Blood Secret (25 page)

 

 

37

Rennie drove fast, anxious to get back and figure it out. This was new for her – going back instead of moving on, covering old ground instead of finding a new one. And it made her apprehensive, not knowing what was ahead and how to play it.

She worked through the fragments of the puzzle, laying them out in her head like a deck of cards. The blood in the car park, the thump on the back fence, the half-finished text message, the tampering in the glove box, the password protection, the phone calls to the cafe – shuffling and sifting them, unsure which facts were related to Max and which weren't. Possibly all of them,
maybe none.

The blood worried her the most. There was a chance it wasn't his, but if he was injured, what would the early summer heat do to him? It was coming up to forty-four hours since he'd been gone – almost two days – and it had been windy yesterday, the temperature in the high twenties this afternoon. She thought about blood loss, concussion, dehydration, infection, internal bleeding. How long would he last? Was he
dead already?

Her mind kept coming back to the search of the house and the glove box. It had to be connected to Max's disappearance.

Technically, it wasn't a break-in. No locks or windows were broken. The metal plate on the front door wasn't scratched. Did Max use his key? Had he given it to someone – or had someone taken it? She let that thought sit for a moment.

Yes, it was possible someone from out of town had assaulted Max in the car park, taken his key ring, waited around to go through the car and the house when no one was looking. She wanted it to be that, an unknown, unnamed person who'd picked Max for no other reason than he was in the dark car park on his own. But doubt niggled and experience made
her uneasy.

It wasn't a robbery, either, at least not the standard TV/stereo/computer kind. And who stole keys then just riffled through wardrobes and drawers? Not your aver­age assailant after money and/or goods. Her father had done it like that. Reconnaissance, scare tactics, a sick private joke. But it wasn't that. Someone was looking for something.

Did they know Max? Was that how he let them get close enough to take
his keys?

Or did it happen another way? Were they lifted from him at Trish's birthday celebration?

If that was how it worked, it was someone who Max knew, maybe someone they both knew. And that idea made her blood heat and her jaw tighten. That was
her
life, it didn't belong here.

The sun was starting to drop and shadows were lengthening as she pulled into the carport. Her father was out of the picture but caution still felt appropriate. Someone had her
semiautomatic pistol.

She told Hayden to wait in the car while she checked both sides of the house. It was to test him as much as it was for security and she hoped he'd disobey so she could be loud and clear about his boundaries.

When she got back, he'd opened the door but was still sitting inside. She told him to wait on the porch while she checked the house and made a quick, quiet inspection of the rooms. As far as she could tell, no one had been there since they'd left. She stood by the study door and waved Hayden in. He sat in front of the monitor and said, ‘What am I looking for?'

‘First up, we need to get into Max's files. He put a password on them. It's not the one we use for emails. James couldn't get past it.'

‘Uncle James is crap on the computer.'

‘Well, let's see how good you are.'

She stood behind him, eyeing the Post-Its still in place above the desk. She collected the ones that'd dropped to the table, wondering if they were selected or had fallen while the room was combed. The ones in her hand were as vague as the ones on the ledge. Scrawled words, numbers, dates, names. She scanned the shelf: phone books, business how-to's, mining equipment manuals and chunky folders. Five folders in all and they weren't lined
up neatly.

The first held records of his renovations on the house. The next was a history of his medical expenses. She flipped quickly through the rest – personal loan records, child support, copies of Hayden's school reports. Surprisingly orderly. Nothing of interest to anyone
but Max.

She yanked on the drawer that was ajar in the filing cabinet. Hanging files, lots of them. She fingered urgently through the coloured tabs: Insurance, Legals, Warranties, Car – surprised at Max's organisation, no idea why they'd been searched. What interest were they to anyone? She gritted her teeth, swore under
her breath.

‘Did you find something?'
Hayden asked.

‘No.' She slammed the drawer.

‘What?'

Exactly. What the hell was she looking for? How would she know if she found it? Or whether it'd been taken? She pushed her hands through her hair, saw the apprehension on Hayden's face. ‘Keep working. I'm going to . . .'
kick something
‘. . . go out there.'

She stalked the living room, needing space to release some stress without being watched. Lack of sleep and food were taking their toll. Her eyes stung, her brain was fading and her stomach felt like it was caving in. She swung the fridge open, tore a handful of grapes from their stalks, pulled a bottle of something fizzy from the door. Two minutes later, the cold drink had woken her up and the sugar hit had cleared
her head.

