The Mak Collection (129 page)

‘Paranoid? In what way?’ Mak asked.

‘Like, you know, paranoid, that’s all. She kept asking if anyone had come to the club looking for her. She was scared. I thought she was maybe just doing drugs again and getting all loopy.’

Mak nodded. ‘She recently lost a friend. Did she mention anything about that?’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘No. That’s awful. I don’t know her that well—she’s just one of the girls here, you know?’

‘Meaghan Wallace worked here a bit, too. Did you know her?’

‘Meaghan? I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘A blonde with a bob. She went back to Sydney.’ It had been a few years.

Charlotte shook her head, and Mak believed her. ‘Where can I find Amy at the moment? It’s important that I talk to her.’

Charlotte was hesitant.

‘Is she staying at a friend’s? Her mum’s?’ Mak pressed.

‘I’m really not supposed to tell you. We aren’t supposed to talk about it.’

We.

So the other girls all knew something as well. The Texas warden was keeping them in line.

‘You have to tell me, Charlotte. It’s very important. I know you don’t want any trouble.’

As a private investigator, Mak had no more rights or powers than the girl who was dancing
for her, but Charlotte didn’t need to know that. Implied power was enough.

Charlotte seemed unnerved by Mak’s inquisition. She clung to Bogey’s jacket like a security blanket, the sensuality gone from her movements. Mak could see she wasn’t going to do any more dancing. Their time was almost up.

‘How do I know you are who you say you are?’ she squeaked.

‘I’m giving you my business card.’ Mak wrapped her card in one last fifty-dollar bill and put it into the woman’s garter. Two hundred and fifty dollars was all the money of her client’s that she could rationalise spending to try to find Amy’s address through her work colleagues. If this didn’t work she might have to start thinking of another avenue, or she’d have to discover another friend of Meaghan’s who was easier to reach. ‘I need to speak to her and I need you to trust me. This is important.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you if you weren’t a woman.’

Charlotte’s customers would not like to hear that.

‘You can trust me.’

‘I really am not supposed to be telling you this, but Amy is um…staying with the owner, Larry. Everyone at the club kinda knows, but we’re not allowed to talk about it with anyone. Thursday she just stopped coming to work, and word is she shacked up with him.’

‘I see,’ Mak said, relieved.

She contained her smile.

So that’s why she wasn’t at her place. She’d shacked up with the owner. That was all?

Mak had been expecting something much worse.

‘You mean the owner, Larry Moon, right?’ Mak had done her homework on the club.

Charlotte nodded, swinging her hips and doing the occasional half-hearted shimmy.

‘You promise not to tell anyone that I told you?’ Charlotte said in a nervous voice.

‘I promise,’ Mak said. ‘No more questions now. I liked your dance. Thank you.’

Charlotte lit up, finally off the hook. She seemed very relieved. In one smooth action she took the bills in her garter and again slid them into the other garter she had bunched up on her wrist. She had quite a collection now.

‘Wait until I am dressed and we will leave together. That is the way it’s done.’

‘Okay. Of course,’ Mak replied.

When Charlotte was dressed, Mak said, ‘I just have one more question to ask—don’t worry, it’s not related. Does your job pay well? You’re a good dancer. What do you pull in, if you don’t mind my asking?’

Charlotte looked flattered instead of offended, which was good. ‘I do pretty well…You’re not with the Tax Department, are you?’

‘No,’ Mak said, laughing.

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you that last night I did four private dances and made over fifteen hundred, cash. My husband and I are saving for a house. Maybe we’ll have it by the end of the year.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Mak said.

Charlotte led Mak out, hand in hand again, with Bogey trailing behind. Charlotte still looked a little nervous about their earlier conversation, but Mak thought she would slide back into character soon, and she did. She left them at the bar and sidled through the crowds of men again to go looking for her next lucrative dance.

Bogey appeared a little awestruck. He had been quiet throughout the dance, perhaps unsure of where to look, or of what could be said, especially in Mak’s presence.

‘Thanks for that,’ Mak told him. ‘You were very helpful. I think I got what I needed—my work is done here. Do you want to leave now?’

