Pip walked into the bakery and breathed in the delicious aroma of freshly baked pies and pastry and could almost feel the calories moving to her thighs. Today’s trip had been a reward for finally making some progress with her writing.
Her gaze ran over the glass display cabinet as she waited for the two women at the counter to finish talking, and her ears pricked up at the mention of Rosevale.
‘Had to be him. I always knew he was a weird old bugger,’ the customer was saying as she packed the white paper bag with her purchases into her carry bag.
‘Fancy the nerve of him—dumping her right there on his property. All this time telling people she’d run off and really she’d been in that dam,’ the woman serving said with a disgusted tsk.
‘I wonder if they’ll be able to charge him?’
‘I wouldn’t think so—I heard he’s practically a vegetable. He’d have to be nearly a hundred if he was a day. Nah, he’ll get away with it, the old bastard.’
‘They need to pull the plug on his life support,’ the customer said, shaking her head as she turned away from the counter.
Pip had been standing there quietly as the two women talked, taking in their words and their reactions. It was clear people had very strong opinions of this man, and the level of animosity seemed to be growing steadily about town as news of the discovered bones spread.
The customer gave her a brief glance before opening the door and heading outside and Pip smiled at the woman behind the counter.
‘What can I get you?’
‘I’ll have a vanilla slice, thanks,’ she said and watched the woman bustle about with a pair of tongs as she selected a large square pastry with white icing and slid it into a white paper bag.
‘I’m sorry to have overheard you just now, but were you and the other lady just talking about Bert Bigsby?’
‘Butcher Bigsby,’ the woman corrected stiffly. ‘Yeah. Killed his wife and her lover years ago. They’ve just found her in the bottom of a dam on his property.’
Pip winced a little at the directness of the woman’s stare. ‘What was he like? Bert … before he ended up in the nursing home?’
‘I don’t know … bit of a loner. Always wore a hat and a green trench coat—left over from his army days. Never spoke much. Only came into town when he needed supplies till he couldn’t do it for himself anymore. You new around here?’ the woman asked, leaning one arm back on the bench behind the counter, waiting as Pip tapped her card.
‘I’m just here visiting.’
She could feel the unasked question hanging in the air as to whom she might be visiting, but Pip sent the woman a bright smile as her payment was accepted and reached for her purchase. The last thing she wanted to do was draw attention to herself by announcing where she was staying.
As she stepped outside into bright daylight, she slipped her sunglasses from her head back down onto her face and looked up and down the wide main street. There wasn’t much traffic to speak of in Midgiburra. The highway didn’t go through this way and it wasn’t in a direct path to anywhere bigger, so it was a fairly peaceful town. Cars were parked either side of the street, which made the place look busy, but there weren’t many people walking around. Admittedly, it was too bloody hot to hang around outside, and Pip assumed most people would do their catching up with friends and neighbours inside one of the air-conditioned shops.
She’d done her grocery shopping, and the back of her car was loaded up; it looked like she was planning to feed a family of ten. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she took out her vanilla slice and bit into it, savouring the gooey goodness of the custard filling. The pastry wasn’t too thick and the top was perfectly melt-in-your-mouth flaky. God, she loved a good vanilla slice. It might be worth a trip into town every so often to get one …
As she sat and finished her slice, she caught sight of a dark sedan pulling into the police station driveway and saw a man in a white business shirt and navy trousers climb out before reaching for his suit jacket from the back seat and shrugging it on. The white of his shirt was stark against his dark skin, and he had detective written all over him. She figured he must be here for the investigation and she couldn’t help but watch him closely.
Things had been fairly quiet on the dam front, with just the occasional police car on site. Pip knew that most of the forensic material had been already collected and taken away for testing, but there was still a team poking about in search of anything else interesting that might relate to the case.
Experience told her the police should have the results back on the bone dating by now, and it wouldn’t be difficult to sex the bones if they’d recovered a significant amount of the skeletal remains—which she was assuming they would have since it was contained inside a vehicle underwater and had little chance to have been disturbed by animals as a body left in the bush would have. There was, however, frustratingly little information coming from the police in the media to date, and despite her best attempts to completely wipe it from her mind, she found herself searching for updates now and again when she took a break from the writing that was now thankfully forthcoming.