Okay, maybe she was going about it the wrong way. Whoever had been here had searched the study and the wardrobe. Maybe they'd looked other places. Figuring out where might tell her more. She turned her gaze to the back windows, watching the yard in the late
afternoon light.

‘I'm going out to the studio,' she called. ‘Don't leave the house.'

She took a large frypan with her – as good a weapon as any at short notice and safer to wield than a knife in the close quarters of the studio. She jogged quickly across the lawn, pausing to listen before opening the door. It was dim inside but bright enough to see she was alone and that the big easel in the middle of the floor had been bumped off its usual spot. Not by much, maybe only the span of a large foot, but she was particular about it, liked it centred under the skylight and its new angle told her someone had been moving carelessly about.

Heart beating hard, she moved through the room, scanning for more signs of intrusion. Nothing among the stacked canvasses, the tins of paint, the bed. Nothing until she got to the back of the room, where Max's overflow from the study was in cardboard document boxes against the wall. One stack of four was now two of two. A cardboard lid had been lifted and
not replaced.

Rennie glanced over her shoulder to the door, unnerved, thinking it through. Whoever had come in had made a hurried path through the room, knocking the easel and going through the boxes. Or at least checking under the lids. Were they after paperwork or something that would fit in a document box? Whatever it was, it was about Max,
not her.

She went back to the house and began a sweep through the rooms, wondering about the intruder's state of mind as they'd moved about. A jar out of place on the old dresser, the sofa cushions untidy. It wasn't angry, there was no destruction, barely more than a few items shifted about. Maybe it was casual, a stroll in someone else's space, opening drawers, touching their stuff, like her father had done. Or was it hurried? A brief, rushed search, the fear of being found making them careless.

In Hayden's room, the bed and floor were a jumble of blankets and clothes. It was a fair guess that was his doing. She doubted he'd considered folding anything or using a coathanger, which meant someone else had left the wardrobe door and top drawer in the dresser open. They held nothing of value – neither did the cup­boards in the bathroom – but someone had thought
they might.

In her own bedroom, she swung the wardrobe doors wide again and cast an eye over the disarray. Study, bedrooms, bathroom. Was it random or logical? Had they looked in the obvious places first or did they start in one spot and move systematically through
the house?

And why look in every room? What could potentially be kept in all those places?

Not files or folders. Who kept those in a bathroom? Jewellery maybe, except they didn't have any. Tissues, pens, condoms, candles. No. Something . . . 

She took a wide-angle view of their wardrobe. Okay, don't
get specific.

Her eyes moved slowly up and down her sparse belongings, then over Max's stuff. The underwear she'd folded and sorted had been shunted about in the drawer but it wasn't socks and jocks being hunted down. Something that would fit under or among the clothing. She stared at the shelf above. What was there before?

She thought back to this morning when she'd tidied Max's belongings, made some order out of his clutter, trying to find some trace of who he was. It was like that game she'd played as a kid – name every item on the table and you win. She'd been good at it, trained by her mother to take note of what she saw. So think.

She went through it in sections, closing her eyes and listing items in her mind then checking them off with what she saw in the wardrobe. His stuff on the shelf: all present. The paperwork: nothing she recalled was missing. The spilled contents of the ashtray: she'd forgotten the rubber bands. Had she left anything else out?

She went over it again: rubber bands, single cuff link, coins, paper clips, tacks. They were all there, all except . . . 

The USB drive. Small, black, shiny. She'd found its plastic cap and
replaced it.

She sifted through the stuff on his shelf, lifting and sliding and relocating until she'd covered the whole surface. Then she searched the carpet, among his shoes, around
her own.

The USB drive wasn't there.

Max rested more than he crawled. No keeping tabs with the wall, just shunting his hands forwards and dragging his knees in behind.

Pav held court in his memory now: the time they were down here, the deep roll of his laughter rebounding around the walls. Nights in his courtyard, the vodka and bourbon, Trish's brief visits to deposit food and retrieve empty plates, not unhappy to have the house to herself. Good times, not the ones when Max had beaten himself up and drowned what was left.

And then Rennie was with them, making it four. Barbecues on Max's new deck, cold nights gathered around the fire in the brazier, celebrating Rennie's first paintings, toasting someone's birthday with champagne at the water's edge, Hayden's party and Pav tossing a protesting, laughing teenager over his shoulder just because he'd dared
him to.

‘Remember I told you once I'd done a desperate thing?' Pav said.

They were sitting on Max's deck. The living room lights were glowing on the timber, the studio windows in the yard ablaze. It wasn't cold enough for the fire, not warm enough for T-shirts. When was it?

