Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  He stood, slid his jacket off and hung it on the back of the chair.

  ‘Is the air-conditioning broken in here?’

  He looked up and around at the ceiling and walls of the room.

  He held the magazine out to me in his truly beautiful, thoroughly masculine, but also impeccably smooth hands. That magazine had sat in my underwear for some time. And now he had it in his hands. My mind made connections it had no business making and I had to strain to focus after that.

  Bad widow. I was a bad, bad widow. But then again, my husband had also been a fibber, a big fat fibber who operated on high-end sex workers and killed off his own family (at least figuratively).

  Surely that bought me a little moral wiggle room?

  Searing was speaking, something about Esmerelda being unhinged and what felt like a very strong reprimand for going undercover at Magic Models.

  I was up on my feet and speaking before I realised my lips or any other part of me was moving.

  ‘We had to! You weren’t doing anything!’

  Boy, I was really angry.

  ‘You had no idea who Crystal was, let alone where she worked! You think I’m completely clueless? Do you? Do you think I don’t know when I’m being persecuted? Burns doesn’t believe me. She’ll crucify me.’

  My hands were shaking as I stalked back and forth from the edge of the bed to the edge of the chair where Searing stood. I did not feel sick and I did not feel faint. I felt something else. I stopped pacing and turned and looked directly at him. It was like staring at the sun. Blinding hotness. I pressed through the rocketing temperature in the room. He was right. It was suddenly boiling.

  ‘Did you know that Crystal had a twin sister, Debbie?’

  He nodded, placing the MM magazine and tax form down on the chair.

  ‘Oh.’ I paused briefly before starting again. ‘And that Debbie died after having plastic surgery performed by Richard?’

  He scrunched his eyes, not sure about that one.

  ‘And that Debbie’s boyfriend is some Mutant biker fix-it person called Bob the Builder?’

  He nodded again, yes.

  I leant towards him in exasperation. ‘Why on earth was Burns still calling me then?’

  ‘Believe it or not it takes a while to get the word out on the street and then for the street to get its ass into gear and get word back to you. I only found out that Crystal came from Magic Models last night. And I only got these—’ he indicated the lookbook and the tax sheet ‘—this morning. Esmerelda isn’t the world’s best personal assistant and Halle isn’t the world’s most forthcoming informant.’ He smiled reluctantly. ‘You did force her hand somewhat.’

  Was that a thank you? ‘Well then!’ I said, eyeballing him, trying to maintain my indignation. ‘It is clear that Crystal killed Richard out of revenge for Debbie’s death using explosives given to her by Bob the Builder Biker.’

  Another sentence I never thought I would say.

  ‘Go and talk to that man!’ I very almost shouted at him, pointing to the door. I realised too late that I was standing very close to him. Our faces were now only inches apart. He was right, the room was hot. Was the air-conditioning broken all over Sydney? Or just in the rooms I shared with him?

  He put his hand out. It hovered next to my hair, my ear, my face. But he did not touch me.

  ‘I can’t question Robert Skylar,’ he said with a genuinely frustrated tone in his voice. His hand still hovered.

  I flicked my eyes to his hand, his face, his lips.

  ‘Who. Who is that?’

  I was trying hard to hold onto my rage and not give in to the other raging emotion that was quickly taking its place.

  ‘Robert Skylar is Bob the Builder who is also Mr Fix-It. He’s a senior member of the Mutant motorcycle gang,’ he said, and his hand finally moved as he wiped a trickle of sweat off my cheek.

  I wanted him, I mean I watched him. ‘Why?’

  He watched me back, but no words came.

  I swallowed and, in an instinct beyond my control, adjusted myself to kissing position, aligning my lips with his.

  ‘Why. Why can’t you speak to him?’

  His hand was on my face and his thumb grazed my cheek.

  ‘The AFP have been running an investigation into—’

  ‘The AFP?’ I interrupted with breath I did not know I had.

  ‘The AFP. The Australian Federal Police,’ he said.

  God. How did I not know that? I nodded and my forehead almost hit him in the cheek we were so close. He didn’t back away. He didn’t move his hand. He pressed on.