She had been going through the boxes of information bought along from her office relating to the Knight case. Some of it she’d found interesting—a lot of it only bought back bad memories, but it did serve to refuel her anger at the man she’d finally been able to expose as the greedy, corrupt person he really was.
It was scary just how good he’d been at hiding his real self from the majority of the world. On the outside he seemed like the perfect family man—the charismatic member of a political party whose reputation was that of a champion for the underdog and all-round good guy—when the truth was he’d been doing deals behind his party’s back and taking money for favours in securing government contracts for underground criminal syndicates. He was also involved in a run of murders—contract-style hits on prominent union members—as well as bribing a number of government officials.
Lenny Knight’s sentencing had been a long time coming. It had taken Pip years to unravel his paperwork trail and find solid evidence to tie him to the crimes he’d been instrumental in planning, but she’d done it. It hadn’t come without a price, though, and she had years of frustration and hitting brick walls to prove it.
This man in his navy suit couldn’t have looked more out of place in this town if he’d been eight foot tall and dressed like a green alien. This was predominantly an Anglo farming community where the general uniform was flannelette and denim. She watched as he disappeared inside the old brick building. Opening her door, she shook off the crumbs from her T-shirt before latching her seatbelt and starting the engine. Whatever was going on in there, it was nothing to do with her. She had bigger fish to fry.
Pip was on her way back from her morning walk when she decided to circle up around the dam. At this time of the day, everything was quiet—except for the birds. They were never quiet. The magpies and their cheerful little chortles, and the kookaburras with their uproarious laughter; the rest she couldn’t identify, but they could be extremely noisy when they were all squabbling over whatever the hell birds argued about.
The dried-up dam was still marked out in a grid pattern where the forensics team had conducted a search, and there was an empty space where the old rusted-out car had once sat in its muddy grave.
‘G’day,’ a voice called out, and Pip yelped, taking a quick step backwards, her heart pounding in her chest. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
Pip located the owner and realised it was the man she’d seen walking into the police station the day before. He was standing a short distance away, hidden perhaps by the trees as she’d walked up. She looked around for a car but didn’t see one nearby.
‘I’m Detective Jarrett,’ he said as he made his way across and stopped a short distance away from her. ‘Chris Jarrett,’ he said in a low, calm tone, offering a friendly smile. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘You just surprised me. I didn’t see you.’
‘I parked the car out on the road and walked in,’ he informed her, flipping through the notepad in his hand. ‘Are you Ms Davenport?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see that you gave a statement to the officers on the scene?’
‘There wasn’t much to tell. Have they dated the bones yet?’ she asked.
‘We’re still waiting on an official report,’ he hedged.
‘But you have a rough idea of how old they were?’ she prompted.
‘I was told you might show an interest in the case,’ Detective Jarrett said, shutting his notebook as he eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Quite the stroke of luck, an investigative journalist being on hand as a mystery unfolds.’
‘Trust me, this is a distraction I don’t need right now,’ she told him with a note of self-deprecating humour.
‘You were spot on about the make and model of the vehicle,’ he told her.
She bit back a smug grin at the news. ‘Were you able to trace it?’
‘We’ve yet to confirm but we believe the car belonged to Herbert Bigsby. The previous owner of this property. There was a report of it missing at the same time he reported his wife missing in nineteen forty-six.’
‘And the bones?’
‘As I said, we’re still waiting for an official report on those.’
Detective Jarrett was a hard one to read. Detectives with Aboriginal heritage weren’t a large demographic she’d encountered, especially here. On the outside he seemed easygoing enough, but he had a shrewdness about him that told Pip he wouldn’t miss much.
His dark hair, cut in a short, almost military style, matched the suit and tie, but the neatly trimmed stubble beard that went across his jawline and top lip gave him a slightly dangerous look. Although, instead of taking away from the professional clean-cut suit, it only seemed to enhance it. He seemed to take his personal appearance and his job extremely seriously, but they were at odds with his laidback personality and disarming grin.
