He was shaking the vodka over ice now after coating the two freezing cold martini glasses with vermouth. ‘And I ask myself, why did she scream?’ he said.
‘Unless someone was doing something to her that she was trying to resist,’ finished La Contessa as Nick carefully shaved the rind of a lemon with a sharp knife and dropped it into the martini. He handed her one.
‘Like throwing her off the top of Turner Towers and into the front seat of old Georgios’s new Beamer.’
La Contessa threw Nick a disapproving glance. He raised his glass to her in toast and said, ‘Here’s to that poor girl, whoever she was. Now the work begins.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked after solemnly sipping the martini.
‘Well, my little Sicilian sauce bottle, we are all in the unique position of isolating at home because of the coronavirus.’
‘What difference does that make?’ she asked.
‘You see, after she was thrown from the building, I kept watch on the door, but no one ran out, which means . . .’
‘That the killer is still in there,’ La Contessa finished for him. ‘And we are going to find them.’
‘Exactly.’
‘How exciting! Catching a killer from our locked-down backyard,’ said La Contessa.
Nick looked at his watch and nodded at Baxter, who scooted off to return with his lead.
‘I’m going to meet Cleaver,’ he said, surreptitiously slipping a hip flask into his pocket.
‘Remember, darling, two is now the maximum for any public meeting,’ she said.
‘They are not counting dogs, so I think we are OK.’
Nick emerged to see the portly figure of Detective Inspector Dave Cleaver puffing up the road with his bulldog, Brian. They walked the dogs together every evening.
‘Nasty business in the apartments opposite,’ said Nick once they were around the corner from the house and sitting comfortably at opposite ends of a public bench.
‘Yes, no suspicious circumstances,’ said Cleaver. ‘Another coronavirus suicide.’
‘I think she was pushed,’ said Nick. Cleaver’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Can you dig around and find out a bit more for me?’
‘A Nick Moore hunch, hey? They have never been wrong,’ Cleaver said. ‘Apart from that time when you accused the Chief of having an affair with his secretary on company time. Or when you —’
‘Yes, yes, we don’t need to go into that now,’ said Nick hastily. ‘Ever since corrupt-to-the-core old billionaire Charles Turner built that monstrosity opposite us, I have felt there is something odd going on. And now this girl comes tumbling from the roof.’
Baxter and Brian were getting restless. Cleaver and Nick stood up. ‘OK, Nick,’ Cleaver said. ‘I’ll let you know who your murder victim is.’
Nick and Baxter returned to the garden to find La Contessa had already begun her own investigations.
‘Darling, it is quite tiring being a detective,’ she said, her voice muffled by the miniature orange tree she had buried herself in with Nick’s astronomy telescope.
‘I have told you that many times,’ said Nick, addressing his wife’s bottom, which was jiggling as she adjusted the telescope to observe each of the apartments opposite.
‘Any developments? Anybody wringing their hands or sitting down to sign confessions?’
‘Not so far,’ said La Contessa, emerging as Nick’s mobile phone started buzzing with the name Cleaver on the screen.
‘Oh, put him on speaker, darling,’ La Contessa said. ‘He may have information on that poor girl.’
‘Nick, you may be onto something.’ Cleaver’s voice boomed out of the handset. ‘The dead girl is Rose Turner.’
‘What? The girl who was in all the papers last year?’ asked Nick.
‘One and the same. The recently discovered twenty-year-old illegitimate daughter of our resident rich-list billionaire Charles Turner.’
‘Who was standing in line to inherit all of his wealth, now that the evil old coot has finally shuffled off the mortal perch.’
‘In police circles we call that motive,’ Cleaver said. ‘But officially at our end there are still no suspicious circumstances. I will leave the detective work up to you.’
After he had hung up, Nick turned to see his wife’s eyes sparkling with excitement.
‘And suddenly, after becoming the next in line to all his money, she coincidentally falls from the top of her late father’s newest building,’ she said.