  ‘The Australian Federal Police have been running an investigation into the Mutant motorcycle gang for over two years. Bob the Builder is currently considered an asset. I’m prohibited from speaking with him.’ He exhaled heavily and in a split second, blink-and-you–miss-it move grazed his bottom lip with his teeth. Now I wanted to pass out. But not before I put my lips next to that just-grazed lip.

  Indigo! Focus. I tried super hard. What did he just say? Bob the Builder. Prohibited. Asset.

  I processed the word ‘asset’ carefully. I was not going to ask another ignorant rookie question. And I really needed not to kiss him. Asset. Asset. Wait. I knew about assets! I knew they were important and that no one ever gave them away. And that they were always protected. I pulled back.

  ‘Bob the Mutant Builder is an asset?’

  He nodded unhappily. ‘Yep, he’s an asset. He’s off limits to me. And Burns.’

  ‘Off limits?’

  I was obviously having a particularly slow processing day. I felt like I had repeated everything he had said in the last thirty seconds.

  It wasn’t my fault. I was not always slow. Or lusty. But I was a new widow. And it was hot. And I was under an enormous amount of stress. And I was pretty sure I had been dropped on my head out of a brothel window by Searing. Searing. It might have been The Searing. He was Romeo and Juliet all over again.

  ‘Off limits,’ I heard Searing say as I desperately tried to tune back in again. ‘I think he’s in protective custody in a safe house somewhere. I’m waiting to hear about a possible location from a source. Even if I knew where he was, I still couldn’t officially interview him, let alone accuse him of conspiring to murder,’ he dropped his hand, pulled away from me and sat back down in his chair, ‘your husband.’

  There you had it. He was Romeo and I had a husband. True, my husband was dead and Dylan Moss, my cheating teen Romeo, lived only in my memory, but they both haunted me. Who wanted to kiss a haunted girl?

  The aroma of hot, brown sugar, freshly ground cinnamon and deep-fried carbs wafted into the room, followed closely by the unmistakable sound of doughnuts being eaten.

  ‘Dude,’ I heard Esmerelda utter from behind the only partially closed bedroom door, with what I knew was a big mouthful of doughnut. ‘That totally sucks.’

  I was going to kill that infernal girl.

  The infernal girl was not alone. I turned to find her shadowed by Patricia and Mother. Both patroness and maid were doing a much better job of hiding behind the semi-closed bedroom door than Esmerelda. To be fair Esmerelda was not really making any attempt to hide. And hiding Mother was a bit like hiding a baby giraffe—albeit an impeccably dressed baby giraffe.

  Realising she had been spotted peeping, Patricia gathered herself and entered as gracefully as possible. She held a tray aloft. Hot, sweet, salted cinnamon doughnuts were piled onto a pink Wedgwood plate. A large, elegant, non-brand name glass carafe had been stuffed with crushed ice, fresh limes and mint, and then filled with homemade blood orange soda. There were two tall pale teal glasses on the tray. I’m not sure when fresh doughnuts and blood orange soda became linked in my childhood mind as a hot summer day treat, but they were. My family held strange traditions. This was the least of them.

  Although I thought the air-conditioning was on, it was tepid at best and I was melting. I stepped away from Searing and sat on the backless cream love seat that butted
up against the end of the bed. The love seat had two large peach silk cushions, one at either end, and faced a rectangular glass coffee table. The remaining matching teal armchair sat facing both the love seat and the coffee table.

  After setting the contents of the tray on the coffee table Patricia went to work adjusting the air-conditioning controls. A ferocious cool breeze immediately hit the room eliciting an audible sigh from almost everyone.

  Mother carefully stepped into the room.

  ‘Detective Searing, you look exhausted,’ she said in her international accent. ‘Would you like a cold drink?’

  ‘No thank you, Ms Jones,’ Searing said while he pushed back the damp hair on his forehead. ‘I’m not thirsty.’ His normally orderly dark waves were falling muddled and curled onto his face. His aftershave or deodorant or whatever it was, was working overtime in the room. He smelt divine.

  Patricia ignored his response. ‘Come into the kitchen. There’s more drink in the fridge.’

