by Clare Kauter
Inside Bazza on the way to the lawyers’ office, I began to feel a little nervous, as hard as I tried to quash the feeling. I was in my element, solving a case. It wasn’t like this was a social call. Besides, Eric usually took a half day on Monday. He’d probably already left. Unless his schedule had changed sometime in the last year and a bit… I did my best to keep myself from spiralling, although I noticed Nat eyeing me as I drove. She knew I was worried. Usually I was better at hiding it than this. Either that or she was just particularly observant. For someone who ostensibly cared so little about others’ feelings, she sure was good at reading mine.
When we reached the city it took a bit of driving to find a free car park. (Free as in vacant, not free as in you didn’t have to pay. Those didn’t really exist in the CBD during work hours.) Eventually I successfully parked the car, only five blocks from where we needed to go. A blessing. We hiked to the office and walked in the door, right up to the reception desk. Thankfully I knew the guy there and he let me go up without question. We crossed to the elevator and Nat and I rode up to the seventh floor where Parker & Yates was located.
There was a second receptionist here, but I didn’t know her so she stopped us and told us we couldn’t go through without an appointment.
“Listen, princess –” Nat began, but I cut her off.
“Audrey!” I said loudly, catching sight of a familiar figure just down the hall. She turned to me and her eyes widened before she smiled and stalked towards me on heels so high and sharp-looking that you could have taken someone’s eye out with them.
Nat whistled softly. “Wow, you could slice a nipple off with those shoes.”
I shot her a quick glance telling her to shut up and turned back to the woman approaching me. Audrey was in charge around here, and I figured that she was probably the best person to speak to short of Jake himself. (Pity I didn’t believe in ghosts. That would have expedited things somewhat.) She’d know what clients he’d taken on, and she was probably looking after any of Jake’s ongoing cases, so she’d be up to date on the situation with said clients. If one of them was responsible for Jake’s death, she’d have a pretty good idea who.
Whether she’d actually tell me was another matter entirely.
“Billy! You’re back?” She pulled me into a hug and I obliged, though I kept a wary eye on where she was treading. I wasn’t an idiot. Those shoes were terrifying. Finally she released me and stepped back, her foot brushing mine on the way and sending certain parts of my anatomy northward. “What are you doing here? Are you here to see Eric? I’m afraid he’s already headed home. It’s his half day.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I thought he might have left already. I’m not here to see him, though. I was wondering if I could talk to you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Is this business?”
“A case.”
She began the standard speech. I can’t tell you anything, client confidentiality, blah blah. Classic lawyer. “Billy, you know I can’t –”
“Trust me, Audrey,” I said, giving her a significant look, “you’re going to want to hear what I’ve found.”
“Is this…” She broke off and swallowed, taking a moment to get control of her emotions. “Is this about Jake?”
I put my hand on her arm and nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I guess you’d better come in, then.” She turned to the receptionist. “Make sure I’m not disturbed until Billy leaves.”
The receptionist nodded and Audrey led Nat and me to her office.
“This is my colleague, Natalia,” I said as Nat and I sat opposite Audrey, who gently lowered herself onto the seat behind her desk. She managed to maintain her composure pretty well despite her apparent sadness over Jake Rogers’s death.
Audrey nodded to Nat and then turned back to me. “I don’t remember you working with a partner before.”
“This case is special,” said Nat.
Audrey’s eyebrows rose and she looked back at Nat with curiosity. “How so?”
“It looks like Jake was up to some dodgy shit,” said Nat. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Oh, great. She was taking that route. Hadn’t we both agreed that I was the one who’d be doing the questioning?
“Am I being accused of something?” Audrey asked coldly.
“Not at all,” I said, glaring at Nat. “She’s like that with everyone. We just wanted to ask you if you knew of anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt Jake.”
Audrey raised her eyebrows. “You think it was someone here at the office?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or a client.”
Audrey gave me a tight smile. “Billy, you know better than to ask me a thing like that.”
“Ah, so you do think one of his clients might have done it, then.”
She frowned. “I said nothing of the sort.”
“You didn’t protest their innocence. You shut down my question immediately. That suggests that I hit on something.”
“Are you seriously protecting one of your clients even though they killed your friend?” Nat asked, crossing her arms. “You ice cold bitch.”
Audrey glared at Nat. On second thoughts, maybe Nat’s style was working. She seemed to be getting under Audrey’s skin. Maybe that was the secret to her success – while I tried to sweet talk people into giving me information, she arseholed them into telling her what she wanted to know just so she’d go away.
“I miss Jake deeply,” Audrey said, teeth clenched, “but I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now, if that’s all –”
“We have the key.”
She turned back to me sharply. “What?”
“The key. To the safe deposit box.”
