Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2)

by Livia Day

  Stir in the thickened cream and vanilla. You’re done. Look at you, you just made custard from scratch! You ROCK.

  Cover and chill in fridge for 2 to 3 hours, or until, you know. Cold.

  SAUCY BIT:

  Ever wondered what you put in butterscotch? Turns out it’s lots and lots of butter. Combine the butter and sugar in a small pan and heat until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and add golden syrup and cream. Keep on low heat for 5-10 minutes or until sauce has thickened, then remove from heat and chill until lukewarm (not completely cold).

  AND NOW IT GETS INTERESTING:

  When the ice cream is part frozen but still soft, pour lukewarm sauce over it, stirring with slow and meaningful strokes until it is swirly but not melted.

  Freeze. Eat. Yum. Feel better.

  What can one say about a corpse? Especially one that has been submerged in water for … let’s say more than a couple of days. It’s not pretty.

  Oh, and throwing up Bundy and Coke into a nearby bush was one nostalgic teen moment too many for me. I think I’ll stick to champagne and margaritas in future.

  The party was over. While the police dealt with the crime scene, those of us who had witnessed the uninvited guest’s arrival all waited in the back room of the deserted town hall to be questioned.

  Xanthippe and Shay were with us — they had returned a few minutes after the screaming started. The no-longer-giggling girls were keeping their distance, shooting odd looks at Jason. I texted Nin to let her know I would need her, Lara or Yui to hang around the closed café waiting for the building inspector tomorrow afternoon as well as morning. At this rate I would be sleeping until midday, if not later. I was so tired my stomach hurt.

  I walked around the room once, because I couldn’t sit still any longer.

  One of the gang of girls tilted her head at me as I passed her, as if she knew me and meant to say something. I kept going. On my second lap of the hall, she looked at me again. I stopped.

  ‘What?’ All my usual warmth at getting information out of strangers had melted away, leaving me belligerent and edgy.

  The girl nibbled her lip, and showed me her phone. ‘I just wanted to — this is you, right? It’s got more hits than any of the others. You’re up to a thousand.’

  It was a YouTube video, on pause, so all you could see was blurred brick and half an arm. But it was my arm. And oh fuck, it was the brick pattern from that alley, which had apparently seared itself on my memory.

  ‘This is so completely what I don’t need right now,’ I said to no one in particular, and pressed play.

  Filmed from above, I saw Stewart and me talk, flirt, quote movies at each other and then kiss each other up against a wall like our lives depended on it.

  I didn’t feel anything. That was probably the shock. I mean, the dead body shock, not the ‘oh look there’s you kissing the wrong boy on the internet’ shock. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed about it. Looked at from a purely artistic angle, it was a good piece of footage. I could see completely why it had attracted more hits than the other #flynnbynight vids, which were mostly people mucking around with fake gunfights and props.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said finally, handing her back the phone. ‘I didn’t know.’

  I did, though, didn’t I. Darrow even told me that they were filming from above. I hadn’t looked. I’d just been swanning around with no thought of consequences, again.

  For the first time, I felt completely calm about the fact that I hadn’t let Bishop call me his girlfriend. It might save him some embarrassment when this particular bit of footage went around the station, as it inevitably would.

  ‘Can I get a selfie with you?’ asked the girl, waving her phone at me.

  ‘Um, no, sorry.’ The thought of it made me want to throw up. ‘Any other day, sure.’

  ‘No, right, I get it. Another time.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The awkwardness of the recently discovered dead body rose between us, bobbing. I turned around abruptly, and walked back to where Xanthippe was lying full length across a row of chairs. Jason and Shay sat near her, talking quietly together. She was close enough to hear them if they said anything incriminating, and feigning sleep to lull them into a false sense of security.

  That’s my girl.

  We could hear talking outside, and then Darrow came marching in with Stewart and Ceege on one side, and Detective Sergeant Leo Bishop on the other.

  All the men in my life. Oh, joy.

