Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes)

by Cusack, Louise

  “I’ll be back,” Rand said from the door.

  Possum had already sprawled back onto the sofa and was fondling the note against his scrawny chest, smiling a dreamy stoner’s smile.

  “The Laundromat!” Rand said loudly. “And remember to lock up.”

  From his prone position, and with eyes closed, Possum gave the thumbs–up.

  Rand shook his head. “Fucker,” he said again softly as he let himself out, locking the door carefully behind himself so they wouldn’t be ripped off. It had taken him months to get the money together for his laptop. He’d hate to lose it, but the rule was that you shouldn’t get attached. Rand knew that. You tried to protect your stuff, to protect yourself and your people. But shit happened. And when it did, you got over it and moved on.

  Rand prayed every night that shit wouldn’t happen to Possum, and he checked him every day for needle–marks, warning him he’d be out on his arse if he came home with any. But it was probably only a matter of time. Before he’d gotten into hacking, Rand had done prostitution. Georgie–boy, the old queen who’d pimped him, had been all that had kept Rand from using. Unfortunately George and his genteel ways were gone. The pimps who worked the Valley now were vampires who happily got you hooked up so you’d be stuck working for them forever.

  Well, as long as your ‘forever’ lasted. Two days ago Lilly–white had washed up OD in the strip club gutter. Thirteen. Man, that was fucked. But Rand had to shut himself off from that. Lilly–white hadn’t been his people. It hadn’t been his job to protect her. Possum was Rand’s people, and once he had this scam landed and the engines switched off they’d been living in the lap.

  Living in the la …

  God, Rand longed for that. In a real house like real people, wearing clean clothes and bathing every day, like on the sitcoms.

  Eating fruit.

  Oh yeah. “Bring it home, Randy boy,” he told himself softly as he set off down the back stairs of their squat, leaping past the broken steps and not putting too much pressure on the timber hand–rail that was only holding on by a few rusty nails. At the bottom he paused to look back up at the old condemned boarding–house he and Poss had called home for the past two months. Fire trap. He knew that. He also knew he’d left Poss in there stoned and smoking.

  But if you don’t turn up when the man orders you to … Rand forced himself to walk away. Responsibility. He had to give Poss some. But that didn’t ease the sick apprehension in his gut. He fired off a silent prayer that Poss would still be there when he got back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The kitchen door slammed open and Baz turned away from the pantry he’d been browsing. “Dad? Why aren’t you napping?”

  “I’m going for a walk on the beach.” Ted said, marching towards the back door. “The house stinks of fish.”

  Baz darted across and cut his father off. “It doesn’t stink,” he said, taking his father’s hand off the doorknob and closing the back door. “And the beach is not a good idea. The storm’s passed over but the weather could be circling back around. I don’t want you caught down there by a high tide.” Baz glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost four and he’d been so busy reading the Power of Attorney forms he hadn’t checked on Venus.

  Baz had found time to ring Randolph Budjenski, which had been incredibly stupid. He should have gotten his father to sign the forms first so he wouldn’t have been lying about that, but after realizing how much he had to lose he’d gotten desperate. Not his finest hour, but at least now he was reasonably confident that Rand was out of the picture.

  The next step was getting his father to sign, and broaching that subject would be the hardest part. The old man had been impossible to please this afternoon, just when Baz wanted him amenable to signing forms.

  “I’m sure it’s low tide,” Ted said, looking past Baz to the window, although he’d only be able to see the cliff top from there, and not the tide line.

  “But I want to go with you, dad, and I need to start getting dinner ready now. Can we go tomorrow morning?”

  “I want biscuits,” Ted said, and walked past Baz to the open pantry. “Where is that new housekeeper? Why isn’t she baking?” He walked inside and started picking boxes up. “I’m sick of these bought biscuits.”

  “You love Iced Vo Vos, “ Baz said, and pushed past his father to reach up onto a high shelf. “Here.” He pulled a Tupperware container down. “These are the ones you like.”

  Ted waited until Baz had taken the lid off to turn up his nose. “I had them yesterday.”

