Scot on the Rocks

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And how long have you been making them?’ I said.

  ‘For myself, five years. I took my first commission two years ago and did my first tournament in the summer.’

  ‘T–tourn—?’ I said, sitting back to let the server put my burger down. ‘Competitive …? Like a …? Does that attract a crowd?’ I didn’t know if I was joking.

  ‘Huge crowd,’ he said. ‘In Tokyo. It’s nail-biting.’

  I took a bite of burger and used my chewing time to decide if there was any more to say about polishing dirt balls.

  ‘Are they always brown?’ I said. ‘Or grey? Do you import fancy dirt from chalk regions and all that?’

  He nodded thoughtfully while he was chewing his own mouthful. ‘I’ve started experimenting with colour,’ he said. ‘Great results with beets.’

  I laughed without meaning to, and then stumbled over my words to assure him I wasn’t laughing at his purple mud balls. ‘Something I read online,’ I said. ‘About having beetroot for lunch and forgetting. You go to the loo and stare at death for a minute, till you remember.’

  He stared at me as if I was death, pretty much.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Gross.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, then took another mouthful.

  I was still waiting. He swallowed and wiped his lips, the napkin scraping over the neatly trimmed ends of his moustache hairs. Another mouthful and another wait. If he didn’t ask me anything about myself now, I would give him up, possible sense of humour, own business, beet balls and all.

  ‘So what do you do exactly?’ he said. ‘I know you work for Todd, but in what capacity?’

  ‘With Todd,’ I said. ‘I’m a therapist. Marriage, family, personal. A counsellor.’

  ‘Whoa!’ he said. Then he followed it up with, ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said. ‘It just as often freaks people out.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing you’re open-minded and non-judgemental.’

  ‘I try,’ I said, thinking, why is my damn phone not ringing, because this guy is seriously not OK. Who the hell admits, right out loud like that on a first date that he needs someone open-minded? What was he hinting at? What was he into? What was I going to do to Todd for getting me into it too?

  ‘I’d like to make you a dorodango,’ he was saying now.

  ‘Aw,’ I said. ‘That’s nice. I’d like to get you on the couch and ask about your childhood.’

  His laugh was about as open and easy as it could be, which is to say it was really awkward and uncomfortable, but at least he laughed.

  ‘How long have you been in Cuento?’ he said, when he had sobered up again.

  Two questions in a row. I answered him. Then I asked if he’d seen the news about Mama Cuento and if he had a theory, and long story short when my phone rang, he said: ‘Your getaway?’

  And I laughed and said yes, but stayed on for the rest of lunch and stretched it into coffee. He had a soy latte and I didn’t even care.

  When we left, it was with a plan to meet in two days’ time and see a movie.

  ‘You choose,’ he said.

  ‘Ha,’ I said. ‘No way. You choose.’

  ‘I’ll get it down to three,’ he said. ‘And you pick the winner.’

  Which was so sensible and reasonable that, as I made my way to Bran’s office to quiz Brandeee’s colleagues, I found myself smiling as I remembered the second handshake he’d left me with after lunch, half-wishing it had been a peck on the cheek so I could have checked for aftershave before I got carried away.

  Todd phoned as I was parking in another landscaped car park beside another set of office suites set around another atrium.

  ‘How’s Blaike?’ I said.

  ‘He went back to bed and he’s still sleeping,’ Todd said. ‘But I phoned you, Lexy.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He knows absolutely nothing,’ I said.

  There was a long pause. ‘That’s a bit harsh. He knows everything there is to know about the Warriors.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ I said. ‘And sports trivia isn’t going to bring Brandeee home.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Todd said, making the phone buzz. ‘Not Burt, Lexy. Doug!’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, he’s … OK. He’s … all right. He’s … He called it an improbable burger.’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’re going to the pictures the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘What are you going to see?’

  ‘A documentary about fungus,’ I said. ‘Butt out, Todd.’

  ‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ he told me waspishly and hung up. I waited. Right enough, he rang back. ‘So Burt knows nothing? And you believe him?’

