by June Whyte
That’s when I’d twigged.
My car breaking down, the phone call from Sasha, the invisible burglar and finally the important fax which gave Edward time to get off his gear, warm up his tool and then grab his trusty riding crop. All planned.
Still reeling from that revelation, the visit from the police an hour after Patrick returned my car, hadn’t improved my morning—or my disposition. More questions. More insinuations. And more warnings not to leave the state.
I’d spent the remainder of the morning trawling the shops for the hottest pink skateboard, the mildest cigarettes and an economy-sized packet of lime-flavored, ultra-fine condoms.
I was in such a daze at the time I hadn’t even had a hot flush while selecting condoms for my mother!
The familiar sight of Simon as he pushed through the front door of the newspaper office and strolled toward me helped kick my spirits up a notch. He might not have a swimmer’s chest like Edward, nor an ultra-tight butt like Jack, but he was definitely what youngsters called fit. Must be all that jogging he did when dashing to the local TAB agency to place his bets.
“Hi Dani,” Simon greeted me as he opened the passenger side door of my car, flicked an empty Big Mac container onto the floor and eased his bulk onto the seat. “Everyone in the newsroom’s talking about Joe giving you a holiday. What’s it like being a celebrity?”
“Oh, terrific,” I snarled and jammed my foot so hard on the accelerator we screamed out of the car park and onto the main roadway. We were using my car because Simon’s fire-engine red Echo would stand out like a flashing neon light if used as the stake-out vehicle.
“Don’t let Joe get to you, darlin’. It’s his security issue that someone is able to get into your computer and screw around with the column. Not yours. The staff at the Tribute might be a tad jealous of your unexpected holiday, but they’re on your side. Except for Alice and her zany mate, Dee Dee, but of course those two are on another planet.” Simon’s knuckles went white as we careened around a corner forcing him to hang onto the seat with a death grip. “Er…like me to drive? Might be easier than trying to direct you in this traffic.”
“Nope.” I dodged around a car already traveling 20ks over the speed limit and zoomed up behind another. “Don’t patronize me, Simon. I know where Gape’s office is.”
“You might know where we’re going,” Simon gasped as we almost collided with a truck full of squealing pigs, “but the question is, will we get there in one piece? Pull over, Dani. Now!”
His thunderous command finally pricked my self-righteous balloon. For some reason I was venting my anger and confusion on Simon, but couldn’t stop myself. However, realizing I was a danger behind the wheel, I slowed down and at the next siding we swapped seats.
After that, I ignored him and stared through the windscreen. My life was crap. And it was my prerogative to wallow in it.
However, after wallowing for a whole five minutes, I decided that option was about as much fun as banging my thumb with a hammer, so settled down to enjoy Simon’s company instead.
By one o’clock, we were sharing a steak and onion sandwich outside Phwaor, a dingy-looking strip club on the outskirts of Adelaide. Not because either of us had any interest in checking out the merchandise, but because that’s where Jack Rivers had led us.
Phwaor was the second strip club Jack and his camera crew had invaded since they’d driven away from the magazine’s office. At the first one, The Garter-Belt, Jack hadn’t got any farther than the front door. After arguing animatedly for several minutes, the two security guys tossed Jack bodily across the street. Much to our delight. I spilt coffee on my lap and Simon almost swallowed his tonsils laughing at the way Jack landed on his butt and bounced.
I was restless. We’d been sitting outside Phwaor for half an hour. Simon had his nose in a newspaper studying the racing form while I finished off my half of the steak sandwich. What was going on inside the club? I wondered. Was Sleazy Jack having group sex with the girls inside, or had they beaten him to a pulp and stuffed him down the garbage chute?
“Hey, Simon,” I said at last. “Get your head out of that paper and talk to me. I’m bored.”
Simon folded the race fields for tonight’s harness meeting in half and looked up. “Sorry, Dani, what do you want to talk about?”
“Do you reckon Jack knows we’re following him?” I asked as I licked the last of the onion off my lips, screwed up the sauce-encrusted paper bag and stashed it in my glove box—together with three empty coffee cups and a smelly banana.
