Murder Undercover

by Claire McNab

  After complaining, there was nothing Vera liked more than a bit of gossip. “You think Harry’s more serious?” I said.

  “Oh yes. Much. He’s sort of stern, but he’s rilly very nice, you know.” She preened herself. “Actually, he’s involved in most of the conferences, so we get to work together quite a lot.”

  “I suppose eventually Harry will take over the running of the resort.”

  Vera’s glanced around, checking if anyone could overhear. “Not if his mother has anything to do with it,” she whispered. “Moreen thinks Quint should be the one, even if he is the youngest. Not that her husband agrees. I’ve heard there’s been words exchanged, you know what I mean.”

  “What about Roanna? Has she been considered?”

  Vera’s puzzled expression was expected. “Roanna? Why would she even think of running the place?”

  As I helped her slot the name tags in alphabetical order, I said casually, “Who are the speakers at this conference? Well-known people? Celebrities?”

  Vera scrunched up her face. “I’m not involved in that side of it, fortunately. I do know Roanna’s doing a session.”

  I looked bored. “Yeah?”

  “Something about the Internet.” She put the tray of tags into the top drawer of a filing cabinet and slammed it shut. “There! We’re all finished, and thanks for the help. Now we can go to the Jitterbug for that coffee you promised me.”

  “Great.” I gritted my teeth. I was almost to the point of Vera overload, but I had to persevere, as I had no way of knowing what gems of information she might still have.

  She gave me one after we’d both signed out at the security desk. “You know,” she said, as we strolled toward the coffee shop, “When I started here I had sign a strict confidentiality agreement.”

  “Really?”

  Vera, buoyed by my obvious admiration, gave self-satisfied giggle. “Like, I hear lots of things, but have to keep them to myself.”

  “Such as?” I was all encouragement.

  She frowned at me. “Tsk! You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Right.” In that one word I managed to inject potent note of doubt in her veracity, to which Vera immediately responded.

  “Oh, all right,” she said, “I will tell you one thing, but you’ve got to promise not to repeat it.” She looked around, as though we were under surveillance. I looked around too, thinking maybe we were.

  Dropping her voice to a whisper, Vera went on, “They didn’t know I could hear, but this afternoon Harry was talking to his mother in the next office, and he was telling her how he’d checked out a guest, and she’d turned out to be a private investigator!”

  “No!’

  “Yes!” Vera took my arm. “She’s here in secret, on a case.”

  Vera looked mysterious: I knew my expression nicely mingled awe and curiosity. “Go on,” I said.

  “You know that man who got killed with the shotgun? Well, his family hired this detective, because they don’t think it was an accident.”

  “That’s awful,” I said. “I mean, what if the guy’s family is right, and it wasn’t an accident? I suppose the Aylmers are really worried.”

  “Worried? I don’t think so! Harry and his mother were laughing about the whole thing.” Vera halted to beam at me. “I bet you can’t guess who the detective is.”

  “Biddy Gallagher,” I said.

  Vera gave a small scream. “You knew! How do you do that, Den?”

  “A wild guess,” I murmured, trying to play down what I’d just done, which was, frankly, to be very stupid. I didn’t want Vera burbling away to others about how I was sharp enough, or interested enough, to peg Biddy as the PI, although it hadn’t been hard to make an educated guess, since Vera had mentioned the person was a female. Biddy then became the obvious choice, being a former cop who was asking questions about the shooting death.

  I could hear my trainer’s voice as if he were standing beside me. “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he was saying. “You just had to be a smartarse, didn’t you, Denise?”

  * * *

  I read the missive Malcolm had passed to me sitting on the green bench in my little hideaway in the gardens. Deciphering the cryptic notes, I found that Lloyd Snead’s lungs had been full of seawater. Why this had happened wasn’t clear, as he hadn’t suffered any serious injury, heart attack or stroke. There were superficial bruises on both shoulders, possibly caused by the harness of his air tanks. The investigating officers had not been able to locate these tanks to check if they had been faulty. The media had been advised it was an accidental death, but I was to assume that the circumstances were suspicious.

