Sharp Shooter (8 page)

I sat in stunned silence, with Joanna doing the hands-on-hips, furrowed brow, and where-did-I-go-wrong thing across the room.

The phone rang again. I snatched it open. ‘Listen here, who the hell –’ ‘Ms Sharp?’

I recognised the cool, arrogant voice and choked off my tirade.

‘This is Peter Delgado.’

‘Yes,’ I squeaked. ‘When and where?’ I listened to the address he gave me. ‘I’ll be there.’

I snapped the phone shut and the room was suddenly very quiet.

‘I’m waiting, Tara.’ Joanna stopped short of toe-tapping but I could see it was on her mind.

‘It’s nothing, mother, just a blatant example of sensationalist journalism,’ I said, before launching into an amended version of events, leaving out the part about taking my pants off.

‘I can’t believe you let Brains out of her cage at night. Poor darling, I’d better go and see if she’s alright,’ she humphed, and pattered off.

I sighed and slumped back on my couch. What a start to the day.

‘Ahem.’

I glanced up at the door and realised that the other half of the JoBob entity was still there.

‘Dad? Come in.’

My father, Robert – known to everyone as Bob – was the gentlest of gentlemen with a quiet sense of humour that he kept well hidden from Mum. As a kid I’d thought him invincible and heroic. Now I realised he was just a nice man married to a very dominating woman. I think I loved him more for that. He was so real.

He shuffled forward in his dressing gown and tartan slippers. My father wouldn’t be seen dead in a pair of thongs.

‘Tara, you know I don’t like to interfere. You’re a grown woman with a life of your own. But I’m worried about this new line of work you’ve taken up. If you need money . . .’ he started, his face turning pink with embarrassment.

I felt guilty and I wasn’t sure why. ‘You know what I’m doing? I’ve been deliberately vague.’

‘I haven’t said anything to your mother, of course, but I was in here unblocking the sink and your phone rang.’

‘You answered my phone?’

‘I thought it might be important. Tara, what are these group sessions?’

For the second time that morning I was speechless. When the shock of what my father was inferring wore off, I began to giggle. The giggle turned into a laugh and the laugh into a guffaw until I was hee-hawing in a most unladylike fashion.

Dad stood silent, nonplussed.

When I could catch my breath I explained what the classes were about.

Relief lifted thirty years from his face.

I got up and came around the desk to give him a hug. Then I told him about my paralanguage business. ‘I was keeping it quiet from you until I earned some money. I thought you’d think I was being flaky and irresponsible.’

He sighed and gave me a quick squeeze. ‘I would have lent you the money.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t want you to.’

There was a pause and the moment passed. He stepped away awkwardly. ‘Just as long as you’re alright then.’

I smiled. ‘I’m right. I gotta go, Dad. Work, y’know.’

Chapter 12

P
ETER
D
ELGADO
HAD GIVEN
me the address of a party in Claremont, the next suburb to Euccy Grove. Claremont was wall-to-wall millionaires without the welfare housing contingent to keep its nose up in the air about.

I’d been told to be there by 9 pm sharp.
In high heels.

My gut feeling about the high-heels emphasis wasn’t good, but, with only twenty cents to my name, the lure of a retainer and the possibility of a thousand-dollar bonus meant I could ignore a few little client foibles.

As I slid and wriggled into my newest LBD (two years old, on sale at Rucci’s), I called Mr Hara and left a message. ‘Hi Mr H, it’s Tara. The client is in the bag and I start work tonight at the usual rate. Will let you know how it goes, but nothing to worry about. Hope Mrs H is ripping up the ski slopes.’

As I eased Mona out onto the highway and took a right at Bayview Terrace, I tried to imagine Mrs Hara skiing. For some reason I conjured a picture of her with her head and body buried in the snow, legs poking up in the air. I tried to change it – God knows, the woman could probably read my mind from Japan – but it wouldn’t go away. Thick, varicose-veined legs waving in the air.

