Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (15 page)

I hadn’t seen Ceege looking so animated in a long time. Whatever hijinks Xanthippe and Darrow were up to, it was worth it to see my friend back in his element again.

Xanthippe loped up to me and Jason. ‘Not that I’d mind us losing half our cast to accident or injury,’ she added confidentially. ‘But the way we’re going, it would be the wrong half. Good to see you, Tish, about time you figured out you wanted to be here.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Nice outfit. We’ll have to get you front and centre.’ She eyed Jason speculatively. ‘Excellent shoulders. Ever considered wearing a trench coat?’

‘Are you completely nuts?’ he demanded.

‘You kind of have to be to do this,’ Xanthippe said, dragging him away. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.’

‘Should I feel bad about letting her do that to him?’ I asked aloud, but Ceege was already busy talking about flats and squares to film students with bemused expressions on their faces. And hey, at least it would get Jason’s mind off his troubles.

I leaned against the ute and watched the beautiful chaos.

A couple of cops ran across the street, demanding that a glamorous girl in pearls and heels ‘stick em up’. The lack of guns was a touch on the unrealistic side. They had rallied to the lack of props by pointing their fingers at her.

No, seriously. Their fingers.

‘Cut, brilliant!’ yelled Darrow the director, emerging from a side street in a flappy striped suit and … yes, a beret. He saw me, and his face lit up. ‘Darling. Knew you couldn’t stay away.’

‘I brought sandwiches and beer and your stage manager,’ I said, shading my eyes from the sun. ‘Do they call it a stage manager in films? Isn’t he supposed to be a Best Boy or a Key Grip or…’

Darrow was eyeing me with a definite gleam in his eye. I felt a rising urge to slap him around the chops and call him a cad. I always knew my love for old movies would be the death of me. Or something. ‘Good outfit, Tish. Very authentic.’

‘Thanks. Darrow … what are you doing here? Your actors don’t even have guns.’

‘It’s metaphorical,’ he told me with a nod. ‘No use of any prop resembling a gun was one of the stipulations of filming on the streets here. Do you think the fingers work? My other option is bananas.’

Metaphorical. Okay then. ‘Where do you want me?’

The ridiculously bereted director dived into the nearest pile of props and produced a heavy brown paper parcel, about the size of a garden gnome. ‘Need you to deliver this to McTavish over in the alley by Joe’s Liquor. They have this metal staircase that almost looks like a fire escape,’ he added proudly. ‘Also, a fog machine.’

I looked at the parcel. ‘Video equipment?’

‘Just deliver it. Try to stay in character.’

I looked around at Darrow’s guerrilla team of film students, many of whom were eyeing me through their iPhones. ‘You’re all going to be filming me?’

‘What?’ Darrow grinned. ‘Can’t you handle the pressure?’

I gave him a cool look. ‘Give me the damn package. Am I a femme fatale or a good girl?’

‘Entirely up to you. Just as long as it looks right from above — I have a couple of film students hanging from the rooftops who know no fear.’

My eyes narrowed. ‘Repeat after me, Darrow. You are not Orson Welles.’ I hefted the package (it felt as heavy as a garden gnome too, it better bloody not be) and walked up the Main Street of Flynn.

My heels made a trip-trapping sound. The street was oddly still. Except for the various people watching/listening/filming me. I lifted my chin, arched my back a little and kept walking.

At least I knew I looked good in the dress.

I walked under the Joe’s Liquor sign and found Stewart sitting on a flight of steps that in no way looked like an American fire escape. He was in an oversized dark suit, a trilby pulled down over his face as he examined some footage on a fancy looking digital camera. When he saw me, he hit a dial on a small mechanical device on the steps above him, and dry ice vapour flooded slowly along the lower half of the fake alley.

I leaned a hip against the brick wall. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’ Wow, it was hard to say old movie quotes with an Australian accent.

Stewart looked up at me, and grinned slowly. ‘She gae me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.’ Heh, possibly it was just as difficult in Scottish.

I arched my eyebrows in true Lauren Bacall fashion. ‘Not very tall, are you?’ Damn, wait. That wasn’t Lauren Bacall. Right film, wrong dame.

‘I try tae be,’ Stewart drawled, still very much Scottish. Somehow the dialogue worked better in his accent than mine. ‘If they hang ye, I’ll always remember ye.’

Ooh,
Maltese Falcon
now. I could
Maltese Falcon
. ‘I haven’t lived a good life. I’ve been bad, worse than you know.’

