Heiress On Fire

by Kellie McCourt

  In one swift motion I stood up and hit her across the head with the empty in-tray. The tray cracked when it connected with her skull and plastic shards fell on the desk and floor. She was stunned, but not for long. She sprang off the desk and lunged at me, syringe in hand.

  I picked up the out-tray and used it to bat away her incoming pointy weapon. The tray connected with her hand, she yelped in surprise and let go of the syringe. It clattered onto the desk. I used the second it took her to recover herself and pick the syringe up to put some distance between us. Not a lot of distance, I only just got around to the other side of the desk. She was fast.

  Incredibly, the thing foremost in my mind was not getting away from her, although it was a very, very close second. It was getting answers. I had to know. And this time I was not going to forget to ask.

  ‘What is the Mediterranean Men’s Club?’

  From what I could see in the knocked-over lamp light and the white glow from the computer screen, she was baffled. But she was a liar and premeditative murderer.

  ‘The what?’ she asked, annoyed.

  ‘You heard me,’ I said, picking up the Botox brochure stand and throwing it at her. ‘What is the Mediterranean Men’s Club?’

  ‘What? Why? Who are they? What do you know?’

  Question with a question; good tactic, but I suspected she genuinely didn’t know. I could think of only one way to find out for sure.

  I made a condescending sad-face. ‘Richard didn’t tell you all his secrets, did he Michelle?’

  God that felt good.

  She let out a primal roar, clambered over the desk like a wild woman and launched herself at me. She hit me square in the chest and clamped onto my torso. We fell backwards together into the waiting plastic lap of the many-wheeled, buttock-moulded, plastic examination stool. That stool was cursed. It skittered across the floor with both of us on board and slammed into the wall with a jolt. Unfortunately, not enough of a jolt to dislodge Michelle. Before I could recover from the shock of having the wind knocked out of me by a flying lunatic, she had the syringe aimed at my face.

  ‘I knew Richard! I knew everything about him! You were just a bank. Nothing more,’ she grunted, attempting to stab me in the lip, then cheek. Maybe it was filler.

  ‘Actually,’ I managed, trying desperately to breathe. ‘All things considered I think I made money out of the marriage.’

  She shrieked at me and pushed forward. I held her syringe hand with both of mine and fought to keep it from piercing my eye.

  She was going to kill me. Because of Richard. She loved Richard. Wait. She loved Richard.

  ‘Why didn’t you delete the emails to Bob, Mr Fix-It, from Richard’s computer? Even with a secure alibi, the spouse is always the number one suspect.’ Searing had said so himself. ‘If your plan was successful the police would have come looking for Richard, for his laptop. Those emails would have implicated him.’ I gained ground and pushed her hand back an inch.

  ‘I had Richard’s laptop safely packed and ready to go with us to Manila,’ she said too quickly, trying to push forward. ‘I’d left a dummy one with no Mutant emails on his desk for the police to take.’ She gave a sharp cackle. ‘Which they did! Idiots.’

  I pushed again. ‘Why keep Richard’s laptop at all?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘I’ve got a business to run.’

  ‘But you still didn’t delete the emails,’ I tried to gesture with my head towards the desk without putting my face in the line of the needle. ‘Why?’

  ‘I haven’t gotten around to it. I, I … shut up Indigo!’

  She was hiding something. What was I missing? What cryptic clue would Bayton give me? Insurance advice? Insurance. Insurance!

  Although Richard lied about many, many things, I did not think he had lied about loving me.

  ‘You weren’t sure, were you Michelle? That he’d just fall into your arms. You kept the emails, as insurance. If Richard didn’t want you, you planned to blackmail him with the incriminating emails. Into what, the business? Into, a relationship? Oh my God, you were ready to blackmail him into loving you?!’

  She screamed with rage through gritted teeth, her scrunched face turning red with anger and exertion. I was going to take that as a yes. I had accidentally shot an arrow through the hornet’s nest. If I had to guess, I would say she kept the emails to Bob and Abby, even after Richard’s death, as insurance too. In case they turned on her. No honour among accomplices and outlaws.

