G'Day to Die (2 page)

“Oops! Sorry.” She paused for breath, shivering as she stared back at the mob. “I didn’t mean to get caught in the middle of that.” She patted down her oversized blouse and hiking shorts as if taking inventory, before flashing me a smile. “I’ve never seen people get so maniacal over photographs. I specialize in chopping off heads, so I don’t even own a camera. I learned long ago that postcards are the way to go. I’m Claire Bellows, and you’re obviously not part of the Aussie Adventures tour since you’re not wearing a name tag.”

I returned her smile. “Emily Andrew. I’m part of the tour, I just don’t do name tags.”

“I like that idea.” She removed her ID and stuffed it into her breast pocket before wiping beads of perspiration from her brow. “We’re not schoolkids, right? I hate name tags, and I’ll be stuck wearing one for a whole week after the tour is over.”

“Conference?”

“Yeah. Scientific meeting in Melbourne. How ’bout you?”

“I’m on the job as we speak. Official escort for a group of Iowa seniors who are in the middle of that mob over there.”

“So you’re not alone?” Claire Bellows reminded me a little of Rosie O’Donnell—dark-haired and heavy-legged, with a directness that oozed confidence. “I always travel alone. When you’re by yourself, other tourists feel sorry for you, so they adopt you. It’s a great way to meet new people. If I keep at it, I figure I’m bound to run into Mr. Right one of these days. Are you married?”

“I used to be.” I let out a sigh. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve never been married. I’m thirty-seven years old, on a career track that has my head pressed against the original glass ceiling, and unless I can reinvent the wheel and wow my company’s CEO, that’s where I’ll be stuck until I’m ready to hang up my lab coat. So I’ve officially entered the marriage market.” She wiggled ten brightly polished nails. “I even got a manicure to kick off the event. First one in my life. I want it all—husband, two-point-three kids, dog, gas-guzzling SUV. I hit the snooze button on my biological clock when I started work and the alarm is about to go off, so I’m pulling out all the stops. Guaranteed, I’ll be walking down the aisle in the next few months.” She nodded emphatically and glanced around the room as if scouting out likely prospects. “Do you have time to date much?”

“Um…dating is a problem.”

She opened her collar wider, fanning herself with the placket. “Well, don’t be surprised by what you find when you get back into the dating scene. If you don’t have good instincts, you’re going to end up disappointed.” She bobbed her head toward Etienne and Duncan. “You see those two hunks over there by the window? Case in point. The two best-looking men on the tour, and they’re taken.”

My neck grew warm with self-conscious guilt, but in my own defense,
this wasn’t my fault!
I wasn’t flaunting them like trophies. I hadn’t even invited them to join me on the tour! What was I supposed to do? Send one of them home? They hadn’t even bothered to buy cancellation insurance!

Claire let out an anguished moan. “It never fails. The gorgeous guys are always gay.”

I jerked my head around to stare at her. “What?”

A gust of wind whistled through the room as our guide banged through the main entrance, his navy blue uniform putting him in danger of being mistaken for a United States Postal Service worker. His name was Henry, and in addition to narrating our travelogue, he drove the bus, prepared and served midmorning tea and cakes, directed us to the restrooms, counted heads, snapped guest photos, maintained our vehicle, treated minor injuries, exchanged currency, and could belt out a rendition of “Waltzing Matilda” that made your teeth vibrate. I was dying to see what he’d do for an encore.

“If I can trouble you for your attintion!” he called out. “I apologize to those of you waiting to board the Aussie Advintures bus, but one of our tires has blown, so I’m waiting on a mechanic from Port Campbell for assistance. No worries, though; we’ll only be delayed an hour or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

Groans. Hissing. “What are we supposed to do for two hours?” a disgruntled guest yelled.

“Introduce yoursilf to your mates!” Henry suggested. “You’re in this for two weeks togither. Give it a go.”

Claire gave my arm a squeeze. “I’m a little stiff, so I’m going outside to walk off the kinks and check out a minor curiosity. See you on the bus.”

“But wait—” I sputtered as she broke for the door, followed by a slew of other guests. I had to set her straight about Etienne and Duncan before her imaginings became grist for the rumor mill. If there was one thing I’d learned in Ireland, it was to nip a vicious rumor in the bud before it had a chance to blossom.

