Du Rose Sons Read online

  Du Rose Sons

  The Hana Du Rose Mysteries

  K T Bowes

  Published by Hakarimata Press

  Copyright 2015

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  From the wilds of New Zealand to the depths of wintry England, meet four heroes to melt your heart and mysteries to tease your mind.

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  Acknowledgement

  I dedicate this novel to all the women out there with sons they will never understand. May the sorority of mothers’ guard and sustain us all.

  Chapter 1

  Nothing rivalled the sight of breaking glass; a crashing, glittering parade of beautiful prisms; each one lethally charged with death. The transparent panes of the French doors were aged, placed into the wooden frames by hands long since dead by the time the rugged, red brick passed through their mottled surface. The clay missile fractured the wooden struts and caused two of the panes to hang like a torn curtain. The third shattered spectacularly, showering the room’s single occupant with spiteful shards of glass.

  “What was that?” The first ear-splitting sound was followed by a deafening second as the hotel’s elderly housekeeper burst into the family room, her eyes wide and frightened and her ample breasts wobbling under her work shirt. “I was next door. What was that crash?”

  The dark skinned Māori approached the woman on the sofa, who sat with her hands over her head as though pinned to the cushions. The housekeeper halted at the sight of the speckling of glass littered in the curly auburn hair and blood on the shaking hands. “Oh my goodness, oh no! Get Mr Logan,” she cried to a waitress who appeared at the heavy door and propped it open with her foot. “Tell him the missus is hurt!”

  The face and the foot disappeared. “Hana?” The housekeeper, ngā hāwini, touched the redhead, disturbing the glass which tinkled down onto the sofa cushions and pinged off the wooden rimu floor. “Did you see who did it?”

  Auburn hair bounced and the glittering glass shone like diamond dust, beautiful and deadly. “No, it happened too fast.”

  The redhead put her right hand up to her face and winced as she contacted a series of tiny open wounds, bleeding steadily and dripping stains onto her white blouse. The elderly book on her knee fell to the floor with a clunk - yet another damaging moment in its long suffering existence. The cover fell over the pages of guilty secrets, hiding them from view.

  Another face appeared at the door. “Sal says she’s radioed Mr Logan. He’s on his way. Shall we bring the vacuum cleaner to get up the small bits of glass? Or do you want us to call the cops again?”

  The housekeeper pursed her brown lips and gave the matter much thought. “Wait for the boss to get here. He’ll decide. Find me a comb. There’s glass in the missus’ hair. You should bring me the first aid kit from the kitchen too; she’s bleeding.”

  “Look, Leslie, I’m fine really. Let’s just clear it all up. There’s no need to bother Logan.” Hana attempted to stand and glass cascaded down like a snow storm. Some of the substantial pieces hit the floor with a tinkle.

  The waitress arrived in the doorway with a comb and handed it over to her superior, who took it without thanks. Hana protested futilely as Leslie bustled around her, raking savagely through the coils and ringlets with a small black comb. “Whose comb is it?” Hana protested. “That’s gross!”

  “Stop your complaining,” the old woman tutted as numerous tiny shards pierced her fingers in her efforts. Finally she stood back and admired her handiwork. “I think it’s all out,” she announced, her brow creased in concentration and annoyance. “But we’ll need to get your clothes off. Best do it here and we’ll clear up in one go, otherwise youse might track the glass all through the house and then my moko will cut her bare feet.”

  Hana sighed and bit her pretty lip as she considered her daughter. At barely eighteen months old, Phoenix Du Rose refused to wear shoes and toddled around the hotel corridors with barefoot enthusiasm. “Fine!” Hana groaned. “But I’m only doing this for Phoe!” Her cheeks pinked with embarrassment as she stripped down to her bra and knickers in the middle of the family room, aware of the hotel full of people nearby.

  Leslie slapped Hana’s bottom with a flat palm and chuckled. “Youse still a gorgeous girlie for your years. No wonder that boy can’t keep his hands off you. My Alfie would love me to look like that.”

