Then I remembered:
Friday night was when I was supposed to die.
Part Three.
"Take both pills, ***k the Matrix."
― Robbie Williams, Rudebox.
Chapter Eleven
The Living Dead
The hands around my neck were as cold as a corpse.
I gagged a little as Doctor Williams took his hands away and pulled the popsicle stick out of my throat.
His words were bleak.
"There's no way you'll be able to sing in three day's time." I didn't like that universe and there was no way I was going to live in it.
"You don't understand, Doctor Williams. I have to be able to sing in three day's time."
He threw the popsicle stick in the bin and raised his eyebrows at me. His white coat was blindingly bright against his brown skin. Here is an interesting fact about Doctor Williams: he is Taj's uncle on his mother's side. But, like everyone else in Tree Valley, Taj's family had disowned him after he claimed there was a top secret UFO base in town and that the Tree Valley government had been infiltrated by aliens. Couldn't really blame them: I'd done the same thing. All sane people would have done the same thing.
"You're not going to be able to sing for years, yet alone in three day's time," Doctor Williams said, rapidly losing patience with me in that same way that doctors always did when I refused to believe anything they said to me if I didn't like it.
I wanted to yell in frustration (that would have been great for throat nodules). Couldn't they just give me a throat transplant or something! They could do so many other things these days. They could create a new species of bees to replace the bees that had died, but they couldn't cure throat nodules.
"Can't you just give me some really strong painkillers so I can at least sing through the pain?" Wouldn't make my voice sound any better, no, but I was getting desperate. Maybe I could just turn up, sing, and hope for the best. By the time I was on stage it would be too late for Gus to replace me anyway.
Doctor Williams crossed the room slowly and leaned back in his big desk chair before cocking his head to the side. "And what would your medical records show, if I went in and checked just how often you'd been prescribed painkillers?"
"Those were all legitimate uses," I said, gulping, trying to swallow the lump that was no longer nodule-related.
"I can't prescribe you anything Lana. The only thing I can prescribe you is a plan to find a new career."
I rolled my eyes and thanked him very sarcastically for all his help.
With no job, no unemployment cheque, and no way to sing on Friday night, by Monday night my haunted cottage would be repossessed.
Oh well, what did it matter anyhow?
I was going to be dead by then, anyway.
***
It had been days since I'd seen Grace. Busy times down at the Tree Valley hospital I assumed. Maybe there was a plague going around. Oh well, at least it gave me time to try and get her car back or at least to come up with a decent excuse for its mysterious disappearance. She wasn't a detective, like I am, but it was only a matter of time before she traced it back to me.
Maybe I could tell her it was abducted by aliens, I thought, blowing on my mug of instant coffee while I looked at the snail trails on the carpet. Or get Taj to say it for me. His reputation couldn't be destroyed any further. My own, while not great, still allowed me to live amongst other human beings. The keys in the front door turned and I jumped, spilling my coffee, groaning not at the stain on the carpet but at the fact that I was finally going to have to face up to Grace.
I sat down on the coffee table, balancing on the edge, wondering how to tell her that she was going to have to move out next week. How to start the conversation? "I'll be dead, and there won't be anyone to pay the mortgage."
I sighed and took another sip of coffee.
"Still no word about my car," Grace said, slumping down on the sofa. "I can't afford to keep taking taxis to work forever...Well, I can for a little while. I'm definitely not going to take the bus."
Must be tough being a rich doctor.
"I'm sure it will turn up," I said, thinking about Grace's car sitting with the rest of the car scraps in the mud pit of the Railway Reserve. Very unlikely she would ever go looking there for it at least. Grace was the kind of person who valued her youthful looks and she wouldn't risk going to a place that could age her a year in a day.
I glanced at my own face in the broken mirror that leaned against the wall of the living room. I'd been to the reserve twice. Had I aged two years? It's kind of hard to tell the difference between 31 and 33 anyway so I shrugged and let it go.
Maybe I'd avoid any further trips just to be on the safe side. I'm not super vain, but I am a little bit. And I couldn't get on stage at the Pink Bird looking like an old hag.
"Hey Grace," I said, keeping half an eye on myself in the mirror. "Did you know there was another former X Factor contestant like me, living in Tree Valley?"
"No. I didn't know you were on X Factor."
Great.
Grace pulled off her expensive designer jacket and threw it on the couch. "Can't even be bothered going to get my PJ's," she said, closing her eyes as she sprawled out dramatically on the couch. "But maybe I'll just sleep here."
It was three in the afternoon.
I excused myself as my phone rang. Unknown number.
"Hello?" The walls were thin between the kitchen and the living room so I kept my voice down just in case it was Taj calling.
It was someone far worse. The mayor of Tree Valley and my current number one enemy (out of about twenty), Harris.
"I've been waiting to hear back from you for days," I hissed, covering my mouth so that Grace wouldn't hear me. "The accident was your fault. You have to pay for a new car. Or at least the damage."
"My insurance will not be paying for your stupidity," Harris said flatly down the line.
