by Kris Pearson
“But if Perce got someone else pregnant the wife might have left in a huff?”
“Exactly,” Jim said, nodding slowly. “Either way, when the boy turned up as a young man Perce was absolutely livid to find either he or she had spawned a loose-living, low-life druggie. I think there were only a couple of us knew,” he added, “and you don’t kick a mate when he’s down. Not that he was ever such a great mate, but a near-enough neighbor, and the same generation, so…” He shrugged.
“So was Beefy on drugs from early on?” I asked. “Someone told me he probably got hooked on them after he was wounded in Afghanistan. He must have cleaned up his act to ever get into the Army?”
“Total disappointment,” Jim said, which didn’t quite confirm or deny anything. “They had no other children so it’s the end of an era for Devon Downs. Probably end up under foreign ownership and get turned into yet another dairy farm,” he added. His bristly eyebrows drew together in a fierce frown.
“Oh well, water under the bridge now.” I swallowed the last mouthful of scone and rose reluctantly from the comfy old kitchen chair. “I need to get home. Your gateposts have inspired me,” I teased as we walked out into the yard. “Graham’s not back until after dark so I thought I’d jazz up the loquat tree out the front.”
“That’s Alex’s work,” Jim said, gazing across at the old green bus where orphaned Alex Hudson presumably still slept after his mother’s tragic death from an inoperable brain tumor. “Good lad. Shaping up well.”
Lord Drizzle often provided short-term farm jobs for foreign students keen to trade their labor for temporary accommodation and work experience. Alex was more than that – almost an extra grandson now from what I could see – and they were working on the Drizzle memoirs together. I looked forward to learning a lot more about my Dad’s old friend in due course. And his motorcycle racing. My brain still boggled a bit at the thought of Jim hurtling around a track far too fast in slapdash safety gear, but that was life back then.
“I’m without Denny for a few days,” he said, leaning an elbow on my car roof. “Bad situation for him. Wife being treated for cancer and their only daughter getting married and insisting they change the wedding to a resort in Fiji. I think they’ve hurried it up, in case. They flew out yesterday.”
I pictured the sunshine and swaying palms. Maybe everyone barefoot on golden sand. “Sounds beautiful. But sad, of course, if the mother’s so ill.”
“Denny’s hopping mad,” Jim added. “They had everyone invited to a big local shebang mid-January. Caterers booked, deposits paid, and then the daughter put her foot down. Half the guests don’t want to pay for airfares and accommodation in Fiji, or can’t get enough leave from jobs at this time of year to make it worthwhile, and Denny feels it’s far too much strain on Lorraine.” He reached out and opened the car door for me. “Bad all round,” he concluded. “I think the daughter hoped it would be a treat for her mother, but weddings are stressful at the best of times. And this isn’t the best of times, by a long shot.”
“Families,” I agreed. “Not as bad as the Percy family, though. Anyway, I’ll be in touch if I hear anything useful about Beefy Haldane.”
I whizzed off home again, music too loud because it was that sort of day, and found a smart black pick-up truck parked outside in the street. It looked like John’s, but what would he be doing here?
After lifting the box of Christmas pudding cupcakes with great care, and the big bag of groceries with rather less, I hurried inside. To my surprise I found not John but Erik, and he was looking right at home in the sunroom with Heather. She was curled up on the divan with the rug over her legs, much as I’d left her. He was sitting by her feet, rubbing a hand to and fro from her ankle to her knee in a slow, soothing caress.
6 – Dinner for Four
Heather was whiter than winter snowdrops. She opened her eyes when she heard me enter the room, but then she scrunched them shut again for a few seconds.
Erik stood, like the gentleman he might be, and gave me a polite nod.
“You’ll never guess what this foolish man did,” Heather said through clenched teeth. “Went straight back to that body without anyone to help, and they might have shot at him.”
I probably opened and shut my mouth like a goldfish a couple of time, because what can you say in reply to something like that? A few seconds later I found I’d grabbed a fistful of my watermelon-pink blouse and was pressing my hand down against my heart.
