Chapter 48

chapter forty-eight

‘I told the police what happened on Christmas Day.’

‘What do you mean? Nothing happened on Christmas Day.’

‘Oh, come on, Brooke.’

‘Nothing relevant happened.’

Jacob Azinovic could hear voices, loud and clear, as he walked around the side of the Delaney house carrying a slow-cooked lamb casserole.

‘I need you to take this over to Stan Delaney for me,’ his mother had said when he came over to check out the mysterious ‘beeping’ sound her car had been making, although it was suspiciously silent when Jacob drove it.

‘Why do I have to take it over?’ protested Jacob. This was the real reason he’d been summoned: to walk over the road and deliver a casserole.

‘Jacob,’ said Caro. ‘It’s possible that man murdered his wife.’

‘Then why are you cooking for him?’

‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ said Caro. ‘Stan has been very nice to me since your father died. Joy would expect me to send over a meal.’

‘Not if Stan killed her, she wouldn’t,’ said Jacob, but his mother’s eyes had welled with tears, so he’d sighed and picked up the baking dish and headed out the door.

‘I overcooked it,’ his mother called out, as he left. ‘Just in case.’

No-one answered when he knocked on the Delaneys’ front door but he could see that the driveway was filled with cars, so he’d come around the side of the house.

All four Delaney children were there, sitting at a table on the back veranda, talking animatedly and loudly. Jacob felt that familiar sense of awed trepidation he used to feel when he’d seen them together as children. There was a kind of glamorous violence to the Delaney siblings. At any moment a monumental battle could erupt.

‘They know all about Savannah now,’ said Troy. His luxuriant dark curly hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it. Troy was the first boy Jacob had ever loved. His first experience of a flirtatious straight boy. ‘They know what Mum and Dad were arguing about now. They know Dad has a motive.’

Jacob cleared his throat to make his presence known and shifted the casserole. It was hot against his forearms.

‘Don’t use the word “motive”,’ said Brooke. ‘It is not a motive! Did you tell them about Savannah? I thought we’d agreed not to mention the Harry Haddad connection at all.’

‘I never agreed to anything, but it wasn’t me. It was Mum’s hairdresser,’ said Troy. ‘They’re trying to get in touch with Harry.’

‘I don’t see what Harry could tell them,’ said Logan. He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Savannah was estranged from him.’

‘Did you think it was Mum?’ asked Amy. She spoke in a dreamy kind of voice. ‘When you heard about the body on the news?’

Oh God, this was an awful conversation to overhear. Still no-one noticed Jacob.

‘Hi, guys,’ he said, with a crack in his voice. Not nearly loud enough. He’d forgotten how you had to up your volume when all the Delaneys were together.

‘No, I did not think it was her,’ said Logan. ‘Not for a minute. She’s fine.’

‘It’s too long now,’ said Troy. ‘She’s been gone too long. We need to forget the whole “Mum is making a point” theory.’

‘All we can do is support Dad,’ said Brooke.

‘Not if he murdered our mother, we can’t,’ said Troy.

Brooke said, ‘Shhhh!’ She pointed at the back door of the house. Presumably Stan was inside. ‘Don’t say things like that. People can tell you have suspicions, or doubts, or whatever the hell you’ve got. They’re analysing our body language online. When we had the media conference you and Amy stepped away from Dad. It looked bad.’

‘I was not stepping away from Dad,’ said Amy. ‘I felt dizzy. I thought I was going to faint.’

‘If you’re so worried about optics, maybe you should have got Dad to join the search party,’ said Troy to Brooke.

‘Dad thought it was a waste of time,’ said Brooke. ‘He said there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell Mum would have ridden in the reserve, because she wrote to the council saying it was the wrong place for a bike track and she never forgave them for not listening to her.’

‘Mum does get offended when the council don’t listen to her recommendations,’ commented Amy.

‘Do you even care about Mum?’ Troy suddenly turned on Brooke, and Jacob flinched at the fury on his face. ‘Are you even worried?’

‘Of course she cares,’ said Amy. ‘Don’t be so mean to her.’

‘I’m frantic about Mum.’ Brooke spoke through clenched teeth at her brother. She didn’t seem at all intimidated by Troy’s fury.

‘It seems like you’re more worried about setting Dad up with a fucking lawyer!’

‘It’s just in case,’ said Logan to Troy. ‘Dad doesn’t even want a lawyer.’

‘In case what?’ cried Troy. ‘In case he’s guilty of murder?’

Jacob was frozen on the spot, his hands slippery under the baking dish.

‘She’s my mother too,’ hissed Brooke. She slammed her fist so hard on the table that it rocked and Logan had to catch the side to stop it falling. ‘You live half your life in America and don’t even call her for weeks on end!’