‘If the bones come back as Molly Bigsby, are you going to open a new case?’
‘For someone who claims not to have any interest in it, you seem pretty interested,’ the detective said almost lazily.
‘I’m curious, not interested.’ Something about the way he held her gaze, probing hers gently, made her momentarily forget what she was about to say. She straightened her shoulders a little and swallowed nervously. He really was good looking.
‘Well, it’s an old case,’ he said eventually. ‘There’s only one individual still alive who was of any interest to the police at the time—and he had an alibi,’ he said, leaning his back against a nearby tree.
She followed the movement, noticing his solid build beneath the suit, and moved on quickly. ‘Bert Bigsby,’ she said, nodding. ‘Maybe you should release a statement saying that, to put an end to all the gossip going about in town.’
‘Most people around here seem to have their minds made up about the whole thing,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t think a statement will change that.’
‘No, but it might finally, officially, clear a man of any wrongdoing.’
‘From what I hear it won’t make any difference—the old guy can’t talk and is pretty much on his last legs, and there’s no known relatives,’ he said simply. ‘But we’re still investigating it until we can work out the most logical way it all played out.’
‘So you’d be basing it on circumstantial evidence, then?’
‘That’s pretty much all we have to go on after all this time.’
‘Any idea which way you think it will pan out?’
‘Are you on the record with this?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow. She made the mistake of holding his sleepy-eyed look, his brown eyes seemingly tugging her towards him, and felt a shot of red hot desire slice through her unexpectedly. What was wrong with her? It was like her libido was suddenly homing in on every eligible male within a hundred kilometre radius.
‘Of course not,’ she said briskly. ‘I’m just curious.’
‘Well, between you and me,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it’s a pretty interesting case. You’ve got an eyewitness placing the husband’s vehicle at the scene of a murder that happened on a road leading to this property only a few kilometres away, but the husband had an alibi, which after reviewing the initial statement taken, actually has a few gaps in it. Then there’s the husband’s mental state to take into account—after the war, there were statements given from locals who had run-ins with him when he came back. And of course, the infamous affair between his wife and Vernon Clements and that man’s subsequent murder. And now the remains of a woman found on Herbert Bigsby’s property in his vehicle.’
‘You said his alibi had holes?’ she prodded, searching his dark gaze warily. She knew he probably wouldn’t elaborate, but it was worth a try.
His eyes lowered slightly, the action setting off another weird tsunami inside her. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she muttered, then froze, realising she’d said it out loud.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing,’ she dismissed abruptly. ‘The gaps in the alibi?’ she prodded, now impatient as she fought off the heat she felt rising up her neck.
‘I can’t go into too much detail at the moment, but there’s a possibility the husband may have had time to get back here at the time of the murder. We have to follow up a few details—made more difficult than usual due to it being over eighty years ago when roads and travel times were a lot different,’ he added.
‘It sounds to me like you’re leaning towards the general consensus in town that suggests Bert was involved in his wife’s murder?’ She wasn’t sure why she was feeling suddenly defensive on Bert’s behalf. She’d started out playing devil’s advocate, but after talking with Pete and Anne the other day, suddenly Bert had become a person—not just a name.
‘I didn’t say that,’ he said calmly, tilting his head a fraction as he took in her defensive stance. ‘But clearly you don’t agree?’
She wasn’t even supposed to have an opinion—she’d just accidentally got caught up in the whole story. ‘I was just—’
‘Curious,’ he supplied for her, with a small grin.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, I’ll admit I’ve got a case load that’s getting out of control back on my desk in Coopers Creek, so an almost eighty-year-old cold case isn’t something I really have a great deal of time to prioritise.’
‘That’s comforting,’ she muttered, her hands going to her hips as she eyed him with a frown.
‘However,’ he went on pointedly, and with maybe even a little amusement behind his dark eyes, ‘I will be going over all the evidence we’ve located on scene and considering all possible leads.’
‘Including linking the unsolved murder of Vernon Clements?’ she asked.
