by June Whyte
To free both hands, I dropped my shoes on the footpath and draped my coat over the front fence. All I needed now was for someone to saunter along the street and cop an eyeful of my goose-bumps. Naturally, it would be a man. And I’d had a gutful of those alien creatures.
The street was empty of night marauders so I yanked the bodice of my dress up over my skimpy see-through bra (another of my antsy hormone leader’s ridiculous ideas) and retied the halter neck straps. As I attempted to push my arms through the sleeves of my coat, an icy wind sent it flapping. And as I hopped up and down, staggering to retain my balance while fitting stupid, strappy sexy sling-backs onto my feet, a razor sharp stone just happened to be sitting there on the footpath, waiting for me to land on it with the bare sole of one foot.
A fitting finish to a day-to-forget.
Now I’d have to ring for a taxi I couldn’t afford: a taxi from Burnside to Gawler. Probably cost more than my fortnightly grocery bill plus next week’s petrol allowance.
Hobbling up the street, I dug for my cell phone and flicked through the listed phone numbers in search of United Taxis.
“Hey, good lookin’, need a lift?”
I glanced up, a snarl at the ready. If that was a pick-up line, I’d rip the guy’s tongue out. If it was little Eddy in his silky grey socks, I’d happily beat the crap out of him before stuffing him in the nearest dumpster.
“Come on, Dani, hop in.”
“Simon?” I peered at the familiar fire-engine red Echo idling along beside me. “You are stalking me?”
Simon stopped the car, leant across the console and opened the passenger side door for me. “You okay?”
“No. I’m not okay.” Doing up the last button on my coat I hunched over and squashed into the car beside Simon. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but don’t ask me what happened. Okay? The tropics will freeze over before I divulge that secret.”
Simon was silent for a moment while he contemplated the view of the upper-class street through his windscreen. “So…” he said at last, eyes still on the pools of light that spilled from the streetlights onto the roadway ahead. “Guess who I ran into at the Gawler Arms tonight?”
“How should I know?”
And why would I care?
“Megan Starr. She was there with a couple of friends. We ended up having a drink and a nice long chat.”
“What?” I screeched. “Megan had time to chat to you but she couldn’t be bothered answering my phone calls.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Simon’s lips twitching. And then it hit me. He knew. Simon had been waiting for me outside Edward’s house because he knew. I closed my fist and punched him on the arm. “Why you—”
He gave a yelp of pain and then must have seen the hurt in my eyes, because next minute his arms were around me, holding me close, rocking me. “It’s okay, Dani,” he crooned pressing his lips to the top of my head. “You’re way too good for scum like Edward Granger. All muscle and silk suits, and yet he’d slit his own grandmother’s throat if he thought it would net him an extra couple of bucks. And don’t worry, I gave Megan a decent serve for fixing you up with Little Eddy. Can’t work out why she’d do that to you. Anyway, I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt.”
I don’t know whether it was the roughness of his overcoat warm against my cheek, or the comforting familiar sound of his voice in my hair. I sniffed and burrowed deeper. If only I could stay in Simon’s arms forever. Let the world with all its ugliness and hurt pass me by.
But this was Simon—and Simon didn’t do forever.
“That’s it!” I told him at last, surfacing for air before I embarrassed him by blubbing all over the front of his coat. “No more blind dates. No more trying to find Mr. Right. No more drooling over hot-looking guys who are way out of my league. It’s just Horace and me and romance novels from now on.”
“Good,” Simon said.
14
Thursday, 7:00 a.m.
“Tell me, Simon, exactly what did you mean by good?”
It was seven o’clock the following morning. When the phone rang and I picked up and discovered Simon on the other end, the words just burst from my mouth of their own accord. Not, “Hi Simon,” or “What’s up, Templar?”, or “Hope you managed to get some sleep after dropping me home six hours ago.” Nope. Straight to the main event.
“Good?” I could hear the confusion in Simon’s voice. “What are you raving on about, Dani?”
“Last night. You said good when I told you I’d finished with blind dates, looking for Mr. Right and wearing sexy red sling-backs.”
