Sharp Shooter (21 page)
I heard the sarcasm. ‘You don’t get on?’
Nick shrugged. ‘No one was ever going to be good enough for his little girl, especially someone who works in sport. It’s not a real man’s job, you know.’ He gave a bitter smile.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were living here?’ I asked, suddenly.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters. It makes the connection between Barbaro and Johnny Vogue even stronger.’
He looked me straight in the eye. ‘What exactly are you hoping to find? I mean, nothing’s been stolen, thanks to Mum interrupting him. How can you possibly tell what the burglar was after?’
‘It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I n-notice things that other people don’t.’
He frowned. ‘What sort of things? Are you saying you’re a clairvoyant?’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head emphatically. ‘I don’t believe in that crap.’
His tone had been so disparaging there was no way I could tell him about the energy disturbance around the writing desk. He’d think I was crazy. I had to find some tangible connection to one of the items first.
I leaned back, palms on the floor. ‘Look, maybe you’re right. There’s probably nothing to find.’ I uncrossed my legs and went to get up.
One giant paw shot out and grabbed hold of my hand, pulling me back down. ‘Whoa! You can’t just bail like that.’
The cord between us thickened and began to pulse. Where our hands touched, our auras mingled and turned into the colour of fire. I jerked back from it.
‘There!’ he said. ‘You did the same thing in my office.’
‘What?’
‘Jumped. Like you’d been stung or –’ ‘Burned?’ I offered.
‘Yeah.’
I felt the heat rush into my face. ‘I can’t explain that either, without sounding weird, so I’m not going to.’
‘Have I offended you?’
I saw the confusion on his face and sighed. I touched his arm. ‘No Nick, it’s just –’
‘Tozzi, darling? What are you doing?’ Toni’s voice cut between us like a diamond drill.
I dropped my hand and turned to face her. ‘Finishing is what we’re doing.’
‘But the mess?’ She frowned, and not just at the mess. Toni had sharp antennae for a messed-up coke addict.
‘Nick said that he’d tidy it up.’ I glanced back at him. ‘Right?’
Nick opened his mouth and shut it again, then nodded mutely.
I went to walk out past Toni but she planted her feet astride and blocked the doorway. ‘Harvard doesn’t run courses in communication analysis and investigation. I just checked on the internet.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I meant Cambridge. Harvard’s where I did my undergraduate.’ I barrelled on out the door, knocking into her shoulder as I went.
She tottered backwards.
The words, ‘how rude’ followed me to the front door.
I didn’t care. Nor did I stop to say goodbye to Eireen. Truth is I couldn’t bear to be in the house with Toni or Nick Tozzi a second longer.
I
GOT HOME AND
gorged on a tin of cold baked beans to raise my carb levels and because it was all I had in my single-drawer pantry.
Then I decided I’d go for a run to work off my stress. It was only a few days until the triathlon and I needed to get in a little fitness work to make the distance.
Make that a lot of fitness work.
I tossed on my daggiest shorts with the flapping pocket (they were clean at least!), joggers and a Lorna Jane crop top, and hit the pavement. My feet were still sore from the Bunkas fiasco but not enough to stop me. The first two k’s were easy, down Lilac Street and into Peppermint Street, past Smitty’s parents’ house. Instead of running west towards the highway, though, I turned left at the end of Peppermint and headed towards the river.
The river-end of Euccy Grove was one beautiful little suburb, full of magnificent old paperbarks and pepper trees. The block sizes were enormous and the houses mostly grand, if a little dated. These were occasionally interspersed with uber-modern, white block houses with lots of glass and embassy-type security.
I’d always fancied myself ending up as an eccentric old lady living in one of the grand old houses, feeding the wild birds and forgetting what day of the week it was.
Not sure how I was going to get one of those houses exactly, considering my net worth was zero dollars, a laptop and a reconned Monaro.
