My Wife's Li'l Secret (10 page)

The Olga I knew was a little shy, but warm and nurturing towards both me and my kids, and I loved her with all my heart. I was convinced she loved me too.

Or so I thought.

Was I wrong!

My phone rang, jolting me from my reverie. I peered at the screen. Private number. I ignored it, not in the mood to handle telemarketers.

It was still raining, the day was still miserable, and I needed more coffee. I could hear Bear talking on the phone and a surge of guilt shot through me – I should be working.

But I just couldn’t.

Dragging myself to the coffee machine, I helped myself to another cup, went back into my office, shut the door, sat in my chair, and stared out the window at the falling rain.

In hindsight, Olga bumping into me didn’t appear so coincidental anymore.

We moved really fast. We called it a whirlwind romance at that time, but I have to wonder if that was the case. (Some people kidded about me having a mail-order bride.)

If it was orchestrated, the question was, why?

Was it money? I wasn’t wealthy. I had some assets, sure, a business, a holiday house, a decent family home. Not enough to want to want to go through lengths to scam me. There were men out there with a lot more money than me waiting to be conned by a pretty girl.

So, why me?

How do I recover from this, I asked myself? Would I ever?

“Big?”

I turned around to see Bear. So deep was I in my thoughts, I didn’t hear him enter.

“I knocked,” he said, his eyes scanning my face.

I didn’t reply.

“You okay, mate?”

I nodded and cleared the frog in my throat. “Y…yeah.”

He walked over to me and squeezed my shoulder. “It’ll be okay, mate.”

No it won’t!

Excitement coursed through me when my phone rang and Jai’s name appeared on my screen.

“Jai, speak to me, buddy!” I said.

“Ritchie, I’m sorry, bad news. My contact has decided to abort the investigation.”

“What? Why? Is it mon…?”

“No, no, not money. He’s been worked over by some Russian arseholes, Big. Really bad. They put him in hospital, man!”

“You serious?”

“Yeah. Blocked his car with an SUV, pulled him out and kicked the shit out of him. Landed in hospital with a broken nose, three broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, a sprained ankle, and a whole lot of other minor injuries.”

“You're kidding me!”

“I kid you not. Surendra, he likes his money. Nothing stops him. But he aborted. Sorry, Big.”

I was at a loss for words.

“They told him to beat it and stop with all the questions.”

“Yeah?”

“He could confirm a few things: Viggo indeed disappeared years ago; the man in the photo I supplied is Cruikshank without doubt, and he was released from prison about six months ago. Couldn’t tell me what he spent time in prison for.”

“Jayzus!”

Jai nodded and continued. “Says the moment he began delving into Cruikshank’s identity, the men cornered him. That’s what he said. Cruikshank’s name caused all this shit. Tells me something is up. Something huge. Sinister, even, man.”

I sat shaking my head, unable to believe all I heard.

“Sinister for sure,” I said. “Maybe…maybe
I
need to go to Ukraine, poke around myself.”

“Don’t, Big. It’s too dangerous, my friend. Please, don’t!”

“Mm.”

After chatting for a few more minutes and offering to pay all his contact's medical bills, I hung up and stared into space.

What the fuck have I gotten myself into?

****

Still stunned over the beating of Jai’s contact, I went home and decided to snoop around, conduct my own investigations into the Natural Born Liars. Since I couldn’t gain access to Olga’s password-protected phone, I checked out her phone records.

Regular calls to Ukraine, I noted with interest. To whom? If she had no parents, and if her ‘brother’ was living in Sydney, who was she calling?

I checked her credit card statements, went through them line by line. Of all her excessive spending, her umpteen cash withdrawals, one thing stood out – around the 20
th
of each month, she made a cash withdrawal of a thousand dollars.

The pattern was pretty clear. I’d never noticed it before, because I never checked her credit card statements before, because I had no reason to. But the withdrawals, which were clockwork, stirred my curiosity. What was she doing with this money?

Digging deeper, I discovered that the withdrawals began a month after we married.

Why? Why would she need a thousand dollars around the 20
th
of every single month?

To buy drugs?

To Ukraine?

Maybe she was supporting these people she called parents, I thought.

Maybe she had a child back in Ukraine I knew nothing about?

Maybe she gave it to Fuckface Cruikshank or Viggo or whatever the bastard called himself?

The thought of her supporting that motherfucker with my hard-earned money, coupled by a quick calculation of just how much of my money was spent on him (a thousand dollars a month over sixty months equaled sixty thousand dollars!) caused me to want to throw something heavy against the wall.

My rage segued between Olga and myself. I was angry at her, sure, but I was furious with myself for being such an unsuspecting chump.

How the hell did I expect Olga to respect me when I was such a dimwit?

I riffled through her drawers, checked coat pockets and shoe boxes, between the mattress and under the bed, through purses and bags, and even flipped through books. Olga loved books, so I would imagine she was the type to save things between the precious pages.

Nothing.

My search proved to be fruitless. Just when I was about to call it off, I found something. In one of her thigh high boots, (which I had never seen before and didn’t even know she owned ) I found a batch of Western Union receipts, each for a thousand dollars being sent to Ukraine on and around the 20
th
of each month.

Two names appeared on the receipt – Olga MacMillan and N. Alvang.

I sat on my bed, or the bed I once called mine, my fingers steepled in front of my face.

Alvang was her family name. She didn’t have another sibling, so …?

After a few moments, I got up and made my way into the room Cruikshank slept in. I absolutely refused to call it Cruikshank’s room, because it was not
his
room at all. It was
my
house,
my
room. I began rifling through his things.

Under a clipboard next to Cruikshank’s bed, I found my signature. A whole batch of them. Except that they weren’t
my
signatures; they were great forges, probably practiced in order to obtain bank loans.