  ‘I do. He still loves her, but in a wistful way, not in a chop-her-into-three-pieces-and-store-her-in-a-freezer way.’

  As I hung up and headed into my second dentists’ office of the day, I prayed it was true.

  FIFTEEN

  You’d think a dentists’ office would be dead when both the dentists were AWOL, wouldn’t you? But a successful American dentists’ surgery runs on a lot of nurse and hygienist energy, with the dentists themselves stopping by for a minute or two once a year to glance at X-rays. So Lancer and Lancer was going like a fair: lots of patients waiting in the plush chairs, flipping through the golf magazines; the sound of power washers emanating from all four treatment rooms; and a small child screaming lustily as a stranger in a mask approached with instruments of torture. Some things never change.

  There were three young women behind the counter. One was drop dead gorgeous but had the sort of extravagantly short hair and facial piercings that would have terrified Bran. One was as plain as a pudding, with painful-looking lasered acne and a figure like a paste pot. The third one was so beautiful she didn’t look real. Probably not a great deal of her was real – her lashes, hair colour, lips, boobs, nails and the sculptural contours of her face certainly weren’t. But her tiny waist and intense violet eyes were beautiful too.

  ‘El-ise?’ I only just managed to say to her. She frowned at my mouth, as if she could tell from that angle that I’d never worn braces and only flossed after a barbecue. I ran my tongue round my teeth self-defensively. My teeth were fine and my parents hadn’t had to remortgage the house for them.

  ‘When’s your appointment?’ she said, batting the unlikely lashes over the unlikely violet eyes. Coloured contacts, I suddenly remembered. And she might have a corset on.

  ‘I’m not a patient,’ I told her. Then I leaned in close, so the people waiting wouldn’t hear the next bit. She rolled back a foot or two in her desk chair, which was completely unnecessary. I do not have halitosis. Or cooties. Maybe she knew her contouring wouldn’t stand such close scrutiny. ‘My name’s Lexy Campbell,’ I said, and I watched her eyebrows hook up, squeezing the immobile skin of her forehead. Surely she was too young for Botox? And for Bran. ‘I’m a therapist and …’ Oh what was the bullshit Todd had come up with to make therapy and investigation sound like a less crazy combo? ‘Troubleshooter,’ I said. That wasn’t right, but it would do. ‘I’ve been employed by Dr Lancer to look into the disappearance of his wife. You did know that Dr Kowalski-Lancer was missing, didn’t you?’

  The phone rang and she glanced at it. I gestured to her to go ahead and do her job.

  ‘Lancer and Lancer,’ she said. ‘Elise speaking. Can I put you on a brief hold? My lunch break is in fifteen minutes,’ she said to me. ‘I’ll meet you at the coffee shop between the nail bar and the Korean barbecue. Just across the street.’

  ‘I know you’re close to Bran,’ I said, as she slid into the chair opposite me with her personal cup of – there was no way to tell, but I was willing to bet it was – something unspeakable. ‘He told me his first instinct when he had a bad shock was to call you. So don’t worry that I’m going to think there’s anything dodgy going on.’
r />   ‘Dodgy?’ Elise said, with a pout.

  I managed to make my sigh a soundless one. I’d met her type before. Cuento was full of them. She wasn’t just spoiled; she was that special, coddled, peeled-grape, weep-till-you-get-your-way, affluent white girl kind of spoiled that would sulk and phone her daddy if it rained on her prom night, if anyone poorer or darker than her tried to make her understand something about their life, or like now if someone used a word she didn’t know.

  ‘Sketchy,’ I said. ‘Suspect. So … what can you tell me?’

  ‘About what?’ she said.

  ‘About how things have been. About the atmosphere at work. The state of things between the two Lancers. Brandeee’s mood. Any dodgy – suspicious – visitors or callers? Anything to get your spidey-sense thrumming? I’m just trying to build up a picture of how things were before she went away.’

  Elise watched me closely as she sucked a good long draught of her mysterious drink up a personal straw. ‘Is that a trick question?’ she said.

  ‘Nope,’ I assured her. ‘It might strike you as a stupid one, but you have to get used to asking stupid questions in this game.’