‘Careful, mate,' Max said. ‘Trish might have to kill us if you talk about it.'

Pav's smile was brief, forced. ‘Turns out Trish was right. It found us here.'

‘What found you here?'

He took a gulp of his vodka, rested his elbows on his knees and nursed the drink in the space between. ‘I took something from someone and he wants it back.'

‘What'd you take?'

‘Money.'

Max paused as his eyebrows rose and fell. ‘How much?'

‘Not that much considering the amount that'd been flowing in and out. But I worked out where it was coming from, saw something I wasn't meant to and then it wasn't safe to stay. Trish was with me. We'd just started up and I wanted to get her away so I took, you know, fistfuls. I stuffed what I could in my pockets and down my shirt. I hit a guy, knocked him out. I think I broke his jaw. I locked him in a storeroom and . . .' he shrugged, ‘. . . walked out with the money. Right past them, like I was going for a smoke.'

‘Shit.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Where was it?'

‘Serbia. Actually, it was Yugoslavia back then. We got on the first train going over the border and didn't book a room until we were in Norway.'

‘Norway?'

‘Fucking cold place.'

‘So what's the problem now?'

He swallowed another mouthful of vodka. ‘The guy I took the money from came out here after the Bosnian War. He's got an import business, brings in all kinds of food. A sales rep came to see me just by chance. He's from over there, too. He recognised me, told his boss and now he wants his money back.'

‘Have you got it?'

The look Pav gave him said it all. ‘I run a cafe in Haven Bay. It's not a thriving metropolis. If Trish didn't own the house, we couldn't afford to stay.'

‘What are you going to do?'

He pulled a breath in through his nose, blew it out through parted lips, took his time coming up with an answer. ‘Ask you for a loan.'

 

 

38

‘I'm in!'

Rennie heard Hayden's shout from the bedroom and ran to the study. He was standing, both fists in the air like a boxer after a victory. She grinned. He held up a hand for a high five and she let him have it, the clash of their palms both harder than she expected and weirdly fraternal after
their hostility.

‘Well done.' She made for the chair but he wasn't ready to give
it up.

‘I went through a bazillion combinations,' he said, sitting down, grabbing the mouse. ‘All Dad's nicknames and made-up words and places he goes and types of boats he's sailed and . . .'

‘And what was it?'

‘It's right there.' He pointed at the row of Post-Its. ‘I was just trying anything and I saw that: Dallas Worthwhile. First letter capitals, no space between.'

Rennie found the words on a note above the monitor.

‘Worthwhile wasn't Dallas's last name, though,' Hayden was saying. ‘It was Brownston.'

‘Dallas Brownston?' She knew the name, couldn't remember the context.

‘He was in the mine accident with Dad. He's my god­father.
Was
my godfather.'

Rennie frowned at the screen then up at the Post-It. He'd used his dead mate's name for a password? ‘Worthwhile?'

Hayden shrugged like it was nuts but hey, that was Dad.

No, it was more than that. She straightened up, remembering now. When she was first sleeping with Max, he'd scared the crap out of her half-a-dozen times roaring out of nightmares. She'd joined him on the deck after a bad one, sat under a blanket in the glow of the floodlights and said nothing as he talked about Dallas – daft things they'd done, trips they'd taken, pranks, sailing, soccer. She'd wondered why he was thinking about it all at three o'clock in the morning. Then he told her about their last conversation, under the rock, in the dark. He didn't look at her, didn't move, barely spoke loud enough to hear. He'd used that word:
worthwhile
. Had said it over and over.
I want to be worthwhile. I'm not sure how to be worthwhile. I only seem to know how to
fuck up.

Rennie remembered how useless she'd felt. An arm's length away without a clue how to touch him. She didn't know what he'd fucked up, only that he'd been fucked over – by his wife, by the coal company, by the insurance, by fate. She had no skills for providing empathy or reassurance so she just slid closer, draped the blanket around his shoulders and kissed his neck, hoped he understood that even after so short a time, worthwhile was an understatement.

‘So what are we looking for now?' Hayden asked, hands poised above
the keyboard.

Max. She was looking for Max. She wanted him back. Hoped to God he hadn't decided to join his friend Dallas.

She squatted beside Hayden. James thought Max took the money from the business and had tried to get into the computer to confirm it or find it or trace it – she wasn't sure which; she just wondered what Max would hide behind the password
DallasWorthwhile.
Maybe there was something in there that'd been transferred from or to a USB thumb drive. Something that was important to someone else. ‘I don't know. Let's just see what's there.'

