White Picket Lies, page 1
White Picket Lies
A Toni Porter Mystery
Lilly Mirren
Contents
About the book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Also by Lilly Mirren
Glossary of Terms
About the Author
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About the book
How well do you really know your neighbours?
Zoey lives in a suburban home by the beach, in a gated community where nothing ever happens. Her biggest frustration is getting her husband to pick up after the potty-training puppy. Until her whole life is thrown into chaos when a body appears in the garden next door.
Stella is new to town. She doesn’t want to get involved in the small-town drama. She’s a single mother with a secret and the last thing she needs is more scrutiny. Looking for answers in her own life, her search becomes inextricably intertwined with the investigation.
Fighting the demons of her past Toni finds herself in the midst of a second marriage breakdown at forty seven years of age. She struggles to keep depression at bay while doing her best to raise a wayward teenaged son and uncover the identity of the killer.
In this small town investigation, it's only a matter of time until friends and neighbours turn on each other.
Please note: this book is written using Australian English. Some words, spelling and phrases may be unfamiliar to you. There is a handy glossary located at the end of the book to assist you.
For truth carriers and boundary warriors.
Chapter One
Monday
17th October
It wasn’t the goals he’d never accomplish or the things he wished he’d done that flashed through the man’s thoughts as he lay prone on the damp ground, the lifeblood seeping from his body. It wasn’t like people said it would be. He wasn’t scared or anxious, didn’t scramble or fumble for a rescue that wouldn’t come. He lay still and quiet, knowing what he faced and realising with a sudden clarity of thought, through the resounding throbbing at the back of his skull, that his time was now.
He tried to reach out for something to hold onto, but his empty hand fell back to the soil with a gentle thud. A sharp object pricked his wrist—a stone, perhaps, or a thorn. He couldn’t say which. Waves shushed quietly in the darkness, curling to shore in the distance in a soothing rhythm.
No, the thoughts that launched themselves across his mind’s eye as he lay dying were his deepest regrets. The things he’d done that’d caused so much pain to the ones he loved most. The parts of himself he’d held back, the vulnerability he’d avoided because it was all too hard.
It didn’t seem hard now, but his perspective was different.
His assailant was gone. Had left him minutes earlier with a rapid thudding of footsteps, pulling the gate mostly shut. He’d owned a dog once, years earlier. That crack in the gate would’ve been just enough for her to squeeze through. She’d always been an escape artist. She’d have shimmied her way through that gap and gone rogue for hours, panting her way around the neighbourhood until she’d terrorised every cat she could find. She’d come home covered head to toe in mud. He missed that dog. Saturn, he’d called her. He couldn’t remember the reason. It’d meant something to him at the time.
He didn’t know why he was thinking of that old dog now as he lay dying in his own garden bed. In the end, it was the things that mattered most that sprang to mind. Or perhaps it was simply the gap through the gate had prodded the memory. It irked him, but there was nothing he could do about it since he couldn’t seem to gather the strength to stand.
What would his wife think? Would she manage without him? He supposed the answer to that question didn’t matter, really—she’d simply have to manage, one way or the other. He should’ve taken out more insurance. It’d been on his honey-do list for at least three years.
Something about facing his own mortality kept him pushing it down the list. Meanwhile, he’d painted the fence, fixed the leaking roof, had the carpets cleaned, and built a garden shed from a flat pack. But the one thing he hadn’t done was update the insurance. And, he realised with some alacrity, it was clearly one of the things he should’ve.
His head didn’t hurt now, but his thoughts were muddy. His mind wandered round and round as his subconscious thoughts drifted again to Saturn, then long hikes through mountains and over glaciers with friends he’d left behind aeons ago. Finally, he recalled all of the family ties and friendships he’d thought would never falter that had ended abruptly at various points in his life, and even now, looking back, he didn’t understand why. Perhaps he should’ve asked, although he’d never been one to dwell on the past. If they ghosted him, he’d ghost them right back. Would any of them come to his funeral?
