A Man for Clair: Secret of the Widow Mulvane (Mystery loves Romance Book 2) Read online

  He kissed her hard and she moaned into his mouth. He could taste the salt air on her lips, while her face was cold. He could also feel the moist heat from her crotch with his leg between hers, kissing her harder still as she ground down against the flex of his thigh.

  Susan Mulvane was an attractive woman of fifty. She kept her dark, slightly stringy hair trimmed at her shoulders. Her slender frame was easily crushed within the powerful grip of John’s arm. She had dark eyes given to sadness—the sadness having been etched into them over the years of reclusion and secrecy. She had such inner strength and resilience, though, and John loved that about her, even though it dominated their relationship and had done over the years.

  John and Susan had for twenty years met every Monday and Thursday at midday there in Susan’s make-believe office. Susan had absolutely no interest in the goings on in her fish market. She had not the slightest clue of what John did or the machinations that took place and produced a quite sizable monthly balance in her business account at the bank. The only reason she ever went to the market was to meet John for lunch and a few hours of loving attention.

  Their relationship was extremely simple in practice and extremely complex in essence.

  They had loved each other since school. They were the same age and had been in the same class. As teen lovers they had promised to wait for one another while John was in the Navy. There had been a year or so they failed to keep close contact, though, and during that time Susan became attracted to one of the wealthy Mulvane family. Charles Mulvane had just returned from university and a few years travelling Europe. He was refined and sophisticated, and he swept a young Susan Cornish completely over the counter of the Everly Cove Bakery and up to his newly built mansion on Point Bleak. He had her up there and pregnant, and ultimately married, before she began to realize how evil he was.

  Susan was married in 1977 when she and John were each just 22 years of age. At the time, John was up in the Timor Sea living a life far from Everly Cove. Susan was pregnant with a daughter, who was four years old when John returned home. And with an icy distance having grown between Susan and her domineering husband, she immediately sought the warmth and care of her first love—then a much more confident and physically powerful man than she remembered.

  Charles Mulvane stood firmly between them, though. He would keep his daughter. Susan was free to leave anytime, but Charles would be keeping the girl. Then one night in August 1986 Charles Mulvane no longer stood between John and Susan. He lay dead on the floor of his study while Susan stood above him with his blood literally on her hands, and although he had been removed from their relationship, Susan and John had ruined any chance of having a normal life together because of suspicion over their involvement in the death of her husband.

  The affair John and Susan had been having while she was married was well known around town, so they decided not to see each other for a while. They kept to that agreement until the police investigation grew cold and talk around town gradually subsided. Then the manager of the fish market retired, and John was seen and accepted as a perfectly valid replacement, and the Monday and Thursday meetings began.

  Over the next several years, John accepted that secrecy had to be maintained. He then challenged Susan to what he considered to be moving on from the past, and he asked her to marry him. She refused. She stood firm with the assertion that she was the one who would be imprisoned for what had happened that night—that he was merely an accessory after the fact. She was the one who risked being locked up for years, and who would take care of her daughter if that were to happen?

  Although John still had the ring he proposed with that one time, he never pushed again. Rather, he became accustomed to the twice weekly rendezvous with the woman he loved, and to enjoying his single life otherwise.

  Yes, they would pass on the street and have a friendly chat, or talk on the phone on a cold, lonely night, but nothing more. Yes, the entire town suspected what they were up to in Susan’s make-believe office twice a week. John had confided in no one, though, and neither had Susan confessed to the ladies at the Red Cross clothing shop where she volunteered for a few hours’ work on Monday and Thursday mornings.

  The entire town knew, but over the years the gossip had dissipated again.

  “I’ve got Grant’s wedding coming up soon,” John commented, collapsing back on the bed beside Susan. He pulled the sheet up to his waist. She tugged it up to cover her breasts. John was breathing hard, and Susan rolled over, cuddling up to his chest. She didn’t say anything. It was the one flaw in their arrangement—that they couldn’t attend functions like that together. Grant was John’s elder brother, onto his third wedding.

  “I’ve got vanilla slice,” Susan tempted. She always brought lunch from home. “Nelly made it for us.”

  “How is Nelly? She over that flu yet?”

  Nelly was Susan’s daughter. She was twenty-eight years old, and over the past fifteen years had barely left the Point Bleak mansion. She rarely even went outside. She had contact only with her mother and the housekeeper, who worked on Susan’s town days.

  “Yes, she’s fine now.” Susan lifted to kiss John again, and she straddled him, keeping the sheet around herself. “Are you ready to eat?”

  “Always ready to eat,” John replied with a laugh.

  Chapter 3

  David swung his axe, imbedding the head into the dead root of the tree stump he had been battling with for the past week. He took another full swing, then another. The root finally splintered as his axe head cut through and sank into the damp earth.

  Where David was working was in a tight corner of landscaped garden, up against the side of a small aluminium storage shed. He was in the sun and out of the wind, and his shirt was soaked in sweat beneath his nylon high-visibility vest.

  He ripped the vest off and tossed it at the tray of his utility, which he had backed in as close as he could to the dead tree stump.

