Then
Forget the heat. We’re driving out to meet Adam, which means we’re in a car and, yes, that means Ben is driving. No, I’m not thrilled about it either. I’m repeating my conversation with Aunty Sam to Patrick.
‘You straight-up lied to your aunt and told her you’d drop it?’ Patrick asks. ‘Good for you.’
‘Not good for me. Bad for me. I’m lying to a grieving aunt. That’s not right.’
‘It was a white lie.’
‘No, a white lie is telling you that you’re pulling off those pants. Mine was a regular-coloured lie.’
Patrick looks down at his high-waisted tweed pants. ‘I am pulling off these pants,’ he says. He is too, dammit. ‘Anyway, they’re Michael’s. I’ve run out of clean clothes.’
Dressed in Michael’s pants, Patrick’s resemblance to his older brother is amplified.
‘You share clothes?’ I ask.
‘If he doesn’t know about it, we do.’
‘You’ve at least heard about washing machines, right?’
‘You could have cancelled if you didn’t want to lie to your aunt,’ Patrick says, ignoring my reasonable question. ‘I would have got over it – eventually. Although you might not have survived the FOMO of me talking to Adam without you.’
‘Nobody says FOMO anymore,’ I tell him.
‘I say FOMO.’
‘I thought Melbourne was supposed to be cool and Perth was the regional backwater.’
‘This place is rubbing off on me.’
‘Is there anything we need to do before we get to the café?’ Lilia asks, breaking into our conversation. Obviously, she’s here too, glowing rather than sweating in all this heat I’m not mentioning. She and Ben are a matching set now.
Patrick has already filled me in on the phone call he had with Adam, which went like this (as best as Patrick could remember it and, now, as best as I can):
Patrick: We know about the affair.
Adam: (Swearing, confusion.)
Patrick: We want to talk to you about it, not to the cops.
Adam: Can we do this face-to-face?
Not bad, right? I was pretty impressed by Patrick’s whole we know about the affair deal. Not that I let him know that – his ego is robust enough as it is.
Anyway, all he says to Lilia now is: ‘I’m going to play it by ear.’
We’re ten minutes early to the café, but Adam’s inside at a table. He’s already drunk half his coffee.
‘Hi,’ I say to Adam, unsure whether he’ll recognise me from the party at Aunty Sam’s, where we didn’t really meet because I spent the entire time lurking awkwardly beside Patrick instead of introducing myself like a normal person.
‘Hi again,’ Patrick says. ‘This is Heidi, Felix’s little sister.’
‘Uh huh,’ Adam says, offering me no clues about whether he remembers me or not. Then he notices Lilia and Ben standing behind us. ‘Who are they?’
Patrick half turns and gives them the once-over. ‘They’re not with us,’ he says smoothly.
Ben opens his mouth, but Lilia grabs his arm and steers him towards the table behind Adam, where her super hearing will be sure to keep them up to speed.
‘I’ve only got a thirty-minute parking spot, so what do you want to know?’ Adam says to Patrick as we sit down.
‘We want to know about the affair,’ Patrick says.
‘How do you even know about that?’ Adam says, his voice going so low and whispery that even Lilia might struggle with this one.
Patrick hesitates, possibly not wanting to reveal the flimsy evidence that’s allowed us to jump to some mega conclusions. ‘We heard her on the phone to you,’ he says.
Adam doesn’t look guilty, only confused. ‘Heard who on the phone?’
‘Elena.’
‘Elena?’
‘Talking to you.’
‘You heard Elena talking to me on the phone?’ Adam seems to be having trouble following the conversation. Is it possible he’s having a stroke? He’s in his twenties, seems fit and healthy enough, but he’s also clearly struggling to understand what Patrick’s saying.
Patrick is starting to look panicked, like he’s losing control of the conversation and can’t work out why.
‘Elena told you not to come to Heidi’s aunt’s house, but you turned up anyway.
She told you she loved you on the phone.
’ I wonder if Patrick, like me, can hear just how shaky the whole thing sounds out loud.
‘Who do you think I’m having an affair with?
’ Adam asks, just as the waiter appears with our coffees.
The waiter gives Adam an alarmed look and bangs the cups down so recklessly my hot chocolate swamps the saucer.
He doesn’t offer to stick around to clean it up, for which I think we’re all grateful.
‘Elena,’ Patrick says. ‘My sister,’ he adds, as though there might be a world full of Elenas with whom Adam could conceivably be having an affair.
Adam laughs. ‘This is so stupid,’ he says. ‘I should have known. But when you said you knew about the affair I just assumed.’
‘You’re not having an affair?’
‘Not with your sister.’ Adam laughs again, apparently genuinely amused, which is a bit of an insult to Elena, honestly.
Patrick seems unbothered by this attack on his sister’s desirability. ‘You would deny it. It gives you a motive.’