There were the usual operating programs, music logs, game downloads, a couple of movies. Folders of photos. He had three cameras, different sizes for different occasions. Had he taken pictures someone wasn't happy about? Easy to store on a thumb drive. ‘Open that one.' She pointed, Hayden double-clicked.

A large file unrolled, almost a thousand shots. She squinted at the first thumbnails. It would take ages to go through them. If he knew he had sensitive photos, if he was concerned enough to add a password, would he bury them in a bunch of other photos? What better place? Shit. ‘Let's have a look at all the files first. We can go back to the pictures later if we need to.'

There were other folders with quirky, Max-style titles:
Jobs n Stuff
for work contracts,
The Go Tos
for client contact lists,
Show Me The Money
for invoices,
Work It Baby
for what seemed to be work he'd brought home. Rennie touched the screen with the tip of a finger. ‘ “WTF” – what's that one?'

‘What the fuck,' Hayden said. It wasn't an exclamation or a question and there was no attitude
behind it.

‘Huh?'

‘That's what it means,' he said. ‘W-T-F, What The Fuck.'

For a computer folder? ‘Open it.'

An index appeared on the screen.
Nothing obvious.

‘Let's have a look.'

Hayden worked his way down the list, opening and closing the files. There were invoices, lists of figures, bank statements for MineLease accounts and a single
written document.

Rennie stood up, keeping her eyes on the screen as fear and uncertainty pounded in her chest.

‘What is it?'
Hayden asked.

It was details of money and transactions, dates and accounts. Was this what James was looking for?

‘Shit.' She paced the few steps across the small room. She didn't know anything about running a business or engineering a fraud. Her crimes were for protection, escape, survival, not about deceit or sleight of hand.

Hayden watched as she stalked back, waiting for the next instruction. It wasn't Max, she told herself. He hadn't taken the money; his password was
DallasWorthwhile.
And a voice in her head reminded her he'd also assaulted a man, disappeared for days and cheated on his wife. What else had
he done?

She tightened her jaw. ‘Right, Hayden. Go back to the invoices.'

He put all six of them on the screen. They were bills that had come in during the past twelve months, varying amounts, the final one the largest by far and dated last week.

Rennie kneeled beside him again, did some quick addition. ‘There's more than half a million dollars billed here.' It seemed like a lot of money but as James had kindly reminded her, MineLease dealt in huge pieces
of equipment.

‘They're all from the same company. Does that matter?'
Hayden asked.

‘I don't know. Pull up the figures.'

‘The ones from the bank or the other ones?'

She frowned. ‘A couple of each.'

It took a few minutes of squinting back and forth before she realised what she was seeing. The bank statements were scans of original paper copies, the kind financial institutions send in the mail. The lists of figures seemed to be from the same statements but cut and pasted from electronic versions, perhaps from online banking. Why the two? Maybe the scans were verification. Maybe the online versions were for use in another document. Maybe she didn't have a clue. In the list of figures, some of the dates, account numbers and transaction amounts were marked
in bold.

‘Open that one again.' She pointed to a file titled
watsNys
, the written document. The first time, she'd just skimmed the page – now she took a minute to read.

It wasn't an official report – that much was clear. It read like notes jotted down as they came to mind. There were company names, job codes, a couple of towns up the coast were mentioned – Coffs Harbour, Forster, Byron Bay – the name S Baskin, sometimes Sondra Baskin, was there a few times. And some of the numbers were in bold.

‘Can you put a page of the figures in a separate window so we can compare the highlighted numbers?'

Hayden shifted documents around until
watsNys
was side by side with a page of figures. The numbers in bold were the same. Dates, account numbers and dollar amounts.

Rennie pulled the page from her pocket, the one she'd taken from Max's office. Dates, amounts, accounts. Another matching set – this one in Max's handwriting. There'd been a fourth set on his
desk blotter.

Was it the money he and James had argued about?

James said he traced the money through their accounts and showed it to Max last week. He must have put this together, written the page of notes and given it all to Max.

She thought about the argument Amanda had heard and the one James told her about. Had James discovered the money missing on Monday, spent the week digging through the accounts, put this together then accused Max of taking it
on Friday?

Hayden tapped the screen, his finger on a date. ‘That's my birthday.'

