‘Boss,’ he said. ‘What’s news?’
‘Wal, it’s Liv.’
His light tone changed. ‘Tell me.’
‘She’s in Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital’s emergency department. Her heart I think, but I’m not sure. We’re on our way.’
He hung straight up on me. I expected he would. Wal loved Liv as much as I did. More, possibly.
* * *
He was standing outside the Emergency double automatic doors when we arrived, smoking a rollie and chewing his fingernails.
‘Wallace,’ Joanna acknowledged as she swept past with Cass on her arm. My mother didn’t approve of Wal and Liv’s liaison, but she wasn’t one to quibble in a time of crisis. It was something I liked about her.
I followed more slowly, waiting for him to stub out his cig and walk with me.
‘What do you know?’ he rasped out.
‘Nothing more than I told you,’ I said. ‘We got home and Joanna had just got a call from the hospital. I rang you and we came straight here.’
‘But I saw her yesterday. We played cards.’
Nothing fazed Wal. He’d roadied for every big rock band that had been through the city in the last thirty years, and plenty of the smaller ones too. He’d seen accidental overdoses, suicides, scaffolding injuries, burns … and taken it all in his stride. Right now though, his mouth was pinched tight, and his complexion was white.
As we walked along the long white-lino corridor, I thought about how today had been full of unexpecteds and firsts. Like something was wrong with the magnetic spin of the earth.
I felt as skittish as an animal in an approaching storm.
10
We got to see Liv two hours later when they admitted her to a hospital room for an overnight stay. She was sitting up in bed, hooked up to three blinking machines and sipping tea.
‘Sis,’ said Joanna from the door. ‘Oh, sis.’
She rushed across to Liv’s bedside and grasped her free hand.
Liv squeezed Joanna’s fingers in a reassuring way, but her eyes went straight to Wal, who stood next to me.
‘Don’t fuss, Jo. It’s just a small turn. The doctor says I need to change my diet. No more cream cheese with my caviar. Red wine instead of champagne,’ she said. ‘Quelle horreur!’
Her aura looked steady, if a little washed out. I felt my body instantly relax. She was speaking, cracking jokes. She was all right.
I let Joanna tut over her for an hour before Cass and I dragged her away and left Liv with Wal.
‘Call me later,’ I said to him out of the side of my mouth as I kissed Liv goodbye. ‘And you behave,’ I said to Liv. ‘You just stole ten years from my life that I can’t afford to lose!’
‘Thank for coming, darling,’ she whispered, and I detected a wobble in her voice. Her bravado was for us, but it had shaken her.
‘You need to take care of yourself better,’ I said.
She gripped my hand to pull me down and return the kiss. ‘Get me out of here.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I promised before ushering Cass and Joanna out.
* * *
It was almost dark when I dropped JoBob home. Joanna pecked me on the cheek as a thank you and muttered something about opening a bottle of wine, which I declined on account of having to go and see Hoshi.
‘You going out again?’ asked Cass when JoBob shut the car door.
‘I need to talk to Hoshi.’
‘You want company?’ she asked.
‘No. I want you to get on my laptop and find out anything you can about a guy called Bernard Romeo. A complete report before I get home this evening. Email it to me as soon as you’re done.’
Her eyes caught fire. ‘We’ve got another job!’
‘Of a sort. Let’s just say I owe a favour, and I need it to be over and done with…’
‘Is it for the biker you met in Brisbane?’
I stared at her. The girl was too smart by half. ‘How did you work that out?’
‘You didn’t say what you did this morning but you were flustered when you got back. I checked the mileage on your odometer. You’d been too far for it just to be local.’
‘My odometer! Jeez. Well, Rip Van Super Sleuth you’ve got your own job starting tomorrow watching Garth’s place.’
‘What about tonight?’
‘I’d planned to send Wal over but…’
‘But Liv?’
‘Yeah. Didn’t have the heart to ask him to leave her. I’ll do a couple of drive-bys later on. You be ready to start there about 7am.’