  Hana turned and screwed up her face. “That’s just weird,” she said. “You can’t say things like that about my father-in-law.” Knitted brows communicated Hana’s distaste and Leslie gave a belly laugh, her ample bosom wobbling with glee.

  “Youse way too serious, girlie. Now, stop shifting yer feet or there’ll be more cuts to mop up.”

  By the time her husband arrived, the slender redhead was wrapped in a large black tablecloth from the dining room, mopping at painful cuts on her cheek and hands with a scratchy corner of the starched fabric. “Geez, Hana!” Logan said in dismay.

  “Don’t come in!” Hana turned towards her husband, releasing one porcelain toned hand from the tablecloth to ward him off. “There’s glass everywhere. You’ll walk it out into the hall.”

  Logan Du Rose shifted awkwardly in the doorway, the heels of his cowboy boots grinding the glass shards which had spread that far. His olive skinned face betrayed agony at not being able to reach his wife and Hana sensed him reading the distress in her face. She was coping just fine until she saw him, but fought the urge to cry as relief flooded over her. Logan’s six foot four inch frame tensed as he made his decision. “Sod it!” he exclaimed and strode over to his slender wife, bending at the knees as he scooped her up into his arms, tablecloth and all. “Take her socks off,” he ordered the housekeeper, who gently peeled them off Hana’s delicate toes. Glass tinkled everywhere and Hana giggled as Leslie patted gently at her bare feet.

  “Where’s Phoe?” Logan asked and the housekeeper replied in Māori. Hana caught the word kai and realised her child was eating without her.

  “You should have told me. I didn’t know she’d woken up.”

  Leslie smiled. “Little moko is fine. Thank the good Lord you didn’t push her pram down here to choose your book. She would have been hurt.” Leslie formed the sign of the cross on her breast with great reverence.

  “I was only going to be a minute.” Guilt flooded through Hana, compounded by maternalism. She left the baby with Leslie in the family dining room, next to the hotel’s enormous industrial kitchen. The wall clock told her it was over half an hour ago. Hana bit her lip, tears prickling behind her eyes. She hadn’t been choosing a book, but trying to find somewhere safe to read the old brown journal in peace. One minute she was engrossed in the crabbed handwriting and the next, woken by glass showering her face. Hana rubbed the back of her hand across her eye and felt the sting as small particles ground in the cuts. She hissed under her breath.

  “Shower,” Logan spun on his heels and crunched across the floor with determined steps. He shouldered the fire door open and turned back to Leslie. “Leave the glass and lock the door. Get the cops again. My daughter could have been in here too.”

  “My book!” Hana held her hand out, green eyes widening in her face. “I should probably read it after all this trouble.”

  Leslie placed the worn journal into her palm, eyeing the tattered fabric cover with fleeting curiosity.

  The shower in Logan’s childhood room took a while to warm up as the cold spring water surged through the pipes to the heating element. The hotel was full and the guests had used much of the copious supply earlier, not to mention the po
st-breakfast washing up in the kitchen. Logan balanced Hana one-armed on his hip in the ensuite, his biceps bulging through his shirt while he ran water over his hand and nodded once, satisfied. He flicked the handle and the water ceased so he could lower his wife and her shroud into the cubicle. Hana kept her arms wrapped tightly round his neck, resisting as Logan tried to release her onto her feet. She nuzzled at the skin under his jaw. “Mmnn, you smell of horse.”

  Logan laughed, a deep, gorgeous sound that reminded Hana of the mountains and she sighed, noticing the tiny fragments of glass on his shirt. “You’re covered now!” She smiled with mischief in her eyes, putting her feet down and hauling her husband into the shower. “You have to get undressed in here too.”

  Logan narrowed his grey eyes and gave his wife a sultry look. “I was actually in the middle of something important.”

  “Drenching horses isn’t as important as me.” Hana bit her lip, tears of shock threatening again in her pretence at bravado. Logan saw and took his cowboy boots off in the wet shower tray, rubbing the soles on his jeans to release the clinging shards. Then he threw them out of the cubicle and closed the glass door, trapping his body close to Hana’s.

  “Drenching’s important if you’re the horse.”

