Losing Your Head (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 1)

by Clare Kauter

  “No, I – ”

  “You found a wallet full of money on your way home and you’re keeping it?”

  “No, I – ”

  “Oh, well. Better luck next time.”

  “I’ve got big news. It’s the reason I’m happy.”

  “You’ve finally got a boyfriend and he’s asked you to move in with him! Isn’t that wonderful? Quick, let’s go upstairs and I’ll help you pack. Who is he? When do I get to meet him? How old is he? Not that I care too much if he’s gonna get you out of my house.”

  “MUM! That’s not it. I don’t have a boyfriend.” She looked a bit put out at this. “But I did quit my job today.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes…” She was concerned. I could see it on her face.

  “Where are you going to work now?”

  I paused. I hadn’t really thought about that. In fact, I’d totally overlooked it.

  “Umm…” I began. “Umm…”

  “Yes?”

  Oops. Forgot about that bit. That whole getting-another-job thing. I wasn’t really qualified to do anything. At all. Maybe I could get unemployment benefits. It probably payed better than my last job.

  “I don’t actually know. I don’t s’pose you’ve heard of any jobs available?” I hoped she had. I’d do anything. It couldn’t be any worse than working at Gregory’s. I was desperate. “Anything?”

  “I’ve heard there’s an opening at Coles.”

  Well, maybe not anything.

  The next morning I stumbled out of bed far too early. Somehow I managed to make it to the bathroom with my eyes still shut. When I finally opened them and caught sight of myself in the mirror I nearly screamed, thinking there was a monster in the room, but when I put on my glasses (which I’d taped together last night) I realised it was just my own purply-blue face in the reflection. The bruise hadn’t gotten a lot better over night. If anything, it was worse. I had a quick shower (only half an hour – quick for me), avoided looking at myself in the mirror, dressed in semi-professional clothes, and headed down to the kitchen for breakfast. After that I planned to spend the rest of the day job-seeking. I settled on a glass of orange juice (which I spilt) and a piece of toast (which I burned) with jam (which kind of made up for the other two mistakes), and then I sat down and grabbed the newspaper to study while I ate. I meant to look for jobs vacant in the Classifieds, but the heading on the front page caught my eye. This was the hottest piece of gossip going around Gerongate yesterday. I’d heard about it from everyone I talked to. Well, nearly everyone – Jeremy and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss it for obvious reasons. I’d been far too busy destroying his marriage for that. But everyone else had mentioned it. So when I saw the headline I just couldn’t resist.

  OLD MCKENZIE HAS THREE FARMS, $2 BILLION, NO HEAD…

  (What a touchingly sincere title. So sensitive I could barely stand it.) I discovered that Francis McKenzie had been found dead on Tuesday morning, when his (headless) body was discovered by a couple of kids. They must have been awful burdens on society to get a Karma trip like that.

  The decapitation wasn’t what had killed him, luckily – it looked like he had been shot to death first. Phew. It would suck to be murdered, but if I had a choice between dying of bullets or having my head hacked off, it wouldn’t take long for me to decide.

  I read further down the article and found out that Frank had left everything he owned (which was quite a substantial amount, what with him being a billionaire and all) to one person – his nephew, James McKenzie.

  I knew James McKenzie. Everyone did. He was two grades above me in school, and he was the most popular guy there. He was also my mother’s best friend’s youngest child. After he completed Year 12 he’d gotten straight into police academy. He must’ve done OK there because a year later he was working as a cop at a Gerongate Station.

  Personally, I didn’t really like James McKenzie. I’d always thought that he had an over-inflated sense of his own importance. I suppose that wasn’t really his fault if you saw the way people acted around him. Not me, of course. I’d been friends with him when we were little because of our mothers, but he changed. (I know, I know – “He’s not the same person as he was when he was four!” Whatever.) We still had to see each other a lot while we were growing up (much to our disgust) but since it generally ended in tears/swearing/violence, we tried to keep our contact to a minimum. I’d hardly seen him since his mother kicked him out, even less since we finished school, and that was fine by me.