  Searing looked confused. His eyes flicked to the glass I was pouring and the one next to it that was seemingly free.

  ‘Dude,’ said Esmerelda, licking brown sugar off her fingers and eyeing Searing. ‘The help eats in the kitchen.’

  ‘But you’re not eating in the kitchen,’ Searing observed.

  ‘Yeah well I’m no help,’ said Esmerelda.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said under my breath and took a long drink.

  I refrained from adding that Searing was not currently being very helpful either.

  While Patricia led an unwilling Searing into the kitchen, followed closely by an ever-hungry Esmerelda, Mother settled herself into the teal silk armchair across from my love seat. She carefully selected a doughnut, took a large bite and let out a low moan.

  I thought it sounded frighteningly similar to the sound I made when Richard’s brother hugged me at the reading of the will.

  To be fair I also make that same sound whenever I put on a pair of fresh leather Choos or touched a new season handbag.

  She put the remaining doughnut down on the plate and patted the cinnamon sugar off her fingers. She was immaculate. Again.

  I looked down, there was nothing left of my doughnut and the cinnamon sugar was wedged under my nails, scattered all over my silk pants and embedded in my fingertips.

  ‘So,’ she said, smiling her famous, flawless smile. ‘I thought we could take a little trip together.’

  ‘A trip? That would be wonderful!’

  I was so relieved—I desperately needed a holiday. I had not been away since my weekend trip to Bali a month ago. And really, four days in a villa at the Waldorf Astoria cannot really be considered a holiday. It would need to be a minimum of a week to be an actual holiday. Plus, with Bob the Builder being an ‘untouchable’ my chances of being excused by the police seemed disappointingly far away again. Maybe we could go somewhere that did not have an extradition treaty with Australia?

  Mother’s smile widened further. This was her too-much smile that the photographers never saw. It was more goofy than glam. This was the home smile. It was joyful.

  ‘I’m so excited you’re so excited!’ She sipped her blood orange. ‘I’ll get Patricia to call a car. I can’t think where I left mine. I thought I parked it in the garage.’

  Technically it was parked in a garage. Just not her garage. To the best of my knowledge it was still in the basement car park of Magic Models. I did not have a single clue as to how I was going to rescue it. I doubted I could get Esmerelda to go back and retrieve it. It would be substantially easier to buy her a new one. I would have to remember to add ‘buy a Prius’ to Esmerelda’s list. When I got back from Hawaii. Or Thailand. Or Costa Rica.

  ‘Vámonos!’ I said before she could reflect much longer.

  CHAPTER 21

  EXCITABLE CHEEKY LEPRECHAUNS

  Ten minutes later I was seated comfortably in the back of a white Land Rover limousine, resting a champagne flute on my tray table, eyes closed, headed for the airport. The heavily tinted windows blocked the sun and the frigid British air conditioner made it feel like autumn. I reclined my seat and fantasised about destinations with large bodies of cool blue water. Esmerelda was nowhere to be seen and Mother was blissfully quiet in the seat beside me. The Maldives. Yes. The water there was amazing.

  The car came to a stop. The driver left the engine running but got out, presumably to stand guard by the passenger door. Had I fallen asleep? The airport was south of the city and even in light traffic it would still take at least half an hour. I opened one eye and peered at Mother.

  ‘We’re here,’ she said.

  ‘Here where?’ I asked.

  ‘Here, here,’ she said.

  Oh dear. No wonder she and Esmerelda got along so well. They spoke the same language. I gave up and craned my neck to look out of the window. We were in the Sydney CBD, in front of a very old, very dull-looking bank. The kind fronted with endless steep, sharp-edged, granite stairs leading to five-storey granite pillars and banks of revolving—no doubt now bulletproof—glass doors. All of which were in the taupe range.

  ‘A bank?’ I questioned.

  ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘The bank.’

  As if that made everything clear.

  ‘I thought we were going on a “little trip”?’ I asked, desperately searching for the Champagne bottle.

  ‘Yes. A little trip to the bank,’ she said as she uncrossed her impossibly long legs and motioned to the driver to open her door.

  I put my hand on her forearm. ‘Why are we going to this very, very dull, very, very taupe bank? I do not want to go to a boring bank. I have enough of whatever is in there. I do not want any more.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what’s in there?’ she said.

