KK02 - Kookaburra Gambit

by Claire McNab

  KOOKABURRA GAMBIT

  Book 2 of the Kylie Kendall series

  Claire McNab

  One

  "G'day." The lanky bloke in the Akubra hat and khaki shirt and pants pumped my hand up and down. "I reckon you're Kylie Kendall. Your cousin, Brucie, said to look you up. Said you've aced private-eyeing and are deadset the only one to help us with our little prob."

  The second bloke, absolutely identical to the first, nodded. "Yeah," he said.

  Behind the desk, Melodie, Kendall & Creeling's receptionist— when she wasn't off auditioning—flashed a dazzling smile. "You're Aussies, aren't you? And twins!"

  "Blood oath!" said the first one, obviously taken with Melodie's wide green eyes, blond hair, and perfect teeth. "I'm Alf Hartnidge, and this handsome brute's my brother, Chicka."

  Blushing, Chicka bobbed his head.

  "Nice little place you've got here," said Alf, looking around the reception area. The floor was red tiles, and there were a couple of hefty earthenware pots, each containing a large cactus bristling with spikes. I'd done a bit of sprucing up around the building—the little fountain in the courtyard now sprouted recycled water enthusiastically, instead of its former depressed dribbling—but I hadn't got to reception yet.

  "What do you think of the cacti?" I asked.

  Myself, I'd never been fond of such plants. They strike me as rather passive-aggressive, squatting in their pots with their spikes to the ready. To be fair, I had to admit it wasn't their fault they didn't appeal to me, and they did fit in with the pseudo-Spanish style of the building.

  Tilting their heads at the exact same angle, Alf and Chicka regarded the contents of the earthenware pots. As they were identical twins, I expected them to look pretty much alike, but it was disconcerting to hear the same voice and see matching body language from two separate people.

  Chicka put an exploratory finger out to touch one of the spikes.

  "They're sharp," warned Melodie.

  Challenged, Chicka tested this advice. "Ow," he said, sucking his finger. He glared at the cactus.

  "I like 'em," said Alf. "Cactuses are survivors"—he tapped himself on the chest—"like the Hartnidges." His expression darkened. "Which brings me to why we're here. Brucie said you were the one to see."

  "My cousin recommended me?" I'd been sworn enemies with Brucie, my astringent Aunt Millie's only son, practically from birth. I hadn't seen him for years, and perhaps he'd changed in his loathing for me. I thought it unlikely.

  "Brucie did," said Alf in a positive tone. "Spoke highly of you. Told us you'd lobbed over to L.A. to become a private eye. And we need one of those, quick smart. Some lowlife scum is setting us up."

  I'd inherited fifty-one percent of my dad's PI company, Kendall & Creeling, but I'd only been a trainee private eye for a few weeks. "It's a bit early in my career to take on a case," I pointed out.

  Alf looked stricken. "Fair go, Kylie. You've got to help us. It's opals, you see. And you'd know all about them, coming from Wollegudgerie." He took off his hat, revealing thick brown hair that seemed to have been hacked with a pair of blunt scissors.

  Turning the hat in his hands, he went on, "Ask Chicka. We're up the proverbial creek without a paddle, if you don't help us."

  "Yeah," said Chicka. "Up shit creek." He shot an agonized look at Melodic "Sorry, love. Excuse my French."

  His apology got a tinkle of laughter from Melodie—she'd been practicing this laugh for an upcoming audition until everyone in the office had been driven mad. "You're real funny," she said to him.

  He ducked his head. "Thanks."

  Ariana Creeling, my business partner in Kendall & Creeling Investigative Services, chose this moment to come through the front door. She was her usual cool self, dressed entirely in black and with her sleek blond hair pulled back from her face.

  "Good morning," she said briskly, and went on by, her high-heeled boots making exclamations down the tiled hall.

  Alf looked after her, his lips set in a silent whistle. "Strewth," he finally said, "did you get those eyes?"

  I knew what he meant. They had the same effect on me. Ariana had blue eyes of laser-like intensity. In my more poetic moments, I thought of them as glowing with blue fire. Of course, I kept these moments strictly to myself.

  "My partner," I said. "Ariana Creeling."

