by Clare Kauter
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I commented.
Natalia’s eyes flicked back to mine. “I think I just have.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Natalia
Billy turned to see what I was looking at and then faced me again, frowning.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” I asked quietly, although the look on his face already said as much.
He nodded. “Yeah. I was far away and the light wasn’t the best when I first saw him – plus I only really saw him in profile – but looking at him now, yep. That’s him.”
“They look similar, he and Jake,” I agreed. I stood and Billy raised his eyebrows. “Coming?”
He sighed. “We can’t finish our coffees first?”
I rolled my eyes and stalked off towards our ghost. Billy followed me, cup of coffee in hand.
“But we don’t even know what’s going on!” Billy hissed in protest, hurrying along beside me and trying his best not to spill any of his drink. “Shouldn’t we at least formulate a theory before we confront them?”
I rolled my eyes. “Billy, Martha’s favourite barista is making out with our dead guy’s brother. I think we’ve got a pretty strong reason to question them even if we don’t have a fully formed theory.”
“We don’t have any theory!”
“Sure,” I replied, “but they don’t know that. Just follow my lead.”
I strode right up to Azita and Roy, who were a little distracted mashing each other’s tongues to notice us, and tapped Roy on the shoulder. They sprang apart and Roy turned to look at me, a blush and look of panic spreading across his face.
“Oh, shit…” he breathed.
“Yep,” I said. “Pretty much what I was thinking. You got anything to say for yourselves?”
“Roy? What’s going on?” asked the barista.
“They’re the private investigators,” he said, and her eyes grew wide.
“Oh.”
“We can explain,” said Roy quickly. “Please – I – just let me tell you everything.”
I glanced at Billy and raised my eyebrows. See? We didn’t even need a theory. They were going to explain everything for us. He narrowed his eyes at me and shook his head slightly. I turned back to the couple. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s head back over to our table so I can drink my coffee while you guys tell me all about it.”
We sat at the table and I mopped up my spilled coffee with a napkin before picking up the cup and taking a sip of the sugary goodness. Mmm. So sweet you could barely even taste the gross coffee flavour underneath. (I really don’t get the appeal of coffee. Or, as I call it, hot bean juice.)
“Well?” I said once we were all sitting down. “You’d better hurry up and explain.”
They looked at each other, still unsure.
“Our client is going to be very interested to hear about this,” said Billy. “Of course, I can’t tell you her identity, but I suspect the two of you already know who hired us.”
Roy sighed. “I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “I know what we did was wrong, but – but –”
“We just didn’t have the cash, and we didn’t know what to do,” Azita said.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Billy suggested, giving them a comforting smile. I stifled an eye-roll. Typical Billy, always being nice to people. Except, I recalled, Adam when he saw him yesterday. There had definitely been something weird going on there. I needed to find out what that was about. But that could wait. For now, I needed to focus on the case we’d been hired to investigate.
“OK,” said Roy, his arm around Azita while she sniffled beside him, teary. “Well, we, uh…” He swallowed. “We wanted to find out who murdered my brother.”
“We gathered that,” I said.
“The police didn’t do their jobs properly,” Roy continued. “They had one suspect and he turned out to be in jail. They barely spent any time on it because they didn’t like that my brother defended the people the cops tried to put away.”
“We don’t know that, Roy,” said Azita, stroking his arm.
“Why else would they do such a shitty job?”
“They’re just really not that great at solving murders,” I said. “It probably wasn’t anything personal.”
“Right,” said Roy, looking a little confused. “Well, um, when the police didn’t manage to find who’d done it, I decided to hire a PI to look into it. I googled the best private detectives in Sydney and came up with your company, but I didn’t have the money. Not even close.”
“He’s a student,” said Azita. “I don’t make that much money at my job, either. We tried to save, but we were worried that if we waited until we had all the money, the trail would have gone cold and whoever we hired wouldn’t be able to find the person who’d done it.”
Roy nodded. “Yeah. And then one day I was meeting Azita here and I overheard some lady tell her all about how she believed in ghosts and thought she could sometimes sense her friend nearby.”
“And you decided to trick an old woman to save on cash?” I said.
Billy gave me a look of disbelief. “Nat…”
“Why are you sticking up for them?” I asked. “This is your future wife they’re extorting.”
“We didn’t have any other option!” said Roy. “We felt bad about it, but what could we do? The cops weren’t going to keep investigating the murder and my brother’s killer was going to walk free. What would you have done?”
“I would have investigated it myself,” I said.
“Well, I… Yeah, OK, but I couldn’t do that.”
“So since you know Martha’s morning routine of walking along the beach, you decided to accost her and tell her to hire a PI to investigate the murder.”
Roy shrugged. “I figured I looked enough like my brother to pull it off,” he said. “It worked, didn’t it?” He glanced at Billy. “I tell you what, when you spotted me in the car park yesterday I figured I was done for.”
“I didn’t get a good enough look at you to recognise you,” said Billy. “Where did you hide when I nearly caught up to you?”
“I crawled under a car.”
