Web of Deceit (16 page)

Steve’s phone went to voicemail. ‘Just checking in,’ she said. ‘Hope she’s doing okay. I’ll try you again later.’

Breanna answered on the first ring. ‘Finally! Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ Jane covered the phone and took a deep breath. Some days she was not all right with her kids living far away. ‘I had to go to the police station. They kept me for ages.’

‘What happened?’

‘What did Dad tell you?’

‘Just that you found her unconscious outside your place, that someone had beaten her up. Who would do something like that?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘Why was she even there?’

Now was not the time to go into it. ‘I’m not sure about that either.’

‘God, Mum, it’s awful.’ Breanna was crying now. ‘And I’m at work, and everyone’s
looking at me.’

‘Oh, honey.’ Jane’s heart ached. ‘Can you go home?’

‘I’ll be okay in a minute.’ She snuffled, then blew her nose. ‘Dad was so upset. And Deb has her moments, but I guess I like her, you know? They’ve been married five years.’

Jane understood, though she couldn’t say she had the same feelings. The events of the last few months had ruined whatever liking she’d had
for Deb. But she felt for her family, and for the kids, and of course for Steve.

‘I haven’t talked to your dad yet,’ she said. ‘I got his voicemail when I tried just now.’

‘He sounded shattered,’ Breanna said. ‘Listen, Mum, I’m thinking about coming up. I’m going to talk to my boss and see if I can get the rest of the week off.’

‘Your dad would probably appreciate that.’

‘It’s to see you too,’ Breanna said. ‘I can’t imagine what it was like to find her like that, what it was –’ Her voice cracked.

My soft-hearted little rabbit girl.

‘I’m fine, sweetie,’ Jane said, pinching her arm to keep her voice strong. ‘You don’t have to worry about me.’

A moment of sniffling, then Breanna said, ‘I have to go. Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Jane took
a moment, then tried Steve again. Voicemail. She didn’t leave a message. She called both David and Glenn but got their voicemails too. They couldn’t answer as easily at work as Breanna. She left messages saying she was all right, she loved them and she’d talk to them later. Then she stood at the front window and looked out. They would’ve taken Deb from here to Prince of Wales. She should call and
find out how she was. But she couldn’t take her eyes from the drying path.

Someone had come along that path last night in the dark and attacked Deb. Jane had seen beating injuries and murders before. It didn’t take as much effort to cave in a skull as people might think, and Deb would have been unconscious from the first blow. Hopefully she didn’t even hear them coming and had suffered not
one second of fear.

But who did it? And why? And was it meant to have been her?

If I wasn’t parked at the beach getting pissed, would it be my blood soaking into the grass this morning?

But she had no enemies, apart from Deb herself.

Who thought you were cheating with her husband. So what about the woman whose husband you were really cheating with?

He’d been so careful
to keep any sign of Lucille out of her sight. Jane imagined he’d done the same with her; it was unlikely that Lucille had been able to find out anything to lead her here so quickly last night.

Except Laird knows where you live…

No. No way in the world. She knew him – okay, so it turned out she didn’t know him, but she thought she knew him enough to feel certain he wasn’t a killer.

If they had a prenup, and Lucille decided to leave him, he might stand to lose everything. That was motive right there.

But then he’d want to kill her, not me.

No, it’d be to stop you telling anyone what happened, idiot.

Jane grasped the window frame. None of this felt real. She didn’t believe that Laird could have done it. She didn’t believe anyone would want to hurt Deb,
but neither could she believe that anyone would want to hurt her.

A familiar silver Lexus came slowly down the street, then pulled to the kerb outside her gate. The driver’s door opened while the engine was still running, and Laird looked across the car’s roof at her front door.

Jane ran down the stairs and burst outside, bolted down the path, around the wet place where Deb had lain,
and onto the footpath. ‘Did you do this?’

‘What?’ He was in a suit and tie, and wore reflective sunglasses that he didn’t remove.

‘A woman was attacked here last night! She looked just like me!’

