Bones of Contention (2 page)

“Look there ahead!” He pointed excitedly. “That’s Melville Island.” He flew in low across a rocky shoreline. “You see that outcrop just under us? That’s where I discovered the body. Two if you count the water spirit.”

Chapter Two

Dinah stiffened. He was a nut case after all. Her chest tightened. She slid her hand onto the door handle and nerved herself for a rendezvous with the sharks. Didn’t all seat cushions double as flotation devices?

She tried to keep her voice amiable, play for time. “Was the water spirit you saw a mermaid?”

“No, it wasn’t a…bloody oath, woman, I’m not daft. A bloke was murdered on the beach down there a week ago. Skewered through like a bloody kabob atop a sea turtle. I call the turtle a spirit because it’s sacred to some of the clans, symbolizes one of their ancestral beings from the Dreamtime.” His face was comical, but the intelligence behind his piercing gray eyes was indisputable.

She shivered. He made the macabre sound matter-of-fact. Like Nick. As if dead bodies were all in a day’s work. “You’re serious? You found a man impaled on a turtle?”

“Sad to say but I did, luv. So many flies I thought at first he was a black man.”

“You could see this from the air?”

“Of course, not. I was on the ground right next to him. The spear that killed him punctured the turtle’s shell, too, though it’s not a cert that’s what killed it.”

What did the old ghoul do? Shoo the flies away and conduct a private postmortem? She didn’t care to hear any more of the grisly details. “Have the police caught the killer?”

“They’re completely up a gumtree, can’t work out the who or the why. It’s a grade A puzzler, all right, but I’ve noodled around with a few theories.” He warmed to his subject. “The bloke was a well-known Pommie journalist—that’s an Englishman to you. He wrote a series of articles about a gang of greenies who’ve been interfering with commercial dragnet fishing, setting off firebombs and causing a nuisance. Made them out to be a bunch of ning-nongs and thugs. In his view, every dolphin and turtle in the bloody seven seas could go extinct if protecting them cost an industry that feeds millions of people.” He paused expectantly.

She picked up on his cue. “And you think that was the motive?”

“Bang-on! The turtle-huggers offed him to shut him up.”

Suddenly, she got it. Jacko had discovered the body and now the murder was his personal property and claim to fame. How many times had he flown over the scene of the crime? How many hapless tourists had he lured out here with the promise of a free ride just to show off his special knowledge and expound his theory? Nick often said how some people relish their connection to a crime, especially a sensational one. They thrive on the attention and the fantasy of being indispensable to the police.

“Why,” she asked, “would the so-called turtle-huggers kill one?”

“A bit of misdirection maybe, or an accident.”

The radio crackled. “Robbery in progress, Bendigo…”

“Strewth!” Jacko shut it off.

“You have a police scanner?”

“How else would I keep tabs? But about the dead journo, here’s another theory. It could’ve been one of the Tiwi people. They own Melville and the smaller island to the west. The land’s not open to the public without permission of the Tiwi Council. Could be one of the islanders took a scunner to this journo trespassing on their land, and whammo!”

“But an Aborigine wouldn’t have killed the turtle. Not if it’s a sacred totem.”

“Not all Aborigines have the same totem, luv. There’s no taboo against chowing down on another man’s totem, especially if it’s tasty. And green sea turtles are bloody tasty.”

“Had anyone chowed down on the dead turtle?”

“Not so much as a chop.” He looked so crestfallen she felt sorry for him.

“You know,” she said, “some murders have no rhyme or reason. Maybe this began as a simple robbery, the victim fought back and the robber went berserk.”

“What kind of a droob sets out to pull a hold-up armed with a spear? He’d have to be mad as a bloody meat ax.”

“Are there no suspects at all who had a grudge against the guy? A jealous rival or…or a jilted lover?” She didn’t like to think what she might have done to Nick if she’d been carrying a spear.

“His mates in Darwin have alibis as tight as a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.”

“Well, how about fingerprints then? The killer must’ve left something behind.”

“Not so much as a gnat’s nib. Any footprints or tire treads were washed away by the tide. Few vehicles allowed on the island and the dead man’s name wasn’t on the permit list. I’m thinking both killer and victim arrived and left by boat…but from bloody where?” He raked a hand through his white mane, rolled his shoulders, and turned Petunia back toward the mainland.

She breathed a sigh of relief and segued to a less bloody topic. “Do the Aborigines cling to their old customs or do they all carry cell phones and surf the Net?”

“Some are highly educated and up to the minute, but some haven’t changed a whit in spite of all the Western civilization we’ve tried to cram down their throats. In their way of thinking, time’s merged into one great bloody gob. Past, present, future—it’s all the same. They believe the spirits of their ancestors live on inside the rocks and animals and trees and they can coax ’em out for a chinwag whenever they like.”