  He peeled the tablecloth gently away from Hana’s body and let it drop, running his fingers over her cold shoulders and up underneath the fiery coils of hair at the back of her neck. Hana shuddered with relief as he bent to kiss her, tasting the remnants of chewing gum on his lips and allowing herself to feel safe.

  ****

  “You saw and heard nothing, Mrs Du Rose? You didn’t hear anyone run up to the doors and throw the brick, or see movement through the corner of your eye? You were sitting side-on to the doors, you said, which is why the cuts are all on the right side of your body?”

  Hana sighed audibly. She felt under interrogation. The South Auckland policemen were battle weary, suspicious of everyone and everything and she began to think they didn’t believe her. “I sat down with the book and got distracted. I think I nodded off,” she began, interrupted instantly by the jaded blonde cop.

  “You nodded off! But the call came at just after ten o’clock this morning.”

  Hana glanced fearfully across at Leslie, whom Logan drafted in to sit with his wife during her statement taking. His head stockman had called him with another problem and he left with an apology, nominating the housekeeper as his replacement. The wise old lady’s eyes bore knowingly into Hana’s and she quailed and heard herself gulp. “I didn’t sleep too well last night,” she ventured, watching Leslie out of the corner of her eye. “I think I’m probably still out of sync after our trip home from Europe. With all the worry about what’s been happening around the property lately, it’s affected my sleep patterns.”

  Hana picked at a knot on the massive wooden dining table, which generations of Du Roses had eaten over, argued over and smacked the snot out of each other over. It had probably seen its fair share of the other kind of passion too and Hana put her cut hands back underneath the table. She heard the clank of metal pans in the kitchen next door. Phoenix sat in her high chair, still eating and learning to make an art form out of it. Her father’s grey eyes fixed on her mother’s face and twinkled as she beamed, displaying her tiny, pearly teeth. The little girl waved her third piece of Marmite splattered toast at her mother and giggled. Hana focussed on the brown streaks on the child’s lips and face and felt bile rising up into her gullet, accompanied by the familiar surge in her stomach. Phoenix’s teeth look like marbled stalagmites. Hana kept her breathing shallow and smiled back at her daughter, whilst deliberately distracting herself with the sound of cars crunching in the gravel at the front of the hotel as guests came and went. The policeman’s eyes were on her and she blanched. “Sorry, was there another question?”

  Hana glanced across at Leslie, finding the older woman studying her, much as a butterfly collector inspects his pinned bugs. Leslie’s once black hair was white at the front, receding into grey towards the tight bun which she restrained her long tresses in. Her olive skin had wrinkled over time and her body spread into an A-line shape like a Christmas tree. But her hazel eyes held all the sparkle of youth, revived through her recent marriage to Logan’s elderly father, Alfred. Hana smirked at the memory of Logan’s disgusted face when the old folk’s coupling was mentioned. She wiped it quickly off when Leslie narrowed her eyes and jerked her head towards the policeman. “Sorry, what did you say?” Hana struggled to recover and turned her body towards the policeman’s growing annoyance.

  “I asked if you thought whoever threw the brick, knew you were in the room.”

  Marmite. Brown, streaky Marmite.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Bored with her late snack, Phoenix entertained herself making finger pictures on the surface of the high chair. Hana’s senses went on red alert as the scent of the awful brown stuff invaded her nostrils and Leslie watched with curiosity, as Hana’s face went from white to pink and back to white again.

  Hana just made it to the dustbin in the corner, ripping the lid off and sticking her face into the massive black bin bag inside. The remnants of the stockmen’s breakfast; bacon, eggs and fried bread, stared back at her and finished the last of her resolve. She threw up spectacularly - mimicked by her daughter who copied the noise - and watched by two policemen and her mother-in-law.

  Chapter 2

  “It’s fine now, I often puke when I’m stressed.” Hana continued to slot Phoenix into the car seat, ignoring the scent of Marmite still on her breath. It was surprisingly easier than pretending Leslie wasn’t standing over her, watching her every move. “Does Logan know you’re ‘stressed’ enough to vomit in front of two cops?”