She paused for a beat and I thought I saw a flicker of panic in her eyes before she schooled her expression back to neutral. OK, suspicion confirmed. She knew what was in that box, and she didn’t want us to see it. If Audrey knew about the box, that meant it had something to do with Jake’s work. Something to do with someone he represented, perhaps. The person Audrey suspected of killing Jake, but refused to dob in to us. Sure, her friend might have been murdered, but no point in losing out on a good client over this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Too late, Ice Queen,” Nat said. “Already saw the look of fear.”
“You two need to leave.”
“Audrey, please,” I said. “We’re not threatening you. You and I are old friends, right?”
She gave me a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Of course,” she lied.
“Exactly,” I said, smiling at her. I saw her shoulders relax a little as I did so and her own smile grew more genuine. “We aren’t here to make trouble for you, Audrey. I just wanted to give you a heads up that we found the key. If there’s anything in there that the firm wouldn’t want the cops finding out about, you might want to see to it that it doesn’t stay there.”
Audrey paused for a moment, studying me. “Thank you for telling me, Billy, but I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course.”
Nat rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. “You’re not fooling anyone,” she said, glaring at Audrey. “You know that, right?”
Audrey ignored her. Instead, she appeared to be weighing something up in her head. Had my ploy worked? I scratch her back, she throws a client under the bus for me?
“Audrey?” I said. “There something you want to say?”
She continued to study me for a moment before saying, “Thank you for coming in. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help. You can show yourselves out, can’t you?”
Chapter Nine
Natalia
“I thought we agreed I’d take the lead on the questioning,” Billy whined as we walked back to the car. Well, OK, he said it normally, but he meant it as a whine.
I shrugged. “Her Majesty was annoying me,” I replied. “You were taking too long to get to the point.”
“We’d only ju
st sat down!” he said, another crack appearing in his calm facade. “You didn’t give me a chance to speak.”
“Do you think she would have told us what was in the box if I hadn’t spoken?”
He sighed. “No.”
“Then does it matter?”
“I guess not.” The words indicated that he was going to let it go, but his tone said something different. Billy really didn’t like not being in control of a situation. More and more I was thinking that Bruno actually had paired Billy with me because he hated him and not because he wanted someone to spy on me. Mostly because Billy seemed to be genuinely good at his job, and therefore there was no way he could be friends with someone like Bruno, whose clearance rate was terrible. Suspiciously so.
We walked up the street towards Billy’s car in silence, both of us squirming slightly under Bazza’s creepy gaze. Once we’d climbed inside him (I could have sworn I heard him give a satisfied groan when I sat down), Billy headed for the Baxter & Co. building. He knew the way and vehemently refused to let me put on the GPS.
“But what if we get lost?”
“I’m not going to get lost,” he snapped. Then, more calmly, he added, “I’ve driven this way a thousand times.”
“If you insist,” I said, then turned to look out the window, hiding my smile. There it was again. Billy’s underlying uptight personality coming through. He’d been doing a much better job of hiding it early in the day. Now it was barely taking any prodding at all to make it rear its head. I guess visiting the law firm had worn him down. His ex hadn’t been there, but it must have brought some memories back.
Or it could just be that he was getting sick of spending time with me. I kind of had that effect on people. They might start out polite, but they rarely maintained that until the end of the day.
Billy, true to his word, knew exactly how to get back to the offices. He pulled into the lot and parked Bazza about as far from the door into the office building as was possible.
“Embarrassed someone will see you in this car?”
“Aren’t you?”
I shrugged. He had a point. “A little.”
“I don’t want to give Bruno the satisfaction of seeing me drive this.”
I nodded. “Good move,” I said. “Plus it’s probably better to park Bazza over here where he can’t perve on innocent bystanders just trying to leave work for the day.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to enable him.”
I snorted. Billy’s happy personality was back. It looked like the cracks in his mask were only temporary. We headed back into the office through the front door to the building.
Billy grew immediately distracted when we walked in the door, finding the receptionist’s desk occupied. His huge movie-star smile returned as he saw Ella, who was typing something on her computer. She looked up when we entered, smiling right back at Billy. I groaned. They ignored me.
“Hi,” said Billy, walking over to her desk.
“Hi.”
“I’m Billy.”
“Ella,” she said. “You’re the new PI, right?”
He nodded. “And you’re the new receptionist?”
She frowned. “Not so new. I’ve been here for a while now.”
“You weren’t here when I last worked here,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows. “You used to work here?”
He nodded. “Before I transferred to Brisbane.”
“Oh, I love Brisbane!” she said, proving once and for all that she was a psychopath. No one ‘loved’ Brisbane. At best people tolerated it. I didn’t even like seeing it on maps. That maybe wasn’t the city’s fault, though. After all, the last time I’d been there it had been on a week long holiday with my ex, who had dragged me to both a Katy Perry concert and a musical. I know what you’re thinking – why not do both those things in Sydney, where you lived? Exactly what I said. But apparently that’s not the kind of thing you’re meant to say when someone gives you a birthday present. It makes you sound ungrateful. Which I absolutely was. Why would I be grateful for being forced to endure the worst week in history?
