Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  I opened my eyes and looked around. The room was empty. Thank you God for the small mercies in life. I sat up and found myself once again dressed in one of my own satin nightgowns. Thank you capitalism for maids who were happy to exchange low standards for high wages. Clean. Clean satin. Clean knickers.

  Wait. A wave of panic broke over me. I clutched my stomach, my ribcage, my hips. Nothing. There was nothing there. The lookbook! The collectible MM Magic Models magazine featuring Crystal Devine. It was gone! I may have uttered an expletive under my breath. All that humiliation and terror, for nothing! We were so close.

  ‘Looking for this?’ said Esmerelda, standing in the doorway holding the magazine.

  ‘You scared the life out of me!’ I snapped. Internally I breathed a sigh of relief. There it was, proof Crystal Devine was very real and very much an escort.

  ‘How did you get it out of,’ I rolled my eyes towards my abdomen, ‘there?’

  ‘The same way I got it in there,’ she said flatly.

  Terrific. That was just wonderful. I blocked the image of Esmerelda pulling the glossy sex worker menu out of my underwear in front of Searing while he heaved my unconscious body down the fire escape of a bordello at an ungodly hour of the night. Terrific. Wonderful. Fantastic. I was absolutely going to bitch slap the next journalist who called my life privileged.

  Calm down. Think silver lining.

  ‘Searing saw it? He saw the lookbook?’ I asked expectantly. ‘He knows about Crystal?’

  At least the police now knew who Crystal was, a sex worker, and that she worked for Magic Models. They could go ahead and match dental records or DNA or whatever it was they did. That had to help me.

  Esmerelda shook her head. ‘Nup.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Ah, nope.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I like lifted it before you hit the ground.’

  ‘I hit the ground?’ I began feeling my body, searching for bruises.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said and took the brownest, crispiest waffle off my tray.

  I had a small out-of-body experience watching myself rise from the bed and begin shouting.

  ‘What is wrong with you? Why did I get dropped? Why didn’t you show him the MM magazine?’ I smacked the waffle out of her hand, back onto the plate.

  ‘He’s a cop!’ she yelled, as if that made sense. And promptly grabbed the waffle back up off the plate, biting into it before I could retrieve it from her again.

  ‘And?’ I stared at her.

  ‘What?’ she said, chewing.

  ‘And?’ I asked, looking for further explanation for the ‘he’s a cop’ excuse.

  I could have pursued this inane conversation, but I had swum these waters before. I could choose to drown in them for the next five minutes, knowing I would be very unlikely to achieve anything but a cramp, or I could move on with my Sunday and clear my name.

  I shot her what I hoped was my most frustrated look and picked up my coffee cup. Wedgwood. I could feel by the heft of the china. It was good to be in a room without heavy Irish crystal or half-naked women.

  As I sipped and calmed myself another thought occurred to me.

  ‘He must know about Crystal. Halle called him when she discovered who I was. What else would she have said to him?’

  ‘Well, like, yeah,’ she mused piling whipped cream on her waffle triangle. ‘I guess.’

  Cartoon steam streamed out of my ears.

  ‘You just said he didn’t know about Crystal!’

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ she said, chewing, ‘I said I didn’t show him the weirdo magazine. He totally must know all about Crystal and Magic Models by now.’

  Shoot me.

  I inhaled and exhaled deeply.

  ‘What happened in Abby’s office?’ I asked, but quickly rephrased my question. ‘Apart from the whole French maid kidnapping thing, what happened in Abby’s office?’

  Esmerelda smiled a lopsided grin and pulled a folded rectangle of A4 paper out of her back pocket.

  ‘Found it in her filing cabinet. Uber low-tech.’

  She handed me the paper. The sides stuck together as I opened it. ‘It’s sticky,’ I reproached.

  ‘Pop-Tarts,’ she said nodding her head happily. ‘Chocolate Peanut Butter.’ She leant in and sniffed the page. ‘No, no that’s Brown Sugar Cinnamon.’

  ‘That is disgusting.’

  ‘Dude, not everyone gets served actual pastries baked in an actual oven served up to them for breakfast. Some of us have to get our breakfast pastries for ourselves outta a box.’

