Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (8 page)

“Sure.” Baz waved towards the bed. “Ask away.”

Moore turned back to Venus and repeated, “Could you tell me what time you entered the water?”

Her smile wavered, and she continued to gaze at Moore as though she hadn’t heard.

“Venus,” Baz said, coaxingly, “Do you remember what time you went for a swim?”

The last shreds of her smile disappeared. “Dawn?” she said, clearly unsure. Her hand was lying limply on the sheet beside her and Baz noticed it was trembling.

Moore was looking at it as well. Closely. But his voice was casual enough. “So how did you get to the beach, Miss Dalrymple?” he asked.

She shook her head again and looked back to Baz.

“You don’t have to remember the number of the bus,” Baz told her. “Just that it was a bus out of Bundaberg, like you told me. The police can look that up if they need to know.” He glanced across at Moore. “I think she’s worried that she can’t remember it all. This morning has been a shock.”

Moore nodded, then looked back to Venus and asked, “Can you tell me what happened in the water this morning?”

She frowned again and glanced at Baz before saying, “I was swimming? A man came to rescue me. I don’t …” She shook her head.

“Maybe he was pulled back,” Baz cut in. “By the shark.”

Moore ignored that completely. “Did you see the shark, Miss Dalrymple?” he asked.

Again, Venus shook her head. “I don’t remember.” She glanced at Baz. “I was… frightened,” she said, and Baz nodded for her to go on. “Maybe I blocked it out.”

Well done!

Baz was exultant, but Moore was less than impressed. “That’s unfortunate,” he said, and turned to give Baz a penetrating glance.

Baz quickly hid his smile. “If she remembers anything,” he said, “I’ll get her to phone you.”

Moore nodded and pulled a card from his pocket. “Use the mobile number,” he said, then turned to Venus. “Thank you, Miss Dalrymple. I appreciate you seeing me.”

Venus nodded, then laid back on the bed and closed her eyes as though she truly was exhausted, and perhaps it wasn’t a stretch to pretend that. Baz left her to sleep and walked Moore out, closing the bedroom door behind them. Once outside the guest suite, he fumbled for the key, then realised Moore was watching him, perhaps wondering, now that he’d seen how gorgeous Venus was, why she was locked in.

Baz dropped the key back into his pocket and left the door unlocked, hoping he wasn’t going to regret that.

They found Waikeri in the kitchen where Ted was wreaking havoc.

Saucepans of water boiled over on the big gas stove and it looked like half the contents of the walk–in pantry were lined up on the long oak servery. The big Maori had settled in at the kitchen table with the remnants of a bowl of potato crisps, a packet of chocolate biscuits and three empty bottles of cola lined up in front of him.

“Damn, Elsie…” Ted muttered from inside the pantry.

Moore propped himself against a servery while Baz turned the hotplates off and walked over to the open pantry door. “Dad, what are you doing?”

“Looking for coffee,” Ted snapped over his shoulder, then went back to moving bottles of preserved fruit around. “Thank God Elsie left. She hid things, I’m sure. This new housekeeper will be much better.”

“When she’s up and about,” Baz said. “She almost drowned this morning, remember, so we’ll give her a day to recover, at least.” During which time Baz planned to find out a whole lot more about her. “In the mean time…” He took Ted’s arm and drew him out of the pantry. “… I think you should try to remember where things are, dad. The coffee is over here.” He led his father to the corner of the servery where the kettle and the coffee, tea and sugar fixings were kept. “You put water in the kettle if it’s low, then pop it back on its cradle to boil.”

“Lovely,” Ted said, smiling. “You get the cups and the tray. We’ll have tea in the library.”

“Actually, we have to go, Mr Wilson,” Moore said from the corner. “Vigo Skeyne is arriving tomorrow and we need to get ready for the media circus that comes with him.”

Waikeri shot his partner a scathing glance. “But Ted has ice–cream —”

Ted slapped his hands together in delight, “The shark hunter!” Tea apparently forgotten. He turned to Baz. “I’ve seen Skeyne on the television. He catches Great Whites. The big ones.”

“This is a big one,” the blond constable said quietly, clearly not sharing Ted’s enthusiasm. “That’s why we have to go.” Baz noticed the younger policeman shooting his superior a hurry–up glance. Which was odd. Why would a lowly constable be bossing a sergeant around?

