by Vicki Tyley
“Anyway, who are you seeing shortly? And what’s the other matter you were asking Kim about?”
“She asked if I would be seeing you, and not knowing how you would feel, I played safe.” He brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “I wasn’t lying; I’m seeing you now. And the other matter was a follow-up on the information you wanted.”
“About Selena?”
He nodded. “Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s not much to tell. She shoplifted a lipstick in her teens and was cautioned, but since then nothing. Not even a parking or speeding fine. Her credit checks came back all A-okay. She’s your regular, upright model citizen. Of course, that doesn’t mean she’s off the hook as far as the death of Jeremy Stillson and the disappearance of your friends goes. She, like Paul Escott and your ex, can’t provide an alibi for the time of the fire.”
“Maybe not, but unless she’s superwoman, there is no way, she could have overpowered three people on her own, killing one that we know of. And though she might be capable of many things, hitting herself over the back of the head is not one of them. No, someone was lying in wait in that cottage, but who?”
CHAPTER 41
hi sis hows it going thsi email thingy is not as hard as I thought gerge says helo any news love b
Desley grinned. Her brother’s first email – short, unpunctuated and full of typos as it was. She pictured him in the workshop’s office, hunched over the keyboard, spending more time hunting for letters than anything else. One day she would tell him about the Shift key. Right then she was just delighted he’d had a go.
She hit Reply.
Hi Brandon
Welcome to the 21st century. What a wonderful surprise. See, I told you it wouldn’t bite.
Say hello back to George for me. Is he the one showing you the ropes?
How’s work? Are you busy? Any more trips to Melbourne on the cards?
I have a funny story to tell you about locking myself out the other night, but it can wait until I’m talking with you. Some things are better said over the phone :-).
Still no news on Laura or Ryan, but I’m hoping to hear from an old boss of Laura’s from Perth soon. With any luck, he’ll be able to give me a lead on her family. It would be something at least. It’s the not knowing that’s the hardest.
The police still haven’t found any link to the dead man, Jeremy Stillson. I thought I might find something on the Internet about him, but I haven’t come across anything yet. I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, if you think of anything, no matter how small, please call me. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid or not.
Tell Mum I’ll phone her over the weekend.
xx
Desley
The phone rang as she pressed Send, the email disappearing from her screen.
“Hi, gorgeous.”
Desley felt her cheeks redden. “Hi to you, too,” she said, her voice going to goo like some lovesick teenager. She couldn’t help it.
“Two things. First, you’ll be happy to know that Paul Escott has been released without charge. He’s had to surrender his passport, though.”
Her face cooled. “So, what does that mean?”
“It means they’re not quite as convinced of his innocence as you are – the passport is just insurance against him fleeing the country. Under his own name, at least.”
“Can he be arrested again?”
“If more evidence comes to light incriminating him, then yes.”
She breathed out. “Unless he’s involved – and I don’t think he is – that’s not going to happen. Helen will be so relieved.” And so am I, she thought. If her advice had landed an innocent man behind bars, she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself. “All’s well that ends well. What was the other thing?”
“Are you doing anything tonight?” She heard the smile in his voice.
“Let me check my calendar.” She counted to ten. “Looks like I might have a free evening. What did you have in mind? Opera? Piano concerto?”
“Um…”
Desley laughed. “Only joking. They’re not really my scene.”
“Phew! I didn’t think so, but you had me worried there for a minute.”
“No, my tastes don’t run to the highbrow. I’m a simple girl: what you see is what you get.”
“I like what I see – a lot,” he said, his voice low and husky. “And I would like to see more of the girl tonight.”
She swallowed. Hard.
“How does dinner at the Supper Club sound?”
Dark. Intimate. Seductive. Perfect. “It sounds…” A flash on her monitor distracted her. She leaned forward. “Ted Ansell’s just replied to my email.”
“That’s sooner than we expected,” he said, his voice all business-like again. “What’s he say?”
She double-clicked on the header-line, opening the email in a new window. “He doesn’t know a Laura Noble. He’s definite no one by that name ever worked at MSRH Consulting while he was there. How can that be?”
“Maybe it’s the wrong Ansell?”
She continued reading. “No, this guy worked at MSRH during the period Laura’s résumé said she worked there.”
“Surely Coyne Systems would have checked out her references before hiring her.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But if MSRH were no longer in business then they wouldn’t have been able to. They certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of tracking down her referee like we have. There’s a written reference in the file – they probably decided that was enough.” She was already bending down to the bottom drawer for the file. “I’ll scan it and email him a copy and see if that jogs his memory.”
“Good idea. Maybe all that thin air in the Himalayas has affected his brain cells.”
Switching the phone to hands-free, she flicked through Laura’s personnel file until she found the MSRH Consulting letterhead, a blue illegible signature below the typed reference. She unlatched the file clips and removed the page, placing it facedown on the scanner bed. “I’ll send a photo of Laura as well,” she said, already scrolling through her digital photos. “She’s not easily forgotten.”
