‘Mrs Bombberg, happy to see you up and about,’ Burns said pumping my hand.
‘Thank you,’ I said. Was she making fun of my throw-up pass out technique? I was not keen to share that highly embarrassing trait with the world. And I was working quite hard on overcoming it.
I shot her my best ‘please be quiet’ expression.
‘Yes,’ she continued loudly, ‘you look great considering you’ve had pneumonia.’
The gaggle at the fence line may not have heard it, but everyone walking past did.
While I had no idea what she was talking about specifically, I was sure the pneumonia story had been concocted by Earl Stevenson or Nigel Barker or both to keep the police at bay.
‘I’m so happy to see you up and about because I’m so keen to have another chat with you about the events of the evening your husband was murdered. I’m so sorry, I mean the night your husband died under suspicious circumstances.’ She used air quotes when she said ‘suspicious circumstances’.
I wanted to kill her. People were slowing down to listen.
In an unprecedented move born of infuriation I stepped into her, compromising both my personal space and hers. I thanked God for the steady heels I was wearing that gave me another three inches on the four natural inches in height I had on her already and stopped me from falling over on the unsteady and highly impractical, hewn sandstone paving beneath my feet.
I narrowed my eyes at her, while trying to maintain the mourning widow expression on my face.
‘You know that Crystal had motive. You know this Bob the Builder biker person was almost her brother-in-law. You know he could have supplied her with explosives.’ I shook my head in genuine frustration. ‘You know it wasn’t me!’
Of course I did not mention the other people who I now felt could have motive: the Mediterranean Men’s Club international fugitives, the weird taupe bank people, whoever made platinum trains, Richard’s fictional family, et al. More people slowed down. Camera crews poked their boom microphones over the fence in an effort to pick up the conversation.
She responded in a frustratingly loud whisper: ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know any of that. What I do know is that Mr Fix-It is AFP off limits.’
‘Make him not off limits,’ I said exasperated.
‘You make him not off limits,’ she said shifting her eyes to the PM who was talking to a journalist about ‘being hard on crime and raising corporate tax rates’.
Normally I would be happy to have someone pull strings for me in such a dire circumstance but the prime minister hated us. Pushing him would be problematic at best. For all I knew he was keeping Bob the Biker, Mr Fix-It, away from the local police and in federal protection on purpose. He absolutely detested Grandmother. She once threw a raw oyster at him. It was a long story.
‘I’ve gotta arrest someone, Heiress,’ she said to me. ‘Might as well be you.’
I suddenly became very conscious of my closeness to her, of the hot sun, of standing out in the midday heat with no cover. Of the people who had stopped and were pretending to check their Instagram accounts while eavesdropping. And even though she was undoubtedly nasty, I felt childish and cheap for deliberately violating her space, and my own. I took a few steps backwards and walked straight into Detective Searing.
I felt my heel crush the toe of his shoe. I did not feel him flinch, even though I was quite sure I had just broken several of his digits. Instead he caught me in his arms.
‘I’ve got you,’ he said.
Oh no. How was it he felt cool and crisp while I felt like a melting mess? He was so annoying. I turned as brazenly as I could, ignoring his cool, smooth-suited loveliness, the intoxicating light scent I could not quite put my finger on, the ‘I’ve got you’ thing, his arms, his beautiful eyes … I forgot what I was being brazen about; oh that’s right, I was preparing to assail him anew with demands of speaking to Bob the Builder, when Mother finally made her appearance, unfurling out of the limousine. Other important and beautiful people suddenly appeared from other long black cars, cameras and camera phones everywhere clicked like cicadas on heat and I was swallowed up by the surging river of security guards, bodyguards and celebrities flowing into the cathedral behind us.
CHAPTER 28
MOTHER LOVER WIFE
The bishop lied. The service took over an hour. To be fair, it was not completely his fault. Somehow a trend started in the church for unscheduled and uninvited people to stand up and speak about Richard. And when I say trend, I mean Richard’s mother. And lover. Separate people.
