Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (31 page)

‘It was,’ said my assailant. Egg and shell dripped down over the black catsuit in question, and down into her fitted leather boots.

‘It looks great,’ I offered.

‘Thanks.’ She crossed her arms, elegant and menacing despite wearing twenty dollars worth of smashed free range egg. ‘So where is he?’

‘You’re going to want to get in a shower really soon. Raw egg does bad things to hair, when it goes hard…’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ She paused meaningfully. ‘Tabitha? I’m in a hurry here. Your landlord. The arsehole. Where is he?’

Ah, well that made more sense. She was looking for Darrow. ‘Does he owe you money? Or are you planning to hurt him?’ Both possibilities were more than likely.

‘Both. Hurry up, I can feel my hair hardening as we speak.’

‘I don’t know where he is,’ I admitted. ‘Honestly, haven’t seen him for weeks. But he’s Darrow. He’ll stroll back in, sooner or later.’

She gave me a filthy look, and somehow managed to still look gorgeous in the process. ‘You wouldn’t lie to protect him, would you?’

‘Of course not.’

Yeah, I probably would. There’s something about stupidly attractive men. They smile, and your knees turn to honey, and suddenly you’re doing things you never thought you would, like giving false witness, or accidentally learning how to poach quail eggs. But I wasn’t lying today. ‘If you must beat the information out of someone, why not try his white-haired, old grandmother?’

She smiled tightly. ‘Good suggestion. I’ll keep it in mind.’

I didn’t feel guilty. Darrow’s white-haired old grandmother was more than a match for either of us. ‘Okay, then. I have to go inside and call my egg supplier. And evict twenty police officers from my café.’ I backed away from her, until I reached my kitchen door. ‘Oh—Xanthippe?’

‘What?’ she said, sounding tired.

‘Good to see you back.’

She glanced down at her egg-streaked outfit. ‘Yep. Just like old times.’

Back in the kitchen, Nin had put the focaccia in our little pizza oven to toast, and was making salad rolls so that the breakfast crowd could take their lunch away with them. When I was growing up, a salad roll was a confection-like sticky bun filled with cheese, tomato, lettuce, beetroot and sliced egg, all glued together with a mock-mayonnaise. Good old Australian corner shop tucker. Now, if it didn’t have cranberry sauce, gouda or red pesto on it, our customers whinged the roof down. Oh, and ham wasn’t good enough for most of the hipster lunch set, even if it was triple smoked and carved off an organic local pig. Fat-free turkey and smoked salmon were where it was at—with a growing interest in grilled mushrooms and haloumi.

I realised I had reached the point of no return when I put ‘tofu and ricotta salad roll, deconstructed’ on the menu, and it became my biggest seller. After that, I started really having fun. If food isn’t creative, what’s the point?

Unfortunately I still had a very vocal (if minority) group of customers who were firmly attached to the Good Old Days, and relied on me to provide the basic staples of Man Food. Steak, fried potato products and pies. I never had this much trouble with the uni students when I was working at the café on campus. At least students appreciated an ironic sprout when they saw one.

Well, no more. The old guard were going to have to find their pies somewhere else. I had hipsters to feed.

The customer bell twanged loudly in the café.

‘In a minute,’ I protested as Nin’s eyebrows became stern and judgemental. ‘Egg emergency.’

As I picked up the phone, a tall, dark and handsome police officer in street uniform put his head through the swinging doors. ‘Tish, the natives are getting restless.’

I rolled my eyes at the old nickname, and handed the phone to Nin. ‘Call Monica. We’re going to need another three dozen. Might require grovelling.’

She dialled, knowing a good deal when she saw one. 

‘So,’ I said to Senior Constable Leo Bishop, ‘by natives, you mean the usual gang of reprobates?’

Bishop grinned his gorgeous grin at me. ‘The accepted term is still
police officers
, you know.’

We went through to the café together. Two customers sat at a window table, enjoying plates of muesli trifle and plum honey toast. The other fourteen customers—sprawling on tables and generally holding up the walls—were mostly over forty, uniformed and slightly dangerous. Even the detectives were so painfully plain clothed that their police credentials were obvious.

Bishop was pushing thirty, but the other adjectives still applied. Uniformed and dangerous. ‘One of these days,’ I warned him in a low voice, ‘you’re all going to get bored with keeping an eye on me.’