  I considered pointing out that this morning I was served waffles, not pastries, but I had a Happy Meal habit and was more than likely bathed by my mother’s maid quite recently, so I refrained from answering until I was on higher culinary and moral ground.

  I opened the piece of paper to its full A4 size and read in disbelief. ‘A tax file number form?’

  Esmerelda rocked back on her heels—figuratively since she was not wearing heels—and nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘You kidnapped a receptionist, stripped a French maid, tasered and then slapped a sex worker, were punched by that same sex worker and broke a bowl of raspberries over a middle-aged Italian man’s head, while he had a, a really, you know, for,’ I read, ‘a Tax File Number Declaration form?’

  ‘And climbed down a fire escape,’ she added, pouring syrup on her—by ‘her’ I mean ‘my’—waffle. ‘You like, totally owe me.’

  I knew staring at Esmerelda in disbelief would not improve my understanding of the situation, so I stared at the form instead: To be completed by the PAYEE. Tax file number. Name. Address. Date of birth … wait a moment, name. Name. Crystal Devine was written above the name box, and in the name box the name Bethany Victoria Bland was written. Crystal was Bethany? It was Crystal’s information!

  ‘It has her name!’ I shouted. ‘Her real name!’

  I pulled Esmerelda in and hugged her. Very briefly. ‘Crystal’s real name!’ I almost spilled my soy latte.

  ‘Dude,’ she said stiffly, and she pulled away.

  I released her and read the rest of the single-page government form. As well as her real name, Bethany Victoria Bland (I knew no one would name their child Crystal Devine on purpose), her address and her tax file number, it also listed the trading details of her employer, Magic Model Escorts.

  I composed myself.

  ‘We have her picture. Her real name. And, a motive,’ I said to Esmerelda, unable to interrupt the smile settling in on my face.

  ‘We do?’ she said, swallowing the remainder of her—my—waffle.

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded, putting my coffee down. ‘Richard accidentally killed Crystal’s twin sister Debbie by operating on her many, many times. Too many times. Did you even know that was a thing?’

  ‘You mean like Michael Jackson?’

  ‘No! Not like that.’

  Well, yes that probably was a very good example of too much. Could it have been like that?

  ‘No. Maybe … Possibly …’ I stopped and thought about it. Really thought about it. No. No, Richard would never have done that. He was so fastidious. So particular. Clients waited months just to get an appointment. I did not think it would even be chronologically possible to have too many surgeries from him.

  I shook my head and cleared the thoughts. ‘Anyway, Halle and Josephine said—’

  ‘The hookers?’

  ‘No, not hookers. Sex workers. They prefer the term sex workers,’ I corrected her.

  She raised her eyebrows and held up her hands in acquiescence. ‘Okay, like, sex workers then. Is that what they said? That Crystal killed him?’

  I started again.

  ‘Halle and Josephine said Debbie, Crystal’s twin sister, had too much plastic surgery, supposedly performed by Richard, and she died. Crystal blamed Richard for Debbie’s death.’

  ‘The sister’s name was Debbie?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Dude.’

  I honestly had no idea what she was saying half the time.
I persisted.

  ‘They said when Debbie died Crystal “just lost it”.’ I did stylish air quotes.

  Esmerelda rolled her eyes again. I ignored her.

  ‘They said she went to Debbie’s boyfriend Bob the Mutant Builder for help and then boom, my penthouse was blown up.’ I finished my story and served myself a waffle with cream and syrup and strawberries and bananas. I had earned it.

  Esmerelda’s eyes stopped rolling and went wide. ‘Bob the Builder? From the Mutants? Mr Fix-It? Crystal’s sister Debbie was going out with Bob the Builder? Seriously?’

  I nodded mainly because I could not say ‘yes’ with my mouth so full.

  ‘That’s seriously serious,’ she said, looking, well, serious. ‘Those Mutant guys are serious.’

  This statement, besides being grammatically challenging, gave me pause. I had not heard Esmerelda speak in fearful tones about anyone before. If she was frightened it was good enough for me. I wanted to get as far away from those ‘serious mutant guys’ and this whole mess as possible. Tahiti-far away.

