Bay of Fires (33 page)

“She only made a big deal out of it because Don was there,” Sam said. “The point is, she fell in. I didn’t touch her. End of story. But if everyone knows I was there, and Don tells the police what he thinks he saw… Mom?”

“It was a horrible accident,” Simone said.

Hall eyed the youth. He wasn’t a kid. He was taller than Hall, probably just as strong, no doubt fitter. Well-developed muscle rippled on his bare legs, arms, and neck. Brimming with testosterone. You couldn’t blame him for being opportunistic. After all, nudity was not common on Tasmanian beaches. Hall was about to back off when an image of Sarah drunk, laughing, and letting Sam touch her smacked into his mind.

“Here’s what I think, Sam,” Hall said. “You followed Anja Traugott. To spy on her in the event she sunbathed topless. She realized you were there, got a fright, somehow fell into the sea. Manslaughter, if your lawyer is smart about it. But apparently you have a thing for looking through the guesthouse bathroom window, too. It’s not going to be hard to prove you are morally reprehensible.”

Hall left then. He had reached his car when Sam jogged up the driveway. They faced each other in the afternoon’s gritty shadow.

“You’re stressing my mom.”

Hall didn’t reply; he sat in the driver’s seat and placed the key in the ignition. Sam held the door open.

“Get your hands off my car.”

“I shouldn’t have said that thing about Sarah.”

“You probably shouldn’t have.”

“What are you going to do? Are the cops going to turn up here?”

“Sam, I don’t know. You’re a good guy. Ring them yourself.”

“I can’t.”

Hall tried to pull the door shut but Sam held on.

“Sarah wouldn’t want anyone knowing about anything, would she? It’s a close-knit community.” Dust stuck to Sam’s face and hair; he looked like a fighter from the
Mad Max
movies. “I remember the old days when everyone would share the catch of the day on the beach. Good times.”

“When women were safe to swim without being frightened into throwing themselves in the ocean, you mean?”

“She slipped. Nothing to do with me. You know it.”

For the fourth and, he hoped, the last time that day, Hall started his engine and drove into the dust storm. It was still thick, but perhaps it was settling. He turned toward the guesthouse. Since he’d left the Averys’, anger had ripped through him. For a brief interlude Sam’s helpless stare and Simone’s bewilderment had defused it.

He slammed the accelerator to the floor of the car. The tires clawed the gravel with a satisfying snarl as he sped up the middle of the road in conditions it was probably illegal to drive in.

I
n the sanctuary of the guesthouse, Hall took two Heron headache tablets and watched the dust blow outside. It was morning, but through the window the coast was so dark, parts of it were unrecognizable. It was hard to imagine it would ever look normal again.

After a while Jane sat beside him, both of them comfortably quiet, sedated by the blackened world. For ages they did not speak, watching as the winds changed the patterns on the sky from corrugated lines to grand swirls to textured layers, as though it were a huge abstract canvas. Hall broke the silence.

“That’s good you won’t need any more firewood for a while,” he said.

Jane nodded. “I suppose. Next thing I’ll be in the slammer for accepting stolen goods.”

Hall smiled. “You’ll be okay.”

“Don’t know why Gary’s suddenly being friendly. Good luck to him.”

“Don’t be like that. Maybe he wanted to see you. That’s nice he brought the firewood.”

“And then he asked me for fifty bucks.”

“Did he?” Hall tried to contain his amusement, but it was hopeless.

He burst out laughing. After a moment, Jane joined in. Like two old mates, they laughed and laughed until Jane’s laugh turned into a racking tobacco cough and Hall had to fetch her a glass of water.

Dust blew intermittently for most of the morning. It did not completely subside until mid-afternoon, coinciding with the turning of the high tide. By then every surface was covered by the turnip paddock’s silky dust. It took Sarah and Erica three hours to clean the shack. Stools, cushions, armchairs, three different-sized tables, diving gear with rusting weight belts, and boxes of old magazines; everything went out on the back grass. Inside they wiped crevices with damp tea towels. Don helped them drag the heavy rugs outside. They slung them over the veranda railing and banged the dust out with a broomstick. Along the row of shacks, as birds cried out from their hiding places in the sooty scrub, everyone was doing the same.

As they shifted the mattress that served as the couch Sarah said, “Don, I have to ask you.” At the same time Don said, “I’m sorting out that matter we discussed the other night.”

They laughed uneasily.

“What worries me,” Sarah said, and she was pleased with the diplomacy in her tone, “what worries me is that I had this crazy thought that you weren’t honest about seeing Roger because there’s something about him you don’t like.”

“Not at all.” Don concentrated on arranging the dirty mattress against the railing, dragging it along a little bit, pushing it with his boot. “It was as I said; it didn’t seem important. But it’s on the record now. I’ve spoken to the relevant people.”

“Good.”

Sarah was wiping down the outdoor furniture when Simone Shelley’s green Mercedes stopped in front of the shack. It was Sam who climbed out. He ran over to her.

“You have to tell Hall I wasn’t on the rocks with Anja. I was fishing with you. Tell him. Otherwise you’re going to regret the day you lured me into your car,” Sam said.

