Sex on Tuesdays (10 page)

The car behind us on the bridge?

Dread lodged deep in my chest, threatening to rip it open. What was that car doing here? Had it followed us? Or was I just paranoid?

As it came closer, the 4WD weaved across the road and began to speed up.

Terror sent shock waves roaring through my body. This was no coincidence. This was the stuff nightmares were made of. Lengthening my stride, I reached Derek and grabbed a fistful of his tracksuit top. Then, before I could gasp out a warning or drag him out of the way, the Subaru's tires bit into the bitumen, let out a teeth-grinding squeal, and headed straight at us.

The squeal of tires assaulted my ears, seeped into my brain, and turned my legs to string. One second Derek was yelling at me to
fuck the hell off
, the next we both hit the gutter with Simon sprawled on top of us. At least Derek's bony body on the bottom of the pile stopped me from slamming face first into the roadway.

Groaning, I lifted my head just in time to see the back end of the Subaru as it hurtled around the corner and disappeared from sight.

An elbow to the stomach took away my last gasp of air as Derek flailed around in an unsuccessful attempt to scramble out from the bottom of the pile.

“Simon,” I wheezed. “I know you just saved my life, but could you please get your great carcass off me? I. Can't. Breathe.”

“Sorry, darlin'.” He grunted, then rolled over and sat gingerly on the gutter beside us. “Everyone okay? No broken bones?”

I flexed my sore right shoulder, testing it for breakages. “Thanks to you, I'm alive. I think,” I added wincing as pain shot down my right arm.

Derek—his face a sickly shade of white—wriggled out from under me while I dragged my bruised body to the edge of the gutter and lowered my rear end gingerly onto the cement next to Simon. My shoulder was on fire. My head ached. And if I couldn't manage to settle the contents of my stomach within the next thirty seconds, I would be in dire need of a bathroom.

“Simon,” I said putting one arm around his broad shoulders and giving him a quick hug. “If you hadn't knocked us out of the way, Derek and I would be road-kill right now. The maniac in that car wanted us dead.”

“Maybe he was aiming at Derek, and you just happened to be in the way.” Simon frowned at Derek, a few meters away, on his knees, tossing his cookies noisily on the side of the road. “Any idea who'd want to run you down, mate?”

As Derek was otherwise engaged and didn't answer, Simon turned back to me, his brow furrowed. “This whole incident was planned, Dani. Did you notice there were no number plates on the car? The mongrel must have removed them before parking in this street.”

“But how did he know we'd be here at this time of the day?” I mused pushing my hair from my eyes and leaning back against Simon's warm bulk. “Unless he followed us to The Fish Inn. I noticed that car behind us on the bridge in the Port.”

“Hmm…maybe a coincidence. If Derek was his intended victim, the killer was probably on his way here and got caught by the bridge opening, like we did.”

I nodded, digesting this theory and feeling a lot better for it. The thought of someone out there hating me enough to frame me through my column was bad enough. But to kill me?

“Did you manage to catch sight of the driver?”

“The car windows were tinted.” Using Simon as a prop, I pushed myself out of the gutter and staggered across to see if I could do anything for Derek. He seemed beyond help, so I bent and picked up my tote bag, which had fallen on the side of the road. Digging around inside, I found two small hairy squares of barley sugar in the corner and handed the sweets to Derek.

“Any point ringing the police?”

“Not much to go on, is there?” Simon lifted one shoulder. “We have no number for the car. No visual of the driver. No idea where he is now. Still, I guess you'd better ring. Can't have a maniac driving around the streets using his car as a weapon, can we?”

“No police!” gasped Derek clambering unsteadily to his feet.

“Excuse me?”

“No police,” Derek repeated taking a shaky step towards us. Being upwind, the smell of vomit almost curled my hair. He stammered. “If we bring in the police, it m-might make the driver a-angry.”

