KK01 - Wombat Strategy

by Claire McNab

  Last night I'd argued to Ariana and Bob that he couldn't be the one, because with his knowledge he'd make a copy, not take the disks from the file. Or he could simply send the information to a distant computer using the Internet. While I'd been speaking, however, it had begun to dawn on me that maybe Sherwood intended for suspicion to fall on someone not technologically adept. And if the disks weren't missing from the files there would be no concrete proof blackmail material had been taken.

  Irma introduced me to Sherwood in the manner of an indulgent mother showing off a talented child. Oscar Sherwood was young enough to make me feel like an older woman. His face made him look about fifteen, but a powerful fifteen. The muscles in his arms were truly impressive, and he wore an extremely tight sleeveless top to allow appreciation of his toned torso.

  "Hi," he said, preoccupied with the innards of a copying machine.

  "G'day."

  "Filling in for Noreen?"

  "That's right."

  "Good luck."

  Leaving him diving deeper into the mechanism, with Irma handing him tools when needed, I wandered off to explore further.

  Deerdoc Enterprises was clearly a thriving corporation, leasing the entire three-floor building on Roxbury Drive. Dave Deer's Slap! Slap! Get On With It therapy room was on the middle floor, adjacent to his office. It had two entrances: one directly from his office, and one leading to a private corridor. The room was exactly as it had appeared in the demonstration disk and was, I discovered, one of three such black-and-white rooms. I peered closely at the white carpet, wondering if the hearty slaps delivered during treatment ever caused a nosebleed, but the thick pile was stain-free.

  Next I checked out the walk-in safe where the theft had taken place. It had an electronic lock requiring a keycard to open it. I didn't have one, but that wasn't a problem, as the door wasn't shut. Inside were ranks of shallow drawers, all neatly labeled in alphabetical order. They had no locking mechanism, so I pulled one out to examine the contents. Patients had individual heavy plastic files, each with the name clearly shown. I pulled out another drawer. Stone the crows! Famous name after famous name jumped out at me. This was a blackmailer's heaven.

  A bloke in a white coat came in, looking preoccupied. He paid absolutely no attention to me, going to one of the drawers and extracting a file. He was wearing a badge indicating he was Dr. Walter Yeats.

  "G'day, Dr. Yeats."

  "Mmmm? Oh, hi."

  "I could be anyone, you know."

  He looked up from the file, focused on me, and said soothingly, "I'm sure you can be. Ambition is a wonderful motor to power one's life."

  "I don't mean that. I mean I could be an intruder, deadset on stealing files."

  "Have you often felt this sense of alienation?"

  "I'm not a patient."

  "Of course not." He tucked the file he'd extracted under one arm, reached into the pocket of his white coat, extracted a business card, and pressed it into my hand. "If you feel the necessity to talk, please don't hesitate to call. Anytime."

  A comforting pat on my shoulder and he was gone. Crikey! I knew the staff hadn't been told about the missing disks, so there was no security flap going on, but even so this was past a joke. If the fancy took me, there'd be nothing to stop me from helping myself to an armful of files and skedaddling with them.

  I set off to run down the remaining three high-level suspects. Working on the principle that everyone eventually would end up in the staff dining area, if only for a cup of coffee, I staked it out around lunchtime—lurking, I hoped inconspicuously, by a staff notice board. It was a good move: In a few minutes I had a meeting with both Kristi Jane Russo of the PR department and Randy Romaine of Accounting.

  Kristi Jane was one of those people who always talk too loudly, so I heard her long before I saw her. In her broad Aussie accent, she was yelling, "Keith's got the bloody hide of a bloody elephant. He says to me, 'Now, listen, Kristi Jane,' and I say to him, 'I'm fed up with listening. I want action.' And Randy, you just won't believe what he says to me then..."

  I was betting this Randy would be Randy Romaine. I waited with keen interest for the pair to come around the corner. In a moment they did. Kristi Jane's voice proved to be much bigger than her body. She had the slight, flat-chested physique of a thin young girl, bizarrely topped by an exaggerated bouffant hairdo.