  ‘I know what’s in there. Money. Old men. And boredom,’ I said and took an unladylike-sized gulp of Champagne.

  ‘Money? Probably. Boring? Possibly. But I don’t think even Richard could get old men to crawl into his safe deposit box,’ she said and promptly hopped out of the Land Rover. I stared after her. Wait. I quickly swivelled my head and gazed up at the bank. The safe deposit key Richard left Mother. The one with the silver circle keychain. This must be the bank that housed the corresponding safe deposit box.

  Richard could not have chosen a more quintessentially traditional bank. Even in death he was conservative. Except when he was performing surgery on sex workers on photocopiers and lying about his not-dead family. I was out of the car, heels clicking on the polished granite sidewalk and heading for the stairs before I knew what was happening.

  I cursed the legally and socially condoned use of high steps with skinny platforms that were so short they did not allow a woman in size 9 heels to walk up them face on. Rather you were forced to angle your body and walk up sideways like a crab in order to place the sole of your shoes on each runner.

  Mother of course was wearing flats (which you can do constantly if you’re six foot tall) and lightly floated up the stairs on her tippy toes, like a prancing gazelle.

  Despite my perfectly tucked and belted holiday-wear Hermès I was dishevelled by the time I reached the top of the stairs. I wiped sweat from my forehead into my undoubtedly rapidly frizzing hair. I was melting. I realised I still had the champagne flute in my hand. I was deeply tempted to drain the glass then and there. My acceptable levels of decorum were on the decline.

  The taupe granite columns were even more imposing and stodgy up close. They radiated heat. The revolving glass doors seemed much higher and wider than necessary. Perhaps they were expecting the simultaneous entry of the Beckham and Jolie-Pitt offspring?

  Mother had arrived so far ahead of me that she had already made and was now finishing a phone call. It sounded as if a late-night date was being arranged. She quickly ended the call when she realised I had reached the summit.

  ‘Big date?’ I puffed.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she grinned, her cheeks a perfect hue of rosy pink. ‘Hot date.’

  I struggled. It
was 38 degrees. All dates in Sydney tonight were going to be hot. She looked at me kindly and waited for me to catch up. I did.

  ‘The fireman?’

  She nodded.

  I still owed that man a fruit basket. Or were muffins more appropriate for a fireman? Flowers? No. Something organic? Maybe one of those hipster Byron Bay baskets? You know—a ginger nutmeg face scrub with some organic Anzac biscuits. What do you send a man who pulls you from a burning building? Wait. I looked over at my mother. Was it true? Had he already received a substantial gift from my family?

  I drained the flute right there in front of the stuffy bank. It was the stress.

  I was happy for her, really. I just hoped it would not be a repeat of Elizabeth Taylor and the gardener. Or had he been a carpenter? Larry something. It sounded egalitarian and romantic but in reality it was a big mess. I wondered if the driver could fetch me a cold refill from the Land Rover.

  ‘You can’t possibly disapprove of him Indigo,’ she said reading my mind and taking the glass off me. She patted my now damp, sweaty hair back down and into place. ‘He saved your life. A billion people saw it.’

  Damn that YouTube video. I had nowhere to run.

  She paused, studied me seriously and said in a very mature, very steady, very un-Mother tone, ‘He’s a good man Indie.’

  For reasons unknown to me I wanted to cry. Was it because she looked so happy? Was it because I was so terrified she was going to get so hurt? Or was it because my own attempt at love, the safest love, the most sensible Bran Muffin love, had failed me so spectacularly?

  I looked around for people with camera phones. Which was everyone with a phone. Please God let this bank be so dismal that no one ever photographs it. My luck had finally changed. There was no one around. I put my damp cheek to her perfectly dry and chiselled cheek, squeezed her perfectly dry hands with my sweaty hand and whispered, ‘Okay Mum.’

  I felt a warm tear land on my cheek. It was not mine.

  I suddenly realised we had abruptly abandoned Searing to Esmerelda and Patricia.

  ‘We forgot about Detective Searing!’ I said pulling away sharply.