How Not To Commit Murder - comedy crime - humorous mystery (22 page)

Frank hung up.

CHAPTER 18

Carlene was sitting on the bed painting her toenails, feet splayed on a towel and all the accoutrements on the bedside table. She looked up as Reuben entered the bedroom. He braced himself for the inevitable outburst.

‘Hi babe,’ she said. ‘How was your evening?’

She was smiling and there was no hint of sarcasm in her voice. Was this a trap?

‘Er ... fine. How was yours?’

She shrugged. ‘Same as usual. Watched a bit of telly, called Mum. How’s Finn?’

‘He’s okay. Well he’s not, actually. That’s why I’m a bit late. He’s had another setback and I had to be there for him while he cried into his beer.’

‘Oh no!’ Carlene stopped, mid-brushstroke. ‘What happened?’

‘He met this girl and things were going great guns. Then she phoned him and told him she’d met someone else, and it was all off.’

‘That’s terrible, honey! But hadn’t he only just split up with his wife?’

‘It was a few weeks ago now.’

She looked at him, aghast. ‘A few weeks! He didn’t even give himself a decent mourning period! No wonder the relationship didn’t work out; he hadn’t resolved the issues from his marriage break-up.’

Reuben felt bound to defend Finn. ‘How do you know? Anyway, he told me his wife left him for someone else, so it’s not his fault the marriage broke up.’

‘But she wouldn’t have left him if she was happy in their relationship.’

Reuben bit his lip, not wanting to start an argument. He watched the neat, precise strokes of the brush as it glided over her toenails, leaving streaks of vermillion red in their wake.

She surveyed her toes then screwed the lid back on the bottle. She looked up at Reuben from under her eyelashes.

‘Anyway, I’m glad you’re home. I missed you.’

‘I missed you too.’

It was sort of true – he would rather have been at home with her than loitering in a cold car park being an accessory after the fact to a non-existent murder. Or for that matter, listening to the marital woes of a non-existent friend.

‘While you were out, I was thinking.’

He felt a sudden weariness – sapped of what little energy he had left. ‘Yeah?’

‘I was thinking about children again. Why bring another child into the world when there are so many out there who need a good home?’

‘You make it sound like getting a dog from the pound.’

Her mouth tightened. ‘Be serious, Rubie. We could adopt a child from overseas, from Africa or Asia, an orphan or one of those kids whose parents can’t afford to look after them.’

‘Shit, Carlene, I’ve got to get my own life together before I can be responsible for someone else’s.’

‘But honey, you do have your life together. Once you get a decent job we’ll be fine. We’ve got a great future ahead of us – don’t you think it would be nice to share it with a child who doesn’t have one?’

‘I’m confused. First you say you’re being deafened by your biological clock, then you want us to be the Brad and Angelina of Brisbane.’

‘It’s just an option, that’s all. Something to think about.’

Carlene leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers. ‘It’s okay, honey, we’ll talk about it another time. I know you’re tired.’

She gave his neck and shoulders a rub as she waited for her toenails to dry. The touch of her hands reinvigorated him, and overtaken by desire, they made love – fast, but mutually satisfying. Afterwards Carlene snuggled into his side and ran her fingers through his chest hair.

‘I’m sorry that I’ve been so shitty with you about Finn,’ she murmured.

‘It’s okay, he has been rather demanding lately.’

‘He’s a friend and that’s what you do for friends. When I thought about it, I realised what a beautiful quality it is; that you stand by him when he’s in trouble.’

Reuben felt a warm glow of pride.

‘And then I reminded myself that I need to give you space. When you’ve been crammed into a prison cell for three years with no privacy, you need psychological as well as physical space.’

Although ‘crammed’ was an exaggeration, it was true there had been little opportunity for time alone. Even in his bunk after lights out, the presence of the others around him was suffocating. Through the thin walls of his cell he could hear the snores, grunts and moans of the others as they settled to sleep, the night air stale with despair and hopelessness. Sometimes he dreamt that he was still there and when he woke up and found he wasn’t, he could almost convince himself the whole three years had just been a bad dream.

Carlene propped herself up on her elbow and traced the outline of his face with her finger. ‘Now, when are you going to bring him home for dinner?’

Reuben gave an inward sigh. ‘I’ll talk to him before his next visit and organise something.’

