FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection

by Zoe Sharp

  The summer house was an architectural flight of fancy writ large. Just goes to show what happens when the wealthy get bored and start doodling.

  As I made my way across the lawn and skirted the swimming pool the summer house was lit up like a beacon, lights blazing from every window. I jogged up the steps that led to the ornate entrance and pushed open the door.

  As soon as I saw who Pierce had cornered, I understood his reaction. The girl was eighteen but could have passed for twenty-one, and she was utterly beautiful, wearing a mask of blasé bravado and a top that was barely legal. She sat sprawled on one of the cane sofas, one long leg dangling with apparent negligence over the arm. Only the nervous swing of her foot gave lie to her insouciance.

  She’d been practising her best sultry pout on Pierce and did not look pleased when I arrived to spoil her fun. Another few minutes and she’d probably have wheedled her way loose. If the scowl she shot in my direction was anything to go by, she realised it, too.

  “OK,” I said grimly. “I’ll deal with this.” As he hurried past me, looking flustered, I added quietly, “Stick to procedure, Pierce. And wake the boss.”

  “Oh . . . really?” His eyes flicked longingly over the girl before he caught my eye and mumbled, “Yeah, OK, no problem.”

  As the door closed behind him I turned back and found the girl watching his departure with glittering eyes.

  “You’ve obviously made quite a hit there,” I said dryly.

  “Hmm,” she agreed, letting a secret little smile briefly curve her lips that died when she switched her gaze back to me. “I get the feeling you’re not quite so easily impressed, though.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said, and for nearly half a minute we stared each other out. Then I sighed. “It was foolish to think you could get past us, Amanda,” I said, voice mild. “Your father hired us because we know what we’re doing.”

  “Damn watchdogs,” Amanda Dempsey said with a sneer. “I’ve been evading people like you, sneaking out, sneaking in, since I was thirteen years old.”

  “Well, we caught you this time, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, you did,” she drawled and something flashed through the back of her eyes, quick and bright. Then it was gone. She shrugged. “Well, you can’t win them all.”

  She sat up, suddenly restless, and reached for the inlaid ivory antique cigarette box on the glass table in front of her. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes,” I said, slamming the lid shut before she had a chance to reach inside, and leaving my hand there. Open-mouthed, she thought about making an issue of it, but took one look at my face and decided not to, shrugging like it was of no importance.

  “You know that someone tried to kill your father less than a week ago,” I went on, allowing some of the exasperation I was feeling to leak through into my voice. “Is this all just a game to you?”

  “What if it is?” she said. “Just because someone’s decided to take a pot-shot at the old man – and the number of likely suspects must be legion – and he’s chosen to shut himself off like some old hermit, it doesn’t mean I have to be a virtual prisoner in this mouldy old place, too, does it?”

  The house had every modern convenience. As well as the outdoor swimming pool and the indoor swimming pool, there were tennis courts, stables, a home gym that made the pro place I used seem positively under-equipped, and a dozen full-time staff to pander the family’s every whim. I knew ordinary people who paid a fortune for weekends away at a place like this. I shook my head. What was that about familiarity and contempt?

  “You want to go out, you’re free to go by the main gate,” I said mildly then. You don’t have to scale the back wall.”

  “Yeah, right.” She gave a cynical snort of laughter and threw me a challenging stare. “So I can go out, huh? Alone?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Not a chance.”

  “OK, so who’ll come out with me and spend the night clubbing? You?” She let her eyes flick me up and down, deliberately insulting. “What if I get lucky? Are you going to wait outside the bedroom door like a good little watchdog while I—”

  “Only if you let me strip-search the guy at gunpoint first,” I said easily. “Mind you, some of the guys you’ve been hanging around with lately are used to that kind of thing, aren’t they?”

  “How dare you check up on me,” she gritted out, her cheeks flushing, a dull red that did nothing for her porcelain skin.

  “We checked up on everyone,” I said.

  She jumped up. For a moment she just stood there, trembling with anger that had her on the verge of tears.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t take my side,” she said, sounding much younger, almost petulant. “My father says ‘jump’ and the only thing you spineless wimps give a damn about is how high.”

  “You have to admit that your old man’s money has come in very useful for getting you out of a few scrapes over the years,” I said cheerfully. “Drug possession and drunk driving, to name but two.”

  “How much trouble do you reckon I would have got into,” she said bitterly, “if I hadn’t spent half my life trying to live up to Daddy’s impossible ideals?”

  “You could have got out from under,” I pointed out. “He doesn’t exactly keep you locked up in the basement.”

  She laughed, as though I’d suggested something ridiculous. “And done what? Gone where?”