Billy raised his eyebrows. “I guess that makes sense,” he said.
“Why did you risk coming back here?” I asked. “You know Martha comes here every morning. Weren’t you worried she’d recognise you?”
He shrugged. “Not really. She thought she saw a ghost. She wouldn’t be looking for a person.”
“Seems risky,” I said. “Maybe don’t return to the scene of your crime next time. You’ll be less likely to get found out.”
“I –”
“Tell us about what happened on the beach,” Billy said, trying to smooth things over. Like always.
Roy shrugged. “You probably already know most of it. I just went down to the beach one morning when it was kind of foggy and spoke to that lady, Martha. She was so nice,” he said. “I really do feel bad about what I did, but I need to know who killed my brother.”
“Well, if you ever raise the funds to hire us for yourselves, let us know,” I said.
Roy looked crestfallen as he and Azita hugged. I glanced at Billy and saw him watching them with pity. I rolled my eyes. Of course he was. Billy was so susceptible to emotional manipulation I could probably make him cry with a glare. Then again, I could do that to most people. I was special like that.
A little further down the road, I noticed a mop of blue hair bobbing along towards us. “Ah, and here our client comes, just in time for us to dob you in.”
Azita started bawling once again. What was up with her? She was going to shrivel up like a mummy from the dehydration if she kept going.
“Billy! Nat!” Martha called as she got a little closer. Her brow wrinkled as she noticed Azita sitting at the table in tears. Then she pressed a hand to her chest when Roy looked at her. “Oh! My goodness.”
“Told you she’d recognise you,” I said to Roy, resisting the urge to poke my tongue
out. I turned to Martha. “We found your ghost, Martha. This is your barista’s boyfriend, who also happens to be the stabbing victim’s brother. He didn’t have the money to hire a PI so he decided to pretend to be a ghost to trick you into hiring us.”
“I’m so sorry,” Azita sobbed. “We just – we couldn’t afford to hire them ourselves and…” She dissolved into tears once more.
“We feel really terrible about what we did,” said Roy, to his credit seeming genuinely sorrowful. “It’s just… well, I need to know what happened to my brother. I’m so sorry. We shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know what I was thinking. We’ll pay you back any money you’ve already spent. I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, you poor things!” said Martha. I sighed. Great. She was as much of a softie as Billy. “That’s awful. Simply awful. Please, don’t be silly. You don’t have to pay me anything.” She looked at Billy and me. “You two have done excellent work solving this particular mystery, and now I would like you to keep investigating the murder.”
“Seriously?” I said.
“Nat,” Billy said, glaring at me.
“Martha, you realise they –”
“I understand,” she said. “They made a mistake, but obviously they didn’t have any other options. I forgive them, and now I’d like to help them.”
“Of course,” said Billy. “We’ve already got a few different leads we’re looking into. We’ll see what we can turn up.”
I held my tongue.
Roy gushed his thanks to Martha and Azita ran off to make her a coffee immediately. I stood and nodded my head to a spot a distance away where Billy and I could talk privately.
“This is unbelievable,” I said when we were alone.
He rolled his eyes. “You were being too harsh on them.”
“That’s kind of an awful thing to do. You thought so yesterday, too.”
He sighed. “I still kind of think that, but it was a decent plan. I guess I’m just a little impressed with them. And pleased that I’m not going crazy.”
“Ah,” I said. “Now the real reason comes out.”
He smiled. “The case is a lot neater now that we’re just looking for a murderer and not the ghost of the victim as well.”
“I guess so.” I swallowed. “Billy, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
I thought I saw a flash of panic in his eyes before his usual calm facade settled over his features. “Yeah?”
“What I said before. About getting rid of Bruno. I meant it.” He said nothing. “Not in a murder way,” I added quickly.
He smiled, though I wasn’t convinced by it. “I didn’t think you were going to kill him,” he said. “Well, I look forward to working in an office that’s Bruno-less. Anyway, I might jog home and have a shower. Meet you back at the office?”
I frowned at his back as he jogged away. I’d expected Billy to ask what I meant when I said I wanted to get rid of Bruno. The way he reacted – instantly changing the subject – it was like he really thought I was going to kill him. He’d hurried off before I’d had the chance to tell him what I meant. Why had he reacted so weirdly? I’d been kind of counting on getting his help with this whole internal investigation thing. I wasn’t having any luck on my own, and I could only blow off Adam for so long. Maybe Billy just didn’t like getting his hands dirty. Or maybe he didn’t want to risk ruining things with Ella. I groaned. How could I convince him to help me?
I’d managed to avoid talking about my suspicions about Bruno and the others with Adam the night before. Instead we’d talked about Maggie, who texted me pretty much the second I got home. Adam helped me craft an inordinate number of puns in order to woo her. Honestly, he was a lot better at punning than I’d have expected. When I commented, his nose wrinkled in disgust and he said, “My walking panic attack friend makes puns constantly. I think she might have rubbed off on me.” He seemed truly disgusted by the notion.
“So you could call her… a walking pun-ic attack.”