August 26. It fell on a Sunday this year and Rennie remembered how excited Max was to have him here – it was a long time since he'd celebrated his son's birthday on the actual day. He'd put on a barbecue, blown up balloons and invited the usual suspects. They ate a mountain of fresh prawns and chicken kebabs and potato salad. Trish brought a mud cake and they sang a Happy Birthday that put the local bird population into flight.

Rennie slipped the mouse out from under Hayden's palm, clicked on other files. There were no invoices with that date but it was highlighted in the bank records and corresponded with a payment from a MineLease account. Not to a client. A resort in Coffs Harbour was paid six hundred and thirty-
five dollars.

A bewildered ‘huh' escaped her lips.

‘What are you looking at?'
Hayden asked.

‘Someone stayed in Coffs Harbour that weekend. Coffs Harbour is mentioned in the notes.'

‘Dad didn't. He was here. He had a party for me.'

‘Mmm.' What was important about
the date?

‘Remember? Dad and Pete and me went swimming and nearly froze our arses off. And Pav didn't get there until really late and Trish yelled at him for like an hour. And Aunty Naomi spewed in the garden. It was awesome.'

Rennie raised amused eyebrows at his version of events. He'd seemed offhand and blasé about it afterwards but maybe he was more impressed than she'd given him credit for. She thought about the party again. The lake swim was the penalty for losing the team prawn-shelling competition and left the three of them shivering and almost blue. Naomi's dash to the shrubbery came after five long months of morning sickness and she'd just wiped her mouth and laughed, ‘Well, there goes breakfast again.' It was dark by the time Pav rocked up with beer and apologies. Rennie couldn't recall where he'd been, somewhere up the coast, from memory. Trish was worried he hadn't phoned then stood in the living room and shouted loud enough to make everyone on the deck turn their backs and pull faces about the awkward domestic moment.

Rennie stared at the bank records. August 26. Coffs Harbour was north of here. Pav . . . was up the coast the day of Hayden'
s party.

He wasn't at Skiffs today when the house
was searched.

He'd scared the hell out of her creeping around the dark yard last night – the evening the glove box
was searched.

Something cold slithered down her spine. If she was another kind of person, the kind she'd tried to be when she came to Haven Bay, she might cringe at the concept of suspecting someone she cared for. But she wasn't. She understood firsthand that the crime statistics were right: the people closest to you were the most dangerous. And Pav was no angel. He had an array of scars on his hands and forearms and they weren't all from kitchen work. She'd seen them before on other people. Tough men with bikes and guns and worse crimes than hers. You got them from fistfights and knives and brawls. There'd been trouble in Yugoslavia before he and Trish fled that neither of them talked about. And there was an angry, dark side to him that kept the staff at bay when it
was exposed.

She flicked her eyes over the screen, checking the dates against a calendar. A Friday in April, a Tuesday in June, a Thursday, a Monday – random days going back a year. She checked the amounts – they were all outgoing payments, some by internet transfer, some by credit card, large and small.

‘Which one next?'
Hayden asked.

‘Wait.' She dropped a hand to his shoulder to hold him in place. ‘Let me think.' Pav was at the cafe six days a week but it didn't mean he hadn't spent or moved the funds. And he could have searched the house and car. He wasn't at work this afternoon and he'd never explained
why
he was creeping around
last night.

Was he looking for the USB thumb drive? Had he heard from Max and was helping to cover
his tracks?

Or was he involved with the money? He and Trish were tight for funds sometimes. Had things got too tight and Max helped them out with money from the business, money he hadn't told James about?

Yesterday, Trish said Max and Pav talked for hours after he got out of rehab. He'd told Pav about the affairs. It was some kind of confessional with a man who had a few sins of his own, Trish had called it. What else had they talked about? And what
were
Pav'
s sins?

Words came to mind: blackmail, cover-up, debts.

*

His skin was hot, his heart thumped like it'd been switched to high and he leaned again the wall like a sick dog. How far had he gone? His body said all the way to China. His brain said not nearly
far enough.

Gritting his teeth, he shifted an arm forwards and the other buckled under him. His cheek scraped across rock as he fell. His ribs twisted, his lungs spasmed. He would've sobbed if he had the energy. Unashamedly, without restraint, howling with the recognition of death barrelling towards him.

His body was spent but his brain was still rolling out the memories. Not in a rush like it might if his life was flashing before his eyes, just in a slow, determined forwards progression as though it wanted to catch up before his lights
went out.

It'd meant a lot to him that Pav asked for a loan, that he thought he could without ruining the friendship. Max would've given him the money if he had it but almost everything was in MineLease – he worried about leaving debts these days, the kind of thing he never thought about before the cave-in.