It could have been Olga or Cruikshank who forged them, I couldn’t be sure.

When I heard a car pull up, I quickly replaced everything exactly as I found it and ducked into the spare room.

****

“So he’s Cruikshank?” Bear asked.

I nodded. “He’s Cruikshank, not Viggo.”

Bear sat back in his office chair and let out a low whistle. “Pretty fucked up, I have to say.”

“Yep.” I drummed my fingers on Bear’s mahogany desk.

“GPS?”

“Yeah, GPS tracking gave me a street in Merrylands. Dina Street.”

Bear’s eyes narrowed at me. “Merrylands? Do
you
know anyone there?”

“Nope.”

“Then we should check out the place. We can go
now
. You ready?”

We were in the middle of a work day, and I felt bad taking Bear away from work. It was bad enough that I had been slacking off.

“After work,” I said, even though I wanted to leave right away. “If you’re able to?”

“Sure.”

I should have left work right away. I struggled to concentrate and get much done anyway. At around 4 p.m., Bear and I got into a company ute and drove forty-five minutes to the suburbs of Merrylands.

The tracking device gave me a street name and a suburb, but not a house number.

When we arrived in Dina Street, which was a cul-de-sac, we drove around a few times to check out the area, then found a parking spot that allowed us a clear view of the entire street, as well as the four houses in Dina Street.

An old lady using an ambulatory contraption emerged from number three to collect mail from her letter box. Almost twenty minutes later, she was still snailing it back to her front door.

“I actually feel like helping the old bird,” I confessed to Bear. “It’s painful watching her.”

Bear chortled. “Yeah, me too! Feel like carrying her in.”

An Asian woman with three kids in tow barged out from number seven, shoved the kids into a Toyota Rav, reached in to smack one of her boys on the head several times, hurled abuse at another, then got into the driver’s seat and sped off, almost running down a stop sign and a cyclist in the process.

“Whoa!” Bear said. “What the hell’s wrong with this woman?”

“With kids in the car, too,” I tsked.

“Two down, two to go,” Bear said, slinking down into the driver’s seat.

Ten minutes later, an old Indian couple inched their Kia into the driveway of number one.

The man emerged from the car, shut his door, and walked up to the front door. The old woman, dressed in a traditional sari, got out of the car, opened the boot, and removed four bags of groceries.

We watched her struggle with two bags to the front door, leave them there, then return for three more bags, after which she shut the boot and carried all the bags into the house. The old man stood at the doorway and watched, but did not help one bit.

“What a fucking jerkoff!” Bear spat. “Look at him!”

“Yeah!” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “Dickhead!”

“Feel like kicking him off his feet!” Bear said.

“Yeah, force him to carry all the groceries into the house, then carry the old bird in, too.”

“Yeah, then carry the
Kia
into the garage, watch his miserable back snap like a fucking twig!” Bear said, sitting up.

I snapped my fingers to add audio to the mental image. “Just like that!”

People-watching can produce all kinds of rage, I have to say.

So far, none of the people we saw looked Russian or Ukrainian.

“Just number five now,” Bear said, glancing at the silver Rolex on his wrist.

I removed a pair of binoculars from the cubby and zeroed in on the only house we hadn’t accounted for.

Number five was a double-story, face-brick house, with a paved front yard and high, wrought-iron fencing.

“Four Rottweilers,” I reported. “Big motherfu –”

“Down! Down! Down!” Bear suddenly hissed.

I crouched low as a Ford Explorer whizzed by.

A
blue
Ford Explorer, driven by none other than my wife’s ex-husband.

“Would you look at that?” I said through clenched teeth.

Bear shook his head. “Does Cruikshank even have a New South Wales driver’s license?”

“Nope. But obviously that doesn’t stop the bastard,” I muttered.

As expected, Cruikshank drove straight to number five, parked the Explorer outside the house, and walked up to the gates.

Immediately the Rottweilers rushed to him. They didn’t bark, just watched him intently. I felt nervous for him, even though I wouldn’t have shed any tears if he was, say, eaten by the dogs.

A man flung open the door, spotted Cruikshank at the gates, and yelled a command at the dogs. The dogs slinked away as we watched the gates open for Cruikshank.

Bear looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Yuliya’s place, perhaps?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Yuliya must have a thing for Rotweillers.”

Five minutes later, four burly men wearing leather jackets and looking as if they stepped off the set of
The Sopranos
emerged from the house with Cruikshank and got into my wife’s Ford Explorer.

Judging by their laughter and the back slapping, it appeared they were all good mates.

None of them looked like tourists to me.

Bear started the ute as the Explorer passed us. “Drop down; I’m going to tail them,” he said.

I sank low in my seat as Bear eased out of the parking spot and followed them at a safe distance.

Five minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a local tavern, where they alighted and walked to the bar area, still laughing and backslapping each other.

“Wait here,” Bear said, removing a black beanie from the console of the ute and slipping it over his head. He got out of the ute, pulled the collar of his jacket over his ears, and strolled into the tavern.

Cruikshank knew Bear, so I was a little worried Bear might be recognized.

Fifteen dashboard-drumming minutes later, Bear emerged and lumbered over to the ute.

“They were too busy talking to each other to notice me,” he said, as he drove away from the parking lot.

He glanced at me. “Loudly, in Russian. Ukrainian too.”

"Yeah?”

“Couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they seemed really familiar with each other. And Cruikshank, he was using his credit card to pay for the rounds and for dinner.”

“What? He doesn’t have a cent to his name. He must be using Liefie’s credit card, the fuck! Using
my
money to pay for his ...where you going?”

“Back to their house,” Bear said, glancing at his rearview mirror, then his side mirror. “Time to check it out. But first, we need to get some meat.”

“Yeah?”

“For the dogs.”

“Ah.” I nodded.