‘Oh, sweet pea, no, no. How could you even think that?’

He tried to touch her arm. She slapped his hand away.

‘Then you’re just a plain shitty arsehole, not a murdering one.’

‘Come on. It’s not what it looks like.’

‘You told me you were separated.’

‘I thought we were,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that she thought something else.’

‘Take those ridiculous glasses off and look me in the eye when you say that.’

He removed them with obvious reluctance, glancing around as if he felt he might be recognised. ‘She doesn’t make me happy like you do. I
swear, Jane, I’ve never met anyone like you.’

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You weren’t separated at all, were you?’

He couldn’t meet her gaze. ‘I wanted to tell her about you. I was trying to tell her when you knocked. We’d just sat down in the lounge room. I was about to begin.’

‘That’s why you were holding headphones?’

‘I was psyching myself up. She’s crazy. I didn’t know what
she’d do. That’s why I had to pretend not to know you. She might’ve tried to hurt you.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘I think I’m in love with you,’ he said.

Something in her heart twanged tight. ‘If that was true, you would’ve told me upfront she was still in the picture and you wouldn’t have hidden all her stuff.’

He looked about to reply when a car tore into the street. She thought for
a second it would be Lucille, then recognised Steve’s black Holden ute. He screeched to a stop beside Laird’s car, blocking the narrow street, and leapt out with his fists clenched and his face a deep and enraged red.

Laird stepped back, looking frightened, but Steve rushed past him and came straight for Jane.

‘What did you do to her?’

What the hell?
‘I didn’t –’

‘You couldn’t
give me one more chance to talk to her? You had to do this?’

His breath reeked of alcohol. The hospital must’ve kicked him out for being drunk.

‘You’ve hated her from the start. You happy now she’s in hospital? Are you? She’s unconscious, they don’t know whether she’ll live or die.’ He shoved her into the hedge. ‘You happy about that?’

‘Fuck you.’ She shoved him back. ‘Get off
me.’

He’d never hit or even pushed her before and she wasn’t going to let him start now. Laird jumped in his car and accelerated backwards away from the kerb and haphazardly up the street.
Thanks a lot
.

Steve grabbed the neck of her shirt and rammed her deep into the hedge. Twigs scratched her neck and she kicked at his shin and missed.

‘Bitch,’ Steve hissed. He shook her, rattling
her teeth.

‘Get off me.’ She punched his stomach. He didn’t flinch. ‘Get off!’

‘You always were jealous.’

His eyes were crazy. She felt his hands wrap around her throat and believed suddenly that he might really try to kill her, that anyone was truly capable of anything.

She grabbed his shoulders and rammed her knee into his groin. He groaned into her face and she tore
free of his grip and started to run, but at the last second he clutched the back of her shirt – not enough to hold her back, but just enough to throw her off balance so that she stumbled and fell headfirst into the gatepost and complete darkness.

FIFTEEN

B
ill and Prue Weaver lived in a shining white two-storey house in a leafy street in Hunters Hill. The hedges along the front of the property were thick and sharply trimmed, and the lawn was like a bowling green, glistening from a recent and unnecessary watering. Ella and Murray followed the white paved path to the front door, where she pulled the rope attached
to a heavy cast-iron bell. The air smelled of flowers and freshly turned earth.

‘Money much?’ Murray said.

Ella grinned, still feeling edgy from when she’d called in the anonymous tip about seeing Fletcher’s van lurking in Amy Street. Because he’d never been mentioned in the news as a suspect in Meixner’s death, she couldn’t call the hotline, so had stood at a grimy public phone box
in Meadowbank and called Ryde station instead. The constable on the desk hadn’t sounded particularly interested, not even when Ella declined to give her name, but all she could do was hope that a note made it through the system attached to Fletcher’s name and van, and when they were back at the office she could oh-so-casually bring his record up and say, well well, would you look at this.

There was the sound of heels on a tiled floor inside and the door was flung open. The woman who glared at them was around fifty, her ash-blonde hair loose on her shoulders, her dark denim designer jeans tight over her plump hips.

