Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

‘Dude. I don’t smoke,’ she said eyeing me, affronted. ‘The body is a temple.’

  Given her shocking diet and complete lack of bodily care her skin should have looked like volcanic rock and she should have been shaped like a volcano. Instead she was perfect. I found it difficult to attribute all her unfair genetic abnormalities to being a non-smoker. Her body was not a temple. It was a drive thru.

  I sniffed the air again. It was definitely smoke. I put my head down and sniffed at my chest. It was me. I smelt of burnt cathedral carpet, frankincense and myrrh, seared red wine-whisky, and chocolate chip cookie dough gelato.

  I sniffed in Esmerelda’s direction. Nothing.

  Mr David closed the divider and his eyes as I swapped out of my charred Chanel dress and D&G shoes. Esmerelda begrudgingly fetched my black Phi Phi duffle from the trunk. I put on a pair of multi-pastel-coloured strappy Alexander McQueen sandals with a sensible three-inch stiletto and dress in the same palette with a fitted bodice, spaghetti straps and side split. All this running around and inadvertent meal skipping had made me svelte. Or perhaps losing a less-than-truthful husband was just intrinsically good for you.

  Richard’s building was located on New South Head Road. The road buzzed with late-night shoppers, cut-price Brazilian cleaners off to learn English at night school, men in expensive suits drinking coffee with women half their age and overworked middle-aged women in activewear.

  Richard’s building was five storeys of wall-to-wall shiny, silvery, mirrored windows. The only space on the veneer of the building not covered in large squares of mirrored glass was the entry. It was a large, clear glass concave rectangle inlet in the centre of the facade.

  This was it. If I could get inside without passing out, I could get my life back. Or at least go into hiding without being chased by the police.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked Esmerelda.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good. Get the USB from the side pocket and let’s go.’ I pointed to my packed duffle bag.

  ‘So, like, I already grabbed that USB,’ she said, patting the bag.

  ‘Perfect, bring it with you,’ I said.

  I cracked the Range Rover’s door and a wave of heat hit me. It might have been dark out, but it was still stiflingly hot. I can’t believe Grandmother did not keep any wine on board. And only one bottle of Champagne! Esmerelda had drunk all the No Sugar Vanilla Cokes. And eaten all the snacks.

  ‘So,’ she said again, ‘that’s gonna be a problem.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, one foot out of the car door.

  ‘I kinda gave the USB to Searing.’ She trailed off.

  ‘I thought you said you gave the USB to Searing,’ I laughed.

  ‘I did,’ she said quietly. ‘I totally copied it to the cloud first. A couple of clouds actually, but I gave Searing the actual USB.’

  ‘Why would you do that! The USB had the Mediterranean Men’s Club files on it!’ I was aghast. ‘You don’t even like the police. You hate the police!’

  ‘Dude,’ she said, regaining some of her sass. ‘Searing was financial crimes for ages. He’s basically an accountant. That barely counts as real police. He’s like a mini homicide cop. Plus, you were pissed when I didn’t give him the tax thing and the Magic Models magazine last time.’

  ‘So!?’ I pushed on, ignoring her points.

  ‘So, like, giving makeovers to international fugitives is serious shit. I figured Searing could use the USB as leverage to make the feds turn Bob over to him.’

  Huh. That was a good point. I had not thought of that.

  ‘Plus, like, giving makeovers to international fugitives is serious shit,’ she repeated.

  ‘You said that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like those guys, they’re seriously serious. As in they might blow up a whole apartment block just to kill one specific dude. Even if they take out a penthouse with an heiress, some doctors, waiters. Whoever.’

  I knew where she was going.

  ‘You thought the “seriously serious” Mediterranean Men’s Club people might try to blow Mother’s house up, with you in it, to get rid of me and the USB?’

  ‘Or the car. They could totally blow your car up to get to you and the USB. Like I might accidentally be in it.’

  ‘But until a few hours ago we thought Crystal set the bombs. We never thought it was the Mediterranean Men’s Club.’

  ‘You didn’t but when it comes to getting dead, I like to keep an open mind,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  I understood. I did not want to get dead either.

  ‘What am I going to copy Richard’s emails to?’ I asked.

