Next morning I had a foggy headache and Bert the budgie’s body was on the floor. Rather, what was left of him was on the floor, surrounded by feathers. His cage was on the ground. Door open. Oh shit. Another murder, which might explain my wild dreams last night.
The bathroom was a mess. The kitchen was a mess. I was a mess. A shower sort of helped, but not much. Had I killed Bert in my drunken stupor? I could understand setting fire to the kitchen – that had happened in the past – and I have been known to knock over his cage at times, but I couldn’t work out how I had killed him. I just hoped I hadn’t trodden on him. He didn’t look squashed. Just limp, with his little head flopping to one side and no tail feathers. Had I killed him and then plucked him? I wrapped Bert in paper towels and tiptoed outside to bury the body in the little park across the road.
I picked up some emergency hangover cures from the convenience store and hobbled back home. A glass of chocolate milk, two Panadols, a slice of buttery vegemite toast and a can of diet Coke later, I felt well enough to die. I had just taken myself back to bed when my doorbell intercom rang.
“Go away,” I croaked. “I don’t want any.”
“Maddie. Are you OK?” It was Constable Jack.
“Yes, I’m OK. Just having a bit of a lazy morning.” Brilliant repartee, but it was the best I could do.
“I’ve been leaving messages for you on your phone, but you haven’t called me back. Can I come in?”
Oh shit. He couldn’t see me like this. There were bird seed and feathers everywhere, and I must have looked really scary, because I felt really scary and the place smelled of burnt eggs. “Um, no. What’s up?”
“They want us for an update at eleven o’clock. Can you get yourself there?”
“Shit. Can’t we have one day off?” I whimpered.
“Detective Griffiths, I do believe you have someone in there with you. Sprung. Tell you what, I’ll go get some coffee and pick you up at 10.45 and we won’t tell anyone.” He sounded positively pleased with himself.
Oh great. Now he thought I had a lover stashed away in my bed. Well, at least when he saw me he’d think my condition was from too much sex, not a Force 10 hangover.
I found my mobile phone and cursed flat batteries. Then I scalded myself in the shower. Then I over-corrected the tap and blasted myself with freezing water. So far, my day was just about perfect.
Of course, I then proceeded to cut my finger with a razor blade while trying to extract the last smear of moisturiser from the tube. Couldn’t find a Band-Aid, so I used sticky-tape instead. I was now officially out of everything.
Constable Jack rang from the car at 10.45 precisely. At least one of us was on the ball.
He wasn’t happy that his RDOs had been cancelled, but we’d both get over it. This bloody case, however, was getting completely out of hand. We talked about how the pollies were driving us mad because the big-end-of-town big boys were driving them mad because they wanted to distance themselves from their former best mate and they wanted the case closed with a minimum of fuss. And investigation.
But every punter who ever read a tabloid newspaper thought he knew who dunnit and the conspiracy theories and lists of suspects and motives were increasing exponentially by the hour. For a man who was supposedly loved by everyone who knew him he certainly had a lot of people who either wanted to kill him, had tried to kill him, had at least one good reason to kill him or should have killed him.
I was now amazed that there were only three bullets.
We’d moved the war room from Surry Hills into the city so at least we had room to spread out but now I was just part of a team that was part of a Task Force. And there were a lot of bloody teams. Bastards. And every cop involved was jockeying to be the MAN who caught the great Jimbo’s murderer. Double bastards.
The case was becoming the legal industry’s growth market because no-one wanted to talk to us without a lawyer present. I sat in on a friendly chat that required two lawyers – the interviewee was a retired judge, so he wasn’t taking any chances. Every day we started with an update from our mighty leader, and I was given the pleasant task of interviewing Lynnette Jameson or whatever her name was now. But there was no-one at her home and her agent wasn’t answering my calls, so I went to the top, to the best celebrity stalker in the game. My sister. She’ll talk forever if you feed her. And my hangover needed Chinese food.
Boo started out as a manicurist but things have gone well for her and she now has a small chain of manicure bars in the big regional shopping centres around Sydney and Newcastle. She’s actually made a pretty good living out of fingernails and says she’s thinking about branching out into eyebrows. It never fails to amaze me that she has the ability to juggle about fifty employees and multiple leases in the toughest retail precincts, yet still exhibits no discernible signs of intelligence.
