Deadly Secrets

Deadly Secrets

By

Beth Sadler

Copyright Beth Sadler 2014

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is written in Australian English.

Cover Copyright Beth Sadler 2014

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Prologue

The night was cool and crisp, with a soft breeze whispering through the trees, rustling the leaves as it passed and stirring the long grass in the paddocks. The full moon shone so brightly that the landscape was perfectly visible even at midnight.

All this helped the fat man to negotiate his way through the rusting, disused, water tanks and old car and tractor bodies littering the ground. He needed all the help he could get, because the body he was dragging by the legs behind him weighed almost as much as he himself. He stopped to rest for a minute and wiped away the sweat that was running into his eyes. Damn it, why had the easiest place to dig a hole deep enough, have to be so far from the house?

Bending once again to his task, he took a firm hold of the jeans clad legs and hauled for all he was worth. It took another hour for the fat man to finish his task, but finally, he straightened from the makeshift grave with a satisfied grunt. This would be the last time that his good friend Alfred ever again short changed him on a deal.

Rubbing his chest he struggled back to the abandoned Brubacher house, dragging the spade and pick he’d found in the old cow shed behind him, burping loudly into the still night. He spat out the foul taste in his mouth, as he cursed his greed in eating that last, gravy-soaked dumpling at dinner tonight. His doctor was always playing hell with him about his cholesterol. Ah, but damn it had tasted so good.

Reaching the house he was cheered by the sight of the sports bag full of hundred dollar bills sitting on the veranda beside the tin that held his bonus. He just needed to stash the tin until he could get back for it without leading Alfred’s brood here; his eldest boy would definitely recognise the contents of the tin. His alibi for tonight was tight, so patience was going to be the name of the game from here on in. He was going to be just as surprised as everyone else by his good friend Alfred’s disappearance.

Struggling with the weight of the half-filled bag he stumbled towards his truck and threw it up onto the passenger seat. He had one final job to take care of, before he could return home and complain about lousy drivers needing a tow so late at night. Greed brought a sly smile to his face as he carefully felt his way inside the darkened wreck of a house.

The flames coming from the car he’d set alight, halfway down the paddock, filtered some light through the windows, making it easier to see.

He’d enjoyed carefully prising this house’s secrets from its thick-headed, dour owner. Lars Brubacher was a canny farmer, but an easy, loose-lipped drunk. It had only taken a couple of beers after dinner at the German Club, to prise the information he needed out of an unsuspecting Lars. Carefully listening to all the stories about the old house; he now knew just where he was going to stash his hoard--- safest hidey-hole on the planet. He laughed long and hard as he took care of his dirty business.

Sadly for all his well laid plans, he wasn’t laughing when the pain hit his chest in the early hours of the following morning. His greed had finally caught up with him. He fought to breathe through the pain, as a giant, invisible hand, grabbed his heart and squeezed until it stopped beating. His last, disgusted thoughts, as he slipped away to meet his maker, were that the bloody thick headed Lars was now a hell of a lot richer than he’d been this time yesterday.

Chapter 1

Nine Years Later

Amy sighed miserably as she looked down at her brand new, poppy-red, steel- capped work boots. She’d been so thrilled when she’d spotted them in the hardware store yesterday; they were a new line, aimed at the fast growing band of female tradespersons. However, at the moment they were fast sinking into the red, muddy ooze surrounding the five foot hole she was standing on the side of. They made a disgusting, sucking, sloshing sound as she tried to shuffle into a dryer position. Who would have thought that in just three short hours, a day that had started out so well could turn into a disaster of such epic proportions?

Today was supposed to be the day that she finally started to get rid of the sixty years of accumulated dirt and junk that surrounded her new home. Instead, it was starting to look like her plans were doomed, not to mention the herculean effort it was going to take, to clean the great clumps of clinging, red mud off her lovely new boots.

Everything had been going so well too, she thought sadly. Work had started bright and early this sunny morning with the prompt arrival of the machinery needed to make her dreams come true. The two huge trucks had rumbled noisily up the dirt driveway with lots of nicely satisfying gear changes and air brake sounds, as they negotiated the numerous potholes. The noise was accompanied by the rich smell of diesel flooding the fresh morning air with its acrid stench.

The trucks carried a backhoe and a massive bulldozer on their trays, the bright-yellow monster machines were to make short work of the decades of neglect that had to be dealt with. To Amy, the loud start to her day meant that her ten acres of overgrown garbage tip would soon be turned into a beautiful setting for the large, derelict, sandstone home she was in the middle of renovating. She was a happy camper.

The machines had quickly been offloaded and put to work. The owner of the machines, Jackson Riker, had nodded briefly in her direction in his usual reserved way, before pulling himself up onto the bulldozer and then lumbering and screeching off to the back of the property, leaving his worker, Tom, to fire-up the backhoe and tackle the dam. Jackson’s grim attitude hadn’t dimmed her excitement one bit. Jackson or Jack as he preferred to be called, never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary—probably something to do with the jagged scar across his throat and his harsh sounding voice, she assumed.

