by Tara Moss
‘Hello?’ she answered.
‘Are you still in bed?’ The familiar voice was accusing.
‘No. It’s the afternoon. Do you think I am out every night until six?’
‘If I were your age, I would be. And I would enjoy it, too.’ The voice belonged to Makedde’s sometime employer, Marian Wendell.
Mak chuckled.
Marian was quickly down to business. ‘I have something for you if you want it. The client just left my office. Are you available?’
‘Yup.’ Mak sat up.
‘You would be needed all week,’ Marian warned.
‘Even better.’
A meaty job was just what Mak wanted to sink her teeth into. A lot of jobs could be knocked over in a few days—a full week’s work would be her longest assignment to date. Normally it was Marian’s more experienced investigators who got the bigger gigs.
‘The job starts today. What time can you get here?’ Marian asked.
‘Give me thirty minutes.’
Mak didn’t bother asking what the assignment was. If Marian was throwing a job her way, she would take it without hesitation—particularly if it was a full week’s work. She needed the money.
After a lightning-fast shower and basic grooming, Mak was primed and on the road in her motorcycle leathers within fifteen minutes. The quickest way to get anywhere in Sydney was on two wheels, and Mak’s horny 1200cc bike was her transportation mode of choice since her move to the city. Thanks to her bike, the astronomical price of car parking was an expense she rarely had to contend with; and with soaring petrol prices, the economy of her bike was even more appealing by the day. On the occasions that she grudgingly borrowed Andy’s car for work, she found herself spotting gaps in the traffic and wanting to accelerate through—a physical impossibility on four wheels.
Of course, a scooter might be equally practical for the city, but it had never been an option for Mak. A particularly infantile pleasure of hers was to pull up to scooter-riding men at the traffic lights and smile at them from the vantage point of her big BMW bike.
Vroom.
Now Mak’s tall, naked K1200R tore up the roads towards busy Bondi Junction and passed the standard daily traffic jams with an ease possible only on two wheels. With time to spare, she stopped her bike on the kerb outside Marian’s office, flicked it into neutral, placed it gently on its kickstand and shut the warm engine off. She grabbed her backpack and made her way inside the building.
Marian Wendell’s office was on the second floor of a three-storey block that Mak imagined might have been glamorous when Marian had first bought up in 1975. It had all the hallmarks of an ill-conceived mid-seventies architectural vision that now left it looking like a rundown concrete box. The colour scheme was brown and weak yellow; the token ground-floor lobby had wood veneer panelling where wallpaper would otherwise be; and the fixtures were decidedly tired. But rather than offend Mak’s aesthetic sensibilities, she felt the place had atmosphere. Mak used her favourite word of the Australian vernacular when describing the building; it was ‘daggy’—dishevelled, uncool, but rich with character. Thanks to the colourful history of Marian Wendell’s private investigation agency, a lot of exciting cases had passed through those doors, and Mak thought she could sense it in the walls.
If only the wood veneer could talk.
She made her way up in the slow-moving elevator, ready to take on her new assignment, helmet and backpack in hand. When she stepped out onto the off-green and yellow carpet of the second-floor hallway, she found that she was not alone. A small bespectacled man a few feet down the hall stiffened at her presence and gave her a long unfriendly look before disappearing into the shared bathrooms at the end of the hall.
Well, hello to you, too, she thought, slightly perplexed by his aggressive glare. He looked like one of the stiffs who worked in the accountancy practice across the hall. Mak realised that when she came to and from work on her bike she probably looked more like a motorbike courier—or maybe even a member of a bikie gang—than a young investigator with a PhD to boot. And some people just had issues with motorcyclists. On one amusing occasion Mak had decided to do some banking on the way home, and a man on a bench seated outside the bank had been utterly convinced that she was about to stage a hold-up before leaping onto her bike and speeding off. He’d been so relieved when she had calmly emerged with her helmet in hand and put her bank slip away that he actually told her what he’d thought she was going to do.