  ‘So you don’t know?’ she said. Those violet eyes were mesmerizing and she had a way of blinking, slowly, like a cat. The kid who had made her drink was still watching her from behind the coffee machine, looking as if he’d been hit on the side of the head with a shovel. The kid who’d taken her order and her money was looking over the till with an identical expression. I was probably wearing it too. We can’t help it; it’s in our genes. It confers an evolutionary advantage to us to be attracted to smooth skin, shiny hair and bright eyes. It helps us not mate with disease-raddled no-hopers. It’s good for the species.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, but I was beginning to guess.

  ‘He was going to leave her,’ she told me. She sat back in her seat and stretched her arms above her head, still like a cat, this time waking up in a patch of sunshine. ‘He’s in love with me.’

  ‘Oh honey,’ I said, unaware of deciding to speak, much less what to say. ‘You know I was married to him, briefly, don’t you?’

  She didn’t like that at all. And fair enough; it must knock some of the gloss off her catch to know he’d once been caught by the likes of me.

  ‘And you know you’d be number four?’

  She wasn’t crazy about that either.

  ‘Don’t settle for a clapped-out thrice-married dentist over forty,’ I said. ‘My God, Elise. Go down to LA for a weekend and walk along Rodeo Drive. If you haven’t got three men begging for your number by the time you have to turn and walk back again, the world’s not the place it is. And it is, you know.’

  ‘But he loves me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ I told her. ‘Now, I’m here to gather information for a missing-person enquiry but here’s some free therapy for you. Loving is what people do. Like eating and sleeping. We’re monkeys – we curl up with people and pick fleas off them and love them. There’s nothing unusual about it. So don’t be too quick to give your heart away. How old are you, anyway?’

  ‘Give my heart away?’ she echoed, with such extreme scorn that she nearly managed to make herself look unbeautiful, for a second, until her face settled back to rest again and she returned to being a goddess. ‘Thank you, Grandma! How old are you?’

  I’m the perfect age, I thought. My morning client had waited too long; this Disney princess was crazy for thinking it was time already. But I was a bowl of medium-hot porridge. It was just the right time for me. Thinking about Doug and his beetroot balls, I felt a little smile creep over my face.

  ‘Seriously,’ I told her, coughing to get the smile wiped off again, ‘Bran is not worth it for you. You need to have some fun for a while and then look for a man who is kind, funny, if you like laughing, as clever as you are – not too much dumber or smarter – and, trust me, as honest as the day is long, and up for a decent life. No addicts, no players, no drama. Watch him for ten minutes with a dog. That’ll do it.’

  ‘Uhhh,’ said Elise, ‘how about hot? How about ripped? How about no college loans and a car I’m not ashamed to be seen in?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘All of that too.’ I had done something that we’re all too prone to do: I had mistaken beauty for goodness. ‘Or take Bran for a spin until he’s ready for wife number five,’ I added. ‘He’s got a good pool and excellent Wi-Fi.’ She didn’t even know I was kidding. ‘But that’s not why we’re here,’ I reminded her. ‘Tell me how Brandeee’s been. Tell me anything you can to help me find her.’

  ‘Weren’t you listening?’ She batted those extraordinary lashes at me again but I’d been inoculated against them via her personality now. ‘He was leaving her, anyway. For me.’

  ‘Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you,’ I lied, ‘but either her disappearance has made his heart grow fonder again, or the guilt of the plan to leave, butted up against getting one of her nails delivered with a ransom note, has done it, or he’s had her offed and he’s covering it with an extravagant display of love and heartbreak … Whatever. Bran is all about Brandeee now, Elise, so I think it would be a good idea for your future plans if you did everything you could to help find her.’ I paused to let it sink in. ‘At least if the thought of being with someone who might have killed his wife bothers you at all?’

  ‘Does he know you’re saying this about him?’ she demanded.

  I thought about it. ‘He knows me, so … probably,’ I concluded. ‘But as I was saying, it’s in your interests to tell me what you know.’

