The Agatha Christie Book Club

by Larmer, C. A.

  Well into her 50s, Maria wore her thick, dyed auburn hair in long, wild curls, and plastered her face with a gelatinous coat of foundation, the type that implores you to play naughts and crosses with your nails.

  ‘Oh, I got a treat for you, Roxy,’ she said, clasping her bejeweled hands together, prayer-like in front, ‘and I need it done fast.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Well then, let’s get straight to it.’ She reached for a file marked ‘Heather Jackson, Artist’ and flung it across her sparkly glass desk towards Roxy. ‘You’ve no doubt heard of this one. One of Australia’s top modern artists. She’s super private and, as far as the rumors go, a complete fuckin’ cow. But I’ve scored an interview and I want you to do it.’

  Roxy flipped through the file. A selection of old press clippings had been placed inside, along with a black and white print, autographed, and a tattered leaflet which read, ‘Sydney Art Gazette Annual Competition, 1989’.

  ‘Why me?’ Roxy asked, surprised.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, for starters, I know very little about art.’

  ‘So improvise.’

  ‘Why not use your art writer?’

  Maria sighed heavily. ‘Because I’m giving you a bloody break. Do you want the job or not?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Deep down, though, Roxy wondered what the woman was up to. She wasn’t in the habit of doing Roxy any favors. Besides, it wasn’t her style to commission the good stories out, especially when she had one of the best editorial teams in the country assembled right under her oily brown nose. Roxy smelt a rat, but didn’t push the matter further. Ten years as a freelance writer had taught her that. You just take the job and run.

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ Maria said as she adjusted a collection of gold chains that had lost themselves in her cleavage. ‘All the info you need’s in the folder. Thursday seems to work well for Heather. You give me a time and a place and I’ll set it all up. Too bloody easy if you ask me.’

  They chatted for a bit longer before Maria started playing with her watch and, getting the hint, Roxy closed the folder and got to her feet. ‘I’ll give you a call this arvo to talk time and money.’

  Maria pushed her eyebrows together. ‘What? You want some friggin’ dosh for this?’

  Roxy just laughed as she saw herself out.

  Chapter 2: A Threatening Note

  ‘Hey, Parker is that you?’

  ‘No Max, it’s your Fairy Godmother. You called me, remember?’

  ‘Oh cut the sarcasm,’ came a deep, raspy voice on the other end, ‘I’m still trying to work my remote dial on my new smartphone. Smart my ass. So, what you up to?’

  ‘Just been running some errands.’ Roxy plucked her own phone from its perch by the gearbox and placed it to her ear. ‘How was your date?’

  Max Farrell groaned loudly and Roxy couldn’t help a chuckle. She had little sympathy for the guy, he brought it upon himself. ‘Too gorgeous for his own good,’ she’d heard both men and women say of him and, reluctantly, agreed. While not exactly handsome, Max had that relaxed, couldn’t-care-less look that lured women in droves: thick, tousled hair, baggy, surf-style clothes, and a smile that came easily, creasing up his entire face, so that it seemed he’d never heard anything so hilarious in his life. And that, coupled with his decidedly fashionable occupation (photographer) made him quite a favorite with the hip, inner-city crowd.

  In fact, it was while working at a celebrity press conference two years earlier that the two first met. The conference had been a bit of a scrum, photographers and journalists vying for the limited attention of some visiting Hollywood starlet. Amidst the frenzy, Roxy had remained up the back, disinterested in the whole affair, and Max admired her indifference and the fact that she didn’t try to win him over as most women did, and so they became instant friends.

  ‘I gather she left empty-handed, so to speak,’ Roxy baited.

  ‘Quite the contrary, she borrowed my jacket and I forgot to get it back.’

  ‘So now you’ve got to see her again.’

  ‘Arrrgggh.’

  Clutching the phone to her shoulder with one ear, she maneuvered the gears and steering wheel of her navy blue VW Golf around a tight bend, then grabbed it back up and let out another chuckle.

  ‘That’s called karma, Max.’

  ‘No, Parker, it’s called manipulation, she did it on purpose.’

