The Revenge of Ebony Makepeace E-Book

Janeen Ann O'Connell

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Brad Culley’s life has descended into chaos. Ebony has disappeared, leaving him to wonder if she ever really loved him, and so too his uncle’s assistant, Phillip, and six million dollars. And his right-hand man, Ferdinand, is testing his patience. Nothing is as it should be.

Meanwhile, as part of her plan for revenge, Ebony takes the first steps into a new life with a new man, and uses Brad’s inheritance to achieve it.

As Brad and his friend Sandy learn more about Ebony’s and Phillip’s deceptions, the opportunity to recover the missing money, and the fugitives responsible for stealing it, diminishes.

Depending on his uncle, his friend, and the police, Brad waits for justice to be served.

Leseprobe

THE REVENGE OF EBONY MAKEPEACE

BRAD CULLEY MYSTERIES

BOOK 3

JANEEN ANN O'CONNELL

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Chapter A1

Chapter B1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

4. Six months ago. Phillip and Ebony

5. Two months ago. Phillip and Ebony

6. One week ago. Phillip and Ebony

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

9. Phillip and Ebony

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

12. Ebony

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

15. Phillip

Chapter 16

17. Ebony

Chapter 18

19. Ebony and Phillip

Chapter 20

21. Ebony

Chapter 22

23. Ebony and Phillip

Chapter 24

25. Ebony and Phillip

26. Ebony

Chapter 27

28. Phillip and Ferdinand

Chapter 29

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2022 Janeen Ann O'Connell

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Lorna Read

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the support of my alpha reader, Denise Wood, this book would not have seen the light of day.

My beta readers ― Ally Britnell and Debra Hammer ― not only provided feedback on the plot, character development and let me know about typos, but they too are a great support.

To my publisher, Next Chapter Publishing and particularly its CEO, Miika Hannila, I am very grateful for the opportunity to get my stories “out there”.

Thank you for reading.

Janeen

CHAPTER A1

Note to readers.

Hi there,

I am an Australian author and as such, use the Australian spelling of words, and the layout of numerals follows the Australian Style Manual. If you are in a country that uses US spelling, please don’t get cross with me because I spell differently. In Australia we use “OK” as the spelling instead of “okay”, practise is a verb and practice is a noun, US spelling doesn’t differentiate between the two.

Australia uses metric for measurement and distance, so the characters talk in kilometres, not miles 😊

We have lots of little different quirks, even though we all technically speak the same language. Thank you for your understanding. I hope you enjoy the story.

Cheers

Janeen

P.S. In this story, Minors Trust is the correct spelling, it is a legal name. The word “Minors” does not have an apostrophe.

CHAPTER B1

In case you missed The Betrayal of Ebony Makepeace, or it’s been a while since you read it, here’s a recap before you begin The Revenge of Ebony Makepeace.

Ebony Makepeace is known to those outside her friendship group as Sherryn Forbes. Her previous life was lost to her when Bradley Culley pretended to kill her. Now Ebony lives in Bradley’s townhouse on the Altona foreshore and builds a new life.

While Ebony works on another book, joins a writing group and enjoys walks on the beach, Bradley obsesses over the death twelve months earlier of his mother, Wilhelmina Warburton/Culley. His brother Steven found their mother dead on her bed, before he lost the plot, and Brad fears foul play. Investigations prove Steven was telling the truth about their mother’s death, but Bradley is like a dog with a bone.

Bradley visits his uncle, Walton Warburton at the family estate in Macedon, hoping his uncle, a solicitor, can find out more information about Wilhelmina’s death.

Meanwhile Sophie Marris, Ebony’s editor from her publishing company, reaches out to Ebony and under the guise of offering her a publishing deal with the vanity press she now works for, tries to get as much information as she can about the investigation into Steven’s charges and subsequent disappearance. She knows where Steven Culley is hiding.

