Who Killed Jimbo Jameson? (7 page)

“Any time from March is the best time to do it because you have to stay out of the sun for a while after you've had work done, and it's easier to do that over autumn and winter. Jilly had her boobs done there because it's so much cheaper than here and they look fabulous and feel pretty good. Everyone's doing it. Oh yummo. That looks good.” She reached for a prawn rice noodle. “And can I have another glass of wine?” I am sure my sister can talk and eat under water.

I nibbled on some prawn toast and slurped some wine and felt my hangover begin to fade.

“So, do you reckon Lynnette finally did it?” Boo was off and running again. “You know she shot him years ago? They were living in Hong Kong and she said that he came home a couple of days early and she said she didn't know who it was because the lights were off and that was before she had her eyes lasered so she couldn't see him properly. Personally, I could never understand that if her eyesight was so bad that she reckoned she couldn't see who it was, how come she could still see him well enough to hit him and why was she sleeping with a gun? So what do you reckon? Could she have got someone else to shoot him this time?”

The egg tarts and mango pancakes trolley distracted her for ten seconds which gave me time to think. Could Lynnette Jameson have hired someone to finish him off? If Boo's ramblings were even half correct and Lynnette was in a hospital in Bangkok at the time of the shooting, she certainly would have an alibi if she was suspected of actually firing the bullets that killed him. But in order to use that alibi, she would have to admit that she was undergoing plastic surgery, and somehow I didn't think that was going to happen.

“You know she married him three times, don't you? Or was it twice? I can't remember.” She started on a plate of pork gyozas with a big dab of chilli sauce. “Anyway, I remember that when Victoria found out that Jimbo had been cheating on her with Lynnette, she chased her in her Jeep and Lynnette had to jump out and hide and then Victoria pushed Lynnette's VW over the cliff at Coogee. She had to walk back up to Malabar Road to get a taxi home and she couldn't pay for it because her handbag went down with the car so she talked the taxi driver into helping her climb into her house through a window because her keys were in her bag and she wasn't wearing underwear. I reckon the driver is still telling that story.” She finished off an egg tart and washed it down with the last of the sauv blanc. “Do you want that?” She grabbed
the last egg tart before I could protest. I like egg tarts. That was my egg tart.

“Anyway, they reckon that she's still crazy about him, and I mean crazy. When he married the last one, Jacqueline, Lynnette got pissed at the pub and went to his house and threw eggs and rocks and yelled and carried on. Evidently, he had spent the night before with her, and she was a bit upset that he was actually going through with the wedding. Anyhow, Jacqueline went outside and slugged her and they had to get the security guys to take Lynnie home. On my god, I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall on that wedding night!” she hooted.

I was almost starting to feel sorry for Jimbo.

“So, what more can you tell me about him? Who else do you think would love or hate him enough to kill him?” I finished the last of my wine and signalled to the waiter for the bill.

“Oh my god! We'll need another bottle and the rest of the afternoon. I mean, don't you remember anything? You do know that there's a fatwah on him? You're supposed to be the smart one, but you really need to get out more. You could start at Mecca and work outwards. Look, why don't you come over for dinner tonight? I'll cook and you can bring the booze and you can listen and learn.”

I phoned Constable Jack to pick me up and we walked out into George Street. Boo was still bubbling along next to me, chatting enthusiastically about her new apartment and her latest love. It never ceases to amaze me that we are related and sometimes I wonder if Mum had a fling with the milkman. As well as the butcher, the accountant and a certain English teacher.

We window-shopped as I waited for the squad car and yet again I reflected on the unfairness of the genetic lottery. My teeny tiny little sister fits easily into the teeny tiny clothing sizes sold in Chinatown, and next to her I'm a giant. A giant old ugly sister with big feet and ratty brown hair next to a beautiful blonde teeny tiny Cinderella.

The squad car pulled up and Constable Jack leant over to open the door for me. Boo's eyes lit up. “Oh, Maddie. Can you give me a lift to Surry Hills?” Without waiting for my reply she jumped into the back seat and fluttered up a storm with her bloody eyelashes.

