The Roast

It's a cliche in murder mystery programs that the perfectionist detective loves cooking elaborate and gourmet dinners to eat by themselves at an empty table. I don't care. I'll be that perfectionist detective who makes gourmet dinners to eat on their lonesome.

I cancelled another phone call from my mother and turned to pull the 12-hour marinated chicken pieces from the fridge. Butter chicken on the menu tonight. Simple. Easy. I ground the spices for the sauce in the mortar as I hummed along to Symphony No. 40. A welcome break from the Christmas carols that were plaguing every corner of the country.

My phone rang again. I lifted the phone to cancel the call and then paused. I frowned and stopped the music. The music shut off and plunged the kitchen into silence.

"Yeah, Dave. What is it?"

"Todd." Dave's voice was matter-of-fact. “Need you for a case. Murder. Closed door. No witnesses."

I looked down at my ingredients lovingly laid out across my kitchen bench top in individual bowls and containers, at the chicken cubes I'd painstakingly measured and cut the night before swimming in a marinade I'd created using curated ingredients I'd gathered at a crowded farmers market over the weekend. I began gathering up the bowls and containers.

"Send me the address."

The house at the address was squat and ugly, hidden behind the other houses on the street as if it knew it should be ashamed. Without the blue and red lights flashing against its grey exterior, the house would have faded into obscurity. The garden was a rambling scramble of weeds and the car that sat in the driveway was in disrepair with electrical tape around the driver's side mirror, apparently holding it in place, although only just.

An ambulance and paramedics tended to a woman wrapped in a foil blanket. Dave stood to the side of them, his notebook flipped open and his eyes weary. As I approached, he moved to join me up the path to the house. We stopped to don our protective gear and be lectured by the site manager.

"And don't touch anything!"

"We know the drill!"

There had been some attempt made to decorate for Christmas with a red and green wreath hanging on the front door. Its large gold bells clanged as we moved the door aside and stepped through into the living room. The cameras were already flashing inside.

"What's the story?"

"Here we have Mr Douglas Brody. Wife put the Christmas roast on, left to pick up some mint sauce and came back to find the husband had tripped and fallen, hit his head on the coffee table."

"What made you think murder?"

"Blunt force impact to the front and the back of his head. He tripped and fell on the coffee table after someone hit him from behind first."

I recalled what Dave said on the phone call. "The closed door?"

"Widow is Bree Brody. She says she locked the door on the way out. Very difficult to get into the house otherwise." He pointed towards the back of the house. I noted again how the house seemed to be hidden from the street by the other houses and then that the ruddy backyard, which was visible from the front room through the kitchen window, was enclosed by six-foot fences on all sides. Dave continued, "Widow unlocked the door on the way in, no sign of forced entry, no sign anyone else was here."

I glanced at the kitchen, which held around three or four bags with groceries spilling from inside them. On the bench, a burnt roast sat proudly, boasting crisp rosemary and blackened crackling. The dining table was set with red and gold, a leafy green table runner through the middle, and melted candles adorning the centre. The cosy inside of the house almost made up for the decrepit outside. Almost. Throw blankets and overstuffed cushions, photos of the happy couple, and knick knacks and books about housewares littered the space. Crowded and detestable. The furniture was then swallowed two-fold by generous Christmas decorations. A bejewelled Christmas tree squatted like a gargoyle in the corner among a small pile of presents.

I glanced around the room, taking in the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and anything else I could take in. Dave watched me. He still held his notebook out in front of him, his arm resting against his swollen belly as he waited impatiently. I took another moment to look around the room, watching him twitch from the corner of my eye. Then I moved over to the grocery bags and glanced inside, taking note of the groceries.

Eventually Dave's impatience won. "What're you thinking?"

"I'm thinking 'why was I called in for this?'"

"You are the only miserable bastard who doesn't see anyone for Christmas."

Ignoring him, I pointed to the roast. "Bag that and bring the widow in for questioning. Where's the neighbour?"

"Which neighbour?"

"All of them."

