by Unknown
I walked all the way back to my parents’ house holding my specs together with one hand. I didn’t have a car or a house of my own, so I walked to work and lived with my parents. I know, I know. What a grown-up.
My parents’ house was your average Gerongate abode. There was nothing all that special about it. It was a two storey, three bedroom home designed in the 70s. As it had slowly moved on through the decades, much of the interior/exterior had (luckily) been updated. However, there was still evidence of the original decorating to be found in the lounge room, where you practically had to wade through the cream-coloured shag pile carpet in order to reach the couch.
I had once pointed out the lack of taste in that rug to my mother. She just told me that if I didn’t like it I could move out. She had never changed that carpet, so I guess she was hoping I’d go for the ‘leave’ option. She’d probably call in the decorators the second I was gone. I was sure she hated it just as much as me; she probably just kept it as an incentive. Mumsie’s quite cunning like that.
I entered our house through the front door and walked through to the back. I was heading for the kitchen to see if I could scab some food off my mother. She’d probably be cooking something, since I hadn’t seen her in the garden when I came in. Now, despite the kind of mental images this may provoke (“Oh, thy mother art such a lovely housewife”), that’s not quite accurate. If you think that her hobbies make her sound a little repressed, then you need to take into account that another of her favourite pastimes is driving her bad-arse Nissan with the massive bull-bar out into the country and “sight-seeing” (read: drag racing) with her best friend, Violet McKenzie (who drives a Prado). She thinks we don’t know she races, but it’s pretty obvious – who goes for a country drive with their best friend in two separate cars?
I stood in the doorway of the kitchen getting high on the smell of biscuits cooking. Mmm. She was putting a second round of mixture on the trays ready to go in the oven when the first lot was done. Mum had her back to me, but she must have heard me come in because before I even spoke she said, “No, there will not be any mixture left over, you won’t get it if there is, and you can’t lick the bowl. You can eat one of the biscuits when they come out the oven, like a nice, civilised, grown up would do. And –” she turned to face me. “Jeez, what happened to your face? It’s hideous!”
I can always rely on Mum for a confidence boost.
“Well, the wall wasn’t watching where it was going…” I trailed off.
“Get some ice on it or something, for goodness’ sake! It’s all bruised and swollen. Where does it hurt?”
Well, I was guessing it was probably hurting in the same place it was bruised and swollen, but I told her anyway.
“Just up the middle of my face.” She passed me a bag of frozen peas to put over it.
“So, apart from your ‘run-in’ with the wall,” at this point she began to laugh hysterically at her own joke, “How was your day?”
“Great!” There was no sarcasm in this statement, and my mother cut her eyes to me suspiciously.
“Drugs?”
“No, I – ”
“You found a wallet full of money on your way home and you’re keeping it?”
“No, I – ”
“Oh, well. Better luck next time.”
“I’ve got big news. It’s the reason I’m happy.”
“You’ve finally got a boyfriend and he’s asked you to move in with him! Isn’t that wonderful? Quick, let’s go upstairs and I’ll help you pack. Who is he? When do I get to meet him? How old is he? Not that I care too much if he’s gonna get you out of my house.”
“MUM! That’s not it. I don’t have a boyfriend.” She looked a bit put out at this. “But I did quit my job today.”
“Really?”
“Yes…” She was concerned. I could see it on her face.
“Where are you going to work now?”
I paused. I hadn’t really thought about that. In fact, I’d totally overlooked it.
“Umm…” I began. “Umm…”
“Yes?”
Oops. Forgot about that bit. That whole getting-another-job thing. I wasn’t really qualified to do anything. At all. Maybe I could get unemployment benefits. It probably paid better than my last job.
“I don’t actually know. I don’t s’pose you’ve heard of any jobs available?” I hoped she had. I’d do anything. It couldn’t be any worse than working at Gregory’s. I was desperate. “Anything?”
“I’ve heard there’s an opening at Coles.”
Well, maybe not anything.
The next morning I stumbled out of bed far too early. Somehow I managed to make it to the bathroom with my eyes still shut. When I finally opened them and caught sight of myself in the mirror I nearly screamed, thinking there was a monster in the room with me, but when I put on my glasses (which I’d taped together last night) I realised it was just my own purply-blue face in the reflection. The bruise hadn’t gotten a lot better over night. If anything, it was worse. I had a quick shower (only half an hour – quick for me), avoided looking at myself in the mirror again, dressed in semi-professional clothes, and headed down to the kitchen for breakfast. After that I planned to spend the rest of the day job-seeking. I settled on a glass of orange juice (which I spilt) and a piece of toast (which I burned) with jam (which kind of made up for the other two mistakes), and then I sat down and grabbed the newspaper to study while I ate. I meant to look for jobs vacant in the Classifieds, but the heading on the front page caught my eye. This had been the hottest piece of gossip going around Gerongate yesterday. I’d heard about it from everyone I talked to. Well, nearly everyone – Jeremy and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss it for obvious reasons. I’d been far too busy destroying his marriage for that. But everyone else had mentioned it. When I saw the headline I just couldn’t resist.
