Murder and Mayhem (2 page)

And, I’ve read my fair share of crime novels and can
usually suss out the villain before I’ve finished the first chapter. So I
decided a murder mystery would be just the right thing to cheer my sister up.
All we need is to work out the plot, conjure up a killer–and create a hero to
save the damsel in distress. Once I’ve got all the ingredient together it
should be plain sailing. But I’ll say no more about that at the moment because
I like to keep everyone guessing until the very last page.

. . .

I wandered into the room and
found Rosie curled up on the bed.

“Hey babe, how are you doing?”

She tried to smile, but I could
see it was an effort.

“Could you make me some Milo,
Bubbie?” she asked.

“Sure Hon. Would you like me to get you something to
eat?”

“No, I couldn’t eat anything but the Milo might help
settle my tummy.”

I micro-waved two mugs of the
chocolaty drink, taking care to make one much cooler than the other. The many
months of chemotherapy treatment had caused problems with my sister’s nerve
endings making eating and drinking even the simplest of food feel like a thousand
needles piercing her tongue and the inside of her mouth–but if I dwell on it
too much, I just want to cry.

I entered the room with a mug in each hand and sat on
the bed.

“I noticed you were down to your last tin of Milo,” I
said as I handed Rosie the warm chocolaty drink. “Good thing I brought a couple
of large tins with me. So they should last you a while.”

My sister touched her forehead and then touched mine,
acknowledging the old telepathy thing we often have going. 

“Shame about the Vegemite. I could kill Ross for
putting it in his carry-on. I told him security would confiscate the jars if
they weren’t in the hold. But would he listen to me–no!” I shook my head in
annoyance at losing two giant-size jars of our precious cargo to the big bully
in blue who was completely immune to my crying and pleading. Some people have
no soul at all.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Bubbie. You know they have
no control over what they do. It’s called testosterone, remember. It’s built
into their genes.”

“I know Hon. But sometimes that man would test the
patience of an angel.”

“Look on the bright side. Little Sweetie brought a
jumbo-size jar with her when she came to visit last May. Mind you, I had to
fight Ben for it.”

“How come?”

“He wanted to take it with him to Santa Cruz. Tried
the old, if you loved me you’d let me have it, routine. Well,
hallooo
! I
didn’t come down in the last shower, now did I?”

“No, Hon, you certainly did not. I remember the day
mom brought you home from the hospital kicking and screaming your little lungs
out. Or maybe it was mom who was doing the screaming. Anyway, it’s water under
the bridge, like baby-pooh flushed down the toilet. So, tell me, what did you
do?”

“I threw down the trump card of course, and
naturally–he crumbled.”

Us mothers need every bit of ammunition we can muster
in the ongoing battle we wage against our children. I was anxious to learn her
secret so I said, “And, what would that be, Hon?”

“I reminded him who the Aussie in the family was. That
clinched the deal. He knows when he’s beaten by forces much stronger than he is.”

“In other words, it was a foregone conclusion. The
poor boy didn’t stand a chance.”

Rosie grinned. “It’s all in the genes.”

“We’re lucky ours are at the top end of the gene pool,
unlike some I could mention, that flounder around in the shallows, where family
trees don’t even fork.”

We drifted into companionable silence while we sipped
our chocolaty drink knowing we had triumphed once more over every mother’s most
powerful adversary–her children.

I’ve often said, and correct me
if I’m wrong, husbands are like insects, if they bite it’ll cause an annoying
itch−but you won’t die if you scratch. Our children however, are an
entirely different species of life-form. They’re like ticking time bombs–primed
and ready to explode over the least little infraction. I’d spent my daughter’s
teenage years walking on eggshells while checking for land-mines under the
floorboards
.

I was contemplating a refill when Rosie’s voice cut
into my thoughts.

“Bubbie, would you massage my legs–they keep jumping.

“Sure, Hon,”
I
said and placed our mugs on the nightstand. When I pulled back the covers I
noticed her legs were so thin I wanted to cry.
As I massaged her gently,
she leaned into the pillow, closed her eyes and in no time at all we were both
lost in our own scary thoughts.

Knife? − I mentally shook my head. Nah–too
messy.

Gun? – I’d have to join a gang or the NRA to get hold
of one of those.

Poison? – What to use? How much? How little? If I was
a Borgia I’d know–but sadly, I’m not.

Bomb? – What would I know about bombs except they go
boom and make a loud noise. I’d need a munitions expert or disgruntled taxpayer
to get hold of one of those. I crossed that one off my list with a great big
red X right through the middle.

“Bubbie?”

“Mmm?”

Drowning? – You’d need water for that and the killer
might not be in the right place at the right time.

When Agatha Christie said killing was easy she
obviously didn’t know what she was talking about. Miss Marple, however, knew
all about murder. Now that’s the kind of woman I’d like to have on my side.

“Bubbie!”

My sister’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Yes Hon?” I
answered distractedly.

“Would you rub some cream on my chest?”

I filed my list away in the dim, dark recesses of my
mind as I covered her legs and made sure she was comfortable.

“I’ll just go wash my hands.” The last thing my sister
needs in her weakened state is an infection from poor hygiene.

When I walked in the room, Rosie had removed her top
and was lying propped up against the headboard with a pillow at her back for
support. I looked at her poor body ravaged by surgery and noticed the area
where her left breast had been was red from radiation; the skin stretched tight
over sinew and bone–and heartbeat. I did my best not to register my feelings as
I squeezed the end of the tube and watched a long thin worm crawl across my
palm.