Battening my hair down with a bandanna, I signaled Etienne and Duncan that I had to leave, then exited the building, bracing myself against the brutal force of the wind.

The sky was electric blue, the sun so hot that it rippled the air. I shivered at the hostile acres of briars and brush that stubbled the cliff top, then stepped onto the slatted walkway that knifed through them, noting the frequent signs that cautioned visitors to
PLEASE REMAIN ON THE WALKWAY
. Oh, sure. Like there was someone on the planet who’d willingly stray
off
it?

I spied Claire and the other guests a city block away, hustling full speed ahead in spite of the heat and head wind. I couldn’t chase her down in my five-inch stacked heels, so I trudged behind for an exhausting five minutes, cursing when I reached the brow of the cliff, where the walkway split into a T.

I squinted east and west, wondering which way she and everyone else had gone. Nuts! This called for serious deductive reasoning.
Eenie, meenie, meinie, moe…

Interrupted by the sudden clatter of footsteps behind me, I turned to find Guy Madelyn hiking my way. “The wind’s a pain,” he called out, his shirttails flapping around him, “but at least it keeps the flies from tunneling up your nose.” He paused beside me and nodded seaward. “Did you know that if you leaped off this cliff and started swimming south, you wouldn’t run into another landmass until you reached Antarctica?”

“Assuming you leaped at high tide.”

He raised his forefinger in a “Eureka!” kind of gesture. “Timing is everything. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name in the visitor’s center.”

“Emily Andrew. You want to hire my grandmother as your new crack photographer.”

“Mrs. Sippel is your grandmother? She has some fine photographic genes. Did she pass them on to you?”

“I got the shoe and makeup genes.” I regarded him soberly as he opened the lens of his camera. “Were you serious about wanting to hire Nana?”

“I’ll say! And I’d like to sign her up before the competition finds out about her.” He scanned the horizon through his viewfinder before motioning me toward the guardrail. “Could I get a shot of you with the great Southern Ocean as a backdrop? I don’t charge for my services when I’m on holiday.”

Was I about to be discovered? Oh, wow. I might not have made it as an actress, but could Guy Madelyn transform me into a cover model?

I struck a pose against the guardrail and emoted like a
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit model. Sexy. Sultry. Windblown.

“Can you open your eyes?”

I tried again. Sexy. Surprised. Windblown.

“Maybe we should try this from one of the lookout points. We’re getting too much light here.”

Which I interpreted to mean, it was a good thing I was otherwise employed, because I had no future as a cover model.

“So you’re not here to shoot a wedding?” I asked as I walked double time to keep up with his long strides.

“Family reunion. It seems the Madelyn side of my family played as important a role in Australian history as the
Mayflower
passengers played in American history, so when my wife and kids fly out from Vancouver in a couple of weeks, we’re planning to meet all the Aussie relatives for the first time. The kids are really fired up, which is remarkable since they’re at the age where nothing impresses them. But I think they’re finding the idea of celebrity status for a few days ‘way cool.’”

“Because they’re related to a famous photographer?”

He laughed. “Because the town is planning to honor us with an award to recognize the contribution my ancestors made toward populating this part of Victoria. We’ve dubbed it the Breeder’s Cup. The kids figure we’ll be the only family in British Columbia with a commemorative plaque for inveterate shagging, so that gives them bragging rights. Kids, eh?”

Noticing a discarded candy wrapper littering the wayside, I ducked beneath the guardrail to pick it up, frowning when I realized what I was holding. “This is one of Nana’s photos. What’s it doing out here?” It was bent, and a little scratched, but in good shape otherwise. I showed it to Guy, who threw a curious look around us.

“I was positive all your grandmother’s photos found their way back to her. People can be so damned careless. I hope this is the only one she’s missing.”

“Dumb luck that I found it.” I slipped it into my shoulder bag for safekeeping. “So, where did your ancestors emigrate from? England?” I knew everyone in Australia was an import, except for the Aborigines, who’d been roaming the continent for either four centuries or sixty thousand years, depending upon which scholarly study you wanted to believe. Yup. The scientific community had really nailed that one.

“Portsmouth. They set sail in the early eighteen hundreds on a ship called the
Meridia,
and fifteen thousand miles later wrecked on a submerged reef along this very coast. My relatives were among the lucky few who survived.” He bobbed his head toward the open sea. “Look at all that water. If you took it away, do you know what you’d find? Sunken vessels. Over twelve hundred of them. More than anywhere else on earth. This whole place is a graveyard, which hammers home a very salient point.”

