Muzzled

by June Whyte

  “Understand? Oh, yes. I understand,” I gasped through partially closed off airways. “This un-special nobody understands perfectly.”

  Tanya, who’d been slumped on the bench beside me, singing something from West Side Story and hiccupping when she forgot the words, staggered to her feet. “Hey, you! Porky! Leave my best friend alone.” Bottom lip protruding, she shoved Tat Guy in the chest, her ten pretty pink lacquered nails digging into his sweaty exposed skin.

  Holy catfish! What was Tanya doing? Committing suicide? Had sculling six cans of booze in ten minutes robbed her of all rational thought?

  I took a shuddering breath as Tat Guy’s hold on my sweater loosened. And just when I’d resolved to break free and insert myself between Tanya and the two hundred pound porker, endure the punch that was surely coming her way, Burping Bertha reached out, his ham sized fist closing gently around Tanya’s small hands. “Dahling,” Bertha gushed. “You have to tell me the name of your nail polish. It’s deevine. Where did you get it?”

  Tanya stopped in mid shove. “Oh this?” she said admiring her nails like a princess admiring the Crown Jewels. “This is Honeymoon Orgasm in hot-pink. You can pick it up from our Virginia store, The Luv Bug. It’s on sale this week for $8.99 a bottle.”

  “You work at The Luv Bug?” Bertha’s big, craggy, heavily made up face lit up and his voice dropped ten octaves until he sounded like a bear in man’s clothing. “I thought I’d seen you somewhere before. My cousin, Louie and I go there often.” Bertha turned to his cousin and casually peeled the man’s fingers from the neck of my sweater, allowing air to infiltrate my lungs again. “Louie, this gorgeous gal works at The Luv Bug. You know, that fuck-me shop where we came across those fuck-me vibrator jock straps.”

  Louie grinned and I swear he’d either filed his canine teeth with a rasp or he was part Vampire. “Oooh, yeah,” he drawled. “And what about that blow up doll we found there? Screamed ’er ’ead off every time we stroked ’er tits?”

  “And the leather whip with the electrodes?”

  Oh…my…God.

  I slumped back onto the bench, closed my eyes and let the talk of vibrating jock straps, orgasmic blow up dolls, pink handcuffs, and battery-charged whips pass right over my head.

  How did I get myself into these predicaments? Why did I keep finding dead bodies? I sighed. All I wanted from life was to train enough winners to keep the bank manager from my door, watch soppy videos on the lounge with my dogs and spend time having hot sex with Ben.

  I opened my eyes and blinked. I must be hallucinating. Thinking of Ben must have magically granted my wish. For there, leaning against the wall on the other side of the bars was my One-Phone-Call. A flutter of pleasure at the sight of his hurriedly pulled on jeans and unbuttoned shirt made me smile. He didn’t smile back. In fact the crease between his eyes told me he was not especially pleased to see me.

  “Ben?”

  “That’s me.”

  Hmm…definitely pissed off.

  I let out a sigh and pushed up from the hard bench. Okay, I guess when you’re woken at one in the morning by an almost incoherent phone call and it’s your girlfriend begging you to drive to the police station to bail her out, it’s enough to make you a little testy. Probably one of those random situations not covered in the latest Dating rule-book. Especially when said incoherent girlfriend confesses she’s discovered a dead body—the second in the past six weeks. Oh yeah—I forgot—and once again she’s a murder suspect.

  “Thanks for coming.” I ran the tip of my tongue over my dry lips and swallowed. “Did I wake you, babe?”

  Ben rolled his eyes then glared at Tanya who was still listing all the new products due to come into the store over the next couple of weeks. “If I can drag you and Ms. Sexpert away from your new friends,” he growled, “I’m here to bail you out.”

  A uniformed sergeant stepped forward and after producing a long black key he called our names and opened the cell door.

  Hallelujah and thank God for long black cell-door keys!

  Not waiting for Tanya, I rushed at Ben and engulfed him in a hug. I was so pleased to see his familiar face I could have eaten him.

  He didn’t respond.

  Confused, I let my arms drop to my sides and frowned. Geez, I’d hugged more receptive telegraph poles.

  A tic in Ben’s jaw twitched and his dark accusing eyes met mine. “We talked about this, Kat,” he said, hands still clamped in his jeans pockets. “I said not to go to Lantana’s house alone.”