  Randy Romaine looked like an accountant, which was what he was. Fittingly, perhaps, he was monochrome: brown hair, brown eyes, brown suit, brown shoes. He had a forgettable face and restrained body language. He certainly didn't fit my mental picture of a stalker. Perhaps he'd reformed and was leading a blameless life, with his stalking days behind him. Or perhaps he'd merely put his stalking on hold and was cultivating the new field of blackmail.

  "G'day," I said, practically leaping in front of them. I beamed at Kristi Jane. "I couldn't help hearing your accent. I'm an Aussie too. I'm just filling in as Dr. Deer's assistant for the next few weeks."

  That broke the ice. "Did you hear why Noreen resigned?" bellowed Kristi Jane. "Terrorism! You've got to stand up to the bastards. Noreen's a lily-livered little twit!" In a moment she'd swept me up into her conversation and into the dining room, where she bullied a mousy bloke into giving up his spot at a table and installed Randy, herself, and me in his place.

  Apart from the desire I had to pop earplugs into my ears to mute Kristi Jane's deafening voice, I quite enjoyed myself. She was a mine of information as far as company gossip was concerned, and better still she wasn't a bit reticent about it.

  Randy Romaine turned out to have a very dry sense of humor, which went rather well with his quiet demeanor. I tried but couldn't find any real distinguishing feature. The bloke was pleasant but not memorable. I did notice, however, how thick his neck was. "Do you work out?" I asked.

  "Why, yes."

  "Do you?" Kristi Jane regarded him with surprised irritation. "I never knew that. Why didn't you tell me?"

  So by mid afternoon I had three down and one to go— Reuben Kowalski. I found Kristi Jane in the PR department shouting into a phone. When she'd finished, I said, "Dr. Deer told me to speak with Reuben Kowalski. He's supposed to be in the billing department, but I can't find him."

  "That's because the bastard will be outside the building, smoking. Bloody pathetic, don't you think? Not being able to give up an addiction that's going to kill you is pretty piss-weak."

  She added I couldn't miss him as he'd be the only one wearing a purple shirt. "Always wears purple, and he's not even bloody gay," she advised. I thanked her, wondering if Kristi Jane had defeated her own addiction to alcohol.

  Reuben Kowalski was exactly where she said he'd be. Los Angeles, I'd been learning, had some of the strictest anti-smoking ordinances in the country, so smokers in office buildings were forced to go outside to avoid inflicting secondhand smoke on colleagues. There was a narrow alleyway running down one side of the building, and a small group of tobacco lepers had congregated there to puff furiously on cigarettes.

  I stopped to examine the spot where the Hummer had been destroyed. The road was blackened, but every piece of the twisted remains had been removed, probably for forensic examination.

  In the alleyway, Reuben was sucking on a cigarette and talking with great animation on a mobile phone. As Kristi Jane had told me, his shirt was deep purple, and oddly enough this color seemed to suit him. He had tight curly hair turning gray and a droopy, nicotine-stained mustache.

  I'd manufactured a reason to see him—a billing that had supposedly gone astray. I introduced myself. Playing anxious-to-please temporary worker, I said, "So sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Kowalski, but Dr. Deer will be calling this afternoon about this matter and..." I let my voice trail off and sloped my eyebrows the wrong way.

  He took a final mighty suck of his cigarette. "Okay, I'll come in now."

  "Oh, thank you, Mr. Kowalski."

  Melodie might have done a better job, but I had to admit I quite impressed myself. Not to skite,
but I wasn't half bad at this acting routine. And now I'd accomplished step one, which was to establish casual contact with the suspects, I could keep up the act by getting them to accept me as just another member of the Deerdoc staff.

  I left at five so I could catch Ariana in the office and give her my first day's report. I felt a bit guilty leaving early, which was stupid, as I wasn't really Dave Deer's personal assistant. I wasn't going to sneak around, so I said "Good night, Chantelle" as I passed her on the way out.

  "Hold on a moment, Kylie."

  I came back to her desk, ready to argue I could leave the premises when I wished. She said, "I've got tickets for a play Friday night. It's a little local theater. I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

  I wasn't lost for words often. This was one of the times. "Urn," I said.

  Chantelle chuckled. "Yes, it's a date. I'm asking you on a date. Think it over and tell me tomorrow. Or you can call me." She passed me a Deerdoc business card. "My cell number's on the back."

