Mary: Aunt Grace

Josh and I sat and drank tea in the cozy corner house of Keane's Aunt Grace, the two of us battered, bruised, hungry, exhausted and most of all desperate for a way to explain with any measure of sanity just how it was her niece had come to be murdered the night before.

Grace was a sweet old woman, her home comfortable if not modern, with the pleasant sound of the Beatles drifting in from the kitchen. The decor seemingly hadn't been altered in thirty years and despite the fact that it was half a world away from Milwaukee, for some reason I found it oddly familiar.

We had each been served a cup of tea almost before we were all the way through the door, once we mentioned we were friends of Keane's. Josh even jokingly mentioned that he'd love a Vegemite sandwich if she had one (and I swear, if he attempts to serenade me one more time with Men At Work he's going to get punched), and she had one in front of him within thirty seconds.

After advising her that this was his first ever taste of Vegemite, she cautioned him gently that it wasn't for everyone, but insisting his terrible hunger could overcome anything, he took a bite and swallowed. Grace smiled, her well-worn laugh-lines criss-crossing her face pleasingly. "What do you think, young man?"

Josh has not often spoken diplomatically in situations such as this in the past, but I hoped that in such a delicate juncture he would reach within himself and find something resembling a civil comment. As usual of late, my hopes were dashed.

"It tastes like a combination of a cow's salt lick and three-week-old @ss."

I cringed as Josh then guzzled the rest of his tea and began pawing at his tongue with his napkin, and I began to apologize on his behalf, but Grace just giggled and slapped her thigh, tickled by the whole thing. "Everyone from O.S. comes in wanting a taste of Vegemite. They think it's going to taste like manna from heaven but bongo. God bless that 'Down Under' ditty. The faces they make when they have their first bite is just too bloody precious." Laughing as she tottered back to the kitchen, Grace exchanged his Vegemite sandwich for a ham and cheese, which he gratefully gobbled up in seconds.

We talked about the weather, the surf, the Port Victoria Hotel, her niece's boat, her first mate Lachlan, some of the rudimentary differences between American and Australian politics and whether or not mayonnaise belonged on a good ham and cheese sandwich. She was thrilled to talk because she was lonely and we were relieved to have any excuse to delay informing her that her precious niece-her one and only family member she still cared about- was gone.

Eventually the conversation petered out, our common ground exhausted, and the burden of informing her as to Keane's fate could no longer be ignored. I took a deep breath, summoned up what strength I had and began, "Grace... about Helen. Last night, she-"

She jumped up then, startling both Josh and I (would he be upset if I mentioned that he also let out a girlish yelp of terror in that moment? Hm). Grace trotted into the kitchen and turned up the Beatles song, grinning and dancing around as best she could on arthritic legs. "'When I'm Sixty-Four'. I do love it so. Red raw... I never thought I'd look back on that age and think about how young I was then." She giggled again, and it was easy in that moment to imagine her as a young girl. It also wasn't difficult to see the resemblance between her and Keane- they had the same lust for life, a similar energy that reminded me of her lost niece so strongly that I had to fight back tears.

I peered over at Josh to see if he was affected as I was, only to find that he wore instead a startled, puzzled expression. He stood up slowly as if in a daze. "What did you just say? That part about how... something red?"

Grace kept doing her little shuffling dance in the kitchen, serenaded by a young Paul McCartney, who had himself turned sixty-four only a couple of years ago. "What's that, my dear? Oh, what... red raw? It's nothing, it just means sixty-four, that's all."

Frowning, then nodding, Josh sat down slowly once more. "Oh, okay. Sounded familiar. It's just an Australian saying, then? I swear to God, you people just love screwing with the English-"

She shook her head. "No, dear. It's not Aussie. It's bingo!"

Now we both shot off the couch, eyes wide, saying in unison, "What?"

Grace nodded. "In bingo, when number sixty-four is drawn, you say 'red raw'. Most of the numbers have another little nickname. It's just a silly thing to say while you play."

My voice sounded distant in my own ears. "You play a lot of bingo?"

"All the time! Some of the best bingo players in Oz live here in Port Victoria! They actually recruit players to live here, can you believe it? We have our own electronic bingo hall so we can take on those in other parts of the world as well. It's a little odd in that you have to leave your bingo charms there when you're not playing, but it's first rate. Why, this house is paid for with winnings, not that I'm saying I'm any great shakes... just lucky, you know." She did her best to look modest.

Flipping out his Blackberry, Josh searched through his previous posts to the one he wrote when he first got to Atlanta. "This is from the encounter with the man outside the storage locker, the man with the Australian accent who was almost certainly Crayton. He said:

"Red raw to blower. Bongo, advise." A pause, then, "Acknowledged. Knock at the door need to know only."

I walked over to Grace and smiled to try and put her at ease as she had now clearly become aware that something more serious was going on. "You said 'bongo' a minute ago, too. Is that a bingo term as well?"

She nodded. "it's just... if you made a mistake. You say 'bingo' when you get bingo, but if you say 'bingo' and it turns out you don't actually have it, that's called 'bongo'."

"What about the rest of it?" Josh showed her the quote on his Blackberry. "Any other Australian bingo terms in there?"

Grace squinted at the tiny screen. "Hm. 'Knock at the door' is what you say when they call the number four. And of course the blower is the machine that makes all the little balls float around." Say, what's the story? Why so interested?"

We mumbled out a stream of excuses and lies and fled, stumbling out into the bright street. In no time we reached our car and sat there on the curb idling with the air conditioning on, the two of us breathing heavily and staring straight ahead over the dashboard. On the walk over Josh hastily Googled and found the Port Victoria Bingo Hall, the address listed as a mile or so out of town.


MARY: There's a chance Crayton hasn't retrieved the chest with the knife yet. If he hid it at his house, the police are watching it. The bingo hall has to be run by Crayton too, stockpiling bingo charms as they get charged up from use. If I had to guess, he's probably there collecting them now in preparation for leaving.

JOSH: Who says he isn't just killing the police at his house and getting the knife now?

MARY: No sirens, no alarms. There's no guarantee, but that's my bet.

JOSH: Okay, so which place do we make a try for, his house and the Magician's knife, or the bingo hall and the charms?

MARY: Both.

JOSH: Uhh...

MARY: Hear me out. He can only be in one of the two places, and there's a reasonable chance that he's in neither. Plus the longer we wait the greater the probability that we come up empty. We need to do this and do it now. That way we're almost guaranteed to come away with something, either the charms or the knife.

JOSH: And the other person is almost guaranteed to be dead.

MARY: If he's in either place. And would we have any chance against him with two instead of one? What difference would it really make? (pause) I'm tired of going up against them and coming away with nothing. I want to hurt them. I want to take something away from them. For Keane, for Lachlan... for Dylan and Pierce and Jeff and-

JOSH: Erg. All right then, don't go all Braveheart on me. Let's rent another car and flip for which site we each take.


Once we discovered we had to drive almost an hour to find a place to rent a car, Josh decided to just buy one in town, a process that is far less painless if you don't bother to haggle. He bought an old four by four with a gun rack, though the owner refused to part with any of his guns in the deal.

We are going to each site now. We flipped a coin, and Josh is going to Crayton's house to find the knife while I'm heading to the bingo hall to see if I can grab the bingo charms. I would be surprised if Crayton wasn't at one of the sites, so there is about a fifty-fifty chance this is the last post I ever write. I wish I could think of something profound to say.

I have a job to do and I'm going to do it. I guess that's all that really matters. Wish me luck.