Brittle Shadows (17 page)

She bit her
tongue.

“And,” he
continued, “if you can’t come up with a plausible motive you might have to
concede that the authorities know what they’re doing after all.”

“No motive, no
crime?”

“Basically.”

She let the
subject drop. Chris had given her more than enough to think about. After
agreeing to catch up for coffee sometime during the week, they said their
goodbyes. He had a stack of reports to get through. She had researching to do.
Her mind already on the task ahead, she hung up.

Midway through
entering Marcus’s name into Google, her PDA beeped. She finished typing and
clicked Search, before resetting the reminder to make an appointment with the
lawyer attending to Tanya’s estate. Returning the PDA’s stylus to its slot, she
glanced up at her laptop’s monitor.

Results 1 -
100 of about 4,530 for "Marcus Bartlett."

Jemma blew out
a breath. How many men shared the same name? She scanned down the page,
clicking on a promising-looking Wikipedia link. Not that she trusted the
accuracy of the free-for-all encyclopedia’s data, but it was as good a place to
start as any. With luck, it would at least provide some insight – factual or
not – into the man and his reputation, not to mention relevant links.

The article’s
anonymous author didn’t go into a lot of detail, skimming over Marcus’s early
working life as a builder’s laborer to the time when he began to make a name
for himself as a property developer. It appeared from the timeline provided,
that the more successful he became, the more rumor and scandal dogged him.
Allegations of insurance fraud, money laundering, bribery, and blackmail to
name a few. But nothing substantiated. Tall poppy syndrome or was there more to
it? Jemma read on.

Married three
times, widowed twice. A water-skiing accident had claimed the life of Marcus’s
first wife. His second wife had died of a prescription drug overdose. One was
unlucky; two was…

A muscle
twitched at the corner of her left eye, but her gaze remained fixed on the
screen. His third wife – the wife whom she’d had the not so divine pleasure of
meeting – Danielle, had indeed been a model as Jemma suspected. Not much more
was written about the current Mrs Bartlett, except to say she was prominent on
the charity circuit. Some good lay behind those feline features, after all.

Descendants:
one son, Ashley Marcus Granville Bartlett, to his first wife. Tick. One fact
she knew to be true. Fen was right. Ash would be a good catch if wealth were to
be the deciding factor. As the only child, he stood to inherit his father’s
empire.

Her gaze traveled
back up to the section about the Bartlett wives. She couldn’t recall Tanya ever
mentioning the deaths of the first two, though she must have. She shook her
head. Get a grip. Marcus didn’t have the monopoly on dead spouses. Tanya’s
ex-husband, Brent’s, first wife had drowned whilst swimming in the surf near
their home. Did that make him a murder suspect? Of course not.

She returned to
the search page and spent the next few hours glued to the screen, going from
link to link, combing through webpage after webpage looking for information to
either verify or elaborate on the Wikipedia article, or to refute it. When she
found herself going in circles, she stopped.

Rolling her
shoulders back and forth, she reflected on what little information she had
managed to gather. The Bartlett Developments’ website was all gloss and
promotion with no reference to any of the allegations pointed at Marcus. Not
that she had expected it to. What she had found, though, were news articles
elsewhere in which Ash’s name, along with his father’s, was linked to a fire
that had destroyed a derelict warehouse complex. Though arson was suspected, no
charges were ever laid. The insurers paid out. While evidently not newsworthy
enough an item to have featured in the Western Australian news, she was yet
again left wondering why Tanya had kept it from her. What else had her sister
not told her?

She stood and
stretched her cramped muscles. A hollow ache in the pit of her stomach reminded
her she hadn’t eaten. She checked the time: almost midday. Too late for
breakfast. Her mind still processing the information she had read, she headed
to the kitchen to grab a coffee and biscuit.

Marcus’s
business dealings were obviously less than squeaky clean, even if only a
fraction of the allegations against him and his company were true. Is that what
irked Chris so much? That nothing could be pinned on the wealthy developer? The
elastic blue line as Ash called it.

She scooped
coffee grounds into the stainless steel plunger, opened a packet of low-fat
fruit slice and waited for the kettle to boil. If Sean’s death was murder, it
had been an emotive, intensely personal act. Staging his death to look like an
accident or suicide was one thing, but staging it as some lewd sex act gone
wrong was another. Who would go to that much trouble? A woman scorned? A woman
strong enough to overpower a large man? She sighed. Perhaps Chris was right.
Perhaps she was trying to make something out of nothing.

Without realizing
it, she had munched her way through half the packet of fruit slice. She closed
the pack, pushed it aside, and finished making the coffee. Her mind churned
like a software application stuck in a loop. What was wrong with her that she
couldn’t accept the authorities’ findings? Was she simply in denial as everyone
had implied, or did it come from deeper down? Was her subconscious trying to
tell her something?

The intercom
interrupted her brooding.

“Fen!” The last
person she expected to see.

“We should
talk.”

Jemma couldn’t
have put it better herself. “Sure. Come on up. I’ve just made a pot of coffee.”

Fen looked away
from the camera. “I don’t think I can.”

“Sorry?”

“I can’t. I
just can’t.” Fen’s bottom lip trembled.

“Oh,” Jemma
said, realization dawning. “There’s a café around the corner that looks like a
giant Lego set. How about I meet you there in a few minutes?”

With a nod, Fen
disappeared from view.

Ten minutes
later, after a quick change of clothes, Jemma slid into the seat across from
Fen at the rear of the packed café.

“I just wanted
to apologize in person for my behavior yesterday and tell you not to take
anything I might have said too seriously,” Fen said, before Jemma had a chance
to draw breath. “It was the drink talking.”

