My Brother’s Keeper (3 page)

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That sounds good.’

‘The spare key is under the mat at the front door. Oh, and I’ll put a cheque in the post to cover flight costs and all. I don’t have internet banking, I’m sorry. There’s a lot I haven’t got my head around yet …’

I let the sentence peter out. No doubt there were a number of things other than internet banking she’d have to get her head around. High on the list would be how to live her life knowing she’d killed her five-year-old son and done her best to murder her seven-year-old daughter. Maybe living in that Christian commune would help.

Her offer of more money reminded me I needed to deposit her down payment cheque or risk getting an embarrassing call from the bank. ‘We can sort out the money when I send you my report,’ I said bravely. The silence stretched on. She wasn’t an easy person to talk to by phone. Jason, on the other hand, was laughing loudly with someone as he opened and slammed wardrobe doors. Presumably, he was making sure they worked. Or looking for skeletons.

I forced myself back to my phone call. ‘If Sunny doesn’t want
you to know anything about her, I won’t tell you. That’s the deal.’ It felt cruel to remind her. The silence went on forever.

‘Yes. I understand,’ she said, finally. As I lowered the handset to the cradle I heard her add, ‘God bless.’ A little nervously, I thought. She must have heard what I did to the last person who tried to bless me. It was at Niki’s funeral. Apparently, Father Fahey’s index finger still bears the scar.

T
UESDAY
20 N
OVEMBER
2012

I
’ve never understood the ‘fine dining followed by great sex’ thing. Who wants great sex on a full stomach? Luckily Robbie agrees with me on this. So we had great — actually, we had excellent — sex and then we dug into our instant pasta meals with almost as much appetite as we’d had for each other. When the sex is excellent even microwave spaghetti bolognese forked straight out of the plastic container tastes mighty fine. As a bonus I got to watch Robbie eat naked. He rested his pasta on the pillow in his lap and scooped forkfuls into his mouth between grins. Robbie had the most spectacular grin of anyone I’d ever seen. It hitched up effortlessly on each side like the house curtain at an old-fashioned movie theatre, hijacking his entire face. And it doesn’t take much to make that grin appear
either. As a habitual frowner, I liked that about him. There was heaps I liked about this man and that grin was right up there in the top three.

Don’t ask.

I filled him in on my meeting with Karen and my imminent trip to Auckland. He said he was happy to look after Wolf while I away. As an ex-police dog handler Robbie would have been an ideal dog-sitter anyway, but even without their shared occupational background my dog and my boyfriend had developed a relationship of some depth and complexity. A few months earlier I had been kidnapped by a nutcase who thought I should pay for what he perceived my sister had done to him. I was missing for days, during which time everyone thought I was dead. I know I did. By the time I was found, alive though not entirely undamaged, Robbie and Wolf had seriously bonded. I suspect they had spent several days comforting each other; which was fine with me.

That Robbie had also bonded with my ex-husband, Sean, during this time — not so fine. As far as I could tell, Sean and Robbie had just three things in common: they were both cops, they both loved Wolf and — well, me. They had me in common. Now I lived in fear of them becoming gym buddies, which just goes to show the level of my paranoia since neither of them belonged to a gym. Not as far as I knew, anyway.

‘I’ve got a rostered day off tomorrow so I can take you to the airport and then I’ll just keep him with me,’ Robbie said. ‘And he can come to the station with me on Thursday, Friday. He’ll enjoy being back in a cop shop. The boys’ll like it too,’ he added, leaning sideways to put the empty spaghetti container on the
floor. ‘You know, once a police dog and all that.’

I watched the way the muscles in Robbie’s stomach bunched as he stretched over and then relaxed as he settled back on the bed. He caught me eyeing him and grinned in response. Cocky. Wolf waited obediently for a sign that he could lick the spaghetti container clean. Robbie deliberately kept him waiting. It’s part of the training. It occurred to me he might be using the same technique with me.

‘Sean came round this morning—’

Robbie interrupted. ‘How’s he going with the Conway case? He’s been working long hours on that with not much result.’

I didn’t want to discuss Sean’s latest case with Robbie. Anyway, Sean didn’t share that stuff with me any more. Robbie finally made a small hand gesture to Wolf who launched himself at the container. I was determined to show more restraint.