“Nah, don’t think so.” Simon shook his head. “What gives you that idea?”
“Seems funny he almost gave us the slip on the way here. Did you notice the way he took off at that amber light? As if he was trying to lose us. Would have too if you hadn’t screeched across the road after him.”
“Dani, knowing Rivers, he was most likely pissed off because his charm hadn’t worked on those two big bruisers at The Garter Belt. That guy’s so up himself, he doesn’t realize his charm only works on snakes and innocent children.”
“Hey, it worked on me and I’m no innocent child!”
“The vote’s out on that one,” Simon muttered.
Not wanting to get into another argument, I said, “Anyway, I can’t see the point of following Jack around for the rest of the day. We should just grab him when he comes out of Phwaor and ask him point blank if he snuck the paper into my handbag.”
“There you go again, Dani. Do you really think Rivers would tell you the truth?”
“Well…”
“The jerk would laugh in your face. If we’re going to find out what Jacky Boy’s up to, we have to tail him. Take note of who he meets, who he talks to and whether he has a mole working for him at the Tribute. Of course, if we manage to get him alone, without his hangers-on, then we can tie him up and throw darts at his face every time he answers a question with a lie.” The grin he gave me belied his words and then he gave a half-shrug. “You have plenty of time to tail the guy for the next few days—you’re on holiday.”
“Me? What about you?”
“Unfortunately, I’m still a poor working man.” His grin continued to widen until I punched him on the arm.
“I am not traipsing after Jack Rivers on my own,” I declared. “I have far better things to do with my time than follow Super Sleaze around town and watch him swagger in and out of strip clubs and brothels.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Well…” I thought quickly. There had to be lots of important things for me to spend my days doing. Like grooming my dog. Watching daytime soaps on television. Shopping for a push-up bra. “Oh yeah,” I said, remembering my mother’s phone call. “I have to visit my mother. If I get time I’ll go this afternoon, if not, I’ll make the trip tomorrow. It’s Henry’s ninetieth birthday on Saturday and Mum asked me to buy a skateboard for him.”
I didn’t mention the cigarettes and lime-flavored condoms. Some things were sacred.
“You’re joking!” Simon’s chuckle set me giggling too. “Your mother’s buying Henry a skateboard? Oh hell, this I’ve got to see. Mind if I tag along too?”
“Sure,” I said trying to keep a straight face. “My mother would love to see you. But if you’re coming just to see Henry ride his skateboard, you’ll be disappointed. Mum’s not giving it to him until Saturday. And if he doesn’t stop his sulking she’ll probably keep the damn thing herself and give him a toothpick instead and tell him to use it to prop up his bottom lip.”
“Dare I ask what Henry is sulking about?”
“Well, Mum is flirting with some new resident called Johnny—who comes complete with a full head of hair—and also Tug, another of her many admirers. The story goes Tug is related to the Mob, so of course Mum’s intrigued by him. And now Henry’s accused her of cradle snatching cuz Tug is a mere seventy-eight.”
“Sounds like a bloody circus!” Simon shook his head. “Funny, but I remember your mother as a bit of a prude in th
e old days. Back when I was dating your sister, she always insisted I had Penny home by ten o’clock. On the dot. Even when the movie didn’t finish until eleven.” He shuddered. Most likely remembering how close he’d come to being stuck with the pedantic Penny. And then he grinned. “You know, I reckon the staff must be adding something illegal to the drinking water at that retirement home. Your mother’s love life is more active than yours.”
“What do you mean? I’ve had a couple of kinky near-misses lately. I’d rate that as—”
“Hang on!” Simon leaned forward over the steering wheel and pointed. “Our boy’s coming out of the club.”
And there, the sun causing a halo to form over his artfully tousled blond hair, was one of my kinky near-misses. Jack Rivers. Dressed in designer jeans and a black t-shirt that clung to his torso like a second skin, our boy swaggered through the nightclub’s front door and strutted, ego to the fore, toward the Gape’s Kombi van.