Mak had chosen a sporty bike, but she might as well have a long beard and a Harley.
‘Boo,’ she said under her breath, but the freaked-out accountant couldn’t hear her. She left the man to his paranoia and, with a faint rustle of leather on leather, stepped through the door of Marian’s office, on which was written:
MARIAN WENDELL AND ASSOCIATES PROFESSIONAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
A bell chimed to alert Marian that she had a visitor. A closed-circuit camera would confirm Mak’s identity to her boss as she walked in.
‘Be with you soon, Mak,’ came Marian’s booming voice from down the hallway.
‘Okay,’ Mak called back, and took a seat in the waiting room.
She made herself comfortable, taking her stiff leather jacket off and looking for something to read. She sifted through a couple of newspapers and a selection of out-of-date magazines in a stack on a glass coffee table in the waiting area. The Australian Women’s Weekly, New Woman, Woman’s Day, National Geographic, Cleo—the plethora of women’s titles was there for Marian’s strong female client base, the women who came to her with problems of errant husbands or suspicious work practices and wanted a ‘private dick without the dick’, as Marian put it. Having read each of the old magazines twice over on previous visits to the office, Mak found a copy of the previous day’s Australian newspaper and perused it instead, speed reading articles on business and federal politics, the sale of Telstra, troops in the Middle East and handshaking on plans for a bullet train between Sydney and Melbourne.
After a couple of minutes Marian stepped out of her office and waved Mak in.
The infamous Marian Wendell was a woman of perhaps sixty-five years, and birdlike in size compared to Makedde’s Amazonian stature. She had big auburn hair that almost seemed to dwarf her features, and a penchant for expensive, glamorous clothing. She had been a very attractive woman in her youth, as evidenced by photos on a filing cabinet, and in her later years she still took great pride in her appearance and presentation. Marian’s hair was always meticulously dyed and styled and her make-up flawless; and, though a bit outdated, her wardrobe was flattering and well maintained. Marian had a handsome office—a practical space cluttered with neat files, but also a soothing space, with the distinctly feminine touches of a ceramic aromatherapy oil burner on the wide working desk, along with a crystal vase that was always stocked with yellow roses, and a romantic-looking Art Deco statue of a nymph on a square display table taking pride of place in the room. Behind it, an Aboriginal dot painting of muted earthy tones depicted a giant serpent of the Dreamtime. Another wall was entirely covered by an impressively jumbled floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. From one tall window there was a view of the Sydney cityscape. Not a postcard of the Opera House exactly, but an impressive view nonetheless. It was a far cry from the dark, masculine quarters of a Philip Marlowe or a Mike Hammer.
‘This guy in the hallway freaked out when he saw me step out of the elevator. I think he figured you’re doing work for bikie gangs now.’
Marian laughed.
Mak was used to being misunderstood. The expression ‘looks are deceiving’ was not the exception but the rule for her. Marian, at least, thought it helped her protégée to look past the appearances of others to see their true nature. Perhaps that was right.
‘You are my secret weapon,’ Marian said, clearly pleased with her new agent. ‘Mrs Anderson was very happy with the result. Her husband was so embarrassed at being caught out that he’s agreed to half of her demands already.’
> ‘I am glad she was pleased,’ Mak replied.
When it came to domestic jobs, not all clients were happy with an investigator’s results. The truth could hurt—a lot. Which was one of the many reasons Marian discouraged marital jobs from male clients. A woman might see evidence of her husband rooting the secretary and respond by getting a good lawyer, while a man might respond to the same situation by getting himself a good baseball bat, and then there were serious domestic violence issues to contend with on top of everything else. It was that ugly side of the business that gave it a bad name, depending on the way the operator handled it.
Even the most respected PIs found themselves on the occasional infidelity case, though many of the big agencies denied it and discouraged such jobs in favour of corporate clients. However, infidelity was the bread-and-butter work. The three full pages of ads for Investigators in the Yellow Pages were a testament to the popularity of marital mistrust:
DO YOU NEED PROOF OF INFIDELITY?