I wobbled into my favourite Chinatown yum cha palace, where Boo had already chosen far too many dishes. Thankfully, she had also opened a bottle of white wine.
“You’re late, Mad, so I started without you,” she said, pouring me a glass. “Oh, and before we start, I just realised that I can’t make it to Mum’s birthday dinner, so you will have her all to yourself.”
Bugger. “But I’ll go halves in anything you want to buy her for a present. Just tell me how much and I’ll give you the dosh next time I see you.” She just oozed sincerity.
Yeah. Right. I’ll have to schlep all over town and you’ll “forget” to repay me. Nice one, Boo.
“Shit, Boo. I’m flat out and she wasn’t expecting me anyway because I’m not supposed to be here. And it’s your turn this year. It’s your turn for the dinner and for the present. We agreed.”
“Mad, I’m really busy and you’re so much better at making decisions and buying her stuff,” she pouted. “Anyway, how come you’re not in Broome? What happened? What’s taking up all your time?”
“I had to cancel, damn it. My key witness in the mafia money-laundering case was shot on Thursday and then on Friday there were two more murders and my leave was cancelled and I’m really pissed off. You’ve probably read about it and I actually wanted to…” and that was as far as I got.
“Oh my god, Maddie. Are you working on Jimbo’s death? Come on, you can tell me, what happened? Was he really tied up? I heard that his dick was almost chewed off? Oh yum, can I have some of those?” A plate of something that looked suspiciously like chicken feet appeared on the table, and I took a closer look. They were chicken feet. My stomach did flip flops.
“Can you please keep those on your side of the table, Boo. I want to enjoy my lunch, not lose it.” She laughed, and made a great show of slurping the toes. I concentrated on my pork bun and refused to react to her childish games.
“You’re the gossip queen, so I want to pick your brain. I’ve got a battalion of ex-wives to talk to, and I thought some background stuff would be of help.”
Now I had her attention. She stopped chewing and took a deep breath.
“You want the juicy bits? That man has, sorry, had, a rare talent for picking beautiful, intelligent women and driving them around the twist. And he fucked up some of his kids, too. I was at Ivy last week and Phaedra was really off her face. She’s Lynnette’s eldest daughter and she’s a really wild one. She comes into the city bar for gels and sometimes she’s still pissed at 10am. I sort of feel sorry for her, because it can’t be easy being Jimbo’s daughter. Anna just shipped hers off to boarding school and they’re the invisible children. But I think Tessa’s protected her kids from the Jameson circus. Bethany did too, because Jace is relatively normal. He’s the eldest, and he’s absolutely gorgeous.” Boo picked at sticky rice with her chopsticks. I was trying to keep up with the names that she was rattling off.
“Yes, I’ve already talked with Bethany and Jace.” I didn’t comment on Jace’s gorgeousity. “So what is Lynette Jameson up to now? She’s kinda hard to find.”
“Yeah, she’s been off the scene for a couple of weeks, but I heard that she was in Thailand because my friend Rebecca works for Qantas and she was on Lynnette’s flight and she said that she said she was going to Spa Samui to detox. That’s the place where you stick a tube up your arse twice a day and you don’t eat and you’re just supposed to lie around all day and have massages and meditate. Becca’s sister goes there every year and she says it’s fabulous, but she cheats a bit and takes a few bottles of vodka because she reckons that’s the only way she can drink the gunk they give you to clean you out.
“But then Jilly told me that she saw her in Bangkok last week and she was walking into the Bumrungrad Hospital.” She paused, took a breath, and reached for another chicken foot. “God, they’re good. So anyway,” she didn’t miss a beat, “if you can’t find her here, I’ll bet she’s still ‘freshening up’ in Bangkok and she’ll be back in about two weeks, looking fabulous with a new haircut to hide the scars and a new wardrobe of copies that she’ll tell everyone are from Rome and that she’s been drinking lots of water and breathing deeply and walking every day and she’s taken up yoga and Pilates and only eats clean organic and that’s how she’s lost weight and looks ten years younger because she has a fabulous new lover in Milan. Do you want that dumpling?” She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“Any time from March is the best time to do it because you have to stay out of the sun for a while after you’ve had work done, and it’s easier to do that over autumn and winter. Jilly had her boobs done there because it’s so much cheaper than here and they look fabulous and feel pretty good. Everyone’s doing it. Oh yummo. That looks good.” She reached for a prawn rice noodle. “And can I have another glass of wine?” I am sure my sister can talk and eat under water.
