Sharp Turn (10 page)

‘Sure.’

I read them out aloud as if I needed to hear them myself.

As she got to work stuffing chicken into rolls, I jotted down a note on my phone about problems between Riley and Moto-Sane. ‘Did your new friend say anything else about the teams?’

She resealed the lettuce container and shoved it in the fridge. ‘He wishes he was working for Moto-Sane. Apparently they pay really good.’

‘
Well
,’ I corrected automatically. Maybe there was a little of my mother in me after all. ‘Has
he
got a name?’

‘T-Dog.’

I shot her a look. ‘T-Dog?’

She shrugged. ‘That’s what he said. He’s on a job-skills scheme. Apprentice mechanical assistant class two or somethin’. Means he gets to clean the oil trays and sweep the pits.’

‘Okay. Moto-Sane pays well,’ I said, thumb-typing. ‘That’s good work, Cass.’

She flushed.

‘Now I need to find out all the names of the people working for the teams and do some digging.’ That probably amounted to about twelve or fifteen people. I was beginning to wish I’d taken the hourly rate.

I slipped my phone back in my pocket and ripped open a packet of potato gems, tipping them into the deep fryer. Oil spat everywhere and the whole van filled with smoke.

‘Quick, turn it down!’ Cass coughed.

By the time I’d found the knob, the gems had crisped into little black nuggets. I scooped them out and revved the exhaust fan to max.

We waited for the van to clear, then Cass offered to take over the chip-making.

Sharee came for her food. Then Jase. He handed me two pit passes. ‘You’ll need them to get in.’

I thanked him, and suddenly we had a queue.

Whenever we got a short break, I was busy washing up while Cass handled the food. By the time the worst of the lunch rush had been and gone, I was hot, covered in oil and hoping I never saw another deep-fried potato scallop again.

So why was I scarfing down a chiko roll? Maybe to distract myself from the memory of Audrey dead under a sheet on Madame Vine’s veranda.

I had just switched off the bain-marie when Bolo and another short guy turned up at the serving window. Bolo glanced at Cass while I looked over the short guy. He was wearing tight jeans that showed off his skinny butt and legs, a clean tee-shirt that had iron creases along the shoulder, and clean boots. His nose was large in his sharp-angled face. If he was wearing an ironed tee, then he had to be married or in a steady relationship. I couldn’t think of a single guy I knew who ironed his tee-shirts – even the gay guys.

I sure didn’t iron mine.

‘You new here?’ asked Bolo.

I took his lead, pretending that we didn’t know each other. ‘Yeah. My name’s Tara and this is my . . . err . . . Cass. We’re going to be filling in for Jim until he gets over his bad back.’

‘I’m Bolo Ignatius,’ he said. ‘Run one of the teams here. This is Lu Red. He rides for me.’

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Well, what can I get you, Bolo and Lu?’

As I copied down their order, I checked out Lu a bit more. Drivers and riders were all, without exception, risk junkies. Most of them were small as well. Didn’t work well if you were too big for your bike or had trouble fitting your legs behind the steering wheel of your racing car. Most of them tended to be on the intense side too, and Lu had a wound-up expression like he might pop a spring and bounce right on out of here at any moment.

Bolo clearly didn’t want anyone, even his own rider, knowing what I was doing, so I served them up their two beef rolls with mustard and two cans of Coke and they went on their way. I watched them walk back to the roller-door lock-up garage section in the pits. There were only a handful of those, the rest were mesh cages. Looked like Bolo could afford the best.

‘All done?’ asked Cass.

I heaved a sigh. ‘Yeah. I’ll disconnect the power and meet you at the gate. Why don’t you go and say goodbye to T-Dog? See if you can find out anything else.’

Cass nodded, slipped the apron over her head and ducked out the door. I locked up the van and went to do a bit of my own snooping around the pits.

Not much was happening behind the stall sign that said Team Chesley; just a mechanic curled up asleep on a pile of rags next to a Kawasaki.

Two stalls down, Team Bennett was all locked up. But further along, Team Riley were in a small group meeting, all gathered close and sitting on upturned containers and drums. Two bikes sat beside them, one of them covered. The uncovered one was a Suzuki.

I walked straight on in without hesitation. Sometimes it was the best way to get involuntary reactions and see auras.

‘Hi,’ I said brightly. ‘I’m from Jim’s Food Van. You want to get any early orders in for tomorrow?’

Of the four guys at the meeting, three of them responded with mild surprise and not much else. But the aura of the fourth guy, the one talking, flared sulphur yellow. I swear I could almost smell rotten eggs. I took a step back. Mr Hara always said sulphur yellow was an aura to run from.

‘What the fuck are you doing just walking in here unannounced?’ the man demanded.

The others looked uncomfortable but nobody spoke up. I figured, being the oldest one there, he must be the boss. That and the fact that he wore a casual suit and expensive shoes while the rest were dressed in jeans and grease-stained tees.

‘Like I said, I came to offer an early-bird discount on lunches, but the deal just got cancelled on account of the potential customer being an arsehole.’

This was not the way to go about gathering intel – making an immediate enemy of your suspects – but I hadn’t bargained on being verbally attacked. Tozzi had been right: these guys took the whole racing thing damn seriously.

I eyeballed the suited guy and backed out until I was standing in the daylight again. Then I turned and strode back to the van. By the time I’d unhooked the power and driven over to the gate, Cass was waiting for me.

‘I didn’t talk to T-Dog – he’s over the other side of the track spreading sand.’

Job-skilling aka slave labour!