  ‘Dude,’ she said flatly. ‘Just like send them to yourself. Or the cloud. Or the cops.’

  Oh.

  I didn’t bother pretending I had known that.

  ‘That better be the last time you take something without asking,’ I said with as much fury as I could manage, which was not a lot at that stage. I was about to ask her to break and enter with me. For the second time in one day. I was on shaky moral, and tech-savvy, high ground.

  CHAPTER 32

  LIGHTS

  Esmerelda and I walked in silence to the glass front doors. A few dim downlights showed the waiting lounges, a closed café, the reception desk and a bank of elevators inside. Hidden behind the reception desk were the security offices. The floors were a cream and grey marble flecked with pale green.

  Outside the streetlights were an ever-present source of unflattering, naked, fluorescent light.

  Esmerelda motioned to the square, bronze pushbutton pad on the side wall. It had a swipe panel below it.

  ‘Got a PIN or swipe card or something?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just, you know, do your thing.’

  ‘Dude, that was like a rusty old restaurant door. This is friggin’ high-tech. I can’t do shit like this without prep.’ She paused. ‘Assuming I knew how to do shit like that at all.’

  I let out an exasperated breath. I did not want to stand outside underneath the designer-looking but prison-escape bright streetlights for too long. What if I was recognised by some tabloid-reading, YouTube-watching tourist? Or worse, by someone I went to SILC with? I squeezed myself into the shadows by the side of the glass doors and stared at the keypad.

  ‘Look away,’ I said to Esmerelda. I covered the keypad with my hand and tapped in my birthday, including the year. The light below the keypad flashed red. That sneaky SOB. I thought it was standard operating procedure to use your spouse’s birthday as a passcode. I was insulted.

  ‘Dude. I hope he didn’t use your birthday as a passcode. That’s totally the first number I’d try if I was breaking in,’ said Esmerelda, her face pressed to the glass. ‘Not that I’d do that.’

  ‘No!’ I lied. ‘Of course not. Anyway, you don’t know my birthday.’

  ‘Yeah I do. It’s on Wikipedia.’

  ‘Really? What about the year?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, nodding into the glass. ‘Wikipedia.’

  Everybody knew Wikipedia was unreliable.

  I put in Richard’s birthday. It flashed red at me again. I would have put in his mother’s birthday but since I had only just met her, I did not know it. Nor his father’s, brother’s or sister’s. I tried their Christian names. Nothing.

  I tried phone numbers. It turned out I did not know Richard’s phone number. It was not my fault I was born in a digital age. I could not recall ever writing it down. The passcode was not my phone number. Or my name. Or any variation of my names. I was getting a sore finger. I looked around for witnesses. There were a couple of teenage girls walking up the street towards us. I began to panic. Panic was bad. I forced myself to do some yogic breathing.

  I quickly tried other words. Plastic. Red light. Surgeon. Red light. Plastic Surgeon. Nothing. Magic. Models. Mutant. Motorcycle. Mediterranean. I had to do that last one a few times, it was tricky to spell. Nothing. Red light every time.

  The girls crossed the street a few metres before the building and headed
into a juice bar. I could see two twenty-something guys coming from the other direction. They were covered in tattoos. No doubt they were up to no good. Or not. They were carrying takeout bags from the Raw Food restaurant half a block down. They locked the food in their Audi and headed into the twenty-four-hour gym. What was becoming of young people?

  Focus Indigo. What else did Richard like? Not pressed juice, raw food or the gym. More like red wine, red meat and golf. What did he love? I had already tried my names. I gritted my teeth and tapped in Sandra. Sandra Banks. Ha! No love for you either! I felt semi-vindicated.

  ‘Dude, hurry up.’

  Think. Cogs creaked. Watches? Trains? Nothing. Model trains? No. Think. Think. What did he really love? Platinum … The light below the keypad flashed green and the glass doors parted. He had loved those stupid model trains, but he had loved platinum more. My plan for the heavy metal chameleon collectibles solidified.

  ‘Friggin’ Heiress on Fire!’ said Esmerelda, removing her face from the glass and slapping me on the back. ‘You’re the dude!’

  I was astonished. I did it!