“Helloooo! I'm Maddie's sister, Barbara, but everyone calls me Boo. Are you two working together now? Why didn't you tell me about this divine man, Maddie? Where's Marco? What happened to Marco? I love Marco. But you're nice too. Where did you come from?”

Oh great, I thought. He's gone. By the time we dropped her off in Surry Hills she had
managed to invite him to dinner that night and had put her phone number and address into his phone (that was just like hers – wasn't that a coincidence?), and she knew that he loved baked pumpkin and drank Coopers Sparkling Ale and barracked for Easts.

I hate my sister.

chapter twelve.

The war room was a hive of activity as the teams updated their progress. The list of “interesting” people had spread over two whiteboards and the statements were piling up.

Everyone had an opinion, and wild accusations and conspiracy theories were increasing daily. My favourite was that Jimbo had been shot by the Russians because he had screwed them on a copper mine deal.

Another one was that all his ex-wives had hired a hit man. That one seemed more credible, but I think it would require an impossible level of co-operation between warring parties. On the other hand, it would be cost-effective, and I found myself trying to work out how the wives would split up the expenses of a hit man. Would the cost be split evenly? Or would they factor in degrees of difficulty? Would abandonment while pregnant with twins cost more or less than good old-fashioned adultery with no kids? How on earth could they work out Lynnette's share? I could just imagine them squabbling over the bill.

The fatwah wasn't on my list. Evidently he had offended an imam when he tripped and spilt beer over the steps of a mosque. Then he had argued with the imam and pissed on the spilt beer. On the mosque steps. So there were approximately 1.5 billion people in the world who could have killed him. Had been encouraged to kill him. Had been ordered to kill him. Just thinking about the logistics of that investigation made my head spin.

By the end of the day we had established that Jimbo had taken a Park View suite on the tenth floor on the Friday morning. He had walked from Elizabeth Street into the reception area accompanied by two women, and his credit card had been swiped by Reception at 11.35am. There was no luggage. Four bottles of Dom Perignon and two six- packs of Tooheys New were delivered to the room at approximately 11.55am. The young room service attendant observed two naked women and a man who he recognised as James Jameson sitting in the corner chair. He was wrapped in a towel and stood up easily to walk to the dressing table to retrieve his wallet. His gait was steady, and he was able to sign the room service chit. He had tipped the waiter with a single hundred dollar bill which he had taken from a wallet that appeared to be thick with similar notes, and he had returned the wallet to his jacket pocket. The wallet, containing $2,355, had been found still in the pocket, which ruled out robbery as a motive.
Jimbo's voice was slurred, but that was not unusual as he was known to be a mumbler.

The attendant had left the room and did not remember seeing anyone in the corridor. His descriptions of the women were almost useless and seemed to be focussed on the size of their breasts and lack of body hair. And the Jack Sparrow tattoo.

A cleaner had seen a dirty-blonde woman leaving the room at approximately 12.50pm. She could not give a detailed description other than that the woman appeared to be very young and was carrying a nice white and gold handbag and her hair was messy and she appeared to be crying. She wasn't sure if the girl's dress was blue or black but it was very short and her legs were a bit orange.

The hotel security department was most embarrassed. The tenth floor CCTV cameras were sprayed over at 3.26am on Friday morning by a person wearing a hoodie, large glasses and a clown's nose, so there was no record of movements on the tenth floor from that time. However, the reception area CCTV timed at 12.52pm on Friday showed a woman answering the description given by the cleaner crossing the corridor that led to the Castlereagh Street rear entrance to the hotel. Further CCTV footage from the Pitt Street Mall picked her up walking into Zara, where she bought a white t-shirt and a pair of size eight denim shorts on sale. She paid with a hundred dollar note. The sales staff did not comment on her hair and did not remember if she appeared upset. One salesgirl observed that her nails were bitten and she was carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag, but thought it was probably a fake. She left through the arcade doorway into the lunchtime crowd and we lost track of her.

The other older woman had been wearing a large hat and sunglasses when she entered the hotel. Her hair was hidden by the hat, so we couldn't be sure if she was the dead redhead. She had not spoken to anyone, but her body language was that of a confident, relaxed woman who knew her way around the hotel. We knew what she looked like, but who was she?

