Cherry Pie (11 page)

‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you thieving little cunts to keep your filthy hands off the fucking deliveries!’ Trip ranted, practically foaming at the mouth.

‘What were you doing in there? Aye?’

‘I—I …’

Yasmin stood with her lips pursed and arms folded, no suspicious white stains on her uniform nor a hair out of place.

You’d never have guessed she’d just been rogered in the dunny. ‘Yes, Kerry. Please explain.’

‘I was, I wanted to, to mop the—’I didn’t have to bung on the stammer.

Just then Bad Boy came in from the back and stopped when he saw everyone gathered around. His eyes were blood-shot and he looked tragically stoned. Trip turned to him.

‘And you! Where the fuck have you been? I just caught the new dishie in the cool room. Didn’t you tell her?’

‘It’s not my fault, man,’ Bad Boy whined. ‘I showed her the rules.’

Trip marched over to the laminated sheet, tore it off the wall and shoved it in my face. ‘Well, what were you
really
doing in there?’ He slapped me around the head with it a couple of times and the rough edge scratched my lip.

Now I was getting angry. I felt like launching myself at him, biting his arm and not letting go. Everyone was watching. Dillon smirked. Gordon actually laughed out loud.

Patsy looked horrified, puffed up his already inflated torso and came to my rescue. He snatched the plastic coated rules from Trip, went to put his arm around me, noticed the stench and just patted my shoulder instead.

‘Isn’t it obvious? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.’

‘What? You’re the fucking poofta, mate.’

Patsy gave Trip a stern look and said, sotto voce, ‘Kerry can’t read.’

It was brilliant. I couldn’t work out if he just wanted to get me out of trouble, or if he really believed it.

‘Is that true, Kerry?’ Yasmin asked in her best ‘special school’ teacher’s voice.

I nodded, hung my head and wiped my nose with the back of my sleeve.

Trip turned to Bad Boy. ‘You know about this?’

Bad Boy bounced up and down, shaking his head. ‘No, man. She never said nuthin’ to me.’

Trip’s anger spiralled around him, nowhere to go, and the others stayed silent lest he direct it at them. With visible effort he clamped down the rage, breathed hard out of his nostrils and said, ‘Well, fuck it. Yasmin, give her fifty bucks and send her home.’

I decided to push it. ‘But I—’

Trip held up his palm and looked away. ‘Yeah yeah, it’s a fucking tragedy you’re illiterate and all that but it’s really not gonna work out. Okay? Try Sizzler or something.’ From him that was probably an apology.

I trundled out to the bins and when I’d made sure no one had followed me, waved at the window where Alex was conducting surveillance, gave him the finger with both hands and performed a twisting, prancing, piggy little dance of joy.

I drove home on a total high, fanging for a drink and a cigarette. There were no ciggies but I slammed down a well-earned glass of cask then poured another. A good result in undercover gave you the same kind of high as a great strip show. The buzz beat any drug, and I knew ’cause I’d tried them.

My phone was ringing but I ignored it. Probably Alex.

I’d talk to him eventually, but first I had to get out of the wig and the rest of the crap and wash off every last disgusting trace of Kezza. I’d just stepped out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel and was combing out my wet hair when the intercom squawked. I picked up the plastic handset and answered.

‘It’s Alex. Let me up.’ He didn’t sound happy.

After the previous night’s abstinence and no dinner, the wine had gone straight to my head and I was feeling a little cheeky. ‘Jeez, I dunno. It’s pretty late.’

‘Open the goddamn door.’ His voice had lowered an octave and I imagined the tone was the same one he used to apprehend fraudulent scoundrels. I couldn’t wait to let him know how clever I’d been so I buzzed him in, quickly swiped on some lip gloss and refilled my wine glass. When I opened the door I noticed his eyes wander over the towel, a quick up and down, then focus back on my face. Men.

‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ I smirked.

‘I told you to stay away.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He pushed past to the bathroom and came out holding the wig and the Garfield shirt at arm’s length. The wig looked like a dead fox terrier.

I smiled. Revenge was so fucking sweet. ‘Alright, you got me, babe. Drink?’

‘Are you deliberately trying to get me in trouble?’ He threw the top and wig back onto the bathroom floor.

