Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  ‘Really?’ I said, sounding less astonished and more pleased than I had intended.

  ‘Totally. Took a call in the driveway and went straight there.’

  That was something. Except, how did it help? Searing would not act, he had said so this morning. He said Bob the Builder, Mr Fix-It, was an off limits asset. What could I do? March into a safe house protected by federal police and ask some Mr Fix-It gang member biker to confess to conspiring with a sex worker to blow up the plastic surgeon they thought had killed his girlfriend, her twin sister? Perfect. How hard could that be?

  ‘Noted. Thank you. That was very good work. Regardless, we will fly out straight after the funeral tomorrow. No delays,’ I said and zipped the black bag closed.

  Esmerelda was tapping into her phone. ‘So like, should I take the brother’s watches to the funeral then?’

  Damn. The watches. How inappropriate was it to give Richard’s watch collection over to his brother James at his funeral, while parts of the partially cremated parts of Richard were being re-cremated? I ate the rest of my Frosty Fruit while I pondered this. Then I ate another one. It turned out that Esmerelda stocked Frosty Fruits the way I stocked sauvignon blanc: by the case.

  It had been dark for several hours by the time my sugar coma lifted and I came to the conclusion that giving out death bequeathments at a funeral was probably in poor taste.

  I exhaled deeply in defeat and Esmerelda got up to collect the watches from the dining room.

  We were in Mother’s garage five minutes later.

  We still could not reach an agreement about who would drive the Bentley, eventually borrowing a Toyota SUV parked next to Esmerelda’s multi-coloured death trap. I assumed the SUV belonged to Patricia because it was compact and looked like it carried groceries and dry-cleaning. I persuaded Esmerelda I could drive, until I gave the car a teeny, tiny scratch.

  ‘You are such a child!’ I fumed sitting in the SUV’s front passenger seat with my arms crossed over the top of the watch briefcase. ‘It was a tiny scrape!’

  ‘Dude, you took off the front fender before we got out of the driveway!’

  ‘Getting out of garages can be very tricky,’ I said in my defence.

  I insisted we take the Cross City Tunnel instead of sitting in traffic. This led to a new debate. Esmerelda apparently did not believe in paying tolls, and we arrived eight minutes later.

  If the valet parker at the Four Seasons was surprised to see the Heiress on Fire and the Denim Surfer emerge from an almost-front-fender-free Toyota-something in the middle of the night, he didn’t show it.

  Then again it was the Four Seasons. Snoop Dogg stayed here. I guess they were beyond shocking.

  CHAPTER 24

  FRONT DOORS

  I expected to wake a bleary eyed, sleeping James Smith clad in £5 Argos pyjamas, pass the watch briefcase through a crack in the hotel room door—or better yet have Esmerelda do it—and be on my way. I was mistaken. The concierge informed me that Mr Smith was not in his room but rather taking a night cap on the third floor. The third floor? Wasn’t the famed triangle pool and its accompanying cosy cabanas on the third floor?

  It was hard to tell if he was indeed present, as half the hotel’s guests, in varying degrees of inebriation and dress, were mid-party on the third floor. A significant proportion were attractive young women. I dispatched Esmerelda into the wet throng to locate Richard’s brother James. Thankfully I did not recognise any of them from the MM magazine.

  So much for my secret surprise delivery. I hid in a corner, making a mental list of the most flattering bikinis and sarongs to buy in preparation for my post funeral flee to Phi Phi, while Esmerelda located James. She finally found him and reported back. He was sitting in an open cabana at the end of the pool drinking whisky.

  ‘How’d you get that?’ she said pointing to my cocktail glass as she led me around the triangular pool towards the cabana at its tip.

  I looked down at the Frangelico and lime cocktail in my hand. I was not completely sure how I had acquired it. And it might have been my second. ‘Open bar?’ I guessed.

