Chasing Can Be Murder (20 page)

“Scaaaarlett.” Ben rolled the word around on his tongue like it was a fine vintage wine. “As in,
Gone with the Wind
?”

“Mummy jus
adored
that movie.”

Oh God…

Ben rested both elbows on the polished counter and leaned closer. Another inch or two and he’d be near enough to lock lips with the woman. In fact, the sight of this potential intimacy had me itching to pucker up and insert my own slut-red lips between them.

“We’re here to examine Matt Turner’s storage box,” I blurted, unable to stand the sickening performance any longer.

The boss lady at the other end of the counter looked up, suddenly alert. She peered down her hooked nose at the scene being enacted in front of her and then cleared her throat.

“Scarlett, they’re calling for someone at storage area number 26. Could you see what they want, please?”

After glaring daggers of accusation at me, Ben turned to the other woman. “Excuse me, ma’am, but Miss Scarlett is busy. She’s attending to us.”

As though he were invisible, the dragon lady quirked her lips a fraction, just enough to send Scarlett a caricature of a smile. “Number 26 please, dear. Now, hurry along, it goes against company policy to keep customers waiting.”

Ben’s eyes glazed over as he watched
Gone with the Wind’
s namesake mince her way towards the door on her red strappy high heels. Her hot red dress so tight it caused her perky little bottom to wiggle with every step. But before he could make a move to follow this vision of perfection, I grabbed the tail of his flannel shirt in a death grip and held on.

“Hmmph!” The dragon lady threw Ben a poisonous,
all-men-are-assholes
glare, before dropping her head and continuing to bang away on her keyboard.

I blinked in confusion. What happened to company policy? If we weren’t potential customers—what were we? Secondary characters in a novel?

Giving up, I gave Ben a nudge to remind him of the purpose of our visit. Earth to Ben...Earth to Ben. When he didn’t respond, I nudged harder—almost dislocating my elbow in an attempt to get him back on track.

Finally, he shook his head as though dislodging whatever erotic thoughts had gathered for a party and slowly turned to focus on Scarlett’s substitute. The horror in his eyes indicated he considered the substitute defective. His jaw tightened and he rolled both shoulders, ready to continue his
sweet-talk
demonstration.

After all—this was Benjamin Taylor and the dragon lady
was
female.

“Hello there,” he drawled cranking out his
I’m-Mr-Wonderful-and-there’s-no-way-you-can-resist-me
smile.

The toxic glare she hurled his way could have annihilated a plague of cockroaches. Yet it hardly made a dent on Mr. Wonderful’s ego.

I smothered a grin. Could my mate finally have met his match?

Still smothering a grin, I flipped Matt’s half burnt bill onto the counter. “We’re here to pay an account and check the contents of a storage box.”

The woman completed whatever it was on her computer that was more important than attending to customers, and then regarded me through her wire frames, small grey eyes frosty, a scowl set in concrete above her hooked nose. “And
you
are?”

I took a small step away from the counter and silently passed the baton back to
Sweet Talk.

Clearing his throat, Ben began what looked like, to me, an impersonation of a bull-frog. Puffed chest, head high, jaw thrust forward to show off his sculpted chin. I almost expected to hear a deep
ribbett
…
ribbett
coming from deep in his throat. Instead, he smiled at his target and crooned, “Isn’t it a lovely morning, Miss—”

“Ms.,” she corrected and the temperature in the room dropped another twenty degrees. “Ms. Stratton. As you can see by the plaque on the counter.”

Ben blinked. “Um…well, Ms. Stratton, as my friend, Kat explained, we have an overdue account we’d like to pay.”

“Identification?”

Ben’s smile sagged at the edges. “Identification?”

“Naturally. We always require identification from our clients.”

Ben fumbled in his back pocket, came out with a wallet and placed his driver’s license on the counter.

The dragon lady let loose another blistering scowl. If Ben was bread he’d now be toast. “This says, Benjamin Elijah Taylor. The name on the account is Matthew Turner.”

“Elijah? And here was me thinking your middle name was
Sweet Talk
,” I murmured, giving Ben another dig in the ribs. By the end of the day he’d have a bunch of bruises under his shirt.

