, confused.
‘I think they put dagga in those cookies they gave you,’ said Jessie. ‘Marijuana can make you hungry. It’s called the munchies.’
‘Oooh wooo,’ said Georgie. ‘Satanists, adultery and drugs. I will be defrocked. Oooh wooo. I should never have used that hair dye.’
‘Georgie,’ said Jessie, ‘a kiss isn’t adultery.’
‘But I . . . They didn’t force me. I went to sleep happy . . . When I woke up this morning, of course I realised how terribly I’d sinned.’
‘You were drugged.’
‘I’ll be the laughing stock of the whole town.’
‘But who will know?’ said Jessie.
‘The police. They know.’
‘Did you tell them?’ I asked.
‘No, I . . . couldn’t. But the satanists have told them. I know they have, that’s why the police came here. It’s all so . . . humiliating.’ She put her hand over her eyes.
‘Georgina,’ said Jessie. ‘Those people told the police they came here for a Bible discussion.’
Georgie peeped between her fingers. ‘They didn’t say . . . what we . . . did?’
‘No.’
Georgie’s hand came down. A bit of white icing was stuck to her forehead.
‘But you could tell the police,’ said Jessie. ‘Lay charges of sexual harassment against those scumbags.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Georgie. ‘Then everyone would know. Oh, I wish the end of the world would come sooner.’
‘I was at a meeting last night,’ I said. ‘A man was killed. Shot.’
‘Oooh woo.’
‘The three people who visited you are suspects in the murder.’
‘Oooh woo. The Bible says, “When lust has conceived it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished it brings forth death.”’
‘They say they were here with you at the time when it happened. Eight-thirty p.m.’
‘Well, yes. They came before eight. They only left after ten.’
‘But you didn’t want to tell the police this?’
‘I . . . no . . . I didn’t admit to anything. It’s all too embarrassing.’
‘Would you be willing to say they were visiting here, if you don’t discuss what happened?’ I said.
Georgie picked up a cloth and started to wipe the cake crumbs off the counter.
‘A good man was killed,’ I said. ‘We want the murderer caught. I don’t want the police barking up the wrong tree. They need to know if those people were here with you at the time of the murder.’
‘Oh, I feel so dreadful about what happened. And then to tell the police . . .’ She wiped a spot that was already clean.
Jessie said, ‘It’s not your fault. And you did have a Bible discussion. That is the truth.’
‘Oh, the truth, oh my goodness. And you are a reporter. Ooh wooo. I am finished.’
‘Georgina,’ said Jessie, ‘this is all off the record, I promise.’
‘You won’t tell anyone?’
Jessie shook her head.
‘I can ask the police to keep it quiet,’ I said. ‘You can give a statement that the three of them were here. You don’t have to tell them what happened.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know. If my church finds out I let satanists into my house . . . They will think even worse things than what happened. Though what could be worse I can’t imagine . . . but they probably can. The Adventists have good imaginations.’
‘They need never know,’ said Jessie.
‘The worst of it is . . .’ she looked down at her lap, ‘I enjoyed myself.’
‘It’s okay to have some fun, Georgie,’ Jessie said. ‘If religions weren’t so repressive—’
‘Psalm 37 says: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,”’ said Georgie.
I interrupted the Bible group discussion. ‘We should go,’ I said. ‘There is a murderer to catch.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
‘Those bastards,’ said Jessie, as we got into my blue bakkie. ‘Taking advantage of a lonely woman.’
‘They’ll probably get away with it too,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I can’t see her laying charges.’
‘Poor thing. A woman like Georgie would feel such guilt . . . Were you brought up with all that religious stuff about pleasure being a sin?’
I started the car. ‘If the satanists didn’t shoot Tata,’ I said, ‘then who did?’
‘You knew him,’ said Jessie. ‘What motives might there be?’
We drove over the shadows of some big karee trees as we headed towards the Route 62 Café.
‘He told us things, but I don’t want to break the trust of the group . . .’ I said.
‘Tannie M, he’s dead now. And when it comes to murder, there’s no place for secrets.’
I swallowed, thinking of my own secrets. ‘Ja, you’re right . . . Tata felt responsible for the death of another man. He gave the man’s name to the police when he was tortured in the 1980s. Maybe the family or comrades of this man took their revenge.’
‘All these years later?’
‘They didn’t know about it then, but maybe they found out recently.’
‘Maybe Dirk told them,’ said Jessie.
‘You’ve got it in for Dirk.’
‘He’s an arsehole.’
‘The thing is, I was thinking . . . with all that smoke around the fire. Tata Radebe might have been shot by mistake.’
‘The murderer intended to shoot someone else?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Who’d want to shoot any of the others?’ she asked.
‘Well, we’d need to look at each person. Fatima has a whole history in Somalia. Her family was killed in the civil war. Her boyfriend was a pirate. Her uncle didn’t like the boyfriend. Also she watched someone being killed in Cape Town and ran away from violence there.’
‘She’s a shopkeeper here, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘I’ve seen a Somalian shop at the entrance to the township. There is still a lot of xenophobia.’
‘Even in Ladismith?’
‘Everywhere. I’ll ask around, see what I can find out . . . My uncle owns a spaza shop. He might know something.’
‘And then there is Lemoni,’ I said. ‘She was robbed at gunpoint in her house in Jo’burg. She shot someone. One of the escaping robbers.’
‘You think the criminals tried to take revenge?’
We arrived at the Route 62 Café, and I parked next to Jessie’s red scooter.
‘Who else might have been the murderer’s intended victim?’ she asked.
‘Well, ther
e’s Ricus, of course. Who knows all the reasons people may have for killing him?’
Jessie smiled. ‘Ja, your Detective Kannemeyer might be jealous of him.’
‘Ag, don’t be ridiculous,’ I said.
‘Ricus might have got up to a lot of nonsense when he was up north, in Hotazel. And maybe his ex-girlfriend organised someone else to shoot him. It might explain why she went to so much trouble to get an alibi from poor Georgie.’
‘And then there is Ousies,’ I said. ‘I like her, but she doesn’t speak much; there is something secretive about her. And now she’s run off . . .’
‘She may be afraid. Someone might be after her,’ said Jessie. ‘There’s also Johannes. He’s hiding something.’
‘Ja, but he wasn’t standing in the circle with Tata; he was a bit away, by his red Mini panel van.’
‘And then there is you, of course.’
‘Why would anyone want to kill me?’
‘Well, there was that murderer last year. He wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for you.’
‘Maybe his ex-wife? Or someone who loved him?’
‘You know who did have quite a crush on him . . . Marietjie, the teller at the Spar.’
‘Jinne. I remember that now,’ I said.
‘It seems unlikely she’d come for revenge now, months later. But we have to look for any motives.’
‘Now that I come to think of it, she has been quite cool with me. We used to be friendly.’
‘Jislaaik, Tannie M. There is a snakepit of motives for killing any one of you.’
Her mention of snakes made me think of a man with angry eyes. I remembered where I had first met him.
‘The black mamba,’ I said. ‘He was driving a black Golf on the night of the murder. I met him at the Ostrich Supper Club in Oudtshoorn. His name is Nick.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Jessie went off on her scooter, and I headed home. The late-afternoon sun gave my bakkie a tall shadow that moved across the veld. My dust-brown hens came running up the garden path towards me, and when I got to the stoep I threw them a handful of mielies before I went inside.
I was about to call Henk but decided to phone Ricus first.