Wombat Strategy

by Claire McNab

  Today was Wednesday. I wouldn't be presentable by Friday. I was about to call Chantelle when she called me on my cell phone. "How are you? I must have just missed you."

  "Lucky you. I look like something out of a horror movie. We'd better cancel Friday."

  "You're breaking our date? No way."

  That warmed me a little, as I'd looking forward to seeing Chantelle outside her work. Perhaps she was destined to play an important part in my future. I could hope.

  Julia Roberts turned out to be my solace for the rest of the day, although Ariana did her share by arranging for a local restaurant to deliver dinner.

  On Thursday, Dave Deer asked me to come into Deerdoc to meet the detectives on the case. He put me in his office and advised me not to volunteer anything. I expected Miles the creepy lawyer would be there, but it seemed the heat was off and I could be trusted on my own.

  The interview was short. It was clear they were merely going through the motions. After the two cops had gone, Dave Deer smiled at me with a certain smugness. "Kept the lid on it," he said. "The media sniffed around but got nothing. Lorelei is very pleased." He rubbed his hands. "I still need you, Kylie. I'm interviewing for a new personal assistant, but in the meantime…"

  He never got to hear my answer. Chantelle appeared at the door. "Dr. Deer? Mr. Perkins insists-"

  She was bodily knocked out of the way by Jarrod Perkins. I'd seen plenty of people lose their tempers, but this bloke beat them all. He was literally purple in the face. The moment he saw Dave Deer, he screamed, "You motherfucking bastard!" In one shaking hand he held a crumpled sheet of paper. "Explain this!"

  Dave Deer zipped behind the protection of his desk. He put up placating hands. "Jarrod, it's me, your therapist."

  "Fuck that for a joke! Some bastard's trying to blackmail me." Perkins stood there panting, poised as if about to attack something or someone.

  Chantelle, eyes wide, hovered in the doorway. "I'll get Fred Mills."

  I saw it dawning on Dave Deer that this was something that must at all costs be kept quiet. "No, Chantelle. This is a medical matter. Please shut the door and make sure we're not disturbed."

  Chantelle caught my eye. "Get out," she mouthed.

  It was sweet of her, but I wasn't going.

  After the door closed, Dave Deer said soothingly, "Now, Jarrod, sit down and let's discuss what's worrying you."

  "You supercilious prick. You knew about this and you didn't tell me." He threw the crumpled page onto the desk. "How long have the recordings been missing? How long have you known, you cocksucker? How long?"

  Dave Deer looked so sincere I thought his face would melt. "Jarrod, Jarrod. I was just about to contact you."

  Perkins leaned over the desk and grabbed Dave's tie. Although he was a much smaller man, his rage had obviously given him strength. He pulled until Dave Deer, red-faced and choking, was halfway across the desk. Shoving his face with its huge beaky nose into the doctor's, Perkins ground out, "I'll ruin you, Deer, ruin you. When I've finished, there won't be a person in Hollywood who'll touch you with a ten-foot pole."

  Released, Dave Deer fell back spluttering. Perkins turned to me. "You!"

  "Me?"

  "You drove me home."

  I nodded warily. Who knew what was coming next?

  "Tell that bastard over there I want everything in this building that has anything to do with me packaged up and delivered to my house. Every file, every sheet of paper, every fucking recording of every fucking session I've had here. Got that?"

  "Got it."

  "And I want you to deliver it, tomorrow morning." He cast a look of burning scorn in Dave Deer's direction. "I don't intend to breathe the same air as that fuckwit ever again. Tell him if he comes near me I'll kill him."

  Crikey, I believed that. "I could probably have the stuff to you this afternoon," I said helpfully.

  "I'm on a night shoot, you stupid bitch. Tomorrow morning at ten."

  He snatched up the letter from the desk and stalked out of the office.

  Dave Deer cleared his throat. "That went well," he said.

  I'd never have suspected he was capable of such irony.

  Friday morning we took my car, with me driving and Ariana navigating. We were using my car because there was a chance Jarrod Perkins might recognize it as the one I'd given him a lift in last Monday. The way the bloke was at the moment, it was wise to avoid upsetting him, and Ariana's BMW would be a strange vehicle as far as he was concerned.

