by Clare Kauter
Tim frowned. “Why was he looking for Charlie?” he asked.
Adam shrugged. “Said he had some questions for her.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I said that you’d be happy to answer any questions so long as I was present.”
I folded my arms. “Happy is a stretch.”
Adam smiled. “He won’t be asking you any questions.”
“Cops hate Adam,” Tim explained. “What with him being a defence lawyer and all.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Adam.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “If he tries to contact you, call me, OK?”
I nodded. “Will do.”
Sometimes it paid to have a really smart arsehole friend.
“Do you have any idea why they’re reopening the case?” Tim asked.
Adam and I each shook our heads.
“They must have some kind of new evidence, though,” said Tim. “Why would they reopen it otherwise?”
“That’s what I thought, too,” I said. “I asked James, but he said he didn’t know.”
Tim and Adam glanced at each other and shared a moment of eye contact but neither of them said anything aloud.
“What?” I said. They didn’t reply. “What?”
Tim shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Honey... It’s just that in this case, maybe James isn’t being totally honest with you. I’m sure he means well,” he added hastily. “It’s just that, you know...”
“I know,” I said. “He’s a cop.”
Tim gave me a sympathetic smile. “He’ll retire one day. Then you’ll be able to trust him.”
“Or maybe he’ll get shot before then,” I said.
Tim and Adam both just looked at me for a moment.
“Sounds like maybe you’ve got some built up resentment there, honey,” said Tim.
Yeah, OK. He could have been right about that. Maybe I was annoyed at James for being so evasive during our lunchtime chat. Did he really not know what was going on or was he keeping things from me?
“Harcourt might not have told him,” said Adam. “After all, he was Topher’s friend. Harcourt might be keeping him in the dark.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I said.
Adam continued. “I mean, it’s unlikely, but there is a slim chance.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. He just half-smiled in return. He was annoying me on purpose.
“Back to the case,” said Tim, giving Adam a ‘shut up’ look. Tim and Adam were best friends, but in a lot of ways they were polar opposites – for example, Tim became friends with almost everyone he met. Adam, on the other hand, had social skills but preferred not to use them.
Adam gave Tim a half eye roll (really he just kind of looked upwards, but we got the point) and said, “Have you been speaking to people, asking around about the case?”
Tim shook his head. “No. Nothing that would have made its way back to Harcourt. I’ve been looking into that building that burned down – the one Charlie’s brother drew a picture of before he disappeared – but I haven’t spoken to anyone connected to the case. I don’t think they’ve even identified the body yet.”
Adam’s brow furrowed and I could tell he was thinking it over.
“What is it?” Tim asked, echoing my thoughts.
“We need to see if they’ve found out who the woman was,” said Adam.
I frowned. “Why?”
Tim’s eyes widened. “Because if they have, that might be the new evidence that prompted them to reopen your brother’s case.”
“What are you saying?”
“If they can place Topher at the scene of the crime...” Tim said.
“Oh, so he’s not just a missing person anymore, now he’s a murderer?”
Tim put his hands up in front of him. “We’re not saying –”
“My brother didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “He’s not like me.”
Tim’s eyes widened even more at that. Adam cocked his head a little.
“As your lawyer, I’m going to advise you to stop talking,” said Adam.
“I don’t mean – I haven’t killed anyone,” I said exasperatedly. “I just mean that he’s the nice sibling. He never so much as punched anyone. He was stoned half the time anyway – it wasn’t like he was going around setting women on fire.”
Tim chewed his lip. “He couldn’t have accidentally burned that building down, could he?”
“No!” I said. “And if he had, he would have called the fire department and run in to save anyone trapped in there. He was friends with James, remember. That’s the kind of person he is. Forget that he’s related to me.”
Tim nodded. “OK. I just had to ask.”
“Trust me,” I said.
“I do,” said Tim. “So maybe he saw something at the building the night of the fire.”
“Or before,” said Adam. “Maybe he was taking photos for his project and inadvertently got evidence of something else.”
I nodded. That sounded plausible. “So is that our working theory? He saw something and had to run away because he was worried Harcourt would kill him for it?”
“We don’t have a working theory,” said Adam. “Let’s wait for some sort of evidence before we get to that point.”
I frowned at him. I’d just started to feel better about this whole thing and then he had to come along and ruin it.
“You should go home,” said Adam. “You need your rest before your double shift tomorrow.”
I groaned. “Right. I meant to thank you for that – a double shift on the Sunday before Christmas. I may actually murder someone. And that someone may be you.”
“Good luck with that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I arrived home, I fed Arnold a snack and contemplated whether I was good enough at acting to convince Stacey that I was out of commission for tonight’s class. No, she’d never believe that I was sick. I could drop the ‘Topher’s investigation has been reopened’ bomb, but she’d probably just say that the class would be a good way to take my mind off things. Arnold and I ate some apples in my room while I sat on my bed, sighing a lot. What a day.
