Lula Does the Hula (36 page)

‘Biggins!’ I moaned. ‘Keep still.’

‘Waaack, werk, haaack, k, k, k,’ muttered Biggins.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s what you get if you hang with Boodle. Smell and slobber and big poos.’

Boodle threw a huge hairy leg over my chest. ‘And good hugs,’ I added.

Now, I’d moan about the sleeplessness, but in the end, I think, it might have saved me. Because chatting with the creatures kept me up. And being up meant I could not be taken by surprise. At about 10 p.m. I heard our front gate open, and sat bolt upright in bed. Biggins hopped from my pillows to my shoulder to the top of my head in two stylish super-silent secret-agent moves, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Boodle’s ears perked up as high as their hairiness would allow them to go and she hopped off the bed to the annexe door – to
that
I paid attention. Boodle was an amazing bodyguard.

I followed her so soundlessly and stealthily that Biggins didn’t need to claw to hold on. In one hand I had the requisite spiky hairbrush, in the other the requisite hairspray. (Pepper spray finito, as per chapter one.)

At my front door, I paused and pressed my ear to the keyhole. I could hear the usual night noises of frogs and insects, but I could also hear the
tac tac tac
sound of someone trying hard to walk quietly down the front steps of the garden.

Slowly, silently, I unlocked my front door. (Do not try this at home. At home dial 999 and wait for help. I don’t know what I was thinking. A strange madness had taken me over.) Slowly, silently, I pulled the handle down and opened the door a crack. I expected to see, any minute now, the figure of a perpetrator rounding the corner. Instead I saw a figure slumped in a chair RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR.

‘AAAAARGH!’ I yelled, squirting hairspray and beating the figure over the head with my hairbrush.

‘AAAAARGH!’ cried the figure, leaping to his full six feet and fending me off with huge hands and garlic-bread breath. ‘Lula! Lula! Stop it!’

‘Bludgeon?’ I gasped, dropping hairbrush and hairspray with alacrity. ‘I thought I heard someone at the front gate. What the frik are you doing here?’

We stared at each other in super-silent silence. Silent enough for us to hear the front gate closing. Someone
had
been coming down the garden steps!

‘After him!’ I yelled, and Boodle leapt past with a huge bark, me hot on her hairy heels and Bludgeon just behind.

But by the time we’d got up the front steps the intruder
was long gone. Boodle was going nutso at the shut gate, Biggins had slipped from my head to my shoulder and the front door of the main house had burst open.

‘WHAT?’ yelled my mother in her nightdress. ‘WHAT’S GOING ON?’

Bludgeon caught my eye and I shook my head, once, a very subtle move. (This requires training.)

‘Nothing, Mum,’ I called. ‘I got a fright seeing Bludgeon outside my front door, is all. You could have warned me I was getting a bodyguard.’

‘Oh,’ said Mum. ‘Oh, okay. Well, yes, Sergeant T thought it best, but she said she didn’t want to freak you out . . .’

‘Nothing freaks Tallulah out,’ grumbled Bludgeon, busy with his phone to call the police station.

‘
You
freak me out, Bludgeon,’ I muttered in reply, going down the steps. ‘Your big villainous self outside my front door at the dead of night.’

I’m sure he would have had something to say about that, but his phone rang, and he slammed it to his ear, giving me a look. ‘Bludgeon,’ he barked. ‘Yeah, sorry ’bout that.’ He flushed, and scuffed his boot against the paving. ‘Uhuh . . . yeah . . . You’ll call the station? Orright. Laters.’

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Mr K says Healey Senior just cruised down Hill Street from this direction. Must ’ave been ’im ’ere earlier.’

I shivered, my eyes wide. ‘Seriously?’

‘Don’t worry, babes. Mr K’s called it in, and ’e’ll go after that no-good perp ’imself.’

‘But Mr K is on his own! Who will . . .’

‘Babes,’ said Bludgeon settling himself back into the chair.

‘Yeah, okay,’ I said. It was no secret Mr K was good at secret stuff. The best. Even so, I should have been sleepless, but, unexpectedly, it was a strange comfort having big Bludgeon outside my door. Especially now that I’d given him my enormous Morris Minor Convention mug full of coffee.

I slept like a log with duck and dog.