‘Duty is never dull,’ he shot back, with that look in his eye. That look had made my stomach jump somersaults when I was sixteen and still innocent enough to be impressed by cute men in uniform. Good thing I got over that particular fetish.

I circulated, smiling my best smile at a horde of middle-aged men who thought of me only as Tabitha, Geoff and Rose Darling’s precious little girl. ‘G’day all. Seen my new breakfast menu?’

Inspector Bobby tapped the pretty laminated pages. ‘No pies on there, Tabby love. How’m I going to start my day without one of Rose’s steak and bacon glories?’

My smile got brighter. ‘Come on, Bobby, this isn’t Mum’s café. It’s mine. And I’m pretty sure your wife told me that eating those steak and bacon glories for breakfast is what led to your heart attack last year. I can’t have you on my conscience any more.’

‘Come on, Tabby,’ said Superintendent Graham in a genial voice. ‘Your pastry’s a work of art. Can’t go wasting skills like that.’

This is true. Excellent pastry is the one tangible thing I gained from running off to Europe with a French landscape artist instead of going to uni. Phillipe parked me at his mother’s farm in the Dordogne for six months, where I learned about soups and sauces as well as melt-in-the-mouth pastry before I found out about the other women he had waiting for him in Paris, Marseilles and Berlin.

‘I’m not wasting anything,’ I said patiently. ‘I have tomato-pear tartlets and vegan quiche on my Specials Board. And the mochaccino special comes with dunking profiteroles.’

The collective weight of the local police force muttered amongst themselves, and glared at said Specials Board.

‘What exactly is
in
vegan quiche?’ said Bishop in a low voice.

‘Bok choy,’ I told him.

‘And?’

‘What do you mean,
and
? I know you all miss my mum’s cooking, but she doesn’t run the police canteen these days. And, in case you haven’t noticed, neither do I.’

It’s not that I don’t appreciate their business. Loyalty’s a nice thing. But if you had fifty-odd honorary uncles and brothers constantly hanging around your place of work, you’d start to crack too. I never dreamed when my parents split up and Mum abandoned the police canteen to make lentil burgers at meditation retreats and folk festivals that I’d end up inheriting her old clientele.

Pies and chips are fine, but I’m not going to spend my life heating them up. This café was supposed to be a fresh start for me, and it was time for me to stand my ground.

‘So, no sausage rolls?’ asked Detective Sergeant Richo, from his little island of denial.

‘I haven’t served sausage rolls in six months.’ They were the first to go, and it hurt to do it. But every revolution has its casualties.

‘Yeah,’ Richo said sadly. ‘Rose always made great sausage rolls. But yours were better,’ he added.

I crossed my arms. ‘If no one orders the focaccia with tempeh and pepperberry dressing in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.’

There was a strangled pause. The effort that it took each of them to not say something patronising was monumental. I could practically see the steam coming out of their ears.

‘All right. Tabby,’ said Inspector Bobby. ‘We’ll be in later for coffee.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed one of the sergeants, brightly. ‘Those low-fat muffins of yours are almost as good as real ones.’

One by one, the officers trooped out of the café. I sagged a little. It wasn’t working. Possibly it wouldn’t work if I served nothing but flavoured oxygen. I was doomed to run a café under constant police surveillance.

‘Reckon you were a bit hard on them,’ said Bishop, who had stayed behind.

I gave him a dirty look. ‘Do you know how good my side salads are? In the year since I started this place, I’ve had three reviews that specifically mention how awesome my side salads are. I’ve turned side salads into a work of art. So the day that one of you bludgers actually
eats
one of my side salads, instead of pushing it to the side and ordering another slab of pie, is the day that you get to have an opinion about my menu.’

He folded his arms. ‘Do you really think we come here for the food?’

‘Thanks,’ I said, stalking behind my counter. ‘Nice to know.’

A couple of people came in to collect lunch bagels. I served them, ignoring Bishop the whole time. My muesli customers finished their breakfast, and paid for their meals.

‘You know I didn’t mean that in a bad way,’ he said, when they were gone. ‘We keep an eye out for you, that’s all. Since your dad…’

‘I know,’ I said between gritted teeth. And boy, did I. Good old Superintendent Geoff Darling, my beloved dad. In the days between his retirement party and eloping to Queensland with his soon-to-be second wife, he took it upon himself to ask every single member of Tasmania Police to keep an eye out for his precious girl. Imagine how grateful I was for that now. ‘I feel very safe and warm and protected.’

