Losing Your Head (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 1)

by Clare Kauter

  “You didn’t strike me as the shy type the first time I met you, you know. I’m actually quite surprised. You’re not going to tell me your name, are you? Is this a game? Am I supposed to guess?” No response. No eye contact, either. “OK, how about 90 Cent? No, you don’t seem to be so fussed on that one. Um, how about Little John? No, that doesn’t quite fit. You could be a Peter, I guess. Maybe a Pat, or a Greg, or a Leroy. Like Leroy Brown.”

  “Panther,” he mumbled. I guessed that was his name. He was trying to shut me up.

  “Panther?” I repeated. “No buddy, you’re too late. From now on, you’re Leroy Brown. Do you know that song? I could sing a bit if you like.”

  “I know the song.” He had an accent that I couldn’t place.

  “Want to sing it with me? On three. Ready? One, t – ”

  “I do not sing.”

  “Oh come on, I got you to talk. If I can do that, I can do anything.” He didn’t look like he was going to sing. “OK, some other time. Look, dude, if you think that you’re going to get me to shut up by not answering me, you’ve got another thing coming. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard my father’s voice before, and I manage to hold conversations with him. Jeez, this silent thing’s irritating. I know you can talk. Why won’t you? I’m not going to stop, you know. I could go on for hours.

  “How about I tell you my life story? I was born in Gerongate Hospital on the – ”

  Panther/Leroy cut me off. “You need your energy for running. Save your breath.”

  That seemed fair enough. After all, I was starting to pant just a little.

  I think we were about one and a half Ks into it when I started to walk. He looked at me.

  “Is there any point in telling you to hurry up?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m the most determined procrastinator ever born. I don’t do hurrying. Although, you could probably pick me up and carry me there.”

  He frowned. “Would you like that?”

  I laughed. “No. It would be embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as getting caught walking around a communal bathroom totally nude.”

  His face, which had just begun to return to its normal colour, lit up like Rudolph’s nose again.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “It was my fault. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  He mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said that Sharps did not warn me that you do not shut up. Normally he would tell me something like this.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That you try to get out of running in any way possible. You have walked for long enough. Time to jog.” He took off and I followed.

  About two kilometres away from Baxter & Co. I started to walk again. Panther/Leroy looked at me.

  “I scare most people,” he said. “Why not you? You are scared of Spider Baxter, and yet I do not bother you.”

  “Spider Baxter? Who – oh, Adam.” I frowned. Did everybody at this place have a weird nickname? “Why do you think I’m scared of him?” I wasn’t ‘scared’ exactly; I just wasn’t comfortable in the presence of such beauty. Probably best not to tell Panther that.

  “Sharps told me. But why don’t I bother you? You are not even vaguely intimidated. Is it because you saw me in the shower yesterday?”

  I chose my next words carefully. “I started out feeling scared of you this morning, but as soon as you blushed you stopped worrying me.”

  “I do not blush.”

  “No, you light up like a neon sign.”

  “You are lying.”

  I laughed. “Whatever you say, Leroy.”

  He smiled. “Keep running.”

  Yes! I’d made him smile. Achievement unlocked!

  When we got to the gym, Panther Brown went straight to the admin desk and got my clipboard from the funky Grandma. He came back to me and said, “We have missed the start of yoga, so we are going to do some stretching instead.”

  We went over to the gym mats near the boxing rings. He was surprisingly flexible for a guy his size, a lot more flexible than me. He wrote down some things on the clipboard. Probably how bad I was. I wondered if he would write that I was annoying and wouldn’t shut up, as well as being unfit and inflexible. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  At 7:15, we moved over to the bodybuilding area and he got me to do rounds with the three-kilo weights like I had yesterday. Then he made me try and do push-ups. Eventually we gave up on that and I had to do sit-ups instead. Then he made me bench-press 10-kilos. It was embarrassingly hard.

  We finished at 7.30, by which time my arms were aching and burning. I wasn’t in a good mood either, because that had done very little for my fat arse. Leroy read what Tim and I had done yesterday.

  “OK,” he said. “Today we’re going over to the boxing bags and I’m going to teach you how to punch. Got it?”

  I nodded. Fine by me. The idea that I was fat had got me stressed enough to actually want to punch something. Plus, I could always think of James McKenzie or Celia Stanton. Hell, even my friend Marney made me want to kill her sometimes. Actually, most of the time – she wasn’t really my friend; she kind of just hung around.

  Leroy showed me a couple of different punches, and I did them. The boxing bag was hard, but I was angry and barely noticed. Which is why at the end, my knuckles were slightly bruised and even a bit bloodied.

  That morning I went for grilled mushrooms and tofu with a slice of rye bread, plus a protein shake for breakfast. I ate alone, as Panther had to get off to a job (at least, that’s what he said – he could have just been trying to get away from me). The breakfast tasted surprisingly good, apart from the wheat grass and Goji routine.

