The Case of the Disappearing Corpse Page 6

  Creeeeeeeeeeek!

  Mesmerized, I watched the door on the garden shed inch open.

  “We’re going to die!” wailed Tayla.

  She stared at the opening door, her feet nailed to the ground.

  “Leroy,” I gulped, dragging him closer with the lead. “Why don’t you go look in the shed?”

  His eyes rolled in alarm and his rear end sank to the ground.

  I glanced across at Tayla. Her eyes were glazed over—probably in the hope that she wouldn’t see anything she didn’t want to see.

  Definitely no help there.

  Sweat beaded under my armpits as I reached out with the torch and nudged the shed door fully open.

  Oh gross!

  I stumbled backwards. Let out a scream. Or was that Tayla’s scream ringing in my ears?

  For there…stuck between the grass speckled lawnmower and the rusty hedge clippers was a stiff, much-the-worse-for-wear, track-suited body.

  Could it be Frank Skinner?

  Twelve

  The voice in my head screamed, “Run! Run for your life!” But after my mistake with the plastic head and the wig, I had to check to see if the body in the shed was real and not a dummy.

  My hands were sweaty. My armpits, forehead, and body were hot—yet I felt icy cold. I could hear a loud rasping sound that seemed to be drowning out all other noises.

  It was my breathing.

  I clutched the torch more tightly and reached forward to give the dirty grey sneaker on the end of the closest leg a prod. From inside the shed a smell hit my nostrils. A bad, sickly smell, like rotten meat. I gagged. My hand shook so badly, the torch missed the sneaker. Instead it whacked the middle of the leg. Like a nightmare in slow motion I watched the corpse shudder then move toward me.

  I let out a scream but no sound came from my lips. I tried to run but my frozen brain wouldn’t send the message to my legs. I tried to close my eyes but they wouldn’t budge.

  A family of bull ants were eating the dead man’s face…

  Phaaaaaaaw. The fish-fingers I’d eaten for tea hurtled back out again, followed by mashed up Tim Tams and something green I must have eaten for breakfast.

  Within five minutes of ringing the police, half the Port Adelaide Police Department came crashing through the gate and into the backyard. From the kitchen Tayla and I heard them snapping out orders. “Stay where you are!” and “This is the Police!”

  Tayla and I sat hunched at the table in the kitchen sipping cups of cocoa and trying to pretend we were invisible.

  “How did you girls get in here?” asked a plain-clothes detective whose moustache kept bobbing up and down as he spoke.

  “A key,” Tayla whispered.

  The detective’s frown deepened.

  “Patsy gave us permission,” I hurried to explain before he whipped out his handcuffs. “She gave me the key so we could get inside and clean the house.”

  The detective shook his head then moved away to speak to another policeman who informed him the body was sealed off and ready for Forensics. The only familiar face in the room belonged to the junior constable. The constable with the dimple. The constable who’d done his best to stop me from invading the crime scene the day before.

  Unfortunately, Constable Nick Roberts wasn’t inclined to talk—except to ask how many sugars we took in our cocoa. He did smile at us once. Just a quick grin of recognition and then it was replaced by his normal starchy face.

  “Are you cold? Would either of you like a blanket?” asked Detective Moustache, almost as an after-thought.

  I shook my head and warmed my fingers by wrapping them around the hot mug cradled in my hands. A war-dance had started up inside my stomach. It was swirling and thumping and making loud rolling noises. Probably meant I still had a couple of fish-fingers left in there.

  “I said we shouldn’t come here,” Tayla mumbled from inside her mug.

  “Why not?” I could see the detective’s moustache actually shivering with eagerness as he turned to Tayla.

  “What my friend means is that it was a bit scary. You know what with Patsy finding the dead man here and his killer still on the loose.”

  I bent down and gave Leroy a gentle shove. He was asleep on my feet. “That’s why we brought our guard-dog with us.”

  “Right.” Moustache turned to the other detective. “Has anyone thought to ring the girls’ parents?”

  “Yes. They should be here soon.”

  That’s when the last two fish-fingers and a whole lot of gunk exploded from my mouth like a missile and landed on Detective Moustache’s bright spit-polish black shoes.

