Eenie, Meanie, Minie, No!: The Tag Series, #1

By Nolan MacKenzie

The diaries of a dead man call. Can Sandie resist? Where will reading them take her?

 

Sandie's husband and his university nemesis compete for the affections of a man long since gone. She turns to the old man's diaries for assistance. It began in academia but it won't end there. Because university can be murder.

 

Sandie uses the diaries to decode a mystery stretching across decades and continents. She might pay with her marriage and her life.

 

Kidnapping and murder form the backdrop for this fast paced thriller set in 1990s New Zealand.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nolan MacKenzie Books
• Release date: Jul 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201234775

Nolan MacKenzie

Leigh lives in the South Island of New Zealand but still calls Australia home, even though she left when she was a pre-teen. Educated in Australia, Africa, Europe and New Zealand she has seen a lot of the world. No matter where in the world Leigh was living, she has always been surrounded by books.  As a child, when she was not being read to, she would be an avid listener to the tales that either her maternal grandmother or her father would weave. Leigh never considered writing until she was encouraged to attend a U3A Creative Writing course in the 1980s. She has been writing ever since. Now, after many years of traveling, teaching and working in a school library, among other careers, she is ready to share her writing with the public. Leigh writes under her own name, as well as the pen names Nolan Mackenzie and Jacklyn Harris.  Leigh has two adult children, who are also voracious readers and write when they can find the time.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Valerie Creighton was dead.

Fabian heard the news as he passed from the lecture theatre, where he had just spent an invigorating hour discussing first-order differential equations and their bifurcations with a selection of his senior students, to the cubbyhole under the stairs which served as his office.

Hear that Creighton’s copped it? a barely post-pubescent student commented to his companion.

Yeah, I wonder ...

Fabian, though he stopped to listen, didn’t hear any more, as the two students were buffeted further along the hallway. He stood watching them. Valerie Creighton couldn’t be dead. He’d seen him only the evening before. He’d been alive and well then. It could only be gossip. What would students know? If Creighton was dead, then he and his colleagues would be the first to know, not indolent undergraduate students. Wouldn’t they?

He decided that his office would not hold the answers. He turned away from his door and, with a bundle of lecture notes and books tucked untidily under his arm, made for the stairs that led to the faculty staff room. Maybe in there he would be able to learn if in fact Creighton had died. Not that he would ask outright, that would be both crass and open to ridicule should the rumour prove wrong. He did not relish the prospect of being shown up. No, a more subtle approach was required. He’d go in, find a seat and listen in to conversations while giving the appearance of concentrating on the papers he had with him.

Slowly he wended his lanky unkept frame through the untidy tide of students coming down the stairs. It was hard to distinguish him purely by appearance, which put both students and Fabian at a disadvantage. He couldn’t command the respect and deference due to a tenured lecturer; and the students didn’t know quite how to respond to him. A fact that wasn’t all that unreasonable when you considered that he was not all that much older than they were. And he still dressed and spoke, and often thought, the same way that the majority of the students did. It had never entered his mind that maybe, having gained a position of responsibility, he ought to assume an air of respectability and discard his rag-tag wardrobe and bohemian-ish lifestyle for something more suitable to a fully-fledged lectureship at the University. He was comfortable in the corduroy jeans that hung down around his hips for want of a belt, and his sandals that made for easy wearing. And nothing would part him from his Arran jersey. While he’d lived at home with his mother she had cared for the jersey as though it was her child, washing and mending it whenever she could wrestle the garment away from him. Now that he was living in the house on his own the jumper was showing the effects of a bachelor life―the flapping leather elbow pads that Mrs Titterton had lovingly and laboriously sewed into place now his trademark. Along with his blond curls that hid his collar with ease. Fashion had never interested Fabian, and probably never would. 

