“Sorry Jim. Almost there.”
“Please, take your time,” I said as she rushed past me with a basket load of washing. “You have a lovely home.”
“Thank you,” she replied from somewhere at the back of the house. There was a knock on the front door at that moment and she came back into the room, looked at me for a moment, then went to the door after gesturing to herself to calm down with her palms waving slowly up and down. I heard some muffled voices, then the door closing again. Steph came back into the room with a young girl of maybe 6 or 7 in her arms. My expression must have been one of surprise, Steph flashing me a shy smile as she put the girl down. I noticed a striking resemblance between them.
“Jim, this is my sister Judith. Jude, this is Jim.” I took a step forward and held out my hand to her.
“Very pleased to meet you, Judith,” I said. The girl seemed a little shy, but shook my hand none the less. She let go after a brief pause, then went back to Steph, half hiding behind her sister’s leg. Steph saw the bottles on the table and went to them, picking the red up.
“Why, thank you, kind sir. I don’t really do wine, but if I had to choose, then red it would be.”
“I wasn’t sure what we were having, so thought I’d bring both,” I said, but then quickly added “but beer works for me. Truly, thanks.” She smiled at that, picked up her own bottle and clinked with me, wishing us good health.
9.
The meal was amazing, and a little surprising. I wasn’t expecting such a fantastic home cooked dinner from someone so young, but then felt a little embarrassed again at presuming to know her situation, or her age, or her cooking skills, for that matter. The gravy she had made from scratch, so rich and deep with a flavour that actually rivalled my own mother’s in comparison. Once we had finished dessert, a warm slice of apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, Steph helped Judith prepare for bed, then tucked her in and read a story from a big red book Judith brought to her. I could hear her reading the story of Goldilocks, and the voices she was using for the bears were actually pretty good. I sat in the living room, sipping another beer, staring into the flames of the fire. It had always been one of my favourite moments of any evening, when you could just relax, and let the dancing flames and crackling pops of the wood carry your mind away.
Unfortunately for me, and probably due to the events of the past couple of days, my mind had wandered back to the first dead body I had ever seen, one of Lucifer’s victims that we found only two weeks after I started at Cider Hill. Her name had been Annabelle Cruz, a 22-year-old waitress who had worked at the Railway Hotel. She disappeared after finishing work, never making it back to her parent’s house where she still lived. We learnt from friends that she had a habit of cutting through the cemetery on her way home, a shortcut that saved her having to walk the three blocks down and around the lake. We don’t know how the killer persuaded her to go with him, but when we found her in an old abandoned shed out on the Munro’s farm, five miles out of town, she had been bound fed upon, the only injuries being those from where he had chewed on her and the marks from where she was bound by her wrists and ankles. Most of her right arm had been stripped clean of flesh, and he had begun to feed on her left arm when he stopped.
It was the Munro’s dog that found her, James Munro hearing his Kelpie barking furiously at something and refusing to come when called. When he had followed the sounds of barking, he had discovered the gruesome scene, a family on the neighbouring farm some 3 miles away hearing the farmer’s blood-curdling scream floating across the fields between them.
“She is asleep,” Steph said as she walked into the room, breaking my thoughts.
“That dinner was amazing, Steph. Really.” Colour flushed her cheeks as she sat down on the seat next to mine.
“Thanks. I’d been taught from an early age,” she said as she took a sip of her wine glass. “And this wine is actually pretty good.”
“Did your Mum teach you?”
“No. My Mum didn’t do much cooking. She was born blind. But we had a lady that came in for most of my childhood. Old Mrs. Marsh. Four times a week she would come cook and clean for us. Then as I grew older, her visits became less frequent. But not before bestowing me with her lamb roast recipe.” She giggled a little, staring into the fire, a distant memory in her eyes.
“Wow, blind. That must have been hard.”
“I never knew any different, so I guess it was just the norm?”
“Of course, sorry. And your father? And please, feel free to tell me to shut up if I’m prying.” I didn’t want to sound like I was conducting an investigation.
“No, it’s OK. I never knew my father. My mum and dad had, what you would call, a whirlwind romance. At least that’s how she used to describe it. His name was Eddie, and they met by the river where my mum used to sit and