IS YOUR PARTNER CHEATING??? DON’T BE THE LAST TO KNOW.
To her many female clients, some of whom were likely soon to be divorced, Marian represented not only a ‘private dick without the dick’ but a necessary role model at a time when the clients needed a reminder that successful singledom was possible. Marian had been widowed some twenty years and yet she was happily solo and successful. A photo of her late second husband, Reg, still sat in a frame on the filing cabinet. As Marian had confided in Mak, Reg had been a much older man who was her ‘soul mate’. He had respected her independence, her business acumen and her decision to never bear children; she clearly felt no need to replace him. Marian spoke of Reg often. She never talked of her first husband, however, and Mak guessed it had not ended amicably. Perhaps one of those desperate-sounding ads for AAAA CHEATERS Investigation Agency—the ‘AAAA’ ensuring the first listing in the phone book—was what had given Marian the idea of becoming a private investigator in the first place. Maybe she had taken it upon herself to bust the kind of bastard she had first married?
‘Sit down, honey,’ Marian said. ‘This is a good one. Top rates.’
Top rates for Mak meant $80 an hour for research and $100 an hour for field work. The job paid well, though not as well as some of her modelling gigs had, of course.
Mak’s special ‘entrapment’ rate for luring errant husbands to hotel rooms was much higher because of her close proximity to the target—and her particularly good qualifications for the job. So far she had a 100 per cent success rate in the handful of such jobs she had completed. Had Mrs Anderson’s glowing report spurred Marian into giving Mak this new job? Or was it just that none of her more experienced investigators was available?
Mak took a seat. Her black leather pants squeaked faintly as she crossed her legs.
Marian had a couple of notes in front of her but she didn’t look at them. She closed her eyes as she spoke, recalling the meeting with her formidable memory. ‘The client is Mr Robert Groobelaar, a real estate agent, originally from South Africa. He has a company called Trident Real Estate. His personal assistant was found murdered in her apartment last night. A young girl. Good-looking.’ Marian pushed a glossy photo across the desk. It showed a smiling girl with a pale blonde bob that fell just below her jaw.
Wow. A murder case.
Mak felt a weird mix of sadness and a rush of excitement. This was more than the usual domestic dispute or corporate espionage case. She pulled a large notepad out of her backpack and wrote down the details. Trident Real Estate. Robert Groobelaar…
‘Her name?’
Marian closed her eyes again. ‘Meaghan Wallace—he says she was unmarried, no children, twenty-three years of age,’ she explained. ‘She worked for him for about the past six months. I’ll get my contacts to run off a file for you with her stats.’
Mak wrote it all down. ‘Okay.’
‘The police have a suspect in custody. The client wants to know everything you can get on him.’
‘No problem.’ A few background checks would not take a lot of time. Marian had great contacts she could rely on to get leads on up-to-date information. A fair number of Marian’s investigations were to find missing persons—runaway teenagers, AWOL spouses, deadbeat dads, that sort of thing. Record checks on any vehicles, leases, mortgages or change-of-address applications in their names were invaluable in revealing not only a person’s whereabouts but a lot about their lifestyle and habits as well. If this subject was in jail already, though, Mak couldn’t see how she would be needed for more than two or three days of work at the most. Given Marian’s magical and somewhat mysterious contacts, there would be little for her to do.
‘The client wants a complete report on the suspect’s background, and what the case is against him.’
Ah. The case against him. Was Mak expected to lean on her police contacts to learn about the case?
‘Do you know the kind of outcome he is searching for?’ Mak said. ‘Perhaps to get the information he feels the police don’t have, or aren’t telling him?’
Marian looked up. ‘I would say so,’ she said. ‘He wants everything you can get.’
So he feels dissatisfied by the way the police are approaching the investigation…
Mak shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘Um, Marian, I didn’t get the job because I have police contacts, did I?’