  ‘Not our concern,’ I said pushing away from the scary bikers and towards freedom. ‘All we need to do is to pass this information along to Searing.’ Assuming it hadn’t been passed along by Halle already.

  I waved the ATO declaration in my right hand and picked up the MM magazine with my left.

  ‘We can prove Crystal worked at Magic Models,’ I said brandishing the magazine, ‘confirming your theory that she was a sex worker. And,’ I waved the ATO form, ‘we can also prove who she was, we have all her details. Plus, I am sure there will be records about her sister’s untimely death.’

  I placed both items in the top drawer of the dresser and shut it behind me.

  ‘Searing just needs to find this Bob fellow to confirm that Crystal received her explosives from him’—a sentence I never thought I would utter—‘and,’ I snapped my fingers, ‘I am no longer a suspect. I can get back to the business of being a grieving widow.’

  In a secluded resort, on a tropical island.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Esmerelda getting her phone out of her pocket and tapping away as she sat down on a white and pale blue striped linen chair set by the bay window. ‘I’m sure it’ll totally work just like that.’

  Three minutes after sending the message to Searing, Esmerelda had her feet, clad in a pair of Nike sneakers (at least that was a brand I recognised) on the matching chair opposite her, her face bathed in warm light from the window, her stomach full of butter and carbs. She was, I was convinced, moments from sleep.

  I was on my second cup of coffee, nowhere near sleep and considering a third piece of rockmelon when Esmerelda’s phone pinged. She flinched and her far less laissez-faire inner Doberman reappeared for a brief moment until she got her bearings. ‘Searing says he’ll be here in an hour,’ she said reading off the phone. Thirty seconds later it pinged again. She considered the message. ‘It’s B1 and B2,’ she said in surprise.

  I studied her quizzically.

  ‘You know. Like the bananas?’

  Still nothing. She made no sense. Honestly.

  ‘Lloyd Harper and Dennis Bayton? The insurance dudes?’ She shook her head at me, as if that was the most obvious thing. ‘B1 and B2?’

  I knew better than to go down the rabbit hole. Nothing would be achieved. Breathe Indigo, breathe. ‘And?’

  ‘They’re like, here.’

  ‘Here? At the house?’

  ‘Dude, that’s what I’m saying. Like at the front door. There’s no answer at the front door,’ she said, reading from the text. ‘I guess it’s the maid’s day off.’

  It was not the maid’s day off because only Patricia was capable of making expertly bronzed waffles and I smelt lemon-scented disinfectant. I knew why Patricia was not answering the door. She had a no appointment no entry policy. Which was sensible. But how dangerous could two career insurance men in their later years be? Were they going to beat us to death with a paper edition of the Financial Review?

  ‘What do they want?’ I asked Esmerelda.

  She tapped her phone and a moment later it pinged again. ‘They say they’re,’ she read stiffly, ‘here to deliver the salvageable items that were mentioned in the will. The two safes and their contents, which were recovered completely intact. And a train set, slightly damaged.’

  I exhaled in exasperation. Damn. That stupid train set was going to haunt me. I hated it. I hoped it was more than slightly damaged. I hoped it was ready for the recycling bin. Why he left it to me was beyond comprehension. Was it possible that he truly did not know how much I detested it? Why would a grown man have such a gargantuan train set? Men. I felt a small stab of guilt. He was dead. But I didn’t kill him, so I was allowed a little room for exasperation.

  The safes were another matter. I could confirm that Father’s watch was in Richard’s safe. I was sure Richard had stored it safely in his safe. But then I had been sure about so many things with Richard. It would be good to just double-check.

  I recalled the sad eyes of his mother. The mother he denied having. I felt a distinct stab of guilt. I did not enjoy this new-found emotion. Most uncomfortable. But, I had found out who Crystal was, just as she had asked, so that was a big tick for me.

  I could also see if the rest of Richard’s watch collection had survived the fire and the following firefighter-induced flood. If the watches were intact I could give them to his brother James Smith. A warm sensation shot through my stomach, and possibly other locations. James, the lost brother. James, the lost Hemsworth brother. The hotter Pitt. I wondered what he looked like in a hammock.

