10

What a relief to be home. To be welcomed at the front door by Tater, Lucky and Stella, all vying for the first lick of whatever part of my skin they could reach. I made my way through the sea of tap dancing fur on legs, routed a jar of tiny teddy biscuits from the pantry and distributed two teddies to each open mouth. The tap dancing didn’t stop so I figured if I didn’t let my welcome committee into the back yard pretty damn quick, we’d be knee deep in puddles.

“No noise, mind,” I warned the dogs as they fell over each other in their eagerness to rush through the open door, “or you’ll set the mob off in the kennel house.”

Dogs attended to, I hurried into the kitchen. After filling the electric jug I reached into the cupboard over the sink and pulled down an economy sized tin of Nescafe. Caffeine—the drug of the gods.

Without a gallon of it Tanya was likely to pass out in the next five minutes.

Although it was 2 am, a time when ghosts supposedly roam the earth—which is probably why it’s also a good time to be in bed, asleep—Ben, Tanya, and I decided to talk first and sleep later. After all, it’s not every day you discover a dead body, your brain gets chewed up by a clichéd good-cop-bad-cop routine, and you become intimate with the occupants of a police station’s holding cell.

When the jug boiled I snagged a colorful Simpson’s mug, the largest on my black metal cup tree, and placed it on the laminated counter top. Tanya wasn’t in great shape. After drinking six cans of beer in ten minutes, in the name of stress relief—her words not mine—was it any wonder? So, to join in our conversation on any useful level she required black coffee.

A bucketful of the stuff.

Looking half his age with sleep tousled hair and hastily dragged on clothes, Ben perched on the edge of a kitchen stool. Tanya, on the other hand reminded me of what Tater dragged in after he’d been on a mouse hunt. Head in her hands and an I-don’t-feel-so-good expression on her slightly green face, she slumped in a chair, woebegone and limp. She groaned. “Oh God, why do I do this to myself?”

“Beats me,” I said spooning coffee and sugar into a mug. “But please, if you’re going to puke, the bathroom’s down the hall second on the left.”

Tanya flicked me a this-is-so-not-a-joke, scowl. “I know where your damn bathroom is, Katrina.”

“Uh-uh…no fighting, ladies.” Ben stood up and, running a hand through his already spiky hair, turned to me. “Ready with that medication?”

“Yep. Coffee number one coming up.” I snapped one hand forward like a theatre nurse assisting a doctor performing surgery. Ben wrapped his fingers around the half-filled Simpson’s mug and passed it on to Tanya.

“I don’t need—” The rest of Tanya’s words were cut off as Ben forced the coffee to her lips.

“Better drink it, Tan,” I advised her, pouring cup number two in readiness. “We need your input if we’re going to work out who killed Jack Lantana.”

As soon as Tanya started drinking without assistance, Ben’s eyes cut to me and he shook his head. “Why the heck would we want to find out who murdered that thug? Your alibis for the time of the murder checked out. You’re in the clear. Plus your dogs are safe now.”

“But are they?” I spooned five teaspoons of sugar into Tanya’s second cup of coffee. This time in a red, black and white mug that stated, Vampires Suck. “What if whoever killed Lantana is the brains behind the dog-napping scheme and Lantana died because he goofed twice?”

“Kat, you don’t batter someone to death just because they stole the wrong dog.”

“Well, why else would he be killed?”

“Because the guy was a crook and probably had enemies jumping out of the woodwork.” Ben slid the empty Simpson’s mug onto the sink, and with an eyebrow hitch, exchanged it for Vampires Suck which he passed to Tanya. “But to me, it smells more like a burglary gone wrong. Didn’t you say someone ransacked Lantana’s office? Well, there you go. Lantana came home, caught the burglar pinching his best china, there was a fight, and Lantana came off second best.”

“Second best?” Tanya growled at Ben from behind her black coffee. “Hey, if you’d eyeballed Lantana’s mangled head, you wouldn’t be saying that. Rumbled burglars don’t hang around long enough to do the vicious damage inflicted on that guy’s skull and then haul their victim across to the refrigerator, remove the wire trays and manhandle the body into a space not meant for man or beast. No. Whoever snuffed out Jack Lantana either hated his guts or it was a retribution killing. It was not your run-of-the-mill burglar fighting to get away.”

“She’s got a point,” I put in. “And another thing, what was Liz’s bracelet doing in Lantana’s office?”

Tanya slapped her empty cup into my outstretched hand and fastened her fingers around her third cup of coffee. “You know, Kat,” she said, her voice pensive. “I’ve been thinking about that bracelet.”

I glanced up, momentarily distracted from refilling Vampires Suck. “And what did you come up with?”

“Absolutely nothing.” Tanya shrugged. “Liz is too out of it, too naive, to have any shady dealings with the likes of Lantana. Okay, she smokes pot till she’s tripping with the fairies—but that’d be the extent of her criminal activities. And as for having any sort of a relationship with that geriatric creep. God, he’s at least forty years her senior.”

