Murder Down Under (A Darcy Sweet Cozy Mystery Book 17) (5 page)

As they walked, another question nagged at Darcy.

“Jon.  What’s Ice?”

“Hmm?  I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Back at the police station there was a poster about how Ice kills more than three hundred Australians every year.”

“Oh.  That kind of Ice.  It’s a street name for methamphetamine.  I remember something about it being very popular over here right now.  It’s highly addictive.  And deadly.”

Well, Darcy thought.  Australia and America had more in common than she realized.

They didn’t take their time.  They had planned on walking around today.  Just to sightsee, and enjoy themselves.  There was no time for that now.  Kevin Powers said he wasn’t going to talk to Alec Beaudoin until this afternoon, but plans changed.  If he suspected Jon and Darcy had more interest in what was going on here in Lakeshore than a tourist should, he might just decide to go over to Evangeline Circle right now.

It was a shame, really, because Lakeshore was a beautiful town.  Tall, narrow pine trees in their full green glory swayed everywhere, outside of town and in small clusters between the houses and buildings.  The sun was warm.  The breeze was nice, and carried the fresh scent of water from the nearby lakes.  They passed by several houses with people out in their yards playing with young children or doing chores.  A few smiled and waved.  It was a nice friendly town.

Where people were dying.

“Hey, look,” Jon said.

He was pointing up at a brown metal street sign with yellow letters spelling out Evangeline Circle.

“Guess we found it.” 

He turned at the corner and she followed with him onto a street that was a little cul-de-sac, curving around to form a lazy circle of houses that were just as white and just as simply built as all the houses in town.  They followed the sidewalk to the right past small, neatly trimmed lawns.  “Now how are we supposed to find the house?  Want to go door to door and ask if anyone knows where Alec Beaudoin lives?”

“Or we could just try that house there,” Darcy suggested with a confident smirk.

In front of the house Darcy pointed to was a mailbox with a number thirteen on it and a black prancing stallion painted on the hinged door.  On the side was a name.  Beaudoin.

“We could try that,” he agreed.  “See, that’s why you’re a consultant.”

Darcy felt a twinge of guilt.  “I’m sorry, Jon.  We’re supposed to be here on our honeymoon and here I have us in the middle of a mystery.”

With a look that warmed her inside, he told her it was all right.  “Besides,” he said, “I still don’t think there’s anything to this.  You promised me you’d drop it if there was nothing to it.  The police have done their investigation.  After we talk to this Alec guy I’m sure we’ll be able to get back to our vacation.”

“So, you’re just humoring me?”

He took her hand and led them up the front walk of the Beaudoin home.  “Maybe a little.  Isn’t that what a good husband would do?”

“I think you qualified for the good husband seal of approval when you brought your wife all the way to Australia for her honeymoon.”

Jon knocked on the door, and leaned over at the same time to kiss the side of her neck.

She could feel her face turning pink.

The door opened and a short man in a blue bathrobe stood not exactly smiling at them.  His brown hair was thinning even though he still tried to comb it over his scalp.  A pudgy face was pockmarked and bristly with a few days’ growth of beard. 

“Help you?” he asked, in a rough and gravelly voice.

“Hi.  I’m Jon Tinker.  This is my wife Darcy.  We’re looking for Alec Beaudoin.”

“Found him.”  Alec crossed his arms over his chest and stuck out his lower lip.  “Don’t know ya, Mate.  Or yer Sheila here.  What can I do ya for?”

“We’re here on vacation—”

“Good for you.  Tourists from America.  I’m not a bloody tour guide.  Whad’ya want?”

The man was close to shutting the door in their faces.  Darcy could tell just from his tone of voice and the hostility that radiated off him in waves.  Some people were like that, she knew.  Some people hated outsiders intruding on their business.  Misty Hollow was a pretty friendly place, for instance, but even back home they had plenty of people who were happy to live their lives behind closed doors.

Before he could shut them out she took a step forward.  “We were worried about the people who got poisoned here,” she said.  “We heard you were a victim.  Would it be all right to talk to you for a few minutes?”

“The poison?”  Alec’s face softened, going through a series of emotions that barely registered before it settled on a tight smile.  “Right.  I mean, sure.  Anything to help a neighbor, even if they are from the other side of the blooming world.  Come in, come in.”

He stepped aside for them to enter.  Jon glanced at Darcy and then quickly looked away.  She knew what he was thinking.  That was a fast change of heart.

