Chapter 19

chapter nineteen

Now

A phone rang. A printer whirred. A keyboard clacked. A man laughed and said, ‘You’re kidding me?’ A woman sneezed and said, ‘Bless me!’ It could have been any open-plan corporate office on a weekday morning, with its grey nylon carpet tiles and beige walls, except that the people working here routinely dealt with the worst of humanity. It was no wonder the most senior of them spoke in similar brittle impatient tones that made their partners sigh, ‘Why are you always so cynical?’

Christina sat at her desk, drinking a full-cream double-shot piccolo from the café next to the station, thinking about Nico, this morning, sighing, ‘Why are you always so cynical, Christina?’ when she questioned why his friend-of-a-friend wedding photographer was demanding payment upfront.

Joy Delaney had been out of contact for thirteen days following an argument with her husband. This was a woman whose children couldn’t recall her going away for one night without her husband.

Why are you always so cynical, Christina?

Because nice ordinary people lie and steal and cheat and murder, Nico.

They’d paid the photographer upfront.

She drank the last of her piccolo, opened the file in front of her and read a printout from Joy’s Word documents on her desktop computer:

So You Want to Write a Memoir

Writing a memoir is an enriching experience. Think of this exercise as a warm-up to get those creative juices flowing. Let’s start with your ‘elevator pitch’ – tell us your life story in just a few paragraphs below!

My given name is Joy Margaret Becker. No relation to the famous tennis player Boris Becker, in case you’re wondering! (But I am a tennis player.) My mother’s name was Pearl, and she was a ‘beauty’, which is why she never quite recovered from the shock of my father walking out on us when I was four years old. He said he was going to meet a friend, but he didn’t mention the friend lived over two thousand kilometres away in the Northern Territory!

My father died in a ‘fist fight’ three years after he left us. He had a quick temper. I have a quick temper myself, or so I’ve been told, but I’ve never been in a fist fight! I was always told that my father adored me but that sure was a funny way to show it.

My mother moved back in with her parents, my grandparents, who were more like parents to me and brought me up. I was especially close to my grandfather, who was the chattiest man I have ever known. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey. I still think of things I’d like to tell my grandpa. My mother was quite a critical, unhappy person. It wasn’t her fault. She was born in the wrong time. I think if she was born now she might have been the CEO of a big corporation. Or she might have been a weather girl. She was certainly pretty enough and always very interested in the weather.

My grandfather loved tennis and one day when I was a toddler, I picked up his big wooden square-headed tennis racquet. It would have been so heavy for a three-year-old. My grandfather, just for fun, threw me a ball and I hit it straight back. He said he nearly fell off his chair. I hit ten balls in a row before I missed one. My grandmother said it was only five. My mother said she didn’t believe a word of it. Who knows! All I do know is that tennis was all I wanted to do when I was a little girl. I just loved hitting that ball. Hard flat shots from the baseline. That’s my favourite. (Too much spin these days. It’s the fancy new racquets.) I loved the sound. Clop. Clop. Clop. Like horse’s hooves. The smell of new tennis balls is one of my favourite smells. I have never taken drugs (apart from paracetamol, I do quite enjoy paracetamol) but I sometimes feel like tennis is my drug. When the match is over it’s like waking up from a beautiful dream.

I started entering tournaments when I was ten. When I was eleven, I played against a thirteen-year-old girl and she cried when I beat her. I didn’t feel sorry for her at all. I remember that very clearly. My prize for winning that tournament was an umbrella. (See-through with a red trim.) That was the same day I overheard a man tell my grandfather that I had the potential to be a world champion. That stuck in my mind. My grandfather and I had a plan. First I would win the local junior championships, then the state titles, then the Australian women’s singles, then I’d go overseas (I’d never been on a plane!) and win the French and US titles, and finally Wimbledon.

By the time I was twelve my grandfather had to build a new shelf for all my trophies.

I was quite young when I married a tall (very tall!), dark and handsome young tennis player called Stan Delaney. We planned tennis careers. We drove all over the country playing in tournaments while still trying to support ourselves. It was hard but fun. I did a secretarial course after school. My mother wanted me to have a ‘back-up’ in case ‘tennis didn’t work out’. Her hope was that I would marry a ‘businessman’. She thought tennis was a fairy tale and perhaps she was right because my husband had a very bad injury when he was only twenty-two. He tore his Achilles playing the third set of the Manly Seaside Tournament quarterfinals. He would have won the match if not for that injury. So that was his Achilles heel! (But it was his Achilles tendon.) So we left the circuit and a few years later we started Delaneys Tennis Academy, which went on to become one of the most successful tennis schools in the state, if not the country, if I do say so myself! (I told my mother that I ended up becoming a ‘businesswoman’ myself but she thought I was trying to be funny.)

We had four children, two boys and two girls. Even Stevens! All four were very talented players. We have no grandchildren as yet.

We recently sold the tennis school and now we have the time to tick things off our bucket list! If only we had a bucket list! Oh well.

‘Christina?’

She looked up to see Ethan, in a turquoise shirt today, at her cubicle entrance, gleaming with health and optimism. ‘These young guys are like fucking Energizer Bunnies,’ one of the other detectives had sighed to Christina, and he was fifteen years older than her, but she knew what he meant.

‘Joy Delaney’s internet search history for the day she disappeared,’ said Ethan, handing her a sheet of paper. He’d highlighted relevant lines in yellow.

Joy had Googled the following questions:

How do you know when it’s time to divorce?

Divorcing after sixty

How does a divorce affect adult children?

Does marriage counselling work?

Does whiskey go off?

‘So much for that wonderful marriage of theirs,’ said Christina.

‘I know,’ said Ethan sadly, and he momentarily bowed his head as if to honour a loss, but then he immediately lifted it again, and said brightly, ‘I’ve also got her phone records. One hour before she sent that text –’

‘If she sent that text,’ said Christina.

‘One hour before that text was sent,’ Ethan corrected himself, ‘there was a forty-minute telephone conversation with a Dr Henry Edgeworth. He’s a forty-nine-year-old plastic surgeon, married with two children. He’s currently overseas and not returning our calls.’

‘A plastic surgeon?’ Christina frowned. ‘How does that fit?’

It didn’t fit.

‘Booking in for plastic surgery so she could change her identity?’ suggested Ethan.

‘Yeah. Because she got mixed up with the Mafia,’ said Christina.

‘Should I look at potential connections with organised crime?’ asked Ethan enthusiastically.

She looked up to see if he was joking. She couldn’t tell.

She said evenly, ‘We need to look at all potential connections.’

Ethan nodded. He looked down at his notes. ‘There was that huge hailstorm two days after Valentine’s Day.’

‘So you’re thinking she got hit by a hailstone and now she’s got amnesia?’

He looked up at her. Now he couldn’t tell if she was joking.

She said, ‘How are we going with that house guest of theirs?’

‘I’m closing in on her.’

‘Good,’ said Christina. ‘Because I reckon all roads lead to her.’