Back at the old cottage, Roxy relaxed into her seat and watched Sam for a few moments as he threw a stick to his dog. Sam had stepped away, out of earshot, entrusting her to make the call, and as she dialled the number Roxy knew she should be alerting Gilda to her situation. She should have told Gilda she was being held captive and begged her to summon the local police to Grears Crossing pronto, preferably with a psychiatrist in tow, but as she glanced across at Sam, something stopped her. Perhaps it was the loving way he played with Lunar, so gentle, so unlike a crazed kidnapping murderer, or any she’d ever met. Or perhaps it was simply her endless need to be the one doing the rescuing that stilled her tongue. And so she had simply followed through on his request and hung up.
He walked over, his dark eyebrows arched high, and she nodded, holding the phone out.
“Keep it,” he said. “She’ll call you back.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, I’m sorry, but we stay put.”
“Figured you’d say that.”
“You do know I won’t hurt you, right?”
She shrugged. She didn’t really know that, not at all, but her instincts told her she would be okay. For some reason, one she couldn’t quite articulate, she trusted the guy. Maybe it was simply because he’d given her a mobile phone. “Thanks to you I never finished my latté. Got any coffee in that hovel of yours?”
His face lit up. “Best coffee in the shire.”
As Sam set about making a brew, Roxy took a look around. The cottage was neater than she expected and had been cosily decorated. Despite being little more than a large slab hut made from local timbers with a corrugated iron roof and a chimney at one end, the inside was surprisingly plush—more quaint, English village than Aussie rural outback. The furniture was mostly vintage antique, the furnishings fading but still charming. One timber wall had been plastered with floral wallpaper, the others left bare, and a deep, fraying sofa, half covered with a large crocheted rug, sat in the middle of the living room, in front of an old woodburner. There wasn’t a television set in sight.
“It was my Grandma’s place,” Sam explained. “Sunny was living here before...” He broke off.
“It’s pretty.”
He looked around as though only just noticing that himself. “So was Sunny. Too pretty, that was the problem. Jed couldn’t help himself.”
Roxy leaned against the kitchen bench and asked, “So they were having an affair?” He seemed to shrink at the words but still nodded. “Did Annika know?”
“Probably. I don’t think Jed was all that discreet. It wasn’t his first, won’t be his last.” He blinked. “Well, I guess it will be now.”
“Were you really friends? You and Jed.”
“Friends? We were best mates.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, long time ago. Before fame and fortune turned him into a tosser. Even then, I forgave him all his bullshit, because he was likeable, you know? A charmer. But then he got his hands on my sister and, well ... I could never forgive him for that.”
“She was a lot younger than you both by the sound of it.”
“Seventeen years younger. Different dad but that’s pretty typical around here. I have two other half siblings, different dad again, they shot off years ago.”
“What do they think of Sunny’s death? What does your mum think?”
He let out a puff of air. “Mum’s in lala land, just wants to grow her organic veggies and pretend the real world doesn’t exist. Saffron and Siena have washed their hands of the rest of us. Saffie lives in New York, Siena’s married some Sydney wanker and we rarely speak.”
Roxy tried not to smile. “Saffron, Siena, Sunny and Samson?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I got off lightly, huh? Mum’s your classic old hippie. Couldn’t help herself.”
Roxy thought then of Max and Caroline’s parents. They lived around here, were hippies, too. She wondered if they knew Sam’s mum.
“Sugar?”
“Yes, thanks, lots.”
He looked at her with inquisitive eyes. “Now that’s not like a woman.”
“Let me guess, they keep telling you they’re sweet enough.” She laughed. “There’s nothing sweet about me, keep piling it in.” She was watching as he spooned the sugar into her cup then stopped him before he started on the fourth teaspoon. “So you’ve lived here all your life?”
“In the general area. Mum moved a lot back then.” He handed her a knobbly handmade ceramic mug and she thanked him, cupping it in both hands and soaking up the earthy smell of fresh coffee. “I eventually escaped.” He glanced around. “Not that I don’t love this place. I do with a passion, but I’m only here temporarily. The place can send you mad, everybody in everybody else’s business.”