  The good part about Mum and Ken arriving at that moment was that Detective Moustache wasn’t allowed to kill me. The bad part was that Mum looked as if she would do it for him.

  Ken hurried over, pulled me into his arms and gave me a grizzly bear hug that had me burying my head in his chest and smelling the comforting scent of his favorite old woolly jumper.

  All Mum said was, “I trusted you, Chiana.”

  The sparks spitting from her eyes told me exactly what she thought about me finding a dead body at Patsy’s instead of playing CDs at Tayla’s.

  Two minutes later Tayla’s mother arrived, dressed in a faded denim mini skirt, a tiny white crop top and knee high boots. Both detectives suddenly seemed to be having great difficulty with their breathing.

  “Naughty girl,” was all she said to Tayla, before fluttering her long black eyelashes at Detective Moustache.

  Tayla gave me a wobbly smile and rolled her eyes. Her mum must have been boy-crazy as a teenager and never grew out of it. She seemed to get bored hanging out with the same guy for more than a few months. Even Tayla’s dad. She met him at a dance, married him a week later and split before the honeymoon was over.

  In the car on the way home it was icier than an Arctic igloo. Mum chilled right out and even Ken was quiet behind the wheel. I hunched in the back seat with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and tears threatening to spill over. Tried and sentenced without a word in my defense. A prisoner on the way to a year’s grounding.

  The questions started as soon as Mum slammed the front door behind her. She threw her coat at the chair then rounded on me.

  “What were you doing at Patsy’s? You told me you were sleeping at Tayla’s.”

  “We were cleaning the house.”

  “At night?”

  “Well, when else could we clean it? We’re at school during the day.”

  Mum wasn’t being fair. Didn’t she care that I’d just been eyeballing a two-day-old corpse? My head ached. My stomach was playing hopscotch with my kidneys. And I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Don’t give me any of your lip, young lady,” Mum snapped, digging me in the chest with one very mean finger. “The point is I trusted you and you let me down.”

  “Easy, Marg,” put in Ken, his voice soft and soothing. He touched Mum on the shoulder. “Cha’s been through enough tonight. Why don’t we continue this conversation in the morning?”

  “There’ll be no television, no computer, no phone-calls, no pocket money, no friends over, no—”

  “Muuuum! That’s not fair!”

  That’s when I noticed the raw fear in Mum’s eyes. Suddenly I realized I’d caused that fear. I sniffed and moved toward her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Somehow we found ourselves in each other’s arms. The warmth of her body stopped me shaking. The security of her arms wiped away the nightmarish images. Pressed hard against her chest I had trouble breathing, but I didn’t care. My mum loved me. She might be grounding me for a year—but she loved me.

  Thirteen

  Two days later things had returned to normal. Sarah was still the flavor of the month and I was still the evil stepsister. Although, when Sarah complained to Mum about me wearing her frog necklace, Mum slipped me a smile and said frogs reminded her of that book she used to read to me when I was little, The Frog Princess.

  Then again…I wa
s still grounded.

  And I knew what it was like to be a lion trapped in a cage.

  I paced from one room to the next. I roared at Sarah when she said the purple top I wore clashed with my red shorts. I scowled at Ken when he suggested I clean the kitchen cupboards. And I snarled at Leroy when he swallowed my dressing gown cord.

  Lately, I’d been teaching Leroy tricks in return for his daily Tim Tam. Just for something to do. Today’s trick was untying knots with his teeth. It wasn’t so bad when he chewed through the knot but when he swallowed the whole cord it left me with nothing to keep my dressing-gown together. And there was always the smelly twenty centimeter doggy-do to pick up on the back lawn.

  The only good part of the day was school. No-one checked my every movement, pulled power plugs on the television and computer, or offered a mop and broom as a way to fill in the long boring hours.

  While sitting on the grass leaning against a tree at lunch break, Jack threw himself down beside me. Almost took my eye out with his elbow.