So protected that most days it’s hard to breathe.

The café door clattered open, and a uniformed constable walked in—one I didn’t actually know.

‘Are you advertising in the police department foyer now?’ I complained.

Bishop ignored me. He was good at that—he’d been practising the art since he knew me only as his boss’s teenage daughter, and his sister’s bratty best friend. ‘Looking for me, Heather?’

The constable gazed around at my colourful pop-art tables, my wall of vintage
Vogue
covers, and my 1960s frock posters. ‘They said you’d be here,’ she answered, as if not quite believing it.

Yep. The décor had been my first assault in the War against Tasmania Police, long before I went to the lengths of taking red meat off the menu. Sometimes I glue glitter to the windows.

Lesbian lunchtime poetry readings were only a phone call away. 

‘Constable Heather Wilkins, meet Tabitha Darling,’ said Bishop.

I waited for the spark of recognition, but there wasn’t one. ‘You haven’t heard the name, Constable Heather?’

‘Should I have?’ she asked politely. ‘I only started a few weeks ago.’

I smiled happily at Bishop. ‘There’s my answer. I just have to out-wait you dinosaurs. Thirty years and you’ll all be replaced by bright young things who’ve never heard of me or Superintendent Darling.’

Bishop made the sensible decision to ignore me again. ‘What’s up, Constable?’

‘Burglary in this building—the top floor.’

‘Crash Velvet?’ I said. ‘I’ll come up with you.’ I leaned into the kitchen. ‘Nin! The cavalry are gone. Come mind the front, and bring me the blue muffins for upstairs.’

‘Crash Velvet?’ It meant nothing to Bishop.

‘A
rock band
,’ said Constable Heather.

‘Not just a rock band,’ I said. ‘Crash Velvet are the new wave in formal kink. The latest YouTube sensation, right here in Hobart.’

Bishop tilted his head at me, as if I was speaking Mandarin. ‘You can’t come with us,’ he decided. ‘This is official police business.’

Nin came out from the kitchen with a basket full of bright blue muffins and a particularly expressive eyebrow lift.

‘Thanks, hon.’ I made a face at Bishop. ‘As if I’m interested in your burglary. I have food to deliver.’

Chapter 2

There are people who should be trusted with ownership of beautiful old sandstone buildings, and people who shouldn’t. I’m not entirely sure where our Mr Darrow fits on the scale. He’s rich as all hell, and owns several almost- heritage listed buildings around Hobart. But instead of doing the sensible thing—installing yuppie apartments with skyrocketing urban rents—he fills the rooms with artists and other oddballs, at bargain lease rates.

It’s probably a tax dodge of some kind—but what can I say? Darrow came to the uni café for years after he graduated, because he liked my gateaux. He claims that he stole me because I was going to make his fortune, but I don’t buy it for a second. There’s not much profit in cafés, too many staff to support. Wouldn’t surprise me if he moved me in here because it’s not far to travel for his daily slice of mocha hazelnut hummingbird cake.

Not that I’m complaining.

I missed Darrow since his latest disappearance. I was used to him hanging around with his stupid laptop, bugging my customers and having pointless, batshit weird conversations with me until I felt the need to bounce cookies off his beautifully-groomed hair.

He’d be back, eventually. Unless Xanthippe was hunting him down to kill him, which was not one hundred percent unlikely. Theirs had been a bad break-up.

Our building has two roomy flats above my café. The first floor is occupied by the Sandstone City mob, a gang of twenty-somethings who blog about weird stuff in Hobart, in the hope of making the place look cool. Bizarrely, it kind of works. Someday the government will stop giving them grant money, but this is not that day.

Then there’s the top floor, and Crash Velvet.

A tiny purple-headed rock chick answered the door. Her eyes slid straight past the two police officers to focus on my basket of bright-blue muffins. ‘Oh, excellent. Just what I wanted. Any chance you can repeat the order every morning for … oh, the next three months or so?’

‘Well, I could,’ I said. ‘Why would you want me to?’ Don’t get me wrong, they were fabulous muffins—the savoury ones were parmesan and onion, with a hint of Tabasco, and the sweet ones were blue velvet with cream cheese frosting and silver sprinkles—but it wasn’t like they’d ordered them for the flavour. When they phoned down the order, all they said was blue. I did consider just using food colouring, but imported blue cornmeal is such a pretty ingredient and I can rarely justify using it. Since they were paying through the nose anyway…