  Everything James ever had was a present from his Uncle Frank. Frank had no wife or kids and was a bit of a cranky old fart, to tell the truth. He didn’t like many people, but he and his nephew James got on like a house on fire. When James was kicked out of his parent’s house (age 16), Frank had taken him in and made him continue on with school. When James had decided to become a cop, Frank had payed his fees, and given James a house (free of rent) as a graduation gift. And it wasn’t like this was just some shack in a side alley. We are talking a few million dollars’ worth of mansion. I’d never actually been inside, but I’d driven past and it was massive.

  Some people have all the luck.

  But now Frank was dead, and everyone was accusing James. It was understandable that they thought it was him. I mean, he had motive (a couple of billion motives, if you catch my drift), and the only person who could give him an alibi had left for South America on Tuesday afternoon, hadn’t been questioned, and was currently unable to be contacted. And James had means. Frank had been shot with a pistol, and in Gerongate – and the rest of Australia, as far as I knew – only cops were legally allowed to carry pistols. If James had used a registered gun then it was only a matter of time before he was caught. Of course, being a cop, he probably came into contact with plenty of unregistered guns, too…

  Poor little James. Means, motive and, right now, no alibi. Everyone thought he was a murderer, and his perfect reputation was in tatters. Boo-hoo. Now don’t get the wrong idea – it wasn’t like I was enjoying this. Well, maybe I was. It was just nice for once that I wasn’t the one being publicly humiliated.

  It was sad about Frank, though. What a gross thing for someone to do. And everyone thought his nephew had done it – at least, nearly everyone. I thought McKenzie was a moron, but I still didn’t think he was a killer. I just wasn’t sure he had it in him.

  When I finished reading the article I flipped over to the ‘Jobs Vacant’ section. Not much there. Coles needed new checkout workers. McDonalds was looking for young people to sell their ‘food’. Same old, same old. I checked the date on the paper. It was yesterday’s. Hmm. So the jobs in the paper weren’t looking incredibly promising. Google didn’t throw up much either.

  There was only one thing for it.

  I shuddered at the mere thought.

  Chapter Two

  Have you ever had a week so bad you start believing that God’s punishing you for something? (Possibly for being an atheist?) We’re talking the sort of week where so many things go wrong that you’re trying to think of solutions to everything and your brain casually offers up ideas to solve various issues – “I could email, but maybe I should just call, that would be faster”, “I’ll go early in the morning”, “Maybe I should just die”. Well, this week had just become one of those weeks. Why, you ask?

  Well.

  I was on my way to Centrelink.

  For those of you not familiar with this glorious establishment, Centrelink is the place they send all the people who need money. Everyone. Just lump them all together, students, pensioners, recently released prisoners, in you go. I had largely managed to avoid it by not going to university, but alas, I was unemployed and now here I was. Just so you get a sense of the ambience, here is the basic procedural run down: you line up for half an hour, get to the front, they write your name down, and then you’re officially waiting. Usually they’ll have a TV playing a handy tutorial on things such as how to wash your hands, there are stains all over the floor (Blo
od? Vomit? Cola?), and you’ll be sitting next to someone who smells of tuna. It’s quite an interesting cross-section of the community you get there.

  If you’re lucky, you’ll get a good employee and not have to return on your next day off to fix up their mistakes. If you’re unlucky… Well. Apparently, hit one wrong key and instead of earning 500 dollars you’ve earned half a million. Seven phone calls and four trips to Centrelink later, the benefit fraud inquiry just might be under control. Then you’ll be able to get back onto your ordinary payments (which, for anyone who isn’t well versed in welfare, means you get slightly less money than you’re able to live on unless you supplement it with some sort of illegal activity).

  My trip to Centrelink was so harrowing that I’m really not prepared to go into any more detail other than they basically told me to get a job. Great.