“I think he likes the attention,” Jon whispered to her when Alec’s back was turned.  “Being poisoned probably made him a local celebrity.”

“I’ve some water in the kettle fer tea,” he told them, cinching the belt of his robe up tighter.  “Wasn’t expecting company.  Don’t get many visitors.  I work night shift at the quarry out west of here.  Usually asleep during the day.  But, I got crook after that poison got me.  Had to take a few days.  Now the whole outfit is shut down for the season and I ain’t got no way to make me rent.”

He stopped talking.  His hands slipped into the pockets of his robe like he didn’t know what to do with them.  “So.  Er.  What can I do for ya?”

They were in his living room, but truthfully Darcy didn’t dare sit down.  Standing was fine with her.  There was a grimy couch with a horrible floral pattern and two mismatched easy chairs, both different shades of blue.  A spring was poking through the cushion of one.  The rest of the room was just as neglected.  The wallpaper needed to be scrubbed.  Magazines and beer bottles and empty pizza boxes littered the floor.  Alec probably wasn’t home much, Darcy guessed, working nights like he did.  That probably explained the mess.

Or, he was just a slob.  She wasn’t sure.  Either way, she stayed standing with Jon.

“Mister Beaudoin,” she said, hoping that being honest with him would gain her some continued good will, “do you know how you were poisoned?”

He was shaking his head even before she had the question finished.  “Coppers asked me that at the hospital.  ‘Fraid not.  So, don’t drink the water, I guess?”

He let out a half-hearted laugh for his own joke that quickly turned into a cough.

“Does the hospital know what poison you had in your system?” Jon asked.

“Sure enough.  Some sort of biological poison, they said.  Like poison oak, just a whole lot stronger.  Put me out on my…er, me backside for four whole days.  Couldn’t see straight the first two.  Couldn’t swallow, neither.  Bad rash all over me skin.  Still coming back from it.  Had to take a week off from me job.  Nothing I’d wish on a worst enemy, I can tell you that.”  Again he stopped, like he’d caught himself saying too much.  “Anywho, you folks won’t have to worry.  Only hit four of us.  Not like it’s an epidemic.”

“Two people have died,” Darcy reminded him.

Alec shrugged.  “Everybody bites the big one sometime, Miss.”

That wasn’t a very caring attitude.  “Did you know the victims?” she asked him.  “The ones who died, I mean.”

“Not the first bloke.  Knew the second one, sort of.  From around town.  Lindsay Burlick.  Sweet girl.  Liked to paint sunflowers.  Just enough to say g’day to, ya understand.”

Hmph.  Darcy was a little disappointed.  She was hoping there was some kind of connection between all four victims.  If there was one, Alec didn’t know what it was.  Did that make the poisonings random?  Or, was there some connection even the victims were unaware of?

“Well.  It was nice to know ya,” Alec said to them after a long pause where no one had anything else to say.  “Enjoy yer stay.  Don’t worry ‘bout getting poisoned.  Hasn’t been a new case in more’n a week.  Fair to say it’s over.  Whatever caused it, that is.”

“The four of you all got poisoned at the same time?” Jon asked.  His police mind was working now.  Darcy could see it in his eyes.  “All four at once?  That’s a bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

Alec blinked at him.  “You know, Mate, you gab like the law.  What is it?  You a copper?”

Jon put on a smile.  “You’re very observant, Mister Beaudoin.  I’m a police chief, but not here.  I don’t have any kind of jurisdiction here.”

“No I reckon you don’t, Mate.”  Alec nodded thoughtfully.  Then he walked away from them, back to the entryway, and opened the door to his small home again.  “No jurisdiction at all.  You should go enjoy your holiday.  Now.”

They were being escorted out.  Whatever good will had got them into his door had been used up, apparently.  Darcy had to ask one more thing.  “Mister Beaudoin, can I ask you if you Know Mabel Quinn?  The bookstore owner?”

“Of course,” he answered.  “Everyone does.  Why do you…oh, you reckon maybe she…I see.”

“We don’t think anything,” Jon said, trying to cover their obvious interest.  “We were talking with her yesterday and she had some interesting things to say.”

Alec leaned in closer to them.  “Mabel’s a full on kook.  Nutters in the head.  If I wanted to say anyone in Lakeshore could slip me a poison mickey, I’d put my money down on Mabel Quinn.”

Interesting, Darcy thought.

