Cold Deception (19 page)

She pulled herself up from the chair while Julia went to let them in. Two uniformed police, a man and a woman, stood at the door. Behind them was Dylan.

Julia felt blood rush to her face. This was not the time to recall steamy interludes with inappropriate men.

She ushered them in and gave them a brief recount of what she found. The two uniformed cops pulled out their torches and made their way to the back garden.

“Are you okay?” Dylan asked her softly. She didn’t think he was just referring to finding a dead body.

She nodded. “Although I can’t say the same for Eleanor. She’s taking it badly. Blaming herself for everything.”

He stroked her arm briefly as he passed her to enter the kitchen. She felt his touch like a warming balm on her soul. He murmured something to Eleanor and patted her shoulder as he made his way out the back. Standing next to her mother as she watched him walk down the garden path, Julia’s sense of dread returned. She was fairly certain it wasn’t an accidental overdose. There was blood on Rez’s face. A lot of blood.

She moved to the back door and peered into the night. Torches bobbed around and a low murmur of voices could just be heard. Eventually, Dylan started to returned to the house. She met him halfway along the path and saw the puzzled frown on his face.

“We’ll have to get the site covered. Hard to do anything in the middle of the night. The forensic team is on the way and can do the basics, but we need better light. I’m afraid you’re in for a sleepless night.”

Julia nodded. “How do you think he died?”

Dylan glanced sharply at her and shrugged. “Not sure, but it wasn’t an overdose.”

One of the other officers called to him. “Chief. Over here.”

Dylan turned back to his officers and Julia watched all of them peer at something on the ground. The light from the torches spread out in a fan as they searched for something. To Julia it looked like a track or trail as they focused on a particular spot and started following it up to the house. They stopped at a point just under Blossom’s window.

Dylan noticed her and pulled her away. “You need to go back into the house and don’t come out. Keep the others inside. Constable, go with her.” The cold, impersonal tone of his voice sent shards of terror through her. She was on parole and someone had just been murdered in her backyard. This was not good.

She and the constable returned to the kitchen and a circle of questioning faces. Blossom had re-emerged dressed in black jeans and a black sweater as if in mourning. Julia shook her head. “It wasn’t an overdose. I think someone killed him.”

Dee drew in a sharp breath and crossed to Blossom who had gone deathly pale.

“Sit,” she said.

Blossom shook her off. “I’m all right.”

“I’m not,” Julia said and collapsed into a chair.

“I’ll make some tea,” Eleanor said.

“The great panacea,” Julia muttered. “Don’t think it’ll help this time.”

She couldn’t go back to jail. She just couldn’t. But Rez was a known drug user and supplier who’d been found probably murdered on the property where she lived. And she was a convicted murderer, after all. Panicky thoughts crashed around her brain until she remembered the most important fact. She had an alibi. All night she’d been with six other people besides Sally. They met at six thirty, broke up at eight thirty, and then had a meal at a Thai restaurant on Katoomba Street.

“What time did Rez get here, Bloss?” She turned to her sister who was chewing her nail and had a blank, vacant look on her face. The hovering presence of the policeman in the corner was like an elephant in the room.

“Bloss?” Julia said loudly, breaking into her trance.

She jumped. “Sorry. I was miles away. What did you say?”

“What time did he get here?”

Blossom thought for a moment. “About nine I think. I was reading and I heard him call me. When I looked out the window, he was standing on the path and wanted me to let him in. I told him to piss off but he wanted me to show him where I’d thrown the pills. I thought he’d cause more trouble if I didn’t show him. You were due home soon, so I went down and showed him. Then he left.”

She paused as if making sure she had the story straight in her head. “I guess it’s possible he came back. I could smell cigarette smoke so I think he was down there for a while. And Curtis was barking. I peered out again after about half an hour, but he was gone.”

Julia nodded. A rap on the front door made them all jump. The constable went to find out who it was. Soon the whole kitchen was full of men and women carrying equipment and wheeling trollies. A blinding klieg light was set up in the backyard which lit up the whole area. Soon lights were coming on in neighboring houses.

“Here we go again,” Eleanor muttered.

