The moment Singh left, the book friends raced into the study where they found Ronnie standing at the window, her eyes staring outwards, haunted. Bethany was on the sofa, just looking bored.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked as they gathered around, and Ronnie nodded, allowing herself to be hugged by Missy.
“That dreadful woman thinks my Seamus had something to do with all this.”
“How is that even possible?” asked Claire, batting her long black eyelashes. “He was here the entire time. We all saw him. How could he have got down to the court and back?”
Ronnie shook her head. Thrust a hand to her throat. “She says Greta wasn’t shot from the court. She was shot from this house.”
They just stared at her, waiting, confused, so she explained: “DI Singh believes the shooter used one of Bert’s long-range rifles, pinched it from the observatory upstairs apparently, then went across to one of the windows that faces the tennis court and… and shot her from there. During the noisy fireworks.”
“Our room!” declared Claire. “The window was wide open, remember, Missy? I thought it was rather odd. Maybe that’s where the shooter stood.”
“Except that doesn’t make any sense,” said Perry. “The court was pitch-black at the time of the shooting, wasn’t it? You turned the light on for us, Ronnie, and it took ages to warm up. How could he have shot so accurately from upstairs at a dark tennis court?”
“But was it dark?” asked Claire. “I’m not so sure…”
“And Seamus was downstairs in the library, writing his speech during the fireworks,” said Missy. “Wasn’t he?”
“I told the silly woman all of this,” Ronnie continued. “She seems to think he snuck upstairs and pulled the trigger while we were all distracted. I told her there was no reason in the world that Seamus would want to shoot Greta, let alone his brother. From anywhere! You do know that, yes? My nephew would never do such a thing. It’s absurd.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” said Claire, but there was a soft snort from the couch where Bethany was now inspecting her fingernails.
She looked up and rolled her eyes at their shocked expressions. “I’m sorry, Veronica, but you can’t honestly be surprised by any of this.”
Ronnie stared at her niece aghast. “What on earth do you mean, Bethany?”
Bethany shrugged. “Even you have to admit, there’s always been a bit of sibling rivalry between the twins.” Then she pointed towards the shelf where the family photos were clustered. “Look at them. You can’t blame Seamus for being jealous of Sebastian.”
She was staring at the largest frame with a blown-up happy snap of Ronnie and her two nephews on a sun-drenched wharf. Ronnie was in the middle, beaming, and on her left was Seamus, his wobbly grin matching his rumpled shirt. On the right was Sebastian, coiffed within an inch of his life.
The book club stepped towards it, getting their first proper look at the missing man. And the difference between the two brothers was surprising. They had assumed the twins were identical, but this was certainly not the case. No doubt about it, Sebastian was the taller, better-looking twin, while Seamus was shorter, stubbier, and just the wrong side of handsome. His hair was red to Sebastian’s blond, his nose slightly wonky, while Sebastian’s was perfectly symmetrical. But Seamus’s smile was sweet, a lot sweeter than Sebastian’s, whose smile was a little too cocky. He knew he was handsome, and he knew you knew it too. It reminded Alicia of the line she’d recently read in Gone Girl, where the besieged husband, Nick Dunne, describes having a “face you want to punch”.
Had Seamus felt that way about his own brother?
“He looks familiar,” Alicia said. “Have we met before?”
Ronnie laughed. “You met his twin, Alicia! Of course he looks familiar.”
She nodded but wasn’t sure that was it.
“Who wouldn’t be jealous of Sebastian?” Bethany was saying. “He’s the charmer; Seamus has always been the runt. It’s only natural.”
“That’s utter nonsense,” snapped Ronnie, and Alicia agreed with that at least.
Sibling rivalry was one thing, but killing your brother because he had the better genes? That seemed a bit far-fetched, and Alicia should know. She’d lived most of her life with a prettier, more attractive sibling, but she wasn’t about to take potshots at Lynette from a window.
“What was Singh’s case against Seamus?” Alicia asked Ronnie.
Before Ronnie could answer, Bethany was on her feet. “I’ve heard this bit. I really don’t need to hear it again. Besides, somebody’s got to find you lot new beds.”
Then she glided out the door, and Ronnie sighed after her as they all took seats in front of the fireplace. And they listened as Ronnie clutched her pearls and told them what Singh had told her about the text message on Sebastian’s phone. The one that came from Seamus.
It did sound terribly incriminating, and several of them shared worried glances while Missy just looked confused.
“Yo Sebastian?” she repeated. “Is that what the message said? Because it seems too wordy for a text, and does Seamus even call his brother by his full name?”
Ronnie held empty palms out. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah!” She bobbed her cherry-red curls. “I mean, I know we don’t know Seamus well, but didn’t he usually call his brother ‘Seb’ or ‘bruz’?” Her eyes were on Perry now. “He used the term ‘bruz’ when he left that voice message before we started searching, remember?”
“What’s your point, Missy?” asked Perry.
“My point is, I call my sister Henny, Henny. And I always rabbit on about her. Have you ever heard me call her Henrietta?” Missy’s eyes danced around the frowning group. “Exactly! And you two…” She clicked her fingers at the Finlay girls. “Lynette, you mostly call Alicia ‘Lis’ or ‘sis’ and Alicia calls you ‘Lynny’. I think it’s a clue. If the text really was from Seamus, he would have written ‘Yo Seb’ or ‘Yo Bruz’ or something. Has to be a fake.”
