Murder and Mayhem (47 page)

“At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on so I
went through the house going from room to room checking every cupboard, every
drawer. I pulled the cushions off the sofas, looked under the bed, behind the
doors. I went through everything in the house and when I was finished I went
through the garage, but, there was nothing there. Everything was gone. There
wasn’t a trace of Sara anywhere. Not a CD or a bottle of nail polish, nothing.
Not even a scrap of paper that was remotely connected to her. There was nothing
that had her name on it. Everything was gone. Even the trash bins were empty.
It was as though she had never existed.”

“Oh, Danny, that’s terrible…”Danny raised his hand to
stop her. Now that he’d started–he just wanted to get it over and done with. He
wanted the pain to go away.

“I was shocked, completely shattered. I had no idea
where she could have gone–or why she left.  When I called her cell phone and
was told the number was disconnected that really threw me for a loop. I couldn’t
understand why she would do that. When I called her office they said she
resigned a week ago. Her boss said she rang and told him she wouldn’t be back.
She gave no explanation. Said she’d be in touch. He asked me where to send her
check. I told them I had no idea.

“I figured there must be something wrong. How could
she have disappeared so completely like that? So I decided to check everything
again, thinking I must have missed something. But there was nothing. All she’d
left behind was the faint smell of her perfume that seemed to cling to
everything, and the sound of emptiness that resonated through the cold, dark
house.

“I wandered from room to room in a daze, trying to go
over everything in my head, looking for some sign to tell me she was unhappy.
But, there was none that I could remember. But there must have been something
that I hadn’t picked up on, otherwise why would this have happened. Everything
had been fine between us when I left–or so I thought. But obviously it wasn’t.”
He stopped and shook his head.

“We hadn’t had an argument and I’d called nearly every
night. She never said anything about being unhappy, or worried. She was her
usual self, so I couldn’t understand what had happened. When I finally realized
she was not coming back, I sat on the floor staring at the bed for I don’t know
how long, feeling completely devastated. Then I did something I have never done
before, or since–I got drunk. I don’t mean a few drinks, I mean I was
paralytic. Completely off my head.

“For three days and nights I didn’t come out of the
haze. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. All I did was drink. I tried to find my way
through the jungle of emotions I felt, but didn’t know how to get through to
the other side. I didn’t know the answers to the questions. Hell, I didn’t even
know what the questions were anymore. I didn’t know what else to do, so I
drank. And when there was no more alcohol in the house I just sat on the floor,
in a drunken stupor. I couldn’t even walk–I had to crawl to the bathroom.
Finally I realized alcohol was not going to solve anything. It wasn’t going to
bring Sara back.” The air was filled with brittle silence.

“So what did you do?” Nicola asked.

“What could I do? I pulled myself together and went
back to work and tried to put it all behind me.” Danny shrugged. “Life goes on
regardless, doesn’t it?”

Danny closed his eyes and listened to the rustling of
leaves outside the window as a breeze came up–the slamming of a door−and
Nicola’s slow steady breathing.

“I never heard from Sara again.”

THIRTY

We walked into the room and looked around. We were not
expecting to see Chartreuse and Louanna because Chartreuse had rung early that
morning to tell us they had something they had to do but assured us they’d be
here tomorrow. We saw Linda and Grace sitting at the back of the room and,
after stopping to have a brief word with Mr. Takamura, headed in their
direction.

“How are you doing today, Linda?” I asked.

“Okay, I guess,” she said.

“How about you, Grace, are you all right?” Rosie
asked.

“Oh, full of beans, never better, Hon,” Grace answered
jovially as she moved down a seat and patted the one she’d just vacated–beside
Linda. “Here, Bee, why don’t you sit between us?”

Linda did a quick sideways shuffle leaving two vacant
chairs in the middle. When I sat next to Grace, Rosie sat beside me, next to
Linda.

“Well, here we are all nice and cozy like a couple of
bugs in a rug,” I said, smiling.

Linda jumped up and looked around. “Bugs, what bugs?
There aren’t any bugs around here, are there?” She bent over and looked under
the chair

“No, Linda,” I said. “It’s just an old Australian
expression.”

“Don’t worry, Linda I’m sure
they check regularly for vermin,” Rosie assured her.

I noticed a spider in the corner
not far from Linda’s head. Knowing her propensity to bolt I decided it best not
to draw her attention to it.

“So,” Rosie said when she noticed the spider and
decided a change of subject might be for the best. “So, what happened to Sara?
Did she leave Danny for another man?”

I screwed my mouth into a tight little moue while I
considered the answer, and tossed out my musings. “I thought so, at first,
but….” I shrugged.

“But what?”

I scrunched up my face and imparted the bad news. “It
turns out Sara was already married.”

“Married? You never told me Sara was married. Did
Danny know?”

“No. I knew of course, but decided not to say
anything.”

“Oh, poor Danny,” Rosie said forgetting it was only a
story. “What happened? Did she go back to her husband?”

“No… Not exactly…”

“What then?”

“A shark ate her.”

Linda nearly choked on the bottled water she was
drinking.

“What do you mean, a shark ate
her?” Rosie asked as she patted Linda’s back in a déjà vu moment. “You okay,
Linda?”

Linda wiped her hand across her
mouth and nodded. Unlike us Aussie who grew up on the beach, I figured Linda
had probably never seen a shark except for maybe the fake one Universal Studios
uses to scare the bejezus out of unsuspecting tourists.

