A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1

by Livia Day

  The meringue kitty cats were a hit as usual, and sold out long before the Coffee & Cake rush eased off. I had Nin and Lara working flat out at the counter and espresso machine, and I still had to let the phone ring about twelve times before I could get to it. ‘Café La Femme, can I help you?’

  ‘Have you googled him?’ Bishop said, without even a hello.

  ‘Bishop, I’m up to my eyeballs in customers right now. Crazy people need cake. Must cake the crazy people.’

  ‘Your new little friend. McTavish. Google him before you get into a car with him again.’

  ‘Google this.’ I hung up, and loaded a tray with lattés.

  ‘Hi, Tabby,’ said a fresh voice.

  Constable Gary, bright as a button in his zip-up police jacket, smiled at me with his usual mix of desperation and hope.

  ‘Hey, Gary. With you in a minute.’ I circulated, dropping off the coffees and clearing two tables before I made it back. Nin relinquished the counter to me, and went out back to fetch another cheesecake or four. Gary was at the front of the queue by then, beaming at me.

  He’s a sweetheart, really—all sandy hair and freckles, and he’ll probably look eighteen right up to his fiftieth birthday. ‘What can I do for you, sweetie?’

  I love to make him blush. He turns into one whole freckle. ‘Um, a vegan quiche, please, Tabby. With extra side salad.’

  I lost a little bit of respect for him. ‘So Bishop sent you.’

  ‘No,’ he protested. ‘It’s what I fancy. And I haven’t had lunch yet.’

  If ever a bloke needed a special someone to feed him up, it was Gary. ‘Sit down, and I’ll get you some lasagne. Don’t tell Inspector Bobby I made one today, I promised Cheryl he gets no more béchamel from me.’

  An hour later, the café had quietened down to a dull moan, and Gary was still sitting at his corner table.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone take so long over a plate of lasagne,’ Lara said in an undertone to Nin.

  Nin’s eyebrows arched a little. ‘Hoping Tabitha will honour him with another smile.’

  I gave them both my bitchy boss expression, which they ignored. Apparently, I am not an authority figure. ‘He does not have a crush on me. He’s hoping I’ll go over there so he can talk about that girl he fancies who works at the newsagency.’

  Okay, he had a teeny crush on me, but pretending I didn’t know was the best possible way to deal with it.

  Lara handed me a flat white mocha, sprinkled with cinnamon the way I like it, and a latté for Gary. ‘Well? You’ve made greater sacrifices to rid the café of uniforms.’

  Too true. I put a couple of brownies on a plate, to give me strength. ‘Gary,’ I said brightly, joining him at his table. ‘Don’t mind if I sit here do you? Have a brownie. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Hi, Tabby,’ he said again, with a little happy sigh.

  I gave him his coffee and passed over three sugar packets. If I’d asked, he would say he only took two. People are odd like that. ‘Have you asked Veronica out yet?’

  ‘Nah,’ he said, looking embarrassed. ‘We’re really busy in the Crime Management Unit this month. And, you know, she wouldn’t be interested in me.’

  ‘We talked about this, Gary. Stop selling yourself short.’

  ‘We really are busy. Bishop’s had me running around all day, following up leads on the new murder case.’ He looked impressed with himself.

  ‘He should let you break for lunch when it’s actually lunchtime,’ I said firmly. ‘There is still a canteen at the station, isn’t there?’

  Gary munched happily on his brownie. ‘Yeah, but everyone says it hasn’t been as good since your mum left. Wow, these brownies are really great. You’re so talented.’

  I didn’t bother explaining that I hadn’t done the day’s baking—why break the illusion? ‘It’s been five years, Gary. You boys are going to have to learn to live without Mum some day.’ I paused, sensing that this moment of total chocolate overload was my best chance to pump Gary for information. ‘So, what’s Bishop’s problem? He seems more shouty than usual. Or is it the effect that I have on him?’

  Gary was the best gossip in the district, apart from Constable Marie who went off to have babies but still posts Twitter updates about who’s shagging whom (she’s usually wrong, which is half the fun of it, and the codenames she uses are hilarious). ‘Oh, that’d be Inspector Clayton. He’s down from the mainland, and he’s in charge of our unit—but even though it’s supposed to be CIB and uniform working together, he keeps dismissing Bishop’s opinions, because he’s not a detective.’

