The Fall That Kills You Read online

  Killiecrankie diamonds are very common in certain parts of Tasmania. Same tourists who come here for the scenery also came here to go fossicking all over Flinders Island and other spots for those little blue and white gemstones. I’ve seen more than a few with a handful of them, thinking they’ve struck it rich. Thing is, killiecrankies aren’t really diamonds. They just look like them. In reality, they’re topaz. Worth a few dollars if you get enough of them, but they usually only show up as tiny chips of hardly nothing.

  But if Malik has one big enough…

  “How big?”

  His eyebrows climb up his forehead. “The diamond?”

  “Yes. How big is this gemstone of yours?”

  He held up his hands, palm to palm, fingertips to fingertips. Then he spread them apart. Five centimeters. Ten. Twenty.

  Thirty.

  Oh, snap.

  The way he held his hands made it look round, too. Like a soccer ball. I can’t keep the look of surprise off my face. I’ve seen killiecrankie diamond earing studs go for a hundred dollars. A stone that size would be worth…

  “Priceless,” he says before I can finish that thought. “Its value is incalculable.”

  “What did it do, fall from Heaven or something?”

  He doesn’t answer that one.

  “Malik, I’ve never heard of a killiecrankie that big. Struth, I’ve never heard of any gemstone that big.”

  “There are countless treasures in this wonderful country, Dell.” He purses his lips, thinking about it. “There was an opal discovered in South Australia in 1956. The Olympic Australis opal. It was, in a word, amazing. It was a third of a meter in length, and nearly as thick as it was wide. Seventeen thousand carats worth of opal. That one was mine, as well, but I’ve since recovered that through… other means. Now I want my killiecrankie diamond back.”

  “You know, I did a report on those when I was in Uni. The name killiecrankie means… what? Shimmering wood?”

  “Something like that. And, just like all valuable stones in the world, mine had a name of its own. The Enoch Diamond. So. Now you know what it is. You know that it is valuable. The only thing left to explain is where it was when it was stolen.”

  “Well, that would be a good place to start, no doubt. If I’m going to help you I’ll need to know everything.”

  “It was in a very secure spot. No one should have ever found it. I’m still not clear how that happened, but it did. I am, as you can understand, very upset.”

  If this was him upset, I’d hate to see him calm. “All right. Well, tell me where it was. Maybe there will be some security cameras or something we can look at. Witnesses we can talk to?”

  “No. I’m afraid there won’t be any of that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of where the Enoch Diamond was kept.”

  It’s like I’m talking in circles. “Malik, just tell me. Where was your diamond?”

  “It was buried,” he tells me, “at the top of Hartz Peak.”

  I have to admit, that was unexpected.

  In the space of a single morning, there had been two separate and significant events that happened on Hartz Peak, both of them landing on my doorstep. Literally.

  Although, I suppose technically neither of them happened this morning. They both happened yesterday. I only found out about them today.

  I’m not a big believer in coincidence.

  Which made me wonder if there was a connection.

  I kept that little thought to myself while we walked back to the Inn. Or rather, while I walked back to the Inn, and while Malik disappeared. Not literally. He just walked off in a different direction, he didn’t evaporate into thin air or anything. I mean, he’s not a ghost.

  I shiver in spite of the heat of the day, and I’m sure glad to get back inside the Pine Lake Inn. Now that I’ve cleared my head a bit, only to have it stuffed full of Malik’s problem, I feel safe within these walls again.

  A glance to my side shows me the new fireplace, empty and clean for the summer, and a constant reminder that sometimes even home isn’t safe. But that’s another story from my life. Right now, I need to take a hard look at the death of Mark Anderson’s brother on Hartz Peak, and the fact that Malik Brewster would have been on that same mountain, at about the same time, looking for his stolen gemstone.

  Malik had described the spot where the diamond had been kept. Buried under a layer of earth, inside a sort of box made from stone slabs. The top was heavy, Malik assured me, and even if someone dug down to it, all anyone should have seen was stone. No booby traps. No extra security. No need.

  Considering what had happened, I might disagree.

  A scenario was playing out in my head, and I couldn’t shake it. Did Malik Brewster go looking for his Enoch Diamond and find Craig Anderson standing there with it? How angry would that have made him?

  As the end of the scenario plays out in my head, I can’t shake the feeling that I might have just been talking to Craig’s killer.

  Of course, we didn’t know that Craig was murdered. Died in a fall, was all we knew for now. Kevin seemed suspicious it was more than that, but that didn’t mean I had to be.

  I chewed on my lip as I went up the stairs and down the first-floor hall, to the stairs at the opposite end that would take me up to the top floor and my rooms. Did Craig steal Malik’s gemstone? No. Obviously not, because if he had, then Malik wouldn’t have had to come to me for help finding it. He’d know where it was. He’d just have to pick it out of Craig’s cold, dead hands.

  Could he have found the empty hole where the Enoch Diamond had been kept, and Craig standing there, and killed him first without asking where the gemstone might be?

  Oh, snap. This was going to get more complicated before it was over. I could see that sure enough. Standing here and playing ‘what if’ sure wasn’t going to solve anything.

