“Oh, hi, Vanessa, it’s Tammy, from across the road, you know? I was wondering if you could lend me some desiccated coconut. I was going to make a lemon slice and I forgot to get any.” It was the best she’d been able to come up with.
Vanessa’s voice drifted to her over the airwaves, sounding just ever so slightly irritated. She did not have any desiccated coconut. A likely story, Tammy thought. Bitch. What kind of Australian woman doesn’t have shredded coconut in her pantry? She was more sure than ever that Vanessa was Bad to the Bone. She made her excuses and rang off, scampering up the steps and in through the back door just as Vanessa emerged, got into her Porsche and vroomed off.
Tammy’s heart was pounding. She’d always been a daring, innovative thinker, at least that was what her thesis advisor had said, but she’d seldom translated this quality into direct, external, Schwarzenegger-type action. This had been a first, she realised, examining what she held in her hand with mounting excitement. It was a small packet of white powder.
***
“You did WHAT?”
“It was easy, Ben, she even left the car door open. So is it the right stuff?”
The little cellophane packet sat between them on Tammy’s kitchen table, seeming to give out a malevolent aura. Ben shook his head. “I’m going out with Arnold Schwarzenegger.” He sighed, picked up the packet and opened it. He sniffed, very cautiously, at it, then inserted the tip of one finger to pick up a few grains of the powder and rubbed it between his fingers. He closed the packet, and got up to wash his hands at the kitchen sink.
“Looks like it, as far as I can tell. Of course, it’ll have to go to the lab to make sure, and you need the lab report for evidence anyway, but this is enough to get a warrant with. But listen here, Tammy, you’d have to give evidence at trial of how you got this, and that just isn’t a good idea. These are some very powerful, nasty people you’re messing with. I’m not at all happy that you went charging in and did this off your own bat.”
“Why, I’ve got the results right there in front of you.”
Ben sighed again, a long, mournful sigh that spoke volumes about the inability of the lay person to understand police matters. “Look, you send some crim away for a good long stretch. But sooner or later, they get out, right? And in the meantime, they’ve got friends and associates, right? I don’t want to come home and find you murdered one dark night.”
Come home? COME HOME? OMG OMG OMG, shrieked Tammy’s mind. OMG he’s thinking about.... Focus, you silly cow, she told herself. Sternly she forced her mind back to the issue at hand.
“But why me? I wouldn’t be the one arresting her. If anyone was going to be murdered one dark night, it’d be you.”
“You’re forgetting the trial. That would have to come out in evidence. You’d be on the witness stand and everything.”
Tammy thought for a few seconds.
“Damn. I don’t know if I’d make a very good witness, Ben. My memory isn’t so good sometimes. I mean, look at now, I completely misremembered about that packet of stuff.”
“What?”
“Yes! It’s all coming back to me now. The packet fell out of the box when she was putting it in the car, and I noticed it when I was looking out the window. That was what reminded me I didn’t have any coconut, seeing that packet of white stuff, so I rang her to see if I could borrow some. Then I forgot all about the packet she’d dropped, and she drove off, and then you came over and noticed the packet on the ground in her driveway and picked it up.”
“Jesus, Tammy, you can’t just rewrite the facts like that.”
“Why not? In fact, now I come to think about it, that’s wrong too. I never even saw the packet. You just happened to see it in her driveway, didn’t you? Nothing to do with me.”
***
The police raid was better than a movie. Tammy watched from her French windows as police descended on the McMansion from all directions. It took until nearly midnight for it all to be over, as police were coming and going for hours carrying boxes of stuff and pieces of equipment, but far and away the best part was seeing Vanessa led out by Ben and his friend Joel, spitting and screaming like a fishwife, one shoe off, her hair coming down and all her elegance and annoying perfection flung to the winds.
***
Following the arrest and conviction of Vanessa Carlson in a blaze of tabloid publicity, Ben was the hero of the hour. He was commended by the Police Commissioner, and more importantly, returned to ordinary detective duties.
Tom was deemed unfit for further police work as a result of his brush with drugs. Tammy could never see any difference in him, but Dr Wright, the vet, had given Ben a written statement expressing his medical opinion that his constitution was damaged and that he should be immediately retired from active police duty. He and Ben moved into Tammy’s house, in order to provide Tom, Ben said, with a settled home environment.
Tammy, of course, received no public recognition for her part in shutting down the Yarrangong drug ring, but the Yarrangong CIB threw a massive party in her honour, at which she was given honorary membership in the detective squad. For a while she toyed with the idea of joining the police force, but Ben’s reminiscences of life in the Police Academy, which apparently involved a lot of getting up at dawn and running for miles, soon had her deciding in favour of writing crime novels instead. She found a great satisfaction in constructing almost-perfect crimes, and if her detective hero bore more than a passing resemblance to a certain Detective Senior Constable, her new friends at the station were too kind to remark upon it, at least in her hearing.
THE END
Thank you for taking time to read Operation Tomcat. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends and posting a short review on Smashwords, Amazon and/or Goodreads. Word-of-mouth referrals are an author’s best friend and much appreciated.
Also by Tabitha Ormiston-Smith
NOVELS
Dance of Chaos: Lazy, frivolous, conceited and totally self centred, Fiona MacDougall is not an asset to the workforce. When she applies for a transfer to the Infotech department of her company, she does so only in order to get an afternoon off work.
Can she succeed in her challenging new job?
Can she save her little brother from the consequences of his evil deeds?
Will Moses do something embarrassing to the vicar’s leg again?
Laugh till you drop as you watch the hapless Fiona at work and in the bosom of her dysfunctional family.
Gift of Continence: With the perfect wedding dress, what can go wrong? A great deal, as Fiona McDougall rapidly discovers. From the wedding from hell onwards, Fiona successively discovers that her new husband is stingy, bad-tempered and an adulterer.
HEALTH WARNING: do not attempt to read this book while drinking hot liquids, as they may shoot out of your nose.
COLLECTION
Once Upon A Dragon: Collected short fiction. A non-themed, cross-genre collection of short fiction, including fantasy, science fiction and horror as well as general fiction.
NOVELLAS
No Such Thing: Twelve-year-old Callie has taken on the responsibility of running the house and looking after her father, following her parents’ divorce. When the bank threatens to foreclose on their home, Callie is forced to admit that this is a problem even she can’t solve, until help comes from an unexpected quarter. But Callie learns that all actions have consequences, and sometimes the price for getting what you want can be too high...
Operation Tomcat: Left almost penniless after divorcing her cheating husband, Tammy moves to the country to reinvent her life. But life in a country town isn't as simple as it looks....
NON-FICTION
Grammar Without Tears: This short collection of dialogues will solve the most frequently experienced problems of the grammatically challenged.
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Operation Tomcat Page 6