  ‘Desperate to see you again?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Oh give me a break. Just call her up and ask her to send it back.’

  ‘It’s a leather jacket, not a letter.’

  ‘Okay, then get her to drop it in to your agency and make damn sure you’re not there when she does.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, good idea! You’re a bloody genius, I knew there was a reason I adored you.’

  Roxy pulled her car into an empty spot in the curb outside her apartment block in the inner eastern suburb of Elizabeth Bay and cut the engine. ‘That and the fact that we’ve never bonked so you don’t have to try to avoid me. Anyway, I’m home now, gotta go.’

  ‘We’re still on for Thursday?’

  ‘We’re always on for Thursday, you know that. Oh, by the way...’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘You haven’t sent me any stupid messages lately have you?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Oh never mind, bloody junk mail, you know how it is. Alright, Maxy, I’ll see you later.’

  She hung up and slipped the phone into her handbag, unlocked the car door, got out and then quickly relocked it. With her keys still firmly in hand, she marched across the pavement to an old brick building that had been painted white too many seasons ago. She looked around swiftly then let herself in. At the mailbox for apartment 8A she tapped on the door several times and, determining that it was hollow, turned away and scurried up four flights of stairs.

  Inside the apartment Roxy deadbolted the door, placed her keys and phone on the mantelpiece and then headed straight for the fridge. She was famished. Unfortunately (typically!), she was also out of food. She reached for a bottle of water and swigged several mouthfuls, then returned to the living room and dialed Wanton Thai Takeaway.

  ‘Timmy? Hi it’s Roxy Parker...Yeah, very hungry!...Yep, yep, the usual. Oh and tofu, not chicken, I’m trying to have at least one meat-free day a week...Okay, then. Thanks, Tim...Huh?...Oh, 20 minutes is fine. Bye.’ She hung up.

  The mantelpiece clock said it was just past 2pm and Roxy moved towards the large glass window that faced the bay beyond to drink in a view that never ceased to satiate. She noted that a few sailboarders were out braving the cold and shivered on their behalf, then strolled into the sunroom.

  Roxy adored her small apartment despite its size and mostly because she had it all to herself. The walls were whitewashed and chipping in places but she liked the chips, they gave it character and spoke of a life lived within. It was just one bedroom, but the living area was spacious enough and opened out onto a sundrenched deck that had been glassed in on three sides so that you could enjoy it all year round. In this room she had placed an old rustic red cedar table that served as her desk and, upon it, rested a small laptop, printer and files. There was also a thick glass vase brimming with wilting tulips and she scooped it up, returning to the kitchen to extract the dead stems and replenish the water before depositing it back on the office desk. After that she watered her ferns, checked her voice mail and logged online.

  As Roxy waited for the computer to whir into action, she pulled off her long boots, jeans and jacket, and changed into an old blue sweater, gray tracksuit and woolly socks. Winter was still officially a month away, but the chill had set up camp early and Roxy couldn’t have been happier. Summer was fine for those who liked to spread themselves like barbequed chooks on a beach somewhere. For Roxy, with her fair complexion and inability to sit still (let alone lie somewhere half-naked), it was all SPF 30, over-sized ha
ts and waiting anxiously for sundown.

  A faint ‘doodle-oo’ announced the arrival of some emails and Roxy slipped back into the office, piling her long legs up beneath her on the chair and clicked on ‘Open’. There was a note marked ‘Only Your Mother’ and she shook her head irritably before opening it.

  ‘Hello, darling. Remember me? Please call, want to catch up. Mum.’

  She trashed it. Mum would have to wait, she had bigger fish to fry. She scrolled down the inbox, past a stream of junk mail which would eventually need erasing, until she got to a letter marked ‘Warning!’. She felt her mouth go dry and double clicked.

  ‘Attention Roxy Parker,’ it began. ‘Have a nice trip? Today was just a warning. Give up the story – ITS (sic) NOT WORTH IT!!!’

  The message had arrived two hours earlier and was unsigned, the return address marked to a Hotmail account with the initials AIL. She wondered if it was traceable, and wished she knew what the hell it was referring to. It was the second threat in two days and she recalled smirking at the first, assuming the sender was Max. Now she was almost certain it was not.