He nodded. ‘Your wish is my command.’

After the crowded and somewhat surreal atmosphere inside the Thunderball Club, walking out into the fresh air on Lonsdale Street was a relief. Mak took a deep breath and tilted her head up to the stars. The air was clear, things were quiet, and there weren’t any crowds of men. This was better.

She looked at her watch; it was nearly two in the morning. They had been inside for over two hours.

Suddenly, the tiredness hit her.

Bogey opened the passenger-side door and she got into his Mustang. He shut the door for her and went around to his side.

‘Which hotel are you at?’ he asked.

‘Tolarno, St Kilda, thanks.’

He started up the car and negotiated the dark streets while Mak ruminated over what had happened. She couldn’t believe that all that evasive action by the warden girl was due simply to an in-house rule of not talking about the boss’s private life. It had seemed a bit over the top. Mak supposed the girls might be protective of one another, though. Any swearing to secrecy of personal information in that club would be a good thing, she supposed. But she would have to get all the info she could on Larry Moon.

‘What did you think of all that?’ Mak finally asked Bogey.

He was concentrating on the road. ‘What did I think of my beer, or what did I think of you shouting me an expensive lap dance?’

Mak laughed. ‘That must have seemed a little weird.’

‘No, it’s fine. I understand. You needed information from her and you figured that was the best way to get her to talk.’

‘Yes.’

Despite the light banter, she sensed that they both felt awkward after the experience. Maybe it hadn’t been the best idea to bring him inside. Or,
at the very least, it might not have been the best idea to bring him in to that lap dance.

‘Do you feel comfortable in places like that?’ she asked him.

‘Comfortable? Well, I like looking at women,’ he said.
An honest answer.
‘Every man does. But places like that aren’t as sexy as they are supposed to be. It doesn’t offend me or anything, I just don’t go for it, that’s all.’

‘Fair enough,’ Mak said.

‘Besides, a lot of those girls are far too young.’

‘Like the bartender?’ Mak offered. She had looked like she belonged on a high-school cheerleading team.

‘Yeah. I felt a bit creepy.’

‘You did? But you didn’t do anything wrong. Most of those girls would have been, what, nineteen, twenty…or in their mid-twenties? You’re in your twenties. They hardly seem too young for someone your age. Did you see all the old farts in there, letching on girls a third of their age?’

He nodded. ‘No, it’s just not my thing. In an environment like that, everything is forced. And the girls are young, just going through the motions. Most young girls are a blank slate. You can impose your own fantasies on them but they rarely have fantasies of their own. When they get older, women know what they want. They have more character.’

‘More baggage,’ Mak added, thinking of
herself. Not yet thirty, and she’d already had enough break-ups, brushes with death and run-ins with stalkers to qualify, even if she hoped she wasn’t as neurotic as the tag implied.

‘Baggage
is
character. Anyone without baggage comes into a relationship with nothing,’ Bogey said.

Mak thought about that. He was right, of course—by one type of thinking, anyway.

‘My baggage comes in being a good coffin-maker and a failed rock star,’ he said. ‘Yours comes in psycho killers and being a smart woman who has been treated like an idiot for half your life. And someone else’s is different.’

Mak’s throat tightened. His comments were so close to the mark, they cut. ‘I think you know too much about me already,’ she said stiffly.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t offend you, did I?’

‘No,’ she said. But his comment had rubbed her the wrong way. It brought to mind all kinds of things she didn’t want to think about. Maybe it was the late hour, or the forced intimacy they had shared in the club, but she found his frank insight confronting. She wanted to get home, and get to bed.

‘You seem older than you are, Makedde,’ Bogey told her.

As Bogey pulled the car into an available spot outside the Tolarno, there was an uncomfortable silence. Neither seemed to know what to do or say to one another.

‘I enjoyed spending time with you, Mak.’

‘Um, thanks again,’ she said, a touch distant, and walked inside. She resisted the urge to look back, but sensed that he was waiting in his car, watching her go and making sure she got inside safely.