  "Can you believe it was only Monday I gave Jarrod Perkins a lift home?" I said. "It seems to have happened yonks ago."

  "You've had an eventful week," said Ariana in her customary dry tone.

  "Thanks for coming with me," I said. I was more grateful than she knew. I'd visualized myself going up to the director's Hollywood Hills home and, as I seemed to often do, saying something that got quite the wrong reaction. And Jarrod Perkins totally losing it, and before Sven could intervene, strangling me. That was my first scenario. Then I had him shooting me. Or maybe throwing me over the cliff.

  So when Ariana had said, "I'm not going to let you go alone, not after that outburst from Perkins. He's unstable at the best of times," I'd been secretly relieved.

  "Good-oh. If you insist," I'd said, nonchalant.

  Now we were on the way, driving up one of the steep, ascending streets of the Hollywood Hills. A large envelope containing the material Perkins had demanded was sitting on the backseat. Ariana was beside me, wearing black jeans and a black jacket. I glanced over at her. "You've got a gun, haven't you?"

  "I do. And before you ask, yes, I'm licensed to carry a concealed weapon."

  I felt a whole lot better knowing she was armed. "Are you a good shot?"

  "Adequate."

  "So you won't go for a head shot, then." I'd been studying The Complete Handbook and had just covered the chapter on the use of deadly force.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ariana shake her head. "I'll aim for the torso, if that's your advice." I heard the amusement in her voice.

  "What if he's wearing a bulletproof vest?"

  I actually got a chuckle. "Highly unlikely."

  She gave me directions, much more calmly than Jarrod Perkins had. When I turned into the drive, the gates were open. I drove slowly up to the house, figuring there were probably cameras eyeing us; I wanted Perkins to have plenty of time to satisfy himself that I was the Aussie bringing the stuff from Deerdoc to him.

  I parked by the front door. There were no other vehicles in evidence. We got out. I didn't even glance at the view. Noticing Ariana's right hand under her jacket, I felt slightly more secure-but not much. If bullets started flying, my TV-viewing told me to drop to the ground. I checked it out. Gravel. It'd be hard on the skin.

  "Ariana, the front door's open."

  She motioned me to get behind her. "Let me go first."

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. It was a cliche, but funny how true. "Something's wrong."

  Ariana felt it too. She took out her weapon, a sleek automatic. Black, of course. Her body was coiled steel, ready to react to any threat. I think that was the moment I really fell for her.

  She pushed at the front door. It swung open. "Mr. Perkins?" I called. "It's Kylie Kendall. I've got the stuff from Deerdoc for you."

  Silence. Ariana, not moving her eyes from the hallway in front of us, said, "Is his assistant, Sven, supposed to be here?"

  "Perkins never mentioned him. He just said he expected me at ten."

  The house was furnished in generic rental style. It had an empty feeling. I didn't know whether to trust my instincts, but I said, too loudly, "Ariana, no one's here."

  She signaled to me to be quiet. "Room by room," she said.

  The living room was empty. So was the kitchen. We went into the master bedroom together. The bed was made, everything was tidy. I pushed open the door of the adjoining bathroom. "Ariana."

  She moved to stand beside me, then grabbed me when I sag
ged. Jarrod Perkins was sitting in the shower recess, legs splayed, a gun in his lap, his brains blown in a red-and-white pattern across the tiles.

  SIXTEEN

  Ariana handled the LAPD when the patrol car arrived. Until then I'd wandered around the house, trying to hang on to the contents of my stomach. Ariana had found me in the study, checking out the papers on the desk. "Don't touch anything."

  Now I sat quietly to one side while Ariana talked to the two young patrol officers. I'd seen dead bodies before, my grandparents, for example, but their passing had none of the violence of this. Perkins had been a despicable human being, but I felt hollowed by his death.

  More cars arrived, more cops conferred with Ariana. It was obvious she knew one bloke personally. Even before the coroner's people had arrived, I heard the cops talking suicide.

  We gave brief statements and were about to go when Sven arrived in a huge black vehicle. I peered at it, and Ariana said, "It's a Cadillac SUV."

