by Clare Kauter
“Keep looking at me like that and I’ll chop your dick off with your own teeth.”
“You’ll…” He frowned, trying to figure out how that would work. “What?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You really want to find out?”
He shook his head quickly. Looking tough in front of the others was one thing, but Nat was not the kind of person you wanted to fuck with. She had an air that said she wasn’t joking about what she’d do to him, and I had no doubt it was possible. Not that I ever, ever wanted to find out.
“So, are any of you going to answer our questions about Jake Rogers?”
“Hey, we had nothing to do with that!” said the man-child.
Nat turned her sharp glare on him. “Really.” Her voice was flat. Clearly she wasn’t buying it.
“Really,” he said. “I swear. That lawyer was good. Got Uncle Troy a real short sentence. We all liked him. Plus he didn’t –”
“Dougie!” warned one of the older men in the room who had previously sat silent, cutting the kid off.
“He didn’t what?” I pressed.
Dougie shook his head, not looking at me. Damn it! He’d nearly let something slip. If his babysitter hadn’t been here we could have found out something about Jake.
“Dougie,” said Nat, her voice stern. “What were you going to say about Jake?”
“Nothing,” he said, avoiding eye contact.
“Dougie.”
He shook his head again, finally making eye contact. “We didn’t kill him. That’s all I was going to say. We liked him. Someone’s trying to set us up.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Wouldn’t tell you if we did,” said the babysitter.
“I know you like to deal with things yourself,” I said, “but if you really didn’t do it, we might actually be able to help you.”
“You think we’re going to trust you, Defranco?”
“I’m not going to put the wrong person away,” I said. “If you really did like Jake, and you really didn’t kill him, it’s in your best interest to help us.”
The babysitter thought for a moment. Finally he said, “It’s like Dougie said. We don’t know who killed Jake. We had nothing to do with it. He was a good kid. Someone’s obviously trying to set us up.”
I knew it was probably stupid, but I actually believed him.
“Who? Who would want to frame you? And why would someone try to set you up like this? By stabbing Jake, I mean. Seems like a bit of a round-about way to do this whole thing.”
He shrugged. “How should I know?”
I frowned. I’d believed most of what he said, but I got the distinct impression that he was being dishonest with that last bit. He did know – or at least suspected – who had tried to set his gang up, and why they’d done it in that way. They wanted to send a message. Maybe this first murder was more important than I’d previously thought.
“The guy Spencer killed,” I said. “You think this has something to do with him?”
The babysitter shrugged. “No idea.”
Yep. Definitely lying. Interesting. Something told me we needed to look into the murder that had landed Spencer in jail. I glanced at Nat, who raised her eyebrows at me. She’d come to the same conclusion. I tipped my head towards the door and she nodded. She was ready to go. It was kind of impressive that we could communicate so well without speaking when we’d been working together for such a short time.
Back in the car, nipples intact, I recalled for the first time in hours what I’d been told about Nat the night before. With my worry about Eric and then Spencer and his crew, my mind had been occupied with other things. Now that those were out of the way, the rumour about Nat and Adam Baxter floated back to the surface. Could it be true?
Well, at least part of it was a lie. Nat wasn’t bad at working cases. That was just Bruno being bitter or threatened by her or something. No, she knew what she was doing. Her technique might be different from mine, relying more on intimidation than sweet talking people, but it worked. She was a good PI stuck working crappy cases because Bruno didn’t like her.
But if she was with Adam Baxter…
Argh. I liked Nat, but if she was dating that guy I didn’t think I’d be able to ignore it. Not after what he’d put me through. I didn’t want it to be true. But why would Bruno and the others make that up? It would explain why Bruno was such a dick to Nat despite his obvious crush on her. He was jealous that she was with someone else.
Maybe I should ask her about it. She was sitting in the seat beside me, typing notes on her phone as I drove us back to the office. A simple question. Find out one way or the other. Better than waiting for her to bring it up.
No, that was insane. What was I thinking? Even if they were together, it was probably meant to be a secret. Worst kept secret in history, but what did you expect when you worked in an office full of PIs? I obviously couldn’t say anything.
“Coffee?” asked Nat.
“What?” I said quickly. Too quickly.
She frowned. “Coffee,” she said more slowly. “I’m placing an order. You want one?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, too distracted to even think to ask her more about this ‘placing an order for coffee’ business. Was there a place near the office that delivered? If so, why hadn’t I been told the second I’d returned to Sydney? That sounded amazing!
She typed something into her phone and I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but I kept accidentally glancing back towards her, wondering about her and Adam Baxter. She caught me looking and I turned away quickly, kicking myself. What the hell was I doing? Did I think I’d be able to see who she was dating if I looked at her long enough? God, first I saw a ghost in a car park, next I was trying to become a psychic.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
I hesitated for a second. I could just ask. It was the perfect opening, really. I could calmly and rationally explain what I’d been told the night before, and she could tell me whether it was true or not. I’d have answers.
