3 A Basis for Murder (3 page)

I nodded and folded up the paper.

“Thanks,” I said, and Melissa and I hurried to her car, keen to put this unpleasant business behind us.

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

(Robert Heinlein)

Chapter Four
.

I was staring at my computer screen when I heard a knock at the door. I managed to pull my feet away from Diva without being scratched, for once. Diva always liked to sit either on, or directly in front of, my feet when I was at my desk. I always liked to sit with my feet stretched out in front of me. Clearly, Diva's likes and my likes were in direct conflict, which is why I always had scratches on my ankles.

I opened the front door, relieved to see Melissa standing there, holding a plastic bag filled with cartons of Chinese take out.

“I come bearing gifts,” she said, as she stepped in.

“Thanks so much; I’m starving.”

“It's been a long day,” Melissa said, "what with driving all the way back from Armidale this morning, and we have work all week, starting tomorrow."

I forced a laugh. “
You
might have work all week starting tomorrow," I said, "but soon I’ll be part time. Being part time is quite a change for me.” A familiar pang of worry about my finances, or lack of them, ran through me. I was only just managing on a full time wage; how would I cope with less pay?

I made my way into the kitchen to fetch a couple of forks, two wine glasses, and a bottle of red, while Melissa placed the bag of food on the small coffee table in front of the couch.

“So what have you been doing all afternoon?” Melissa asked. "Getting used to being a lady of leisure? And why is your cat glaring at me?"

I stopped poking around in the various food containers. “She wants some of our food."

"Well, why don't you give her some?"

I sighed. "You don’t understand. Diva wants us to give her our food, but she doesn't want to eat it. She wants to sniff it, and then glare at us. Look, you give her a tiny piece of your food, and I’ll fetch my laptop. I want to show you something."

I returned just as Diva was alternating between sniffing the little piece of chicken that Melissa had offered her, and then glaring up at her.

I took a sip of wine, and then said, "You have to see this.” I placed the laptop on the table, turning it so Melissa could see. I played a news video that showed aerial footage of the police helicopter hovering in place.

Melissa turned away. “I’m eating; I can’t watch anything so gruesome.”

I shrugged and turned the screen so that it only faced only me. "Listen to this," I said. We both listened to the news report for a few minutes. It said that while the police had nothing but praise for the local media, the Sydney media's helicopter had been hindering the police's PolAir helicopter, making the retrieval difficult.

The report went on to say that the man fell over the edge and that there were no suspicious circumstances. It said he was a tourist from Britain.

“How do they know that he fell over the edge at this early stage and wasn't murdered?” Melissa asked.

I shut the laptop and leaned forward, exchanging the laptop for my carton of food. "Good point. Although they did know who he was, but I suppose that might've been from a missing person's report or something. They were only retrieving the body at the time of the news report, so they wouldn't have any idea what happened to him. Anyway, I suspect there are only two choices; either he fell, or someone pushed him."

“It creeps me out,” Melissa said. “Who knows how long he was down there. Maybe he wasn’t dead at first, you know? He could have fallen; I guess he probably did, but maybe he fell a week ago. Maybe he died alone down there after days of being thirsty and hurt. Maybe he was paralyzed.”

"Oh, Melissa, please don't say that!" I shuddered at the thought.

Just then there was a loud knock at the door, and Melissa and I looked at each other. "Were you expecting anyone?" Melissa asked.

"No, not at all."

I opened the door to see Julie, the post lady, standing on the doorstep. "I knew I wasn’t interrupting you when I saw Melissa's car outside," she said in a loud voice.

"It’s a Sunday," I said pointedly.

"Oh silly, I don’t have any mail for you. I just came to invite you to a party." Julie looked over my shoulder and craned her neck into the hallway.

"Would you like to come in?"

With that, Julie pushed past me and hurried down the hallway into the living room. "Hi, Melissa. I've just come to invite you and Misty to a party. Oh, red wine, just what I need!"

I dutifully went to the kitchen and returned with a third wine glass.

When I returned, Julie had made herself at home, leaning back in a deep armchair, and Diva was purring around her legs.

"Diva doesn't like many people," Melissa said, as I poured Julie a glass of wine.

Julie bent down to stroke Diva, who didn’t object. "All animals like me. Cats, dogs, even cows. Anyway, I've come to invite you both to a housewarming party next month, seeing that we're moving into our new house soon."

We both thanked her.

"I've invited some men for you, Misty."

I groaned loudly. "Oh, please don’t, Julie."

Melissa, the traitor, nodded. "Good idea. Misty, you're hopeless with men. If someone doesn't set you up on a blind date, you'll be eighty before you know it and still single."

I glared at Melissa and thought I'd have words with her later. She had the good sense to look uncomfortable, and squirmed in her seat.

I knew it was not going to be a good week. I had discovered a body, and tomorrow, Skinny was going to cut me from full time to part time. The only thing I had to look forward to was going to a party where lots of highly unsuitable blind dates would be lined up for me.

* * *

Humans: No fur, no paws, no tail. They run away from mice. They never get enough sleep. How can you help but love such an absurd animal?

(Anonymous cat about humans)

Chapter Five
.

I woke up the following morning with a bad feeling that something awful was going to happen. It dawned on me exactly what it was before my first coffee. Today Skinny would tell me that my hours had been cut. I was dreading her gloating over it; in fact, my stomach was churning so much that I couldn't eat any breakfast. I made an extra coffee to compensate and then headed to work through the drizzling rain, telling myself that it wouldn't be as bad as I thought.

I was wrong.

"Misteeeeeee!" Skinny's screeching voice hailed me from her office. I would prefer to listen to fingernails running down a blackboard; that would be a far more pleasant sound. Melissa shot me a sympathetic look as I walked past her desk.

