by June Whyte
Eyes huge in her pale face, Tanya stared back at me. “Shit!” she breathed, blinking in the sudden light. “That was close!”
Tanya Ashton: the master of understatement.
The tuna patties I’d eaten for dinner warred with nerves so tightly strained I wouldn’t be surprised if they unraveled and left me limper than a rag doll. Shaking, I burrowed my fingers into my back pocket and pulled out my mobile. “I’m going to ring Ben.”
“Not a good idea,” advised Tanya with a small shake of her head. “Ben thinks he’s indestructible. Tell him we’re in trouble and he’ll come galloping over here like a knight in shining armor instead of torn jeans and checked flannel shirt. And what do you reckon the guard dogs will do to him? Lick his face and play ball? I don’t think so.”
She was right. Cujo1 and Cujo2 would turn Ben into chopped liver and then spit out the bones. We needed plan B. I rammed my mobile into my pocket and tore at a hang nail with my teeth. “If we had some juicy lamb chops we could toss them through one of the back windows and escape while the dogs were eating.”
“Wouldn’t work. We’d need to empty a butcher shop to keep those two eating long enough for us to reach the front gate.”
“Well, do you have a better idea?”
“How about we shoot ’em?”
I blinked. Gave her a duh look. “Shoot them with what? A slingshot made out of knicker elastic and a bag of frozen peas as ammunition?”
“Sorry.” Clearly on edge, Tanya threw back her head and let out a pent up breath. “I’m nervous. I can’t think straight when I’m nervous.” She raked both hands through her hair which made it stand on end. “I need alcohol.”
“Alcohol? Tanya, this isn’t a hotel.”
“No worries, I’ll go check out Lantana’s fridge, see if he’s got any booze, and while I’m there, with any luck, I’ll find a couple of sheep for the dogs stashed in the meat container.”
Another crashing thump shook the front door. My heart, already stressed to the max gave a plaintive bleat and attempted to batter its way out of my chest.
Tanya, who hadn’t felt the deadly scrape of canine teeth on her backside, merely scowled at the door then picked up and brandished a big ugly statue of what looked like an overweight vampire with bloodshot eyes. When the door stopped shaking she placed her weapon back on the hall stand and shrugged. “At least we don’t have to worry about Jack Lantana popping out of his bedroom. He’s definitely not home. Only the dead could sleep through that noise.” She swiveled on one foot and set off down the passageway. “Which means we only have the dogs to worry about—unless, of course, Lantana shows up and finds us stuck in here.”
I set up a mental force field and refused to allow her last throwaway comment to filter into my already overtaxed brain.
While my PMT affected friend went hunting for booze and red meat, I decided to have a quick snoop around. Okay, I was no Kinsey Millhone and never would be, but who knows… I might be lucky enough to fall over a clue that explained why Lantana was so dead keen on stealing my dogs.
The first room I came to appeared to be set up as a study or an office. The desktop computer was turned on, and a colorful screensaver featuring a dancing naked woman with breasts the size of basketball hoops provided the entertainment. Newspapers, greyhound racing magazines and betting guides covered every available space on the desk and spilled over onto the floor. Desk drawers lay open and the contents scattered across the room. Books dragged from shelves littered the carpet.
What a mess! I didn’t have to be a detective, fictional or real, to realize either Lantana was the world’s worst housekeeper or he’d had a visit from an intruder. Even Linus from the Charlie Brown comics could work that one out. Questions crowded my mind. Why would an intruder break into Lantana’s house? And did they find what they’d been searching for? And the Million Dollar Question–how did the intruder manage to get past the dogs without losing at least one limb?
And then another big fat ugly thought hit me.
Tanya and I were inside the burgled house. If anything was missing, guess who’d get the blame? And unless Tanya found some munchies for the dogs pretty damn quick, we’d be sitting here twiddling our thumbs when the owner of the house arrived home and rang the police.
Caught between the desire to poke through papers on the floor and fear of being charged with break-and-entry, I hovered a few feet inside the doorway. It wouldn’t do to leave my fingerprints on anything. Especially as my fingerprints were now on the database down at the local police station.
