Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (17 page)

‘Okay then,’ said Xanthippe, and swayed for effect.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Shay, giving Jason a weird look. ‘Don’t want you to fall in or anything.’ How sweet. He actually believed Xanthippe was off her face. Either he was being protective or he reckoned he could cop a feel, but either way he was in for a surprise.

Jason just shrugged, dropping down by the lake’s edge and setting up the plastic cups again. It was probably my job to stick around here and make sure he didn’t drown or give himself alcohol poisoning. I gave Xanthippe a finger wave and watched her totter deliberately away with Shay sticking close to her.

I accepted another eye-wateringly strong Bundy and Coke from Jason. ‘So your dad liked the idea of Darrow’s film?’

Jason shrugged, the cynicism apparently worn away. ‘He likes anything that distracts from newspaper articles about me and Annabeth or our families. So yeah. Your bloke Darrow turned up a couple of days ago, and got Dad on side by talking up the positive press for Flynn. Worked like a charm.’

‘Darrow is so not my bloke,’ I said quickly.

Jason looked mildly interested. ‘Which one’s yours, then?’

‘That is a complicated question.’

‘You’re talking to someone who had two girlfriends at the same time who were pretending to be each other,’ said Jason with a welcome flash of humour.

‘This is true,’ I agreed. ‘I can’t beat you at complicated.’ I wasn’t sure I bought the idea of Darrow charming Daddy Avery and the town of Flynn into this chaotic madness. There had to be more to it than that. I mean, he’s good, of course he’s good. Darrow could talk a cup of coffee into believing it was dandelion and burdock. But conservative middle-aged businessmen are not his target audience, and they don’t tend to fall for his charming wiles the way the rest of us do.

The gaggle of girls further down the shore of the lake were doing that giggly screechy thing that signals the beginnings of group hysteria. It made me feel old. They were looking over at us again, and at their phones, and it made me feel oddly protective of Jason. Poor kid. Last thing he needed was his misery showing up on Instagram.

I wriggled my toes inside my vintage pumps. It was one of those rare hot summer days in Tasmania where the heat still lingers into the evening. I wanted to dip my feet in the lake to cool off. I’d have to take the authentic 1940s style stockings off to do that, though, and Jason had probably been traumatised enough for one day without getting a flash of my garter belt. ‘It’s cool that your dad was willing to costume up with the group. My father would never have loosened up enough to do something like that.’

‘Eh,’ said Jason. ‘I reckon Pippa pushed him into it. She’s all about bringing Flynn kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.’ He laughed unexpectedly, eyeing my costume. ‘Well. You know what I mean.’

I had seen Jason’s stepmother in passing throughout the day, dressed up in black and white movie vamp style, her dark hair in starchy ringlets, and stocking lines pencilled up the backs of her bare legs. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, and seemed pretty tech savvy. She was the one who had been helping everyone upload their smartphone footage to Darrow’s computer, and making sure they all used the right hashtags to document the day via Twitter. ‘She’s younger than your dad, yeah? How long have they been married?’

‘Not even a year. He’s scared she’ll get bored of lamington drives and Friday Night bingo and run back to the big city. Between them they’re all about the idea of turning Flynn into one of those shiny cappuccino tourist towns. Dad is obsessed with Cygnet and how wicked trendy they are now. Cygnet has like Bollywood festivals and major events every other weekend. Every time he drives through that town you can hear his teeth grind about how full the cafés are. The other day I actually heard him muttering ‘ten art galleries, ten art galleries’ under his breath.’

The girls peeled off their faux film noir outfits now, jumping and splashing their way through the water, laughing as if this was the funniest, most original thing they had ever done.

Hell, they were babies. It could be true.

Not just stockings now, dresses were coming off, and there was more splashing. Also some whirling. Surely this had to cheer Jason up? But no, he looked as grim as ever, and barely seemed to have noticed the semi-naked young ladies.

‘I wish I knew where Alice was,’ Jason said finally. ‘Not just — you know, to help with my case. The alibi thing. But I miss talking to her. She hasn’t been responding to my texts since the day she disappeared.’