"Well, what am I supposed to tell my housemate?" I asked him. I could hardly afford to buy a brand new BMW. I could hardly afford to buy a bottle of milk.
"Maybe you shouldn't have been stalking me," Harris said, a smug note entering his voice. Well, his voice was always smug. But it became so heavy with smugness right then that I almost dropped the phone from the weight of it. "What will May think about that? Oh..." he said, as though the thought had just occurred to him right then. "Maybe she already knows about it. Maybe she is the one who paid you to do it. I'm sure the police will be happy to hear about that."
I hung up the phone.
There was only one person I could turn to right then. Even if it aged me another year.
***
He could have at least used the corpse of Grace's car to cover up the hot pink UFO scraps.
"I keep the scraps there as a reminder..." Taj murmured as we leaned over the precipice of the clay hill, into the valley below. I slipped a little and barely bothered to stop myself.
"A reminder of what?"
"That they really landed here five years ago."
Okay, then. I wasn't really that interested in UFOs right then. I was more interested in getting Grace's car back to her.
"Harris was such a jerk to me on the phone," I said, kicking the clay. It left the toe of my boot covered in light brown gunk like I'd kicked a dog poo. I found some grass and tried to get rid of it.
"What do you expect?" Taj asked. "The man lied to get into power and he's been stealing from the town ever since."
"Can we get the car out?" I asked.
Taj raised his eyebrows. "We can get the bits of the car out...but what good is that going to do your housemate?"
"Oh I don't know," I said in sudden despair. I looked up at the grey sky and tried not to cry as I thought about what a disaster my life -- my very, very short life -- had turned out to be.
Taj hesitated a moment before he wrapped his arms around me.
"Are you okay, Lana?"
"I should be asking you that," I said, shaking my head as I took in the sight of
him, looking for any signs that he had been hurt by Louis the week before. I glanced down and saw a pair of matching bruises on his wrists.
I placed one of mine gently next to his. "Bruise twins," I whispered gently.
"Did he hurt you?" Taj asked.
"I'm not supposed to see you, Taj."
"Why did you come here, then?"
I looked down into the pit. "I thought something might be salvageable."
I kicked at the clay again and a chunk fell in, landing sloppily in a big splat on Grace's BMW. I should never have borrowed her car. I should never have been following Harris so closely that night. I should never have lied to May...
I should never have come to see Taj.
I should never have been killed in pink blood.
Rain started to fall softly, which only caused the clay on the black car to melt and spread like lava over the broken parts.
She's going to kill me when she finds out.
"Why did you ask to meet me at the airport that night?" I asked Taj.
"You're the one who wanted to meet me."
I shook my head, ignoring the rain which was growing slowly more violent and knife-like as it stabbed the top of my head. The tin roof of Taj's shed rattled. "I only wanted to know the truth..." I said, staring down at the UFO wreckage, which almost had my attention again. "I never wanted to go to the airport."
"I thought it was best that you see the show for yourself," Taj said quietly.
I looked up at him in surprise. "So you do know what happens there after dark?"
"Of course I do. I've always known," he said bitterly, staring up at the skies. "I just wanted someone else to see it as well. So that way I might feel less alone. Can't you understand that, Lana?"
"Louis said I was in danger," I said quietly, knowing even as I said it, staring first at the bruises on my wrists, then Taj's, how stupid that sounded. Louis was the only one who put me in danger that night.
"Maybe you were," Taj stated. "But I figured you could handle yourself." A sudden chill ran through me.
"Taj," I had to ask. "How did Louis know I was going to be at the airport that night?"
I turned fully to face Taj. The rain had plastered his thick dark hair to his face. Wet, it looked even longer and even more wild.
My heart beat so loud while I waited for the answer that I was afraid he was going to overhear it.
"I guess I'm not as isolated up here as I thought I was," Taj said in a deep dark voice as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "They are listening to me here, Lana." He glanced around. "I thought I was safe here but I'm not. I'm sorry that you got hurt. I was trying to do just the opposite."
Taj turned and looked down at me. He was almost a foot taller than me, so he always looked down on me when he spoke.
"So I'm in danger right now?" I asked, stepping back. "He knows I'm here, right now. Why did you let me come here, Taj?"
Stay away from Taj. Or you'll end up dead. Louis's words, not mine. He may have been a sociopath, and a pathological liar, but he was going to be right about that. In three days, I was going to be dead.
It was hailing. I hadn't seen hail in five years.
"You wanted to come here, Lana."
I zipped my leather jacket up right to my chin and started to storm away."
"What are you doing, Lana?"
"I'm going to find out who stole May's money. Even if she's not paying me. Even if she never speaks to me ever again."
I had to set one thing right, at least, before I died.
Chapter Twelve
Swallow The Pink Pill
"Don't give her to me!" I shouted way too loudly into the front room of the house, as Brent, Jyson's husband, handed me a screaming Lucy. "I don't know what to do with a baby."
Brent was kind of Jyson's opposite...whereas Jyson was barely any taller than I was, Brent was over six feet tall, and he didn't have the 90s boyband floppy hair Jyson had, but rather, a close shaved blonde do like he was in the navy or something.