  After wasting two hours of my life to be told essentially to go away, I started walking home. Then the torrential rain started. This is when I discovered that the dye in my brand new blue pants was not particularly stable. So unstable, in fact, that they were now white pants and my (usually pasty) legs were a bright turquoise. And also the pants were now two sizes smaller, seeing as apparently they shrink when wet. (I don’t mean to brag, but it was quite a spectacular wedgie going on – yep, another wedgie. What a glamorous life I lead.)

  After arriving home, extracting my pants from my crack, and attempting (read: failing) to wash the blue dye off my legs, I decided to take action.

  I needed a résumé.

  I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen so that I could do up a draft, and began by writing ‘Résumé’ up the top. So far, so good. I’d even remembered to put the accents in (and I hadn’t even had to Google the spelling). Underneath the heading, I wrote my name and a brief description of myself and my goals. Well, I wrote that I wanted a job I enjoyed, anyway. If such a thing was possible. Money would probably have scored higher on my list of priorities right at that time, but I thought that it would be better to leave that off. Might not have come across that well.

  Next I listed my qualifications. It wasn’t a lengthy list. It was my (rather mediocre) HSC scores. That was it. Jeez, prospective employers would be real interested to know that. I was definitely going to be at the top of their list.

  Their ‘Who to Avoid Hiring at All Costs’ list.

  Then came the list of previous employment. After much thought I decided to actually write Gregory’s Groceries and just hope like hell that they didn’t decide to give Jeremy Martin a call.

  I printed off a few copies and decided to go door-to-door. I handed out copies to shop owners for about two hours before I ran out, then I went home. I made myself a tomato sandwich (tomato: liquid, bread: stale) and sat down at the kitchen table to think. Mum was out in the garden and dad was down at the mechanic’s fixing somebody’s car, so I had the room to myself. None of the people I had seen this morning seemed very interested in hiring me and to be honest, I couldn’t blame them. Four years of employment as a checkout chick, no car and still living with parents wasn’t exactly impressive. To tell the truth, it was actually pretty sad. And they could probably tell I was a walking disaster by the bruise on my face. And let’s not forget the sticky-taped bridge on my glasses.

  OK, so I hadn’t done that well with the people I’d met so far. I considered my options. Employment agency – not exactly appealing. I decided to leave that for when I was getting seriously desperate, which honestly wasn’t going to be far away. I could visit more of the places in the CBD, but if I really wanted to have a door slammed in my face, I could probably manage it myself. Besides, everyone who needed a job probably went down the main strip looking for one.

  There was another option. I could visit new parts of town and see if there were any jobs going there. There were probably a lot less unemployed idiots job seeking in the back streets than in downtown Gerongate. There were probably a lot less business owners looking for unemployed idiots in the backstreets than in downtown Gerongate as well, but hey, it was worth a try.

  That was how I’d found myself, an hour later, in a part of Gerongate I’d never been in before, standing out the front of a business I’d never heard of. I’d hesitated and I wasn’t quite sure why.

  It could have had been that there were about fifty cameras out the front, some trained on the entrance and some on windows and the rest moving to give a full view of the front of the building. There were probably about four cameras filming any one place at a given time. It’d make entering undetected a nightmare. Not that I was planning to break in. It was clear these guys meant business.

  I looked at the front door. It had a state-of-the-art security system on the right side of the door with an intercom connecting to somebody inside. There was a screen, a speaker, a few buttons and what looked like a credit card slot (and hell, do I know credit card slots – thank you, retail).

  There was one other thing that was bothering me about this place. It wasn’t the name. Baxter & Co. wasn’t exactly frightening. A little secretive, maybe. But not scary. The thing that was worrying me was how high-tech and expensive this place looked. This wasn’t exactly a high-tech and expensive neighbourhood. This was a carry-a-gun-at-all-times kind of neighbourhood. And what bothered me about that was the suspicion I had that maybe that was how these guys made their money – by carrying guns at all times. And using them.

