by Gilmour, SJB
‘The thing is,’ I told him, frustrated. ‘I can’t leave here. I need to get James to investigate Trish—’ I was becoming emotional. ‘If only—’
‘Only what?’
‘I just wish I could read Trish’s mind the way I can her daughter’s. Then, next time she comes around, I’d know for sure.’
Mason gaped around, bewildered. ‘Mrs Owen, do you mean to tell me that after everything you told the young Riley lad, you still do not understand? You can read her mind, just as you can those two inebriates in there.’ He waved in the direction of the lounge where Mitch and Sally were into their second James Bond movie.
‘All you need do is care. It’s empathy that allows us to reach the minds of the living.’ He began to tick names off on his fingers. ‘Kelly Forbes. You care about her. The policeman. You care about him in a way too, don’t you? Your occupants? Is it not obvious?’ He looked disgusted. ‘I tried to explain it to the Riley boy, but the youth will not listen.’ He drifted out into the middle of me and looked about, appraising the tidy state in which Sally kept me.
I was shocked but not for long. Sally came into the room for more drinks. She walked straight through Mason as if he wasn’t there. But then, to her, he wasn’t. I didn’t wait. I plunged into her mind to see what thoughts she’d had about the step and the fuse-box. It was like swimming through a strong current. Her thoughts were sluggish and simple. Sober, her thoughts were fast and varied, leaping from one to another like flash cards.
Being in her mind, it was almost as if I felt drunk. Her thoughts were hazy, but they were strong. It made it harder for me to reach the memories I needed. More wine. Shit, I need to pee. Whoops, bit wobbly there. My ears are hot. I need to pee. Fill the glass then go pee.
She filled her glass and raced out of me. A few moments later, she returned, intending to just nick in and grab her glass and another beer for Mitch. I had to be quick. I knew where the thought was. I just had to bring it to the surface. Two deaths in two months? If they need to test that step, should they come back and test the rest of the house for prints? It’s a long time ago, but— How did that woman die? Electric shock and a fall? Did they even look at the fuse-box?
There! I’d done it. Sally was shaking. She set the glass down on my bench so hard it snapped the round bottom piece right off. In her shock, she also dropped the bottle of beer.
‘Fuck!’ Sally rarely swore out loud. Since I’d just given her quite a shock, I forgave her immediately.
Mitch heard her yell and bounced in, concerned. Emotions played over his reddening face as he took in the mess and Sally’s expression. He went from concerned to amused to alarmed. Sally was not smiling at all.
The thoughts about testing the fuse-box fled her mind as she now had a mess to clean up. Mitch helped and between the two of them, the unsteady pair soon had smelly, sticky liquids and glass cleaned up and fresh glasses poured. Mitch decided it was time to switch from beer to wine. Mistake, I thought. Big mistake. Regardless of the correct way to avoid getting too drunk and thus avoiding a nasty hangover, I had to get them thinking again. I hit Sally again.
She paled and set her glass down carefully this time.
‘Mitch, I just had a thought.’
He blinked. ‘Oh?’
She told him her idea, just as I was dredging up a similar thought in his head.
‘We’re too pissed now,’ Mitch told her seriously. Then he grinned and nodded in the direction of the lounge. ‘We’ll call the cops in the morning. Tell ‘em we don’t mind if they go over the place with a fine-tooth comb.’
Sally nodded and made a quick note on the little pad she used for her shopping list.
‘So I don’t forget,’ she told him, waving the pad at him.
It was impulsive and pushy of me, but before I could think twice, I’d done it. In Sally’s buzzing mind, I’d seen the curious thought she’d had about me and Ashleigh. Sally scribbled another note on the pad. “Dinner Saturday. Ask Trash what happened to owners.” Haha! I wrote “Trash” not “Trish.” Better rub that out… There. “Trish.”
Then they went back to their movie, and I was left to stare at that note. Oh dear. Now I’d done it. She’d see that the next morning and remember it. As good as I was at bringing ideas up to the top of her mind, I couldn’t for the life of me (okay, bad choice of words) suppress an idea once it was there.
Chapter Six
The morning before the dinner at the Forbes’ house, the police paid them another visit.
‘Look, there’s a limit to how much I can tell you.’ Leading Senior Constable James Hewson was sitting out on the porch outside my window. Sally and Mitch were with him. ‘Melbourne CID have sent us a detective. Guy’s name is Thompson. He’s a weird bloke but he’s by-the-book.’
‘Mate, I don’t care about the case really,’ Mitch told him. ‘I’m not going to write about it. I wasn’t involved and I’ve nothing to gain from it. I just want the whole thing over and done with, and I guess, just for our own piece of mind, I want to make sure it’s all closed. You’ve got the step. Your colleague over there is checking the fuse-box and you’ve got people in the shed. I think we’ve a right to know at least what you’ve found.’
James nodded. ‘Okay. Look, it’s not going to hurt anyway. You might as well know that we had a bunch of people’s alibis to check.’ He nodded at Sally. ‘Mrs Taylor, you were in residence at Monash Uni four years ago. On the days in question, you were in lectures both days. We checked.’
Sally nodded mutely.