It’s not that I’m inherently against pop songs or musical theatre. It’s just that the choice of holiday was so incredibly at odds with my personality that I began to question whether I’d somehow slipped into an alternate reality. Not to mention the musical in question was Cats, which, if you haven’t seen it, I’d suggest you avoid at all cost. Singing cats. That’s what it’s about. Grown humans dressed up as cats, singing about life as a cat. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea, but I like to imagine the musical was written by someone who dropped a ton of acid and watched a group of feral felines eating garbage from a dumpster, then wrote down an accurate account of what they saw.
“I prefer Sydney,” said Billy, smiling at Ella. “Much better scenery.”
I actually gagged aloud. “Better scenery? Really, Billy? Is that the best pick up line you can manage?”
They both shot me annoyed glances and then turned back to face each other, ignoring me. It looked like Billy’s word vomit was working. Ella was lapping it right up, just like my pet dog did with actual vomit.
I didn’t have the stomach to stand around listening to the two of them flirt with each other, so I headed back to the office to sort out my notes for the day and tally up expenses. Maybe a flash of inspiration would come to me while I mulled over what we’d found out today. If not, we still had tomorrow’s trip to prison to look forward to.
Chapter Ten
Billy
“Sorry about that,” I said, turning back to Ella as Nat disappeared into our office. Well, our storage cupboard. “She’s, uh…”
Ella nodded. “I know what she’s like,” she said with a grin that left me breathless. Perfect white teeth against bright red lipstick, a smile that went all the way to her eyes (which were brown and flawlessly made-up with lashes so long they looked like she could probably use them to fly). I knew I shouldn’t really be looking at other women when my lovely Martha was waiting on me, but I couldn’t help it. It was hard not to look at Ella. “It’s not your fault. No one has any control over Natalia.”
“Right,” I said. “And technically she’s my boss, so…”
Ella’s eyes widened. “Seriously? But didn’t you say you worked as a PI here before I started?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“But she started here after me! Why would they make her your boss?” I shrugged and she shook her head. “Typical.”
My brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
She paused, looking a little worried, like she’d said something she shouldn’t have. “Oh, nothing.”
I crossed my arms. “That’s definitely a lie.”
“Wow, you are good at this PI thing,” she said with a wry smile.
I grinned. “Come on, you can tell me.”
“I really shouldn’t have said that.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
She took a deep breath, mulling it over. “Alright,” she said finally. “I’ll tell you – on one condition.”
I smiled. “What condition?”
“You come out for drinks tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows. “A date? Already?”
She rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling. “A group of us go out after work sometimes.”
“So not a date?” I said, pouting. “Breaking my heart, Ella.”
One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Oh, it’s still a date. We usually have an orgy afterwards.”
I laughed. “Right, of course. Well then, I can’t possibly say no. Intrigue and an orgy – my weaknesses.”
She smiled. “Then it’s settled. I’ll meet you here in…” She checked the time on her computer. “Twenty-five minutes, when we both knock off for the day. I’ll let Bruno know you’re coming.”
My stomach clenched at that but I maintained my smile. Of course Bruno would be there. Why hadn’t I realised that? I was an idiot. “Great. Well, in the meantime, I should prob
ably get back to my boss.”
Ella smirked. I got the distinct impression she wasn’t a big fan of Natalia. “Good luck.”
Nat was on the phone when I walked into the office so I took the opportunity to have a look around. She hadn’t been joking – this really was a storage room. Just big enough to fit two desks in, one tiny window high up and a single globe casting dim yellow light down on us. I moved to the empty desk and took a seat. There was a computer which looked reasonably new and some pens and sticky notes in the drawers. The chair was comfortable. OK, the location sucked, but the setup itself wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t like Bruno had given me a typewriter and a fax machine or something.
I logged into the computer and did some research, pulling all the info I could on Troy Spencer, just to give myself a little refresher course. Yes, he’d been in prison at the time of the murder, but he had plenty of cronies who could have done it on his behalf. I knew the bar where his associates hung out, so I made a memo to myself to go there.
Audrey hadn’t proven to be all that helpful, not that I’d really expected to find out much from her. The one piece of information I’d gotten from her was that she knew – or at least suspected – what was in that safe deposit box. It most likely had to do with one of Jake’s cases, then. She was aware of some piece of evidence he had on his hands that he’d wanted to keep hidden from the world, and now she knew that we knew it existed. We didn’t have a clue what it was, sure, but we knew something, and Audrey definitely didn’t like that.
Once I was done with my research and typing up my notes, I had five minutes until I could leave. Nat was still on the phone, and it looked to me like she’d been on hold almost the entire time. I wondered who she was calling. The prison? Yes, that was probably it. Trying to make an appointment to speak to Spencer. I shook my head. Good luck with that. No way would he agree to meet with us.