‘I feel nauseous,’ said Pen emphatically. ‘I can’t believe Jack and Jazz are covering the regatta. No way is that cretin taking footage of me. I’ll puke all over her sickening self.’

‘You’re such an angry person,’ I observed. ‘I think you need to see someone about that.’

‘I’m angry because I got dragged around town in a POLICE VAN, a DRAUGHTY ONE, all night and then I had to spend hours down at the stinky old police station shivering my butt off with a noisy duck and a depressed dog. And later I’m going to have to watch your boyfriend getting flirty with his flatmate and you
just standing there
!’

‘You were so great last night,’ I said.

‘I was,’ said Pen. ‘No trauma there.’

‘You’re good.’

‘I am. I’m good.’

‘Good at coxing too. It’s a bonus that you didn’t get supper yesterday. This way there’s less for us crew to carry.’

Pen punched my arm. We ate toast half-heartedly, watching Bludgeon drink coffee outside. He said it wasn’t professional, like, to hang around ’avin’ brekkers wi’ the
clients. Our ears perked up when his did at the screech of tyres at our front gate.

Pen thundered out the front door and up the front path to smile at a car with claw marks across the bonnet.

‘Hey!’ I said, following at a more leisurely pace. ‘Why are you driving Bludgeon’s car, Mr K?’

Pen nudged me and hissed, ‘Do I look pale and interesting?’

‘So pale, so interesting.’

Angus, Pen’s boyfriend, hopped out of the passenger seat and came over for a kiss. From Pen, not me. But still. Ew.

‘Well, Tallulah,’ said Mr K. ‘It’s all part of the service. I do drive exceptionally well.’

‘I bet.’ I grinned. ‘Are you and the seniors looking forward to the regatta?’

Mr K shuddered. ‘Not I.’

‘You’re not?’ I was surprised. Pen and Angus were only surprised by how lovely each other tasted. Double ew.

‘Madame Polanikov is insisting that I hula with her. At the luau.’

‘Seriously? Come in, come in, tell all!’

‘No, no thank you – just came to pick up Bludgeon. We’ve got a couple of people to talk to. Hello, Bludgeon.’

Bludgeon loomed behind me and I stepped aside so he could get by. He did a complicated handshake with Mr K, and I rolled my eyes.

‘What’s the latest?’ I demanded.

‘No one’s been caught, if that’s what you mean, but Parcel’s autopsy results are finally available.’

Bludgeon grinned and clapped Mr K on the back. ‘“Available”! That’s my man.’

Mr K winced. ‘Well, the news is we’re after a man with a wig.’

‘We are?’ That was unexpected.

‘Lab results on the autopsy showed Parcel Brewster had advanced lymphatic cancer – should have died months ago. It may be that he fell into the dam in his weakened state and just drowned. Even a nasty bruise on his head and various other bumps and scratches are pretty inconclusive –
but
they found fibres in his mouth and gullet. Like he’d been eating
hair
. Though it wasn’t hair, obviously . . .’

Oh yes! Arns had mentioned that. Maybe Parcel had bitten into his attacker’s head in a struggle – ew! I wished I’d not thought that thought, though a struggle with an attacker would go some way to proving Parcel’s death was not entirely accidental. But it hadn’t seemed to me that any of the Healeys needed borrowed hair . . .

‘Mr K,’ I said, ‘maybe we should go to Sassy’s Salon. Wouldn’t they supply wigs to certain customers?’

‘No,’ said Bludgeon, unconsciously stroking his bald head. ‘There are special agencies for wig-fitting.’ I raised my eyebrows and he hurried on: ‘But Aunt Sassy will know
for sure who in Hambledon has never been into the salon for a snip.’

‘Exactly,’ said Mr K. ‘I’ve already left a message.’

It hadn’t taken much to persuade Mum to go down to Big Mama’s for a breakfast banquet. Mum is the worst cook in the world and we all agreed we needed something substantial to kick off the day of the Port Albert Regatta and Festive Luau!

Main topic of conversation? Yes: bad men with guns.

‘So . . .’ Pen thought for a second. ‘Cluny wasn’t involved?’

‘No,’ I said, adding, ‘definitely not. Unless he wears a wig. But I heard those men talking that night and –’

‘Yes, yes, so you don’t know for sure.’