But the big Maori did as he was urged, lumbering out of his seat and spilling potato crisps across the floor in the process. “Thanks for the snack, Ted,” he called, then nodded to Baz, “Wilson. We’ll see ourselves out.”

Moore walked over and held open the swinging kitchen door, letting Waikeri through first.

Ted glanced up from the sink where he was fiddling with the lid of the kettle and said, “I’ll walk them to the door.”

Baz saw his father wink, as if signaling to one of the men, then he toddled off behind them in his tartan slippers. The polished timber door swung shut behind them and Baz frowned at it. He would have sworn they were all strangers when his father had met them at the door. Now everyone seemed so… familiar. Had his father forgotten who they were, and now he remembered? Or was something else going on?

Baz turned off the tap his father had left running and followed them into the hallway. He passed the guest suite silently, making a note to himself to come back and lock it, then he padded down the hall towards the front door where he heard Waikeri’s belly laugh. Baz edged to the corner and looked around it into the front foyer of the house as the giant Maori walked out, trailed by the blonde constable Baz had made such an ass of himself with. Then Ted pushed the door closed, smiling to himself, as if nursing a happy memory. About what?

Baz stepped around the corner and hurried to catch up with his father before Ted disappeared. “What were you guys talking about?” he asked and stopped his father at the library door.

Ted blinked, as if trying to remember, then said, “Sharks.”

“Of course you were. Sharks are hilarious.” Baz took a breath and tried to rein in his frustration. “What were you really talking about, dad?”

Ted leant close as if to check out the color of Baz’s eyes, then he lowered his voice and said, “I told them you were even more of a whiny mummy’s boy before I sent you off to boarding school.” Ted chuckled. “They found that hard to believe.” Then the old bastard ambled into the library, only to jerk to a halt two steps in. He pointed at the chair Venus had been in. “What in MacArthur’s name is that!” he demanded.

Baz had been about to storm off so he could nurse his hurt feelings when he glanced over and saw what his father was boiling about. From this distance, the papers Baz had stuffed under the wingback chair were clearly visible.

“That was an accident, dad,” Baz said, hurrying past him. “I’ll clean it up.”

“Who did that?”

“I did.” Baz pulled the papers out and put them on the low coffee table, trying to smooth them but only managing to smear the damp print further. “Shit,” he muttered.

Ted spluttered until he was wound up enough to shout, “Don’t you swear, boy!” right next to Baz’s ear. Which, of course, made Baz want to say
Fuck!
But he managed to hold that in. Just.

“I’ll fix it, all right!”

“There’s no need to shout!”

“Then don’t!” Baz shouted back.

They stared each other down, then Baz swept the papers into his arms and took off. “I’ll sort this out in the study.”

“You’d better, boy,” Ted called after him. “They’re worth a lot of money.”

“And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?” Baz shouted back as he marched down the hallway to the study where he flung them onto the sand covered desk, shaking with reaction. Then he sat in the chair and put his hands over his face, not sure if he wanted to cry or scream.

His father was a complete fuck–up who was probably giving the Wilson estate away in chunks for all Baz knew, and yet nothing was Theodore Tiberius Wilson’s fault. Oh no! Not even when he gave Saltwood on a silver platter to some Internet scum. It would always Balthazar’s fault. Always Baz being blamed for every that went wrong. Never the evil, demented… badly dressed, wrinkly, old
bastard
in the library.

And who had ever been on Baz’s side?

Not Beth. She’d told him to be nice to his father to get money out of him so she could have a holiday house in the Bahamas and a skiing villa in Colorado. She’d never been sympathetic, but then, she’d been smart enough to be ‘otherwise occupied’ with her own family when it came time for Baz to visit his father, so she’d had no idea how imperious the old bastard could be.

And now? Well, now there was no–one. Venus was only interested in sex, when what Baz longed for was something he knew didn’t really exist. The perfect wife. A funny, beautiful, intelligent woman who drove him crazy in bed and cared enough about him to hold him when he needed to be held.

Like right now.

Of course, that was far too much to expect but it didn’t stop Baz wanting it — wanting someone who would love him, not despite his flaws, but because of them. Someone who would search out his strengths and admire them. Someone he could spend the rest of his life getting to know, to respect, and to love.