"Sorry it's just for one moment," Brent said while he fished around for the car keys. He had red eyes and seemed wired. "Sorry about this," he said, straightening up. "Jyson should have been here to meet you. I can't believe he's done this." From the tone of Brent's voice, I guessed it wasn't the first time Jyson had been picked up and held by the police.
"He's lucky he still even has a P.I's license...I can't figure out how he does..." Brent said, finally pulling the car keys out from in between two couch cushions.
A moment of holding a baby felt like an eternity. I didn't understand why Brent wasn't taking her back off me already. What had he taken me for, a functioning adult who could hold a baby for more than a minute? I had bad news for him if he had made that fatal mistake...
I held her back out to Brent like she was a bomb I needed to get rid of. Let Brent be the collateral damage.
"Come here Luce," he said. "Looks like you're coming on a car ride."
Brent shook his head as we headed out the door. "And he leaves me holding the baby as well. Never marry a P.I."
***
The lights of Gun Employment had long gone out by the time Brent pulled the car up in front of it. There was a figure standing outside the police station on the other side of the road. Guess Jyson had already managed to bail himself out.
Lucy hadn't stopped crying the entire car ride. "They tell you to take the baby for a car ride to get her to settle. Well, those experts have never met this baby," Brent said, slamming the front door before he scooped Lucy out.
Relieved to be free from my own steel prison of baby screams, I raced across the street to greet Jyson. I'd expected to find him contrite but he greeted me with a suppressed smile and a, "Thanks for coming to get me."
"This is beyond the pale," Brent said. I noticed a hint of a British accent when he spoke and wondered if he really was British, once upon a time, or whether he just had that sort of posh-inner city voice that those from Sydney and Adelaide and occasionally Melbourne, did. He certainly didn't look much like a Tree Valley, or Traralgon, native. He looked more like a Viking.
Jyson shrugged and lit a cigarette while Brent opened his mouth wide in heavy disgust and pulled Lucy out of the line of smoke and fire.
"I can't believe you, Jyson. This is a new level of irresponsibility."
Yeah, there was definitely the hint of a British accent there.
Jyson looked away and muttered something. "You're one to talk about irresponsibility."
Brent hurried back to the car demanding that Jyson meet us once he'd finally decided to stop acting like a teenager and put the cigarette down.
He took another one from the packet and offered one to me.
"I'm supposed to be singing in a few nights..." I murmured, taking one anyway and lighting it with Jyson's pink lighter.
"So what happened?" I asked, puffing smoke up into the night air, watching the grey tendrils grip at the dark.
"Got caught snooping, the usual," Jyson said with another shrug as his smoke mixed with mine. "They couldn't charge me with anything, though. Just got dragged out here after some a-hole called the cops on me. They really crack down on crime in this town, don't they?"
"You weren't following Harris again, were you?" I asked, suddenly a little worried.
He put the butt of the cigarette out with his toe. "Sorry, I'm still wrapping up this old case of mine...haven't been able to look into the mayor any further."
I was relieved, not offended. I didn't want him to get caught trailing Harris again.
"It's okay. Lucy arrived early, I know. You weren't planning on being so busy so quickly."
Jyson leaned against the brick wall of the police station. "To be honest I'm enjoying the peace of this moment right here. Thought we'd still have a few weeks before we became parents...A few weeks to sort stuff out." His voice changed suddenly. "I really shouldn't complain, though," he said, standing up straight and heading back to the car.
"Do you want me to do this with
out you?" I asked, hanging back a bit. Unlike Gun Employment, the lights of the cop station were still bright behind me. "I don't want you to get into any more trouble. Plus, you've got a baby at home," I said gently. "And it looks like Brent is really...missing having you around."
Jyson shot a grim smile back at me. "That's true. But I promised to help you tonight. So let's drop these two home and go get the bad guy."
We had to push past the empty and full cardboard boxes to get to the computers on the fourth floor of May's office.
"These are the only computers with the software on them..." Jyson explained, switching one on. We waited while it coughed to life. "It's expensive to buy a license, thousands of dollars a year for a subscription. May never wanted to pay for anyone to have a home version." Jyson stared at the green screen, the reflection of which sort of made him look like the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz, in the dark room. "Though, if I can be candid...I don't think she wanted any of us to have access to it in our homes."
She wouldn't have been ecstatic that we'd essentially broken into the office, either, but I figured she could hardly get any more angry at me than she already was. She'd cut me out of her life already, refused to answer a single call or text, crossed to the other side of the street when I'd spotted her in the esplanade. What could she do to me that was worse than all of that?
"These things take forever to load," Jyson said. "You'd think with all the money this firm has they could buy new computers."
"The money the firm had," I corrected him. The only reason the computers hadn't been ripped from the wall and sold to pay the debts was precisely because they were so old no one wanted them.
"True." He asked me to look away while he typed a password in. "Sorry, but, you're kind of on the outs with May at the moment..." True. I doubted she'd want me knowing the nuclear codes.
Pink Blooded: A Lana Pink Mystery Page 10