He should have said, ‘Yes, strange, I’ll look into it. Perhaps we’ve been lucky after all.’ Jesus, he should have thanked her. That’s what he should have done. Instead he’d panicked. He didn’t take enough time to read the letter before dismissing it.
It was never going to be an easy game for him to win, but it was at that moment that he lost. Snake eyes. All over, red rover.
‘It’ll be nothing,’ Whitlam had said. Sealing his fate with those words. ‘A mistake. Ignore it.’
But the mistake was his. He could tell by the way her back stiffened and she cast her eyes down. Distancing herself. If she hadn’t known for sure when she walked in, she knew it as she walked out.
Karen Hadler’s goodbye as she left was as dry as the paddocks.
‘Scott Whitlam,’ Raco said. ‘Shit.Shit.Does that work?’
‘Yeah. It works. He’s got a gambling problem, I found out last night.’ Falk told him what McMurdo had said. ‘That’s what tipped me off. Something McMurdo said made me realise we’d been looking in the wrong direction the whole time.’
‘So what are we talking? Stealing funds from the school for what? Bad debts?’ Raco said.
‘Could well be. Whitlam turns up last year from the city. No connection to the place. Sticks around even though he clearly hates it. He told me some story about a mugging gone wrong back in Melbourne, a stranger got stabbed. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to that than he says.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘Jesus, poor Karen,’ Raco said.
‘We’re idiots,’ Falk said. ‘We discounted her far too quickly. Her and Billy. We thought they were collateral damage. Luke was always the main player, he always attracted the attention. Ever since we were kids. He was the perfect cover. How could anything ever be about his boring wife when it could be about Luke?’
‘Christ.’ Raco closed his eyes, running through the case as they knew it. Shaking his head as pieces dropped into place. ‘Karen wasn’t being stalked by Grant Dow. She wasn’t afraid of her husband.’
‘If anything, Luke was probably worried about what she thought she’d discovered at the school.’
‘You think she told him?’
‘I think she must have,’ Falk said. ‘Why else would she have my phone number?’
Karen went straight from Whitlam’s office to the girls’ toilets. She locked herself in a cubicle and put her forehead against the door before she let the angry tears come. Right up until that meeting there had been a glimmer of hope. She’d wanted Whitlam to look at the letter and laugh. ‘I see exactly what’s happened,’ he’d say before explaining it in a way that made perfect sense.
She’d been desperate for him to say that, and he hadn’t. Karen wiped her eyes with a shaky hand. What now? Part of her still couldn’t quite believe Scott had stolen that money, even though she now knew it to be true. She’d known it before, if she admitted it to herself. She’d gone through the account records herself. The errors that had cropped up were his, not hers. A trail of breadcrumbs exposing his deceit. His theft. She tried the word out. It felt so wrong.
Karen believed suspicion was not the same as certainty, but her husband’s view of the world had always been more black and white.
‘Babe, if you think the bastard’s nicked the money, then call the cops and report it. I’ll report it if you don’t want to,’ Luke had said two nights ago.
Karen had been sitting up in bed, a new library book open across her lap. She wasn’t getting very far with it. She watched her husband take his clothes off and throw them in a heap on a chair. He stood there naked and arched his broad back as he yawned. He flashed her a sleepy smile and she was struck by how lovely he looked in the half-light. They spoke in whispers so the sound didn’t carry to the kids’ rooms.
‘No, Luke,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t interfere. Please. I can do it myself, but I want to be sure. Then I’ll report it.’
Part of her knew she was being overcautious. But the school’s principal was part of the bedrock of the community. Karen could imagine how the parents would react. Tempers were so fraught, a part of her worried they might actually harm him. She couldn’t let loose an accusation of that scale without solid proof. Kiewarra was fragile enough as it was. This had to be done right. Then there was her job to consider. She’d lose that in a heartbeat if she was wrong.
‘I should talk to Scott first,’ Karen said as her husband climbed in next to her and put a warm hand on her thigh. ‘Give him a chance to explain.’
‘Give him a chance to hide it, more like. Karen, babe, let the cops handle it.’
She was silent, mutinous. Luke sighed.
‘All right. If you won’t report it, at least get some advice on getting whatever this proof is you think you need.’ Luke rolled over and reached out for his mobile phone. He scrolled through until he found a contact and passed the phone to Karen. ‘Call this guy. That friend of mine who’s a cop. He does something with money with the Feds in Melbourne. He’s a good bloke. Really smart. Plus he kind of owes me one. You can trust him. He’ll help you.’
Karen Hadler didn’t say anything. She had told Luke she would sort it out, and she would. But it was late and easier not to argue. She found a pen among the clutter on her bedside table and picked up the first piece of paper to hand, the library receipt she was using for a bookmark. That would do. She turned it over and wrote a single word of reminder before copying down Aaron Falk’s number. Then, because her husband was still watching, she tucked it carefully into the book she was reading and placed it by the bed.
‘So it won’t get lost,’ she said, turning off the lamp and lying back against the pillow.
‘Call him,’ Luke said as he reached out and slipped his arms around his wife in the quiet night. ‘Aaron will know what to do.’
