My Brother’s Keeper (8 page)

‘No,’ she said finally, her voice very quiet.

‘Salena?’

Sunny coughed an ironic laugh. Fair enough, I thought. From what I’d seen of their relationship Salena wouldn’t be of any use to her anyway.

‘Are you totally sure she’s dead?’

‘Yes, I’m totally sure,’ I said. She sniffed loudly. ‘Is there someone you can go to now? Someone you can talk to? Someone you trust?’ Again the silence. I held my breath, worried that I’d made a seriously bad decision in telling her.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. Surprisingly, she did sound okay. I waited while she blew her nose. ‘I’m alright. Dad will be back soon.’

I kept her talking until she heard Justin’s car pull up outside. She broke down again when she knew he was there; when she knew she could break down. I sat in the car and knocked back the dregs of Sean’s bitter coffee. Professionally, it had been wrong to tell Sunny her mother was dead but it felt ethically wrong not to tell her. Emotionally, it was fucked either way. The whole situation was what I think is called a lose-lose.

The last of the sun had dropped down behind the hills, leaving Oriental Bay in shadow. I flicked the car heater on. The warm air revived the homely odour of dog, but not just any dog. It was the distinctive, aromatic, comforting odour of my dog. I breathed it in deeply.

I was back in Wellington. Home.

S
UNDAY
25 N
OVEMBER
2012

I
n my life, I’ve made love for a number of reasons. Love and desire, to name the two most obvious. But there are other reasons for making love that you only learn about when you’ve been together for a while. The list of reasons for having sex is even longer: lust, fun, tenderness, happiness, sadness and boredom … these are only a few. The great thing about being with someone you love is that you get to make love and you get to have sex. Robbie and I were at that awkward stage in our relationship when neither of us was quite sure if we could include making love in our repertoire of having sex yet. Though Robbie’s suggestion that we move in together needed considered discussion, in the meantime we had plenty of less wordy stuff we could get on with. And though we couldn’t yet decide on
how deep our feelings were for each other, we were unabashedly confident of the depth of our feelings for my dog, which was definitely a plus. For Wolf anyway.

Sunday morning Robbie and I stayed in bed reading the paper, drinking coffee and dunking croissants. Wolf pretended to show no interest in the greasy croissant flakes but I was confident that as soon as we were in the shower he’d be on the bed sneakily hoovering them up, lips luffing. I hadn’t talked work with Robbie except to tell him I’d found Karen’s body and that, though the police were treating her death as suspicious, there was every chance it had been the result of an accident or natural causes. Robbie sensed, I think, that I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t shake the image of Karen propped up against the end of the bed, her legs stuck out in front, ankles crossed, hands beseeching. Nor could I erase the image of Sunny throwing her shoes away and running barefoot down the wharf. Being the one to have told Sunny her mother was dead weighed heavily on me. It shouldn’t have been me, I knew that, but at the time I felt I had no choice.

It might have been my distraction that drove Robbie from my bed. He claimed to have a game of social rugby to get to anyway. Cops have these friendly events all the time. The police are a closed society not entirely of their own making. People fall into two camps when it comes to socialising with cops. They either fawn, or feel compelled to complain about a parking ticket some arsehole cop gave them five years ago. Having lived with one for a number of years I understood why it was easier for cops to just hang out with other cops. Sunday morning rugby games were popular with the single cops. Single male cops, that is. There
would be few women brave enough to insist on being included in that male bastion. I didn’t ask Robbie if he was playing rugby with Sean and he didn’t offer information one way or the other, which was a relief. Why do men think it’s okay to buddy up with their girlfriend’s ex-husband? We women know it is just so wrong.

We kissed goodbye. It was a good kiss. Then he said a loving farewell to Wolf who nudged him coquettishly, dipping his big skull between Robbie’s knees to better facilitate the ear rub. His tail wagged out of control. I would have to have words with him about his unseemly display of affection — Wolf, that is.