‘And you, Mr Taylor— You were harder to check. When Mr Owen died, you were in Sydney in a meeting with your publisher. When Mrs Owen died, well…’
‘I told you, I was in LA. Signing the deal for the movie.’
James nodded. ‘We’re still waiting for confirmation of that meeting, but Immigration have confirmed you left Melbourne in the morning the day before, and came back six days later.’ Neither Mitch nor Sally said anything so James continued. ‘The most obvious beneficiary of course was Eugenie’s brother Neill. He’s based in Yarra Junction. He had an alibi when he was asked at the time. Out with his girlfriend in a restaurant in The Junction. They’ve split up now, but we’re checking them again. Doubt anything will have changed.’
Girlfriend? Good for Neill. Pity it didn’t work. Still, I wasn’t surprised. Neill was hopeless. Always forgetting to return calls. Growing up, the few girlfriends he’d had didn’t hang around long. He was always too focused on his painting to pay them enough attention.
James looked around and nodded his head sideways in my direction.
‘There’s nothing yet. But,’ he stressed, ‘look at it this way. You find the step. Then someone breaks into your house and doesn’t seem to take anything. Maybe they weren’t after something of yours. Maybe they were after something left behind. Something from when Eugenie or Ashleigh were killed.’
Sally kept her face as diplomatically happy as always, but Mitch didn’t bother. He frowned.
‘So you think they were killed, not victims of stupid accidents.’
James didn’t reply.
Mitch nodded. ‘Alright then. Maybe after Officer Preeta’s done with the fuse-box, she should check out the ceiling. The house is on a slab, so there’s no underneath. The roof’s the only hiding place left.’
James nodded and waved at the ladder on the roof of the police Landcruiser.
‘Way ahead of you, Mr Taylor. Do you mind if she checks your shed too?’
Mitch shook his head and waved at the shed in an off-hand manner.
‘Go for it. I cleared out the meth lab last week, so it’s all clear.’
Mitch and Sally came back inside then and sat at my kitchen bench. Neither said much out loud, but their thoughts were plenty loud enough.
Fuck this, Mitch complained to himself. No way I can write while these people are creeping about.
Sally was having similar thoughts. I should be working on my notes. Images of her spiders’ movements and her
documents flashed though her mind. Mitch is hating this. I hope he’s not mad at me. Then she gave up worrying about it and began making her minestrone.
Better give her a hand, Mitch thought. Better than listening to Mister Plod climb all over my house.
Sally brought out her enormous stock pot. I’d had one similar to it, though mine had been aluminium, where hers was stainless steel. Full, it could carry thirty litres. She set it on the stove, while Mitch pulled out a nest of stainless steel bowls. Then he began pulling out all the vegetables from Sally’s soup-veggie crisper drawers and arranged them out on my bench-top for her. Then he patted her on the bottom and left, hoping he’d be able to concentrate on writing with the cops searching his house.
The carrot, tomato, onion and garlic trimmings she’d kept, Sally set in one of the bowls. To this, she added six more diced carrots, all the celery trimmings, plus whatever celery she had in the fridge, also diced. Then she diced up a whole bulb of garlic and four brown onions. With Mitch now out of her way, Sally moved around in me like a dancer. As soon as she had completed one manoeuvre, she was already halfway into the next.
She turned the heat up full whack under the pot and poured in several tablespoons’ worth of extra-virgin olive oil. Then in went the garlic and onions. After a quick stir, she began chopping up six tomatoes, discarding only the little brown stems at the top. The tomatoes and the rest of the trimmings and celery went in next. She stirred it all about a bit more, then began tackling her heavier vegetables. A whole cabbage, two heads of broccoli, a cauliflower, a good half kilo of green string beans and two parsnips all saw the business end of Sally’s knife.
I loved watching her knife-work. She had a block of German knives that she kept very sharp indeed, but she rarely used them. Instead, she had several more like the largest chef’s knife in the block. These she kept in a drawer with her steels. Before and after each use, the knife would get a thorough sharpening with first the diamond steel, then a quick hone from the regular metal one. Once the blade was razor-sharp, she’d chop, slice and dice away with such speed and accuracy, anyone would have thought she’d trained at Cordon Bleu.
Once the vegetables were chopped up, and the pot stirred a few more times, she got to work on her herbs. Mitch had fetched a few handfuls of parsley from the garden — about the equivalent of two bunches from the grocer. Sally chopped this up and set it aside in a bowl for later. I knew she’d be adding this at the last minute, but the dried herbs she was measuring out would go in sooner.
Half a cup of dried oregano, half a cup of thyme, six bay leaves and a quarter of a cup of dried sage all went in next, along with a few bags of osso bucco bones. Sally preferred that cut because she could trim the meat and stew it, but keep the bones and their lovely marrow for the stock in her soup.
Again, images of her grandmother flashed through her mind. I don’t care if it’s early, Nonna’s rule was one glass for her, the rest of the bottle for the zuppa. She began to pour herself a glass of wine from the cask in the fridge.
Jeepers! Couldn’t they go a day without booze? If they weren’t careful, they’d end up like Trish and David. I sifted through her mind until I found her thoughts about Trish Forbes. That brought her up short, let me tell you. She poured that glass straight into the pot without taking a sip.
