Prophets and Loss (A Johnny Ravine Mystery)

by Martin Roth

  Chapter Eleven

  I was nervous about going to meet Melissa the next morning. The pastor’s words weighed heavily. Might I find her sprawled on the floor in the grips of a drug overdose? Perhaps she would be waiting to greet me with a flimsy negligee and a seductive embrace?

  So I was in for shock when I knocked on her door.

  “It’s open,” she called out in a bright voice. I walked in.

  Some old Tamla Motown hit sung by Marvin Gaye was booming from the audio system. And right in front of me, Melissa, dressed in a slinky purple leotard, was doing leg presses against a wall. Her face glowed with color. Her hair was bundled up and packed into netting. I cast from my mind the thought that she was back on the pills.

  “Got an audition,” she said, panting a little.

  “Audition?”

  “Revival of Oklahoma. At the State Theater. The audition’s in two weeks.” She pressed some more. Her long legs looked as if they might reach the ceiling.

  “Still remember all the moves?” I asked. As far as I knew, it was quite a few years since she’d last danced professionally. I thought chorus dancing was for young women.

  “Of course. Like riding a bicycle. Look.” She did a routine across the living room floor. It involved a lot of side-stepping, with her arms stretched first one way, and then the next, followed by some high kicks. It sure looked good, though I felt that with thirty minutes’ practice I could possibly do it too.

  “Life goes on,” she said, as if reading my doubts. “Gotta make my own life.”

  Yes, sure. Confront reality. Make your own life, Mel. But you couldn’t make it as a dancer when you were young. Now you’re in your mid-thirties. “You’re looking very professional,” was all I said.

  “Look at this.” She did a kind of pirouette movement on her toes, then a series of high kicks, and some more side steps. Actually, I was pretty impressed. She still had it.

  A towel was hanging over a chair in the hallway. She grabbed it and wiped her face, then proclaimed: “Tea time.”

  She walked into the kitchen and emerged wearing a white sweater and black slacks, and holding a large blue mug. “Herbal tea. Want some? Oops, sorry, I forgot.” She laughed. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  It had been a running joke with Grant and Melissa. At times during my years in the mountains of East Timor I was forced to subsist on little but soups of roots and weeds. So why continue in Melbourne when fine coffee was so abundant? Yet it seemed Melissa and plenty of other Australians couldn’t start the day without a weedy herbal tea, tasting to me like rotting hay.

  I went and sat on the sofa. “Getting anywhere with your investigation?” she called brightly from the kitchen. It was almost as if her husband’s death of exactly a week before had occurred way back in the distant past. Had she also forgotten her unpleasant outburst at me?

  “Slow,” I called back. “Very slow.” I stood and walked into the kitchen, where she was boiling water for my coffee. “Mel, tell me all about the Prophets. I’ve got a meeting with one of them in a couple of hours.”

  “The Prophets?” There was a hardness in her voice, but then she relaxed. “Boys with toys. Cell phones. Pagers. Little palm computers. Gadgets that tell them the latest share prices from around the world. You name it.”

  “You mean they weren’t serious? Just playing?”

  “Oh, they were serious. Serious money. That’s what it was all about. But somehow they turned it all into a game. They used to meet in pubs and work out which stocks to buy. I never understood it. Sometimes Grant would come home excited because some share price had doubled or something, and he’d insist on taking me to a fancy restaurant. Other times he’d be furious. Wouldn’t talk for two days.”

  She poured my coffee, and we walked back into the living room. How far could I go in voicing Rohan’s suspicions that Grant was deeply involved with the Dili Tigers? She herself had shown me the photos of Grant at La Rue. Even she didn’t trust her own husband. But I didn’t want to wreck her mood and set myself up for another tirade of invective.

  I sat back down on the sofa. “And the Dili Tigers?” I said breezily, almost as an after-thought. “Any connection with the Prophets?”

  She sat next to me. “The Dili who?”

  “Tigers. You know, you told me that Grant said they were his worst nightmare. What else did he say about them?”

  “I don’t know.” She seemed genuinely surprised. She clasped her mug tightly in two hands and thought for a long time. I didn’t dare look at her, in case she was about to start crying. But then she spoke, and her voice was calm and reflective. “I remember that one night he was looking worried. When I asked him why, he told me about this group or organization or something, the Dili Tigers. He said they were from Indonesia and were a kind of terrorist group. He thought they might be planning something dangerous. But he never told me what.” She paused. “I sometimes felt he wasn’t telling me everything. That he was trying to protect me.”

  “He didn’t mention any connection with his old company the Prophetic Edge?”

  She pondered the question. “No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”

  “And you trusted him?”

  Immediately I regretted the question. Melissa tensed. With one hand she began straightening her long hair, as if for therapy. Was she holding back tears? Was she about to explode in rage? But then she turned and looked at me and her expression was one of sympathy.

  “Johnny,” she said softly. “Our relationship wasn’t perfect. I wish I hadn’t shown you those photos before. The ones from…you know.” I nodded. “I’m not entirely sure what they mean. But I was angry that day.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Johnny, as I said, our relationship wasn’t at all perfect. We had our problems. But I had a past and Grant had a past, and considering that, I think that in this world of ours we were doing pretty well. I had never been as happy as I was with Grant.”

  I smiled weakly. I couldn’t think of anything to say. It certainly didn’t sound as if she was having fantasies. She seemed hard-wired to reality. I took a long sip of coffee.

  “Johnny,” she resumed. “You know something? Please don’t think me rude for saying this. But sometimes I think I understand you, and then at other times I don’t. You seem so driven. You look like you’re searching for something. Like you’re not really content.” She smiled at me. “I know all about what happened to your wife in Indonesia. It’s terrible. It really is. But it seems to me that experience has gone and poisoned your relationships with all women. You’re too scared to commit yourself in case you get hurt again.”

  She seemed about to stand, but changed her mind. “Johnny, you know when we pray in church, and sometimes the pastor asks us to pray silently in our hearts for someone in need. Well, a few times I’ve prayed that you can find the happiness that I found. That’s still my prayer.”

  She gave me a hug, and suddenly I realized it wasn’t her but me who had started crying.