“Um…I did?”
“Come on, you know you did.”
“Okaaay.”
“Well, I was wondering—you know, vaguely tossing it around—what exactly did you mean when you said, good?”
Vaguely tossing around? Hell, except when I was in the middle of a nightmare featuring a naked Edward and his swishing riding whip plus God knows what other instruments of torture he had stashed under his bed, I’d lay in bed for hours, still wired, tearing the word apart, juggling half a dozen scenarios in my head.
Good. Simon was jealous of me seeing other men. Good. He was beginning to think of me as a sexy lady as well as an old friend?
“All I meant was good, I can finally get some sleep.” Simon’s voice was dismissive; even had the suggestion of a shoulder shrug about it. “I’m getting too old to rescue you from your kinky blind dates, Dani.”
Deflated, I sniffed and thought, well, there goes my jealousy theory, blown up in one barbwire remark. And then the blood rushed to my face and the heat pulsed and radiated from my cheeks like old-fashioned fire bellows.
Was last night’s hug from Simon a pity cuddle?
“Anyway,” Simon went on in his normal let’s-stick-to-the-facts-ma’am voice, “the reason I rang is because I have more bad news.”
My shoulders drooped as I let out a sigh. “Honestly, Simon, I don’t want to know. I’m up to my ears in bad news. Any more and I’ll drown in the depressing stuff.”
But of course the retired ex-cop wasn’t interested in my feelings—only the facts. “Our mystery murderer has tampered with your column again, Dani. This time one of your letters mentions ‘tea and toast with vegemite spread on top’, which is exactly what DF’s wife was eating when the killer broke into her house.”
“Oh, shit!” I let my body slide slowly down the old-fashioned wallpaper until I was sitting on the floor, legs bent, back hard against the wall. There was a grating pain in my chest. Like all the air had leaked out of my lungs.
“Hey, you still there, Dani? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, one fist rubbing rhythmically at the centre of my chest. “What’s going on, Simon? And why me? I just don’t get it.”
“It’s got to be one of the staff at the Tribute. Who else would have access to your column before the paper gets onto the streets?”
“But who?” I wailed, fighting tears. Horace must have heard my cry because his head poked anxiously around the bedroom doorway. Seeing me on the floor he padded across the carpet and stretched out beside me, his head heavy on my lap. “Who at the Tribute hates me enough to use me as a tool for murder?” I went on, scratching behind the greyhound’s ears. “And who at the Tribute would be violent enough to ram a hot poker down a woman’s throat?”
“Not Tracey, our literary guru. She’s too busy partying all night. And can you imagine the fashion conscious Dee Dee with a hot poker? Hell, she’d be too worried about breaking a nail to wield anything heavier than a mascara wand. And Rob, the Tribute’s photographer? Put him in that situation and he’d hang around for hours afterwards taking photos of the murder scene from every angle, until the cops arrived and arrested him. And—”
“What about Alice?” Simon broke in, effectively ending my rave. “I know you consider Alice a harmless flake, but if you went to jail for murder, who’s the likely candidate to take over your column? Alice! I can easily imag
ine her chanting spells and brandishing a poker while calling up the dark spirits of the night.”
“Maybe.” I gently shifted Horace’s head off my lap and stood up as a sudden thought struck me. “And maybe it’s no one at the Tribute. Maybe it’s Jack Rivers from Gape magazine. He’d also fit the description of the devil with the face of an angel that Alice saw in her crystal ball.”
“Rivers? I don’t follow you. Okay, the man’s a slimy scumbag who’d camp out in a ladies’ toilet for a week if he thought there was a possibility of catching the Queen in mid-flow…but a murderer? And what reason would he have to kill Mary Foster? And why would he involve you?”
“I don’t know,” I moaned and my head started to pound. That was the trouble—I really didn’t know. “It’s just…well, why did Jack Rivers pretend to be my blind date the other night? Don’t you think that’s suspicious? My niece, Suzy, told me that Jack paid the real Craig from Accounts two hundred dollars to stay home and let him take his place at the restaurant….”
