She nodded as though she had received an answer to a problem that had been troubling her.

  “We must follow that up as soon as possible,” she said. “Right now I need to know whether Jason saw anything on the morning that Gabby Peters died and if so, what he saw.”

  “Right. Yes, I can understand that.”

  “As far as the murderer is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether Jason really saw anything. The killer obviously heard what the boy said and believed he saw something. Who was there on Monday evening when Jason was talking to you? Who could have overheard him?”

  “Well, it was a warm evening and it seemed like everyone was out and about. The bistro was busy and people were wandering around in the grounds of the Mansion. I saw Heath, Bec, Sarah, Chad and Lisa all together at a table with a few others.”

  “Could anyone of them, Heath for instance, have overheard what Jason said to you?”

  “I was sitting outside enjoying the ocean view. Anyone could have been behind me while I was talking to Jason. And anyone on the lawn below might have heard if they put their mind to it.”

  “You didn’t see Edna?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. Maybe Giuseppe finally succumbed to her charms and he wooed her over dinner.”

  That brought a smile to her face. “Very funny.”

  We sat there for a while soothed by the swishing of the waves rolling into shore beyond the dunes. Dusty startled me when she abruptly stood up.

  “This murderer is too arrogant,” she said. “They must be caught. Soon! Now! Murdering an innocent child. That is just too vicious. All of those people who have lied will now tell me the truth. And I will have the truth. I will have this monster.”

  She marched across the grounds, arms swinging, bold conviction in her step.

  Chapter 26

  The next few days were a rapid succession of interviews where Dusty relentlessly delved into people’s lives and unearthed their secrets. And with unexpected results. Edna was her first scalp. Dusty cornered her in her garden cutting back her lemon tree.

  “Edna,” she said. “I want to know where you were on the morning Gabby was murdered; I mean after your walk. You came back here and then you baked some scones. Is that correct?”

  Edna’s jaw tightened. “That is correct. I have already told you that. I don’t see why you think you have to come around asking questions as though you were the police.”

  Dusty ignored her complaint. “What were you doing between the time you took the scones out of the oven and when you discovered Mimi on the verandah.”

  “I don’t see that that is any of your business.”

  “But Edna, don’t you understand? If you can’t account for your movements, it means you don’t have an alibi for the time Gabby was murdered.”

  Edna, her clipping shears poised, stared at Dusty. “Are you accusing me of murder?”

  “No. But I need to put all the pieces together. I need to know where everyone was so that I can track down the one person who was not where they say they were, the one person who was at Gabby’s house committing murder.”

  Edna sliced off a twig with a vicious clip of her shears. Dusty continued.

  “You told the police you came back from your walk, spent the morning in the kitchen and then went in search of Giuseppe to tell him about Mimi.”

  “And that is perfectly true.”

  “Yes, but it’s not the whole truth, is it Edna?”

  To my surprise a faint blush appeared on Edna’s thin cheeks.

  “I was not out murdering anybody. That’s all they need to know.”

  “Edna, Mimi followed you home, didn’t she? You were at the back of Giuseppe’s place. You went around there after you took the scones out of the oven, didn’t you?”

  A few minutes passed before Edna answered. “So what if I was? I happened to be doing a spot of bird watching while I was waiting for the scones to cool. That’s all.”

  “And you came back along the path that runs around the park and that’s where Mimi saw you. You didn’t discover Mimi on your verandah. She followed you home and found a sunny spot on your verandah.”

  “Aye, if you must know.”

  Now I understood the gleam of triumph I had seen in Dusty’s eyes the day we talked to Edna. She had indeed caught her out in a lie.

  “Surely there was no harm in telling the police that?” said Dusty.

  “None of their business.”

  “What did you do after that?”

  “Wrapped the scones in a cloth and tidied up the kitchen.”

  “And then you went to find Giuseppe?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Didn’t take much notice of the time. Just before eleven, I think.”

  “Did you see anyone in Park Street, near Gabby’s house, for instance?”

  “I did not.”

  “Edna, did you see anyone in Hegarty Park that morning either when you went to the bush looking for birds or on your way back?”

  “I did not.”

  “Thank you, Edna.”

  “Hhmmpf. I’d like to know when all this prying into people’s private lives is going to stop.”

  “It’s not very pleasant,” said Dusty, “but, if it helps track down the person who murdered Gabby, it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

  Edna stooped to pick up a lemon that had fallen to the ground. “Can’t see how knowing what I choose to do with my time helps in any way.”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it, Edna. Knowing where everyone was and what they were doing at the time of the murder is extremely helpful in tracking down the killer.”

  Edna shook her head to indicate her disbelief but seemed mollified. She turned to me. “Come on inside, O’Kelly. I’ll pack up a couple of pieces of that fruit cake you liked so much. You can take it back to the Mansion with you and have some good home cooked tucker for a change.”

  Meekly, I did as I was told, trying not to think of Arsenic and Old Lace.

  “So,” I said to Dusty when we returned to the car. “Why didn’t she want to tell you where she was that morning?”

  “You mean why not admit to bird watching?”