“Keep me posted—”
Scan complete.
“Okay…” she said, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She didn’t know when Ted Ansell would be in front of a computer again, but if she were lucky, her email had been one of the first he had replied to and he was still there, slogging away through a backlog of other unanswered messages. “Bye—”
“Wait! You didn’t give me an answer.”
Answer? She paused a moment too long.
“The Supper Club?”
“Sorry, Fergus.” She took a breath. “Sounds great. I just want to get this email off in the hope of catching Ted Ansell before he takes off into the mountains again.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come and work for me? It comes with perks.”
“Hmmn?” She attached the oldest close-up photo of Laura she could find to her reply email. Not that her best friend had ever aged. “Sorry, what was that?”
Fergus chuckled. “Bye, gorgeous.”
“I’ll give—” The call disconnected.
It wasn’t until the email and its attachments had disappeared from her Outbox that Desley relaxed. Her reply was in the lap of the cyber gods. All she could do was pray there weren’t any server outages or delays and that her message had landed in his Inbox, whether he was there or not.
She swiveled in her chair, turning her back on the computer, and stretched her arms above her head. The last time she had experienced the smoky romance of the Melbourne Supper Club she had been with Trent, though she daren’t tell Fergus that. Or should she? She closed her eyes, the haze and heady aroma of cigar smoke, the sensual feel of the leather, the smooth jazz, all coming back to her in a rush. She licked her lips, the dryness of a martini lingering in her memory.
From behind her, she heard the ping of an incoming email. Spinning her chair around, she used the
edge of the desk to haul herself back to the keyboard. Brandon. She smiled, her disappointment at it not being the expected reply from Ted Ansell fleeting. Didn’t her brother have any work to do?
hi me again how did u find lauras old boss pls be careful sis too dangerous stillson man alreday dead you next better leave to cops love b
She read it through once, mentally punctuating and correcting the text, and then read it through again. What did he mean she was next? Frowning, she picked up the phone and called his mobile. Voicemail. She tried the garage’s number next, but it been switched over to the after hours service. She reread it, wondering if she had misinterpreted the intent, read something into it that wasn’t there.
Before she could give it any more thought, the incoming email alert window popped up in the middle of the screen: New mail has arrived. Would you like to read it now?
She hesitated, almost afraid to open it. What if it was a reply from Ted Ansell saying he had never set eyes on the woman in the photo before, and that the employment reference was a fake, the signature forged? Where would that leave them? Holding her breath, she clicked Yes.
Dear Desley
My apologies. I did indeed have the pleasure of working with the young lady in the photo you sent me, but I hadn’t realized she had changed her name. The person you refer to as Laura Noble, I knew as Nicole Moore. And though the name has been altered, the reference is legitimate and I would have no hesitation in recommending her for any position she might apply for.
Unfortunately, I know little of her family or private life. I believe she has a brother, but I couldn’t even tell you his name.
Good luck with your search. When you do track down Nicole/Laura please be sure to pass on my kindest regards.
Best wishes
Ted Ansell
CHAPTER 42
Fergus grabbed Desley’s fingers, stopping her from tying them into knots. “What is it? What’s happened?”
She gazed up at him, her gorgeous hazel eyes haunted, her face beyond pale. “Laura isn’t who I thought she was.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, enfolding her in his arms. A backward kick closed the front door.
“I mean Laura Noble isn’t her real name.”
“Come again.”
He felt her chest heave. “If Ted Ansell is to be believed, the person he wrote that reference for and who he identified from the photo is Nicole Moore.”
“Are you serious? Nicole as in Ryan Moore’s absent sister?”
She pushed away from him. “Unless, there are two Nicole Moores. You can read the email for yourself.”
He followed her, his mind whirling. Siblings living together as man and wife? Had Desley’s friend changed her name to cover up an incestuous relationship with her own brother? What other answer could there be?
Desley brought up the email from Ted Ansell on the screen. He read it over her shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief. Of all the possible scenarios he could have come up with, this wasn’t one of them. “Well, it certainly explains why they would be so secretive about their pasts. The mind boggles.”
She stood and paced back and forward between the desk and window. “Tell me about it. I haven’t been able to think of anything else.”
He understood why. It must have come as a real shock to find out that the woman she had thought of as her best friend, wasn’t that woman at all. Let alone finding out that Laura – or Nicole or whoever she was – had been shacked up with her own brother. The mere thought of it made Fergus’s skin crawl. “This throws a whole new light on everything. I take it you haven’t told Grant or Kim about this development yet.”
“I’m still trying to come to grips with what it all means myself,” she said, the heel of her hand pressed to her forehead, her eyes scrunched.
“Any theories yet?”
