Derailed (44 page)

“– and on that TV, Maybelline, you can watch Neighbours.”

“Just like mall security,” she says with glee.

“Yup! Pretty much got the road and the houses across from you covered.”

As we watch people and cars go by, we sit on her bed, eating honey soy prawns and sipping rum.

“This is wonderful, Ritchie,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t want to go and sit outside, because my back hurts from the cold. And my beautiful roses, they’re all gone now, thanks to that slut.” She jerks her chin toward Scarlett’s house. “But it’s so lonely in here. If I don’t go outside, I don’t see anyone other than my daughters for weeks! Now, I don’t have to leave my bed to watch the world. Sweet!”

It saddens me to hear that. “Well, tell you what, Maybelline, after I’m done, I’m going to let you keep this set-up so you have a window to the outside world.”

Her eyes bulge with surprise and gratitude, making me feel really bad for her.

I take a swig of my rum. “And…I’m coming back to install cameras on your side gates as well, so you can also get a clear view of the side road. Broaden your world. How ’bout that?”

Even though walking is hard for her, she shuffles over to give me a hug, making me feel really, really bad. By the time I leave her house, I’m slightly tipsy, but happy to connect with Mabel and to be able to make her day a little better. And that’s…Maybelline!

RITCHIE

I expected to get something within a week from Mabel’s cameras, but to my surprise, I get a call from Mabel that very evening just before midnight. 

“Ritchie,” she whispers, “you need to come over right away. She’s got a male visitor, but there’s no car. Odd for sure.”

As she whispers, I’m already running to my ute, keys in hand.

“Okay, but how do you think he got there? Cab?”

“Nope. Would have seen it. Just come now!”

I’m outside Scarlett’s in less than ninety seconds. It’s true, there are no vehicles parked in Scarlett’s driveway or around the house. I cruise the streets surrounding the house. There are too many cars around to pinpoint which car belongs to Scarlett’s visitor.

I reverse my ute into Mabel’s property and spend the next hour waiting in it, my eyes fixed on the property.

Finally, a man emerges. He’s of slight build, dark hair, and with his head bowed, he walks away from the house. Something tells me he’s the man who answered Scarlett’s secret phone. I give him a lead before I ease out of Mabel’s driveway and cruise behind him. He walks to a Mercedes two streets away and gets into it.

I tail him for about ten minutes to a double-story house in the neighboring suburb of St Ives. As he pulls into the driveway, his garage door automatically opens. I know that once he gets into the garage, the door will shut and I won’t be able to see his face. Right now, I want to see his face.

The moment his Mercedes enters the property, I turn on my bright lights and drive into the garage, where I park behind him, preventing the garage door from closing. He gets out of his Mercedes and squints at me, blinded by the glare of my lights. I smile. I just found the woman – no, the man – whom I nearly ran over the night Bradley was murdered. That scared, nervous look – it was the same look he gave me that fateful night. Maybelline, you beaut!  

RITCHIE

I race over to Bear and Arena’s and knock on the door. I’m so excited, I really want to pound on it, but I don’t want to wake up the kids. Bear and Arena have had their fair share of unwanted late-night visitors, and that has left them traumatized and slightly paranoid.

Arena beats Bear to the door. “Richie, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Something’s right, Arena.” I fill them in on Mabel, the cameras, her phone call, and Scarlett’s late-night visitor.

“He’s the guy I almost ran into that night,” I say. “I’m positive of that. He’s our guy.”

Arena scratches her eyebrow with a fingernail. “But the woman’s voice? The screaming…?”

“Dunno about that, but he’s framing Rival. I know this much. He’s around her build, he was wearing a wig, and he killed Bradley. I will never forget those eyes.” I turn to Bear. “Got his license plate too.”

Bear nods. “Give it to me. I’ll get Captain Warner to delve into it.”

“Know what’s even better?”

“What?” Bear and Arena chorus.

“You have surveillance outside your house, right? Motion detecting –”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…?” Bear says, cocking his head at me.

“– he’d have passed your house…after he ran into me.”

Bear jerks upright. “I…I can check it. It’s recorded surveillance.” He jumps to his feet and runs to his laptop. “We just need the date.”