  “Right.”

  “Because it wasn’t birds she was watching.” Dusty gave me a knowing look. She obviously expected me to draw some conclusion from her statement. However, I was having trouble working out what Edna might have been watching. Koalas? No, I didn’t think so. Dusty’s look suggested something more surreptitious than that.

  “She was spying on Giuseppe,” said Dusty, apparently losing patience with my slow thought processes. “Using her binoculars to try to peek through a back window to see what he gets up to with all the women who visit him.”

  “No!”

  “Yep.”

  “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?”

  “Not really. I had some inside information from Mrs Mac. She didn’t want to embarrass poor old Edna by dobbing her in, but she told me in the end.”

  So that’s what Mrs Mac meant when she had told Dusty she had seen a woman near Giuseppe’s place on the morning of the murder.

  “According to Mrs Mac,” continued Dusty, “spying on Giuseppe is a regular pastime of Edna’s.”

  I felt sympathy stirring for poor old Edna. But was she pathetic or evil?

  “I still think she could be the murderer,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. She’s a definite possibility. But if she killed ‘that girl’ who was ‘corrupting’ her Giuseppe why hasn’t she done anything to get Sarah out of the way? Why just kill one of the immoral creatures corrupting poor old Giuseppe?”

  “Yes. Right. Good point. But perhaps she hasn’t had the opportunity or perhaps she found that she was overcome by remorse and decided not to repeat her evil action.”

  “You could be right,” said Dusty.

  Dusty had received a text the day before from her police contact informing her that the USB cord held no forensic evidence. That did not mean it wasn’t the murder weapon. I was surprised that Dusty hadn’t asked Edna how she came to have the cord in her possession.

  “As long as she doesn’t know I’ve got it,” she had said when I asked her about it, “it’s a weapon I can use to throw her off balance when the time is right.”

  “As long as she doesn’t find out it’s gone in the meantime. Otherwise she might be the one putting you off balance.”

  Dusty smiled and held up her right hand with two fingers crossed.

  In between accompanying Dusty on her interviews I had been trying to do my own relentless digging through the technological back door. Dusty had asked me to conduct a thorough check into the backgrounds of the people we had been interviewing.

  “Find out if they have any secrets. Check their backgrounds and their employment history. Look for any links to Gabrielle Peters. Anything at all. Examine their financial records. Leave no stone unturned. Do whatever you have to do to get the information. Somebody had a reason to kill Gabby and I want to know what that reason was,” she had said.

  Edna’s secret was the first one I unearthed.

  “I can find nothing out of the ordinary in Edna Graham’s financial records,” I told Dusty when I gave her my report. I was not yet ready to reveal my surprise discovery.

  “What about her work?” said Dusty. “I thought there might have been a chance of some dreadful scandal from her nursing career.”

  I refrained from telling her I had had visions of Edna offering her patients a cup of tea to which she had added arsenic.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Boss. As far as I can ascertain she had an impeccable nursing career in this country. She was in her early twenties when she arrived in Australia from the UK in 1964 and went straight into nursing.”

  Dusty sighed. “So, no unexplained deaths of patients in her care, anything like that?”

  We were on our way to the hairdressing salon across the road. Dusty had arranged to see Bec during her morning break. I continued my oral report as we strolled along the driveway of Murloo Mansion.

  “Nothing like that,” I said. “But, Edna does have a deep dark secret.”

  “A deep dark secret? That sounds dramatic. You’re winding me up, right?”

  “Well, she has a secret, put it that way.”

  Then I delivered my surprise news.

  “In fact, she had a child.”

  Dusty stopped so abruptly that I ended up several paces ahead of her and had to turn around to face her.

  “A child?” she said. “Edna?”

  “She had a baby in 1964.”

  Slowly, she resumed walking, a thoughtful expression on her face. After a few moments silent reflection, she shook her head as if to clear any confusion there might still be in her mind.

  “Before she came to Australia?”

  “No. After. She gave birth in a Melbourne hospital.”

  “Melbourne? I know Edna had a fiancé when she was around nineteen. In Scotland. But if she had a baby in Melbourne in 1964, it certainly wasn’t his.”

  “It was a child born out of wedlock, as they say,” I offered.

  “Do you know what happened to the child?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I need to do a little more checking. I could go back to the suite and get to work on it now if you like.”

  She waved away that suggestion and said, “The question is: does this give Edna motive for murder? Was Gabby blackmailing her? That would give Edna a double motive to commit murder.”

  “Self protection and protection of Giuseppe, you mean?”

  “Correct. Wait a minute. You said you didn’t find anything unusual in Edna’s financial records. I assume you checked for withdrawals similar to the payments made to Gabby?”

  “Right. But it is possible, given her age, that Edna might keep money in cash in her house.”

  “Under the floorboards?” said Dusty with a grin.

  “Or in a coffee canister,” I said, returning the grin.

  “Even so,” said Dusty, “I doubt that she’d have a lot of cash stashed away.”

  “Which would give her a reason to get rid of her blackmailer. She wouldn’t be able to keep making payments indefinitely.”