The events all become too much for Ebony, and she goes away for six months, not telling Brad, or anyone else, where she will be. She stays in a cottage on Lake Wendouree in Ballarat.

Whilst Brad, his uncle, his best friend, Ryan Sanderson (Sandy), and Brad’s assistant, Ferdinand are investigating Wilhelmina’s death, Ferdinand discovers money has been misappropriated from Sapphire Publishing – Brad’s late father’s business ― the company who was publishing Ebony’s books. Steven is the suspect.

Brad finally concedes the death of his mother was from a brain aneurism and nothing to do with his brother.

Brad meets with Sophie Marris in a coffee shop. Marris says she wants to talk to Ebony about her books, but Brad sees his brother (who skipped bail) outside the café. Using Sophie Marris’s phone signal, Detective Sergeant Tomy locates her and Steven in a property two doors up from Brad’s parents’ residence. Ebony sees the capture on the evening news, and returns to Brad and the Altona townhouse.

While Uncle Walton is tying up his sister’s estate, he discovers funds are missing from the Minors Trust his sister set up for her boys when they were small. As an auditor, Ferdinand has been monitoring the monies in the Trust. He is charged with fraud, and held in custody.

Walton’s assistant and friend Phillip, who had been with him for twenty years, disappears. As does Ebony. Ferdinand is released as it becomes apparent that Phillip and Ebony are the likely fraudsters.

1

My uncle left Sandy’s place, with the news of Ferdinand’s release and Phillip’s and Ebony’s disappearance, dangling in his wake. In his attempt to cheer me up, Sandy fired up the barbeque and threw on some sausages he’d thawed out in the microwave. He sliced up a couple of onions which he threw on the barbeque plate before the sausages finished cooking, and asked me to get a loaf of bread out of the freezer.

‘Do you live completely out of the freezer and the microwave?’ I complained when I realised the bread was frozen into a solid block. ‘I think your freezer is up too high. This will never thaw out.’

‘Have faith, my friend.’ He undid the tie holding the bread bag closed, and with a knife prized off the first slice, then the second, third and fourth. ‘See? Easy peasy.’

‘You’ve had lots of practise. You do remember I don’t eat meat anymore, don’t you?’

‘Bullshit. She’s not here. You can eat what you like. A couple of sausages won’t kill you.’ He lit the mosquito coils he had lying around outside and put the food on a large platter in the middle of the table. ‘Sit down.’

Obeying his orders, I waited while he walked into the kitchen to collect cutlery, plates, napkins, and two beers.

‘You forgot the tomato sauce,’ I whined.

‘And the butter. Be a dear and get them for me.’ Sandy set up the table while I collected the rest of the items.

‘I found cheese slices in the fridge. Brought those out too.’

Sandy was right. I didn’t know whether I was a vegetarian by choice, or because Ebony had almost bullied me into being one. I put a sausage in a buttered slice of bread with sauce and onions and a piece of cheese. It was gone in a matter of seconds.

‘Good?’ Sandy grinned while he opened the beer.

‘I’ve missed them. I used to go into Bunnings at the garden nursery end, if I went there on weekends, so I didn’t have to walk past the Sausage Sizzle at the front. You could smell the snags and onions all over the carpark.’

‘What would you ever need at Bunnings?’ Sandy sniggered.

‘I didn’t need anything, but Ebony would get in redecoration moods and change the cushions on the outdoor chairs, or want a new garden gnome, or new pots. She did a good job, I must admit.’

‘She did a good job on you, my friend.’

‘What will happen now?’ I finished my second sausage and bread, and drank the beer. ‘I can’t blame her for wanting to punish me you know, but I am struggling to come to terms with my gullibility: my readiness to believe she forgave me and could love me.’

‘The Fraud Squad will move their focus to Ebony and Phillip. They’ll do all the forensic stuff and if they conclude the two of them likely took the money from your trust fund, they’ll ramp things up.’ His eyes were glazed over when he looked at me.

‘Don’t you dare shed a tear for me, or what has happened,’ I snapped.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘No worries.’