Too bad if I ended up with a patch of crumples.
The steady beat possibly calmed me a little, but it would have made more sense to grab Erik’s shirt and make sure he was the one still alive.
Yeah – not going to happen. He looked mega-alive. Cool and steady. As though he was thriving on the situation. He was soon sitting by Heather again and once more had a big hand curled around her ankle.
“You’re okay?” I asked him.
He looked across at me with his unnerving dark eyes. “Never better.” His mouth twitched at the corners and he took a deep breath because I saw his broad chest expand, which stretched his green Burkeville Bar polo shirt most decoratively. The man was solid muscle.
I let go of my blouse. “Why on earth did you do it?”
“Wanted to get lower. Couldn’t take the risk when we had Heather with us.”
She glared at him and huffed, “But you’d risk your own life!”
Now there were two anger spots blooming on her pale cheeks. I absolutely saw her point of view. From what she’d seen on the first flight, someone was up to huge amounts of no good down by the beach. Why would anyone go back for another look?
Erik shook his head. “Not so much of a risk.”
“But they could have shot at your engine,” she said.
He gave the slightest of grins. “Engine’s up above me. If they’d hit that, the bullet would have gone straight through me and I wouldn’t be worrying much.”
“I might be,” Heather snapped. Then she gave a very obvious swallow. “Really?”
I sagged down in Dad’s big cane chair. “Why didn’t you wait for DS Carver to swing into action? Or whoever it would be if they had to get someone else out there?”
Erik planted his other hand on his knee and sat there as solid and still as the First World War memorial in the main street of Drizzle Bay. “Striking while the iron was hot. I could get back there in a few minutes. No idea how long it would take for them to deploy someone from further away. Every minute means evidence can be hidden or destroyed.”
“But hang on, why’s that your business?” Would he admit he and John were somehow working in cahoots with the Police or one of the government departments? That word ‘deploy’ surely smacked of a military background.
“Concerned citizen,” he said without blinking. “Had the means to lend a hand.”
“Lend a body,” Heather muttered. “Lucky you didn’t.”
By now I’d stopped being so shocked and had the story straighter. “So no-one actually shot at you? Did you see anyone?”
Erik took another slow breath before speaking. “No-one shot at me. I’m sure no-one was around. There’s nowhere much to hide down there. I took a chance and went down pretty low.” He waited a few seconds while Heather and I made disapproving noises like a pair of old grannies. And,” he said, pausing and grimacing, “that’s not Haldane on the tree.”
“What?” we exclaimed in unison. “Who?” We must have sounded like one person in an echoing cave.
Erik shrugged. “Haldane’s dark. Big beard. This guy had long hair, lighter brown, no beard to speak of. The downdraft swept his hair back and I got a decent look this time. Still dead though.”
I sat up straighter, wondering if it was Roddy. I had no idea what he looked like of course. If he’d been a soldier until a few months ago, could he have long hair by now?
“Already sent Carver some much better shots,” Erik added. “Hopefully good enough to ID him from. I needed to stay well back – far enough I di
dn’t blow any of the evidence away.”
“You’d better tell Paul,” I said to Heather. And then realized I needed to get back to Jim Drizzle and let him know it wasn’t Beefy before the story went any further. “Excuse me just a mo,” I said, trotting off into the back yard and confessing to Lord Jim that I’d been barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. The spaniels galloped over and gave my legs a good sniff in case I’d been anywhere interesting since they’d last seen me. Could they smell Iona’s café or the produce department of the Mini-mart? I gave each silky head a rub, and played with Manny’s ears while Jim huffed and puffed on the other end of the line.
“So he’s still out there somewhere, and maybe planning to steal more of my cattle,” Jim said, sounding pretty peeved. “A good Angus bull can fetch close to three thousand dollars. I don’t breed them for criminal scum to profit from.”
That was pretty strong language from polite old Jim! “It might not be him doing it, of course,” I soothed. “Could be someone else entirely. I’ll pass on anything Bruce Carver tells me – not that I’m expecting a flood of confidences from that direction.”