  The syringe shook in her hand as she surged forward, doubling down on her efforts. I was losing the upper-body strength fight; she was on top of me and gravity gave her an unfair advantage. The syringe was cutting in and out of the skin above my cheekbone just below my eye. I fought, but she pressed down on the plunger, pushing the mystery fluid through the barrel and out the end of the needle. Some of it spilled down my cheek but some pierced my skin and entered my bloodstream.

  I couldn’t believe I was going to say this but desperate times call for desperate measures …

  ‘The trains. Don’t forget the trains. Richard also left me his trains.’

  Success. The syringe relented slightly as she rocked with laughter.

  ‘The trains? Jesus Indigo, how desperate are you?’

  I was pretty desperate.

  ‘Those trains, they’re nerd junk. You want ’em? Have ’em! There’s a whole pantry full of them on the first floor. Still in their boxes.’ She smiled and drilled down again. ‘I’ll have them buried with you.’

  The syringe hit my cheekbone with such force the needle bent. She simply rotated the needle, jabbed again and emptied whatever was left in the syringe into the soft tissue below my cheek. Satisfied, she unlocked herself from my torso and stepped back.

  I slid off in lightheaded exhaustion, putting my hands on the wheelie stool to steady myself. It immediately tried to escape from me, but I clung onto it.

  ‘Nighty night, Little Kitten,’ she purred.

  I saw stars. An entire childhood of name calling, cruel tabloid headlines and impossible supermodel-mother–daughter comparisons came crashing down on me. Drugs or no drugs—not Botox judging by the swimming feeling floating through me—she was going down.

  I picked up the wheelie stool seat first and threw it at her. The metal castors spun, whacking her hard in the neck, jaw and face when they connected; the hard plastic seat slammed into her stomach, knocking the wind out of her and planting her on her perfectly peach-shaped ass. She hit the ground with a most undignified thud and I prayed one or more of her butt implants had exploded. I would have been happy for any of her implants to explode.

  She stared up at me dumbfounded. I was not done. She was still breathing. I stumbled over to her, using my Lucky Bill genes to fight off the dozy drugs ebbing through me, put my hands around her little white throat and began strangling.

  I was so blinky and tired I feared I would pass out on top of her before she was dead. That would be a terrible waste. I kept the pressure on as I swayed. Her eyes rolled back in her head and I vaguely heard screaming coming from the corner of the room.

  ‘My baby! My baby!’

  Either Michelle’s lover had come to save her, in which case I was a dead woman, or Esmerelda had found her broken iPhone, in which case, well, slightly less dramatic but I was still in trouble.

  Lucky Bill genes or no, I could feel I was going to lose consciousness. I lined myself up so that my forehead connected directly with hers when I collapsed, inflicting maximum damage. I recall it making the same sound as coconuts being knocked together. Clunk.

  CHAPTER 34

  WATER SLIDES

  When I woke up Richard’s office was full of light and police. Michelle, shadowed by Burns, was sitting in Richard’s desk chair, in handcuffs. I was sprawled out on a black leather couch in the far corner. Searing was standing next to the open door talking to Esmerelda who was tapping away at her slightly damaged iPhone. He was taking notes on a tablet. Michelle was pleading her innocence to B
urns, who was taking notes in an actual notebook.

  ‘She’s crazy!’ Michelle was saying to Burns. ‘She came at me with a syringe!’

  Burns examined the bent needle which was now safely locked away in a clear evidence bag. ‘We’ll find her prints on it then, I’m sure.’

  Michelle blanched. ‘She was wearing gloves!’

  ‘These gloves?’ Burns asked producing a pair of inside-out surgical gloves, also trapped in an evidence bag.

  I prayed you could get fingerprints from the inside of surgical gloves.

  Michelle blinked and changed tactics. ‘There was anaesthesia in that syringe!’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Burns.

  Michelle’s eyes darted around, searching for a feasible response.

  I was starting to like Burns.

  ‘She choked me! Look,’ she said and pointed to her neck. ‘I’ve got bruises.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Burns said.

  But she did.

  ‘Really?’ queried Michelle. ‘I could’ve sworn that would bruise. She choked me unconscious for Pete’s sake!’

  Burns arched an eyebrow at her. ‘I guess you upset her.’