She nodded. She’d already worked that out. It was funny the way people talked of the countryside as an escape, a private hideaway, when the truth was it was so much easier to hide in a city. There were more people to get lost amongst.
Sam stepped out of the tiny kitchen and made his way back outside to the ratty old chairs in the open sunshine, and Roxy followed. She suspected this was where he spent most of his time. He didn’t seem like the indoor type.
“So where did you move to?” she asked.
“Sydney.”
“Really?” She didn’t peg him for a Sydney guy, either. “Where?”
He looked across at her with a smirk. “Nowhere you’d hang out.” Then his eyes flickered down to her black leggings and Nike trainers.
She bristled a little. “Try me.”
“Newtown. The grungy part.”
“I don’t live that far from there. Elizabeth Bay.”
He scoffed. “Far enough.”
Roxy decided to let that one slide and said, “Did you come back after your sister died?”
“Few months before, when Gran died. Came back to help Sunny clean the place up, sort out Gran’s stuff. We were thinking of putting the place on the market, Sunny was supposed to come back to Sydney with me.” His face clouded over and he looked down into his cup. “It was my fault.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
His eyes shot back to her. “How can I not? I introduced them; like waving candy in front of a child.”
“They’d never met before?”
“Oh sure, years earlier, when she was just a scrawny kid. Jed didn’t have much time for her back then, but this time... well...” He took a gulp of his coffee. “I ran into Jed one day down at the café. He told me they were having one of their infamous jams, said to come along. Sunny begged to come with me and I thought nothing of it. She was twenty-one then. Thought she’d be bored stupid around us older buggers, but I wasn’t counting on Jed’s charm. I should’ve known he couldn’t help himself. He always did have a thing for young groupies, especially the blonde ones.”
Roxy recalled Annika being relieved she was not a blonde. “Sunny was a groupie?”
“Not until that night. Suddenly she couldn’t get enough of the band. Bought all their albums, put all Jed’s posters up, even got one of those stupid Moody Rings.”
“Moody Rings?”
He scoffed. “You’ve heard of mood rings, right? Got a crystal that’s supposed to reflect the state of your emotions or some crap. The Moody Roos had a bunch of stupid merchandise like that, although the Moody Rings were supposed to be ‘collectables’. Limited edition and all that... Anyway, she flashed it about, kept begging me to take her back to see the band play. Of course I never clicked that it was Jed she wanted to see.”
“They started seeing each other?”
“I guess so. I didn’t catch the details, but I caught them out. A few weeks later I was supposed to be driving back to Sydney. Sunny was originally coming with me, but she made up some excuse about a job interview and said she’d come down later. I stupidly believed her.” His eyes clouded over again as he shook a dark thought away. “Anyway, it was raining something fierce that night and I only got as far as the highway turn off when I realised it was a bloody stupid idea, way too dangerous to drive. I decided to return to the cottage and head off the next morning. When I got back, Jed was here.” Sam’s voice cracked a little then and his jaw tensed. “He was in my grandmother’s bed, for God’s sake.” He tossed the remainder of his coffee out onto the dry earth as if the taste was no longer palatable.
Roxy didn’t know what to say. It had to be hard to find your baby sister in the arms of a much older guy, let alone a married rock star, someone you once called a friend. “What happened then?”
“I was fuming, I got straight back in the car and pissed off. Two weeks later she was dead.” He leaned over, his head in his hands, and Roxy didn’t say a thing, just let him work through the haunting memories. Eventually he said, “I should have packed her up and taken her with me. I should have punched him out. I should have done something.”
“Oh Sam, they were both adults.”
He sat back up, his eyes fiery. “No! He was an adult; she was still a kid, at least at heart. She was so naïve, so innocent and pure, you know? Ate only organic food, was a yoga maniac and really anti-technology. You know, she didn’t even own an iPad or a mobile phone, unlike every other Gen Y in the universe. Said they gave you cancer, refused to have one.” He half smiled. “Which was a pain in the arse, actually, ’cause there’s no landline here. I could never get in touch with her.” His smile deflated. “Jed would’ve loved all that about her, would’ve thought it was ‘quaint’.” He turned to meet her eyes. “It was his pattern, see? He always got them young, promised them the world, and then returned to Annika. Always. He broke my sister’s heart.”
