Short Fuse (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 0)

by Clare Kauter

  Heading to Harcourt’s desk, I started to rummage through the papers and other debris on its surface. Nothing. The drawers were similarly useless – old pens and chip packets, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names, a box of condoms. I gagged at the thought of Harcourt needing condoms and slammed the drawer shut.

  Next, the filing cabinet. I scanned the names but nothing stood out – no file for me or Topher or any other names I recognised. I searched the draws methodically: one, two, three –

  The bottom draw wouldn’t open. Locked. I glanced around the room, but I already knew the key wasn’t there. There hadn’t been a key in the desk. Harcourt must have had it with him. No one seemed to have noticed that I was in the office yet, but how long did I have?

  The computer was logged in to the main server, but I couldn’t access any further information without Harcourt’s login details. I glanced back at the filing cabinet, at the locked bottom drawer. There had to be a way to get in.

  Opening an incognito tab on Harcourt’s internet browser, I googled ‘how to pick a lock’. This was a farce of a B & E, I realise that. What kind of criminal breaks into someone’s office and uses their victim’s computer to figure out how to pick the lock on their filing cabinet? A shit criminal. To be fair, I hadn’t had a lot of experience with that kind of activity – the most criminal thing I’d done was spray paint ‘cops are tops’ across the windshield of a police car, and that was mostly just criminally hilarious.

  Well, until this week that was my biggest crime. I guess what I’d done to McKenzie’s car probably counted as my new criminal masterpiece.

  Back to the matter at hand. I pulled a paper clip from one of Harcourt’s desk drawers and got to work on the filing cabinet. I tried to force the clip too much and slipped, slamming my fist into the metal drawer. My heart stopped. I was done for. I waited, but no one seemed to have noticed the loud series of thuds and clangs that rang out through the office as a result.

  Eventually I managed to pop the lock open, although whether that was through finesse or sheer force I do not know. There were a number of files in the drawer with names I did not recognise, however there was one that stood out. It had only been added recently – the cardboard was new, and the name was scrawled in messy handwriting unlike the printed labels on the other files.

  DAVIES, Christopher

  Of course, I opened it.

  Twelve

  James McKenzie sat next to the bed in my hospital room.

  “My brother!” he said. “My own brother!”

  “Um, you do know that he’s one of my best friends, right? And you, y’know, aren’t?”

  James ignored me. “He hid drugs in my room!”

  He sounded so scandalised that it was almost endearing. So naïve. “It’s not like it was meth or something. And anyway, shouldn’t you be, like, talking to Topher about this? Seeing as he’s your best friend?”

  “Topher is defending Will!”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “So am I.”

  “Yes, but you always argue with me so it’s fine.”

  “Right, sure.” I looked behind him to see if there was any way I could make a getaway. I would have struggled to outrun him normally, and I had even less hope with a cast on my leg. If only the hockey stick incident had done some more severe damage to him. I sighed. Trapped. “James, why are you here?”

  “Well, I can’t live at your place anymore. Will keeps coming over and trying to apologise.”

  “Um, isn’t that a good thing?”

  “No! He reckons he told mum everything, but she won’t believe him. She thinks he’s just trying to get me out of trouble.”

  I sighed. “He wouldn’t have done it on purpose.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he snorted. “He accidentally hid his drugs in my room.”

  “He probably didn’t think Violet would search your room, what with you being such a stickler for the rules and all.”

  “Well, she did.”

  “Yeah, I gathered.”

  There was a moment of silence and I hoped he was going to leave me to succumb to my pain medication. Sweet, sweet, brain-fuzzing meds. I didn’t think James would approve of me taking any in his presence given the situation he was in.

  “I’m moving in with my uncle,” James announced.

  “Crazy Barry?” I replied. “That’s an interesting choice. Thinking of making a career out of used car sales?”

  “Not Crazy Barry. Frank. I spoke to him earlier and he said it was all good.”

  “Billionaire Frank?”

  “Have you assigned adjectives to all of my relatives?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Boring Aunt Sherrie, Creepy Cousin Reggie, Not Actually Related But Shows Up To Family Gatherings Eyes Of A Sex Offender Julio…”

  “Fair call on those ones.”

  “Of course, now I’m going to have to add Junkie Will.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  He was getting way more upset about this than I would have expected. “James?” I said gently.

  “Yes?”

  “Get over it.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I have to go pack so I can move for the second time this week anyway.”

  “Your life is so hard, James. Go and cry yourself to sleep in your new mansion.”

  He rolled his eyes at me and I watched him leave. It wasn’t until he’d disappeared out of sight that I realised I felt kind of bad for him.

  I picked up my book and kept reading.

  In a couple of days I was out of the hospital with my leg in a cast and a smile on my face. I was more than a little excited for the time I’d get off work because of my injuries. (Only a week, though – then Jeremy would have me working the night shift again, sitting out the back and stamping new use-by dates onto products.)

  When I went back to school, everyone was abuzz with the news of some party the seniors were throwing. Some kid’s parents were away and he had the house to himself, so he’d made the very original decision to throw a party. I didn’t even know who the guy was – and I doubted many other people did either. That wouldn’t stop anyone from showing up, though.

