Spell It Out, page 10
Barb looked flustered, and I thought the clipboard woman was going to intervene, but then Lucy spoke again. “You know, there could be something to all this tea leaf reading stuff. I remember a few months ago that Aurelius was complaining about a stalker. Do you remember that, Sabrina?”
Sabrina shrugged one shoulder, and Lucy pushed on. “Yes, surely you remember. Aurelius said he was being stalked by someone who claimed to be a relative. He said it was a scam and if the person came to the office, we weren’t to tell them anything about him or give them his address. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh yes,” Sabrina said. “He was worried about someone who claimed he knew him. The receptionist was nervous about it, because he told her that this guy might come to the office and ask questions about him and be very pushy. She was quite upset because she was scared of confrontation.”
“So it was a man?” I asked Lucy. “Did he ever come to the office?”
“Yes, it was a man, and no, I don’t think he ever came to the office. The fuss died down soon enough. Do you remember, Bruce?”
He looked entirely uninterested. “No. It must have been before I joined the company.”
James agreed. “It must have been before I joined the company too, because he didn’t say anything to me about it.”
Lucy nodded. “He was quite upset about it. I suggested that he call the police, but he said he didn’t want the bad publicity.”
Sabrina held up both hands. “Can we get back to the tea leaf reading now? Mystical Maria was halfway through mine. This interruption has probably put her off her train of thought.”
Lucy glared at Sabrina.
Barb peered into the tea cup once more. “You will be given an opportunity to make a career change, but family obligations might get in the way.”
The clipboard woman made a show of looking at her watch. “Okay, thank you for participating. I need to get my kids to their soccer games in Tamworth. Drury, do you think you have enough photos?”
The photographer nodded. “I’ve got heaps. We have everything we need.”
The woman looked pleased. “All right then, everyone back to the minibus. Thanks for your time, Mystical Maria, and you two ladies too.” She nodded to us.
“I’ll text you if I find out anything,” Sabrina said in a low tone as she walked past me.
After they had all left, Camino and I sat at the table with Maria. “Did you get a vibe if any of them was a murderer?” Camino asked her.
She shook her head. “Things just come to me when I’m reading tea leaves. There was definitely a child involved with Sabrina, but it could have been her nephew as she said.”
“She could have been lying,” Camino said.
Barb nodded. “Quite possibly. And James Collins had a terrible childhood, and I didn’t see any father figure in his tea leaves.”
“So he could be Aurelius’s illegitimate son,” I said.
“Maybe. And Bruce Gordon had horribly unbalanced tea leaves. He doesn’t seem at all trustworthy.”
I thought it over for a minute. “The stalker guy was surely Aurelius’s son, so that means it isn’t Sabrina or Lucy.”
“Unless there’s more than one person involved,” Camino said.
I was crestfallen. “Then what are we going to do? We need a description of the stalker, and none of them saw him.”
Camino sat upright. “I know! Aurelius’s wife would know. We will have to question her.”
Chapter 15
“That settles it. We need to go and see her right now, Amelia.”
I looked at Camino as if she had gone mad. “Do you mean you want us to drive to Tamworth right now?”
She nodded happily. “We’ll go and pay our respects to Aurelius’s wife. We’ll ask her about the stalker. We’ll ask her for a description.”
I rested the back my hand on my forehead. “She’ll throw us out. She’ll call the police and have us arrested for trespassing. Why would she want to speak to us?”
“We’ll say that we were there when her husband was thrown out the window.”
I threw up my hands in horror. “Great,” I said sarcastically. “I’m sure she’ll want to speak to us in that case.”
Barb interrupted. “Camino might have a point. I mean, his wife might ask you to leave and not tell you anything, but she’s your only lead to find out who this stalker is. Worst case scenario, she will ask you to leave; best case scenario, she will tell you the name or at least a description of the stalker, who we all think is Aurelius’s son.”
I was still reluctant. “I suppose so, but do we have to go immediately?”
