Murder Most Fancy, page 17
‘Buy everything.’
‘Totally way ahead of you,’ she responded, fishing out my purse and removing a gold credit card.
I cradled my head in my hands, inhaling the scents of carbs, coffee and seawater. I was in the early stages of an epiphany about purchasing more beachfront property when I heard a woman, who had apparently seated herself across from me, ordering.
‘Would you like that as a latte or a flat white?’ the waiter was asking.
‘Either. I’ve had both beverages and they’re identical.’
‘Not really,’ said the waiter, unfamiliar with his audience. ‘You see, with the latte we have a small layer of foam, but with the—’
‘No,’ she replied without malice. ‘I took samples from both beverages and tested them. They’re empirically identical.’
I peeled my forehead off my hands and found myself face-to-face with Dr Bailly. I opened and closed my eyes repeatedly. Being locked in a car overnight with the frightening chemicals used on new upholstery could have caused some type of hallucinogenic reaction.
She was still there.
‘Do you own a typewriter?’ I abruptly asked her.
‘No.’
She did not seem to think the question was odd, left of centre, or in any way out of place, even delivered at 6 am, by a virtual stranger in a café just thirty metres from her home.
‘Do you need a menu, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber?’ she asked, offering me a well-worn piece of A3 paper folded in three. ‘I don’t need it. I know it off by heart. I always order raisin toast. The raisin toast is very good.’
‘No, thank you, Bailly,’ I said, smiling weakly.
I was torn. The resentment and fear of being duped again sat heavily in my chest. I wanted to grill her. I needed someone to be angry with. The problem was, I believed her. She was quite possibly a genius, but she was no criminal genius. She was without guile and sincerely kind. She was also missing seven out of ten social skills. She really grew on you.
Like an online shopper reluctant to click the pay button at a new store, I searched for Esmerelda for reassurance. With timing as immaculate as ever, she plonked herself down on the chair between Bailly and I.
‘Hey, look!’ she said excitedly, pointing back to the counter with its vast plexiglass front, innards filled with perfectly tanned baked goods. ‘They got fresh croissants!’
‘The croissants are also good,’ Bailly agreed. ‘Not as good as the raisin toast, but good.’
Esmerelda gave Bailly a wide grin, her stalking crocodile persona nowhere to be seen. She was all happy, cute koala, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Esmerelda. It could have been that she was overwhelmed by fatigue and hunger, but I decided to trust my instincts, ignore my paranoia and go with Esmerelda’s gut. Plus, I was tired, and they had freshly deep fried vanilla-glazed bear claws stuffed with cinnamon apple and crème pâtissière.
Besides, no one who lived so close to a bakery this good could be rotten. That left one alternative: my penpal had to be someone from within the police.
‘What do you know about Detectives Rope and Winters?’ I asked Bailly as her somewhat terrified waiter appeared to deliver her coffee.
‘They’re police detectives,’ she said, examining the sugar shaker, deciding against it and reaching for the packets.
‘And?’ I prompted.
‘They’re partners,’ she said, selecting a packet of plant steroid brown sugar.
‘And?’
‘They’re police detective partners,’ she said, ripping the top off the tiny sachet and emptying it into her latte/flat white.
I could see that saying ‘and’ again would cause her to answer in a similar fashion, which would cause me to shriek violently. I tried another strategy.
‘Are they good detectives?’ I asked, hoping my emphasis on the word ‘good’ would connote some meaning regarding their ethical standards.
‘Rope is not a good detective,’ Bailly said, shaking her head and bobbing her body forward to emphasise ‘not’. ‘Winters is a very good detective. Between them, they make one median good detective. That’s probably sufficient,’ she said.
‘Sufficient?’
‘Yes. Sufficient. Adequate for the purpose. Enough.’
Okay. Sufficient. I didn’t think she was referring to their moral compass. I would circle back to that. Might as well dive down the rabbit hole in front of me while the going was good. I straightened my spine and inhaled.
‘Do you think that Detectives Rope and Winters will successfully investigate and solve the mystery of UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters?’ I tried, very precisely.
‘No.’