  I lost myself for a while. I may have closed my eyes and swayed on my feet for a moment.

  ‘You’re thinkin’ about that hot brother, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  Snap out of it Indigo! Think. What were B1 and B2 doing here without an appointment? I looked sideways at Esmerelda playing Angry Birds on her phone. She was a criminal genius.

  ‘Okay. Call Franny. They can wait.’

  ‘No need to wait, Franny’s been and gone,’ she said, seeming pleased with herself.

  I touched my head. My hair was done. Wait …

  ‘Dude. You’re a really heavy sleeper.’

  This was a frightening development.

  ‘What about my make-up?’ I touched my face. Or was that done while I was asleep too?

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  ‘Fine. I can get Franny here in like sixty seconds. You’ll be done in like ten minutes.’

  ‘How can you do that?’

  ‘She’s in the pool.’ And she pointed out the window.

  ‘What! Why?’ I marched over to the window. Sure enough, my hair and make-up artist was damp, bikini-clad, lolling in a cabana with a daiquiri and a Vanity Fair.

  ‘Dude, it’s like 38 degrees and her aircon’s totally died,’ she explained.

  I knew why she had not fled to one of her own family’s cabanas (and they had many). As well as being rebelliously self-employed, Franny was currently persona non grata to her entire Sicilian clan for taking Anna’s side on the whole third (fourth?) very young husband debacle.

  I supposed there were worse things than an inhouse stylist.

  Forty minutes later my make-up was perfect and I had ascertained the supply boat to Anna’s love island was due to depart this afternoon.

  ‘Any news on Dr Sam?’ I asked Esmerelda as Franny packed up her wands.

  ‘Nope. She’s still coma chick.’

  Damn. That woman slept more than I did. Aren’t doctors supposed to have sleeping beaten out of them during their medical residencies?

  CHAPTER 19

  TRAINING

  Lloyd Harper and Dennis Bayton approached the pool house accompanied by a small army of security guards. Each guard was pushing a hand trolley stacked with three black and yellow steel boxes. Each box was the same shape and size as one of those portable plastic storage tubs. Except instead of the lid clipping on, these steel box
es had hinges on one side and two bulky clips on the other. God. How many of those half-baked ridiculous trains did they find?

  I hurried away from the window and into the dining room as Lloyd approached the front door.

  There was a knock. I nodded to Esmerelda indicating I was ready to receive visitors.

  ‘What?’ she said as she slumped into the dining room doorframe.

  ‘You know what. Get the front door,’ I said as I settled myself at the head of the French provincial wooden table.

  She grunted in response and disappeared.

  I patted my pants and adjusted my top. I was dressed in a pair of high-waisted, semi-sheer pale yellow and white striped silk georgette palazzo pants from Zimmerman and a spaghetti-strapped, stretchy faux blue denim top from Chloé. Pant top and top bottom meeting perfectly at the waist. My feet were very happily encased in a pair of Manolo Blahnik denim sandals with matching yellow and white daisy appliques. I had forgotten to dress in appropriate widow tones of black and grey. Huh. Escort work had changed me.

  I watched the parade as it entered the dining room. The two older insurance men were followed by Esmerelda, who was followed by a small cavalcade of security men. Both insurance men wore suits, Lloyd a full three-piece Savile Row number including pocket square. The stifling heat did not alter their wardrobes.

  The security guards wore khaki-coloured pants and buttoned-up collared shirts with standard green epaulettes. I could see from the other side of the room they were poly-cotton. Their allowance for the heat came in the form of short-sleeved shirts instead of the usual long-sleeved.

  I stood to greet Lloyd and Bayton. ‘Gentlemen. Very kind of you to return these … items to me. Personally.’

  Lloyd held his hand out and shook mine a little too vigorously. ‘It’s absolutely our pleasure.’

  ‘Mrs Jones-Bombberg,’ said Bayton by way of greeting. He indicated to the dining table. ‘May we?’

  ‘Certainly.’ I gestured them into a seat each and they both sat, but not before Bayton motioned to the guards to begin unpacking.