Chapter 27
27
Max
Max was used to sitting on the couches of dead people first thing in the morning, comforting their relatives, drinking tea and sometimes ducking from grief-induced plate Frisbees. She was used to doing it hungover, or when she was distracted by something in her personal life – a fight with Damien or Jackie, or the day after the anniversary of the car crash. She’d got good at separating her personal life from her work life – like peeling a slice of beetroot out of a sandwich. She could usually remove it completely, barely a trace of pink on the bread where it had been. But what she’d never had to contend with, sitting on a victim’s couch, speaking to their family, was thoughts about sex with the guy sitting next to her still ricocheting through her mind. Even after he’d told her exactly how he felt.
I just don’t see you in that way.
You’re not my type.
Sitting on Poppy Raven’s tiny yellow couch opposite her parents, with Grey’s enormous boulder of a knee a hairline away from her, she was unable to remove her beetroot life from the bread life. The beetroot was mushed up, soaking through the bread, staining everything pink.
She couldn’t focus. She was going to do something stupid like tell them the truth about who Grey was and why they were there. Hell, she might even mention the note left behind on Giovanni’s pillow and try to get the Ravens’ take on it.
She didn’t like the fact that they were lying to Poppy’s family, telling them they were private investigators, but she’d had to rationalise it to herself, unable to say more than a few words to Grey since last night. She’d been telling herself on the excruciating car ride here, up the modern entrance stones to their front door, that lying to them would help get to the bottom of what happened to Poppy. It was all in the interest of stopping another attack. She just hoped the Ravens would get the truth when they found it, that it wouldn’t be kept under lock and key in Grey’s box of Barbarani secrets.
It was killing her that she couldn’t talk to him about this. But she doubted she would ever be able to look him in the eyes again without feeling the turntable nausea of shame and passion.
She tried to focus on small details in the room: the sound of Mrs Raven boiling water for tea, and how Mr Raven held his hands together to stop them from shaking. Fissures of grief canyoned their faces; Max couldn’t help staring at them, trying to track her way back through the memory of her own path of grief. The Ravens’ house reminded her of the one she’d grown up in. Photographs of their wedding day, their children, hung proudly on cream walls. An enormous wall-mounted flat-screen and other modern appliances likely forced upon them by patronising adult children clashed with wooden cabinets stacked with VHSs and DVDs. Max’s mum had always organised her books in alphabetical order by author, like a real library, and Max now fought the urge to run her finger along the bumping spines. Had Poppy done that to Mrs Raven’s books?
Was it the same sort of pain, losing a child as it was losing a parent? It probably wasn’t. But Max was protective of the grief she carried for her parents. She’d always felt it was so wrong, so unfair, so utterly, inconceivably evil that they had been ripped from her that way. She’d thought that no one would ever understand her pain. Just like no one would ever understand what happened with Jackie and Evan. But Grey had. Ironically, the one person who could actually understand what she’d been through because of his own past, was the one person who didn’t want to know her.
She’d thought Libby had understood her too, but now, with everything that happened last night and with what Alexandra had said, Max wasn’t sure where they stood.
‘Thank you.’ The sound of her own voice surprised her as Mrs Raven put a mug of tea in her hand. Grey had offered to make it but Poppy’s mother had insisted. Mr Raven had muttered something about keeping occupied with physical tasks – as though if she was left without a simple purpose like pouring water into a kettle, she would implode.
‘We are deeply sorry for your loss,’ Grey said. Even though Max was humiliated beyond measure by him, she was surprised at Grey’s gentleness with the Ravens. He seemed utterly genuine in his composure when he spoke to them. If Max didn’t know how good he was at deceiving people, she might almost believe he was being sincere.
Mrs Raven’s face tightened, and her husband put a hand on her knee. ‘Thank you,’ he said, copying Max’s rhythm like he had lost his own sense of speech. ‘So you’re a PI? What is it you think you can do for us?’
As Grey set his tea down on the glass coffee table, Max tried not to draw comparisons between it and the one she’d found Jackie splayed across on that fateful night. She wondered if Grey remembered what she’d said. About the knife.
‘I think I can find out what happened the night she died,’ Grey said. The roughness of his voice felt like stubble grazing her neck and she shivered. Focus, Conrad . ‘I have references from previous cases I’ve worked on that you’re welcome to call if you want reassurance of my capabilities.’