  I hadn’t exactly meant to end up in this part of town, wherever this part was. I’d taken a wrong turn and kept going, somehow ending up in the seediest back alleys you could imagine. (Hello metaphor for my life.) At one point I’d walked past what I thought was a pile of garbage bags, when suddenly they started moving and one of them groaned. Displaying admirable bravery, I screamed and ran away. Hashtag streetlife.

  The more lost I got, the more broken windows I saw. Broken bottles on the road, graffiti everywhere. And not even clever graffiti. Just pictures of anatomically incorrect dicks and the word “gay” scrawled across doorways of abandoned buildings. (But hey, maybe that was a really happy abandoned building, what do I know?)

  This was an area in disrepair. It was even worse than that time we went on a family road trip and ended up eating lunch in a terrifying little country town. (That place had looked like the set of True Detective, and I’m sure everyone there was related.)

  This Baxter & Co., though? Clean, tidy, untouched. It was fucking pristine.

  So that was what had kept me from going in straight away. In this area, a nice building just seemed a little sinister. Oh, who was I kidding? It seemed a lot sinister.

  Don’t be stupid, my daring side said. Just go in. Just do it! What’s the worst that could happen? You could get a job. Ooh, how awful?!

  No, my sensible/conservative/boring side said. The worst thing that could happen is that you could get shot.

  Pessimist, said Daring. Daring won.

  I walked up to the future-of-security front door and tried the handle. To my amazement it turned. I had been half hoping it wouldn’t so I could leave and not talk to anybody. This situation made me uncomfortable. Either someone had left it unlocked or someone had seen me standing outside and keyed me in. This was not the sort of place where I could imagine people left doors unlocked, at least not if they wanted to live. I was left to conclude that I’d been let in intentionally. And that scared me.

  I entered cautiously. More cameras. The reception desk to my right (I use the term loosely – ‘reception’ sort of implies that there will be a receptionist) was drowning in unsorted files and pieces of paper. It was chaos. Just seeing it brought out the (formerly latent) obsessive-compulsive in me. I resisted the urge to move behind the desk and start tidying, however, because firstly that’s weird, and secondly the desk was unattended and I was curious to know who had let me in.

  I turned to my left and studied the office door. It was shut, but judging by the nameplate it belonged to the boss. I had a strong suspicion that he’d been the one to let me in, which was odd because 1) W
hy, and 2) What kind of boss could afford that level of security but didn’t even hire a receptionist. I quickly knocked on the doorframe before I lost heart, and hoped no one answered. No such luck.

  “Come in,” called a deep male voice from inside. I opened the door and stepped in. Harry Baxter was a balding man who looked to be in his late fifties and had obviously bought the shirt he was wearing many meals ago because the buttons were now working pretty hard. He looked at me over the rim of his glasses, which were resting three-quarters of the way down his nose. He spoke.

  “You were standing outside for quite some time. I’m curious. What can I do for you?”

  I was impressed that he didn’t seem to be put off by the massive bruise on my face, although I was worried that it might be because he had learnt to ignore injuries through practice. They probably got a lot of practice here. I kind of wished I hadn’t worn jeans because it would have been interesting to see if he’d be so unruffled about my Smurf legs.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Iwasjustwonderingwhatexactlyitisyoudohereandifthereareanyjobsavailable?” I knew I’d said it far too quickly. Great. Another job opportunity gone. Baxter took off his glasses (not sticky taped, if you’re wondering). His green eyes were crinkled at the corners and I could tell he was amused.

  “We’reaprivatesecurityandinvestigationfirmandyesthereisonejobvacant.”

  Great. Now he was mocking me.

  “Sit down,” he said, “And tell me about yourself.”

  “Well, um, here’s my résumé,” I said, passing the sheet of paper across the desk to him as I sat down. “Er, my – my name’s Charlie Davies. Um, I’ve lived in Gerongate my whole life. I did OK in my HSC but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do so I didn’t go to Univer-”

  “Do tell me – Charlie, isn’t it? – tell me, Charlie, why you worked at Gregory’s Groceries for four years and yet you haven’t listed your boss as a referee?”