Chapter Two
Thursday
20th October
It was too early to get out of bed. The birds had sung for a full two hours and the sun was high in the sky, but still Detective Sergeant Antonia Kauffman had no intention of rising yet. She’d been up late the previous night, working the evening shift that would never end. Too many drunks, too few officers on duty to deal with it all, and so it was left to her, as one of the more junior detectives of the Tweed Heads Police Department, to deal with the kerfuffle going on at the desk.
It didn’t matter that none of the male detectives had to deal with drunks at the front desk. None of them batted an eye over it. She couldn’t say anything, either, because she’d never hear the end of it. They hated it when she complained about unequal treatment, as though she wasn’t one of them after all, despite her protestations to the opposite. But if she didn’t speak up, nothing would change. And so, she found herself at an impasse. She had to say something if she wanted to be taken seriously in her role, but if she did, they wouldn’t take her seriously. It was a quandary she hadn’t found an answer to, and one she wasn’t sure she ever would.
She rolled over in bed and groaned when the snooze alarm sounded.
“You getting up?” Rodger’s voice sailed in from the bathroom. Steam issued through the open door.
“Yep,” she grunted. He was home at least. He’d been out late the night before. In fact, she couldn’t recall when he’d come home. It happened more and more lately.
She rolled over and slung her feet to the floor with a yawn. Then stretching her arms above her head, she let the tension from the previous night work its way out of her shoulders as she leaned to the left, then to the right. At forty-six years of age, she was beginning to notice a shift in her body the way she hadn’t when she started on the force eight years earlier. Everything was harder. Every muscle ached more and for longer after she exerted herself. But at least she was walking, which was more than she’d thought she’d be doing when she was shot five years earlier, on the streets of Sydney. The bullet missed her spinal column by mere millimetres.
With a grunt, she was on her feet and reaching for her toes. No matter what, she always did her stretches. It helped stave off possible injuries. She never used to worry about growing old because it seemed like some far-off distant thing that would happen to a kind, grey-haired, wizened version of herself. Not something that would happen now. She’d only graduated from high school a minute ago, and now she was forty-six years old.
Forty-six.
Where had those years gone? They’d disappeared in a haze of study, drunken parties, then sleepless nights with a baby and years of pounding along the streets of Sydney chasing crack addicts and criminals. So much of it was a blur.
&nbs p; She hadn’t stopped to smell the roses often enough—that was the problem, according to her mother. She’d had to point out that there weren’t many roses in crack dens, and if you stopped, you’d be shot or stabbed. Better to keep moving. But Mum had never liked the fact that she’d signed up to be a police officer in the first place. It wasn’t ladylike, not something women should do. She’d have to work with hard men every day, they’d never treat her as an equal, she’d see too much of the underworld, and it would scar her. That was what Mum had said the first day when Toni had been heady with the glow of enrolling.
It’d angered her at first. Mum was being a downer and old-fashioned, and she didn’t know what she was talking about. Eight years later, she didn’t want to admit to her mother that perhaps she’d had a decent point or two. She was too proud for that. But she wasn’t as harsh with her mother these days. She listened to her rants without rolling her eyes and tried to take her advice. That was about the best she could manage for now.
“You going to the station?” Rodger asked, walking into the bedroom still flossing. “Because I could do with a lift.”
“Sorry, I’m heading in later than usual. Exhausted after last night.”
“I bet you are. You shouldn’t work so late. It isn’t right—they’re taking advantage of you.” He stood in his boxer shorts, plucking the string from between his teeth and reinserting it over and over as he spoke.
She’d gotten home late, and he hadn’t been there. She wouldn’t ask him where he was last night. They’d only end up fighting.
“You should do that in the bathroom,” she said.
He shrugged. “Always telling me what to do.”
“I’m not trying to be bossy. But I swear I saw a piece of toast fly across the room and land on the doona.”
He grunted. “Hardly likely.”
Toni hated it when he flossed or brushed in the bedroom. It was one of her many pet peeves. In fact, there was very little that Rodger did these days that didn’t raise her ire. She did her best to hide it, but it was harder some days than others.
He disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a scowl. “I guess I’ll ride the bike to work, then. But it looks like rain.”