“Sorry, Hon, this is going to be cold.”

Rosie nodded and closed her eyes.

“So what did you finally decide?” she asked after a
while.

I thought for a moment. “I’m still not completely
convinced Cascade Falls would be the best place to hide a body. However I have
written the beginning after something Little Sweetie suggested might be worth a
try.”

My sister opened her eyes and looked up at me, her
pale face lit up with a smile. “How is our girl?” Rosie has two boys so we
share my daughter.

“Working hard as usual, you know what she’s like.”

“We sure can be proud of that one, can’t we, Bubbie?”
She sighed, her eyelids fluttered–and closed as I gently worked the soothing
lanolin across the scarred tissue.

“We certainly can. But the boys are shaping up nicely.
If only we could knock that damned Y chromosome out of them we’d have ourselves
a couple of real men,” I said, but with my scant knowledge of science I knew I
was on shaky ground here. “Or is it the X?”

Rosie’s eyes flew open. “Hey! Do
I look like a scientist?”

“Don’t bite my head off. I don’t know what you do in
your spare time.”

“Remind me to tell you when your calendar is clear.
But let’s not transgress into
those
muddy waters and spoil what would
otherwise be a nice day. So, tell me, what did our girl have to say?”

“S
he
sends her love of course,
and wanted to know how you were doing.”

“S
he
is such a caring person.”

“Well, she certainly didn’t get that from me,” I said
as I wiped my hands on a cloth and adjusted Rosie’s clothes to make sure she
was warm.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Bubbie you’ve got your
good points.”

I couldn’t figure out where she
got that idea from but decided to humor her anyway.

“S
he said
I should start with Danny on Bondi Beach. You know, add
a bit of Aussie flavor to the story. At first I wasn’t too keen on the idea but
then I thought about it, and I think I may have come up with something that
just might work. Would you like me to read what I’ve written so far and you can
let me know what you think?”
My sister
has always been my greatest fan even if it was only rude words on the school’s
toilet block walls.

She whooped excitedly and gave me a shove. “Well,
don’t just stand there go get your laptop.”

I hurried across the hall to the guestroom and was
about to grab my laptop off the desk when I noticed the open bathroom door
beckoning me in. Our mother, God rest, always counseled the family, “Never
bypass a whistle stop because the train might whizz right on past the next
one–and before you know it you’ll be up the creek without a paddle!”  Wise
words indeed to fashion our lives on!

As I zipped up my jeans and hit
the flush button I heard my sister’s voice calling from across the hall.

“What are you doing in there,
writing a novel?  I haven’t got all day to wait for you to get yourself into
gear.”

“I had to make a bathroom stop,”
I told her as I climbed onto the bed and opened the laptop. “Remember what Mum
always said.”

“Yeah, well, Mum said a lot of
things–but we rarely listened.”

“True. But ignorance is a hard
thing to grow out of,” I reminded her as I shuffled my backside into a
comfortable position and hit the start-up button. We watched as the screen
morphed into life with a hum of flashing lights and cyberspace words. Can
anyone tell me, who reads that stuff?

“Just give it a minute, and
don’t go getting too excited. You need to remember this is just a rough draft.”

Rosie swatted the air impatiently.

“I haven’t got all day; will you just get on with it?”
She glared at the screen–and sighed loudly. “That computer of yours is so slow
it’ll be Thanksgiving before it powers up.”

I chewed on a hang nail.

“Christmas, more like.”

“Why don’t you let go of the purse strings and buy
something decent. They’ve got all kinds of whizz–bang fancy ones these days
that’ll do everything except make a hot pot of tea.”

“Well when they come up with one of those you be sure
and let me know. In the meantime I’ll just stick with old faithful. It has
served me well…and knows all my secrets.”

When I opened the file words morphed onto the screen
in a haze of blue light that reflected off my glasses and made me blink.

I looked at my sister… and grinned. “Are you ready?”

“Do you really want me to say it?”

“Nah, I get the picture… there’s no need for words.”

*****

Prologue

The mercury rose with the promise of another hot
summer and even though there had been good rainfalls recently they only served
to create more fuel for the bushfires that were sure to come if this past
summer in Santa Barbara was anything to go by.

Danny Richards sat on the promenade outside The
Breaker’s Café overlooking Bondi Beach, grateful for the large umbrella that
protected him from the hot midday sun. A half-eaten sandwich lay drying on a
plate pushed to one side while he sipped iced latte from a tall glass and
mouthed the words of an old Beach Boys’ song that drifted out through the
doors.

Danny’s eyes swept over the landscape and came to rest
on that far line on the horizon where the sky meets the sea, and thought how
that same body of water ebbed and flowed on the western shores of America, like
a giant umbilical cord connecting the two continents.

He shook his head in an effort to deny the memories
that threatened to surface and turned his attention to yachts skimming waves
out past the headland−and daredevil surfers riding their boards too close
to the rocks.

As Danny watched small children dig holes in the sand
and build sandcastles that melted like ice-cream into the encroaching tide, his
thoughts strayed to another time on another beach, half a world away, where
another child had built sandcastles and dug holes with much the same
determination–and outcome. Different time… different place… different life…

Danny took another bite of the almost
dried-out
sandwich and sipped the now warming latte
as his fingers drew patterns in the crystals of sugar spilled across the glass
top of the wrought iron table. He remembered every detail like it was
yesterday.