Ha. Who were those contacts? Nella? Jett?
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Mrs Raven said.
Mr Raven looked more sceptical. ‘Tell me what you’ve found.’
Grey leant forward. ‘The wine was poisoned. It looks like it was rat bait.’
‘Rat bait.’ Each ‘t’ was sharp and filled with saliva as colour drained from Mr Raven’s face. Meanwhile, Mrs Raven sipped her drink, politely nodding for Grey to continue.
Grief would never stop surprising Max. When the doctor had sat down on her bed to tell her both her parents hadn’t made it out of surgery, she’d asked if they had any chocolate ice cream because she didn’t like vanilla.
‘Did Poppy have any enemies?’ Grey asked.
‘She was a 22-year-old accounting student, not a Russian oligarch.’
Or an Italian wine maker.
‘Did she ever mention the Barbaranis?’ Max asked, not too proud to admit she felt a little smug as the large shoulders beside her tensed. Why shouldn’t she ask questions?
The Ravens looked at each other. ‘I suppose she talked about them. Gossiped. Never took much notice, if I’m being honest. Maybe we should have.’ Mr Raven’s eyes clouded over as Mrs Raven took a deeper sip of tea, her expression blank.
‘I can’t rule anything out,’ Grey said, ‘and I will be investigating that angle too, but if Poppy didn’t know the Barbaranis personally, I doubt there would be any motive for them to hurt her as well as their own reputation with poisoned wine.’
He was right, as much as Max hated to admit it. It looked like the Ravens agreed too.
‘But their kid was always up here in the city partying – Luke, Lucas?’
‘Luca,’ Max said.
‘Yeah, him. Those pseudo news sites were always publishing pictures of him at these out of control university parties. Poppy could have met him there. I heard he was at that party where that kid fell.’
Grey wrote something down on a notepad. Max couldn’t see if they were actual words or not. It seemed to placate Mr Raven though. She tried not to pay attention to the way Grey’s shoulders had knitted together at the mention of the party. She didn’t want to be able to notice small changes in him, because that meant she wasn’t doing her job.
‘Was Poppy at that party too, sir?’ Max asked.
‘Don’t think so. She just talked about it a bit – everyone around here did, since it happened not too far from us.’
‘I didn’t hear anything about Luca Barbarani being at that party,’ Grey said. Max tried her best to stare at her tea without shattering the mug all over the floor. Could the Ravens tell he was lying?
‘Yeah, well, his lot probably kept that hush hush. Don’t want word getting out you’re connected to a suicide when there were probably drugs involved. Folks around here talk, though.’
‘Do you know where Poppy got the wine?’ Grey asked. His composure didn’t waver at all, but Max could sense the shift in him. Something about Mr Raven’s words were clearly distressing him.
Liquor Paradise was a small boutique store on the main strip of the Ravens’ suburb. The street was full of Audis, Porsches and Mercedes, so Bessy oddly didn’t stick out like she had in the hotel car park. This was not the type of shop Max used to buy booze from in her uni days. She and Jackie never got carded down at their local BWS, which had always made them feel sophisticated and mature, even with their sixpacks of cruisers and flasks of goon.
Grey pushed his Ray-Bans into his hair. Max couldn’t get over how strange he looked out in the wild of suburbia – like a safari animal suddenly caged in a grey concrete zoo. He blended in well enough to convey ‘normal civilian’. The only thing that might give him away was his murderous glare, which couldn’t really pass for squinting now that he was under the cool shade of the shopfront.
‘Stop,’ Max said. ‘You look like you’re trying to cut people in half with your laser-beam eyes.’
‘I’m not doing anything.’ He looked genuinely confused. The smile she wished she could give him stung on her jaw as he looked down at her, still glaring. He didn’t have another setting.
Well, actually, he did. But she wasn’t going to think about that. She wasn’t going to think about how she could smell Christmas wrappings as she brushed past him on her way into Liquor Paradise. She wasn’t going to think about the way she’d felt him hold his breath as she’d passed. Because he hadn’t done that. She’d just imagined it. Just like she was imagining he was watching her now.
A bell chimed once for each of their bodies across the threshold. The scent of cardboard, cork and beer wafted towards her. The La Marca wine had been her first taste of alcohol in six months and she’d decided even though their pinot noir was liquid ecstasy and tasted like the most erotic climax mixed with the best moments of your life, she hadn’t missed it that much. What she’d missed was the comforting weight of a glass in her hand after a long day, the feel of her feet tucked up under her legs on the couch, leaning against Damien’s shoulders. But it wasn’t Damien she missed, it was the normality of those moments that had been ripped from her. She wasn’t sure she would ever get that again.
