‘I’m not at liberty to—’
‘It was Liz Austin, wasn’t it?’
Much as I tried to keep a poker face, my eyes must have widened, giving me away. Victoria smirked and took a last drag of her cigarette before stamping it out underneath her dainty slipper.
‘She’s older than Nick by four minutes, yet she’s constantly acting like his mother. She never liked Isabella from the get-go, was always a bitch to her, apparently, a surrogate mother-in-law. I thought it was weird, like maybe there was some
Flowers
in the Attic
brother–sister action going on, but maybe that’s just my dirty mind.’ Her laugh turned into a hacking cough.
‘I can’t confirm or—’
‘Listen.’ Victoria lit another cigarette and offered me one. I shook my head. ‘I like Nick, even though I don’t know him all that well, and I’d bet any money he didn’t do it. But I don’t have a clue who’d want to blackmail him or set him up. I don’t see how I can help.’
‘You’ve known Isabella for a long time,’ I prompted.
‘We’re not exactly friends.’
‘But you used to be. You went to school together, didn’t you?’
‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I should get back upstairs to the party.’
I’d gone to so much trouble, I couldn’t let her go just yet. There was a sudden crack and I jumped, but it was just the fireworks starting. Oohs and aahs drifted from the top deck as a shower of multicoloured sparks fell from the sky.
‘Everyone’ll be watching the light show. Sit down, relax.’ I pointed to the metal bench that followed the contours of the hull.
‘I’ll need some more champagne . . .’ She pouted prettily and a touch of the old princess was back.
‘Sure, wait here.’ I ducked out into the corridor, down to the middle of the boat where I’d noticed the galley as I’d first come in. I poked my head in. The catering staff were all looking out the portholes, trying to see the fireworks. I grabbed a half-full bottle of Pol Roger and a clean glass from a tray left on a stainless steel bench, and motored back to Victoria before she could up and leave.
‘Tell me about Isabella.’ I sat next to her.
Victoria sighed and drank some champagne. ‘I met her when I started at St Katherine’s in year eleven. I was just a public school bogan on a scholarship and she’d been there all her life so she intimidated the hell out of me at first. She was exquisitely beautiful, fiercely intelligent, well spoken, poised. Next to her I was a bit of a geek.’
I gave her a look. ‘Piss off,’ I said.
‘No, really. I had braces and mousy hair and was taller than everyone and flat as a tack. They nicknamed me “Plank” and made fun of the way I’d put “but” at the end of each sentence. “But what?” they’d ask. I got out of that habit pretty quick. I don’t think we ever would have been friends if we weren’t both smokers. We first bonded over sly ciggies in the toilets, and then later in class. We were both top in the humanities, bottom in maths. That’s how I’d got the scholarship. I was good at English, but Isabella was better. I beat her in drama though. We wanted to be actresses or writers or both, and were always making up stupid plays and performing them at assemblies.
‘Then Isabella had to leave at the beginning of year twelve. Her dad left her mum, ran off with some tart and hid all the money in some offshore account and that was it. There was no more money for school fees and she had to go to the local state school. The one I’d just left, ironically.’
‘Couldn’t she get a scholarship, if she was so good at English?’ I refilled her glass.
‘It was too late in the term and anyway, I had the last one. I didn’t see much of her for the rest of the year but we caught up when we’d finished school. We both applied to do acting at the Victorian College of Arts but didn’t get in. I took a year off to work, got a job in a clothes shop on Chapel Street, and Isabella was accepted into RMIT. Professional writing. I actually got into the acting course the next year—they like you to have a bit of life experience—and although Isabella was happy for me, I could tell she thought it was a bit shallow. She was deadset she was going to write the Great Australian Novel, but I think she did more swanning around in coffee shops smoking Gitanes and drinking black coffee than actually writing anything.
‘I’d met Hamish by then—I actually sold him an Armani suit—and then Isabella started going out with his friend James. We all had a lot of fun. I had the student life, still worked in the shop a couple of days a week, but didn’t have to worry about money. The boys were loaded. There were a lot of parties and holidays and fast cars. Maybe Isabella was right, maybe I was shallow, but she couldn’t talk, she was getting into it too, despite her superior air, like she was a deep and meaningful artiste and the rest of us weren’t.’