She chuckled. “Not any worth repeating.”
“Try me.” He had his own ideas, but he wanted to hear her thoughts first.
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
He crossed his heart.
Rewarding him with a small smile, she sunk back down on her office chair. “Remember this is straight off the top of my head. I haven’t thought it through fully yet.”
He nodded.
She looked at him, gnawing her bottom lip. “What do you make of it?”
“I asked first.”
“Yes, but you know more about these things.”
“What things are we talking about? Incest? Depravity? Secrets? Insights into the human psyche? They’re not exactly my area of expertise.”
“Don’t they teach you that stuff at the police academy?”
He cocked his head to the side and waited.
She sighed. “All right, here goes. For whatever reason – and I can’t even begin to understand this – Laura, or rather Nicole, and Ryan became intimate and somewhere along the line, fell in love. Even though they knew it was wrong, they couldn’t deny their feelings and deciding they couldn’t bear to be parted, came up with a plot to start life afresh where no one knew either one of them. Of course for that to work, one of them had to change their name.” She paused. “With me so far?”
Fergus nodded.
“Good, because I’m not. Okay, so they decide Nicole should be the one to change her name and even go to the trouble of filing a final tax return for her, telling everybody she’s gone abroad. Everything goes along according to plan until someone from their past shows up…”
“Jeremy Stillson,” he said, filling in the blank.
“Right. We already know this Stillson guy has no scruples. He threatens to reveal their sordid secret and they panic. Accidental or otherwise, Stillson dies – again.” She raised her eyebrows. “They set fire to the house, hoping to destroy any evidence and flee in Ryan’s Nissan, which is later stolen. See, I told you I had an overactive imagination.”
“Not at all. We’re on the same track. A few holes, but I’m sure Grant and his team will be able to fill them. Where do you think Laura…” He corrected himself. “…Nicole and Ryan are now?”
Desley spread her hands in an open shrug. “God knows. As far away as possible, I would imagine. Maybe not even in the country.”
She looked shell-shocked, her eyes vacant. He knelt down on one knee beside her, taking her cold hand in his. “How are you feeling?”
“The person I knew doesn’t exist. How am I supposed to feel?”
CHAPTER 43
Bleary-eyed, Desley opened the door. “God, Brandon, it’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
Her brother didn’t answer. With a backward glance over his shoulder, he bulldozed his way inside, shutting the door behind him.
“Okay, it’s official: you’re scaring me. What’s going on? Why are you here?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing his head down to hers. “I’ll tell you in the car,” he said, his mouth so close to her ear, she could feel his hot breath. “I’ll wait for you here. Go and get dressed. Throw a few things in an overnight bag. But hurry.”
She twisted away from him, dislodging his grip, and stepped back. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you in the car. Trust me on this, okay?”
If she couldn’t trust her own brother, who could she trust? A thought struck her. “Oh God, it’s Mum and Dad, isn’t it? Something’s happened to one of them.’
He shook his head, criss-crossing his arms in front of him. “No,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. “They’re both fine. Please just do what I ask. I’ll explain everything on the way.” He pointed at the stairs.
What choice did she have? Her brother wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t important. Three steps up, she stopped and turned. “Why didn’t you phone?”
“Phones have…” He cast a furtive glance around him and cupped his hands behind his ears.
She frow
ned. Still half-asleep, she couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t mentioned anything about the phone tapping or the hidden camera to him for good reason, so what was with all the cloak and dagger stuff? Shaking her head, she dragged herself up the stairs to her bedroom.
Glancing at the empty bed, Desley wondered what Brandon would have done if Fergus had been there as he had for the last few nights. Another thing she hadn’t confided to her brother, but it wasn’t as if she was privy to his love life. And she was certain there was someone.
Somehow she managed to get herself dressed, opting for warmth and comfort over looks. Though she had no clue to their destination, Brandon’s instruction to pack an overnighter suggested she had a long trip ahead of her.
“Desley!”
“Coming.” She tossed a couple of long-sleeved T-shirts, a pair of jeans and a heavy jumper into the open sports bag on the bed and zipped it up, before remembering she hadn’t packed any underwear or toiletries. Shoving socks, knickers and a bra down inside the bag, she hurried to the en suite and gathered up deodorant, moisturizer, toothpaste and her toothbrush. Anything else she needed, she would have to buy on the way.
She picked up her mobile phone from the bedside table and for a second, thought about calling Fergus. One look at the alarm clock was enough to change her mind.
02:23
What utter madness, she thought, slipping the phone into her jacket pocket. Giving her bedroom one last look, she switched off the light and headed downstairs to whatever awaited her.
Brandon already had the front door open, his hand out for her bag. She gave it to him, armed the security system and joined him outside, their movement triggering the motion-sensors out the front of her townhouse. White light flooded the area, illuminating the silver-colored four-wheel-drive parked in her driveway.