He struggled against the wave of students; his mind too numbed to think past the possibility that Creighton might be dead. With each jostle he thought anew of what the world would be like without Valerie Creighton. Not just his own personal world where Valerie had filled a void left by his absent father then by the death of his mother, but also the world bounded by the bricks and mortar of the university campus where Valerie had been such an immovable presence. Of Valerie Creighton’s own world Fabian didn’t give a thought. Valerie was tight-lipped about his personal life, and no one had dared attempt to venture in. The idea that Creighton may have had a life outside the university was utterly unthinkable.

The flow of students started to dwindle as Fabian reached the top of the stairs, He glanced briefly at the dull portraits of chancellors past who faded into the wood panelling of the corridor, a dour collection of academia that had always given Fabian the shudders. Even the students, through the decades, found them too dismal to tag. Sombre, colourless features stared unsympathetically above the folds of their gaudy coloured robes of velvet and ermine, their hands clasped over protruding paunches or gaunt, ramrod bodies. It was enough to turn anyone away from the prospects of academic life, and he wondered yet again why he had chosen the career path he had. He gave a deep sigh and continued down the passage. It came back to Valerie Creighton. Everything did. Always. And now they were saying he was dead.

Fabian entered the staff room, his fellow colleagues were seated in clutches engaged in muted conversation, dazed expressions on their faces. He set his papers and paraphernalia down on one of the threadbare armchairs that ringed the cold room and, listening carefully to the conversations, went to the cupboard by the window and extracted a chipped, blue glazed mug with the name of an obscure Welsh village etched in white across it—a legacy of his wandering days. With equal automation he dropped a tea bag into it and filled it with water from the urn over the sink. Like so many institutional urns it dripped. Momentarily distanced from the ambient conversations Fabian watched, as the droplets of surplus water slowly formed and fell, one by one, onto the soggy grey-yellow ‘Wettex’ sponge placed under the tap to catch the drips and he was reminded that Valerie had some joke about the sponge and the drips, and the students. But Fabian could not remember it. He wondered if Valerie would remember ... then chided himself and feeling foolish carried his cup of tea back to his chair and the familiarity of his papers.

Slowly the murmur of voices invaded his reverie and his eyes focused on the occupants of the room. They were his colleagues in tenure only. A lone llama in a corral of donkeys, he could never fit in with the staid old men in equally staid old suits. The only relief to their uniformity was the individual personality statements on display that bisected the stark white fronts bordered by dark jackets on two sides and dark trousers on a third. Fabian had stereotyped each variety of tie into a character pattern that never seemed to vary.

The narrow dark ties of Phillips and Green were a prime example. The small knots at their neck, held in the narrow-mindedness of their lives, but stopped short of their thoughts. These they were forever foisting upon others. Colourless men in colourless ties. Tall and thin. Like their ties. Most of the staff were like their ties: grandiose bowties, pretentious cravats, gaudy and garrulous strips of satin or silk, lavishly imbued with rainbow hues and expanding in size according to their wearers’ girth and the dictates of fashion. Fabian despised them all for conforming to stereotypes, unaware of how blatant his own fashion statement was, and how it, too, reflected his own views on life and his own insecurities.

Phleggs was the exception. Younger than the other lecturers, he was tall, fat and flamboyant and therefore, according to Fabian’s theory on attire, so too should his ties be. But they weren’t and it annoyed Fabian that Bill Phleggs refused to be categorised. No sooner would Fabian slot him into a pigeonhole, than Phleggs would change his tie structure. There was no reason for the changes, neither fashion nor weather. It was as though Bill Phleggs had a vendetta against Fabian’s ordered existence. And it annoyed him. Just about as much as the man himself did.

Silence fell as Bill Phleggs entered the room, his normally jovial face an unshaven ashen mask, his jaws clenched. He stood just inside the door and scanned the room for Fabian. There was something about Titterton that engendered antagonism, and Bill could never quite isolate what it was and that annoyed him sufficiently to warrant avoidance.  Yet here he was seeking him out. Not that he wanted to, it was more a matter of courtesy for an old friend, and had to be done. He mentally hitched up his pants and headed in Fabian’s direction.