‘He wants me to sell the house,’ I said.

Robbie dumped the pillow on the floor. ‘I guess that’s fair enough. He must need the money with the little kid and all.’ Without waiting for a response, he padded through to the bathroom. Instead of admiring his naked butt, which I would normally do, I pulled a face at his back. Childish, I know, but I’d have preferred him to say Sean’s request was unreasonable. I’d have liked him to commiserate with me, not understand Sean. I wanted him to take my side so that I could be the gracious and generous one to say that Sean wanting me to sell the house was fair enough. Grumpily, I finished off my spaghetti while Robbie peed. He came back into the room as naked as he had left it.

‘So. You’ll be buying a new place, eh? Any chance you’ll be moving over the hill to the ’Mata?’ It was a joke. Wainuiomata,
where Robbie worked in the local cop station, didn’t have a lot going for it apart from its proximity to a regional park and its low-priced housing. The high local crime rate was probably a plus for him, professionally.

‘Yeah, well it might come to that, depending on how much we get for this.’

He climbed back onto the bed and placed my empty spaghetti container on the floor for me. ‘We’d make such good neighbours,’ he said, sliding his body alongside mine. ‘I could drop by for a cup of sugar.’ He grinned that ridiculously hitched grin at me.

While Wolf chased the plastic containers around the room, licking every corner of them, we did something similar. Robbie tasted of spaghetti bolognese. I guess I did too. Maybe there’s something to be said for fine dining followed by great sex after all.

W
EDNESDAY
21 N
OVEMBER
2012

W
e were nearly at the airport when Robbie slapped the steering wheel. ‘Oh, shit. Sorry. I forgot to tell you. Sean rang.’

‘When?’ I asked. Which wasn’t actually the question I was thinking.

‘When you were in the shower,’ he said. ‘This morning.’

‘You answered my phone?’ I could hear the accusatory tone. I’m sure Robbie did, too, but he just casually threw that grin at me.

‘No. I left it for the voicemail to kick in.’ He pulled the police car into a temporary park outside the terminal. People stared, probably assuming I had been picked up for an offence. The murderous look on my face didn’t help. If being really
pissed off was an offence — fine. Hang me.

‘When Sean didn’t get a pick-up from you, he phoned me.’ Robbie studied my face. ‘On my mobile,’ he added, going for the information overkill. ‘He said to remind you that a friend of yours — Abi?’ He waited for confirmation but I just kept staring out the window, controlling my sudden urge to hit him. ‘Sean said she used to be a real-estate agent and he thought you might want to contact her and see if she could recommend someone to sell your place.’

I nodded and then busied myself organising carry-on and handbag, making a big fuss about looking for my ticket, saying goodbye to Wolf, keeping my head averted. The last thing I wanted was a fight but Sean and Robbie being mates was really doing my head in.

He put his hand on my arm. ‘Hey, Di. Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ I lied. ‘Thanks for the lift. And Wolf. Thanks.’ I opened the car door.

‘Move in with me,’ he said. I was gobsmacked but he repeated the offer as if I’d spoken. ‘When you come back from Auckland. Move in with me.’ He nodded in the direction of Wolf. ‘You can bring your funny-looking kid too, if you like.’ Wolf had his head out the window, tongue lolling, one ear up, one down. ‘And then, when you’ve sold your house, we could buy a place together.’ I suspect my mouth was hanging open. ‘In the city,’ he added, perhaps misinterpreting my look of dismay. I stuttered and stammered a non-reply, something stupid about needing a coffee before my flight. ‘Just tell me you’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Okay. I’ll think about it,’ I said. I kissed that lovely mouth
of his and walked towards the terminal. When I glanced back, he was whistling as he climbed back into the car. Wolf was leaning forward, trying to sneak a surreptitious neck lick. Neither of them was looking in my direction. They appeared blissfully happy. In the glass entrance doors I caught sight of my reflection. I looked pretty much like I always do. Then the doors slid open, splitting me in two.