Sarah didn’t think twice. She grabbed Sam by the scruff of his neck and dragged him behind the fence so that Don and Erica could not see. Pinned against the wooden palings by his shoulders, Sam was stunned.

“Lured you into my car?” she said, her voice cold and low. “Those are not your words. What kind of game are you and your mother playing, Sam?”

He didn’t try to escape, so she loosened her grip. It took a lot of self-control. Her anger was like an unstoppable amphetamine rush.

“Listen, you little shit. Do not ever try to blackmail me. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

Energy from her rage fine-tuned her vision so that every detail of Sam’s face was clear—the tiny burst capillaries on the whites of his eyes, crusts of white saliva in the corners of his mouth, and clear snot at the base of his nostrils. She clamped her fingers into a fist.

“Is this what you want?” She rocked her fist, back and forth, in front of Sam’s face. “You’d better tell me what’s going on, Sam.”

Sam believed she was going to hit him. He was shaking. Sickened by herself, Sarah released his shoulders, and he collapsed onto his knees in the grass beside the fence.

“Mom told me to come here. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. She wasn’t dead when I left her. Sarah, please help me.”

“Left who? Anja?”

“No. Anja drowned. I tried to find her. If anyone could have found her it was me. It wasn’t my fault. Chloe was my friend. I would never willingly hurt her.”

Sarah could barely understand him, he was crying so hard. She reached out her hand to pat his head but pulled it back before she touched him. It was horrible watching a man cry. He had a cat scratch on his neck. It looked fresh, blood welling up beneath each prong, the skin around it swollen. She told Sam to go home, told him not to worry, that things would sort themselves out, but her words were uttered by rote, the kind of general thing you said to an upset person. After he left, she busied herself in the garden, pouring water over the dirt-caked succulents and geraniums, trying to compose herself. Her own temper frightened her. Had she scratched him? She examined her nails, but they were blunt and short.

When the shack was clean, all windows open to air it, the sisters rode with Don down to the guesthouse. Sarah’s parents and Pamela were already there, helping Jane.

Hall’s car was parked out front. Sarah recognized it before Erica did.

“There’s Hall’s car,” Erica said.

“I’ll head somewhere else,” Sarah said. “Enough people here.”

“No need to leave, Sarah. Everyone’s here,” Don told her. “Teamwork today. One in, all in.”

In the main room Jane and Pamela stood on a table, reaching up to unhook the decorative fishing net from the ceiling. Flip and Simone were on the ground, hands stretched out to take it. Each woman was smiling at Hall and his camera. They did not notice Sarah. Neither did Hall. He had his back to her. He looked at once familiar and devastatingly distant.

She left. As she walked down the ramp, she could hear Jane urging Hall to hurry. She couldn’t hear Hall’s response, only the women’s laughter at whatever he said. Good chance that was the first photo ever taken of those four women together.

Even with excellent pictures, it was unlikely that Hall’s dust storm cleanup story would run. Elizabeth wouldn’t read past the first paragraph, unless she was reading it aloud to the newsroom for a joke. She had done that before with shoddy cadet reporters’ copy. For this warm fuzzy to run, it would need to be a very quiet news week—unless of course by chance there were dust storms blowing all over the state. As far as Hall knew there weren’t, but he continued photographing the women cleaning the guesthouse. Concentrating on work was the only thing keeping him from calling the police station and venting his concerns about Sam Shelley. He had felt rattled when Simone strolled in, offering to help Jane. Robotically, he had nodded at her and continued arranging and taking shots.

For a crazy moment he had considered calling that bird-brained spin doctor Ann Eggerton. That was when he knew he was not thinking with any intelligence. She would have a press release typed up and issued to every news outlet before he even got off the phone.

He heard Sarah’s voice as she walked up the guesthouse ramp. He took several more shots while he composed himself. When he turned around, she was gone. Erica and Don stared back at him, complicity mirrored in their expressions.

Hall crossed the room so quickly he accidentally kicked a dustpan and broom. He didn’t stop to pick them up. Sarah was already halfway across the lawn.

“Wait,” he said.

She paused. She looked upset, and he wanted to hug her. That would be the wrong thing to do.

“You need to ask Sam Shelley about Chloe.” She spoke without looking at him, her jaw clenched, her lips severe. “I don’t know what the story is, but he knows something.”

“What’s happened?”

“I don’t even know if he’s telling the truth. He said, and don’t quote me, he said, ‘She wasn’t dead when I left her.’”

“Do you want to go somewhere and talk about this?”

“No.” Sarah continued to look away, her gaze fixed on the other side of the yard where the dogs paced as far as their chains would allow. “And his mother. She’s involved. He all but said it. One more thing: the tip used to be an old tin mine. There are a few disused mineshafts in the bush behind it. I might be way off here, but I saw Sam in the bush, directly behind the tip. The week before Christmas, before you got here, before everything happened.”

Hall processed the details. He would get to the bottom of this immediately. He began to thank Sarah for sharing the information, but she was already walking away.