  I went into the female showers (I checked three times before entering), got my things out of my locker with my key card like one of the girls had shown me yesterday, and hopped under the spray. Baxter and Co. had really nice bathrooms. There were no expenses spared – they were actually individual showers with individual drains and they didn’t have a gap under the wall where you got hit with the spray from the person next door. My knuckles stung a little when I got soap on them.

  Back in my office, the In-tray was full. I sorted out the files, filed some, and then started researching the others. I was half way through the second file when the telephone rang.

  “Good morning. Baxter & Co. Charlie speaking.”

  “You little bitch,” said the voice at the other end. “How dare you mess with me? Do you know who I am?”

  It was Larry Jones. Apparently he’d found out that Imaso wasn’t quite who he thought she was. And now he knew my real identity. I pressed the record button on the telephone. Luckily it didn’t beep.

  “Listen, Grandpa,” I answered. “I mess with everyone. Besides, you’re hardly terrifying. You’re an old man with addictions and you don’t have enough money to feed them. You had Frank killed because you wanted his assets, and now his heir won’t sell either. Is he your next victim, Larry? Are you going to kill James next?”

  “I –” He hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ha. I had him.

  “Oh, I think you do. Who did you pay to do it? I know you hired someone.”

  “Hah! All right then, lady, I did. I did pay someone. James McKenzie. He killed his uncle. I heard that he killed all those other people, and I decided to get him to whack off his uncle. Hah! I’d like to see you hand this tape over to the police now!”

  And with that, he hung up.

  Shit. He’d known that I was recording the conversation, and he’d made sure he’d incriminated James on it so I couldn’t hand it over to the police. And what annoyed me even more is the fact that the police were probably tapping Larry’s line and had heard that conversation already. Double shit.

  I picked up the phone and called Tim’s office.

  “You need to get out here now. I think James is about to be arrested.”

  About 2 seconds later, Tim barrelled down the corridor an
d slid to a stop at my desk.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Larry Jones called me because he found out who I was and rang up to abuse me so I recorded the conversation in case he said anything interesting and he realised I was recording so he said that he hired James to kill Frank because he heard that James was an assassin and the police are probably listening in on his phone calls and if he made that call from his home phone or office or mobile then they’re going to arrest James and – ”

  Tim cut me off. “Charlie, try that again. Slower.”

  I said it again, only this time there were sentences.

  “OK,” said Tim when I’d finished. “You’re right, honey. This will probably have been monitored by the police.”

  My gut sank. “Oh shit. Shit! I don’t know why I feel so bad – I mean, I don’t even like James – but shit, I don’t want him arrested because of me. Oh no. Oh man!”

  “Charlie, would you let me finish? The police probably heard this conversation if he made the call on one of his telephones. Chances are that he didn’t, because while he isn’t the smartest person I know, I don’t think he’s dumb enough to incriminate himself on a phone that he knows is being tapped by the police. You need to calm down.” He paused. “I thought you didn’t like McKenzie. He’s grown on you, hasn’t he?”

  I thought about that for a second. “I guess so. Like, I’m not in love with him or anything, but I don’t want him to get put away for life.”

  Tim nodded. “Did you see his speech on the news last night?” he asked. “He was pretty convincing. I don’t think anyone who saw that is going to be able to say that they honestly think he did it.”

  I agreed. He was a natural on film. He made you want to believe what he said, so much so that even if he did get arrested, even if he confessed, most people would still want him to be found innocent. Yes. He was that good.

  Tim’s mobile went off, and he went outside to take the call. I wondered who it was. Maybe James. Maybe even Joe Winton, our little mole. Maybe he had information for Tim. Or, you know, maybe the call was just from a life insurance salesperson and had nothing to do with McKenzie at all. Best not to rest any hopes on it.

  After a while Tim came back inside.

  “That was Joe Winton. He told me that the police are trying to get a warrant to search Jones’s office. He said the earliest they can get the warrant is 5 pm today. Wanna ride along and check it out, honey?”

  I thought about it for a second. “Well, book club is on today, but that doesn’t start until half past 6, so as long as I’m home by then, sure.”

  He smiled. “Your mother is going to think there’s something going on between us.”

  I smiled too. “My mother couldn’t care less, really, except if I moved out of her house and in with you. Violet would care more.”

  “Would Violet be upset if we were going out? Y’know, because of her crush on me and all?” He was grinning even wider now.

  I laughed. “Maybe. But then again, her husband is Brian McKenzie and I think she reckons she did alright getting him.”

  He nodded. “Most women seem to think that getting a McKenzie is alright. Not you, though.”

  “No. Not me.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  I wondered how to answer that. “We used to be friends, but we had a fight and didn’t make up again. Now it’s more natural to stir each other up than to be nice. It’s just the way things worked out,” I answered.

  “Did you ever have a crush on James?” he asked.

  “You’re starting to sound like him.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Why yes?” I retorted.

  “So you did.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You might as well have.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re hard to read.”

  “You bet.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “So it is a yes, then. You did.”

  “You’re putting words into my mouth again.”

  “You really won’t say?

  “No.”

  “Fine. I’ll go.”

  “See ya.”

  “Later, honey.”

  And he left.