They all stared at her as if she was batty, and Queenie told her as much. “Maybe it autocorrected, Missy. I think you’re stretching. And we don’t always use the same terms of endearment all the time, do we, folks? Peeps? Possums?” She offered Missy a pointed look. “Besides, he wouldn’t have been in his right mind, would he? And that’s not the only thing…” Queenie stopped, gulped at Ronnie’s distraught expression, and said, “Never mind.”
Ronnie released her pearls. “No, no, you must speak freely. It’s what we’ve always done. It’s the only way to help my nephew, by getting to the truth. Please tell me what you’re thinking.”
Queenie grimaced. “It’s just that Seamus was very adamant that we stay away from the house when we searched, remember?”
“Only because he’d already searched there,” said Claire.
“And why ask us to search at all?” added Perry. “He’d risk being caught. He didn’t need to do that. Could’ve shut up about Sebastian while we got plastered and watched the fireworks.”
She nodded, almost with relief. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“What about the book Hugh mentioned,” asked Alicia, trying to move them on. “The family tree Sebastian was researching. Could it have something to do with that?”
“I don’t see how,” said Ronnie. “But that’s why you need to stay. You think outside the box. You ask the curly questions. Look, I didn’t come down in the last shower. I know the twins aren’t angels and didn’t always see eye to eye. But I also know they love each other and they’re not violent, they’re just not.” A glance at Queenie then. “But if you find otherwise, if the truth is ugly, then I will just have to accept it, won’t I? But I can promise you this, whatever you find, there will be a lot more to it than stupid sibling rivalry.”
By the time the book club got to bed, it was well past midnight. And they weren’t exactly in beds. Instead, Bethany had cobbled together sheets and duvets and instructed them to spread out on the ground floor. Perry was bunking down on the couch in the study while Missy and Claire shared the pull-out sofa bed in the library. The remaining three, Queenie and the Finlay sisters, were across two lounge suites back in the enormous parlour. From there, they could see out the bay windows, across the patio to the dark night sky where the helicopter’s enormous beam continued dipping and diving, like an eagle searching for its prey.
“We’re cursed,” said Alicia, watching, sleepy-eyed. “We’re officially Miss Marples, doomed to forever stumble across dead bodies.”
“There’s worse people to be,” said Lynette. “Besides, Ronnie’s a widower, Claire’s freshly married and you’re not a spinster anymore either, sis. Or not for long.” She watched Alicia’s frown flourish. “You’re wondering why he didn’t show.”
She was talking about Alicia’s detective boyfriend, and Alicia nodded. “You think Jackson’s over me and all my bad luck with corpses?”
“I think he loves you and is otherwise occupied.”
Alicia nodded. She really hoped that was true. But unless there was a separate homicide tonight, he was off duty. He should have been here.
Lynette’s eyes slid outwards to the lights. “This is either one very big property or that chopper is way off course.”
“What do you mean?” asked Queenie.
“Look.” She pointed to the noisy bird in the distance. “I don’t know what they’re searching for, but from this angle, it looks like they’re hovering over the sea. Now why would they be doing that?”
The three women swapped a worried look, none of them willing to answer.
~
Detective Inspector Singh was getting too old for this crap. The pilfered golf buggy could only get her so far, and now she had to trek the final distance to the farthest corner of the property to the boundary wall that separated Westeraview from its neighbours to the north and the ocean to the east. But she was assured the walk would be worth it. One of her team had located some evidence that had been discarded just on the other side of that wall.
Had insisted she hang around to check it out.
And so she’d sent Pauly on to headquarters with the suspect, and here she was, snagging her dress in the foliage, trying to keep it from flying up with the gusty coastal breeze, and she cursed the book club, knowing none of this was their fault but blaming them anyway.
She’d never met a group of people so likely to stumble upon a corpse and so unlikely to run screaming for the hills like every other poor sod she’d ever interviewed. It’s like they were living inside one of their cherished murder-mystery series…
“Detective?” A voice broke through her thoughts.
She looked up and around. They were now just metres from the cliff face. You could no longer see the ocean, but you could clearly hear it, roaring like a warning cry far below.
Detective Sergeant Jarrod Mallee was motioning towards a makeshift ladder that had been propped up against the perimeter wall.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ll hold it steady.”
She rolled her eyes, tucked her dress in tight, then clambered up the rungs until she reached the top. From there she could see out towards the ocean again or not see it so much as hear it and feel it, crashing on the rocks below, sending sea spray up and into her eyes, the gusty wind loosening her ponytail and slapping strands of hair across her cheeks.
Eyes now watering, she stared out for just a moment, then looked down to the rocky embankment on the other side of the wall, which was lit up by a portable LED floodlight. It was not a wide space. A few metres at best. A thin fringe of native saltbush swished and swirled with the wind right along this eastern perimeter, and below that, a precarious drop down and into that unforgiving sea.
“Got another gift for me, I hear?” she called out, her voice almost lost in a sudden gust, and Scelosi looked up from where he was squatting, just on the wrong side of the wall.
“Hey, Singo, glad you could make it. Thought you should see this for yourself.”
“So considerate of you,” she called back, smiling.
Then her smile slipped away as he carefully shuffled to one side and pointed towards a bright yellow plastic flag with the number fourteen on it, then at the object it was marking.
It was a shoe. A black derby dress shoe.