Thin Blood (23 page)

In the other
room, Grace continued her rant. “They’re all going to burn in hell!” She
erupted into loud, raucous laughter that suddenly stopped short. “Oh God, make
them stop!”

Narelle’s jaw dropped. She stared
at Jacinta as though she was from another planet. “Did I hear you right? Did
you say Kirsty had an
affair
,” she screwed up her nose, “with Grace?”

“Didn’t you
know?”

Narelle shook
her head slowly from side to side, her eyes wide in disbelief. “You can’t be
serious. They were girlfriends, but not in the way you’re suggesting. Kirsty
was as straight as you and I.” The pitch of her voice rose as, uncurling her
legs, she leaned forward. “And even if it was true, how would you know about
it?”

Behind her,
Jacinta heard a sharp intake of breath and then the sound of a CD case
clattering on the floor. She felt Brett’s gaze boring the same question into
the back of her head, but didn’t turn around.

“To be honest,
Narelle, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s what Grace told me. She
said Craig knew all about it, and that Kirsty was leaving him for her.”

Narelle
chortled, her face relaxing. “That woman is more deluded than I thought. The
only place she and my sister were having a lesbian relationship was in her
head,” she said, tapping her temple with a finger. “And, anyway, if Craig knew
all about it, as you say, he would’ve told me. God, if it had been true,
nothing would’ve been standing in our way.”

“According to
Grace, Craig wanted both you and Kirsty.”

Narelle pressed
her lips together, her face turning pink before, unable to contain it any
longer, she burst into laughter. “What a joke. Was that the punch line?”

“No, there’s
more,” Jacinta said, deciding to press on while Narelle was in her current
mood. “She thinks that the night Kirsty disappeared, Craig and she argued about
it…” Her voice trailed off, deliberately leaving the words hanging.

Narelle laughed
even louder.

Jacinta glanced
behind her. Brett sat on his haunches in front of the Edmonds’ extensive CD
collection, looking like he had been slapped in the face. She turned back to
Narelle.

“If it’s not
that, what makes you think Grace is the one stalking you?”

Narelle’s
laughter came to an abrupt halt. Jacinta watched as Narelle’s gaze fell back to
her hands, her mind working overtime to formulate answers.

“In a funny way,
knowing Grace had a crush on my sister makes more sense. We always knew,
regardless of what the courts said, that she held both Craig and I responsible
for Kirsty’s death. But continuing to harass us year after year… well, we could
never quite fathom the intensity of her vendetta. Losing a friend can’t be in
the same league as losing your wife or sister.” Pausing, she added, “Can it?”
looking to Jacinta for confirmation.

In Jacinta’s
mind, the strength of the bond between two people didn’t depend on a blood or
marital connection. How could it? Her own father had disowned her even before
she was born. Her mother had then married a man who systematically destroyed
her, demeaning her at every opportunity. Despite these feelings, she simply
shook her head.

“But that still
doesn’t explain what she…” Jacinta paused before adding, “…or whoever it was
who broke in was looking for.”

Narelle threw
her hands up in the air. “Who knows how that woman’s mind works… Oh my God,”
she exclaimed suddenly, “what if she was looking for the gun? What if Kirsty
rejected her advances?” The blood drained from her face, becoming paler with
each what-if. “What if she’s the one? What if she decided that if she couldn’t
have Kirsty, no one else could either? Oh my God, what if the gun is,” she
stumbled over the next words, “the murder weapon?” She was trembling, her eyes
large and round as saucers. “Oh my God, where is it? What have you done with
it?”

Not admitting
that scenario had crossed her mind more than once, Jacinta opted to play
devil’s advocate. “But if that’s the case, what about the two women victims
found in the Toolangi State Forest? Grace has no known connection to them, but
Craig has.”

“What do you
mean, he had
links
to both victims? I know Tamara Whitfield worked for
the same stockbrokers as Craig, but they hardly knew each other. Have they
identified the other body? Who is it?” The pitch of her voice started to rise
again. “What connection does she have to Craig? Tell me,” she demanded, gulping
air.