  * * *

  It was five to five, and I was pondering the McKenzie case. We knew Larry Jones had hired someone to kill Frank (amongst others). We were pretty sure that Jones and the hired hit man were trying to frame James. That was it. We didn’t know anything else.

  Well, OK, we did. We knew that James was innocent. We knew that the police suspected Larry Jones. We knew that whoever had killed Frank was an accomplished assassin. We thought that Frank had figured out something about who was responsible. And we knew that we needed to solve the case fast.

  The door opened and Tim entered. “C’mon,” he said. “We’ve gotta get going.”

  We jogged back down the corridor, through a doorway, down some stairs, along another corridor, down some more stairs, until we eventually emerged in the underground parking lot. We jogged over to Tim’s Porsche, he beeped it open and we jumped in.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Larry’s office building. We’re waiting for the police to turn up, and then we’re causing a distraction so they don’t make it to Jones’s office.”

  “What kind of ‘distraction’ are we causing?” I asked. “The legal kind? Or the not-so-legal kind?”

  “Nothing too bad. Andrews ain’t the sharpest tool in the box. It shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of him.”

  Tim pulled up out the front of a six-storey office building in a reserved parking space.

  “Um… are you sure we should be parking here?” I asked. I was slightly dubious about Tim’s disregard for the rules. He seemed to think that nothing could touch him (which is probably true), but I wasn’t nearly as confident.

  “It’s a Porsche in the VIP parking space. It would look weirder if we parked in a normal spot.”

  We got out, he locked the car, and we walked in through the glass doors. We were in a big room with a reception desk and green lounges where a bunch of people were sitting. Judging by the impatient body language, most of them had been waiting for a while.

  Tim swept over to the lounges and sat, and I followed him. The people looking at us probably thought that he was an important businessman and I was his PA. Which, when you think about it, was pretty close.

  Tim picked up a seven-month-old magazine from the coffee table near us and pretended to read it. At least, I guessed he was pretending. Tim didn’t strike me as the kind of person to worry about celebrity baby dramas, who’s on what diet or who was caught wearing that hideous outfit. Tim was the kind of guy you could see dating a celebrity, but not having any idea what she was famous for.

  I heard a telephone ring and Tim pulled his mobile out of his pocket. He walked outside to take the call and I was left on my own with the out of date magazine he’d left on the couch. I picked it up, but flicking through it I remembered why I don’t read tacky magazines – I don’t care. Although that diet sounded interesting…

  A breeze rustled the pages of the magazine as the doors opened again. I looked up, expecting it to be Tim re-entering after his telephone call, and instead saw Joe Winton and Michael Andrews. I thought Tim would follow them, but he didn’t come back in. The cops walked over to the front desk and showed the receptionist their badges and a piece of paper. She spoke to them for a while, and then pointed to the elevator. Shit! Where was Tim?

  I looked around one last time for Tim, but he was nowhere to be seen. I was on my own. Now what? I bolted upstairs. I had no idea which office was Larry’s, but somehow I had to cause a distraction before the police got to it.

  Think, I told myself. What’s the best way to cause a distraction? Well, that was obvious. Mass hysteria. But how?
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  By now I was on the third floor. I ran up the corridor like someone who was worried that they were about to lose a house and $20K if they didn’t beat the police to a certain office. There was no one else in sight. Just me, a rotating security camera, and a fire extinguisher.

  That was it! I looked at the camera. For the moment, it was faced away from me. Somehow, I was going to have to make it up to the other end of the corridor without getting caught on camera, and set the fire alarm off. I looked up. There was a sprinkler system in the roof. If I could get it to go off, everyone would bolt outside onto the street. An alarm would probably go off as well. That should generate a moderate amount of hysteria.

  I ran over to the wall and edged down it. I was in the camera’s blind spot. When I got to the fire extinguisher, the camera was facing the other way. I covered my hands with my shirt (didn’t want to leave fingerprints), pulled the extinguisher off the wall and the alarms and sprinklers started. I bolted back down the corridor (careful not to get caught on camera) and ran down the stairs screaming. “Fire! Everyone get out of here! There’s a fire!” When that didn’t seem to be getting much of a reaction, I tried “Bomb! There’s a suicide bomber upstairs! Run for your lives!” Again, that didn’t seem to have much effect so this time I tried just shrieking as loudly and as piercing as I could.

  People started filing out of offices then, so I started saying things like, “What’s going on? Can anyone else smell smoke?” and “Did anybody else hear that bang upstairs? It sounded like something exploded.” By now, there was quite a large mass of people hurrying down the stairs, and since most people were in white blouses (including me) it was a bit like a crazy wet T-shirt contest.

  Everyone started muttering, and it got louder. Pretty soon someone screamed, and as we ran through the foyer there was definitely terror in the air.

  Everyone who worked in, or was visiting, the office building was out on the sidewalk. Most people were drenched and a lot were screaming (including Officer Andrews). Suddenly someone put their hand around my waist and I felt myself being dragged out of the crowd.

  “Time to go, honey,” Tim said. “Wouldn’t want the cops to spot us.”