Hall was considering how to catch Simone alone when she stepped onto the guesthouse veranda, rolling a bucket of dirty mop water. Hall took one side of the handle, Simone took the other, and they carried the heavy bucket toward the grass.

“I’m so glad we’re still friends,” Simone said, standing back as Hall poured the dirty water onto some bushes. “I was worried you were cross with me.”

She adjusted her red bandana, tugging at a loose lock of hair that had fallen free.

“I’m not cross.” Hall gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m reporting on a possible double murder. You need to be honest with me. My patience is wearing thin.”

His aggressive tone startled her. She glanced at the guesthouse. “Please, Hall. Not here.”

“You want to sit in my car? Or yours?”

“Sit in mine. It’s behind the concrete tank. Out of the way.”

Inside the green Mercedes it was cool and dark. Hall had never sat in a luxury car, but the experience was lost on him. He found his notebook and spun his pencil in his hand, choosing his words carefully. He had only one chance to make this conversation work.

“So you have me where you want me,” Simone said.

She turned the keys and the air-conditioning came on. Music did too—a jazz tune with a fast trumpet-driven tempo—and she lowered the volume.

Every conversation Hall had held—with Sam, with Sarah, with Simone, with Roger, with anyone in the Bay of Fires—ran through his mind. Odd comments, observations that had not made perfect sense, his own interpretation of the various relationships among them all; Hall mentally shuffled the fragments of information like pieces of a puzzle.

“You’re a good mother, Simone, but you need to get your son a lawyer,” Hall began. “Chloe Crawford. Buried alive in a mineshaft behind the tip.”

Simone took off the red bandana and folded it on her lap. She appeared utterly relaxed, waiting for Hall to continue. The only sign Hall could perceive of her nervousness was her mouth. She kept licking her lips. It was not a mannerism he had observed her doing before. He was pretty certain she was not aware she was doing it.

“It’s a heartbreaking tale,” Hall said. “Teenage lovers, a summer holiday romance, she breaks up with him, and his reaction is explosive and violent. And that poor little girl, cowering in the mineshaft, praying that her parents would find her.”

“She wasn’t buried alive.” Simone sounded teary. “They had an altercation and he put his hand over her mouth. She was yelling at him. He only wanted her to be quiet. She was unconscious when he came to get me. Sam tried to do the right thing. But it was too late. Chloe was dead when we returned. I took her pulse. She was in a strange position and must have suffered asphyxiation while he was gone. It was awful, Hall. Sliding her into the mineshaft, that was my idea.” Sobbing, Simone covered her face with her hands. “A mother does things for her son, Hall. I’ve already lost two husbands. Should I be expected to lose my only son, too?”

“She asphyxiated?”

“It’s not the worst way to die, Hall.”

“Chloe Crawford left her parents’ cottage with a surfboard under her arm. She was going surfing. Can you explain how she ended up in the bush?” Hall stared straight ahead, concentrating on Simone’s voice rather than the way she kept stroking her own arms.

“Sam and Chloe paddled their surfboards across the lagoon. They walked up into the bush a little way, planning to kiss. It was, as you say, an innocent romance. And it went wrong. Maybe she got scared. I understand her family is quite religious.”

“And her surfboard?”

“Everything was tossed into the mineshaft. What were we supposed to do? We’re not trophy hunters.”

Simone turned to face Hall. Teardrops sat on both her cheeks. She didn’t try to wipe them away. He could not look away from her dark blue eyes. For a surreal moment, a feeling of déjà vu washed over him. He was a teenager again, sitting in a car with a beautiful girl, waiting for her to give him permission to touch her. In reality, Hall realized, Simone was waiting for him to make a decision.

“You’re not trophy hunters.” Hall sounded harsher than he intended to and Simone’s little smile faded. “So how did Sam come to have Anja Traugott’s bikini top?”

Simone smoothed her hair. She folded her bandana into a triangle and wrapped it over her head, tying it in a jaunty knot at the base of her neck.

“Hall. No one wants to be a bad person. It’s not in a human being’s nature. I don’t think it is. But we all have to do whatever is necessary to survive. I’m not evil. I know you know that.”

In the spacious vehicle Hall felt cooped up. Through the tinted window the sky was darker. The air-conditioning was working too well, and Hall had goose bumps on his arms.

“I’m a loving mother. I want Sam to experience love and enjoy his sexuality. I’ve always been very open with him about life. But women can be cruel, Hall. I know you know that—I can tell.”

Hall raised his palm to stop her from talking. “I’m sorry, Simone. You need to inform the police. I won’t do anything until you have done so. You have my word.”

As he placed a hand on the door handle, Simone placed her hand on his leg. It was a slender hand and seemingly weightless—he could barely feel it through his jeans.

“Hall, I have another worry you might be able to help me with.”

“Yeah?”

“Sam turns eighteen next month. The law is quite clear in Tasmania.” Simone’s voice was melodious. It had quavered before. “It is a crime for anyone to have sex with a seventeen-year-old if they are more than five years older than the seventeen-year-old. It’s an awful situation.”