I let out a sigh of frustration and shook my head. Yep, I’d be better off helping Tanya distract the dogs so we could get the hell out of here.
As I turned to leave, a glint of deep red on the desk beside the computer caught my eye. I took a step closer. No, it couldn’t be. Surely that wasn’t the bracelet from the set Dad gave my sister, Liz, for her fourteenth birthday? The ruby bracelet that matched the necklace Liz left behind for me when she ran away from home?
Fingering the familiar necklace at my throat, I glanced up and down the passageway, noted it was currently empty, so scurried across to the desk. And, hand hovering over the piece of jewelry, I paused to reconsider. Did I really want to know if the bracelet was Liz’s? If so—what would that imply? It couldn’t bear thinking of for it would mean Liz and Lantana knew each other. Which didn’t make sense. Mind swirling, I scooped the bracelet up and turned it over. Yep. There on the back next to the gold clasp were the same initials engraved on the underside of my necklace—E.J.M.
Elizabeth Jennifer McKinley.
A shiver, colder than a blast of wind blowing across the icy stretches of Antarctica set my teeth chattering. What was Liz’s bracelet doing on Jack Lantana’s desk? Had she been in this house for some reason and left her bracelet behind? Or was there something more sinister going on? Did it have anything to do with her moving on, disappearing, and leaving Scott, her boyfriend, behind?
Still shivering, I swallowed the lump in my throat, slipped the ruby bracelet onto my wrist in case the police found us here and leaned forward to get a closer look at a small block of yellow post-it notes lying beside the phone. The top sheet had indentations from the last reminder Jack had written to himself. A phone number? A helpful name? A clue linking Lantana with my sister, Liz? If I tore off the top page I’d leave my fingerprints behind. Not a good idea. Instead, I slipped the whole block of yellow post-its into my pocket and turned my attention to the flashing computer. Now, if only I could move that damn screensaver without leaving fingerprints and get a look at what Lantana had been working on…
Both hands clasped firmly behind my back so there’d be no chance of accidentally losing a print I nudged the mouse with my hip. Immediately, the dancing nude disappeared from the screen and in her place was a web page, downloaded from a greyhound breeding program. What dog was Lantana interested in? I bent forward to study the particulars and almost wet my pants when a blood-curdling scream sent my heart into free fall.
Something bad had happened to Tanya.
“Hang on, I’m coming!”
Another scream, even more terrified than the first, directed me to the back of the house where I found Tanya in a rundown kitchen that looked like it was set in a 1950s time warp, green laminated table top, old style kitchen hatch, worn linoleum floor covering.
“What is it, Tan? What’s happened?”
Tanya stared at me, her eyes wide and bulging. Then, one hand covering her mouth, she slowly lifted her other arm, and pointed at the open refrigerator. I followed her shaking finger and felt the room spin.
Tanya hadn’t found meat for the dogs. Or booze. Bathed by the inside door light of the refrigerator I could see all the wire shelves had been removed and Jack Lantana had been jammed in, knees scrunched under his chin, arms wrapped around his scrawny bare chicken legs. Not only had his purple pants been removed—he had died the way he’d been born. Completely naked. After gaping for what felt like a hundred years at his
poor shriveled penis, my eyes shifted up over the soft paunch and the sunken chest to his head. A wrecked head. A head that had been beaten out of shape by something hard, blunt, and deadly.
And I knew, without going any closer, that Jack Lantana would never steal another dog.
8
Whoever stashed Jack in the refrigerator must have turned the gauge to minus 50 degrees. Ice clung to his broken nose, his bloodied lifeless eyes were frozen popsicles and if I leant forward and gave his ear a tug I had a feeling it would break off in my hand. Even the blood from his smashed skull was no longer liquid. Blood that had spurted, congealed or spilled down onto his nakedness, now resembled paint from a child’s finger painting.