  In the coffee shop with Vera, I’d had a quick glance at a Sunday newspaper brought over from the mainland. Snead’s death was summed up in one sentence in the breaking news digest: Lloyd Snead, international banker, died Friday in a drowning accident at Aylmer Island luxury resort.

  I expected that there would be much more comment in the Monday papers, particularly in the financial sections, as Snead had been well-known for wheeling and dealing on the international stage. From my earlier ASIO briefings I knew of one activity Snead had managed to keep under wraps—his career in money laundering. This was about to change. Snead had had extensive contacts with Russian banks, and his name had come up in ongoing investigations carried out by several countries concerning the transfer of huge sums of money from Russia to banking institutions all over the world. The scandal was that the money was international aid, intended to help the ailing Russian economy.

  The other information raised my eyebrows. The CIA had very recently put an operative in place on Aylmer Island. There was no name, or even an indication of gender. I understood the game: All security organizations kept as much from other agencies as possible, even within their own countries. More, they kept as much secret as they could from the governments who set them up.

  I checked the nearby path to make sure no one was anywhere near me before I burned the communication. Then I carefully mashed the ashes into the dirt under a shrub, dusted my hands, and set off for a scintillating evening in the rec room.

  “There’s an envelope for you,” Kay said the moment she saw me. She was obviously dressed to go out: she wore much makeup, and her dress was in shades of cream and brown to complement her hair. “Like it?” she asked, twirling around.

  After the grueling time I’d had with Vera, I didn’t feel gracious enough to fake interest. “Lovely,” I said shortly.

  Enthusiasm undaunted, Kay said, “Some of us are popping over to the mainland for a bit of a party. You’ve got time to change if you like to join us. Actually, Bruce was looking for you earlier, to ask you to come, but he couldn’t find you.”

  I thought Thank you, Vera as I said, “Bruce didn’t mean as his date, did he?”

  “I’d say so.” Kay smirked at my horror. “Jeez, Den, don’t you like him?”

  “He’s all yours, Kay. He’s too much man for me.”

  She went off laughing, turning at the rec room door to call out, “Don’t forget your message.”

  The envelope had my name in unfamiliar writing, strong and angular. Retreating to the bland surroundings of my bedroom, I slit open the envelope. The single page was from Roanna, and was very brief: Denise, I’m asking you to a private picnic tomorrow. I’ll provide everything. Pick you up at eleven. Roanna.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning Roanna turned up twenty minutes early, announcing her presence with a sharp rap on my door. She was dressed as I was, in shorts and a T-shirt. Her top was plain, crisp white, mine was pale green with the words GRAVITY! NOT JUST A GOOD IDEA, BUT THE LAW.

  Ridiculously, I was embarrassed to have her see the banal little room I slept in, so I came out into the corridor, hastily closing the door behind me. “Okay, I’m yours.”

  She grinned but didn’t comment. She handed me an insulated backpack, the twin of the one she wore, and we set off into the clear morning air. It was warm rather than hot, and the sunli
ght didn’t have its usual metallic force.

  We strolled down the path from the staff quarters, passing Seb going the other way. “Hi,” he said, eyeing Roanna and then me. A smile turned the corners of his mouth. “Have a nice day.”

  I gave him a stern look. “We’ll try.”

  His knowing smile turned into a laugh. “I bet you will.”

  As we continued, Roanna said, as though she’d never seen Seb before, “A friend of yours?”

  I looked at her with surprise. “Don’t you know Seb? He’s worked on the island for over two years.”

  “I know him by sight, that’s all. I don’t have that much to do with the day-to-day running of the resort.”

  We walked along in silence for a moment, then I said, “What do you do?”

  Her mouth tightened. “You mean, am I gainfully employed, or just sponging off my family?”

  Hell! I didn’t want to alienate Roanna—I was supposed to be gaining her trust. I spread my hands in a don’t-misunderstand-me gesture. “I was interested, that’s all.”