Roxy sipped her coffee. It was very good, strong, just as she liked it. “I get why you’re angry,” she said after a few minutes. “Perhaps he did break your sister’s heart and sure, that’s unforgivable, but did he kill her?” Roxy wasn’t convinced. “His pattern was to sleep with them and leave them, not kill them. There’s no logic there, no reason why he should. Annika obviously knew about his affairs and she was still married to him. He had no obvious motive, Sam.”
“Well, if he didn’t do it, somebody did. That wasn’t an accident, Roxy, she was held down in that water and she was drowned.”
“How can you be so sure? Accidents happen, Sam. I’m sorry, but they do.”
From the recesses of her brain a grisly memory reached towards her: an entire family drowned in a creek, still strapped to the seatbelts inside their car. She tried to recall the details now as he blinked back at her, not looking convinced.
It had been a long and rather macabre habit of Roxy’s to cut out newspaper articles of suspicious deaths and paste them into a growing series of scrapbooks she dubbed her Crime Catalogues, which both enthralled and appalled her friends and family. Max had been in the appalled camp and she had found herself cutting out fewer and fewer articles after they hooked up. This particular story was older than their relationship, yet she still remembered some of the details now. It had been a dreary, rain-swept night. A young couple and their three small children had tried to drive across a swollen creek, to check in on the in-laws, or something like that. She couldn’t quite remember what they were doing out on such a woeful night. She knew one thing for sure, though: they had never made it. The couple’s car was eventually found several kilometres down river from the creek’s causeway, all five souls dead inside.
Roxy wondered now why she’d even pasted that story into her Crime Catalogues. It wasn’t exactly suspicious; just a dreadful, tragic waste. Sam was shaking his head furiously. “Not my people; no way. Sunny would never have drowned in a bloody creek, I know that much.” He stood up and whistled for Lunar who came racing from the back of the house, stick still firmly in his mouth. Sam pulled it from his jaws and threw it as far as he could, out past the line of gum trees and Lunar galloped after it. “We grew up in these parts, Roxy. There is no way Sunny crossed raging waters. None of us would. It was rule number one. You just didn’t do it. But that’s not the only thing.”
She looked up at him, her eyebrows high.
“After I heard ... after Quick called me about Sunny, I got straight in the car and came back here.” He nodded his head towards the house. “The house had been trashed.”
“Trashed?”
“All of Sunny’s posters, the ones of Jed and the Moody Roos, had been ripped down and torn to shreds. His albums and DVDs had been smashed.”
Roxy’s eyebrows dropped. “Could Sunny have done that, before she drowned? Maybe they’d had a fight.” It was sounding suddenly like suicide, but Roxy didn’t want to say that, not yet. Sam’s emotions were too volatile to hear it.
He was shaking his head furiously. “That’s not all. I had to go down and...” He choked again. “I had to ... identify her body...” A long pause, a weary sigh. “She wasn’t wearing the Moody Ring. It was missing. I came back here, couldn’t find it anywhere. It’s gone.”
“Okay,” said Roxy, thinking, that still doesn’t prove anything. “Could it have washed off in the creek?”
He ignored this. “Here’s what I think happened. I think maybe you’re right ... maybe they had a fight, Jed and Sunny. Maybe Sunny finally woke up to herself, realised she shouldn’t be sleeping with a married man, maybe he dumped her, or maybe it was over something bloody trivial, I don’t know. Either way, they might have had a fight, she ripped up his shit then arranged to meet him at the creek to throw his ring in his face, but he couldn’t handle it. Jed wasn’t used to being rejected. He was the great Jed Moody. That would’ve stung. So he lashed out.”
She cocked her head to the side. She wasn’t buying it.
“How about this then?” He shifted in his seat and turned his whole body towards her, his eyes boring into hers. “Maybe Annika found out about the affair and she’s the one who came here and ripped Jed’s shit up. Then she followed my sister to the creek, or lured her there, who knows, ripped the ring off her finger and killed her. Revenge.”
“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”
“It’s been seventeen months, one week and two days. A lot of time to think.”