‘Ok. But Tara…’ she trailed off and looked out the window.
‘Spit it out.’
‘I think it’s time we had a paying job.’
‘Amen to that,’ I said and patted her shoulder.
She jumped out of Mona and walked down the driveway. Despite everything the day had thrown at her, I saw a spring in her stride. Cass was a survivor, and I was glad.
* * *
A half hour later, I pulled into the lane behind Hoshi’s cottage in Fremantle, wedged the car into an old tin-roofed carport, and switched off the headlights. Mrs Hara, Hoshi’s large, fierce Italian wife, didn’t like me coming through the front door, so I’d taken to using the tradesman’s entrance.
I found my way to the back door in the dark without tripping over his herbs and knocked on the door. Mrs Hara’s chimes were tinkling in the breeze and I could smell tarragon and mint. I also caught movement in the corner of my eye: the faintest flicker of something pale, and then a sharp pain to the back of my knee.
I came around swinging but was down on my arse before I could connect with anything. A person in a bundle of flowing robes flattened me onto the deck and sat on my chest.
‘Your night reading is very bad, Tara. You must get better at it. Bahahahahh…’ Hoshi Hara jumped lightly to his feet and offered me his hand.
I declined and hauled myself up. ‘What the hell, Hoshi?’
‘Is no good that you just read auras in daytime. You must sense disturbances at night too.’
‘And how do I do that?’
‘Practise stillness,’ he said. ‘Come inside. Mrs Hara has made baklava.’
‘Baklava?’ I suddenly got over being aggrieved by the attack. ‘Lead the way.’
I followed Hoshi into the kitchen and plopped myself down on the stool in the corner. I’d found from hard-learned experience that it was the best place for me. Everywhere else seemed to be in Mrs Hara’s way. One time she even swatted me with her wooden stirring spoon for being between her and the fridge.
These days I was quite comfortable sitting on my corner stool. Only … the baklava was on the kitchen table.
‘Hoshi, could you…’ I began as Mrs Hara bustled in wearing a pair of lycra gym pants and a voluminous t-shirt with a Qantas airline logo on it. It was the first time I’d ever seen her in anything outside her usual floral A-line shifts and pumps. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.
‘Humph,’ she snorted. ‘You.’
‘Bonjourno, Mrs Hara,’ I said meekly. ‘Martin sends his love.’
‘Marty,’ she beamed. ‘Belissimo.’
She went straight to the bench, snatched up the roll of alfoil sitting next to the toaster and tore off a bit. Then she proceeded to wrap some honey dripping baklava into a neat parcel.
‘For Marty,’ she said handing it to me with a glare. Then she kissed her petite husband on the cheek. ‘I go to dancing now. Your supper is in the fridge.’
With that she swooshed out of the room sucking a good amount of the world’s oxygen with her.
‘Will she always hate me?’ I lamented to Hoshi when the door banged shut.
He shrugged. ‘Mrs Hara is a strong woman. I do as I’m told.’
I blinked. ‘We all do.’
‘It is for the best.’
‘Do you know Bernard Romeo?’ I asked him, deciding to change the conversation.
Hoshi frowned. ‘Dead real estate guy. Rich wife.’
‘Yeah, that’s it. I’m the one who found him.’
‘Say what?’
I told him the quick and dirty version of that night’s events, and my subsequent meeting with the Western Cheaters.
‘I thought your aura was looking all messed.’
‘That’s probably on account of other things. The Cheaters want me to find out what Romeo did on the day leading up to his death.’
‘Why so?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but it seems they have … or had a business connection.’
Hoshi shook his head. ‘This not good, Tara. Bad business for you to be mixed up in.’
‘Too late,’ I sighed. ‘Soon as I asked Bon Ames for that favour in Brisbane, I was already in trouble. It got me out of a jam at the time though… But I need advice. How do I beat the cops to finding out what he was doing that day? I’m already a day behind.’