He shut his eyes and shook his head slightly, the look of distaste still lingering on his lips, although I could have sworn I saw the hint of a smile there too.
The puns clearly did the trick, because Maggie was following me on Instagram by the end of the night. Adam helped me do my makeup (that guy has the steadiest hand you’ve ever seen – my winged eyeliner had never been so even) and set up my lamps to give me the best lighting so I could post a hot selfie. Maggie was the first to like it. I was so in.
Then she asked me on a date. For the very next night.
Yep.
So in.
I did try to ask Adam about his love life too, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. From the way he’d spoken about her, I suspected it had something to do with Pun-ic Attack, but I let it go.
Adam hadn’t pushed me for details about what I thought was happening at the office, and I guessed that was because he figured my curiosity over Billy would cause me to crack and tell him sooner rather than later. He was right. That’s why I needed Billy to help me find out what the other PIs were up to, and why I wanted his opinion on whether he thought a Baxter & Co. employee could have been involved with the recent burglaries at buildings secured by our company. I needed his second opinion before I was confident enough to tell Adam Baxter my suspicions.
Adam and I were friends, but I still didn’t want to make a total idiot of myself if it turned out there was nothing to this and I’d just imagined it because I hated the people I worked with. I needed to make sure I wasn’t being totally crazy before I took it to him. It wasn’t just my reputation as an investigator on the line. These were big accusations. You didn’t tell your company’s second in command that his business was rife with corruption and responsible for multitudinous crimes without some serious evidence. Of which I had none. At least if I had Billy backing me up, I had something. From what Adam had said, he respected Billy’s skill as an investigator. I figured Billy would give what I said more weight. If he agreed with me, that is.
In the meantime, I was keeping my suspicions to myself. The evening before had been fun, but the undertone was slightly tense. I could see Adam wanted me to tell him what I was keeping from him. And I would. When Billy confirmed that I wasn’t imagining it. And once Billy helped me with that, I’d find out all about his past.
Of course, Billy wouldn’t know that last bit, but what’s a little secret among friends?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Billy
Once I’d eaten some oats (with blueberries and cinnamon) for breakfast and showered, I climbed in Bazza and headed for the office. When I walked in, Ella stopped me as I passed her desk.
“You coming again tonight?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Again?” I asked. “Do you guys ever just have a night in?”
She crossed her arms. “Well, I guess if you don’t want to hang out with me you don’t have to come.”
I half-smiled and sighed. “I really don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Of course you do,” she said. “Come tonight or break my heart.”
“Sure, that would be a choice,” I said. “If I were a monster. But I’m not, so I’ll see you there.”
She grinned. “Good,” she said. “Hey, you should invite Nat. She never comes when I ask her, but maybe she will if you do.”
I raised my eyebrows, surprised that Ella would even think to invite Nat. And what would the others think if Natalia showed up to their nightly bitch-fest? “Uh, I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Just try?” she said, pouting. “For me?”
I smiled. “How could I say no to a request like that?”
When I walked into the office, Nat was studying a file on her desk.
“Look at this,” she said without so much as glancing at me. I crossed the room to her (which took roughly 0.001 seconds) and peered over her shoulder.
“Jesus, Nat!” I said. “Can I have a content warning next time?”
She looked at me an
d raised her eyebrows. “What? You’ve never seen pictures of a dead body before?”
“I have, but only when I’m expecting it. And not usually this early in the morning.”
She shook her head at me, as if she couldn’t believe I was so weak. “You’ve been up for hours. You can deal with this.”
I sighed, rolling my eyes, and after steeling myself for a moment looked back down at the pictures she had spread out over her desk. Pictures of Jake Rogers’s body, stabbed and covered in blood, lying on the otherwise pristine sands of Bondi Beach. I wondered how they’d cleaned the space up. Had they carted the sand away? Poured water over it? Or just kind of mixed it around until the blood wasn’t so obvious?
“Why are we looking at these?” I asked. She pointed to a couple of the pictures on the left side of her desk and I looked closer. They weren’t Jake, I realised. That victim was lying on concrete. “The guy Spencer killed?” I guessed.
She nodded. “Jason McDonald,” she said. “I looked up everything I could about him, but so far I don’t have much. Eighteen years old. The only connection I could find was that he used to go to school with Spencer’s nephew, Dougie. According to a couple of the teachers they weren’t friends.”
“You don’t think Dougie could have recruited him to work for Spencer?” I said. “Something went wrong so he topped him?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. I don’t know. I looked into his family, but none of them have criminal records. Watched some interviews with them. They just seemed sad. Not angry. Can’t see them stabbing the lawyer.”
I was impressed. “You’ve been busy.”
“You just took forever to have your shower and get back here,” she countered. “I did a normal amount of work for the time I had.”
She sounded a little terser than normal. OK, she was annoyed with me. Why? Because I ran away from her earlier? I mean, yeah, in hindsight I could see why that might be offensive, but what did she expect after what she’d said? I decided to just let it go.
“So what’s the plan now?” I asked.