“Good girl, Merry. Thanks for letting me know anyway.”
I gave the spaniels a final pat and shot back inside, glancing at my watch. No time to get the Christmas decorations onto the loquat tree right now – the promised lasagna took precedence. But first I returned to the sunroom, walking ever more slowly so I could listen as words like ‘commercial’ and ‘frontwoman’ and ‘scenery’ drifted out. I poked my head through the doorway. “Are you two okay? Like tea or coffee? Anything?”
It definitely wasn’t my imagination; they were now sitting closer together. And looking like a pair of conspirators.
They shook their heads about drinks, and I mumbled something about making a start on dinner and went back to the kitchen.
A frontwoman for a commercial? Heather had let slip she used to be an actress, so what were they cooking up together? I couldn’t hear their voices any longer, even though it was the quietest lasagna I’d ever made. Then there was a big burst of barking from the spaniels and Paul arrived – earlier than expected, but at least dinner was now well under way.
He brandished a bottle of Merlot. “You said pasta?” He sniffed, and then closed his eyes. The kitchen now smelled like somewhere in Tuscany or Umbria and seemed to meet with his approval because he opened them again and smiled. “Looking forward to this,” he said.
“Don’t get your hopes up too high,” I warned him, taking the wine and setting it on the counter. “That looks ideal. Thank you.”
“How is she now?”
A fond brother probably doesn’t want to hear his sister has spent the last couple of hours with a hunk like Erik sitting at the foot of her bed and making affectionate advances to one of her legs. Or that he’d now moved closer and they definitely had their heads together about ‘something’.
“She’s had a nice rest,” I said. That was certainly true. “She’s in the sunroom with Erik, because he came by with some pretty interesting news.”
Paul instantly lost his casual air, sucked in a quick breath, and squared his shoulders.
I waved him through, wondering how close Heather and Erik would now be. “I’ll just set the table. Be there in a minute.”
Or maybe I’d be there right away, because I could ask Erik to join us and perhaps learn more. The chances of him being available were slim, but you never knew unless you asked.
Heather was sitting on the divan with her feet on the floor. I wondered if she’d straightened up because she’d heard Paul arriving.
“How are you doing?” he asked, touching her shoulder.
She grimaced and shrugged. “Very strange day. Better now some time’s gone by. I’ve stopped shaking anyway.”
The two men shook hands. Paul looked tall and on edge. Erik seemed entirely relaxed.
“How about we go into the big front room?” I suggested. “More chairs. And who’d like a drink, because Paul’s brought a nice bottle of Merlot.”
“Lovely,” Heather said, reaching out a hand to Erik.
As none of my guests had ever been into the big front room before, I led the way. “My mother’s favorite room,” I said, waving them to the chairs and sofas.
“I can see why,” Heather said. “Great view.”
Yes, it was. We needed more visitors to come and admire it, not that Graham was likely to change his mind any time soon about being sociable. Since our parents had died we’d had the front fence taken down and a new one built which ran from the corner of the house to the garage, and another from the front of the house to the side fence, effectively keeping the spaniels safely confined. They had the whole of the back yard to tear around in, and we gained the entire ocean to look at. Not a bad trade. Now only a band of easy-care miniature Peter Pan agapanthus marked the front boundary – currently covered in a nodding forest of knee-high blue flowers.
Across the road, big frothy waves lost their fight with gravity, tumbled over, and slid up the broad expanse of sand. Beyond them the sun-dappled sea stretched all the way to the horizon. In the near distance, Brett Royal’s whale-watch charter boat ploughed its way back toward the dock. It was the view I’d grown up with, the beach I’d built sandcastles on, and where I adored walking the dogs.
“Anyway, sit,” I said. “I’ll get the glasses.” Not wanting to miss anything I was back in a flash with four wine goblets, a dish of cashew nuts, and the bottle of Merlot balanced on a tray. I set it down and Paul reached for the bottle. No-one was speaking. Heather and Erik had seated themselves on a sofa. Paul had claimed one of the chairs. I perched on the other sofa, nobly depriving myself of the view. Who was going to break the ice?
