Heller’s Decision (45 page)

Undeterred by
this obstacle, I moved on to Plan B – breaking the key box open.
The major problem with that plan was I had nothing to use. I
doubted my nail file would cause much damage. I was in a classic
catch-22 situation. I needed a tyre lever to open the key box, but
I needed the key to open the 4WD to access the tyre lever.

I hunted around
for something to use, my eyes lighting on the fire extinguisher
bracketed on a wall nearby. In movies, people managed to break open
locks by banging them with a fire extinguisher, so it must be
possible to do. But when I lifted the extinguisher off its bracket,
the first thing I noticed was that it was frigging heavy.

A mental
picture of myself right at that moment flashed into my mind.
Are
you out of your mind?
I asked myself. I then reminded myself of
the repercussions I’d face for breaking into Heller’s property,
even given the generous chance that I’d succeed. Reluctantly, I
replaced the extinguisher. In a last act of desperation, I took out
my ‘key’, the card I used to enter both the Warehouse and my flat,
and swiped it in the key box.

It opened.

Someone must
have been careless and neglected to remove my access to it when I
was suspended. Not that I was complaining, mind you. I snatched the
last pair of keys off its hook and hared over to the 4WD.

It took a while
for me to find a free spot at the shopping centre. I drove around
for ages, frustration levels rising with every second. Luckily for
me, I managed to drive towards a car pulling out. Seeing another
driver coming from the opposite direction also eyeing it off, I
planted my foot and the reversing car barely had time to clear the
spot before I screeched into the spare space. The other driver
honked their horn at me and made a very rude finger gesture, which
I ignored. Some people are just bad losers.

My experience
at the centre was vastly different to the previous day. Almost
nobody paid me any attention, and if they did it was men checking
me out. When I reached
Miss Petunia’s Boutique
, I loitered
out the front for a few minutes, pretending to look at the window
display. I was unsure if I could handle being evicted a second
time. But I hadn’t come all this way, and dressed up, to chicken
out. Steeling my backbone, I stepped inside.

The same
saleswoman who worked in the store yesterday was busy serving a
client while Miss Petunia hunched over some paperwork at the
counter. She looked up as I approached the counter.

“Good morning.
How are you today?” she asked with one of those tight smiles that
indicated she couldn’t really care less about how I was today. “May
I help you with anything?”

That flustered
me. I hadn’t been expecting a polite welcome. “Um . . . I’m here
about the interview?” I said, somehow turning a statement into a
question.

“Certainly,”
Miss Petunia replied, a little more animated. “Come through to the
back.”

She bustled
around the small office/store room, whisking a pile of clothes from
the guest chair, dumping them on top of one her filing cabinets. I
tentatively perched on the edge of the seat, while Miss Petunia
pushed a box of assorted necklaces, earrings and bracelets to one
side of her desk.

“I must say
that I’m very grateful to have another candidate to interview. The
applications so far have been poor.” She tittered again in that
annoying way. “You should have seen the one who came in here
yesterday. Good God, what a sight she was! I kid you not, her skin
was
orange
.” She shuddered vigorously. “Hideous.”

And though I
thought that was a harsh judgement, a major lightening bolt hit me
– she didn’t recognise me. Granted that today I had kept my hair
down and loose and I no longer looked like a giant Oompa-Loompa,
but she must truly have been averting her eyes yesterday, not
catching a good look at me. This was going to be far more awkward
than I’d imagined.

“Perhaps she
was just having a bad skin day?” I offered weakly as an excuse.

“I almost had
to call security before she’d leave. Quite an obnoxious young
lady.” She shuffled some papers around. “Let’s have a chat about
your experience . . . Oh, do pardon me. I haven’t even asked you
your name yet.”

I couldn’t tell
her my name – she’d surely remember that from yesterday. I blurted
out the first thing that come to mind, “Matilda Heller.”

“Matilda? A
lovely name. It’s just the sort of name I like my girls to have.”
She ran her finger down a list. “Hmm, that’s odd. I don’t have you
listed as one of my interviewees.”

