Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) by Jean Bedford

list I’d made before Paul’s phone call.
    “The Johnsons,” I said. “We need to talk to them. And Joe Kominsky’s mate at the tip. There’s Mr Digrigorio at the cemetery, too.”
    “Well, I can’t really go to Melbourne, love,” Graham said. “I’ve got to be here in case there are any run-throughs before rehearsals start…”
    “Okay,” I said. I thought perhaps an interstate trip might do me good.
    Graham booked me a flight for the next morning and we decided to call it a day. I went upstairs with the cat and got together a travelling bag. I put Haydn’s piano trios on the tape deck and settled down with a fresh bottle of dry white to see if I could drink myself out of the blues and into sleep. I was angry that what Paul Whitehouse thought could affect me so much — after all I hardly knew him, but I’d thought we were becoming friends. Get real, I told myself, you were starting to fancy him, girl. This made me even angrier, and more depressed. Fancying someone who clearly thought you were a meddling nitwit was a dead-end street.
    By the time I’d uncorked the third bottle and was playing the Haydn for perhaps the tenth time I was maudlin. I sat on the couch trying to hold a struggling Toby on my lap, assuring him he was the only one who loved me, the only one I loved. He was so furious with this treatment that when he finally escaped he streaked out onto the balcony and down the bougainvillea to the yard. So I wouldn’t even have the dubious comfort of his large, obtrusive weight on my bed that night. By the time I’d cried myself into false sobriety I was so exhausted that I kicked off my shoes and went to sleep on the couch.
    I woke to find Graham standing over me, blocking the early morning sunlight from the open French windows. My right frontal lobe was throbbing and my mouth felt like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag.
    “You’ve got half an hour,” he said. “Looks like a great party.”
    I gulped the Berocca cocktail he was holding out to me and while I staggered to the shower and trembled over a handful of Panadols, Graham tidied up the bottles, the overflowing ashtray and the spilled wine. Toby was nowhere around — if he was deeply offended he sometimes stayed away for days.
    “You okay?” Graham said when I finally emerged, grasping my bags. “I must say the green face goes beautifully with your hair.”
    “Shut up,” I said creakily. Going down the stairs was a nightmare; so was the trip to the airport as I suppressed a constant urge to throw up. Graham’s car was back in the workshop so he was taking mine to Windsor to try to trace the Digrigorios. He dropped me outside the Australian Airlines terminal, where my flight was already being called, and I thought of asking for a wheelchair to get me to the departure gate. By the time we were in the air I was fervently praying that the plane would crash and end it all.
    When I got into the taxi at Tullamarine I realised I didn’t have a clue where I was going. Three black coffees and some anti-nausea pills on the plane had cleared the hangover somewhat but I was still shaky. I’d intended to go straight out to Hawthorn, where the Johnsons lived, in the hope that someone would be at home. Now I knew I wasn’t capable of that.
    The cabbie waited patiently.
    “Oh God,” I said. “Just a decent motel. In Carlton or somewhere.” I lit a cigarette as he pulled out.
    “There’s a $200 fine for that in Victoria,” he said, grinning at me in the rear-vision mirror.
    “It’s worth it,” I said. He laughed and lit up a fag himself.
    “Getting as bad as Queensland here now,” he said, and for the rest of the journey he filled me in on conditions in what he referred to as the Wowser State. I half listened and murmured yes and no and really at appropriate intervals, while I tried to work out what I was doing. All I knew was that I needed a bath and something to eat before anything else.
    Melbourne was having one of its rare hot