Noting Ben’s slightly dazed expression, I jumped in, suede boots and all, in an effort to save any further embarrassment. “Ms. Stratton, allow me to explain. Matthew Turner is my cousin. He can’t get here today because he’s—well, he’s sort of indisposed.” I crossed my fingers tightly behind my back. “Anyway, he asked me to pay his account and check his storage box.”

“Identification?”

Geez…what was it with this woman and her phobia for ID? A person she trusted must have let her down badly in her dark and dismal past by pretending to be someone they weren’t.

And we were copping the back-wash
.

I handed Ms. Stratton my trainer’s license. At least that had a slightly better photo than the unsmiling chinless thug displayed on my driver’s license. I hate the way motor-vehicle department’s photographers always wait until I’m thinking black thoughts, feeling impatient, or just plain glaring at some creep in the queue who’s been ogling my boobs for the last ten minutes, before taking the photo.

“Your surname isn’t Turner—it’s McKinley.”

Ms. Stratton of the snotty attitude was starting to get up my nose. “Since when has
that
been a crime?” I asked her. “As a matter of interest, how many cousins do
you
have with a different surname to yours?”

The sharp point of Ben’s elbow caught
me
in the ribs.

“My dear, Ms. Stratton,” he drawled, flashing another valiant smile at Ice Woman. “A lady of your intelligence will appreciate we’re not here to waste your valuable time, only to pay Matthew Turner’s current account. You see, it’s impossible for um...Kat’s cousin to come in person, but he asked us to take care of his account and while we’re here, check the contents of his storage box. Make sure it’s exactly as he left it.”

“I see.” Was that a slight softening of the gimlet eyes behind Ice Woman’s wire-rimmed specs? “That will be $52.50. Will you be paying by check or cash?”

“Cash,” said Ben, his smile tottering on a smirk as he turned to me. “Right, Kat. Pay the nice lady.”

“Me?”

His grin widened.

Suppressing the childish urge to stick out my tongue, I rummaged in the pockets of my jeans and brought out two screwed up $20 notes and a handful of coins.

“$46.10. That’s all I have on me.”

He shrugged then counted the remaining $6.40 from his back pocket before sliding the money across the counter. “So...now that’s all settled, we’d like to check Matt’s storage box. Merely to confirm the contents are safe.”

Ms. Stratton slowly counted the money into a cash register and after making out a receipt, handed it to me. And I swear, just before she opened her mouth to speak, she
almost
smiled.

“Password?”

Ben let out a yelp of incredulity. “Password?”

“We cannot allow anyone to examine one of our storage boxes without giving the correct password. Company rules.”

And I thought training greyhounds was an uphill job. If this was any indication of the problems associated with earning a living as a private investigator, they were welcome to it.

“Um—let’s see,” growled Ben. “Would it be…
greyhound
?”

“Sorry.”

“What about
racing
?”

She shook her head again.

“
Queen of Egypt
?”

“Uh! Uh!”

“
Betting-ticket
?”

“
Race-form
?”

“
Win and place
?”

“
Quinella
?”

Ms. Stratton’s head flicked from side to side like one of those painted clowns in a sideshow booth where a customer drops a ball into a moving mouth in the hope of winning a plastic comb, a Kewpie doll, or a stuffed soft animal.

The dragon lady was thoroughly enjoying herself. I could tell. Every time she shook her head, her lips disappeared inside her mouth and her eyes sparkled.

What word would Matthew have used as his password?

“I know! I know!” I yelled, flapping one arm in the air, like a school kid asking to go to the bathroom. “It’s
TAB
. Matt’s password
has
to be TAB.”

Just as I caught the imperceptible quiver of Ms. Stratton’s bottom lip, which meant I’d spoilt her day, my mobile began to trill,
Stayin’ Alive
.

“Hold that password,” I told her and held up one finger before answering my phone. “Kat McKinley of McKinley Greyhounds.”

“G’day, Kat. Dan here. Can I have a word with Erin?”

I blinked. Confused. “Erin? No. Why would Erin be with
me
, Dan?”

There was a slight pause. I could hear a quick intake of breath before Dan spoke again. “Why
wouldn’t
Erin be with you? She’s staying with you, isn’t she?”

“No.”

“Well, if she’s not with you…where the hell
is
she?”