  I didn’t get the feeling from Malik that he was a killer. I know, that’s an odd thing to say because of how he makes me feel whenever he’s around. Weird. Odd. On edge. Still, I have a sense for people, usually. I get a feeling from them, and Malik Brewster just doesn’t scream “sadistic killer” to me.

  Maybe, the devil’s advocate side of me wants to argue, that’s because he’s the regular kind of killer.

  Closing the door to my room behind me, I set the lock, and then go and drop onto my bed. Of all the places in this Inn, this place is mine. The ghosts know not to come here without my personal invitation. The staff knows to leave me alone when I’m up here unless it’s an emergency. This is my own personal space. In a town this small, everyone needs somewhere to hide for a little while.

  My room’s a little bigger than the others. Maybe not so grand as room number nine, the Honeymoon Suite, but definitely bigger than the others. I’ve redone it a few times to add personal touches of my own. After my husband Richard left us I moved from the house we had shared together, to here. No sense having an entire house just for me. This space, my bedroom here and the attached bathroom over there, is really all I need.

  And my boyfriend doesn’t mind coming over to spend the night sometimes, so there’s that as well.

  A red closet out from the wall on the right side was one of the things I’d added. A photo of the town taken from a drone by a local photographer hangs on the wall now, showing the trees and the buildings and the three irregularly shaped lakes around us. That’s a new addition. My bed, with its four wooden posts holding up a canopy of pink ruffles, takes up most of the available floor space out here but I don’t host a lot of parties. The walls and the trim are pink. I’m thinking of painting over it. Maybe I’m growing out of my girlie phase.

  Laying there on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, I press the wooden unicorn on my necklace between my thumb and finger, hoping for inspiration. It was a gift, from one of my very best friends, apart from Rosie, right before she died. She’s no longer with me in the flesh anymore, and that hurts me more than I let on. She’s gone but not forgotten. Of all the ghosts haunting the Pine Lake Inn, she’s the one I talk to most.

  Wish she was here to tell me what I should do about this. At least, to make me laugh and see things from a different perspective like she does so well. She comes and goes as she pleases, however. Not like I can just give her a ring on her mobile. There’s no area code for the afterlife. No, I’m on my own for now.

  The thing of it is, it’s hard to get inspiration without information.

  I’m definitely missing some of that. So, I could go and ask Mark some more aimless questions, and get absolutely nowhere because I don’t know what to ask. I could go out walking around Hartz Peak and hope to stumble across a killiecrankie diamond the size of a football, without having any idea where it is. I could go to Kevin and find out if he’s had time to find out anything more about Craig Anderson, his life, his times, his death. That’s a good idea… but It’s only been about two hours since he left here, and he’s got other irons in the fire, too. He would’ve called if he’d found out anything I needed to know about the dead man, or his brother staying as a guest at my Inn.

  So, if I want information, I’m really only left with one place to turn to.

  Rolling over, I reach for the phone on the bedside table, ready to make a transatlantic phone call.

  The phone rings just before my fingers touch it.

  Of course it does.

  Very few people have the direct number to my rooms. I keep it that way on purpose. Just like the staff knows not to disturb me up here unless it’s important, they know not to put calls through to this phone. Short of the Inn being on fire or the Governor General himself showing up at the door, that phone doesn’t ring. Anyone who has this number also has the number of my mobile. People who call me, call the mobile. They don’t c
all my rooms.

  People know better.

  Which means this is probably a ghost trying to get in touch with me.

  They do that sometimes. When they need help, or they need to talk to someone, or they just get bored sitting in the hereafter, they call me. For a while I stopped answering. Then I decided that if the only connection these poor spirits were going to have to the living was me, then maybe I should answer after all. I mean if I was dead, and I needed help, I know I’d want someone to answer that call.

  So I pick up the phone. “G’day?”

  There’s only static as I listen. Popping and hissing and crackling. I listen, hearing whispers come and go in the white noise.

  Then there’s a voice.

  “…find me…”

  I don’t recognize whoever’s speaking, but I’ve had enough calls from beyond the grave to know a ghost when I hear one. This is another ghost, calling Dell Powers for help.

  As if I didn’t have enough on my plate already.

  “…find me…”

  “Yes, I heard you the first time,” I tell him. It’s a man’s voice. I can tell that much, at least. “I’m a little busy at the moment. Can I maybe come look for you some other time?”

  “…I need...please…find me…”

  I sigh into the phone, and lay back down with my head buried against my pillows. “Fine. Can you at least tell me where you are? I mean, Tasmania’s not as small as it looks, and the rest of Australia’s even bigger, and if you’re somewhere else then we’re really going to have to put this on the back burner.”

  The static grows louder, angrier. I don’t mean to make fun of the ghost but it’s just one of those things. If they’re going to call and interrupt my day, they’re going to have to put up with a little bit of sarcasm.

  “So,” I say, raising my voice over the crackle-pop-snap of the static. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll try to find your body and help you move on to the next place. Okay? It’s the best I can promise you. Where are you?”

  The static quiets until it’s almost gone, and now I can hear the voice clear as day.

