by Ruby Loren
I held my ground. “Actually, they like to accuse me of things I haven’t done,” I told him. “Perhaps they’re that way with you, too?”
He nodded. “They’re telling lies, but I know someone told them.”
“Well, it wasn’t me,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t want to suggest anything, but Jenna wasn’t known for keeping quiet if she thought someone had done something bad to her. She may have told quite a few people. I doubt the police would take one person’s word as anything significant.” Hopefully that would get Tiff off the hook. I knew she’d told the police about what Harry had done. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had known, or even suspected.
Harry nodded. “It’s a conspiracy against me.”
I looked around, but no help appeared. I was stuck sorting this out on my own.
“Harry, you must love Julia a lot. I think the best thing to do is to be nice to her. Show her that you love her, and do everything you can to let her know you care. If you’re supposed to be together, then I’m sure everything will come right in the end.” I tried for an encouraging smile. “It’s Christmas! A little romance goes a long way.”
Harry looked less than impressed. “She should just trust me,” he complained, but then his expression softened a little. “Maybe I’ll try that. The police don’t know what they’re talking about,” he finished before finally sloping back off in the direction he’d come from.
I tried not to collapse against my locker with relief. Harry had shown he deserved his reputation for having a hot temper.
I shook my head. He was so impulsive and full of rage.
He was the polar opposite of everything I suspected Jenna’s killer to be.
I sighed and closed my locker up. It was back to the drawing board as far as finding the murderer went.
Claudia walked into the staffroom right after I’d managed to finish changing my clothes. She was clearly looking for someone.
To my surprise, it turned out to be me.
“I’m glad I found you. I just thought you should know… Lawrence died in hospital this morning,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said and then wondered if that was the right thing to say to Claudia.
She nodded. “I know he was mean, and could be a fool, but I’ll still miss him.”
“Auryn and the zoo will be sorry to see him go, too. I’m sure something will be done to commemorate his work.”
Claudia managed a small smile. “Yes, Auryn said that he’s already thinking of something to do.” She shook her head. “Poor Auryn. Everything always seems to happen at once here. It may sound callous, but at least the zoo is a roaring success right now. Otherwise it would all be doom and gloom, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded, unsure what to say to that.
“Well, I’d better get back to work. Lots to do,” she said, looking a little unhappier all of a sudden. “Lawrence’s funeral isn’t going to happen until after the New Year. I know he wouldn’t have wanted the zoo to be disrupted in any way. Also, Auryn is the one who’s been saddled with organising it now everyone knows about the will.” She had the decency to look a little guilty. “At least it’s been paid for by the old man.”
“I’d better offer to help him if he needs it,” I said, reflecting that Auryn really did have a lot on his plate, even if this funeral was being pushed back. Much like my consultancy career, I noted.
“Cute cat,” Claudia said, reaching up to touch Lucky, who was sitting on top of the lockers watching everything.
“No!” I said, right before she touched him.
Claudia looked at me in surprise.
“Trust me. You’ll be scrubbing your hand for a long time if you do that. He’s normally a black cat with white paws. Now he’s just black and stinky.”
Claudia wrinkled her nose. “You have a point. I wasn’t going to say anything when I smelled it earlier.” She gave me a slightly apologetic look. “Anyway, back to work,” she repeated and walked off in the direction of the new offices.
I walked Lucky through the zoo to the dependant animal unit, where I knew there was a sink big enough for a cat-sized bath. It was only now that I reflected I probably should have waited to change my clothes, but I could hardly have walked through the zoo smelling to high heaven.
Hopefully, Lucky wouldn’t cause too much of a fuss. If he was going to continue his strange affection for cows, he would either have to learn to be more careful, or get used to a lot of baths.
Whilst I ran the water with Lucky curiously sticking his paw into the stream, I reflected on Lawrence’s death. All I’d done when I rescued him was buy him some more time, and it was time that hadn’t seemed to count for anything. Should I have left him in the office after all and given him a faster, easier death? I shook my head, knowing I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I’d hoped I was giving him a second chance and I had, even if it hadn’t been for long. It wasn’t my choice what he’d been able to do, or not do, with that opportunity.
“We can only try our best, can’t we, Lucky?” I said before scooping him straight into the lukewarm cat bath.
Then the real battle began.
I woke up in a cold sweat. A glance at my phone screen informed me that it was three in the morning.
“It always is,” I muttered to myself.
I sat up a little and stroked Lucky, who slept in a tight ball beside me. He made a small cat sound of happiness when I ruffled his fur, but slept on.
My mind was already drifting back to the dream I’d just had.
It had been a nightmare.
I’d been in Jenna’s office, looking over her shoulder.
Her laptop had been open and there was a TV show flickering on the screen. Her hand stretched out and pointed towards the laptop and I could see the grave dirt underneath her fingernails. Then she’d turned her face. I’d looked at Jenna, Jenna the way I remembered finding her, but in an even worse condition now she’d been beneath ground for a while.
