The mother rolled her eyes. ‘Teenagers,’ she sighed.
Stevie said, ‘There seems to have been a bit of a misunderstanding, Mrs Breightling. I believe you’ve been under the impression that Emma has been doing some extra babysitting for Mrs Carlyle, when in fact she’s been working for me. She slept at my house last night and I thought you knew about it, but you obviously didn’t. I’ve come to apologise; it seems we’ve had our wires crossed.’
From somewhere within the house, Stevie heard the sound of footsteps scraping up a stone staircase.
Miranda Breightling pursed plump lips and touched her short, immaculately styled hair. ‘I’m afraid I lost control of Emma a long time ago. This is very embarrassing, you’d better come in, Mrs...’
Stevie put out her hand. ‘Just call me Stevie,’ she said. ‘Stevie Hooper.’
The woman flinched under Stevie’s firm grip. ‘I’m Miranda Breightling. Come in.’
Miranda glided ahead, a small woman, walking as straight as if she had a book balanced on her head. Stevie followed, trainers squeaking on the white marble tiles. A ditty of her father’s popped into her mind and the memory made her smile.
When you use this marblehall, use the paper not the wall.
The house was more interesting on the inside than it was on the outside, although the ultra modern décor was not to Stevie’s taste. She preferred old things, things with warmth and character. More black lacquer doors to the right of the front entrance opened into a formal lounge dominated by an oversized cream modular couch. As she progressed through the house she discovered the soft furnishings to be the exception, not the rule; the place consisting mostly of wrought iron, stone and sharp angles. The kitchen contained more stainless steel than a hospital morgue. Light streamed in from a stained glass skylight in the adjoining family area. There was no evidence of a TV. A shiny black couch stood next to a blocked up fireplace.
At the granite breakfast bar, Miranda pulled up a wrought iron barstool for Stevie to perch on. She turned to a coffee machine, whose milk frother sounded like an old-fashioned steam train. Stevie wondered if the sound effects were a ploy on Miranda’s part to delay what was sure to be an uncomfortable conversation for both of them.
In her white linen skirt suit, Miranda looked as cool as ice cream, although Stevie did detect a slight tremor in her hand and an almost imperceptible quivering of froth on the cappuccino placed before her.
They made small talk. Stevie could tell that the woman couldn’t wait to get rid of her, but courtesy demanded a show of gratitude to the scruffily dressed woman who’d brought her daughter safely home.
It was patently obvious that Miranda wasn’t interested in Stevie’s polite answers to her polite questions, and was even less interested when Stevie tried to reintroduce the topic of Emma’s deceit. The restless eyes indicated a mind far away on more important things—lunch? Hair removal? Surely the woman couldn’t be as shallow as her daughter had made out.
Stevie knew she’d failed the etiquette test the moment she’d gripped Miranda’s hand too tightly. She shook hands the way her father had taught her. She tried to make up for it now by mimicking her perch upon the barstool, but failed in this too. The stool wasn’t built for comfort, and in jeans the natural tendency was to flop the legs, not keep them taut and together like Miranda’s, constricted as they were in the tight skirt.
Coffee from the overfilled cup slopped onto Stevie’s jeans at her first sip. Damn, another fail, but it could have been worse. Once when she’d been out at a restaurant with Monty, a gulp of coffee had gone down the wrong way and she sputtered it all over the white tablecloth. They’d laughed so much they’d had to leave. Under different circumstances it would have been quite fun to take the piss out of this woman, give her a bit of a shock. No wonder Emma was such a reactionary.
She wondered what Monty would have thought of Miranda. She was very beautiful, no doubt about it, but that wouldn’t have fazed him. He wouldn’t have felt as uncomfortable here as Stevie did, he was at home anywhere, in an outback pub or a reception at Government House. With a good education behind him and well travelled, he could be smooth as molasses when he wanted to be and probably would have charmed the be-Jesus out of her. She shook her head to stop her mind from wandering any further.
Miranda’s fingers were long and graceful and adorned with a tasteful array of rings; nothing too big or garish. Her large eyes followed Izzy as she explored, worried perhaps about sticky fingermarks on the pristine surfaces.
