by Vicki Tyley
She stood in the shadows near the door, trying to remain inconspicuous as possible while she waited for Fergus to arrive. Up the front, the priest intoned what sounded like a prayer. Looking across the sea of heads, Desley wondered how many of the congregation she knew. She felt a touch on her arm and turned.
“Sorry I’m late,” Fergus whispered in her ear. “Have I missed anything?”
Shaking her head, she hooked her arm through his and leaned into him. His body heat blended with hers. Comforting. Reassuring. A sense of belonging. More than Nicole Moore had had in her short life.
Though Desley couldn’t condone Nicole’s actions, she could understand them. The grief of first losing a father, then her mother and finally her only sibling had to have been all-encompassing, had to have tipped the balance of her mind.
Fergus patted her hand. A beaming and unquestionably pregnant Selena was walking back up the aisle toward them, hand-in-hand with her new husband. Desley smiled. Trent deserved to become the father he had always wanted to be. Perhaps not biologically, but in all the ways it counted. The saddest part was Jeremy Stillson had left a legacy that Nicole never would.
And that’s what Desley couldn’t comprehend. As much as she loved Brandon, she didn’t know if she could be driven to sacrifice her own life to avenge his death. Of course, unless she was put in that situation, she would never know. A mother’s love on the other hand, she thought, touching her stomach…
***
Thank you for reading Sleight Malice. I love to hear from my readers: [email protected]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Based in rural Victoria, Australia, she writes fast-paced mystery and suspense novels in contemporary Australian settings. More information about Vicki and her books can be found at: www.vickityley.com
OTHER BOOKS BY VICKI TYLEY
THIN BLOOD
Craig Edmonds, a successful stockbroker, reports the disappearance of his wife, Kirsty. What starts as a typical missing person's case soon evolves into a full-blown homicide investigation when forensics uncover blood traces and dark-blonde hairs in the boot of the missing woman's car. Added to this, is Craig's adulterous affair with the victim's younger sister, Narelle Croswell, compounded further by a recently acquired $1,000,000 insurance policy on his wife's life. He is charged with murder but, with no body and only circumstantial evidence, he walks free when two trials resulting in hung juries fail to convict him.
Ten years later, Jacinta Deller, a newspaper journalist is retrenched. Working on a freelance story about missing persons, she comes across the all but forgotten Edmonds case. When she discovers her boyfriend, Brett Rhodes, works with Narelle Croswell, who is not only the victim's sister but is now married to the prime suspect, her sister's husband, she thinks she has found the perfect angle for her article. Instead, her life is turned upside down, as befriending the woman, she becomes embroiled in a warped game of delusion and murder.
PROLOGUE
Craig Edmonds stared at hands sticky with darkening blood.
His hands.
He held them away from his body and looked down at his chest in horror. Large, dirty-red blotches marred the once pristine white shirt. Forgetting the blood on his hands, he tore at the buttons, ripping the shirt open.
Breathing in short, sharp gasps, he frantically examined his torso, looking for the wound. No cuts. No injuries. No holes where there shouldn’t be any. His chest heaved in relief. He wasn’t dying, after all.
But then, mid-sigh, it struck him: if it wasn’t his blood, whose was it? His head whipped around, his eyes scanning the room like radar on overdrive.
Even in the half-light, he quickly saw all was not as it should be. The glass shade from one of the bedside lamps lay in shattered fragments on the floor. The curtain rail over the bedroom’s bay window hung at a precarious angle. Usually a black-and-white photo of a nude, tattooed woman hung above the bed; now the frame lay in pieces in the doorway.
He focused on the queen-sized bed. His stomach clenched as he took in the twisted and disheveled bedclothes. Instinctively, he knew the dark patches on the sheets weren’t shadows that would disappear once the curtains were opened.
He swallowed, the acrid morning-after taste of whisky harsh in his parched mouth.
“Kirsty?” he croaked. Clearing his throat, he called again, hesitant but louder.
In the crushing silence, time stood still.