‘Didn’t you see the sign?’ she snapped. ‘No hawkers.’

Ella held up her badge. ‘Mrs Prue Weaver?’

The woman’s round cheeks turned brighter pink. ‘Yes?’

‘Detectives Marconi and Shakespeare. We’d like to speak to you about your husband, Bill.’

‘I have nothing to say.’ She started to close the door.

Murray put out his hand. ‘It’s important that we find out what’s –’

‘I do not like repeating myself,’ Prue Weaver said. ‘Kindly remove your hand.’

‘We saved his life, you know,’ Murray said.

She hesitated, then lifted
her chin. ‘Regardless. He’s asked me to say nothing.’

‘Why?’ Ella asked.

‘It’s private business.’ Her cheeks coloured further.

‘Did he tell you what happened?’ Murray said.

‘Yes, he did.’

‘He hung himself with his tie on the back of his office door,’ Murray said, as if she hadn’t answered. ‘Detective Marconi here managed to get a knife through the gap and cut through
the tie, then squeezed in and did CPR until paramedics arrived.’

Prue Weaver hesitated. ‘Then I suppose I owe you my thanks.’ She put out a plump hand.

Suppose?
Ella shook it. The woman’s skin was hot and damp.

‘Did you know that we were there because one of your husband’s employees was killed two days ago?’ Murray went on. ‘Marko Meixner. Did you know him?’

‘I’ve never
met the man, and I can’t see how I could shed any light on anything to do with him.’

‘The fact remains that his death led to our presence in the office, and our presence saved your husband’s life, so a few minutes conversation is perhaps not only in order but owed, don’t you think?’

Murray smiled and stepped through the doorway, Ella right behind him, Prue looking flustered in their
wake.

The living room was full of oversized armchairs. A huge and gloomy painting of a bowl of fruit hung over the mantelpiece and velvet-embossed wallpaper covered every other wall. The thick carpet made the place feel padded and soundless, and the air stank of overly sweet chemicals, as if somewhere a plug-in air freshener worked overtime.

Prue stayed on her feet and didn’t invite
them to sit.

Murray faced her with his hands behind his back. ‘You’ve been to the hospital to see Bill?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did he tell you why he tried to kill himself?’

‘Suicide is no longer a legal issue, so I don’t see why the police are involved.’

Ella said, ‘We’re concerned there may be irregularities in how Payton and Jones operate, and an attempted suicide and
a death among the staff are no reassurance.’

Prue drew herself up. ‘My husband would not be involved in any manner of wrongdoing.’

‘He might have inadvertently become involved,’ Murray said. ‘We’re here for his protection, if anything.’

Nice one, Ella thought.

Prue’s eyes widened. ‘Do you think he’s in danger?’

‘We just don’t know,’ Ella said.

‘Nobody can get
to him in the hospital, can they?’

‘Doubtful,’ Ella lied, thinking back a couple of years to the man who’d been murdered in his hospital bed right before her eyes.

‘But you can understand now why we need to know what’s going on,’ Murray said.

Prue Weaver squeezed the mantelpiece with one ring-heavy hand and stared at the bowl of fruit as if for inspiration. ‘He must never know
that I told you.’

‘We do our best to keep every confidence,’ Ella said.

‘He told me in the hospital that he’s been feeling depressed and the news of the death upset him greatly,’ Prue said. ‘But I believe there’s more reason than that. Over the last year we’ve been having some financial difficulties because his bonuses at work have been decreased and the value of our investment properties
have dropped.’

Properties, plural, Ella thought. ‘Go on.’

‘Bill is a man who expects life to continually improve,’ she said. ‘The GFC has affected not only his clients’ portfolios but our own, and Bill had to sell the properties at a loss. He said it was the best thing to do, that the forecasts weren’t good and it was better to let them go now than wait and see their value fall even
further.’

‘These properties were where?’ Murray said.

