| |
Leo scratched Emmitt’s head distractedly as he sipped his morning coffee.
Emmitt, now purring, moved from the chair beside Leo to Leo’s lap, intending to settle into a more comfortable position—ideally one that encouraged more head scratching.
“What do you think?” Leo said to Emmitt. “Is it too soon to call her again?”
Emmitt purred.
He’d seen Jane just last night—they’d driven to Pt Chevalier beach and spent a tranquil hour sitting by the water. She was still sleeping a lot and getting tired easily, so they’d kept it short and it wasn’t enough. Leo wanted more. But would she get sick of him pestering her? Did she even like spending time with him? Leo thought she did, but he wasn’t exactly known for being completely clued-up in this department. And what of her memory problems. And those dreams involving... blood. Leo didn’t know whether he should be worried or whether that was totally normal for someone who’d clearly been in a recent accident. Should he be accompanying her to her next doctor’s appointment? But she hadn’t asked him to, and it did seem rather personal. Leo shook his head and took another sip of coffee. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly be stripped of all the information that made you sure of who you were.
“And I’m the only person she knows,” he said out loud. “She’s probably lonely, right?”
Emmitt meowed and started grooming himself.
Leo drained the last of his coffee, moved a disgruntled Emmitt from his lap to the chair and stood up. “Sorry, dude. I’ve gotta see about a girl.”
***
ALICE GARNET HELD UP her phone to show Tim and Paige. She pursed her lips. “What does an eggplant emoji mean?”
Tim went completely still. Paige, right next to him, cast wide eyes in his direction. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her: her mother was on a dating app and fielding eggplant emojis. But lucky for her—and for Tim—Alice didn’t wait for an explanation.
“If he isn’t going to send me a proper message then he’s out!” She laughed gaily and swiped her finger across the phone.
“Mum, I asked you to please not do this in front of me, but it’s almost as if you wait until I’m around to log on.”
“Oh, relax, Paige, it’s just a bit of fun. What do you think, Tim?”
Tim shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and pressed his lips together. Paige looked from her mother to Tim. Why was she asking Tim for his opinion? There seemed to be some sort of new alliance between the two. Tim had never had a problem with her mother, they’d always gotten on fine, but recently they seemed to be chummier than normal.
“We’re just here to help you with those boxes and then we’re going,” Paige said.
“Right, yes. They’re in the spare room. Can you bring them down and put them in the hallway? Red Cross is coming to pick them up later this afternoon.” Alice went back to her phone. “Oh, that’s quite amusing,” she said, raising her hand to her cheek and sounding pleased. “Oh, my,” she added, a pink bloom flushing across her cheeks.
“Come on,” Paige said, grabbing Tim’s hand and yanking him upstairs. “Before this gets any worse.”
***
SOPHIE WANDERED OUT of her bedroom, the initial rumblings of hunger from twenty minutes ago now turning into rather insistent demands.
“Hi Myra,” she said to her very shy, very quiet flatmate sitting in the corner of the living room. After being startled by the unexpected presence of Myra on a number of occasions, Sophie had taken to checking the corners of rooms she entered, just in case she was lurking. It wasn’t that Myra was creepy, it was just that she preferred to observe rather than actively participate in human interaction. Especially when Victoria was around.
“Hey,” Myra replied quietly. She looked at Sophie’s summer dress then glanced down at the maxi dress she was wearing, as if checking she’d gotten it right. If the aim was to match Sophie, then she had. But this was nothing new. Soon after Myra had moved into the flat a couple of years ago, Sophie had noticed Myra’s clothes becoming rather similar to her own. Even the almost pathologically self-involved Victoria had observed this, and while she would never admit it, her rather barbed comments on the matter suggested to Sophie that she was angry that she herself hadn’t been chosen as Myra’s style icon.
“How’s work going?” Myra asked.
“Oh, fine, you know.” Sophie opened the fridge and retrieved a packet of organic chicken drumsticks, a packet of cos lettuce, a tomato and the second half of the avocado she’d saved from last night’s dinner. She’d cook the whole packet of chicken thighs now and eat the leftovers later. “We’ve got a potential case, a small one, but it’s something. How about you? Got the results of your exams yet?” Sophie continued, eyeing the selection of herbs and spices and wondering how to best prepare the chicken for cooking.
Myra shook her head. “Soon, I think.”
“And the rest of your summer break going well?”
Myra nodded but didn’t volunteer any further information. She’d gone back to India to visit her family for a good portion of her summer holiday and had only returned last week. She’d volunteered only the barest details of her trip, murmuring that it had been ‘good’ with a slightly uncertain smile.