“I never got to send off my novel,” she’d said and had reached out towards me with her horrible hand.
Then I’d woken up.
I rubbed my eyes and wondered if I’d be able to sleep again after that horrible dream.
“It was just a nightmare,” I whispered to myself and curled up closer to Lucky, hoping his fur would protect me from the monsters who lurked in the dark.
17
Digging up the Past
The nightmare was still in my head the next morning. It was as if Jenna was unhappy that I hadn’t done more to find her killer. She thought I’d given up.
Yesterday, the police had publicly confirmed that the poison used to kill Jenna was the same as the poison in the bag in the shed, but they’d found no fingerprints or any other signs that might point to a particular person visiting the store room. The case was at a dead end and now Jenna was haunting me.
I caught sight of my reflection in the servals’ glass and pulled a face. I looked dreadful. My lack of sleep had meant I’d overslept and hadn’t even been able to cover the damage of a sleepless night with makeup. I was hoping to drop in to see Tiff at coffee time. She never used much makeup herself, but what she did use was always perfect. I was hoping she might be able to work a small miracle.
To everyone’s surprise, more snow had been forecast, and the sky was certainly threatening. I’d just finished making and stuffing one of my favourite big cat amusers - rubber balls filled with various bits of meat, and had dropped it into the servals’ enclosure. The elusive pair were already sniffing around and starting to get the hang of it. I wondered if they’d be as enthusiastic if they were caught in another snow drift.
“Hopefully it won’t be too bad,” I said, repeating the mantra I’d heard so many times already that morning. No one wanted the zoo to have to close and miss out on the wild success of the Winter Wonderland. Even as I said it, I saw a small flake drift down from the sky. With not long left until Christmas, it would appear we were due another dose of snow.
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“I’d better get some more bedding put out,” I said to myself, starting for the barn. The zoo animals who were less impressed by the snow liked to be able to hide from it until it was all over. There were days when I wished I could do the same.
As I walked towards the hay barn, I kept hearing Jenna’s voice in my head. I never got to send off my novel…
I sighed and shook my head. What could I do about that? From what I’d found, she’d only written a few hundred words. I didn’t know if my mind was suggesting that I morph from comic book artist into crime writer and write the whole thing in memory of her? What she’d written hadn’t even made sense! There’d been no plan, and I still thought it had been copied from a book, rather than penned herself.
Unless what I’d found hadn’t been the novel after all.
The file had been called a crime-type name, and I’d just made the assumption. I pulled my phone out, googling the name as I remembered it. A novel by David Baldacci came up.
I shut my eyes. It hadn’t been Jenna’s novel. I definitely didn’t really believe Jenna was actually in my head, telling me to find her crime novel, but it did raise a few questions. She’d always claimed she was writing a novel - not going to write, but writing - as if it were in progress.
If that truly were the case, where was the file?
It wasn’t the only file missing from her laptop either, I reflected. Officer Ernesto had mentioned that there may be a hard drive. He hadn’t sounded at all convinced and when the police had searched Jenna’s office and her house again, they still hadn’t found it.
But I knew Jenna was quite good at hiding things in places that no one expected. Especially if she thought hiding an item would be the way to keep it safe and ensure she got the leverage she was looking for.
I remembered back to a time when she’d hidden some rather personal hard copies of photos and had nearly driven a successful crime writer mad. Had Jenna been up to her old tricks?
I hesitated outside of the hay barn and then set off to check if my theory would pan out.
“Madi, I got your text. I’ve brought my makeup bag with me,” Tiff came out of the gift shop when I walked past.
“Thanks Tiff. Can we go to the staffroom? There’s something I need to check,” I said, not wanting to be more specific until I knew for sure. There were so many crazy theories flying around at the moment, I didn’t want to contribute another one. I also didn’t want Tiff to think I was nuts, if I had to explain about the nightmare and turned out to be completely wrong.
“I need the loo anyway. I think I’ve got a bad case of mince pie overdose. They keep giving them out in the shop,” Tiff said, and I noticed she did look rather green. Still, her makeup was perfect…
“You can never have too many mince pies,” I informed her and waited until she’d turned the corner in the direction of the staff loo before I turned to face the cloakroom cupboard. Once upon a time, I thought I’d seen Jenna walk out of here when she’d been forced into emptying her hiding place. Might she have used the same location to conceal a hard drive?
I looked around. It was still too early for coffee break, so the room was empty. I walked into the cloakroom, turning the light on and shutting the door behind me. Then I stood in the small space and waited for something to jump out at me.
After a few moments, I was forced to conclude that there was nothing obvious. The room contained the winter coats of staff members, but when I poked around behind them, the walls were blank. The only thing that might be considered a ‘furnishing’ in the room were the two metal poles that the coats were hung on. I checked them. They weren’t loose and were pretty firmly attached to the wall.
Think! my mind pushed, and I looked at the floor. Jenna loved mysteries. Hiding something beneath the floorboards would definitely have appealed to her. I got down on my hands and knees and started feeling around the wooden floor, hoping that no one would walk into the cloakroom right now.