Fabian tried to read his current character, but today Bill Phleggs did not wear a tie. He wasn’t wearing his usual grey and green tweed suit either. In its place were faded brown corduroy jeans, and a faded red sweatshirt with a blue bush shirt winking at the elbows, though not visible at the neck. The blasted man hadn’t even bothered to pull his shirt collar out, Fabian thought to himself with indignation. Indignation that swiftly turned to outrage as it registered that Phleggs was ambling across the room to sit in the armchair beside him.

From all around the room eyes watched as Phleggs made his way across the floor. Fabian’s stomach contracted  and he was unnerved by the solemnity of the sad eyes in sad men following the action playing out around them. But there was no escape.

A pity really, Phleggs said as he dragged the chair closer to Fabians’ and eased himself into it.

Fabian had the sensation of everybody in the room similarly moving themselves closer, all the better to hear. What do you mean?

Phleggs rested his elbow on the arm of Fabian’s chair, and cupped his chin in his hand. About Creighton, he muttered through his fingers.

What about Creighton? Fabian looked at Phleggs. He could feel sweat breaking out in the confines of his armpits. He shivered and averted his eyes. He didn’t need the close scrutiny of Phleggs’ bright blue-eyed gaze, but now he saw his colleagues, enlivened with curiosity as they strained to catch the conversation, ready to grasp any snippets which may be thrown their way. Fabian was reminded of the vultures in Africa. Wizened birds with scrawny necks and beady eyes, perched on roof tops as these men were perched on the edges of their chairs, waiting for their next titbit. If it hadn’t been so pathetic he might have laughed.

Phleggs noisily shifted his weight so that the bulk of his body was between Fabian and the others. Him dying like that I mean.

So he is dead.

A colleague was pronouncing Creighton dead. So, Valerie Creighton was dead. Officially. Fabian felt a guilty mixture of relief and sorrow. Relief that he was now finally unburdened with speculation of the unbearable truth. And sorrow, not so much for the man mourned, as for his own loss.

Yes., I thought you knew, Phleggs looked around the room at the sombre faces peering in their direction. Seems everyone else knew.

But how? The question that Fabian really wanted answered was ‘why?’ ‘How’ was purely functionary. People died. They died and were dead. Weren’t they? Phleggs hadn’t said killed, or murdered, only that he had died. Dead was dead. But why was he dead? Now that was a question he thought was worthy of an answer, but he didn’t know Phleggs well enough to ask it.

In his sleep.

Silence filled the room as Fabian slowly looked around. Everyone was looking back at him, hungry, searching eyes, waiting. What for, Fabian couldn’t fathom. What was it that they wanted from him? It was totally beyond him, so he gave up and turned back to Phleggs. Shouldn’t the University be closed for the day? he asked quietly.

Why should it be? interjected Phillips loudly from his chair nearby. It’s bad enough that we’ll be landed with his workload, without the extra involved with a days’ holiday.

Phleggs ignored him and continued to give Fabian all his attention. It should be, and it would be, he paused to take a deep breath, but his passing has only just been discovered.

Fabian shook his head. The other staff in the room appeared to have known. Even the students were talking about Valerie Creighton’s death.  How could he be the last to hear? And why did it have to be Phleggs of all people to tell him? It was all getting to be too much for Fabian. But I heard students talking about it earlier, he said, almost to himself.

Phleggs sighed and ran his fingers through his bushy blond hair. Well, these things tend to leak out before they are due to. Do you know who it was?

What?

Who did you hear say that he was dead?

Oh, scoffed Phillips, and Phleggs spun around to face him, everybody’s been talking about nothing else, all morning.

Phleggs gave him a scowl but said nothing. He turned his attention back to Fabian. Who? he asked softly.

Fabian thought briefly before replying, Paul Constance and Kevin Smith. Why?

Phleggs put his hand out and placed it on Fabian’s arm. Fabian wanted to pull away but felt so drained of energy that he made no attempt. He looked helplessly at Phleggs who merely shrugged his shoulders.

No reason. Just curious.