By the time I made the downhill stretch to the river, I was puffing hard but feeling good. Four k’s and no problem. I was fitter than I thought.
I turned left at the Freshwater Bay Yacht Club and began the arduous climb up to Devil’s Elbow.
Joanna, on the rare occasions we were in a car together, sometimes drove me around Devil’s Elbow and pointed out the house her grandfather used to own.
‘He gambled away all their money, you know.’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Broke my grandmother’s heart. They had to leave the house and move down to Lilac Street.’
‘What’s wrong with our house?’ I’d say defensively.
‘Oh Tara,’ she’d say, and roll her eyes in despair.
As I puffed my way towards dear old gambler-holic Great-Granddaddy’s home, I admitted to myself that Mum was right. The view was spectacular: a crow’s eye view of the Swan in all its sapphire, sandbar-dotted, boat-busy, sunlight-glinting glory. It was something else.
Come to think of it, the house I imagined growing old and feeding the birds in looked a lot like this.
Right about the end of that thought, things started to go very wrong. Yesterday’s blisters grew new blisters and the mild air became like sandpaper on my windpipe. My legs developed a serious wobble, and the jog became a walk, became a shuffle. My stomach boiled with the exertion.
I spotted a lane between Great-Granddaddy’s house, and the next, and staggered up there to find a discreet something or other to throw up in.
With immaculate timing, I began barfing my baked beans into a small jade bush just as a removals truck roared into the lane, tooting his horn and scaring the decorum out of me. I jumped back into the jade bush to avoid being flattened.
As I shook my fist at the truck’s rear-view mirror and let loose with my most alliterate profanity, a sleek grey Lamborghini cruised up behind it and the batwing door popped open.
Not any old Lamborghini, mind – a
Reventon
, the most bad-arse sports car ever made.
‘Tara, are you alright?’ A Hugo Boss-suited Nick Tozzi enquired from within.
Fuck.
‘I thought you drove a Porsche,’ I stormed to combat my embarrassment.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘Most of the time. But we’re moving house today. I had to bring the Lambo over.’
I looked helplessly after the truck as it turned into the back entrance of Great-Granddaddy’s house. ‘You’re moving in
here?
’
‘I wasn’t aware I needed your permission,’ he said dryly.
Somewhere, someone was laughing at me. Nick Tozzi drove a Reventon
and
he’d bought
my
house.
Have I really been so
bad, God?
I suddenly stopped feeling sorry for him.
‘May I give you a lift home?’ he asked. ‘I think I have a towel in here that you could sit on.’
I looked down at my bare legs. They were spattered with something I’d rather not name. I drew myself up to my full height and stepped out of the bush. ‘Not if yours was the last Lambo on earth.’
Lame, Tara. And what was I saying anyway? Naught to one
hundred kph in 3.3 seconds. I’d kill for a ride.
Without a shred of dignity left, I strode off.
A few houses over the crest and thankfully on the downhill, my phone rang. I pulled it from the strap of my crop. ‘Yes,’ I snapped into it.
‘Tara?’ asked a deep, masculine voice.
‘Er, yeah.’ I didn’t know any deep masculine voices other than Bok and Tozzi, and it wasn’t either of them.
‘It’s Edouardo.’
I sucked in a breath.
Edouardo. Club Eighteen. Gorgeous
tight butt.
‘Hey dude.’
‘Hey.’
Silence. I mean I hadn’t really expected him to call and I was plastered in sweat, vomit and envy.
He jumped in. ‘I . . . err . . . wondered if you wanted to catch a bite tonight?’
‘To eat?’
‘Yeah.’
My mortification began to ease. ‘Sure. Where?’
‘I’m working until eight.’
‘I’ll come by after that if you like.’
‘Great. Pick a place.’
‘You like Indian?’ I asked.
‘Onion bhaji is my muse.’
‘Mine too. Later.’ I hung up.
My day was looking up.
