Scarlet Stiletto - the First Cut

by Lindy Cameron

  “How lovely to see a young man take such pride in his domestic duties,” I offered, my thoughts running to Mrs Wilcox’s milk saucepan. I twittered on, old lady style, reminiscing about my knowing Stewart as a sweet young boy (I had to make this up, obviously).

  I tell them nobody knows of my painting’s existence! Labour the point of how I live alone, how deaf I am. That, since Mrs Wilcox’s death, I’ve hung the painting in my front upstairs bedroom. They’re practically salivating by the time I leave.

  My trap laid, all I had to do was wait ...

  I prepared for bed, then called Alice. As I’d thought, she was at the laboratory with the ants, who’d made an exciting breakaway and were forming a new colony. She was awake for the night.

  So far, all was to plan. The lab was twelve minutes from my house, at the most. Less, with no traffic.

  “Just checking your number works, dear.” I said and settled down to watch from my bedroom window.

  It wasn’t in my plan to fall asleep! I thought I was far too nervous. I woke to noises. They’re already in the house! The clock glows 4 a.m. I remember that was Mrs Wilcox’s time of death.

  I hear them moving around downstairs. I’ve lost precious minutes.

  I find I’m absolutely frozen and they’re getting closer. Finally, I manage to press ‘redial’ to Alice. But before I’m able to say anything, they’re in the room. A torch blinds me. I try old lady asleep but the phone in my hand gives me away. It’s grabbed, the cord ripped out of the wall. The torch flashes until it settles on my picture. I hear grunts of satisfaction. I swing my feet down to the floor but am pushed onto the bed, a big arm pins my chest.

  A pillow is over my face, my arms trapped. I struggle, get a kick to one of them. One throws his full body weight on me now.

  Then there’s blackness. Silence.

  Alice is pressing a lavender-scented flannel to my forehead when I come to.

  A policewoman grins to see me awake.

  “You are one truly amazing woman,” smiles Alice. “Anita would be so proud of you.”

  I was so grateful she didn’t tell me off, call me a silly old lady.

  “Did they ...?” I whisper, barely able to get the words out.

  “Both caught. With the picture.”

  “How did you ...?” I strain.

  “Your number came up on my mobile. I knew something was up. The police were here within ten minutes. Luckily ...” Her eyes filled with tears. Mine, too, I have to confess; I’m not ready to go.

  I squeeze her hand. She grabs mine, puts it up to her mouth and kisses it with such affection I’m quite taken aback.

  “If you can bear any more excitement, I’ve found out where the missing pictures are,” she says.

  I try to sit up.

  “Tomorrow. Shhhh.”

  ‘The Laurels’, where Miss Beatrix Dukes is ending her days, is quite the nicest nursing home I’d ever seen. Her rooms are an art gallery. As well as the twenty-five beautiful portraits of Beatrix in her youth, there is one of Anita and Beatrix together, naked on the rug underneath the skylight, entwined around each other. It’s entitled, ‘Self-Portrait With Lover’.

  The nurse said that although none of them can make any sense out of Beatrix on a daily basis, she seems quite lucid when talking to that painting.

  The autopsy showed Mrs Wilcox had bruises ‘commensurate with a struggle’ and a well-hidden needle-mark puncture. Stewart Remington is being charged with murdering Mrs Wilcox with an overdose of morphine, with Marcus as his accessory.

  After the forensics had their field day with the milk saucepan (there was no residue of sleeping pills, just aged milk and hot chocolate), Alice presented it to me mounted on a plinth, inscribed ‘Mrs T. Domestic Goddess’.

  I’ve put it on the hall table underneath my painting. That way no one can avoid noticing either trophy.

  Roxxy Bent

  First Prize Trophy, 2003

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Everything $2.00 On This Rack

  Why is it that, in the first scene of most private-eye films, the gumshoe gets visited by a breathless, dizzy blonde woman who’s worried about her missing husband? Nobody like that ever comes into my office. My stock in trade is more like the specimen in front of me now: male, mid-forties, thinning, paunching, and practically wilting with tedium. He may as well have had ‘middle-management public servant’ tattooed across his forehead. He sipped prissily at his weak, white tea, sweetened with his own saccharine that he kept specially in his pocket.

  I could feel a headache coming on.

  “My wife’s left me,” he said, “and I want you to find her and find out why.”

  I can tell you why now and save you the money, I felt like saying, but stayed quiet. I needed the work.

  “Please go on, Mr Michaels.”

  “I think she may have joined some weird cult.” His pale eyes blinked, his tone was solemn.

  I needed a Disprin badly. “With respect, Mr Michaels, that seems a little far-fetched.”

  “You don’t know Carol. She was always reading books about astrology and past lives. She had these ideas about the anti-ageing process. We had to drink grass juice!”

  The thought of wanting to prolong your time with this guy was a depressing one. He sat looking at me accusingly, while the coach-bolt tightened across my head.

  “That doesn’t really qualify as cult behaviour. Was there ... anyone she was seeing?”

  Always a delicate question this one, when dealing with the rejected spouse, because nine times out of ten there was.