Fabian nodded weakly and started to tidy the disarray of papers on his lap. Phleggs removed his hand from Fabian’s arm and watched him.

I’m sorry, he finally said, but I felt that you’d want to know.

Yes. Thank you. But how did you find out?

I’ve just come from his place. I, I found him.

Fabian stared at him. Valerie had never indicated that he knew Phleggs on a social level. Had never said that he was expecting a visit in the morning from him. Fabian felt betrayed. And jealous. Jealous that someone else had also shared a friendship with Valerie Creighton outside the campus, and that of all people, it had to be Phleggs. His fingers clenched around the edges of his papers.

Phleggs had been prepared for a variety of reactions to the news he had to bring to Fabian, but nothing had prepared him for the hostility he saw in Fabian’s eyes as he glared at him. He felt inept at dealing with the situation, but he knew that whatever it was that was eating at Fabian had to be defused.

I, I’d promised to have a look at his roses.

Roses?

Flowers. Roses. I enjoy gardening, and ... and Creighton had asked me for some help.

Now Phleggs was sweating. It had been a rough morning for him. Nobody likes to come face to face, unexpectedly, with a dead person, least of all a friend and colleague, and now he had to handle Fabian’s antagonism.

I, I thought you should know. Also, Phleggs searched for the words, the police will probably be here shortly too.

The silence in the room ended at the word ‘police’ as the interlopers broke into frenzied chatter. It was also the impetus that Fabian needed to break through his resentment. Phleggs rose and made to leave. Fabian grabbed him by the arm, Police? Why?

Phleggs shrugged his shoulders. To ask us questions. No doubt there will be a post-mortem.

With that he stood up and left the room while Fabian found himself surrounded by phoney friends and thrill seekers. Yes, they were indeed vultures. Now that the danger from predators had gone, they congregated around the carrion for their fill. All Fabian wanted was to be alone. To be alone, and to think.

He collected his papers into his arms, clutched them close against his chest and in an action that would have made an All Black winger proud, he pushed his way through the throng and disappeared out of the room. With little regard for his fellow pedestrians he rushed to the sanctuary of his office below the stairs and there he stayed.

****

Fabien spent the day in his office. Valerie was dead. So, may as well be he. It transpired that there had been no need for the police to visit the University. Valerie had died in his sleep, there was no mystery to that, people did it all the time.

But not people like Valerie Creighton, screamed Fabian’s brain. People like Valerie Creighton lived forever, or at least for their allotted three score years and ten. They didn’t die in their prime, well, late prime. There had to be another reason. But a day spent in seclusion hadn’t brought that reason to light.

Fabian had spent the time laboriously picking his way through the likely alternatives, but despite all Valerie’s meddling in affairs removed from his station, and stepping on others’ feet, Fabian could think of no one who would benefit from his removal. The bald fact of the matter was that Valerie had no enemies. There could be no foul play. Yet something continued to niggle, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. And why on earth should it be the detestable Phleggs to single Fabian out to talk to was beyond him.

And what was Phlegg’s connection with Creighton?

Maybe the weak link in all of this was Phleggs. It was Phleggs who had first, officially, reported the death. Yet there had been rumours rampant before he had made his appearance in the staff room. And, Fabian stopped. Phleggs had been very interested in where the rumours had come from. That was it! Phleggs had killed Creighton, and was now running scared that someone, a student maybe, had seen him and would turn him in. But the question remained―what did Phleggs have to gain?

It was dark when Fabian finally emerged from his office and headed home, though it was neither hunger nor fatigue that had roused him. Lost in his own world of unravelling intrigue, he hadn’t eaten or felt hungry all day. Rather, it was habit that drove him. He always returned to his house at night. Old habits die hard, he’d rationalize to his friends when they’d raise their eyebrows as he left a party before midnight. His mother had always insisted that he be home by midnight, and home by midnight he always was. 

Slowly he picked his path across the deserted campus. He stumbled in the loose gravel on the yet to be sealed path between the new library and the car park. He looked around him, and found that he was alone. He looked up at the library, shrouded in darkness. Gone even were the late library workers, and the clandestine lovers. Gone too was the moon. He was utterly alone in a world gone wrong.