  Sven flung his bulky body out of the SUV and demanded of the nearest cop, "What the fuck's happened?"

  "Your name?"

  "Sven Larsen. I live here. Personal assistant to Mr. Perkins." He swung his head around, his angry expression fading. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

  "Where have you been, sir?"

  "The gym. I go every morning. What's going on?"

  We left as he was led into the house. Ariana drove, because I was still too shaky. After a long few minutes, I said, "Was it suicide?"

  "Hell, no," said Ariana. "Can you really imagine Jarrod Perkins killing himself? Killing someone else, yes. Himself? No."

  "Are you saying murder?"

  Ariana shot me a hard blue stare. "I'm saying murder."

  I thought of begging oft" my date with Chantelle, having seen a corpse that morning, but I was looking forward to going somewhere new, with someone I didn't really know. It would be an escape from the indelible picture of the slumped body in the shower recess. I kept myself busy checking through Dad's things in the boxes Ariana had packed up and customizing his computer to suit me. Ariana had gone out, and nobody disturbed me, except for Harriet, who sweetly checked to make sure I was okay then left me alone.

  Chantelle had told me to dress casually, so I put on freshly ironed jeans and a blue tunic top. My battered face was a disaster area beyond repair, so I decided to tough it out with dark glasses until the lights in the theater went down.

  I explained to Julia Roberts I was going out and might be quite late. She checked that I'd filled her dinner bowl then made it clear she didn't care.

  Chantelle was picking me up, and she arrived as Melodie was leaving. "You're Melodie!"

  "You're Chantelle!"

  I realized they had never met in person, though they'd certainly shared quite intimate information via the receptionist gossip network.

  Melodie was appraising Chantelle with approval. "Acting?"

  "Amateur stuff mainly. You?"

  Melodie assumed a modest expression. "Some. I have a callback for Angel Rejects"

  "Angelique?"

  "How did you know?"

  "You're perfect for the part."

  Later, in Chantelle's car, a red Jeep, I said, "I didn't know you were into acting."

  "I'm not, really. Practically everyone in this town dreams of being an actor. The rest are aiming to be scriptwriters." She gurgled with laughter. "Sweeping statement, of course, but with a core of truth."

  Something was puzzling me. "If you and Melodie have talked so much, how come you didn't know she was"-I was about to say a would-be actor, but Melodie would hate that-"an actor?"

  "We don't talk about personal things, we're at work."

  "But I know for a fact you and Melodie discussed me."

  "That's different."

  Plainly there were receptionist networking rules I'd never understand.

  Sooner or later the subject of Jarrod Perkins had to come up. It was sooner. "You found Jarrod Perkins."

  I made an indeterminate, let's-not-discuss-this noise. Didn't work. She repeated the question.

  I said, "Yes, it was horrible."

  No way was she going to drop the subject. "Shit, Kylie, you saw Perkins yesterday. Right off the wall. Never heard a man scream that way. He said something about blackmail…" She trailed off, sending me a fill-in-the-blanks look.

  "Did he?"

  "When the news came he'd shot himself, I wasn't surprised. Obviously, he was losing it. Maybe this blackmail thing pushed him over the edge."

  "I'd rather not talk about it tonight."

  Clearly disappointed, Chantelle said, "Sure." Two minutes later: "Melodie said you were white as a ghost this morning when you came back."

  "Thank you, Melodie."

  "And she's been fending off reporters all day."

  "She has?" This would be the first time Melodie had failed to spill the beans.

  "Ariana Creeling told her not to worry you."

  Crikey, Ariana had more clout than I'd realized. I hadn't thought anyone or anything could shut Melodie up. And I hadn't thought of Ariana for minutes, and now here she was, popping up again.

  "So did you actually see the body?"

  "Chantelle!"

  She took both hands off the wheel to gesture she was giving up. "Okay, subject's off the menu."

  I pushed Ariana out of my mind and concentrated on Chantelle. She was looking spectacular tonight. Her silk shirt was a rich golden yellow and glowed against her dark skin. I felt a tickle of anticipation, but that may have been my stomach. I'd got over the shock of the morning's discovery and was feeling ravenous.

