Thin Blood (27 page)

Her mind
reeling, she leaned back in her seat. If she had known all the facts earlier,
would she have been so keen to be involved? Up to the point when he told her
the bullets recovered in the Toolangi State Forest and the one Craig Edmonds
had been shot with more than likely came from the same weapon, she had been
prepared, until it was proved otherwise, to write off everything else as a
series of bizarre coincidences.

How she had
possibly entertained that idea, she didn’t know. What were the odds on three
women connected in some way to Craig Edmonds being murdered; a gold and sapphire
cross owned by the last victim found in the vicinity of the remains of the
other two?

After talking
with their families, Daniel didn’t believe the women had been randomly
targeted. Tamara Whitfield and Chandra Pinder had both been shot at close range.
And, while both women had been extroverts, they had also been extremely
security-conscious and would have been wary of any stranger. He felt certain
they had known their killer.

“That may be so,
but where’s the motive?” For Narelle’s sake, Jacinta prayed Daniel’s suspicions
about Craig Edmonds were wrong. If Daniel was right, the cold-blooded murder of
the two women cast the murder of Craig’s first wife in a completely different
light. Had Craig, as argued by the prosecution, killed Kirsty in a drunken rage
then, realising what he had done, disposed of the body? Or was it more sinister
than that? Had it been premeditated?

“Sex. Lust.”

“What do you
mean?”

“According to
her sister, the first victim, Tamara Whitfield, had been besotted with some
man. That’s all she could tell us, but because Tamara had refused to name
names, her sister assumed he had to be a married man. At this stage, the rest
is circumstantial, but I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. First, we
know Craig Edmonds, a married man employed by the same firm, has shown he’s not
averse to a bit of adultery. Second, he lied about how well he knew her. The
Christmas party photo refutes his claim they were barely acquainted. Third, she
wasn’t the only victim linked to him.”

“And I thought
only journalists speculated,” Jacinta said, trying to follow Daniel’s chain of
thought.

“As I said, it’s
purely circumstantial, and only one scenario. It doesn’t fit neatly into all
the boxes, but nothing ever does. As police, we’re trained to look at everything,
no matter how obscure or improbable, from every angle. From there, it’s a
process of elimination.”

“What about the
architect? How does she fit into this particular scenario? Another of Craig’s
flings?”

“We don’t think
so. Chandra Pinder was engaged to be married. I know that doesn’t preclude her
from having an affair, but her mother and her fiancé both said she had been
jittery in the months leading up to her disappearance. She thought someone was
stalking her. Friends and family said she was flirty by nature, but perhaps
that someone misread her signals. Is it possible Craig Edmonds became
infatuated with his architect? Who knows?”

Closing her
eyes, Jacinta kneaded her temples. “If that’s the case, who shot Craig?” She
paused, dropping her hands. “Is it possible he shot himself to deflect
suspicion away from himself?”

“Not unless he’s
a contortionist with very long limbs. He was shot from the back, and the
evidence is pointing to it being a drive-by shooting.”

“Grace Kevron
has a car,” Jacinta said.

Daniel chuckled.
“So do you. Don’t worry, we’ve already checked out that possibility. Grace is
still tucked up safely in hospital, where she can’t hurt herself or anyone
else. So unless she can be in two places at once, that rules her out. Any other
suggestions?”

Jacinta clammed
up, the lilt in Daniel’s voice making her think he might be winding her up. For
now, she would keep her thoughts to herself.

The taxi had left. Daniel and Wendy
were probably already curled up together in bed, their sons sleeping soundly in
the next room. Brett was hundreds of kilometres away in Canberra. She didn’t
own a cat. Jacinta had nothing but her thoughts for company. And they weren’t
much fun.

Light
conversation over a delightfully simple but tasty supper of grilled open
sandwiches of mozzarella, tomato and fresh basil had provided a welcome but
brief respite from thinking about murder and guilt. Now, home alone with little
to distract her, her earlier conversation with Daniel kept running around in
her head, playing like an audiotape on loop. If only she could find the stop
button.

Double-checking
the front door lock, she headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. She drank
half of it standing at the sink, refilling the glass before carrying it with
her through to the bathroom. A few minutes later, she emerged fresh-faced and
clean-teethed.