  I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment, waiting for Bishop to check on Xanthippe first. He glanced over in her direction, obviously taking her fake sleep as genuine, and then headed right for me and gave me the world’s biggest hug.

  The first word that floated into my brain was safe. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Tired,’ I said. True. That was a good start.

  ‘So,’ he said, letting me go. His businesslike, police voice was back. ‘You and Xanthippe on a double date with a pair of teenage boys?’

  ‘Because that’s a logical interpretation of events,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

  ‘I was looking for you earlier,’ he said lightly. ‘Came down to see how you were all getting along.’

  ‘We were getting along fine until the surprising dead bloke turned up,’ I said, more sharply than I meant to. Ceege, Stewart and Darrow were all keeping their distance, giving us space. ‘Do you know who he was?’

  ‘We have some ideas,’ Bishop said. ‘A name, anyway. Malcolm Drake, lives in New South Wales. He had his wallet still on him, driver’s licence and everything. Whoever dumped his body wasn’t too good with details. Still don’t know why he’s dead in a Tasmanian lake, but a name is a good start.’

  ‘Annabeth had a rich older boyfriend,’ I said quietly. ‘He set her up at an acting school on the mainland this year, that’s where she was when Alice was playing French Vanilla.’

  ‘See,’ Bishop said after a pause. ‘I could ask how you know that, but I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘People tell me things.’ I wanted to curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head and not get up in a week.

  ‘I remember.’ Bishop pulled a notebook out, and scribbled a few things down. ‘They want a Hobart liaison to work with the locals on this one, and it’s probably going to be me. Any more evidence to add, that I can share with my colleagues?’ He gave me a slightly more intense look. ‘Any reason for me to declare conflict of interest and make sure I’m nowhere near this case?’

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ I said, honestly.

  Bishop blew out a long breath. ‘Whoever this bloke turns out to be, it looks like he’s been underwater for a couple of weeks — can’t know for sure, but that puts his death close to Annabeth’s. His girlfriend and her other boyfriend dead at the same time … it’s not looking good for young Mr Avery.’ He looked across the hall to Jason and Shay. They weren’t talking any more, but looking at Bishop with matching expressions of worry. Plain clothes was one thing, but no one looked more like a police officer than he did.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ I said furiously.

  Bishop was taken aback. ‘Tabitha…’

  ‘No, I mean it. Don’t you even think about accusing that poor kid of anything else. He already has to deal with the whole town thinking he committed some kind of weird crime of passion. And now he’s going to have her boyfriend’s death pinned on him too? He really wasn’t that into her.’

  Bishop’s facial expression was one I knew well — where the police officer took over from the human being. ‘I have to do my job, Tabitha. You can’t take it personally.’

  ‘You can’t, I can,’ I muttered. ‘The police ruined his life by accusing him the first time, and they couldn’t make a case stick. No evidence.’

  His face went all stormy. ‘You know how this works, Tish.’ Well, yeah. When your dad is a
police superintendent, you understand the ‘police work and integrity comes before everything, even friends and family’ philosophy loud and clear. I know completely how this works. I always understand, and yet he always treats me like I’m this irrational child who doesn’t get the more complex ethical issues of his job. But then the next thing out of his mouth was: ‘Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?’

  Oh, fuck. Was that was I was doing? Was I really such a terrible person that I would fight with him deliberately to distract him from the fact that a thousand people on the internet had watched me kissing Stewart today? ‘Dead bodies bring out the worst in me,’ I said quietly.

  Bishop patted my arm. He didn’t look stern any more, he looked kind and forgiving, which was completely and totally worse. ‘I know. You should be able to go home soon.’ And he left, crossing the hall toward Jason Avery.

  I went to join my friends. Xanthippe was no longer pretending to be asleep. Ceege budged along the bench to make room for me to sit next to him. ‘How you doing, Tabs?’

  ‘Trying to set fire to Bishop with my mental powers,’ I said. ‘How am I doing?’