I
ARRIVED AT
C
LUB
Eighteen as the afternoon shift swapped over with the evening bar staff, and had to wait while Edouardo pried himself away from a fresh lot of gym junkies. At least Mrs Honey-to-be wasn’t one of them.
‘You must get tired of that,’ I said to him as we ran out to the car park before they could follow him. ‘My friend Bok has the same problem. Though not as badly as you do.’
‘I didn’t think he looked like your brother.’
I grinned, though I doubt he could see it in the dark.
My phone rang as Edouardo unlocked the car. It was Wal.
‘Bog called me. Your car’s ready. He wants it out of there tonight,’ he said.
‘Tonight?’ I gasped.
‘He’s got a load coming in. Needs the space.’
‘But it’s 8 pm.’
‘Load’s not in till midnight. He’ll be there all evening. Can you do it?’
‘What if I can’t?’
‘He’ll likely park it outside the compound. Course it might not be there in the morning.’
I thought of Bunka. ‘Tell him I’ll be there before midnight.’
‘Right. Ahhh. Take some company. Not the place for wimmen at night.’
That so?
I got inside Edouardo’s 2002 Subaru, and we sat with our knees pushed up around our ears. ‘Nice car,’ I said. ‘Cosy.’
He laughed. ‘Got it for my eighteenth birthday. Then I grew eight inches.’
‘Wow!’ I said. ‘You must be from the same gene pool as Bok. Happened to him too. Scrawny little punk at seventeen; major tall hunk at twenty.’
‘So where are we going?’
I fixed him with my best smile. ‘Actually, Edouardo, I have a favour to ask.’ I gave him a lean account of the abridged version of Mona’s plight, leaving out the nature of the graffiti, how I knew Bog, and that I had a little scouting in mind.
‘Sure, no problem, Tara. Haven’t been out to the east side. Time I learned my way around Perth. Mind if we eat first though?’
‘Sounds like a plan. You know Northbridge?’
‘Sure. My modelling agency’s got their office in there.’
‘Well there’s a great Indian restaurant in James Street and it’s kind of on the way to Bunka (in the way that following the North Star is the way to Jesus in the crib!).’
Edouardo drove into the city and we found a lucky park on busy William Street. ‘My modelling agency is right over there.’ He pointed across the road to a shop window full of black and white photos on easels.
We ran across when there was a break in the traffic and I ogled the male models.
‘That
you
?’ I asked, pointing to a particularly hot body wearing only a mask and a pair of boxers.
‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Advertisement for Bonds.’
I swallowed hard, taking in the silky skin, and abs like rippling sand dunes. His curly hair had been straightened and he looked like something from Man Power only much, much more gorgeous. And tall!
‘Yeah. You like it?’
I stuck my fingernails into my palms to help collect myself and shrugged. ‘Not too shabby for a country boy.’
He laughed again. ‘Anyone ever tell you, you’re pretty cool? Most girls I show this one to come over all man-eater.’
‘Uh?’ My ego detector began to swivel. ‘So I’ve passed the test then?’
He flushed. ‘Yes . . . no . . . what I m-mean –’
I punched him in the arm. ‘Let’s eat.’
We chatted our way through two serves of onion bhaji, a madras curry and cucumber raita. Edouardo was a witty conversationalist – interested in everything. It’s never been
this
easy with a guy, I thought. Not on a first date. Maybe he’s gay?
In fact, he seemed so sweet that I was beginning to feel guilty about dragging him out to Bunka. Then again, maybe he needed to pass a couple of my tests too.
We split the bill and walked back to the Subaru.
I directed him onto the bypass and out east, remembering my last trip on this road in the Cayenne. I wondered if Nick was enjoying his first night in
my
house.
‘Take the next exit,’ I said.
We left the highway and merged into the local traffic doing their perennial laps around the streets of Burnside. A crowd of people were street drinking on the embankment near the station. I wondered if Cass and her gang were there.