  We walked cautiously through the open double doors and into the darkened foyer. Me, creeping. Esmerelda with her Doberman on. We headed straight for the elevator bank. I pressed the ‘up’ button and waited. Nothing. Esmerelda pressed it. Crickets.

  ‘Dude,’ she said stepping back, ‘there’s like a swipe under the elevator button.’

  I looked down. She was right. There was another swipe panel. No number pad this time. Damn it! We were in the building but stuck on the ground floor without a swipe card. We had hit an impenetrable figurative and literal brick wall.

  ‘I s’pose we could just take the stairs?’ she said pointing to the stairwell door two metres to the left of the elevators.

  Perhaps impenetrable was too strong a word.

  I prayed the stairwell door was not locked. No lock. Thank you, gods and goddesses. This was going to be my lucky night.

  The stairwell was a lot less glamorous than the elevators. There was no soft lighting, no plush carpeting, no polished mirrors. The lights were covered in hard plastic and looked like they had escaped from an asylum, the stairs were chalk-dry concrete and the walls bare and unpainted.

  ‘Esmerelda,’ I said inhaling concrete dust, ‘remind me to do something about these stairwells.’

  She nodded and tapped the job in. We had completed quite a few of the tasks on the phone list. Plus, I was not in jail. I was pleased, all things considered.

  We stalked past the second floor which housed all the surgical operating suites and a second larger and blander surgical elevator (for transporting patients from surgery on the second floor into recovery on the third floor).

  Nothing would be happening on the second floor, all the surgeons were at the wake. Wait. What if the wake ended and everyone left? What if some of the Sydney Plastics staff came back to work? No. I had approved an all-night open bar of high-end booze. And it was catered. No one was coming back to work tonight. At least not sober. And drunk people made terrible witnesses. Everyone knew that.

  We crept on.

  The third floor housed the luxurious recovery suites where the patients lived while their liposuction swelling abated, their facelift or rhinoplasty bruising reduced, their breast implants settled in and their stitches dissolved.

  The decadent third floor was serviced by the utilitarian fifth floor which housed the kitchens, laundries and well, I could not say specifically what else went on—all the mundane but necessary hotel-type things.

  I lived with a constant curiosity about Richard’s third-floor clients. He sometimes alluded to which CEO, sports star or actor might be getting a little off the nose or a lift, but Richard never named names. He had some ethics. I subconsciously stopped on the third floor and had my hand on the stairwell door handle.

  Esmerelda stood behind me. ‘Dude. What?’

  I buried my tabloid curiosity about door number three down in my psychological cellar, removed my hand and kept climbing.

  When we reached the fourth floor, I cracked the door open. The fourth floor housed all the consult rooms, the surgeons’ offices, administration offices and accounts. Richard’s office was on the fourth floor. I put my eye to the tiny gap between the door and the jamb. Nothing. I carefully pushed the door further in and poked my head out into the vestibule. It was dim and quiet. Happy days.

  We stepped inside.

  Past the elevators was a square-shaped reception-waiting area, two large reception desks mirroring each other at the top of the square. We crept past the elevator doors into the waiting lounge.

  The room had tightly woven cream and black carpet, and light turquoise wallpaper featuring van Gogh’s Almond Blossom. The reception desks were shiny and waist-high. The carpet formed a runway between the two desks and led to the consultation and examination rooms. Past those were the surgeons’ private offices and further still, the administration and accounts offices.

  The more we advanced, the darker it got. I didn’t spend a lot of time at Sydney Plastics. I hoped I knew it well enough to find Richard’s office in the shadows.

  ‘Dude,’ Esmerelda whispered. ‘Are you Corey McKaine?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I turned in the dim light to see Esmerelda face to face with a scruffy-looking man in his mid-twenties. He had shaggy blond hair, a deep tan and a pale three-day growth.

  ‘You totally are Corey McKaine!’ she said excitedly.

  God help me—it was Corey McKaine, Esmerelda’s kryptonite.

  Corey McKaine was a Gold Coast-born world surfing champion, several times over. I knew this because he was also, in his youth (hard to believe that at twenty-eight he was not in his youth), an Olympic gold medal swimmer.

  ‘Like, Corey McKaine, what are you doing here?’

  He pointed to his bandaged face. ‘Deviated septum.’