“You can take the car if you like. I’ll take the bike.”
“Really?” He perked up. “Okay, thanks.”
He tugged on a pair of chinos and a button-down blue-and-white striped shirt. “I’ve got parent-teacher interviews this afternoon, so I’ll be home late.”
“No worries,” she said, undressing for the shower. “I’ll pick up some takeaway if you like. How about Chinese?”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Although, I’m kind of sick of takeaway. Do you think you could make that chicken pie I love?”
She pasted a smile to her face. “Sure, of course I can.” He knew how tired she was, and she still had a full shift of work to do that day. They’d fought so much over domestic chores in recent years that they’d put together a chore chart even though the two of them didn’t have any children living at home. It was like stepping back in time to when Ryker was at primary school. It made things easier—that’s what she told her girlfriends whenever they asked about it. But the truth was, he rarely stuck to it. He usually found some excuse not to contribute to the upkeep of their small two-bedroom unit.
Chapter Three
Zoey Winton loved the quiet stillness of the early morning hours before the house awoke. Her husband, Dave, still snored softly in the master suite at the end of the hall. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Isla, lay with arms and legs askew across the bed, her nose pressed directly into her pillow and her hair a dark brown mess that obscured most of her face.
But this particular morning was different from other mornings because today was her twentieth wedding anniversary, and although she’d never admit it, she found that an utterly depressing thought. It shouldn’t be depressing, since she loved her husband and they had a wonderful life together with their daughter and frou-frou designer dog in their double-story house in the quiet seaside town of Kingscliff.
Actually, she still quite liked Dave even after all these years. If they ever had the chance to spend time together, just the two of them, they got along surprisingly well. Her friends often told her how jealous they were of her relationship. But the fact that her anniversary shouldn’t depress her, and yet she was depressed, depressed her further still.
No, this was silly. She wasn’t depressed. She couldn’t be. She assured herself of that fact with a stern inner voice. No, depression was for people who were sad. And she wasn’t sad. She was feeling a little low—that’s all it was. And who wouldn’t? Twenty years! Twenty years of living with the same man, washing his dirty underwear, cooking his meals, and listening to his snoring. It was enough to depress a saint.
When she thought about it, as she folded items of clothing that were strewn around the floor of Isla’s bedroom and laid them in a neat pile on the corner of her desk, by every objective measurement, she had a very good life. Only it was a little dull. That was her one complaint. Well, perhaps that and the housework. No one told her how much of her life would involve standing over a kitchen sink or folding laundry. So much time spent alone. So many hours doing mundane tasks.
She did it because she loved them, of course. It was all for love and it’d been her choice, and faced with the decision again, she probably wouldn’t make a different one. So why was she depressed…no, not depressed. Why was she down?
She’d have to analyse the feeling later because it was time to wake Isla and get her moving for school. The child was like a great big boulder that Zoey had to push up an enormous hill every single morning. Why did it take so long for her to find a pair of socks and pull them onto her feet? How many times did she really have to check her phone for messages in a five-minute period? These were the questions that Zoey asked herself each morning in the rush to get out of the house.
She leaned down to stroke Isla’s arm, using her singsong voice to chant, “Time to rise and shine.”
Isla had grown taller and lankier recently. The chubby cheeks had hollowed out years earlier, but now she was as tall as Zoey, and when she got ready for school, her legs were like two strands of uncooked spaghetti beneath the tartan skirt of her uniform.
She rolled over and yawned, her brown eyes blinking open. “Morning, Mum.”
Zoey sat on the edge of the bed and tickled Isla’s forearm. “Good morning, sweetheart. You’ve got PE today, so don’t forget your swimmers, okay?”
Isla nodded with another yawn, then Zoey bounded to her feet. The next chore on her list was to let the dog out. The puppy was eight months old, definitely mature enough to be potty trained, and yet she still managed to crap in the house at least once per week.
Isla padded past her to the bathroom and frowned. “What are you doing, Mum?”
“Looking for the dog. Where is she? We’ve got to take her out.”
Isla shrugged and ducked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her with a bang.
