Murder Most Fancy, page 28
How could she be so blatant? He was sitting right there. And how did she know? Sure, she had a nose for crime, chicanery and law enforcement personnel like a truffle hound, but this?
‘No,’ I said firmly as I tried to telepathically signal her to stop.
‘I’m surprised to hear you say that, Indie,’ James said, preparing to bite into his own bao. ‘You were at Lucas Carr’s front door for some time. Did he not leave you with anything memorable?’
Indie? Wait. Front door? Thank you, God, she was asking about the dentist!
In the midst of all the debate about whether or not we should drive back to the city, giving James directions and Esmerelda’s rapid-fire phone ordering, I had not had a chance to pass on the information about Max.
I mentally tried to scheme my way out of my previous answers.
‘He didn’t give me new information,’ I said, ‘but he did clarify some of the things we knew. Or thought we knew.’
Esmerelda squinted and poked her spoon at me. ‘Huh?’
‘For example, Dame Elizabeth thought Max’s daughters’ names were Carley and Ellie. She was a little bit off. Lucas said Carley is Tahnee. And Ellie is Lizzy, short for Elizabeth.’
‘Oh yeah, okay. I get it. So, like, we totally thought his name was Max, but really it was Maxwell. Clarity.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, breathing an internal sigh of relief.
‘What else?’ she said, forking noodles. The woman never used chopsticks. Maybe it was a form of cultural rebellion.
‘Dame Elizabeth said Max was from Western Australia. The rest of the Hollys and the staff at the Holly Park Hotel said he was from South Australia. Lucas made it seem like Maxwell was from the Northern Territory. Darwin.’
‘Do you like think he was straight with you?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Absolutely.’
‘What else?’
‘Nothing else. I must have said something wrong and he clammed up.’
‘That’s quite a lot,’ James said, standing up and heading back into the house. ‘Sounds like you’re much better at this than you give yourself credit for.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I protested.
Esmerelda went to work on her phone. James came back with two glasses of cold, almost clear white wine and a small bottle of No-Sugar Vanilla Coke with a metal straw.
I lay back on my lounge, watching the fairy lights secreted along the walls, in the floors and ceiling, in the pool, along the cliff and in the palms and greenery glitter like white diamonds.
‘Got ’em,’ Esmerelda said seven minutes later. ‘“Darwin darlings Elizabeth and Tahnee Harraway, daughters of Northern Territory pearl baron Maxwell Harraway, whose estimated net worth is $2.5 billion, sparkled at blah, blah, blah.” No other kids. No photos of him. Says he’s a widower and a full-on public recluse.’
I guess that prayer bracelet was made of black pearls.
Before I was aware, James had clinked his glass to mine. I almost dropped it in surprise.
‘You did it,’ he said.
Did I? Did we? We did! We’d found Max! The man in the lilies, UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters, was Maxwell Harraway, pearl baron.
I knew Maxwell Harraway. Well, I knew of him. He’d made his first fortune fifty or sixty years ago as an old-school pearl diver in Broome. He’d famously started out using no scuba gear, just an extraordinary lung capacity, an iron will and a supernatural understanding of the ocean. Harraway then opened a small pearl jewellery store in Darwin called Phoenix Pearls. He used the store’s profits to open a small gold mine and then a pink diamond mine, eventually creating Harraway Industries. The world’s most spectacular pearls and pink diamonds were sold at dozens of Phoenix Pearls stores globally. I shopped there.
Esmerelda was correct. Harraway was a serious recluse. He was fastidiously private, hated the media, rarely attended public functions and was never photographed. As a result, you almost never heard about him.
‘Do his—’ I asked.
‘Both daughters live in Darwin,’ Esmerelda pre-empted me.
‘Is—’
‘Harraway Industries is based there too.’
‘Please call—’
‘Already emailed Loraine and asked for your nanna’s plane at nine tomorrow.’
‘Seven,’ I said, contradicting her.
I was being completely unfair and petty. She was right, 9 am was much better than 7 am, but I hated it when she read my mind. It made me uncomfortable to think our brains had become so similarly aligned.