Blech.

As I turned left into Victoria Avenue though, the street was its own distraction. ‘Millionaires’ Row’ they called it. Palatial houses and smug apartments that looked out onto a contented, yacht-strewn river. Some of the houses had their own little piers which looked as picturesque at night as they did in the daytime.

The address Peter Delgado had given me was both palatial and had its own jetty. I drove up past the house and turned right, parking Mona outside a block of luxury apartments. As I walked back I saw Mercs, Porsches and Beamers sweeping up into the white-gravel driveway.

Fortunately my LBD and black strappy heels were simple enough to be invisible.
You can’t go wrong in black. You can’t
go wrong in black
, I told myself all the way to the gate.

I waited there for the car congestion to clear, then clattered up the front path and rang the doorbell.

A butler answered.

Butler! Yikes!
Lots of my friends’ parents had had expensive houses, but none of them had a butler.

I told him my name and he checked his list and asked for ID. Satisfied that I was who I said I was, he stood aside, making a sweeping motion with his hand. ‘The ballroom is the first door on the left. Do you have anything you would like to check in, mademoiselle?’

‘Uuh?’ I said. ‘Like what?’

‘A coat. We also have a no-weapons policy.’

I shook my head dumbly. I mean I’d been brought up properly, Joanna had seen to that, but no one had ever asked me if I’d like to check in a weapon with my coat.

For Chrissake, this was Perth!

‘Enjoy your evening, Miss Sharp,’ he intoned, then dipped his head to hide the kind of superior grin reserved for people who had gravy stains on their shirt, or sauce on their chin.

I make a point of standing tall when I’m nervous, so as I entered the ballroom I was ram-rod straight. This put me close on six feet four in my high heels, something I was ordinarily comfortable with . . . though not when every head of a hundred-plus Party Elegant swivelled in my direction and stared.

The staring was not because of my beautiful posture, not even because I was the tallest person there (because I wasn’t – there were a couple of absolute giants), but because everyone else was dressed in white.

Peter Delgado appeared from nowhere, an expensively dressed woman with straight, dark hair clutching his arm. The woman’s aura was wintery blue and lumpy, and an unattractive sneer lifted her top lip back from her teeth.

‘Good evening, Ms Sharp. This is my wife, Carlotta.’

Ah, the cut-snake lady
. I smiled and held out my hand, despite remembering Garth’s description of her. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

The woman declined my handshake and shot her husband a searching look.

‘Get me a drink, will you?’ Delgado told her.

She flicked her hair over her shoulder and walked away through the crowd without a backward glance. It was the height of her killer heels that jogged my memory. She’d been standing at Delgado’s reception the other day.

‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Delgado said to me between gritted teeth. ‘It’s a “white” party.’

‘You told me to wear heels,’ I gritted back. ‘Nothing about the colour of my clothes.’

‘Francine rang you.’

Francine?
The Giggler? ‘You mean your PA?’

He nodded and swung me into a position so that his body partly obscured mine. Over his shoulder I could see people going back to their conversations. Show over.

‘Yess,’ he hissed.

‘Well maybe you’d better get yourself a new PA with an IQ higher than her boob measurement, ’cos that one clearly can’t understand plain English. She never contacted me,’ I said, furious, then I shook him off me and tried to think of something else to talk about. ‘Nice house. Who owns it?’

‘Mr Viaspa.’

I swallowed. ‘Johnny Vogue?’

Delgado looked me in the eye. ‘You do know who he is, don’t you, Ms Sharp?’

I glanced around at all the people. The white suits and gowns made their auras sharper. It was like stepping out into the centre of a very bright rainbow. I screwed up my eyes and searched the room until I located the face I’d seen in the newspapers. ‘Skinny dude over there with the big nose and the mullet, standing in between the gladiators and sucking down the Corona –’

‘I’m sure he’d be flattered by the description,’ said Delgado dryly. ‘There’s Nick. I’m going to introduce you. Now do your thing, Ms Sharp.’