“What’s that?”

“Air travel is a wonderful thing.”

We followed the walkway through a stand of trees that were as stunted and gnarled as Halloween ghouls, then descended a short flight of stairs to a lower level with sweeping views of the deeply scalloped coastline and the thundering—

Guy suddenly ducked beneath the guardrail and charged through the underbrush, heading straight for the cliff’s edge. Eh! Were Iowans the only people who ever observed the rules?

“What are you doing?” I screamed after him. “Didn’t you read the signs? You’re supposed to stay on the walkway!”

He dropped to his knees twenty feet away and rolled something over.

Oh, God. It was a body.

“
W
hat do you s’pose she was lookin’ for?” asked Nana, her nose pressed to the visitor center window.

“A husband,” I said as we watched two officials load a body bag into the rear of a van labeled—
CORONER—CITY OF WARRNAMBOOL.

I’d run back to the visitor center after Guy made his discovery and tracked down Henry, who’d punched a number into his cell phone before dashing off with his medical kit. When emergency vehicles started screaming into the parking lot, I gave the police and paramedics directions to the site, then joined the other guests in the climate-controlled visitor center to await the outcome. With speculation about the nature of Claire Bellows’s injury running rampant, Osmond Chelsvig conducted an independent poll of our Iowa contingent and announced the results with the same giddy excitement that overtook him during off-year school board elections.

“Broken leg gets six votes. Diabetic coma gets one vote. Head trauma gets two votes. Ingrown toenail gets one vote. And, ‘She’s faking it to draw attention to herself’ gets one vote.”

We all threw disgusted looks at Bernice, who crossed her arms defensively. “You can’t prove that was me. That’s the beauty of secret ballots.”

When the coroner’s van pulled into the parking lot an hour later, I realized that all of us had been wrong. Claire Bellows was more than injured.

Claire Bellows was dead.

“She might have succumbed to heatstroke,” suggested Tilly Hovick, who leaned heavily on her walking stick as she observed the activity in the parking lot. “I believe that in extreme circumstances, heatstroke can cause death. If she was sensitive to the sun, she should have had an umbrella, though in this wind, an umbrella would be about as practical as flip-flops in the Arctic.”

“I bet she died of thirst,” said Lucille Rassmuson, whose fluorescent pink muumuu made her look like a pitcher of cherry Kool-Aid. “I thought I was going to die of thirst myself when I was out in that heat.”

“People don’t die from thirst,” Margi Swanson corrected helpfully. “They die from dehydration. We’ve treated a few cases at the clinic. Would you like me to explain the physiology to you?”

“NO!” a chorus of voices sang out.

“I’ll till you what killed her,” rasped an unfamiliar voice in an Australian drawl. “Nature.” With his accent, it came out, “Naycha.”

He strode into our midst with testosterone-laced swagger, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops as he squinted at each of us. He was wearing a tank top, shorts, thick socks, and boots that looked as if they’d kicked around a construction site for decades. His face was the color of tree bark, seamed and unshaven, and on a leather string around his neck hung a tooth the size of my baby finger. Probably one of his own. His name tag read,
JAKE SILVERTHORN.

“My giss is taipan,” he said around the toothpick that was wedged in the corner of his mouth. “Didliest snake on earth. There’s only one good thing about being bitten by a taipan.”

“Would that be that there’s an antitoxin available at local pharmacies?” asked Tilly.

“You die quick. Though some say, not quick enough.”

It suddenly grew so quiet, I could hear sweat popping out on everyone’s upper lip. “How quick?” asked seventy-six-year-old Alice Tjarks in a voice much more tentative than the one she used to announce the daily farm reports on KORN radio.

“Two minutes. Four, tops. The most agonizing four minutes you’ll ever spind.”

I stared down at my open-toed wedges with the ankle straps and wondered if I should reconsider my footwear options.

“The taipan’s a northern vipah,” Jake went on in his growlly voice. “But there’s three million square miles of imptiness around us, most of it unexplored, so no one really knows what’s out there. Taipan’s niveh been spotted in Victoria, but that doesn’t mean it’s not here.” His toothpick bobbed as he stretched his mouth into a knowing grin. “Or maybe it was a ridback that bit her.”