“Every culture has myths. We all believe some things that aren’t true.”

“Fair enough, and we’re none the worse for believing in the pixies. It’s believing the hard-boiled, godless liars that does us up the bum and makes us cynical. Right?”

Did the nosy old codger expect her to volunteer a case in point from her own life? “I’ve never thought about it,” she said.

“Well, take it from old Jacko, luv, they walk amongst us. The worst of them can hoodwink the best of us and they don’t give a damn who gets caught in their graft.”

First murder and now graft. His brain was a veritable police blotter. She prayed he didn’t have another crime scene to show her. He looked at her in a sideways, calculating way as if he wanted to pry open her head and screw with the machinery, the way Nick looked whenever he tried to wangle her over to his way of thinking.

Nick again. She needed a mental escape key, a charm or incantation to ward off thoughts of him. What was that Latin phrase she was always misspelling when she temped at the law firm? Starry…no. It sounded like starry, but it was
stare
.
Stare decisis
. It meant that the matter was decided, over and done, finished, settled, kaput. And vis-à-vis herself and Detective Nick Isparta, the matter was
stare decisis
in spades.

She stared out the window at the walls of a spectacular escarpment fringed by tropical forest. They were over Kakadu National Park now. According to her tour guide and would-be crimebuster, it was the largest national park in Australia and home to Aboriginal people for the last 50,000 years. Maybe it was the aura of the place or the altitude or a vagary brought on by lack of sleep, but she thought she knew what the Aborigines meant by the merging of time. At the present moment she was buzzing into the future in a yet-to-be-produced airplane on a collision course with a past she’d made a specialty of forgetting. But with Cleon slated to die in a matter of days, one ancestral spirit in particular had reasserted himself in her consciousness and the time was now or never for a chinwag with the man who’d known him best. If Cleon didn’t give her the lowdown on her father, that would be that. Her mother had stonewalled for years and gave no sign that she was saving the nitty-gritty for her memoirs.

“Give this theory a burl, Dinah. The Pommie bloke saw some skulduggery he shouldn’t have seen, only what he saw happened elsewhere. He was brought to Melville by boat and murdered there to keep the other place a secret.”

She couldn’t believe the single-mindedness of the man. “Jacko, you’ve developed an unhealthy obsession. It must’ve been gruesome stumbling onto a dead body, but you need to do something to take your mind off it. Go on a holiday or read a book, maybe talk to a therapist.”

“Think I’ve hopped the fence, do you?”

“If that means what I think it does, yes. You can’t waylay every tourist who walks through an airport and make them listen to you spitball a lot of whodunit theories.”

“You’re right to give me a taste of the curry, luv. You’ve places to go and things to do and I’ve delayed you long enough.” He pointed out the window. “Look there below. We’re over the Nitmiluk. That’s the Katherine River.”

The blue-green water shimmered like glass as it cut between the canyon walls. The fierceness of the sun gave the rugged cliffs a glazed patina—or was it her eyes that were glazed?

Ahead of them sprawled the town of Katherine. Soon she’d be on the ground, feet in the future, head in the past. Petunia descended and she caught sight of what appeared to be a large cemetery. She had a rush of second thoughts. Did she really want to delve into her father’s felonious past? The sugarcoated version she’d been fed as a ten-year-old was painful enough. Why be a glutton for detail? You couldn’t exhume a dead man’s conscience or second-guess why he did what he did. If only she could make sense of his incongruities. If she could reconcile the kind, compassionate man she’d known with the callous, drug-running rotter he turned out to be, then maybe she could let go.

Stay away, Lucien had warned her. Let the dead bury the dead. But what did that stupid proverb mean anyway? Cleon wasn’t dead yet and his memory was excellent. Why would Lucien discourage her from talking to him? Had Cleon told him something worse than what she knew already? Was he trying to spare her more shame and heartache or had there been something else in his voice? A note of…fear?

The runway zoomed up at her. She jammed both feet against the floor, threw her internal gears in reverse. She had a bad feeling, a foreboding, pins and needles in her toes.

Jacko whooped. The wheels clunked onto the tarmac, bounced, and clunked down hard again. “Bonzer ride, eh, Dinah?”

“Bonzer,” she said, but she was thinking back to the sharks that didn’t eat her with something like nostalgia.

Chapter Three

Despite the surreal detour, Petunia beat the Airnorth flight from Darwin, which according to a hand-printed sign taped to the Airnorth counter wasn’t due for another half hour.

“Lucien knows how I hate to sit and wait,” said Dinah, craning her neck around the terminal.