“You
don’t?”

“No.” She shook
her head and
tsked
. “One of my girls must have taken your
phone call and has neglected to write you down on my list. Never
mind. Here you are.”

“Here I
am.”

She leaned back
in her chair. “Tell me about your retail experience.”

I’d already
told her over the phone all my credentials. I couldn’t reiterate
all that without arousing her suspicion, so I just made jobs up,
enthusiastically detailing each fabricated achievement, impressing
myself in the process. I truly was an absolute retailing
prodigy.

When I stopped
to take a much-needed breath, she jumped in. “Would you be willing
to work here for the rest of the day as a trial? Gratis, of
course.”

“Of course,” I
said, trying to hold my sarcasm at bay. It seemed as though she
hadn’t quite grasped the concept of paying people for their honest,
hard work.

“Excellent.
Come with me while I show you the ropes.”

I received a
cursory five-minute induction, interrupted by another customer
entering the shop. Miss Petunia shoved me gently in the back. “Go
and serve her,” she whispered.

I spent a fair
amount of time with the customer, proud when she happily left
having purchased two new dresses and a necklace.

“Not bad,”
conceded Miss Petunia. “But you could have persuaded her to buy
that suit set too. She spent ages looking at it.”

“It really was
the wrong style for her and the colour didn’t suit her at all.”

“That colour
doesn’t suit anyone. I don’t know what the designer was thinking
about when he chose it. Every lady who’s tried it on so far looked
jaundiced wearing it. But the lesson today is that the customer is
always right, Matilda. She wanted that suit, but was unsure. She
only needed that one little push from you to convince her into
adding it to her purchases.”

Suitably
chastened, I worked doubly hard for the rest of the day. After the
store closed for the day, Jodee (the other sales assistant) and I
spent a further thirty minutes sweeping, re-racking discarded
clothes and tidying up the clothes racks, while Miss Petunia worked
the till, reconciling the day’s takings against the dockets and
credit card chits.

“You can go
now, girls,” Miss Petunia said, not looking up from her work.
“We’ll see you again tomorrow, Matilda.” Did that mean I’d got the
job or was it just an extended free trial?

Jodee and I
walked to the carpark together, chatting about inconsequential
things, but then split up to head to our vehicles. As soon as I
reached the 4WD, I stopped with dread.

Someone had
scratched ‘BITCH’ into the paintwork at the rear of the car.
Probably that guy who’d wanted the parking bay too
, I
thought with a gloom that lasted all the way home. Someone was
going to kick my butt about that eventually.

I trudged up
the stairs with tiredness, thinking of a long, hot bath and a nice
meal, when one of the men poked his head out of the security
section doorway.

“Clive wants to
see you in his office now,” he said.

I groaned. My
butt kicking must be coming sooner than even I anticipated.

Chapter
30

Although my
immediate thought had been that I was in trouble for the
car-scratching, a little glimmer of hope shined inside me that
Clive might have some news about Heller. But when I spotted his
thunderous features through the glass panel of his office, that
little glimmer died an unnatural death.

His cold, flat
eyes stalked me across the room as I approached. When I reached his
door, he lifted an index finger in a flicking motion, which I
assumed meant he was telling me to shut the door. It appeared my
bollocking would take place in private, which was more concession
than Heller ever gave anyone.

Clive nodded
brusquely towards one of his visitors’ chairs, indicating I should
plant my butt. So I did, waiting nervously for what would happen
next.

“You took one
of the vehicles today.”

“I needed to
get to work and my car doesn’t have any petrol,” I explained. I did
a mental face-palm because my car
still
didn’t have any –
how would I get to work tomorrow?

“I want to make
this perfectly clear, because you seem to struggle to understand
basic concepts. Don’t touch the fleet vehicles again. Drive your
own car.”

“And as I just
told you, it doesn’t have any petrol at the moment. I need petrol
in my car so I can drive to a petrol station to buy petrol,” I said
slowly for his comprehension, because two of us could play that
little game.