‘A house in Clontarf and an apartment in Double Bay. We lost three-quarters of a million between the two, can you believe it?’

‘No,’ Ella said.

‘The shares we own too. So much money gone.’ She smoothed a finger over the gilt frame of the painting. ‘It goes to show that even the most knowledgeable people aren’t immune
to the vagaries of the market.’

‘Indeed,’ Ella said.

‘That kind of thing makes him feel like a failure,’ Prue said. ‘When I was signing the paperwork for the sales, he apologised for letting me down. I told him it didn’t matter, we still have our lovely home here, we still have his salary, and one day we will come back better than ever.’

Ella nodded. Beside her, Murray coughed
into his fist.

‘Having said that, though, let me say this.’ Prue smiled, and Ella smiled back.

For someone who wasn’t going to tell them anything, she was really letting loose.
The power of the attentive ear.

‘I think things are picking up.’ Prue lowered her voice, as if Bill might somehow be able to hear. ‘I stumbled across a cruise brochure in his desk drawer when I was dusting.’

Ella bet the woman had never dusted in her life. ‘Is that so?’

‘It’s for the expensive Caribbean cruise we go on, the one he thought we couldn’t afford this year. Obviously things are turning around and he’s going to surprise me with it one day soon.’ Her teeth shone.

‘So things are looking up, but he’s still depressed enough to try to kill himself?’ Ella said.

‘I told you,’
Prue said. ‘It’s been a stressful year. And he was very saddened by his employee’s death.’

Ella nodded, thinking that something didn’t add up.

*

Bill Weaver lay in a ward bed, his huge bulk propped up on three pillows and his meaty hands clutching the raised side rails. The bruising on his throat had turned dark and Ella could hear a whistle in his throat when he breathed.

‘Beautiful home you have,’ she said.

He glared at them. ‘You had no right to go there.’

‘This is a homicide investigation,’ Murray said. ‘We go where we need to go. And by the way, your wife is delightful.’

‘You stay away from her,’ he wheezed, fumbling in the sheets for the call button while sweat burst out on his forehead.

‘Prue knows about the cruise,’ Murray said.

‘You have no right,’ Bill gasped.

‘She told us a few other things too,’ Ella said. ‘How about you tell us your side of the story?’

A nurse hurried in and bustled them aside. She grabbed an oxygen mask from the wall and slid it over Bill’s head.

‘Just breathe,’ she said to him. ‘Nice and even.’

He flapped a hand at Ella and Murray, a clear ‘go away’ gesture.

‘Yes, you’ll have to leave,’ the nurse said.

Ella said to Bill, ‘Think about it, okay?’ before they walked out.

*

Jane lay dry-eyed and angry in Prince of Wales hospital’s Emergency Department, her fingers going numb on the icepack she held over her aching cheek. Her head throbbed and her neck was sore. They’d done X-rays and now she was waiting for the verdict. She thought briefly
about asking for a pregnancy test but couldn’t stand the prospect of some cheery nurse offering either congratulations or commiserations.

‘Jane?’ The curtain was inched open and Detective Juliet Rooney looked in. ‘You awake?’

Jane struggled up in the bed. The icepack fell off.

‘Jesus.’ Rooney peered close. ‘You feeling okay?’

Jane found herself tearing up.
Stop it.
‘I’m
fine, really.’ She reapplied the icepack and looked into Rooney’s eyes. ‘I lied last night.’

Rooney raised a hand. ‘Before you say another word, I have to tell you that anything you say –’

‘I didn’t do it,’ Jane said. ‘I’m not confessing.’

‘Even so.’

‘I wasn’t just driving around. I went to see my, uh, boyfriend. But his wife answered the door. That’s why I was upset and
wanted to get drunk.’

Rooney sat down and opened her notebook. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Laird Humphreys.’

Rooney looked up. ‘The newsreader?’

‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘And he was outside my house this morning when Steve and I had the fight that ended in this.’

‘The constables didn’t mention him.’

Jane felt heat creep up her cheeks. ‘He scarpered when it kicked off.’