“Kirsty!” he screamed, as he dashed into the master bedroom’s compact, white-tiled en suite. He stumbled, clutching at the doorframe. He took in the bloodied handprints adorning the vanity unit and walls like some sort of macabre finger-painting. Fighting an intense wave of nausea, he looked down at the blood-smeared floor.
Trying desperately to rein in his growing panic, he raced to the main bathroom. His wife wasn’t there either. Next room.
Out of breath, heart hammering, he reached the internal door that led to the double garage and opened it. The external roller door was down and his red Alfa Romeo and Kirsty’s silver Lexus were parked next to each other.
Gripping the door handle, he sagged against the door. He took a deep breath. Fought for control of his adrenaline-charged body. He lurched into the kitchen, heading for the sink.
Hands shaking violently, he somehow managed to turn on the cold water tap. He watched, mesmerized, as the blood from his hands, diluted by water, swirled in a pink eddy in the bottom of the sink before disappearing down the plughole.
Oblivious to the water dripping from his hands, he dropped onto the pine storage-box-cum-bench beneath the window at the end of the kitchen. Elbows on knees, he dropped his forehead into his hands. If only the infernal pounding would let up, he could think straight.
His memory of the previous evening was patchy, to say the least. He had a vague recollection of arriving home stressed after a late-night meeting at the office and, bypassing the dried-out dinner Kirsty had kept warm for him, heading for the bottle of Chivas Regal. After that, it was anyone’s guess as to what had happened.
A series of short clips flashed through his mind. In one, he saw himself shouting at Kirsty, her throwing up her hands and yelling back. What had they been arguing about? In another, he was picking up his car keys, and…
Damn it! Why can’t I remember? he thought, glancing towards the door leading into the garage. It was then he saw the set of four smudged, rust-brown streaks low on the doorframe. He closed his eyes, praying for the nightmare to end.
Except he had a feeling the nightmare was only beginning…
BRITTLE SHADOWS
When soon-to-be-wed Tanya Clark is confronted with her fiancé's naked corpse hanging from a wardrobe rail in the upmarket Melbourne apartment they share, her life is torn apart. Two months later, distraught and unable to cope, she drowns her sorrows in a lethal cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs.
On the other side of Australia, a grieving Jemma Dalton struggles to come to terms with the suicide of her only sibling. Despite there being no evidence to the contrary, Jemma refuses to accept Tanya had intended to kill herself. Not her sister. Then the coroner's report reveals that at the time of her death she had been six weeks pregnant. The will, too, raises more questions than it answers. How did a young woman on a personal assistant's wage amass shares worth in excess of $1,000,000?
In a desperate bid to uncover the truth, Jemma puts her own life at risk and starts to probe the shadows of her sister's life. But shadows, like bones, grow brittle with age. The consequences can be deadly.
PROLOGUE
One foot inside the apartment, the smell hit her. Sour, like cat pee. Except they didn’t own a cat.
“Sean?” she called, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat. “Sean, honey, are you home?” Louder this time.
Not a sound. Only that putrid smell.
She dumped her heavy satchel on the floor, kicked the door closed, and surveyed the room.
The late afternoon sun streamed through the balcony-facing floor-to-ceili
ng windows. Long shadows from the life-sized, headless bronze nudes standing sentry sliced the living area. The Age newspaper lay open at the business section in the middle of the narrow glass-topped dining table, Sean’s mobile phone next to it. Apart from one of the eight chairs sitting askew from the table, she could have stepped into the pages of Home Beautiful.
She crossed the carpet toward the short hall that led to the bedrooms and stuck her head into the apartment’s galley-style kitchen. Tomatoes, red onions and a cling-wrapped tray of meat – the makings of what looked to be one of her fiancé’s specialties, Spanish steak – sat on the stainless steel drainer next to the sink. Further down the bench, she spotted a bottle of red wine together with two wine glasses, one of which was already poured. She sniffed the air and moved on.