Camino was still nodding. “Yes, because Thyme, Ruprecht, and Mint are still minding the shop. They expect us to be away for some time, so we can tell them all about it when we get back.”
“Tamworth is an hour away,” I reminded her, “so a round-trip is two hours.”
Camino waved one hand at me in dismissal. “They won’t mind.”
I shut my eyes tightly and rubbed them. Could it get any worse?”
“Perhaps we should wear tree onesies,” Camino said. “We could just pop back to my house and collect some onesies.”
Yes, it could get worse. I shook my head. “Let’s go to Tamworth immediately before I change my mind. How do we know where she lives?”
“I googled her last night,” Camino announced proudly. “She lives on a horse farm just out of Tamworth, at a place called Manilla. She has a property there and she has show horses. I’ve already googled the directions. I can navigate, and you can drive. In fact, it’s probably only fifty minutes from here because it’s closer than the Tamworth township.”
I knew when I was beaten. “Okay then, but don’t blame me if she’s angry with us.”
“Let’s just get her to shake hands first,” Camino said, and winked at me.
I caught on immediately. Camino intended to put sugar, calamus root, and liquorice root on her hands, so when Aurelius’s wife shook hands with her, she would be sweetened towards Camino as well as being slightly compelled to feel that way. I just hoped Camino had enough for me to put on my hands as well.
Soon the two of us were on our way to Tamworth. It was a pleasant drive, albeit quite a boring one with the same scenery all the way, paddocks full of sheep and not much else. Going down the mountain was a little more exciting if one wondered if the car’s brakes might burn out, but that was the only possible excitement on the journey. When we had reached the tiny town of Moonbi, Camino yelled, “You’ve gone past the road.”
“I thought you were navigating,” I said. “You’re supposed to give me warning, not tell me when I’ve gone past it.”
My words were clearly lost on Camino. “You’ve gone past it,” she said again.
I sighed and turned the car around. Presently, we drove past more interesting scenery. Here, down the mountain, they clearly did not experience the frosts we experienced in Bayberry Creek, and the paddocks were lush and green. Camino managed to do a better job of navigating this time, and soon we were on the road Camino informed me belonged to Bryony Matters. My stomach churned, and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“I’m not looking forward to this,” I said.
“Flowers!” Camino shrieked.
I jumped. “Have I gone past a road again?”
“Flowers!” she said again. “Turn back, Amelia. We should take her flowers.”
“But we’re nowhere near town,” I complained. “Where are we going to find flowers?” I hoped against hope she wasn’t going to suggest that we sneak into someone’s garden and pull them out.
To my relief, she didn’t. “We just have to drive to town.”
This was not going at all well. I was getting to the stage where I wanted to lie on my sofa with a cold pack on my head. Still, I allowed Camino to direct me back in the direction of Tamworth itself. Fortunately, we came upon a small shopping centre. “Go into Coles and buy some flowers,” Camino said. “It’s our only hope of buying flowers.”
“What if Coles doesn’t have any flowers in stock?” I asked.
She waved her hand at me. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Coles did, in fact, have a selection of nice flowers, and at a bargain price. I selected the biggest, most colourful bunch I could find, paid for them, and then headed back to the car.
Camino rubbed her hands together with glee. “Good work, Amelia. Those are quite pretty, the pink gerberas, the gold lilies, and the lavender daisies.” She stuck her nose in the blooms. “Funny, they should have a strong fragrance, but they don’t. I expect it’s because they’ve been in the air conditioning. You know, it’s the warmth that brings out the fragrance.”
“Aha. Do you want to do anything else while we’re here?” I asked her. “Bathroom break, anything? I don’t want to head back here again.”
“I’m all right,” Camino said thoughtfully. “I wish I had brought a onesie, though. We could get out of the car and creep up on her in our tree onesies.”
“Wonderful!” I said. “Why don’t you make a two-person horse onesie? Then we could creep through her paddocks dressed as a horse.”