  “You have them every day,” Baz said, trying to hold onto his temper.

  Ted shook his head and stood with his lower lip stuck out petulantly.

  “Fine!” Baz said and snapped the lid back on, shoving the container back onto the shelf. “Go hungry. I don’t care.” He pulled his father back out of the pantry and shut the door. “Eat grass. It’ll be good for your liver.”

  “Grass? Will it?” Ted frowned.

  “Sure. Cows do it all the time.”

  “Is this some new diet?” Ted wandered over to the window and looked past the wind–battered rose garden to the sodden lawn. “The grass is very short out there.” He turned back to Baz. “And didn’t that make people sick during the Irish Potato Famine?”

  Baz wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. “Look, are you hungry or not, dad?” he asked, suddenly tired of the whole conversation.

  Ted narrowed his eyes and ducked his wavering head, staring at Baz as though trying to see into his soul. “What time is it?” he asked at last.

  Deep breath.

  “Four in the afternoon, dad. Two hours until dinner.” Too late for afternoon tea anyway.

  Ted thought a moment longer then said, “Am I hungry … ?” He waited, as though expecting the answer from Baz. When it wasn’t forthcoming, he added, “How long is a piece of string!” then smiled idiotically as though he’d just made a huge joke.

  Baz felt suddenly tired. “You don’t have a clue, do you, dad?” he asked.

  Ted winked and nodded, as though they were sharing a secret joke. And perhaps they were.

  Only Baz wasn’t in on the secret. “I’m getting us an early dinner,” he decided. “Party pies.”

  Ted clapped his hands together, an uncoordinated effort, but he didn’t seem to notice that. “A party!”

  “Yep. A party.” Whatever it took. “You have a shower and get ready, dad. I’ll prepare the food.”

  “Good, good.”

  Ted was smiling happily to himself as though his dearest wish had been fulfilled and, watching him, Baz felt an unexpected stab of emotion. When the complexity, the barriers and the aloof manner that Baz had always hated about his father were stripped away, the old man was really lovable. Not that Baz could ever bring himself to think, let alone say, that he loved his father. But neither could he deny that at odd times a kernel of warm fuzziness opened inside his chest.

  A very uncomfortable kernel.

  “Don’t be long,” he called after Ted as the old man toddled out of the kitchen and disappeared. Baz knew from experience that the party pies only took twenty minutes, and Ted had been known to spend an hour in the bathroom, doing God only knew what. And as Baz didn’t want to think about his father naked, he fussed instead with the party pies, lining them up on a tray and concentrating on that. In fact, he was so deep into the line–up that he’d completely forgotten he had more important things to worry about than his father’s odd habits. Until the phone rang.

  Baz snatched up the kitchen extension with a curt, “Saltwood.” A vain effort to retain his anonymity.

  Not for long. “Mr Wilson, it’s Constable Moore.”

  Baz listened to the policeman’s smooth, deep voice with trepidation as he related the pathologist’s findings. They weren’t pretty, and Moore’s description of small blue–green scales imbedded in Steve’s broken chest caused a hot, sick feeling to wash up through Baz’s body. He hadn’t noticed them on the corpse becau
se he hadn’t looked at it closely. But he’d sure as hell seen little blue–green scaly things on Venus’s fingernails.

  Could Moore have seen them when they’d interviewed her briefly in the bedroom? He wasn’t saying, but that could be a ruse. Maybe he was pretending he hadn’t so Baz wouldn’t realize they suspected Venus was involved in … what? More than a rescue? What if Steve hadn’t been innocently trying to save her? She had baulked when he’d used the word rescue in retelling her the events.

  Whatever the truth of the situation, Baz was sure Venus was innocent, and without thinking it through properly he cut over Moore to say, “Venus isn’t here any more, I’m sorry.” An uncomfortable silence followed so Baz went on to give an improbably story about waking up and finding her gone, of searching both the bushland and the beach, and then deciding she was a flake and that they were happy to see the back of her.

  “Why didn’t you inform me immediately? “ Moore asked.