“Jesus, Derek,” I said trying not to breathe in the fumes. “If that wasn't being angry, I'd hate to be around when the guy means business.” The thought of being questioned by the police twice in one day didn't sit well with me either, but that was another matter. “He was aiming to kill you, Derek. If it hadn't been for Simon, you'd be with the Angels now.” And maybe I'd be playing a celestial harp too—or warming my hands at a very large bonfire. “Just out of curiosity,” I went on. “As it's not every day someone attempts to run me down…do you have any idea who was driving that car?”

“None whatsoever, I—” Derek gulped and his face turned the color of cream cheese. He clutched his stomach with both hands and slowly sank to his knees.

Holding my breath, I bent over him. “You alright, Derek?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute….”

With breakfast and lunch plastered on the front of his tracksuit and over his Nikes, Derek looked anything but okay. Blood trickled from a gash on his head, one leg of his pants was torn and bloody at the knee, and there was a graze the size of a small country on his left cheek. Being on the bottom of our triple pile-up, Derek had taken the full brunt of Simon's rugby tackle.

Still, he was lucky not to be a statistic.

“Come on, mate,” Simon persisted, his cop colors showing again. “You must have some idea of what's going on. First your wife is murdered, and now you come close to buying a plot in the graveyard next to her. If you're innocent—who's the guilty party?”

Derek bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes as though trying to blot out the memory of everything that had happened in the last two days. “I told you,” he whispered. “I don't know a thing.”

The sound of “Three Blind Mice” trilled from the other side of the road. My mobile must have skittered from my bag in our recent dash with death.

After checking caller ID, I growled deep in my throat and squeezed my eyes shut.

“Mum, not now,” I pleaded, my hand shaking as I held the phone to my ear. “I'll ring you back later. I'm not exactly in a position to chat at the moment.”

“Oh, that's all right, dear,” she yelled in her normal china-cracking voice. “Except by then I will probably be on a plane heading for Vegas. I might even win myself enough money on the crap tables for a nose job, as well as a boob job.”

Oh God, why me?

“Okay, Mum, what's happened?”

Her sigh was like air being let out of a tire. “I'm having man trouble, Dani. Henry's got the sulks because that new resident, Johnny wants me to brush his hair. And Tug took me aside at lunch today to show me how he frisks victims before he tops them. Says that's what he used to do back when he was driving getaway cars for the Mob, fifty years ago. My problem is that I'm just too much of a guy magnet.”

A guy magnet? Where did my mother get hold of these expressions? “Mum, please stay where you are. I'll buy Henry's skateboard later today and bring it to the Home tomorrow. We'll discuss your man problems then. Okay? I'm sorry, but I really can't talk now.”

“Oh, isn't that sweet? Henry has stopped sulking and now he's offering me his afternoon-tea biscuit. It's a chocolate Tim Tam, too.”

I sighed. Other people's elderly mothers grew frail and incontinent and went to sleep in front of television watching soaps and reality shows. My mother was a
guy magnet
.

Simon laughed as I tossed the phone into my bag. “Your mother's having man problems and
you've
offered to fix them for her?”

Ignoring Simon I turned back to Derek. “I think it's time you told us everything you know.”

“Dani's right,” put in Simon, taking hold of Derek's arm and helping him to his feet. “The guy in the car was lying in wait for you. He wanted you dead.”

“I have no idea who would want to kill me—or Mary.”

A perplexing thought crept into my head. If the guy was after Derek, why didn't he run him down while he was out jogging? Why wait until we arrived on the scene? I shook my head in an attempt to clear these stomach-clenching thoughts that were sneaking in and making me feel like joining Derek at the gutter. “Could it be that whoever was driving that car didn't want Derek to talk to us?”

“I don't know anything to talk to you about.”

“Could be,” answered Simon, disregarding Derek's pathetic bleating. “Maybe the killer thought we were getting too close, becoming a nuisance, so decided it might be a good idea to do try a three-for-one and get rid of all of us at the same time.”

My throat dry, I gulped, letting this scary piece of conjecture seep slowly into my already overloaded brain cells, swirl around in terrified jerks, and finally take root.

And then I began to shake.

10

Wednesday, 12:45 p.m.