'All of them' ended up being a few dozen. One household had six people staying for the holidays, another had ten. Then a cranky elderly man who had to turn his hearing aids on to hear us speak. Dave muttered, "Uncanny resemblance there", as we trudged away. Not a single one of them had seen or heard anything.

By the time we returned to the station, the widow had been questioned and security footage had been pulled. I poured myself an instant coffee while I waited for Dave to gather the information. My phone rang with my sister's number, followed by a few messages. I turned it off.

When Dave came back in, he was holding a folder and his notebook was finally - thankfully - tucked away. "You want to tell me what the roast was about?"

I barked out a laugh. "Old story I read once. The angry wife hit him over the head with the roast and killed him, stuck it in the oven to cook it and went grocery shopping to create an alibi. Fed the coppers the roast when they came so that they destroyed the only evidence."

Dave sighed and slapped his folder down on the table. "Well, it's not the roast. And the widow has a solid alibi. Cameras got her everywhere."

“You look disappointed,” I remarked, a familiar tightness clinging to the inside of my ribs.

“You’re slipping. This case and the last case haven't been solved with a single glance around the room. I'm starting to think you've run out of luck. Might have to start doing some actual police work.”

I only grunted in response and said, "Cause of death?"

"'Blunt force to the back of the head with a convex instrument causing a concave injury'," Dave read from the notes. "As far as the coroner can determine so far anyway. We'll know more after Christmas now. He reckons something wider than a bat but likely man made."

"And the interview?"

Dave sucked on his teeth. "I don't trust her."

I nodded.

"She's got no motive though."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Ask her who was coming around tonight and who was meant to mow the lawn."

Joan strolled into the kitchen behind Dave. "Her parents and he was meant to mow the lawn. And clean the dishes."

I smiled at Joan. "Excellent interviewing." Looked at Dave. "Motive."

"What? She killed him over a lawn?"

I looked at Joan. "Is it ever about a lawn, Joan?"

Joan shook her head with a smirk and sipped her tea as she left.

Dave shook his head. "Well, she's named a suspect. His brother. They co-own a business together. Brother might have been looking to sell." His face was smug. "Now that's what I call a motive."

"Name?"

"Jack Brody." Dave's voice was suddenly authoritative as he spoke to our suspect. "May we come in, please?"

"What for, officer?" He asked, his eyes wide. The man was so large he was barely framed by his own front door. A Christmas hat sat jauntily on his head. I could hear the sounds of children playing. "We're clearing the table and getting the kids off to bed."

"We need to talk to you about the death of your brother, Douglas Brody."

Jack Brody was pale and sweaty as he sat across from us. The conversation was brief. He was with his family, for every second of the day, right up until we arrived. He gave us a USB with security footage to prove it. The only thing he could say about selling the business was a mumbled, “Well, it was going under anyway, wouldn't've lasted long into the new year.”

After we returned to the station, Dave checked his watch and made his excuses, backing out the door quickly as he went. I scowled after him. I've never been one to go home during a case. It was like a fire in my veins until the moment the case closed. I was lucky none of my cases had gone cold, although the last one had certainly been close and, at the time, I didn't sleep for a week, waking often in a cold sweat throughout the night.

I watched the video of the wife's interrogation first. Bree was a little thing, hunched over the tabletop. Joan started by asking Bree questions about herself. Bree's voice was small and shaky. Her eyes were wide and scared, appearing to shine with tears even in the grainy footage.

When asked if she had killed her husband, she hesitated a moment, then said, "I'd thought about it so many times, in a joking way. I never thought it could be a reality." And then burst into tears again, throwing herself down on the tabletop dramatically, her shoulders shaking with her sobs.

I spent the next few hours, right into Christmas Eve, scouring the security footage gathered from Jack's house and the neighbours houses for anything suspicious. There was barely anything in the footage. Only the wife, Bree, leaving with her reusable grocery bags. Which is why the shadow of a man walking up the garden path was so easy to spot, even though he walked within the shadows, shoulders hunched as if against rain that wasn't there, and his head down. Fifteen minutes later, he walked back, this time at a much quicker pace. I scrolled the footage back and forth through the footage over and over again.