It seemed it would be me. “Paul – Erik has some pretty shattering news.”
Paul had just picked up the first glass, but he stopped before tilting the bottle. I saw his gaze slide from Heather to Erik.
“Nothing to do with me,” she said. “And I’m still hopping mad about this. Erik flew straight back to that body after we left this morning.”
“What does Roddy look like?” I demanded of Paul.
“Why?” Heather asked. So that answered the question of whether Paul had told his sister much about his inappropriate stalker. Plainly not.
Paul set the bottle down without pouring a drop. “Fair like Heather,” he said, offering no further description.
“Not him then,” Erik said, leaning back into the sofa. “When I went back on my own I did a pretty thorough recce. No-one around that I could see, so I –”
“Flew down really low!” Heather exclaimed. “Honestly, how stupid can you get?”
Erik didn’t seem to mind her annoyance. Indeed, he grinned faintly, drew her hand down onto his thigh, and left his own on top of hers so she couldn’t pull it away. I saw Paul’s gaze follow their hands before he looked up at Erik’s face again.
“Wasn’t Haldane,” Erik drawled. “Once the downdraft pushed his hair away, that was plain. Long, light brown hair. Skinny dude. Not Maori.”
“Wasn’t Roddy either, then,” Paul said. “When I last saw him he had a buzz-cut from Afghan. No time for it to grow far in a few weeks.”
Heather wound some of her hair around a finger and then let it go again. She glanced across at Paul with an enquiring frown.
“Someone I counseled over there. Came to New Zealand and teamed up with Beefy Haldane.”
Well, that wasn’t quite true, but it seemed it was the version Paul wanted his sister to know. Fair enough – we all have our embarrassing secrets. Paul’s hopeful gay stalker now seemed to be well out of his way and it was probably best he remained there.
“So we know Haldane’s still on the loose,” Erik said, bringing us back to the point.
“And possibly living at Devon Downs, according to Jim Drizzle,” I inserted.
Erik grimaced. “So maybe nowhere near Mason’s Ridge after all? Despite that warning in your brother’s car, he hasn’t
come to any harm yet.”
“Someone else has,” I said glumly. I glanced across at Paul. “Yes, pour us all a drink – I think we need it.”
“But to lighten the mood, we have something worth celebrating,” Erik said. “We’re expanding. Getting a seven-seater Squirrel AS355.”
I must have looked really blank because he circled a finger in the air a few times, fixing me with his super-dark eyes and inviting me to guess.
“Helicopter?” I asked. “Another one?”
“Bigger one – for our new business.”
Paul immediately brought the bottle of wine upright again. “What about the Burkeville? Are you selling it?”
Erik shook his head. “Nope – got it working well. Debs will take over as manager. She’s doing ninety percent of the job already.”
“So…?” I asked.
“Heli-tourism.” He rubbed his hand over Heather’s, to and fro in a soft caress. “Get folks to where they want to be a lot faster. Family trips some of the time. Flights over areas they’d never normally see. Set down somewhere great for a picnic –”
“Food from the Burkeville,” Heather inserted.
“You got it! Maybe visit caves with pre-historic paintings, waterfalls no-one has access to, enjoy a swim somewhere pristine and unpolluted, whatever the best local features are. But way off the beaten track. Something really special. There are plenty of cruise liners calling into Wellington over the summer months. People with money who want a memorable day’s experience. We’d give it to them for sure.”
Paul pushed the glasses into a line, reached for the wine, and started to pour again. “It’ll take a fair bit of that to cover the cost of the new machine.”
“We’ll be working it pretty hard,” Erik said. “Some adventure survival treks for folk with tougher constitutions, too. That’ll be Jawn’s baby.”
I was once again struck by the difference in their accents. Californian John, who pronounces his name ‘Jarrn’, and Erik who practically swallows the word. One of these days I’ll ask Erik where he grew up.