  She shook her head, in wonder or disgust or admiration I could not tell, there were just too many people and too much noise. It was a blur of wet lycra, power ballads and steamy chlorinated water. On the upside James was fresh from the pool, sprawled out, eyes closed, on a sun lounge wearing only a pair of perfect pin-up snug mid-thigh James Bond swimmers. Those aqua shorts were not Argos. They were Armani. He was far more tanned and chiselled than any Irish train driver had any right to be. And if I was not so filled with indignity about his throwing an enormous pool party at the Four Seasons on his dead brother’s tab the night before said dead brother’s funeral, I would have felt very, very guilty about my lusty fantasies, and the thirteen Frosty Fruits I had consumed in the last six hours.

  I stood over him, staring. Esmerelda nudged me.

  ‘Fun party,’ I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. ‘Have a great time.’ And I dropped the oversized briefcase containing the watches on his abs. I may have misjudged the fall a little and hit him slightly lower. If the briefcase made contact with something tender he did not show it. He slowly opened his eyes and peered up at me. He obviously had no idea who I was. I turned and made a bee-line for the exit. It was like pressing a wall of wet flesh. There were people in bathers everywhere. I understand that great white sharks had taken all the fun out of summer beach swimming in Sydney at night, and yes we were in a heatwave, but surely these people had their own pools to go home to?

  I had lost Esmerelda in my rush and was searching the crowd for her when I suddenly found myself facing James Bombberg, I mean James Smith. He was holding a towel around his waist with one hand, and the briefcase of watches in the other.

  God, why did he have to be wet and wearing a pair of bathers and be built like that? He needed more deep-fried Mars Bars in his diet.

  ‘Wait,’ he said with a notch of anxiety in his rich voice. ‘It’s not a party.’

  Boy he had a sexy accent.

  Two girls walked past in matching Calvin Klein bikinis and said, ‘Great party Jimmy!’

  I kept walking.

  Navigating my way along the side of the pool I thought I saw Esmerelda eating a hot dog, but then I lost her again. She was going to have to make her own way home. I needed to leave. Immediately.

  I had just pressed ‘close’ on the elevator door when a tanned, non-train-driving looking hand wedged its way into the door. James let himself into the elevator and his towel unwrapped and fell to the floor. Just not enough hands for the briefcase, the towel and the elevator button. That was a shame.

  He pressed the button for the twentieth floor, swiped a card across the security scanner and gathered his towel. The elevator began to move up and I realised I had not pressed the button for reception. Damn!

  He stood between me and the buttons. I tried to move around him, but he was all brown and toned and worst of all, damp. His dark blond hair sat a few inches above his shoulders and was dripping onto his dark, but still lightly freckled shoulders. I could feel the heat rising in my face.

  ‘Please,’ he said taking a step towards me in what felt like a rapidly shrinking elevator, ‘take them back.’ And he placed the briefcase at my feet.

  The elevator reached the fifteenth floor and kept going.

  He leant into me and said, ‘I wasn’t having a party. It was a wake. We were throwing Ricky a wake.’

  It was hard to believe my Bran Muffin Husband was so closely related to this complicated, messy dessert.

  The twentieth floor arrived and he stepped out of the door. I looked down at the briefcase and then at the small puddle of pool water next to it and then up to the closing elevator doors.

  I only just managed to wedge the briefcase in the door in the nick of time. When the doors opened James was standing, waiting for me.

  ‘Take the watches,’ I said and thrust the briefcase back at him.

  ‘I’m not sure
I want them,’ he said, and attempted to hand the briefcase back. I was not completely sure, but I thought his accent changed, or at least wavered slightly.

  ‘They belong to you!’ I said adamantly, pushing the briefcase back. ‘You were there. You heard the reading of the will. It is what Richard wanted.’

  ‘Richard? My brother who said he had no family?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I want anything from a non-brother.’

  ‘No?’ I said looking around the lavish hallway at the Four Seasons. ‘Maybe you could sell them to pay your hotel bill?’ I shot back. ‘Or did Richard your non-brother already take care of that for you?’

  ‘Ouch,’ he said, and a broad smile seeped slowly across his face. ‘Nice shot Heiress.’ And he winked at me! Why were people suddenly winking at me!

  He looked at the suitcase still sitting uninvited in his hands. ‘Tell you what, if you give me five minutes to get changed, I’ll be able to trade you something for the watches.’

