Sex on Tuesdays (7 page)

I gave a half-hearted nod.

“There's a guy I'd like you to meet. He's rich, not bad looking and like you, he's out there, actively looking for a partner.”

“Megan I don't think this is the time for—”

“Rubbish—now is the best time. It will take your mind off all this nasty murder business.”

“You wouldn't say that if you knew how my blind date turned out last night.”

“Phooey. Edward Granger is exactly the sort of guy you need. I can even guarantee his expertise in the sack.”

I screwed up my nose. “Don't tell me he was one of your regulars.”

“Okay, I won't. Suffice to say, Edward is a real kinky operator.”

“I don't like the sound of that.”

“Pish. You'll love him.”

“Does he carry?”

Megan pretended to look confused. “What do you mean?”

“Carry. As in pack a gun. I know you're only trying to help, Megan, but the last guy you introduced me to worked for The Mob.”

“You mean, Stefan?”

I nodded.

“Oh, don't worry about Stefan. He'll never bother you again. He's not around anymore.”

Oh God, I hoped she meant he'd left the country and was living a comfortable life in some warm exotic clime.

“So,” said Megan, breaking into my dark thoughts, “shall I get Edward to give you a call?”

“You say this guy's rich, handsome and good in the sack? Sounds like the best thing I've been offered since puberty. And what's more, if he
is
carrying, he can shoot all the bad guys for me.”

Megan, realizing I was glassy eyed and starting to babble, finished her latte and placed one beautifully manicured hand over mine. “I can see you're in no condition to discuss sex therapy today, Danielle, so if you leave that pile of letters with me I'll go through them tonight. What say we meet here again, same time tomorrow?”

“Sure. And you're right. I'll end up face first on the table if I stay here much longer. And if that happens, they'll need a forklift to move me.”

Megan dropped the letters into her Gucci handbag. “See you tomorrow, girlfriend. Drive carefully. And don't go to sleep at the wheel and plough through some old lady's front fence. You don't want to give that blood-sucking brother-in-law of yours any more material for his Danielle Summers Complaints File.”

After the hungry way Joe had stared at my neck while I was being escorted to the police car earlier in the day, I'd say that was a definite.

7

Wednesday, 5:15 a.m.

The dream was weird. A real spin-out.

Whether it was brought on by the sight of Alice waving her voodoo doll as the police led me away, the thought of
DF'
s wife with a poker wedged down her throat, or just a bad batch of pepperoni on the pizza I'd eaten before falling asleep, I'll never know.

I was trudging the streets of an unfamiliar town, hunting for
DF
's wife. Somehow, I had to warn her she was about to get murdered. And although I'd seen her slip down this dark alleyway no more than fifteen seconds ago, I'd lost her. Like a ghost in the night, she'd up and disappeared.

There was a chill in the air. Grey fog swirled in eerie snatches around me. I shivered, feeling the wintry cold touch my insides. Instinctively, I pulled my knitted cap further down over my ears. “Come on, Mrs.
DF.”
I called out. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help.” My words, weak and unconvincing, were snatched away by the fog as soon as they left my mouth.

A sudden movement caught my eye, halting me in mid-step.

“Is that you, Mrs.
DF
?” I whispered, nerves stretched like rubber bands. I could just make out what looked like a dark figure standing beside a row of garbage bins.

A woman in long flowing robes and long pointy shoes stepped away from the bins and caught me in the headlights of her fiery, green-yellow eyes.

Alice.

But this Alice had bent claw-like fingers, a hooked nose, and black hairy spiders crawling over her neck and shoulders. This Alice wore flowing black robes and a tall black hat, and her teeth were broken and rotten.

Just as I'd convinced myself it was time to turn tail and run, Alice spat a live frog from her mouth, caught it deftly with one talon, and bit off its head. I was transfixed. And then a large black cauldron, bubbling and spewing putrid-smelling gas, appeared beside her. After dropping the remains of the frog into the cauldron, she mumbled something in a language I couldn't understand and a Harry Potter wand sprang into her hand, snarling and growling and snapping, like an angry tiger.

I turned to run, only to find my legs wouldn't work. They'd been turned into soggy wet noodles. Whimpering, I crashed to the ground.

“You can't write for treacle, Danielle Summers!” she screamed, spitting a frog leg in my direction.

“Y-you're right, Alice. My writing is crap.”

In the blink of an eye the wand turned into a stun gun.

“You can have my column. I don't want—”

The zap from the stun gun left me floundering and twitching like a fish hauled up onto a wharf. I couldn't speak. I couldn't stand. I could barely get a thought going in my head. But I tried. “Alice, what have I ever done to you?” I asked her. But it came out like, “Oooh, aaah mmm aaah ggg shhh oooh?”