  I didn’t really get the appeal. Getting drunk and sweaty in a house full of people grinding and vomiting while all the girls and some of the guys tried to seduce McKenzie – or, even worse, my brother – seemed like a pretty terrible way to spend an evening. (As I’ve mentioned previously, Toph and I were kind of opposites in every way, and rather than running away screaming as they did from me, people liked spending time with him.) I wasn’t keen on attending this party. At all.

  Which is why when Topher asked me if I wanted to go, I laughed in his face.

  I’d had a good morning so far. The pain meds made sitting through history and geography far more bearable, even if they did kind of impair my ability to retain information. My friends were also acting as my servants, carrying my schoolbag around for me and spotting any potential crutch obstacles as we made our way between classes. Life was good.

  Then Topher came and found me during recess.

  “I know you hate parties, but…”

  [Insert me laughing in his face.]

  “Seriously,” he continued, unperturbed, “I want you to come to this party.”

  I wiped away the tears from laughing. “Good one. You nearly had me for a second.”

  “I mean it.”

  I rolled my eyes, still trying not to laugh. “No.”

  He changed tactics. “You’re coming. You don’t have a choice.”

  “And how exactly do you plan to make me go?”

  He leaned close, whispering so my friends wouldn’t be able to hear. “Either you come to the party or I’ll tell everyone at this school about your Mills and Boone collection.”

  I paled. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, but I would.”

  I was going, then.

  Thirteen

  INTERVIEW WITH JAMES MCKENZIE

  DC Harcourt: OK, just again for the ta
pe, James. When was the last time you saw Topher?

  J McKenzie: Saturday night.

  DC Harcourt: At the party?

  J McKenzie: Yes.

  DC Harcourt: And you definitely haven’t seen Topher since then?

  J McKenzie: No.

  DC Harcourt: Why don’t you tell me about that party?

  J McKenzie: It was all pretty standard. Kind of what you’d expect, you know. Dancing and stuff.

  DC Harcourt: I’m not going to bust anyone for underage drinking. I just need to know if anything happened that might tell us where Topher is now.

  J McKenzie: I can’t think of anything.

  DC Harcourt: Any detail, no matter how small – I need you to tell me, James. We just want to make sure he’s safe.

  J McKenzie: There’s nothing. I’ve racked my brains for anything he said or did, but there’s just nothing. He was acting exactly the same as any other day. I don’t – I don’t know where he is, or why he’s gone, or why he wouldn’t tell anyone before just taking off. He was fine at the party and then he was just gone.

  DC Harcourt: OK. Well, why don’t you walk me through that night?

  J McKenzie: Right. OK, when should I start?

  DC Harcourt: Did you two travel to the party together?

  J McKenzie: Yes.

  DC Harcourt: Then we’ll start there.

  Fourteen

  Where the hell was Topher? Had he intentionally ditched me with James as some sort of joke? It was half an hour later than when he’d told us we were meant to leave, and this whole ‘being civil’ thing was wearing a little thin. Topher had decided we should all walk to the party together, but at some point during the day he’d gone out and now we had no idea where he was.

  “He’s not answering,” said James, hanging up his mobile and putting it back into his pocket.

  “Great,” I said. “Well, if he’s not here in the next five minutes, I’m going back to my room, putting on my pyjamas and reading a book.”

  “Sounds like a plan. What book?”

  “You wouldn’t have heard of it,” I said, not looking at him.

  “Right. So not ‘When the Moon Hits Your Eye’, for example.”

  I whipped around to face him. He winked.

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  I didn’t believe him for a second.

  “It’s hugely underrated as a literary work,” I said.

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “It has a really strong female lead and a unique perspective on the werewolf genre.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “If you tell anyone I’ll kill you.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  We were silent for a couple of seconds before James said, “Do you think we should just go and meet him there? Maybe that’s what he meant and he just didn’t tell us.”

  I thought about it for a moment before I shrugged and nodded.

  “I guess. He’ll throw a tantrum if we don’t show up.”

  James rolled his eyes long-sufferingly and nodded in agreement. “He can be a whiny little child when the mood strikes.”

  James and I set out for the party together, Topher nowhere to be seen.

  It was slow going, what with my limping along on crutches. James offered to call a taxi, but I didn’t want to get there any earlier than necessary. I did, however, make him carry my bag. He didn’t argue. No matter what feud we had between us, he wasn’t going to be that mean.

  Talking to each other like two people who didn’t have a decade of hatred and fighting behind them was an odd experience.

  “Do you know whose party it is?” I asked.

  James shook his head. “No idea. I don’t think anyone actually said.”

  “You know that inviting us there is probably just some elaborate ruse to get you and Will to make up.”

  “Will is going to be there?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Of course Will’s going to be there. Topher probably got a lift with him.”

  James scowled. “Why did I not realise that?”

  “Because you’re an idiot.”

  James gave a soft snort of laughter. “Yeah, it’s pretty obvious now that I think about it.”