“Brilliant!” Camino said, clearly oblivious to my sarcasm.
I groaned.
“What if she’s not home when we get here?” I asked Camino.
“We will just have to come back again tomorrow,” she said.
I was not at all happy about having to do some sleuthing in Tamworth. Furthermore, I was quite annoyed with Detective Barrett. If only Detective Chris Bowes had been in charge of the investigation. I’m sure he would have listened to me about Aurelius’s son. I was annoyed that Detective Barrett had dismissed it out of hand, and now we actually had evidence that Aurelius did have a stalker. I wondered if the police knew that. I pulled off the road into a dirt area under a clump of gum trees.
“What are you doing?” Camino asked me.
“What I should have done before,” I told her. “I’m telling the police about the stalker. I’m going to text Thyme to ask Dawson to pass it along to the police.”
“Why don’t you just call the police now?” Camino asked me.
I bit my lip. “Okay, but that man is so rude.” I had the local police number in my contacts list, so I called them. Detective Barrett himself answered. I suppose the uniformed officers had gone home for the day. “It’s Amelia Spelled,” I told him.
I was sure I heard him sigh. “What can I do for you, Ms Spelled?”
“The Influenza Marketing Company wanted those of us who were at the tea leaf reading the day Aurelius Matters was murdered to have another tea leaf reading today for publicity purposes,” I told him. I waited for him to speak, but when he remained silent, I continued. “Lucy Love told us that Aurelius had a stalker a few months ago. She said he was quite worked up about it and told the staff that the stalker was claiming to be a relative. He asked them not to give out any information about it.”
“Is that all?” Detective Barrett said.
“Yes, but remember I told you that Mystical Maria said Aurelius had a child, and he insisted that he didn’t and got quite upset? Maybe the stalker is Aurelius’s illegitimate son, and he didn’t want to acknowledge him. Lucy said he told the staff that the stalker was claiming to be a relative.”
“Do you have anything else to tell me?” Barrett asked me.
“No,” I said in a small voice.
“Thank you for your assistance, Ms Spelled. I’ll look into it.” With that, he hung up.
I resisted the urge to throw my phone out the window. “Why that, that…” I stammered.
The phone had been set to Loud, so Camino had heard everything. “You did your duty, Amelia. Don’t let it upset you. He said he would look into it.”
“He was just saying that for something to say,” I told her. “He doesn’t mean it.”
Camino patted my arm. “You don’t know that, Amelia. He might possibly look into it.”
“And pigs might fly,” I muttered.
Bryony’s house was only a short distance down the road from where I had stopped. The other properties appeared to belong to hobby farmers, and hers stood out by comparison. Acre after acre of white painted fences graced the paddocks, and shiny, well-groomed horses looked over the rails as we drove in. The house itself was not quite the mansion I had expected. It was long, low, and brick. However, the presence of scaffolding around it suggested to me that it was currently undergoing renovation work.
I parked under the shade of a spreading Moreton Bay fig tree. I hoped Camino would get out of the car first and do all the talking. Sadly for me, she just sat there.
I grabbed the flowers from the back seat and walked around to Camino’s door, opening it for her to get out. “I’m a little nervous to tell you the truth,” she said.
“You and me both. Do you want to do all the talking?”
Her hand flew to her throat. “Oh no, I’m no good at talking to suspects. You’ll have to do all the talking, Amelia.”
“But she’s not a suspect,” I told her.
Camino shrugged. “How do you know? Perhaps she’s having an illicit affair with Bruce Gordon or James Collins, or maybe she’s having an affair with both of them, for all we know.”
I had no chance to respond because a statuesque blonde woman walked over to us from a sparkling pool.
“Are you Bryony Matters?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“I’m Amelia, and this is Camino.” I thrust the flowers at her. She looked surprised but took them. “We were at the tea leaf reading when your husband died. We happened to be in Tamworth today so we wanted to pop in and pay our respects. I hope you don’t mind.”