  Trust Bishop to end up working under the one inspector in the district who didn’t think the sun shone out of his arse.

  ‘Yeah,’ Gary continued. ‘Inspector Clayton has been giving him heaps for ignoring the other traps earlier, but that’s really not fair because no one took them seriously.’

  When grilling people for gossip, I find it’s best to nod and smile a lot, as if you know exactly what they’re talking about. So I nodded and smiled. ‘Wait—what traps?’

  Gary finished his last bite of brownie, and I waved at Lara to fill us up. She gave me the finger, and went back to cleaning the cappuccino machine. Fair enough, really.

  ‘It looked like stupid pranks,’ Gary went on, without the extra lubrication of a second brownie. I pushed mine in his direction, just in case. ‘The cat stuck up the tree, then the postman who fell into a cage. No one thought it actually meant anything. But then there’s this net with a dead body in it, and no one knows how it got up there. Those rock band blokes turned out to have some Super-lawyer, and we can’t prove they were involved, so who could it be? The body was some junkie busker, but still … Inspector Clayton reckons that finding the Trapper could be really important now. Pivotal to the case.’

  ‘The Trapper,’ I said encouragingly.

  ‘I came up with the name,’ said Gary, puffing up a little. ‘And everyone around the station picked it up—he’s sort of sneaky and cunning. And he sets traps.’

  ‘Clayton,’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘Is that Des Clayton? I think my dad knew him, years ago.’ Big surprise there. There aren’t many senior officers in the country who don’t know Dad, one way or another. ‘Ran the training college in Adelaide?’

  ‘On active duty now,’ said Gary. ‘Anyway, that’s why Bishop’s all cranky. So don’t take it personally.’ He smiled at me. ‘That was really good lasagne, Tabby.’

  There was a firm cough from Lara, and I glanced at the clock. Quarter to five—that’s time to start looking inhospitable and wave chairs around, so we don’t get any customers sneaking in at two minutes to closing. ‘Great seeing you, Gary. Pop in again soon.’ I cleared the plates briskly, leaving him to give a little wave on his way out.

  No sooner had he left than the bell jangled as he stuck his head back in. ‘Hey, Tabby. If you’re interested, there’s stuff about the traps up on your friend’s blog.’

  ‘What friend?’ I said. ‘Wait, what blog?’

  6

  Sandstone City. I’d contributed a few stories to the blog over the last few months, mainly due to the fact that Simon, Head Geek, spent a lot of time hanging hopefully around our coffee machine until he figured out that Nin really isn’t into blokes. Also, I talk a lot. Apparently some of the things I blurted out randomly were worth writing down.

  I’d never actually looked at the site, though.

  Once the kitchen was halfway clean, I sent Nin and Lara home and cracked open my laptop. The blog came up in Google easily enough, and the top post was one of Stewart’s glamour shots of Bev Darrow and her meringue erotica. He’d asked her some interview questions, and the whole thing came across pretty well.

  Underneath was a post by simoning reporting the dead body found swinging in a net in Crash Velvet’s spare room and that police were considering it a suspicious death. There was also a bit of a blurb about the Crime Management Unit handling the case, with a link back to the Tasmania Police website about how
the unit was made up of general officers as well as members of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). No mention of the body being a junkie busker, as Gary referred to him, but Simon had published interviews with all the band members about how shocked they were and how weird it all was.

  The final tagline of the post was: Publicity Stunt Gone Wrong, or has the Trapper Gone Homicidal? Have your say on our forum!

  The word ‘Trapper’ had a link to an earlier post by random_scotsman, so I clicked through.

  * * *

  WHO IS THE TRAPPER?

  Margarita of Margarita’s Pre-Loved Fashions (Bellerive) discovered her missing cat hanging in a net from a tree. Bizarrely, it seems that this was part of an elaborate contraption set up to catch a passerby. What kind of sick puppy are we dealing with here?