  “We’re all stressed, Leslie. Someone’s damaging our property and trying to cause us expense and misery and it’s working!” Hana’s patience diminished as another wave of nausea threatened. “I just need to go home and put Phoe to bed. I’ll be ok.”

  “Stay here,” Leslie urged. “Logan’s room is always free and you’ve got clothes there. I’ve told the girls to put your other clothes in a bin bag and they’ve managed to get all the glass out of the shower. I’ll look after my mokopuna and you can rest for a little while. Seeing as you’re not sleeping so good...” The old lady narrowed her eyes at Hana, keen to play along with the charade for now.

  Hana felt tears brimming again, joining with the sickness to make her utterly miserable. She raised her eyes up to the clear blue, winter sky to stop the leakage and found Leslie’s strong brown arm around her shoulders. Sniffing, Hana placed the keys into Leslie’s outstretched palm and went to the passenger side, climbing into the high utility vehicle and struggling to close the door. By the time Leslie had launched her elderly body into the driver’s seat, Hana’s cheeks were already wet.

  “Mum, mum, mum,” came Phoenix’s tired voice as the engine started and her eyes closed as if by magic.

  Leslie spun the big vehicle round with skill, pointing it towards the sweeping drive but hanging a precarious left onto a small road that wound up through the colourful New Zealand bush. Despite the winter, hues of natural green dominated the native growth which seemed unperturbed by the cold temperatures. The road was sound, tar covered and metalled with the familiar grey chips. Logan had made sure that access from the house deep in the bush would be easy.

  “Christian conference.” Leslie’s gentle voice cut across Hana’s rambling thoughts. Her hazel eyes locked onto Hana’s deep green ones with a knowing look. “Last night’s guests. They used the ball room for a Christian conference. They were nice people. None of them would have aimed a brick at a glass door with someone sat right behind it. Hell, they wouldn’t have known where to find a brick!”

  “We know it wasn’t them.” Hana’s comment had an edge of exhaustion to it, causing Leslie to raise her eyebrows in concern.

  “Promise me it’s not your heart again?” the old lady begged, referring to the massive heart
attack Hana had suffered almost a year ago. The vehicle swerved as Leslie looked pointedly at Hana and took her eyes off the road too long.

  “Careful!” Hana grew annoyed. “It’s not my heart, at least, it wasn’t!” She bit her lip and looked out of the window at the passing bush, the weight of the world pressing down on her shoulders.

  Leslie drove up the mountain road in silence and Hana used the welcome relief to try and process her own thoughts. But ten minutes was not long enough to even get beyond planning that night’s dinner and they arrived at the metal farm gate far too quickly. Leslie hauled her body out of the ute to open the gate and then drove the vehicle through, leaving it open behind them.

  Hana’s home was new and stylishly constructed. Logan had designed it in his head throughout his childhood and commissioned the build after their wedding. It was completed whilst the couple travelled in Europe on a belated honeymoon and Hana returned to New Zealand and moved in, enjoying the newness of the house amidst its ancient surroundings. Leslie rolled the truck under the covered porch adjoining the hardwood front doors and Hana hopped out and walked back along the drive to close the gate. She lingered for a moment by the old kauri tree which stood guard over the land, studying the list of Du Rose names inscribed in its elderly bark.

  From this angle the house looked stunning. Long and low, it occupied a third of a green paddock covered in lush, sweet grass. Logan intended to landscape it into gardens but since they had been home, work on the hotel and farm, in addition to the merging of their property with his half-brother’s, had demanded all his time. Hana quite liked it as it was, natural and unspoiled by human hands. Behind the house, a railed metal fence prevented their baby daughter falling over the sheer cliff which faced west, the wide expanse of the Tasman Sea and Port Waikato below. Hana closed her eyes and remembered her first visit here. Logan had carried an entire picnic in his saddle blanket and shyly showed her this land, left to him by his paternal grandmother. In her will, she told him to ‘build a house’ and he had. But the physical structure was only a representation of the strong family and subsequent legacy that he struggled to birth, from the ruins of the Du Rose name.