“Ten years of quiet, then I arrive and the neighborhood goes to the dogs,” Julia said.

Dee snorted trying not to laugh. Soon all of them where giggling, right on the edge of hysteria.

“Do June and Bill some good,” Eleanor said between laughs. “They need a bit of excitement in their lives.”

“They’re getting it,” Julia said. “I bet they hope I go back to where I came from.”

The laughter died as if shut off by a tap.

“That’s not going to happen,” Dee said, her voice full of worry. “They can’t see you as having anything to do with this.”

Julia shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not a good look to spend ten years in jail for murder and then have someone murdered in your backyard within a month of you getting out.”

“But Rez was involved in all sorts of drug-related crap,” Blossom said. “Any one of a number of people could’ve done it.”

“But why here? Why at our house?”

A nagging thought inched its way into consciousness. The first time she’d seen Rez she’d been amazed about how much he and Blossom looked alike. Same clothes, same hair and same build. What if whoever did this was after Blossom? It was dark, it would’ve been an easy mistake to make.

Julia’s blood froze as realization dawned. O’Reardon. He’d threatened her family if she told anyone about his drug distribution into jails. But she hadn’t. So why was he doing this? It didn’t make sense. Maybe he’d seen her with Dylan. Maybe he thought she was planning to tell Dylan everything she knew about the way O’Reardon did drug drops. But then he’d come after her, not Blossom.

Her brain ached, trying to put the pieces together.

And continued to ache hours later as Dylan took her yet again through her statement.

But that wasn’t the worst part. The virtual ransacking of the house was terrifying. She knew they had to do it; anywhere a body turned up had to be thoroughly search for evidence. As the house was turned upside down, the look of misery on Eleanor and Dee’s faces cut her to the bone. Julia had told her mother she’d never leave the mountains; maybe for their sake she should. If this kind of attention was going to follow her, getting out of the mountains might be best for everyone.

Julia knew her statement was straightforward and that Dylan hadn’t spent nearly the same time with her as he had with Blossom. For all her anxiety at being an object of suspicion, she’d not considered that Blossom would be considered a likely ‘person of interest’. But of course she would be. She was the last person to see Rez alive. Or at least the last person who admitted to seeing him alive.

“So you left the women’s health center at eight thirty then went to the Thai restaurant with Sally and some other women. Who exactly?”

Julia frowned, trying to put faces to names. She’d met them all in one rush at the beginning of the meeting so wasn’t sure she had their names correctly sorted. When she mentioned Jenny, the coordinator of the domestic violence support group, Dylan smiled.

“You had dinner with Jenny?”

Julia nodded.

“I’ll check with her later. She’ll give me a good bollocking.”

“Why?”

“She’ll claim I’m harassing you unnecessarily and it’s all part of a conspiracy to keep women subservient and controlled.”

“She didn’t strike me as being that unreasonable,” she said dubiously.

“She’s not. It’s a game we have. She tells me I’m part of the fascist, authoritarian patriarchy and I tell her she’s full of left-wing paranoid crap. We have a great time, then we tell each other everything we both need to know about the dropkick blokes who think beating their partners is all part of a good night out.”

Julia smiled and leant toward him, over the kitchen table where they were seated. “You like that part of your work, don’t you?”

He lifted his gaze to hers. Everything within her stilled as he looked into her eyes. While she knew a little more about him now, she was aware he was still a man who hid behind layers of protection.

“It’s important. Protecting the innocent is always important,” he said. They were alone in the kitchen while the constable stayed with the others in the lounge room. He threw his pen onto the kitchen table and leant back in his chair, expelling a breath.

“Julia, I don’t know what’s going on here. Not with Rez, not with Blossom, and certainly not with you.”

A chill inched inexorably up her spine. “It was a mistake, wasn’t it?” she asked softly.

He shook his head, his eyes bleak. “Just bad timing. I know you’re not involved with what happen to Rez but somehow his murder is connected with you getting out.”

“What about Blossom? You spent a lot of time with her.”

He dragged his hands through his hair. “She was the last one to see him and she was angry with him. We’ll know more over the next few days. The guys from the homicide squad will be doing most of the work.”