“Who’s that woman with him?” Simon, who for the last six months had been resisting the fact that he needed glasses, screwed up his eyes for a better view. “She looks familiar.”
“It’s Megan!” I pushed my nose flat against the car window and frowned. “Why would Megan be talking to Jack Rivers?”
“If he’s writing an article on prostitution, I guess an interview with the great Megan Starr would be a coup for him.”
“But she’s retired,” I bleated.
Simon shook his head at me. “Answer me this—who has the most experience in their field? An operative or a retiree?”
I scowled back at him. “Depends on the field,” I snapped, getting heartily sick of Simon accusing me of being naive. “Technology is changing every day.”
“Not in Megan’s profession it isn’t.”
Acting like a ten-year-old, I stuck out my tongue and then turned away from Simon’s triumphant grin to follow the scene on the footpath, where Jack, one arm possessively around Megan’s shoulder, looked to be talking up big. What a shmuck! When he leant closer and whispered something in her ear, Megan recoiled as though he was a flesh-eating crocodile. And whatever she snarled at him made him go white and back right off.
“Doesn’t look like he’s interviewing her,” I told Simon who was craning his neck over my shoulder for a better view. “Looks more like an argument to me.”
“In which case Jack better watch out. Megan Starr is a crack shot. Heard she won trophies for her shooting prowess before turning to the lucrative career of servicing over-sexed and under-achieving penises.”
“My friend, Megan?”
“Yep. That woman is not just a pretty face,” Simon said, eyes fixed on the pair on the footpath. “Hey, looks like Jacky Boy went too far.”
I looked up just in time to see Megan, eyes blazing, grab Jack by the front of his t-shirt and shake him. And then she spat in his face.
“Go Megan!”
“Ho! Ho!” Simon crowed, his face splitting in a wide grin. “I’d give the shirt off my back to know what Jack said to warrant that serve.”
“Me too,” I said, resisting the urge to point out that the shirt currently on Simon’s back was worth less than one of the rags I use to clean my car.
On the footpath, the startled cameramen—who’d just finished loading their gear into the Gape’s Kombi van—now focused on the vision of Megan’s rear as she strode aggressively up the street. One said something to Jack. It must have upset him even further because next thing he came thundering toward the van, almost ripped the passenger side door off its hinges and threw himself inside the vehicle.
“Just get us the fuck out of here!” he roared before slamming the car door to emphasize his point.
“Hmm…” I said, lips twitching as I gazed across at Simon. “Might not be a good time to confront our suspect.”
“You could be right, darlin’,” Simon said and switched on the ignition. “Let’s follow him for one more hour and then we’ll call it a day. Should be a laugh counting how many more people succumb to our boy’s amazing charm.”
“And you know,” I said peering at Jack’s thunderous face through the side window of my car as the Gape’s van sped past. “After seeing how fragile Jack’s ego is, I think he could have killed Mary if she had the audacity to dump him.”
“I agree.”
“But it’s the poker that’s got me stumped. Shoving a poker down a woman’s throat isn’t really Jack’s style.
“No, Jack’s style would be to tie his poor victim to a chair and force her to listen to stories of his many conquests.”
I laughed as Simon pulled out into traffic to follow the van to its next destination. “Or the list of hair products he employs to maintain his carelessly tousled appearance.”
16
Thursday, 4:30 p.m.
“Dani,” Simon said as we turned into the driveway of Sunny Days. “If I’m still breathing when I turn into a mean cranky eighty-year-old, will you please book me into this amazing facility. It’s like Las Vegas for the incontinent set.”
“Book yourself in, Templar,” I told him parking my beat-up car at the front entrance to the main building. “By then, I’ll be fighting for a room myself. And you won’t be a mean cranky eighty-year-old,” I added tossing him a grin. “You’ll be a sweet, silver-haired old gentleman, with an ebony cane and an eye for the ladies.”
“If you’re here I’ll have eyes for one lady only.”
Oh, wow! I thought, tugging at the neck of my shirt. Where the heck did that come from?