‘In detective work,’ Nick said, ‘there are no such things as coincidences.’
*
‘Nicky!’
Resting detective Nick Moore’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. La Contessa only ever called him like that when there was trouble afoot.
‘Yes, my Sardinian sorceress?’ he replied.
‘You know how you said you were going to fill the freezer with essential supplies?’
‘And I did, my little Calabrian cutey.’
‘Well it appears the freezer is completely filled with vodka. There is no room for food.’
‘And your point is . . . ?’
‘What if we go into total lockdown?’
‘Exactly. I am testing every vodka I can find in order to make the perfect coronavirus martini.’
La Contessa threw her arms up in despair. ‘Well, tell me what you have found out about that poor dead girl, Rose Turner.’
Nick jumped at the chance to change the topic. ‘She came out of nowhere six months ago and was introduced to the world by Charles Turner as his previously unknown illegitimate daughter.’
‘I’m not surprised that dirty corrupt old goat had a love child,’ La Contessa said. ‘My hairdresser was telling me about some of the parties she attended at his Palm Beach pad.’
‘And it seems,’ continued Nick, ‘that after their high-profile reunion, Turner ensconced the twenty-year-old in the penthouse opposite.’
‘Only to pop his clogs a couple of months ago, leaving her a hefty inheritance, one would imagine,’ said Nick’s wife.
He nodded, thinking hard. ‘It would also put her at the front of a very long queue of people who thought they would be the one collecting the lion’s share of his fortune.’
In the meantime, they had a socially distanced appointment at the races to get ready for – in their own garden.
‘What do you think of this, darling?’ La Contessa asked, pirouetting into the garden in a red dress so tight she could only have been poured into it.
‘Botticelli himself could not have captured such beauty,’ said Nick, looking up briefly from the back of the television set he had carried into the yard. Already he could see this was going to be a huge success and a more permanent fixture.
‘Didn’t he paint a lot of nudes?’
Nick nodded.
‘Fat ones?’
This was heading into dangerous territory very quickly, so Nick pressed the television remote and mercifully it burst into life with coverage of the first day of The Championships at Royal Randwick.
They were being joined on Zoom by friends in Queensland, Victoria and Adelaide for the best of the races at Caulfield, Doomben and Morphettville.
‘It’s so nice to still be able to dress up and attend the races with our friends,’ said La Contessa. ‘Oh, and I do like the cravat, Nick. Very debonair. What do you fancy?’
Nick bounced to his feet.
‘No, not that, silly. In the races. It will be a nice break to stop thinking about catching that poor girl’s killer,’ she said. ‘I saw Inn Keeper in race six at Caulfield and for some reason thought of you.’
‘I was thinking about poor dead Rose Turner and thought I might put a few dollars on All Too Soon in race five at Randwick,’ said Nick.
‘And then I hoped Rose had had her Best of Days, number six in the Doncaster Mile, before someone took Aim, horse seven race six, and tried to plant her on the Nature Strip, number one in the TJ Smith Stakes.’
At that moment the sun passed behind Turner
Towers and cast the garden into shadow.
CHAPTER 2
The Inheritance
‘So when you were buying all the vodka and putting it in the freezer, did you think to pick up any toilet paper?’
Nick sighed. He loved his wife but she did tend to harp on about things that were clearly not important. ‘How on earth could I carry that when my arms were full of martini essentials?’ he explained patiently.
La Contessa was back under the orange bush with the telescope, examining the apartment block opposite. She emerged, leaves tangled in her curly hair, clearly struck by inspiration.
‘We know that the poor dead girl was an heiress to her father’s property and business fortune.’
‘Correct,’ said Nick patiently. ‘Giving us a list of people who were set to inherit from him and would therefore have a motive to bump her off the roof.’
‘And we know that the killer is in coronavirus lockdown opposite and must still be there.’
‘Aaah,’ said Nick, nodding now. ‘I see where you are going. If we found out who was living in the other apartments and cross matched that with the people who were due to inherit . . .’