“You won’t be in charge of this?”

He shook his head. “We do the preliminary work and they’ll take over. We don’t have the resources for a full-on murder investigation.”

He glanced at her. “You should try and get some sleep.”

She snorted. “I don’t think so.”

*

The telephone call came just as she was drifting into sleep. Hours of questions, endless cups of tea. The homicide squad arrived as Dylan said. The crime scene was processed and from what Julia could glean, Rez had been stabbed in the back while sitting on the stone wall smoking.

They’d all been questioned even more thoroughly by the detective from the homicide squad who of course was particularly interested in Julia. He was a no-nonsense, brisk type with sharp green eyes and a deceptively calm questioning style, who seemed resigned to the fact she had nothing to do with the murder. Julia could tell he thought she was involved in something.

“So. A well-known petty drug dealer, who’d been in a relationship with your sister and had been turfed out of this house some weeks ago, turns up murdered in your back yard. Doesn’t look good does it?”

“I don’t know, Detective Palmer. I leave that to you. All I know is that I didn’t have anything to do with Rez’s murder and neither did anyone in my family.”

He grunted, not happy but not able to disagree with her. Julia knew they’d found no forensic evidence in the house. No bloodstained clothing, no trail leading from Rez to the house.

“You’ll be seeing me again. The investigation’s just beginning.”

She nodded, weariness falling on her with sudden, crippling force.

After the body was removed, they packed up and left. At three in the afternoon she crawled into bed and prepared to sleep like the dead. A phone call ended all that.

Eleanor put her head around Julia’s bedroom door. “It’s for you. David Warren from the parole office.”

Julia groaned and dragged herself out of bed and to the phone in the hall.

“Get in here now,” he snarled.

“Now? I was up all night. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“Now,” he said and hung up.

She held the phone in front of her and stared at it, dread making a sick, sour twist in her gut. He couldn’t breach her on this, surely?

“Are you okay?” Eleanor hovered anxiously at the end of the hall. Behind her, the window showed a day stark with gray skies.

“Yeah. After the fun of last night he seems to need to see me now. Where’s Blossom?”

“Gone to see Douglas.”

Julia grunted and made her way to the bathroom. Maybe a cold shower would wake her up.

But she became wide awake when she sat in front of David Warren’s desk and listened to his tirade.

“You are in real danger of being breached. I told you to leave that fuckwit Rez alone and he turns up dead in your back yard.’

“I had nothing to do with it,” Julia said in cold, precise words. “Check with the police. You can’t breach me for something I didn’t do.”

“Don’t bet on it. You can be breached for associating with known criminals. So far, you threatened Rez in my office after provoking a fight with him, a fact I’m obliged to tell the police about, and you were seen talking to Vanessa Hunt on the main street of Katoomba. A woman who’s spent the last ten years in and out of jail. What are you playing at, Julia? Off on some vigilante run again?”

“What? What do you mean?” she said, shock and fear coating her vocal cords.

“I mean the cops might not be able to prove anything against you but I wouldn’t put it past you to have conveniently organized one of you mates to get rid of your sister’s inconvenient ex-boyfriend who no one would much mourn. Just like the priest. You take the law into your own hands to get rid of scum. That’s it isn’t it?”

Julia sat in stunned silence. This was bad. This was a disaster.

“That is so far from the truth I don’t know where to begin. You’re not really serious are you?”

“I’m deadly serious. There’s something going on in that head of yours that will get you back into jail if you’re not careful. Okay, I might be wrong and you have nothing to do with Rez’s death. I sincerely hope so. But the only way you’ll prove that is by staying away from known criminals. That means Nessa and any other of your mates from jail. Do you get it?”

She nodded, the action setting off a swirl of dizziness in her head. She seemed to be staring at him from the end of a telescope. Shaking her head, she stumbled to her feet and swayed, searching for the door. She had to get out of this room.

“Hang, on, hang on.” He leapt out of his chair and caught her, easing her back into her chair. “Don’t faint on me. Here, have some water.”

He fumbled with a jug on his desk and placed a plastic cup in her hand. The cool water cleared her head.

