Recipes for Love and Murder (26 page)

‘No,' said John. ‘Green. Please. Let me up, I can't breathe.'

‘That Mr Marius,' said Dirk, shifting his weight to turn to Anna. ‘Do you think he did it because Martine wouldn't sell?'

John moaned under Dirk's movements.

‘Dirk,' I said, ‘you and Anna need to be in hospital getting better. The funeral is tomorrow.'

‘I don't trust that Mr Marius,' said John. ‘If he's working with Shaft . . . And he wanted that land for fracking . . . What would he do to a woman like Martine who stood in his way?'

Anna loosened her grip on the pole and took the syringe needle out of John's neck. She was gazing into a corner of the room. She said something under her breath that was hard to catch. But Dirk and John heard her, and they both nodded. I knew what it was because I'd heard her say it before: ‘I'll kill him.'

Dirk climbed off John, and sat down in an armchair. Anna pushed the pole aside and poked the syringe under a chair cushion. She used her arms to pull herself a little away from John, and stretched the leg under her alongside her plaster cast. John turned himself onto his back and stroked his ribs.

‘That blerrie fracking donder,' said Dirk.

‘We'll get him,' said John.

John looked at Anna and then Anna looked at Dirk. These were very different looks from the earlier ones of hatred and fear. They were like naughty children now, hatching a secret plan.

There was the sound of a car racing along the dirt road towards us.

‘It's the police,' I said.

‘How about some tea?' said Didi, getting up.

The show was over. I went to help her in the kitchen.

Then they were at the door. Kannemeyer and Piet. Kannemeyer cleared his throat. Candice stood up, and gave him a sunshine smile. One of those smiles that showed off her long legs and pearly toenails.

‘Well, hello, big guy,' she said.

She wasn't talking to Piet.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Kannemeyer smiled at Candy then frowned at the rest of us. He gave me an extra-big frown.

He said, ‘All right, what's going on here?'

‘Niks nie,' said Anna, wiggling the toes on both her feet.

‘Nothing,' echoed John, sitting up, holding his ribs.

Dirk just said nothing.

‘These beskuit look good,' I said to Didi, as I carried them to the coffee table in the lounge, along with the cups. ‘Did you make them?'

‘Organic muesli rusks,' she said, putting her tea tray down on the same table.

Kannemeyer looked at me as if it was all my fault and shook his head.

Piet was moving between us like a mongoose through the grass. He looked at the back of John's neck. There was spot of blood on it. He found the syringe under the cushion, but he didn't touch it. He put his hands on the cushions on our front-row seats.

‘Please help yourself to milk and sugar,' said Didi, pouring from the teapot.

Candice added milk to one cup, and milk and two sugars to another.

‘Coffee,' said Dirk, adjusting his green robe to be respectable.

‘Ja, coffee, please,' said Kannemeyer.

Anna and John also grunted agreement. Didi put down the teapot and went into the kitchen to prepare coffee.

Candice took a beskuit and the sweet tea to Kannemeyer. He thanked her. I watched him sip from his cup and look at her as she smiled and drank her own tea. It was hard not to look at her. She knew how well that little cream dress fitted her, and she was glowing.

Piet pulled Kannemeyer aside to tell him what had happened. I could see from the story of Piet's hands that he had a good idea of the truth.

I also wanted coffee, but it seemed rude to leave all that tea, so I poured myself a cup and went and stood by the kitchen door. It was open and I looked out onto a wild garden with big camphor trees. I wasn't hungry, but I went back to the lounge to get a rusk – just for the company. Kannemeyer was listening to Piet and watching Candy. I went out the kitchen door, and stood with my rusk and tea in the shade of a camphor tree.

I stood between a buchu shrub and a bitterbos plant. The sky was big and bright blue. Too bright. I was feeling blue, but not that bright kind of blue, the other kind.

I drank some tea and looked down at the greenhouse. The baboons were gone. I finished the tea and put the cup down next to a slangbos.

‘We've got a murder to investigate,' I told the rusk, which I hadn't eaten.

It looked good, but not as good as my mother's muesli beskuit, and I still wasn't hungry.