  "Right-oh."

  I rode down to the parking structure deep in thought. I was looking at Chantelle in an entirely different light. It was rather flattering to be asked, I told myself, but how did she know..?

  "Melodie!" The receptionists' bush telegraph had been at work.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Oh, sorry," I said to the bloke sharing the lift with me. "I was thinking out loud."

  When I got to Kendall & Creeling, I was ridiculously disappointed to find Ariana had left for the day, however Melodie had a consolation prize for me. "You can meet Fran's husband, Quip, if you like. He's in the kitchen talking to Rich."

  "Quip? Is that a name?"

  "I think it's actually Bruce, but Quip wanted something that'd stand out on the first page of a script. Quip Trent. Comedy writer, so it suits, don't you think?"

  "Would I have seen any of his work? Movies? TV?"

  Melodie shook her head, a look of deep compassion on her face. "The biz can be so hard. Quip hasn't sold a script yet." She brightened up to add, "Any day now, though. Rich says he might use Quip as a script doctor for his new project."

  This was one for the books. "How can Quip be a script doctor if he's never had any of his own scripts made?"

  With a forbearing smile, Melodie explained, "You don't get how the biz works. Hardly any scripts get made. It's the writing of them that's important."

  She broke off as the delivery bloke in the daggy brown outfit—who'd made me feel a real galah yesterday—came in with a pile of boxes. While Melodie was sorting through them, the bloke nudged me in the ribs.

  "Well, well," he said, grinning. "Solved any big crimes lately?" He looked me up and down, noted my tailored dress, and chuckled some more. "Dressing for success, are we?"

  "I am," I said, "but jeez, look at you."

  "What?"

  "It's hard to look good in brown. Especially that brown." I added, as my exit line, "It's cruel, really, making you wear that uniform."

  "Hey, wait a minute..."

  I strode off, mad as a cut snake. This blasted bloke would tell Melodie how he found me reading Private Investigation: The Complete Handbook. This news would hit the receptionists' telegraph. Soon everyone would know. Including Ariana.

  There were four people in the kitchen: Lonnie, clutching his ever-present mug of coffee; Rich Westholme, lounging against the counter; Fran, frowning; and someone who must be Quip.

  His handsome face lit with amusement, he was saying, "Oh, my God, I saw Molly Ringwald the other day. I mean, hi, can we say blast from the past? I mean, what has she done since Pretty in Pink? Hello!"

  This bloke had to be gay. He was everything I loved in a man: humorous, delightful, and homosexual.

  A hot glare from Fran caught my attention. "He's mine," she said. "Keep your paws off him. I won't say it twice."

  FOURTEEN

  Early next morning I was explaining to Julia Roberts how she'd have to keep a stiff upper lip because I'd be gone again today, when Ariana knocked on my door. Fortunately I'd made the bed and everything was tidy.

  Ariana stood in the doorway, wearing her signature black. Her pale hair was as smooth as her expressionless face. It mystified me how she projected that aura of cool, contained authority without appearing to do anything at all. My imagination skittered around, trying to visualize her in the depths of passion. Before I got to the point of short-circuiting, Ariana said, "I tried to get you on your cell phone, but no luck."

  "Sorry, I didn't think anyone knew the number to ring me, so I didn't turn it on." I went over to my bag, retrieved the phone, and activated it. "Hey, now that I know you have the number, it'll be on twenty-four-seven, no worries."

  "Tell me about yesterday."

  I gave her a complete rundown, including my assessment of how crook the security at Deerdoc was.

  She listened without comment, then said, "Dave Deer called last night. He wants to know when you're moving in."

  "I'm not."

  "Why? Is it leaving Julia Roberts that's holding you back?"

  "It's that Dave Deer's a lech. If I move in there, sooner or later Elise is going to catch him putting the hard word on me. It'd be a nasty sitch."

  "What makes you think you won't face the same situation in the office?"

  "Look, Ariana, I know he's our client, and he's an important one. I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't happen, but he can't cop a free feel and not have me get snarky about it."

  "Just so long as you don't throw him over your shoulder, as I recall you did the captain of the football team."