Usually wide open, the door to the guest bedroom was half-closed. Hoping Sean hadn’t offered a bed to one of his boozy mates, she hesitated for a moment and then gave the door a sharp shove.
The door swung in, releasing a rush of sour air. Pinching her nostrils together, she leaned into the room, ready to beat a hasty retreat if anyone was in there. Her gaze went first to the queen-sized bed. Although the quilt looked rumpled, the bed itself didn’t appear to have been slept in.
Breathing out through her mouth, she glanced across the bedroom to where sunlight, filtered through the window’s upward angled Venetians, striped the ceiling.
She took another step into the room and turned around. The leather strap of her handbag slid from her shoulder. She didn’t try to stop it, couldn’t stop it. Unable to move, all she could do was gape at the open wardrobe, her eyes bulging almost as much as the vacant ones staring back at her.
A silent scream blocked her throat. She couldn’t breathe in; she couldn’t breathe out. Her lungs wanted to burst. The purple, bloated face of the naked man hanging from the wardrobe’s steel rail on a belt, his swollen tongue protruding from his mouth, was almost unrecognizable. Almost.
She stumbled backwards, snaring her handbag as she landed in a heap next to the bed. She scrambled in the bottom of her bag, her mobile phone eluding her like wet soap in the bathtub. When she did manage to get hold of it, she struggled to still her shaking hands. Her fingers felt fat and clumsy, the buttons on her phone tinier than she remembered.
“Emergency. What service do you require? Police, Fire, Ambulance?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but a magazine page stuck to her leg now had her attention instead. She peeled it off, dangling the magazine at arm’s length as if it were a dirty sock. She had never seen anything quite like it. Naked flesh. Entwined bodies. Explicit sex scenes.
If she had thought things couldn’t get any worse, she had thought wrong. She shook her head, unable to come to terms with what she was seeing. Her fiancé, her lover, her partner was dead; dead and surrounded with hard-core homosexual pornography.
FATAL LIAISON
“...easy, fluid readability factor. I didn't want to put the book down, and it was immensely enjoyable.” -MotherLode blog
The lives of two strangers, Greg Jenkins and Megan Brighton, become inextricably entangled when they each sign up for a dinner dating agency. Greg's reason for joining has nothing to do with looking for love. His recently divorced sister Sam has disappeared and Greg is convinced that Dinner for Twelve, or at least one of its clients, may be responsible. Neither is Megan looking for love. Although single, she only joined at her best friend Brenda De Luca's insistence. When a client of the dating agency is murdered, suspicion falls on several of the members. Then Megan's friend Brenda disappears without trace, and Megan and Greg join forces. Will they find Sam and Brenda, or are they about to step into the same inescapable snare?
CHAPTER 1
As he listened to the second phone call from his mother, Greg Jenkins noted the increased tremor in her voice.
“Samantha still hasn’t arrived. And she’s still not answering her phone. I’m so worried. Should I call the hospitals? What—”
“Whoa. Slow down, Mum. Don’t stress out. Remember what the doctor said. Don’t worry about Sam. We all know how bad she is with time. She’d be late for her own funeral.” Greg laughed, hoping to ease his mother’s tension.
“Yes, but—”
“Please, Mum, I’m sure you’re worrying unnecessarily. Sam has—”
“Gregory, dear, I wish you wouldn’t call her that. Sam’s a boy’s name.”
“Okay, Mum.” He started again, using the name Sam herself loathed. “Samantha’s a big girl now. I’m sure she’s all right, but just to put your mind at rest I’ll go and check on her. She’s probably so wrapped up in her new man she’s forgotten she was supposed to visit you this weekend.” He laughed again.
“What new man?” The pitch of her voice rose.
Greg could almost see her gripping the phone in both hands as she waited for her eldest child to answer. Silently berating himself for opening his big mouth, he wrestled with what he could say without digging himself into a bigger hole.
“Gregory?”
“Sorry, Mum, there’s someone at the door. I’ll have to go, but I promise I’ll get Sam… Samantha to phone you as soon as I can. Now don’t get all worked up. There’s nothing to worry about, you’ll see. Bye, Mum.”