  “Find out who K is yet?” he asked as he removed the lid from his giant sized lunch box. I watched him shove sandwiches, cake, miniature pizzas and something that looked like long yellow worms into his mouth with awe. Mum always said Jack was a growing boy, but wow…how much bigger did he want to grow?

  I grabbed a handful of raisins from his lunch-box and shook my head.

  “The pink handkerchief is old news.” I glanced around to make sure no-one was watching, then snuck the microfilm from my pocket. “How’s this for a clue?”

  He leant forward his blue eyes sparkling. “Cool. What’s it from—a digital camcorder?”

  “Don’t know. Found it in Patsy’s tracksuit pocket. Could be hers, but I’m betting it belonged to Frank.”

  “It wouldn’t belong to Patsy.” Jack shook his head. “That woman’s a total techno-dummy. She doesn’t know a computer byte from a dog bite.” He took a healthy swig from his Coke. “How come you haven’t given it to the police?”

  Before I could answer, one of Jack’s mates appeared, boots in one hand, football in the other.

  “Hurry up Jacko,” he called, tossing the football in the air. “Coach wants us on the field in two minutes.”

  “Gotcha, Dingo,” Jack answered, closing the lid of his lunch-box. Turning to me he hissed. “You have to tell the police, Cha.”

  “Mmmmm…” I mumbled in a sort of perhaps voice.

  “At least don’t do anything dangerous unless you check with Tayla or me first.”

  “Okay,” I promised, watching him walk away. “I will if I can.”

  Tayla wasn’t at school. She was staying with her grandparents for a couple of days. Whenever her mum was at the flowers and chocolates stage of a romance like she was with Stevie, she didn’t want Tayla hanging around.

  Her mum often screwed up Tayla’s life like that. And yet, in between boyfriends, she was a great mum. Except she acted like Tayla’s big sister instead of her mother. Tayla said it was because her mum didn’t want to grow up. She said her mum had this weird hangup about getting old.

  Being grounded, I wasn’t even allowed to ring Tayla at her grandparents when I arrived home from school. I was so bored I almost offered to scrub the kitchen floor. Almost—but I’m not that crazy. I didn’t even have Sarah to fight with. She was at the mall with friends and wasn’t due home for another hour. So when Ken asked me to take his books back to the library I gave a yell of excitement and danced around the room. You’d have thought I was on my way to Disneyland instead of the local library.

  “See if the latest Nora Roberts book is in, will you, Cha? I’ve had my name on the list for a month now.” Mum flicked water at Ken from the sink, then giggled when he used an extra fast tea towel to flick her back. “And don’t hurry back. Have a look around the library and see if there’s anything you want to borrow. A few good books should keep you out of mischief for the next week or two.”

  It was while I was riding my bike over the Birkenhead Bridge into Port Adelaide that I spotted Constable Nick Roberts. The young cop was hurrying in the direction of the shopping mall. He looked different out of uniform. Dressed in black jeans and a black Nike tee-shirt, like a normal guy.

  On the spur of the moment I decided to practice my P.I. skills and tail the cop—keep out of sight—catch him off guard and finally pounce.

  Standing on my brakes, I came to a dragging halt. In the P.I. manual it says a good P.I. should follow their suspect on foot so I chained my bike to a post outside the British Hotel and waited for him to reach the curb.

  Not wanting him to recognize me, I untied my ponytail and let the reddish straw-colored stuff I called my hair hang down over my face. This disguise stuff is easy, I thought, as I slipped a pair of sunnies on my nose, yanked the teal, black and white Port Power’s cap down over my eyes, and developed a left-leg limp.

  Constable Roberts stood by the curb waiting for a red light so I hid behind a bush and peeped out through the leaves. As soon as he reached the other side of the road, I ran a yellow light and hid in the doorway of a hairdresser’s shop.

  A woman with bright yellow hair piled on top of her head pushed through the hairdresser’s door and smiled at me. It was Patsy’s neighbor from the house she’d been renting with Zoë.

  “Hi Mrs. Murch,” I said. “Cool hair-do.”

  I could almost see her going through the files in her head, trying to work out who I was. Then it seemed like a light went on.