Intent on not
being late two mornings in a row, she set the alarm clock for fifteen minutes
earlier, telling herself the snooze button was out of bounds. Then, turning out
the light, she scrambled under the covers, sighing as her weary head hit the
pillow. She closed her eyes, expecting to fall asleep almost instantly. Instead
she found herself staring at the insides of her eyelids, a black nothingness.
She squeezed her eyes harder, hoping to convince her brain it was time to
switch off. When that didn’t work, she tried counting imaginary white, fluffy,
cartoon sheep. But as tired as she was, sleep evaded her.

With a resigned
groan, she rolled onto her side and felt for the bedside lamp switch. Blinking
against the light’s sudden glare, she retrieved her spiral-bound notebook and a
ballpoint pen from the bedside table’s single shallow drawer and sat up. She
knew the only way she was going to get any sleep was to clear her head. In the
past, writing down her thoughts had helped.

For the next
half-hour, she wrote furiously, dumping her thoughts on paper. When she read
the jumble of words back, they made even less sense, but at least she had
something to work with. She tore out the filled pages, laying the loose sheets
on the bed in a semicircle around her, gazing at them as if expecting the
answers to materialise.

In the middle of
a fresh page, she wrote CRAIG EDMONDS in bold capitals and circled it. Then, in
mind-map fashion, she added a series of boxes, connecting each to the circle
with a solid line. She stared at the diagram for a while, and then began to add
labels. She wrote ‘Kirsty Edmonds’ in the top box, inserting her sister’s name,
‘Narelle Croswell’, in the one at the bottom of the page. With the two wives
taken care of, she then allocated a box to each of the first two murder
victims, Tamara Whitfield and Chandra Pinder. Opposite them, on the right-hand
side of the page, she added Grace Kevron’s name, leaving the box below hers
blank. All these people were connected, but to what extent?

Using dotted
lines and starting from the top, she added in the known links. Kirsty had been
married to Craig, Narelle was her sister, Grace was supposedly her best friend,
and she had been architect Chandra Pinder’s client. Because Jacinta wasn’t sure
if Kirsty had known, or known of, securities clerk Tamara Whitfield, she
inserted a question mark between the two names.

In fact, Tamara
Whitfield’s only definite link to the group was she had worked for the same
stockbroking firm Craig Edmonds had. Unless he had indeed been having some
illicit affair with her, then it was highly unlikely Grace would even have
known she existed, and the likelihood Chandra Pinder had known her would be
even less. Narelle had told her that Tamara worked for the same stockbrokers as
Craig, but claimed they hardly knew each other. Is that what Craig had told
her? How long ago?

A possibility
she hadn’t wanted to contemplate leapt out at her. She closed her eyes,
thinking back to what Narelle had told her about the start of her affair with
Craig. If she remembered correctly, the original affair between Craig and
Narelle had lasted for about five or six months, breaking off about a year
before Kirsty disappeared. That meant that for Daniel’s scenario to be right,
Craig had to have been having an extramarital affair with not one woman, but
two. Love square? Her mind boggled.

However, that
didn’t explain how the next victim, Chandra Pinder, fitted in. True or not,
affairs were consensual; stalking wasn’t. Narelle’s throwaway comment about
Craig definitely remembering the architect because of her stunning looks
needled Jacinta. Was it possible Craig had made a play for Chandra, not
accepting no for an answer when she rebuffed him? Had he been such a
philanderer that a wife
and
a mistress weren’t enough to satisfy him?

The diagram
began to look like a warped spider web as, adding yet another dotted line, she
joined Chandra’s and Narelle’s boxes. Like her husband and sister, Narelle had
been acquainted with everyone on the page, with perhaps the exception of Tamara
Whitfield.

Skipping the
blank box, Jacinta moved on to the final one. With her pen poised, she studied
the lines radiating from the box labelled Grace Kevron, connecting her to
Kirsty, Craig and Narelle. Question marks hung over the remaining two. Because
Chandra Pinder had been contracted by the Edmondses, it was possible but not
certain that Grace, as Kirsty’s best friend, had met the architect. She made a
mental note to ask Narelle.