  "True?" Alf grinned, then his smile faded. "Pity she's a Yank. She wouldn't know anything about opals, would she?"

  "Or kookaburras," said Chicka.

  I was rapidly getting out of my depth. "Perhaps you'd better come along to my office."

  "I've shut Julia Roberts in there," said Melodie. "She's been annoying Lonnie."

  "She does it on purpose," I said, irritated. "She knows he's allergic."

  Alf and Chicka looked at each other. "Julia Roberts is in your office?" They spoke in unison.

  I repressed a smile. "She is. Come and meet her."

  Chicka picked up what looked like a large hiking backpack and slung it over his shoulder. The two of them followed me down the hall.

  My office door was like the others in the building, studded with fat brass buttons. "Spanish look," I said, opening it and ushering them in. Ensconced on one of the chairs, Julia Roberts yawned and stretched, then sat up to regard the intruders with her patented blank stare.

  "It's a cat," said Alf, his disappointment plain.

  "She really belongs to Melodie, but since Melodie's temporarily staying in an apartment building that doesn't take pets, Jules stays here with me."

  "You live here?" asked Chicka, winning Julia Roberts's grudging approval by gently stroking her tawny back with appropriate reverence.

  "This building used to be a house before it was converted to offices. There's a guest bedroom at the back."

  Bob Verritt put his angular head through the door. "Hi," he said. "I heard Kylie had company."

  Like Ariana, Bob was a licensed private investigator, and I was, in effect, his apprentice. To become a licensed private eye I had to do two thousand hours of supervised work in the field each year for three years. Six thousand in all. It was a quelling thought, considering I had only accumulated a few hundred so far.

  "Come in, Bob," I said. "Meet Alf and Chicka Hartnidge." Although I still had no idea what had brought the twins to Kendall & Creeling, I added, "They've got a problem we might be able to help them with."

  They all did the ceremonial shaking-hands bit, Bob hiding rather well his surprise at two identical blokes wearing identical clothes, down to their brown pull-on ankle boots.

  The Aussies were tall, but Bob was taller. He had rounded shoulders and was so thin his clothes—he favored navy blue suits—hung on him loosely, looking as though any strong breeze would make them flap like dark blue flags. Bob wasn't the slightest bit handsome, but his face reflected the outstandingly pleasant person he was. He had straight, no-particular-color hair; a strong, hooked nose; and a crooked smile.

  "What's the story?" Bob asked.

  Alf jerked his head in his brother's direction. "Chicka will show you."

  Chicka obediently grabbed the backpack and upended it over my desk. Stuffed toys rained down—all Australian native animals. I saw platypuses, frilled lizards, kangaroos, even a wombat.

  "Meet the Oz Mob," said Alf, surveying the toys with pride. "No doubt you've heard of them."

  "I'm afraid not," said Bob.

  I chimed in with, "News to me too."

  Clearly amazed, Chicka said, "You haven't heard of our top-rating kid's TV show, The Oz Mob ? It's won awards."

  "Sorry."

  Chicka clicked his tongue at our ignorance. "The Oz Mob's big at home," he said. "Very big."

  "And if all goes well," said Alf, "it'
ll be gigantic over here in the States."

  "If all goes well," said Chicka, shaking his head mournfully. "If all goes well."

  Two

  Bob Verritt and I were sitting in Ariana's office. The room was like her: cool and contained, with a predilection for black, at least in the furniture—black desk, black filing cabinets, black lounge chairs for clients. The walls were flat white. The only break from this stark decor was found in the muted earth colors of a couple of rugs on the polished, dark floor.

  "Alf and Chicka are coming back tomorrow," I said. "I told them by then we'd know if we'd be taking the case...or not."

  I was dead keen that Kendall & Creeling did take on the Hartnidges as clients, and even keener to be directly involved myself. Not only would the case bump up my total hours, it involved something in which I had expertise. I might know next to nothing about being a private investigator, but I knew just about everything to do with opals. This wasn't surprising, since Mum's pub, The Wombat's Retreat, was smack bang in the middle of Wollegudgerie, premier opal-mining town in outback Australia.