‘No?’ I quizzed. The moment the word came out of my mouth, I regretted it. I beat her to the response. ‘No, okay, I get it. No means no.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. No.’
Sadly, I knew what she meant.
‘Why not?’ I said, getting the hang of the gentle interrogation. Be calm. Be specific.
‘Detective Winters had his arm broken by a farmyard animal. He’s now restricted to desk duties, meaning he’s unable to perform at full function. As a combined team, they now fall below the median of good into sub-par. The UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters investigation is difficult. UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters has not been listed as a missing person. You’re the only person to come forward claiming knowledge and relation to him. His fingerprints aren’t in the system. His DNA isn’t in the system. Because he is elderly, his age is hard to gauge. He could be sixty-eight, he could be eighty-six. There are many indications he wasn’t homeless—on the contrary, he presented as a very wealthy man—yet he was dressed as a vagrant and covered in detritus and organic matter. His injuries are varied and curious. Tests are expensive. He is not a priority. I would estimate that it is unlikely they will find his identity or his killer.’
‘Like, that’s a lotta words,’ Esmerelda said.
Bailly’s last word struck me.
‘You think there was a killer?’
‘Yes. I can almost certainly state that he was murdered. I have run many tests. I am waiting for results,’ she said.
‘You ran more tests?’ I pressed her.
‘Yes. I extended the autopsy to its full capacity,’ she said, sipping her latte. It was definitely a latte.
‘Are you going to get into trouble for that?’ I asked, motioning for Esmerelda to take a note to remind me when this was all over, I’d need to have a word to the NSW premier about having Bailly’s slate wiped clean with her boss’s boss, the NSW coroner.
‘Yes,’ Bailly said, accepting her raisin toast from a new waitress. ‘I didn’t become a forensic pathologist so that I could be told not to be a forensic pathologist. There are more financially lucrative medical specialities. But none that communicate with the dead. I needed the tests to complete the autopsy.’
‘Come back to the farm animal part,’ Esmerelda said, as always focusing on the most important issue. ‘What kinda farm animal?’
‘A lamb.’
‘Like, Detective Winter got his ass handed to him by a lamb?’
Bailly peered at Esmerelda. ‘There was no donkey. It was a lamb. Lamb.’
She said the last word slowly. Laaamb.
I thought Esmerelda was going to punch Bailly. She was instantly inflamed, looking to me in indignant frustration, gesturing at Bailly with her right palm outstretched.
What I really wanted to say was, ‘Kettle, meet Pot.’ But I didn’t. I was strong.
‘Where might a homicide detective encounter a farmyard animal like a lamb?’ I asked on Esmerelda’s furious-curious behalf.
‘In a farmyard,’ Bailly said, sipping.
Esmerelda glared at me like the wounded party in a sibling fight. I understood why Bailly might have been tapped as the forensic pathologist with lower-end people skills. On the upside, if I needed to find out what an exploded Esmerelda head looked like, I knew where to come.
‘Why was Detective Winters at a farmyard?’ I asked calmly, not willing to risk any Esmerelda brain contamination on my bear claw.
‘He has a hobby farm in the Blue Mountains,’ she said, turning her attention to the raisin toast. Lightly toasted, butter on the side.
‘I see. So he was at his hobby farm and he was kicked in the arm by a lamb?’ I was getting good at being calm.
‘No,’ she said, spreading the butter generously. She was going to run out of butter.
Think.
‘He was at someone else’s farm and was kicked in the arm by a lamb?’ I tried serenely.
‘Yes.’
I was getting excellent at this.
‘Dude!’ Esmerelda said, finally getting a rush of some kind from Bailly’s answers. ‘It wasn’t even his lamb? Someone else’s lamb broke Winters’s arm? Awesome. Like, I hope it was super fluffy and super cute. And like had a little bell ’round its neck.’
‘Why?’ I stupidly wanted to know.
Esmerelda glared at me like I was the investor who had turned down the opportunity to give the people at Google their seed money.
‘It’s totally way much more better that way.’
Of course it was.
I stopped a waitress. ‘Could we have more butter please?’
