Who Killed Jimbo Jameson? (13 page)

“I come bearing gifts. No sugar.” Jack handed me a coffee and walked through my door. “Nice place. Been here long?” He took his time to wander around my living room.

“It's home. I like being able to close the door and just be me.”

“So what is the big mystery?”

“What do you know about cats?”

“Cats?”

“Big cats.”

“Big cats like lions and tigers?”

“No. A big black one with orange eyes.”

“Um. I like cats, but I'm not an expert. We had a couple of moggies up at Byron, but they looked after themselves. Or rather, my mother did.” He smiled, and finished his coffee. “Why?”

Thoughts of little fluffy kittens being cuddled by Constable Jack sent me all warm and fluffy inside.

“My bird was murdered and there have been dead animals on my bed, and last night I woke up and there was a cat sitting on me. And he had put a live, well, almost dead, rat on my bed. And then he finished off the rat on my bed.”

I could see him trying not to laugh. “And…?” “And then I turned my back and he disappeared.”

“So…do you want me to get rid of the rat? Or find the cat?”

“Smartarse.” I gave him the finger. “I dealt with the corpse, thank you very much, but I want to make sure the cat doesn't come back. I mean, he's huge and he's got these weird eyes and he just made himself at home and then he hissed at me when I tried to move him off the table.”

“Sounds like quite a character. Sometimes cats make up their minds where they want to live, and that's it. Perhaps he just loves you.” My heart went boing.

“Please. We've only just met.”

“Perhaps he's been worshipping you from afar. After all, dead'uns are kitty-cat love offerings. He was bringing you presents. Cats do that. I remember that we had an old tortie who would drag in half-dead mice and expect me to be grateful and tell her what a beautiful girl she was. But I'd have to finish off the poor little things with the shovel.”

Aww. Constable Jack was a fluffy-kittie-cuddler with a soft heart…and a shovel.

“Thanks for that insight into the feline mind, Jack. But how did he get in here? All the doors and windows were closed. And I was in the bedroom when he left last night and I know that I closed the verandah door.”

“Is there anyone who could have let him in and forgotten to tell you? Does anyone have a key?”

Oh great. Now I'd have to admit that nobody else had a key to my place. There was no “significant other”. I was alone.

“Uh, no. I just changed the locks,” I lied.

“Do you want me to take a look around? He might be curled up in a cupboard. Cats do that. Such a gentleman.

“Go for it, Jack. I've looked, but you might see something I've missed.”

He took up such a lot of space as he wandered through my tiny little house. And he was thorough. I thought I'd dribble when he went down on his hands and knees to check under my bed, but there was no bogeyman or cat hiding among the chocolate wrappers, dust bunnies and my missing purple bra, which he retrieved and handed to me without comment.

He checked my cupboards – thankfully I'd had a manic organising afternoon a couple of weeks before – and stood tippy-toe to sweep the back of the top shelves. No cat. Then he moved
to my rather grotty bathroom with the busted toilet seat.

“Well, there's your problem. He's using the window.” He nodded towards the small window high up above the sink. “I'll shut that for you?” All he had to do was to reach up and he could move the sliding window. But it wouldn't slide.

“Damn. It's stuck. Do you have any WD40?”

“WD-what?”

“Right. You have no idea. So I'll bring some over the next time I'm here.” Next time and here in the same sentence? “So finish your coffee and let's get out of here. We've got an update in thirty minutes.”

chapter twenty two.

Well, at least now we knew why Jimbo had wanted to settle up with Jacqueline before this day. While Constable Jack had been searching my house for the devil cat, Bradley had announced that TenTen had taken over another company, CAGM, and the stock market went wild. TheTenTen share price, which had taken a bit of a beating in the last two weeks, recovered and headed north, as Jameson and Bradley had known it would.

The widow Jameson was now worth significantly more than she would have been if she had settled for a percentage of his worth two weeks before. She may not have known Jimbo's plans, but she was definitely a winner financially at this point, and she had “won” the marriage stakes.

The Pole-Dancer's birthday present turned out to be the kiss-off. Among the papers she had so trustingly signed was a financial settlement that secured her the Point Frederick house, a share in a mediocre racehorse, one million dollars and absolutely no hope of anything else. There was an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement that impressed everyone who read it, but then I suppose his lawyers had plenty of time to perfect the art of the perfect NDA. I felt sorry for Vanessa. Unless she could work out a way around that NDA, she couldn't even write a book about Jimbo or give an “exclusive” interview to a gossip magazine.

We finally received the medical examiner's report, which basically said that a single cause of death could not be determined and the matter was to go to the coroner.

Yes, Jimbo had been shot three times and the shots would have been fatal if his heart had been beating. But it wasn't beating when he was shot. He was dying or dead when he was shot.

A cocktail of anti-depressants, anti-coagulants, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and hypertension drugs, cocaine, Viagra, nitrates and alcohol had combined to greatly exacerbate an unfortunate episode of anaphylactic shock, brought about when Jimbo came into contact with an allergen.

The oily smear on the brown paper bag taken from the hotel room had proved to be from a good old-fashioned peanut sauce. There were traces of peanut sauce on his penis and on his mouth, which explains the engorgement, the choking, the blocked trachea and the petechial haemorrhages.

The contents of her stomach revealed that Chelsea had eaten a chicken satay wrap shortly before fellating Jimbo. Her hands, mouth and saliva would have contained traces of the peanut sauce. His body, recognising the allergen, had reacted and anaphylaxis had commenced. Jimbo would have started to swell and choke as his throat closed up, and he would have stopped breathing. Panicking, Chelsea gave him the kiss of life, which only made things worse for Jimbo.