Before Jacinta
could open her mouth, a resounding crash down the side of the house had all
three leaping to their feet.

“Shit! What was
that?” Like the two women, Brett stood stock-still, his gaze fixed in the
direction from which the noise had come.

An involuntary
scream escaped Jacinta’s lips as a half-naked man, barefoot and dressed only in
jeans, appeared at the sliding glass doors. Without his glasses, it took her a
moment to recognise him.

Jacinta’s gaze
flitted between Narelle on the inside and Craig on the outside, her frown
deepening. With each savage rattle of the door handle, Narelle shrunk back
further, her face frozen in a rictus of shock. She had always been so loving
and protective of Craig, so what was it about his sudden appearance now that
she found so frightening? What had happened between them to turn her into a
quivering mess at the sight of her own husband?

“Shouldn’t he
still be in hospital?” asked Brett, his voice a harsh whisper. “Do you think we
should call the police?”

No one made a
move, the tension in the room palpable.

“You have to go
now,” said Narelle, in a tightly controlled monotone. “I need to talk to my
husband alone.”

Brett’s breath escaped in a loud
huff, his eyes closing as he tilted his head back over the headrest. The whole
situation felt so surreal he’d had to pinch himself to make sure it wasn’t some
weird dream. If it hadn’t been for Jacinta’s obstinacy, they would have been on
their way home, leaving the Edmondses to sort out their own domestic troubles.

“I’m not going
anywhere. If you want to go home, you’ll have to walk,” Jacinta snapped at him.

He sighed. “If
you’re so concerned, why don’t you call Daniel? He’s trained for all this; we
aren’t. Please, Jacinta,” he added, although he knew pleading was pointless.

“Not yet.” She
glanced down at the mobile phone in her lap. “You heard her. If she doesn’t
answer the phone when I call in ten minutes, then we call the police.”

“A lot can
happen in ten minutes.”

“At least they
can’t shoot each other, can they? By the way, what did you do with the gun?”

“I wanted to
talk to you about that,” he said, wishing he had never laid eyes on it. “For
now it’s hidden away, but the sooner it’s in police hands, the better.”

Jacinta visibly
baulked, her head jerking back. “Have you even stopped to think it through? We
still have no idea if the gun is implicated in any of the deaths or not, but
whose fingerprints do you suppose are all over it? Besides yours, of course.
Not to mention the matter of it not being registered.”

“It’s a gun, Jacinta.
Guns kill. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten hurling yourself at the floor
when Narelle fired the so-called unloaded gun at the ceiling. We might not be
so lucky next time,” he said, cocking his finger at her to emphasise his point.

She batted his
hand away. “I know that, but I don’t think it’s as clean-cut as you seem to
think. We need to find out a lot more before we go dobbing people into the
police.”

“For a start,
what’s this sudden ‘we’? Up to now, you’ve treated me like a mushroom.”
Kept
me in the dark and fed me bullshit
, he added silently. “Am I the only one
with any fucking common sense here?” he demanded, anger welling in his chest.
“Leave the detective work to the professionals, for Chrissakes! Do you want to
end up like those women in the forest?”

Her mouth
opened, but no sound came out.

“Answer me!”

She swallowed,
the corner of her mouth twitching in a small smile. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Damn it,
Jacinta, I’m being serious!”

She squeezed his
hand, her smile fading. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound flippant. I do
understand what you’re saying, but let’s not,” her mouth twitched again, “jump
the gun, so to speak.”

He glowered at
her, wrenching his hand from her grip. If she’d thought he would find her gun
quip amusing, she’d thought wrong. “If Narelle and Craig are innocent of any
wrongdoing, they have nothing to worry about. In fact, it could be the very
thing that helps clear their names. And as far as it being an unregistered
firearm, I’m sure you could talk Daniel into arranging an amnesty.”

“Craig inherited
that gun from his father. I still think surrendering it to the police at this
stage would be premature, causing a whole lot of what might turn out to be
unnecessary grief for Narelle and Craig. Daniel said himself that Narelle had
survived all these years without incident. Anyway, you’ve confiscated it.
Surely, that’s enough until we know more.”