All too soon, Stacey arrived home. She burst into my room and walked straight to my wardrobe to choose an outfit for me. Apparently I couldn’t be trusted with that level of responsibility. I guessed she hadn’t liked the Grinch T-shirt I’d worn yesterday. She picked out a floral dress and sandals, and when I got out of the shower she did my hair for me too.
“So, what’s tonight’s class?” I asked as I sat in front of the mirror with Stacey behind me plaiting sections of my hair.
In the reflection I caught her smile. “It’s a surprise,” she said.
Oh dear. That did not bode well.
Stacey and I took my Mustang to a local primary school where the class – whatever it was – was to be held. We were on our own tonight since Stacey apparently hadn’t managed to rope anyone else into whatever this class was. We parked in the teachers’ car park (it was after hours, so we were allowed to park there) and walked into the main hall of the school.
When we entered, I recognised the instructor at the front of the room as one of the fitness instructors who worked at the gym at Baxter & Co. from time to time. Slowly, I turned to Stacey, a look of horror spreading across my face.
“You didn’t...”
“Come on!” she said, taking me by the hand and dragging me to the front of the room. “It’ll be fun. I’ve always wanted to learn to tango!”
Despite my protests, Stacey didn’t release her grip on my hand so I was unable to escape. Of course, I could have snapped her wrist and pulled free, but that seemed a little too far even for me. While I was trying to reason with her, I spotted a familiar face across the room and trailed off, surprised. It was a guy from work – I’d forgotten his name when we were introduced and Tim had refused to tell me (apparently PIs were meant to be able to figure things like that out for themselves), so in my head I just called him Old S
port.
Stacey turned to see what I was staring at. “Ooh,” she said. “Hello...”
I turned to look at her, exhaling loudly. “No, don’t tell me you’re attracted to him!” I said. Stacey had a track record of only ever being attracted to horrible guys. Russian gangsters, sad clowns, fedora-wearers – you get the point. She was like a litmus test for weirdos. “And to think I thought he was OK.”
Stacey frowned at me. “You know him?”
I nodded. “We work together.”
“What’s his name?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t listening when he first introduced himself. I’ve known him too long now to ask, and I can’t ask other people in case they tell him.”
She finally released my hand and blood rushed back into my fingers. (She really had been gripping it quite hard.) “You need to find out his name,” she said.
“Why don’t you just go and introduce yourself?” I suggested. “Then you can find out his name like a normal human and you’ll be able to tell me without him being any the wiser.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No. I’ve implemented a rule that I need to Facebook stalk any men I’m planning to ask on a date so that I can vet out the bad ones. Given my track record...”
“Yeah, that seems like a good idea,” I said, nodding. “But couldn’t you just introduce yourself now and ask him out at a later date?”
Stacey rolled her eyes. “You have no idea how dating works, do you? I know it’s been, like, a thousand years since you last dated someone, but come on,” she said and I bit back the urge to protest. “If I don’t introduce myself and ask him out in one conversation, I will have missed the moment.”
“I don’t think that’s –”
“If you work together then surely you’ll have mutuals on Facebook, right? So we just need to look through the people on your work mates’ friends lists and see if we can spot him.”
I sighed and handed her my phone. “Fine. You can do that, but I’m not getting involved.”
People were still trickling into the hall since the class wasn’t due to start for another couple of minutes. Eventually Stacey handed me back my phone, shaking her head. She’d been unsuccessful.
I shrugged. “Too bad.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Uh, no. You are not getting out of it that easily. You’re going to find out his name for me and we’re going to establish if he’s a suitable mate.”
I groaned. “Why don’t you just introduce yourself? He can’t be worse than the last few guys you’ve dated.”
Crossing her arms, she said, “No. I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t date without a background check. Now, you and I are going to tango as far away from him as possible so he doesn’t recognise you and talk to me and ruin my plan.”
“Stace, you can meet someone one time and then ask them out at another time. I promise that’s acceptable to normal humans.”
“What would you know about normal humans?” Wow, touché. She shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind. Find out his name for me first. I’m not going to risk dampening the spark – or getting electrocuted by it.”
And with that, she took me by the waist and my (still kind of tingly) hand and led me around the dance floor at the teacher’s instruction.
Somehow I managed to make it through the lesson without embarrassing myself too much, possibly because it was a beginners’ class and the teacher kept it pretty easy for all the elderly couples present. Or maybe she recognised me from work and decided that it was better safe than sorry. Either way, I went home with only a rolled ankle, so all in all it was a pretty successful evening.
The entire drive home, Stacey stared longingly out the window. I grimaced. This wasn’t good. Despite her best intentions of looking into Old Sport before falling for him, here she was pining after him without even having met him. I needed to find out his name stat. Tim wouldn’t tell me, but maybe Adam would. I decided that I’d ask next time I saw him. After all, it was for a good cause.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Being woken by an alarm on a Sunday seems like just about the cruellest form of torture available to the human race. It’s the day of rest, damn it. Not to mention that I had to work in a shopping centre on the Sunday before Christmas – for a double shift. I rolled on some stress control deodorant, though I doubted it was going to do much to keep my anxiety at bay. Today I’d be working with Randy and Garry, the crappy Santas, so I wasn’t even going to have a chai latte to get me through. I decided that today I was going to solve this stupid case no matter what. I couldn’t handle another day in the retail environment. My soul was being sapped away more and more every waking moment.