‘You want to find out about a man quick, you go personal.’
‘You mean his personal life?’
‘Yeah, yeah. You go for the personal first. Always. Police, they got their procedure. Rules to follow. Talk work stuff. Blah, blah. You go to the tender bits quick smart.’
‘The tender bits, you reckon?’
He picked up a slice of baklava and squished the honeyed pastry between his thumb and middle finger. ‘Juicy.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Also, I got a contact at the morgue. Works night shift. Maybe he’ll give you a time of death.’
‘Really?’ I perked up. ‘That would help.’
‘His name Jimmy Cricket. You call him. Say I sent you.’
‘That’s not his real name!’
A shrug. ‘His parents lived across from the WACCA.’
I shook my head to clear away the ridiculous image of a stork flying low across the WACCA grounds to drop a baby on someone’s doorstep, and jumped off my stool and gave him a hug.
‘Shush, shush, Missy,’ he said pushing me away. ‘Mrs Hara see that she use you for sushi.’
I quickly reassumed my stool position, and copied Jimmy Cricket’s number into my phone. We chatted for a little longer then I left with Bok’s alfoil-wrapped treat and a notion of where to start.
* * *
I called Cass on the way to Garth’s house.
‘How’s the background search going?’
‘Boring.’ She sounded tired and a bit peeved, but she was a teenager so I expected that.
‘Concentrate on his social life. Look at all the photos of him online and see if you can find the drinking establishments he frequented.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘A drive by Garth’s and then I’m going to the morgue.’
‘It’s not fair,’ she said testily. ‘You get all the fun.’
* * *
I turned up the stereo and let Lana Del Rey accompany me back along the highway to Garth’s place.
He lived in a wide street that ran between the road his office was on and the highway. It was a good spot with some stately old homes interspersed with slightly meeker, refurbished, bungalows. A good, solid address but not the very best.
One time, I imagined that I’d be living there, and had wondered how I would go managing a garden in a street where people had to do that sort of thing. Of course, that never happened in the end, and I’m pretty sure Garth had a gardener to look after it now.
I cruised slowly along his street and pulled up short of his driveway, switching off my headlights. 10pm on a weeknight and Perth was in hunker-down mode. Garth’s front porch light was on, and a light in the front bedroom seeped around the edges of his slatted blinds. I pictured him sitting up in man jammies, reading the business pages of The Australian, and checking his phone for messages from Jasmine.
The idea of him with a crush on someone was vaguely uncomfortable. It’s not that I didn’t wish Garth well; it’s just there hadn’t been another girlfriend since me, and it felt odd. I was used to Garth being single.
I chided myself for being selfish and turned my focus to the peering up and down the street and down the side of his house. All clear on the Western front. No one casing the place except me.
I took the chance to call Jimmy Cricket.
He answered after a handful of rings. ‘James speaking.’
‘I’m a friend of Hoshi Hara’s and he—
‘I can’t talk,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m on a break in twenty minutes. Meet me outside the ambulance bay next to the big gum tree.’
‘But I—’ Too late; he’d gone.
I set the mortuary address into my phone’s GPS and followed its clipped directions down the highway and into the city at a sedate pace. At this time of night, it wasn’t going to take me long to get there. Though I would never have admitted it, the GPS voice was a teensy bit comforting. Me and dead people … well we didn’t do well together.
I entered the large car park right on twenty minutes later and drove up and down the darkened rows until I spotted a large silvery gum tree on the east side near some brightly lit double doors.
I pulled into the closest parking bay and got out. Tree yes, but no Jimmy Cricket.
‘Pssst!’ came a low whisper.
I peered around and finally identified a head sticking out from behind the tree’s wide girth.
‘This side,’ said Jimmy Cricket.
I walked cautiously around to the dark side and discovered a skinny, tall young man dressed in scrubs, puffing on a joint.
‘You’re smoking dope,’ I said automatically.
