A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1

by Livia Day

  ‘So that’s it,’ Stewart said, spreading his hands wide as I pulled into the little car park of Claudina’s apartment block. ‘All my secrets, laid bare before ye.’

  ‘I believe you,’ I said, though I didn’t, really. Surely there was still more to be discovered about Stewart McTavish. ‘Come on. Let’s dig up some of Xanthippe’s secrets for a while. It’s definitely her turn.’

  * * *

  Xanthippe answered the door on the first knock. She glowered at me. ‘Whose bright idea was it to feed Doris Day movies to this woman? I don’t know if getting my hands on that bastard Darrow is actually worth all this—one more amusing misunderstanding with Rock Hudson and I will stab myself in the eye. Both eyes. Then I’m going to start on other people’s eyes.’

  ‘So glad I’m unqualified to be the bodyguard,’ Stewart said in a low voice.

  ‘We need to talk,’ I said, ignoring their Doris Day hatefest. Savages. ‘About this.’ I flashed her a glimpse inside Kevin Darrow’s exercise book.

  Xanthippe rolled her eyes. ‘That took you long enough. Come on in.’

  Claudina, her bloodshot eyes fixed to By the Light of the Silvery Moon, didn’t even look up from the couch.

  ‘Bonus points for the insomnia cure,’ said Xanthippe, giving me two very sarcastic thumbs up. ‘I think you melted her brain. We can talk back here.’ She led the way to an empty bedroom.

  I assumed it had belonged to Julian. There was furniture here but someone—his mother or sister, perhaps—had cleared out everything remotely personal.

  Xanthippe had an overnight bag stashed in one corner, and a pile of face and hair products in a box on the otherwise empty bookshelf. Making herself at home. She had also brought some furnishings that I had last seen in Darrow’s house.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘You’re stealing stuff now? How many lamps and doonas does it take to balance out a trashed Lotus?’

  ‘More than he owns,’ Xanthippe said grimly. ‘Let’s get on with this. What do you think you know?’

  I kicked off my powder blue boots and sat on the bed, bouncing experimentally. I picked a nail polish out of Zee’s collection and started painting my big toenail in Ocean Aqua. ‘Well, I found Darrow. The closed café finally got his attention. He says he’s writing a novel, and he got young Kev to devise some theoretical traps for him to use.’

  Xanthippe snorted. ‘And I’m Calamity Jane. You believed him?’

  I capped the bottle and reached for another, Peppermint Pink, for the second toe. ‘No reason why I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I know I didn’t chuck a postman in a cage or snare a cat in a net,’ Xanthippe said, crossing her arms.

  I raised my eyebrows and said nothing as I started on the third toenail with Iceberg Cobalt. Stewart said it for me: ‘No mention of the trap in Crash Velvet’s flat. Does that mean ye did that one?’

  Xanthippe glared at us both. ‘Darrow is the one who set the Trapper loose. I found the plans on his computer.’

  ‘But when did you find them?’ I asked, sorting through the remaining nail polish options. I found a lovely bright scarlet called Lurve and set it aside for later. ‘Before Julian Morris built the trap in Crash Velvet’s spare room, or afterwards?’

  ‘If you know Morris built it, why are you hassling me?’ Xanthippe huffed.

  ‘Because he doesn’t have any motive for doing it,’ I replied. ‘The most logical reason is if someone paid him. Musicians. Always broke. Who do we know who might want to get Crash Velvet a bit of extra publicity, and capitalise on the “Trapper” story that had already featured on the Sandstone City blog?’

  ‘Their new PR advisor,’ Stewart said helpfully.

  I lined up several nail polish bottles on the bedside table—a blue, a green and a brown, all strangely matte with metallic flecks through them. ‘I see you’ve been collecting the new Gee Bee range. It’s crap, apparently. But here’s the funny thing—when Julian’s body was taken into Forensics, they found traces of a Gee Bee nail polish on his fingertips, as if he’d been painting someone’s nails with it.’

  ‘That’s your evidence?’ Xanthippe said. ‘Substandard nail polish? It’s not overly sound as detective work goes, Tish.’

  I just looked at her. ‘This range of polish comes in a four pack. Where’s your Poison Flesh, Zee?’

