‘That’s it.’ Rod stood up, but Isabella and Cummings lunged and grabbed a wrist each to keep him in place. A woman down the front madly scribbled in a notepad, while a guy with a big camera snapped off shots. A grey-haired lady was so appalled that she actually stood up and shouted, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’
Nick nodded in mock wide-eyed innocence, slurring slightly. ‘You’re right, madam, she should be. Izzy looks pure as the driven slush but don’t let that fool you. Got a real mouth on her—one time she called me a cockless cunt. Wasn’t so much the insult bothered me but the fact a so-called professional writer would use such an obvious tautology.’
Cummings could bear it no longer and tried to wrest back a modicum of control. ‘Mr Austin! There are schoolchildren in the audience.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He turned to them. ‘Tautology: the redundant repetition of meaning in a sentence. I mean, a vagina, by its very definition—’ ‘Would you like to take this outside?’ Rod was red-faced and sweating.
‘Not particularly.’ Nick shrugged.
I looked at Isabella, sure she’d be mortified by the turn of events. I was; it was so cringe-worthy I was wincing and digging my fingernails into my palms. Chloe seemed to be enjoying herself, though. She’d been watching back and forth like she was at the tennis. But Isabella didn’t even look embarrassed. She had a glint in her eyes and a small smile on her lips and looked almost . . . triumphant.
Cummings checked his watch. ‘I know it’s a little early but we might have to wrap it up here. My apologies to the audience, but if guests turn up intoxicated and then refuse to act in a civilised manner—’
‘No, Phillip,’ Isabella said. ‘I’d still like to do my reading. That is, if Nick can control himself for five minutes and refrain from interrupting.’
Nick held up his hands, palms out.
Cummings said, ‘If you’re sure . . .’
She nodded. Cummings held up Isabella’s book and read from the blurb at the back: ‘Atmospheric, evocative, elusive and erudite, this literary crime novel transcends the genre—’
‘Transcends the plot,’ Nick snorted. ‘This I gotta hear.’
Isabella gave him a look. ‘I did send you a signed copy, Nick.’
‘Must have chucked it in the trash.’
‘Well, you’ll have to buy a new one with your own money.’
It suddenly occurred to me that they were flirting with each other. The eye contact, the insults; it was nasty and brutal, but it was flirting nonetheless. Rod finally caught on too, because he stared at them, a deep crevice indenting the skin between his bushy ginger eyebrows.
Isabella started reading, talking soft and low into the microphone, her velvety voice lulling the crowd.
‘It is a house of mirrors, you know that now. Sleek-surfaced, burnished and brittle as the man’s crystalline consciousness. A leather lounge reflects light, the slippery cushions where he pushed you down . . .’
Nick went pale and stared at Isabella with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Was he angry? Scared? Had she plagiarised something he’d written? His fingers clenched around his glass.
‘You glimpse yourself, for a moment, in the television’s vast, dead screen: dress torn, breasts exposed; clutching the statue high above your head. Fingers twined in chrome veins, you sweep it towards his ruined skull and as it hooks the scalp you look, finally, and laugh at the banality of the object which—’
Bang! The audience jumped as Nick’s glass shattered in his fist. He sat there and stared as blood poured out of his palm. Cummings jumped up, brandishing his handkerchief and trying to help, but Nick just stumbled down the steps and lurched out of the tent.
A
s the crowd shuffled out of the marquee, I turned to Chloe. ‘I’m going to find Nick,’ I said, ‘see if he’s okay and still up for the ride-along on Monday.’
‘Cool. Meet you at the signing.’ Chloe didn’t look at me. She was tracking Curtis and Desiree, not letting them out of her sight.
I finally spotted him half-hidden behind a willow tree on the banks of the Yarra, smoking another cigarette, his injured hand held up to his chest. Liz was talking to him and it looked like she was imploring him to do something, probably go to hospital for stitches, but he shook his head and waved her away. Just as I was about to approach, Isabella appeared from the port-a-loos and swept straight for him. I hung back, peeking out from behind a gum tree, too far away to hear exactly what they were saying.
First they shouted, then appeared to calm down. Isabella took the cigarette out of Nick’s mouth and had a couple of drags before grinding it out under one dainty Mary-Jane. In no time they were shouting again until suddenly Nick leaned in and kissed her. She pulled away and slapped him, then took his face in both her hands, pushed him against the tree and kissed him back, hard. Writers. I gave up trying to figure them out, went to look for Chloe and found her in the book-signing tent, in front of Rod Thurlow, the line behind her stretching out across the oval. He signed her copy of
Lethal Force
with a flourish and a smile, but she didn’t move on.
