Murder Most Fancy, page 34
‘Are you wearing Chanel to a break-in?’ he asked.
‘You’re wearing Valentino,’ I shot back. And he was. Black Valentino jeans, turtleneck and boots.
‘Fair call,’ he said.
Esmerelda disappeared in the Lexus, heading to the deputy coroner’s favourite bar, Anna’s Inn. Mr Pasty was about to have an unbelievably fortuitous evening chatting with the exceptionally gorgeous and exceptionally blonde Josephine. It was astonishing to be the beneficiary of personal favours from an escort agency. I would have to send flowers and a large muffin basket along with the $10,000 per hour payment.
We rode in silence to the cross-city tunnel. Once inside, James promptly reached into the back seat and pulled two Happy Meals from a heated container.
‘How could you possibly have known?’ I gasped. Having a Happy Meal habit was one of my dirtier little secrets. It would be bumped down the list after tonight, but still, it was up there.
‘A little bird told me,’ he said playfully.
‘A little bird called Patricia?’
‘Ah now, if I told you, the bird might get hurt.’
He was right. And hurting the bird might endanger my breakfast trays.
The call of the pickle-laden cheeseburger was too much for me. I stacked it with crispy French fries and bit in, trying hard not to make moaning sounds as I ate. It was possible I had made moaning sounds when he kissed me all over, and I didn’t want him to feel in competition with a cheeseburger. It would be an uphill battle, even for him.
He ate his burger in five bites and his fries one at a time, which I found inexplicably erotic. It didn’t help that he smelt amazing, Amouage yes, but also a body wash I could not put my finger on. And his hair was still damp from a wash and trim.
He cleared his throat to speak on several occasions, but nothing followed. As much as I tried to erase his words, hands and lips, I couldn’t. I exhaled heavily and tried to articulate myself but failed. We were doomed. Like nervous teenagers, we exchanged nothing but sighs and curbed glances.
I realised with some surprise that the Volvo we were in this evening had a slightly different interior to the last one.
‘Is this a different car?’
‘Of course. It’ll be different again in a few hours. Just in case.’
‘Will there be a just in case?’
‘No.’
Such romantic banter.
We slid into the car park of a thoroughly suburban bar and pulled up next to the Lexus with Esmerelda in the driver’s seat. Esmerelda powered down her window and handed James a soft drink can. He took the can and buzzed his window up. Not a single word was exchanged. Creative professionals.
An hour later, the Volvo was parked at the rear entrance to the FMCCC. James unscrewed the top of the can, revealing a hollow silver interior containing Mr Pasty’s ID pass card.
‘Are you sure the cameras are off?’ I asked.
‘Aye. I had a good chat to a lad in the firm. From six to six-thirty, they’ll see the footage from last night. Still, best be safe,’ he said, handing me a pair of oversized, no-brand sunglasses, black gloves and a black cap.
The low bun worked perfectly with the cap. Just as well; it would have been awful to ruin such wonderful hair. I swapped my glasses for the no-name brand but discarded the gloves. I had my own.
At the back of the facility was a massive roller door with a thick-looking human-sized door to the left. The smaller door had a camera above it and a swipe keypad beside it.
My hands were sweating under my gloves and my lower stomach was in complete turmoil. We got out of the car and stood together on the concrete ramp. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked.
For Max, I thought, fortifying myself. For Dame Elizabeth.
‘Of course,’ I said, feeling stroke-level terrified.
He slid the card along the keypad reader and punched in the code: 0805. Pasty’s dogs’ birthday. The light went from red to green and the door clicked open. My heart ricocheted around in my chest like a pinball.
He slid through the door first. He reached back and his splayed, leather-gloved left hand landed hard on my belly, stopping me from entering. He surveyed the blackened surrounds then nodded. He pivoted to me and, moving his hand to my waist, guided me through the door into the darkened room.
In a single hammering heartbeat, I was through, he was through and the door clicked closed behind us. I felt for the wall, using it to navigate my way to face him behind me in the murkiness.