  Xanthippe fidgeted impatiently. ‘What are you going to do, dob me in to Leo? Last I heard, not being in possession of a bottle of nail polish was not a hanging offence.’

  ‘She has a point,’ agreed Stewart.

  I pointed a bottle of Mermaid Foam at Xanthippe. ‘This isn’t about Bishop, or evidence. The point is, I know you’re involved. Darrow is involved. Apparently I’m involved. So tell me what the hell is going on before Leo starts arresting us all.’

  Xanthippe flopped on the foot of the bed. ‘You don’t honestly think I’ve been sneaking around putting ping pong balls into handbags?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think!’ After a moment, I gave in. ‘No. But Darrow thinks you’re the Trapper, and you think he is. If you weren’t both so obsessed with this little cat and mouse game over the Lotus—yes, I know, beautiful car, destroyed, tragedy of epic proportions, put it back in your pants—then you would have pooled your information by now and you would have realised that someone has used both of you.’

  Xanthippe blew out the breath. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘A timeline of events. A confession about everything you were directly involved with.’ I raised a hand to ward off her protests. ‘I’m not telling Bishop anything right now. As if he’d believe me. But I have to know what you did, and what Darrow did, so we can get together and figure out what someone else did.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Xanthippe. ‘For the record, I don’t think Darrow is the Trapper. I think Morris was the Trapper, and Darrow paid him.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘Because I paid him too.’

  I threw the bottle of nail varnish at her. She ducked, and it hit the wall in a crunch of glossy-green-on-cream. Oops. Good thing this wasn’t my house.

  ‘Right,’ said Xanthippe, straightening up. ‘Timeline. I found out about my car via text a couple of weeks ago—can you believe Darrow didn’t have the balls to at least call me in person?’

  ‘Bravery is not one of his superpowers,’ I agreed, managing to stay calm.

  ‘So I decided to take the job with Crash Velvet—kCeera’s an old friend, and they’d been asking me to sort out their PR for months, but I didn’t fancy coming back here.’

  ‘Until you needed an excuse to come and whip Darrow’s arse,’ I put in.

  ‘As if I need an excuse. Yeah, so I got here, what, a week and a half ago? Sunday before last. Started looking for Darrow, and working with the band. I read up on Sandstone City, which seemed the local media most likely to play ball.’ She nodded in Stewart’s direction. ‘Saw his stories on the Trapper, and wondered if it was something we could use, but didn’t think much of it. But I needed somewhere to crash that night, and I broke into Darrow’s place. And I found the plans.’

  ‘You assumed he was the Trapper?’ I said, shaking my head with disbelief.

  ‘You don’t know half the dodgy stuff he gets up to, Tish. It wasn’t unreasonable.’

  ‘Not to an ex-girlfriend with a grudge, no.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Xanthippe grunted. ‘I figured it was poetic justice, using Darrow’s freakishness to help me out in my job. So I set up one of his traps myself.’

  I went cold. ‘Just how important is promoting this band to you?’

  Xanthippe looked furious. ‘What the hell do you think of me? I’m going to run around killing buskers for fame and profit? Believe me, if I was prepared to murder people to promote Crash Velvet, we wouldn’t be relying on some pissy little blog to get the news out. No offence,’ she added, to Stewart.

  ‘None taken,’ he said, bemused.

  ‘I asked around some pubs last week. Found out some busker had been boasting
about being paid to set stupid traps around the streets of Sandy Bay. Morris was easy enough to find. You’re not the only one who knows people around here, Tabitha. He had a copy of the same plans I did—never admitted who paid him for the first traps, though I dropped enough hints that I already knew. I paid him to do one for me. That was the Monday and Tuesday before he was killed.’

  Damn, she is good. ‘So you already knew Morris?’ I asked.

  Xanthippe gave me another of those ‘are you high’ looks that she was so very good at. ‘Tish, you went out with him at college. We all knew him.’

  ‘Huh.’ Maybe I should be keeping some kind of diary.

  Now Xanthippe was shifting uncomfortably. ‘Morris was supposed to put a dummy in the net, done up in freaky bondage gear. I got a shop mannequin for him, and the clothes, and even gave him the damn nail polish. Imagine the look on my face the next morning when the band told me that instead of a dummy, it was Morris hanging in the net, with a needle sticking out of him. I don’t know what happened. But if Darrow is responsible, this is serious shit, Tabitha. He can’t get away with this.’