I spent the next hour moping through the personal records Karen had given me the first time we met. In theory, Karen’s death terminated our contract. In theory, I should parcel everything up and send it back to her, but that seemed rather pointless, her being dead and all. I decided I might as well hang on to it all until the investigation was complete. Presumably, Sunny would be the beneficiary of Karen’s will and the parcel of childhood memorabilia would go to her. Karen’s carefully kept record of her daughter’s childhood milestones seemed even more poignant now. I was in no doubt Karen had been keenly looking forward to seeing her daughter. I wished for Sunny’s sake she had been given the chance to meet Karen but whether she would ever have been able to forgive her mother was another matter entirely. It might have helped if she could understand her mother’s attempt to kill her was an aberration, a terrible mistake brought on by her drug habit. I tipped an embossed card from a pocket-sized envelope into my palm. Inside was a lock of fine hair.
Sunny’s first haircut
was written on the envelope in
backward sloping script. A beep alerted me to a phone text. It was Jason Baker, reminding me that today was my first open home and requesting I vacate the premises before one o’clock. As I stared malevolently at the phone I remembered it held a set of photos that needed downloading. Crime scene photos no less.

There were a dozen in all. Six made up the panorama I’d taken standing in the middle of the room next to Karen’s body. The photos looked as if they belonged in a game of Cluedo. Mrs Peacock in the drawing room with the knife. Maybe it was the light from the bay window heightening the colours that made the images seem lurid. More likely it was the dead body in the middle of the room. I downloaded them all to my laptop and used Photoshop to study each one in detail. I had no idea what I was looking for; maybe a clue to what happened? Who was I kidding? But there was one shot I stalled over. I couldn’t figure out what it was that made me return to it again and again. Something about it bothered me. I gave up and stored the laptop in a file box labelled ‘Tax’. That should put off any likely burglars among the open homers, unless of course they were employees of Inland Revenue.

Normal people spend hours preparing their house for an open home. I made the bed, did the dishes and vacated the premises before one o’clock, as requested, with a full 30 seconds to spare.

Gemma was waiting for me at the dog zone end of Lyall Bay, as arranged. She’s my oldest and closest friend so I didn’t take the scowl personally. She always looks like that. The place was crazy with canines of every shape, size and variety. In the five
hundred metres of designated free dog area there must have been at least thirty freewheeling canines and their not so freewheeling owners. Wolf adopted an aloof and superior manner befitting an elderly ex-police dog until a youthful huntaway approached and sniffed his butt optimistically. That sorted, they cantered off together towards a yappy pack of short-legged terriers, tails and expectations high. We left Wolf to sort out his own social networking while Gemma and I sauntered along the waterline, enjoying the sunshine and sea air. Being a cop, Gemma already knew about the suspicious death in Mt Victoria, but she didn’t know Karen was my client or that I had been the one who found the body.

‘How did it look to you?’ she asked.

‘Dead.’ I hid my shudder in a shrug. ‘She looked dead.’

‘I mean did it look like a homicide or an accident?’

I pictured Karen again. Still. Silent. ‘I don’t know. There was a big bruise on her neck but …’

‘But what?’

‘Well, the room showed no obvious signs of a struggle—’

Gemma interrupted ‘It’s pretty unusual to bang yourself on the neck.’

‘Yeah, I thought that, too.’

‘I’m talking about you. How did you get that bruise?’

Instinctively my hand went to my neck. I didn’t realise the bruise from the she-devil incident with Ned was visible. Robbie hadn’t mentioned it.

Gemma slid a sleazy smile in my direction. ‘You and Robbie getting a bit boisterous?’

‘It was just a misunderstanding with a guy in Auckland.’

Gemma raised an eyebrow but made no comment. We watched Wolf and the huntaway race side by side through the shallows, egging each other on. I was admiring the way Wolf’s hair caught the sunlight. Gemma was thinking about something else entirely.

‘So what is happening with you and Robbie?’

‘Nothing,’ I said way too quickly.

Gemma smiled cruelly. ‘Uh-huh.’ She always manages to get more information out of me than I intend to give. I guess that’s what makes her such a good detective.

‘He wants us to move in together.’ Luckily for me, my phone rang, so I could ignore the surprised look Gemma turned on me. It was Oliver, accountant to the stars.

‘Okay, I took your friend Justin’s accountant out for a drink. I was forced to order from the top shelf.’ No preambles with Oliver.

‘Fine. Send me the bill. What did you find out?’

‘Well, you were right about the gym not making a profit. It’s losing money like the proverbial sieve.’

I watched Gemma wander off towards where Wolf and the huntaway were disputing the ownership of a stick. They were tugging at it from either end. Wolf’s neck muscles were straining, his forelegs flat on the sand, butt high up in the air with effort. His blind eye as milky as an oyster.

‘So they’re in trouble financially?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ he replied archly.