  “You mean, an affair?”

  “Well, someone she may have wanted to ...” (the words ‘escape with’ hovered dangerously close, but I changed them in the nick of time) “... leave with?”

  I was expecting a stinging retort to the contrary, but instead he slumped his round shoulders and looked defeated.

  “There could have been,” he said helplessly. “I hardly knew what was going on in Carol’s head most of the time. If it wasn’t belly dancing it was chant and be happy. She was talking about going to Nepal a few days before she left.”

  It struck me that, even if a little eccentric, Carol Michaels was a good deal more interesting than her husband.

  “I tried,” he was saying. “She was dead keen on aquarobics all this spring, and then she wanted to cash in some of my super to build a heated pool, so we started that. She had an appointment with the fellow to look over some pavers, trying to decide what colour we should landscape with around the pool area, then she up and left.”

  I was beginning to like Carol Michaels more and more. I took a few notes, trying to shield my headache from the early summer glare outside.

  “Did she take her passport?”

  “I have no idea. I certainly can’t find it anywhere. Most of her clothes are gone, and her makeup and what have you. She’s got a sister in North Queensland she’s as thick as thieves with. Audrey’s into this yoga and beansprouts business as well. Came down last year and they both went off to hear Shirley MacLaine talking about dolphin energy or something.”

  “I’m actually more interested in the boyfriend angle,” I said, writing ‘CD’—my code for Complete Dill—in my notebook next to his name. “Did she work with anyone likely, or was there a neighbour or friend?” I could imagine his wife, any woman, pulling the pin on this guy and shooting through; but with whom? Her aquarobics instructor? Was she at this moment reaching enlightenment in a Nepalese monastery with the guy from the health food shop?

  “If it was anyone, it’d be the bloke from the nursery up the road,” said Bryan Michaels firmly, surprising me.

  “Why do you feel that?” I pressed patiently, underlining the CD and putting a star next to it.

  “She had him around all the time. They’re always gossiping over catalogues and aromatherapy and what have you,” he sighed gustily. “She’s been consulting him about the meadow of native grasses she wants to turn the front lawn into.�
�

  Suddenly, as I rooted in the desk drawer for a soluble Aspirin, I felt a flash of pity for him. He couldn’t help being a dullish ... um (I consulted his details—oh, god, spare me) ...pharmaceuticals salesman. Okay, so peddling new brands of casting plaster to dentists and trying to get enthused about thermometers could turn someone dull. Perhaps Carol Michaels was a flighty, fad-obsessed woman who’d just got it into her head to take off with the chap from the nursery. Maybe it was her husband who was the long-suffering one.

  “What’s this guy’s name, the nursery man?”

  “Er ... Haynes, Francis Haynes.” He gave me the address and I took copies of Carol’s birth certificate, licence number and medical history, which he’d brought with him in a tidy file.

  “I’ll check whether or not your wife has used her passport or booked airline tickets somewhere. And I’ll find out if this Haynes is missing, too. Okay?” I smiled as winningly as I could under the circumstances.

  He nodded rapidly, running his finger nervously under his collar. “Getting very warm, isn’t it?” he said, in a sudden attempt at small talk. “Soon be summer.”

  A thought struck me. “Did your wife take summer or winter clothes, Mr Michaels?”

  “Winter, sort of. Some sweaters and a coat, you know the kind of thing. Er ... some slacks, a few long-sleeved shirts. Mostly she’s taken to wearing those Indian-style clothes— cheesecloth baggy things—they’re all gone, too.”

  I studied the photo he’d given me: a blurry shot of a woman at a barbecue, her plate piled high with tabouli. She looked distracted; her short hair blew in her face. She could have been anyone. She looked like a librarian, or the lady at your lead-lighting class. Her shirt was green-striped, with a long pointy collar, circa 1970s, and big red buttons.

  “I’d like to see some more photographs, if I may. This one doesn’t tell me much.”

  “Yes, I’m not much of a photographer. I have an album at home. Would you like me to bring it in?”

  “No. How about I drop by and see them tomorrow? Right now I’m going home to sit in a cold bathtub for a while.” I smiled wanly. The late afternoon sun was pouring through the window; we were both shiny with sweat, and my headache was pounding at my temples.

  Mr Michaels stood and nodded. “I just want you to find her and ask what’s going on,” he said.

  “I’ll make it my business,” I replied, rising to shake his hand.

  The next morning was just as hot as I drove slowly to his house, a bigger anonymous suburban number than I had imagined, flanked on either side by dwellings based around the same generic plan. A huge hole had been torn into the back lawn, like a tooth from a gum. I glanced down into it and then made my way around the idle earth-moving machinery to the outdoor furniture, set up where my client sat, his hand on a photo album.

  “Well, that’s her pool,” said Bryan Michaels with a humourless smile.

  “I never realised they made such a mess.”

  “They have to dig down a fair way. Look at the rest of the lawn—it’s ruined. And, there’s going to be another great truck here this afternoon when they come to pour the concrete.” Again I felt a tweak of sympathy for the man left paying the bill for his wife’s dream project.