  No comment. I will not nose-shame a man who makes most of his income from sponsorship deals.

  ‘You got a nose job?’ Esmerelda wanted to know.

  ‘Totally,’ he nodded foggily.

  ‘What the heck are you doing?’ I asked, trying to whack her on the shoulder for emphasis, but missing in the dark and hitting Corey McKaine square in the face.

  ‘Ouch,’ he said mildly. Rhinoplasty hurts. A lot. Clearly Corey McKaine was stoned on painkillers and sleep walking.

  ‘Don’t chat with him!’ I said looking around in a panic. ‘Get him out of here!’

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘Take him back downstairs to the third floor and tuck him into bed. Without being seen!’

  There had to still be staff around. He would not be unattended. And the law of the jungle economy dictated that if there was one customer, there were others. The world did not stop in my absence after all. Even more frightening, Sydney Plastics did not stop in Richard’s absence. He would have been very annoyed.

  I could see by the movement of shadows that Esmerelda was feeling around in the dark for a shoulder to lead the stoned surfer with. A brief rustling indicated she had connected and I heard heavy steps as they made their way to the stairwell door.

  I took two steps into the reception area. I was now standing between the two reception desks. There was a ‘ding’ and suddenly the room behind me was flooded in a rectangle of light. I turned to see Corey McKaine, keycard in hand, finger firmly pressed on the ‘down’ button. Esmerelda, with Corey’s armpit wedged on top of her shoulder, his arm draped around her neck, was caught flat footed, a deer in the elevator headlights.

  ‘Tuck me into bed,’ Corey giggled, eyeballing Esmerelda.

  ‘Dude.’ Her face split in an idiotic grin, her head bobbing ridiculously. ‘Friggin’ Corey McKaine!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I hissed, as she hopped in the elevator with him, ‘it’s Corey McKaine.’

  If we had been busted by Corey McKaine there was little chance at stealth left. I was not then going to bump my way down the corridor in the dark, risking life, limb and
possibly a deviated septum for nothing.

  ‘Give me your phone,’ I whispered as she stood in the elevator with the surfer.

  She looked truly aghast. ‘My phone?’

  ‘Yes, I just want to use the torch app.’

  She hesitated. She was waiting for the elevator doors to close and save her.

  ‘I’ll get you a new one,’ I said, using my best patter.

  Nothing. The doors began to close.

  I quickly cleared my throat. ‘Please.’

  ‘More data storage?’ she pushed. The silver doors began to slide together. I could see Corey McKaine smiling giddily down at her. A cheeky, quizzical look came across his face and his right arm moved.

  ‘Sure. Yes. More data. More whatever. More everything.’ I did not want to walk in the dark. And, despite the current fiasco, I was too frightened of being caught to turn the lights on.

  ‘Deal,’ she said. There was less than a foot left between the closing elevator doors and she threw the phone perfectly before they slid shut. I, however, did not catch it perfectly.

  As the last sliver of light closed in on them, Corey’s right hand moved down to the place I suspected it might move to and there was the distinct sound of nose cartilage being crushed as the elevator doors closed.

  I heard Esmerelda say, ‘Frig you Corey McKaine!’

  Corey McKaine yelped something creative enough to make a trucker blush. He was going to need more painkillers. And more bandages.

  As was Esmerelda’s phone. It flew past me and hit the super hard, white Carrara marble veneer feature wall behind the reception desk. It made the same sound as Corey McKaine’s nose. A kind of bright, cracking noise. I retrieved it. The screen had a new, very large X-shaped crack. However, the torch app still worked. I was happy.

  I shone the phone’s torch light on the carpet and stalked my way up the hall. I found Richard’s office in under two minutes. The door was open. His office was decorated in the same colour palette as the reception area with some additional black and white furnishings. It was reserved, without personality or definitive taste. It was fine.

  There were two black and white bergère fabric chairs facing his desk. His office chair was the high-backed, swivel kind with lumbar support. His desktop was tidy: matching old-fashioned in and out plastic document trays, a laptop computer attached to a larger second screen, a wireless keyboard and mouse, a white potted orchid, a small silver lamp and a clear resin stand neatly stacked with brochures for Botox and Juvéderm. The male and female models on the brochures were impossibly flawless.