  On the other side of the desk, Ariana leaned forward in her chair to examine the three soft toys lying in a neat line in front of her, each with its little belly split open. She picked one up but nearly dropped it when the movement activated its voice.

  "I'm Kelvin Kookaburra," the toy bird shrieked. Then it went into peal after peal of maniacal laughter, only stopping when Ariana hastily put it down.

  "That's why a kookaburra's also called a laughing jackass," I said helpfully. "They're a type of kingfisher. My aunt lost a lot of goldfish that way, until she put netting over her goldfish pond."

  Realizing I was yakking on, I made a mental note to shut up. When I was stressed I tended to talk too much, and Ariana had a talent for making me feel tense. Sure, I'd inherited from my American father a controlling interest in Kendall & Creeling Investigative Services, but for all intents and purposes it was Ariana's company. I was just an Aussie who'd inconveniently turned up and thrown a spanner in the works.

  After the first frosty reception, when she'd been gobsmacked to learn I was planning to help run the place, Ariana had warmed to me to some degree—a certain kiss was still burning in my memory—but the uneasy feeling remained that if I said to her I was willing to sell my share, she'd take it like a shot.

  I wrenched my attention back to hear Bob saying, "Alf and Chicka Hartnidge have quite a story to tell."

  Ariana smiled. "Clearly. Let's have it."

  I always melted a bit when she smiled, though I fought to make sure she never knew it. Putting on an alert expression, I gazed at Bob, waiting for him to sum up the Hartnidge brothers' dilemma.

  "It's really Kylie's case," he said, "so she should tell you."

  Ariana and Bob both looked at me. I cleared my throat. I'd be succinct, to the point, short and snappy, like Ariana would be if she were explaining the situation.

  I marshaled my thoughts and began. "Alf and Chicka Hartnidge started off producing a kids' series for Aussie television called The Oz Mob, using puppets a bit like the Muppets but based on native animals, such as echidnas, wallabies, and koalas."

  "What's an echidna?" said Bob, throwing me off my stride completely.

  I glared at him. "Eats insects, gots lots of spines, rolls up in a ball when scared."

  "Like a hedgehog?"

  "Most likely. Anyway, where was I? Yes, this kids' series turned out to be a mega hit, and Alf and Chicka got the bright idea of licensing someone to make soft toys and hand puppets based on the Oz Mob characters. Soon they were selling like hotcakes— Penny Platypus, Ferdie Frilled Lizard, Korinne Koala, and so on." I indicated the toys on the desk. "But the most popular character of all was that one, Kelvin Kookaburra, probably because he and his mad laugh started and ended the TV show."

  Back home, I'd always liked hearing kookaburras laughing. They were impressive birds, with large beaks, square heads, pale downy breasts, and lovely mottled brown-and-blue markings on their backs and wings.

  When I was a little kid, I remember being disappointed to learn from my mum that kookas weren't laughing because they had a good sense of humor. It was really: "Get out! This is my area!" Still, they were so handsome I found it easy to forgive them.

  "After The Oz Mob was a hit," I continued, "it was picked up by a cable channel here in the States, and now it looks like it's going to be a success all over again. There were no flies on the Hartnidge brothers, as far as bargaining was concerned. They licensed the program to television but kept the rights to the soft toys and puppets themselves. Their plan is to import them for sale once the series takes off."

  Bob pointed to the three little Kelvin Kookaburra bodies. "Those were in the first shipment." Like a magician, he whipped a velvet bag out of his pocket. "And concealed in them were"— dramatic pause, while he opened the bag and gently spilled the contents onto the desk in front of Ariana—"these!"

  These were twenty-eight high-grade opals. Beautiful gems. Each stone was cut and polished, ready to be made into jewelry. Between us, Bob and I had used the best part of a box of tissues to clean them. They'd been coated in some sort of grease—probably Vaseline—before being hidden inside the Kelvin Kookaburras.

  Ariana picked up one of the stones and examined it closely. "Kylie, you must know something about opals."

  "Just everything," I said immodestly. "You don't grow up in the 'Gudge without learning every last thing about them."

  Bob picked a stone too, holding it to the light pouring in through the skylight. "These are so much more impressive than the opals I've seen here in the States."