Izzy stopped when she came to an abstract arrangement of steel and glass rising out of the floor, gazing up at it, no doubt trying to figure out what it was. She reached to touch one of the sharp edges and Stevie called out to her to stop, worried she would damage herself on one of the steel points which rose to the vaulted ceiling like spears.
Izzy dropped her hand and turned, bestowing an angelic smile upon the two women seated at the breakfast bar.
Miranda’s smile in response was probably as genuine as she was capable of through the eggshell smooth skin. ‘What a beautiful child,’ she murmured to Stevie, ‘those Shirley Temple curls—’
‘Can I go upstairs and see Emma?’ Izzy asked her.
‘Of course you can, darl,’ Miranda said.
‘Just for a minute, it’s nearly time to leave for Georgia’s house,’ Stevie said as her daughter scuffed up the stairs to the mezzanine landing, calling for Emma.
Stevie’s coffee tasted like mud. She forced down a final swallow, resisting the urge to pull a face. Give her instant coffee any day. A breeze cooled her cheek and she became aware of the musical sound of trickling water, tracing its source to an open window at the back of the family room. Next to it French doors opened into a high walled courtyard blocking the view of the river beyond. The paving and wall were made of recycled bricks, rustic and charming and quite incongruous with the style of the rest of the house.
‘Have you ever thought of signing Izzy up with a modelling agency?’ Miranda’s violet eyes were now focused intently on Stevie’s for the first time since they’d met.
Stevie dragged her gaze from the inviting view outside. ‘Nah, not really, not my scene,’ she said, roughening up her voice just for the hell of it. ‘I suppose I might let her if she was keen when she was older, but frankly I haven’t got the time as things are.’ Now might be a good time to test out one of Emma’s possible lies. ‘I’m a police detective you see, which means a lot of after hours work. I don’t think I’d ever find the time to get her to the shoots, the make-up courses and whatnots.’
Miranda visibly paled under the layer of foundation. Her eyes widened and her hand crept to her throat.
Sheesh,
Stevie thought, Emma wasn’t lying, not even bending the truth on this one. The mention of police had left the woman looking like a roo in headlights.
Miranda composed herself, slid from the barstool and looked at her wristwatch. ‘My goodness, is that the time?’
Stevie followed suit. ‘I suppose we should get those girls moving,’ she said, heading towards the stone stairway. She called out for Izzy, heard footsteps thumping on the mezzanine and saw her daughter peering down at them through the decorative balustrade.
‘Thank you for telling me what Emma’s been up to. I think it’s best that Emma stops working for you. It’s the only way for her to learn.’ Miranda looked pointedly at her daughter who was coming down the staircase. Stevie agreed, adding that Emma was more than welcome to call by any time for a visit.
‘But I want Emma’s stories!’ Izzy cried.
Stevie stopped on her way to the stairs, feeling something cling to the wisp of a thought in her mind, something connected to the Bianca Webster case. But like a feather in the wind, it blew away before she could grasp it.
Monty stared down from his office window, watching the white figures spill onto the oval while the seagulls circled in a cloud above. He was a rugby man; cricket had never held much interest for him although the view from the window provided a handy focus for his restless gaze. He couldn’t count the times he’d had to put up with the grumbles of colleagues that his fifth floor corner office was wasted on the likes of him.
He sat at his desk looking at Stevie’s photo, gazing into her clear blue eyes. He traced the high ponytail that accentuated the curve of her neck, at the little gold kinks still visible even when her hair was pulled taut against her head. She hated the kinks, but wouldn’t be bothered doing anything about them—not a straightening-iron kind of girl, she’d say, occupied with more important things—Izzy, the job, even him he liked to think. He knew the grunge fashion and offhanded manner belied a girl with old-fashioned tastes and a passion for real family values. Her reluctance to move in with him was a mystery, even more to her than to him he suspected.
The funny thing was that once he’d felt pretty much as she did now. For years he’d punished himself for a mistake he’d made one night when he was drunk, a mistake that in the long run turned out to be no mistake at all. But he’d put himself on the wagon, desperate to take control of his life. Now he could take or leave a drink, the same as the next man.
Couldn’t she see that she was doing the same thing now, punishing herself for something that wasn’t her fault?