‘Should I contact Ferdinand?’ I asked, to change the direction of our chat.

‘If he suspects you knew they were going to charge him, he might not be receptive to your call. If he didn’t know, he might expect you to make contact. It’s a tough situation.’

We sat outside on Sandy’s dusty garden furniture until the mosquito coils finished their job and put themselves out. The first bites saw both of us pick up our crockery, cutlery, and the uneaten sausages and go inside. Sandy put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I would have washed them by hand, but he grumbled when I offered.

‘Besides,’ he smirked, ‘I have solar panels so I can put it on during the day and it costs next to nothing to run.’

Sandy lived in what, once upon a time, was a worker’s cottage. A single-fronted weatherboard house in Kensington ― between five and six kilometres from the CBD. The cottage he paid around $500,000 for ten years ago was now worth around 1.5 million. The front door opened onto a hallway that had two bedrooms on the left and then opened into a newly renovated back end of the property. Working within the heritage restrictions, Sandy had added a big kitchen/family room with space for a dining table, a new laundry, bathroom, and separate toilet. It was nice.

‘You can make the coffee if you like,’ Sandy said. ‘I’ll make up the spare bedroom for you.’

That was a relief. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to be alone.

‘I’m taking you shopping in the next few days,’ I yelled out so he could hear me.

‘What for?’

‘You are buying a coffee machine that grinds the beans and has a frother built in or attached. I can’t do the capsule stuff any longer.’

‘You’re a bloody sook.’

Despite having a coffee later than I would normally, and despite the day I’d been through, I slept reasonably well in Sandy’s spare room and bed. While I lay in bed in the morning, trying to put the shitshow pieces of my life together in my head, I heard him boil the kettle and bang around in the kitchen.

He didn’t bother me. Didn’t knock on the door, didn’t call out to me. I lay in bed, dozing on and off, eventually reaching for the phone to check the time: 10.30. Panic set in. It had been many years since I slept this late. I pulled on my trousers and threw the jumper I’d worn yesterday over my head. I left the t-shirt lying on the bed.

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

Sandy was sitting at the dining table reading a newspaper.

‘Why are you reading a newspaper? Who still does that?’

‘I do. Obviously. In answer to your first question: if you didn’t need the sleep, you would have been up before now.’

2

Every time I drove into the garage of my South Melbourne property, my skin crawled. I always pictured Steven sitting in my kitchen with a gun at the ready, waiting for me. It didn’t matter how many times I told myself he was in gaol ― I still got the creeps. But selling this place, or renting it and living somewhere else was not on the agenda. I loved this location.

Following the drama that was Steven kidnapping and torturing me, I had the house fitted with lights and window coverings that I controlled with a remote. I pressed a button before I got out of the car in the garage, and all the lights in the house turned on. I could isolate this to different rooms, of course, but having every light on while I went in and looked around gave me a semblance of security.

I forwarded the office landline to my mobile and stayed home for a few days. Before Ebony, I had a good fitness regime, but that slid into disrepair the more entangled in my brother’s schemes I became. Then, when my brother was out of the picture, Ebony kept me so busy I didn’t have time to go on a run or to the gym. That’s changed. These days I’m up at 6.00am and jogging the block from my house to the foreshore, where I run along the beach. Daylight saving means it’s really 5.00am, so the sun hasn’t appeared when I’m out and about.

* * *

The mercury was already at 32 degrees (Celsius) when I reached for the remote in my pocket and unlocked the front door after my morning run. Perspiration dripped onto my clean bamboo floorboards and when I bent down to wipe it off, more dripped onto the area. I pulled off my t-shirt and wiped my face and head so there’d be no more drips. Had I always been this pedantic? Couldn’t I walk in and then go back and clean the floor? That would make more sense. Perhaps the sun had cooked my brain.