It didn’t seem to occur to him something bad might have happened to her. ‘She left her phone at the house when she disappeared,’ I said. That was a point. How had the police not seen evidence of Alice and Jason madly texting each other, if she had left her phone at the house on the day she left?

Maybe they did know the connection. Maybe I was reinventing the wheel, wasting my brain energy even thinking about this stuff. The police were on the case, probably five steps ahead of me and Xanthippe. Leave it to them. Have another drink.

‘We might be able to find Alice,’ I suggested, out of nowhere.

Jason gave me an odd look. ‘You’d do that?’

‘She’s your alibi. Someone has to find her. I don’t suppose your dad would help?’

‘He might make a financial contribution,’ said Jason. ‘Pippa’s good with computer stuff, she might be more use.’

‘Also, we have Xanthippe on our side, with her wily wiles,’ I told him. ‘That’s practically a team of crack troops, you know.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to get involved.’

‘I tried not being involved. Someone blew up my kitchen, my friends all stopped speaking to me, and I ended up snogging someone who is not only not my boyfriend, but also not the person who is specifically not my boyfriend.’ I took a deep swallow of Bundy and Coke. Gah, it tasted like sweet fermented tar. ‘Not being involved is not working for me.’

The girls were screaming again, and it took me more than a few moments to realise that it wasn’t the shrieky ‘ooh aren’t we daring, semi-skinny dipping on a hot evening with a boy in the vicinity’ screams of earlier, but something entirely different.

Jason went after them first, splashing through the water to where two or three of them screamed and grabbed at each other, setting the others off, crying as much as laughing and screaming, and doing their best to get the hell out of the lake even if it meant climbing over each other to get there.

I stood on the sidelines, and it was only when Jason turned to me with a sick expression on his face that I realised what that bobbing shape in the water actually was.

There was another corpse floating in Lake Serenity.

17

BUTTERSCOTCH FOR SHAY

(COMFORT ICE CREAM FOR STRESSFUL SITUATIONS)

Custard:

6 egg yolks, beaten

1 cup cream

1 cup whole milk

1 cup thickened cream

2/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon (REAL) vanilla extract

Sauce:

125g butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

1/2 cup cream

CUSTARDY BIT:

You’re going to need a double boiler for this. Trust me, no other way. Also you need a tin or pan of cold water standing by, big enough to rest the top part of the double boiler in it after the cooking part.

Pour the pouring cream and milk into the top part, and let the water underneath simmer slowly. While that is happening (don’t let it go too long, you want it just hot), whisk the sugar into the egg yolks. Then take a good big spoonful (big cooking spoon not teeny eating spoon) of the hot cream and whisk it into the eggy mix. Seriously. Not scary. You can do this. Pour it all into the pan and stir constantly while it all cooks. You know it’s done when you stick a spoon in and the custard coats it in a nice surface. Take the pan off heat and pop it straight in that pan of cold water. Remember it? Yep, that’s the one.

Stir in the thickened cream and vanilla. You’re done. Look at you, you just made custard from scratch! You ROCK.

Cover and chill in fridge for 2 to 3 hours, or until, you know. Cold.

SAUCY BIT:

Ever wondered what you put in butterscotch? Turns out it’s lots and lots of butter. Combine the butter and sugar in a small pan and heat until butter has melted and sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and add golden syrup and cream. Keep on low heat for 5-10 minutes or until sauce has thickened, then remove from heat and chill until lukewarm (not completely cold).

AND NOW IT GETS INTERESTING:

When the ice cream is part frozen but still soft, pour lukewarm sauce over it, stirring with slow and meaningful strokes until it is swirly but not melted.

Freeze. Eat. Yum. Feel better.

What can one say about a corpse? Especially one that has been submerged in water for … let’s say more than a couple of days. It’s not pretty.

Oh, and throwing up Bundy and Coke into a nearby bush was one nostalgic teen moment too many for me. I think I’ll stick to champagne and margaritas in future.

