by June Whyte
“Mum, you’ve been married to Ken for six months now. How much more time does the little princess need to adjust? She’s totally screwed up my life ever since she moved in.”
“There you go again!” Mum threw her hands in the air, the red mark on her nose from the flying hairbrush almost pulsating in her frustration. “Screwed up your life…why don’t you try looking outside the square sometimes, Chiana and see what your behavior is doing to us as a family?”
“My behavior? What about Princess Sarah’s behavior?”
By now I was wailing at Mum’s rigid back as she marched towards the kitchen. “How come she gets to stay inside the square,” I yelled, “while I’m the one who’s made to go outside?”
Life in our house would never be the same again. Not only had my mum turned into an alien, she was expecting me to be nice to the step-sister from Hell.
The front door slammed behind me as I stormed out.
“It’s not fair,” I yelled at next-door’s skinny black cat as it slunk past me then skittered up the tree in fright. “Nancy Drew never had these distractions to put up with when she was solving a mystery!
Three
Later that afternoon, Jack, Tayla and I met outside No. 16 Edward Street—the house where Patsy found the dead body. Cops were crawling over the grounds like ants at a picnic. Blue and white crime tape fluttered in the breeze. Sightseers laughed and gossiped on the footpath or drove past beeping their horns.
All that was missing was a Mr. Whippy ice-cream van.
Jack sprawled against a police-car parked by the curb. His Port Power baseball cap turned back to front, his eyes darting lizard-like over the scene.
“Crikey,” he said, shaking his head. “What’s with all these people? Anyone would think we were on reality TV.”
“No way are we getting into Patsy’s for a snoop today.”
Was that relief I heard in Tayla’s voice?
“Of course we will,” I growled back at her. “Nancy Drew wouldn’t let a slight hitch like this get in her way. All we need is a plan.”
“Who’s this Nancy character you’re always on about?” asked Jack whose reading consisted mainly of cheat sheets for his Play station games.
“She’s an amateur detective in a series of books written years ago,” I explained. “Nancy always caught the bad guy.”
Tayla had changed into her new denim shorts and red boob tube which made her look even more like a movie star. It was okay though. I’d accepted Tayla was much prettier than me from the time we wore matching Barbie tee-shirts in a year three look-alike contest. The judge awarded her a chocolate and me a rubber stamp on the back of my hand.
Anyway, Tayla’s looks often came in handy. Like now.
“What about the young cop standing by the gate?” I quizzed her. “Reckon you could worm some info out of him?”
“The cute one?”
“If you say so!”
To me, you see one male you see them all—scruffy hair, smelly socks and even smellier armpits.
Tayla tossed her blonde curls and beamed her adorable smile, a habit that won hearts and normally got her out of detention early. “Don’t you just luuuv the dimple.”
Jack put his finger down his throat and made sick noises. “Call that a dimple? Looks more like a hole in his face.”
I nodded wisely. “Probably fell on a nail when he was a kid.”
“Or got his chin caught in a lawnmower.”
“Very funneee.” With another toss of her hair and a slight adjustment to her boob tube, Tayla walked toward the young cop guarding the gate.
“She won’t get him talking. It’d cost him his badge.” Jack pushed himself away from the car and rubbed the back of his neck, almost poking out a lady’s eye with his elbow in the process.
“Don’t forget to ask him if they’ve dug up any clues,” I called out. Hey, if anyone could start a cute cop with a hole in his chin blabbing—it was Tayla.
While Jack and I held our breath, Tayla zeroed in on her victim. I mean…selected policeman. Smiling that alluring, I’m-just-adorable smile, she leaned one elbow on the gate and stared up into his eyes. “Hi. My name’s Tayla. What’s yours?”
“Don’t lean on the gate, kid. It may not have been fingerprinted yet.”
Hmm…so much for I’m-just-adorable!
Not one bit bothered by the rebuff, Tayla upped the megawatts in her killer smile and adopted her ‘little girl’ voice. “Have you found that nasty old body yet, Mr. Policeman?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“It makes me sooo scared knowing there’s a big bad killer around. Are you any closer to finding him?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Is Patsy inside? I’m a friend of hers. She’s probably expecting me.”