  [UPDATE—in answer to the huge number of comments and emails that crashed our server this morning, the cat was fine. No damage to the cat. Is it morally wrong to play practical jokes on animals? Have your say on our forum!]

  * * *

  ‘Such a hack,’ I sighed, but kept reading.

  * * *

  This is not the first mysterious trap sprung upon the citizens of Hobart. Two days previously, an employee of Australia Post returned to his Dynnyrne home only to fall through a hole in his entrance hall, and land in a steel cage. Using a mobile phone, he called a locksmith to secure his release. When interviewed, the postal worker (who wishes to remain anonymous) said, ‘I don’t know how that bastard got all that in there so quickly. I only went out for milk.’

  Have you heard any more stories about this Trapper? Has anyone you know been caught in one of his contraptions? Comment!

  * * *

  Sometime later, I lay in wait for our resident Scotsman.

  ‘Tabitha,’ said Stewart as he stepped out of the office to find me sitting on the stairs. ‘Wha’s up?’

  I smiled winningly. ‘Fancy painting my walls?’

  He gave me a suspicious look. ‘According to my sources, when ye smile like that, I’m supposed tae start running.’

  ‘Where would be the fun in that?’

  Apparently I had a good point.

  ‘The meringue erotica story is daein well,’ Stewart said as we went through to the café. ‘Bringing a heap of readers to the site. I could do with a few more like that.’

  ‘More hits than the cat-in-a-net story?’

  ‘Are ye kidding me? Real news versus patisserie porn? No contest. Though cats do rule the internet.’ He gave me a knowing grin. ‘Have ye been reading my blog, Ms Darling?’

  ‘Maybe a little. Looks like we’ve got our very own Trapper here in the building.’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘Can I really take those rubbish posters down?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Stewart removed them carefully and meticulously. ‘See, much better already.’

  I think he meant soulless and boring, but I was still trying to tease information out of him, so I kept that opinion to myself. It only hurt a little. ‘So, who’s this anonymous postal worker?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m nae daft,’ he said in a tone that said ‘sprung’. ‘My sources are protected, Darling.’ Or was it ‘darling’? My last name leads to such emotional ambiguities.

  ‘We don’t have Freedom of the Press in this country.’

  Stewart removed my Twiggy poster, and added it to the stack. ‘I’ve been in Australia long enough. Ye cannae fool me that way.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m gonnae need a pencil.’

  I brought him a handful from behind the counter. ‘You don’t have to paint my walls. I only used it as an excuse to talk to you.’

  Stewart took the pencils from my fingers, then leaned around and pecked me on the cheek. ‘I know. Now back off and let me work. I’ve got plans for this wall of yours.’

  That shouldn’t have sounded quite so sexy … right? ‘Hungry?’ I said in a squeak.

  ‘Oh weeeell, if you’re going to feed me, I suppose I’d better start singing like a canary. No, wait, journalistic integrity … giving me indigestion…’ He faked a messy death scene in front of me.

  ‘I’ve read your stuff, McTavish. As a journalist, you make a great photographer.’

  ‘Och! You’re a hard woman, Tabitha Darling.’

  I resisted the urge to swoon upon hearing my name rendered in a Scottish accent. ‘I try.’

  He started making little gasping noises. ‘So very hungry, cannot make art…’

  Reader, I fed him.

  * * *

  An hour and several plates of leftovers later, Stewart had cleaned off my walls with the diligence of a true obsessive (the paint job was recent enough that he wasn’t insisting on an undercoat, though he had then lapsed into arty jargon about what he was going to do with the layering of paint, leaving me to nod and smile). He was now covering my wall in blocky pencil marks that made no sense to me. ‘Um, when you said you knew what you were doing?’

  ‘Shush,’ he said. ‘Genius at work.’

  ‘Right. So who put you on to the story about the Trapper, anyway?’

  ‘Can’t tell. Would hae tae kill ye, and then there would be no more pasta salad for me. Did I mention how exceptional this pasta salad is?’

  ‘Secret’s in the dressing. What if you know something that the police need to know?’

  ‘So ye feed me, I spill my sources, and then it gets passed straight on to your grumpy uniformed boyfriend. It’s all strangely unappealing.’

