Black Teeth (24 page)

‘God…'

She takes off her glasses and massages her head. Eyes shut, she whimpers: ‘Do you think it would?'

‘What?'

‘Teach him a lesson.'

‘Nope.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I don't think he's going there to kill Glen Tyan.'

She pokes her head forward.

‘But you just said—'

‘He told me that's what he wants to do. Maybe he believes it himself, but…'

Without thinking I take hold of her coffee, drink from it. Just a sip to lubricate my throat.

‘I think his primary intention is to make Tyan act in self-defence. That's the…the thing he's going there to do. He can't manage it himself, so he's going to force a retired cop to do it for him.'

She gently sways back, eyes gently sway back, hands rub her knees like she's staving off nausea. I'm expecting a concerted rebuttal, but instead she says, ‘Yeah.'

I wait for her to say more, or at least to open her eyes.

And she's like, ‘There's something I haven't told you.'

39

The ordinary atmos of coffee drinking and trip-hop rises a notch. Someone wearing an actual apron stacks milk crates in the door to the kitchen. Someone else at a table nearby complains about their communications lecturer. I rub my shoulder.

‘I'm listening.'

‘A few days after his father died?' She gazes at the tabletop, hands play with the waxy plant, the kind that adorns all the tables in here. ‘He asked to borrow the car. I brought it round to him in the afternoon, then I came and got it back the next day.'

Someone behind the café counter, a skinny Asian girl showing her midriff in the middle of July, lets loose a great cackle of laughter. Beth waits for it to subside, edges closer.

‘When I came to pick it up, he was really scattered. Like, distressed? I asked if he was all right and he said he just needed to sleep because he'd been in the car all night. I asked where he'd gone but he didn't want to say. So I just took the car and left.'

Now there comes a relentless beeping sound, begging for attention—some appliance the workers don't have sufficient time or concern to shut off.

‘The thing is, though, the odometer wasn't changed,' Beth has to raise her voice. ‘Not even a kilometre? It was on the half-seven when I dropped it off. It was in the same place when I picked it up.'

‘So he hadn't driven anywhere.'

‘
But
…'

That appliance, it's a blender. Piercing. A jigsaw piece reversing
into place. Beth leans closer; her voice softer but somehow more intense.

‘I gave it to him with a half tank of petrol. When I picked it up it was nearly empty.'

I try to make sense of this by peering at the air above her.

‘So…you think he…'

‘Yes.'

The blender goes silent. Someone has switched it off, leaving a vacuum of quiet and I almost whisper:

‘That's it then. That's what this is. He can't go through with it himself, so he's made himself believe this conspiracy crap about Glen Tyan. That's why he got the insurance.'

She stiffens at that last word, turns as if to properly contemplate the mural on the café wall. A grief-filled sigh, adjusting to this new reality.

‘God, it's so creepy…' Her face falls, expressionless. ‘That policy makes me sick…But…you think…'

Fear comes to her eyes, verging on terror.

‘What?'

‘You think, if I didn't take the money, if I gave it all away…Do you think we should
stop
him going through with it?'

‘You think we shouldn't?'

‘What right do we have?' She leans across the table. The blue in her eyes vibrates, as if frightened by the words she speaks. ‘It's the right thing to do, right? To help him, like, escape? If that's what he wants?'

‘I don't—'

‘I won't accept
any
of the money.' She glares, begging to be believed. ‘I'll give it away. I'll give it to the shelter. But we have to think about what's best for Rudy.'

I can't assess what's best for Rudy. Don't even know the criteria. ‘We have to think about what's best for us as well.'

‘For us?'

‘I'm not ready to just
watch
him make the last big mistake of his life. And I'm not ready yet to give up reasoning with him.'

‘You
tried
that.' The strain in her eyes is extraordinary. I want
to grab hold and comfort her, but not with all these people around. ‘
Look
what happened.'

Beth needs me to understand, even as she's drenched in the shame at what she's saying. To justify herself, she pleads:

‘I
hate
to think of him living in pain.'