“That’s what I figured.” I let out a sigh, rubbed my tired eyes. “In fact I can’t come up with one thing Liz and Jack would have in common.”

“Except both having shocking tastes in fashion,” Tanya muttered.

That was true. Last time I’d seen Liz she’d been dressed in what looked like a long flowing orange nightdress and a purple knitted hat with a bow that could have come straight off a teapot. I shook my head in an attempt to clear the fog of so many unanswerable questions before pushing the half-empty sugar bowl across to Tanya.

Ben unhooked a Man at Work mug off my cup tree. “The explanation could be as simple as Liz losing her bracelet out on the street somewhere and Jack finding it.”

I screwed my nose at him. “Bit coincidental.”

“It’s the only solution that makes sense,” he assured me while pouring himself a coffee.

Still not convinced, I chewed on my bottom lip. What were the odds of Jack Lantana, the guy who tried to steal my dogs—and for some obscure reason also got himself killed and stuffed in his refrigerator—finding a bracelet my sister Liz lost, presumably in Port Augusta?

Something like 0001%?

In need of a tissue to wipe up a dribble of coffee on the table top, I slipped my hand in my pocket. And felt a jolt when my fingers fastened around the square shape of a pad of post-it notes. “Oh, yes, I forgot to mention,” I said, extricating the tissue and wiping up the drips. “I took something else from Lantana’s office.”

“Something else?” Tanya looked in need of sustenance to soak up the coffee so I snagged a tin of chocolate biscuits from the cupboard and dumped them in the middle of the table. She frowned. “How come you didn’t mention this before?”

Was this girl for real?

“Tanya, unless you’ve been in a coma for the last four or five hours—we’ve had a few other things on our plate.”

“Well…” Tanya gestured with a double-choc Tim Tam biscuit. “Don’t just stand there looking all mysterious. Give. Tell us what you found.”

“It’s probably nothing, but I snitched a pad of yellow post-it notes from beside Lantana’s phone. Okay, as far as I could see from a quick glance there was nothing written on the pad, but it was sitting there, staring up at me, so I slipped it in my pocket.”

“As you do…”

“Waste of time, really.” I shrugged one shoulder, suddenly feeling foolish. Here I was acting like an amateur sleuth when all I knew about sleuthing was what I’d read in my collection of Sue Grafton books. “I just thought…well…maybe Lantana left an impression of the last thing he wrote on the top page of the pad. And—” I could feel heat rising from my neck and spreading across my face “—and it could be a clue.”

Ben draped one arm across my shoulders and tugging me closer, kissed my hot cheek. “Well then Ms. McKinley, amateur detective, let’s see what you got.” Eyes twinkling, a grin spread across his face. “What say I buy you a detective’s slouch coat for Valentine’s Day, babe? Reckon you’d look good in one of those.” His grin turned wicked. “Especially if you wore nothing underneath.”

“Please,” Tanya wailed, rolling her eyes. “If you two are going to get horny leave the room. Otherwise, can we get on with the reason we’re here.”

“Sorry,” said Ben who didn’t look at all apologetic.

I dragged my eyes away from smoldering temptation and gulped a breath of air. “Of course, if we were fictional characters, we’d find the name and address of the guy who killed Lantana imprinted on the notepad.”

Tanya growled. “Would you shut up already and show us what you got.”

I dragged the pad, now slightly dog-eared, from my pocket and placed it on the table next to the biscuit tin. “All we have to do is lightly color the page with a pencil.”

“Do it!” ordered Tanya.

I dug out a pencil from the back of one of the kitchen drawers and rubbed the lead lightly over the empty top page.

“There’s numbers coming through,” Tanya whispered, nose almost touching the pad as she leaned across the table.

“Seven…no…eight numbers,” said Ben, equally hypnotized.

“It’s a clue,” I said, disbelief in my voice as I stared down at the numbers. “We’ve got a real, fair-dinkum clue. Looks like a phone number.”

“Well, don’t just stand there,” grumbled Ben, rubbing his hands together. “Ring the number. Find out who it belongs to.”

Oh yeah. Easy peasy. Just ring the number.

“What if it’s the killer?” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded as if I’d swallowed sand. This wasn’t like reading about a murderer. This was real. Too damn real. “What if I recognize the killer’s voice? That would mean I know him. Personally.” I paused, heart-beat scooting up a couple of thousand decibels. “And worst scenario. What if the killer answered and he recognized my voice? What if—what if he knows I know he’s the killer?”

By now I’d worked myself into such a state tiny beads of sweat littered my brow when I looked at my reflection in the toaster. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and stared down at the small sheet of yellow paper.

“Oh, gimme that!” Ben snatched the post-it note from the table and marched into the lounge room with Tanya and me trailing behind like toddlers on leads. “I’ll ring the number myself.”

With that, he lifted the receiver from its base and punched in the numbers—then waited.