We marched out into the sun, the rusk and I, in the direction of the greenhouse. I trampled some heart-seed love grass with my veldskoene. The vetplantjies and vygies were all flowering after the rain. I stepped on a little mouse-fig succulent and its iridescent petals were crushed under my heel.

I was sorry I had stepped on the mouse-fig, and I placed my feet more carefully. I found a narrow dirt path and followed it down to the greenhouse. It was not a long walk, but it was hot. I was glad to reach the shade of a rhus tree that stood at the entrance to the glass room.

‘Blikemmer,' I said to the rusk. ‘What a mess.'

You could tell a troop of baboons had run wild there. Pots of soil were knocked over and plants were broken. There were squashed red and green things on the floor that were maybe once fruit or vegetables. In the corner I saw what I was looking for.

‘A pomegranate tree,' I said to the rusk, ‘but there's no fruit on it. Not even tiny green fruit.'

I walked between some blobs of red and purple. Tomatoes and grapes, I think.

‘But there was fruit on it,' said a voice.

I jumped and looked down at the beskuit in my hand. For a moment I thought I had finally gone crazy, and my rusk was talking back to me. But then Piet was by my side.

‘Jinne, Piet, you walk like a cat,' I said. ‘I didn't hear you.'

Piet ran his fingers over the tips of a pomegranate branch.

‘You see – it was plucked here.'

‘Was it ripe?' I asked.

He shrugged.

‘Those blooming baboons,' I said.

‘Let's ask them,' he said.

He pointed to a tomato-coloured paw print on the floor. I walked behind Piet as he followed their tracks out of the greenhouse, then across a field and into the dry river bed. Even I could see their prints there in the sand. I stood in the shade of the sweet thorns and wild olives, and looked up towards the kloof, where Piet was pointing.

The trees were flowering, and the air was full of bees and the sweet smell of blossoms. Piet walked ahead of me, up the sandy bed. He stopped often to look at ants, so I could catch up with him. I also stopped to watch the ants so my breath could catch up with me. There were lines of them marching along, carrying pollen and flowers.

We walked up the dry river towards the mountain. I was glad I was wearing my veldskoene. They know how to walk on the sand and stones. We came to a big gwarrie tree. Piet nodded to it as if he was greeting an old woman, then he crouched on his haunches in its shade. I stood beside him in the cool, and let my breathing slow down. He rested his hand gently on one of its branches. His pale brown skin was rough and dry like the dark skin of the gwarrie bark, and his face was wrinkled like its leaves. Gwarries grow very slowly, and the trunk of this one was thick – it must have been a few thousand years old. Piet's people, the Bushmen, had been around many thousands of years. He said something I couldn't hear to the tree before we stepped out again into the patchy shade of the river bed.

Piet tapped his ear, and I stood and listened. Baboons were barking from inside the kloof. Soon we were in the shade of the mountain – close to the ravine. Piet pointed up at a giant fig tree in the kloof, its grey roots wrapped around big stones.

The baboons were having a picnic in the tree. As we got closer, they moved further up its branches. Two young ones were chasing each other, fighting over some grapes. A baby baboon was attached to its mama's belly, holding a red tomato in its mouth.

Piet looked around the base of the tree. He found a piece of melon rind, and some green leaves, but they had not left much else.

Piet pointed out a big baboon. The baboon was holding onto something in one paw and scratching his tummy with the other. He showed us his teeth. I think he wanted my rusk. I gave the rusk to Piet. Piet chewed on it and looked up at the baboon. The baboon grunted and bared its teeth again.

When he had finished eating, Piet picked up a white stone from the river bed.

He took a few steps back and shouted: ‘Jou skollie!'

Then he threw the stone at the big baboon and it hit him –
thwock
– on his hairy belly.

You could see the baboon didn't like being called a scallywag, because he barked very loudly and threw something down at Piet. This was followed by a noisy storm of barking and a rain of food flying down at us. Something hard hit me on the head. It hurt.

‘Bliksem,' I said, rubbing the spot.

The baboons jumped from the tree onto the mountain cliffs and made unhappy grunting barks. We had really messed up their picnic. In the sand around us were grapes and melon rinds and tomatoes. On his face Piet had tomato splatter and a smile.