‘I call her all the time!’

‘You do not!’

‘Well, the truth is none of us had called her lately,’ murmured Amy at the same time as Logan sighed heavily and said, ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

Troy stood up abruptly. He did a double-take when he saw Jacob standing on the lawn like a loon. ‘Hi, Jacob.’

‘Sorry,’ said Jacob idiotically. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt. Mum asked me to bring this casserole for your dad.’ He held it out as proof and the glass lid wobbled alarmingly. My mother overcooked it on the off-chance your dad is a murderer.

‘Whoa.’ Troy stepped off the veranda and grabbed the baking dish from him. ‘That’s really nice of your mum, tell her thank you.’

‘I’ll get Dad for you,’ said Amy. ‘We’re all just waiting for him to clean up. He’s inside, uh, painting the bathroom.’

‘Like you do,’ said Troy. He held the baking dish easily under one arm like a football. ‘When your wife is missing. Great time to renovate.’

‘Jesus, Troy,’ said Logan under his breath.

‘Don’t disturb your dad. I’ll leave you to it.’ Jacob backed away fast. ‘I hope – I hope you get good news soon.’ He held up two tightly crossed fingers. Like a fool.

The four Delaney siblings looked back at him gravely. They did not look like people expecting good news anytime soon. They looked like people waiting for a funeral to start.

As he walked back to his mother’s place he wondered what could have happened last Christmas that was either relevant or irrelevant to the police.

He’d been here visiting his mother at Christmas. He had not heard or seen anything untoward from across the road.

His thoughts turned to a long-ago Christmas Day, when he was around ten or eleven and he somehow ended up at the Delaneys’ place, umpiring a late-afternoon doubles match between the four siblings, who had all received various types of tennis gear for Christmas that they wanted to try out.

‘Don’t let my awful children take advantage of you, Jacob!’ Joy had called out, but Jacob loved umpiring the Delaney matches. He knew all the rules because his dad was a sports nut, and so Jacob was a sports nut too. He felt as powerful as God up there on the high umpire’s chair, with a bird’s-eye view, able to see every mistake. He put on a loud, grave voice, imitating the umpires on TV, and the Delaneys didn’t even make fun of him. They appreciated the effort.

It was Logan and Brooke playing Troy and Amy, and at that time they were evenly matched, although they shouldn’t have been, because Brooke, although clearly talented, was just a little kid and Amy was a teen, an incredible player, but Amy was hampered by Troy, who made stupid errors in between flashes of brilliance, and they were up against Logan, who at fourteen had the power and speed of a man, and made the court look small.

The match went on and on, until Jacob’s dad came over to collect him because dinner was on the table, but then his dad, being his dad, got caught up in the match.

Joy and Stan set up picnic chairs. The two grandmothers tottered out in high heels carrying gin and tonics and cigarettes. Stan gave Jacob’s dad a beer. The sky turned pink. The four children played as if lives were at stake.

Jacob couldn’t remember who won. He just remembered their passion and their talent. He still loved witnessing the combination of passion and talent, in any endeavour, whether it was sport or musical theatre. The grown-ups were respectfully silent during each rally and then applauded like they were watching a grand slam. The Delaney kids fed off their applause. They punched the air. They roared with delight. They fell to their knees. It felt like Jacob was part of something big and important.

‘Remarkable family,’ Jacob’s dad marvelled on their way back across the road to a cold dinner and a rather cross mother. ‘Your umpiring was top-notch, Jacob.’

It occurred to Jacob that a man who could take such pleasure in watching someone else’s children compete in a backyard tennis match would probably have quite liked at least one athletic child of his own, rather than the two uncoordinated, academic kids he got.

It said something about his dad that it had taken Jacob thirty-four years for that thought to occur to him.

Your umpiring was top-notch, Jacob.

Just when he thought he had a handle on this grief business, it walloped him, as if he’d only just got the news. He pressed the back of a hand that still smelled like lamb casserole to his mouth and a small white butterfly fluttered by so close he felt its wings brush against his cheek.

His mother believed every passing butterfly was his dad stopping to say hello, which was convenient, because there were plenty of butterflies in this leafy suburb.

Hi, Dad, thought Jacob. He didn’t believe the butterfly was his dad, but still. Just in case. He watched the butterfly sail up above his mother’s front door. It hovered under the eaves, right next to the small metal bracket where his mother’s security camera usually hung. It had been smashed by a hailstone in the storm a couple of weeks back.

Yeah, I know, Dad, thanks for the reminder, I’m getting it fixed. I’ll pick it up –

Then he stopped in his tracks. He turned around and looked back at the Delaneys’ house and wondered what mistakes that camera might have witnessed from way up there with its bird’s-eye view.