  Mollified, she said, “Sorry, I took your question the wrong way. I look after the computer side of things for the resort. I set up the accounting system, I keep the Web page up-to-date, and on the Internet I handle bookings, queries, advertising, all that sort of thing.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “Over my head, I’m afraid.”

  As we reached the shoreline edge of the Aylmer compound, Tony, the nasty drunk from the bar whom Roanna had told to get lost at the party last night was walking from the beach, scuba tanks in one hand. Seeing Roanna, he made a wide detour so that he wouldn’t pass close to us.

  “That guy,” I said, “Tony, isn’t it? I don’t like him.”

  Roanna sent a scornful look in his direction. “I share your opinion. But the trouble is, he’s a friend of Harry and Quint’s, so I have to put up with him.” She gave me a wry smile. “Frankly, I don’t much like most of my brothers’ friends.”

  There was an opening, but I didn’t want to seem to be pushing her for information. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said, commiserating. “My brother had any number of friends I couldn’t stand.”

  We traded thoughts about brothers, and families in general, and I started to fill in the details of the Aylmer relationships. As I’d already been told, although George Aylmer was the titular head, his wife, Moreen, was most emphatically in charge, with nothing happening that she didn’t know about. She ran the company with the help of her two sons: Harry doing most of the work, Quint the golden boy in his mother’s eyes. Roanna seemed to be on the periphery of the action, being occupied with the computer side of things but not involved in any decision making.

  Hope began to bloom in me that Roanna might not know about the criminal activities. I had to acknowledge that this optimism was hardly justified. She was clearly intelligent, and it was difficult to believe that she had remained ignorant of everything that was going on around her.

  We were walking along a narrow path a few meters in from the shoreline. At the beginning it was posted as being a private way. We came to a junction, where another path ran away from the water. “That leads to my little house,” said Roanna.

  I was curious. “Can I have a look?”

  “Sure, but you won’t see much.”

  I’d been surreptitiously examining the boundaries of the Aylmer compound on my daily walks. A light mesh fence, two meters high, ran along the borders I’d explored, and I was positive that an alarm would go off if anyone attempted to get in. I hadn’t looked at this lower boundary, and I wanted to check if it was the same.

  It was only a few steps to a tall security gate. I peered through its mesh and caught the merest glimpse of a building nestling in the greenery.

  “Just a few steps to the ocean,” I said. “Now that’s luxury.”

  We strolled on, chatting about nothing in particular—music, movies we’d seen, funny things that had happened to us in the past. I found myself elated to be in her company, enjoying the experience as if I had no hidden agenda and Roanna didn’t belong to a family almost certainly responsible for crimes as heinous as murder and sedition.

  After half an hour or so we came to a pristine little beach, deserted except for a couple of raffish seagulls who were having a vulgar screaming match over a prized morsel. Roanna dropped her pack on the sand and made a wide gesture. “How about here?”

  “Good enough.”

  It was better than good. Aquamarine water edged the white sand; the sky arched pale blue and brazen above us; a tiny tree snake, like a brilliant green ribbon, curled around the branch of a tree. A couple of incandescent blue-and-black butterflies played tag.

  One could, I thought, tire of such perfection eventually, or at least take it for granted, but for me the scenery on this island had a charmed, not-quite-real atmosphere about it, as though magic was in the air and spells and enchantments were commonplace. I had to admit that I was a smidgen enchanted by Roanna.

  We sat down in the shade of a clump of palms. She said, “It’s a Spartan picnic, but nourishing, I assure you.”

  It wasn’t in the least Spartan, of course. There were delightful little individual packages, and opening each one was like unwrapping a gift. Appetizers of smoked salmon and capers, and pâté and crackers, were followed by chicken and ham and rare roast beef, each one accompanied by side dishes to enhance its flavor.

  The insulated pack had kept the wine cold, and it filled my mouth with astringent coolness. “A toast,” I said, clinking my plastic glass against hers. “Let’s drink to…” I paused, then went on, “To good fortune.”