  It was hard to remain angry with a man who looked like he had been sculpted by da Vinci. Especially when I understood what post-mortem betrayal from Richard felt like.

  I did not walk away and I am guessing he took that as an agreement because he turned and strolled casually down the hallway towards his room. I actually did not want to follow him, but I desperately did want to get rid of these stupid watches and run away from the police on Grandmother’s private jet to the Phi Phi Islands with a clear conscience.

  How could I achieve all of those things?

  He clicked the electronic lock on the last door in the hall and held the room door open for me. Or should I say suite door. James was in one of the coveted corner suites with sweeping floor to ceiling windows offering panoramic views of the city, Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Even to a native Sydneysider the view was startling. Had Richard organised this lavish room for his brother?

  I was no expert on hotel prices but my handbag equivalency radar told me each night in this suite could probably buy a Louis Vuitton clutch, maybe even a tote. A week here and you could buy the classic steamer trunk.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ James said, gesturing to the biscuit-coloured lounge fronted by a glass coffee table. ‘I’ll be right back.’ And he disappeared off into the bedroom.

  I had not been this uncomfortable in a suite at the Four Seasons since the SILC Year 12 formal dance.

  When I heard the spray of the shower being turned on I realised I had stopped breathing altogether. I commanded my body to start breathing again. In and out. In and out. In and out. Okay, I was breathing.

  I stared down at the couch. There was no way I was sitting on any soft surfaces in this room. Apart from anything else, I had not had a lot of regular sleep lately and I was exhausted. Contact with the lounge suite might render me into a coma.

  James returned in what seemed like moments. He was freshly showered and dressed in what I could have sworn was downplayed Valentino, casual but stylish. His hair was neat but tousled. And he smelt the way he looked. Amazing. Ignoring my hormones, I tried to actively wish I was asleep. Somewhere else.

  He had the watch briefcase in one hand and in the other hand, nothing. What was he planning to trade with, imaginary beans? Not that I wanted a trade, I just wanted to be rid of those watches, and him. I gazed at him expectantly.

  ‘Not here,’ he said shaking his head. ‘We need to go down a few floors. Is that okay?’

  I shrugged nonchalantly. He nodded and led me out of the room. I had never been so relieved to be in a hallway in my life. We walked in silence to the elevator. I could feel a very small patch of perspiration under the back of my hair and I prayed the elevator was cooled. If that heat moved south, my silk dress, in very light summer colours, would not be forgiving. All I needed to add to my humiliation were perspiration patches.

  God was deaf and air conditioners all over the city had resigned in protest over the heatwave. Including the one in the Four Seasons elevator. We rode in hot silence to the eighth floor. I was so keen to exit the elevator I tripped over my dress and fell out the door the moment it opened.

  No, I had not learned my lesson about high heels and long dresses. Escaping a deadly fire was not a strong enough fear to override my fashion DNA.

  I was in the midst of being completely mortified when I felt myself being caught and scooped up. I was about to protest when I realised we were standing/falling in the dark. That was probably why I fell over. It wasn’t my heels at all.

  James smiled at me. ‘You’re really quite gorgeous.’

  That accent. Had his voice become sexier? Wait. How was I again in a delectable and unsuitable man’s arms?!

  ‘Put me down,’ I cautioned. ‘Now.’

  Being held by my recently deceased husband’s superhot brother could not possibly be a good idea.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said and unceremoniously plonked me into a wingback chair.

  The lights in the room were off. It was lit only by the glow of city and harbour lights, spilling in from the panoramic windows. More power outages? Wait. There were display cabinets. Were we in a closed jewellery store? No, it smelt, distinctively. We were in the chocolate boutique.

  Famously an entire floor of the Four Seasons Sydney was dedicated to the production, consumption and display of handmade chocolates. Some of the best cocoa beans in the world were in this room.

  There were dozens of three, four and even five-tiered, pyramid-shaped, glass displays jutting up from the ground and placed strategically throughout the room. Some were barely 30 centimetres wide at the base, narrowing to tiny 10 centimetre tops; others were enormous, a metre of glass at the base tapering off to a 30 centimetre square of glass at the top. There were glass jars filled with coloured chocolates. There were chocolate fountains. They were not turned on in the middle of the night but they were there.

