Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) (3 page)

But apart from that, I had to admit, we hadn’t got very far. Which was why the idea of muscling in on the Channing case was so attractive.

*

I looked at my notes again, and frowned. Rex Channing seemed the obvious place to start, since Leonie refused to talk. I pulled the phone book over and looked him up — an address in Vaucluse. And his wife and kid still lived in Liverpool. I was dialling before I’d thought of a decent story.

“Yes?” His voice was gravelly, aggressive.

“Mr Channing? My name’s Anna South wood. I’m… er… I’m a reporter with the
Mirror
and I wondered if you could possibly find the time to talk to me…”

It was surprisingly easy. He agreed to meet me later in the afternoon and rang off. I hoped Graham would be back by then.

“A good morning’s work,” I said to Toby, who’d shifted to his afternoon position on the back of an armchair, and I decided to treat myself to a curry at the Satasia, up the road in Darling Street. I’d bring back some take-away for Graham, I thought guiltily, imagining him slogging around the western wastelands talking to malicious old gossips. I ran upstairs to get a book — a Dorothy Sayers I’d read several times before — and let myself back out into the golden spring day. It’s one of my favourite habits to eat alone in an Asian restaurant with a good read, and I was already salivating at the thought of chillied lamb with fresh coriander leaves.

*

Graham hadn’t come back by two-thirty and I’d arranged to be in Vaucluse by three, so I left him a note under the curry container and went to the garage for my venerable VW. After Clyde’s death, in an excess of hatred for all his expensive toys, I’d sold his Alfa and the little MG Sports and I’d gone to the motor auctions in Five Dock where I’d immediately fallen for the old beetle. It had a home-made convertible black canvas top and was painted in bronze, black and silver tiger stripes. It also had a probably illegally souped-up engine and could beat most cars on the road when the lights changed. I’d had a powerful stereo installed, and leopard-skin seat covers, and I loved it with a passion, in all its tackiness. It’s an ideal car for Balmain, too, where most of the winding streets are just wide enough for one car at a pinch, not counting all those parked higgledy-piggledy on the kerbs.

I put Chopin to playing loudly on the tape-deck and hummed along as I zoomed around the Crescent and through the outskirts of the city and Paddington to Vaucluse.

*

Rex Channing’s house was a real new-money treat. Ornate cast-iron fence, security gate, more white Spanish pillars than in all of Seville and a four-car garage with its own set of the fluted columns. A white late-model Mercedes was parked on the gravel — it seemed a subdued sort of car for this house, I thought. A surly-looking Asian gardener opened the gate for me and looked with disgust at my brave little car.

“I have an appointment,” I said, turning the music down a bit.

He grunted and jerked a thumb towards the circular drive in front of the house, where there was an elaborate portico with flagged sandstone steps. “Cor,” I breathed as I got out of the car. The door was opened before I hit the top step, and another sullen Asian man, in a black silk trouser suit, beckoned me inside and down a hallway lined floor and ceiling with enough imported marble to restore the Colosseum. It was the sort of house I’d always suspected Clyde had secretly lusted after — ostentatious to a fault — but he’d let me have the final say in our home decorating.

The butler, or whoever he was, opened a huge fumed-oak door and bowed me inside. The room was a
Playboy
vision of a real man’s den, with white nauga-hide couches, a conversation pit, thick-piled cream carpet, eighteenth-century hunting prints. There was even an antique pipe-rack on a Regency tallboy by the long, sea-filled windows.

“Mrs Anna Southwood,” came the gravelly voice I remembered from the phone. He sat behind an enormous desk — half the lost southern cedar forest there, at least — and I blinked at him, a dark bulky shadow against the sunlit view.

“Clyde’s widow,” he said. “Playing funny buggers. Sit down.”

Oh shit, I thought, but I sat, on one of the most beautiful parlour chairs I’d ever seen. I furtively fingered its silk-upholstered seat. You’d swear it was the original cover.

Rex Channing was a big man, and not especially graceful. He had one of those potato-Irish faces, ruggedly attractive, really, and ice-cold blue eyes. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected, and I wondered again about Leonie and Beth eking out their bleak outer-suburbs existence. He’d obviously outgrown them both long ago. “Well?” he said. “What’s the real story?” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say and sat staring at him like a mesmerised rabbit.

“You’re a private detective, I hear,” he said, flicking a cigar from an inlaid box on his desk. “Amateur.” He bit the end off of the cigar and held it in front of him. I had a nervous urge to chatter at him about how interesting these obscure male rituals were, but I suppressed it. When he had the noisome thing lit and glowing, he leaned back in his chair and pointed a large finger at me. “Are you working for my ex-wife?”

“No.” I gulped. There, it was easy to speak. Pull yourself together, girl.

“Who, then?” He didn’t waste words, this bloke.