‘We would find the killer,’ squeaked La Contessa. ‘Come on, Baxter, we’re going for a walk.’
She grabbed the lead and clicked it onto the excited beagle’s collar.
‘Where are you going?’ Nick asked, a concerned furrow to his brow as his wife and dog exited through the garden gate. ‘You know you cannot get within two metres of anyone.’
‘I’m going to find out who lives in the apartments opposite,’ she said.
Some time later they reappeared through the gate, with La Contessa wearing a triumphant smile.
‘Look what I found,’ she said excitedly.
La Contessa lifted her gym top to reveal more than 20 letters and envelopes stuffed into the top of her leggings.
‘Darling, you do realise under the Telecommunications and Postal Services Act 1989 there is a penalty of up to five years for stealing someone else’s mail?’ said Nick, who was nevertheless quite impressed.
‘But what if you open someone else’s mail by accident?’ she said, pulling the envelopes out and dumping them in a heap on the table next to Nick.
‘Even you would have trouble explaining how you managed to open the mail of twelve different apartments without realising not one was for you.’
‘Oh, Nick, don’t be such a policeman: let’s see who lives there.’
‘What’s this?’ Nick asked as he put the envelopes into piles.
A handwritten note had fluttered to the floor. Nick picked it up and read the flowery green writing aloud to his wife, ‘Meet me upstairs at 4. R.’
‘Gosh, do you think R could be Rose? That’s a real clue, isn’t it, darling?’
‘Yes, my Sciacca Sherlock, it is,’ said Nick carefully. ‘If you can remember which of the mailboxes it came from.’
La Contessa’s face fell.
‘Never mind,’ said Nick kindly. ‘You have done a marvellous and completely illegal job. Well done.’
He had ordered the letters on the table and was now perusing them carefully, forcing himself to concentrate as La Contessa disconcertingly leaned over from the other side.
‘I don’t think there are any clues hidden there,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Nick, quickly grasping at one of the envelopes. ‘But there is one here. Look, apartment number 11, the one right under Rose Turner’s penthouse, has none other than Mrs CA Turner living there.’
La Contessa gasped. ‘You mean Catherine Turner, Charles Turner’s widow?’
‘It must be,’ said Nick. ‘If we were looking for someone from whom the sudden appearance of an illegitimate heiress would rob a lot of money, then the unhappy widow would have to be top of the list.’
‘Oh, darling,’ La Contessa said. ‘Isn’t that what you call motive?’
*
‘Look at how shiny this is.’ La Contessa held up a dollar coin from the bucket of soapy suds in front of her. Nick raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘I’m washing all the coins to make sure they don’t have any traces of the COVID-19 virus,’ she explained.
‘One unexpected consequence of this virus,’ observed Nick drily, ‘is that it has turned my wife into a money launderer.’
La Contessa ducked back under the orange tree for her 500th examination that morning of the apartment block opposite.
‘Quickly!’ she exclaimed, turning round, grabbing a startled Baxter and dragging the hapless beagle towards the gate. ‘The widow Turner is dragging her ghastly Pekinese out for a walk and I’m going to take some of my gold coins, buy a coffee and bump into her.’
‘Good luck, darling,’ said Nick. ‘Look for unnecessary hand-wringing, a sudden urge to confess and furtive glances over the shoulder.’
As she and Baxter flew out of the gate, Nick sat down contemplatively in front of the mail his wife had stolen from the mailboxes of the apartment block opposite. After a moment, he picked one up and turned it in his hands before pulling out his mobile phone.
‘Hello, Cleaver,’ he said. ‘Can you look someone up for me on the police computer? It’s Natalia Kowalski, and her name’s ringing a bell from our old days on the vice squad.’
*
The following morning, the intrepid detective duo were beginning to feel the effects of lockdown.
‘What date is it, darling?’ La Contessa asked.
