Well, at least now we knew why Jimbo had wanted to settle up with Jacqueline before this day. While Constable Jack had been searching my house for the devil cat, Bradley had announced that TenTen had taken over another company, CAGM, and the stock market went wild. TheTenTen share price, which had taken a bit of a beating in the last two weeks, recovered and headed north, as Jameson and Bradley had known it would.
The widow Jameson was now worth significantly more than she would have been if she had settled for a percentage of his worth two weeks before. She may not have known Jimbo’s plans, but she was definitely a winner financially at this point, and she had “won” the marriage stakes.
The Pole-Dancer’s birthday present turned out to be the kiss-off. Among the papers she had so trustingly signed was a financial settlement that secured her the Point Frederick house, a share in a mediocre racehorse, one million dollars and absolutely no hope of anything else. There was an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement that impressed everyone who read it, but then I suppose his lawyers had plenty of time to perfect the art of the perfect NDA. I felt sorry for Vanessa. Unless she could work out a way around that NDA, she couldn’t even write a book about Jimbo or give an “exclusive” interview to a gossip magazine.
We finally received the medical examiner’s report, which basically said that a single cause of death could not be determined and the matter was to go to the coroner.
Yes, Jimbo had been shot three times and the shots would have been fatal if his heart had been beating. But it wasn’t beating when he was shot. He was dying or dead when he was shot.
A cocktail of anti-depressants, anti-coagulants, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and hypertension drugs, cocaine, Viagra, nitrates and alcohol had combined to greatly exacerbate an unfortunate episode of anaphylactic shock, brought about when Jimbo came into contact with an allergen.
The oily smear on the brown paper bag taken from the hotel room had proved to be from a good old-fashioned peanut sauce. There were traces of peanut sauce on his penis and on his mouth, which explains the engorgement, the choking, the blocked trachea and the petechial haemorrhages.
The contents of her stomach revealed that Chelsea had eaten a chicken satay wrap shortly before fellating Jimbo. Her hands, mouth and saliva would have contained traces of the peanut sauce. His body, recognising the allergen, had reacted and anaphylaxis had commenced. Jimbo would have started to swell and choke as his throat closed up, and he would have stopped breathing. Panicking, Chelsea gave him the kiss of life, which only made things worse for Jimbo.
Each drug he had been taking was contra-indicated for anaphylaxis. Each drug would have exacerbated the situation, and poor Jimbo asphyxiated and suffered a fatal heart attack during an episode of extreme anaphylactic shock. It was an accident. A cascade of accidents. The bullets were deliberate, but not necessarily fatal. Two of them had been slowed down when they passed through Chelsea, and the head shot was dramatic, but unnecessary because he was already brain-dead. It was death by chicken satay and poor life choices.
But what about the bullets? Who had shot him? And why?
It was going to be a long day.
And then it was an even longer night. My mother’s birthday.