And then I thought, but that’s thirty years away. Damn. Nothing new here. I’d always known Simon was not a forever sort of guy, so I pushed away the image of him and me at Sunny Days in thirty years’ time and gazed at the surrounding scenery.
Billiard-table-smooth grass. Residents sipping colorful drinks while lounging on comfortable outdoor furniture. A riot of flowers, shrubs and water fountains. An Olympic-size swimming pool. And even a par-three golf course with electric golf buggies.
Pensioner’s Heaven.
“I don’t know where we’ll find Mum at this hour,” I said, switching off the ignition and leaning back in my seat. “Bingo? Golf? Playing pokies in The Lucky Horseshoe room—”
“In bed with Henry?” suggested Simon with his lopsided grin.
“Oh, God, no. That’s the last thing I need. To bust into Mum’s room and find her and Henry in bed naked, going at it,” I groaned.
“With a gun tucked into her garter belt, courtesy of her toy-boy, Tug,” added Simon, starting to chuckle.
“Don’t joke,” I warned him, shuddering as I imagined all that wrinkled, plucked chicken flesh bouncing around on the bed.
Before locking my car, I passed Simon the parcel containing Henry’s new skateboard. “Here, carry this and make use of your empty arms,” I told him. “But don’t let Henry con you into showing it to him or you’ll have my mother to answer to. Which won’t be nice.”
After identifying ourselves over the intercom, some unseen hand inside the building buzzed the front door open for us.
“Geez,” I said entering ahead of Simon and finding my feet sinking into a newly laid coffee-colored carpet in the reception area. “I wouldn’t mind this carpet in my lounge room. Only one problem—Horace would lose his doggy toys in the pile.”
Studying the floor covering, Simon nodded. “This carpet is perfect. Soft to fall on. When you think about it, a threadbare carpet in a retirement home would have to be a health hazard.”
“Hmm…hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess it’s not all fun and games when you get old.”
“No, but at least at Sunny Days the elderly are treated like real people instead of inconveniences waiting to die and make room for the next name on the list.”
I glanced at Simon. He still blamed himself because his Dad, suffering from Alzheimer’s two years ago, had been shuffled off to a nursing home exactly like the one he’d described. At the time, Simon had been too busy catching and locking up bad guys to
look after his Dad. And his mother, Beryl, was too busy enjoying her social life and her wealthy fourth husband to give a rat’s ass about one of her exes. To make the guilt trip even worse, Simon’s Dad had died six weeks after being admitted to the nursing home.
I squeezed Simon’s hand, but before I could attempt to cheer him up, Gloria Reeding, the manager of Sunny Days, drifted out of her office, her professional smile firmly in place. She nodded at Simon and then laid one cold hand on my arm. “Ms. Summers,” she said, her private-education voice honed over many years of being in authority. “May I please have a word before you visit your mother?”
Oh! Uh! Sounded like trouble.
Leaving Simon to chat up one of the wheelchair-bound residents, a sweet-faced lady with long silver hair that reached down to her waist, I reluctantly followed Gloria Reeding’s stiff back into her office. Now I knew what it was like for my mother, all those years ago, when she’d been summoned to my headmistress’s office the day after I’d climbed onto the school roof and hung a pair of her bloomers on the flagpole. Mum was getting her own back on me now. Then again, I couldn’t see my arthritic parent reproducing that particular act of rebellion—her knees wouldn’t get her two rungs up a ladder let alone all the way onto the roof.
“Coffee, Ms. Summers?” Dressed in a beautifully cut, oatmeal-colored suit with a silky saffron underblouse, Ms. Reeding crossed to the coffee machine and poured a straight black for herself.
“No thanks, I’m fine. And please, call me Dani.”
“Of course.” She indicated a chair on the other side of her desk. “Please sit and make yourself comfortable, Dani. I won’t keep you long.”
The chair she’d pointed at wasn’t much of an improvement over the police issue chair at the police station. Why is it people in authority always have a comfortable state-of-the-art chair for themselves and a reject from Cash Converters for the other side of their desk?