I sat in the front row and listened to a rather unsteady Shirley Smith go on about what a wonderful child he was. How clever. How endearing. How the neighbours loved him. How his teachers loved him.
How he said she was dead. No. She did not say that. But she was clearly ignoring the fact that he had indeed said she was dead.
Not a ringing endorsement.
I stopped myself from searching the crowd for James. It was already making my head explode that Searing and James were in the same space. In my opinion a 2500 seat cathedral was not a big enough room for those two men to share.
Mother was sitting on my left and Grandmother, fresh from banking board meetings in Zurich, was on my right. Esmerelda was seated in the row behind us. Sitting too close to the lanky anti-model would invite far too many questions. Behind us she just looked like a rather tanned Japanese rocker no one would admit to never having heard of. I leant my head back over the pew and, after a little pestering, she leant forward. I nodded towards Shirley Smith and whispered, ‘Is it just me or is Richard’s mother a little, you know?’
‘She’s totally bombed,’ said Esmerelda.
‘She’s practically paralytic,’ said Grandmother.
‘She might need AA,’ said Mother.
This may have been the first common ground Mother and Grandmother had had in several decades. I made a mental note to exploit that later. Without Richard around as a buffer these two were going to have to get along. Well, not kill each other at least.
I exhaled deeply. I suppose being drunk was her right. It was her son’s funeral. Still, rather undignified.
After many tears she finally stepped away from the lectern, thudded shakily down the sanctuary stairs and took her seat in the left front row pew on the opposite side of the church to us. She half fell, half sat into the space between her husband and son.
To her right, her husband, my father-in-law, Mr Smith was looking red-eyed and red-nosed.
On her left sat James. Impossible not to look at him now. He was noticeably less chic than the James I ate chocolates with twelve hours before at the Four Seasons. I do not know what he was wearing but there was not a natural fibre in sight. The suit fitted like the horrifically made Project Runway garment that gets the straight guy from Idaho who had no idea anyway sent packing.
Sadly, even when he looked bad, he looked good.
I peeled my eyes off James the chameleon and gazed at the funeral order of service I held in my hands.
The funeral booklet was made from a heavy white linen stock. It was almost as nice as the stock used on our wedding invitations. But not quite. This paper was 350 GSM French, ours had been 450 GSM Japanese.
I could tell by the font and style that Grandmother’s PA Loraine had put it together. It was perfect: pale, crisp, stylish yet classical, obviously expensive but not ostentatious. Essentially the printed equivalent of Loraine’s always razor-perfect hair. In twenty years I had never seen a strand out of place.
I heaved a sigh of relief. And not just because Esmerelda had not organised the funeral booklet, but also because Dr Cooper was the last eulogy speaker listed. He would be quick; no doubt he had a golf course or a pretty twenty-five-year-old he would rather be on.
Dr Cooper was the senior plastic and reconstructive surgeon from Sydney Plastics. He was a good surgeon. The staff seemed to like him. He did not look his fifty-something years (a perk of the job I suppose). And he never flirted with the c
lients, but from what my social contacts told me, ‘Coop’ was a serial dater. Which is a polite way of saying he was addicted to sex.
I peeked over the aisle to James Smith’s side. Neither he nor his father showed any sign of leaping into the fray. I snuck a look back over the rest of the rows. Burns and Searing stood to the left side of the back aisle, both sets of eyes scanning the crowd. I saw Eddy and Nigel Barker a few rows behind us on the right. Earl Stevenson sat at the far end of the same row. Even Lloyd Harper and Dennis Bayton the cryptic insurance man (I think he knew about those trains being platinum), were across the aisle about fifteen rows back.
My best friend Anna Del Rico sat a few rows behind me. She had traversed several oceans to support me, but I could see she was still otherwise occupied by her latest acquisition: a buff, blond nineteen-year-old professional sports star. She raced through husbands and fiancés at such a rate I could not recall his name. I had always found her ability to be unreservedly emotionally open impressive. It was part of her charm. However, she also practised a complete lack of foresight or personal responsibility which drove her mother to cook and her father to internally rejoice. I always felt Anna was living her dad’s secret dream life and her mother’s nightmare.