‘Awesome,’ she said. ‘I booked it for seven anyway.’
Kill me now.
‘Congratulations, Heiress,’ James said, giving me a stout wink. ‘You’re quite the detective.’
Kill me twice.
Franny agreed to be picked up en route to do my hair and make-up during the four-and-a-half-hour flight to Darwin. Among the last season’s clothes I found in my room was a gorgeous low-backed wide-legged floral Dior jumpsuit and a white Hermès jacket with a palm leaf motif, lined in white satin. There was even a pair of new-in-box cork Prada wedges.
James insisted Esmerelda sleep in the room next to his so he could keep an eye on her. This was a genius strategy as it also meant Esmerelda would be a buffer, sleeping between my room and James’s (although our rooms were at opposite ends of the house, I felt an extra layer of deterrence couldn’t hurt). Esmerelda, however, objected, proposing to sleep in the glass conservatory under a blanket of stars.
I won her over by promising on the soul of Coco Chanel that I would be ready to go, no complaints, at 5.30 am if she slept in the allocated room. So, I had Esmerelda as a buffer and a leisurely eight hours to sleep. Theoretically. My mind kept clicking over information, rudely delaying valuable REM hours.
*
I had never slept in the same house as Esmerelda. Astonishingly, she was a morning person.
By the time I woke and stumbled, robed and bleary-eyed, into the kitchen to boil my very own kettle, to make my very own tea, Esmerelda had already swum (location unspecified), showered, eaten, collected the mail and was on her second cup of coffee.
James likewise had been in the pool, showered (thank God I had slept through that), toasted some leftover naan bread from the night before and was making a jug of French press coffee.
I would not need to make my own tea after all.
The sun was in the process of waking over the bay and the ocean. Burgeoning streaks of pink and red ricocheted across the endless surface of the sleepy turquoise water. It was spectacular. At least there was one advantage to being up at 5 am.
Esmerelda was not particular when it came to stealing breakfast, happily snagging a piece of James’s crispy naan and abandoning the cup of instant coffee she had made herself (the odour coming from the cup on the sink was impossible to mistake) for the Brazilian blend from James’s freshly pressed pot. She was simultaneously attacking the sticky-taped sealed edges of a red and white Australia Post box with a steak knife. She slit the edges and opened the box. Inside was a black matelassé nappa leather Mui Mui handbag, the kind with handles, a detachable strap and a push-lock clasp. She pulled it out of the box, unclasped the lock, parted the handles and pulled a purse in the same fabric from inside. Both the handbag and the purse smelt, well, odd.
She put the purse on the breakfast bar and shook the handbag upside down to make sure there was nothing else in it.
I glanced at the discarded box. It was addressed to Esmerelda. Great. Now even she got more mail at my beach house than I did.
‘Like how did Heinsmann even find me here?’ she asked.
There was something strange about the way Esmerelda handled the handbag. It was all wrong. Only a canvas bag with no hardware could have been that lightweight. Matelassé nappa leather with metal hardware was much heavier.
‘It’s been less than twelve hours!’ she complained. ‘Rich people gossip is off the hook.’
The purse looked like it had seen a full day’s shopping with someone who liked to use cash and kept receipts. It was full to bursting, but the surface was unblemished.
I stared at the bulging purse and the feathery light handbag.
‘Mui Mui don’t make full purses,’ I mumbled, cogs gradually moving in my waking brain. ‘Only coin purses … and … that handbag is too light. It can’t be leather. It smells almost as bad as your coffee. Are those clips painted plastic?’
In a microsecond, James swivelled from the toaster to the counter and scanned the items.
‘Where’d you get those?’ he asked flatly.
‘Delivery dude.’
‘When?’ he pressed.
‘Like two seconds ago, when you were in the shower.’
‘Delivery people don’t come at 5 am,’ I said slowly.
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Not even for rich people?’
‘No,’ I deadpanned, pouring myself some of James’s coffee.
‘It’s hard to tell what’s normal for you people,’ she defended.
James took a soda spoon from the drawer and inserted the long, thin handle under the closed flap of the paunchy purse. It made a crunching sound, like it was full of bath crystals. He snatched the purse and ran.