  ‘His collar isn’t even smoking.’

  ‘Damn.’

  I couldn’t stop this. I couldn’t make it unhappen. And I wanted to cry, because it felt more wrong than anything else that had happened lately.

  Jason looked like he was about to bolt, staring at Bishop like he expected to be hit, or arrested, or both. Shay stood at his side, so defensive and scowly that I would put money on him assaulting a police officer before the night was over.

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ I said in a fierce whisper, and my friends all glanced at me, then back to Jason. Except Stewart, who didn’t move. I looked closer and saw that, yes, he was discreetly filming Bishop and Jason with a very small video camera that would get him much better quality footage than all the smartphones people had been flinging around today.

  The doors swung open and a self-important older man in a pristine 1940s style suit and hat strode in as if he owned this town. His pretty brunette wife, femme-fataled up from her cute vintage shoes to her heavily made up face, walked along beside him.

  Stewart swung the camera in their direction, capturing their dramatic entrance.

  ‘Detective, I trust you are not attempting to interview my son without his lawyer present?’ boomed Greg Avery, Mayor and entrepreneur.

  ‘We’re taking witness statements right now, sir,’ Bishop said mildly.

  ‘Forgive me, but that’s less than convincing,’ Greg Avery replied, staring Bishop down. ‘Jason will not be a scapegoat. No one in town even knows who this latest dead man is.’

  ‘In which case, Jason has nothing to worry about,’ said Bishop. ‘Jason is of age, Mr Avery. We do not need your permission to interview him either here or at the nearest station.’

  ‘Just get it over with,’ Jason said abruptly, standing up like a string puppet, all jerky and sudden. ‘Can’t be worse than last time.’

  ‘Jason, our lawyer,’ Greg Avery reminded him. ‘There is a procedure for these things, for your own protection.’ He placed a hand on his son’s arm. It looked more controlling than comforting.

  Jason shook his father off. ‘I don’t care about that. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t,’ said Pippa Avery, stepping forward to hug Jason. He let her do that, though he stood awkwardly in the circle of her arms until she let go. ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ she promised him.

  I was glad someone thought so.

  I crashed that night in the tidy twin bedroom over the Scallop that Xanthippe had booked for the night, and woke up with a crunching, thudding, deeply painful reminder of why drinking like you’re seventeen is not a good look on someone who is officially past her mid-twenties.

  I buried my head under the pillow and moaned until a persistent beeping sound alerted me to the fact that Bishop was awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and wanted to have breakfast with me.

  What my body wanted me to do was climb back under the covers and sleep the day away until my skin felt like it was the right way around, but I knew a flag of relationship truce when I saw one.

  My only consolation was that Bishop almost certainly didn’t know what YouTube was. The man barely thinks he needs email on his phone. He couldn’t know yet.

  But it was only a matter of time. Damn the information age.

  Half an hour later, I sat in a candy yellow booth in the Flynn ice cream parlour, nursing an atrocious cup of coffee while Bishop attacked a high stack of pancakes with apple slices and bacon.

  ‘We’re inside now, you can take the Audrey Hepburn sunglasses off,’ he suggested.

  ‘Have you seen the decor in this place? Believe me, it’s best I keep them on.’ That, and it hid from him how bad I look with a hangover. I was wearing a borrowed T-shirt from Xanthippe, and the underskirt of my 1940s dress from yesterday. I was too wiped to care whether it looked like I was wearing underwear in a public place or not.

  ‘Okay then,’ Bishop said. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

  The giant sunglasses and greenish hue to my skin didn’t tip him off? ‘Marginally worse than last night. I’m surprised you’re so perky — how do you manage to put in a full night’s policing and still get a good night’s sleep?’

  ‘Hard drugs,’ he said with a straight face.

  ‘As long as someone enjoyed themselves last night.’

  ‘Not my idea of fun, interviewing a bunch of teenagers about their possible role in a murder,’ he said, more sharp than he usually was with me.