We had interviewed every staff member, every hotel guest and their guests, but that description matched just about every second woman in the hotel. The hat had been identified as one that was imported in bulk and sold in just about every hat department and mediumpriced clothing shop in Australia. I wasn't holding my breath on that one.

The contents of the hotel room were being analysed: one empty bottle and one half-full bottle of champagne, three empty cans of beer, two empty packets of potato chips, a greasy,
crumpled brown paper bag and a Toblerone wrapper were now with the lab.

All glasses, cups, saucers, bottles and the whipped cream container had been dusted for prints, but only Jimbo and the room service boy had scored a hit. The room service boy had burst into tears and promised that he had only borrowed the car and the case had been dismissed. He was so transparently terrified and had been working so hard that day that I felt sorry for him when we let him go. He hadn't had time to scratch himself, let alone organise and execute a murder. He had, however, scored a great tip and had a story he could tell for many years.

Jimbo, on the other hand, had quite a history of assault convictions, which yielded up another set of potential suspects who would be phoning their lawyers and rehearsing their songs. There was even a case of attempted murder: Nick Wells, one of Lynnette's husbands, had been beaten up on Hamilton Island. Two masked men had knocked on his door, and when he answered they attacked him. He played possum, but remembered them saying, “Yep, he's definitely dead,” and then leaving. But Jimbo had an unbreakable alibi, nothing was ever proved and the case fizzled out.

The file was dusted off and two lucky bastards from Homicide scored a trip to Fiji to interview Nick Wells “just in case”. Yes, Wells possibly had a motive, but he had bought an island and was teaching meditation and yoga to rich Americans when not harassing Japanese whaling ships.

“Gee, it'd be good to swap with those dudes. Fiji's nice this time of year.” Constable Jack whispered to me, and my heart raced at the thought of a couple of balmy nights under coconut trees, cold Fiji Bitter and some hot Jack. I could wear a frangipani in my hair and walk along a moonlit beach and he could….

“So, will we go straight from here or is there time for a quick shower before dinner?” Damn. It was nearly 5.30pm. Nearly time for dinner with my sister. “I can pick you up, if you like,” he said. Oh, great. I had one hour to transform myself into a fabulously gorgeous and fascinating sex siren, lose five kilos, permanently straighten my hair and find something clean to wear. And buy some moisturiser, deodorant and make-up and actually use it. But what did I say? “That's a good idea, Jack. Seven o'clock will be fine.”

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Boo had used the whole afternoon to sparkle her apartment, plump up the
cushions and, I noticed, change the bed linen. There were even lilies in the vase that she borrowed from me last year. It all looked so effortless. Her apartment was a candle-lit mantrap, complete with roast lamb and vegetables and the Buddha Bar mood music that I gave her for Christmas last year. “If she serves chocolate ice cream for dessert I will rub her cute little bunny nose in it,” I muttered under my breath.

Constable Jack had showered and changed and looked and smelt delicious. Worn, clean blue jeans and boat shoes, no socks, and a pale blue and white striped cotton shirt with the sleeves pushed up and the top three buttons undone to give a peek of gold chest fur that I could floss my teeth with if given the chance. He looked so clean. So bloody healthy. And to top it off, he had great manners.

“These are for you, Boo, and I thought we could share this with dinner.” He presented her with a small but charming bunch of palest pink baby roses and a bottle of Henschke Tilly's Vineyard, and she dimpled and blushed and batted those damn eyelashes again. I hate her.

I must admit that the lamb was perfectly cooked by Boo and perfectly carved by Constable Jack. The vegies were perfect and the salad was perfect and Jack's wine was absolutely sublime. My offering, grabbed from the odd-bin from the bottle shop, went quite well with the chocolate mousse and I behaved perfectly, considering that I was most definitely the third wheel and had attained a state of advanced invisibility.

Boo prattled on about how much she loved the beach and was going up the North Coast next month and how she just loved the simple life and wasn't it a shame about Byron Bay…and he lapped it up, the fool. They always lap it up. She plays dumb and blonde and helpless and reels 'em in. He wasn't at the dribbling stage yet, but it was early in the night.