  “True. But, really, being an unmarried mother way back in 1964 is hardly the sort of secret anyone cares about these days.”

  “Edna might care.”

  “She might. If Gabby was blackmailing her, that might have been enough to tip her over the edge considering she already had a jealous hatred of Gabby. I could have done with this information yesterday when I went to see Edna.”

  “I didn’t have it yesterday,” I said. “If you remember you went tearing around to Edna’s before I had a chance to start my dirt digging.”

  “All right. Keep your shirt on; I wasn’t blaming you. Anyway, see what else you can find out about Edna’s baby. The more information I have before I ask her about it, the better.”

  Bec, busy with a client, saw us through the salon window as we approached and gestured at the cafe next door. A couple of workmen in orange visibility vests were at the counter buying hot meat pies and drinks. Dusty headed for a table at the back that offered privacy. We were seated and our beverages served when Bec, still in her black work apron, slipped into the vacant chair.

  “The barista said you usually have a hot chocolate,” said Dusty, sliding the mug of liquid over to Bec.

  “That’s right. Thanks.” Bec waved her appreciation at the young girl behind the counter who was probably more of a ‘Jill of all trades’ than a trained barista.

  “I know you don’t have long,” said Dusty, “so I’ll come straight to the point.”

  Bec nodded her approval and took a sip of the hot chocolate. As she had done with Edna, Dusty explained the importance of knowing all the details of what happened on the day of the murder.

  “It’s about Heath,” continued Dusty. “I know there is something you’re not telling me and I want to know what it is.”

  Bec looked straight at Dusty. “I’m not holding anything back about the day of the murder. I’ve told you everything; everything I did that day. Yeah, everything I know.”

  “Then what is it you’re not telling me, Bec? It’s something to do with Heath and that means it’s linked to Gabby.”

  “Why are you so sure there’s something about Heath I’m not telling you? I’ve already told you about the woman in the cafe.”

  “There’s something else.”

  “There’s nothing.”

  “You’re lying. When someone lies to me, it makes me suspicious.”

  Bec began twisting one of her earrings. “I’m not lying.”

  “Tell me, Bec. Is it something that happened the day before Gabby was murdered?”

  Bec lowered her eyes and shook her head.

  “Something happened between you and Heath, didn’t it?”

  Bec said nothing.

  “When?”

  Dusty seemed to know Bec was ready to tell her the truth. She waited patiently. I sipped my excellent cappuccino and looked around the café. Paintings of the area’s coastal scenes, possibly by a local artist, lined one wall. The workmen had left with their pies and drinks. The shop assistant was now making a coffee for a young woman who was balancing a child on her hip. I watched as the assistant poured steamed milk into a take-away cup and spooned froth on top. I hardly heard Bec when she spoke.

  “On the Friday night.”

  That got my attention. I turned back to the conversation at our table.

  “You and Heath were together on the Friday night before Gabby was killed?”

  Bec nodded and ran her fingers through her hair as I had seen her do during her first interview.

  “You’d better tell me about it. You have my word that I’ll not use it in the book without permission. You see, Bec, I’m not just writing a book about Gabby’s murder; I’m also investigating her death. I want to expose the killer and gather enough evidence for the police to arrest the monster.”

  Bec looked up. I thought I saw fear in her eyes.

  “I’m not suggesting for one minute that you or Heath had anything to do with Gabby’s death. It’s just that I have to know the truth. Lies make it difficult for me to see the whole picture clearly.”

  “I saw Heath on the Friday night at the Claigan pub,” said Bec, with a sigh. “There were a few of us there but when the others left it was just Heath and me. He was worried about Gabs. Well, not worried about her but concerned because she had a problem that she couldn’t share with him. He didn’t like the idea of her being on her own and worrying about something, but at the same time he respected her wishes.”

  “Did he think she might have been meeting someone else?”

  “He wouldn’t think that.”

  “Okay. So you had a few drinks together at the Claigan pub. Then what happened?”

  “I was staying in Claigan that night, at my auntie’s place.”

  “So you wouldn’t have to drive back to Murloo after drinking?”

  “Correct. Around nine thirty, Heath decided to go home. He said he had some student essays to mark in the morning so wanted an early night. I said I’d share the cab with him. The taxi dropped Heath off first. When I was sitting in the cab on the way to my auntie’s house, I couldn’t stop thinking about how down in the dumps Heath seemed.”

  “What did you do?”

  Bec lowered her voice. “I asked the driver to drop me before we reached my auntie’s house. Then I walked back to Heath’s place.”

  “And?”

  “He was a bit surprised to see me, but he invited me in and offered me a coffee.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I made a complete fool of myself. I put my arms around him and started kissing him.”

  A deep blush darkened Bec’s face. Dusty hastened to ease her embarrassment.

  “Well, Heath is very attractive. I don’t see that wanting to kiss him is anything to feel foolish about.”

  I hoped I hid my disappointment…all right, jealousy…when Dusty made that remark.

  “Actually, it was very nice.” A nostalgic smile played across Bec’s lips. “Yeah, it was nice. Heath responded at first.”

  “At first?”

 

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