Brett felt his
initial resolve faltering. Although his head told him he was right, his heart
wasn’t listening.
What’s another few days after all these years
, he
rationalised. Besides, he knew even a bulldozer couldn’t stop Jacinta in her
tracks once she had decided on a course.

“Okay, I’ll
leave it for now—” He held up his hand in a stop motion as she leaned toward
him. “But only on two conditions. You have to promise me, Jacinta, that if the
ballistics tests in
any
way match that gun – calibre, age, brand,
whatever — we surrender it to the police and you tell them everything. I don’t
care how damning it is for Narelle.” He waited until she nodded, and then
continued. “Second, stay away from Craig Edmonds. You have no idea what he’s
capable of.”

“And you do?”

“No, but that’s
the whole point. We’re dealing with the unknown. Someone murdered his wife and
two other women connected to him. And regardless of what you say, until he’s
ruled out, he has to be the prime suspect.”

“But not the
only one,” she said, glancing back down at her mobile phone.

Sighing, he
lifted her chin with two of his fingers, tilting her face toward him. “Do you
promise?”

“Yes, yes, I
promise,” she said distractedly, staring past him to the house. “But,” she
turned her head, looking him straight in the eye, “where is the gun?”

“I shoved it
inside the recycle bin as a temporary measure,” he said, pointing at the
yellow-lidded blue wheelie bin next to the garage. “Don’t panic,” he added
quickly. “No one saw me do it. What else was I supposed to do? You had the keys
to the car.”

He extended his
arm through the gap between the two front seats, and groped for something in
which he could conceal the gun. “Stay here and make sure no one comes out. I’ll
go and get it.” His fingertips touched something fabric on the floor, almost
under Jacinta’s seat. Grunting, he strained to hook what turned out to be a
lightweight but durable green-printed calico shopping bag.

Once out of the
car, he skipped across the dew-laden grass verge to the footpath. He paused,
inhaling the cool morning air, and looked around. The street was starting to
wake, a magpie choir high in the trees heralding the new day. In the distance,
he heard a car start up and drive away, a door slammed somewhere else, but most
residents, it seemed, were enjoying a Sunday lie-in.

For once,
Jacinta did what she was told and stayed in the car. Trying to appear as
nonchalant as possible, he sauntered up the Edmonds’ driveway, resisting the
urge to keep checking over his shoulder. Although it was only a slight incline,
by the time he reached the wheelie bins, he felt he had climbed a mountain, his
legs shaking from the exertion.

Standing so his
back blocked the view of anyone who happened to pass on the street, he opened
the yellow lid and peered in. He skewed the stack of newspapers to one side. He
broke out in a cold sweat, his stomach lurching violently. In his mad panic to
dig through the carton of plastic soft drink and water bottles underneath, he
almost overturned the blue plastic wheelie bin. He even checked the green
rubbish bin next to it, on the unlikely chance he had put it in there instead.

He couldn’t
believe it; the gun was gone.

Hoping the fresh air might help
revive her, Jacinta wound down the car window, sucking in lungfuls of the
slightly damp air as she watched the front of the Edmonds house for signs of
movement. Her head buzzed, the culmination of the last few weeks’ events
threatening to overwhelm her. Perhaps Brett was right. Perhaps she should
forget all about it and leave it to the police to deal with. If only it were
that simple.

Checking the
time on her mobile phone again, she wondered what had possessed her to leave
Narelle alone in the house with a psychiatric hospital absconder, even if it
was her husband and it was only for ten minutes. Craig had been hospitalised
for a reason, and although it was possible medical staff had deemed him well enough
to return home, they certainly wouldn’t have discharged him in a half-dressed
state in Sunday’s small hours.

From her angle,
she couldn’t see much of Brett except his back. He had the lid up on the blue
bin and appeared to be rummaging through its contents. What was taking so long?
Had he hidden the gun so well he was having trouble finding it?
Thank God
he'd had the strength of mind to remove it from the house when he had
, she
suddenly thought, imagining what might have happened if Craig had got his hands
on it.