My Island Homicide by Catherine Titasey

hallway. The wind forced itself through gaps in the old frosted louvres in one long, agonising moan. ‘ Em been maydh , that one.’
    â€˜Well, we are following that up, but we know Melissa used to give Franz money for food and he had given her a pearl shell pendant.’
    â€˜Look in room blong em ,’ she said and gestured with the broom to a doorway. ‘ Em more worser since Mama been dead. Before, em been talk with hands blong em and help me with chores. Em nathakind now.’ She walked off and her words faded. ‘Ten years, em been like this. I been give up with that kid.’
    Franz’s room contained a single wrought-iron bed, a bedside table, an antique wardrobe and a large tin chest with a dent on top and chipped brown paint. A yellowed print of a black Madonna and Jesus hung above his bed, which was draped in a faded blue towelling bedspread with tassels that sucked me back to my childhood. I hadn’t seen one for years, and without thinking, I sat down and ran my fingers over the raised contours of the swirling patterns, just as I had done as a child. My two brothers and I had been given them as Christmas presents when I was about eight. The boys got the blue and green ones and I got the pink. I begged them to swap but they laughed at me. I complained for days until finally Mum dyed mine dark blue. It ended up a dull grey purple, much better than pink.
    â€˜Get a load of this.’ Jenny was kneeling by the tin. ‘There’s some birthday and Christmas cards signed by Melissa, a full money box and torch labelled “Ramu”. The rest of the stuff is sheets with crocheted edges and towels and patchwork quilts. They must be tombstone unveiling gifts.’
    â€˜The crocheted linen and the coconut mats and brooms given to the deceased’s in-laws for organising the tombstone?’
    â€˜Yes, the marageth , the in-laws.’
    â€˜Mum has often gone and bought bolts of island dress material and handtowels and face washers and sent it up to different families for tombstone unveilings.’
    â€˜It takes years of planning and fundraising, but it’s worth it. You know something like 80 per cent of Islanders, that’s like 40,000, live on the mainland?’
    â€˜Yeah, my mother has said tombstone unveilings are important rituals to reunite families, even for a short time.’
    â€˜Fred’s family are organising his father’s tombstone unveiling now for December. Have you been to one?’
    â€˜Only as a kid, but I don’t remember much. We’d driven down to Townsville. I ended up with gastro and in hospital on a drip. Mum reckoned it was from the turtle or dugong that had been left out for hours before we ate it.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah. That sounds about right.’ Jenny laughed. ‘If you don’t eat at those feastings regularly, you can get food poisoning.’ She pulled out some papers. ‘Have a look at these.’
    I was only half-looking. I was thinking about my mother. She’d made a point of saying, whenever the opportunity arose, like when a funeral home or retirement village ad came on TV, ‘Don’t forget to cremate me.’ It occurred to me, while I was going through the tombstone unveiling gifts Franz kept, that Mum didn’t want us to be inconvenienced by her death and the subsequent tombstone unveiling ritual.
    I focused on Franz and the old tin box full of handwritten notes, in Melissa’s small, flowery script, with little circles on the i’s and curled ends on the y’s and g’s . If these don’t fit I can order another pair for you and I picked these up when Alby and I were in Cairns and Here’s a backpack. I bought one for Alby .
    â€˜We should take these in case we need them for evidence,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ll get everything together. Can you let Izzy know we’re taking them?’
    â€˜No way. She scares me.’
    Jenny went off to find Izzy, who