I held my breath, waiting for her to scream at us or to order us off her property. Camino had not shaken hands with her yet.
“How kind,” she said. “Did you know my husband well?”
I shook my head. “No, we only met him that day.”
She seemed a little taken aback, but indicated we should sit on the seats just outside her back door. A regal Italian Greyhound walked over to inspect us, and a fat kelpie rolled over for a belly rub. “Lovely dogs,” I said.
She nodded. “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?” Or maybe a cold drink? Wine?”
Camino and I both said we would like a cold drink. When Bryony disappeared inside the house, we smiled at each other. This was going much better than I had thought it would. Bryony was not at all as Sabrina had described her.
Now I just had to figure out how to bring the conversation around to Aurelius’s possible illegitimate son.
Bryony came back with cold drinks and a plate of Tim Tams which she put on the table. “So you don’t work for the Influenza Marketing Company?” I noticed she had poured wine for herself.
“I own a cupcake store in Bayberry Creek,” I told her. “It was only a coincidence that we were there that day.”
“Yes, I bought two tickets for a tea leaf reading and gave one to Amelia,” Camino told her. “We are so sorry about what happened to your husband.”
“Were you both drugged too?” she asked us.
I nodded. “Yes, we were. Everyone was.”
“Except the murderer,” she said with narrowed eyes.
“That’s the mysterious part,” I said. “Everyone present was tested, and we all tested positive for the sleeping pills. I can only assume that someone didn’t drink the drugged tea until after they had, well you know, committed the murder.” I bit my lip. “I hope I haven’t said too much and upset you.”
She hurried to reassure me. “Not at all. There was no love in my marriage. Aurelius had many affairs. In fact, we would have got a divorce years ago, except neither of us wanted to leave this property.” She waved one hand expansively across the vista.
“Did Aurelius like horses too?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Yes, he had several show hacks. Those Warmbloods over there.” She pointed to some tall, black horses in the paddock just behind the pool. “I’ll have to sell them now. I like showing riding ponies.” She pointed to some much prettier and much shorter horses in another paddock. With their dainty heads and slender legs, they reminded me of deer.
“I hope the police find out who murdered him soon to give you some peace,” I said.
She made a snorting sound. “It’s Detective Barrett, isn’t it?”
I nodded. She pushed on. “That Detective Barrett is a first-rate idiot. He asked me the silliest questions. It’s a shame the Tamworth police can’t take over the case because they would have it solved in no time.”
I thought I should risk a question, since we were already on the subject. “Lucy Love mentioned that your husband had trouble with a stalker a few months ago. He was terribly concerned that the stalker would go to his office and ask questions about him. She said the stalker was pretending to be a relative.”
Bryony made that same strange strangling sound in the back of her throat. “Stalker, my…” She let loose a string of language that made me blush. “That was no stalker; that was his son.”
I gasped, as did Camino. “His son?” I repeated. “At the tea leaf reading, Aurelius said he didn’t have any children.”
“He didn’t have any legitimate children,” she said, and then took a large gulp of wine. “This was an illegitimate son. He was angry when Aurelius didn’t want to know him. In fact, Aurelius didn’t want anything to do with him. Aurelius was like that. He was a very nasty man. Like I said, I would have left him years ago if it wasn’t for this property. We were housemates, really, not husband and wife. I didn’t even like the man. Luckily for me, he kept out of my way, and I did my own thing. I thought it was nasty how he wouldn’t claim his son.”
“Why didn’t he?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “He fathered the child well before I married him, so he wasn’t worried about that. I think he was worried that the son would get his money or ask him for money.”
“Did his son ask him for money?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Not as far as I know, but Aurelius was worried that he would. Aurelius wasn’t a very nice man, if you get my meaning. He probably didn’t want to be bothered with his son. I’m sure he saw him as a potential burden. He just wasn’t a compassionate person. In fact, Aurelius didn’t have a compassionate bone in his body.”