  “But I didn’t.” I bleated.

  “I said I’d come with you.”

  So—that’s what was up Ben’s nose. Surely he couldn’t be jealous of me finding a dead body. He could take over that honor any day. “Ben, before I left I rang you at home and there was no answer.”

  “Well, you should—”

  “And your mobile was switched off.”

  He shook his head, his expression clearly telling me what he thought of my intelligence. “So, you went anyway. And not in the daylight—oh, no—you had to go visit a potential killer at night.”

  “I had Tanya with me.”

  “Tanya?” His rolling eyes were becoming a bit of a cliché.

  “And if the dogs hadn’t chased us we wouldn’t have gone inside.” I scowled back at him.

  Who’d stolen my gorgeous laid-back boyfriend and substituted this cold snarly clone? If this was how he was going to act when he was annoyed, I’d rather we’d just stayed mates. I needed a hug. A loving hug. A hug to melt the ice in my chest and chase away the nightmares.

  I tried again. “Ben…it was awful. There was this dead guy and—and he was scrunched up in the refrigerator and…”

  Without warning the image of Jack Lantana, head bashed until it didn’t resemble a human head anymore, flashed across my eyes. I could feel a tremor starting in my legs and travelling up my body. I reached for Ben’s coat sleeve and clung on to stop myself from sinking to the floor. “And—and he had ice all over him and there was blood.” I closed my eyes but the picture wouldn’t go away. “And the back of his head was all staved in—and I could see…”

  I broke off, unable to describe the way Jack Lantana’s brains, white and slimy and lifeless, poked out of his skull.

  Ben’s arms snaked around my body and crushed me hard up against his chest. “I’m sorry, babe. You scared me shitless. Come here.” His body was warm and welcoming and when he bent and kissed me on the top of my head, I let out a sigh. “It’s all over, Kat,” he promised. “You’re safe now.”

  “Sorry to get you out of bed,” I mumbled into the comfort of his jacket.

  He chuckled and the sound of his laugh warmed me further. “I must admit I’d rather you got me into bed.”

  I snuggled closer. Benjamin Taylor smelled of damp dogs, fresh air and sunshine on rich damp earth.

  10

  What a relief to be home. To be welcomed at the front door by Tater, Lucky and Stella, all vying for the first lick of whatever part of my skin they could reach. I made my way through the sea of tap dancing fur on legs, routed a jar of tiny teddy biscuits from the pantry and distributed two teddies to each open mouth. The tap dancing didn’t stop so I figured if I didn’t let my welcome committee into the back yard pretty damn quick, we’d be knee deep in puddles.

  “No noise, mind,” I warned the dogs as they fell over each other in their eagerness to rush through the open door, “or you’ll set the mob off in the kennel house.”

  Dogs attended to, I hurried into the kitchen. After filling the electric jug I reached into the cupboard over the sink and pulled down an economy sized tin of Nescafe. Caffeine—the drug of the gods.

  Without a gallon of it Tanya was likely to pass out in the next five minutes.

  Although it was 2 am, a time when ghosts supposedly roam the earth—which is probably why it’s also a good time to be in bed, asleep—Ben, Tanya, and I decided to talk first and sleep later. After all, it’s not every day you discover a dead b
ody, your brain gets chewed up by a clichéd good-cop-bad-cop routine, and you become intimate with the occupants of a police station’s holding cell.

  When the jug boiled I snagged a colorful Simpson’s mug, the largest on my black metal cup tree, and placed it on the laminated counter top. Tanya wasn’t in great shape. After drinking six cans of beer in ten minutes, in the name of stress relief—her words not mine—was it any wonder? So, to join in our conversation on any useful level she required black coffee.

  A bucketful of the stuff.

  Looking half his age with sleep tousled hair and hastily dragged on clothes, Ben perched on the edge of a kitchen stool. Tanya, on the other hand reminded me of what Tater dragged in after he’d been on a mouse hunt. Head in her hands and an I-don’t-feel-so-good expression on her slightly green face, she slumped in a chair, woebegone and limp. She groaned. “Oh God, why do I do this to myself?”

  “Beats me,” I said spooning coffee and sugar into a mug. “But please, if you’re going to puke, the bathroom’s down the hall second on the left.”