Wolf reluctantly gave up his stick to the huntaway who then dropped it dismissively. Wolf wouldn’t like that.

‘The vitamins or health supplements business or whatever
it is, seems to be doing okay. And according to Lou there’s a lot of cash floating around. Your man claims he’s lucky with the horses. If he is, he’ll be the first.’

Gemma retrieved the stick and hurled it into the water for Wolf. The young huntaway got there first. Having won the race, he didn’t even bother to claim the prize. He stepped over it and sauntered off. I thought I heard Gemma growl at the huntaway but it might just have been Oliver clearing his throat.

‘Okay, thanks, Oliver. I owe you.’

‘Yes, indeed you do. I’ll round the invoice up to the nearest hundred, shall I?’

‘Fine. Lovely to talk to you, too.’

I joined Gemma at the waterline. Wolf was walking backwards, his eyes fixed on the stick. Gemma would go to throw, but every gesture was a feint. At first Wolf lunged in the direction he thought the stick had been thrown, but already after half a dozen false throws he was smart to it. Gemma smirked at his cleverness. ‘So are you going to move in with him?’

Instead of answering, I asked a question of my own. ‘Are you going to be working on the case?’

Gemma feinted with the stick again. This time Wolf didn’t move a muscle. ‘Depends on what Smithy says. It might not even be a case. The body’s still
in situ
but they’re planning to move it later today. He’s down to do the PM tomorrow.’ Smithy doing the postmortem was good news. He and I went way back. Wolf crouched in the water, oblivious to the waves smashing on his butt, eyes riveted on the stick.

‘So? Are you going to move in with Robbie?’ Gemma never left a question unanswered. She was keeping half an eye on the
huntaway who was circling behind her weighing up his chances of getting to the stick before Wolf.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve got the house on the market.’

‘Wow! That’s big,’ Gemma said, swivelling her head in my direction. Wolf thought her attention had shifted. She flung the stick in a high arc over his head. He was on to her though and trotted backwards under it, his one good eye locked on its trajectory. I was on to her, too.

‘It was Sean’s idea. But it’s okay. It’s time to move on.’

I ignored the cynical look Gemma turned on me. It was true. Even if I didn’t really know what ‘moving on’ actually meant. Wolf leapt in the air and caught the stick long before it hit the water. The huntaway was impressed. So were the humans. Maybe it was the pleasure of it that made Gemma more forthcoming than usual.

‘You know that if Smithy thinks there’s anything suspicious, it’ll be the full works. Seven years inside — she would have made a few enemies.’

I hadn’t thought of that. If Karen’s death was a homicide, the cops would be all over it. Some criminal networks are run entirely from inside prison and the death of a recently released prisoner would be thoroughly investigated. Karen may have been the link to the outside world for an activity run from inside. Or she may have thought she’d made the break from an inmate only to discover they had connections outside, too; connections prepared to deliver payback. The cops would be looking closely at all Karen’s relationships, including her most recent cellmate, Vex. My sister’s killer. I looked at Gemma. She nodded in confirmation. I’d finally got there.

I let Wolf keep the prize stick he’d proudly carried all the way back to the car. I heard him crunching away at it in the back seat. It sounded like small bones breaking.

Before unlocking the front door, I hosed and dried Wolf in the back yard and then checked the letter box. On top of my power and phone bills was an unstamped envelope. My name was handwritten on the front in backward sloping script. Inside was a cheque for two thousand dollars, tucked into a folded handwritten note.

And just like that I realised what had bothered me about that crime scene photo. Impatiently, I fired up my laptop and found the shot I’d stalled over. On the far side of Karen’s bedroom, opposite the bay window, was a closed-off fireplace. In the middle of the mantelpiece was a group of photographs. One photo took pride of place in the centre. That was what had disturbed me. I rolled my finger down the mouse to enlarge the photo further and waited impatiently while it focused. It was a photo of Sunny — a recent photo; so recent in fact, she was wearing the same flouncy blouse I’d seen her in on Saturday. I slumped back in my chair. Karen had written that she was
looking forward to seeing what her daughter looked like. When had she put that note in my letter box? It had to be after our phone conversation on Friday night when she had insisted on paying me for the extra time in Auckland. And obviously it was before I found her body on Saturday afternoon. Karen must have got hold of the photo sometime between those two events, which raised the most important question of all: who had given Karen the photo of Sunny in the hours leading up to her death?