‘Yer a bitter little lady.’

‘It’s a bitter little world.’

Okay, we needed to quit while I was ahead. Every other film noir quote I could think of was about kissing, cheating on your lover, or policemen. None of which seemed appropriate. Or safe. I held out the package. ‘You’d better take this before someone shoots me for it.’

Stewart stood up, taking the brown paper parcel off me. ‘I wouldnae worry too much about the dialogue. Sound quality’s not gonnae be usable. Besides, I think Darrow has something else in mind for the audio track.’

‘So why all the signs about not using fake American accents?’

‘Fake American accents really, really annoy him. Did I see Jason Avery come in wi’ ye?’

I nodded. ‘We found him on our way into town — gunning his engine on the edge of a precipice. And get this … he has a thing for the other Annabeth. Alice. French Vanilla. He knew all along that his Annabeth wasn’t living in that house. And
Alice
is his alibi for Annabeth’s murder.’

Stewart tilted his head. ‘Xanthippe has been trying tae get residents of Flynn to tell her their side of the Annabeth French story for two days, and Tabitha Darling breezes in and get a random confession on the side of the road. How do ye do that?’

‘People like to talk to me,’ I said defensively. ‘There’s something about the hope of getting fed that brings out the spirit of confession.’

‘Aye,’ Stewart said, giving me an odd look. ‘There’s something, all right.’

Oh, awkward pause, just what we needed.

‘Alice never mentioned Jason,’ Stewart said finally.

‘Nope.’

‘So whatever reason she had fer telling us her story … it wasnae getting him off the hook with the police.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ I was starting to have a funny feeling about Alice.

‘Shouldae let Bishop arrest her after all,’ he muttered.

I looked at him in surprise. Was he actually suggesting I had made the right call? ‘Not that we had much choice in the matter. But she might have told us the truth if I hadn’t dragged him into it.’

Stewart laughed. ‘Ye admitting ye were wrong?’

‘Not in this lifetime.’

We shared a look that said that neither of us was going to apologise, but we weren’t cranky at each other any more.

I sighed, and moved to sit on the steps. Stewart sat beside me, the brown paper parcel between us. Like a little Great Wall of China tied up with string. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately,’ I confessed. ‘I used to have a sense of adventure, but now — it feels like I’m playing everything safe.’

‘Nae one could taste yer ice cream experiments and doubt ye have a sense of adventure,’ Stewart assured me.

‘Have I changed?’ I blurted out. ‘I mean — ’ How weird was it to talk about this with him? But he wasn’t just the boy who kissed me an hour before Bishop finally figured out that he liked me back. He was my friend. Stewart and I had clicked the first time I saw him, and we’d never been short of things to talk about. He’d been gone for months, travelling around Tasmania as part of some stupid experiment to see if Sandstone City could branch out to cover the whole island (the correct answer to that was no, not if it meant being deprived of my Stewart).

Still, he was looking at me right now in a way that didn’t make me feel stupid, and that was one hell of a good start. ‘Changed how?’ Stewart asked me.

‘Xanthippe and Ceege think I’ve got boring since I started going out with Bishop,’ I said, and yes, I was sulking. ‘Well, they said conventional. And vanilla. But they meant boring.’

To his credit, Stewart thought about it seriously. ‘I havenae seen as much of ye lately,’ he said finally. ‘And that’s my fault, I know. But it seems like yer more cautious. Ye work harder and party less. Nae as likely tae drop everything for some frivolous reason … though yer here today, so…’

‘The café is closed, I had literally nothing else to do, and Ceege guilted me into it,’ I muttered.

‘Heh. There ye are then. Also,’ Stewart said pointedly. ‘I couldnae help noticing yer more inclined to call the police when people on the wrong side of the law cross yer path.’

‘Sense of civic responsibility,’ I muttered, and felt embarrassed even saying the words aloud.

‘Aye, right. My point is — I don’t think this has anything tae do with yer boyfriend.’

He’s not my boyfriend
, I didn’t say aloud.

‘You don’t?’ I blinked at him. If he thought I had changed like the rest of them (and why would it be more alarming hearing it from Stewart than anyone else) then how could it be anything other than the huge big thing that had changed in my life, namely that I had a tall, dark, gorgeous drink of police officer I was sleeping with.