I do understand. If I can feel pity for Rudy Alamein, what chance does a big heart like hers have?

‘What if his father
didn't
do it?' I offer this with as much optimism as I can generate. ‘What if we could prove that someone else killed Cheryl Alamein and framed Piers? He'd forget all about Glen Tyan. And exonerating his father would give him something to live for.'

It's a reverse of the formula I've been applying, but it reaches the same result. Despite how unlikely we are to determine its variables.

Beth winces at my logic. But there's hopefulness in her voice when she says, ‘You think someone else did it?'

‘No,' I say. ‘But it's possible, isn't it?'

‘So…What? I mean…what do we do?'

Suddenly I'm hungry. Ravenous even. Again I search the room for a waiter. The half-stoned beard lingers by the counter, flirting with the Asian midriff. I wave and still they don't see me. Then I yell: ‘Oi!'

Both of them hear me, look, move through the tables in my direction, synchronised.

I say to Beth: ‘We hope the real killer's in a mood to confess.'

40

Suddenly the road is lined with eucalypts and the small-town quaintness of Sassafras gives way to a national park. Thick trunks drive into the forest canopy, bark hanging from their branches like spaghetti after a food fight while lichen cakes the pines and the white reflector poles and even the bus stops when we happen to pass one, lonely and forbidding among the green. There aren't many other cars. Any other cars. Maybe it's just us winding through the Dandenong Ranges. It feels like it.

Beth needs time so I'm not driving fast. Her fingers tap the tablet glass, flip from webpage to webpage. She's quiet but for the occasional coo of interest.

To our left comes a break in the trees and I look out across an expanse of tree ferns, a sea of open umbrellas. Like the umbrellas at the graveyard this morning.

To distract myself from this thought I glance at the map on my phone. We've been driving for an hour, will arrive in less than ten minutes. Beth has been engrossed in her iPad for longer than I thought she'd need. I'm about to tell her that her time is up when she stirs.

‘Okay.'

‘You found something?'

‘I think so.'

‘Are you ready?'

‘Uh-huh.'

I expected her to be uncomfortable with this. The deception.
The spycraft. But she's come around to the idea and it's her presence now that drives the car as much as the petrol in the tank, my foot on the throttle. Of all the lies I've told these past days, I've not had anyone to stand there and tell them with me.

Beth taps DIAL on my phone, then SPEAKER. It doesn't take them long to answer.

‘Claireborne Views Residential, Erica speaking.'

‘Hello,' says Beth. She doesn't say anything else. I glance at her.

‘Hello?'

Beth finds her voice.

‘Hello. Ummm…I'm trying to contact Kenneth Penn?'

Not even a please. She's that tense. It prompts Erica to abandon all courtesy as well: ‘Hold.'

A recording kicks in, mid-sentence. A smarmy voice like that airship in
Bladerunner
:

…the quality of a life spent among the stunning and gorgeous surrounds of one of Victoria's most scenic and beautiful—

A delicate croak cuts it off.

‘Yes?'

I grab at Beth's knee, try to make the act supportive, not condescending.

She says, ‘Ummm…Kenneth Penn?'

‘Yes.'

‘My name is Elizabeth Cannon.'

‘I'm sorry?'

Her voice rises, too loud: ‘
Elizabeth Cannon…I'm a broker with Fredermons.
'

I gesture with a flat palm. She lowers her voice.

‘I'm a broker with Fredermons. We have you listed as an authority in nineteenth-century French?'

Beth's classic upward inflection, but this time posing it as a question, asking the silence on the other end of the line for confirmation.

For my part, I've never heard of Fredermons. Beth says it's a boutique auction house with the kind of cachet that might keep Ken Penn on the line. According to the rudimentary search I did at Beth's place, he used to be the kind of collections specialist that newspapers
went to for commentary, whenever there were pages to fill about exhibitions or thefts or celebrity sales. Despite her reticence, Beth's experience with antiques is the best hope we have of getting in the door.