“Yeah, but Rivers set you up because he planned to have you photographed in an uncompromising position—not to kill anyone.”
My dog bumped me on the leg with his head, demanding attention, so I scratched behind one of his velvety ears again. “I know, but thinking back, when Jack came up behind me at the restaurant, he surprised me into dropping my handbag on the floor. And he didn’t give me a chance to pick it up. Instead, he distracted me with his blarney, while he bent down and retrieved the bag himself.”
Still trying to recollect every detail of the scene in the restaurant, I drifted across to the sofa and flopped back onto its tapestry cover before going on. “And the following morning the police found a draft copy of my column inside that same bag. Coincidence? I don’t think so. And instead of the original answer to DF’s letter, which was on my draft copy, the corrupted answer—the one published in the morning’s paper—was on it. That’s the reason I was marched off to the police station for questioning.”
Horace leaped up on the sofa beside me. After swiping his rough tongue across my cheek, he settled down, resuming his earlier position with his head on my lap.
“Jesus, Dani.” Simon sounded agitated. “Why didn’t you tell me about your handbag falling on the floor before?”
“Hey, I’ve had a few things on my mind over the last couple of days,” I told him. “And anyway, I didn’t put one and one together and come up with Jack Rivers until just now. We both thought someone at the Tribute must have put the evidence in my bag.”
He gave a resigned sniff. “Fair enough. So…Jack Rivers had every opportunity to slip that paper into your handbag at the restaurant. Interesting. I say we pay our sleazy journalist mate a visit. Should be fun beating a confession out of him. And if he’s not at home, perhaps his front door might be open and we can have a look around. See what the sneaky turd’s up to.”
“But why would Jack kill Mary?” I asked, more confused than ever and so against breaking into someone’s house, even if the “someone” was Super Sleaze, that my heart rate escalated to a thousand beats a minute. “And why would Jack tamper with my column? I still don’t get it. To me, the only one with a motive for killing Mary is Derek, and he seems genuinely devastated by his wife’s death.”
“Okay, how’s this? What if, say, Jack Rivers was having an affair with Derek’s wife?”
“Mmm,” I said, not at all convinced.
“Hey, it’s not only the husband who can stray in a relationship, you know.”
“It’s not that. It’s just, well, wouldn’t that give Derek more of a motive to kill Mary? And what reason would Jack have for killing his lover?”
“She could have dumped him.”
I had to laugh at this theory. “Come on, Simon. Be real. We know Jack Rivers has an ego the size of Uluru, but hey, being dumped isn’t a strong enough motive for murder.”
“Dani, darlin’, you are so sweet. And so naive. If only the world was full of people with your philosophies we wouldn’t need correctional facilities.”
“Humph,” was all I could think of in my defense.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta love ya and leave ya now. I need to pick up yesterday’s court details from the police-station on my way to work.”
“I’ll see you at the Tribute later then.”
“And don’t worry; you can leave that other business with me. I’ll ring my contact at Gape and find out where and when we might catch Super Sleaze away from the office today.” His chuckle sounded low in his throat. “I think I’m going to enjoy this meeting with Rivers. Could be a bagful of laughs.”
“Maybe for you, Templar, but not for me,” I said to the flat sounding buzz of the dial tone.
Steeped to the eyeballs in bad news, I dropped the phone as though it was contagious, slid out from under Horace’s comforting head, and trudged, bare-footed across the carpet, towards the kitchen.
I hadn’t even had a chance to drink my first cup of morning coffee yet. And already I’d made a fool of myself thinking Simon cared about my love life, my sex column at the Tribute was sabotaged for the third time, and it looked like I’d have to come face-to-face with sleazy Jack Rivers again.
It didn’t need gut instinct to tell me this wasn’t going to be one of my better days.
* * *
Anticipating the heady taste of caffeine, I’d barely finished pouring steaming hot coffee into my giant-sized Smiley mug when the phone set my head pounding again.
“Oh bugger!” Glancing across at the ringing phone on the nest of tables beside the couch, I wrapped both hands around the warmth of my mug, and frowned. “Answer that please, Horace. I’m in need of my caffeine fix.”
