by Simone Sinna
“Good,” said Steve with a grin. “There might be hope for a PI career after all.”
Sienna poked her tongue out at him.
“Mmm,” said Steve. “That’s starting me thinking about…”
“Not until we finish,” said Sienna immediately feeling flustered. Steve had that look. A shiver went through her.
“What don’t we know?” Connell asked helpfully. But he leant forward and pushed her hair out of her eyes and the feel of his fingers across her forehead was less than helpful. For the concentration anyway.
“Who rang and what they said,” said Sienna.
And any proof about Vlad actually being involved in Richard’s death. But how were they going to find either proof or answers twenty-five years later?
The answer came to Sienna in the middle of the night, nestled between her two men who were better at sleeping when stressed than she was. At least to the first part of the problem. The second part was going to be harder and relied on people really believing she was Elle O’Grady. Watching the two men breathe on either side of her, and thinking of how important they were becoming in her life, she knew they would give her the strength to try her very best. In the end she was probably a better actress than she was a PI and had already decided this was her first and last assignment. Could she get a job up here? Pay wouldn’t be great, but it would mean she could be around these two men that made her feel alive in ways she had never dreamed of. Would they want her around? If so, for how long? She wasn’t sure that she had the strength to face their answers to this.
* * * *
“No, absolutely not.” Steve didn’t look as though he was going to budge anytime soon.
“Vlad probably doesn’t know one way or another. You said he was probably just the thug.” Sienna was equally as determined, tackling her bacon and eggs with gusto as she tackled them over breakfast.
“Can I refresh your memory? He’s a thug that nearly killed you.”
“But you’ll be there, or not far away. And he wouldn’t risk killing me if he thought I…”
“No.” Connell this time. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Well, at least let me go see if I’m right about who made the call.”
Steve and Connell looked at each other.
“Okay,” said Steve finally. “But I’m driving you.”
The drive was long so they set out first thing the next morning, before it was light. Connell had tried to get her to ring Janie, but it hadn’t felt right. Sienna was sure she could get the answers better in person.
Sienna’s first memories of Janie O’Grady were at Elle’s eighth birthday party. She’d never been to a party in an apartment before. The memory of twenty girls dancing jelly beans into the carpet and throwing them onto people passing below had been fun at the time, but probably a mistake. Had her own mother been in charge, neither of these events, or the police being called, would have happened. But then her mother and Janie O’Grady were as different as if one had been a lioness and the other a wide eyed doe caught in the headlights.
It had been after that party that Sienna had become Elle’s best friend. The other girls had been unkind and laughed at her and made jokes about Janie. Sienna, perhaps finding her own inner lioness, had leapt to her defense even though her own mother had been less than positive about the birthday party. She had, however, been resigned to the friendship and later told Sienna how proud she had been of her for looking after Elle.
“Janie sort of missed out on common sense when it was handed out,” said Sienna as Steve drove her back to Melbourne, to the housing commission house in the suburbs that Janie had moved to after Elle left. Now thinking about it, she must have moved when DJ had stopped paying the rent, because through her childhood Elle had lived in an apartment in Richmond, a short bus trip to the private school they had both attended. DJ had paid that bill, too.
“She found life hard,” said Sienna, thinking back to the waiflike woman who had often seemed younger than them. “When she was young and pretty, there were always men around. But then she kind of gave up.”
Elle had had to call an ambulance more than once after episodes of too many pills and alcohol. Poor Elle, and poor Janie. It had been tough for them both.
Steve eventually stopped outside a row of redbrick apartments and Sienna walked up to knock on the door. Janie’s lawn hadn’t been cut and the only plant was dead. The front porch had a few pairs of old shoes and a mat that once said welcome, but only the come remained amongst the fragments.
Janie eventually opened the door, but only after Sienna had banged several times and called her name. She blinked, the light and Sienna unfamiliar.
“Yes?”
“Mrs O’Grady…Janie. It’s Sienna Martin.”
It took Janie a moment to place the name. It would have been four years since they last met—Elle’s twenty-first. In that time she’d aged ten years, looking closer to sixty than forty-five, and weighed perhaps four stone more. The waiflike woman Sienna had thought of as a fairy when she had first seen her, had disappeared under life’s burdens.
“Sienna?” She frowned and looked around. “Is Elle here?”
“No, Mrs O’Grady. Can I come in?”
“Janie, please. It’s a mess, luv,” she said, chortling. It was, but then it always had been. Sienna followed her into the kitchen when she offered to make coffee and found a stool to sit on.
“So how’s the sex life?”
Sienna suppressed a giggle. Janie was one of the few people she knew who she could tell the truth to and not be judged. But now wasn’t the right time.
“Not bad,” Sienna replied. “But kind of related to that, I have a problem you might be able to help me with.”
Janie poured hot water onto instant coffee and put a bottle of milk next to the mug. “Yeah?” She rummaged around and found a cigarette and lit it as Sienna surreptitiously checked out the milk’s expiry date.
“My boyfriend is having some issues,” said Sienna. Instant and no milk. “And had had a run-in with someone I think you know. I’m hoping you can help me…understand this guy better.”