  In a weak moment, I’d almost said, Let’s drink to us.

  We finished the wine, neatly packed everything away, and then sat side by side contemplating the water. “Nice day,” I said, taking off my sunglasses and turning my head to look at her lips. Looking at someone’s mouth is supposed to make the person want to kiss you. It had worked for me before, but I wasn’t sure if Roanna was susceptible.

  She was.

  We leaned toward each other, without haste. Our lips touched once, tentatively, then we were kissing desperately, as though our hunger could never be satisfied. We slid down, until we were lying on the sand. She tasted wonderful, wonderful. I tingled, flamed, grew tight.

  “Crikey, you can kiss,” I said, breaking away for air.

  She was as breathless as I was. With a mischievous grin, she said, “I’ve been practicing, just for you.”

  I pulled her to me, turning until she was on top of me. “Now I’ve got you where I want you,” she said as she lowered her mouth to mine. God! If this was kissing, what would lovemaking be like? I couldn’t keep still, or quiet. I arched under her, groaned, put my hands around the back of her neck and devoured her mouth.

  This was way out of control. The last rational part of me was pointing out that we were on a beach, where anyone might come by, but my body didn’t care about that at all. “I want more,” I said against her lips.

  Roanna was more circumspect than me, or perhaps she had better hearing. She lifted her head. “Someone’s coming.”

  “What?”

  Then I could hear them too. A group, it sounded like, talking and laughing as they came closer to us. By the time they came out onto the beach we were sitting side by side again, chastely admiring the scenery. We were flushed and hot, but hey, this was the tropics.

  “Hi,” said one young girl, a greeting that was echoed by her three companions, another girl and two young gangly boys, a greeting of sweet awkwardness that youth grow out of far too quickly.

  We hied back.

  It was clear that they were going to settle on our beach. They chose a spot just along from us and dumped their things. I looked at the sand we had churned with our activities and said to Roanna, “Perhaps we should go back.”

  “Perhaps we should.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her face, her neck, her bare legs. “I’m sorry we had to stop,” I said in a low voi
ce, a precaution that was hardly necessary, since the kids were chattering together like galahs.

  “Me too.” When she smiled, a dimple appeared in one cheek. I wanted to lean over and kiss it.

  Get a grip, Denise!

  Excellent. I was in control again, and could probably walk without my knees wobbling. “Okay,” I said, leaping up with extraordinary energy, “we’ve done the beach bit, so what’s next?”

  Roanna said, “My bed.”

  A shaft of fire transfixed me. “It’s awfully sudden,” I said. “I’ll have to give it some thought.” Like one millisecond.

  She collected the packs and handed one to me. “Tomorrow night?”

  I wanted to say, “Why not now, right now!” but that would seem overeager, and I reminded myself I was supposed to be playing this cool. I remarked, “Tomorrow? I’ll have to check my appointment diary.”

  She chuckled. “You do that.”

  * * *

  Why tomorrow night? Why not tonight? I hadn’t asked while I’d had an Irish coffee with Roanna at the Jitterbug Cafe, but impatience throbbed in my over-zealous body, to the point where I’d had to speak severely to myself to stop an impetuous question, or, much worse, a plea.

  We said good-bye, and I set off briskly, having to hurry back to my room to change clothes, as I could hardly turn up for my afternoon shift behind the bar with a message T-shirt and without my name tag.

  I was passing the clinic, a neat wooden building half hidden by flowering bushes and located near the northern wing of the hotel, when I heard raise voices. “I want that information, and I want it now,” boomed Biddy Gallagher.

  Whoever she was speaking to murmured something, to which Biddy responded, “Bullshit!”

  Curious, I slowed, then made an abrupt turn and headed for the back of the building, where another huge clump of bushes could provide adequate cover. I was fortunate that it was a mild day, because instead of air conditioning, the hinged windows were all open which explained why I had heard Biddy so clearly.

  She was still going strong. “I’ll have your license yanked. And that’s the best that’ll happen to you.”