Rooney made a notation in her book, then looked up again. ‘If we need to speak to him about last night, what will he say?’

‘God knows.’ Jane felt her colour deepen. ‘He told his wife I was a fan or something. From what I heard before I left, I don’t think she believed him.’

Another notation.

Jane shifted in the bed. She should tell Rooney her concerns.
In a minute.
‘Where’s
Steve?’

‘At Maroubra station,’ Rooney said. ‘Are you going to press charges?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Has he ever done this sort of thing before?’

‘No, God no. He can be an idiot but he’s never been violent,’ Jane said. ‘Did you find out where he was last night?’

‘The casino. For hours. Apparently he’s something of a regular there.’

‘Oh.’ So he didn’t have a girlfriend
at all, he had a problem. ‘How is he?’

‘Apologetic, sobbing, and sobering up.’

‘No charges,’ Jane said.

Rooney nodded. ‘Getting back to Laird Humphreys, what time did he arrive at your house this morning?’

‘Around an hour ago,’ she said.

‘Did he come straight up and knock on the door?’

Jane shook her head. ‘I was upstairs and saw him through the window. He pulled
up in his car and half-got out, and was looking at the front door.’

‘Or the path?’ Rooney said.

‘Perhaps,’ Jane said, feeling the blush inch higher.

‘What did he do then?’

‘I ran downstairs and outside and started yelling at him,’ Jane said. ‘He was blustering, said it wasn’t like that, he thinks he loves me.’ She snorted.

‘How long were you seeing him?’

‘Almost
four months.’

‘Was he ever violent to you?’

‘No,’ Jane said. She looked at the foot of the bed, but could feel Rooney watching her.

‘You know why I’m asking, don’t you?’ she said.

Jane swallowed. She felt faint. ‘Yes.’

‘How did he look when he saw you?’

‘I don’t know, I was running too fast and yelling too much.’ She tried to remember. ‘Stunned, maybe? Surprised?’

She knew what that suggested; knew it made him sound suspicious.

Rooney turned a page in her notebook. ‘What about his wife? Do you think she knew who you were to Laird when she opened the door?’

‘She knew all right. I could see it in her eyes. And she turned her hand to make sure I’d see her rings.’ Jane put down the icepack. ‘Laird said this morning that she’s crazy. He claimed
that he had to deny knowing me so she wouldn’t try to hurt me.’ She could hear Rooney’s pen moving on the page. ‘But how could she have found out where I lived?’

Rooney said nothing.

Jane felt herself tear up again. ‘I know that Laird might not want me to tell anyone what happened. That if she divorced him he might lose a lot. Or that he could have told her my address.’ She looked
at Rooney. ‘Do you think that’s what happened?’

‘I don’t think anything,’ Rooney said. ‘It’s just one of the avenues we’ll look at. But you said yourself that it was dark at the front of your house, and Deb had a history of coming around and breaking things, which explains why she was there. She even brought the golf club with her – your ex identified it as one of his. And you do look very
much alike.’

Jane sagged back in the bed. ‘I can’t believe he would.’

‘People get killed for much less,’ Rooney said.

It was true. Jane had seen it often herself. She tried to picture Laird skulking in her front garden, and shook her head. The motion made her dizzy. ‘I can’t imagine it.’

Rooney’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She checked the screen then shut her notebook
with a snap. ‘I have to go. I’ll be in touch.’

She went out, and Jane lay back and looked at the ceiling. Her head ached. She pressed the icepack on firmly, the pain a sharp stab that she swallowed down. How could this be? She’d been so good at picking troublemakers and liars; and hiding a wife was one thing, but having a violent streak wide enough to kill a person, or let someone else do
it, was a whole different issue. Sure, it wasn’t necessarily true, but knowing the thought was in Rooney’s head too made it impossible to dislodge from her own. And while she couldn’t imagine Laird doing it, or ‘helping’ Lucille do it, before yesterday she couldn’t have imagined him driving off while she got beaten up or being with someone else either.