‘Wouldn’t you, if you worked here?’
He had a point.
‘You might get busted?’
‘No one comes out here at this time of night except me.’
I couldn’t see his face properly in the shadows and he seemed happy to keep it that way. His outline suggested largish ears and a long face.
‘Hoshi said you’d be able to help me. I’m looking for a cause and time of death on one of your corpses,’ I said.
‘Bernard Romeo.’
‘How did you know?’ I said, surprised.
‘Everyone wants to know.’
‘As in…’
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Let’s just stick to the basics. I’m risking my job for this favour.’ He sucked deeply, nervously on the joint again, and I got the benefit of the secondary smoke.
I’d never been much for chemical recreation. When you see colours around people all day long, the last thing you want is more weirdness. But Hoshi’s latest bugbear that I have poor sensory acuity in the dark was true. It sure would have been handy right now to see Jimmy Cricket’s aura.
‘Can you help me?’ I asked.
‘The reports were sealed so I don’t know cause of death, but the word inside is that he died about 6pm on the day he was found. His arms had been sawn and detached from his body. Hands and feet tied. Safe to say he’d been murdered.’
‘So he’d only been in the water a couple of hours when he washed up?’
‘Pretty stupid throwing a body in the sea just when the tide is coming in.’ Jimmy Cricket giggled and then sucked on the joint again.
‘Anything else you can tell me?’
He dropped the joint, stomped the end, then picked it up again and rammed it into his pocket. ‘Man, I’m famished,’ he said. ‘Gotta go raid the vending machine. Later.’
That was the last I saw of Jimmy Cricket.
* * *
On my way home, I did another drive by Garth’s. Everything was as quiet as before and the light in his bedroom was now out.
I cruised up and around the block a couple of times and then headed home. Today had been a long, stressful day, and I had a half packet of Tim Tams waiting for me.
11
Cass woke me in the morning with a cup of lukewarm tea.
‘Do I have to?’ I said from under my doona when she nudged me.
‘Tea. I have to go to Garth’s soon. Can you give me a lift?’
I flopped the bed covers back
and forced myself upright. I’d been dreaming that Ed and I were sailing a racing catamaran up past the Swanbourne nudist beach, and the sail tore.
‘What did you find out about Romeo?’ I asked taking the mug from her.
‘Emailed it to you. Can I borrow your black jacket?’
I nodded and she rifled through the clothes on the couch to find it while I reached for my phone with my free hand.
Cass gathered her kit, and stepped towards the door. ‘I’ll be out of the shower in five minutes.’
Since when, I thought.
I propped up on my pillow, sipped the tea and scrolled through the email attachment. She’d given me a brief outline of him and listed all the venues he’d been photographed in. She’d also included his home and work addresses. It was comprehensive, in clear order, and she’d bothered to do a grammar and spell check. I was impressed. Cass was smart and instinctively knew how to be organised. She had so much potential in life. I just needed to break her of the idea that she should work for me.
Bernard Giovanni Romeo
Age: 52
Occupation: Owns Romeo Real Estate
Marital: married to Stacy Jane Bender (George and Phyllis Bender own the Fresh Flesh gym franchise. It’s a national chain worth like… millions). Bernard took over about three years ago.
Hobbies: Travel, clothes, drinking, and snorting coke (according to my bullshit detector/Spidey sense)
Children: Armanno and Maria
Other family: Gabriel, Olivier, and Dominic: Gabriel married a duchess and lives on the Mediterranean on a bad-assed yacht. Olivier is in Sydney working as an account manager for a fashion house, and Dominic is a national pentathlete who lives here, but travels to Europe to compete in events.
I perused the list of bars she’d compiled and recognised about half of them. The man truly liked to gad about.
I took my last sip of now-cold tea as Cass came back in, dressed and ready to go.
‘Good work on this, Cass.’
She nodded. ‘I even spell checked it. What did you find out?’
Sharp Edge Page 7