Murder with the Lot Read Online Free PDF Page A

so I could describe everything to him in detail.
    Mona’s body was six feet from the lake’s edge. Grains of sand were gathering in her brittle-looking hair. No gun in her hand. Two gold bracelets. A gold watch. Not a robbery then, they hadn’t killed her for her jewellery. Heaps of footprints and gouged-up pink sand all around her. Something glinted in one of the footprints. Using my hanky, I picked it up, turned it over. A key. Silvery, small and ordinary, it looked like the key you’d buy with a padlock at any hardware shop. So where was the padlock?
    I dropped the key into my bag.
    I walked around, the dust-laden wind tugging at my dress and hair. I put my hand over my nose and mouth. Thunder rumbled overhead. No tyre tracks visible. So the murderer hadn’t driven here. Jesus, the murderer! I glanced around. He could still be here, waiting invisibly in the shade of the native pines. Or behind the piles of rubbish, the cars, anywhere. Dean would be ages, Hustle’s at least an hour away, and he’s not one to hurry unless he has a reason. Surely he’d consider this a reason?
    A twig snapped. I whirled around. Was that a dark shape, among the trees? The hairs on my forearms stood up, all on their own, with no assistance from me.

I started scurrying towards the car but soon realised I’d left my run too late. The storm wall of dust hit me hard. The sun disappeared and the place went dark like someone had snapped off the light. Sand carried from miles away whipped up in stinging slaps against my face, lacing my eyes with grit. I cupped a hand over my eyes, trying to shield them.
    My star picket in one hand, I groped around in the rust-coloured fog, blinking painfully. Where was the car? Where was anything? I stubbed my toe on a rock, it rolled over with a shallow-water splash. Water. I was at the lake’s edge, so the car must be the other way. I turned and blundered around some more. I tripped, stubbed my toe on another rock. Another splash. Cass, you bloody fool, you’re going around in circles. Sour-flavoured panic rose up in my throat. Stay calm, I whispered. Just find some shelter and wait this out. Where? Where? Come on, think.
    I knelt on the sand and held my dress up over my face. In different circumstances I’d find it hilarious to be in this position with my dress over my head. Sand scoured my arms and legs, crunched nastily between my teeth. I coughed up a gobbet of grit. My sister Helen used to pull her dress up like this when she was a kid. When any stranger came to visit.
    Helen and I used to play cubby house in the old corrugated iron shed out here by the lake. A ruin left over from the mining days. Probably some poor bastard’s house, probably raised six kids in it. The shed. Yes. It was by the water. I just needed to follow the edge of the lake.
    The mud was deep, black and stinky underneath the pink crust. Still holding my dress up over my face, I waded along the lake’s edge, my shoes full of the stinking squelch. At least my feet were protected from the wind, they weren’t stinging with sandpaper burn. Finally the shed loomed up on my right. I slipped in through the doorway, let go of my dress and slumped against a wall, panting. The relief from the scouring sand-wind combination was like an instant balm.
    The wind blew sand in through the doorway, the broken window and every crack. I stepped away from the wall and hunkered down in the corner furthest from the door. The light was dimmer here, but near my feet I could see a few loose strands of coloured wire, left over from the days when I’d wound them into a bracelet for Helen. The place smelled stale. I wiped my stinging eyes. Ran my tongue over my teeth. I was looking forward to a drink of water and a shower, maybe even a long cool bath.
    I stared at Helen’s old bracelet wires, the wind buffeting the hut, while I worried about what to do. That snapping twig. Maybe it was just a kangaroo.