  Retrieving the original message for another look, she read it aloud: ‘This is a warning. Don’t do the story and live to tell the tail (sic).’ She recalled the morning’s push and a bright pink blush swept across her face. Who was doing this to her? What did they want? And, more importantly, which story could they possibly be referring to?

  Roxy chewed her lower lip for a few minutes and then moved her cursor to the ‘Reply’ symbol, clicked, then typed the words, ‘What is this about?’ She double clicked and waited for the email to disappear from her screen, her heart now somewhere near her feet. Then she had a thought. She counted to five, drew in a deep breath and clicked on the ‘Send/Receive’ button. Within seconds, there it was, a message from the Mail Delivery Subsystem marked, ‘Returned Mail: See transcript for details’. She exhaled. Damn it. Her message had not got through. Either AIL at the hotmail address no longer existed or it had some kind of Smart Screen software attached. This was one of those fancy new technologies that enabled you to screen your emails and disallow any ‘foreign’ messages. Well, she figured, it was to be expected. But she did have one more option.

  Roxy picked up her phone and located the morning’s text: ‘Be at my office by 10am. No later. VERY important. Oliver Horowitz’ She emitted a loud groan. It wasn’t Oliver’s style, why hadn’t she spotted that? He wouldn’t have bothered spelling out all the words—‘B at office’ and ‘l8r’ were more his style—nor would he have signed his full name. There was one other glaring clue. The text originated from a number she didn’t recognize, certainly not one of Oliver’s. She shook her head at herself. Clumsy!

  Not yet defeated, the writer’s thumb went to work on her own smartphone, locating the foreign number and pressing the ‘Call’ button. After many rings it answered, sending a shot of adrenaline through her body, but it was just one of those recorded messages alerting her to the fact that the number was no longer connected. How surprising. She relaxed again and made a note of the message in a file marked ‘Viruses’, adding the two email messages by cutting and pasting them onto the page.

  Roxy sat back in her chair for a few minutes trying to think. Who ever had sent those messages was no fool. They had managed to erase their tracks. But then, Roxy was no fool, either. Nor was she completely empty handed. She glared at the Hotmail email address again: AIL. She assumed they were someone’s initials, but perhaps they were a business name? Feeling increasingly exasperated, Roxy logged off and began scrolling through a folder marked ‘Ongoing Stories’ to see if anything leapt out at her. There was a feature she’d just completed for Cosmo on the joys of being single but wondered who, short of a marriage celebrant, could take offense with that? Then there was the biography she was writing for Mrs Musgrave but so far the well-known socialite’s life has been as riveting as a game of her treasured Mahjong. The only other alternative was the story Maria had handed her that morning, the interview with an artist not accustomed to giving interviews. Surely that was little more than harmless PR?

  ‘Besides, I haven’t even started that yet!’ Roxy moaned, leaning back in her chair and staring with glazed eyes out at the ferns. Eventually, she conceded that the likeliest option was the Musgrave biography. Perhaps old Beattie did have a few skeletons amongst the twin sets in her wardrobe. She made a note to look into it and then, in the ‘Viruses’ folder jotted down a quick description of the man she thought had pushed her that morning while it was still fresh in her mind: ‘Fattish, hairy (greasy ponytail?), dark clothes. Shorter than me. Unfamiliar. Determined.’ The doorbell buzzed and she clicked the file shut before dashing to the speaker. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Wanton Thai,’ came a voice at the other end.

  ‘I’ll be right down!’ She slipped black sandshoes over her socks and fetched some notes from her wallet. Through the smudged glass door of the lobby, Roxy could just make out a small, black-headed figure holding something white, and she opened the door swiftly.

  ‘Ahhh hello Missis Roxy.’ A young Thai boy beamed as he thrust a bag of food towards her.

  ‘Hi Lee,’ she replied, handing him the cash. ‘Busy day?’

  ‘Oh not so busy todaaay,’ he sang. She thanked him and locked herself back in.