OLD MCKENZIE HAS THREE FARMS, $2 BILLION, NO HEAD…
(What a touchingly sincere title. So sensitive I could barely stand it.) I discovered that Francis McKenzie had been found dead on Tuesday morning, when his (headless) body was discovered by a couple of kids. They must have been awful burdens on society to get a Karma trip like that.
The decapitation wasn’t what had killed him, luckily – it looked like he had been shot to death first. Phew. It would suck to be murdered, but if I had a choice between dying of bullets or having my head hacked off, it wouldn’t take long for me to decide.
I read further down the article and found out that Frank had left everything he owned (which was quite a substantial amount, what with him being a billionaire and all) to one person – his nephew, James McKenzie.
I knew James McKenzie. Everyone did. He was two grades above me in school, and he was the most popular guy there. He was also my mother’s best friend’s youngest child. After he completed Year 12 he’d gotten straight into police academy. He must’ve done OK there because a year later he was working as a cop at a Gerongate Station.
Personally, I didn’t really like James McKenzie. I’d always thought that he had an over-inflated sense of his own importance. I suppose that wasn’t really his fault if you saw the way people acted around him. Not me, of course. I’d been friends with him when we were little because of our mothers, but he changed. (I know, I know – “He’s not the same person as he was when he was four!” Whatever.) We still had to see each other a lot while we were growing up (much to our disgust) but since it generally ended in tears/swearing/violence, we tried to keep our contact to a minimum. I’d hardly seen him since his mother kicked him out, even less since we finished school, and that was fine by me.
Everything James ever had was a present from his Uncle Frank. Frank had no wife or kids and was a bit of a cranky old fart, to tell the truth. He didn’t like many people, but he and his nephew James got on like a house on fire. When James was kicked out of his parent’s house (age 16), Frank had taken him in and made him continue on with school. When James had decided to become a cop, Frank had payed his fee
s, and given James a house (free of rent) as a graduation gift. And it wasn’t like this was just some shack in a side alley. We are talking a few million dollars’ worth of mansion. I’d never actually been inside, but I’d driven past and it was massive.
Some people have all the luck.
But now Frank was dead, and everyone was accusing James. It was understandable that they thought it was him. I mean, he had motive (a couple of billion motives, if you catch my drift), and the only person who could give him an alibi had left for South America on Tuesday afternoon, hadn’t been questioned, and was currently unable to be contacted. And James had means. Frank had been shot with a pistol, and in Gerongate – and the rest of Australia, as far as I knew – only cops were legally allowed to carry pistols. If James had used a registered gun then it was only a matter of time before he was caught. Of course, being a cop, he probably came into contact with plenty of unregistered guns, too…
Poor little James. Means, motive and, right now, no alibi. Everyone thought he was a murderer, and his perfect reputation was in tatters. Boo-hoo. Now don’t get the wrong idea – it wasn’t like I was enjoying this. Well, maybe I was. It was just nice that for once I wasn’t the one being publicly humiliated.
It was sad about Frank, though. What a gross thing for someone to do. And everyone thought his nephew had done it – at least, nearly everyone. I thought McKenzie was a moron, but I still didn’t think he was a killer. I wasn’t sure he had it in him.
When I finished reading the article I flipped over to the ‘Jobs Vacant’ section. Not much there. Coles needed new checkout workers. McDonalds was looking for young people to sell their ‘food’. Same old, same old. I checked the date on the paper. It was yesterday’s. Hmm. So the jobs in the paper weren’t looking incredibly promising. Google didn’t throw up much either.
There was only one thing for it.
I shuddered at the mere thought.
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About the Author
Clare Kauter is an Australian author who describes her books as “mystery with a twist..ery”, and advises that if you don’t like puns, you should back away now. Since early adolescence, she has spent much of her time reading, writing and watching crime fiction and fantasy, while shirking the sort of responsibility that real people have to deal with on a daily basis.
She began writing her first novel at age 13, and eventually (with a lot of editing), that book was published as Losing Your Head (the first of the Charlie Davies Mysteries) in early 2015. She also writes the ‘Damned, Girl!’ series, set in a modern fantasy world.
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