Authors: Vicki Tyley
“You don’t
believe me, do you? I knew it would be a waste of time.”
Grace was up and
halfway across the room before Jacinta had time to blink. Silently berating
herself, she clambered to her feet. She heard her mother’s voice in her head:
The
first rule when you’re in a hole is to stop digging.
Unless you were
Jacinta, of course.
“Grace, stop!
Let’s talk about it. We could go to the police together.”
Grace didn’t
break her stride. “Forget it!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Mark my words,
they’ll pay. And I don’t need anyone’s help, least of all yours.”
Jacinta stopped
in her tracks, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of helplessness. She had
inadvertently uncaged a monster over which she had no control. When the front
door slammed, she exhaled loudly, wishfully hoping she had seen the last of
Grace Kevron.
With her head
pounding from heat, stress and drinking on an empty stomach, she flopped down
onto the daybed and closed her eyes, her promise to herself to shower shelved.
The glare of the sun shining through the window above her penetrated her
eyelids, sending tiny darts of pain into her brain. Groaning, she covered her
eyes with her arm and rolled onto her side.
She found that
if she lay still, it didn’t hurt as much. Gradually, her headache eased to a
dull throb and to her surprise, she felt herself drifting into the welcome
oblivion of sleep. Unfortunately, her peace was short-lived.
Impatient for the traffic lights to
change, Craig Edmonds glanced at the folded newspaper lying on the passenger
seat beside him. His grip tightened on the steering wheel. He knew Jacinta
Deller had been trouble from the instant he set eyes on her. Now he had proof.
The newspaper
article linking the discovery of skeletal remains in the Toolangi State Forest
to the disappearance of his first wife could only have come from one person.
Besides Narelle and himself, no one else except Jacinta had been privy to the
reason behind the visit from the police. Unless the police had leaked the news
themselves — which he doubted, since the DNA tests were still to be completed —
that only left Jacinta.
Knowing he
needed to back up his suspicions, he had set out to find out as much as he
could about the woman. Narelle had been in bed asleep when he logged on to the Internet
and entered ‘Jacinta Deller’ in the search engine. While shocked to discover
they had been duped by a reporter, he wasn’t surprised. It all made complete
sense to him now.
Loud tooting
broke through his consciousness. The lights had changed to green and he was
holding up the traffic. Planting his foot on the accelerator, he peeled away
just as the lights turned to amber, leaving a queue of irate motorists in his
wake.
He had no
concern for them. He was so consumed by Jacinta Deller and the destruction she
was wreaking on his and Narelle’s lives, nothing else mattered.
Groaning, Jacinta jammed the pillow
over her head. If she ignored the incessant knocking for long enough, then
whoever was pounding on her front door might just go away. She didn’t care who
it was; she wasn’t in the mood to face anyone else that day.
Eventually, the
knocking let up. She breathed a sigh of relief and tossed the pillow aside. Had
she been asleep for minutes or hours? She opened a bleary eye. The sun was no
longer shining directly into the room. Late afternoon, she guessed.
Reluctant to
stir, she closed her eye again. Somewhere in the house, her mobile phone rang.
Cursing but at the same time hoping it would be Brett calling, she swung her
legs over the side of the daybed and stood up. Still groggy from sleep, she
stumbled toward the living room, homing in on the ringing satchel.
Midway across
the room, she glanced toward the French doors leading out to the courtyard. She
gasped, horrified to see Craig Edmonds’ cupped face framed in one of the panes.
In that same instant, Craig spotted her. For a few seconds, she stood
stock-still, unable to do anything except watch the obviously agitated man as
he hopped from foot to foot, madly waving what appeared to be a folded
newspaper. He looked like a deranged puppet, his mouth opening and closing in
rapid succession only adding to the parody. She didn’t need to hear the words
to know he wasn’t commenting on the weather.
Her mobile was
still ringing as she lunged for her satchel.
“Brett! Brett,
oh, thank God, it’s you.” Shaking violently, she gripped the phone with both
hands. “Come quickly. Oh God, he’s trying to smash the door down.”