‘Oh relax, Detective, I was brilliant, the pig of glory, a master of disguise. No one knew it was me and I bet you your colleagues didn’t recognise me either. And the shit I found out … but you wouldn’t want to see the photos, would you?

Maybe you should leave now before things go … how did you put it? Pear shaped?’

‘Photos?’ he asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

I sashayed over to the coffee table, booted up my laptop and plugged my digital camera into the USB port, preparing to download. As I bent over the towel almost fell off, as they do, and Alex fixed his eyes on a
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
poster over my right shoulder.

‘Put some clothes on.’

‘In a sec.’ I sat on the couch in front of the computer and patted the cushion next to me.

He paused, then finally walked over and sat down. The faintest trace of faded aftershave reached my nostrils and his trouser leg brushed my thigh. I busied myself transferring photos and lifting my glass for a couple of comprehensive swigs. I clicked open the first image.

‘Check it out,’ I said. ‘A whole box of plastic wrapped cash.

Money laundering, has to be. And I got that.’ I pointed to the can. ‘Probably just broad beans but it could be full of drugs. Sam Doyle’s doing, you reckon?’

‘I really can’t say.’

‘Maybe I’ll have to find out on my own then.’

‘This isn’t funny.’ He sighed. ‘What do I have to say to get you to leave this angle alone?’

I glanced at him, trying to think of a witty riposte, but the wine had kind of floored me and my mind went liquid and blank. I got caught up checking out his straight black brows and the coffee-coloured eyes fringed by surprisingly long lashes. Then my gaze dropped to his large hands, veins on the back of them, and a smattering of dark hair. I remembered a time not so long ago when he’d kissed me at the entrance to my flat and those same hands had snaked under my top and I’d felt his erection pressing against me. God.

He looked up from the computer. ‘What?’

I leaned over, put one hand on his upper thigh and moved my lips to his. He abruptly turned his head and my mouth brushed his ear. I sat back. He removed my hand from his leg and stood up.

‘Simone, I’m getting married. You’re dating my best friend.’

Before I could say anything he turned and walked out the door. As his shoes echoed down the concrete stairwell mortification hit me like a punch in the stomach and my skin prickled with a full body blush. I must have seemed like a desperate freak. I jumped up from the couch, threw off the towel and grabbed my jammies from in front of the heater, dancing and hopping as I pulled them on. I raced down the stairs, out the security door and down the concrete path, twigs and gumnuts digging into the bare soles of my feet. I had to catch him and explain that I hadn’t really meant it, it was the wine on an empty stomach.

But I was too late. I heard the low growl of his Commodore starting up and by the time I popped out of the gate his tail lights were disappearing down Broadway, halfway to Glenhuntly Road. I groaned and slapped my forehead. Idiot.

Idiot! I turned and walked up the footpath to my block, pausing to stick my hand in the letterbox as I’d forgotten to check it on my way in.

What I felt in there made me scream out loud.

It was a possum. Not a whole one.

I grabbed a plastic wrapped community newspaper and swept the severed head out of my letterbox. It fell onto the concrete path and rolled a small way and I crouched down to examine it in the yellow glow of the night lights lining the walkway. What I’d plunged my hand into was the meat and bone of the neck, chopped clean through with an axe or a cleaver. I nudged it face up with the rolled newspaper. The lips were drawn back, exposing sharp teeth in speckled grey gums.

Worse than that were the bloody sockets. Someone had plucked out its eyes.

Upstairs I scrubbed the hand covered with dark specks of possum viscera and shuddered, a convulsion like you get slugging cheap scotch. I badly needed a cigarette and reached into the cupboard above the fridge where Chloe stashed one of her many travel bongs. I pulled down her mull bowl and found a Winfield Blue nestled in a cone’s worth of debris, half the tobacco rubbed out and the cigarette paper twisted up.

I lit it. Dry, stale, but better than nothing.

After finding the head I’d checked the street to see if anyone was watching but all I saw were leafless oaks, parked cars and dark, silent houses. I’d briefly debated calling Alex but decided he’d see it as some bid for attention, since my lunge on the couch hadn’t worked. I could call the cops but honestly, what would they do? Pull out the blue and white tape, get the medical examiner and cart the evidence off to the morgue?