The black-and-white greyhound stretched full length on the couch, lifted one ear and then promptly went back to sleep.
“Hey, Inspector Rex can grab the phone in his mouth and bring it to his master. Why can’t you?” I told the drowsy dog as I marched across to the table and snatched up the cordless phone.
“Hello, Danielle Summers speaking.”
“Don’t bother coming into work today. Or tomorrow. Or any day for that matter. You and your column are finished.”
“Joe?”
“Of course it’s Joe. I had the police banging on my door this morning. Woke me at six o’clock to tell me not to print any more of your columns until further notice. And as far as I’m concerned—that’s forever.”
“But—”
“You’re sacked! Hear me? S. A. C. K. E. D!”
The tightness in my chest had me gasping for breath. Vaguely in the background, I could hear my sister, Penny, shouting. Something about a pair of garden sheers and Joe’s testicles. What sounded like a scuffle and a colorful curse was followed by Penny’s sharp voice on the line. “Danielle, are you okay?”
“N-no. Not really, Pen,” I admitted, forcing a deep breath from my constricted lungs. “Did Joe just…just sack me?”
“What Joe meant to say was take a holiday, with pay, until this awful business is over.” Her voice, laced with steel, went on to query her husband’s earlier statement. “That’s exactly what you meant—isn’t it Joseph?” Joseph must have nodded or grunted or protected his head from a flying saucepan because Penny went blithely on to berate me further. “However,” she added, like the harbinger of doom, “I am not at all happy with your latest shenanigans, Danielle. For a start, I do not enjoy members of the police department knocking on my front door. What will the neighbors think?”
“I—”
“And I don’t enjoy having my sister’s name attached to a murder case. It’s not seemly.” She paused and I could visualize her tossing her fringe from her suddenly narrowing eyes. “You didn’t murder this beastly woman…did you, Danielle?”
“Penny, of course I—”
“Because, if you did, I know an excellent lawyer who’ll get you off on mental instability,” she blathered as though taking part in a talking race and her life depended on winning. “You know, you’ve always
been a bit unstable, Danielle. Ever since mother dropped you head first on that cement floor in the bathroom when you were eighteen months old. If we need to, we can dig up the old hospital records from that time and use them as evidence.”
“Penny!” I yelled, exasperated. “I didn’t—”
“And speaking of our mother, it’s your turn to visit. Find out what’s going on in that den of iniquity she calls a retirement home. Whoever heard of a retirement home with Happy Hour twice a day, its very own pokies room and a no-holds-barred game of poker every Friday night? She was on the phone yesterday demanding I bring her cigarettes and condoms. I ask you. What does an eighty-three-year-old woman want with condoms? Of course I told her she’d get neither of those disgusting things from me and I want you to promise you won’t let her talk you into getting them for her, either. You’re such a marshmallow, Danielle.”
Exhausted, shattered, totally bushed, my brain turned into ice cream and I melted onto the couch beside Horace.
15
Thursday, 1:00 p.m.
Six hours later—after arranging to meet Simon because his contact at Gape had given him the tip that Jack Rivers would be on assignment for most of the afternoon attempting to dig up dirt on brothels, strip joints and strangely enough, funeral parlors—I parked my car in front of the Tribute.
No way was I going inside the office. I was still too fragile to face the pitying looks from my colleagues. And as for confronting Joe—well, common sense told me I’d be safer jumping into a sea of white pointer sharks.
Added to the turmoil in my head, I’d discovered Edward had tricked me the night before. In fact, it seemed like the whole evening was a well-rehearsed plot to get him over my knee, and me into his bed. When Patrick, the scrawny mechanic guy, had returned my car around 8:30 that morning, he’d let slip that he’d replaced the stolen distributor cap. He also rambled on about my car needing a new motor and a new gearbox and a new transmission. “What? Someone stole my distributor cap?” I’d queried, ignoring all the comments starting with new. “Yeah,” he’d replied with a smirk. “It musta been pinched while you was inside the theatre.”