“Holy mother of God!” Grace uttered and crossed
herself not once, but twice. As I suspected–a nun. Can I pick ‘em or what?

“A shark ate her! Oh, Dear Lord, how awful.” Grace
crossed herself again, then kissed her thumbnail. “Was she a friend of yours,
Bee?” she asked and gave me a sympathetic pat on the knee.

I shook my head, and shrugged. “Nope.”

Grace leaned forward and looked across at Rosie,
sympathy etched in every line on her face. “Oh, Hon, she was a friend of yours.
I’m so sorry.” Then she reached over and patted her on the arm.

“Oh no, Grace. She wasn’t a friend of mine. I didn’t
even know her!”

“Oh, then who was she?” she
asked, obviously confused.

“Danny’s ex-girlfriend,” I said without fanfare.

“Oh, I see. She was Danny’s ex-girlfriend,” she said
but it was clear that she didn’t.

“So, Danny is a friend of…” she
looked pointedly at me hoping she chose the right sister, “…yours?”

I raised an eyebrow in a golden
arches moment and peered at her over the top of my glasses. “You might say
that…”

We contemplated our navel for a while.

“I heard there was a lot of that in Australia this
summer,” Rosie said as she picked at a loose thread on the hospital gown and
watched the seam unravel.

“What’s that, Hon?” Grace asked.

“Sharks… eating people.”

“Oh…!”

“There’s a particularly scary one at Universal
Studios.” Linda tossed out a glance from under her brow and picked at the skin
round her left thumbnail. “Down in L.A. I saw it once.”

Snap!!

“Take a spear gun with you next time you go,” I
offered.

“You think I should?”

“Works every time. And, a pair of flippers wouldn’t go
astray either,” I said knowing with Linda it’s best to prepare for all
contingencies.

“Thanks for the tip.”

“You’re welcome.”

*****

Nicola could feel his heart hammering and see the
pulse throbbing in his neck. She felt a shiver pass through his body and knew
the worst was to come.

“.... About a week later the partially decomposed body
of a woman was washed up on a beach,” Danny said, “somewhere south of the city.
The television and newspaper reports said it had been ravaged by sharks. When
they gave a general description of the body, including details of an unusual
tattoo, I knew it was Sara.”

“Oh, Danny, I’m so sorry.”

Branches on the tree outside the window brushed
against the glass. The elevator pinged; a door down the hallway slammed;
someone laughed. In the distance they could hear traffic on the freeway, the
wail of a siren, a barking dog.

“I contacted the local police and was able to identify
the body from the unusual tattoo on her right buttock. It looked a little like
Sara, what was left of her, but as Sara had taken everything with her when she
left there was no DNA to use for comparison, so the police were happy to accept
my word that it was probably her. They had no one else in their missing
persons’ files that matched the description.

Three weeks later the Federal Police came to see me.
They told me the woman I had identified as Sara Summers was in fact someone
called Jessica Meadows.

“So it wasn’t Sara, after all,” Nicola said, relieved.

Danny took a deep breath and let it out, slowly.

“Yes, it was, at least the Federal Police seemed to
think so. They told me Jessica had been placed in the witness protection
program some years ago. She’d had plastic surgery and was given a new identity.
They said, Sara… Jessica, was the wife of one of the biggest importers of
cocaine into Australia and had testified against him during the trial in
Darwin, and was about to testify at another trial for two murders she had seen
him commit.

“The police seemed to think he put a hit on
Sara–Jessica,” he corrected, “to stop her from testifying against him, again.
Apparently she was the only witness. The murders were pretty brutal, I was
told. The husband knew he would probably be out in less than ten years–with
parole–for the drug charges. The Federal Police had only recovered a small
percentage of the drug money, estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of
dollars, he’d probably stashed somewhere off shore. So, when he was released
from prison he could live anywhere he wanted. But if he was convicted of the
murders, he would never see the light of day for maybe thirty years. So I guess
that explains why she suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace.

“They questioned me and checked out my alibi for the
time they estimated the body had been put in the water. I was in the clear
because I was in Canberra tied up with meetings until late every night.” A tic
twitched at the corner of his mouth. He tried to keep the tears from his voice
as they welled in the back of his throat. He swallowed and waited for his heart
to stop pounding.  

“To this day her death has remained a mystery. They
still don’t know if she was murdered or if it was an accident. Because of the
state the body was in when it was discovered there were no obvious injuries.” A
desolate expression crossed his face. “They were pretty sure she had been
murdered, but had no proof.” Danny wiped his hand across his eyes.

“As for the husband–he’ll probably be out in a year or
two.”

“And there’s nothing anyone can do?”

Danny shook his head.

“Not without proof.”

“How did you manage to cope when all this happened? 
It must have been hard trying to come to grips with something like that.”

“It was, believe me. I did the only thing I could. I
placed that part of my life in a box and put it away, never wanting to revisit
the horror of those memories again.”

“I’m sorry I made you dredge them up again.”

“Memories, like secrets, never disappear. They’re
still there – if you look close enough.

“That part of my life is over. It’s in the past. It’s
time to move on and make a new start. Life goes on, regardless.”

“Yes, it does,” she said, thinking about her parents.
“But, how could you put something like that behind you and move on? It could
not have been easy.”

Danny shrugged. “I just put everything into my work
and my bikes. They were my saviors. Freewheeling across the countryside with
the wind in your face washes away all the pain and horror that life throws at
you.