“How’s Victoria been?” Myra said. Sophie and Myra didn’t often engage in long conversations, but they chatted in passing, and sometimes bonded over Victoria and her annoying ways.
“She’s still asking me about work,” Sophie shrugged, “so who knows what’s going on there.”
They both laughed.
“Is Leo still working for you?” Myra said shyly as she dropped her gaze and fiddled with her hands.
Sophie suppressed a smile. Myra had met Leo for the first time before Christmas when he’d popped by for a Christmas drink, and Sophie suspected that Myra had been rather taken with him. She could tell because Myra had retreated even farther into the recesses of the living room, clutching her offered glass of champagne while never taking her eyes off Leo as he cheerfully and obliviously chatted to Sophie.
“Yes, although I haven’t seen him for a few days.”
As Sophie fussed about with a medley of herbs—she didn’t bother to closely inspect which she was sprinkling over the drumsticks because they would go on the barbeque and it wouldn’t make much difference in the end—she wondered again about Leo. She hoped he was okay.
“Are you barbequing those? Is it alright if I cook some eggplant while you’ve got it going?” Myra asked, coming over to the kitchen. “Is there enough room on the grill?”
“Sure,” Sophie said, her mind returning to the Leo-Myra dynamic. Was it worth trying to set them up, she wondered? While Leo seemed to be only vaguely aware of Myra’s presence, maybe it was worth making subtle enquires.
But did she really want her friend and colleague dating her flatmate?
Sophie mentally shelved the idea and went back to sprinkling random herbs and spices onto the drumsticks. As she was about to take them out to the barbeque, her phone beeped with a text from Wade.
Hey, Soph, how’s your day going?
She eyed the display with a pulse of uncertainty. Things had become a little strained last night. Sophie, her head full of Roman, had told Wade she had an awful headache and hadn’t lingered in his car when he dropped her at home. She could tell he was a bit put out by the abrupt end to their date, but she simply wasn’t capable of anything else. And the headache hadn’t been a lie, she just couldn’t tell him the reason.
Another text came through.
How about next time we do dinner, just the two of us.
Sophie smiled. He was pushing through the uncertainty and it was a nice feeling to have someone make an effort to make things work.
Yes, she wrote back.
She owed it to him and to herself, to give it a go.
***
ON MONDAY MORNING, Paige and Sophie went straight to the conference room. While Sophie made the coffee, Paige skipped over to the corner and wheeled out the whiteboard.
“We need a suspect list. We should start with the people at her house on that Sunday when she thinks it happened.”
“If Leo can get us a window of time for the deletion, we can ask for alibis.”
“You know what?” Paige said, eyeing the blank whiteboard.
“Are you asking me or the whiteboard?”
“We need to look at this in two separate parts,” Paige continued, ignoring Sophie’s sarcastic tone. “First, we have the locked-room mystery—the question of how they, whomever it was, gained access to not only her office, but her laptop and hard drive. Second, we have the question of who did it.” Paige wrote How?: Locked Room Mystery on one side of the board and Who Did It?: Suspects on the other. Using the whiteboard marker, she tapped the word Suspects. “Since we need to go back to her house and inspect the room more closely before we can make progress on the How, let’s focus on the Why. Let’s examine the people who were at the house that Sunday and look at motives.” Paige started writing on the board. “We’ve got her husband Martin, neighbour Gillian, editor Sally, rival Peyton, and the writing group Annie, Juniper, Geoff, and Tammy. Let’s start with Peyton because Cecilia thinks he did it.”
“Yes, plus what we overheard.”
Paige continued to write on the board, adding the headings of Means, Motive, and Opportunity at the top.
Next to Peyton’s name, she wrote Money Issues under Motive.
“I found out about the Amazon royalties situation,” Sophie said. “Amazon pays them monthly, but not until sixty days after you earn them, and only when you reach a certain threshold of sales. With a bestseller there’d be no issue of reaching that, but even so it would be at least two months before Peyton saw any money.”
“So he can’t be expecting to pay back that advance from Sally from the royalties. He said a week.”
“There’s no way.”
Paige snapped her fingers. “Unless he’s made some sort of deal. Maybe he was approached as soon as it was released, and he got a book deal under that pen name. Or he sold the movie rights and is getting an advance or something?”
“I guess that’s possible.”
Without warning, the door to the conference room opened.
“Hey,” Paige cried as a young woman entered the room.
“I’m Zelda Cho,” she said, stepping farther inside as if she’d been invited.
“You can’t just walk in here,” Paige said.
“Can’t I?” Zelda shrugged as if she genuinely didn’t understand. “Don’t you want clients to come in?”
“You’re not a client.” Paige regarded her warily, then hopefully. “Are you?”