I didn’t ask.
“Nope,” I said. “Nothing wrong. Just glad to be heading back to the office with all my nipples.”
“Right,” she said, and turned back to her phone.
She definitely knew I was lying.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Natalia
Billy had started acting weird again. What exactly was his problem? He seemed to be calmer when he was talking to a convicted murderer who’d once threatened him with a meat cleaver than he was when alone with me. Maybe Bruno’s Here’s Why We Hate Nat speech the night before had gotten to Billy after all. Oh well. Another one bites the dust.
We walked back into the office, passing Ella at the front desk on the way in. I didn’t bother saying hello to her, but Billy, whose need to be liked was almost pathological, smiled and waved. Guess he’d forgiven her for being related to Bruno, then. I suppose it wasn’t technically her fault that she was his cousin, but I was surprised Billy had recovered from that news so quickly. He must really like her.
He stopped to chat and I continued to the office, plonking down in my desk chair and moving my mouse to wake up my computer. I’d already emailed my notes to myself from my phone, so I opened them up and added them to a folder with other information from the case. Billy still wasn’t back by the time I finished that, so I decided to get to work on the lead we’d picked up. This murder had something to do with Spencer’s stabbing. The men we’d spoken to today might not have done it, but they definitely thought it had something to do with the guy who’d ended up dead at Spencer’s hand. I figured that looking up the murder he’d been convicted of couldn’t hurt.
I wasn’t able to dig up as much info as I would have liked about it. What I did find was all very general, and I couldn’t even find the name of the murder victim. I tried calling Bobby to ask him about it, but he didn’t answer so I left a message. Why was there so little information about this case? It seemed o
dd how few details had made it to the press. Then again, everything about this case seemed odd.
Finally Billy returned to the office.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I was telling her what footage we needed her to look for in the archives. To see if we could spot anyone suspicious near the beach on the morning Jake was murdered.”
“Right,” I said. I was sure he had been asking her about the footage, but I doubted his discussion with her was entirely about work. He liked her. Even despite the Bruno thing. His mistake.
There was a knock at the office door.
“Come in,” I called. The door swung open and Adam Baxter walked in carrying a tray of coffee.
Adam was a tall guy, slim but muscly with brown skin and dark hair that was a little curly. Today he wore tight black jeans (as per usual) and a blue knit jumper. I say he wore them. More like modelled them. He could have stepped straight out of the pages of a magazine. Even in real life he looked like he’d been airbrushed. Not only did he appear to have been engineered in a lab, he was also possibly the smartest person I’d ever met, with degrees in law and medicine. He was also an arsehole. Luckily he was the same kind of arsehole as me, so we clicked.
His stern demeanour combined with his general air of being slightly too beautiful for this world made most people a little wary of him. Even Billy, I noticed, shied away when he walked into the room. Just for a second, I could see panic in Billy’s eyes and then it disappeared. I guess he was nervous having the boss around on his second day back at work.
“Hey,” said Adam, smiling at me. He was super serious most of the time, but occasionally he pulled out a grin that was so warm it was impossible not to return it.
“Hi,” I replied, grinning.
He looked around the tiny, dim room. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, eyeing a browned apple core slowly shrivelling up on my desk.
“What can I say? I’m a homemaker.”
“How long have you been in here now?”
“Three months.”
He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. This room isn’t big enough for one person, let alone two of you,” he said. “Why don’t you just head to the cafe down the road and do your work there? They have free wifi. You could just get Ella to do your research for you on her computer and email it to you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I think that might be against the rules.”
“Promise I won’t fire you for it,” he said.
I shrugged. Adam might not have sacked me over it, but I wasn’t so sure about the others, and I didn’t want to give Bruno or Drew anything they could use against me. I was already on shaky ground with the whole ‘breaking Bruno’s nose’ thing. Not showing up to the office might be the thing that tipped the balance and landed me out on my arse. Of course, I hadn’t told Adam about the managers’ quest to get rid of me, not wanting him to intervene. That would only make things a thousand times worse. But I’d all but promised I’d tell him about it when we’d been talking on the phone. Argh.
I nodded at the tray of drinks he was holding. “You’d better have gotten my order right.”
“Of course,” he said. His face grew more serious now, and I could tell that he’d noticed the change of subject. I swallowed. I really didn’t want to have to explain all this to him. Was there some way I could squirm out of it? “And don’t think I don’t know you made me order a peppermint mochaccino on coconut milk with two sugars and hazelnut syrup just so that the barista would hate me forever. Thank god I had Billy’s order to cancel it out.”
He turned to Billy and gave him a smile. Billy returned a fake smile of his own as Adam handed him the huge cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” he said, looking away. Wow. He was way more nervous about Adam being here than I would have expected.
Adam handed a cup to me, then took his own out of the cardboard tray and put the tray in the recycling. I looked down at the cup he’d handed me, frowning. It was a proper reusable travel mug, not just a disposable one. And it was printed all over with…
“What’s this?”