‘I think it must be the 65th of April. Didn’t March have eighty-seven days this year?’ said Nick. ‘It certainly felt like it. Why?’
‘I can’t believe it has been almost two weeks since poor Rose Turner was pushed off that building and we are still no closer to finding her killer.’
Nick was busy mixing his first martini of the day. He finished shaking the vodka and asked his wife what she had learned from her brief encounter with the widow of the late billionaire Charles Turner.
‘Not much, I am afraid,’ La Contessa said. ‘She mostly complained about being locked down in Sydney so far away from her friends and family in Toorak.’
‘Hmm. Did she say why she was here?’
‘I did ask that and she said it was her late husband’s wish that she come and spend time in his last building.’
‘With his illegitimate daughter and heiress . . . ?’
‘When I mentioned that, she just said it was a terrible business and rushed off. Not much help, I am afraid.’
‘Nonsense, my little Lombardy lovely – every piece of information adds to the jigsaw puzzle of clues we are putting together,’ said Nick, handing her a martini. ‘For instance, while you were gone, I did a little checking on Natalia Kowalski on the ground floor.’
La Contessa’s eyes sparkled and she sat up eagerly.
‘And you won’t believe what I found,’ said Nick. ‘I put in a call to Detective Inspector Cleaver about the young woman.’
‘You know,’ said La Contessa, ‘I have been watching her and, despite the coronavirus isolation, she often has gentleman visitors.’
‘Ah-ha!’ said Nick. ‘Go on, my Parma Poirot.’
‘Well, one doesn’t like to say it, but the gentleman arrives, she puts down the blinds in the bedroom and an hour later the man leaves. I think she may be a lady of easy virtue.’
Nick nodded. ‘You are right. Her name rang a bell so I called Cleaver to check. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t muddling it up – I had a Polish friend who was a sound technician, and a Czech one too.’
‘That wasn’t funny.’ La Contessa frowned.
‘It was a little bit funny,’ protested Nick. ‘Anyway, I was right. She was one of the girls we arrested in a bust on an illegal brothel about ten years ago.’
‘Well they are pretty swanky digs for running that kind of operation,’ said his wife.
‘I think she is just earning a little bit of money on the side,’ said Nick. ‘Keeping her hand in. The real game for her has been her role as a high-society mistress.’
‘One and the same.’ Nick nodded. ‘The question is why he would put his mistress, his wife and his newfound heiress in the same building.’
‘I think I might have a brilliant plan,’ said La Contessa.
Nick looked startled. These things never worked out well for him.
*
‘Mariabella, I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ protested Nick after she had laid it out to him. ‘I’ve got to read the form for the second day of The Championships.’
‘Nonsense. You are a big boy and, besides, I will be watching through the telescope right here.’
Nick shrugged his shoulders in resigned frustration. He knew there was absolutely no point in trying to reason with his wife once her mind was made up. And in this instance, that mind was set on having him visit high-class sex worker Natalia Kowalski in the apartment block opposite.
‘I still can’t believe you found her online, let alone booked an appointment,’ he said as he headed for the gate. ‘What name did you use again?’
‘John Smith,’ La Contessa replied, already in place with the telescope under the orange bush.
Less than ten minutes later he was back.
‘That was fast, even for you.’ La Contessa laughed. ‘She didn’t even get a chance to draw the curtains.’
‘No, as I tried to explain earlier, I arrested her years ago when I was on the vice squad. She recognised me straight away.’
‘Oh,’ said La Contessa disappointedly. ‘So she didn’t tell you anything?’
‘Well, she may have somehow got the impression I was still a policeman,’ Nick said with a smile. ‘She told me Turner gave her the keys to the apartment and asked her to move in before he died.’
‘Did she know anything about Rose?’
‘Apparently not, but I think my visit may stir things up a little.’
CHAPTER 3
An Unwelcome Visit
The crash of glass and whoosh of igniting petrol came just as Nick and La Contessa were getting into bed.
The Dying Diplomats Club Page 18