  “Chiana Ryan? How are you, dear? Have you recovered from finding that nasty body in the shed? Poor thing. It must have been a terrifying experience for you and your little friend, Tayla.”

  “Terrifying,” I answered, mechanically. Nick was striding down the street mega fast. If I got caught up talking, I’d lose him.

  “Nice to see you, Mrs. Murch,” I said, moving out of the doorway. “Can’t stop. I have to get to the library before it closes.”

  She smiled again and then with a toss of her new hair-do, took off up the street, high-heels clicking on the stone pavement with each step.

  Eyes on my prey, I flattened myself against the painted brick wall then slid into the next shop doorway. Nick had crossed the road by now and was heading in the direction of the shopping mall.

  In my hurry to cross the road and keep my prey in sight, I didn’t see the humungous truck. That is until its blaring horn made my heart do a double somersault with a twist. I quickly staggered into the gutter and crouched down behind a parked car.

  Over the bonnet of the silver grey Commodore, I could see Nick coming out of the Newsagents, a magazine in one hand and a can of Coke in the other. He glanced up and down the street then headed off once more toward the mall.

  I started to jog to keep up, my eyes still on the jean-clad figure ahead. Suddenly Nick stopped. So I stopped. Nick scrunched his can, put it in a street bin and looked casually in my direction. I threw myself at the nearest shop window and plastered my nose to the glass.

  That’s when I discovered the only thing worth buying in the window was a row of dead blowflies. The shop was closed. And judging by the thickness of the dust it had been closed for a hundred years.

  What was Constable Roberts doing now?

  I grabbed a quick look out of the corner of my eye.

  Uh! Oh!

  He was walking toward me.

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even slip inside the shop and pretend to buy a few mummified blowflies. Shoulders hunched, chin buried in my chest, I bent down and undid my shoelace on the pretence of tying it up again. The footsteps came closer, not in any hurry, just casually strolling towards me.

  “Hey, kid! Why are you following me?”

  I buried my chin further into my chest and untied the other lace. Perhaps if I ignored him he might think he’d mistaken me for someone else.

  “Chiana Ryan?”

  Hmm…

  I looked up at his starchy face through a curtain of hair. “Oh, hello, Constable Roberts. Fancy meeting
you here. Your day off, is it?”

  One large hand, complete with very pointy fingers, wrapped itself around my arm and helped me to my feet.

  “Don’t give me any of that who me rubbish. I want to know why you are you tailing me like some third rate Private Eye from a cheap movie?”

  Third rate? Cheap movie? This guy was seriously in need of glasses.

  “I was on my way to the mall, Constable,” I said, my voice honey-sweet and innocent.

  I half-expected the sparks from his eyes to set light to an old man who happened to be passing by. “Rubbish.” Nick Roberts snapped. “You were tagging me. Have been for the last five minutes. And I don’t like that.”

  “You don’t? Okay, here’s the deal then,” I said, getting ready to run for my life if his ears started to smoke. “You tell me about Frank Skinner and I’ll stop following you. If not, I might have to practice my tracking for say—the next couple of hours. See, I’m writing a story about this famous P.I. called Rebecca Turnbull and I really need to know what’s happening.”

  Nick’s scowl could have knocked a magpie off its nest. He drew himself up to his full height of around six-two and glared down at me. The fact that my head didn’t even come up to his armpits put me at a slight disadvantage. However, I folded my arms. Tapped my toe. Tried to stay cool.

  Which is tough when you’re so scared you’re about to wet your pants.

  At last, he shook his head slowly then burst out laughing.

  “Okay, you win.” A grin spread across his face as he looked me up and down. “Right-O, devil-spawn,” he growled. “What do you want to know?”

  A low breathy sigh escaped my lips. I returned his grin and hurried to keep up with him as he strode along the footpath toward the mall.

  “What have you found out about Frank Skinner?”

  “Your body in the shed?”

  “Yeah. Come on, you must have checked him out by now.”

  “Well, he did have a past record for assault and robbery with a weapon.”

  “Know where he worked?” To keep up with Nick’s long legs I was jogging beside him now.

  “At the Weapons Research Station at Osborne.”