I nibbled on some prawn toast and slurped some wine and felt my hangover begin to fade.
“So, do you reckon Lynnette finally did it?” Boo was off and running again. “You know she shot him years ago? They were living in Hong Kong and she said that he came home a couple of days early and she said she didn’t know who it was because the lights were off and that was before she had her eyes lasered so she couldn’t see him properly. Personally, I could never understand that if her eyesight was so bad that she reckoned she couldn’t see who it was, how come she could still see him well enough to hit him and why was she sleeping with a gun? So what do you reckon? Could she have got someone else to shoot him this time?”
The egg tarts and mango pancakes trolley distracted her for ten seconds which gave me time to think. Could Lynnette Jameson have hired someone to finish him off? If Boo’s ramblings were even half correct and Lynnette was in a hospital in Bangkok at the time of the shooting, she certainly would have an alibi if she was suspected of actually firing the bullets that killed him. But in order to use that alibi, she would have to admit that she was undergoing plastic surgery, and somehow I didn’t think that was going to happen.
“You know she married him three times, don’t you? Or was it twice? I can’t remember.” She started on a plate of pork gyozas with a big dab of chilli sauce. “Anyway, I remember that when Victoria found out that Jimbo had been cheating on her with Lynnette, she chased her in her Jeep and Lynnette had to jump out and hide and then Victoria pushed Lynnette’s VW over the cliff at Coogee. She had to walk back up to Malabar Road to get a taxi home and she couldn’t pay for it because her handbag went down with the car so she talked the taxi driver into helping her climb into her house through a window because her keys were in her bag and she wasn’t wearing underwear. I reckon the driver is still telling that story.” She finished off an egg tart and washed it down with the last of the sauv blanc. “Do you want that?” She grabbed the last egg tart before I could protest. I like egg tarts. That was my egg tart.
“Anyway, they reckon that she’s still crazy about him, and I mean crazy. When he married the last one, Jacqueline, Lynnette got pissed at the pub and went to his house and threw eggs and rocks and yelled and carried on. Evidently, he had spent the night before with her, and she was a bit upset that he was actually going through with the wedding. Anyhow, Jacqueline went outside and slugged her and they had to get the security guys to take Lynnie home. On my god, I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall on that wedding night!” she hooted.
I was almost starting to feel sorry for Jimbo.
“So, what more can you tell me about him? Who else do you think would love or hate him enough to kill him?” I finished the last of my wine and signalled to the waiter for the bill.
“Oh my god! We’ll need another bottle and the rest of the afternoon. I mean, don’t you remember anything? You do know that there’s a fatwah on him? You’re supposed to be the smart one, but you really need to get out more. You could start at Mecca and work outwards. Look, why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? I’ll cook and you can bring the booze and you can listen and learn.”
I phoned Constable Jack to pick me up and we walked out into George Street. Boo was still bubbling along next to me, chatting enthusiastically about her new apartment and her latest love. It never ceases to amaze me that we are related and sometimes I wonder if Mum had a fling with the milkman. As well as the butcher, the accountant and a certain English teacher.
We window-shopped as I waited for the squad car and yet again I reflected on the unfairness of the genetic lottery. My teeny tiny little sister fits easily into the teeny tiny clothing sizes sold in Chinatown, and next to her I’m a giant. A giant old ugly sister with big feet and ratty brown hair next to a beautiful blonde teeny tiny Cinderella.
The squad car pulled up and Constable Jack leant over to open the door for me. Boo’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Maddie. Can you give me a lift to Surry Hills?” Without waiting for my reply she jumped into the back seat and fluttered up a storm with her bloody eyelashes.
“Helloooo! I’m Maddie’s sister, Barbara, but everyone calls me Boo. Are you two working together now? Why didn’t you tell me about this divine man, Maddie? Where’s Marco? What happened to Marco? I love Marco. But you’re nice too. Where did you come from?”
Oh great, I thought. He’s gone. By the time we dropped her off in Surry Hills she had managed to invite him to dinner that night and had put her phone number and address into his phone (that was just like hers – wasn’t that a coincidence?), and she knew that he loved baked pumpkin and drank Coopers Sparkling Ale and barracked for Easts.
I hate my sister.