‘Now do my boobs!’ She leaned over the table and hung her cleavage in his face like she was a groupie and he was Tommy Lee.
Rod looked bemused. ‘Whoa. I’m not sure I have enough ink in my pen.’
‘Oh, come on, Mr Thurlow.’ She licked her lips and winked. ‘You look like the sort of guy who’s
always
got enough ink in his pen . . .’
Looking around I immediately found the reason for the display—Curtis and Desiree, perusing the true crime section, her hand wedged into his back pocket. I’d had just about enough; this wasn’t so much a writers’ festival as an expo for jealous lovers. I went over to them, and Chloe, who had just finished getting her tits autographed, glowered at me like I was Judas Iscariot, before pretending to browse the book stacks.
‘You weren’t kidding about the rough break-up,’ I said to Desiree, low enough so Rod wouldn’t hear. ‘That panel was a fucking fiasco. How long since they’ve been divorced?’
‘Oh, they haven’t quite untied the knot yet,’ Desiree said smoothly. ‘You have to be separated a year. Isabella wanted to fudge the date on the papers but he wouldn’t have it. Isabella wants to marry Rod on Christmas Day so it’s all a bit . . . fraught.’
She wasn’t wrong. Isabella came in and sat at the signing table next to Rod. Her cloche hat was on straight and she’d reapplied her lipstick.
‘Where have you been, darling?’ he asked. ‘People have been waiting to get their books signed.’
‘Sorry, got caught up talking to some of the audience members. They all agreed that Nick behaved appallingly.’
Suddenly there was a commotion at the entrance to the book-signing tent as a tall blonde swanned in. She had the figure and sweetly pretty features of a Miss Australia contestant and was trailed by a cameraman and a guy with a boom mike.
‘Isabella!’ said the blonde.
‘Victoria!’ Isabella stood and the two hugged, lightly. ‘What’s with the camera?’
‘Oh, it’s for a documentary. A year in the life of best-selling writer Victoria Hitchens.’ Victoria rolled her eyes.
Rod was giving Victoria a dirty look. Victoria put her arm around Isabella and spoke direct to camera. ‘This is Isabella Bishop, a terrific author and my best friend from high school. I don’t think I could have become a writer without her. She really inspired me.’
Isabella smiled graciously, if somewhat tightly, towards the camera.
‘Oh shoot.’ Victoria looked at her watch. ‘I’m late for my panel. So great to see you again.’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Isabella murmured as Victoria swanned off.
Curtis’ phone emitted a jangly version of the
Mission
Impossible
theme, and he pulled it from his back pocket. ‘Malone,’ he said. ‘Speak.’
It was another thing he did that irritated the hell out of me, and I wondered how a sophisticated woman like Desiree could stick him. Chloe I could understand. She could be almost as annoying as he was.
‘Hey, Andi, what’s happening?’ Curtis said.
Andi was a friend from my childhood, now a journalism student. Three months earlier she’d gone missing; her disappearance was the case that had led to my mum getting shot. Andi hadn’t gotten off lightly either: she’d nearly died, and had to have the lower half of her right leg amputated. She’d sold her story, not for money but for an opportunity to work on the newspaper who’d published it, and was now actually working as a journo while she finished her degree.
Curtis turned away from me and Desiree, dug his notebook out of his shirt pocket and started scribbling on it. ‘Uh-huh. Yep. No kidding? Shit yeah, I’d be into it. Now? Pick you up in twenty.’
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘A body’s been found just outside of Daylesford. Word on the street is it’s Lachlan Elliot.’
‘Who?’
‘Investment banker who disappeared eighteen months ago. Toorak guy. Had links to bikies and organised crime.’
I vaguely remembered seeing the story in the papers and on the news. There’d been rumours he owed money and had faked his own disappearance.
‘It’s gonna be a big one, so me and Andi are teaming up. Malone and Fowler. Has a ring to it, don’tcha reckon? Andrew Rule and John Silvester have had it too good for too damn long. They better get wise there’s a new true-crime team in town.’
Chloe was lurking behind a pile of books, pretending not to listen, and Curtis did a hair flick to cover his glance back to check she was there.
‘Hey, babe,’ he told Desiree. ‘Gotta blow this popsicle stand.’