  Esmerelda chimed in. ‘Yeah, it’s not nice to call names.’ And she hit a button on her phone. The conversation between Michelle and I played for all the world to hear. She pressed more buttons and Searing’s tablet dinged. Then Burns’s phone. Soon the room was a chorus of digital notifications.

  Esmerelda must have activated the record feature on her phone before throwing it to me. It had captured everything. I was going to kill her. Or hug her. I couldn’t decide. Instead I closed my eyes and feigned unconsciousness. It worked for a while but the EMTs kept poking, prodding, testing, injecting, checking and generally hovering. They were too well trained. I fluttered my eyelids open before they pronounced me faking. The recording had been played and discussed multiple times by then anyway. The humiliation was almost complete. I could not decide what was worse, hearing Michelle call me Little Kitten over and over, or sounding so sincere about Richard’s trains.

  ‘Mrs Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg,’ said Searing, spotting my open eyes and crossing the room to me. ‘You’re awake.’

  I sat up and looked at him. He was gorgeous. It was the glorious golden-brown eyes. No, the thick, soft, wavy hair. No, the tanned, rope-muscled forearms. No, it was the lips. They were perfect.

  ‘For goodness sake Searing,’ I said, trying to cover my unbridled lust (and because I was still a little drugged), ‘just call me Indigo.’

  ‘Indigo,’ he said smiling.

  Perfect lips. I wondered what it would be like to kiss him … I drifted before crashing back: Don’t do it Indigo! Do not kiss that man. He’s an accountant policeman for goodness sake! Get a grip! You’ve been drugged! Do something else. Anything else.

  ‘Did you know it is illegal for a man to own a brothel?’ I asked him groggily.

  God help me, do not touch him.

  He grinned, enjoying the conversation. ‘Why yes Indigo, I did know that.’

  ‘Did you know that the Mutant Motorcycle gang owns Magic Models?’

  How did I even say that tongue twister? Stop speaking!

  ‘I suspected, but thanks to you, I know for sure.’ He opened his tablet. Tap. The conversation I had had with Bob the Yeti Builder in the walk-in fridge played.

  I turned so sharply to Esmerelda my stomach lurched.

  ‘Dude, I swear I didn’t record anything else.’ She sounded almost apologetic.

  ‘And,’ said Searing, ignoring Esmerelda’s confession of sneakily recording private conversations, ‘based on Crystal’s Tax File Number Declaration form we got a search warrant and raided Magic Models. I did some number crunching, we’ll be charging Abby with 2265 counts of tax evasion and the Mutants with 5694 counts of profiting from prostitution.’ He leant in and whispered to me: ‘Abby was quick to roll on Michelle for a reduced sentence in a prison farm like Silverwater instead of twenty years in a supermax.’

  Silverwater. We were back to Silverwater.

  ‘I helped get that,’ I said, jabbing a dopey finger at his tablet.

  ‘Yes Indigo, you did.’

  He was cute. I tried to smile. A look of concern passed over his face.

  ‘I think you had better lie down again,’ he said.

  I wanted to kiss him even more and given my current complete lack of boundaries, it could happen.

  ‘Did you get the emails?’ I asked Esmerelda, trying to distract my lusty, spaced-out brain. ‘From Richard’s computer?’

  ‘Dude,’ she said flatly.

  Okay. She had the emails.

  ‘We’ve got everything,’ said Searing sitting beside me, patting his device. ‘Emails, recordings, Crystal’s ID. It’s enough. You’re in the clear.’

  Kill me. The train-kitten recording was going to be evidence in an open court. What would Anna Wintour think of me grilling a Biker-Yeti? The room began swinging.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Searing said putting his hand on my back, between the nape of my neck and my shoulder.

  The swinging stopped but a warm blush spread from the spot where his hand lay. The heat shot down my intoxicated spine and spread everywhere.

  He tilted his head to the left and leant in for a closer examination. He repeated the EMT routine of checking pupils and pulse. But it was very different. His eyes probed mine with emotion. When he slid his hand from my shoulder, the playful smile fell from his parted lips. His hand stopped, two fingers on my pulse point, palm on my chest, his pinkie resting lightly on my clavicle. Heat rushed through me again. Oh boy.