‘For what?’
‘If you were sleeping with my sister, that gives you a reason to have killed Felix.’
Obviously, that’s when the waiter returns with Patrick’s melting moment. The biscuit skitters across the plate as he dashes back to the kitchen, whether to fill in the kitchen staff on this fresh development or call the police, I can’t say.
Adam’s not laughing now. ‘I thought Felix’s death was an accident.’
‘We’re not sure what it was,’ I say, ‘but we think it might not have been an accident after all.’ Then, before Adam can ask me why and force either of us to go through our less-than-compelling evidence (such as Patrick’s phone going missing and Felix’s non-suicidal personality), I continue.
‘Adam, if you’re not having an affair with Elena, who are you having an affair with? ’
Patrick’s a step ahead of me. Kind of. ‘Was it Felix?’ he asks. He sounds excited, possibly because if Adam was seeing Felix on the side, it would still give him a motive for murder.
Adam laughs again. ‘I met Felix for the first time the night he died. I’m not that slick. It’s, um, his name is Haruto.’
‘Haruto?’ Patrick says. ‘He was at the party too, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, he was there with you?’
‘No. We work together.’ Adam picks up his coffee cup and takes a couple of generous gulps.
‘Why’s your relationship a secret, though?’ I ask.
‘He’s married.’
One table over Ben spills his water glass.
‘Hence affair,’ Adam clarifies. ‘It really wouldn’t be great for Haruto if this got out. That’s why I agreed to meet you. I thought maybe you were going to say something to his wife, Jade.’
‘Haruto’s married to Jade, a woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does anybody else know?’ Patrick asks.
‘Just Felix,’ Adam says.
‘Felix? I thought you only met him that night.’
‘He saw us together at the party.’
I try to meet Patrick’s eyes, because this feels important, but he’s too busy making a face at Adam.
‘You were snogging your secret boyfriend at the party that he went to with his wife?’ Patrick says. ‘That’s amateur hour, mate.’
‘Thanks for the feedback,’ Adam says, looking exactly as annoyed as you’d expect at being lectured by a teenager, much less a teenager who makes the word mate sound like a microaggression. ‘Obviously, it was not a great idea. But we were in a room, and Felix walked in on us.’
‘What did he say?’ I ask, trying to imagine the scene.
‘He just sort of laughed and said, I’ll knock next time.’
‘I’ll knock next time?’ Patrick repeats. ‘Those exact words?’ He has an expression on his face that I don’t understand.
‘Or something like that. It was awkward. I wasn’t sure if he knew Haruto and Jade were married, because he’d just met us all that night and probably couldn’t remember everyone’s names.
When he left, I remember freaking out that he was going to make a casual comment about it to the wrong person, not realising it was a secret. ’
Patrick seems weirdly zoned out and doesn’t offer any follow-up questions, so I jump in with my own. ‘But he didn’t?’
‘Not as far as I know. By the time we got downstairs, Felix had already gone out for his walk.’
‘And he died instead,’ I say.
‘I didn’t kill Felix to stop him from outing Haruto,’ Adam says, colder than the two millimetres of coffee left in his cup. ‘I’m already out, nobody cares. Haruto is … Haruto’s business.’
I look at Patrick, waiting for him to jump in with some Bad Cop business so I can go back to being Good Cop. But he’s staring at his coffee.
‘It sounds like Haruto’s the one with a motive, not you,’ I say, resigned to doing this solo if I must.
‘No,’ Adam says. ‘You don’t know him. He’s not like that.’
‘What are murderers like?’ I ask and if I don’t start being a bit nicer, Adam looks like he might storm out.
‘Do you mind if I ask what you remember from that night?’ I add before Adam can pick up his phone and keys, and get the hell out of here.
‘I was overseas when it happened and I’m trying to put it all together.
’ I adopt my now well-practised haunted look.
(The trick is really just to suck in your cheek.) ‘For closure.’
‘Uh huh.’ Adam doesn’t look convinced, but he’s not a total arsehole, so he softens a bit. ‘You want to know, like, what happened that night?’
‘Please. I think it would help.’
Patrick kicks me under the table, which I assume means he thinks I’m laying it on too thick. I aim for an I’m compensating for your silence kick back at him but connect with the leg of the table instead, which shudders my barely touched hot chocolate.
‘Elena invited a bunch of us over for drinks and pizza. We’re all pretty tight at school and we go out for drinks sometimes, but we’d never been to Elena’s before. I remember I nearly missed the turn-off and almost hit your aunt when I pulled in so suddenly. Then I—’
‘My what?’ I ask.
‘Your aunt. Sam, right?’
I look at Patrick, who seems to have finally emerged from his reverie. Behind Adam, Lilia’s head jerks up and I know she heard it, too. Ben is looking at his phone.