Taking advantage of Derek's reluctant hospitality, I perched on a high stool in his kitchen, a supersized mug of steaming coffee warming my hands while Simon was busy on the phone networking with his sources. Our battered host, after boiling a kettle and warning us to
stay put
, was safely installed in the shower—presumably shampooing blood, dirt and vomit from his hair.

I glanced around the kitchen. Shouldn't I be doing more than sit and consume caffeine until my eyes bugged? This was my third cup. The pummeling sounds of fast-running water bouncing off the bathroom tiles meant Derek was still otherwise engaged. So I stood up, dumped the unfinished caffeine in the sink, and wandered into the hallway. For some perverse reason I wanted to see Mary's room. And although coffee sloshed and heaved in my stomach at the thought of what Mary must have suffered in that room, it was too good an opportunity to miss. Maybe I'd pick up on the dead woman's vibes, even find a clue as to who murdered her.

I'd grudgingly scrubbed Derek off my list of suspects. Reason one—whoever killed Mary had also attempted to turn her husband into road kill. Reason two—Derek's hands were blister free.

Simon argued that any killer with half a brain would use fireproof gloves to handle a red hot poker, and the run-in with the Subaru might not have been related to Mary's death. It could have been a disgruntled player who Derek had forced out of this week's football team. The enraged husband of some woman Derek was busy bonking. Or even a drug dealer he owed money to.

Whatever. Derek knew more than he was telling us.

I nudged open a door at the end of the hallway and peeped inside. A room with a single bed. How the heck did Derek and his wife expect their love life to be a wild fantasy while balancing two humping bodies on the confines of a single bed?

With browns and grays predominating, the décor definitely spelt male. Dozens of wooden-framed photos—all depicting athletic young men dressed in the Port Adelaide Football club's colors of black and white, kicking, leaping or running after a cylindrical ball. A 42-inch plasma television with surround sound. The latest Mac desktop computer. And going by the graphic pictures in the magazines open on his bedside table, Derek hadn't been lying when he said he was “distinctly frustrated.”

Water blasting from the shower alcove in the ensuite bathroom adjoining Derek's bedroom, suddenly slowed and stopped. I froze…then quickly shut the door and scuttled across the hall to the other bedroom.

Mary's room.

An icy shiver skittered up my spine, snagged on my heart, and took up residence in the right ventricle. Did I really want to go inside? Mary's vibes had already left the room. All that remained was a bed devoid of mattress and coverings, empty drawers pulled out to their maximum, and a deadly chill in the air that was like a force field warning me to get out.

The stone fireplace held me like a hypnotist's eyes. Cold dead ashes spilling out onto the hearth. Blackened brush and dustpan set. Antique fire screen with etchings of golden angels dancing across the front.

Ignoring the horror that held my breath prisoner, I took one step into the room, eyes focused on the large stone fireplace. No poker. Of course the killer's instrument of death would be bagged and labeled at the police station together with the blood-stained mattress and purple sheets.

I sniffed. Was that a hint of Poison? Mary and Megan preferred the same perfume. Must be the ad on television showing the rich and famous doused in the revolting stuff that made it so popular. Give me Body Shop Vanilla any day.

“Find anything?”

My heart, ready to run up the white flag, did a somersault with a backward flip as Simon's voice grazed my ear.

“Geez, Simon, don't sneak up like that! You scared the stuffing out of me.”

“Nothing to find in here, Dani?” he said glancing across at the empty bed. “Forensics would have gone over the room with a fine tooth comb.”

“Just thought I'd take a peek.” I shivered. “Wish I hadn't.”

His arm came around me as he moved me out of the room and closed the door behind us. “Derek's finished his shower, so we'd better make like polite guests and return to the kitchen. I want to get him talking about the night of the murder.”

When Derek limped into the kitchen—wet hair pushed back, clean shorts and polo shirt with the Port Adelaide Football club's motif on the pocket—I was sitting at the table staring into a giant-sized first-aid box that Simon had unearthed from a cupboard. It had so many tubes and bottles and packets of gauze and little tweezer thingies inside, I figured a degree in medicine would be required to identify and classify them all.