  Tanya flicked me a this-is-so-not-a-joke, scowl. “I know where your damn bathroom is, Katrina.”

  “Uh-uh…no fighting, ladies.” Ben stood up and, running a hand through his already spiky hair, turned to me. “Ready with that medication?”

  “Yep. Coffee number one coming up.” I snapped one hand forward like a theatre nurse assisting a doctor performing surgery. Ben wrapped his fingers around the half-filled Simpson’s mug and passed it on to Tanya.

  “I don’t need—” The rest of Tanya’s words were cut off as Ben forced the coffee to her lips.

  “Better drink it, Tan,” I advised her, pouring cup number two in readiness. “We need your input if we’re going to work out who killed Jack Lantana.”

  As soon as Tanya started drinking without assistance, Ben’s eyes cut to me and he shook his head. “Why the heck would we want to find out who murdered that thug? Your alibis for the time of the murder checked out. You’re in the clear. Plus your dogs are safe now.”

  “But are they?” I spooned five teaspoons of sugar into Tanya’s second cup of coffee. This time in a red, black and white mug that stated, Vampires Suck. “What if whoever killed Lantana is the brains behind the dog-napping scheme and Lantana died because he goofed twice?”

  “Kat, you don’t batter someone to death just because they stole the wrong dog.”

  “Well, why else would he be killed?”

  “Because the guy was a crook and probably had enemies jumping out of the woodwork.” Ben slid the empty Simpson’s mug onto the sink, and with an eyebrow hitch, exchanged it for Vampires Suck which he passed to Tanya. “But to me, it smells more like a burglary gone wrong. Didn’t you say someone ransacked Lantana’s office? Well, there you go. Lantana came home, caught the burglar pinching his best china, there was a fight, and Lantana came off second best.”

  “Second best?” Tanya growled at Ben from behind her black coffee. “Hey, if you’d eyeballed Lantana’s mangled head, you wouldn’t be saying that. Rumbled burglars don’t hang around long enough to do the vicious damage inflicted on that guy’s skull and then haul their victim across to the refrigerator, remove the wire trays and manhandle the body into a space not meant for man or beast. No. Whoever snuffed out Jack Lantana either hated his guts or it was a retribution killing. It was not your run-of-the-mill burglar fighting to get away.”

  “She’s got a point,” I put in. “And another thing, what was Liz’s bracelet doing in Lantana’s office?”

  Tanya slapped her empty cup into my outstretched hand and fastened her fingers around her third cup of coffee. “You know, Kat,” she said, her voice pensive. “I’ve been thinking about that bracelet.”

  I glanced up, momentarily distracted from refilling Vampires Suck. “And what did you come up with?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Tanya shrugged. “Liz is too out of it, too naive, to have any shady dealings with the likes of Lantana. Okay, she smokes pot till she’s tripping with the fairies—but that’d be the extent of her criminal activities. And as for having any sort of a relationship with that geriatric creep. God, he’s at least forty years her senior.”

  “That’s what I figured.” I let out a sigh, rubbed my tired eyes. “In fact I can’t come up with one thing Liz and Jack would have in common.”

  “Except both having shocking tastes in fashion,” Tanya muttered.

  That was true. Last time I’d seen Liz she’d been dressed in what looked like a long flowing orange nightdress and a purple knitted hat with a bow that could have come straight off a teapot. I shook my head in an attempt to clear the fog of so many unanswerable questions before pushing the half-empty sugar bowl across to Tanya.

  Ben unhooked a Man at Work mug off my cup tree. “The explanation could be as simple as Liz losing her bracelet out on the street somewhere and Jack finding it.”

  I screwed my nose at him. “Bit coincidental.”

  “It’s the only solution that makes sense,” he assured me while pouring himself a coffee.

  Still not convinced, I chewed on my bottom lip. What were the odds of Jack Lantana, the guy who tried to steal my dogs—and for some obscure reason also got himself killed and stuffed in his refrigerator—finding a bracelet my sister Liz lost, presumably in Port Augusta?

  Something like 0001%?

  In need of a tissue to wipe up a dribble of coffee on the table top, I slipped my hand in my pocket. And felt a jolt when my fingers fastened around the square shape of a pad of post-it notes. “Oh, yes, I forgot to mention,” I said, extricating the tissue and wiping up the drips. “I took something else from Lantana’s office.”