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. Tonight, though, I had a lot of homework to do on Bolo’s problems and some hard thinking about how I might help Madame Vine.

Chapter 9

W
E EXCHANGED VEHICLES AT
Jim’s place and I gave him the takings. After a quick debrief, we were on our way home. It was 3.45 pm and the sou’wester was howling in. Crisp cool mornings in Perth were heavenly; cool windy arvos were a plague.

Cass had the window down. She’d taken the band out of her hair and it flew around her face, making me think of Fridge with his nose into the breeze.

I put up with the buffeting wind because it made it hard to talk and I was beat. All I could think of was having my place back to myself.

And sleeping.

Wal was waiting for us when we got back to the flat, sitting on the couch, his backpack at his feet. I sniffed the air. At least he hadn’t been smoking, and the flat was even more spotless than yesterday. I’d never find anything!

Cass crawled onto the couch next to him and closed her eyes. I badly wanted to do the same but Wal had news.

‘Boss, I got a place to go to. Wondering if you could drop me there.’

‘Oh?’ I tried not to sound too pleased. ‘Where?’

‘Liv’s got a friend who needs a caretaker for his building. It’s down on the highway on the corner of Glyde Street.’

Bless you, Liv!

Glyde Street was right near my gym. ‘No problem,’ I said. ‘Just give me a tick to change.’

I dived behind the screen and switched out of my oil-spattered clothes into shorts and a gym top. Then I grabbed a pair of odd socks and my sneakers, and Wal and I were out the door.

‘I’ll bring dinner home,’ I called out to Cass as I left.

The flat was above an antiques shop on the highway. Wal sent Liv a text to say we were on our way and when we got there she was waiting outside.

‘Liv!’ I enveloped her in a bear-sized hug and whispered ‘Thank you’ in her ear.

My dear eccentric aunt looked unbelievable in white bootleg jeans and a layered but fitted top that showed off her still-flat stomach. Her heels were teetering high and see-through with a gold trim, her hair was piled high and secured loosely with gold combs. She looked like an advertisement for brunch on the Mediterranean. As usual, Wal’s eyes popped.

I totally got Wal’s attraction for Liv. I mean, she was gorgeous and smart as well as elegantly offbeat.

I totally
did not
get her attraction to Wal.

Liv had left a string of broken hearts behind her over the years, including some of Australia’s most successful businessmen. It just didn’t make sense. I guess there’s no accounting for taste – or common interests for that matter. They both loved heavy metal music and Monopoly (when Wal didn’t fall asleep).

I thought about Edouardo and me: we both dug Indian food and Flaming Drambuies. Tozzi and I were both basketball and car addicts. Common interests tended to level the romantic playing field. I was secretly pleased Liv had someone to fuss over – other than me.

She got the key from the shop assistant and we went up the stairs at the back of the building. The key opened a large open-plan room with a sink and kitchenette in one corner, a big old couch in the centre, and a once splendid, now tarnished brass double bed over near the window.

‘Shit,’ said Wal with appreciation.

‘Where’s the toilet?’ I asked.

‘Downstairs. So is the shower. Not ideal,’ said Liv. ‘I’ve brought you some food, Wallace, and some old linen I had lying around in the cupboard.’

Wal flushed and licked his lips as if he was thinking something unseemly. I took that as my cue to leave them to it.

Ten minutes later I was at my gym, chit-chatting with Craigo, my muscled-up fitness instructor, in his office. Craigo and I had become pretty friendly since winning a triathlon together. He was already talking about entering another one.

Rather Be Dead?
was a small gym with a pretty select clientele. JoBob had given me a membership in the hope that I might meet someone ‘suitable’ there. I’d kept the membership up because it kept me fit-ish, Craigo was a doll – and they sold the best muesli slice and fresh orange juice around. As it turned out, the place was useful for more than just muesli slice and fitness. I’d seen a photo on the noticeboard here which had linked clues together for me in a previous job, allowing me to blackmail Johnny Viaspa into leaving Nick Tozzi and me alone.

Being a small establishment, you sometimes had to wait for the equipment, but the waiting itself was pretty cool given the excellent air-conditioning and the widescreen TVs permanently tuned to Fox Sports and V. I caught up on the week’s gossip with Craigo until a Stairmaster was free. As I dived forward, a guy got to it before me – just. He saw my disappointment and laughed.

‘You take it,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for the bench press machine anyway.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said, hoping he was. If I didn’t get on the machine now I was going to curl up on one of Craigo’s funky couches and zed out.

‘Yeah.’ Another friendly smile.

My tired brain began to register him properly. He was attractive in a short-haired, well-built, decent-faced kind of way. Not outstanding like Ed, or Mr Charisma Tozzi, but just . . . nice.

I mustered a semi-decent grin. ‘I owe you.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’ He tossed his towel over his shoulder and headed to the bench press.

I exercised until I’d exorcised cooking oil and chiko roll from my pores, then dragged my spent carcass via the Vege Express back to Lilac Street. At the drive-through, I got vegetarian cannelloni and vegetarian lasagna; not because I didn’t like meat, but because I felt like pasta and I was too tired to get out of my car and go in search of anything else. A quick trip through the local bottle-o added a sixpack of Crown Lager and a two-litre bottle of ginger ale, all thanks to Bolo’s advance.

The birds hung upside down and squawked for attention as I staggered past but I didn’t stop to play with them. Dinner was calling.

Cass was asleep.

I dropped the hot food on her lap. ‘Half each,’ I said before trooping back out to the shower.