Bailly eyed her nearly empty butter dish and then me. ‘Thank you. You’re very observant, Indigo-Daisy-Violet-Amber.’
I didn’t know what to say. It was the second time she had given me the compliment. Bailly didn’t seem like the most bountiful compliment-giver.
‘Was it his left arm or his right arm?’ I asked, sensing an opportunity to have my original enquiry answered.
‘Right,’ Bailly said, biting into her raisin toast.
‘Is Detective Winters right-handed?’
Bailly watched the waitress place a small ceramic butter dish filled with curled globes of grooved butter in front of her and then nodded.
Winters was right-handed and had a broken right arm. There was no way he was the typewriter bandit. Rope was just not creative enough for stock card, posted envelopes and manual typewriters. Plus, according to a conversation I’d had with Bailly on the day we first met, Rope was a horrible speller. There were no spelling mistakes on the anonymous cards. Even the grammar was correct.
I was back to being frustrated and clueless. Which triggered my hungry button for sugar-filled foods.
Esmerelda was still on the lamb.
‘So, like, did it kick him? Did he fall over it? Did it attack him? Was he running away from it?’
‘Yes. He fell over the lamb, which had unexpectedly run in front of him. As he was falling over the lamb, the lamb’s hind leg kicked out and hit the detective in the forearm. His ulna was broken. I do not know whether it was broken by the fall or by the kicking. Both are feasible.’
Bailly carefully examined Esmerelda’s riveted expression as Esmerelda nodded her head in encouragement. ‘And? It was fluffy, right?’
Bailly stared at Esmerelda for a long moment. ‘Spring lambs are generally considered endearing. At that stage of development, a lamb would almost certainly have enough new wool to be considered fluffy,’ she said finally. ‘Therefore, I have no reason to believe that the lamb that injured Detective Winters was not “super fluffy and super cute”.’
This made Esmerelda extremely happy. I was also happy because large volumes of baked goods began to arrive: pain aux raisins, chocolate cake, blueberry muffin, orange cake, brownie, caramel slice, raspberry white chocolate muffin, lemon poppyseed cake, croissant, pain au chocolat, apricot Danish, apple turnover, brioche, raisin toast and one vanilla-glazed bear claw. This was followed by a variety of teas and coffees. One of everything, as requested. We took up all the room on our table and the one next to us. I was not concerned. While Esmerelda and I were professional in very few ways, eating was an exception.
‘Don’t even think about touching that bear claw,’ I said to Esmerelda with a mouth full of blueberry muffin while pouring my tea. Although I was primarily a pacifist, I worked out semi-regularly with an angry female kickboxing champion and I knew a few bear claw-worthy moves.
‘You’re not going to eat all that, are you, Mrs Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg?’ said a voice behind me.
It was moments like these that restored my faith in God. That is, that God was very real, and really didn’t like me.
I desperately tried to choke down my muffin, which was a tremendous shame because it had a perfectly browned crispy crust, was heavily scattered with fresh blueberries, and was soft, airy and delightfully warm in the middle. I hated to waste it on choking.
Esmerelda, who had a mouth full of pain aux raisins, frowned suspiciously at me. The expression of shock on my stuffed face evidently convinced her that I had no part to play in Searing’s appearance.
‘Dude,’ she managed, twisting sideways to glare up at him. ‘Like what the hell? You don’t live near here.’
‘And how would you know?’ Searing asked, pulling out the fourth and final seat at the table. ‘Do you mind, Jem?’
Jem?
‘No,’ she replied.
‘You two know each other?’ I said, trying to remain calm while simultaneously hoping I didn’t have blueberry in my teeth.
‘Oh yeah,’ Searing said, flashing me his ludicrously gorgeous smile. ‘Jem and I go way back.’
Searing seated himself. Unsurprisingly, every female member of waitstaff, and two of the males, were instantly at our table to take Searing’s order. As if he wasn’t attractive enough, he ordered a bear claw. Be still my heart.
‘Seriously?’ Esmerelda said, with no qualms about speaking while starting in on the raspberry muffin. ‘You’ve been homicide for five minutes.’