There at my feet – the thing that had whacked me on the head – was a half-eaten ripe pomegranate, its seeds red and glistening like jewels.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

‘How come I always find you in the middle of the trouble, Mrs van Harten?' said Kannemeyer.

We were back, on the stoep of the farmhouse. Piet handed him the pomegranate. He looked from the fruit to Piet to me. Inside I could hear John moaning, and Didi fussing over him.

‘The baboons,' I said, ‘they took it from the greenhouse.'

‘Nice work,' Kannemeyer said to the pomegranate. ‘You went baboon-chasing?'

‘Piet found them,' I said, ‘in a fig tree.'

‘That woman, Candice, she took Anna and Dirk to go and see the boy in George. Tell him about his ma.'

‘Oh.'

‘I told them now was not a good time to go,' he said. ‘But the people around here don't listen to me.'

Piet was looking at the ants on the other end of the stoep.

‘Could you drive the ambulance back to the hospital?' said Kannemeyer. ‘With John. He needs to get his ribs checked.'

‘Did they tell you what happened here?'

‘No. But we worked it out.' He shook his head. ‘Of course, no one wants to press charges.'

‘At least Anna and Dirk have stopped fighting,' I said.

‘With each other, maybe.'

‘What you going to do about that?' I said, looking at the pomegranate in his hand.

‘Have a word with John.'

‘Best when she's not around,' I said.

He nodded. He looked out onto the blue slopes of the mountain.

‘This Candy woman,' he said, ‘you're friendly with her.'

‘Kind of,' I said.

Now he was calling her Candy.

Piet looked at me, then Kannemeyer, then back at me, like something was about to happen.

‘What do you know about her?' asked the detective.

‘I told you about her yesterday. She's Martine's cousin.'

He hadn't asked me about Candy yesterday. But now that he had seen her, he wanted to know all about her.

‘Tell me more,' he said.

I shrugged.

‘She drinks,' I said. Then I felt stupid. ‘Sometimes. She was upset about Martine.'

Kannemeyer smoothed the tips of his moustache.

‘Why do you ask?' I said.

‘Just interested,' said Kannemeyer.

Hattie came to fetch me from the hospital in her Etios. As I got in, she handed me a brown envelope with a Riversdale postmark.

‘It was sent speed mail,' she said. ‘So I thought it might be urgent.'

I had thought of walking down to the
Gazette
, rather than asking her for a lift, but my legs were walked out and the day was just too hot. At least her car had air conditioning. I breathed in a big mouthful of cool air as we jerked across the car park.

‘So, do tell, Maria, what did you find?'

She was on the wrong side of the road, and she scraped lightly against a low wall to avoid hitting an oncoming car.

I gave her the latest circus, baboon and pomegranate report. She shook her head and clicked her tongue and asked questions in all the right places. Hattie was a good listener, even if she was a bad driver.

‘You must have missed lunch?' she said, as we raced down Hospital Hill.

‘Ja,' I said.

‘Me too,' she said. ‘I thought we could go for a chicken pie.'

‘I'm not hungry,' I said.

She slammed on her brakes and pulled over to the side of the road, bumping into the trunk of a jacaranda tree.

‘Maria,' she said, ‘are you going to tell me what's going on with you?'

I watched a few purple flowers land on the bonnet of her car. Loosened by the thud.

She said: ‘The detective called me. He told me what happened. With your shoes.'

Some insect in the tree was creaking like a door that needed oil.

‘I didn't want to worry you,' I said.

‘For heaven's sake, don't be an idiot,' she said. ‘Why don't you come and stay with me for a few days?'

‘Did the detective put you up to this?'

‘The man is worried for your safety,' she said. ‘And I'm worried about more than that. You're not yourself.'

Now the insect was creaking double time. Calling for a mate, I suppose.

‘I'm tired,' I said. ‘I didn't sleep well last night.'

‘Now you say you're tired. Earlier you said your tummy was sore, and that you've got Jessie's sickness. Now it turns out she wasn't sick after all. Well, love-sick maybe.'

I heard what sounded like another insect replying to the first one.
Creak. Creak-creak
.

‘Well, I never . . . ' said Hattie. ‘Tannie Maria. Are you in love?'