  “…Hartz Peak…”

  My heart nearly stops. This ghost is at Hartz Peak. The place where Craig died.

  Craig’s ghost! This is Craig’s ghost!

  “Craig? Is that you?”

  “…find me…”

  I push myself up, sitting on the edge of the bed, wishing I could reach through the phone and grab hold of him. If I could just get the connection better, or get the ghost here, I could ask him how he died, who killed him, anything that might actually solve this mystery.

  “Craig, I’m going to find who killed you. Just hold on, this isn’t over. Hear me? I’ll find who killed you.”

  “…can’t…”

  “Yes, I can. I’ll figure this out, Craig. You just have to give me some time.”

  “…can’t…”

  “Yes,” I promise. “I can. Just let me find you.”

  “…I’m…not…dead…”

  In my ear the static stops abruptly, replaced by a loud ringing as the line disconnects.

  The phone receiver slips from my fingers and falls to the floor.

  Craig wasn’t dead? What did that mean? He had to be. That was a call from his ghost.

  A ghost telling me they aren’t dead. Now I’ve heard everything.

  It did bring up some interesting possibilities, though. Was the body on the mountain not Craig? Kevin had said that the Federal Police made the identification off the ID in his wallet, which made me think that his face was… unrecognizable. Fingerprint identification would take some time, and dental records might not be possible for the same reason that they couldn’t identify him with his face.

  That didn’t make any sense. The dead man had Craig Anderson’s wallet. Unless we had both a gem thief and a wallet thief wandering around Lakeshore, then the body was Craig’s.

  Craig Anderson was dead, without a doubt. So who did I just get a call from, telling me they weren’t dead?

  The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

  I needed to talk to Kevin, and tell him what I’d heard. He knew about me being able to see ghosts. Maybe I left out some of the more serious details. A mother was meant to worry about their son. I worry for him every day, being the very involved police officer that he is, and that’s as it should be.

  So I can talk to him. Sort of. Mostly. No, what I need right now is to talk to someone who knows about ghosts, and knows them better than I do.

  Leaning over the edge of the mattress I pick the phone up again. I still remember the number by heart, even if it is in the United States. U.S. phone numbers are weird. Country code, then three digits, and three more digits, and then four… why’s it so uneven?

  Takes a few moments for the number to connect, and then it’s ringing. I try to remember the time difference while I wait. If it’s just after one o’clock in the afternoon here, then what time is it in—?

  The call connects, and a sleepy voice that I recognize very well answers. “Hello?”

  I can’t help but smile. “Hey, Darcy. It’s been too long.”

  “Dell!” she says, her voice awake instantly. “Wow, I was just thinking about you. A dream, actually. You’re right, it’s been too long. How’s things down undah?”

  We both give a chuckle at her bad attempt at an Australian accent. “Things are a little crazy here, to tell the truth. There’s a dead man, and a ghost calling me up. Not sure they’re one and the same, either. Just hung up on him, actually.”

  “Well, I did warn you to give up your phone. I make it just fine without one.”

  “Well, they do have their uses.”

  “It’s a modern world, you know. You should consider e-mail and internet messaging.”

  “We’re a bit more laid back here in Lakeshore,” I tell her. “Listen, I’ve got a couple of things to ask you. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure. I need to get up anyway. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for Jon.”

  Darcy Sweet is another person I consider one of the best friends I’ve ever had, even if we are on opposite sides of the world. I can count on one hand the number of people who’d bother to pick up the phone whatever time of day I call. Rosie. Kevin. James, if he’s not too busy. A couple of others. And, Darcy Sweet.

  “So, first of all… wow, this is gonna sound loopy.” Even between us, this is going to be a hard thing to explain. “First, I need to ask you about someone who lives in your town of Misty Hollow.”

  “Shoot. I’m all ears.”

  “What can you tell me about a man named Sean Fitzwallis?”

  There’s a long pause, and while I’m waiting for her answer I can hear a cat’s meow in the background.

  “Shh. Quiet, Smudge. This is long distance. Uh, why are you asking about Sean?”

  “I have… a friend over here. Malik Brewster’s his name. He’s got some issues and, to be honest, I don’t know whether to trust him. He said I should call and ask you about Sean Fitzwallis. He said that would tell me if I can trust him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” I tell her, “he said that him and Sean are the same.”

  “He said that, did he?” She chuckles softly. “Well, if that’s true then you’ve got nothing to worry about. Sean is kind of… my guardian angel, I guess you’d say.”

  “That’s high praise.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Sean and I have had our disagreements, and our arguments, and there was one time when I flat out told him I never wanted to see him again.” She paused again, with a slow breath in, and a slower breath out. “Even then, no matter what, Sean was there to watch out for me. So, if your guy thinks he’s the same as Sean then you’re in good company.”

  That made me feel a lot better. I still don’t know why Malik couldn’t just tell me that himself, but hearing it from Darcy really put my mind at ease. “Aces. Thanks, Darcy. So, there’s another question. Um. Wow, if the first question didn’t make me sound like a complete nut case then this one surely will.”

  “It’s fine, Dell. Whatever it is, go ahead. Ask away.”