Jacko parked her suitcase and daypack next to a row of plastic chairs. “He must have called ahead and found out the flight was delayed.”

“I suppose.”

“Hard to tear himself away from the reunion, I expect. With his father living part-time in Sydney, they probably don’t get to spend much time together.”

“Not a lot. Uncle Cleon’s used to having his own way and so is Lucien. They have a tendency to lock horns if they’re together for longer than a couple of hours.”

“All fathers and sons argy-bargy over one thing or another. Senior a bit of a tall poppy, is he?”

“If you mean does he have a big ego, yes. He bullies and browbeats and manipulates. He drives Lucien up the wall. But he can be caring and bighearted, too. At least, he’s always been wonderful to me.”

Jacko looked at his watch. “Cripes! I’m sorry to choof off and leave you to wait alone, luv, but it’s later than I thought and I’ve some other goings-on to look into while I’m in town.”

“Oh.” She felt a shock of anticlimax, disappointment even. Almost as if she were losing a friend. “Well, Jacko, thanks for the scenic tour and the crash course in Strine. It’s been…unforgettable.”

“It was my pleasure, luv. I hope your visit to the Land of Oz is a ripsnorter.”

She watched him lope through the terminal barking Strine into a cell phone and an Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole feeling came over her. The Land of Oz was going to take some getting used to. As the flight she should have been on wasn’t due for another half-hour, the bar seemed a logical place to wait for Lucien and start acclimating.

What she found was a chipped tile counter with four stools and an uncaged green parrot pecking seeds and raisins off the tiles. A Russell Crowe look-alike with a sexy grin and a diamond stud in one ear was unboxing bottles and lining them up on a shelf behind the bar.

“G’day.” He wiped his hands on a bar towel and swaggered over. “What can I do for you? I’ve got vodka and beer. Tooheys New, Tooheys Old, and Hop Thief.”

“Could I have a Bloody Mary?” Something with the word “bloody” seemed an appropriate finale to her adventure with Jacko.

“No worries. Take a load off while I do the science.”

She sat down and he turned to his drink-making. She took a deep breath. With the emotional turbulence ahead of her, she could use a bracer. She hoped Lucien would come alone to meet her. She wanted to gauge his mood before wading into the larger family drama, find out why he’d been so dead set against her coming. He was probably just preoccupied and anxious when she phoned from Seattle. Thinking about how to say good-bye to his father would give rise to all kinds of knotty feelings. But he’d be glad she was there for him. The trick was to figure out the degree of “being there” Lucien would appreciate. He despised a bleeding heart and, as Nick once cracked, she wasn’t a natural comforter.

Stare decisis
.

The hunky bartender set her drink in front of her. “Where’d you fly in from?”

“Darwin.”

“You’re lucky you could land. The airport was closed until an hour ago. Wallies on the runway.”

“What?”

“Wallabies. Pint-sized kangaroos. They’re pests here at the airport.” His cell phone trilled. He flipped it open and walked away out of hearing range.

Dinah took a sip of the Bloody Mary and gasped. This guy must’ve gone to the Molotov School of Bartending. As her taste buds acclimated, she remembered the incendiary cocktail Lucien had concocted for her thirteenth birthday—vodka, gin, applejack, and tequila. Afterward, she’d walked an abandoned railroad trestle across the Suwannee River as if she were performing on a balance beam and Lucien had dubbed her a full-fledged member of the Hundred Proof Club. It was the summer before he left for college and he and his pals had turned Cleon’s peanut farm outside the town of Needmore, Georgia, into a training camp for life in the frat house. Cleon made sure she never crashed those parties, but she saw enough of the morning-after chaos to know they’d been wild. He let the boys get away with murder. Of course, he was between marriages then. He’d stayed single for a long time after her mother left him.

The passengers arriving on the flight from Darwin trooped through the terminal, kissing their meeters and greeters, handing off babies and bags. The singletons whipped out their cell phones and hurried on toward baggage claim and ground transportation. She set her watch to local time by the clock behind the bar. Three-thirty-seven. Back in Seattle, Nick was probably kissing his redhead good-bye, holstering his piece, and heading out to fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Stare decisis.

Now that she’d quit her job at the law firm, she’d be beating the bushes for some other employment. When she was in college she’d been gung-ho about anthropology: primitive myths, bygone religions, vestiges of ancient beliefs that live on in curious superstitions. She’d wanted to revisit all the places and tribes described in
The Golden Bough
. She’d wanted to unearth a lost city in the Amazon or rescue some crucial fragment of a forgotten civilization from history’s dustbin. On a dig in Macedonia during her senior year, she discovered a human skull with a neat round hole bored into the parietal bone—evidence of trepanation, the earliest known form of brain surgery. The early peoples of the region believed that epilepsy and other crazy or deviant behavior was caused by demon possession. Trepanation provided an exit hole for the demon to escape. The skull had been an exhilarating find. She was on her way to anthropological stardom.