He stared at me
for a moment, his eyes unblinking and his face stripped of all
emotion. He picked up his phone and barked out a few orders.

“I’m giving you
the barest amount of fuel. It will be enough for you to drive to
the nearest petrol station that’s three blocks from here.
Understand?”

“Yes,” I
replied, a little snarky. He didn’t have to treat me like an
imbecile.

His phone rang
again. His half of the conversation consisted of a series of
varying grunts. When he finished, I was treated to a full blast of
his death stare again.

“The paintwork
is damaged.”

“What
paintwork?” I asked in pretend innocence. He wasn’t buying it.

“The paintwork
on the vehicle you stole. It has the word ‘bitch’ scratched into
the back.”

“I didn’t
steal
it. Don’t be so overdramatic.”

“Who did
it?”

“How would I
know? I was at work. It wasn’t there when I parked this morning and
it was when I left in the afternoon. What happened in between then
is a mystery to me.”

“You won’t
touch one of those fleet vehicles again. I’m going to be down a 4WD
because of you. Now it will have to go to a repair shop. I can’t
have any of the men driving around in a bitch-wagon.”

I helpfully
gave him the name and address of the Incredible Bulk. “Whatever you
do, don’t go to him, otherwise you’ll never see the 4WD again.”

“If I’m
disadvantaged by being one vehicle down, I will be using that car
you drive for my men. Understand?”

“I understand!”
I snapped. “But I need it to get to work.”

“Tough
shit.”

“I don’t like
taking the bus.”

“Tough
shit.”

“You can’t just
take my car like that.”

“Why not? You
took mine and didn’t seem to have any conscience about it.”

“I was
desperate.” But it was no use – it was like arguing with a rock
mountain and just about as much fun.

“And you seem
to have forgotten that it’s not
your
car, it’s
Heller’s
car.”

“How could I
possibly forget with you here obligingly reminding me every five
seconds?” I stood to leave. I had better things to do – like
clearing out the mouldy things shoved to the back of my fridge.

“I will be
informing Heller about this.”

“Of course you
will,” I scorned. “And anyway, speaking of Heller – where is he?
Have you been in contact with him? Every time I ring him it says
he’s out of range.”

“How would I
know where he is? I’m not his secretary.”

“I’m calling
bullshit on that. I bet you know everything about this extra job of
his.”

He crossed his
arms and stared me down. It was pointless trying to interrogate him
further. I knew he’d never spill a word, even if it were just to
deny he knew anything.

In the
stairwell I bumped into Bick returning from a job.

“I have a
present for you,” I smiled. He struggled to return the smile. His
‘breakup’ with Dixie must have hit him hard, though I wasn’t sure
you could break up with someone with whom you’d only had a few
dates.

He waited
expectantly.

“You’ll have to
come upstairs to my flat.”

He failed to
show any enthusiasm for that, his eyes rolling up to the ceiling
where our every move was being monitored.

“Don’t worry
about those bloody cameras. I’m not planning on jumping you.”

He smiled
faintly. “Shame.”

I punched his
arm in a friendly, light way. “Come on.”

At the door to
my flat he hovered, not quite daring to enter.

I sighed with
impatience. “Bick, just get your arse in here. You’re not going to
get into trouble.”

“I don’t want
Heller to fire me, or even worse, beat me up.”

“All right. You
stay at the door if it makes you feel better.” I handed him
Security Swingers
. His eyes almost plopped out of his head.
“I thought you’d be interested in watching this.”

“I know what
I’ll be doing this evening.”

I leaned on the
doorway, crossing my arms. “So what happened between you and
Dixie?”

He shrugged.
“She stopped answering when I rang her, and didn’t respond to any
of my messages. So I thought I’d have it out with her in person.
But when I got to her apartment block, I spotted her going into the
building with another guy. They were all over each other. I took
the hint.”

“Oh, I’m so
sorry, Bick. I really am.”

“I can take
rejection, but it would have been nice of her to let me know,
instead of just cutting me loose without a word.”