Amy wanted the dam gone, but she didn’t want to flood the surrounding area. If the dam was just breached then it would take weeks for the paddock to dry out. So, it had been decided that cutting a trench towards the boundary creek was the best way to drain the water, before filling it in and levelling the area. Immediately Amy had received permission from the adjoining land owner, she had given Jackson the go-ahead.

Amy spent several happy minutes watching as Tom’s machine quickly gobbled up huge bites of the red earth, before turning and walking inside to continue stripping out the generations of neglect that had consumed her home. One thing Amy enjoyed was a challenge.

Nearly an hour later a long piercing whistle penetrated the pop music that was blasting directly into Amy’s ears, courtesy of a pair of top of the range headphones. Ripping them from her head she ran outside, dread sending icy chills down her spine as she answered the piercing sound from one of the emergency whistles that Jackson and Tom wore while they worked. Jackson had explained the safety measure when they’d discussed the details of her job.

Jackson was very big on rules.

At the very least she expected to see one of the machines upside down or sinking deep into a mud hole.

Once outside, she saw Jackson running flat out towards Tom, who was standing stiff and silent, staring vacantly into the open trench he’d just cut, his backhoe standing unattended with the engine still running. The emergency whistle was clutched tightly in his upraised hand, inches from his mouth, as if he had been turned to stone immediately after he’d blown it.

Jackson and Amy slid to a stop beside Tom almost at the same time, struggling to stay on their feet in the greasy mud.

What’s the panic about, Tom? Jackson demanded, in his sand and gravel voice.

Tom pointed with a shaking finger towards the edge of the dam where the water was slowly draining and washing down the newly opened trench to the creek. Because Tom had only just breached the wall of the dam, there were only a few inches of water oozing lazily along the bottom of the trench, making it very easy to see the skeletal foot that had been uncovered near the dam wall. A once white sneaker, now dyed red with the colour of the earth it had been buried in, decorated an obviously human foot. As they watched, the water slowly uncovered the bottom half of a leg, tatters of denim jeans still wrapping the bones. Jackson looked down at Amy’s blank faced stare and swore long and inventively.

Damn it, I knew you were going to be trouble, the minute I laid eyes on you.

Amy was too shocked by the sight of a corpse on her property to defend herself from his unjust accusation, just watching in a daze as Jackson quickly dealt with the backhoe engine.

He shut down the machine and then walked around it, carefully checking that it wasn’t in danger of getting bogged in the mud, before returning to assess Tom and Amy’s condition. What he saw had him continuing to exercise his vast repertoire of profanity. They were in deep shock and not likely to be of any immediate help.

Damn it all to hell, he was supposed to have put dealing with bodies behind him. He was out of the army now and leading a nice civilised life working with machines. Machines didn’t die, or rely on you to save their lives, they just broke down occasionally and then got fixed.

Digging his phone out of his shirt pocket he made the necessary call to the police. It took him several frustrating minutes to convince the voice on the other end that he knew what a corpse looked like and that it wasn’t a dead kangaroo in sneakers. Call finished, he reluctantly turned his attention to Amy and Tom; the next hour wasn’t going to be easy. Grabbing them each by an arm, he forced them into movement, dragging them back towards the house. Halfway there he had to stop while Tom violently heaved his heart and his breakfast up, Amy didn’t seem to notice, just patiently waiting to be moved on.

Reaching what was left of the old back veranda sleep-out, he firmly pushed them down into chairs, then, still muttering and cursing, he entered the house, going in search of Amy’s food supplies.

Amy had moved in immediately the new roof had been installed and was now camping out in the smallest bedroom, spending every waking minute on the renovations.

Jackson found her stash of food in an extra-large esky in the kitchen and got to work, efficiently making two huge mugs of hot, overly sweet tea. Returning to the veranda with the mugs, he wrapped Amy’s fingers firmly around one and ordered her to drink. Once he saw that his order was being obeyed, he grunted a satisfied sound, and then turned to do the same with Tom. Jackson had taken charge; it was after all, what he was good at. The army had spent fifteen years teaching him how to organise troops in a war zone.

In an amazingly short time, the police turned up, accompanied by a forensic team in a large van. Jackson intercepted them in the driveway and led them around the house and up the back paddock to the dam.

A large man in a leather jacket and slacks seemed to be in charge, he was obviously CIB judging by his clothes. Amy could only see part of his face, but he seemed to be in his fifties with thin, greying hair and an air of relaxed command. Amy noticed that his body language matched Jackson’s easy demeanour, which, in a weird way made them look alike. The two men stood on the side of the trench, looking like comrades in arms as they conversed.