But in late 2000, another of those Balkan insurgencies erupted. The ethnic Albanians attacked the Serbs, the Macedonians attacked the Albanians, her Bulgarian archaeology professor was caught smuggling weapons to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and Cleon dispatched a bodyguard named Mark Granger to bring her home.

In retrospect, it wasn’t clear if her career had been Balkanized or Grangerized, but it had definitely been marginalized. She fell head over heels for Mark, a mistake for which she should have had her own head trepanated. And by the time she came to her senses and split, she’d lost sight of her dream. She drifted from place to place, job to job. Lounge canary and piano player in Atlanta, copywriter in Denver, paralegal in Seattle. She still read everything she could lay her hands on about myths and the magical stories people have dreamed up to explain the workings of the universe. Once in a blue moon, her old anthropology professor called with an offer of field work in some exotic place, but those assignments were temporary and led nowhere. Maybe this latest hiatus would galvanize her to set some long-term professional goals for herself. But even if she had to play “Stardust” ad nauseum for a room full of drunks or draft mind-numbing interrogatories for testosterone-crazed litigators, she needed a paycheck fast. She had less than $800 to her name.

Her Bloody Mary seemed to have evaporated and still no Lucien. What was keeping him? It suddenly hit her that she didn’t have the telephone number of the lodge. Maybe there wasn’t a telephone. She had the international cell phone number Lucien had given her somewhere. She grubbed through her purse. Wallet, passport, compact, lipstick, cigarettes. Boarding passes, overdue Visa bill, quart-sized plastic baggie with toothpaste and leaking blue mouthwash. Lucien’s number wasn’t there.

The parrot let out a ferocious squawk. “Where’s my bloody munga?” It waddled down the bar to Dinah, cocked its head, and sized her up with one curmudgeonly little black eye. “Where’s my bloody munga?”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or take cover.

The bartender reappeared. “No scrounging from the customers, Speed.” He brought out a banana, peeled it, and set it down at the opposite end of the bar. “Here’s your bloody munga, mate. Come and get it.”

Speed waddled off, squawking.

“Does munga mean banana?” asked Dinah.

“It’s whatever there is to eat. Speed’s not picky. How about you? Another Mary?”

“Sure.” What the hell. If Lucien bloody Dobbs didn’t show soon, he’d find her blitzed. But blitzed might be the best way to ride out this week. She predicted the atmosphere at the lodge would be combustible. In more crowded venues—Cleon’s annual Christmas bash, for example—the wives tolerated each other with polite disdain. But in close quarters, in a situation fraught with so much emotion, repressed hostilities between the first Mrs. Dobbs and the third Mrs. Dobbs could flare into open warfare at the slightest provocation. Fortunately for all concerned, Dinah’s mother, the second and most provocative of the Mrs. Dobbs, had sent her regrets.

The pain must be unbearable for a man who loved life as much as Cleon did to shorten it by even an hour. He’d always been so full of drive and gusto. She’d considered him practically immortal. It was hard to picture him weak and ailing, harder still to learn that he’d asked for assistance to end his life. The Cleon she knew would’ve shot himself without fuss in his own back forty. But having opted to die in this way, it was strange that he didn’t go to Oregon or Washington or someplace more accessible where assisted suicide was quasi-legal.

She nursed her second Mary for half an hour, reorganized her purse, read a few sentences in her guidebook on Aboriginal myths, something about the physical contours of the country being encoded in “song lines.” Only these “songs” weren’t music, not in the ordinary sense. They were some kind of a divine navigational system, the energy currents generated by the ancestors as they traversed the land. It was too deep to fathom just now. Maybe after she’d rested and her own energy currents had regenerated.

She checked her watch, craned her neck. Maybe Lucien had a flat tire or a dead battery or an emergency of some kind. Oh, God. Maybe Cleon had passed away ahead of schedule.

“Did he stand you up?” The sexy bartender again.

“What?”

“You’ve been watching the clock ever since you sat down. I’ll be off in a quarter hour. If you’re staying in town, I’ll give you a ride to your hotel.” His eyes offered something way racier than a lift into town.

“Not today, thanks. Family obligations.”

“I’ll take a rain check. My name’s Robbie. What’s yours?”

“Dinah. From Seattle.”

“Well, Dinah from Seattle, give me a call if you shake free and fancy a bit of night life.” He jotted a number on her napkin and flashed a bad-boy grin.

“Maybe I will,” she said. He looked like primo post-Nick therapy, but she’d had enough excitement in the Land of Oz for one day.