W
EDNESDAY
21 N
OVEMBER
2012

A
long white plane moving silently across an expansive blue sky; strutting mynahs and jacaranda blooms; the sweet cloying smell of jasmine, the rotting stink of mangrove swamps; Rangitoto. All triggers. All invitations to the ghosts of my past to haunt me. I lived in Auckland when I was kid. We did, I mean. Mum, Dad, Niki and me. I remembered Mum here, shrugging the sundress straps off her shoulders. Bronzed legs. Shading her eyes from the late afternoon sun. Smiling. I don’t know if they’re real memories but I’ll take them, they’re all I’ve got of her. Memories of Niki surfaced, too. Us playing in the back yard, an Auckland back yard — there’s still nothing to compare; Niki running ahead of me on the way to the corner dairy to buy ice creams, traversing tree roots that had erupted through
the pavement; Niki looking back over her shoulder, laughing, squealing. Her smooth brown legs. She was a gorgeous two-year-old, all joy and madness. Fearless. Gone.

I realised with a jolt that my father’s ghost was silent.

The Ponsonby house owned by Karen’s mother was one of a big block of townhouses just behind Three Lamps, at the junction between Ponsonby and Herne Bay. The units were spread across three streets to form a triangle, with the interior of the triangle being the gated commons area and driveway access to the units’ garages. I found the key under the front door welcome mat, as Karen said I would. A burglar would get a real hoot out of that little irony.

Later I’d ring Justin, introduce myself and ask if we could meet, but first I planned to walk by the house, get a feel for the neighbourhood. I wanted to try to sense how the family lived. In preparation, I’d dressed in trackies and gym shoes. Herne Bay is teeming with young trophy mums, keeping themselves in shape. Close inspection would give me away but with my hair pulled back in a ponytail and a pedometer clipped onto my waistband I’d pass a cursory look. If there was a car parked in the driveway or a sign of someone at home, like the song says, I’d just walk on by. That was the brilliant plan and, like all brilliant plans, it went totally to shit.

The house was a lavish icing-white Victorian villa set back from the street, with a high, wide visage. Two attic rooms had been added into the spacious roof, each with its own toy balcony. I guessed these rooms would have panoramic views of Cox’s Bay on one side, the Disney-coloured Chelsea Sugar
Refinery across the water, and maybe even a glimpse of the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The property was what my father used to describe, accompanied by a clownish droop of the bottom lip, as salubrious. In other words, this place was serious money.

I crossed the road to gawk at the turquoise lap pool. Before I could wipe the envious drool from my chin and move on, a silver BMW M3 convertible drove up onto the footpath and stopped directly in front of me, cutting off my way forward. I immediately recognised both the man driving and the young girl in the passenger seat from my Google search. It was impossible to move past the car without getting in their way. Keeping my head down I feigned stretching as Sunny climbed out of the vehicle first and then her father.

Justin beeped the car lock over his shoulder, strode past me and went through the gate without so much as a glance. Sunny, too, stepped past and for a giddy moment it seemed possible I might not have registered on either of their radars. But as I edged around the metallic butt of the Beemer, Sunny spoke.

‘Sorry about the parking,’ she said. ‘Dad always does that. He’s going back out again in a minute.’ She had paused to check the letter box but when I didn’t answer she shifted her focus to me. Our eyes met and she smiled. She’d seen me, registered me and would remember me. It was too late to walk on.

‘No problem. I’m a bit of a footpath parker myself,’ I said. She smiled and pushed the gate open. ‘Actually,’ I added, and waited for her to turn back towards me. ‘You’re Sunny Bachelor, aren’t you? Do you think I can have a word with your dad?’

Sunny stood very still, her long limbs twitching with a fight-or-flight
response. I tried to look as unstalker-like as possible. I didn’t want to frighten her more than I already had.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘How do you know my name?’

Either I was doing an even lousier job than usual or this fourteen-year-old was more suspicious than most. I guess you learn to be wary of the unexpected if your mother has tried to kill you. Suddenly Justin was there behind her, car keys at the ready. He picked up the tension instantly.

‘What?’ he said to Sunny, then without waiting for a response, turned his attention to me. ‘What do you want?’ He advanced with hunched shoulders and straining pecs and didn’t stop advancing until he was inches in front of me, fists clenched ready to plant me one. He had gone from easy, detached calm to fight-ready in point four of a second. The Beemer I was sweating against probably boasted a similar acceleration rate. I unstuck my body from his car and readied myself to fend a blow. Better a broken arm than a smashed face, I guess. Mind you, a comminuted diaphysial fracture of the radius and ulna is pretty painful. I should know.