Well, not just her expertise. Penn was born in 1931, which means he's eighty-one, which means he was twenty-five years older than Cheryl when they hooked up. So maybe a pretty face can win him over.

‘What is this about?'

It's a weedy voice, like he's straining to grasp something just out of reach.

‘Ummm, as I said…' Beth fumbles, leans in closer to the phone like that will help. ‘I'm a broker with Fredermons.'

‘Yes.'

‘Ummm…' She looks to me for help but all I can do is drive encouragingly.

She reads from the iPad: ‘We've come upon a germain royal soup tureen we believe dates back to Napoleon Three, and we're keen to have the item looked over. Am I correct in saying that French antiques is your area?'

The quaver in her voice probably isn't audible over the phone.

‘I'm sorry, what?'

She doesn't know what to say to that; her hesitation stinks of failure, and I'm wondering if there's some way we can
break in
to the Claireborne facility. But then the voice croaks:

‘My understanding is that Napoleon Three silver was all melted down. To finance wars and orgies and such.'

He makes a grotesque sound which might be chuckling and Beth pushes on the seat belt, relieving the pressure from her torso.

‘I can't comment on the provenance, Mister Penn. I can only tell you that we're getting advice on authenticity with a view to putting the piece on the market.'

‘If you think the piece is genuine…' comes the deathly wheeze from the phone, ‘my advice is to handcuff it to your wrist and fly it to Sotheby's. No one in this country can sign it off. And no one over here's going to fucking buy it!'

Another chuckle and a long inhale. That suggestion took the wind out of him.

‘Ummm…We were hoping we might visit with you to discuss it. Ummm…Today.'

Beth really pushes that seatbelt away like it's a web she's caught in.

‘What's to discuss? I no longer have a client list. You understand where I am, don't you?'

‘Yes, and we're just a few minutes away. We've been displaying the item for a dealer in Olinda and we thought—'

‘Wait…' His voice drops past its timbre, deepens into gravel. ‘You've got the item
with
you?'

She says: ‘Yes?'

‘
Jeeeeesus
,' Another chuckle from the string section. ‘If you've got the nerve to bring it here, I'll take a look out of deference to your testicles!'

‘We can be there in a few minutes.'

‘You say,
we
?'

She smiles at me, confident now.

‘My assistant and I.'

‘All right,' he says, like
It's your funeral.
‘I'll tell them to let you through.'

Once the call has ended and I've checked that it's ended, I'm like, ‘Great job. You're a natural.'

She snorts.

‘I'm a fucking
liar
.'

We laugh harder than we need to. Drain the tension from the cabin.

41

‘His eyes are too sensitive. He keeps the room dark. But that's a blessing.'

I don't know if she's a nurse—she has all the authority and none of the uniform. Her big beige cardigan and fantastic rump lead us from linoleum to grimy carpet, back to linoleum. Out the window the trees block whatever hilltop view this facility is supposed to command, reinforcing my suspicion that putting an aged care home in the Dandenongs is motivated less by the ‘stunning and gorgeous surrounds' than by the positioning of its guests as far from Melbourne as their families' consciences permit. Beth follows close, crowding me, thrown by what happened at reception.

We were asked to wait for an available staff member, someone who would walk us through to Penn's room, so we stood politely to one side of the service window and quickly discovered that the guests were free to wander where they pleased. One of them, a bald gent with a white moustache, entered the foyer from the dining room, assessed these two visitors and hurriedly took cover behind a tall potted plant. Before long he was beckoning to me and I approached, bore a face of painful remorse that I would not be of any use to a senile old man.

‘The door, Clancy,' he whispered. This required him to open his mouth wide and the spasm suggested he was choking. He had no teeth.

‘I'm sorry?' I glanced around: no staff, just a scattering of ghostly women shuffling about in moccasins.

His mouth yawned wide again, trembled and he managed: ‘
Clancy, open the door!
'

A skeletal finger poked at the door to the carpark, where we'd entered. Beside it was a keypad and a sign that thanked you for not unlocking the door for residents.