“No one. Just…” I was really getting rattled. I remembered the exercise our old drama coach had given us for first-night nerves, and I imagined I was swallowing a boiled egg whole. It worked to some extent, then it seemed to get stuck half-way down.

“Look, Mr Channing…” I said, round the egg in my throat. I was damned if I’d say “I can explain…”

“Rex,” he said, and smiled, a disarmingly charming grin. “Call me Rex, and I’ll call you Anna. Let’s put this on a friendly basis.”

“Um, okay then, Rex.” I floundered, then found myself giving him a garbled and highly inventive version of why I was involved. I put a lot of the blame on Graham, playing as dumb as I thought I’d get away with. Just acting on orders, sir — that sort of thing. Graham and Paul Whitehouse, who were casual acquaintances from first year Law, became bosom buddies in an instant. Mate-ship, I thought, was something Rexie would understand.

“That’s enough,” he said, and sat frowning at me. For a wild moment I wondered if he had a secret button under the desk that would bring his sulky employees running in to tie me up and dump me in a lonely spot somewhere. I used to watch ‘The Rockford Files’, too.

“Ask your… partner, or your boss, or whatever he is… if he’ll take a retainer from me,” he said, and it took all my willpower not to fall off the chair.

“I haven’t seen my daughter for nearly two months,” he went on, turning to stare out the window, speaking to the expensive view. “At first I thought it was just that bitch being difficult — trying to screw more money out of me or something. She kept telling me Beth was sick. Too sick to go out with me, too sick to speak to me on the phone. I had to go interstate for a week or so, and when I got back it was more of the same. That’s when I realised there was something serious going on. I rang the school and went over there. When I realised no one had seen her for weeks I called the cops. I want my daughter found,” he said, sucking on his cigar, looking at me now. His face was red with anger, or some other suppressed emotion. “Dead or alive, I want her found. Understand? And when she is, I want to be the first to know. Not that fancy lefty lawyer, not the police — me. How much do you charge a day?”

“A hundred and fifty dollars,” I said. “Plus expenses.”

He opened a drawer and took out one of those huge double chequebooks. He wrote, tore, and handed me the slip.

“There’s a thousand dollars there, on account,” he said. “Now you’re working for me. Right?”

“Right,” I said and restrained myself from saluting.

I drove back to Balmain in a puzzled daze, shooting at least three red lights. If there was one thing I was absolutely sure of, it was that Rex Channing didn’t have the faintest clue what had happened to his daughter.

When I got back to the office, Graham and the curry had gone. There was a note for me on my desk:

Auditioning. Catch you later.

G.

P.S. Thanks for the food.

“Arsehole,” I muttered with feeling. He hadn’t even hinted at how his questioning had gone.

Chapter 3

Next morning Graham was in early. When I came in, he’d already let Toby into the office and was sitting playing with him on the floor. Toby doesn’t much enjoy being played with and when Graham got up he shook his slightly ruffled fur and turned his back on us very firmly.

“Well?” I said. “What happened yesterday?”

“Sorry, love, I meant to ring, but after the audition — which was terrific, I really think I might get the part — some of us went drinking. You know how it is.”

“I mean what did you find out, dickhead? What did the neighbours have to say?”

He made coffee and we sank into the alcove chairs for a note-comparing session.

“Well,” I said. “
Did
you talk to the neighbours?”

“Sure did.” He looked rueful. “Most of them didn’t know anything, but there’s one old bat who’s really got it in for Leonie Channing. She’s apparently the one who called the cops over the arguments. And she’s full of complaints about how Leonie never mows her lawn and throws rubbish over the back fence. She also reckons Leonie’s been in the bin a few times and that she’s on drugs or an alcoholic — says she never appears until afternoon and then she’s in a daze — doesn’t seem to listen when she’s spoken to. Mind you,” he said, taking a sip of coffee, “I wouldn’t listen either. She never stops talking, this old girl.”

“What were the rows about?” I said. “I mean, was it just shouting late at night, or what?”

“Well, the first time it was yelling and what sounded like furniture being smashed at about two in the morning. This neighbour,” he consulted his notes, “Mrs Darroch, says she tried to knock at their door to complain, but they were making so much noise they didn’t hear her. That’s when she called the police. But by the time they arrived it was quiet, and the girl, Beth, said it was nothing, just an argument.” He looked at his notes again.

“The next time was similar, except they came out into the yard. Leonie was brandishing a poker or something and shouting ‘I’ll kill you, you little bitch’, or words to that effect. Again, when the cops got there it was quiet and the girl said everything was fine.”

“No idea what the fights were about?” I asked.

“No. Old Darroch obviously couldn’t get close enough to hear much. But the other interesting thing she said was about another family called Johnson, who’ve moved interstate. Something about
them
having a daughter who disappeared, too. The old girl said she’d always thought it was a local maniac.”