Except there wouldn’t be a next visit.
Sorry, Finn, the time has come for you to
stand on your own two feet, there’s only so much I can do for you
. Finn would either run into some financial problems so he could no longer afford to fly to Brisbane, or meet another woman who would shag him senseless, thereby rendering him with no energy or inclination to get on a plane. The second option was obviously more preferable for Finn, and Reuben drifted off to sleep thinking of the various scenarios in which Finn could meet a woman so stunning that he’d drop his oldest and closest mate like a hot potato.

***

Why did Frank want to meet at the Bulimba Soccer Club? Surely he wasn’t a soccer player. Maybe he had a kid who played soccer. Reuben couldn’t imagine Frank as a father at all, let alone a soccer dad. He hoped Frank wasn’t going to suggest another attempt in the pole dancing car park. He, Reuben, would have to come up with a better idea.

On the way to work, he racked his brains but alternative scenarios for murder refused to materialise. After parking, he took the phone Frank had given him out of his pocket, slipped out the sim card, and wrapped the phone tightly in a plastic bag he’d brought for that purpose. He disposed of it in the industrial garbage bin near the rear entrance of the cafe.

He tried not to think about his meeting with Frank. He mixed up several orders and sent an opened can of beetroot skidding off the preparation bench onto the floor. Joe was standing nearby at the time, his white apron adorned with splashes of pink.

‘Jesus Christ, boy, what is the matter with you? Sometimes you leave me speechless!’

He ranted and raved while Reuben cleaned up the mess, threw his apron off and rifled through the storage shelves to find another.

‘In trouble again?’ murmured Nina as she dumped an armload of dirty dishes onto the sink.

‘He’s always in trouble!’ Joe shouted. ‘Always a hundred miles away, God knows where! I don’t know what you saw in him! And me, I don’t know why I hired him!’

‘You said he makes you laugh,’ Nina reminded him.

Joe snorted. ‘Laugh! I laugh on the other side of my face!’

After Joe had gone back out into the shop, Nina returned with more dishes. She glanced sideways at him. ‘You weren’t daydreaming about being at the beach, were you? Lounging around with a gorgeous blonde?’

She busied herself washing her hands with an enigmatic half-smile. It took him a few seconds to realise she was referring to his photo spread in the latest
City News
. Was there anyone in the entire city of Brisbane who hadn’t seen it?

‘As a matter of fact, no,’ Reuben said. ‘At least not with that gorgeous blonde, we didn’t exactly hit it off.’

‘Really? Are you telling me your charm and good looks didn’t impress her?’

There was no sarcasm in her tone, just gentle teasing. Her hard edges had softened a little and he’d come to realise that her brusqueness was a cover for shyness. Or maybe a protective mechanism she used for men.

He grinned. ‘Once in a blue moon it happens. Sometimes I think there’s an inverse relationship between a woman’s beauty and her niceness. Present company excepted, of course,’ he added.

‘Of course.’

She swished past him out the door.

***

Reuben glanced in the Barbiemobile’s rear-view mirror numerous times during the trip to the Bulimba Soccer Club. SC Bonazzi’s warning echoed in his mind. Surely the cops wouldn’t be following him, they had bigger fish to fry. But if they happened to see him with Frank and Bomber, they’d be asking questions – apart from the fact that he was breaching his parole. Frank’s maxim was ‘invisibility in a crowd’. In other words, meeting in a public place was less likely to draw attention to you than sneaking around undercover. Reuben wasn’t so sure, but even so, he wished he’d taken the bus. It was impossible to be invisible in a crowd on a pink motor scooter.

He’d told Carlene he was shopping for her Christmas present and so needed to go out alone. That had impressed her as Christmas was still ten weeks away.

‘I’ve never known a man to be so organised – usually they leave it until five o’clock on Christmas Eve.’ She entwined her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. ‘What are you buying me? Give me a clue.’

‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ he whispered into her ear.

His mysteriousness was authentic as he had no idea what he was buying her. And as he would return empty-handed, the decision was so important it would require further excursions.