“Did you tell that to the Lakeshore Police?” Jon asked him.

“No, I did not.  Didn’t think of it until you just jogged me memory.  I’ll tell them soon as I get the chance.”

Then he was holding the door open for them to leave.  Darcy knew Alec would get his chance to talk to the police again soon enough.  He could tell them about Mabel when Kevin Powers came to interview him.

Now Mabel was an even stronger suspect in Darcy’s mind.

Outside again on the sidewalk of Evangeline Circle, Darcy waited to say anything until they were a few houses away, just in case Alec was listening at his window. 

“So what now, Jon?  Do you still think there’s nothing to this?”

“I’m not sure if I do or not,” he admitted.  “I know this much.  I’d like to talk to Mabel again.”

“So would I.” 

“Of course, there’s someone else I’d like to talk to even more than that crazy bookstore lady.”  He watched Darcy out of the corner of his eye.  “I’d like to talk to Lindsay Burlick.  I’m betting she knows something.”

Lindsay, the dead girl.  Darcy could only imagine how much easier murder investigations would be if people could talk to the dead victims.  That was impossible, of course.  No one could talk to the dead.

Except for Darcy Sweet.

They were almost back to Mabel’s bookstore when Darcy’s stomach started to growl.  The walk had worked up an appetite.  Checking her My Little Pony watch, she saw it was only just after ten in the morning.  Not even close to time for lunch.

“I saw a store on the way into town,” Jon said, checking his watch too.  “There was a sign in the window that said they sold food.  I think it’s some sort of deli.  We could always get a midmorning snack and take a break.”

She smiled up at him.  “You read my mind.  Are you sure?  I mean, I know we agreed to only eat at the Inn.”

His stomach growled, too, and that seemed to decide it for him.  “We’ll only eat prepackaged foods or things we can watch being made in front of us.  I don’t see the risk in that.  We can eat quick, and then get back to investigating.”

“Are you sure?  I know this isn’t what you wanted to do today.”

He took her hand, and they passed by the bookstore together.  “Tasmania isn’t going anywhere, Sweet Baby.  Besides, you heard Alec.  The poisonings have stopped.  We might just be too late for this mystery.  So.  I say let’s take a break and get you something to eat.  Then we can talk to the crazy bookstore lady.”

As they passed the Eye of the Beholder, Darcy peeked in through the tall windows.  Mabel was inside, wearing a dress even more colorful than the one from last night, dancing in slow circles between the book stacks.

They got to the deli or whatever it was a few minutes later.  It was the same one Darcy remembered from the taxi ride.  Painted white boards overlapped each other up the two story building to the edge of the slanting tiled roof.  In the tall windows were the signs for tobacco and medicine and the one that read “Food Here.”  A black sign above the door had the name of the place written in scripted letters.  “The Morris Milkbar.”

“What’s a milkbar?” Darcy asked.

Jon shrugged.  “Not really sure.  I hope they sell more than milk and tobacco, though.”

The floors inside were wooden planks.  Every step was a hollow thump, thump, thump.  Somehow, the place managed to look smaller on the inside than it had on the outside.  Maybe it was the tall coolers along the outside walls, stocked with cold drinks and juices and, yes, milk.  There were wrapped sandwiches that Darcy saw in one cooler, and boxed meals in another.  Rows of shelves took up space on one side, while this side closest to the door was an open space with three round tables and chairs waiting for customers to sit down.

A counter to the left of the door had a cash register and debit card machine next to a display of lottery tickets, and past that was a glass case full of wrapped hams and other meats and blocks of cheese.  A working deli, stuffed into a convenience store.  Wow, Darcy thought.

Behind the counter, a woman was bent over a meat slicer, working a side of beef into thin slices.  She looked up at them with a final slice.  “Be with you in a jiff.”

The woman’s slender figure was hidden behind a long green apron.  She was probably in her thirties, Darcy judged, a little older than her and Jon, even though the lines of her face made her look older.  Her blonde locks were pulled back neatly under a mesh hairnet.  Taking off clear plastic gloves she smiled and powered down the slicer.

“I’d love a sandwich,” Darcy told her.  “Do you make those here?  Turkey and maybe some Swiss cheese?”

“Get that right quick for ya.”  The woman’s smile broadened.  “You’d be Americans then? Could tell by the accent.”

Darcy wanted to say she didn’t have an accent, but she knew on this side of the world she was the one who sounded different.