He hung up, sucked in a deep breath and slowly released it. There was no one at the door but at short notice, it was the only thing he could think of to get out of what would’ve been the inevitable interrogation. His sister needed her butt kicked for letting down their mother like that. Sam, of all people, knew how over-protective their mother was, more so since Sam divorced her no-hoper of a husband and moved to Melbourne.
Greg picked up the phone again, and pressed the two buttons that would dial his sister’s home phone a suburb away. As he waited for the call to connect, he wandered through the house into the kitchen. The phone started ringing. Cradling it between his chin and shoulder, he filled the kettle. The phone rang out, which was good. It probably meant Sam was en route to their mother’s place. Maybe she’d been unlucky enough to end up with a flat tire or broken down. It was bound to be something as simple as that.
The kettle boiled as he tried Sam’s mobile number. It too went unanswered, but at least this time Greg was able to leave a message. He looked at his watch. He’d give her half an hour and if she hadn’t called him back by then, he would have to think of what else he could do to try to track her down. Younger sisters, who’d have them?
Twenty minutes later, he’d emptied the coffee pot and finished off the best part of a packet of shortbread biscuits without realizing it. His mother’s anxiety had started to rub off on him. He didn’t wait the half hour out. Instead, he reached for the phone and dialed Sam’s mobile first and then her home again, ending up with exactly the same results as before. No answer at either.
Had it been a Freudian slip when he’d inadvertently mentioned the new man in Sam’s life to his mother? Greg knew nothing about the guy except he was, in Sam’s words, “tall, dark, and drop-dead gorgeous.” He didn’t even know the guy’s name. What he did know was that Sam had met him through one of those agencies that specialized in dinner dating. Dinners for the desperate and dateless. He found the whole concept repugnant, but his sister had assured him that all was civilized and above board. He’d taken those assurances at face value, happy she was making an effort to get on with her life.
CHAPTER 2
Megan Brighton peered around the edge of her menu, flinching as her eyes met the ginger-mustached man’s stare across the table. What a sad lot her dinner companions were. Even the strained smiles pasted on the majority of faces at the table did little to lighten the atmosphere.
“So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” asked the man seated on her right, before laughing.
She groaned inwardly. Why’d she allowed herself to be talked into this? She didn’t belong there. She was single because she chose to be. A single, professional career woman. Well, at least that’s wha
t she told anyone who cared to listen, including herself.
“I’m not sure,” she said, her gaze not shifting from her menu. “It’s not quite what I’d imagined.” If it hadn’t been for Brenda, Megan knew she would have scarpered as soon as she caught sight of the ten or so white-tableclothed tables arranged around the room, each set for a dozen diners. From the company’s blurb, she’d been expecting to be one of “twelve carefully matched diners” eating at your standard everyday restaurant with normal people. Where she’d ended up looked more like a function centre, reminiscent of a wedding reception. The only difference was a lack of bride and groom, and the guests weren’t related by blood or marriage. Or at least she hoped not.
A beefy hand cut through her vision. “It’s Wayne, by the way. Wayne McGurk.”
She blinked and forced a smile. “Nice to meet you, Wayne. Megan Brighton.”
“So what do you do?”
“Recruitment consultant. And you?”
Wayne puffed out his chest. “Property entrepreneur. Units, villas, townhouses, duplexes, houses, vacant land, commercial, residential. You name it. Not good to have all your eggs in one basket. The key is to buy well under market price to minimize risk. Instant equity…”
Megan’s gaze swept the table. Next to Mr Ginger Moustache, whose place tag actually named him as Robert, sat Nick, a square-jawed man with dark-rimmed spectacles. Thanks to Brenda switching place tags, Nick had to be content sitting between two males. He was looking off into the distance, his thoughts obviously further afield than the immediate table. Adam, a hollow-cheeked pasty-faced man sporting a dark goatee beard was deep in conversation with Kate who was seated at the end. The boy-girl pattern continued as it was meant to around the table.