  It was like being on a very fast water slide; my stomach flipped, my heart raced, I wanted to get off and stay on at the same time, and I worried frantically about the state of my bikini line.

  Burns cleared her throat loudly from the other side of the room. She looked pointedly at Searing’s unmoving hand on my body, before yanking Michelle out of Richard’s office chair and onto her feet.

  The spell was broken.

  Michelle’s eyes danced suspiciously from Searing, to me, then back to Searing. She stared at his eyes, his hands. Her eyes prodded me, searching. A grim look spread across her face.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ she spat. ‘You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me! The hot cop? She gets the hot cop too? No fucking way! That’s not fair! Just fucking shoot me!’

  Okay, perhaps the spell was not completely broken.

  Esmerelda let out a halted chuckle. Her product-free skin was flawless. Michelle was right, sometimes life was just unfair. Esmerelda sauntered out of the room grinning, probably in pursuit of a dozen cinnamon scrolls or a slab of tiramisu to snack on.

  Continuing her objections, Michelle looked to Burns for support. Surprisingly she found none. Instead Burns shot me a begrudging grin. Michelle’s rage tickled her too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. She might get along with Grandmother yet. Not that Burns and Grandmother were ever likely to come into contact again.

  ‘It’s wrong!’ Michelle continued as Burns led her from the room. ‘She’s a fucking heiress for Christ’s sake! She doesn’t get the scorching detective guy! She should have to wait for some fat, balding, broke German prince or something! Just fucking, no! No!’

  ‘There are no German princes,’ hollered Esmerelda from the hallway. ‘Yeah, that’s right, I know classy shit too.’

  Burns raised her eyebrows at Searing and accidentally slammed a furious Michelle into the wheelie stool on the way out the door. I heard the crack of shinbone on metal which increased Michelle’s parting tirade and accompanying filthy looks. She yelped some new unbecoming four-letter words and that was it. She was gone.

  Searing’s hand silently slipped off my skin and onto the fabric of the couch. Now the spell was broken. I was really beginning to dislike Michelle Little.

  ‘I looked at your USB. The Mediterranean Men’s Club folder,’ he said ignoring our moment. Bang. Lust out, villains in. ‘There’re s
ome serious criminals in there: thieves, crime syndicate bosses, drug kingpins, enforcers, traffickers, money launderers, scammers. It’s a long list. Mainly European or European descent with a couple of locals thrown in. There might be more, I haven’t traced them all yet.’

  He micro-corrected his impeccable posture. ‘Your husband was a very busy man.’

  No kidding. He had no idea. Okay, he had the USB so maybe he had some idea.

  ‘Yes,’ I said willing the conversation to end.

  ‘One of these guys is wanted in connection to a break-in at the Prince Rainier salon in the Cartier store in Monaco.’ He sounded impressed. ‘Princess Grace of Monaco’s jewellery was on display there at the time. Can you believe that?’

  Yes.

  ‘No.’

  It was almost the truth. I didn’t know what to believe. Richard ironed his socks. And our sheets. He was fanatical about income tax. He stopped at orange lights. He stocked up on washing detergent when it was half price. And now he was involved with bikers, fixers, fronts, sex workers and a homicidal PA. Plus, a barrage of international criminals, budget surgeries and the leprechaun at the taupe bank. He hoarded precious metals. He was an orphan with two living parents for goodness sake! I would never have believed it, if I had not just lived it.

  He was a Bran Muffin with a bitter, poisonous centre.

  ‘Since you no longer need the USB as a bargaining chip, I’ll pass it along to the AFP. Then you’ll be in credit with the feds. Just in case.’

  I glared at him in mortification. The AFP? Credit? Feds? Just in case? That sounded like a world of trouble I wanted no part of.

  I was going to eat, sleep and bake on a tropical island for a season and then I was going to go back to my old non-fainting life. Fashion weeks. Film festivals. Premieres. Restaurants. Plays. Museum galas. Gallery openings. Exhibitions. Shopping in Chanel and Dior and Saks and Harrods while everyone else was asleep.

  Privately, I desperately wanted to know all about my dead husband’s clandestine Other Life, but I did not want anyone else to know about it!