  I refrained from rolling my eyes. “You’re young and moderately bright. You didn’t have to be a lapdog all your life,” I said, unable to resist getting my own back for her earlier jibe. “You could have gone anywhere and done anything you set your mind to. Most people,” I added, “have to work for what they want in life. They don’t get it handed to them on a hallmarked silver platter by a flunky wearing white gloves and a tailcoat.”

  Amanda paced to one of the windows even though the lights made it impossible to see anything outside except her own reflection in the glass. Maybe that was all she was after. Eventually, she turned back.

  “You don’t come from money, do you, Charlie?”

  I thought of my parents’ affluent country home in the stockbroker belt of Cheshire and laughed. “My folks aren’t quite down to their last farthing, thank you very much.”

  I shifted slightly so I was between her and the open doorway, just in case, glancing through it as I did so. Lights had come on in the main wing of the house and I could see figures moving across the lawn. Pierce might be new and green, but it seemed he had remembered what he had to do, at least. “I certainly don’t go running to my father,” I went on, “to bail me out every time I hit a problem.”

  “If that’s what I’ve done,” she said, lip twisting, “it’s because I’m just doing what Daddy taught me from the cradle.”

  “Which is?”

  “That money is the answer to everything.”

  Into the silence that followed, my walkie-talkie crackled into life.

  “Hey, Charlie,” came Pierce’s voice, loud and clear, “you were right. We got him. Some punk kid with a sawn-off. Southwest corner. The situation’s contained and the police are on their way.”

  “Good. Thank you.” I put the walkie-talkie back in my pocket and glanced across at the girl. “Sorry, Amanda,” I said with no regret in my voice. “Your diversionary tactic didn’t work. Who was he, by the way – your latest bit of rough? Did you really think he’d get to your father before we could stop him?”

  I put my head on one side and watched her as she turned away from the window and staggered back to the sofa, dropping onto the cushions like her legs would no longer support her. But when she looked up, her eyes were wild, defiant.

  “You’ll never prove anything,” she said. Fine words, spoilt only by the shaky tone.

  “She doesn’t have to.”

  Behind me, the door pushed open and her father stepped into the summer house. He’d put on a silk robe over his pyjamas, but he was still a commanding figure.

  Amanda stiffened at the sight of him,
then dived for the cigarette box on the table in front of her, scrabbling inside it.

  “If you’re looking for that nice little semiautomatic you hid in there,” I said, regretful. “I found it this afternoon.”

  Her colour fled. She gave a shriek of rage and flew out of her seat. I was never quite sure if it was me or her father she intended to attack, but I didn’t give her the chance anyway. Before she’d taken more than two strides I’d grabbed her arms, spun her round, and dumped her back onto the sofa again. I was tempted to get a punch in, but she was my principal’s daughter, after all.

  I settled for a verbal blow instead. “Not so much watchdog, Amanda,” I said. “More guard dog.”

  She snatched up the cigarette box and hurled it instead. It never came close to target, hitting the wall next to the door and cracking in two, scattering filtertips across the Italian tiled floor. Then she began to cry.

  Her father regarded this display of temper without expression, while I received another message from Pierce to say the police were at the main gate.

  “Let them in,” I said. I looked across at Dempsey. “Do you want them to take her, too?”

  Dempsey pursed his lips briefly before shaking his head. “That won’t be necessary. He motioned with a vague hand. “We’ll get her . . . help of some kind.”

  “Your decision, sir, of course.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off his daughter. “Why, Amanda?” he asked softly. “What do you possibly gain from my death?”

  Her lip curled. “My freedom.”

  He frowned at that. “But you’ve had everything you could possibly wish for.”

  “No. I’ve had everything money could buy,” she said in a brittle voice, throwing her head back. “And if you don’t know the difference there’s no earthly point in my trying to explain it.”

  There was a long pause. Dempsey finally broke his brooding survey and flicked his eyes at me.

  “I’m not dealing with this tonight,” he said, like it was some minor irritation. “Just get her out of my sight, would you.” And with that he turned on his heel and stumbled from summer house. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, if your children hate you enough to try and kill you. Either for or because of it.

  I moved over to his daughter. She rose from the sofa. “Not quite such a game now, is it, Amanda?” I said.

  “On the contrary,” she said, eyes glittering, head high. “Now it gets interesting.”

  Like I said: the rich are a whole nother country – they do things differently there.

  Served Cold

  In this collection of short stories featuring Charlie Fox, this story is unusual as it is not written in first person – in Charlie’s voice. Instead, the story is that of a waitress and stripper called Layla, who has reached a rock-bottom turning point in her life and has made a momentous decision.

  This story came about when Megan Abbott invited me to contribute to the anthology of female noir, A HELL OF A WOMAN, which she was editing. The theme of the anthology was to celebrate the girlfriends, secretaries, sisters and other female characters who normally play sidekicks and walk-ons in noir fiction. This was their chance to shine.