Marian Wendell arrived at her office at nine o’clock sharp, seven days a week. The first hour of her workday was taken up with paperwork and chasing the progress of her active sub-agents so she could keep track of them, and keep her clients informed. Makedde’s phone rang at four minutes past nine—first cab off the rank. The phone rang only once before Mak picked up. She had been expecting the call.

‘Good morning, Marian,’ she said, tired but smiling. ‘I can’t believe you come in at nine on Sundays, too.’

‘Investigations don’t stop for the weekend.’

‘No, they don’t,’ Mak agreed.

She lay on top of her hotel sheets in her underwear, slowly stretching and trying to wake herself up. She’d taken her suit out of the closet and draped it over the chair, and then fallen back onto the bed. The previous evening’s adventures at the Thunderball Club had gone late, but she felt that it had been a successful night’s work.

‘What’s the update?’

‘It’s going well so far, I think,’ Mak said. ‘I’m confident I will find Amy Camilleri later today, and she should know something of Meaghan’s private life. She is shacked up with the owner of the strip club she works in. I’m going to pay a visit, but I need a car. Can I get a rental? Can we budget that in?’

Marian paused. ‘I’ll organise for it to be sent to your hotel in the next hour or two. You need it urgently?’

‘No. An hour or two is fine. I have some things I need to do first.’

Like get some more sleep.

‘What are the expenses so far?’ Marian asked.

Mak reached for her investigations notebook, which she had open on the bedside table. She listed the exact hours she had worked and the price of the taxi fares, the club entry fee, and then the cost of the private dance that had brought her the latest information. Marian liked to keep her clients updated as to the precise amount each day of investigation was costing them, so that there were no surprises when it came to billing. Most jobs could be resolved in under a week, but some investigations stretched on for a month or so and could rack up quite a bill. Mak hadn’t been on one of those jobs yet, but she dreamed of it. Being paid handsomely for a long assignment might help her save enough to lease a nice office and some furniture for her practice.

‘Did you say you spent 250 dollars in…private dancing?’ Marian asked.

‘Yes.’ Mak paused. ‘Well, it was only one private dance, but it was a good one. The dancer is the one who told me where Amy is holed up. I think Jag was right about Amy and Meaghan being very good friends, because Amy hasn’t been coming to work since Meaghan’s murder. The girl last night said that Amy sounded upset.’

‘You have receipts for everything?’

‘I don’t know if you have ever tried to get a receipt for a lap dance,’ Mak said, ‘but it tends not to work that way.’

‘Of course, of course—but you have receipts for everything else?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good girl,’ Marian said. It was a turn of phrase she tended to use a lot and, coming from a woman like her, Mak didn’t mind it. It was as if she viewed her sub-agents as her own children. ‘Don’t spend too much more of this guy’s money down there. It took a little to convince him that you needed to go interstate.’

‘Well, Meaghan’s parents, bless them, didn’t know that much about their daughter’s comings and goings. Amy should, though. I’m planning to be back by late this afternoon.’

‘Okay, give me an update again this afternoon and let me know when to book the flight,’ Marian told her. ‘Your client will be happy to know how long he will have to pay hotel bills for.’

‘No problem.’

Mak hung up the phone and rolled over, burying her head in the stiff white hotel sheets. Her body sank gratefully into the mattress. She slept like that for another forty-five minutes.

At 11 a.m., just as she had returned to her room from a delicious full breakfast and a mountain of lattes, Mak received a call from the front desk to tell her that her rental car had arrived. It was sitting out the front of the hotel. She walked back down to take a look.

To her dismay, the rental car was bright orange.

Nice. That won’t make me stand out at all.

Mak may not have approved of the colour of her allotted rental vehicle, but at least she had something to get her from A to B. The car was a small Hyundai automatic and easy to drive, a good, suburban-looking model. But orange? Mak could not imagine a more conspicuous colour. She did not want to stand out more than she had to. What if she had to watch the house for hours or tail someone? A non-flashy suburban car was perfect for the work, but not an orange one. As it was, she was likely to be driving the ugliest car on the block. Who could fail to notice that?

She changed into a lightweight suit and wore a low-cut black singlet underneath with one of
her reliably impressive push-up bras, which she felt might come in handy.