Chapter 2

At first Fabian thought the shrill scream was part of the deranged dream his brain had been throwing up all night. With each successive REM sleep he would be inundated with the swirling patterns of his university colleagues, heads distorted out of all proportion, and scraggy long necks craning towards him as they danced around him. Every time he would try to break through the circle they made with their feathered arms they would screech with laughter. He could see their screams, pegged out as crotchets on treble clefs, rising and being wafted away in a whirlpool at whose core was Valerie’s tormented face. Then Phleggs would appear, goosestepping out of a swirling mist, a German World War I helmet on his head, flying goggles dangling around his neck. ‘Valerie’s dead! Valerie’s dead! Valerie’s dead!’ he’d chant in time to his march and throw him one of Creighton’s rose bushes. The vultures would then swoop down and fight over who should get the roses, and Fabian would find himself being drawn into the vortex, along with the music score, ever towards Valerie who was reaching up to him, but something kept pulling him back and he was never able to reach Creighton.

But this time the piercing noise was out of place. He clutched at the streamers of his dream and grappled his way to consciousness. The screaming was not in his dream, but the telephone. He thrust the dregs of his dream from him and staggered out of bed, willing his limbs to carry him the required distance down the hall and into the kitchen where the trilling became louder and more insistent.

Blearily he squinted in the direction of the microwave, grateful, that the digital time display was brightly illuminated. He groaned. Seven-thirty on a working day couldn’t be considered early, but he felt as though he had not seen the sandman all night. He hitched his flannelette pyjama pants up with one hand as he reached for the phone with the other.

Yeah? He yawned into the mouthpiece and scratched his armpit, then ran his fingers through his hair.

Titterton, is that you? barked a voice from the other end.

Yes. Fabian was fully awake now.

Bill here. Bill Phleggs. That much Fabian already knew, and he groaned inwardly. It was bad enough to be woken up by the phone, but for the perpetrator of the insult to be Phleggs was the epitome of poor manners. Sorry if I woke you, but can you get over to Creighton’s place before coming in to work this morning?

I guess so, Fabian answered cautiously.

Good, bellowed Phleggs down the phone.

Only, what’s all this about? But Fabian was talking to the burr of a dead line. ‘Bloody cheek!’ He thought as he replaced the handpiece of the phone and shuffled back to the bedroom.

Damn strange. The whole thing. Certainly not the actions of a guilty man. What was Phleggs playing at? He shrugged his shoulders and stepped out of his pyjamas, hooked them with his foot and tossed then onto the rumpled bed then hauled himself into the clothes he’d worn the day before. The only concession to cleanliness being clean socks and underwear.

He leaned over a basin of steaming water. Can you really believe that Phleggs killed Creighton? he asked his foamed counterpart in the mirror. No. No matter how hard he wanted to lay the blame for his loss at the feet of someone, anyone, and no matter how much he disliked Phleggs, he could not bring himself to the point of accepting that a fellow colleague had done the deed.

He rested his hands on the edge of the basin and peered deeply into the mirror. What was he going to do with no Creighton to direct and motivate him? He felt slightly sickened at the prospect. No, not sickened really. Sad, and empty, and angry too. All the emotions that he had felt when his mother had passed away. But that time Creighton had been there to help him through his distress, and the aftermath of emotions. Now it was Creighton who was dead, and there was no one to help him this time.

Watch out boy, he said to his reflection, you’re on your own this time.

A cynical chuckle rose in his thoughts and escaped his throat. Time. What a feckless thing time was, sticking its unwanted presence into all manner of trite clichés. It heals all wounds? Not those inflicted on Creighton. Oh well, time would tell, he supposed. But he didn’t hold much faith in time. Or in anything, if it came to that. He sighed and returned to shaving.