  While he paused in his attack on the stump, he flicked open his mobile phone to see if there were any messages or missed calls from Cassie. There weren’t. He would have heard his phone buzz, anyway, so it was a pointless exercise to check it.

  He snapped it closed and stuck it back in his pocket then resumed work.

  The movement of Cassie’s car had him concerned, particularly since the same thing had happened one night the previous week. Cassie had been working late on both occasions. The previous week she had told him her car wouldn’t start, and that’s why it was still at her work late at night. She explained that her uncle had taken her on his way to work and jump-started the damn thing.

  David figured a dodgy battery could easily fail on a cold night, so it made sense. He again decided there was nothing more to it as his axe broke through another root and the tree stump seemed to shift.

  He leaned on the crow-bar he had wedged underneath and was able to lift the whole thing. He had finally severed the last root, it seemed, so he slung a length of chain around the stump and used the horsepower of his utility to drag the monster out of the garden.

  At thirty years of age, David was doing quite well for himself. He had worked a few years for a local landscaper and studied the craft at night-school. He then started his own business, as there was plenty of work around town. He targeted commercial premises rather than residential, distinguishing himself from the guy he’d previously worked for.

  He was working at the Everly District Hospital that afternoon, and after winching the tree stump onto his trailer, he tidied up his tools and drove along past the high school and soccer fields. From there he took a small bush track that wound down to the creek where he dumped the two-hundred kilogram monstrosity.

  David had the contract for both the school and soccer fields. He also took care of a number of small commercial allotments around town and had just picked up the contract for the council chambers, court house and police station. They were new buildings set in a magnificently landscaped garden and parkland.

  He stoppe
d in on his way back from the creek and checked the sprinkler settings. They were on timers, and there had been a savage little storm with power outages the previous night. His timers were showing eleven AM while it was actually getting on three o’clock in the afternoon.

  David had one residential contract but it was no ordinary residence. The Mulvane mansion was set in parkland that virtually covered Point Bleak. The only other thing on the headland was a narrow walking trail around the cliff-face to a fenced lookout that took in the sweep of rugged coastline to the south.

  The house where Cassie lived with her mother was on the way. David pulled up outside and checked his phone again, pointlessly.

  He sat for a moment with a weird flip-flopping going on in his stomach. He and Cassie had been seeing each other for a year, ever since she got back from Melbourne where she had lived for six or so years. They had been mostly going out as a group but in recent months had always gone together, in as much as David would pick her up and see her home. She had stayed over at his house plenty of times.

  He figured it was the ring that was making his gut flip-flop. He had wrapped it the previous night and had it in the pocket of the coat he had put on over his damp shirt.

  He approached the front door and knocked. He knew Cassie’s mum would be at work, as would her uncle John, who lived in a flat out the back of the small red-brick house.

  He knocked again, gently, not wishing to wake Cassie if she was sleeping. It was her day off.

  He had turned away when the door opened and she appeared wrapped in a thick yellow robe with her sandy-blond hair mussed from a pillow. She was yawning. “Hi, David,” she offered sleepily. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I was just driving past and—um—I was trying to call before. Did you get my message?”

  “Yeah, I got it… Sorry, I was sleeping in. I was going to call you.” She had edged behind the door, only keeping it open enough to see through.

  “No, that’s cool. I just saw your car again last night, and I wanted to make sure you got home okay.”

  “Oh, yeah. It wouldn’t start again,” she said with another yawn. “I had to get Uncle John to start it this morning.”

  “Oh, right… ‘cos I, um…”

  That wasn’t right, David reasoned. He guessed John could have been down town earlier that morning, but why wouldn’t he have said something about that?

  “I actually bumped into John this morning—” he started, without knowing where he was going with the remark.

  “Yeah, so, what’s up, anyway?” Cassie cut in. She had reddened in the face. “I need to get going,” she added. “I’ve got a bath running.”

  “Yeah, okay… Come over tonight?” David moved forward another step.

  “Yeah, I’ll try… I’m not sure if Mum wants me to do her hair.” Cassie narrowed the door another inch. “Call me later, okay?”

  “Okay.” David paused before backing slowly down the steps. “I’ll call you.”

  He sat in his utility feeling better in some ways but worse as well. His gut had stopped flip-flopping, but it still didn’t feel right as he made his way across town. He actually felt ill. He felt the culmination of a burst of nervous tension that ended up as a queasy churn in his stomach.

  He pulled into the driveway of the Mulvane mansion and went right around back and knocked on the old wooden screen door.

  “Hey, sis. You got anything to eat?”

  David’s sister, Amanda, house-kept for the widow Mulvane on Mondays and Thursdays. She let him in. He was only allowed in if the widow’s daughter was upstairs. Amanda closed the door that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house. There was bread and corned beef, and David made a sandwich while his sister poured him a cup of tea from a pot she had warmed on the combustion stove.

  “I need more firewood,” she said. “Can you bring some up?”

  David nodded. “Are you going to see the olds this weekend?”

  “I might… Do you want to come?”