Yeah, right. They already thought I was flaky. Eventually I’d picked up the head using two rolled-up community newspapers like giant chopsticks, carried it around to the back of the flats and dumped it in someone else’s wheelie bin.

I stubbed the cigarette out and tried to rationalise the possum head as the cops would have done. A prank. Kids. The work of some random freak. And I might have believed it if it wasn’t for the eyes. That was a message meant for me.

After the late night I woke at ten and when I wandered out onto the balcony in my jammies, steaming cup of coffee in hand, I discovered there was a heatwave going on. Seriously.

Blue sky visible between the rooftops and bare branches, no freezing wind and had to be at least sixteen degrees. In the warmth and light the possum head didn’t seem so scary. In fact it struck me as totally lame. In my time I’d been shot at, stabbed, nearly raped. What sort of idiot thought a possum head would scare me off? I wasn’t going to waste any more time thinking about it and spent the next half hour jotting notes to myself, trying to figure out what was going on with Andi’s case.

I knew she was alive, at least she had been on Tuesday evening, and that certain things had been removed from her place. By her or somebody else, I wasn’t sure. I knew she was working on some potentially explosive story likely to ruin reputations at the very least, and I knew that Trip and Yasmin had lied. I’d been attacked, which could have been coincidence, but the possum head was no accident.

I couldn’t entirely discount the theory that Andi was a bit unbalanced and had disappeared and made the phone call as a bid for attention, but after all I’d found out, and knowing how ambitious she was, I highly doubted it. They tell you in inquiry agent school that you should keep an open mind and not make assumptions but I couldn’t help myself. I knew it in my guts. A story of a celebrity chef involved in some sort of money laundering scam was news alright, and could be just the sort of big break Andi needed to get out of the hospitality industry for good. As Curtis was fond of reminding me, journalism was a hard gig to crack. It had to be about Trip, and Jouissance, and the ‘colourful’ Sam Doyle.

The next thing I assumed was that someone had found out what she was up to. Trip? Yasmin? Doyle? Had they done something to her? Possibly, but what sort of halfwit would kidnap someone and let them keep their mobile phone? More likely was the possibility that she had been discovered, disappeared before they could get to her and come to grief along the way.

Whatever it was, I had to find out what happened that night at Jouissance, and I had to find out more about Sam Doyle. And Alex couldn’t stop me.

I could go spend a couple of days trawling through company records and court reports to get more information, or I could do it the easy way and call my old boss, Tony Torcasio.

He was an ex-cop who knew a lot of Sydney policemen and PIs and he subscribed to databases that I didn’t have access to.

Sure, he’d fired me, but in a friendly way, and he’d always said that if I needed any help …

‘Hey, Simone.’ He seemed pleased to hear from me.

‘How’s it going? Been getting much work?’

‘Matter of fact I’m on a case right now.’

He groaned when I told him it was missing persons, but I filled him in, right up to my triumph the night before. Tony could keep his mouth shut.

‘Undercover as Kezza the dishpig. Jesus. Only you.’ I was sure he was shaking his head.

‘I was just wondering if you or any of your Sydney mates know anything about Sam Doyle?’

‘You just said Alex told you to back off from that angle.

Stick to the background, family and shit.’

‘Yeah but I can’t. It’s all connected. I reckon Doyle will lead me to Andi.’

‘If Alex is already investigating the man then I’m sure he’ll keep you posted.’

‘Oh, he’ll let me know what’s going on when it’s all over, but that might be too late! She might be dead!’

‘Very dramatic.’

‘Please, Tony, any scrap you can throw me …’

‘No.’

It took me a couple of seconds to register what he’d said.

‘What?’

‘You heard. I’m not going to say anything except stay away from him. I know you. I give you information and you’re straight up there, in his face, following him around, probably fucking up the fraud investigation, and then all hell breaks loose. I don’t want to be responsible. So, no.’

He was as bad as those fucking cops at Elsternwick. ‘Well thank you very much for your help, Tony, you obviously think very highly of me.’

‘Anytime.’ Tony hung up.

There was only one thing to do. I called Curtis.

‘What’s going on with you and Chloe?’ he said, instead of hello.

‘You’re not at hers are you?’