A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 (21 page)

I
woke up
, which was a plus.

My first thought was that it was getting late (or rather, early) and Nin was going to kill me if I didn’t make it to the café on time, for our re-opening. The prep work filling the fridge might placate her, but nothing short of actual attendance would be good enough for those eyebrows of hers. She would judge me so hard, and there was a serious possibility that she might bake me in the oven for dessert.

My second thought was that I wasn’t wearing shoes. Given that the shoes I had been wearing were my powder blue Prada wedge-heeled boots that I had bought in
Italy
, this was cause for some distress.

Not quite ready to open my eyes, I reached out with my bare feet in case my boots were somewhere nearby. My toes came into contact with the crisp, cold metal bars of a cage.

That was when I remembered the whole bit about nearly dying on my kitchen floor, and realised how lucky I was to be alive right this second.

Except that I was in a cage. Gary had tried to kill me, and he had left me barefoot in a cage.

Son of a bitch.

I sat up so fast that the cage floor rocked under me. Not just a cage. A hanging cage. Like Tweety Bird.

My throat hurt, and my chest as well. Panic lurched through me as I remembered the details. Gary had held me down and stopped me breathing.

And I used to give him extra marshmallows in his hot chocolate.

Holy everloving fuck.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked now, and the sound of his voice made my whole body clench up in fear. I could hear him, but not see him.

‘Oh, just fine, Gary,’ I said after a moment, tucking my bare feet under me. In my cage. I had a cage now. ‘You know, kidnapped. And it’s a bit chilly in here. But otherwise…’

‘Sorry I had to do that,’ he said. I could see him now, folded back in a corner of the room, sitting on a rickety stool beside a workbench. There was no electricity down here—the dim light came from an old-fashioned kero lamp. The place was full of old, broken furniture, and boxes of junk.

‘Yes, well I can see why you had to,’ I said sarcastically. ‘What with me being all relaxed and joking in my kitchen. Obviously I deserved this.’ I clamped my lips down, as I could see the sharp tone was affecting him. Pissing him off was not the best plan right now, even if sarcasm was my automatic reaction to feeling afraid and angry. ‘So,’ I went on, brightly. ‘If you wanted to put me in a gilded cage, you might have scraped the rust off first.’

Long silence.

‘That was a joke,’ I added. ‘Am I not supposed to joke with my kidnapper? Maybe you should let me know the rules. The management requests that abductees not enjoy moments of levity in the presence of their captor.’ More silence. Except, you know, from me. Because I don’t do silence. ‘Have I been kidnapped, Gary? Wouldn’t want me to get the wrong end of the stick about this one.’

‘Mostly,’ he said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

‘Mostly kidnapped. I suppose I can work with that.’ I took a deep breath, willing myself to keep up the bantering tone. Light-hearted, frivolous. Like, it’s totally normal to be locked in a cage by a police officer and former friend. ‘Are we thinking ransom, Gary?’

For a minute, I pictured a Mel Gibson movie style scenario, with Stewart dropping a package of money into a rubbish bin, Bishop hiding on a rooftop with a covert gun squad, Xanthippe and Darrow as the loose cannon vigilantes, and Ceege in a cocktail frock leading an army of beautifully dressed elves as they came to my rescue.

With my brain, I’m never bored.

‘No,’ said Gary, and I had to reel back my thoughts to figure out the question I had asked.

So, not ransomed. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘You,’ he said, and he tilted his head up so he was finally looking at me. ‘I want you, Tabby.’

It was a lot harder to pretend that this situation was in any way funny. Breathing calmly and evenly had also become more difficult.

We were in the space under someone’s house. It was musty and dark, and not properly sealed. There were a couple of yellowed slits of windows on the far wall, which suggested the house was (like most houses in Hobart) built on a slope. My eyes were getting used to the dim light, and I could see various shapes hanging from the ceiling. Models of Kevin Darrow’s traps, made from paper and sticky tape and icy pole sticks. There were a few ping pong balls littered around the place. And there, jammed up between a chest of drawers and an old wardrobe, was a shape that looked like another person.

‘Who’s that?’ I asked, straining to see.

Gary laughed, and leaned over to give the figure a push. It lolled out like a corpse, and I screamed before realising that it wasn’t a person, alive or dead.