  The air conditioners in this room were awake, maintaining perfect chocolate conditions: 20 degrees Celsius, low humidity. Heaven.

  The walls of the room were lined with Parisian café-style tables and chairs.

  It was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Better Homes and Gardens.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ I asked, suspicious and impressed, inhaling the smell of Colombian cocoa. I felt like an alcoholic in a wine cellar.

  ‘Do you like chocolate?’ he asked, ignoring my question, pulling a chair out for himself and placing the briefcase on the low table between us.

  What kind of a question was that? The whole world knew I loved chocolate. My exploits with chocolate were tabloid legend. Besides, who didn’t like chocolate?

  ‘I like it,’ I said, realising I had eaten four boxes of Frosty Fruits but no actual food since this morning (unless you count the cashews). I was starving. ‘How did you get in here?’ I asked again.

  ‘I’ve got a sweet tooth and I’ve been a very good customer,’ he said smoothly. His accent had changed! It was less cracked, less rough.

  And, accent or no, how good a customer did you need to be to have the security and elevator pass cards?

  ‘Okay, grand,’ he said and handed me a large gold chocolate box with twelve compartments. ‘I’ll trade you one chocolate for one watch. There are twelve watches in the briefcase, so you get a dozen chocolates. Fair?’

  When had he opened the suitcase and counted the watches? I nodded my head, yes. What did I care? They did not belong to me anyway, they were Richard’s. The only thing I really wanted was out.

  ‘Well,’ he said, opening the briefcase, ‘let’s see. A ’77 Vacheron Constantin. That must be worth a butter cream truffle.’

  And he reached over to a glass stand and picked up a small round chocolate in a gold patty pan and placed it in my chocolate box.

  ‘A ’67 Universal Genève,’ he said picking up the second watch and raising his eyebrows. ‘My brother certainly had expensive taste.’

  I looked at him. ‘You certainly know a lot about watches for a train driver.’

  ‘My grandfather was a horologis
t,’ he said and placed a white chocolate toasted coconut lime ball into my box.

  ‘I thought you said your grandfather was a train driver?’ I said leaning across the table.

  ‘He drove trains too,’ James said and picked up the third watch. ‘A ’75 Rolex Submariner. Classic piece.’

  He dropped a candied orange dark chocolate into the gold box.

  I stood up and turned the gold box upside down, emptying the chocolates onto the table. They scattered and rolled off onto the floor.

  It is not that I did not like the chocolates he was choosing for me. It was just that if I was going to consume something dark and destructive in the middle of the night I was going to choose it myself.

  ‘If it is all the same to you I will choose for myself. You can trust me,’ I said, mustering as much false bravado as I could, making a sweeping hand gesture at the open case. ‘I promise to take only twelve.’

  This got a small laugh from him. It was deep and throaty, but not loud. It was the laugher of someone who seemed really alive.

  I strolled around the room choosing chocolates: crushed marshmallow macarons in milk chocolate; apricot, rosemary, and salt chocolate circles; bright pink guava drops; smooth confit fig squares in dark sugar; cinnamon and honey creams; rosewater and passionfruit swirls; lychee and geranium petal balls; lime and toasted coconut … I was not going to exclude the lime and coconut just because he chose it first.

  ‘Feck me!’ I heard him exclaim, and one of the perspex glass boxes clattered to the floor, bouncing at his feet across the polished blond wood floors and coming to rest on its side. Right next to the butter cream truffle.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  Was there a redback in the case? A funnel-web?

  James looked up at me, pure astonishment on his face. He was holding Richard’s Rolex Daytona. Why should that be of such intense interest to him? I do not claim to be a horologist or any kind of watch expert, but even I knew it was probably the least valuable timepiece in the collection. Did he know it was Richard’s? How long had they been estranged? I had no idea how long Richard had had the watch for. He had always worn it. I am not sure why but I always found it kind of, embarrassingly, sexy. It had a pull.