  I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. ‘Why did none of you tell the police that you had hired Morris to build the trap?’

  ‘Crash Velvet don’t know,’ Xanthippe said. ‘I mean—they know not to mention my name or my involvement with them to anyone. They’re good like that. But I let Morris into the flat when they were all out—the band don’t know what I did.’

  ‘And you,’ I said in a hard voice. ‘Why haven’t you told Bishop about your role in all this?’

  ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t put him in this position, Tish. You know how bad it’s going to look.’

  ‘It will be worse if it comes out now. Or later—if the case is compromised because of it? You can’t do this to him, Zee.’

  ‘I’ve already done it.’ Xanthippe’s voice was on edge—this was the most freaked out I had ever seen her. ‘I can’t tell him now. He’ll kill me.’

  ‘He loves you, he won’t—’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Stewart broke in. ‘Am I missing something here, about Bishop and Xanthippe?’

  I had forgotten that he hadn’t been here our whole lives. ‘She’s his sister.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ It apparently required a bit of mental readjustment to add that detail into the mix. ‘Different last names?’ Stewart asked after a moment.

  ‘Halves,’ said Xanthippe. ‘Different dads. We’re not that close. But it’s not exactly going to help out his career if I admit I commissioned the Crash Velvet trap.’

  ‘Or if you’re arrested for murder,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes, thanks for that.’ Xanthippe sighed. ‘The police have decided it was an accidental overdose. Maybe it really was.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, knowing how much she needed to believe that. ‘But if that’s the case—what happened to the mannequin?’

  ‘We’re missing something,’ said Stewart, the only one left in the room who wasn’t sitting on the bed. ‘Some detail that will make the rest of this make sense.’

  ‘Just the one?’ Xanthippe said sarcastically. ‘Shall I check my handbag?’

  ‘Don’t mind him, he reads crime novels,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, one of those.’ She gave him a pointed look. ‘This is off the record, by the way, Mr Bloggy McBlogger.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Stewart. ‘It’s my policy not tae publish anything that will make Bishop want to hurt me.’

  ‘Amazing how much ground that policy covers,’ I said, wanting to smile despite everything.

  ‘Ye were right the first time, Tabitha,’ said Stewart. ‘None of this will make sense until we get Xanthippe and Darrow in a room together, and figure out which bits of this the two of them are no’ responsible for.’

  I nodded. ‘You grab Claudina and the Doris Day stash. I’ll make some calls. Let’s get this done tonight. My place. I have a café to open tomorrow.’

  Gateaux. Panini. Bagels. Gluten-free friands. I wanted my old life back.

  I also wanted Stewart to stick around, and Darrow to stop disappearing, and Xanthippe to be my friend again, and Bishop to kiss me like he did in the stairwell that time, only more.

  I wanted my dad back, while we were at it, but that wasn’t going to happen. I’d settle for the rest.

  * * *

  ‘Ceege!’ I yelled as soon as my key turned in the door. ‘You home?’

  ‘No need to yell,’ said my housemate, strolling out of the kitchen in his grubbiest Nirvana t-shirt and a pair of half-dead jeans that I swear I have binned twice for his own good. ‘Didn’t tell me about the dinner party.’ Ceege shared a very male nod with Stewart, cast a startled look over the mess that was a sleep-deprived Claudina, and eyed up Xanthippe with interest. ‘Long time no see. I keep telling Tabs she needs more lady friends. Come around any time.’

  ‘Eyes back in your head, or I’m telling Katie,’ I told him. ‘What’s this about dinner?’

  Ceege jerked a thumb towards the back of the house. ‘Darrow. In the kitchen. With a wooden spoon. He wasn’t expected?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’ I’d been calling all of Darrow’s numbers, including the new one, but had received no reply. Apparently, that was because he had spent the afternoon camped out in my kitchen.

  I knew what he was cooking before I reached the kitchen door. Bouillabaisse. My bouillabaisse, to be exact—well, my recipe by way of Jean-Michel’s mother in the Dordogne, that angel on earth who taught me how to make melt-in-the-mouth croissants and heavenly pie crusts.