‘So when did you have your falling out?’ I asked, trying to hurry her along. The fireworks would be over soon and people would come looking for her.
‘When I had my first book published. I’d tried the acting thing for a couple of years after uni, but it wasn’t really going anywhere. I had the looks by that stage, I suppose, but maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. I got a few bit parts in soapies, a couple of ads. I tried my hand at writing a script so I could cast myself in the main part, but it was pretty dreadful. I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. Then one day I was reading this book about writing which suggested you write what you enjoy reading. I’d always had a secret addiction to historical romances that I’d never admitted to Isabella—she would have taken the piss—so I started to write my first book in that style, just to see if I could do it. I had plenty of time in between auditions and my part-time job. I used to take around a little notebook and scribble in it all the time, not daring to tell anyone what I was up to. What if I failed? The story was about this girl who grows up in the suburbs of Melbourne in the twenties and wants to be an actress and ends up in Hollywood. Bit of wish fulfilment, I suppose. One of my customers at the boutique actually worked for an agent, and I gave it to her to give to him and the rest is history, I guess. Hamish was shocked. He had no idea what I was up to or that I’d be capable of such a thing.’
‘And what about Isabella?’
‘She was furious!’
‘So that’s when you and Isabella fell out?’ I asked Victoria.
‘Yep. I was shocked, but I should have seen it coming. We always did have a bit of a rivalry and here she was, very publicly slaving over a novel for five years, and I come up from behind and pip her at the post. Me, the shallow actress!’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Twenty-six. I got a lot of publicity because I was so young, and had been on TV, however brief ly, but I was shocked when it became a bestseller. I never even thought I could write a book, let alone get it published. Isabella eventually finished
The Liquidity of Desire
, but I don’t think it sold very well.’
I thought of what Rod Thurlow had told me at the Villa. ‘I heard the relationship ended because you started bitching her out. You were jealous of her talent.’
Victoria laughed incredulously. ‘Who told you that? What a crock. She was slagging me off to anyone who’d listen, telling them I was a hack and I’d only got published because I was young and good-looking and I’d slept with the right people. She started hinting that I was too dumb to have even written the book—hello, scholarship to St Katherine’s?—and she told everyone I’d had every surgery under the sun.’
‘Have you?’
‘Only my nose and my tits. Pretty standard for an actress. She was saying I’d had ribs removed and full-body lipo. Bullshit. I was always skinny!’
‘How about when she met Nick?’
‘By that time me and Isabella weren’t friends, although we did see each other at festivals and functions. I thought Nick was a nice guy. We actually had lunch after they broke up. He called me, wanted to talk. He was desperate to get back together with her and asked me what he should do. Shit, I didn’t know. I think she really did love him, but she couldn’t handle being poor, she was freaked out by it, ever since her dad took off. Plus Nick was too nice for her. She was the type who’d walk all over the good guys, always go for the man’s man, the real cock of the walk.’
‘Like Rod Thurlow?’
‘That dick? The trouble with those alpha types is they’re like that all the time. In business, in their personal life. They go for everything in the same way they go for money.’
‘Like Hamish?’ It slipped out.
Victoria looked confused until I told her I’d talked to him earlier.
‘He doesn’t seem too happy about your success,’ I said.
‘He’s not. He used to be okay, believe it or not. But he’s turned forty and the markets have taken a dive and he’s losing his hair . . .’
‘Mid-life crisis?’
‘Putting it mildly.’
I poured her another glass of champagne.
‘So you don’t know of any trouble Nick and Isabella might have been in?’
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Did you hear about anything happening on the writers’ roadshow where they first met? Something that might have involved Desiree—the sex writer—or a poet called JJ?’
‘Sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘That’s okay.’
Victoria lit another cigarette. She had a relaxed, glittering look in her eyes and seemed like she was in no hurry to get back to the party.
‘It’s funny talking about Isabella. Despite all the shit she said about me, I always missed her after our falling out. She was smart and witty and I’m sorry she’s dead. People always ask if the heroines in my books are me and I usually say partly, but you know what? I think I’ve based them more on Isabella than myself.’