Anxious to read any and all of the expressions on Ben’s face when whoever was on the other end of the line answered, I perched on the arm of the sofa and leaned forward. The only outward signs of nervousness from Ben seemed to be the frown etched between his eyes, a twitch or two of his shoulders and the drum of impatient fingers on the wooden phone table.

“Hello. Who am I speaking to? Oooh…riiiight.” A wide grin almost split Ben’s face in two. “It’s Cockatoo Pizza Palace on the line,” he said and handed to phone to me. “So, unless they deliver their pizzas with large blunt instruments inside—I don’t think we’ve found our killer yet.”

I put the phone to my ear. “Can I take your order, please?” The girl on the other end of the line sounded bored and mechanical.

A great whooshing sigh of relief lurched through my body, leaving me limper than a bad handshake. “Er…yes… I’ll have a family sized vegetarian please.”

Tanya’s mouth gaped as I finished placing the order and hung up. “Why did you order a pizza?”

“It’s a pizza joint. What else was I supposed to do? Order a bucket of Macadamia ice cream and six bottles of Tequila?”

“No,” put in Ben. “But you could have told them you’d dialed the wrong number.” And then the image of a pizza with mozzarella cheese, capsicum, mushroom, onion, fresh and sun-dried tomato, fresh garlic and oregano topped off with special tomato sauce must have slid into his memory-bank. He smacked his lips. “Although, on second thoughts—”

“Yeah, on second thoughts,” I agreed, smirking. “Vegetarian Pizza. Your absolute favorite. Now, let me put this another way. Are you hungry or do I have to eat this pizza all by myself?”

“Hungry?” returned Ben, drool forming on the corners of his lips. “Hell, I’m hungry enough to eat a swagman’s bum through a wire fence.”

“That’s gross.” I tried to visualize pink and white roses in a vase so Ben’s image wouldn’t compute. Beside me, the phone rang. Thinking it was Cockatoo Pizzas verifying my order, I picked up.

“Kat, this is Scott Brady, Liz’s friend. I spoke to you a couple of days ago.”

“Scott?” I frowned. “Don’t you hippy types ever look at a clock? Do you realize it’s half past two in the—”

“I know and I’m sorry. But please, don’t fob me off this time. I’m really worried about Liz.”

I sighed. Sank into the arm chair beside the phone and tried to ease the tension from my shoulders. “Go on then.” My eyes strayed to my wrist where Liz’s ruby bracelet told me something was very definitely wrong and it was up to me to do something about it. “Okay, I’m listening. What can you tell me?”

I could hear Scott take a deep breath before continuing. “That’s the problem. I dunno what’s happened to Liz. A couple of days ago, she phoned me. Said she was frightened. Something about overhearing a conversation she wasn’t supposed to. Dunno what she was on about because she was babbling and before I could calm her down and find out what was up her nose, the phone went dead. I thought the battery in her mobile had crapped itself but when I drove out to check on her the next day, like, she was gone. Her stuff’s still there but there’s no sign of Liz.”

Now nervous, my fingers played with the bracelet, twisted it back and forth. The tiny rubies set in the gold band glittered in the light from a floral lamp on the end-table beside me. “What makes you think Liz hasn’t just taken off? You should know by now that my sister doesn’t do conflict very well. Her normal reaction to any problem is to run away from it.”

“The shack’s been ransacked and I found blood on the floor.”

I closed my eyes while a lump of lead settled in the pit of my stomach. “What are you trying to say, Scott?”

“What if Liz has been kidnapped or…”

The lump of lead grew heavier. “Or what?”

“I should have checked on her straight away instead of the next day.”

“Have you contacted the police?”

“The local pigs aren’t taking the case seriously. They think Liz, being a hippy, has moved on.”

“They could be right.”

“What about the blood? What about the mess in the shack?’

I forced myself to remain calm. “Scott, there’s probably a simple explanation for the blood, like a nose bleed or maybe Liz cut herself. And as for the shack being ransacked—if you’ve lived with Liz for any length of time you should know she was born without a single housekeeping gene in her body.”

There was a loud banging on the other end of the line. Sounded like someone hammering on Scott’s front door. I strained to hear his words over the noise. “Kat, I found your phone number programmed into Liz’s mobile—”

“You’re kidding me. Liz has entered the twenty-first century?” About time! “And what—she left her mobile behind?”

“She left everything behind.” Scott’s voice gave a squeak of impatience then became serious again. “Look, strange things are happening here. Can’t explain them over the phone but I think they’re connected to the local greyhound track. I need you to help me find Liz.” The banging became even louder and I could hear shouting. “Uh! Oh! Sorry, gotta go.”

“Hang on!” I growled. “Where are you ringing from? Where in Port Augusta are you?”

His voice was barely a whisper. “Ring you later.”

“Nooo!” I yelled. “I haven’t heard from my little sister in over a year and you ring to tell me she’s disappeared and then want to hang up on me. Do that, buster, and I’ll put a deadly curse on you. You’ll have warts growing out of your eyeballs and your toes will grow fungus and drop off.”

Evidently he wasn’t afraid of curses because all I could hear was the dial tone.