  Good point. “I’d planned to ring this morning,” Baz lied, “when I finished searching. But my father had one of his bad spells and I had to settle him down. I didn’t realize there were suspicious circumstances around Steve’s death, so it didn’t seem like a priority.” Baz stopped babbling and held his breath.

  “Fair enough,” Moore said. “But I’ll need to check out the room she stayed in. Don’t touch anything until I get there, all right?”

  “Sure,” Baz said with more confidence then he felt, “but can you ring me before you come so I don’t miss you? I might have to take dad to the doctor.”

  “Are you home this evening?”

  Fuck! “Sure. At this stage.”

  “You’ve got my number. Ring me if you have to leave. Otherwise I’ll see you in a couple of hours. And you said Miss Dalrymple’s mother was a family friend. Could you have her contact details there when I arrive?”

  “There’s been a storm,” Baz threw in, although he could well imagine Moore thinking, No shit, Sherlock. “The roads could be difficult in the dark,” he added, hoping like hell that they were flooded.

  “I’ve got a four wheel drive,” Moore said. “It’ll get through.”

  “Great. Fine. See you then,” Baz said brightly, and hung up the phone. Then he looked at it for a couple of seconds before slumping against the bench top to put his hands over his face. “What am I doing?”

  Protecting a murderer?

  No, Baz didn’t believe that. Venus was a lot of things, but he didn’t believe her capable of murder. Unless Steve had tried to rape her and she’d hit him in self–defense? Christ, he should have persisted with his questions and not let her distract him with all that nonsense about getting pregnant. He was certainly digging a hole for himself with the police. Now he needed to find somewhere to hide Venus and come up with an explanation for his lack of contact details for the mother he’d invented for her – a dear friend of my aunt. What had he been thinking!

  Hell, what if Moore asked his father?

  Maybe Baz should tell Venus to leave. It was starting to get all too hard.

  But after a couple of seconds of thinking about that Baz realised he couldn’t, because he didn’t trust her to not take stupid risks in her mission to get pregnant. He really needed to find out what her true story was before Moore arrived, but what if she stonewalled him? Could he tell her he needed answers or he’d turf her out? Was he determined enough to do that? Because there was no point in threatening something he wasn’t prepared to follow through on.

  He was just mulling that over, realizing he’d never been in such a mess before, when he heard a sound that jangled down his spine like marbles banging down a set of stairs.

  The doorbell.

  His heart slammed into his ribs – then he caught his breath. It was way too soon to be the constable, unless Moore had lied about how close he was. No. That was too horrible to contemplate. It had to be someone else. So he took a moment to calm himself down then he turned and, with remarkable presence of mind, put the tray of party pies into the preheated oven.

  “More guests for the party,” he said softly to himself, a surreal calm overtaking his previous terror. Then he forced himself to walk at an even pace down the hallway that led to the front foyer. It was lined with photographs of Wilsons – four generations of them in all their finery, lined up outside Saltwood. Not a single one of them had committed a criminal offence, or at least had never been caught.

  Baz told himself he wasn’t about to be the first.

  So he reached for the doorknob and grasped it, but in the end he didn’t have the courage to open it. What if it was the constable — if Moore had been trying to trick him? Perhaps he should at least move Venus into another room.

  He was just vacillating on this idea, wondering if he could back out of the foyer without the visitor realizing he’d arrived on the other side of the door, when he heard a sneeze. A woman’s sneeze.

  Immediate he thought of Venus, flipped the bolt with his thumb and wrenched the door open.

  But there, standing on his front porch, soaking wet but with a tentative smile stood… Wynne Malone!

  “Hey, Baz,” she said softly.

  “Fuck,” he replied.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wynne faltered, her smile fading. Fuck. Did that mean he wasn’t happy to see her? She’d been on edge for most of the six hour drive, struggling to remember why she’d thought cornering Baz at his father’s house would help him fall in love with her — in fact, wondering how he could see her arrival as anything other than an invasion of his privacy.