“How long ago?” I said.

“Oh, years, I think.” Graham referred to his notes. “Yeah, three or four years back. They never found any trace of her, but they took in some bloke for questioning. They had to let him off in the end for lack of evidence. But Darroch reckons it was him. He still lives round there, with his mother.”

“Well,” I said impatiently, “why didn’t you go and see him?”

“Running late. Anyway, it doesn’t sound very likely, does it? Not if the police were satisfied.”

I chewed on my pen. “They might not have been. They just couldn’t prove anything. Anyway, we should follow it up. What’s his name?”

Graham referred to his scrawls again. “Joseph Kominsky. But she didn’t know his address.”

It was easy enough to find — A. & J. Kominsky, Lilac Avenue, Liverpool. I’d have bet all Clyde’s money that the street hadn’t ever seen a lilac anywhere near it. When I rang, a querulous, heavily accented old voice told me that Joe wouldn’t be home until five. I couldn’t call him at work — he was ‘out on the truck’. I arranged to go over after five, to suspicious and reluctant agreement, then sat back, thinking.

“You’d better come, too,” I said to Graham. “I got a bit scared talking to Rexie-baby, and this Joseph bloke might be a real maniac. Oh shit,” I suddenly remembered. “I haven’t even told you about Rex Channing yet. We’ve got a real client.” I filled him in on my meeting with Rex Channing and he looked at first amazed and then worried.

“Anna, I don’t like it,” he said. “Why would someone like him employ
us
? He must have stacks of money, and connections. It doesn’t make sense.”

It had been worrying me, too, but I’d persuaded myself there must be reasons.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps he doesn’t want his mates to know too much about it. Anyway,” I said sheepishly, “he knew Clyde…”

Graham was still dubious, but he brightened at the sight of the cheque.

“Meanwhile,” I said, “we should find out some more about the other missing girl.”

I made a phone call to the office of the
National
and got their extremely efficient secretary Clare, who said she’d go through the back files and fax us anything she found on Kylie Johnson’s disappearance. It must have been a slack day in there, because the copies started coming through within the hour. We took them up to the Satasia to read over a late lunch. There wasn’t much — the
National
had simply picked up on the dailies and the case got only a few brief mentions. I realised we’d have to go to the State Library to look up the other reports. Still, it gave us the broad outline, and some idea of what to ask Joseph Kominsky.

*

Lilac Avenue wasn’t an avenue, and Clyde’s money was safe. It was a cul-de-sac down near the oval and the football club, we discovered as we got slightly lost. I was navigating — never my strong point. The row of plain fibro houses, with tired but well-mown lawns and a bit of obligatory cactus displayed here and there, abutted the stretch of public land and the back windows looked out over the field and what seemed to be a creek heavily overgrown with sheoaks and wild bamboo. In the fading evening light it looked like a good place for a murder.

The Kominskys’ place was unusual in that it had a well-established small garden of natives — bottlebrush, grevillea and willow-leaf gums. An elderly woman was at the letterbox next door when we pulled up. She stared at us — at the car, my clothes, Graham’s television good looks, and stood like a rock, her hands full of leaflets. She hushed ineffectually at a nasty yapping little white dog, apparently called ‘Gough’. On her porch was a forlorn-looking blue budgerigar in an ornate white cage on a stand. I wondered if its name was Neville.

“He’s home,” she said to Graham. “You another policeman?” She seemed maliciously pleased at the prospect.

“That’s a prickly pear you have by the window,” I said to her, moving towards the fence and sending the dog into a frenzy. “It’s a certified pest. I’ll have to notify the CSIRO.”

She gaped and looked worried.

“Is it?” Graham asked, opening the gate.

“No,” I was feeling guilty now. “It’s just a common-or-garden
opuntia
. Not the pernicious sort. Not that the CSIRO’d do anything about it.”

Curtains twitched at the front window as we went up the concrete path, through the jungle of shrubs. There was also a beautiful bay tree in a pot on the meagre porch, glossy and dark green. Mrs Kominsky opened the door, a little dumpy woman with a permanently tragic expression on her lined face.

“Mrs Kominsky?” I said, and she nodded, clenching her hands together in her cotton apron. “I’m Anna Southwood, I rang earlier.” She nodded again but made no move to let us in. If the cops had already been here, they’d frightened her badly.

Graham took over and introduced himself, reminding me of what a nice man he is under all his actor’s vanity and bag of tricks.

“Mrs Kominsky,” his voice was gentle. “We’re private investigators. We’ve got nothing to do with the police, and you’re not legally obliged to talk to us at all unless you want to.” I could have kicked him.

“Then why you here?” she said in a husky voice. “He has enough. Last time, questions all the time. Twice in jail all night. This time more questions. He don’t do anything. He don’t hurt little girls.”