After several minutes Amy saw one of the overall clad forensic team approach them, waving his arm around, pointing along the trench and into the dam, obviously giving instructions. She saw Jackson nod in understanding and then quickly mount the backhoe and start it up. In a very short time, he had carefully widened the trench, giving the team more room to work in and started a new trench thirty feet over.

Jackson dumped the excavated dirt from the new trench between the two trenches. Amy realised that he was deliberately building a barrier that would lower the risk of the dam draining into the one with the corpse in it. It took nearly two hours to complete, but finally he shut down the engine and once more joined the CIB man.

Amy’s system was starting to reboot slowly, much like a computer that had had a forced shut-down. She knew she needed to get her brain working again quickly, if she was to understand what was happening and what sort of mess she was in. Who the hell had a corpse in her backyard?

Jackson had got her through the tough early stage, but now she needed to take back control. This mess could shut down her jobsite. Okay, she would go inside and make another mug of tea, wash her face and then go keep an eye on proceedings.

It took Amy longer than she’d planned to get back to the trench. She tried, she really tried hard but, somehow her brain kept switching off for long minutes at a time. She filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove to boil, then, realised after ten minutes of waiting that she hadn’t lit the gas ring. Then, she got out the plastic bowl to wash her face and forgot to pour water into it. Another twenty minutes passed in a fog until finally things started to come together, her system appeared to be coming back on line. After another hot, sweet tea and an icy-cold face dunk, she was ready to face the rest of the day.

******

So now here she stood, on the edge of the trench, watching her brilliant plans sink into a five foot mud hole.

Jackson had immediately ordered her back to the house when she arrived at his side, but she had stubbornly shaken her head. Now, sneaking a sideways look at the tall, grim faced man standing solidly beside her, she tentatively volunteered a hopeful question.

Any chance this could be an old body that was buried in a family grave on the property?

Jackson stared down at her in disbelief. Are you out of your mind? How many ancestral corpses do you know of that were buried in sneakers and jeans and without a coffin?

Amy sighed deeply. Yeah, I suppose not many.

Try, not any, replied Jackson with finality.

They looked on as the forensic team cautiously scraped away more of the mud, revealing remnants of a jacket and shirt. Amy found herself trying to engage Jackson in conversation again. She needed living human contact and whether he liked it or not, he was it for the moment. Tom was still sitting in a daze back at the house. Amy had left him in peace—reality was going to bite him on the bum soon enough when he surfaced.

Do you think they’ll let you get back to work soon? Amy asked hopefully. Jackson barked a cheerless laugh, and then shook his head in disbelief at her determination to get the job done.

No.

Why not, what more do they need to do, once they’ve collected all the bones?

Jackson watched the breeze ruffle her short, fiery curls as he looked thoughtfully into her liquid, golden-brown eyes before answering. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

The thing is, they have to make sure this is the only body on the property. It will probably take them a week to cover the ten acres. They’ll have to bring in trained cadaver dogs and ground penetrating radar. Not to mention that the dam has to drain completely before they can check the bottom out. I’ll have to move my machines out today and come back when they’ve finished.

Damn it, I just knew you were going to say something like that. Amy wailed in disappointment. How soon can you reschedule my job?

I can move a couple of jobs around to this week and then get back to you by next Monday. Possibly, he added cautiously.

Amy had a habit of pinning you down to the price and the time before you could think clearly. He thought it might be something to do with her big, warm, golden-brown eyes and glossy, fly away, chestnut curls; curls that tempted him to tweak them around his fingers for hours. But, as no woman had ever messed with his mind before, he wouldn’t swear to it.

Amy blew a frustrated breath out through puffed cheeks and then surrendered to the inevitable.

Okay, I’ll just keep working on the interior and hope that you can get finished before I’m ready to paint out the rooms. The last thing I need is red dust blowing in from outside all over the new wall cladding.

From what I saw when I was inside, you need your carpenter and an asbestos removal team to prep the inside first, Jackson said.

I’m the carpenter and the asbestos team is on standby. Amy muttered disgustedly for several seconds about people who ripped out perfectly good silky-oak weatherboards and replaced them with fibro, before continuing. I’d planned on finishing the clean-out today and starting the windows and doors tomorrow, I’ve had them all made offsite.

When will they arrive? Jackson asked.

They’ll be delivered tomorrow and it will only take me two to three days to install them, Amy said happily, she was starting to get her enthusiasm back again. So she had a corpse on her property and a delay in the clearing, so what, she still had work to do.

Jackson looked a long way down, at the diminutive woman standing next to him and wondered if she really had stolen his mind. You’re the carpenter?

Yep, Amy grinned back up into his face, enjoying his shocked look. Since fancy-dancy power tools were invented there are a lot more of us female carpenters around now. Anyway, a heck of a lot of the work carpenters used to do is all farmed out now.

She waved her arm back towards the house before continuing. "Take the roof