Sally added the rest of the vegetables she’d cut up and then put in a small handful (well, she did have small hands) of rock salt as well as grinding in about a tablespoon or so of black pepper. Lastly, she topped the pot up with enough water to cover the vegetables, stirred it all about a few more times and turned down the heat.
There. Couple of hours and I’ll pull out those bones and check it.
I was so engrossed in watching my little general take charge of the stove and everything else in me that I only just remembered what I needed to do. I had to get her to get James into me so I could see where he was at. If I could do that, then I’d need to get her to bring Trish in. Preferably before Sally broached the subject of my death during a polite dinner conversation.
Sally’s manners weren’t hard to find. She turned on the kettle. Better offer him a cuppa, she thought.
Evidently, my suggestion worked. She came back into me a few moments later, followed by James and Nayani.
Guess I better tell her, James thought.
‘We didn’t find anything in your ceiling, Mrs Taylor.’
‘Sally, please. Black coffee, no sugar. And Nayani, white tea with two.’
‘Sally,’ James replied with a nod as he accepted the coffee. ‘But Nayani here did find some more blood out in your woodpile in the shed. Could be transfer from the step, could be something else. Because this case is now active, it’ll take less time to get a result from the people at Melton.’
Nayani smiled and thanked Sally for her tea with a grateful nod.
‘There are a lot of prints in the fuse-box, though. We’ve got Mr Taylor’s on file, but do you mind if we take yours to eliminate them from what we found?’
What? Ink on my hands? Will it wash off? Wait, that means they’ll stay on file forever. Shit. Oh well…
‘Sure, go ahead. Do you want to do it now?’
Nayani smiled that diplomatic smile of hers again. I was beginning to warm to this woman. After I’ve finished this tea. Wonder if she has any biscuits? Damn, that soup is starting to smell good.
Huh? That was the first time I’d been able to hear Nayani’s thoughts. Maybe Mason was right after all.
Nayani and James finished their drinks and then Nayani went out to the car to get a fingerprint kit, while James filled in some forms in his log book. Now more than ever, I knew I had to get Trish into me so I could try to hear her thoughts. All I needed was some way to identify with her and I might be able to get into that alcoholic mind of hers to see if she remembered anything. To see if she was my killer.
But how? How could I do that? Oh, I could encourage Sally and Mitch to invite them around again, but neither wanted much to do with their neighbours right now. This whole mess had made them feel pretty suspicious about the lot of them, so much so that I couldn’t budge those thoughts at all. I gave up trying to figure that out and decided to concentrate on James. His mind was trained to be suspicious. It was easy to find what I wanted.
Did the original guys on the scene miss anything else than that step? Better go back to see who was there. They’ve all moved on now. Only Jilly and old Tony are still here from those days. If there’s blood out in the shed and the step was there too, why was it there? Why wasn’t there any other debris from the stairs? I saw the scene shots. That guy landed bad. Smashed up the rails — there was stuff all over him. Who cleaned it up? Bloody hell, doesn’t this woman do anything else than cook?
Brilliant! He had no memories or references to Trish that I could find, but he was on the right track. The police report would sure to have notes about who was at the scene, surely. Nobody could mess that up. I hope. I pushed again.
Why go back? Just ask Jilly to have a look at the file. It’s on my bloody desk. If one of the neighbours was there, then I could save myself a trip to the station and back…
After their cups of tea and coffee and a few more minutes of polite chit-chat, James and Nayani left. They sat in the Landcruiser for several minutes before driving off. When I saw them turn left towards the Forbes’ house instead of right to Gembrook, I could have broken into song.
Sally also watched them go. Once they were out of sight, she slouched on one of the bar stools and rested her head on her arms over my bench-top. I just want this to end. Her mental tone was bitter and exhausted. This is fucking killing me. I’m not horny. I’m not happy. Shit. This is supposed to be my perfect fucking life in my perfect fucking house and now I’ve got this perfect fucking mess.
I hated seeing her that way. When I’d first met her, I’d not liked her at all. Then over time, I’d seen through the cheery Miss Popular veneer to her genuine heart and staunch soul — completely the opposite of what I’d
expected to find. It was then I suppose, that I realised I loved her every bit as much as I loved Mitch. She was my family and my spirits rose and fell with hers. I couldn’t let her stay miserable.
Down inside her mind, where they’d been almost trampled to death, were happy thoughts. One of them was one she had often thought about me. Her kitchen when she had grown up had been the central hub of the household. Family members would come and go at all hours, often spending huge slabs of time away from everyone else, but somehow, whenever they met, they always seemed to do it in the kitchen. It was a place to catch up, a place to share the joys and pleasures of each other’s company.
I, she planned, would be the same. In fact, I already was, she reflected. Mitch spent much of his time in his study or riding his bike. She spent many hours at her studies or roaming the paddocks for spiders or bush-walking through Kurth Kiln Park. It was in me that their lives intersected again. Even cold or tired or stressed, when they met up with each other in me, those discomforts fell away as their love for each other flowed buoyant and strong alongside the current of secure warmth that came from me.