“I’m not —”
“Okay. Okay. You’re not at liberty to say.” Tayla’s voice turned septic and her smile slumped.
The constable’s lips tweaked.
“At least tell me your name,” she persisted, leaning against the gate again. “Or aren’t you at liberty to tell me that either?”
“Constable Nick Roberts of the Port Adelaide Police Department.”
We were getting nowhere…
I glanced at the riot of purple and yellow pansies bordering the lawn next to the veranda. Wasn’t that where Patsy said she’d found the body? Or was it where the knife dropped after she’d kicked him?
Something pink and fluttery and resembling a handkerchief caught my eye. It was in the middle of a geranium bush, not far from the pansies—and the police were searching the other side of the garden. What if they missed it? What if the handkerchief belonged to the killer? My knees suddenly turned to toffee and excitement bubbled in my chest.
Could this be a chance for me to snare my very first clue?
“Jack,” I whispered, digging my nails into his bare arm and dragging him closer. “There’s something I want to check out on the other side of the crime-tape. Can you cause a disturbance while I sneak in?”
“What?” Jack’s eyes boggled.
“Jump up and down on the hood of the police-car. That should do it!”
Jack, his face the color of a ripe plum looked like he’d swallowed his spit and almost choked on it. “I-I c-can’t do that, Cha!”
“Okay—okay. Now listen…I want you to collapse—act like you’re real sick. Whatever it takes. Just distract the police while I sneak in and snag that clue.”
Leaving Jack to create a diversion like a true P.I.’s assistant, I strolled along the fence-line, casually whistling Three Blind Mice. As soon as I heard a loud moan and someone shouting, “Hey, get back. Give the poor boy some air!” I was over the fence and belly down on the ground, my tee-shirt hitched up around my armpits. Then, like a snake after a mouse, I slithered towards my target. The bright red geranium bush.
Hunching my shoulders forward I dug my nose deeper into the lawn and wriggled another half dozen centimeters. The smell of fertilizer and dry earth crept up my nose. Strands of dry grass tickled the soft bits inside my nostrils.
Oh! Uh!
I could feel a giant sneeze coming. It was like a simmering pressure-cooker ticking away somewhere deep inside, wherever sneezes have their launching-pad.
It was only the scrap of pink that urged me on. Of course this could be a wild-goose chase—that’s more P.I. talk—and the hankie could belong to Patsy or Zoë, but my gut instinct told me this was a very important clue.
I read somewhere that all Private Investigators have a highly developed gut instinct. Probably comes with the trench coat and the dark glasses.
Just as I reached out and snagged the evidence, the pressure-cooker blew its lid and I launched the biggest sneeze of the century.
Aaaaaaaah! Choooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
“Hey, kid, what do you think you’re doing there?” I felt myself being lifted bodily in the air and set roughly on my feet. “Okay, what game are you playing at?”
<
br /> It was Dimples. From close range the hole in his face looked more like a bomb crater.
“I-I dropped a dollar and it-it rolled under the fence, constable.”
“And pigs fly. What’s your name?”
“Cha.”
“Cha?” His eyebrows, fair, with a touch of ginger, lifted. His mouth thinned to a grim line. “What sort of a name is Cha?”
“It’s short for Chiana. Look, I’m sorry, but that was my last dollar and I need it to catch the bus home.”
Tayla wasn’t the only actor in our Investigative team. I sniffed, rubbed my eyes and thought of the saddest movie I’d ever seen. Titanic. Almost squeezed out a tear.
“Please don’t send me to jail, constable.’ I sniffed again. ‘My mum’ll kill me!”
“Where’s the dollar?”
I felt around in my pocket until my fingers settled on a one dollar coin.
Thanking God and all my lucky stars, I thrust it under the cop’s nose. “See. Now can I go? Pleeeese. If I miss my bus I’ll be late home and—”
“Yes—I know. Your mother will kill you.”
I nodded.