If only I could explain it to you in a way that wouldn’t make you turn your back on me,
he muttered to the photo as he put it back in his drawer. Whatever was going on with Natasha Hayward seemed to be stretching her loyalties like a spinnaker in a storm and he worried she would snap.
He had been relieved and genuinely pleased to find the fax waiting for him on his desk from ballistics, stating the bullet that killed Kusak could not be traced to any of the confiscated guns in the armoury. Nevertheless, his suspicions of Hayward niggled no less than his aching tooth; at the very least he thought, she was a major incident waiting to happen.
Monty stretched, unable to get comfortable; his toothache seemed to have travelled down his neck and into his arm. It dawned on him then that his anger stemmed largely from the fact that Stevie had failed to tell him, failed to trust him. If it turned out Hayward was involved in Kusak’s death in any way, Stevie would go down for it too. She’d be accused of ignoring the possible breakdown of a team member, which subsequently led to that team member committing murder; her career would be in ruins. Why the hell hadn’t she told him at the start, got his advice when she first had trouble with Hayward in the park? Why hadn’t she let him help her with this? Why sacrifice her career for a loose cannon like Natasha when she must know he’d do anything for her?
He looked up at the phone, willing it to ring. Stevie would doubtless be talking to Tash today, but he had no idea when. The pain in his arm worsened. It seemed to be spreading to his chest. He took some deep breaths and, deciding it was better to err on the side of caution, phoned his doctor. The receptionist said there was a space in two hours time, sooner if it was urgent. Monty said it wasn’t.
He put the phone down, his gaze dropping to some unconscious doodling on his notebook—Natasha’s name woven into a maze of Celtic knots. To his dismay he discovered that her name had pressed its way through all the pages that lay beneath.
That afternoon, after a piece of news that had initially dumbfounded him, Monty called an impromptu progress meeting with the senior detectives involved in the Zhang Li case. The three men grabbed swivel chairs and clustered around Monty’s desk, sipping coffee from foam cups and balancing notebooks on knees.
‘Firstly,’ Monty said to his gathered team, ‘the report from ballistics on the bullet that killed Miro Kusak was waiting on my desk when I got in. Apparently it’s an exact match for the bullet that killed our Asian loan shark, Zhang Li.’
Wayne put his cup on Monty’s desk and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, well, that is interesting.’
Angus beamed. ‘I thought two murders by an automatic pistol within weeks of each other was a bit of stretch for Perth—I mean this is hardly downtown LA. Looks like there is a God.’
‘And it seems he wants to help us out for a change,’ Barry said. ‘Though he could have waited till after the weekend.’
‘Don’t get too excited, fellas,’ Wayne cautioned. ‘The bullets might have been fired by the same gun, but we don’t have the gun. What about the impounded guns, Mont? With the state of the armoury since the amnesty, anyone could have lifted one and then put it back.’
So Wayne had been thinking along these lines too. The thought left Monty feeling slightly vindicated.
‘One of us you mean?’ Barry sounded incredulous.
Monty nodded. ‘Yes, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that we might have a cop playing vigilante—but rest easy, there’s no match.’
Wayne shrugged. ‘Without the gun then, we’re not really any the wiser.’
‘Only now, Wayne, we have a link, bizarre as it might seem, between the death of a loan shark and the death of a paedophile,’ Monty said.
And I have no reason to be suspicious of Hayward, he thought. So why then am I still plagued by these doubts, this deep sense of foreboding, as if she is still some kind of a threat?
He thought back to what the doctor had told him that morning; that he must attempt to cut down on his workload and reduce the stress in his life. He had to drop the subject. He slashed a pen through his doodles and tore the page from the book.
He attempted to pull himself together and pointed at Wayne. ‘You and Angus said you thought the Vietnamese girl at the herbalist’s was hiding something. Have you followed that up yet?’ Monty asked Wayne.
Wayne shook his head. ‘The dead rock spider put paid to that yesterday, boss. I’ll pay her another visit this afternoon.’
Barry smirked at Wayne from where he sat spinning in his chair. ‘He’s sweet on her,’ he said with one of his infuriating Alfred-E-Newman grins, ‘that’s why he hasn’t done it yet.’
Monty listened to the exchange with the distance of a weary headmaster.