  He seemed to be in better spirits about this whole situation than I’d have expected. If our situations were reversed and my best friend had tricked me into going to a party to make me talk to someone I was furious with, and to cap it off had made me walk to said party with my worst enemy, I’d be furious. But then, I had anger management issues. (Seriously, I had the worksheets and stress ball to prove it.)

  “What’s in this bag?” James asked. “It weighs about fifty kilos.”

  “It does not. It – I – there’s nothing in there.”

  James raised his eyebrows at me and felt the bag.

  “What are you doing?”

  He frowned as he felt a rectangular object through the canvas material. “Is there a book in there?”

  I sighed. “I was worried I’d get bored.”

  He smiled at me. “I wish I’d brought a vampire romance to keep me occupied.”

  “Shut up. And it’s more focused on werewolves, anyway.”

  He held his hands up. “I couldn’t be more sorry.”

  I rolled my eyes. Luckily the house – whoever’s it was – was fairly close to my place and we arrived reasonably quickly, even with my slow going. Someone I didn’t recognise answered the door, nearly died of shock that James and I had arrived together, and let us in. The sun was setting outside and music was pumping throughout the house. It was something bassy that I didn’t recognise, which was no great surprise since I mostly listened to my mum’s classic eighties rock collection. Drunk teenagers were sprawled across every available chair, canoodling like there was no tomorrow. Argh, youths.

  Down the hall I saw Topher and Will disappear into a room. I nudged James and he saw them as well. He handed me my bag.

  “I don’t think I’m quite ready to deal with them yet, but you go ahead. I might try to find a drink.”

  I was scandalised. “James McKenzie, getting drunk?”

  “James McKenzie drinking lemonade,” he corrected. “I can’t get drunk in public places.”

  “Why? Scared you’ll lose your seat on the student council?”

  He snorted, but stopped smiling abruptly as he noticed someone approaching. I looked in the direction he was facing and groaned. It was Sharna and Tanya, who were basically joined at the hip and in my head had morphed into one person whom I had dubbed ‘Shartya’.

  “Jamie!” they cooed, barging through the crowd towards us.

  “Because of them,” he muttered.

  Right. If I were him, I would not get drunk around those two. They were terrifying at the best of times. I’d want to be in possession of my full faculties whenever they were nearby, too.

  “I’d better leave you to it,” I said, and began swinging away on my crutches at the highest speed I could manage.

  “Coward,” he called after me.

  I made my way to the room that I’d seen Topher and Will enter earlier. It was someone’s bedroom, and they were lying on the floor side-by-side giggling when I entered.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  “Charlie!” they said in unison before bursting into fits of giggles again. Three guesses what they’d been doing before the party.

  I shut the door behind me. “Hey, guys. Thanks for leaving me to walk here with James alone.”

  “Sorry,” said Topher, not sounding sorry at all. “We had shit to do.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t let James see you doing that shit if I were you. I can’t see him being thrilled that you two are still lighting up after he got kicked out of home for doing just that, even though he’s never touched the stuff.”

  Wow, I sounded like a grandma. Those young whippersnappers with their fancy newfangled drugs… Back in my day, we never touched the stuff!

  “Since when do you care about James?”

>   “Since never,” I snapped. “I was just saying…”

  “Want a drink?” Toph slurred, handing me his cup. “Tonight’s gonna be a good night, I can feel it.”

  He smiled at me, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Fifteen

  James didn’t trust Harcourt either. Had Topher told him something? I couldn’t exactly ask him – we weren’t on speaking terms anymore. Not that we’d ever been particularly close. Now, though? I could not even entertain the thought of talking to him about my brother, or about anything else.

  Maybe I’d talk to William instead.

  I stopped reading the interview with James, knowing it wouldn’t tell me anything else I wanted to know. He was lying just as much as me. There were other sheets in the file that might be more interesting.

  The first one I checked confused me. A lot. It was a draft drawing from one of Topher’s tech art classes, a to-scale blueprint and sketch of an old warehouse in a part of the city I didn’t know. He’d spoken about it a bit, but I wouldn’t have recognised it if his name and student number hadn’t been written on the page. Why was this here? Why did Harcourt have it? He’d searched Topher’s room yesterday, and I guess he’d taken it then, but I didn’t know why it mattered to him. I doubted it was because of Harcourt’s love of architecture.

  Hearing voices outside, I panicked. After shoving the file back into the cabinet, I waddled across the room (I’d been squatting on the floor) and hid under the desk. Somebody was at the door, turning the handle. I gulped. This was not something I wanted to be caught doing. Breaking into an office in a police station and reading someone’s secret files was almost definitely frowned upon.

  With a squeak, the door opened. I shut my eyes and hoped – hard – that I hadn’t left anything out of place.

  “… the little bitch,” said Harcourt, still chatting with someone out in the corridor. I heard something hit the desk and guessed that he had thrown a file on it. There was another squeak and the door closed. I waited a moment before I heard Harcourt’s muffled voice coming from the corridor. I exhaled. The little bitch was safe. For now.