Jon asked for a sandwich too, and they added chips and drinks, and had their snack in just a few minutes.  Paying with colorful plastic notes, they thanked the woman in the green apron and took seats at one of the tables to eat.

After a few moments, she called over to them.  “Everything super?”

“It’s very good,” Darcy told her.

“You two are tinny.  You’re here before the lunch rush.  Come eleven-thirty got my hands full.  This place used to belong to my parents.  They’ve passed on now, and here I am.  Oh, sorry.  You trying to eat and me talking your ears off.  Name’s Cathy.  Glad to have you here in Lakeshore with us.”

Jon looked at Darcy, chewed his bite of sandwich, and swallowed it back with a drink from his bottle of Coke.  “We’re enjoying our vacation.  Lakeshore is a beautiful town.”  Then, smooth as silk, he steered the conversation to the mystery going on around them in this beautiful town.  “We heard there was some trouble here, though.  Some people got poisoned?”

Cathy’s plain face turned sour.  “Yeah.  Was a nasty bit of business.  Two of them died.  I hear the third one might be a goner, too.  Only one out of the woods is that drongo Alec Beaudoin.”

Darcy wasn’t really sure what a ‘drongo’ was, but from the way Cathy’s lips curled around the word, it wasn’t anything good.

“We were talking to…someone earlier,” Jon said to Cathy, “about one of the victims.  A young woman by the name of Lindsay Burlick.  She was from here in Lakeshore, wasn’t she?”

Cathy scratched at her ear, leaning one hip against the counter.  “Sort of.  Her family was from Melbourne.  I think Lindsay lived here with a housemate for five years or so.  Came into the shop now and then.  Liked the natural food stuffs, as I recollect.  Had the place at the end of Humes Street.  Nice little place.”

“Let me guess. The white place?”

Her laugh was honest and lighthearted.  “I know, right?  Every place in town.  White, white, white.”

“Is there a reason for it?” Jon asked her.

“It’s a nod to our history.  Bit of nostalgia.  Australia was originally a dumping ground for Britain’s convicts.  Thing was, not every criminal wants to stay locked up even when the prison’s in such a nice place like this.  Whole groups of them escaped and became bandits and robbers.  Bushrangers, they was called.  In 1813, bushrangers came to Lakeshore.  Burned the whole town.  Stole the gold from the mayor’s house.”

She paused to take a breath, taking a grape soda from the little mini-cooler near the front.  “After the bushrangers left, the people painted over their houses to hide the fire damage.  Used white paint, ‘cause it was what they had.  Done it that way ever since.”

Now that Darcy knew the reason for it, she kind of liked the town being all white like this.  It meant something, and made them all a community.

Plus, they now had the address of the house Lindsay Burlick used to live in.  Cathy had also told them Lindsay used to share the house with someone.

If they were lucky, Lindsay’s housemate would still be there.

She couldn’t finish her sandwich fast enough.

***

Asking how to find Humes Street would only raise Cathy’s suspicions.  Neither of them wanted to take a chance that just walking around to find the street would work twice.  So the plan, once again, was to go back to the bookstore in town.  Now that they knew more they would have more questions to ask Mabel. 

Jon was becoming more and more convinced that what had happened here wasn’t just coincidence.  Four people in the same town, all poisoned, all nearly at the same time.  Two of them dead, a third one maybe dead soon.  A fourth one just out of the hospital.

That was way too much coincidence for Darcy, even more so for her police officer husband.

The path they took from the Milkbar to the bookstore got them lost.  Again.  Somewhere around the fountain with its pitiful little stream of water they took a wrong turn.  “How come I don’t get lost in Misty Hollow but every step I take here leads me in circles?” Jon asked as they stood looking both ways up Main Street where it intersected Koala Lane.  The houses all looked the same.  The church they had seen yesterday with its handmade cross dominated the other side of the street.

“Maybe your sense of direction is backwards,” Darcy teased.  “Since we’re upside down.”

“Heh.  That must be it.  I think we’ve already been down there.  It looks familiar, anyway.”

“Can I help you folks?” a voice called across to them from the churchyard.

A small man, both thin and short, had come around the side of the church while Darcy and Jon stood there.  At first she thought he was a teenager, but his dark brown hair was receding and his face showed the lines that only came from years of laughter and deep thought.  Round glasses with dark rims gave his oval face an owlish appearance.  He wore black slacks and a black short sleeved shirt with a reverse collar, marking him as the church’s pastor.