I watched in horror as he sprinted out to the back deck and pitched the overstuffed Mui Mui purse high over the edge of the infinity pool. It sailed through the air, far over the incline, to the beach, landing on a soft patch of white sand a metre from the water’s edge. It was a black speck with a minuscule gold logo sparkling on a deserted beach.
I suspected a significant amount of James’s childhood had been spent playing sports that involved throwing balls long distances.
‘Jesus!’ I gasped, having followed him outside. ‘What is it with you and overreactions?’
‘Dude,’ Esmerelda said, strolling outside with the handbag. ‘This is a knock-off.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m totally insulted. You can’t bribe a person with a counterfeit.’
She was the resident counterfeit designer goods expert.
James took the handbag from her and ran his hands across the lining, then the iconic stitched exterior.
‘Best to be safe,’ he said and pitched the handbag over the edge too, this time in the opposite direction. It was lighter and much more aerodynamic than the purse. The wind caught the open bag like a sail and blew it at least 100 metres down the beach.
We stood and watched, three sets of eyes peering through the dawn light, moving from the purse to the handbag and back again. They sat listlessly on the beach for a full minute.
‘Drama queen,’ I said to James, turning to walk back into the house.
And then the little black Mui Mui purse exploded with such ferocity, I was jolted forward into a piece of outdoor furniture and the hairs on my arms singed. I put my hand to my heart.
‘Jesus!’ I stammered, turning around, wide-eyed. ‘God!’
What was it about spending time with James that brought out the blasphemy in me?
‘Huh,’ Esmerelda said, staring at the charred black hole the size of a minibus in the beach. ‘They totally don’t make ’em like they used to.’
No kidding.
Esmerelda’s eyebrows were almost completely gone—singed straight off. Sometimes it just didn’t pay to face a fight head on. Or eyebrows on.
Sand does not burn. But it does, as it turns out, melt. A significant section of the beach had, quite shockingly, melted. It was like a scene from Frozen. But in reverse, and with red hot glass instead of freezing cold ice.
I turned to James. ‘What on earth was that?’
‘PETN,’ he said, turning back to the house.
Well, that was much clearer.
Esmerelda and I trailed after him. ‘Like, what now?’
‘Pentaerythritol tetranitrate. PETN,’ he said, gulping his coffee and putting on his jacket. ‘It’s a crystal explosive. Very powerful. Can be detonated by a variety of things, including small electric shocks, like the kind delivered by mobiles.’
‘I knew I heard it ticking!’ Esmerelda exclaimed, wide-eyed, pointing to the post box.
‘You could not have heard it ticking,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t built by Wile E. Coyote. And mobile phones do not tick.’
‘Like, I could feel a phone in there, dude. It was counting down.’
‘If she can be at one with the Force, perhaps she can be at one with a phone,’ James said wryly, lifting his carry-on to his shoulder, heading for the front door. ‘I’m going to do a quick walk around the grounds. If we get separated, I’ll meet you at the airport.’
‘Separated? You’re leaving?’ I should have been happy. I had spent hours yesterday willing him to leave.
‘Not immediately, no, but I need to have a look around. I won’t be far and you won’t be alone for long. I’ve a feeling the cavalry will arrive very shortly. You can’t get too many mass detonations in this neighbourhood.’
Before I could object, he was gone. No lingering stares. No mention of the necking, pecking and generally mind-bending canoodling from the night before. Nothing.
I hurried to my room and dressed, trying to push the flaming images out of my mind. It was not a fire, I told myself in a mantra-like loop. Breathe.
It was a PETN detonation. Substantially different to the penthouse incident.
Breathe. Breathe.
I was dressed and buckling my wedges before it dawned on me that James had invited himself to the airport and therefore on the Northern Territory expedition, and I had failed to object.
Damn.
He was right about one thing, though: the locals dialled 000 the moment the faux purse hit the beach. And the cavalry did arrive.
CHAPTER 22
MUI MUI, IS THAT YOU?