Each drug he had been taking was contra-indicated for anaphylaxis. Each drug would have exacerbated the situation, and poor Jimbo asphyxiated and suffered a fatal heart attack during an episode of extreme anaphylactic shock. It was an accident. A cascade of accidents. The bullets were deliberate, but not necessarily fatal. Two of them had been slowed down when they passed through Chelsea, and the head shot was dramatic, but unnecessary because he was already brain-dead. It was death by chicken satay and poor life choices.

But what about the bullets? Who had shot him? And why?

It was going to be a long day.

And then it was an even longer night. My mother's birthday.

chapter twenty three.

Oh, I was so tempted. Jack suggested that I join him and his surfer mates at the pub. As it was just around the corner from my house, I could get him pissed, throw him over my shoulder and carry him home for a night of drunken sex. It was a plan. And even if they talked about surfing all night, a bar full of young, healthy surfers trumped dinner with my mother, but if I didn't turn up she would set on me a plague of biblical proportions. He would be relaxed and happy with his mates and I'd be having dinner with my crazy mother and her loopy boyfriend.

Dinner with my mother was right up there with mammograms. A birthday dinner with my mother and her latest boyfriend Darren was cruel and extraordinary punishment. He was nuts and she was a squirrel. Darren was just another one of a long line of dysfunctional neurotics who'd crawled into her life, pleading to be saved from their current problems and then developing brand new obsessions as she transferred her hang-ups to them and called it progress. My mother was now a vegan, so the night was going to be a nightmare of bean sprouts and filtered spring water and lectures. The night was going to be hell.

I decided that I'd have a pre-emptive drink and a burger before I went to dinner, and a remedial drink and a block of chocolate when I got home because by then I'd really need it.

What was it with my mother? She is a successful psychologist with a blog and a regular spot on midday television. To people who didn't know her, she's a brilliant example of a modern woman. What a crock! My mother is a nightmare.

Mothers are supposed to be sensible. They're supposed to be rational. Mothers are supposed to be calm and elegant and sit in the corner and knit jumpers and make jam and wear blue floral dresses and turn up at school Open Days sober and know how to make things. They're supposed to be a lot of things, but she is…not.

My mother has varying explosive degrees of red, blonde or sometimes alarmingly calicocat combinations hair, a Botox and Restylane habit, and if she has another boob job her tits will split. Most of the time, she shops at Supré and Vinnies and then blows the budget on Wheels & Doll Baby. She actually wears gold sparkly leggings and it's not a pretty sight, even though she goes to Bikram yoga three times a week. She can cook when she feels like it, but she doesn't like to be limited by an actual recipe so the results can be somewhat surprising.

My mother has embarrassed me for my entire life.

Once, she turned up at school for my Book Week Parade dressed as The Cat in the Hat. All that black lycra with high heels kept the year six boys talking for weeks and permanently traumatised me. She followed up that effort by having an affair with my English teacher, which I must admit helped my results for a while with very little effort on my part, but eventually I was back to sitting at the far end of the classroom with yet another teacher hating me and making my life a misery.

She made appropriate appreciative noises when she unwrapped her present that I'd picked up at the crystal shop at Bondi Junction, where I'd been assured that Cobaltoan Calcite brings the essence of unconditional love. Now all I had to do was wring a hundred dollars each out of my brother and sister, who were too busy to even sign the bloody birthday card and would change the subject when I brought up the subject of money.

The night was a blur of Jaina joy and vegan philosophy and their plans to visit an ashram outside San Francisco to study Tantric yoga and advanced meditation techniques that are usually conducted under the stars in hot tubs. Clothes optional. Darren The Goose just sat cross-legged and cross-eyed, worshipping her, hanging on to her every word. They planned to celebrate his thirtieth birthday there, which I think officially qualified my mother as a cougar. Or just a very dirty old lady.

Over a feast of celery salt-and-pepper tofu, gingered couscous and steamed bok choy washed down with room-temperature filtered water with a daring slice of lime, I was grilled on what had happened to Jimbo.

“I remember when he lived in Caledonia Street. He was with that tall, dark-haired model and he had a Rolls Royce. How that car survived in Paddo was a mystery. Anyway, he used to hang out in the front bar of the Grand National and he'd drink until he fell off the stool. And he'd grope any girl who came near him.”

“Did he ever hit on you, Mum?” I couldn't resist asking.

“Of course not, darling. I was married to your father and was always faithful,” she lied. I
knew she lied. My mother and Jimbo Jameson: it was yet another horrible mental image for me to deal with.

Naturally, she had her theories about Jimbo's life and death and Darren nodded enthusiastically as she rattled on about false personas, extreme narcissism and exploitation while Darren threw in karma for good measure. Did Jimbo actually deserve to die? Were his lifetime sins actually responsible for his death? Had the universe finally corrected a terrible mistake? The theories bounced back and forth, becoming wilder and weirder and my head started to ache and I fantasised yet again that I was adopted.

Pleading a monstrous headache and a mountain of dirty washing, I left them debating the finer points of Acquired Narcissism and walked home, congratulating myself on my scintillating social life. I considered checking The Royal's front bar and accidentally joining Jack and his friends, but my mother had put me in such a depressed mood that I couldn't be bothered. At least my faithful bottleshop was still open and offering uncomplicated, unconditional comfort. The raucous night sounds wafted through my open window as I crawled into my bed to wallow in my misery and aloneness. Again.

chapter twenty four.

Who killed Jimbo Jameson? That was the question that should have been uppermost in my mind.

However, the question that was consuming my thoughts was how to get my hands on Jack Reynolds. I've never been good at the helpless fluffy bunny act, but I didn't want to scare him off with my natural hit-'em-over-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat-and-drag-'em-back-to-my-cave tendencies.