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“What can we do?” Tane paced a narrow track next to the river and the others watched as he spun in an arc and repeated his frustrated stalk back the other way. Daisies and buttercups crushed beneath his heavy steps and Leilah swallowed. Different images penetrated her fractured thoughts; male fingers stroking her thigh as the flower heads bowed in a soft breeze. Colour kissed her cheeks and she squirmed, unable to catch her lover’s gaze in case his thoughts too had strayed that way. She licked her lips and sighed.
“Any ideas, Lei?” Dante drew in a breath and gave her an encouraging smile. “You’re the brains of the outfit.”
Leilah gathered her thoughts, pushing away the erotic images. She grew rattled at their ability to make her crave more. He wouldn’t meet her again. They’d promised each other after last time. But they’d made the same agreement the time before too. And the time before that.
“Leilah?” Dante spoke again and his tone held a harshness which claimed her attention.
“What?”
Vaughan sighed in exasperation and lay back in the soft grass. The sunshine glinted off his dark hair in peculiar highlights of red and gold. “Why do you always expect her to have the answers?” His fingers fluttered towards his stomach before he caught Leilah’s gaze on him and corrected the movement.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, her tone tender. “Kevin hit you hard.”
“It’s fine.” The sharpness of his tone told her he wouldn’t discuss it.
Dante’s gaze burned holes in the side of her face as Leilah turned towards him. “I fixed it,” she said. “I told you what I said to Tane’s dad.”
“But what if they catch you out?” he demanded. “It’s not the truth.” He directed his next question to Tane. “Why won’t you tell us where you went, man? We could help you.”
Leilah saw wariness crawl across Tane’s expression before he turned his back on them and stalked the other way. The quick long strides gave him time to think. Leilah saw he’d come up empty as he darted a nervous glance in her direction. “I can’t tell you,” he hissed. “Trust me.”
“A chick?” Dante’s eyes clouded. “You’re shagging some chick and you didn’t share it with us?”
Vaughan closed his eyes and rested his forearms against his head. It shuttered his expression from view and demonstrated his disdain for Dante’s hunger for pornographic detail. Leilah heard him humming a tune under his breath. They’d both watched enough primitive horse mating to know the mechanics. She felt the colour mottle in her throat again and pursed her lips, forcing her eager mind in a different direction.
“Dante, stop!” she chided. “It’s nothing to do with the problem we’ve got right now. Someone killed Malcolm and we don’t know who or why. We need to stop them pinning it on Tane.” Her eyes narrowed. “Let’s start with the people we know couldn’t have done it. That excludes all of us because we just wouldn’t.” Her teeth ground in her jaw as she rushed to exonerate herself with them, hoping to escape further scrutiny. “And Hector was in bed. I woke him up when Red escaped.” Sunlight couldn’t disguise the paling of her skin as she remembered Malcolm’s floating face. “And Vaughan and Horse arrived as we got him back onto our property.”
Vaughan grinned, a flash of white teeth in an olive complexion. He kept his eyes closed. “After he’d screwed half the mares in our paddock. Randy bugger.”
“Lucky bugger,” Dante sighed and flashed Leilah a meaningful look. “I was home all night and desperately in need of a shag.” She swallowed and kept him focussed on the alibis of their town instead of letting him stray into the realms of sex, a place his mind spent too much time already.
“We saw Tane’s dad and he saw us. Mari hates the dark so she wouldn’t be out then. Ted?” Vaughan snorted and Leilah dismissed the town misfit with a shrug of acknowledgement. “Okay, too lazy. Not Ted.”
“Maybe if Malcolm sat in his special seat near the window at the cafe.” Tane continued pacing and made another turn, trampling a new row of daisies. His lips curved upward in a reluctant smile and Leilah rolled her eyes. “Who then?” he demanded. He stopped walking and slumped to the ground. Despair trudged across his expression. “So far, there’s only me in the frame. This is a disaster.” He ran a shaking hand over his face and Leilah heard the bristles scratching against his palm. She wondered when they ceased to be children and morphed into young men and a woman. Her cheeks flushed as she remembered her own metamorphosis. Naked, sweat coated skin sticking to the grass amid muted cries of pleasure. Not the first painful time, but all the ones after. She kept her gaze on a lone buttercup and breathed through pursed lips. She bargained with herself inside her own head and avoided his gaze. They promised each other a drought, but she knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Nobody warned them how addictive it became. They couldn’t stop. Perhaps a mother would have told her that. If she’d had one.
“We need to know where he died.” Dante stated the obvious and Leilah cringed. Malcolm’s lifeless fingers stroked the grassy bank of the gully, darkness sapping the colour from his skin. “Or how. Maybe he fell and banged his head. Why was he at school after dark?”
“He wasn’t.” Tane paled and his lips appeared bluish in the sunshine. “He died nearer to the mountain. They found orange soil on his clothes, which means the gully flushed him out at school. He didn’t start there, but closer to the foothills of Pirongia.”
Vaughan’s eyes widened. “Our mountain?” He pointed an index finger to Leilah and then back to himself. “But we live there.”
Tane swallowed and nodded. “I know.” His gaze settled on Leilah and he paused for breath. “I know you didn’t mean to, Lei, but you put me right there around the time he died. My dad thinks I did it.”