“Perhaps we can help to prove that,” Graham said. “We’re acting privately. We just want to find out the truth. If your son’s done nothing wrong, surely you’ll want that, too.”

“Oh, come in,” she said suddenly, with the angry defeat in her voice of someone who’s bowed to authority, possibly interrogation, all her life.

“Joe!” she called towards the back of the house. “Come. More questions.”

As I closed the door I saw her neighbour still gazing sadly at her three-metre pride and joy.

Joe Kominsky was what Clyde used to refer to as a ‘mother-redundant’. About fifty, a hesitant and bewildered-looking man in workmen’s overalls, he looked to the old woman for confirmation of everything he said. I suspected he was on the borderline of being intellectually disabled, or whatever term they use these days.

We didn’t speak until Mrs Kominsky had made and brought coffee, lovely real dark stuff, with little sugared hard biscuits that were delicious. Joe sat like a log, waiting. I really hoped he hadn’t done anything to those kids. This clean, shabby little house was full of sadness already; it was like a fragrance, as if they had an incense called ‘melancholy’ seeping through the rooms.

It turned out that Joe did a bit of casual work for the council, gardening and rubbish carting, sometimes helping the garbage men. He’d had no alibi at the time of the first girl’s disappearance, a night his mother usually played euchre. I looked at her with new respect.

“But why did they suspect you in the first place?” I asked. It was really hard not to direct all the questions to the old woman — he referred them to her, anyway.

“I…” he looked at his mother. She nodded impatiently. “I knew those girls,” he said, in a slow voice. “They liked my kites.”

“Kites?” Graham prompted, and got a pleased nod in answer.

The old woman leaned forward. “He has fine collection,” she said, like the mother of a small boy, pride mixed with exasperation in her voice. “Many kites. Big ones…” Her gnarled hands made a large shape in the air. “He fly them in the park, down there.” She gestured through the lace curtains towards the football ground and the tangled bush near the creek. “Every weekend. Only now, not so much. People stare at him after Kylie disappear… sometimes they say things, upset him.” She looked away from us, into her own unhappiness. “He go sometimes to different park now. Far… farther away.”

Joe took his moods from his mother, too, and now his pleased smile faded.

“I didn’t hurt them,” he said, suddenly. “I just let them hold the strings sometimes. They were nice little girls. My friends.”

There wasn’t much more to be got. Joe must have looked like an obvious suspect to the neighbourhood — a rather odd bachelor with a foreign mother — and to the police, too. It would have been an easy solution. I thought of the Christie case and shivered. That supposed murderer had actually been executed, for no real reason other than his peculiarity, and Christie’s confession had come too late.

As we were getting up to go, with polite thanks for the coffee, I thought of something.

“Mrs Kominsky, the newspapers referred to you as friends of the Johnson family at the time…?”

She shrugged. “I know the mother, Carol. Just a bit. She work in the supermarket. Nice lady. We talk sometimes. Her mother Polish, like me. She talk Polish to me.” She hesitated at the door, then decided to tell us the rest. “Joe do… did… her garden. Sometimes. Cart rubbish away. He work there the day Kylie disappear. But he do nothing, Miss Anna. He’s good man.”

I think it was the ‘Miss Anna’ that did it, from this fabulous old biddy. I left Graham at the car and marched next door. When I came back I felt better.

“I told her that on second look it wasn’t prickly pear at all,” I said and started the car. We were both silent on the drive back. I really didn’t want it to be Joe, but I had to admit it was possible, and Graham obviously felt the same way. I dropped him at his place in Leichardt and went home.

*

I spent a miserable night alone with Toby, feeling restless and uneasy. I didn’t like the side of detecting I’d seen that afternoon, and I knew the memory of Mrs Kominsky would nag at me for a while. At 2 a.m., finally admitting insomnia, I got up and made myself a glass of hot milk. I took it back to bed with my notepad and pen, and tried to work out what we should do next.

Rex Channing, I thought. How did he make his money? I made a note — we should check out his business interests. Perhaps he had enemies who wouldn’t stop at kidnapping his daughter. I wondered vaguely how you
did
check out such things, and realised I was very sleepy. Lorna would know. I had another important thought as I drifted into unconsciousness, but I didn’t have the willpower to write it down, and by the time I woke up I’d forgotten it.

I was grumpy and slightly manic in the morning. When Graham arrived I was rearranging pot-plants and fussing over the placement of furniture. He took one look at me and quietly edged towards the coffee-maker. With a strong long black in my hands I calmed down a bit. It was one of those times I would have killed for a cigarette, but Graham had never been a smoker — no budging there — and I knew if I went out and bought a packet I’d fall right off the wagon in my present mood and be chain-smoking again in no time.

“Well, boss?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking hard. “I wish we could talk to Leonie.”