Sam’s phone rang then and they both jumped, Roxy almost spilling her coffee. Glancing at the screen, she spotted Gilda’s number and felt a stab of relief. “It’s my detective friend,” she said and he nodded before getting to his feet and stepping away.
“Hi, Gilda,” Roxy said.
“Hi, sweetie, are you okay?”
“Sure, what have you got for me?”
Gilda hesitated. “You want to tell me what this is all about? What it’s got to do with Jed Moody?”
“No I don’t, not yet.”
“Right, well, I had a word with Detective Brent Wiles. You remember him? He was the lead investigator on the Gordon Reilly homicide last year.”
Roxy’s brain shot back to a dreadful series of murders that all linked in to the death of an old surveyor and his missing photograph. It was one of several cases Roxy had helped solve over the past few years and it still saddened her to think of it, which she didn’t want to do, not now.
She pushed the memory away and said, “What about Detective Wiles?”
“Wiles is fairly high up at the NSW Homicide Squad and is usually the first one to get on a plane and investigate suspicious deaths around the state.”
Roxy flashed a glance at Sam who was watching her eagerly. “So you guys do investigate homicides outside of Sydney then?”
“Only when the local area command aren’t sufficiently resourced or specifically request our help. Many just don’t have the skills and expertise. It’s a point of contention, but it’s all to do with funding, or lack thereof. I won’t bore you with the politics now but Tweed/Byron is usually one area command that does need our help, whether they like it or not. In this case, Wiles says he never got the call. In fact, he didn’t know anything about Sunny Forrest’s death, not until I gave him a buzz. He was able to take a look at the case file for me, which was really nice of him...” She paused. “You know, I’m surprised he could find the time, to be honest, he’s usually so—”
“What did it say, Gilda?” Roxy’s patience was wafer-thin.
“What? Oh, right, um, I hate to say this, but you might be right. There are some obvious clangers.”
Roxy glanced at Sam again and this time she nodded, then watched as his jaw tightened and he abruptly turned away. “How so?” she said.
“Well, judging from the report, the local detective there put it down to an accident, and never ordered a post-mortem.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Yes and no. Death by drowning is quite a common cause of death.”
“But in a creek?”
“Yes, funnily enough. About 90 percent of all drownings occur in freshwater, Rox. We usually think of the surf when we think of dangerous water, but it gets a bad rap. You’re more likely to drown in creeks, rivers, dams, swimming pools, hell even the bathtub can be bad news, at least for little kids.”
“Okay, so what about a grown woman who knew never to cross a swollen creek?”
“Yet one more reason to order a post-mortem, which the local area commander, Quick, never bothered with.”
“You think he should have?”
“Yes I do. Looking at it now, so does Wiles. It’s like your local bloke made no effort. One brief witness report, but no last sightings and nobody canvassed the area. Plus, she had a fairly suspicious head wound that might have been explained by the drowning, but it might not have. Who knows, it was never investigated further. On the advice of Detective Sergeant Quick, the coroner ruled it an ‘accidental death’ and left it at that.”
Roxy lowered her voice. “Could it have been suicide?”
“Maybe, maybe not. As I say, the head wound is suspicious. In any case, it’s rare for a coroner to rule suicide without strong evidence to support that. And as we know, there wasn’t any evidence.”
“And the cop in charge?”
“Detective Sergeant Quick? I asked about him. Wiles has worked with him once or twice before. Reckons he’s okay, at least he didn’t want to bitch about him to me, but I could read between the lines. It sounds like Quick is one of those slacker cops, looking to ride out the rest of his career in a cushy job in a quiet part of the world. He got posted to the Tweed Heads command about four years ago, probably more for the surf than anything else. Apparently he used to be a pro surfer, before he entered the force. Look, you have to tell me what all this has to do with Jed Moody.”
Roxy explained, “It’s actually more to do with Quick. He’s the one about to look into Jed’s death and I’m just wondering whether he’s up for the job.”
“You’re wondering?”
“Well, let’s just say someone I know has got his reservations.”
“His? Who is this someone?”
Roxy hesitated; Sam was watching her again. “Just someone I’ve met.”