By the time Dave arrived back to the office the next morning, I had completed a timeline on a spare whiteboard, depleted the stocks of instant coffee in the kitchen, and drawn a moustache on every photo of Dave's I could find. There were more than I had thought. His identification tag was left on his desk, the employee of the year photo hung on the wall in the staff room, and the photo of himself and his wife on his desk, among others. I'd dodged a further five calls from my family. They were getting fewer and farther between. I could see the end of the holiday period in sight. I'd also put together a list of suspects: the wife and the unknown suspect. The brother’s licence photo was taped to the board also but I had drawn a cross through it. Alibi checked out.

Dave entered the station to find me with my hands on my head, sitting cross-legged on top of a desk, staring at the board.

He sighed in greeting. “What’re we doing first?”

“Visiting the wife.”

Bree opened the door quietly. Her face was pale and behind her stood a taller woman who must have been her sister. They had the same pinched face and quizzical eyebrows.

“This won't take long, ma’am,” Dave said. He was perfectly genial. I tried not to look surprised. "We just needed to know what you meant by…,” Dave squinted at his notepad. “‘I'd thought about it so many times, in a joking way. I never thought it could be a reality’.”

Bree paled. Her sister snorted. “That man had it coming.”

“Anne,” Bree hissed. “Go back inside, I can handle this.”

Anne straightened to her full height, her nose high in the air. Then she disappeared as Bree stepped through the door.

“Do you want to tell us what she means by that, ma’am?” My voice was hoarse.

“My sister, Anne,” Bree waved over her shoulder. “She just came up last night. Over an eight hour drive to get here. She can be a bit angry when she's tired.”

“Any reason she'd be angry with your husband?”

Bree shook her head, but the words seemed to pour out of her. “I’ve said too many bad things about him to her. I should have never mentioned anything. He was just a difficult person to live with sometimes, that's all. He would refuse to do the chores. But he was a good husband, always looking out for me. Worked hard on his business.”

“The business that was going under?”

Bree looked startled and frowned over at Dave as if he had two heads. “Going under?” She looked at me, and read the seriousness in my expression. “The business was going under?”

I studied her for a moment and then nodded. Her eyes welled with tears that soon trickled down her cheeks.

She said, through her tears, “I imagined him dying in a freak accident or divorcing him and taking everything every time he made me angry. I couldn't be angrier than now.” Bree wiped at her face with her shaking hands. “Even now I can't think of anyone actually killing him. Everyone loved him. He was the light of every party.”

I held in the noise I wanted to make. He sounded awful.

“When did your sister get in?”

“She arrived just an hour after you lot took me in.”

“Do you recognize this man, Ms Brody?” Dave held up a printout of our unknown suspect for Bree to see.

Bree shook her head almost instantly. “No, not a clue. But there's been so many people around our neighbourhood lately.”

Dave began writing down notes in his ever-present notepad and Ms Brody peered at him as if trying to read the words he was writing.

I cleared my throat. “One more question, Ms Brody.”

She nodded, her eyes glassy and distant.

“There wasn't any mint sauce in your groceries. What did you actually go out to buy from the shops?”

Bree scoffed, looking exactly like her sister, and on a sob that wrecked her voice, muttered, “Douglas wanted lamb, didn't he? I bought pork. He asked me to go back out and get him lamb or else he'd refuse to eat it.”

Dave nodded, suddenly appearing impatient again. “We'll let you go, Ms Brody. Thank you for your time.”

Bree nodded and then hesitantly said, “It's actually Ms Gray, I never changed my name.” Bree smiled sadly, her tear-soaked cheeks glinting in the sun. “Merry Christmas, officers.”

The moment the door closed behind her, Dave turned to me. “First the roast, now the mint sauce?”

I shrugged. “I like food.”

Dave looked me up and down as we walked back to the car. “You don't look like you've had anything to eat this year.”

I raised an eyebrow at him and glanced pointedly at his swollen belly. “I also like running.”