  “Something else?” Tanya looked in need of sustenance to soak up the coffee so I snagged a tin of chocolate biscuits from the cupboard and dumped them in the middle of the table. She frowned. “How come you didn’t mention this before?”

  Was this girl for real?

  “Tanya, unless you’ve been in a coma for the last four or five hours—we’ve had a few other things on our plate.”

  “Well…” Tanya gestured with a double-choc Tim Tam biscuit. “Don’t just stand there looking all mysterious. Give. Tell us what you found.”

  “It’s probably nothing, but I snitched a pad of yellow post-it notes from beside Lantana’s phone. Okay, as far as I could see from a quick glance there was nothing written on the pad, but it was sitting there, staring up at me, so I slipped it in my pocket.”

  “As you do…”

  “Waste of time, really.” I shrugged one shoulder, suddenly feeling foolish. Here I was acting like an amateur sleuth when all I knew about sleuthing was what I’d read in my collection of Sue Grafton books. “I just thought…well…maybe Lantana left an impression of the last thing he wrote on the top page of the pad. And—” I could feel heat rising from my neck and spreading across my face “—and it could be a clue.”

  Ben draped one arm across my shoulders and tugging me closer, kissed my hot cheek. “Well then Ms. McKinley, amateur detective, let’s see what you got.” Eyes twinkling, a grin spread across his face. “What say I buy you a detective’s slouch coat for Valentine’s Day, babe? Reckon you’d look good in one of those.” His grin turned wicked. “Especially if you wore nothing underneath.”

  “Please,” Tanya wailed, rolling her eyes. “If you two are going to get horny leave the room. Otherwise, can we get on with the reason we’re here.”

  “Sorry,” said Ben who didn’t look at all apologetic.

  I dragged my eyes away from smoldering temptation and gulped a breath of air. “Of course, if we were fictional characters, we’d find the name and address of the guy who killed Lantana imprinted on the notepad.”

  Tanya growled. “Would you shut up already and show us what you got.”

  I dragged the pad, now slightly dog-eared, from my pocket and placed it on the table next to the biscuit tin. “All we have to do is lightly color the page with a pencil.”

  “Do
it!” ordered Tanya.

  I dug out a pencil from the back of one of the kitchen drawers and rubbed the lead lightly over the empty top page.

  “There’s numbers coming through,” Tanya whispered, nose almost touching the pad as she leaned across the table.

  “Seven…no…eight numbers,” said Ben, equally hypnotized.

  “It’s a clue,” I said, disbelief in my voice as I stared down at the numbers. “We’ve got a real, fair-dinkum clue. Looks like a phone number.”

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” grumbled Ben, rubbing his hands together. “Ring the number. Find out who it belongs to.”

  Oh yeah. Easy peasy. Just ring the number.

  “What if it’s the killer?” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded as if I’d swallowed sand. This wasn’t like reading about a murderer. This was real. Too damn real. “What if I recognize the killer’s voice? That would mean I know him. Personally.” I paused, heart-beat scooting up a couple of thousand decibels. “And worst scenario. What if the killer answered and he recognized my voice? What if—what if he knows I know he’s the killer?”

  By now I’d worked myself into such a state tiny beads of sweat littered my brow when I looked at my reflection in the toaster. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and stared down at the small sheet of yellow paper.

  “Oh, gimme that!” Ben snatched the post-it note from the table and marched into the lounge room with Tanya and me trailing behind like toddlers on leads. “I’ll ring the number myself.”

  With that, he lifted the receiver from its base and punched in the numbers—then waited.

  Anxious to read any and all of the expressions on Ben’s face when whoever was on the other end of the line answered, I perched on the arm of the sofa and leaned forward. The only outward signs of nervousness from Ben seemed to be the frown etched between his eyes, a twitch or two of his shoulders and the drum of impatient fingers on the wooden phone table.

  “Hello. Who am I speaking to? Oooh…riiiight.” A wide grin almost split Ben’s face in two. “It’s Cockatoo Pizza Palace on the line,” he said and handed to phone to me. “So, unless they deliver their pizzas with large blunt instruments inside—I don’t think we’ve found our killer yet.”