That left Tamara
Whitfield. Even if Craig had been involved with the securities clerk and Kirsty
had found out, would she have told Grace about it? Jacinta had her doubts. As
it was, Grace’s hurt at only finding out about the affair between Kirsty’s
sister and husband at the murder trial, and not from her so-called best friend,
was still evident years later.

Absent-mindedly
clicking and unclicking her ballpoint pen, Jacinta stared unseeing at the end
of the bed. Grace might have had it in for Craig and Narelle for what she
perceived they had done to Kirsty, but what possible reason would she have had
to want Tamara and Chandra dead? None that Jacinta could immediately see.

However, who was
the mystery contact Grace kept alluding to? A journalist or someone with
insider knowledge? News of Narelle and Craig’s marriage had only been published
after Grace had found out about it. Moreover, how had Grace come to be at the Toolangi State Forest crime scene? Someone must have tipped her off.

Jacinta’s imagination
ran rampant, conjuring up an endless list of possible, if not improbable, plots
and motives. In her mind she could make anything fit, even briefly entertaining
Grace’s notion that Narelle and Craig had been in it together, before
dismissing the idea as ludicrous. Sisters didn’t kill each other. Besides,
divorce would have been the simple option if the pair had wanted Kirsty out of
the way.

More confused
than ever, she gathered up the loose pages and jammed them together with the
notebook and pen back into the drawer. Writing her thoughts down had had quite
the opposite effect to the one she intended. Instead of clearing her mind, all
she had done was shuffle everything around, making room for more sleep-robbing
notions.

She glanced at
the empty bed beside her, wishing Brett were there. Apart from missing him, sex
never failed to put her to sleep. Hoping a warm cup of milky cocoa would go at
least some of the way to having the same soporific effect, she padded down to
the kitchen. Opening the fridge door, she half-expected to find Brett had drunk
all the milk that morning, as he was inclined to do, but to her amazement, she
found a new, unopened carton wedged in beside the one she had bought on the
weekend and that was already virtually empty.

In the night
stillness, the purr of the microwave as it warmed a mug of milk seemed
magnified, the end ping ear-splitting. Even the clank of the teaspoon against
the inside of the cup as she stirred in the cocoa sounded like she was bashing
a toy xylophone. Tossing the dirty spoon into the sink, she lifted the mug to
her mouth, inhaling the rich cocoa aroma.

She froze, a
sense that something wasn’t quite right engulfing her. Then she heard what
sounded like soft footsteps outside the kitchen window. Jacinta’s chest
constricted. Her breathing tightened further. In slow motion, she set the warm
mug on the kitchen bench and flicked the range hood’s light switch, plunging
the room into darkness. For a few moments, she stood clutching the edge of the
bench, the pounding of her own heart the only sound she could hear.

Mustering the
courage to move, she lifted the corner of the blind and looked out. Her stomach
lurched, her mouth opening in a silent gasp. She jumped back, dropping the
blind as she ducked below the bench. Huddled against the kitchen cupboards, she
tried to stem her panic. It was pitch-black out there, yet she was convinced
she had sensed, if not seen, movement.

Scrambling on
all fours in the dark, she managed to locate the cordless phone, breathing a
little easier when she heard the dial tone. But who to call? Brett was too far
away to be of any real help. Daniel and Wendy certainly wouldn’t appreciate
being woken in the small hours for something that might turn out to be nothing
more than her overactive imagination.

Was she being
neurotic, or was someone prowling around outside her home? The tables had
turned. Now she knew how Narelle must have felt. She hugged the phone to her
chest, her whole body so hypersensitive to her surroundings that she felt sure
she would have sensed the vibrations of a spider’s eight legs crawling up the
wall.

For what seemed
hours, she sat motionless, too petrified to move, until finally she plucked up
the nerve to phone Brett. She needed to hear his voice, needed him to tell her
nothing bad was going to happen, and needed to reassure herself he was in bed
alone. She had forgiven him his indiscretion at a similar conference in Sydney,
but she hadn’t forgotten. She almost laughed. If scaring herself witless hadn’t
been enough, she had to torment herself with what Brett might or might not be
up to.