Janie laughed, the laugh turning into a cough full of phlegm. “Luv, on men I long ago decided there ain’t nothing I understand or want to.”
“Draco Jackovitch.” Sienna was watching for a reaction, but she didn’t need to look hard.
“Asshole,” said Janie, her eyes narrowing. “If your bloke has anything to do with him take my advice and run now.”
“Tell me about him,” said Sienna simply.
Janie blew smoke into the air and watched it dissipate. “He never looked like much,” she said, eyes now glazing as memories claimed her. “But there was something about him, you know?” She looked at Sienna, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He was different from the others. Commanded respect. Jimmie was drunk all the time and treated me like shit, and suddenly here was this man that, well, made me feel like a princess.” She smiled and Sienna felt a pang of sadness for her. There had been precious few moments for her like that, she suspected.
“But I made the mistake of getting pregnant,” Janie continued. “Not that Elle was a mistake,” she added hurriedly, “and to be fair, he looked after her. But fuck me, he put me through hell.”
“How?”
“I wanted to marry him. I was with Jimmy, but truth be told, he was as good as dead before he drank himself into the grave. I could see a life with George. I would have done him proud.”
Sienna had her doubts about this, but everything would have been very different if Draco had married Janie, so who could tell?
“But the bastard had his eyes on someone else, was probably already fucking her.”
Sienna held her breath. Tiffany?
“Told me he was going to marry her, that she had kids and he didn’t need any more.”
It had to be Tiffany. “Was Elle born by this stage?”
Janie shook her head. “I was pregnant, desperate. Jimmie knew it wasn’t his. We’d
already done fertility tests. He was shooting blanks. He was knocking me around and I knew I had to get out, do something.”
“So what did you do?”
Janie suddenly looked miserable. “Jimmie died so that solved that problem.”
Sienna stared at her. “Did DJ have something to do with that?”
Janie shrugged. “DJ liked quick, easy solutions.”
“Did you do anything else?”
Janie shook her head, suddenly looking suspicious. “Why?”
Sienna mentally crossed her fingers. “We wondered what he was capable of.”
Janie took another puff of her cigarette and then looked hard at Sienna. “Why?”
“Because,” said Sienna. “I think he tried to kill me.”
Janie stared at her and shook her head, mumbling something Sienna didn’t catch.
“I need your help, Janie,” she said, “to save me, my…boyfriend…and maybe Elle, too.”
Janie rolled her eyes. “Elle can look after herself.”
“Like you thought you could at her age?”
Sienna saw that this hit the mark. Janie flinched and looked away. “What do you want to know?”
Now Sienna really did have her fingers crossed. “Did you ring Richard Crane?”
The silence seemed to extend into the next millennium. Sienna had never known time to pass so slowly.
“I don’t know anyone called Richard Crane.”
“No, but you knew who he was,” said Sienna. “Knew he was married to the woman DJ lusted after.”
“She was fucking him, the bitch,” said Janie. “But I didn’t tell Mister Uptight and Proper Crane that.”
“So what did you tell him?”
Janie looked at Sienna, seeming to try to make a decision. Finally she continued. “George left stuff everywhere and took calls all hours of day and night. I wasn’t half as stupid as he thought. I knew he was going to fuck Crane big time. He wanted his wife and he’s a man who gets what he wants.”
“So what did you tell Crane to convince him of that?”
“That he’d lied.”
“Lied about what?”
Janie shrugged. “It was a long time ago. Something to do with the safety of the site he wanted to build on. I remember when there was that landslide thinking it was Hotham and that he’d killed all those people. But the landslide was at Thredbo, so I guess it wasn’t him.”
“Do you know what Richard was going to do that worried DJ?”
“I know what he did.”
Sienna held her breath. “How?”
Janie looked directly at her. “Because I didn’t just ring him. I was there the night Crane died.”
* * * *
“We have enough to go to the police,” said Connell’s voice of reason and optimism.
“And DJ’s lawyers would laugh all the way to court when they sued us for defamation,” replied Steve. “We’ve got nothing. Yes, we know he did it, but Janie O’Grady would cave and even if she didn’t, they’d pull her apart on the witness stand. Vindictive ex-lover? Pro? No one would believe her.”
“They don’t have to,” Sienna said.
“Why not?”
“Because she was there that night.”
“It still boils down to her word against theirs.”
Sienna grinned. “We have a little something else on our side.”
“What?”
Sienna pulled out a photograph. “Janie wasn’t entirely stupid.”
The room could be just recognized as the interior of Icebreaker, wall color not the current nondescript bone but a deep pink. There were a number of people talking around the fire place, snow outside orientating the viewer to the season. Steve and Connell huddled over it.
“That’s Harry,” said Steve. “And DJ. Is the man by the door Vladimir?”
Sienna nodded.
Connell pulled the photograph out of his brother’s hand. “And,” he added, voice cracking, “that’s my father.”
“Yes,” said Sienna. “But the very pregnant woman there is Janie. I guess we can’t prove it’s the exact night, but given how pregnant she looks, and it’s snowing so it is winter, it has to have been around the time.”
