Sharp Shooter (24 page)
‘Yeah, he’s kooky too.’
‘Hasn’t stopped you conning food from his wife,’ I retorted.
‘Aahhh, meatballs.’ He licked his lips. ‘Shame they had to go on holidays.’ He brightened. ‘They must be back soon?’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Don’t give me that look. She loves cooking. Besides, I was just keeping an eye on you.’
‘That the real reason?’
He sighed. ‘Do you know how often I get a home-cooked meal, T? At least you can raid your parents’ fridge.’
Bok’s dad had died a few years ago when Bok was still living in Sydney. After the funeral his mum had gone back to the Philippines to live. There was a bunch of both guys and gals out there who would gladly move in and play cook for him, but Bok hadn’t decided which side of the fence to take up residence, so he was flying solo at the moment.
‘Maybe we should live together?’ I offered.
‘What, so you could open the tin of baked beans and eat it before me? Maybe not!’
I shrugged. ‘What am I going to do, Bok? About Nick Tozzi and Johnny Vogue.’
This is where my pragmatic friend dragged me back into reality, and metaphorically smacked me around the face. ‘Trust your instinct,’ he said.
‘What?’ I wasn’t expecting that. Maybe,
Get a grip, Tara.
But
. . . trust yourself?
He grinned at me. ‘Maybe I’ve been spending too much time with oily magazine execs, but I’m sick of other people’s agendas running my life. Don’t let that happen to you. Next thing you know you’re just a whipping boy.’
I reached across the table and gave him the last glob of mozzarella. ‘Hang in there,’ I said. ‘Things’ll get better.’
We talked about the magazine then until Kimmy Koo kicked us out of the courtyard about midnight.
I hugged Bok in the car park and drove home.
As I fell asleep, anchored to my bed by a kilo of cheese, an idea had well and truly planted itself.
‘C
AN
I
HELP YOU
?’ asked the guy behind the desk at SUP Assayers Inc.
‘I want to enquire about getting a mineral sample analysed,’ I said. I was dressed in my best anonymous clothes, wearing my hair in a pony tail.
Olga Ordinary
, I hoped.
SUP was the only assay company in town; it had to be the place where Nick had his mineral samples analysed. Maybe if I snooped around I could find a connection between the lease and Vogue’s new mining hobby.
Then
Mr Snooty Tozzi would have to listen to me.
‘Sure. Fill out these forms about what you want. There’ll be a charge of thirty dollars per two hundred grams.’ His aura looked thin and miserable like an animal that needed to be stroked. Its colour was almost indistinguishable from the bone-coloured walls and toning carpet. Unhealthy.
I took the paperwork. ‘Kinda breathtaking decor, isn’t it?’
He stared at me for a moment, wondering if he’d heard right. Then suddenly he burst out laughing, and his aura flickered alive and became distinguishable from the surroundings. It turned a lovely soft green colour like spring grass.
I grinned madly at him.
‘Here, I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Some of the questions can be ambiguous.’
After I gave a fake name and address, I found out that James-of-the-soft-green-aura was just doing sick relief for a woman who’d had a breakdown, and that he normally worked in the company’s other office.
‘So what happens to my little sample bag now?’ I asked, bringing out some of JoBob’s best garden soil from my Mandarina Duck and dropping it on the counter.
‘We courier it out to the lab and they do their thing. Takes about two weeks to get the result.’
‘That long?’ I got all wide-eyed. ‘Does it have to go to Neverland and back?’
He chuckled. ‘No, Burnside.’
‘Burnside?’ My psychic sensitivities began to smoulder. ‘I thought Burnside was just spray painters and refrigeration storage places.’
‘There’s a slab of government land out there too. We’ve got a lab right near it.’
‘Bit like Euccy Grove.’
James rolled his eyes. ‘Major difference in the council rates though, I bet.’
We exchanged understanding looks, the way people do when they know a city, and all the nuances of wealth and poverty that exist there.
Then the door opened and another customer entered the office.
I smiled warmly at him. ‘You’ve been wonderful, James. I hope you get back to your other office soon.’
He smiled back and, if nothing else, I was pleased to see that his aura stayed bright.
‘Say, you wanna get a coffee later?’ he said.
Crap.
‘Sure thing. Got a few things happening at the moment. Maybe when I come back in to collect the report.’
His face fell a little. ‘OK.’
I caught the lift to the dimly lit basement car park and wandered around looking for my car. When I found it (that’s right, I parked in one of the ‘Reserved for SUP Employees Only’ bays), I threw the receipt and SUP pamphlet on the passenger seat and slumped in behind the driving wheel, resting my head on the sheepskin cover.
Form 1a – f
had severely taxed my Thursday morning brain.
Thursday morning!
I banged my head on the steering wheel. That meant two days until my meeting with Peter Delgado. I had to run in the triathlon before that. I wondered which was more likely to kill me – the triathlon or Delgado?
Stop being hysterical
, I told myself severely.
And get
moving.
I sat up and put the key in the ignition. ‘Aaaagh!’
A dead bird lay squashed under my windscreen wiper; neck broken, beak wide. And not just any bird: a pink and grey galah. For one shocking moment I thought it was Brains or Hoo.
Get out of the car, Tara
.
Go and look. Identify the body
, ordered a bossy voice in my head.
Operating under its command, I got out and examined the corpse. The bird was neither Brains nor Hoo and had been dead a while. It was stiff and crawling with ants.
I reached into the car and grabbed the SUP pamphlet. Then I pulled back the wiper blade, wrapped the bird up in the paper and took it to the nearest rubbish bin.
‘Uuugh.’