  “It might all be a misunderstanding, Mr Michaels,” I offered lamely. “Your wife might just need some ... space.”

  “That sounds exactly like her,” he said bitterly.

  “Let’s look at your photos, then, shall we?”

  Here was Carol Michaels over a period of years. Bryan was right: her tastes in clothing had veered towards the floaty and ethnic of late, but she’d obviously always had individual tastes; a camel coat with a fur collar and kelly-green trousers, a pair of spotty bathers and a big straw hat. In each photo she smiled determinedly into the camera with mild blue eyes. It was hard to say whether she was shrewd or credulous, happy or sad. She had the kind of face that could slip into a crowd and not be noticed by airline stewards, hotel staff or the person at the corner shop. Tracking her down might be more difficult than I’d thought.

  Up in her room her wardrobe was pretty well cleared out, as well as all the drawers. No jewellery left, no incriminating letters declaring ardent love for someone other than her husband, no notepads with hotel reservations conveniently outlined. I returned to Mr Michaels and the photos.

  “Thanks for letting me see these, Mr Michaels. I’ll take a couple for reference, if that’s okay?”

  “Certainly. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to deal with the tradesmen about the pebble-dash.”

  I left and headed down to the local nursery, a patch of greenery in an industrial zone of hardware shops, car detailers and discount tyre marts. I wandered into the greenhouse area and gazed at some shrubs for a while, feeling guilty about my own garden or, rather, my eight square feet of decking.

  “Can I help you at all?” A tall, extremely handsome young man was standing behind me, a spray pump in his hand.

  “I’m looking for something that thrives on neglect.”

  “Hmm, you’d better get a cactus. Although, people don’t realise how much water a cactus actually needs.”

  “Well, I can certainly simulate a desert environment,” I smiled. “Actually, I’m looking for a Francis Haynes. Does he work here?”

  “He certainly does; we run the place together.”

  “Oh, good. He’s not on his summer holidays by any chance?”

  “We never take holidays around here,” the guy laughed, heading for the greenhouse door. “Hang on, I’ll give him a yell.”

  Francis Haynes, when he joined us a moment later, was the second most perfect specimen of manhood I’d seen—in the same day—within five minutes. I wondered if the heat was getting to me.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, taking off his sunglasses and wiping his forehead.

  I told him my name and business. “I’m wondering if you know a Mrs Carol Michaels?”

  “Sure I do. Nice lady with a drip-dry husband. She comes in here often. We’re helping her design a rockery landscape garden.”

  “She seems to have left for parts unknown with person or persons unknown,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “How intriguing. Good for her.”

  “Her husband had a feeling she might have left with you.”

  Francis looked at his business partner then they both looked at me, their mouths twitching I’m slow. It took me about five seconds, and then we all burst out laughing.

  When I took my leave with a cactus ten minutes later, we were the best of friends.

  So, absolutely no leads there, I thought, with a sense of frustration. Maybe I’d phone the sister in Queensland to see if Carol had gone there or, at the very least, had confided in her.

  I’d just put the cactus in the car and was wondering if there was a cafe in walking or short-driving distance, when I spotted the opportunity shop. Op-shops are my weakness. There’s something about coming out with a bag full of stuff you’ve just bought for a couple of bucks that simply lifts the spirits. I looked at my watch, decided I had a few minutes to spare, and ducked inside.

  Humming to myself I wandered up the aisle of $1 BARGAINS! and past the WOMEN’S WINTER TOPS to the rack that said ANTIQUE CLOTHES AND FANCY DRESS. Op-shops always have a rack like this; it’s where they put unusual stuff. Once, in a small country op-shop in New South Wales, I found a fabulous red ballgown made in 1952 ... But I digress.

  Something made me stop and focus on the $ 2 rack. Looking back, I marvel at the random set of circumstances that allowed me to fluke my best-ever find, and how close I’d come to resisting temptation and walking away to find some lunch.

  I slowly reached out my hand for the coat-hanger, when a cold wave yawned up and turned over in my stomach. There was THE shirt: the green-striped ‘70s number with the pointy collar and red buttons. Oh, no! And, a little further back on the rack, was a camel hair coat with a fur collar.

  It was only later that I considered t
here could have been a different logical explanation for this. Carol Michaels could easily have cleaned out her own wardrobe on the way to her new life; she could have turfed all this old stuff into the op-shop bin on her way to the airport. I don’t know why this sensible, perfectly feasible scenario didn’t occur to me then and there.

  But, at the time I just knew, somehow, that that wasn’t the case. I knew, without a second thought, that all of Carol’s clothes was there, somewhere; along with her suitcase and makeup and the poor woman’s stockings and underwear. I knew, because I felt tears of pity filling my eyes as I stood there holding her shirt with the childish buttons. Fluking it: not a very professional investigative method, I know, but there you are. How can you say to a police detective you know and respect, “Look, I just know she’s dead because I’m already grieving for her”? Sometimes a person, and their official connections, just has to take their stomach’s word for something, and that’s all there is to it.