‘I didn’t mean for us to meet like this. I just happened to be walking past.’ Liar, liar, pants on fire. ‘I’m Diane Rowe. Can I make a time to talk with you?’

‘Talk about what?’ he said, folding his arms across his chest. It looked more impressive like that. That was the point. But already his anger was dissipating. I’m five foot ten, athletic and can hold my own in more situations than most people, but he had it all over me in size and strength and knew it. The knowledge of it calmed him, just like that. I wasn’t so sure he’d stay all that sanguine when I told him his ex-wife had employed me to
check up on their daughter. Sunny stepped out from behind her father’s bulk. She eyed me closely.

‘You know Karen has been released from prison,’ I said, as an opening gambit. They both tensed and glanced at each other but neither responded. ‘I’ve been asked,’ I said, skirting the point, ‘to talk to Sunny. To see how she is. Check that she’s okay.’

Justin swelled up like a baboon’s arse as he closed the small gap between us.

‘Who told you to check on Sunny? Tell me who told you to do that!’

He was right in my face, spit hailing my cheek. What Justin lacked in height he made up for in bulk. I was scared but knew I had to stay exactly where I was. I needed to keep my voice calm and, ideally, I needed to not shit my pants.

‘Karen asked me to make contact,’ I said, trying not to flinch in anticipation of a punch. ‘I’m sorry it’s happened like this. That’s my fault, not hers. I should have phoned you first.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ He sounded more confused than angry.

‘I’m a missing persons expert. I try to find people who are missing.’

He breathed heavily on me for a full ten seconds — I counted. Then, finally, he took a step back. My butt hole and half of my flight muscles relaxed.

‘Well, you can fuck off then. Sunny isn’t missing. She’s here with me. I’m her father.’ He wanted to say more but held it back because of Sunny. I saw him struggling and he knew it. ‘Go inside,’ he said, turning his back on me and attempting to usher Sunny inside the gate.

She shrugged his arm off her shoulder. ‘No. I want to hear her.’

‘I said go inside.’ He knew she wouldn’t.

‘If she was sent by … M … by Mum.’ She halted, embarrassed, I think, by her hesitation at the word, but then picked it up again. ‘I want to hear what she has to say.’

He glanced up and down the street and then pushed the gate open aggressively. ‘Let’s take this inside.’

Presuming the ‘this’ to be taken inside was me, I dutifully followed Sunny down the path to the house. Justin walked close behind me. I could feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. It was meant to be intimidating. It was.

So far my judgment had been way off course, but I was determined not to make things worse by gabbling on about the impressive Carrara marble benchtop, although the kitchen was, without doubt, an impressive designer number, all grey on grey and white on white. Justin pulled a chair out from the billiard-sized dining table and leaned in to indicate I was to sit on it. I perched awkwardly with my bum on the hard wooden edge. The room smelt of burnt milk. Justin filled the space with his bluster, and it was a large space to fill. Eight metres by eight metres, would be my guess. Sunny tilted her shoulder against the wall, levelled a cool gaze at her father and then transferred it to me. Physically, she resembled her mother. The same almond-shaped eyes and long neck. She was painfully skinny but there was a steadiness about Sunny that her mother didn’t have. This girl is brave, I thought.

‘So why did Karen send a private detective to check up on me?’ she asked. She’d been practising this question on the way
into the house. Using ‘Karen’ instead of ‘Mum’ made it easier for her. We both knew it was bravado.

‘I’m not a private investigator … I, I’m …’

She interrupted me with a forced laugh. ‘Oh great, not even.’

I let the sarcasm sit there. She had every right to be smart-arsed. It had been unfair of me to catch her unprepared. Once I was out of here I would beat myself up for getting it so wrong, but right now my priority was to stop Justin doing that job for me. Hands on hips in a clichéd posture of an angry man, his eyes swung from Sunny to me and back again. He saw his daughter was close to tears and took control.