“How should I know?” We seemed to be going around in circles. Dan could be so thick sometimes so I spoke slowly and distinctly, as to a child. “Dan, the last I heard from Erin was when I spoke to her on the phone last night. She said your car had broken down and she was waiting for some guy to pick her up. Some guy you’d met at the pub, which is pretty damn slack if you ask—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan broke in. “But when George got there Erin was gone.”

“Gone?” I went cold all over. “What do you mean, gone? And what makes you think she’s with me?”

“She left a note. Said she was staying with you until Tanya got back.”

The cold dribbled into my bones. “And the note was definitely written by Erin?”

“Of course, otherwise I’d have rung the cops.”

That’s when the shaking started and my voice box went rusty. “Dan,” I croaked. “I know nothing about a note.”

Had the little wretch decided to stay overnight with one of her friends and used me as an alibi? Or had something terrible happened to Erin?

I must have looked as rattled as I felt because next minute Ben’s arms were around me, the rough material of his shirt pressing against my cheek.

“It’s Erin,” I whispered. “She’s disappeared.”

“No sweat,” he said into my hair. “You know what a pain in the butt that kid is. She’ll be at a friend’s house playing games on their X-box.”

Ben, one arm still around my shoulders plucked the phone from my fingers as he guided me towards the open doorway.

“Dan. Ben here,” he growled into my mobile. “Listen, mate, Kat and I are on the move now. We’ll ask around the streets and check the river. Meanwhile, why don’t you get some mates out there searching for her and if no one’s found her by 4 o’clock, we’ll meet up at Kat’s house. Right?” He paused to listen to something Dan said. When he spoke again his voice was softer. “Hey, don’t spit the dummy mate, Erin can’t be far away. Ring around and ask if any of her friends have seen her. And mate,” he said before hanging up, “don’t forget to give us a ring back when you find her.”

As we powered through the office doorway I heard Ms. Stratton’s disappointed wail following us. “TAB? Don’t you want to know if that’s the correct password?”

But we were too busy attempting to beat the land-speed record back to Ben’s van to answer.

20

Two hours later Ben and I were still searching for Erin. We’d been to the park, we’d peered into both historical wells, which the town was named after, cross-examined shopkeepers, given joggers the third-degree and stopped locals out walking their dogs. We even poked sticks into the Gawler River. Of course the river at this time of the year wasn’t much more than a trickle, but I figured if Erin was like most kids, she’d be fascinated by water and perhaps set up camp in the bushes nearby.

No camp. No clues. No Erin.

What did I expect? Erin wasn’t
most
kids!

So, next item on the agenda—door-knocking. If I had a personal list of
Things Imosthate doing—
door-knocking would come just below having teeth pulled without gas. Honestly, if I had to make a living as a door-to-door saleswoman I’d be sleeping under a bridge and eating dinner from restaurant garbage bins.

And if today’s experience was anything to go by there was no reason to change my mind.

After banging on doors for over an hour we discovered that sixty percent of people have their televisions up so loud they wouldn’t know if a hurricane hit them until their screen went static. Of the rest, ten percent hadn’t seen Erin. The other thirty percent yelled “Go away! Don’t want any!” and slammed the door in our faces before we’d even asked our first question.

It wasn’t until we came across a group of spray-can toting kids doing a graffiti job on someone’s back fence that we stumbled on a clue. Well, actually, it was Ben who stumbled on it. He was so busy questioning me about how long Scuzz intended hanging around, he didn’t see this girl of about thirteen, complete with arm and ankle tats, until he stubbed his toe on her calf muscle. She was stretched across the footpath drawing stick figures in red and blue paints. And boy, what those stick figures were up to would have made a prostitute blush.

After establishing Tattoo Girl wasn’t traumatized or in need of hospitalization due to the hefty size twelve to the leg, I gave the kids the third degree. Seems like Tattoo Girl, who had been sitting on her own roof sharing a bong with her boyfriend on the night of Erin’s disappearance, lived across the road from Tanya. When questioned further, she told us she’d noticed this grey car with a yellow driver’s side door cruise down Tanya’s driveway and pull up at the house. The driver had gone inside and when he came out, seemed to be acting suspiciously. I asked her to define
suspiciously.
She said he was,
like, running from the house
.