‘Is this it?’ I asked.
‘Aye,’ he lilted, ‘we’re in it now.’
I put my hands out and onto his shoulders, my eyes adjusting enough to find his outline. My entire system was flooded with adrenaline, I was my own little drug lab. My body seemed weightless as I felt my way down his chest. His pullover was thin enough to feel every muscle underneath and soft enough to invite more touching. I moved my hands up his body to his neck and face. My brain was so busy coping with the shock of the break-in it didn’t have the chance to object as I guided his face towards mine. It was so dark I needed to put two fingers on his lips to make sure I was in the right spot. I was.
‘Absolutely the last time,’ I murmured into the shadows.
His head nodded in my hands and I kissed him. It was everything I imagined it would be. His intensity lifted me off my feet. He slipped his gloves off and his bare hands held my face and stroked my neck. He used just the right amount of pressure. There was a soft yearning, a provocative tenderness and then a hungry explosion, all in a hypnotic rhythm. It was mesmerising. Quite possibly the back door of the forensic medicine and coroner’s court complex was not the most appropriate place for it, but this was my fourth break-in, albeit the first into a state facility. Other insurmountable undertakings felt imminently more doable.
He pulled away from me. ‘I lied,’ he gasped. ‘I lied about coming here. At first because I didn’t think you’d go through with it. It was so crazy. You’re … you. Then I wondered if you would go through with it. Then I was worried you’d go through with it. In the end, I did it. For you. But you came. You’re here! But you don’t need to be here. We don’t need to be here. It’s already done.’
‘I do need to be here,’ I said. My eyes had adjusted and I could see the outline of his face. I stepped back, attempting to make meaningful eye contact and to get some distance. ‘It’s unfortunate you chose to lie to me.’ I paused. ‘What specifically did you lie to me about?’
‘Mr Pasty’s account was hacked four hours ago and all the folders relating to UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters were downloaded. I had the DNA results sent to the lab you hired for comparison. I didn’t think you’d go through with it. I didn’t think you’d come tonight. You’re either crazy, Heiress, or you’ve balls of steel.’
‘Esmerelda says I’m too rich to be crazy,’ I inexplicably informed him.
‘Balls of steel ’tis then.’
As somewhat complimentary as that was, I did not enjoy being lied to. And although it was information I would have liked earlier, it would not have altered my plans. I really needed to see Max up close and in person one more time. As much as Tahnee and Lizzy resembled Max, they were both missing one unique physical quality I was now almost certain Max possessed. It was something I couldn’t ask Bailly about without potentially endangering Dame Elizabeth. I needed to get into the FMCCC to see for myself.
So, it seemed we’d traded omissions.
‘I need to see the body,’ I said simply. Then I stomped my right foot twice. The heel of my Chanel boot lit up and a white flashlight with a blue ring shone out from the toe. I stomped the other foot and identical lights flashed on. My boots were lighthouses, shining through the inky FMCCC sea.
‘Feck off!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re Batman in Chanel.’
I had been called worse.
I stalked forward into the gloom of the cavernous garage structure. I assumed vehicles drove up the concrete ramp, through the garage door and into the giant car bay. And I didn’t think they were delivering UberEats. I imagined ambulances and coronial vehicles coming in and hearses coming out. A rush of satisfaction ran through me knowing that Max would soon be coming out rather than being trapped here for an icy eternity. Or at least until the FMCCC had a meltdown-level power failure.
At the end of the garage was a double door. The kind with a foot-wide metal panel running horizontally along the centre with large mesh-and-glass windows above. The kind that swung in and out. The kind you get in hospitals. There was a human-sized metal stretcher parked beside the door. I carefully pushed it aside and leaned in on the door. Locked.
James scanned the double doors. There was no keypad. No card slot. We were in trouble. He ran his gloved hand along the wall to the left of the doors. He was three metres away before I heard a click and the heavy doors opened. A blast of cold air greeted me. Before walking through, I squinted backwards: there was a large green plastic button set into a metal circle. The door wasn’t locked, just pushbutton automated, to save you from holding it open while pushing a stretcher through.