Jemma delved in
her bag for her wallet. “Does this mean you’re rescinding your offer to help
me?”

“No, no, not
that. I meant more about what I said about Sean’s ex being capable of murder.
It was stupid. I shouldn’t have shot my mouth off like that.”

“Was it the
drink talking, too, when you told Ash that I thought he was treating me as a
Tanya substitute?”

Fen twiddled
with the teaspoon on her saucer. “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk
about.” She looked up, her expression sheepish. “Did you want a coffee or
something?”

An ‘or something’
would have gone down well right about then. “I’ll order in a minute. Go on.”

“When did you
talk to Ash?”

“He turned up
last night.”

“Weren’t you
going out last night?”

Jemma gave a
half-laugh-half-snort. “That’s a whole other story.”

“So what did
Ash say?”

“I think you
know what he said. The question is why?”

Fen bowed her
head. “He was pissing me off. All he could talk about was Jemma this, Jemma
that. I did it to shut him up.”

“What did he
actually say?”

“You know, how
you’re kindred spirits and all that crap.”

Jemma laughed,
not so much at Fen’s words, but at the face she was pulling.

“I’m serious.
He might not have come straight out and said it, but he’s definitely got the
hots for you – big time. And after what you said about not liking him in that
way, well, I thought I should say something.”

“So you were
doing me a favor?”

Fen’s face
brightened. “Exactly.”

“One small
problem: he now thinks I don’t want anything to do with him.”

“He’ll get over
it.”

“Maybe. You
know him better than I do. I didn’t help, though.” Jemma told Fen about her
reaction to Ash’s touch. “But only because he caught me by surprise. I would
have jumped, regardless of who it was. Mind you, even if I had been prepared, I
would’ve still felt uncomfortable.”

Fen nodded.
“That’s just Ash. He’s a touchy guy. But I know what you mean. Do you want me
to talk to him?”

Jemma cocked
her head, her eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, I know,”
said Fen with a chuckle. “I’ve done enough damage already.”

“Hold that
thought,” Jemma said, getting to her feet. “I need a coffee.”

While standing
in the queue at the counter, her gaze drifted around the room. Her heart
skipped a beat. Seated at one of the street-front tables, deep in conversation
with the same platinum blonde woman she had seen him with in Carlton Gardens,
was Ethan Kelly. She quickly averted her gaze, grateful when the man in front
of her moved off. She took his place, ordering a cappuccino.

On her way to
rejoin Fen, she couldn’t resist a furtive glance toward the front of the café.
Ethan and his lady had disappeared. She breathed out and continued on her way,
her step a little lighter.

Jemma squeezed
back into her seat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away,” Fen
said.

“Do you know,
or know of, an Ethan Kelly?”

Fen’s eyes
rolled up for a moment. “Can’t say I do. Why?”

“Just curious.
It’s not important,” Jemma said, picking up her cup.

“Of course it
is. Who is this mysterious man?”

Jemma sipped
her cappuccino. “No mystery. He’s the apartment building’s property manager.”

“More,” Fen
said, making circling motions with her hand. “You don’t get away with it that
easily.”

“There’s no
more to tell. Not about that anyway.”

Fen leaned in,
her dark eyes shining with expectancy.

“What I want to
know is what makes Sean’s ex so scary?” Jemma asked. “Friday, you seemed to
think her capable of murder.”

“I told you,”
Fen said, pushing away from the table, “it was the drink talking.”

“But if it
hadn’t crossed your mind, you wouldn’t have said it – drink or no drink. You
did say you wanted to help.”

“And I do, but
I don’t want to fill your head with any crazy ideas either.”

“Sure, I
understand that, but you know these people much better than I do,” Jemma said.
“I knew Sean’s ex was being a pain in the proverbial at one stage, but not to
the extent that he was forced to take out an intervention order against her.”

Fen huffed. “As
if a piece of paper is going to stop anyone out to cause trouble.”

“Agreed, but if
the order is breached, they can be arrested.”

“Not if it
can’t be proven.”

“What was she
doing?”

“You know the
sort of thing. Phone calls and hang-ups at all hours of the day and night,
anonymous notes addressed to Tanya implying Sean was sleeping around, slashed
car tires, etcetera etcetera.”

“How long did
all that go on for?”

Fen scratched
her head. “I don’t think it ever really stopped. It seemed to happen in waves.
Nothing for ages then whamo. Probably to do with what time of the month it was
or something.”

“And the police
couldn’t warn her off or anything?”

“They tried,
but of course she always denied any wrongdoing. She made Tanya’s life hell –
even after Sean died.”

Jemma stared at
Fen. “What? That doesn’t make sense. Her beef was with Sean, surely, not
Tanya.”

“You don’t
know? Sean left her for Tanya.”

Another bubble
burst. “Seems I didn’t know much at all about my sister. Did she think I would
judge her for it?”

“Actually, I
think it was more about how she judged herself. She never set out to be a
marriage wrecker. It was just the way it turned out. She always carried a
certain amount of guilt about it, which wasn’t at all helped by Kerry Mullins’
carry ons.”

Jemma jammed
her fist into her mouth, her teeth hard against the knuckles, and gazed into
her cappuccino’s thinning froth. When had real life become a soap opera, one in
which her sister played a starring role? “How do I get in contact with Kerry
Mullins?”

Fen’s eyes
widened. “Are you mad? That would be asking for trouble.”

“I just want to
talk to her, hear her side of the story.”

“Oh yeah, good
idea, if you want to be her next target.”

“I have no
intention of riling her.”

“You won’t have
to. Just being her nemesis’s sister will be enough.”