“That was
my
column you took over—
mine!
” she yelled, her eyes two spinning tops on a background of tight sallow skin. “I killed my stepsister Daisy Mae—and it was all for nothing. You came along and spoilt everything.”

“But Alice—” I started to say in my head while my thickened lips continued to blub and drool.

“Tell me, Danielle,” she said, her voice now chillingly polite as she picked me up and tossed me into her bubbling cauldron. “How does that feel?”

“Glugg uggg,” I answered, trying hard to get my negative point of view across.

“What about this?” And she pushed me all the way under.

It was hot and dark inside the big cooking pot and smelt of Bombay curry. A bloated spider with a face like Megan's, swam past as fast as her eight skinny legs would allow. She hitched one perfect eyebrow at me, but didn't stop to chat.

Still cackling at her little joke, Alice produced a giant spoon and began to stir the cauldron, chanting over the rancid bubbles. The spoon crashed on the side of the pot in time to her chanting.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The noise growing louder and louder until it woke me up.

Terrified, I flung back the doona and sat straight in bed, traces of the nightmare clinging like spider webs to my subconscious. The banging was for real. But where was it coming from? My heart skittered upwards, leaving a black hole where it should have been anchored. My face pulsated with heat. Sweat beaded on my forehead and trickled into my eyes.

On top of the nightmare, I was now having a hot flush. So clammy, so stifling, it was more like a mini-vacation in the tropics.

What was it that self-righteous, smug, size 8 assistant at the local health shop had told me?
Whatever you do, don't let the doctor talk you into using HRT. Try our Black Cosh-Cosh. That's the best treatment for menopause.

I had news for her—it wasn't. I'd like to see
her
survive a hot flush while ingesting crushed black beetles or fungus or whatever it was they made their herbal remedy from.

Thump. Thump. Thump
.

Horace barked from the bottom of my bed. Someone was knocking on my front door. And by the racket they made, were determined to get in.

Glancing across at my bedside clock radio, I scowled at the little red digits dancing on the black background. Who in their right mind would knock on my door at 5:30 a.m.? My friends knew I wasn't a morning person and normally steered clear of me until well after my first cup of coffee.

I shoved my feet into a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers and reached for my dressing gown.

Could it be Simon?

Doubt it. He'd rung last night, quickly realized I was falling asleep over the phone, and arranged to meet me for breakfast at McDonald's.

Penny?

God, I hoped not. I wasn't in the mood for a lecture from my interfering big sister.

“Okay! Okay! I can hear you,” I shouted as I unlatched the front door and peered myopically through the space left by the security chain. “And so can everyone else in the damn street!”

Note to self—pick up glasses from the Optician sometime soon, before people start calling me Ms. Magoo.

“Alice? What are
you
doing here?”

“You're not the murderer!” she screeched, her eyes rounds of cheese in her thin pasty face.

“I know that, you idiot!” Unsure whether I was still hooked up to my nightmare, I peered at Alice's hands. No magic wand. No stun gun.

But she was banging on my door an hour and a half before I was due to gulp down my first caffeine fix for the day.

“Oh, Dani, please forgive me,” she went on flicking her tangled mane from her crazed eyes. “You're not the murderer.”

“Will you get a grip!” I snarled at her, unhooked the latch, and opened the door. “Of course I'm not the murderer. I don't need you to tell me that. What the hell are you doing here?” I paused, studying Alice's wrinkled face. “Why aren't you home concocting an anti-aging cream from cuckoo eggs and bats' dribble?”

“
He's
the murderer!” Alice yelled dramatically. Her hands trembled as they covered her mouth. “I saw it all.
You
didn't kill that woman with the poker—
he
did!”

“Alice, for God's sake, calm down. You'll wake my neighbors,” I said in what I considered a soothing voice, but probably came out as frustrated, even snappy. With Alice, she probably wouldn't know the difference. “Why don't you go home and take a couple of pills, or some of that chamomile tea you're always raving on about. You look like you've just gone ten rounds with a bad-tempered billy goat.”

“I saw the killer in my crystal ball,” she continued, as though I hadn't spoken. Fair dinkum, the woman was batty. Certifiable. “He looks like an angel,” she whispered, clutching at her throat. “But don't be deceived by his good looks. The man's evil. I saw him laughing at her. Laughing while he tied her to the bed. Laughing while he forced the poker down her throat. Oh, Danielle, I am so sorry. I thought
you
killed her. The tarot cards assured me it was you. I even told that nice policeman with the suede shoes I heard you telling Simon that
DF
's wife was a tease and needed to be taught a lesson.”