The chilled room was filled with metal drawers housing the dearly departed. They lined the walls, left and right. The fact that it was scarcely lit by rows of faint green downlights didn’t help with the terror factor.
‘You go right,’ I whispered with absolutely false bravado.
He nodded and began methodically reading the labels on the right drawers. The drawers were stacked four high and I had to crane my neck to see the names printed on the top ones. We searched unsuccessfully for what seemed like an icy eternity. We were rapidly closing in on a white dead-end wall at the end of the room.
‘We’re burning time,’ James warned. ‘We’ve only five minutes left of tape.’
Perhaps less time should have been dedicated to making out. Not definitely, just perhaps.
I read the last set of drawers. No UP Rose Bay 0909 Winters. No Max. James was a fraction ahead of me. He’d begun examining the white wall.
As I approached, I realised the dead-end wall had a set of cleverly camouflaged doors set into it. A keypad and a card swipe sat beside the doors. There was a small glass window set high in the right door. I stood on my tippy-toes, cupped my hands and (almost) pressed my face to the glass. It was a small chamber, resembling a private crypt. It had twelve drawers, three wide, four high. UP ROSE BAY 0909 WINTERS was printed in bold capitals on the top middle drawer. Max was dead ahead.
James took the card out and swiped it through the reader. It flashed green. I pushed against the doors. Nothing. He swiped the card again. Green. He entered Mr Pasty’s code. Angry red. A flush of fear went through me. The code wasn’t working.
‘Three minutes,’ James said calmly.
Okay, I had worked out Richard’s passcodes, I was sure I could work out Pasty’s. Except I knew Richard and I had never even met Pasty. The only person I knew who worked here was Bailly.
‘Two minutes, thirty seconds.’ Not even a waver in his voice. He kept punching numbers. Red. Red.
Dr Bailly. Interesting woman. She risked her job by doing the extra tests. She risked jail by telling us about Pasty’s dogs’ birthdays. All so Max would get justice. Some people take social equality very seriously.
‘Two minutes.’
Birthdays. Bettina’s. April Fools’. Terence Lopez went missing on Halloween. October 31. Bailly was born on Friday the 13th. October 13.
I pushed James aside and punched in 1310. Green light!
I knew I wouldn’t be able to see into the top drawer without a ladder, and there were no ladders. So the moment the doors hissed open, I bolted in and began pulling out the drawers below Max’s. I would have to use them as steps. I prayed they were empty. And if not, well, for forgiveness.
I heaved drawer one open and stepped up. It was mercifully empty.
James pulled drawer two, also empty, and I stepped again.
I pulled drawer three and found myself face to bone with … a mermaid skeleton?
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ James murmured in slow astonishment. He crossed himself and then shook his head, like someone trying to void their ears of salt water after an ocean swim.
I unglued my eyes from the skeleton mermaid long enough to look down and put my second foot on the second drawer. I hiked my right foot up to the third drawer, and history cruelly repeated itself as I slipped and toppled onto the skeleton. I felt a long scream escape my lungs as her bones crunched beneath the weight of my body. I grappled with her ribcage and bendy spine, trying to hoist myself over her, but the cold metal was slippery, and not perfectly horizontal. My foot went with gravity and slid down the tray and I found myself bent over, face to fin with her flared spiny tail. I may have stopped breathing. Bones or no, she still smelt fresh, like clean water, and there was a mesmerising sense of calm about her. Not enough to calm me, though. In my panic, I tried to stand up and smashed my head into the tray above. Max’s tray. James was suddenly beside me, putting my hands onto Max’s tray, and guiding my right foot back down to the second tray.
‘One minute thirty.’
I closed my eyes and hauled myself up to Max.
I would have liked some time to say goodbye; unfortunately, I had a more pressing business. ‘Hi, Max,’ I said. ‘I just need to have a quick peek at your ears.’