It was a mannequin. It wore some of Crash Velvet’s costume items, and had a mad wig of blue hair. Lurid makeup had been scraped over its face. I knew without looking that its nails would be sparkly matte purple—
Poison Flesh
. ‘Julian Morris’s masterpiece.’

‘Nice job, don’t you reckon?’ said Gary. ‘Of course, your mate Xanthippe put him up to it.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘A police officer’s sister. She should know better than to mess around with people like Morris.’

‘You didn’t like someone else stealing your idea, did you?’ I said. ‘Julian Morris was your errand boy, building those traps around Sandy Bay. First the one in the street, then the one under Amy and Danny’s house. You must have given him access.’ Near my house, hell, one of them in my stepsister’s cellar, so when I heard about it, I’d feel
involved
. ‘But then Xanthippe stole him from under your nose, and he started building a trap for her instead. Tell me, what did happen to Julian?’

As soon as I’d asked the question, I wished that I hadn’t. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to stay in blissful ignorance of how Julian had died. Accidental overdose? Worked for me.

‘He was a drug courier,’ said Gary. ‘Just like dealers, scum of the earth. Even when you get them into the prison system, they always reoffend.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘So, you’re like Batman. You’re out to punish the criminals.’ Except Batman never kills anyone. People forget that bit, but I had it drummed into my head from the time Ceege got into a flamewar about it on Tumblr.

Gary obviously liked the analogy. His freckled face creased into a delighted grin. ‘Yeah. Like Batman. Got to get them off the streets, Tabby. Risdon’s too good for that sort.’ Yes, our local prison was renowned for being a comfy place for drug dealers, all sunshine and Nintendo.‘Too easy. Got to make an example of them.’

‘So,’ I said, going out on a limb. ‘Why am I in a cage, Gary? What are you punishing me for?’

Gary looked at me for a moment, and I half thought I might have won this round. But then he moved to a shuttered wicker basket, opening it up. A cat emerged, purring and cooing.

For one mad moment I thought he’d got hold of Kinky Boots, but when Gary turned toward me I saw a scraggy and toothless old Siamese, who wound her limbs lovingly around Gary’s neck and shoulders.

I’d seen that cat before, in a basket of elderly lace accessories. It was Margarita’s Moonshine.

‘She likes me,’ said Gary, with wonder in his voice. ‘I trapped her in a net, and she still likes me. I’m going to try it with you.’

Not liking the sound of this
at all
. ‘Bondage and incarceration might be a turn on for some people,’ I said sharply. ‘I’m not one of them.’

Gary’s face fell a little, as he realised I wasn’t going to swoon with gratitude. He put the cat down on the ground, and she wound around his ankles. Huh. She really was a fan.

I moved in for the kill. ‘Why don’t you let me go? No one has to know about all this … silliness. It can be our secret.’
For three minutes until I get to a phone, you utter maniac.

‘If I let you leave,’ said Gary. ‘You’ll just go back to ignoring me. Like before. I did it all for you, Tabby, and you still didn’t notice me.’

‘Of course I noticed,’ I said. ‘I gave you lasagne and your favourite biscuits. Wasn’t I always nice to you?’

‘You’re like that with everyone,’ Gary said. ‘You feed everyone, you smile at everyone. I was special.’

Now I had to to stroke his ego? I wasn’t sure I had the patience to make nice with somebody whose idea of wooing was to lock me in a homemade cage. On the other hand, my life depended on it. Ick. Ick. Ick. ‘I’ve always thought you were special, Gary. But if we’re going to explore this —’ Gah ‘— thing between us, then can’t we find somewhere nicer? I mean, we’re under some old house. It doesn’t scream “romance” to me.’

‘No!’ Gary yelled. ‘This is our place. I made it for you.’

‘Oh,’ I said faintly. Lovely. Just what I’ve always wanted.

‘I did everything for you,’ he added.

It wasn’t the first time that Gary had said something like that, and I didn’t like the sound of it any better. ‘Define “everything”, please?’

Gary smiled, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was a raving lunatic, he would have looked sort of cute. He’d always had that schoolboy Jimmy Olsen thing going for him. Even as my brain screamed ‘Keep back, fiend,’ the rest of me (which hadn’t caught up to recent events) still wanted to give him coffee and cake and ask him about his day.

He
was
special—he’d always been one of my favourites. In a puppy dog kind of way.

‘I wasn’t hurting anyone,’ said Gary, sounding delighted with himself. ‘I just wanted to get your attention. It would have worked, too—but then Xanthippe had to go and interfere. I should have known that a loser like Morris couldn’t be trusted to keep my secrets. I should never have trusted him with my plans.’