  ‘Should I have brought bread?’ I asked as I stepped into my kitchen, but several baguettes were already lined up on the counter.

  ‘Sent Ceege out for some,’ Darrow said.

  Xanthippe was already moving forward, with the momentum of a freight train. ‘You stupid, selfish, careless, bastard arsehole.’

  He turned as she reached him, and stuck out the wooden spoon to ward her off. She hesitated, caught in a mesmerising haze of tomato and seafood and mmmmm. ‘Try it,’ said Darrow in his smoothest voice.

  Suspiciously, Xanthippe blew on the contents of the spoon, and then took it into her mouth, tasting the soup.

  ‘Does it need pepper?’ Darrow asked.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, strangely calm as she licked the spoon. ‘It’s good.’ She pulled a document out of her hand-

  bag and smacked him in the chest with it. ‘Sign this. Now. Dickhead.’

  ‘You only had to ask,’ he said, eyes innocent. Even I would have smacked him for that, but apparently bouillabaisse is the universal currency of forgiveness, or at least of temporary cease-fires. Xanthippe stood there glaring while Darrow signed the insurance forms with a flourish. She took them back and checked every signature.

  ‘I’ve been working on a way to make it up to you,’ Darrow added, his caramel eyes all warm in the soup haze.

  Oh, yeah. I’d called it. The only reason he hadn’t signed those papers at a distance was because he wanted her to hunt him down. These two were so damaged for each other.

  ‘Don’t,’ Xanthippe muttered. ‘You making things up to me is always more hazardous than the original disaster.’

  Darrow grinned that wicked ‘oh I’m off the hook’ grin of his, and fetched bowls.

  We ate the soup with piles of French bread, the six of us. Ceege slurped his down in a hurry, then beat a retreat to World of Warcraft. We were being way too weird for him, and he needed a dose of reality that could only be provided by metrosexual elves. Claudina kept nodding off in her chair.

  Darrow and Xanthippe watched each other in ways that made me think I should either offer them pistols at dawn, or a bedroom for the night.

  ‘So,’ I said finally. ‘Someone stole Darrow’s laptop and gave copies of the trap designs to Julian Morris, before Xanthippe came back to town, paying him to build the first two traps. Someone stalked me with electrified ping pong balls, and did the same to Claudina, to freak her into cha
nging the story she told the police. I’m assuming that none of those things were done by people in this room?’

  Xanthippe and Darrow shrugged at each other.

  ‘It never occurred to me anyone would actually build the traps,’ said Darrow, raising his eyebrows at Xanthippe. He had already been brought up to speed on her side project. ‘Let alone pay people to build them. They were purely designed for fictional mischief.’

  ‘Better be a bloody good book,’ said Xanthippe.

  ‘Lots of violence and smut,’ he shot back.

  ‘Sounds trashy. And my car…?’

  ‘I was researching a scene,’ Darrow admitted, appropriately shamefaced.

  ‘A scene in which the protagonist is dumb enough to leave off the handbrake when he gets out of a vintage sports car?’

  He gave her a genuine expression of sorrow and guilt. ‘I have been looking for a replacement.’

  Xanthippe folded her arms. ‘You’ve been avoiding me while you look for a replacement?’

  ‘No, I’ve been avoiding you so we wouldn’t have to have this conversation until you lose the urge to strangle me with a computer cord.’

  ‘I’m not sure that day will ever come,’ Xanthippe told him.

  Darrow smiled warmly. ‘I promise to make it up to you. Many times over, if I have to.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  I opened my mouth to point out that the best way Darrow could have avoided Xanthippe and her strangling urges was to sign those insurance forms when her lawyer first sent them to him. Then I shut my mouth. Interfering in other people’s love lives is always a bad idea.

  ‘Anyway,’ Stewart interrupted. ‘We dinnae know who, or why. After all tha’, the only thing we’ve achieved this evening is our tea.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Darrow.

  Claudina yawned, blinking her eyes rapidly. ‘Was I asleep? What did I miss?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Stewart. ‘Is there anything you havenae told us, Claudina? Morris was killed by a heroin overdose. If he was no drug user, where did he get it?’