‘Just browsing?’ The young worker with short dreadlocks looked up hopefully from his phone.
‘’fraid not,’ Grey said, showing the guy some card Max figured was either a fake PI licence or a fake police badge. ‘We’re hoping you can help us out with a few questions. Were you working the Saturday afternoon shift last week?’
‘I ... yeah ... yeah, I was.’ The guy scratched his nose. ‘What’s this about?’
‘You sold a bottle of wine to this girl.’ Max held up her phone showing a picture of Poppy.
The guy swallowed in recognition – Poppy’s face was all over the news. ‘Are you arresting me?’ He hung his shaggy head, and Max could have sworn he twisted his wrists under the counter to make them easier to cuff.
‘Should we be?’ Max said.
‘Was it really the wine?’ he choked out.
‘We can’t be sure,’ Grey cut in before Max could answer. It pissed her off that he didn’t trust her to not blurt out classified information. Had he forgotten this used to be her job?
‘How many bottles did Poppy buy?’ Max asked.
The guy was shaking his head. ‘Just one.’
‘Are you sure?’
Dreadlocks nodded vigorously. ‘Positive. I remember because my boss – Marvin – was all up in my ass about upselling. I tried it out on her, you know, young chick, all dolled up ready to go out. I figured I could convince her to go for another bottle or somethin’.’
‘But she didn’t take it?’
‘I tried real hard,’ he said, as though concerned they were reporting back to Marvin. ‘She was originally gonna go with a Thatcher red, but I convinced her to go for the sangue. Fuck. Oh, fuck, if I hadn’t ...’ His fingers dug into his temples.
‘If you hadn’t,’ Max said, ‘someone else would have bought it and the same thing would have happened. It wasn’t your fault ... ah, sorry, I didn’t catch your ...’
‘Ollie.’
‘Ollie, we believe the wine was tampered with before it was delivered to you. There’s no way you could have known.’
‘Have you got the recalled bottles out back?’ Grey flicked a yellow and red label on an empty shelf dedicated to Barbarani Sangue.
Ollie nodded miserably. ‘Marvin said the truck would come take ’em later today.’
‘I’ll need to look at them.’
Ollie led them through the smells of damp cardboard and old ice in the beer fridge to a large storeroom stacked with multi-coloured boxes. The recalled sangue was quarantined to the side, and someone, Marvin perhaps, had stuck an A4 piece of paper with a boot print on the top box and scribbled RECALLED in permanent marker beneath a skull and crossbones.
‘He drew that before we found out she’d died,’ Ollie said as Max and Grey started to pull the bottles from the casings. ‘What you looking for?’ The young guy circled them like a puppy trying to sniff their butts in a park.
Grey ignored him but Max felt for the kid; she understood guilt like that. ‘We’re not exactly sure,’ she said gently.
‘Look at this,’ Grey said as the dull chime of the doorbell summoned Ollie back to the front of the store.
Max tried not to inhale too deeply as she looked over the crook of Grey’s elbow to his phone. ‘What’s that?’ she squinted at the red circle on the screen.
‘The lid of the bottle Poppy Raven bought.’
‘Okay.’ Max didn’t want to know what he’d had to do to get access to that evidence photograph.
‘What do you notice?’
‘It’s red – oh. Shit.’ The centre of the lid had a black dot, kind of like a little eye. The bottles on the floor in front of her didn’t. ‘How zoomed in is this picture?’
‘At normal scale, the hole wouldn’t be noticeable. It’s about the circumference of a small syringe.’ Grey clicked the screen shut.
Max stepped away so she could breathe properly; she didn’t need to be corralled out of the store room. She practically scampered back into the storefront, heart in her throat.
‘Everything okay?’ Ollie asked.
Max felt electricity course through her as Grey’s brown eyes pierced the space between them. But she was getting better at displacing her thoughts about him now that they were getting somewhere with the investigation.
‘I was wrong,’ Grey said. ‘We’ll need the CCTV footage going back to when this batch was delivered.’ He pointed at the pile of sangue. ‘Someone injected rat bait into the bottle Poppy bought.’