Her parents smiled supportively at me. If I had to swap my highly dysfunctional family for another highly dysfunctional family I would choose the Del Rico clan every time.
Anna sat between her newly minted husband and her cousin, my hair and make-up fairy Franny. Anna winked at me and gave the universal let’s-drink-cocktails-after-this sign. We had perfected this signal while in our senior years at SILC. I winked back at her. I could use a cocktail, preferably a frozen one. This cathedral, filled to the brim in mid-summer, was beginning to simmer. I hoped they served daiquiris at the funeral home.
No one made a move to get up, except Dr Cooper. Thank God. Finally things were back on track. Dr Cooper’s eulogy was flattering: what a great surgeon, what a great boss, helped poor children with life-changing surgery, et al. And swift: under five minutes.
The hiccup came when he stiffly, unnaturally announced an obviously forced ‘spur of the moment’ invitation to Richard’s plastic surgery nurse Sandra Banks to ‘come up and say a few words about Richard’.
I will give you a few words. Go away. Get off. Be quiet. Shut up.
By the time Ms Banks had made it to the lectern to take the baton from Dr Cooper, his further clarification of who she was saw her miraculously promoted from Richard’s plastic surgery nurse, to ‘International Practice Head Nurse’. What did that title even mean?
Sandra’s eulogy started like Dr Cooper’s: Richard gave the practice everything he had, he helped children, he was a great boss.
Then it shifted gears slightly: he gave so freely of himself, how she—they—needed him, how he helped her.
Then it changed down gear again: what an operator, how wonderful he was with his hands, how she loved working under him.
I sensed a slight murmuring in the cathedral.
I looked back to Esmerelda for reassurance. Rookie move. She nodded her head in affirmation and mouthed, ‘Totally.’
I looked to Mother. ‘Sandra’s just emotional, honey,’ she said. ‘They were reasonably close.’
‘Close?’ Grandmother hissed under her funeral book. ‘Just as well he’s already dead. I would have had him skinned. Sac first.’
Ouch. For a regal lady she said some scathing things. She was a wonderful grandmother.
Was Richard really having an affair with his nurse?
‘He was so much more than a great boss. He was a deeply, deeply, fulfilling part of my life,’ she said, and a flirtatious smile played on her inflated lips.
Mother began meditative breathing.
Oh God! He was having an affair with his nurse! How trite! How pedestrian! How dull! It was so Richard. Even when he had an affair it was uncreative.
Was I dull? Oh God. I was. Dull and safe married dull and safe. Wait, his hidden life was not dull, it was nefarious. Was I secretly wicked too?
I looked away. Richard’s mother was almost passed out. His father was staring with hostility at Sandra Banks. James’s gaze was steely. If he was Superman there would have been a big, smoking hole in the ground next to her. James moved his gaze sharply to me. He was too fast, or I was too slow—he caught me. We locked eyes. I got a tight smile.
I remembered how James spoke of Richard. Was it money? Did money drive Richard to crime? Where did he get that Princess Grace engagement ring? He was always incredibly talented with a scalpel, a natural surgeon, but aren’t former medical students always in debt? What did he do to get that ring? Is that how it started? Was I the catalyst? That did not explain Sandra Banks. Or his not-so-dead family. Or the platinum trains or the USB at the bank.
I could feel the sweat and the fuzz setting in.
Sandra Banks was still speaking. For those in the crowd who had missed the affair innuendo she was just a big-boobed strawberry blonde blabbing on, keeping them in a sweltering church.
Those who caught the implications began tittering every time she said anything that could even remotely be interpreted as having a double meaning.
‘Long hours at the office’ became translated into ‘fooling around on his desk’.