  She’d been so worked up by the time the storm had hit, the gale–force winds had felt like the hand of God trying to push her back home. But still she’d persevered, telling herself that the road to love was often paved with tribulations and that she would ‘overcome’.

  That determination had faltered when her car had bogged, but after a few self–pitying tears she’d rallied and trudged through mud for two hours. Now, exhausted and drained of any reserves of bravado, Fuck was the last thing she wanted to hear.

  Still, she pasted a weak smile on her face and held out a dripping hand. “Just wanted to say sorry in person.”

  “Wynne,” Baz said, in the same tone as he’s said Fuck, but she forced her hand to remain extended and eventually he took it, pulling her over the threshold and glancing behind her quickly before slamming the door on the rising wind.

  He stood back then and frowned at her, as though unable to get his head around the fact that she’d appeared on his doorstep. But it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Hadn’t he read her letter? He just continued to stare.

  Luckily she wasn’t a complete mess. Wynne had only just taken her raincoat off and left it on the front gate (not wanting Baz to see her even carrying it – bad memories), so her smart pink, knee–length suit was mostly dry. More than could be said for her hair. The sweeping chignon her hairdresser had fussed over that morning was fallen out and hung like rats–tails down her back.

  “Wynne?” Baz said again, this time in a questioning tone, but that was all he said and, tired though she was, Wynne realised she’d have to move the conversation forward herself.

  She put her small suitcase on the marble floor tiles beside her and straightened to look him in the eye. “Did you read my letter?” she asked gently, then waited for him to tell her he’d thrown it away unopened. His frown merely deepened and she nervously tucked a rat–tail behind her ear, hoping she looked waif–like and vulnerable, instead of the drowned rodent she feared was more likely. “Deputy Principal Barnes gave me your address to post it to,” she lied. Baz would know, as well as she did, that Barnes could lose his job for giving out personal information. There were laws to protect privacy.

  But instead of questioning that part of the story, Baz said, “What letter?”

  Wynne felt her heart flutter uncomfortably. Was he going to deny even receiving it? “I sent you a letter of apology by registered mail. The post office told me your father sign
ed for it two days ago.”

  Baz closed his eyes on a sigh. “That explains why I didn’t get it.”

  “I said in the letter that I was heading up this way to visit my sister,” another lie, “And wanted to drop in to apologize in person.” Her gaze dropped down to her muddy pink stilettos. “How embarrassing,” she added and tried to force a blush, but she was freezing cold and shivering so heated cheeks were hard to conjure.

  There was a heartbeat of awkward silence before Baz said, “My dad’s a bit forgetful. He’s probably put your letter somewhere safe and…” He shrugged, then added, “Anyway, apologize for what? I was the one who was rude.”

  Wynne let her held breath out silently and tried not to smile, but that was even more difficult than conjuring the blush. She felt exultant. Everything was working out perfectly! “And now my car is bogged,” she said, gazing up at him again through her sodden eyelashes, “and I’m stuck here. I’m so sorry. Like you need more trouble from me.” She offered him a weak, self–deprecating smile.

  “Bogged? How far back?” Baz seemed inappropriately pleased about that.

  “About two hour’s trudge away,” she replied, risking a wider smile.

  Miraculously, Baz smiled back. “So the road’s completely blocked?”

  She nodded. “No one will be able to get out of here until my car is moved.”

  “Or in, “ he added, grinning at her.

  Wynne felt her heart beat that little bit faster. He was just so gorgeous, so completely scrumptious, from the tips of his tousled black hair that touched his shoulders, down past those ‘take me to bed’ eyes and deliciously white teeth, all the way down that lean, tanned body in its casually stylish tee shirt and shorts, to his Italian leather sandals. Oh yes, he was a man who could dress himself. Wynne loved that about him. Loved everything about him, in fact.

  “Looks like I’m stuck here,” she repeated, waiting for a reaction to that.

  Baz nodded, apparently unperturbed. “I’m surprised to see you, Wynne,” he admitted, “but I have to say it’s a happy surprise. You’re timing is impeccable!”