‘Tabitha,’ Stewart said patiently. ‘Some pretty bad stuff happened earlier this year. Someone ye cared about turned out to be a murderer. Ye were stalked and abducted, and ye couldae died. It’d be odd if that didnae hae an effect on how ye see the world.’

Don’t ask me why it was such a relief, but it was. Also how weird that I had known Zee since high school, and lived with Ceege for three years, but Stewart knew me better than either of them. ‘So you do think I’ve got boring and conventional … but not because of my boyfriend.’

‘In a nutshell.’ He was teasing, though. ‘Either that or yer finally becomin’ a grown up, and what are the odds?’

‘Pretty slim,’ I grinned back, feeling ridiculously happy. A weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Post traumatic stress made so much more sense than ‘your relationship makes you boring’ syndrome. ‘Stewart, can I ask you a really important question?’

‘Why yes ye can, Tabitha.’

I poked the parcel. ‘What’s in this damn thing?’

‘The Maltese Wombat.’

I stared at him. ‘Tell me you’re kidding.

‘Wish I was.’

‘Wish I hadn’t asked.’ Maybe all this was my fault. Darrow and I shared a love of old movies, but I’d never noticed that his interest in them was, um, a touch on the pathological side. ‘You know,’ I said, looking sideways at Stewart. ‘You could have agreed with everyone that Bishop was a bad influence on me. Turning me vanilla. I’d have listened to you.’

He gave me a slow, incredulous look that made me blush to my toes for even thinking for a minute that something like that was a possibility. ‘I’m not tha’ fellow.’

‘I know that,’ I said quickly.

‘Dae ye?’ He shook his head, eyes on me. ‘I’ve done this before, Tabitha. I fell for my best friend, and she fell for someone else, and I didnae — seduce her away from him, or make up stories tae make her like him less. I didnae make any grand gesture tae make her choose me. I let her go.’

I didn’t know anything about Dinah Leiber apart from what Stewart had told me, but I kind of hated her for breaking his heart. He was a sweetie, and he was funny, and he was seriously cute despite (okay, maybe because of) dressing like a broke band groupie who couldn’t afford new T-shirts. He was always up for an adventure.

I’d hardly known him any time at all, and he was one of my best friends.

How could she have chosen someone else over him? My stomach went kind of queasy at that point, though. Because she wasn’t the only one.

‘I like the suit,’ I said helplessly. He looked horribly good in the 40s gear. I’d always been impressed by how well he rocked fancy dress when he had to.

‘It’s just a costume.’ Stewart sounded annoyed with me again. Impatient. I couldn’t blame him, really. ‘Dinnae look at me like ye ran over my puppy, Tabitha. I’m no’ drinking cheap whiskey and dreaming what might hae been, because ye decided to give it a go with Bishop instead of me. Di was the most important person in my life from my eighth birthday onwards, and I got over her. Yer really no’ that special.’

I laughed, because that was good. It was a good thing. I didn’t want to make him miserable, he was my
Stewart
. I wanted him in one piece. ‘So I’m going to go now, and we can work on pretending we didn’t have this conversation.’

I got four steps down the alley before he caught my arm, pulling me around to face him. ‘Tabitha, yer an Australian, do ye no’ recognise bullshit when ye hear it?’

‘Apparently not,’ was all I got out before he kissed me, and oh bloody hell. It wasn’t a friendly kiss. It wasn’t light and teasing and not quite there, like the last time we did this. It definitely wasn’t drunken and sleepy like the one before that.

It was clear cut, sober, and in blazing daylight. Stewart kissed me hard and searching, walking me backwards until I hit that brick wall, and he kept after me. I let him. I kissed him back. I opened his mouth with mine and dug my hands into his hair so hard that his ridiculous trilby fell off, and I gave him everything I had.

16

SANDSTONE CITY: So what kind of movie are you shooting here? Film noir covers a lot of ground. Are we talking a crime caper, tragedy, romance, spies, mobsters?

DARROW: All of the above. To be honest I won’t know what kind of story it’s going to be until I get into the editing suite, but based on some of the footage we’ve manage to get today, it’s going to be a story of love and betrayal, with lots of red herrings and complicated plot twists.

SC: You don’t think it’s a bad idea, to be shooting a film without any idea what’s going to happen in it?

DARROW: Completely bonkers, I know. That’s the joy of it.

SC: Pippa Avery, local mayor’s wife and freelance web designer, is here with me now. Pippa, tell me about the character you constructed for
Flynn By Night
.