“I’ll let you off with a warning this time Chiana—but it’s against the law to enter a crime-scene without authorization. Understand?”
I nodded again. Felt like one of those nodding dogs you sometimes see sitting in the back window of a car.
As Constable Nick Roberts frog-marched me through the gate onto the footpath and sent me on my way, I could hear Jack’s bright voice, saying, “It’s okay, folks, I’m fine now. My stomach-cramps have disappeared. Must have been that sandwich I ate for breakfast.”
“Sandwich?” An elderly lady clutching a yapping Chihuahua under one arm stood regarding Jack as if he shouldn’t be out without a keeper.
“Yeah—baked beans, peanut butter, raspberry jam, sliced pickles, pineapple and a great glump of tomato-sauce. Yummeeee!”
I stifled a giggle.
The scary part was—that’s probably what Jack did have for breakfast.
“Meet you at the water-fountain,” I yelled.
While waiting for my two assistants to catch up I jogged to the Esplanade and put my mouth under the water jet. This detective stuff was thirsty work.
Tayla flopped on the grass beside me and giggled. “Wasn’t Jack a hoot?” I shook my head. Even ‘flopping’ Tayla still managed to look cool. Whenever I flop I hit my bum on the ground and it hurts.
Jack took a swig of water then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Reckon I’ll be an actor when I leave school.”
“When you clutched your stomach and staggered around like a drunk I almost wet my pants,” Tayla said and laughed.
“Now that would have caused a diversion.” Jack grinned at Tayla then turned to me, his face suddenly looking anxious. “You okay, Cha?”
“Sure.”
“We didn’t have much luck, did we? No new info. No clues. Nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Both heads snapped to attention and swiveled in my direction.
“What did you get?” Jack asked.
“I think the killer could be a woman.”
“A woman?”
“How do you figure that out?” Tayla said.
Daa daaaaa…
Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat I whipped the pink handkerchief from my back pocket and waved it over my head like a trophy.
“Look what I found in Patsy’s garden.”
“Of course you’d find it in Patsy’s garden,” Tayla said like she was explaining something to a prep kid on her first day at school. “She lives there.”
“Or it could belong to Zoë,” Jack added.
Smugly I pointed to the large embroidered K in the corner of the handkerchief. “Since when does the name Patsy or Zoë start with a K?”
Four
“It’s Good-Dog time,” I called out as I opened a packet of canine kibble.
Like bullets from a machine gun, the brown, yellow and green kibble rat-tat-tatted against the aluminum sides of the dog-dish.
Leroy’s mouth gaped. His wide brown eyes followed my every move. The loose skin around his jowls dripped with long stringy strands of drool. A slimy pool of saliva formed at my feet.
In fact, Leroy reminded me of Jack—just before he ate a chili-dog smothered in tomato-sauce and mustard. Or a family sized pizza with the lot. Or a heaped bowl of ice-cream covered in chocolate sauce, strawberry jam, broken bits of Flake, half a packet of nuts and topped with an extra-large scoop of thick clotted cream.
But that’s where the likeness ended. Jack was always on the move. I looked down at my bug-eyed bulldog. Moving certainly wasn’t Leroy’s favorite pastime. Evidently he’d used up his energy quota for the day doing strenuous activities like breathing and eating. He was currently using my sneakers as a mattress.
“Where the heck were you when God dished out energy?” I asked, shaking him off my foot and bending to set the bowl of Good-Dog under his nose. “Taking a nap under His heavenly chair?”
The dog, unaware of his short-comings, lifted his head as high as the bowl and began munching steadily; his rear end sprawled on the tiled floor.
“But I love you.” I screwed up my nose as his rasping tongue coated my cheek with a mixture of drool, dead-rat breath and crunched up kibble. Leroy couldn’t help being lovable instead of handsome. Snoozy instead of hypo. He’d been that way ever since he wandered into my life just over two years ago for a sleepover.
And he’d been ‘sleeping over’ ever since.
Leaving Leroy to his meal, I plucked a packet of caramel fudge Tim Tams out of the cupboard, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and tiptoed up the stairs to the study.