I emerged to find Esmerelda sitting at the window seat, window wide open, drinking coffee and playing on her phone. ‘Like, they’re outside,’ she said, pointing with her non-phone hand.
‘The police?’
‘Yup.’
I wanted to deal with the police quickly and get out. To this end, I decided to lie. That could have been anyone’s exploding fake Mui Mui purse, officer.
It was Palm Beach.
Over a dozen uniformed police swarmed the beach. Two plain-clothed detectives stood on my deck, observing them.
‘Ms Hasluck-Royce-Jones-Bombberg,’ Searing said, turning to face me. ‘I’ve officially run out of ways to say we must stop meeting like this.’
‘Told you,’ Burns said, drinking from a takeaway coffee cup. ‘She’s a catastrophe magnet.’
How on earth did they get here from the city so quickly? Even with sirens blazing it would take forty minutes. The explosion could not have occurred more than five minutes ago! How could they possibly know I was involved?
‘You cannot prove that purse came from here!’ I gasped.
‘Ah,’ Burns said, taking a final sip and shaking the now-empty paper cup. ‘A purse, was it? That makes sense. Betcha that’s the matching Moo Moo handbag.’
On top of the reclaimed wood table, in a large clear plastic evidence bag, sat the battered faux Mui Mui handbag. It may have been half a beach away from the exploding purse but it had not escaped unscathed. Or unnoticed.
I tried again.
‘What are you two doing here? How did you even get here? An exploding purse in Palm Beach cannot be related to your cold case! Are you back in homicide? No one died, did they. Did they?!’
‘So many questions,’ Burns said, rolling her eyes. ‘No, not back in homicide. No, no one died. Drove here in an unmarked Holden.’ She turned to him. ‘Your turn.’
‘Well,’ Searing said, ‘I’m happy to report UP Greenacre 0101 West is an unknown person no more.’
‘Really?’ I said, thrown off, staring from one detective to the other. ‘You solved it? Already?’
Just how good were Searing and Burns as detectives?
‘Not quite solved, but we IDed our UP. His name was Terence Lopez,’ Searing said. ‘Forty-two, husband, father of one, solid employee, owner of a quiet two-bedroom apartment in Balmain. Born in the Philippines.’
The Philippines? That was a long way from Balmain and Greenacre.
‘Known to his friends as Smooth,’ added Burns.
‘The injuries. How did he receive those injuries?’ I immediately wanted to know.
Although Esmerelda and I had done a deep-dive into the life and times of Maxwell Harraway last night, we had thus far found nothing about his childhood or youth. He was not just an enigma when it came to his current life, but his past too.
Searing pulled up a chair at the outdoor table and Burns sat too. This all but forced me to sit with them.
I dusted my seat down. I didn’t have time to get changed again if there was charred Mui Mui on my cushion. ‘The injuries?’
‘He had a crap childhood,’ Burns said.
‘No kidding,’ I shot back. ‘Specifically. What happened to him?’
Searing exhaled and rubbed his eyes. ‘He was trafficked.’
‘What?’
‘Trafficked.’
‘As in human trafficked, trafficked?’
The pair nodded. ‘Also known as modern slavery,’ Searing, ever PC, added.
‘No!’ I exclaimed. ‘Here? In Australia? No.’
They nodded. I felt distinctly ill. I was not equipped to swim in this end of the pool.
‘How?’ It was all I could get out.
‘Most of Australia’s trafficked people come from Asia. Thailand, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia. Mr Lopez was from Manila originally. He was trafficked as a kid, forced into slave labour to pay off a jacked-up, unlawful and completely illegitimate “family debt”.’
‘Why didn’t he run away?’ I asked.
‘He did. Many times. But he was only successful when he was sixteen. He probably became too strong. Too fast. The results of his unsuccessful attempts were …’
The scarring.
Poor Terence Lopez. This end of the pool was a cesspool.
Wait. Max Harraway, pearl baron billionaire, was a trafficked child? A slave?
I shook my head—it wasn’t possible. ‘Could that have happened to a child seventy or eighty years ago, from the UK or Europe?’
Burns scratched the back of her neck. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, maybe? It’s not exactly our area of expertise.’