Arena clasps her hands and squeezes her eyes shut. “Please let him be on the footage,” she prays.

After a short while, Bear brings up the footage. “Okay,” he says, getting up from his laptop. “All yours, mate.” He takes Arena’s hand. “We’re going to bed. Wake us up if you get –”

“Bear!” Arena jerks her hand out of Bear’s. “I wanna stay and –”

“No!” Bear says, grabbing her hand again. “He can do it. You come to bed, ’Rena.”

“Bear, this…this is huge,” Arena says, pulling her hand away. “I can’t go to –”

“Arena, you know that I can’t sleep without you. You want me tossing and turning without you? You want that? Huh?”

Before she can answer, he grabs her, throws her over his shoulder and walks up the stairs.

“Bear, put me down!” Arena hisses. “This is important!”

Bear continues carrying my sister.

“I have four children, not three, you know,” Arena says in an exasperated voice.  

With a chuckle, I pour myself a whisky and settle down to view the recording. If Arena wasn’t my sister, I’d tease Bear, call him pussy-whipped, a wuss, living under a petticoat government. But my heart sings when I see them together, loving each other. If my sister is happy, I am happy.

Three whiskies, and a lot of useless footage later, I have nothing. What if I am wrong? Hope slowly fizzles. But, I forward the tapes and continue watching.

“Anything?”

I turn around and look at my sister, creeping into the dining room with a blanket around her.

“Nah. Go to bed.”

“Can’t. I really am excited about this new development.” She makes herself comfortable on a chair and watches the screen with me.

A short while later, I jerk to attention at the sight of a blurry figure running toward Bear’s house. It’s black and white footage, so we cannot determine what color the man’s sweater is, however, it is striped!

“Ohmygod! That is not Rival,” Arena whispers. “Look at his gait – it’s a man.”

I nod as the figure passes Arena’s house and heads toward the neighbors across from her house. He removes the striped sweater he’s wearing, rolls it up, and places it under a shrub.

“Paydirt!” I say throwing my hand up in the air.

“Ohmygod!” my sister says.

The man runs on and eventually disappears from the wide-angle screen. We never get to see his face.

Arena jumps to her feet and runs to the window, where she peers out at her neighbors across. “Do you think it’ll still be in their shrubs?”

I think about it before I answer. “I doubt it. He would have…” I suddenly get an idea.

“He would have come back for it,” I say, as I continue watching the screen.

“You think so?”

“Well, I wouldn’t leave it there for a gardener or for the old folks from across to find it. If it were me, I would come back at a later date and remove it.”

I start to forward the footage. We jerk upright when we see footage of a car driving slowly past the neighbor’s property. A white SLK. The same, if not similar to the one I followed earlier on. The driver appears to be a man, but again, we cannot see his face.

“What ’bout his registration plates?” 

I shake my head.

“Damn!”

The car drives off. But minutes later, the Mercedes returns, slowing down even further to view the property in question. Again, he drives off.

“Damn!” 

“He’s casing, relax,” I say.

Then I smile when I see him return a few minutes later on foot, a shopping bag in his hand. We watch him reach into the shrub and remove what looks like the sweater and probably the gun. When he turns around, we get a full view of his face.

“Bingo!” I cry, jumping up from my chair. 

“Rival’s cleared!” Arena says, jumping up and down.

“She sure is.”

“I’ll get dressed and we’ll go to the cops?” Arena says.

I shake my head. “I need to do something first. Not a word to Rival or anyone other than Bear.”

“But…but…”

“No buts, ’Rena,” I say, putting on my jacket. “Just go to bed and leave things to me.” I rush out of the house.

My sister follows me out of the house. “What are you gonna do, Ritchie? Tell me.”

I stop and turn around. “I’m gonna take Scarlett out to dinner to the finest restaurant in Sydney!”

“What?”

I laugh as I open the door of my Jeep.

When I look at my sister, she is looking up at the balcony.

I follow her eyes to Rival’s. Oh fuck!

The hurt in Rival’s eyes makes me feel bad. Enough to make me want to run up to her and explain. But I don’t have time. I have too much to do to save that lovely arse of hers.