‘How come?’
‘For all her faults, Isabella was as headstrong as they come. She wanted something, she’d go for it, and she didn’t care who she pissed off or offended. Me, I’m too polite, too worried about what other people think. I want to please people. I write what they want me to write. Show up at things like this and act all la-di-da like a successful female author should. I wear the suits and boof up my hair for the website pics. It’s not really me. Most days I get around in ugg boots and trackie-daks with food stains all down the front. Maybe it’s easy for me to play a part because of the acting, I don’t know. But I do know I couldn’t base my protagonists on myself because I’m hardly ever in conf lict with anyone.’
‘What about Hamish?’
‘Only in a passive-aggressive way. It would make for a bloody boring story. Isabella could be a narcissistic bitch and a tart and she manipulated people to get what she wanted, but she was never dull. I’ve always sort of admired her for that.’
‘Maybe you need to rebel a little.’
‘Maybe I’ve already started.’ Victoria grinned.
She stood up to get back to her guests and I thanked her for her time, told her it had been nice to meet her. It had. She was a cool chick, nothing at all like I’d expected.
Before she took a step her mobile rang. She extracted it from a small jewelled purse and smiled when she saw the display.
I thought of something I hadn’t asked.
‘One more thing,’ I said. ‘When I was talking to Hamish he said something about a few people being dead, I think. I don’t know if he was just drunk or if he was talking about someone other than Isabella.’
Victoria held up one finger to me as she talked into the phone.
‘Hey, babe. No, it’s fine. I’m glad you called. I miss you too. Can you hold on for one sec?’ She covered the mouthpiece while she spoke to me.
‘Probably referring to a guy we knew whose body turned up a couple of months ago. He went to Briarly College with Hamish and James, studied economics with them, and they all worked together at McMahon’s bank. He was always a bit of a sleaze so I wasn’t terribly sorry to hear he was dead. You probably read about him in the papers. Shallow grave in Daylesford. Lachlan Elliot?’
Lachlan Elliot. The dead investment banker that Curtis and Andi had been writing about. The one that ice-fiend Tiara claimed to have known. Was there a connection between his and Isabella’s murders?
As I left, Victoria was getting all giggly and throaty as she talked into the phone and I realised she probably did believe in the transformative power of a good screw, just not with Hamish.
Back on the top deck of the boat I ordered a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc as the fireworks continued to crack and burst overhead. I was happy Victoria had been so forthcoming and felt a certain satisfaction at having done everything I could with what little information I’d had. Now I could finally relax. There was nothing else I could do until the boat docked after midnight, and hell, it was New Year’s Eve.
I leaned back on the bar, sipping the wine and watching the end of the light show, thinking that with Sean off work for the next few days I’d be having an enforced break from the case. It would be good to have the time to figure out what to do about the psycho who was threatening me and practically everyone I knew. I was beginning to realise I’d have to tell Sean what was going on, but I had to think about how to word it first, and we’d both have to come up with a plan to ensure no one got hurt.
If I told Sean, that would be it for me and the Nick Austin case. I hated not being able to finish what I started, but at least I’d have done all I could. I’d give Liz back the remainder of the money, less expenses, and she could decide if we’d take the information I’d gathered to the police. I wondered if the cops would make anything of the Isabella/ Lachlan Elliot connection.
I hoped that my being cooperative would inspire Detective Talbot and her mates to ease up on the whole ‘cancelling the licence’ thing, but even if they went ahead, I guessed I didn’t actually need it anymore. I was off to start a whole new life overseas. Jesus. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet. I wasn’t looking forward to telling Chloe. And I wasn’t too keen on moving to Canberra for six months, but that was a small price to pay. I’d fucked it up royally and there was nothing left for me in Melbourne. Time to blow the popsicle stand.
I downed the wine quick smart, getting a nice buzz and feeling pretty positive, all things considered. I turned to order another, but a guy in an oversized velvet suit wearing a mask like mine pushed in first and ordered a bourbon and Coke. He had a raspy Australian accent, maybe one of Victoria’s mates from the old days. The barman handed him the drink and he asked how much.