“Like me to treat those cuts and grazes?” I asked Derek tentatively.

He smiled. “Thank you.”

Of course, his smile didn't last long. Instead, he hissed and yelped as I dipped cotton wool in some purple antiseptic and dabbed it on any open cut I could find.

That part was easy, but I couldn't work out what to do next. Frowning, I picked up a 250ml bottle half-full of thick, green, gooey liquid. Perhaps a dose of this stuff might help. My patient looked as though he needed a boost of something extra strong to soothe his nerves.

“No. Not that!” yelped Simon, his eyes wide. “Not unless you want Derek squatting on the toilet for the rest of the day.”

“Oops!” I dropped the offending bottle back into the box and picked up a packet of what looked like white chalky powder.

“Here, let me finish him off.” Simon reached across in front of me and dragged the box towards him. “I have a certificate in first-aid.”

“You do?”

“It's a prerequisite to joining the force.”

Pleased to leave the doctoring to an expert, I stood up. And while Simon dabbed and plastered and applied a couple of little butterfly clips to the gash on Derek's face, I went for a wander around the large living room. A network of computers was set up on desks along the opposite wall. All ultra modern—all state of the art—all flashing menacing screen savers showing severed sections of the human body.

“Into dissecting people, are you, Derek?” I asked him while pouring myself another coffee. After adding a slurp of milk and three heaped spoonfuls of sugar, I straddled a chair and watched as Simon closed the First Aid box and returned it to its cupboard.

“What?” Derek looked up from the bottle of St. Agnes he'd removed from the top shelf of another cupboard. “Oh that? No, I'm a fitness coach. I study the human body.” He turned to Simon and lifted the bottle in salute. “Join me in a brandy?”

“No thanks, mate. I've already had one brandy today and I'm driving, so I'll stick to coffee. But you go ahead. You look like you could use one.”

I drank my coffee in silence while Simon tried to convince Derek that if he wanted to stay alive, he only had two options. Well, three, actually: talk to the police, confide in us, or shift to another planet.

“Confide in you?” Derek, drinking brandy straight from the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then shook his head at us. “You come here, bang on my front door, chase me up the street, almost get me killed, and now you want me to answer your questions. Well, how about answering one of mine.” Belligerent now, he scowled, slammed the bottle down on the table, and stuck out his chin. “Who the hell are you?”

“Surely we introduced ourselves earlier, Derek. I'm Simon Templar and this is Danielle Summers.”

“That tells me nothing. If you're from the police, I've already answered your questions. In triplicate. And if you're journos after a juicy story, I've had it with the media. You lot are like a mob of wild dogs slathering over a bitch in heat.”

Wow! Perhaps I could pilfer that simile and use it in my column to advise a woman who'd written in about her husband who stalked her for sex every five minutes of the day.

“Okay, Okay,” I said, ready to placate the writhing beast. “We're not here after a juicy story. We're here to help you find out who murdered your wife. Simon is a crime reporter for the
Tribute,
and I write their sex-therapy column.”

“You!” gasped Derek. “
You're
Dani Summers?”

Oh! Uh!

Derek's mouth twisted in a snarl and his hand tightened around the neck of the St. Agnes bottle. Apprehensive of his body language, I braced my hands on the table top ready for a quick getaway if he started swinging in the direction of my head.

“So it was
you
who wrote that filthy piece about shoving something hot down Mary's throat?” Derek's eyes, bloodshot at the edges, bored into mine.

“I didn't write that letter, Derek. Someone hacked into my computer and changed my column. And once we find out who did, we'll probably know the identity of the murderer.” I looked pointedly at the rows of computers blinking along the wall before continuing. Okay, Derek may be scrubbed off my suspect list but there was still something suspicious about him. “You seem to know your way around computers. I don't suppose you had anything to do with hacking into the
Tribute
's computer and sabotaging my column?”

“Noooo!” He leaped to his feet, spilling brandy down the front of his clean polo shirt. “Can't you see I just want to be left alone?” He slammed the bottle onto the table and wrapped both arms around his shaking body. “My wife was murdered two days ago. Even though I have an alibi, the police are treating me as if I killed her. Can't you understand—I don't need more of the same from you two.”