Chapter 3

Fabian stood just inside the front door and looked around the familiar room with its rug spattered polished floor, and its dark panelled walls. With every breath he could feel Creighton, his presence permeated the room totally. The dark toning of the furnishings hid the light-heartedness with which Creighton had filled his life. The room was, really, like a mausoleum. He shuddered and turned to Phleggs.

And you found him here? He didn’t want to owe Phleggs any thanks, but he had to know.

Phleggs nodded in assent, Fabian turned back to his perusal of the room. Many an hour he had spent here, in pleasant solitude with his mentor, and in heated debate. He walked across to the dining table, perpetually stuck in the far corner like a petulant child in disgrace. He ran his fingers along the backs of the carved rosewood chairs with their tapestry covered seats, and he smiled as he remembered the meals he had enjoyed there. It was strange to be wandering around the familiar room with only Phleggs to intrude into his thoughts. He didn’t say anything. But then he didn’t have to. Fabian could feel his eyes following him, everywhere. Why didn’t the damn man say something, rather than shadow him with his eyes and ears?

It was all so silent. The heavy red velvet curtains, still drawn, closed out the noise of the morning commuters, each secure in their own safe and sterile private world. Oblivious to all the drama and hurt of real life. Not for them the trauma of death. He glanced once more around the room. Would this be the last time he would see it?

It was a comfortable room. A man’s room. A room where affectations were unknown, and that made it safe. Where would he find another like it? It was just as he had left it two nights ago. Except that Creighton wasn’t there. He walked over to Creighton’s chair, a large dark brown leather, wing-backed affair, which swivelled, and tilted and rocked. The stub of his cigar was in the ashtray on the highly polished side table. Fabian picked it up. This was the cigar that Creighton had been smoking on his last evening. Fabian could remember him lighting it. Creighton had even offered him one, as he usually did on profound occasions. Not that Fabian had thought that night had been such an occasion, not then. But he had refused, as he always did. He could never work out if the continual offer was purely a display of politeness, or if in fact Creighton never remembered that he didn’t smoke. He twisted the stub between his fingers and let it fall back into the ashtray.

Come on into the kitchen, Phleggs broke the silence, I’ll fix you some coffee. Fabian gave a start and turned sharply to face him. Phleggs raised an eyebrow in query and took a step towards the cocktail cabinet. Or, or do you want something stronger?

No! Fabian almost screamed, then calmed down. No, coffee will be fine. Thank you. Reluctantly, he followed Phleggs out of the room and down the hall to the homely kitchen at the back of the house. How dare the man assume such an aura of belonging, and wander around a dead man’s house, offering drinks, and coffee, as if they were his own to proffer? Damn the man! He didn’t want a drink, of any sort. Not in this house. Not in the company of Phleggs. But if it was the only way to hear why he had been dragged down to the house, then he would suffer, but in silence. He had a lot of questions for Phleggs, but he was damned if he was going to ask them. Not until he had heard what Phleggs had to say.

Then, to add insult to injury, as they approached the kitchen Fabian could smell the damn coffee. Freshly perked coffee at that, and Fabian hated the man walking confidently in front of him.

He sat stiffly on a kitchen chair and played with the morning’s paper on the table while Phleggs put the percolator back onto the hot-plate. What was Phleggs doing here? His scowl deepened and his hand clenched into a fist on the table. Why didn’t the man speak? The silence was unbearable. If he felt like this with the silence, how, must a guilty man feel in the sterile cubicle of a police interview room? He glanced quickly at Phleggs. He certainly wasn’t acting as a guilty man should, making himself at home and giving no indication of being affected by Creighton’s death. In fact, he appeared quite relaxed and at ease with the whole situation. He was even quietly whistling. The dratted man appeared to be taking all this as a joke.

Actually, the ‘dratted man’ was as bewildered as Fabian. Phleggs could never really claim to be a friend of Fabian’s. Nor did he want to be. In fact he tried to avoid Titterton as much as possible. Fabian was a pathetic unkept young man already old beyond his years. And he was altogether too quiet and lifeless for him. He didn’t know how to enjoy himself, and have fun. He looked at Fabian as he reached for another cup