“Who told you about me being seen with Nessa?”

He shuffled and looked uncomfortable. “I can’t tell you that.”

“It was that cop, wasn’t it? The one sitting in the car with Dylan Andrews. Did he tell you that Dylan spoke to me afterwards and was satisfied I’d just run into Nessa and was trying to give her some support?”

He shook his head, avoiding her eyes. “It wasn’t a cop.”

“The newsagent then.”

“Look, just drop it. Just stay away from Nessa or anyone like her.”

She placed the plastic cup on his desk and left without a backward glance.

*

“She’s involved someway, Dylan. I don’t know how, but she’s connected.” Palmer sat opposite Dylan in his office and played with a pen, the click-click irritating even against the backdrop of a noisy office.

Dylan frowned but said nothing. He knew Julia was connected to Rez’s murder too, but unlike Palmer was certain O’Reardon was behind it. Trouble was, he had no idea why. Rez was thought to be a courier for O’Reardon so his connection with the Taylor family was troubling, even though he knew it was an association none of the Taylor women wanted, even Bloss.

But none of it made sense. It wasn’t like O’Reardon to get himself involved in something like this. He was much more underhand and subtle. Maybe Rez had some kind of rival in the drug trade. Maybe it had nothing to do with drugs.

He stirred in his chair uncomfortably as Palmer went on to speculate about Rez’s murder.

“When she was sentenced for the murder of the priest the judge said Julia was on some kind of vigilante kick. I wonder if she’s doing the same thing here?”

“But she wasn’t anywhere near the murder scene and has a number of witnesses who can confirm that.”

“She could’ve got someone to do it for her. She was seen talking to one of her crim mates recently.”

“Nessa?” He snorted. “You’ve got to be joking. I saw Julia and Nessa talking and it was nothing to do with murder. Nessa can barely look after herself. She’d be incapable of doing something like this.”

“People can do anything if their drug supply starts to run out.”

Dylan shook his head. “Take it from me, I’ve known Nessa for years and it would amaze me if she was involved. And at the moment there’s no chance of her drug supply running out. She’s shacked up with one of the upper Mountains’ major drug dealers.”

Palmer nodded, looking gloomy. “I guess you’re right. It was a bit of a stretch.” Dylan felt the other man’s speculative gaze on him. “You seem keen for Julia Taylor not to be involved. Something going on I should know about?”

Dylan stared back at him calmly and shook his head, all the time willing his pounding heart to calm. “I’m a friend of her parents. Can’t avoid that in a small town. But I hardly know her. Only met her a few times.”
And each time we could barely keep our hands off each other.

Palmer grunted. “What about her sister? Sounds like she and Rez had a major falling out. She was the last one to see him.”

“No evidence anywhere. Wouldn’t you expect some blood on her or in the house?”

“Yeah,” Palmer sighed. “She could’ve taken off her clothes, I guess. But I can’t see it. And after speaking to her, I doubt she’s involved. She strikes me as a bit of an innocent. Pretty upfront about what happened between her and Rez and ashamed of it. And essentially what forensic evidence there is, points to someone coming down the driveway and hiding in the bushes. An ambush. That’s why I’m wondering about any of Julia’s crim mates.”

“Who told you about Julia being seen with Nessa?”

Palmer looked down at his notes. “Ah, Grady, Norm Grady. One of yours.” He paused while Dylan felt his searching gaze on him again. “No love lost between you and Norm, is there?”

“Why do you say that?”

Palmer shrugged. “I got the impression he thought you wouldn’t tell me about Julia and Nessa. Why would he think that?”

Dylan let out a long sigh, all the time contemplating just what to tell Palmer. From everything he’d heard about the other man from his colleagues, he was a good copper, honest, hardworking with a dry as dust sense of humor. Maybe it was time to broaden the investigation of O’Reardon, let Palmer in on just what they were up against.

“There’s something you should know,” Dylan said. “It’s about Angus O’Reardon. We’ll need to talk to Pringle.”

Palmer raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“Come on, it’s time to raise the stakes,” Dylan said, pushing back his chair. “Nothing to lose now.”