The room was empty. Great. While no-one was around I could make a start on my true crime story. I turned on the computer and opened a new document in Word, then typed:
“Rebecca Turnbull P.I.: The Case of the Disappearing Corpse.”
Thanks to the guy getting killed on poor Patsy’s doorstep I had the beginnings of a story. And with the help of my trusty P.I. assistants I intended to work my way through to a satisfying ending. Hey, I’d already found one very important clue.
A wet nudge on my leg broke my concentration and heralded Leroy’s look-at-me-I-actually-dragged-myself-up-the-stairs arrival in the study. Instead of his usual horizontal sprawl, he sat, his stumpy tail thumping on the carpet. His head tipped to one side.
Doggy love?
Nah.
Leroy’s way of begging for a Tim Tam.
“Okay, just one,” I agreed, plucking two biscuits from the packet. I popped one in the dog’s cave-like mouth and one in my own, then, after licking the chocolate off my fingers, I began to type.
“The sun beat down on her bare head as Rebecca Turnbull, Sydney’s fearless female Private Investigator, strode purposefully up the path towards the front door of her mansion. Fang, the mean Doberman with eyes the color of fire, trotted at her heels.
The day had been productive, as usual. They’d solved two cases that had baffled the police for months. Now they’d been hired to find the missing daughter of a visiting Sheik.
Turnbull stopped. Senses on full alert. There was a strange man sleeping on her front lawn and he sure as hell hadn’t been there when she’d left home that morning. Whipping out the snub-nosed revolver she always carried in her pocket, Turnbull hurried forward. Her mind took in every little detail, including the fact that the strange man on her lawn was not asleep—he was dead!
‘Fang!” she called. “You check around the back. I’ll take the house.’
Barging through the front door like an army tank, she—”
“It’s your turn to do the dishes, Chiana. I can’t. I’ve washed my hair and if I don’t put the straightener on it immediately, it’ll go fuzzy.”
Wouldn’t you know it—Turnbull had Fang—I had a self-absorbed step-sister with a hair obsession.
I gritted my teeth. “Get lost, b
ucket-head. Can’t you see I’m busy? Go straighten your hair in the kitchen sink while you’re doing the dishes. And make sure the water’s deep enough to cover your nose.”
“Marg said it’s your turn and she wants them done now.” Sarah came into the room and stood, arms folded, as immovable as the ancient rock, Ulura. “You shouldn’t even be in here. It’s my night to play on the computer, so get lost, lame-brain!”
“I’m not playing, Sarah—I’m writing a story.”
She shook her long hair, still princess-like, even when damp.
“Don’t know why you bother,” she taunted. “No-one wants to read the garbage you write.” She paused, gave me one of her wicked-witch-of-the-west looks. “Like…now, what was it again? Oh, yes, I remember.” She put on a goofy face and preened herself like a featherless peacock. “Before getting under the shower this morning I looked at my body in the bathroom mirror…”
Oh…my…God! Sarah had read my diary. I’d have to chop her into little bits, put her through the blender, and then kill her.
In my eagerness to begin the chopping process, I shot to my feet, screaming like a cat with its tail caught in the fridge door. The computer chair tipped backwards. The mouse ended up dangling by its cord. And the rest of the Tim Tams found their way into Leroy’s waiting jaws.
“And I’m sure my boobs have grown at least half a centimeter since I checked them last week.” Sarah choked hysterically over the memorized words, her body shaking with laughter so much she almost fell down the stairs.
At the kitchen door Sarah repeated the words on top volume. Smirking, she turned to me. “You are so lame, Chiana. Boobs wouldn’t be seen dead on your skinny chest.”
I’d more than kill her—I’d roll her in pigeon poop, stick a stamp on her head and mail her to the North Pole. With any luck the elves might use her to fertilize Santa’s roses.
“Mum!” I yelled, bursting into the kitchen where Mum was mixing up a batch of cakes. Ken, my besotted step-father, was nuzzling at her neck and dipping his finger in the mixing-bowl. Even after six months of marriage they still smooched like teenagers and made goo-goo eyes at each other. Sickening.