  I blushed a bit, remembering how I'd boasted about that the first day we'd met. "Hell's bells," I said. "Do you remember everything?"

  "Everything."

  "I'd better be careful what I say."

  When a ringing sound started, I looked around, puzzled. "Your cell phone," said Ariana.

  It was Chantelle. "Have you decided about Friday?"

  I didn't ask how she'd got my number. I knew. "You could have asked me at work," I said, aware Ariana, who'd moved to stroke Jules, couldn't help overhearing my end of the conversation.

  Chantelle's chuckle was warm and promising. "I couldn't wait."

  "Okay, I accept."

  "Terrific. See you soon."

  The mobile gave a discreet burp when I ended the call. "Someone from work has tickets for a play," I said, feeling the need to explain.

  "I hope not on Saturday night."

  "No, Friday. Why?"

  "You mentioned you'd like to see my sister's work. The gallery has a private showing of Janette's new exhibition this Saturday night."

  Now, this wasn't a date, not really, but I still felt a tingle of excitement. "That'd be great, Ariana."

  Crikey, I was even getting a charge out of saying Ariana's name. I mentally tried Chantelle. Bit of a jolt, but not as much. I frowned to myself. This was rebound stuff. I couldn't say, or even think, Raylene's name without a pang. Overcompensating, that's what it was. I was trying to fill the void she'd left with other women. Maybe I needed some Slap! Slap! Get On With It therapy. Or maybe I just needed some good, healthy, uncomplicated sex.

  "What in the world are you thinking about?" Ariana asked.

  "Nothing in particular. Why?"

  She shook her head, smiled at me, said, "Again, Kylie, you find me lost for words."

  She went off, still shaking her head, bemused. I consoled myself with the thought that I had some effect on Ariana, even if it wasn't quite the one I would have hoped.

  My mobile rang again. This time it was Melodic "Kylie, I've got a favor to ask, and you'll probably be gone before I get to work."

  "I can't look after the phone."

  "It's not the phone. It's something else...a big favor, actually. I'll understand if you say no."

  She wouldn't, of course. "What is it?"

  "In the top drawer of my desk there's an envelope with head and shoulders."

  "Yes?" I said doubtfully.

  "You
know what I mean. My publicity shots. I want you to take one to Deerdoc with you."

  "Why?"

  "Chantelle called and said Lorelei Stevens has an appointment with Dr. Deer this morning. I'm sure you'll be seeing her. I'm only asking a little thing. All I want you to do is ask her to autograph my photo."

  I didn't bother inquiring how she knew about the appointment. The world of spies could learn a lot from receptionists. "Let me get this straight. You want me to ask Lorelei Stevens to put her autograph on your photo?"

  "If it isn't too much trouble. It's the recognition factor, you see. When Lorelei and I meet in the future, my face will be familiar to her."

  "And are you likely to meet Lorelei Stevens in the future?"

  "Oh, yes," said Melodic "I've got an audition. It's a movie where she's the lead, Heart of Pain. Larry says I'm just made for the role..."

  Fair dinkum, I was astonished. My mum would say gobsmacked. Lorelei Stevens signed Melodie's photo! She didn't even blink or ask who the hell this dame was. She just scrawled her signature right across Melodie's face. And she smiled while she did it.

  Of course, she'd been smiling since she came out of the therapy room, both cheeks a bit pink and eyes a bit watery.

  A couple of minutes later Dave Deer appeared, his white medical coat so starched it practically crackled. He purred, "Lorelei, we've achieved so much today. You've been very brave. Very brave. But a wise soul like yours knows pleasure comes through pain."

  This sounded like S/M to me, but I reckoned neither of them would thank me for sharing that thought, so I didn't. Instead I'd whipped out Melodie's photo and asked the film star to sign it.

  This particular celebrity was the exception to the blond rule. She was a sultry brunet with aquamarine eyes—I suspected tinted contact lenses—and an astonishing cleavage.

  "Alert Ms. Stevens's limo driver she's on the way down," commanded Dave. I called Jim, the doorman, who would signal the limousine driver. If all went according to plan, her luxury transport would draw up just as Dr. Deer and his famous patient exited the building through a special side entrance reserved for celebrities.