With each thump
of Craig’s fist on the door, she expected to see glass shattering. He tried the
door handle repeatedly, jerking it up and down with such force that she thought
it could only be a matter of time before he broke through. “Hurry!”
Distracted by
the newspaper that Craig was now pressing up against the glass, she didn’t hear
Brett’s reply. Edging forward, she squinted at the hazy newsprint, trying to
focus. Although Craig appeared to have run out of steam, she was reluctant to
move much closer.
Concentrating
hard, she was just able to make out two of the words in the headline: ‘murder’
and ‘skeleton’. She blinked and stepped back, knowing then exactly what had
happened. Some savvy reporter had put two and two together — or rather, the
police visit to the Edmonds house with the discovery of the unidentified
skeletal remains. Craig clearly thought the blame lay squarely with Jacinta.
She started to
shake her head but thought better of it, guessing any denial from her at that
stage would only antagonise him further. Gnawing her lip, she glanced back and
forth between the newspaper article and Craig’s stony face.
Beam me up,
Scotty
, she thought, suddenly wishing she could be anywhere else but there.
Another planet, perhaps.
Craig continued
to glare at her, mouthing what could only be obscenities.
Damn it
, she
thought,
I am not going to be intimidated in my own home
. Thrusting her
shoulders back, she marched up to the French doors. A thin pane of glass was
all that separated them. She could see the spidery veins in his bloodshot eyes.
Then, with more
bravado than she actually felt, she shouted through the closed doors, informing
him in no uncertain terms that she had nothing to do with the newspaper
article. She was in the throes of threatening to call the police when Brett
rounded the corner of the courtyard, surprising both of them.
“Look, mate, I
don’t know what your problem is, but you’re not welcome here. If you’re not
gone in ten seconds, I’m calling the police.”
After the
initial shock, Craig looked almost relieved to see Brett. “Finally, someone who
can give me some straight answers.” He thrust the newspaper at Brett. “Have you
seen this? Your reporter…” his lip curled as he said the word, “…girlfriend is
responsible for this.”
Brett looked at
Jacinta, one eyebrow lifting slightly. She couldn’t believe it. Her word
evidently counted for nothing.
Outraged, she
had unlocked the door, preparing to face off against her critics.
“I repeat; I am
not in any way responsible for that article.”
“And why should
I believe the word of a liar?” Craig asked with more than a hint of smugness.
Jacinta frowned.
“That’s right,
your secret’s out. You’re nothing but a fucking nosey reporter, happy to screw
up other people’s lives for the sake of a story.”
“It’s not like
that. Please let me explain.” She glanced sideways, hoping Brett would come to
her aid. “But not out here.” The neighbours had heard more than enough.
For the second
time that day, she was inviting an unknown quantity into her home. At least
this time she had Brett on her side.
Ironically,
Craig chose the same seat that Grace had vacated only hours earlier. Declining
Brett’s offer of a drink, he sat forward on the seat, arms crossed defensively
over his chest.
Brett had taken
up position on one of the barstools, reminding Jacinta of a tennis umpire. She
would have much preferred to have him sitting beside her, offering moral
support and giving them at least some illusion of unity. Hiding her
disappointment, she sat back in her seat, making a conscious effort to keep her
body language as relaxed and open as possible.
A sidelong
glance from Brett warned her to be careful. Not that she needed warning. As far
as Craig was concerned, Jacinta was the devil incarnate, out to destroy
everything he held dear. She wasn’t completely without empathy. She could see
how he might think that and she was the first to admit she wasn’t entirely
guiltless.
Her first
mistake had been not listening to Brett when he pleaded with her to leave the
story alone, but her biggest mistake — and the one she regretted the most — was
entangling herself with Grace Kevron. The woman was plainly unbalanced. How
else could her erratic and vindictive behaviour be explained?