  ‘Bishop’s not my boyfriend.’ I felt the need to share this information purely for the sake of accuracy.

  Stewart was still thoroughly amused at himself. ‘Do ye think solving this crime will make him fall into yer womanly arms?’

  ‘Oi!’ I couldn’t help laughing at that. ‘I’m not looking to solve a crime here. Leaving that to the experts, thank you very much.’

  ‘Just nosy, then.’

  ‘Basically.’

  Stewart went back to work. ‘I wouldnae worry about it. The police know everything I know—more, probably. I got nothing out of the mad cat lady. She waved her arms a lot, and howled about how cats were the ultimate pinnacle of creation. And it was one of yer cop friends who put me on to the story, in any case.’

  ‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure why I was disappointed.

  Stewart gestured at the walls. ‘How long can I hae on this tonight?’

  ‘Don’t you have anywhere else to be? Someone to be with?’ Really subtle, Tabitha, nice one.

  ‘Me, I like walls. They offer so much, yet ask so little in return.’ I might have thought he was joking, but he was gazing at the blank surface pretty intensely.

  ‘You can have an hour. It will take me that long to finish cleaning the kitchen, and wiping down in here.’

  ‘Aye, all right.’ Stewart paused. ‘And will ye be talking to me the entire time?’

  ‘I’ll try and resist,’ I sniped, and headed for the kitchen. Mopping and scrubbing awaited. Fun fun fun.

  * * *

  Friday morning, after fulfilling my crime witness obligations, I drove across the river to my favourite berry farm. They can deliver, of course, but I like to look at their stocks for myself every now and then. I wanted a new dessert for the Saturday shoppers and was hunting inspiration. The clear air, sweet smell and thick greenery of the farm was exactly what I needed to let my brain do its best work.

  Hobart is a small city, as Australian state capitals go. The back of beyond, especially if you listen to anyone under twenty. But when adventuring in the big wide world gets old, it’s nice to have somewhere comfy to return to. A boutique city on the edge of a wide river, within a stone’s throw of farmland and fresh produce … oh, yes. There are worse places in the world to settle down.

  Raspberries are one of my favourite things in the universe. I loaded up the car with a pallet of them, more than I’d actually planned to buy, plus a bonus box of the last cherries of the season. If I marinated them, th
ey would last me all winter.

  I was thinking about mini-trifles as I drove away from Sorell, surrounded by bushland and clear blue water. I love trifle, but it’s messy as hell to serve. It would have to be done in individual portions, and that’s a lot of faffing about. Plus, as desserts go it’s chalked up on the old school blackboard. Shades of Nannaland.

  I reached the turn-off to Bellerive, the prettiest and poshest of the eastern suburbs (which is the charming local way of saying ‘suburbs on the opposite side of the river to the real city’) and before my conscious brain kicked in, I was heading in that direction, scanning the main street for Margarita’s Pre-Loved Fashions, the home of the netted cat.

  This was unreasonably nosy, even for me. What did I care about some lunatic setting traps around Hobart, even if one of them had netted a dead man in my building?

  I spotted the boutique, and a handy parking space right beside it. Behind a police car, as it happens. The shop window was full of cute vintage frocks, which officially made it my kind of place.

  Inside, a forty-something, henna-haired drama queen was being interviewed by a uniformed senior constable. Who was, of course, Bishop. I ducked behind a rack of faux fur stoles and feather-wool scarves, pretending great interest in the garments.

  ‘You lot weren’t interested in my poor Moonshine when it first happened,’ Margarita said to him, waving her arms at a ratty old Siamese cat who was asleep in a basket of lace gloves and doilies. ‘I called three times, and none of you came to see for yourselves. One of your little receptionist madams said I was wasting police time.’

  ‘I do apologise for that,’ said Bishop between gritted teeth. Sounded like this conversation had been going around in circles for some time. ‘Matters have since escalated…’

  ‘Because a human has been killed,’ said Margarita, with a fanatical gleam in her eye. ‘My Moonshine could have starved in that net! He was three streets away when I found him. Someone thought it was funny.’