“What’s a redback?” asked Margi.

He made a tarantula of his hand and wiggled it in the air like a hand puppet. “An eight-ligged killing machine.”

Nervous twitters. Gasps. Dick Teig burped.

“Your ridback isn’t the worst of its kind. One nip by a Sydney funnel wib and you’re looking at instantaneous dith, but a ridback toys with you a bit. If he gives you a nip, you can look forward to a few minutes of frinzied twitching before you discharge every fluid in your body and die a grisly death.”

Snakebite? Spider bite?
Uff da
. Dying from thirst was looking better by the minute.

Tilly waggled her cane in the air. “Is the redback indigenous to this part of Victoria?”

“The buggeh breeds especially will in Victoria.” He looked down at his feet and cracked a smile. “Why do you think I wear boots?”

“Is Imily Andrew here?” a man called from the doorway.

Recognizing him as one of the officials from the coroner’s office, I hurried over to him. “I’m Emily.”

He was a well-built guy around my age who had a Mel Gibson thing going with his looks, which made me wonder if all Australian males were six feet tall and gorgeous. He nodded politely and flashed his ID badge. “Peter Blunt. Warrnambool Coroner’s Office. I apologize for the interruption, but I need to ask you a few quistions. I promise it won’t take long.” He opened a pocket-size spiral notebook and readied a ballpoint. “You were with Mr. Madelyn when he discovered the body?”

I nodded. “I stopped to admire the scenery near one of the lookout points and was stunned when Guy took off into the underbrush, ignoring all the posted signs. I didn’t see the body until he fell to his knees, and that’s when I ran back here for help. I’m afraid my participation ends there.”

“Did you know Ms. Bellows?”

“I spoke to her for a few minutes before she left the visitor center, but that was the first and last time. The tour only began yesterday, so none of us have had much of a chance to chat yet.”

“Was she complaining of any ailments? Dizziness? Pain?”

“She said she was a little stiff. And she looked pretty hot.”

“Thirty-eight degrees Cilsius will do that to you. We’re having an unusual bad spill of heat. A sorry wilcome for you, isn’t it? Have you any idea why she might have lift the boardwalk?”

“She told me she wanted to check out a minor curiosity while the bus was being repaired.”

“Did she say what?”

“I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say.”

“That’s the thing about the Shipwrick Coast,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s such an awesome sight that tourists niveh tire of exploring it. There’s some blokes who won’t rist until they see every wind shift and tidal change. Tourists use up more film here than anywhere ilse in Victoria.” He flipped his notebook shut. “Thanks for your hilp, Ms. Andrew.”

“No more questions?”

“That’s it.”

“So you don’t think foul play was involved?”

He eyed me curiously. “We didn’t find any evidince to indicate a crime had been committed.”

“Oh, thank God!” I grabbed his forearm and squeezed gratefully. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that.” Given the number of bodies I’d stumbled upon on my last four trips abroad, I was relieved that Claire’s death didn’t smack of homicide, but the fact that her dreams of a husband, children, and a gas-guzzling SUV would never be fulfilled left me oddly dispirited. “So, what happens now?”

“Postmortem. She might have had a preexisting condition that contributed to her dith, so that’s what we’ll be looking for. Hilthy adults don’t collapse and die for no reason.”

I sidled a look at Jake Silverthorn and lowered my voice as if I were sharing an original thought. “Do you suppose she might have been bitten by, say, a poisonous snake or spider?”

Peter bowed his head close to mine, and said in a knowing undertone, “You’ve rid the book, haven’t you?”

“Book?”

“
The Big Golden Book of Reptiles, Insects, and Marine Life that Can Kill You in Australia.
”

I stared at him, deadpan. “There’s a whole book?”

“It used to be an encyclopedia, but they condinsed it into an abridged coffee table edition with great color illustrations. It only lists the didliest buggehs, so you don’t have to waste time looking at the ones that give you more than an hour to live.”

A whole hour. Imagine. You’d have time for a pedicure before you kicked off.

“But if you ask me, the thrit is way overblown. The last time I saw a report of someone dying from a snake or spider bite was an eon ago.”

“How much of an eon?” I asked. “Ten years? Twenty?”

“Two weeks. But I’m talking about the whole country.”