“Aha!” I said when I felt one of the boards come loose in the very corner of the room. Upon further inspection, it became clear that the tacks used to hold the boards down were missing. I prised the rectangle of wood up and reached into the void beneath, holding my breath.
At first, I thought there was nothing there, but then my fingers grazed something smooth and hard. I found the edges and lifted up the item.
It was a slim black hard drive.
I exited the cloakroom back into the staffroom and walked over to the communal computer, that was mostly used for printing. Fortunately, the USB cable was still attached to the hard drive. I looked around, but Tiff must still be in the bathroom.
I plugged in the cable, wondering if I really had found something significant.
The contents of the hard drive looked almost identical to the files that had been present on Jenna’s laptop. There were only a few difference that I could see. The first one was the additional folder entitled ‘My Novel’. I hovered over it with the cursor. So, Jenna really had written a novel after all! I thought about checking it, but I’d noticed something strange I was eager to check out.
The file containing Jenna’s TV shows for the week she’d died was present on the hard drive.
I opened it up, my eyes scanning the page. A lot of soaps and daytime TV shows passed before my eyes, until my mouse came to rest on CrimeWatch.
Feeling a strange sense of trepidation, I double clicked on the file.
Continue playback? A little box proclaimed and I clicked ‘yes’.
“These scammers are responsible for a whole spate of crimes, stretching back for years. Let’s take a look at them in action, shall we?”
The presenter stood to the side and the screen flashed up with some pretty decent quality footage of a normal couple, greeting people outside of what looked like a garden centre.
“This family run amusement park and rare plant centre thought they were hiring a top-level events team to boost sales with a special event during the summer season. They were even given a special offer to entice them.” The presenter walked away from the footage. “Like any good business, Mr and Mrs Barker were aware of cyber crime, so they decided to do their homework about the company.” The presenter stopped walking and stared directly at the camera. “But would you believe it? Everything checked out. And indeed… the company they thought they were working with is a reputable business. But that wasn’t who the unsuspecting couple were signing up with.” He pointed at a fresh screen and a photo of a ginger man and woman popped up. “To make matters worse, this pair of cyber crooks didn’t just take the revenue they made from their special events. They’d persuaded the amusement park to allow them to take all entry fees on the basis that they would handle it all for the company and be able to submit an accurate set of accounts at the end, when the money was paid.”
I shook my head, privately thinking that should have rung alarm bells immediately. I thought the owners of the amusement park had been fools to trust the pair.
But I was the one who was the fool.
Just before I decided to turn off the programme, my eyes focused properly on the two suspects, still displayed on the screen.
“Hi Madi, I’m actually looking for Auryn,” Barnaby said, making me jump when he walked in through the staffroom door. I desperately clicked close on the video player, but it was too late.
“She knows!” Barnaby called and I was unsurprised to see Sara appear around the door frame.
“That’s such a shame. We’d have been gone after Christmas. Now we have to cut things shorter,” she said, her voice even icier than it had been when I’d first met her.
“Let’s finish up here and get going,” she said to Barnaby, as if I didn’t even exist.
He looked at me with those warm brown eyes. I wondered if they were real, or if he was wearing contact lenses. The only thing that had clued me into him being the same person as the scammer on CrimeWatch was the fact the playback had started there and the bone structure of the pair when they had th
eir pictures next to each other.
Barnaby took a step towards me and Sara shut the door of the staffroom behind her in a very final way.
“You are not going to get away with this,” I said, hoping that Tiff would choose this time to put in an appearance. Those mince pies must have really disagreed with her! At least if she’d appeared, it would be two on two.
To my horror, Barnaby pulled a small axe from his belt, that looked like it had most recently been used for chopping down Christmas trees. He took another few steps forwards and I backed away, trying to think of something that would stop me from being chopped into little pieces.
“You’re going to sit down and you’re going to eat a few of these,” Barnaby said, pulling out a little packet full of familiar blue crystals. “Everything will go away after that.”
“I’m not eating rat poison,” I told him, flatly.
“Come on, Barnaby! This is a golden opportunity to get ourselves out of trouble. If you manage to do this right, it will buy us more than enough time to get away. She’s quite a convincing suspect and you told me the police don't like her,” Sara pressed.
“Sorry, I really did think you were nice,” he told me, moving closer with the axe. “Poison would be better than this.”
“I’m not taking anything,” I told him, trying to keep a small distance between us. “What’s the big plan? You’re going to try to make me die the same way you killed Jenna when she figured out who you were? Will you leave the vial of rat poison next to me as some kind of guilty admission? No one is going to believe it. I had no reason to kill Jenna,” I said.
Sara shrugged, still holding the door. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your name will be cleared eventually, but we’ll be gone by then and no one will catch up with us. Avery has done better for us than we’d ever expected. That arts and crafts day was a masterstroke!”
I was reminded of Jordan telling me I was being taken advantage of by agreeing to speak at the seminar for free. If this was where the money from it was going, I thought he had a point.