‘Gruelling weeks travelling through Asia together for critical children’s surgeries, pro bono’ became ‘relentless boner gorilla sex at the Sheraton Manila, the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur and the Bangkok Hilton. And possibly in the Qantas Business Lounge. Oh no, do you think he took her in the Chairman’s Lounge! Imagine that! Mistresses love the Chairman’s Lounge!’
At least in my mind that is how it went.
I heard a woman behind me say, ‘No wonder she set him on fire!’
The voice of another woman who must have been sitting with her said, ‘I’m just surprised she did it herself! Doesn’t she have a person for that?’
‘A person or a purse?’ the first woman responded and they both laughed quietly. Not quietly enough.
I felt Esmerelda’s hackles go up. Without looking back I shook my head. Japanese rock stars did not attack bantering Sydney socialites in cathedrals. Not generally anyway.
I began to feel sick. My hands were sweating. The blood was draining from my face. Before I knew what was happening, I was on my feet. My stomach lurched immediately. For one dreadful moment I thought I was going to throw up in St Mary’s Cathedral. I was a lapsed semi-Catholic at best, but even I instinctively knew that was a sin of some sorts.
But I did not throw up. I was well past throwing up. The passing out however, I could not completely vouch for. My feet moved me across the front of the church towards the sanctuary steps without incident. It was a miracle.
The whole cathedral erupted into a choir of ‘Oh my God’ and ‘What the hell is she doing?’ A lot of people in this room were going to perdition for cursing about God in a cathedral. They would go in the back of a Mercedes, but still.
By the time I had made it up the carpeted sanctuary I was enormously thankful to whomever chose my chunky heels. They would never fulfil their destiny of keeping me from sinking into the graveyard grass—since we were now headed for an indoor funeral home and a re-cremation—but they were the only thing keeping me upright on the slippery mosaic terrazzo floor.
By the time I had climbed the sanctuary the enormous cathedral was silent.
Everyone saw me coming, except Sandra Banks. She was standing, eyes closed, hand on heart, mid-sentence talking about how Richard was more than just her boss when I extended my arm and poked my hand between her and the lectern. Her eyes flew open and I grabbed her wrist and began shaking it.
‘Thank you, Miss Banks,’ I said. ‘What an astonishing employee you are. I am sure you performed your many nursing assistant services very adequately.’
Not that I had anything against nurses or nursing assistants. The one who cared for my grandfather in his last years should have had a hospital wing dedicated
to her. But I knew Sandra would hate the demotion. So I was petty and mean. Too bad. This woman was telling the whole world she had fecked my husband. She could just feck off. I was entitled to a bit of petty meanness.
Nurse Sandra was so shocked to see me that she took a step back and I used the space to my advantage and placed myself in front of the microphone.
‘I look forward to you acting under me in the future,’ I said more to her than to the microphone. ‘I intend to be very intimately involved in the practice and its charitable works in the future.’
I had no intention of running that business, but I was not going to tell her that. Let her sweat it out and think I was going to make her life miserable for the next twenty years.
‘What?’ she finally managed.
‘Oh yes.’ I smiled at her. ‘Very intimately involved.’
I motioned to Dr Cooper to collect her from the sanctuary. Red-faced he climbed up and put an arm around her, shepherding her like a child down the stairs to her pew. It was too late for her to wrestle control from me now, but as she took her seat I could see her face held severe fury.
Oh God. What was I going to do now? This was the last thing I wanted. I looked around in desperation. Two and a half thousand people were staring at me, waiting for me to say something profound.
‘I loved my husband. He was not perfect, but he helped many people,’ I said.
Sure, one of the people he helped the most was himself. Sure, some of the people he helped might have been wanted international fugitives. Sure, most of the people he helped were prosperous people determined to be more beautiful with each passing year, but not all, some were good old-fashioned hard-working sex workers. But … Think of the poor children! He also helped many poor children!
My inspiring two sentences were received with tepid nods and lukewarm ‘yes’s. I was a motivational speaker just waiting to happen. I had been outdone by my husband’s mistress at his funeral.
Heiress On Fire Page 27