  Back upstairs, Roxy placed the takeaway on the coffee table and fetched a bowl, some chopsticks and the file Maria had given her. She replenished her water glass, scooped some rice into her mouth and began to read. The Glossy job seemed straight-forward enough. A simple celebrity interview with a diva of the Australian art world. Questions: probing and insightful. Duration: One hour max. Copy: upbeat with a fresh angle and just a hint of attitude. Result: Glossy sells more magazines, Heather Jackson sells more artwork, Roxy gets paid. And that was her only interest in the matter.

  Until she started reading from the file.

  Like most Australian’s what Roxy knew about the interviewee wouldn’t fill more than a paragraph. The Sydney Art Gazette, one of the city’s longest-running and most credible street rags, had sponsored an Emerging Artists award some 20 years back and the winner, an unknown 30-year-old called Heather Jackson, not only scooped the coveted first prize but had gone on to become one of Australia’s most famous living artists whose controversial portraits—brightly painted and slightly abstract—earned her notoriety in art circles around the world, from Paris to New York. Even more notorious was her disdain for the press, she hadn’t done an interview in five years.

  ‘So tread carefully with her,’ Maria had warned. ‘One wrong question and she’s out the door.’

  ‘What’s a wrong question?’ Roxy asked. ‘She’s just an artist. She’s not a politician for God’s sake.’

  ‘Yes but she’s a private artist and a very friggin’ famous one at that. It’s a bloody miracle she even wanted to do the interview.’

  ‘That’s my next question,’ Roxy said. ‘Why do an interview at all? It’s not like she needs to.’

  ‘Everybody needs to, eventually.’

  ‘But why Glossy?’

  Maria stared at the writer, hard. ‘Because Glossy is the Mecca of magazines. Of course! Look, the point is I need you to be polite, tactful and keep her on side. I just want a lovely, “Look Who We Got” story and nothing more.’

  ‘I’m all manners,’ Roxy promised, but looking through the file now, she was not sure she wanted to be. While Heather shunned official media interviews, she lived the celebrity life to the hilt: the file was brimming with paparazzi pictures of the artist, arriving, head down, blinged fingers up to shield her face as she entered or exited one cocaine-fuelled, A-list party after another. There were blurry pictures of her cavorting with near-naked men on exotic beaches and all kinds of salacious rumors, as well as a few disgruntled lovers who had threatened to ‘reveal all’. But as far as Roxy could tell, none had ever made good on their threats. She wondered why.

  All of this was of little consequence to the writer, excep
t that it was in such stark contrast to the woman she was now reading about in the form marked ‘Entry Forms: Emerging Artists/Sydney Art Gazette’. Heather Jackson’s original application letter for the art competition that made her a household name had been copied onto the form, her flowery handwriting as surprising as the words themselves: I want to portray real people. Not film stars and fluff. I want to document the people that matter.’

  A color snapshot of her entry portrait was also attached and, while the photo was not great, it was clear the painting was. Done in bold, bright strokes with proportions askew, it showed a young, physically disabled woman flinging her hands about with the words, ‘Not Drowning, Waving’ written in the same black scroll below it.

  It was a startling picture and Roxy could barely tear her eyes from it as her food grew cold before her. It was the perfect career launcher, imploring you to seek out more, to discover what sort of person could capture such an image so sublimely. Roxy wondered where the original was and, placing it to one side, made a note to ask Heather during the interview. She also decided to look up Heather’s other works. She didn’t remember them being quite so beautiful.

  But first she had a small personal matter to contend with. Picking up the phone again, Roxy wandered to the hallway mirror to stare somberly at her reflection.

  ‘Mr Hamilton, hello, it’s Roxy Parker here...Yes, thanks, I’m great. I’d like you to order me in another pair of the Prada glasses...Yep, that’s right, same style, same prescription...Oh you do? Fantastic, thanks, I’ll be down there tomorrow.’ And then she hung up with a smile.

  Stifling a yawn, Roxy went into her office, opened a folder and retrieved the news piece she’d been reading earlier that day. Taking a pair of scissors, she sliced around the article and then reached for a giant scrapbook and some glue. As she pasted the page securely into place she reread the sub-heading and felt her interest grow: ‘Mutilated Corpse Baffles Police’.