I give my sister a stern look. Not a word. She nods. I race off to see Vlad, a huge grin on my face.

RIVAL

I shouldn’t be upset about who Ritchie sees and what he does, I tell myself. We’re not together. He’s history. We’re just friends. Yet, I’m hurt and so disappointed in him. How could he possibly go to dinner with Scarlett? Her of all people? The woman I despise with every fiber of my being. Given that Ritchie and I once loved each other once and promised to love each other forever, I have to admit, I expected some degree of loyalty from him.

How fickle has he become? Or was he that fickle all the time and I just failed to see it? Two-faced, that’s what he is. Sure, he’s being really nice to me and my girls, visits every day and pays special attention to Holly, so there, I can’t fault him. But clearly, Scarlett is a master of seduction and without a doubt, Ritchie is following in Bradley’s footsteps. Maybe Bradley was right after all – Ritchie admires Bradley so much that he wants everything Bradley has. 

I have to let go. With all that I have been through, I’ve realized in life that if someone wants to leave, you should always let them go. Trying to stop them, hanging on to them is like trying to hold smoke. In the end, it’s all okay, it’s all good. I’m living testimony to that.

Besides, I have no time or energy to think about Ritchie. Any day now, I am going to be arrested for Bradley’s death, and of course my stress levels are high.

Bradley is no longer around to protect me or my girls, so I am totally responsible for my two babies and myself. That’s why I fight for calm. In spite of the grueling interrogations, I haven’t been arrested yet, so I try really hard not to think about the murder charges. Maybe, just maybe, Scarlett will be caught and the charges will go away. I know Scarlett is behind Bradley’s murder.

I’m more worried about ending up in Dunhill. The first symptom that something is wrong with me is my inability to fall sleep, and sleep has recently eluded me. If I do end up in Dunhill, what happens to Holly and Phoebe? Some days I feel absolutely overwhelmed and am unable to leave my bed.

However, Arena’s never far from me. She’s present during consultations with Vlad, she sits with me when I’m being questioned by detectives, she drags me to coffee and insists on taking long drives with me and the kids. She truly is my mainstay right now.

To help me cope, she has me keeping an electronic diary. “Once all your thoughts are down on ‘paper,’ and out of your muddled mind, you will find yourself less stressed.” She may be right, because I do feel better after journaling my thoughts and the day’s events.

However, I hate it when she tells me to relax in a blasé voice. Sometimes she acts as if my arrest is not going to take place. Does she get that I am facing life behind bars?

There is a plus side – my book sales have rocketed because of the exposure I’m getting for Bradley’s killing. That doesn’t comfort me in any way. How can it when the real killer is out there, with her lips an inch away from the man I love? Loved. (Past tense – let’s be clear about tense here.) Looking svelte in killer heels and a dress that shows off every curve?

She’s gotten away with murder. Literally, and I’m going to take the rap for it. The injustice of it all.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I killed her. If I walked up to her, threw a scarf around her neck, and tightened until she died. It would solve so many problems. But she’s too strong for that. I would need a gun. Where the hell do I get one from? Anyway, those dark thoughts are something I have to brush away or they could fester and lead to other things.

I guess I can handle anything except Ritchie’s betrayal. I miss him. I miss his laughter and his goofing around and his strong arms around me. With him by my side, I always felt invincible. Now Scarlett probably feels invincible. How the tables have turned.

Chapter Thirty-One

RITCHIE

It’s 5 p.m. when I ease my Jeep into Scarlett’s driveway. For the past couple of days, I’ve wined and dined her, swam with her and even watched a few DVDs at her place. It’s been fun for sure.

Today she greets me dressed in a white string bikini that leaves little or nothing to the imagination. “Hey, handsome. Preparing us some cocktails.” She gestures for me to follow her.

“Great! I could do with one.”

We enjoy her mixology skills and chat for a while before she dives into the pool. Not only does Scarlett look great in a bikini, but she is also a magnificent swimmer. Graceful.

“Join me,” she says, treading water.

I hold up my hand. “That time of the month.” 

She laughs and gets out of the water. I take a towel to her and place it around her shoulders.