She slid her arm around his waist and they performed an ostentatious kiss with rather a bit too much porn-star tongue. Curtis smacked his new girlfriend on the arse, slid on a pair of those mirrored sunnies favoured by American highway patrolmen, and swaggered off into the day.
I’d had enough of the freak fest and went to find Chloe so we could go home. She was flipping through a book, but when she saw me she hurriedly stuffed it back onto a shelf. I could have sworn it had
Sex Secrets of a Thousand Dollar an
Hour Callgirl
in the title.
T
he next morning I woke with a start, heart beating fast, and it was a few seconds before I realised why. Shit. It was Sunday, November the eighth; Alex was getting married and Sean was arriving back from Vietnam. He was going straight to Alex’s from the airport so I wouldn’t see him until late that night, but I still had a lot to do before then. Hair cut and dyed, nails painted, eyebrows shaped, solarium, Brazilian. Amazing how feral you could turn when no one was getting up close and personal.
I had a couple of hours to kill before my first appointment, so I got up and drank a plungerful of coffee, pulled on terry-towelling short-shorts and a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt, threaded the house key into the laces of my ancient, worn-out runners, and headed out for a jog. The path beside the canal ran all the way to the ocean, behind houses where flowering vines curled around fences and indolent cats snoozed in the sun.
As I ran I thought about the debacle at the festival the day before. It was funny, I’d always thought strippers were the most fucked-up profession, but those writers were sure giving them a run for their money. Perhaps they spent too much time ferreting away in their garrets, living inside their own heads, slowly going mad. It was supposed to be healthy to engage in artistic pursuits, but honestly, sitting on my arse all day writing stories about characters who didn’t exist would have driven me bonkers. Stripping was my creative outlet, even though people scoffed when I tried to explain that, and I knew I’d have to give it up completely, soon enough. At twenty-nine I was getting too old, and it didn’t exactly do wonders for my PI reputation either, but I knew I’d miss it. Not to mention the fact that I was hopeless at painting and sure as shit couldn’t play guitar. Maybe I could write a book about my adventures, seeing as how everyone else seemed to be. Although they weren’t so much adventures as an embarrassing list of fuck-ups.
At Ormond Esplanade I jogged on the spot as I waited for the walk sign, dashed across the road, and then I was running south along the bay, dodging bike riders, roller-bladers, dog walkers and young mums with high-priced prams. Grey-green water lapped the sand of Elwood Beach and a soft, salty wind cooled the sweat on my face. I sprinted all the way to the lifesaving club and stopped for a drink at the bubbler before turning and running back. At the public toilets I veered onto the grass and pounded up the hamstring- and lung-punishing Elwood Hill. Leaning against the white wooden lookout I stretched my quads and tried to get my breath back. Up there I could see the palm trees of St Kilda, the arc of the Westgate Bridge and the skyscrapers of the CBD. On a clear day Geelong was visible across the vast curve of Port Phillip Bay, but that morning a hot haze hung in the air, smelling of ozone, reminding me of the one occasion I’d visited Los Angeles.
I was fourteen, and it was the last time I’d seen my dad, who lived there with his new, American family. We’d never been close—he and my mum had split when I was tiny—but after that last visit we’d never spoken again.
My email from last week hadn’t worked either—just bounced back with the message ‘delivery failure’. I debated with myself whether it was worth tracking him down, and wondered why I wanted to contact him anyway. Because Mum wouldn’t talk to me? And what did I hope to get out of it? Money? Fatherly advice? A tearful reunion?
Yeah, right. He’d never tried to get in touch with me.
I ran down the other side of the hill past the dense scrub, which, combined with the public toilet, made the area such an attractive gay beat, sprinted across the park then up Glenhuntly Road past the Elwood Lounge, video store and cafés. Left on Broadway, then I slowed to a shuffle. I’d almost finished my loop when one of my shoes finally carked it, flopping open like the mouth of a panting dog. Rivulets of sweat ran down my back, seeping into the waistband of my shorts, and I was just nearing my unit-block, mentally planning my day, when I got the creepy feeling I was being followed. I whirled around and saw a stretch limo with tinted windows come to a halt behind me. I didn’t have to be a detective to put it together—white limo, Alex’s wedding day. For half a second I had the idea he’d gone AWOL from his own nuptials and had come straight to my place to tell me so. Then the driver’s door opened and out popped Sean.