‘Um . . .
Mr Cluny is Helen’s dad
. He’s not the scheming, murdering kind.’

‘I heard Mr K tell Great-aunt Phoebe that Cluny owes five hundred thousand, and that the bank is threatening to take the crematorium away unless he starts repaying on a ten-year plan. He’s got to be the scheming kind if he wants to keep everything okay for his family. Selling that land would be the perfect solution, and Parcel was the only obstacle to that.’

‘
Five hundred thousand?
How did that happen?’

‘Old Mrs Cluny had a thing for online poker.’

‘
Helen’s mum gambles?
’

‘No! Her grandma!’ Pen suddenly dropped her voice as Mum wandered off to find a menu and the Carusos. It was strangely quiet here at Big Mama’s. ‘You need to get the bedroom ban lifted,’ she said urgently.

‘Ohh,’ I said, ‘really? Seriously? Cos, I was thinking, maybe it’s good! You know, no boys in bedrooms. Takes the pressure off. We don’t have to worry about the whole do-I, don’t-I sex thing.’

Pen flung her hands in the air. ‘
Thinking?
That’s not
thinking
, you cretin! You are unbelievable! You don’t think about anyone but yourself! Some of us don’t have to worry about SEX, because it’s just NOT AN ISSUE!’

‘Shh! Keep your voice down!’

‘Some of us have clear boundaries with our boyfriends! Some of us are just going to have fun! Getting to know each other! Without having to
make polite conversation in the living room
! IN FRONT OF EVERYONE!’

I winced. ‘Okay, I get your point. I get your point. I’ll talk to Mum.’

‘You make this problem go away!’ Pen got her stabbing finger out again. ‘Otherwise Angus won’t want to come around any more, I’ll get really moody and make your life hell AND JACK WILL DROP YOU LIKE A SACK OF SPUDS!’

Suddenly I felt tense. My stomach flipped and all the weirdy feelings I had churning about – the nagging unease that bad people were still out there, that I had a regatta to row on camera, a hula to dance, a family to please, a father who could turn to drink on stage, a boyfriend who hadn’t rung me since I’d snitched on him – it was all too much. The toast I’d had earlier didn’t go well with the mix. I ran for Big Mama’s toilet facilities, not caring that the stall door was shut, and threw up in the bathroom bin till the only thing coming up from my heaving body was stringy bile.

Pen followed me in, shutting the bathroom door behind us. She handed me a tissue. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Lula.’

‘’S all right,’ I whispered, blowing my nose. She handed me another tissue. I wiped my mouth, and straightened.

The toilet stall door opened. ‘Babes,’ said Bludgeon, barely a metre away, his hand on his fly, ‘if you weren’t so sick right there, I woulda thought you were after a sneaky peek at Mr Enormous.’

‘Mr Enormous?’ I croaked. I blinked at him. ‘Seriously?
Seriously?
’

‘Come on, Tatty,’ said Pen, pulling on my arm again. ‘Bludgeon needs to wash his hands.’

Gianni Caruso finally came over to our table and swept
us a low bow. ‘So pleased you can celebrate being alive-a!’ he declared.

Great-aunt Phoebe tapped a manicured finger on the menu and looked up at Gianni over her stylish glasses. ‘Camomile tea for me, please,’ she said.

Gianni went round the table taking orders. Pen made me get lasagne.

‘This early in the morning?’ I asked, appalled.

‘Carbo-loading, Tatty! You want to be responsible for losing the race against PSG today?’ she asked. ‘For being the weak link in the chain? After all that’s happened?’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Your friend Alex would be yelling at you right now, but I’ – she looked lovingly at Angus (yes, of course he was there too, and the animals, if you must know) – ‘I am calm and reasonable.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Get the pasta.’

‘I’ll have the lasagne,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Gianni.’

The bell on Big Mama’s door jangled wildly and Tam came bursting in. ‘You
are
here! Tatty, your life! I swear!’ She shook her head and spun to leave. ‘I’ll be back in five with Carrie and we need all the details!’

‘Wait!’ I called. ‘What about your shift at Aunt Sassy’s?’

‘Nearly done!’ said Tam, halfway through the door. ‘Alex will be here any minute. Don’t start without me! Just got to finish Esme’s toenails – they’re not getting any shorter.’ Out she slammed.