I brushed his long white hair off his face and tucked it behind his ears. I could now clearly see the pin-sized holes located just in front of both ears, on the very edge of his face. The medical term for the tiny holes was preauricular sinus. According to my somewhat limited research, the hereditary holes were the evolutionary remnants of fish gills. Preauricular sinuses. Bethany-Lyn Kilmer had been right, even if she was a horrid person with no sense of kindness.
The odds of Max sharing such a rare genetic anomaly with Gilly and Astor were astronomical. Unless, of course, they were related.
Cousin Max.
‘One minute. We need to be gone.’
I climbed back down the drawers, pausing for a split second to glimpse the skeleton again, before dropping to the floor. The sudden stomp of my feet switched the flashlights in my Chanel boots off and we were plunged into darkness. We slid the drawers back in by feel and thundered through the doors into the army green dimness of the steel-lined room.
‘Fifty seconds.’
Although my personal training regime is consistently adhered to twice a week, the only cardio involved is kickboxing, which is more of a frustration release mechanism than anything else. Running was not in my wheelhouse, though I could see now why some people were so attached to it.
‘Forty seconds,’ he said as we reached the second set of double doors, both of us searching for a green plastic button. There was none. We were back to the keypad and the card swipe.
‘Bloody hell,’ he growled. ‘I should’ve seen that.’
I would have taken some responsibility for distracting him had it been the first set of doors, but the second set was on him.
He slid the card out of his pocket and through the reader, punching in Pasty’s code. ‘Thirty.’
We bolted the short distance to the next door, which, on this side at least, opened with a good old-fashioned door handle. We hurtled through it and out into the night.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ he said, already in the car.
I threw myself into the passenger’s seat of the Volvo as it reversed out of the driveway, heaving the moving car’s door shut with both hands. Ding, ding, ding. The Swedish car objected to something unbuckled. I could hear James counting down. ‘Ten, nine, eight.’ We crossed dozens of empty, white-lined car park spaces as we headed for the exit.
‘Five,’ he said. I was violently jolted as we ran over the concrete hump separating the public and private car parks. ‘Three.’ Ding, ding, ding. The Swede continued to complain. I jammed my seatbelt buckle into the clip as we skidded in a dramatic turn onto the main road. I reached over and fastened James’s belt too. The car stopped screaming.
‘One.’
I sat in silence, trying to digest what I’d just seen and done, attempting to lower my stroke-inducing heart rate.
‘Well,’ he said, navigating the Volvo back to Anna’s Inn, ‘that’s one way to pass an evening.’
‘Quite.’
‘Burgers and a break-in. Might we consider that a first date?’ he asked.
Traditionally, one is asked out on a date before indulging in break and enter. Suitors do not enquire afterwards if the felony counted as a date.
‘No.’
‘May I ask you on a date?’
‘No,’ I said, my hands shaking so hard I could not get a grip on my McDonald’s cup.
‘You sure?’
‘Yes,’ I said, spilling sugar-free cola as I abandoned the lid and straw, and gulped directly from the side.
‘Okay,’ he said with a wink.
Had my body not been awash with adrenaline, I might have been able to formulate a comeback. On the upside, the adrenaline was the only thing stopping me from passing out.
I was still attempting to get my breathing under control when we caught a set of red lights across from Anna’s Inn. Between deep breaths, I scanned the car park for the Lexus. James turned to me while waiting for the colour to change. ‘Did you … uh, see a mermaid skeleton in there?’
‘I absolutely did not.’
‘Right then,’ he said as the lights turned green. ‘Me either. But, uh, do you think whatever it was, was real?’
‘Definitely not.’ I shook my head vehemently. ‘Probably just someone getting ready for Halloween.’
He put his foot on the accelerator. ‘Aye. Practical jokers.’
CHAPTER 26
FAMILY
Mr Pasty’s FMCCC pass card was returned to him without incident. By all accounts, the deputy coroner was having an excellent evening. One he no doubt reminisced about with Mrs Pasty when she found an envelope in her letterbox a week later with a dozen glossy photographs recording the event for posterity.