Dave paused at the end of the driveway. “Where was that camera that caught the suspect?”

I pointed to the neighbours house. The camera

Dave clambered into the driver's seat with a huff. “Where to now?”

“Back to the brother.” Whilst Dave drove I called Joan. “Can you call and get the security footage from the toll out of the city through Somerton?”

“A ‘hello’ or a ‘please’ might be nice.”

I ignored her. “Get back to us quickly.”

As I hung up the phone, another call came through. I answered quickly. “Is this the coroner's report?”

“No,” a startled voice on the line shrieked. “Are you seriously working a case on Christmas Eve?”

I hesitated. “Sally?”

“Oh, what? You finally remembered I exist?”

“I can't talk right now, Sally.”

“If I had that coroner's report for you, you sure would.”

For one bizarre moment, I wondered if she did have the report and envisioned her waving the manilla folder around as she scolded me through the phone. I wouldn't have put it past her. I could imagine her stomping into the coroner's office and demanding all sorts of things from the poor, unsuspecting woman whilst her hands were elbow deep in someone's insides and chest cavity.

“I don't have the report. But I would if it meant you'd answer your phone!”

I hung up the phone as she continued to rant and put it on silent. Dave side-eyed me from the driver's seat.

We found Jack in his front yard. “What is it now?” He grumbled at us, a string of Christmas lights held limply in his hand.

“Whose fault was it that the business was going under?”

Jack hesitated. “His.”

“Not yours?” I asked. “You wouldn't kill him to hide the evidence?”

“What is this about?”

“When was the last time you spoke to or saw your brother, Mr Brody?”

“Uh um,” he mumbled. “Spoke to him yesterday afternoon.”

“About?”

“Just the business,” he said, shrugging.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“He had to go, there was another call. Bree, his wife.”

Dave and I exchanged glances. “Do you know this man?” Dave asked and held up the image from the security footage.

Jack blinked and then squinted at the photograph. “That's Douglas's jacket.”

“What do you mean that's Douglas's -,” I started but my phone was vibrating in my pocket. I pulled the phone free. It wasn't my sister.

“Where did you say the sister was meant to be?” Joan's voice was breathless on the other end of the phone, filled with anticipation.

I turned quickly to Dave. “We've got her.”

“So you're telling me,” Dave speculated several hours later. The arrests had been quick. As had been finding the murder weapon. “That they clobbered him over the head with one of the bells from the front door, … over dinner?”

I shuddered as I remembered Anne’s cold smile and remembered her quick walk back down the path in the man’s jacket. It had been planned. Bree bought the wrong meat, went out shopping for the lamb and that's when she called Douglas to let Anne in. Anne then used Douglas' own jacket, smuggled out in recycled grocery bags, to walk past the cameras and kill him with the bell on the front door. The murder weapon had clanged as we walked inside to investigate the scene.

“It's never just about the dinner, Dave,” I said to him, grinning wide as I closed the passenger door behind me.

Finally, I was inside my house. Finally, all was well. Finally, I could make my butter chicken.

The doorbell rang.

Doubt knotted in my chest and I felt the weight of the world settle on my shoulders. I answered the door.

“We'll eat whatever you're cooking, MasterChef,” Sally cried as she slammed a bag of presents against my chest. “Go make it or I'll give you another murder to investigate.” She stomped into the room and kicked her shoes off, leading in my mother who stopped to give me a peck on the cheek and my nephew who screamed as he rushed in the door.

With that as a word of warning, I placed the presents neatly in the corner of the room and resumed making my butter chicken dish that had now marinated for over 24 hours.

I prepared the dish as I would have for any other meal, all the while with my sister ranting about work and my mother calming my bustling nephew. My nerves were wrecked. I looked down at my creation with a coldness as I served it into bowls for all of them.

“What is it?” My nephew asked. I gritted my teeth as I answered.

"But I don't like butter chicken!" His voice was high and whiny. Snot dribbled from his nose.

A darkness settled in my chest. I leaned over to him, a smile pasted on my face. "Let me tell you about the last person who didn't like their Christmas dinner."