Simon took a sip of his coffee and looked over the rim at Derek. “This alibi of yours, mate. Watertight is it?”

Derek threw himself down on the chair again, grabbed the brandy bottle by the neck and took another long swig before answering. “Yes. As a sealed bottle.”

“Are you positive about that? A little bird told me you weren't in the pub at the time your wife was murdered.” Simon shook his head. “Your alibi is full of holes.”

Derek's snarl reminded me of a dog that'd just had its bone stolen. “And who's this little bird?”

“Come on, Derek. Cut the crap. I
know
you left the pub for half an hour. Enough time to drive home, shove a poker down your wife's throat, and get back to the pub to set up your alibi.”

Derek slumped into his chair, his face crumpling. “Why would I murder Mary?” he wailed. “I loved her. She's been part of my life for almost twenty years.”

I felt like crying with him. Maybe Harry and Bettina were right and Derek was innocent. One thing for sure—the man was a nervous wreck. And if Simon continued this barrage we'd have a melted pool of fitness coach all over the floor and no answers to our questions. I reached out and squeezed Derek's hand. “We really do want to help. Just tell us who rang you that night. Who enticed you out of The Fish Inn on the night of your wife's murder? Was it Mary asking you to come home?”

Derek snatched his hand away and scrubbed at his eyes. “No, it wasn't Mary,” he said, his voice starting to slur from the brandy, his eyes bloodshot. “I don't know who rang me. A woman. Her voice was muffled like she was trying to disguise it.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “She said to meet her at the Port Lighthouse. She threatened to tell Mary I'd been having an affair if I didn't show up.”

Hmm…so skinny Derek had been having it off with someone other than his wife. I leant forward, my fingers clasping the back of the chair. “And was this mysterious woman right, Derek? Were you having an affair?”

“No.” He opened his eyes, glared at me, and then his shoulders sagged. “Yes. But it was all over. I'd already told the woman I didn't want to have anything more to do with her. I loved Mary.”

“What was your mistress's name?”

“None of your damn business,” he snapped beetling his brows at me. “It's over. And I have no intentions of dragging her name into this sordid mess. Anyway, there was never anything between us other than great sex. It wasn't as if I'd ever leave Mary for her. The woman was just a good lay.” He shrugged, took another swig of brandy, and then flicked a glance at Simon. “You understand, don't ya mate? Men can't do without sex. Mary was always a bit disinterested in bed, so naturally I had to satisfy my urges elsewhere.”

Simon nodded at Derek in a conspiratorial
secret men's business way
. I scowled at the pair of them. And here I was currently on the look-out for a man. I'd be better off buying a cat to go with my dog.

“I'm with you, Derek,” Simon said agreeably. “But it might help with our enquiries if you told us the name of your bit on the side.”

Bit on the side?

“Nah! Shan't tell. Ya wasting ya time.” Derek was smashed. “She might have been my bit of nookie but I reshpect 'er.”

“All women are tarts under their make-up, Derek, so it won't hurt to whisper her name in my ear.”

Tarts under their make-up?

“Never.” His tongue seemed to get caught up in his teeth and he began to dribble. “You can pull out my fingernails if you like. I'll never tell.”

Don't tempt me.

“No woman's worth the pain, Derek. They're only—”

The kick aimed at Simon's shin under cover of the table struck paydirt. I smiled angelically at his muffled yelp of pain. Even though I wanted to know the name of Derek's “bit on the side” —because hey, here was another suspect to add to our list—even Blind Freddy could see Derek wouldn't reveal his ex-lover's name. And more importantly, Simon was pissing me right off.

“Sorry to break up your
little boys'
chat,” I said sweetly. “But I have a meeting with my assistant at four and I need you to drop me off at the
Tribute
first, Simon.”

I turned to Derek who was almost cross-eyed, trying to keep his eyes open. St. Agnes had done her job. “Will you be okay on your own?” I asked him.