“Thanks for your patience!” Henry’s voice reverberated through the room. “Our bus is back in working order so I’d appreciate your boarding as soon as possible. I’m hoping to make up time on our way back, so instid of stopping for dinner en route, I’ll order boxed lunches and lit you eat on the bus. That way you’ll still be on time for our ‘Meet and Greet’ back at the hotel. So sorry for the inconvenience, mates. Really.”

As the room began to empty, Peter urged me out the door. “Would you mind walking to the van with me so I can give you a business card? If you recall anything in the nixt few days that might be of use in our invistigation, ring me up.”

He removed a card from the vehicle’s glove compartment and scribbled something on the back. “This is my cill number, in case you need to reach me at home. You niveh know when those memories are going to kick in.” He handed me the card, smiling with straightforward interest. “I don’t suppose your tour group has accommodations anywhere around Warrnambool.”

My voice dripped apology. “I’m afraid we’re staying in Melbourne.”

“My loss. I could have shown you sights along the Great Ocean Road that the guidebooks haven’t even found.”

“Riddy when you are, Peter,” the other official said as he climbed into the passenger’s side of the van.

I waited until they drove away, then crossed to the parking lot where our bus was being given a final once-over by the Port Campbell mechanic and a male audience high on testosterone.

Men were so predictable. A guy might not know a jackhammer from M.C. Hammer, but if he hears the far-off buzz of a drill or saw, he’ll be out the door, tracking down the sound like a mountain man tracking bear. Once he locates the source, he bonds with the other guys who show up with ritual grunting, scratching, drinking, and standing around being useless. A lot of people think it’s team sports that form the cornerstone of male relationships, but it’s not.

It’s power tools.

I found Etienne and Duncan on the shaded side of the bus, watching sweaty, windblown tour guests climb aboard—Etienne with his black hair, Windex blue eyes, and one percent body fat, and Duncan with his football player’s physique, too-long blond hair, and dark brown eyes. I never failed to be struck by how opposite they were, and not just in looks. “How can you stand out here in the heat?” I swiped away the moisture that was drizzling down my temples. “Aren’t you dying?”

“
Bella
.” Etienne lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers. Duncan gave my hair a playful ruffle.

“Hiya, pretty. You’re right. It’s hell out here, but the mechanic had a pneumatic wrench that was poetry in motion, so we had to check it out, didn’t we, Miceli?”

Etienne spun me around into his arms and whispered seductively against my earlobe, “It’s made of titanium and can withstand a thousand foot-pounds more torque than your average pneumatic wrench. It’s the bomb.”

I grinned. “Do you know what that means?”

“I believe it means the essence of perfection.” His voice rang with boyish enthusiasm. “I have a new American slang dictionary.”

“How does a police inspector learn about foot-pounds of torque?”

“It’s not something I learned,” he whispered against my neck. “It’s part of the programming software that goes with the Y chromosome.”

“Hey, Em,” Duncan interrupted, “is that a bug on your foot?”

“BUG?” I shot out of Etienne’s arms. “Where? Which foot?” I thrashed around and swatted blindly, pausing after a few panicky moments to look down. “Is it gone?”

Duncan gave me a serious once-over. “Yup. Looks like you got it.” He braced an elbow on Etienne’s shoulder. “What do you say, Miceli? Time to climb aboard?” He gave me a flirtatious wink, the twinkle in his eye making me wonder if there’d been a bug there in the first place. I looked suspiciously from one to the other. Fast friends, were they?

I fixed Etienne with a questioning look. “I’m surprised you didn’t flash your credentials at the coroner so you could get in on the investigation.”

A moment’s uncertainty flickered in his eyes before he remembered to smile. “They seemed to have things well in hand. No sense making a nuisance of myself.”

But he always wanted to be in on the action. What was up with that?

“Twinty-nine, thirty, thirty-one,” said Henry as he included the three of us in his head count. “That leaves eleven gists missing.” He glanced around the parking lot. “Always a few stragglers who muck up the works.”

I imagined it was only coincidence that my Iowa contingent had exactly eleven members, but they couldn’t possibly be the culprits. Without exception they were always first for everything—to arrive at breakfast, to be out the door, to board the bus so they could claim the good seats by the restroom. They might be old, but in any given footrace, they always smoked the competition.