In his hand was a watering can, still dripping from the spout.  He raised his other hand in greeting and then wiped sweat from his brow.  “You must be tourists to our little town here,” he said.  “Lost, are ya?”

“A bit,” Jon admitted.  “We’re looking for Humes Street?”

“Not so lost after all,” the pastor reassured them.  “Although I do recommend heading to church whenever you feel lost.  Glad you found me.  You need to go up Main Street that way, and take your second right turn.  Humes is the next street.  A dead end.  Are you looking for someone?  I know everyone in town, if I can help.”

“Oh, let them go already, Jonas,” the man standing in front of the doorway of the church said to the pastor.  It was the tall man with the gaunt face who had waved to Roy’s taxi yesterday.  He was standing in the same place that Darcy had seen him, holding the same wooden cane with the rounded handle, wearing dark clothes again.  His face was clean shaven, his gray hair combed straight back from a high forehead.  He winked at Darcy.  “They’ve got important things to do.”

“Well we are in kind of a hurry,” Darcy had to admit.  If Jonas was the pastor, with his reverse collar, maybe this other man was the assistant pastor.  He certainly had the kind eyes and easy smile she would expect from someone who spent their time ministering to the needs of others.

“I see,” Pastor Jonas said with a nod.  “Young people.  Always in a rush.  Like a wallabee hopping around.”

“You’re Pastor Albright?” Jon asked.

“Yes I am, although it’s Reverend not Pastor,” he corrected. “I am the minister at the church here.  Feel free to come down while you’re visiting us here in Lakeshore.”

“We just might do that,” Darcy said, although her thoughts were already on finding Humes Street.  “Thank you, Jonas.”

The pastor seemed surprised.  “I don’t believe I told you my first name, Miss.”

Darcy thought back through their conversation.  “No.  He did…”

She was pointing at the empty front steps of the church, where the tall man had stood, and was now gone.

“Who did?”  Pastor Jonas asked.  “I don’t see anyone.”

“I don’t know who it was.  He was tall, with gray hair.  Using a cane?”

The pastor’s face went very pale, and he turned to stare at the church door again, as if he’d just seen a ghost.

Jon thanked the man again.  They left him standing there, and started down the street in the direction he had given them.

Darcy felt tingles running up and down her spine.  Pastor Albright’s church wasn’t as empty as he might think.

Humes Street was easy enough to find, once they knew where to look.  A dead end street with exactly three houses on it.  The last one at the end wasn’t much different than the others.  A single story home, with a plate glass window facing a small yard littered with pine needles from the trees growing just past the edges of the pavement.  The white of the exterior walls was bright and clean, like it had been painted only recently.  Darcy could see flowers of different colors drooping along the front, beginning to wilt as the seasons changed.

Heavy blue curtains were drawn across the window so they couldn’t see inside, but a beat up Volkswagen hatchback was in the driveway.  Someone was home.

The door opened before they even got to the short set of front steps.  A slender young woman stood glaring at them, dressed in khaki shorts and leather cowboy boots that had pink fringe on them.  Her shirt matched, with pink pockets and shoulders on the sleeveless button-up top.  Curly black hair framed an angry face.

“Who’re you?”

Maybe they should have thought up a plan, Darcy told herself.  Something to say that would explain what they were doing.  Hindsight was a wonderful thing.  Well, without a plausible story to tell, all they were left with was the truth.  It had worked before.

“My name is Darcy,” she said.  Jon looked at her in surprise.  She ignored him.  “This is my husband, Jon Tinker.  We’re staying at the Pine Lake Inn.  We heard about the poisonings, and we heard that Lindsay died.  We’re so sorry.  Would you mind if we came in and talked to you about it for just a few minutes?”

Something in what she said must have struck the right tone.  The woman took a short, stuttering breath, and the heat from her gaze softened.  “Nobody’s cared one tiny wit about her death,” she said to Darcy.  “Except her sis.  She came to town right after.  Hardly left my side.  Nobody else in this Godforsaken place showed a lick of concern.  The cops don’t care.  Wrote it off as an accident.  Had the nerve to say Lindsay did it to herself.  Took something she shouldn’t’ve.  A big fat lot of good they are.  Like to drown the whole lot of ‘em in a lake full of crocs.”

She took another little breath.  Darcy saw her shoulders relax and wondered at the emotion bottled up inside of her.  “Come inside,” she offered.  “My name’s Maureen.”