“A gift,” said Adam. “You guys can keep them.”
“I thought you were joking about the dinosaur tutu thing,” I said, staring down at the mug covered with various varieties of dinosaur in ties and business attire and chef’s hats and hoodies and ugg boots.
“Why would I make something like that up?”
“Why would something like that exist?”
He sighed. “Long story.”
“I need to hear it. I’m sure Billy would like to hear it as well.” I glanced over at Billy, who was sitting at his desk looking a little stunned and not entirely with us. “Wouldn’t you Billy?”
“What?” he said, looking up at me.
“Say yes.”
He frowned. “Yes?”
I looked back at Adam. “See?”
He shook his head at me and sat on top of a low filing cabinet pushed up against the wall. This room wasn’t big enough for extra chairs.
He sighed. “It’s merch for a game. Dungeons and Dinosaurs. My brother and one of our friends came up with it.”
“Dungeons and Dinosaurs?” I repeated.
He nodded. “You paint toy dinosaurs and…” He shook his head like even he couldn’t believe how ridiculous this all was. “They go on dates while prepping for the end of the world.”
“That’s… the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yep,” he agreed. “But it’s starting to gain a bit of a following, hence the merchandise. You’re welcome for the cup, by the way.”
I frowned. “How did they come up with the idea for this game? And why?”
He paused for a second, and I could tell that he was wondering whether he should tell me.
“I wasn’t expecting that to be such a tricky question.”
He sighed. “They broke into a meth lab and needed a cover story.”
My eyebrows rose. “Gotta admit, that’s not where I thought this tale was going. Your friend and brother sound like very interesting people.”
“They’re like a walking panic attack.” I snorted with laughter. He nodded at my cup. “Anyway, don’t let your disgusting drink go cold. Not after what I had to endure ordering it.”
I took a sip. Delicious. Adam didn’t know what he was talking about. I nodded towards him as he took a sip of his own drink.
“And what’s your coffee that’s apparently so superior to mine?”
He half smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“I bet it’s a latte. Pumpkin spice.”
He visibly shuddered and choked slightly on the sip he was swallowing. “Please don’t say that word,” he croaked.
My eyes widened. I’d never seen Adam so flustered as he’d seemed in that moment. A shudder? And a choke? He might as well have screamed and ripped off his clothes for the scene he’d just made.
“What word? Pump–”
“Don’t,” he warned.
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” I shook my head. “Does this have something to do with your brother? Or your walking panic attack friend?”
He nodded. “The friend. And her mother. Her terrifying, terrifying mother.” His eyes grew distant and I made a mental note to give him the details of my therapist. “It was just meant to be a barbecue. I was not prepared for that level of carnage.”
I frowned at him, concerned. “Are you OK?”
He nodded and finally seemed to come back to reality. “Fine,” he said, giving me a tight smile. “Things would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t had the blowtorch.”
I paused, momentarily stunned into silence. In what possible situation would adding a blowtorch improve things?
“This friend sounds kind of intense.”
He breathed out, half laughing. “You have no idea.”
He and I both took a sip of our coffee, unsure how to continue the conversation. I glanced over at Billy, but he app
eared to be off in his own world once again.
What was the deal with him today?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Billy
Confirmed. One hundred percent confirmed. Not a single doubt in my mind. The Natam (Adalia?) ship was sailing. Nat and Adam. I’d never seen either of them smile like that before. Ever. Bruno was right. They were definitely banging. Damn it! There were two people I liked at the office, Nat and Ella, and now I couldn’t trust either of them. Just my luck.
And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the whole thing. What was up with Adam? He’d walked in and handed me a coffee like nothing was wrong between us. Oh hi, Billy. Here’s a coffee. Keep the mug. By the way, how was the year in hell I caused you purely because of my own pettiness?
I was so distracted I couldn’t even concentrate on what he and Nat were discussing. I thought I heard something about dinosaurs and blowtorches, but obviously I’d misheard. That would’ve been ridiculous.
Out the corner of my ear (yes, I know that’s not something people say but I was distraught so shut up), I heard Nat’s phone ring. “I need to take this,” she said to Adam. “Go annoy Billy for a while.”
I was immediately hit with an overwhelming feeling of nausea.
“Bobby,” said Nat, answering her phone. “Need a little info from you.”
While she was talking to Bob, presumably about the murder Spencer had been convicted of, Adam stood and walked over to me. He’d only been about two steps away, but when he sat on a box filled with files next to my desk, I could no longer ignore him and pretend I was working instead of interacting with him. I took another sip of my drink to fuel myself – noticing for the first time that it was actually a pretty decent coffee – and turned to him, fixing a smile on my face so he wouldn’t know anything was wrong.
When I turned to look at him, he pulled back ever so slightly. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
“Nothing. What? I’m fine. Nothing wrong. Why would there be anything wrong?”
“You’re grimacing.” He glanced at my cup. “You don’t like the coffee?”