The party was over. While the police dealt with the crime scene, those of us who had witnessed the uninvited guest’s arrival all waited in the back room of the deserted town hall to be questioned.

Xanthippe and Shay were with us — they had returned a few minutes after the screaming started. The no-longer-giggling girls were keeping their distance, shooting odd looks at Jason. I texted Nin to let her know I would need her, Lara or Yui to hang around the closed café waiting for the building inspector tomorrow afternoon as well as morning. At this rate I would be sleeping until midday, if not later. I was so tired my stomach hurt.

I walked around the room once, because I couldn’t sit still any longer.

One of the gang of girls tilted her head at me as I passed her, as if she knew me and meant to say something. I kept going. On my second lap of the hall, she looked at me again. I stopped.

‘What?’ All my usual warmth at getting information out of strangers had melted away, leaving me belligerent and edgy.

The girl nibbled her lip, and showed me her phone. ‘I just wanted to — this is you, right? It’s got more hits than any of the others. You’re up to a thousand.’

It was a YouTube video, on pause, so all you could see was blurred brick and half an arm. But it was my arm. And oh fuck, it was the brick pattern from that alley, which had apparently seared itself on my memory.

‘This is so completely what I don’t need right now,’ I said to no one in particular, and pressed play.

Filmed from above, I saw Stewart and me talk, flirt, quote movies at each other and then kiss each other up against a wall like our lives depended on it.

I didn’t feel anything. That was probably the shock. I mean, the dead body shock, not the ‘oh look there’s you kissing the wrong boy on the internet’ shock. I couldn’t even feel embarrassed about it. Looked at from a purely artistic angle, it was a good piece of footage. I could see completely why it had attracted more hits than the other
#flynnbynight
vids, which were mostly people mucking around with fake gunfights and props.

‘Thanks,’ I said finally, handing her back the phone. ‘I didn’t know.’

I did, though, didn’t I. Darrow even told me that they were filming from above. I hadn’t looked. I’d just been swanning around with no thought of consequences, again.

For the first time, I felt completely calm about the fact that I hadn’t let Bishop call me his girlfriend. It might save him some embarrassment when this particular bit of footage went around the station, as it inevitably would.

‘Can I get a selfie with you?’ asked the girl, waving her phone at me.

‘Um, no, sorry.’ The thought of it made me want to throw up. ‘Any other day, sure.’

‘No, right, I get it. Another time.’

‘Sure.’

The awkwardness of the recently discovered dead body rose between us, bobbing. I turned around abruptly, and walked back to where Xanthippe was lying full length across a row of chairs. Jason and Shay sat near her, talking quietly together. She was close enough to hear them if they said anything incriminating, and feigning sleep to lull them into a false sense of security.

That’s my girl.

We could hear talking outside, and then Darrow came marching in with Stewart and Ceege on one side, and Detective Sergeant Leo Bishop on the other.

All the men in my life. Oh, joy.

I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment, waiting for Bishop to check on Xanthippe first. He glanced over in her direction, obviously taking her fake sleep as genuine, and then headed right for me and gave me the world’s biggest hug.

The first word that floated into my brain was
safe
. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Tired,’ I said. True. That was a good start.

‘So,’ he said, letting me go. His business-like, police voice was back. ‘You and Xanthippe on a double date with a pair of teenage boys?’

‘Because that’s a logical interpretation of events,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

‘I was looking for you earlier,’ he said lightly. ‘Came down to see how you were all getting along.’

‘We were getting along fine until the surprising dead bloke turned up,’ I said, more sharply than I meant to. Ceege, Stewart and Darrow were all keeping their distance, giving us space. ‘Do you know who he was?’

‘We have some ideas,’ Bishop said. ‘A name, anyway. Malcolm Drake, lives in New South Wales. He had his wallet still on him, driver’s licence and everything. Whoever dumped his body wasn’t too good with details. Still don’t know why he’s dead in a Tasmanian lake, but a name is a good start.’

‘Annabeth had a rich older boyfriend,’ I said quietly. ‘He set her up at an acting school on the mainland this year, that’s where she was when Alice was playing French Vanilla.’