Jacinta glanced
at the man opposite. Although his body remained rigid, his dark eyes betrayed
him. In them, she saw a deep sadness. She found herself unexpectedly softening
towards him, knowing then that underneath all the bluster existed a real man
desperately trying to mask his true emotions. A real man trying to protect what
was left of his life.
“Craig, you’re
right, I should have been straight with you and Narelle from the start. I used
to be a reporter for a small regional newspaper called
The Acacia Tribune
,
but I was retrenched last December.” She looked to Brett to back her up. He
nodded. “I’ve done some freelancing since, but nothing major.” She paused,
acutely aware that she could cause more harm than good by revealing too much.
After all, there were different degrees of straight. “Um…”
“Jacinta doesn’t
freelance these days, though,” interjected Brett, on cue. “In fact, she had an
interview today for a copywriter position.”
Confusion
clouded Craig’s face for a moment, the lines around his eyes deepening. “So
what do you call this, then?” He tapped the newspaper article with his
forefinger. “Just a figment of my imagination? I don’t care what you say — all
I know is that from the day we met you, we’ve had nothing but trouble. I’m
warning you, stay away from Narelle.”
“Isn’t that up
to Narelle to decide?” she snapped, his threat like a red rag. Out of the
corner of her eye, she saw Brett’s eyes widen. Ignoring the little voice in her
head telling her to quit while she was ahead, she added, “She has a will of her
own, you know!”
Craig jumped to
his feet, his voice hard and steely as he loomed over Jacinta. “What do you
think she would say if she knew her new buddy had been deceiving her all along?
Save yourself the hassle and leave her alone.”
“Don’t you see? That’s what my
stepfather did to my mother. Controlled her every move. Cut her off from her
friends.” She grabbed at his hands and squeezed. “Craig’s doing the same thing
to Narelle. You can’t honestly expect me to
butt out
, as you put it.
What sort of friend would that make me?”
Brett’s mind
raced, working overtime to make sense of what Jacinta was saying. If she had a
stepfather, this was the first he was hearing of it. And when had she and
Narelle become such close friends that she was prepared to stand up to Craig
Edmonds, a man who had been accused of murdering his wife? Certainly, life was
never boring with Jacinta around. That much hadn’t changed.
She stopped
jabbering, her bottom lip quivering. Tears welled in her eyes as she released
his hands and started to turn away. He caught her, pulling her in tight against
his torso. She clung to him, silent sobs racking her body.
He held her
fast, feeling the warmth of her body, smelling her perfume. How wrong could he
have been? It was madness to think he could ever stop loving Jacinta. Whatever
her foibles, they were part of what made her the woman he loved. His mouth
sought hers, the faint, sour taste of alcohol surprising him.
Neither of them
spoke, but somehow they ended up in the bedroom, the incident with Craig all
but forgotten. Tearing at each other’s clothes, they fell onto the bed, a
tangle of limbs. In seconds, both were naked.
Digging her fingernails
into his back, she locked her legs around his hips. Her aroused body moved with
his, not staying still for a moment. He couldn’t get enough of her. Nor, it
seemed, she of him.
Later, he lay on
his back and stared up at the ceiling, Jacinta’s head resting in the crook of
his arm. Even though her breathing had slowed and her eyes were closed, he
wondered if she might be feigning sleep. Had the sex, too, been a way of
putting off answering the inevitable questions?
No
, he decided,
that
was my doing
. He smiled to himself, remembering. Although he had only
intended to console her, not race her off to bed, she had been no passive
participant.
Great sex aside,
he had been rather taken aback by the mention of a stepfather. What stepfather?
In the whole time they’d been together, Jacinta had not said one word about the
man. He doubted it was something that could easily slip your mind, but on the
other hand, whenever he asked about her past, she tended to be extremely
evasive. All he knew was that Jacinta had never known her father, and that when
she was fifteen, she and her mother had moved from Perth to Melbourne. Now that
she had let that much slip, would she open up to him?
Brett’s last
thought before drifting into an endorphin-induced sleep was at least he
understood what had prompted her antagonistic attitude toward Craig. He
reminded her of her stepfather.