  While I was thinking about what to write for A HELL OF A WOMAN, we had a trip planned by ferry from Scotland across to Northern Ireland. It was a long drive to the ferry port at Stranraer, and traffic was slow and heavy. In brief, we just failed to make the boat, arriving at the port just as the security gates were closing. We had no choice but to hang around in Stranraer for several hours until next boat.

  This was how I ended up sitting in a little café, drinking a pot of tea and idly watching the waitresses moving mostly ignored between the crowded tables. And that’s when the character of Layla first began to form.

  She’s seen life from the seamy underside, found and lost love, been discarded, betrayed and abandoned. But now she has a plan . . .

  Served Cold was nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger in 2009, and was chosen to appear in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME, edited by Maxim Jakubowski.

  Layla’s curse, as she saw it, was that she had an utterly fabulous body attached to an instantly forgettable face. It wasn’t that she was ugly. Ugliness in itself stuck in the mind. It was simply that, from the neck upwards, she was plain. A bland plainness that encouraged male and female eyes alike to slide on past without pausing. Most failed to recall her easily at a second meeting.

  From the neck down, though, that was a different story, and had been right from when she’d begun to blossom in eighth grade. Things had started burgeoning over the winter, when nobody noticed the unexpected explosion of curves. But when summer came, with its bathing suits and skinny tops and tight skirts, Layla suddenly became the most whispered-about girl in her class.

  A pack of the kind of boys her mother was usually too drunk to warn her about took to following her when she walked home from school. At first, Layla was flattered. But one simmering afternoon, under the banyan and the Spanish moss, she learned a brutal lesson about the kind of attention her new body attracted.

  And when her mother’s latest boyfriend started looking at her with those same hot lustful eyes, Layla cut and run. One way or another, she’d been running ever since.

  At least the work came easy. Depending on how much she covered up, she could get anything from selling lingerie or perfume in a high-class department store, to exotic dancing. She soon learned to slip on different personae the same way she slipped on a low-cut top or a demure blouse.

  Tonight she was wearing a tailored white dress shirt with frills down the front and a dinky little clip-on bow tie. Classy joint. The last time she’d worn a bow-tie to wait tables, she’d worn no top at all.

  The fat guy in charge of the wait staff was called Steve and had hands to match his roving eye. That he’d seen beyond Layla’s homely face was mainly because he rarely looked his female employees above the neck. Layla had noted the way his eyes glazed and his mouth went slack and the sweat beaded at his receding hairline, and she wondered if this was another gig she was going to have to try out for on her back.

  She didn’t, in the end, but only because Steve thought of himself as sophisticated, she realised. The proposition would no doubt come after. Still, Steve only let his pants rule his head so far. Enough to let Layla – and the rest of the girls – know that he’d be taking half their tips tonight. Anyone who tried to hold anything back would be out on her ass.

  Layla didn’t care about the tips. That wasn’t why she was here, anyhow.

  Now, she stood meekly with the others while Steve walked the line, checking everybody over.

  “Got to look sharp out there tonight, girls,” he said. “Mr Dyer, he’s a big man around here. Can’t afford to let him down.”

  He seemed to have a thing for the name badges each girl wore pinned above her left breast. Hated it if they were crooked, and liked to straighten them out personally and take his time getting it just so. The girl next to Layla, whose name was Tammy, rolled her eyes while Steve pawed at her. Layla rolled her eyes right back.

  Steve paused in front of her, frowning. “Where’s your badge, honey? This one here says your name is Cindy and I know that ain’t right.” And he made sure to nudge the offending item with clammy fingers.

  Layla shrugged, surprised he picked up on the deliberate swap. Her face might not stick in the mind, but she couldn’t take the chance that her name might ring a bell.

  “Oh, I guess it musta’ gotten lost,” she said, all breathless and innocent. “I figured seeing as Cindy called in sick and ain’t here – and none of the fancy folk out there is gonna remember my name anyhow – it don’t matter.”

  Steve continued to frown and finger the badge for a moment, then met Layla’s brazen stare and realised he’d lingered too long, even for him. With a shifty little sideways glance, he let go and stepped back. “No, it don’t matter,” he muttered, moving on. Alongside her, Tammy rolled her eyes again.<
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  Layla had the contents of her canapé tray hurriedly explained to her by one of the harassed chefs and then ducked out of the service door, along the short drab corridor, and into the main ballroom.

  The glitter and the glamour set her heart racing, as it always did. For a few years, she’d dreamed of moving in these circles without a white cloth over her arm and an open bottle in her hand. And, for a time, she’d almost believed that it might be so.

  Not any more.

  Not since Bobby.

  She reached the first cluster of dinner jackets and long dresses that probably cost more than she made in a year – just for the fabric, never mind the stitching – and waited to catch their attention. It took a while.