I wanted to be sick. I wanted to scream. I wanted to slam the refrigerator door shut and block the sight of dead Jack from view, but my feet refused to take me closer to the nightmare. Instead, they turned into two lead weights and became rooted to the spot. I still hadn’t recovered from waking beside my first dead body six weeks ago and here I was in the presence of another one.
A nervous lump clogged my throat and with an effort I tore my eyes away from the thing in the refrigerator, the thing that used to be Jack Lantana, and turned towards Tanya. In the dim light from the fly-spotted bulb in the kitchen, I could see my white faced friend clutching at a wooden rail-backed chair for support.
“Jesus!” She finally gasped, her breath wheezing like she’d just crossed the finish line in a Bay to City marathon. “Is that—”
Almost choking, I swallowed the lump in my throat before answering. “Tanya, meet my dog-napper. Jack Lantana.”
“He looks so…so…”
“Dead?”
“And…so meaty. You know, like a…a butcher shop.”
Tanya was right. From this day forth, the nauseating stench of blood and the image of Jack Lantana’s raw gaping head would precede me every time I set foot in a butcher’s shop. I was just contemplating the pros and cons of turning vegetarian, when Tanya spun around and took off out of the kitchen like she’d been bitten by a swarm of bees.
I followed her. No way did I want to be left alone with that. What if, now the refrigerator door was open, Jack started to melt? Would the blood melt too? Would the blood trickle out in a pool over the gray linoleum? I started to run. No way did I want to hang around in front of the refrigerator and risk drowning in melting blood.
“I’ve gotta find something to drink,” Tanya called over her shoulder as she made a dash down the passageway and into the first room on the left which was Jack’s lounge room. “And I don’t mean water.”
“Shouldn’t we ring the police first?” I asked, then froze–half-in, half-out of the doorway. An upturned coffee table, now minus one leg, shards of opaque glass with the remains of what looked like a cheap vase, and dirty white lace curtains torn from a smashed window littered the stained carpet. Clearly Jack had put up one heck of a fight. But the ugly stain, dark red against a pale green background, showed the exact spot where he’d fought and lost.
Oh God. I really didn’t want to be here. If only I could go home, lock all the doors, take a cleansing shower, slip into my comfortable Pooh Bear nightdress and watch an old romance movie on Channel 72, squashed up on the sofa with my dogs.
“Kat, you’re not thinking straight,” said Tanya. “Look around. We’re not in a public place here. It’s not the Mall or the cinema or the greyhound track. We’re trespassing in the dead guy’s house.” She shook her head at me as though talking to a simpleton, then punched the air when she spotted an old fashioned vinyl covered bar attached to the back wall of the room. “Believe me—this won’t look good to the men in blue.”
I drew in a breath and closed my eyes.
Won’t look good? Hell, they’d lock us up and toss the key into the nearest crocodile infested swamp.
“I know, but we still have to ring the police,” I said and grabbed a breath. “We can’t get past the Cujos without their help?”
Tanya considered my latest comment while checking out the contents of the bar and the frown between her eyes deepened. Then she shrugged, reached out and snagged a slab of VB beer. “Okay,” she said, tugging at the ring on one of the cans. “You make the phone call. I’ll drink the booze.”
After dialing 911 and admitting to Detective Inspector Adams that yes, there was another dead body and yes, I was currently in the house with said dead body, I wandered back into the lounge.
Already Tanya was downing her second can of VB. “Here, take this, it’s all I can find. No whisky. No vodka. No wine. This guy has absolutely no taste in liquor,” she said tossing me an unopened can from the slab she’d set down on the coffee table.
“We can’t drink Lantana’s beer. That’s stealing.”
“Hey, Lantana has no need for it. Where he’s gone he’ll be too busy dodging fire and pitchforks.”
I placed the can back down on the table and studied Tanya’s face. It was like last time when I’d called her after discovering Matthew Turner, a fellow greyhound trainer and a one-night-stand who’d been murdered in my bed. Tanya had hurried over to support me and ended up drunk and disorderly by the time the police arrived.
“Go easy on the alcohol,” I warned her. “You know what drinking too quickly does to you, Tan.”
She lifted both eyebrows at me in query.