Skinny's first words surprised me. "Misty, you shouldn't have personal visitors here at work. This is a place of work, not a social club." She stopped talking and gave me her best glare.

I feigned ignorance. "Visitors? I haven't had any visitors." Not invited ones, anyway.

Skinny ignored me and pressed on. "I'm afraid I have some bad news, Misty. We can't afford so many full time journalists, so we have decided that from next Monday, you will be the one to go onto casual rates and work part time. We will give you the payments that are legally required, of course, the holiday pay and sickness pay we owe you."

Although I had known this was coming, I was afraid I was going to cry, so dug my thumbnail under my little fingernail and took a deep breath.

Skinny hadn't finished. "Misty, I'm sorry to tell you this when you're not well."

I was puzzled. "What do you mean? I'm fine."

Skinny did her best to look apologetic, and failed. "It's just that you look pasty-faced and bloated." She stood up and pointed to the door. "Well, don't let me keep you. I'm sure you have work to do. Part time work doesn't mean part time effort."

I walked out, seething, torn between wanting to cry and wanting to scream.

I had hoped that after delivering the bad news, Skinny would leave me alone for the rest of the day, but that was not to be. She marched into the office and slammed a large form down on my desk, and then summoned Melissa. "You two girls, I need you to fill out time sheets each day. You need to fill in exactly what you're doing, and the times you're doing it, on these forms. For example, mark in any article you're working on, the times you start and finish, and if you have to go out to interview someone, mark in the time for that. Mark in the time you're at lunch, the time you arrive each day, and the time you leave. Hand the forms to me at the end of each day."

At that point, Melissa looked at her watch and said, "Oh, speaking of time, I'm running late for that interview."

Skinny barred her way. "Write in the time you leave and the reason that you'll be out of the office, before you go."

Melissa muttered to herself while filling out the form, and then left. I caught the words "micromanaging troll" as she hurried out the door. I looked at Skinny, but she appeared not to have heard.

I filled in "Port Macquarie ghosts, article research" on the form, and then spent over an hour on Twitter. I was supposed to be researching ghosts in the city of Port Macquarie for an article, but I had already finished not only the research, but also, the whole article. I figured that since Skinny hadn't asked for the article, she would assume I was still working on it. I unfollowed over a hundred Twitter Followers who had inactive accounts, and then accidentally followed them all back again. I gave up and turned to Pinterest.

I went to the bathroom, then came back and wrote on the form,
11.05 - 11.10 a.m., peed in office bathroom
. I poured a coffee, so wrote
11.16-11.18 a.m., poured myself a coffee in the staff room
. Take that, Skinny!

As Melissa was still out of the office, I was alone in my misery. Despite the rain, I decided to go out for lunch at 12, so duly filled in the form. I threw my lip gloss and what loose change I had into my knock-off Dolce & Gabbana bag that I'd bought for a song on eBay, and then left the office. I had an egg sandwich and a Pepsi sitting in the office refrigerator, but needed to get as far way from Skinny as possible.

I was so preoccupied that I hurried out the front door of the building and then straight into a man. I mumbled an apology, but he seized my arm.

"Misty, it's me."

"Douglas!" To say I was shocked was something of an understatement.

"Misty, we need to talk."

"You tried to kill me!" I must have said that too loudly, as people turned to stare at me.

Douglas took my arm and hurried me down the street, holding his umbrella over both of us. "Hush, Misty. I'll explain everything. I actually didn't try to kill you, if you recall."

I thought back. True, he hadn't exactly tried to kill me, but when Cassandra, the homicidal granny, had told him to call people to take me away and murder me, he hadn't objected.

I wondered what to do. Scream for help? Pull away? "We need to talk in a public place," was the best I could manage.

Douglas stopped and turned to me. "What do you mean?"

"On TV, they always meet dangerous people in a public place."

Confusion spread for a moment across Douglas's face. "Oh yes. Anyway, I was thinking of buying you lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Public enough for you? You really do need to hear what I have to say."

I reluctantly agreed. I figured that I was not in any danger, and I was more than curious as to what he was going to tell me. Plus given my new employment status, I needed every free meal I could get.

We were shown to a private corner facing the street on the upper floor of the Chinese restaurant. Douglas wasted no time in getting down to business. "Misty, I've been sent by the Society to fill you in."

I couldn't believe my ears. "What! But you're from the Black Lodge - the Society's a rival group. What on earth are you talking about?"

Douglas shook his head and leaned closer. "I'm a double agent. The Society got me to infiltrate the Black Lodge."

It was getting stranger and stranger, but before I could speak, the waitress came to take our orders. I'd lost my appetite, but I had just lost full time work. I'd have to get free meals wherever I could, just like I had in my student days. With that in mind, I ordered Roasted Tofu with Cashew Nuts. To my frustration, Douglas took his time but finally decided on the Beef in Black Bean Sauce.

Douglas suggested vegetarian spring rolls as well, and I agreed. I planned to eat as much as I could so that I'd have more money to pay the mortgage at the end of the month. Nevertheless, the suspense was killing me.

The second the waitress left, I addressed Douglas. "What do you mean, you're a double agent? I didn't come down in the last shower of rain. Do you expect me to believe that? How gullible do I look?"

For a moment, I thought Douglas was going to say something rude, but instead he let out a long sigh and leaned back in his chair. He ran his hands through his hair.

I kept talking. "And you tried to kill me!"

Douglas sighed again and then leaned forward. "Misty, I'm never going to hear the end of that, am I? I actually didn't try to kill you. Cassandra suggested that I arrange it, but I didn't."