Rabz hesitated, shot a nervous glance at the door as if desperate to escape, then said, “Martin and I started seeing each other before he even met Ellie. He met her in early January this year. In Vancouver.”
Lozza exchanged a quick glance with Gregg. Her pulse quickened.
“Just to get this clear,” she said, “you and Martin were dating before Martin met Ellie? And then you and Martin continued seeing each other long distance throughout their courtship and marriage? Then after they moved here, you and Martin continued the affair?”
She nodded.
A dark, inky thought that dovetailed with Willow’s comments bled into Lozza’s brain. “Did Martin marry Ellie for her money, Rabz? Is that what this is about? He loves you, but she’s bankrolling your lives?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?” asked Gregg.
“Why don’t you guys bloody well find him and then you can ask him yourself!”
Lozza and Gregg said nothing. They waited.
Rabz pushed a tangle of hair back from her face and said, “I’m sorry. I’m just wired—I’m so scared he’s dead or something and I . . . I’ve had no one I could talk to, or share my worry with. We were in Sydney together and then he got a sudden call from her. She informed him that it was urgent that he come home right away. He flew back early.”
“By ‘her’ you mean Ellie, his wife?” Lozza asked.
“Yes,” Rabz snapped. “Ellie. He said he was going to leave her. We’d bought tickets to . . . we were going to go away together. Live abroad, travel the world. I don’t know what was so important that he had to rush back for.”
Quietly, Lozza said, “Here’s the thing I’m not understanding. You and Martin start an affair around the time he develops an interest in a big expensive development in New South Wales. You’re single, he’s single—why not just make it official?”
She looked down, said nothing.
“And then he meets Ellie, who we’ve learned is some Canadian heiress—her father is one of the wealthiest men in the country. And Martin marries her very quickly, supposedly on a trip to Las Vegas, while you two carry on your secret affair. He and his rich wife form a partnership with funds from her daddy, and Martin Cresswell-Smith is suddenly flush with funds to proceed with the development. Yet he’s planning to leave her and run away with you?” Lozza paused.
Gregg watched Rabz closely. “Looks to me like he’s a gold digger, Rabz, and you knew it.”
“He’s wealthy in his own right,” Rabz countered. “He’d made a mistake with Ellie, that’s all. A terrible mistake. He’d realized it after she’d moved here. She was not what he thought she was. He was winding things up and selling his half of Agnes Holdings, and he was going to leave her before she freaked out and tried to harm him or something. She’d get high on drugs and hurl things at him. She stabbed him on the boat—a whole lot of people witnessed what she was like that day. Martin said he saw something truly frightening in Ellie that day. She tried to strike him with a cast-iron frying pan later. I . . . And now, with you guys here, with no sight of him, yet she returned from the fishing outing? I’m worried she might have done something to him. He’d never have taken her out fishing again. I know he wouldn’t have. It made no sense that they went out in the boat again. Just after she called him home urgently. She must have lured or coerced him to do it or something.”
Lozza thought of what Willow had said—that she too felt it unlikely her friend Ellie would go out in the boat with Martin again. Things were not adding up here.
“You mentioned you and Martin had bought plane tickets?”
“We were going to fly to the Cape Verde islands in just over two weeks. Martin had rented us a house there for a year.”
“And you believe he was winding up his company—this big development project?” Gregg said.
“Well, he said he was off-loading his share of it, and leaving Ellie to handle the rest or sell or whatever.”
“Did Ellie know that her husband was getting on a plane and vanishing in two weeks?” Lozza asked, testing Rabz.
Rabz looked embarrassed. “No . . . I . . . I don’t think so. Why would she?”
“Are you aware that Ellie had hired a PI to follow you and her husband, and that she apparently has compromising photographs of you and Martin?”
Sweat beaded across Rabz’s lip. She wiped it away with a trembling hand. “No,” she whispered.
Lozza placed the CCTV photo of the bald man on Rabz’s desk and pushed it toward her.
“Do you recognize this man, Rabz?”
She studied the photo. “No. Why?”
“This man came into the Puggo with a parcel for Ellie while you were away. He left the parcel here for her to pick up. Had he come in before?”
“I . . . I’ve never seen him. I’d recognize someone like that.” She glanced up. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“Maybe nothing,” Lozza said. Her mobile buzzed. She ignored it and watched Rabz’s face closely as she studied the photo again. Gregg’s phone then buzzed. Gregg checked the caller ID and motioned to Lozza he was stepping out to take the call. She nodded.
“There is something else,” Rabz said quietly as Gregg departed. “It might be important . . . given everything that has happened.” She wavered, wiped her mouth again, then said, “The night before they were seen going out in the Quinnie, Martin called me from his house. He said there’d been a sudden change of plans. He could no longer meet me in Sydney to fly to the Cape Verde islands. He asked if I could join him at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur instead. He said he’d be leaving for KL early and he’d wait for me there—send details. And we’d head to Cape Verde from KL.”
Lozza frowned. “You think he might have bolted to KL?”
“He hasn’t answered his cell. He