  She wasn’t bright, but she had such an investment in herself that it shone a clear light on the path of advantage. She nodded and took another deep suck on the straw. Either she was showing off her cheekbones or there was semolina in there.

  ‘She hasn’t been her usual self for a while,’ she said. ‘She’s usually all about remembering to be thoughtful? Like asking after family members and remembering birthdays? Little gifts and tokens and treats for the staff. It’s kinda creepy but we’re all used to her.’

  It didn’t sound creepy. It sounded like Brandeee was a good boss. This girl was too young to be quite that cynical.

  ‘But recently …?’ I said, nudging her.

  ‘Yeah. She was distracted, kept looking at her phone. She was always talking when she pulled up, and she sat in her car, finishing the call. And there were a lot of incoming texts too. More than usual.’

  ‘Her son’s been away at boarding school,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s been texting.’

  ‘And then, a couple of times, she really dropped the ball,’ Elise said. ‘She forgot Christmas. Didn’t give us any cards or presents or bonuses. And you can’t really ask, when it’s an extra, can you?’

  ‘What does she usually give you?’ I said.

  ‘Five-hundred-dollar gift card, plus a little like candle or mittens or something, you know?’

  ‘Five hundred dollars?’ I said. ‘That’s nice. That must have been a bit of a disappointment, when it didn’t turn up. Did Bran say anything?’

  ‘He gave us his presents, same as ever,’ Elise told me. ‘I don’t know if he knew she stiffed us.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d say not giving your employees a five-hundred-dollar wedge was ‘stiffing’ them exactly but I didn’t argue.

  ‘And, of course, Dr Lancer doesn’t ever give us girls Valentine’s Day gifts.’

  My ears pricked up.

  ‘That would be inappropriate. It’s only Dr Kowalski-Lancer who marks that holiday.’

  ‘And did she?’ I asked. ‘Or did she drop the ball again?’

  ‘Like a rock,’ Elise said. ‘With an insulting Addams Family bouquet.’

  I had no idea what that meant, as was so often the case with casual references to popular culture.

  ‘Added to what happened at Christmas, it made me think she had money troubles. Real tight money troubles if it was worthwhile skimping on staff gifts. You know what I mean?’


  This time, I did, but I couldn’t slot it into a bigger picture any way that I was happy with. Brandeee had a son at an expensive boarding school but was cutting back on gratuities? And even if we got past that, it was hard to see why a kidnap victim would have advance money worries. A murder victim likewise. If Brandeee was in the soup financially, that pointed to her cutting ties and running away. But was I really willing to believe she had pulled off one of her own acrylics and sent it to her husband? Mimicking the ransom note from a statue heist that hadn’t yet taken place when she left? And was instantly copied all over the western states?

  Elise was still talking: ‘… disappointment because she’s always been my role model.’

  ‘Brandeee has?’ I asked.

  ‘Who else are we talking about? She’s exactly the kind of woman I’ve always wanted to be. Focused, driven, self-actualized, mindful and so evolved.’

  ‘What a sweetheart,’ I said, hoping it would go over her head. Which it did, by a mile.

  ‘Right? Anyways, I hope you find her. No, really.’ My look hadn’t gone over her head, then. ‘Because, while she’s missing, it would be kinda tacky for Dr Lancer to divorce her. Awkward on a practical level too, probably. Getting papers signed and whatnot?’

  ‘And reckless,’ I added, ‘while the police are still trying to work out what happened to her. It’s the first thing they think of, when a married woman goes missing, you know. And when a married woman whose husband wants to divorce her goes missing …’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Well, put it this way: a memorial service for a missing person declared dead is a lot cheaper than a nasty divorce. No coffin to stump up for, even. Just a quick half hour in the nearest Moose Lodge, platter of little sandwiches, job done.’

  ‘But you were kidding,’ she said. Finally something had got through her foundation and contour and slapped her in the face. ‘You didn’t mean what you said about him having her killed, did you? Did you?’

  ‘I’m not the police,’ I reminded her.

  ‘I need to go back to work,’ she said, standing up and flipping the lid of her personal cup closed. ‘I need to speak to them – I mean, my break time is over.’