‘What thing?’

‘Do what it takes to get close to him, then dig around in his private life. I want to know everything you can find out. Especially, the state of his finances.’ He slipped a white envelope into my hand. ‘Here’s your retainer.’

I peeked inside and saw five crisp hundred-dollar bills. ‘Um, thanks,’ I said, stuffing it in my bag.

I didn’t have time to ask anything else before my prey responded to Delgado’s wave and came over.

I looked up. I had to. The guy was close to seven foot and built like an athlete who’d only gone the teensiest bit to seed by the way his suit hugged his massive frame. He had the face of a boy, an attractive one at that, and there was something familiar about that face . . .

Dark ’n’ delish
is how Bok would have described him. I suddenly wished Bok was here with me to poke fun at the beautiful people and tell me I looked hot in my LBD.

‘Delgado,’ nodded the giant, holding his fingers out for a slap, homey style. Though his smile was in place and perfectly pleasant, his gorgeous, creamy caramel aura shrank to a mere silhouette as he touched hands with Delgado.

‘Nick Tozzi, meet Tara Sharp.’

I held out my hand for a traditional man-shake. When we touched, his aura expanded warmly, engulfing Delgado’s sludge-brown shadow. I almost jumped back, which would have looked flaky, because for all intents and purposes he was wearing a smile and just politely shaking my hand.

He caught my slight wince and loosened his grip.

I grabbed his hand harder, not wanting him to think I wasn’t up for a decent handshake, and succeeded in making his eyes widen in the way a person does when they are getting a Mason’s secret shake – or a come-on. Imagining
he
was thinking the latter, I dropped his hand an instant later.

This was getting off to a bad start, and Delgado was creeping me out with his intense eyeballing, so I resorted to my default male conversation topic. Sport.

‘Hi, Nick,’ I said. ‘You look like you might have spent time at the back of the scrum.’

He broke into a wide grin. ‘I was just thinking the same thing about you.’

A girl could take offence at that kind of comment, but strangely it felt more like a compliment. I laughed. ‘That’s no way to speak to a girl who’s wearing spiky heels.’

His eyes quickly dropped to my shoes then took a very slow trip back to my face via my legs, hips and chest. ‘Why? Will you take it out on me?’ His smile was more boyish this time.

I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. We were already flirting inside our first fifty words to each other. I hadn’t had that happen in a long time.

‘I’ll be right back, Nick,’ said Delgado, slapping him on the back.

‘Sure, Peter,’ he said, his aura shrinking when Delgado touched him, then growing as soon as he looked back at me.

Flattering really, I guess, but then I noticed something I’d missed before. There was a spot of darkness like a bruise in his lovely caramel aura. Something was wrong in his life.

‘So what
is
your sport, Nick?’ I asked, truly curious now.

‘Basketball.’

‘Seriously? Errr . . . what I mean is . . . you look –’

He interrupted before I could bury myself. ‘I played college in the States. Got invited to NBA tryouts and didn’t make it.’ His smile faded a bit then.

‘Shame. But then not really. That’s more than most players even dream about,’ I said brightly, while I racked my brains. Who was this guy? I knew most of the ex-players around town, but Nick was probably ten or fifteen years older than me. I’d probably been wearing water wings when he was a contender.

He shrugged. ‘I decided to come back home to play the Aussie league but things had changed here a lot. I was the last of the big, slow centres. They’re all my size now, but
quick
as well. I got sick of training harder than everyone else just to match up. Running up sand hills when you’re my weight . . .’

I nodded in sympathy. ‘Yeah, there are some things some bodies are not meant to do.’

‘Your body looks like it’s pretty versatile,’ he said, looking me up and down again with a bald-faced appreciation that should have got me hopping mad. But he had a way about him, a slight goofiness that took the sting out of it. And a longing, like he hadn’t been with a girl in a while. But that couldn’t be right.