  "They're certainly not the pale, wishy-washy ones you're used to," I said. "This sort are pretty well only found in Australia. Back home, when people say black opal, they think Lightning Ridge, but I happen to believe Wollegudgerie's stuff is equal, if not better."

  Ariana turned the stone in her fingers, and the colors flashed brilliantly. "Why are they called black opals?" she asked. "This one's green and blue."

  After weeks of being a novice PI, and not sure what in the hell I was doing most of the time, I was pleased to have a chance to show off my knowledge.

  "The name black opal comes from the black potch—the dark layers that provide a terrific contrasting background for the bars of color. That's what makes black opals worth so much more than the milky ones that have white or gray potch." I had to smile, hearing myself. "I'm a regular little mine of information, aren't I?"

  "And the value of this little collection?" Ariana asked.

  "Worth a motza, because they're solid stones, not doublets or triplets." I picked up another opal, a gorgeous thing shot with fire. "If you look at this from the side, you'll see it's solid stone, not a doublet or triplet."

  "Which are?"

  "Sometimes very thin opals are attached to a layer of dark opal potch or dark plastic. That makes a doublet. If a clear capping of crystal quartz is put on top as well, it's a triplet. Of course, laminated opals like that aren't as valuable."

  Ariana looked thoughtful. "I take it these are all solid stones?"

  "They're fair dinkum."

  "Could you put a value on them?"

  A sharp knock at the door was followed by Fran's entry with Ariana's mail. Fran was Ariana's niece, a fact she took to mean she could show her true personality without worrying about repercussions. This meant she was, as usual, scowling. It was Fran's nature, I'd discovered, to be caustic. She met life with a heavy frown, daring it to confirm her worst suspicions.

  Fran's gloomy moodiness didn't go with her looks. She wasn't tall, had red hair, blue eyes—not a patch on Ariana's—and pale skin, plus a truly spectacular bust. To my mind, someone brimming with angst like Fran should be tall and emaciated, with masses of black hair falling over tortured dark eyes.

  "Mail," growled Fran. She slapped the envelopes down in the in-box. Then the pile of opals got her fascinated attention. "Wow! Going into the jewelry business, are we?"

&
nbsp; "Not likely," I said. "These are shonky goods."

  "Contraband," said Bob. "Smuggled into the country."

  Fran picked up a stone and examined it. "Lovely." Her scowl had entirely disappeared. Opals clearly had more power than I'd imagined. She looked at me quite civilly. "Your hometown is famous for these, isn't it?"

  "Wollegudgerie flame opals, they call them."

  Ariana sat back in her chair. "Kylie was about to tell us what these are worth."

  "I wouldn't call myself an expert at valuations," I demurred.

  "Just go for it," Bob said.

  "Opals are valued on depth of color, number of colors, the perfection of the stone, and unique patterns or features," I said. "Just a quick look at this lot shows me these are bonzer—some of the best I've seen. I'd guess they'd be worth at least fifty, sixty thousand. And that's in Australia. Black opals are so rare in the States, they'd fetch quite a lot more. Maybe double."

  Bob Verritt looked at the pile of stones with more respect. "The duty on these would be quite a sum. Any way to tell where they were mined?"

  "Almost certainly somewhere in Australia—probably Lightning Ridge or Wollegudgerie. We Aussies pretty well have the black opal market tied up and control how much gets exported. That's why this type is so valuable."

  I considered mentioning the robbery of Ralphie Bates's Opalarium back in Wollegudgerie, but somehow that wouldn't be fair—not until I'd got the full story out of Alf and Chicka.

  "I guess this has something to do with the twin brothers I overheard Melodie babbling on about," said Fran. "She was telling someone on the phone they were so alike it was creepy."

  Obviously the receptionist network had been activated. "The Hartnidge brothers," I said. "Alf and Chicka."

  "If they've got nothing to do with the smuggling, why don't they go to the authorities and say, 'Gee, fellas, look what we found' and be done with it?"

  "Lamb White," said Bob.

  Fran frowned, then comprehension dawned. "Lamb White, the Christian movie company? These guys have a deal with them?"

  "Pending," said Bob. "And if a breath of anything illegal gets out, the deal's canned."