  We ate in a little Indian restaurant in the same block as the theater. The place was semi-dark and packed full of noisy patrons. I loved it because it was so full of life, and life was something I found myself valuing more than ever.

  The theater was hardly larger than the restaurant. I'd taken off my dark glasses, as I reckoned no one was looking at me anyway. We sat in the front row on a low bench, our knees protruding into the stage area. The play, Chantelle confided, had been written by a friend of hers; it was called Voices From the Walls.

  I steeled myself, expecting something perplexing and experimental, but it turned out to be a broad farce about the entertainment business. The audience roared with laughter through most of the performance. Being a foreigner, I didn't get all the references, but I enjoyed it all the same.

  Afterward we went backstage and crammed into a tiny dressing room to meet the cast and Chantelle's friend, the writer-director. He was a puppy-dog type of bloke, hopeful and ingratiating. If he'd had a tail, he'd have wagged it madly.

  A spontaneous party was starting, and suddenly I wanted to get away. Reading my mind, Chantelle murmured, "Let's get out of here. My place?"

  I looked into her eyes and felt a sudden jolt of freedom. No one knew me, no one cared what I did. This was someone I didn't really know, and she didn't know me.

  "I'm game," I said. "But my nose…you'll be gentle?"

  Arms around each other, we laughed our way to her Jeep. I felt giddy, like I was a kid again, on the edge of something new and exciting.

  Chantelle had an apartment in West Hollywood just off Santa Monica Boulevard. We made it through the front door before we kissed, quite gently, in the darkness. And then more insistently, until my skin tingled and the core of me began to melt.

  Chantelle laughed against my lips. "Do you want to shower with me or go to bed with me?"

  "Both, please." My knees were growing weak. "Bed first?"

  Everything shook. The floor beneath us creaked, the window shutters rattled. Then it was still again.

  "Stone the crows! What was that?”"

  Unconcerned, Chantelle nuzzled my neck. "Probably an aftershock."

  "What the hell's an aftershock?"

  "From L.A.'s last big earthquake. Aftershocks go on for years. Of course, it could have been a small earthquake in its own right."

  I tightened my arms around her. What was i
t about danger pumping up one's sexual responses? I was living proof it worked. Trembling with both alarm and passion, I said, "Jeez, Chantelle, you're awfully casual about this. I mean, an earthquake!"

  Another less violent shaking rolled through the apartment, dancing the shutters again. "Yerks!"

  "Calm down. After you live in L.A. for a while, you'll get used to it."

  I doubted it, I doubted it strongly. But I was finding Chantelle a delightful antidote to fear. The bed was super-size, the sheets were crisp, her body was lithe and strong, her skin like satin. Her mouth devoured me, her hands traced electric patterns on my willing flesh.

  "You're pretty crash-hot," I breathed.

  "That's good?"

  "That's very good."

  I was tight, I was liquid fire, I was flying. Sensations rippled, caught at my heart, exploded.

  "Tell me what you want," she whispered.

  "I want to fall into the flames."

  SEVENTEEN

  A bit singed, but happy and rather tired, I made my way home next morning. As it was Saturday, I wasn't expecting anyone except Jules to be there, so it was a surprise to find both Ariana's BMW and Dave Deer's white Rolls in the parking lot.

  When I got near Ariana's office I could hear Dave Deer's agitated tones.

  "Already I've had cancellations! And these are big names, Ariana, big names! They don't like scandal, they demand complete confidentiality. If it gets out that Perkins was being blackmailed, they'll run for the hills, they'll desert me. And after all I've done for mental health in this town!"

  I stuck my head around the door to say I was there, and Ariana beckoned me in.

  Dave Deer glanced at me and said, "Your face looks like hell." Then he was back on subject. "Ariana, I'm telling you. Any hint of blackmail is death to Deerdoc. Death!"

  "No blackmail letter was found."

  "You sure?"

  "I spoke with the detective in charge. We go back a long way. I mentioned blackmail, and he said nothing was found."

  "Shit! You mentioned blackmail to him? You should have kept that quiet."