‘You got the job because you are turning into a good investigator,’ Marian said.
Mak smiled at the compliment.
‘Who has good contacts,’ she added sharply. ‘Nearly all of my investigators have police contacts of some kind, Mak. No one is expecting you to jeopardise your relationships for an investigation. That would be counterproductive.’
Mak nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said, though she still wondered if those relationships were the main reason she had been chosen. Her ties to the police—to both her lover, Andy, and her friend Detective Mahoney—might give her an advantage in a case like this, but if either of them helped her out with information and was discovered, it could put their careers at serious risk. So far, she had not considered exploiting them for that kind of help.
Marian slid a piece of paper with a name and address on it across the desk. ‘The client took his PA to a party on Wednesday night and that was the last he saw of her. Yesterday she left him a message that worried him. That was the last anyone seems to have heard from her. The client thinks she might have gone home with someone who was there called Simon Aston. He wants you to check him out.’
Sounds like a jealous lover to me.
‘Where was the party on Wednesday night?’ Mak asked, her pen poised.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
Mak frowned. ‘He wouldn’t say, or he didn’t say?’
‘He wouldn’t say,’ Marian repeated.
‘Well, do I get to meet the client? Ask him a few more questions?’ Mak asked eagerly. She was new to the business of private investigation, but it seemed to her that she could get a lot more information if she just talked to the client directly.
‘No. As far as he is concerned you don’t even know his name, so there are to be no mentions of him and no contacting him. He is paranoid about his confidentiality.’
‘Oh,’ Mak replied, disappointed. She thought for a moment. ‘Is he married?’ She suspected a guilty affair with the deceased.
‘Yes,’ Marian answered, but failed to add any juicy personal details. ‘Mak, stop analysing the client. That’s not your job.’
Mak smiled. Sorry.
‘There’s more.’ Marian closed her eyes again as she continued to speak. It was one of her unusual quirks that she spoke this way—eyes closed—when recalling details of a case or a conversation. It was rumoured that she had a photographic memory. Mak sometimes found this mannerism of Marian’s unsettling. She never knew where to look. The tops of her boss’s lavender-painted eyelids? The desktop? ‘The client wants everything you can get on the victim’s life in the weeks leading up to her murder—her close contacts, secret lovers—e
verything, and any relationship she might have been having with this Simon Aston, any contact they had with one another.’
Mak nodded. She was beginning to see why it would take a week. In fact, it would probably take longer with that kind of field work. ‘That’s a lot to cover.’
‘He has you on retainer for a week, all expenses. Get everything you can.’
This was definitely Mak’s biggest job to date. With any luck she would be able to tuck another couple of grand into her savings account soon. ‘Does he want photographs, a log of the guy’s activities, anything like that? Does he want this Simon Aston followed, or does he just want information?’
‘Information. He already knows Aston and what he looks like. Follow him if it helps, but the client isn’t asking for surveillance.’
He just wants to know if the guy was banging her. And maybe if the suspect was too. I get it.
‘No problem. What do we know about the guy in custody?’
‘His name is Tobias Murphy,’ Marian said.
‘Where are they holding him, do we know?’
‘He’s in juvey.’
Mak was surprised. ‘Really? He’s underage?’ That might blow her theory on the victim having an affair with the murder suspect. Maybe.
‘It seems so. The boy has some priors, according to the client. That’s what the police told him, anyway.’
Getting records of any convictions on a juvenile was tricky.
‘I don’t want to ask too many stupid questions here but if the police already have a suspect in custody, why does the client want it all investigated? Did he say?’ Mak asked.
Marian’s sharp hazel eyes opened. ‘It’s not our job to wonder why we have been hired. The client is happy to pay your rate for at least a week, possibly more. It’s legit work. That’s all we need to know. He is particularly paranoid about confidentiality, are you clear? So you didn’t get his details from me.’
‘Yeah.’