‘Now you sound like a journalist,’ he nodded knowingly.
Her eyes narrowed a little as she held his gaze determinedly, refusing to let him off the hook by avoiding her question. There was something incredibly sexy about this exchange they’d become embroiled in. As annoyed as she was by his lurking amusement beneath some of his answers, she also found it a little refreshing.
Her exchanges with Erik had had that teasing kind of feel at times too, but looking back, there was always the realisation that she was talking to a cop, first and foremost.
She didn’t get that with the detective.
‘Yes, I’ll be also looking into the unsolved murder of Vernon Clements,’ he said and gave an amused groan. ‘I wasn’t expecting to have to handle the media out here this morning.’
‘You’re not. I’m simply …’ She paused as he waited for her usual comment and replaced it with a slightly haughty, ‘looking out for the public’s interest. I think locals have waited too long to get to the bottom of all this. Now it’s the police department’s opportunity to show taxpayers how clever you all are and solve it. Once and for all.’
‘I can see why grown men shake in their boots when you ask for a one-on-one interview,’ he said, pushing away from the tree.
‘Only if they have something to hide, detective,’ she said, turning away from him to retrace her steps back home.
She heard his soft chuckle as she left and wondered at the small bubble of interest inside her at the deep timbre of his voice. What was happening to her? She’d been in the back of beyond a handful of days and she’d had more chance encounters with men here than she’d had in the city in the better part of the past decade.
Maybe she should try looking up a few of her possible contenders for a date when she got back to the city—the ones she’d previously knocked back because she was too focused on her career to bother shaving her legs and getting dressed up to go out with.
‘You’re not getting any younger,’ she heard her mother’s voice echoing.
Whenever she was stupid enough to dwell too long on things like her age, she’d usually feel the beginnings of heart palpations and do what every sensible, well-adjusted person did—completely erase the thought from her mind and bury her head back in the sand. But perhaps it was time to consider her mother’s advice, that she should think about making time in her schedule to find someone she might consider worthwhile enough to try having a relationship with.
She flinched slightly at the word relationship. It sounded so … permanent. Actually, it wasn’t even the permanent thing she had an issue with—it was more the whole rearranging-her-entire-life-to-fit-someone-else-into-it thing.
She liked not having anyone to answer to. It took an incredible amount of discipline not to let out a snort or roll her eyes when her friends talked about ‘when my husband finds out how much I spent on that pair of shoes’, or before they could commit to a catch-up, they’d ‘just have to check with the hubby that they didn’t have plans for that day first’.
Seriously? If that was what marriage ultimately came to—checking in to get permission to do something for yourself or feeling guilty about buying a pair of bloody shoes—then they could keep all the other good stuff they raved about. The babies and the company and the partnership, oh, and the soul-mate thing …
How ridiculous. With a gazillion people on the planet, to believe you have one person you were destined to be with forever seemed a little limiting. Not to mention how convenient it was that most people claimed to have found them without having to leave the state to bump into them. If you only had one soul mate, how come they were always so close by? You rarely heard of anyone travelling to Kenya to find them, or Greenland—oh no, they bumped into their soul mate at a hen’s night in a pub in Surry Hills.
Pip sighed as she reached the house. She didn’t know the exact moment she’d became so jaded about love. It seemed to have happened gradually with each story she uncovered. There wasn’t a lot of romance attached to dealing with corruption and the underbelly of society. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in love—she’d just never experienced the Hollywood version of it, and she doubted it was as magical as filmmakers wanted everyone to believe it was.
The detective’s smile popped back into her mind and she instantly found herself comparing it with Erik’s. It was like comparing chalk and cheese—the laid-back, sleepy-eyed gaze and lingering amusement that seemed to hover just under the surface in contrast with Erik’s open, confident frankness. Two men so very different and yet both had managed to stir something inside her.
Pip gave a frustrated huff as she reached a decision. As soon as she got back from this writing retreat she would find someone suitable and arrange a date. Surely after spending a couple of hours in painful politeness she would return to her senses and remember why men were a distraction she could do without and go back to living for her work.