‘
You
what?”
I screeched. “Why, you—” I grabbed a handful of her baggy old sweater, black of course, and shook her.

I was going to kill this woman.

“You're insane, Alice! Crazier than a neutered croc!” I shoved my face into hers and then quickly pulled back as the smell of garlic almost floored me. “Why did you lie to the police? You know I didn't say anything to Simon about
DF
's wife. The letters that come into the office are confidential.” I paused. “And while we're on the subject of murder—you could have taken my longhand copy from the trash can and you also had access to my computer. So, where were you and what were you doing at the time
DF'
s wife was killed?”

“Alice was in bed with me. All night.” A well-spoken man in his late fifties stepped out from behind my overgrown geranium bushes. Bald, except for several strands of grey hair combed neatly across the top of his head, he was dressed in brown corduroys and a red-and-white checked flannel shirt.

I took a step backwards, closer to my front door and escape. “Who the hell are you? What were you doing in my flower bed?”

He offered his hand. “I'm Wayne Jackson, Alice's fiancé.”

Surprised, I shook his hand, which was cool and free of calluses, suggesting he was not, and never had been, into hard yakka. “You're Alice's fiancé?”

And he didn't even look like a warlock—or whatever it is you call a male witch.

He nodded. “As I said, Alice was in bed with me that night, as she is every night.” I must have looked as though I didn't believe him because he quickly added. “Didn't Alice tell you we're getting married in November?”

“Other than spilling hot coffee in my lap and saying
oops
, Alice doesn't have a lot to say to me.”

“I'm sorry we woke you, but Alice has been stressing since two this morning about lying to the police. I couldn't stand her moaning any longer so I suggested she come over here and apologize to you in person.”

Alice muttered to herself as we spoke. And then she began to yell, like one of those harbingers of doom in a Shakespearean play. “It was the devil, Danielle. Keep away from him or he'll kill you, too.”

I shook my head, unable to keep up. It was as though she and I were acting in two different theatrical productions.

“Come on Alice, pull yourself together,” I scolded. “You're not making any sense.
Who
is the devil?
Who
am I supposed to keep away from?”

“The murderer,” she said regarding me as though I had an IQ of a six-year-old. “The one I saw in my crystal ball.”

I turned to Wayne who was trying to calm his overwrought fiancé. He had an arm around her shoulders, patting her like a child. “She's lost me,” I told him. “Are you sure Alice hasn't been drinking?”

“She hasn't had her morning medication yet.”

Alice stamped her foot. “Of course I'm not drunk. I drink nothing but herbal tea.”

If herbal tea has this effect on a person, I'm sticking to good old-fashioned red wine.

“Early this morning, I was hot and restless and couldn't sleep,” Alice went on, her voice high and brittle, her face getting red and blotchy. “So, I took out my crystal ball and began rubbing it—”

“As you do,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes.

“When suddenly I went over all cold. And then
he
appeared in a vision. He'd tied this poor woman to the bed and was laughing and taunting her. And then he…”

Her face went from red to white and she began to shake uncontrollably. I half-expected her to crumple in a heap on my doorstep. “And then he…”

She stopped again, her eyes pools of dark fear.

“Look, Mr. Jackson, Wayne, I think you'd better take Alice home. She doesn't look well.” I shuffled my feet, not really keen on inviting a gnarled witch and her maybe-warlock in for breakfast. “I'd ask you in,” I said, “but I have no chamomile tea on hand and coffee would probably frizzle the last of Alice's brain cells. Why don't you just take her home and feed her some of those happy pills you mentioned?”

“You're right.” He gave me a resigned smile that implied this was all in a day's work for him. Love
must
be blind. He knew his fiancé was crazy, and yet he still wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. “Sorry to get you out of bed, Ms. Summers,” he went on in his polite upper-class voice. “But Alice was distraught and I didn't know what else to do.” He tightened his grip on Alice's arm and began to walk her down the path towards their car. “Come on, darling. Let's go home and sort you out.”

Alice swiveled her head around as Wayne opened the front gate. “Don't let his good looks fool you,” she shouted over her shoulder at me. “It's the devil! He killed that poor woman and now he's out to get you!”

Shaking my head, I closed the door, reattached the security chain, and with Horace padding along behind me, made my way toward the kitchen and my first caffeine fix of the day.

No way could I go back to sleep now.

As well as a witch, I had a handsome devil with a poker fetish just itching to climb out of his crystal ball and dance his way into my dreams.