“Actually, no.” Zelda handed a small white business card to Sophie, who read it, then slid it over to Paige.
ZELDA CHO, TRUE CRIME SPECIALIST.
Paige read the card, then looked up. “Why are you here?”
Zelda rolled her eyes. “To interview you, of course.”
***
SOPHIE HAD SPENT THE last fifteen minutes trying not to laugh as the very Paige-like Zelda tried to get them to agree to an in-depth, exclusive interview about the Radsworth case while the increasingly irritated Paige, refused.
It was even harder not to laugh when, once she’d gone, temporarily defeated but promising she “wasn’t giving up that easily”, Paige turned to Sophie with a cross expression. “Wow, she’s annoying.”
Sophie pressed her lips together for a moment to compose herself, then said, “Maybe we should have let her interview us.”
“We can’t let people think we give away information about our clients and cases. They won’t trust us.”
Sophie conceded a nod. “I guess.”
Paige stood up. “Come on, we’re supposed to interview Sally in half an hour.”
“She knows the truth about why we’ve been hired, right?”
“Yep. But I gave a cover to Peyton. We’re interviewing him later.”
“Who does he think we are?”
“Aspiring writers.”
“Okay.”
“And he only agreed to talk to us once I reminded him of who you were. He saw you at Cecilia’s party and was rather taken with you, so watch out.”
“Watch out?”
“I may have given him the suggestion you like older men.”
“Paige!”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“Wade is exactly my age.”
“He’s not who I’m talking about it and you know it.”
***
LEO PERCHED ON THE edge of Jane’s bed.
He felt presumptuous, as if he was invading her personal space, even though she was the one who’d told him to sit down there. He hadn’t seen her yesterday in the end, she’d needed to rest, but today she’d rung him and asked him to come over.
“I just wanted to say thank you, Leo. I don’t know what I would have done without you over these last few days. Everything is awful and scary, except you.”
He swallowed and looked down at his hands. He couldn’t pretend that he was just being a good Samaritan. He liked her. Liked, liked her. But did she feel the same or was she just relying on him to help her figure out whatever was going on? Not only did she have memory loss, but there was whatever had caused those awful cuts on her arms, and—as Leo had recently learned—her legs as well.
“I just hope I can help you.”
Jane smiled. “You already are.” She stood up. “And thanks for coming with me to my appointment. I’m a little nervous.”
“Fair enough.”
“Shall we go?”
As they walked past reception Leo glanced at the glistening water of the pool, cursing that he’d once again forgotten it was here and hadn’t brought togs with him. But Jane didn’t seem to have any interest in the pool, so maybe it would be a bit weird for him to bring togs and take a swim by himself. He had more important things to worry about than having a swim, he mentally scolded himself.
At the hospital, Leo was left to wait for a little over an hour while Jane met with the doctor. When she emerged from the consulting room, she gave Leo a small smile and Leo felt relief flooding through his body. They obviously hadn’t told her she had irreversible brain damage or something.
“They said overall I seem okay, but they’ve booked me in to see a neurologist, just to make sure. I’ll have to come back for a follow-up appointment.”
“A neurologist? That sounds... serious.”
“It’s just a precaution.”
They walked out to the carpark. “Where now?” Leo asked hopefully. “Are you hungry?”
“Actually, I am. I was going to suggest we eat.”
“Do you like Asian food?”
“I guess I’ll find out?” She gave him a small smile.
“Dominion Road isn’t far from here and it’s on the way back to the motel. What about dumplings? Barilla or Sha Xian Snack are both good.”
“I’m up for it.”
Leo pulled his car into the supermarket carpark. “If we’re less than ninety minutes we can park here. These places are usually pretty fast.”
As they strolled down Dominion Road, Leo pointed out where he used to work. “It’s gone now but it used to be a DVD rental store.”
“Retro,” Jane said.
“Yeah.”
“I just realised I don’t know what you do. For a job?”
“Oh, uh—”
“Wait.” Jane stopped abruptly. “This place. It’s familiar.”
They were next to an organic shop. “Here?” Leo asked. Jane nodded. They were just about to move closer when a woman wearing an apron came hurrying out. “Oh, thank god, you’re okay,” she said to Jane. “I was worried.”
Jane clutched at her arm. “Do you know me?”
“No, I just... you came in last week really upset. You were crying.”
Jane raised her hand to her mouth. “I was? Was I alone?”
“That’s the thing. I couldn’t tell. There was a man nearby and he seemed to be... I don’t know... interested in what was going on? I tried to ask you if you were okay, but you just ran off.”
“And the man?”
Her mouth twisted as she nodded. “I didn’t see for sure, but yes. I think he followed you.”