‘Detective Searing has been a detective for six years. Homicide for over two,’ Bailly corrected. ‘There are an average of sixty-one homicides per year in Sydney. There are currently six forensic pathologists at the FM triple C. Statistically speaking, it would be unlikely that the detective and I would not be professionally acquainted.’
Searing’s bear claw arrived in a land-speed record, along with a chai latte I am almost certain he had not ordered.
I was so shocked that I had unconsciously begun to eat my own sugar-covered claw and only had two bites remaining. My latte glass was empty.
‘Also,’ Searing said, sipping his chai, ‘we did a few units of criminology together at uni.’
‘No,’ she challenged calmly. ‘Five. Five is more than a few. Two is a couple. Three is a few.’
The caffeine and sugar rushed to my brain and I realised I had asked Bailly to re-autopsy a case belonging to a detective she knew. Undoubtedly quite well. They were probably friends. ‘So, you’re friends?’
Bailly sipped her coffee. ‘We’re not friends.’
Or not.
‘We’re not?’ Searing questioned.
Bailly shook her head. ‘No. Cassie Roebuck, who sat next to me in Year Three, said friends speak every day. We don’t speak daily. Fiona Carlson, who sat next to me in “Criminological Perspectives: Understanding Crime” at university, said adult friends speak at least three times a week. We don’t speak three times a week.’
Esmerelda stopped eating just long enough to impart some sage advice about people named Cassie Roebuck and Fiona Carlson being, well, several colourful and unappealing adjectives, not all of which one would find in a dictionary. Her point being they weren’t to be trusted. She added that even if Ali Wong, Sally Fitzgibbons and the Dalai Lama were her three best friends, she would still be unlikely to find the time to make contact with each of them three times a week. I wondered if the trio also made up her ‘celebrities you would invite to dinner’ list.
Bailly didn’t look convinced.
‘I don’t speak to my best friend three times a week. Not even three times a month,’ I confessed. ‘And I’ve known her since kindergarten. Friendship is more about trust. Reliability. Looking out for each other. Otherwise you would technically be friends with the person who brings your post or your takeaway food, but not a person you’ve known and cared for since childhood.’
Bailly considered this new information. ‘I may have more friends than I thought.’
‘Great!’ I said to her. ‘So, we’re all friends.’
‘No.’ She pointed between the two of us. ‘We’re not friends.’
Okay, then.
‘We’re, ah … professional acquaintances … who have, just now, coincidentally bumped into each other at a local café.’
‘Agreed,’ Bailly said.
It was partially true. What was Searing’s excuse?
‘David, I did not ask you here as a friend. Although it is possible we may be friends. I asked you here as Detective Searing.’ She paused, adjusting herself on the café chair. ‘I have begun a new autopsy on your cold case UP Greenacre 0101 West.’
Searing blinked slowly, shaping his mouth into an unintentional and yet flawless ‘o’. If I were prone to falling off chairs, I would have done so. Instead, I forked a chunk of lemon poppyseed cake smothered in orange cream into my mouth. I was hoping this would stop me from speaking.
‘Jesus! That’s great, Jem, really.’ He positively beamed across the table at her. He further digested the news. ‘Did you say you’ve begun? You’ve already started on UP Greenacre?’
‘Yes. A preliminary examination of the remains has unearthed some serious inaccuracies. The first one being UP Greenacre 0101 West was not Caucasian. He was almost certainly of south-east Asian descent. Also, he was not in his sixties. More likely he was only in his mid-forties.’
We all gaped at her in astonishment. No wonder Searing had been keen to have a second autopsy.
‘Dude,’ Esmerelda said, shaking her head and choosing between a chocolate cake and a brownie before settling on the latter.
I leaned into Searing. ‘It’s not just me; that is pretty bad, right?’
‘Yes, princess,’ a cranky female voice above and beside me said. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but that’s pretty fucking bad.’
CHAPTER 14
DUCKING OUT
Esmerelda inadvertently inhaled some of the loose cocoa powder sitting on top of her brownie, causing her to cough chocolate dust all over Detective Nicole Burns, the diminutive redheaded detective who had spearheaded the campaign to round me up, charge me with Richard’s murder and throw away the key.