He arrived at the soccer club with ten minutes to spare. The spring sunshine blazed down on the field swarming with children in their soccer gear. The muddy-coloured Brisbane River lurked in the background. At one end of the field, a coach was taking his teams through some moves. At the other end near the grandstand, a few rows of wooden seats with no shelter, a match was in progress. The players looked about ten to twelve years; one had blonde plaits, another a ponytail. As Reuben stopped to watch, the ponytailed player kicked a goal. Her teammates cheered, slapped her on the back and punched her arm. He was sure that as a kid he would have enjoyed soccer a lot more if girls had been allowed to play.

He hadn’t had lunch, so he joined the queue of jostling, chattering children at

the canteen. He ordered a hot dog and a coke, and stood in the shade of the clubhouse to eat it. As the sauce dripped down his arm, he realised it was the first hot dog he’d had in almost four years. He’d always found that the amount of sauce dribble was in direct proportion to the palatability of the food. Some things never changed.

The ponytailed girl’s team scored another goal and the opposition looked downcast, scuffing their shoes on the grass. Reuben thought of his own short-lived soccer career. He’d tried out for the under-tens – he was small for his age, not naturally sporty; but he ran and tackled and kicked his heart out, and finally made it into the B-side.

When he told his mother, the creases in her face softened. ‘That’s great, Rube, I’d love to come and watch, but Saturday is my busiest day. I’ll organise a lift there for you with Michael’s mum.’

When he pleaded, her face grew stony. ‘I said no and I meant it. How do you think I’m going to afford the fees and the clobber you wear if I don’t work?’

She turned away from him and fumbled with a cigarette. Reuben, close to tears, yelled, ‘If you gave up smoking, you’d have enough money!’ and ran from the room before she could retaliate.

He played regardless, but after a few lacklustre performances, was dropped from the team. From then on, he avoided sport altogether, throwing his energy into inventing ingenious methods of dodging PE classes and selling his best ideas to his classmates.

Someone slapped him on the back. Bomber stood in front of him, grinning, a roll-your-own cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth.

‘His Highness awaits you,’ he said. He inclined his head towards the grandstand. Frank sat in the middle of the back row, sipping on something in a polystyrene cup. The grandstand was about half full, but the seats around him were vacant. He wore cargo shorts, t-shirt and cap, eyes on the game, looking like any other devoted soccer dad. Reuben stuffed the rest of his hotdog into his mouth and followed Bomber. He steeled himself for Frank’s greeting, reminding himself that in this public setting, the worst thing Frank could do was throw his coffee at him, and the coffee at these places was always lukewarm anyway.

They climbed up to the back row and sat one each side of Frank. Eyes still straight ahead, Frank said in a low voice, ‘I’m pissed off, Littledick.’

‘How was I to know she wouldn’t turn up for her lesson? She could have been doing anything – maybe she was Christmas shopping.’

‘People don’t go Christmas shopping in October. And besides, the shops aren’t open on Wednesday nights.’

How come Frank was so knowledgeable about shopping?

‘And I’m wondering if there was a reason she didn’t go – maybe she had a little premonition that something was going to happen.’

Reuben met Frank’s steely gaze. ‘What are you saying? You think I forewarned her?’ At least he didn’t have to fake his indignation.

‘You’ve got the hots for the bitch; you could have dropped a hint.’

Reuben swallowed. ‘Why would I do that? I’m not going to risk my wife’s life for her. She means nothing to me.’

A cheer went up from the crowd. A goal had been scored by the losing team. Bomber jumped up in his seat. ‘You beauty!’ he yelled, punching the air. ‘Gotta play the part,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth as he sat down again.

‘Think about it, Frank,’ Reuben said. ‘I could hardly have warned her not to go to her pole dancing class. How would I have known about it? She’d have me charged with stalking.’

‘You could have been more subtle as in “don’t go anywhere tonight because you’ll be blown to smithereens”.’

‘And she’d have believed me, of course. The first thing she’d do would be to call the cops.’

Another cheer went up from the crowd and Bomber jumped up again. ‘Good onya, kid!’

Reuben looked over. ‘That was the other team.’

Bomber shrugged. ‘Hey, I don’t care who wins. I’m just here for the party.’

A large family, armed with hot chips and coke, straggled up the grandstand and sat down in the row in front of them. Frank scowled, inclined his head and got up. Reuben and Bomber followed him out of the row onto a grassy knoll to the side of the soccer field and out of earshot of passersby. Frank lowered himself onto the grass and sat awkwardly with his legs out in front of him.