“It turns you into a legless drunk.” I threw myself down on the nearest lounge chair and sank my head in my hands. “Oh God, this looks bad for us, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t worry.” Tanya drained her second can and immediately tore the ring off the next. “When the police see the dead guy they’ll know it wasn’t us. That guy’s an ice block. He’s been dead for hours. We’ve been in the house, like, ten minutes. All they’ll do is ask us a couple of questions and then let us go.”
I hung onto that thought. Bathed in it. Licked it up and let it warm my cold insides. As soon as Detective Adams pulled up out the front, I could walk away from this nightmare and let him take over. Let him bring in the dog-catchers. Deal with the suspicious death. Contact the coroner. Seal off the area. Turn off the fridge. And whatever else the policeman in charge did in the presence of a dead body. He was more than welcome to it.
All I wanted to do was go home.
9
So much for going home…
The basic wooden bench, splintered from years of crudely written messages, jabbed like a branding iron into the soft flesh at the back of my legs. Squirming offered no relief. I slid a furtive glance to the metal bunks cemented into the wall at the rear of the cell. Flinched at the sight of thin unwelcome mattresses, even thinner blankets and the lip curling scent of eau-de-urine emanating from one of its snoring occupants. And when a six foot transvestite, decked out in an iridescent green and purple mini-dress that showcased his hairy legs and frilly knickers, leaned over and burped his vomit-enhanced breath in my face—I decided I might as well bang my head against the prison bars until I passed out.
Reporting Jack Lantana’s murder to Detective Inspector Adams was a big mistake. Think Tyrannosaurus Rex big. I should have contacted a nice polite uniformed constable and left the Colombo look-alike to get on with whatever he’d been doing before I disturbed him. Probably torturing some sweet old Granny he’d caught smoking pot to relieve the pain of her arthritis.
It took four rangers from the local dog-pound, each armed with a tranquilizer gun, to capture and remove the Cujos. But the moment they’d settled the dogs in the RSPCA vehicle, DI Adams acted. Through the smashed window of the lounge we heard Adams shouting instructions to his back-up team before hauling off and breaking down the front door.
“We must stop meeting like this,” Tanya told him, saluting his hurried arrival with a can of VB beer—her sixth—as we met him on the other side of the broken door. He scowled, pushed past us and stomped toward the kitchen. We followed. When he reached the industrial sized refrigerator his face grew grim. One look inside and Adams promptly radioed in something
called a Code 503: ‘White Caucasian—60 to 65 years of age—around 85 kilos—probable cause of death, several blows to the head with a blunt instrument.’
Within minutes, a team of CIB detectives and uniformed police arrived on the scene. While they spread their tentacles into every crack of Lantana’s house, DI Adams produced two sets of police-issue handcuffs and, reading us our rights, fastened them around our wrists.
End result—after an hour long interrogation, Tanya and I were incarcerated in a holding cell at our local police station, awaiting bail.
I cringed as Burping Bertha belched in my face again. My stomach did a back flip and I instinctively screwed my nose and turned my head away. That’s when Bertha’s mate, a short fat guy with a small hairy patch just below his bottom lip and tats decorating every exposed body part, shadow-boxed in front of me—all the better to display his flopping belly and active tattoos. That was okay until he leaned into me, face so close his broken nose almost touched mine.
“Reckon ya too good for me and me mate, eh?” Tat Guy said, thin lips twisting in a sneer. “Think ya somethin’ special, hey, bitch?”
I was dead meat. No—I was maggoty dead meat. I flattened my shoulders against the rough gray wall behind me until every crevice poked through my sweater. A doomed fly eying a raised can of Mortein spray.
“Oh, no,” I squeaked. “Not me. I’m definitely not special. I’m just an un-special nobody.”
Tat Guy made a noise like a constipated vacuum cleaner and spat on the floor, barely missing my one hundred dollar Adidas sneakers, bought at a 50% off sale. “Because if ya do, bitch, I’ll have to smash ya teeth through the back of ya head.” He grabbed me by the neck of my sweater. “Unnerstand?”