‘Look, I don’t want you here in our home,’ he said. Unfairly, I thought, given that it was he who had ushered me in there. Sunny gave him a look. It wasn’t one I could interpret, but Justin had. He scrabbled around in his wallet and threw a business card in my lap.

‘Come to my office tomorrow, ten o’clock. We’ll talk there.’ I pocketed the card. ‘Now you can fuck off,’ he said, opening the back door for emphasis.

I placed a card of my own on the table. Gym shoes squeaking, I made the long trek across the floor. I made it all the way across the eight metres of polished recycled rimu without Justin thumping me in the ear. I’d count that as my best achievement of the day.

‘I might be there or I might not,’ Sunny called, with all the pluck of a poleaxed fourteen-year-old.

‘We’ll decide on that tonight,’ Justin amended. ‘As a family.’

He was addressing Sunny, not me, but I caught the response from her. It was a definite sneer. Was it the word ‘family’ she
was reacting to? Hard to tell with teenagers. They do make a point of sneering at everything.

The decor of the townhouse was low-key designed living space, three floors, plus a garage, laundry and storage area underneath. There was no one hiding in the wardrobe or the showers. I checked. But there were women’s clothes in the main bedroom’s wardrobe and a few men’s shirts and jackets in the smaller bedroom, facing the unit’s common area.

A big antique clock ticked the minutes away as I studied the cluster of photos on the wall in the spare bedroom. It was a poignant soundtrack by which to study these captured moments in time. They were arranged in a semblance of chronology, starting with studio family portraits of Karen as a toddler with her mother and father. They were quite formal for the 1980s. There was no sign of other siblings. Parenting can be a big learning curve for someone who’s grown up with no little brothers or sisters to look after. Still, ‘learning curve’ is a long way from murder. The most recent photos were of Karen’s mother, Norma, in the company of a benign-looking bearded man. He looked a good decade older than her, but from the camera’s point of view, they made a happy-looking couple.

In one of these photos a good-looking guy in his late twenties was squeezed proprietorially between the two of them. I pieced together the narrative of the family’s life: Karen was an only child and after her dad died Norma had remarried. The looker in the photo was her new husband’s son from a previous marriage.

One photo of Karen with Sunny and Falcon was set apart from the others, centred above a small oak side table on which
a wooden cross and candle were placed. Judging from the age of the kids, the shot must have been taken shortly before Karen drove the car into the lake. Sunny leaned against the bonnet of an olive-green two-door Holden hatchback. Knock-kneed and ridiculously skinny, enormous sunglasses hid her expression. Falcon was unsmiling, his arm stretched towards the car as if reaching to anchor himself. Karen was in the driver’s seat. She was looking at the camera with what seemed to me like a look of defeat. I chided myself for reading way too much into the image. This was me trying to understand how anyone could have driven their two children into a lake. Then it occurred to me that this was probably the car. If I was right, then it was a morbid choice of images for Norma to hang on the bedroom wall, even with the reverential cross and candle keeping it company. I went in search of a glass to fill to the brim with the wine I’d brought.

Feet up and alcoholic sustenance in hand I could now comfortably kick myself for stuffing up the first meeting with Sunny. It had been stupid to try a walk-by and risk getting caught. Now I needed to decide if I should tell Karen I’d met her daughter; cowardice won. Anyway, I reasoned, the deal with Karen was that I wouldn’t tell her where Sunny was until her daughter had instructed me to. Sunny certainly hadn’t done that. Not yet anyway.

Karen answered on the second ring.

‘Have you seen her?’ she asked, before I’d said a word.

‘There’s a chance I might get to talk to her tomorrow,’ I said. Evasion isn’t exactly lying.

Her breathing was loud in my ear. ‘Good,’ she managed.

‘It’s not confirmed yet,’ I warned.

‘Okay.’

She was grateful for anything I could offer. We chatted for a bit about her mum’s townhouse; I thanked her for letting me stay there; she urged me to make myself at home and to use anything at all. Her phone manner hadn’t got any easier. There were still long hesitations and she held the phone close to her mouth. The sound of her uneven breathing was unnervingly intimate.

‘If I do see Sunny,’ I said, ‘and we can talk privately, is there anything specific you want me to check up on? Anything you’re especially worried about?’