  Well, that wasn’t true. But since regular sex entered the equation, he has done his best not to lose his temper with me the way he used to on a regular basis. I’m not sure if this is a positive sign for our relationship. I knew where I was when we were shouting. Plus it was kind of hot. This restrained control thing was … uncomfortable.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said in a low voice. ‘I was — not particularly nice to you yesterday.’

  ‘You were having a rough night,’ he replied.

  ‘Just a bit.’ I took a deep breath. Keeping secrets was not one of my specialties. Time to blurt the truth and find out for certain how much damage I had done with that badly-timed snog I had shared with Stewart yesterday. ‘So I have something to tell you.’

  My phone beeped with a message.

  ‘You check that,’ said Bishop, getting to his feet, eyes on me. ‘I’ll get more coffees — if you think this is going to be a long conversation?’

  ‘Long enough for coffee,’ I said. It wasn’t so much the part where I had to confess I’d been smooching someone else. It was the horrible but inevitable relationship conversation that almost certainly had to follow. Unless he walked away once we got past the first bit.

  Bishop went in search of coffee, and I called up my message. It was from Shay French. I’d put my number in his phone back during the Great Butterscotch Bonding Moment, in case he needed to get in touch again.

  The message was simple: Jase has done a runner. I stared at it for some time.

  ‘I have to go,’ I told Bishop, not even waiting for him to return from the counter. ‘I’m sorry. It’s an — emergency.’

  ‘Darrow’s having a fashion crisis?’ he said, more resigned than surprised.

  ‘Xanthippe is a fashion crisis. I have to go talk to her right now.’ That part wasn’t a lie. If I was going to get Jason out of this unholy mess he had brought upon himself, I was going to need her. And every other dodgy resource at my disposal.

  Bishop couldn’t know.

  Stupid, stupid kid. I still didn’t believe that Jason was guilty. Well, obviously this was a sign of guilt, it was a bloody big billboard advert saying ‘arrest me, I’m guilty as hell’ but it never occurred to me that he actually was.

  Apparently I was still capable of belief in people. That was good, right? It meant I hadn’t changed as much as people kept saying I had. The horr
ible experience I’d had earlier in the year hadn’t completely broken me — or if it had, I was mending at a reasonable speed.

  ‘We can meet up tonight?’ Bishop suggested. ‘I’ll be around Flynn most of the day. We could grab an early dinner before you head home — or catch up back in Hobart, if you prefer.’

  ‘Tonight,’ I agreed and kissed him fast before the guilt set in.

  Never mind the YouTube thing. I was now keeping a secret from him that he would find completely unforgivable. The worst part was, it almost felt like a relief. When he found out I had covered for Jason, he would probably dump me. And that meant I didn’t have to make any decisions at all.

  I ran for it.

  18

  From: Darlingtabitha

  There is nothing that can’t be fixed with ice cream.

  From: Nincakes

  That is an opinion. That you have. I could provide a list to the contrary, but I know it’s not worth arguing with you on these points.

  From: Darlingtabitha

  Liquorice ice cream, for instance. If they’d had that at the early twentieth century, there would have been way fewer wars.

  From: Nincakes

  I’m pretty sure they had both ice cream and liquorice, so chances are…

  From: Darlingtabitha

  NO WARS. I wish liquorice ice cream was as black as real liquorice.

  From: Nincakes

  I really hope this isn’t a natural extension to your war theme. Just say no to replacing the world’s weaponry with candy substitutes, Tabitha.

  From: Darlingtabitha

  If you could get liquorice ice cream to actually look like liquorice then you could create the world’s biggest and most spectacular liquorice allsort, formed entirely from ice cream.

  From: Nincakes

  well OBVIOUSLY what you need is giant squares of actual liquorice, which you can use as wafers to spread thick slabs of orange, pink and green ice cream on, and then you have your giant ice cream liquorice allsort.