Gilda cleared her throat. “I know something’s up, Roxy, and you don’t seem to want to tell me about it.” Still Roxy remained silent. “I’ve already got my mate Johnno trying to trace this number, but it looks like a ‘prepaid’, which doesn’t help. Just say the words ‘okeydokey’ if you’re in trouble. Just say it.”
Roxy nearly did, she wanted to, but again Sam’s doe eyes seemed to hold her back, and it didn’t help that his gorgeous, faithful dog was also staring at her with his big, wet eyes. She said, “I’m okay, Gilda, really. But I’d be better if I knew this idiot Quick was off the case. Is there anything you can do from there?”
“Not really. As I say, Wiles is the one who usually gets the call when the death is ruled suspicious.”
“But what if Quick rules Jed’s death an accident? Drops it.”
“Oh, he’s not gonna do that! There’s no way they can fudge this one. I’ve finally logged in to the outside world and it’s all over the press. Every celebrity, politician, news groupie is tweeting about it.”
Roxy said, “There’s another problem with Quick. He seems very friendly with Jed Moody’s wife.”
“Friendly as in, ‘seen-her-around’ friendly?”
“More ‘cuddle-and-stroke-hair’ friendly. They were almost intimate. Made me wonder whether they’re best mates, maybe ex-lovers...”
Gilda considered this for a moment. “Okay, well, that might naturally preclude him from the investigation, then again it might not. In small towns, if you prohibit the top cops from investigating their mates, you leave them twiddling their thumbs all day. It’s a bit impractical.”
“Yes, but if it is murder, Annika could be a suspect. Quick can’t be seen to be doing her any favours.”
“Or doing your mate any disfavours, right?” When Roxy didn’t answer, Gilda said, “Look, no matter what happens, the Powers That Be are not going to let this one get swept under the carpet. No way. Judging from the police buzz, it’s sounding increasingly suspicious.”
Roxy glanced back at Sam. She wasn’t sure whether that was good news or not. “What are they saying?”
“I haven’t got all the details yet. I can look into it further for you, if you like.”
“Thank you, that would be great. And I’m sorry for ruining your day off.”
“Nah, I was bored to tears anyway. I’m not real flash at entertaining myself. Was even considering watching Bold & the Beautiful reruns when you rang.”
“So I saved you from a fate worse than death then?”
“I think you did. And I’d like to repay the favour. You have to tell me what’s going on. Are you really okay?”
“Really, I’m fine. But I have to go. Thanks again, Gilda. I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than that, Missy. You owe me the truth.”
“One day,” she said softly, then hung up.
Sam made his way back over, his hands shoved into his pockets, his eyes hopeful, so she relayed what Gilda had said.
“You were right about your sister. Accident or not, it was never investigated properly. Gilda thinks Quick’s a joke.”
His whole mood lightened. It was as though a heavy weight had been lifted and he pumped a fist in the air. “I bloody knew it! I knew it!” He turned back to her. “Now what do we do?”
Roxy held both palms up. “Hey, I don’t do anything, this is your fight, Sam, your case, remember?”
“Yeah, right, of course.” He did not look discouraged.
“Whatever happens, regarding Jed Moody, Gilda says it’s very unlikely Quick will be in charge of the case, at least not for long. She says someone from Sydney will probably be sent up to investigate, most likely a detective called Brent Wiles.”
“Good, then hopefully he’ll look at it with fresh eyes, won’t jump to any conclusions.”
She nodded but wasn’t as mollified by this. Despite her instincts, Roxy had to concede that things looked pretty grim for Sam Forrest. And she remembered Detective Inspector Brent Wiles well. He was smart and he was efficient. In anyone’s books, the disgruntled brother Sam was a pretty obvious suspect.
Sam seemed to be considering this too as his shoulders slumped and his face clouded over again. “Want me to drive you back?”
For the life of her Roxy did not. She liked it here and she liked this burly guy with the sad eyes and the faithful mutt. But she nodded anyway and stood up. It was time to get back to the Moody property, to pack her bags and head home. The book was clearly off now and she had lost her taste for it anyway. The more she knew about Jed Moody, the less she seemed to care, and it saddened her.
Roxy had once been so impressed with the rock star and his music. Now, Jed Moody seemed little more than a cliché character from Gilda’s favourite soap opera.