I started the day gift-wrapping. It wasn’t my strongest skill, but hey, I wasn’t looking to do a good job. I was here purely to figure out who the pervert Santa was. Of course, the people who asked to have their presents wrapped by me and received a ball of sticky tape and staples in return didn’t know that, but never mind.
During Randy’s ten-minute break, I slipped outside to talk to him. I found him by the car park puffing away on a cigarette. That was going to be fun for the kids who had to sit on his lap afterwards. He smelled like an ashtray. Which kind of suited him, because he also had the personality of an ashtray.
“Hi,” I said, standing a short distance away from him to try and avoid his smoke cloud.
“You got a boyfriend, toots?” he asked.
God, shoot me now.
“Randy, no one says ‘toots’ anymore. If you’re going to be a lecher, at least do it right,” I said.
He smiled and gave a laugh which turned into a cough. “Not for me, love. I’m looking for someone for my idiot nephew. Reckon he’s about your age.”
“Oh, he’s an idiot? Wow, you’ve really sold him well there.”
Randy laughed again, which turned into a mild coughing fit – and then escalated into an extreme coughing fit. His face turned red and he doubled over at the waist, really hacking now.
“You alright there, Randy?” I asked.
He dropped his cigarette, which was only half done, and put his hand to his chest as he tried to draw in a breath. It sounded to me like he was really struggling.
“OK, Randy,” I said. “I’m going to call you an ambulance.”
Then he collapsed onto the ground.
Naturally, that was the exact moment a mother rounded a corner with four small children who all immediately began to scream. Santa was lying in a heap in the Westgarden car park and Christmas was ruined.
“It’s OK,” I said, once I got off the phone with emergency services. “He’s not dead.” I knelt down beside him and poked him in the belly. He didn’t respond. “God, maybe he is dead.”
The mother glared at me and dragged her wailing kids away.
“Thanks for your help,” I called after her.
After the ambulance arrived and took Randy away, Garry showed up to cover the rest of the shift. As I stood at the counter, taking people’s money and listening to babies screaming (although to be fair to the baby, that’s what I wanted to do every time I walked into this fluorescently lit hell too), I thought about what had just happened with Randy. It seemed unlikely to me that he would have been in good enough shape to outrun the cops.
I sent a message to Adam letting him know what had happened. He agreed that it seemed unlikely that Randy was the flasher given how sick he clearly was. The flasher had been in relatively OK shape, so probably not a pack-a-day smoker who could barely laugh without getting out of breath and collapsing. Randy was innocent.
That was one suspect down. Time to find something incriminating on Garry and then I could leave this hellhole.
The other elf who was standing at the counter with me left for a toilet break and I took the chance to look through the bag Garry had left behind the counter. There was a small nook under the till where we all left our belongings during our shifts, and I’d noticed that Garry brought a gym bag in with him, which struck me as odd. Garry
didn’t look like the kind of guy you’d find in a gym. In a brief reprieve while I didn’t have any customers, I bent down and unzipped Garry’s bag.
I don’t know what I was hoping to find, but I figured there could be something. A bottle of Jack Daniels, maybe. Garry seemed like the type of guy who’d enjoy the odd tipple – maybe so much that he’d get drunk and go on a flashing spree around Gerongate. When I opened the bag, it looked like I’d struck gold. The bag contained several kinds of medication. Maybe he had some kind of condition that would make him strip off and run half-naked in public locations.
Glancing up, I saw a customer approaching the counter so I snapped a picture of the various boxes and bottles of medicine and sent it to Adam, asking whether any of it would make Garry behave strangely. When I’d finished up serving the customer, my phone buzzed with Adam’s response. I crossed my fingers and hoped that this meant the case was wrapped up.
Please please please...
Looks like you can pack away your elf costume.
I squealed and punched the air, startling an elderly woman who was perusing our selection of baubles nearby. Brilliant! Garry was guilty! Everything was –
Then my phone buzzed again.
It’s arthritis medication. No chance Garry’s our guy. The police are picking Bob up now.
Shit. That hadn’t been what I’d hoped for. I took off my stupid elf hat and sat it down on the counter before retrieving my bag from under the till. A woman approached and without looking at me plonked her crappy bauble selection on the counter in front of me.
“I’d like them gift-wrapped,” she said as she rifled through her bag for her wallet. “And you’d better do a good job of it, or I’ll make you do them again. After all, I am paying you for this. You wouldn’t have a job without me.”
I ignored her, too lost in my own thoughts to bother interacting with her. The case was over – I didn’t have to pretend to be a good elf anymore. And I was too busy trying to make sense of everything to deal with this woman. They were going to arrest Bob? But he was so lovely! He couldn’t be the flasher. It just didn’t –
“Excuse me, young lady, are you even listening to me?”