Kevin Darrow’s plans
, I thought about reminding him. I managed to restrain myself, though. See, Bishop? In dire circumstances, Tabitha Darling can actually keep her big mouth shut.

‘If Bishop’s sister could find out who built the traps, anyone could,’ said Gary. ‘Paying him to be discreet wasn’t enough. I had to make sure he stayed quiet forever, didn’t I?’

Put like that, it sounded perfectly reasonable… No, hang on a minute. ‘So you found out that he was cheating on you with Xanthippe. Building a trap for her.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gary, as if he genuinely thought he was explaining something sensible and normal. ‘When I spotted him sneaking around your building with his tools, I knew what he was up to. Couldn’t trust him after that.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘So, you didn’t trust Morris after Xanthippe corrupted him. And you decided to … teach him a lesson?’ I stopped short of accusing him of murder. We were having this civilised conversation and everything. I didn’t actually know for certain that Gary had…

Gary laughed out loud. ‘You think I was scuttling around, switching insulin for heroin? I’m a police officer, Tabby.’

‘Okay,’ I said, breathing just a little easier. ‘So you didn’t kill Julian Morris?’ Things might not be as bad as I was imagining.

‘No,’ said Gary with a soft smile. ‘But I let The Vampire know that Morris was screwing his wife. Within twenty-four hours, Morris mysteriously died of an accidental overdose, injecting pure heroin instead of insulin into his own veins.’ He paused. ‘I suppose he could have done it himself, but it doesn’t seem likely, does it?’

Huh. That actually made sense. It didn’t make me feel a whole lot better about being kidnapped by Gary, but at least he wasn’t technically a killer. I might still talk my way out of this, if I kept my cool. ‘If you knew who The Vampire is, why didn’t you simply arrest him?’

‘No evidence,’ Gary said, sounding almost normal. ‘Most of the cops in Hobart know who he is. Keeps his nose pretty clean, though, and we’ve never had an opportunity to bust him. He’s a dentist,’ he added with a sneer. ‘Respectable as you like.’

Dentist. So Julian’s Nat was apricot-haired Natasha Pembroke, and … her husband Dr Shiny Teeth was The Vampire. It was vaguely reassuring to find out he was a villain. Those blinding teeth were way too disturbing to belong to an innocent person. ‘So she knew what she was doing when she shot you with the bow and arrow.’ Not a random drug-related freak out after all.

‘Natasha Pembroke,’ said Gary in a biting voice. ‘That woman. Completely flipped out after Morris was found dead. Like she couldn’t find some other deadbeat toyboy to replace him.’

‘Weren’t you worried she would tell the police about your deal with Morris?’ I asked.

‘She did. After we arrested her for the siege. She told Bishop and half a dozen other police officers that she shot me because I arranged for her lover to be killed. And you know what? They laughed at her. Bishop said it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.’ Gary’s mouth twisted a little. ‘They never believed I could do anything like that—not good old Gary, the one everyone can trust. Mrs Pembroke changed her mind about accusing me when it came to making a formal statement. She couldn’t prove it, and she’s not stupid, so she claimed to be acting irrationally under the influence. It would have been her word against mine.’

Why was he was telling me this now? I couldn’t help but worry about that. If I knew all his dodgy secrets, what was he planning to do to me?

I clung desperately to the idea that he wasn’t a murderer. Maybe this was semantics, but since I was going to be caged by a raving madman with a crush on me anyway, I would prefer it to be one who didn’t go around spiking people’s insulin with heroin.

‘They didn’t take me seriously,’ said Gary, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t all that happy that Bishop and the others had so easily dismissed the idea that the Trapper was a criminal mastermind. ‘They didn’t think I was capable of killing one scummy little dealer.’

‘But that’s a good thing,’ I said. ‘You’re a hero, remember? A police officer. Not a bad guy.’

‘Oh,’ said Gary, sounding a little far away. ‘But you don’t know what I’ve done.’

I tried not to look worried about that ominous comment. Delaying tactics were called for. ‘Gary, I’m starving. What time is it?’

‘Nearly lunchtime. You slept most of the morning.’

‘Well, I had a late night. Plus, chloroform.’ I tried not to think of Nin working away in the café without me. If I survived this, she was going to kill me. Or worse—she might quit.