The routine after my run was a shower, coffee, breakfast, then work. I heard my mobile ringing when I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. It could ring. I didn’t start work until 8.30. Whoever was calling was persistent though, calling, hanging up, calling, hanging up at least five times. I answered the phone on my terms. Well, when I was dressed. My uncle’s name popped up on the screen.

‘Hello, Uncle Walton. Sorry I didn’t answer you before. I was in the shower.’

‘Brad. This is the first time I’ve called. It might have been the Fraud Squad.’

I shivered. Not because I was cold, but because of the unknown. I’d go through my call log shortly. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

Uncle Walton cleared his throat. ‘Nothing. Just calling to see how you are going?’

‘I’m fine. I’ve started running on the beach in the mornings, which helps clear my head and burn off frustration.’

‘I imagine it does. Have you been in contact with Ferdinand since his arrest and release?’ There was an undertone of concern in my uncle’s voice.

‘No.’

‘He called me looking for Phillip. Seems no one has bothered to tell him that Phillip disappeared, presumably with your Miss Forbes.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I said Phillip had left unexpectedly, and I didn’t know where he was. The truth. Sort of.’

I thanked my uncle, and assured him I would call Ferdinand. My stomach lurched. I felt sick.

The multiple calls and hang-ups were from an unknown number. I didn’t fret about missing them. They could call back.

Rarely did I skip breakfast, but I wouldn’t tempt fate and force yoghurt and fruit down my throat, even though the fresh blueberries and strawberries smiled at me when I opened the fridge. Maybe after I’d called Ferdinand, I would feel like eating.

I took my phone into the family room and sat in my armchair. What was I going to say to him? How would I start the conversation? Idiot. He probably won’t even take your call.

It rang for about twenty seconds. I was just about to hang up when Ferdinand spoke.

‘You’ve taken your sweet fucking time to get in touch. Do you want something?’

Phew! What a relief. He sounded like himself: pissed off, grumpy, agitated.

‘Hi Ferdinand. I’ve been out of action. Under the weather. Not up to facing the world. I’m sorry for neglecting you.’

‘Did you know that day you were throwing up in the toilet at the office that they were going to arrest me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You fucking bastard. Couldn’t you have said something? We’ve been friends for five years. I work my butt off for you.’

‘What would I say? I didn’t know what was going on, or when. Sandy said you were a suspect and it literally made me sick. Why don’t I come and pick you up and we can get some breakfast? Anywhere you like. We can talk. I’ve missed you.’

He hung up.

I sent him a text: I can fill you in a bit more about Phillip’s disappearance.

Half an hour at the restaurant I like at Docklands, was the response.

I ordered a cab and finished dressing. No way I could drive to Docklands, park, and get to his favourite restaurant in thirty minutes.

Ferdinand sat at the back of the establishment at a table that overlooked the Yarra River. I walked toward him, my heart racing, my morning coffee trying to force itself up to my gullet for release.

‘Good morning,’ I said, pulling out a chair.

‘Is it? I haven’t had any good mornings since your friends at the Fraud Squad banged on my apartment door and dragged me away. LITERALLY!’

I took a breath and pictured Ferdinand being taken away and thrown in a gaol cell. ‘I can imagine the terror. You are powerless, the grip of fear verging on hysteria.’ I looked at him. He picked up the menu.

We sat in silence for a few minutes while Ferdinand pretended to look at the menu he would have known by heart. I tried to get the attention of a waiter to order coffee.

Coffees ordered, he put down the menu and stared at me without blinking. ‘What do you know about Phillip? I expect the truth.’

Our coffees appeared in front of us, and the waiter asked if he could take our orders. Ferdinand ordered bruschetta with avocado and poached egg on toasted sourdough. It sounded good, so I said I would have the same.

After the waiter moved away, I told Ferdinand my uncle had called with startling information.

‘What information?’

‘Apparently, Phillip left a letter for my uncle in the cottage he lived in. It was under a magnet on the fridge, and until the other day, my uncle hadn’t noticed it.

‘What did it say?’