“So what do we do with it?” asked Connell, still looking at the last photo ever taken of his father.
“Confront Vladimir with it and see if he’ll do a deal.”
“Too dangerous,” said Steve. “Even if we are Tiffany’s sons, we are expendable to DJ.”
“What,” said Sienna slowly, “if I get the real Elle to do it?”
Chapter Eleven
In the end, Elle, selfish, flaky, and intensely irritating, loved her. And while Sienna didn’t want to play this too hard, didn’t want to ask Elle to choose between her best friend and her father, Elle did owe her and knew it, and that was enough. Enough to get on a plane at least. The rest was as yet an unknown. The fashion shoot was over anyway, and it seemed like George Three might have left with another model, so Sienna was just offering another place to dash to in order to fill in the emptiness.
Sienna had removed her things from the room at Snow City and moved in with Steve. He gave her the choice of rooms, and didn’t enter the lush purple one she made her own. Within those walls she was her own person. But in the rest of the house he made it clear she was welcome for an indefinite period, but that while there she was his sub. It was at once unnerving and stimulating and she struggled to think about resolving the DJ issue while simultaneously being a sex slave. In the end it was easier to separate the two and work out of Connell’s office, since it was on DJ’s territory. At High Towers she could belong to her men.
They devised a plan, but it was hard to cover all possibilities. Sienna emphasized that there was to be no risk to Elle. They just needed a recording of a confession, and Steve’s police friend Tom had been brought into the mix, however skeptical he might have been. Sienna thought privately that the photo of Elle had gone more toward convincing Tom than either of Steve’s or Connell’s arguments. He was single and hot, in an “I’m the guy with the power” sort of way that Elle liked, so why not?
Elle arrived with a splash, via helicopter from Melbourne, clambering out like a celebrity and kissing good-bye her fellow passengers.
“You said it was urgent, hon,” she said, hugging Sienna, “so here I am.”
DJ was presumably paying the bill. The helicopter pilot was dropping off another three people so maybe there was a deal she managed to swing. If anyone could, it would be Elle.
“I may just kill you,” said Sienna. “You told me nothing!”
“But I didn’t know anything to tell,” Elle protested. “What have you found out about Steve? Is he the problem?”
Only that he was the hottest man she had ever met. Equal hottest, that was. “No,” said Sienna firmly. “The problem is someone called Vladimir Sergeiveitch Grekov.”
There was no reaction from Elle. She showed her a photo. Elle frowned. “I think I’ve seen him with DJ.”
I bet you have. “He tried to kill me,” said Sienna bluntly. “Push me off a mountain to be exact. Any idea why he might have wanted to do that?”
Elle frowned. “Well, I guess he’d know you weren’t me.”
Brilliant. “And?” Elle looked vacantly at her. Sienna didn’t expect any different. “I think he killed someone else here twenty-five years ago. I need your help to prove it.”
“Wow, hon,” said Elle, wide-eyed. “You’re really getting into this stuff, aren’t you?”
* * * *
When Elle sauntered into the bar at Icebreaker later that night, she looked like a blonde version of Grace Jones in James Bond, tall, lithe and hair cut in strong angular lines, and an expression that suggested she knew what she was doing and aimed on doing it and more. Connell, by her side, half expected her to swing into the room and drop herself into Vladimir’s lap. He was sitting by the fireplace, reading the newspaper. Elle ignored him and went straight to the bar. Connell had initially bee
n very skeptical of Sienna’s analysis of Elle’s role, but after half an hour in her company, she was either an actress worthy of an Oscar or just as Sienna described, flaky and without malice and largely clueless.
When Harry saw them, he gave what looked like a forced smile. “Connell, my boy, something to drink?” he said. He looked Elle up and down approvingly. “You do attract the hot ones.”
Elle giggled and wriggled her butt onto a bar stool. “Do you have champagne?”
“Sure,” Harry replied.
“Better make it the good stuff Harry,” said Connell loudly. “This here is DJ’s daughter. The real Elle O’Grady.”
Harry stood and stared. Connell wasn’t sure if the surprise was at a second Elle O’Grady turning up, or that she was DJ’s daughter. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vladimir freeze. Elle giggled. “DJ doesn’t like me being introduced like that,” she said. “But if it means the French stuff, I guess no harm done.”
Harry wasn’t moving, let alone sourcing champagne. Cheryl pushed him out of the way and delved into the fridge. She pulled out a bottle of Moët & Chandon that was already open and poured Elle a glass.
“So who was the other one?” Cheryl asked, looking at Elle suspiciously.
“My best friend,” said Elle. “DJ wanted me here at the beginning of the week and she was just holding the fort for me.”
Harry looked like he was going to be sick.
“But I seemed to have lost her,” Elle continued. “She was going to ring me if she had to leave, and I haven’t heard anything from her since…well, day before yesterday.”
“And her room looks like it hasn’t been slept in,” added Connell. Vladimir wouldn’t have known it was him that had been on Mary’s Slide that day, and he was banking on enough uncertainty that perhaps given the conditions he’d believe whoever had followed him down the slope hadn’t seen her and no patrols had found her.