There’d only ever been one woman in Baz’s life who had loved him that unconditionally.

And he’d lost her when he was eight.

Chapter Eight

W
ynne looked over her laptop screen to the peak–hour traffic outside the coffee shop window and sighed. All those people rushing home, probably to loved ones and noisy children while her empty flat echoed with loneliness. She’d thought an outing would raise her spirits but it hadn’t, and the uncomfortable
no body loves me
feeling had driven her to hot chocolate with marshmallows and a gigantic slice of cheesecake which she’d inhaled so quickly she’d barely tasted it. Then she’d felt sick because it would take her ages to work that off on the treadmill, but there was nothing for it – the hollow ache in her chest wouldn’t be filled by anything less than sugar and a big slab of fat. She knew that from experience.

So she’d binged, and now when she should be trawling employment websites on her laptop, she was obsessing about Baz and why he hadn’t called her. Wynne hadn’t mentioned it to Rachel, but she’d sent the letter two whole days ago, and this morning she’d checked with her post office and found it had been delivered at 10am yesterday and signed for by one Theodore Tiberius Wilson. Baz’s dad.

So Baz definitely had her letter. Why hadn’t he rung?

Wynne picked up her mobile phone to check that it was working, then wondered if she was starting to get compulsive. She put the phone back into her handbag and pulled out her copy of the letter she’d sent him. She’d reread it dozens of times since she’d posted the original, and each time she’d imagined she was Baz reading it for the first time. How would he react?

Dear Baz
I hope you won’t think I’m forward in writing to you, but I wanted to apologize for the bizarre circumstances surrounding our last meeting. I can only say that I read the signals incorrectly. When you smiled at me at the staff Halloween party, I assumed you were interested in me, and then I overheard you telling the other male teachers about a fantasy sequence you’d seen, with a girl in a raincoat. Although I’d never done anything like that in my life before, after a few too many drinks I thought it would be thrilling to bring that fantasy to life for you.

I was wrong.
It was scary and dangerous, and your reaction was completely understandable — wrong timing, wrong setting, wrong girl.
I hate leaving thing… unpleasant, so I’d like to buy you a coffee to apologize. I’m heading north to visit my sister next week. Could we meet and lay this to rest?
Friends?

Of course Wynne wasn’t about to lay anything to rest, or to settle for being Baz’s ‘friend’, but it seemed safer to start slowly. The imaginary visit to her sister would cost her an overnight accommodation at a nearby motel, but she couldn’t drive all that way up and back in a day, so she’d simply have to bear that cost. Even an hour with Baz would be worth the investment. Assuming he ever called her. Her mobile phone number was on the bottom of the letter and she’d expected a response by lunch–time yesterday. His father had been home to sign for the letter so Baz must be too.

Thirty hours later she was still waiting.

Wynne folded the letter up and tried to quell the panic rising inside her. Trying to win Baz had gotten her sacked. If he didn’t answer her letter…?

No. She couldn’t hold Baz accountable for her job. It was her own stupid desperation to get his forwarding address that was to blame. Even as she’d been setting the rubbish bin in her art room on fire, she’d realised it wasn’t the cleverest plan but she’d convinced herself that while everyone else was on the oval waiting for the fire brigade, she could sneak into the empty admin office and find his file. And if the wretched admin staff hadn’t shut down their computers she would have had it quickly. Instead she’d had to go searching through filing cabinets for the hard copy, then rather than sneaking out undetected, she’d been discovered with Baz’s file under her arm by the principal on his final sweep through the building.

It had been a complete debacle, except for the fact that
Saltwood’s
address was so simple she’d easily been able to recall it later after the file had been taken off her, along with her job. Still, unemployment had freed up time for her to visit Baz, so that was a plus.

Assuming he responded to the letter.

They’re busy,
she told herself, and
be patient,
but she was desperate to convince Baz she wasn’t a lush. It had been completely uncharacteristic of her to drink so much, but his inattention had made her so frustrated! The raincoat had seemed, to her muddled mind, to be a shortcut. And it had been — a shortcut to rejection. She had so much ground to recover, and the longer it took to see him, the more her faith that they would have a
Happily Ever After
wavered.