I ran back to the car, slammed the door and squealed out of the basement. When I was back in the sunshine, and a reasonable distance from the city centre, I let out a scream.
I did that intermittently down Stirling Highway, stopping only when I got to the corner of Lilac Street.
I parked and ran down the driveway straight to the bird’s cage. They were busy shagging and looked quite annoyed at the interruption.
The pain in my chest eased enough for me to catch my breath – then I saw a photograph pegged to the food gate. It had been taken with an instant Polaroid; a picture of the dead bird under my windscreen wiper.
A sweet little message from some sweet little psycho.
I snatched the photo and jammed it in my pocket, then I grabbed hold of the cage and began to wheel it up the back of the driveway towards my flat.
The birds started screeching and flapping.
Dad came out to see what the commotion was all about. ‘Tara?’ He peered down from the pool verandah.
‘Hi Dad. Just moving the birds outside the flat. You’re away a lot. I thought they might like the company.’
‘Ohh.’ Dad looked nonplussed. ‘Have you checked with your mother?’
‘Uh,’ I grunted with the weight of the cage up the incline. Water sloshed onto my feet from their drinking bowl. ‘No – but – I – will.’
Joanna appeared on the verandah beside him. ‘Will what?’
I repeated myself.
My mother frowned while I pushed the birds over a hump in the pavers and into a nice shady spot under the eaves near my door. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’
‘Well, if you’re suddenly feeling so responsible, Tara, you can feed and change their water every day as well, cover them at night, exercise them regularly and give them treats. Otherwise you can
Put them back where they were
.’
Joanna wore her most formidable expression.
What could I say? Someone was threatening to kill the birds because of something illegal I’d got mixed up in and now I had to protect them? ‘OK,’ seemed so much easier.
We chatted for a few minutes about other things and then I excused myself. As I did, their voices floated down to me. ‘Will she ever grow up, Bob? She’s so . . . careless and impulsive.’
‘Don’t worry, Jo. She’s a good kid. She’ll get there in the end.’
‘You’re too soft on her, Bob. I’ve been telling you that for years.’
‘Yes, dear. You have.’ Their voices trailed off as they moved back inside.
Good kid?
I sighed. I was neither of those things. When would they ever realise?
I sat and pondered my miseries over a back issue of
Marie
Claire.
After re-reading the story about women having their labia removed at puberty in some remote village, somewhere, I felt much better about my own life; enough to go outside and collect my street directory from my car.
I slumped onto the couch and began to leaf through the Burnside maps.
Much to my annoyance, I needed information from Garth. He didn’t answer his mobile when I rang it, so I tried his work number.
‘Wilmot & Associates,’ he answered.
Garth had never had a full-time PA. He was too tight.
‘Where’s your mobile?’ I asked.
‘Right next to me,’ he answered, surprised into the truth.
‘So you’re ignoring me?’
‘Tara?’
‘Who else?’
‘Yes, I
am
avoiding you. When you’re not being abusive, you’re asking me crazy questions. Why wouldn’t I avoid you?’
‘Because your life is so boring that my presence in it actually livens it up. And you owe me for the Whitey thing.’
‘I told you it was a joke. I never thought he’d ring you. I was mad at you because you laughed at me about the break-in.’
I didn’t let him distract me. ‘You also blabbed to the cops.’
‘I kept it as general as I could, but I had to tell them something about you. So I chose things anyone would say.’ He sighed. ‘Come on then, what is it?’
‘Where’s the government land in Burnside?’
‘Wha-at?’
‘You heard me. I’ve got my street directory open, I just need some landmarks.’
‘Why would I know that?’
‘Because you drove taxis to put yourself through university. Perth’s not a very big city.’
He sighed again. ‘I always forget you know so much about me. Look north of the railway line on your map, right on the border of the next suburb. There’s a triangular-shaped wedge of land. The north-east freeway runs along one side of it, and . . . I don’t know . . . Lucas Road, I think, runs the other side.’
Lucas Road.
I flipped quickly to the index and back. ‘Got it. Thanks Gartho.’
‘Tara,’ he said quietly. ‘What sort of trouble are you in?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When did you last call me Gartho?’
OMG,
he was right. Knowing someone well worked two ways. It seemed anxiety was leaking out of me in endearments. ‘Gotta go. Talk to you later.’
I hung up and glanced at my watch. My meeting with Delgado was on Saturday morning. That gave me about forty or so hours to work out what was going on and how to handle it.
I rang Wal. ‘Wal, it’s Tara Sharp. I need you to ride shotgun with me to Bunka.’
‘When?’
‘Now. This afternoon.’
‘No can do. Gotta set up for a gig at the Subi.’
The Subiaco Hotel was only a fifteen-minute drive away from Lilac Street. ‘What time will you be finished?’
‘Around 4 pm.’
‘I’ll pick you up then.’
‘Gotta be back by midnight to pack up.’
‘No problem.’
‘Ah . . . should I bring any . . . deterrents?’ he asked with a hopeful note in his voice.
I thought about the dead galah on my windscreen. ‘Yeah.
Please do.’
‘Sweeeeet,’ he said.
I
DRESSED FOR
B
UNKA
in jeans and runners then snagged a jacket over my shoulders. Then I added a cap that I could pull down over my hair.
I took a look in the mirror. Too designer still, I decided, and swapped the jeans for some worn but fitted track pants. The tracks clung too closely too my legs but at least they didn’t scream money.
Satisfied, I locked up the flat, and tipped the birds’ crunched seed husks into a dead pot plant. The birds were still a little flustered by their change of location and Brains tried to bite me when I reached in with fresh seeds.
‘Silly bird,’ I said sternly.
She took another swipe and nicked the tip of my finger.