  “No. It looks like rain next week, so I’ll have to mow all weekend. Dad wants his camera back before they go on Monday. I was going to fly over tonight, but if you’re going on the weekend..?”

  Amanda didn’t look up from the dishes she was washing. David started reading an article in an open newspaper on the table about the Prince William and Kate Middleton relationship possibly cooling off and doubt being cast over whether they would ever be engaged.

  Amanda wiped a plate and set it aside. “So, did you give Cassie the ring yet?”

  “Not yet. Tonight, maybe.”

  “Can I see it again?” She had wandered over from the sink.

  “I wrapped it up.” David took the small box from his pocket and put it on the table. His sister sat down beside him.

  “She’s going to die when you give it to her,” she said wistfully.

  David cocked an eyebrow. “So, how’s Boofhead going?” Boofhead was what David called one of the local cops, a man named Brent Cooper. His sister could hardly get a word out whenever the guy was around.

  “How should I know how he’s going?”

  “What—he didn’t ask you out or anything the other night?”

  “No. As soon as you left and we were alone, he couldn’t get away quick enough.”

  David turned to his little sister. She was incredibly shy and so was the cop. “So, ask him out, sis… Ask him over for dinner or something.”

  “No way. Imagine if he said no!”

  “He won’t say no. Bet he’s never even had a serious girlfriend.”

  Amanda giggled a little at that. “Well, that would make two of us.”

  “I know. You’re bloody perfect for each other!” David gave his sister a hug around the shoulder.

  She giggled some more and half sniffled. “Anyway, I can’t believe you’re giving Cassie a ring. That’s so awesome!”

  “Yeah, well, what’s really awesome is how long the grass is out there. I’d better get to it before it starts getting dark.”

  Chapter 4

  “We’ll pay,” Myles offered, shrugging. “It’s not like it’s going to cost you anything, and no offence…”

  “Oh—no offence? Really?” Clair scoffed. “It’s damn well offensive!”

  “No, I mean it’s nothing unusual, and if you want to keep on in the business, it’s what most women do at some stage… Well, small-breasted ones.”

  Clair looked at her breasts. She had on a push-up bra. They weren’t as perky as they were a few years ago, but she was no teenager anymore.

  “You and your father can stick your boob-job where it fits, Myles. I’m not doing it.”

  Myles frowned. “Fine! Whatever…” He cuddled up behind. “Just think about it, okay?”

  “Do you know what unequivocal means?” Clair squirmed around in the cuddle. She knew Myles wouldn’t know what unequivocal meant. “That’s the variety of no we’re dealing with here—an unequivocal no.”

  His frown deepened and she kissed him.

  “And there’s not a hope in hell I’ll be thinking about anything to do with work for the next three weeks… No chance!”

  “What sort of car did you get?” Myles asked. He had offered Clair the use of one of his cars, but she had thanked him and declined, hiring one instead.

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s a Toyota.”

  It was a basic late model sedan. She had mapped out her journey and thought about getting a four-wheel-drive in case there was any snow in the mountains. She had never seen snow, let alone driven in it. She had settled for a smaller car with better fuel economy. The rental deal offered unlimited kilometres, which she would need.

  “What—an Aurion?” Myles added to his query.

  “I don’t know. Who cares? It’s like new, and if it stops or a cow jumps on it, I call the number and they bring me another one.”

  As a child Clair had been in the back of a car that hit a stray cow on some country road. It was her biggest fear.

  Myles
had taken to her car rental documents, to find the precise make of the car, it seemed. He opened her map. “Why don’t you take the main highway?” he challenged.

  Clair had circled potential stop-over points along a secondary route that avoided the main highway and, more importantly, the larger cities and traffic congestion. “Because I want to take the scenic route,” she explained flippantly. She was actually more scared of city traffic and huge trucks than cows.

  She took her rental car folder and map off Myles and packed them back in her bag. She had only stopped by his apartment to say goodbye. Her last shift was the previous night, and she had picked up the rental car that morning and had it downstairs packed and ready to go.

  “Behave yourself!” She lifted to kiss him goodbye. “And don’t go around telling women they need boob-jobs. It’s not a nice thing to say.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  He followed Clair out the door and rode with her in the elevator.

  “No, it’s a Camry,” he announced as they approached her car.

  “Yeah—whatever.” Clair kissed him goodbye again. “See you in three weeks, Myles.”

  With that final task ticked off, she was on her way, experiencing a sense of exhilaration at the idea of a three day road trip. She had already programmed the car’s GPS with her first destination. It was past mid-day, so she had calculated about five to six hours drive-time to cover the first 300 kilometres to a town named Tenterfield.

  It was only ten minutes to the motorway heading south out of Gold Coast city. It was busy, and Clair stayed in the slow-lane, quite unaccustomed to driving, and feeling safer following along behind a caravan while everyone zoomed past. There were a lot of trucks—huge, noisy monstrosities with their wheels close to the white lines separating the lanes and threatening to sway over.

  Clair rarely drove at all. She rarely left the city and used busses and taxis to get around. There was also a train service to Brisbane where her parents lived, and her father would always pick her up at the station when she visited.