Cherry Pie (14 page)

I turned my attention to the painting and a laugh bubbled out of my lungs so fast I had to fake a coughing fit.

He looked over from the kitchen where he was depressing a lever on the espresso machine. ‘What do you think?’

Thick oil paint swirled across the canvas in lumpen swabs of dark green, burgundy and brown, and it had taken me a couple of seconds to register the subject matter: Dillon, done up as a modern day Hamlet. He wore ripped jeans and a t-shirt and stared at a skull, his eyes intense black whorls. Two theatre masks hung in the air, one smiling, the other frowning, and crawling out of some mist behind him were other Hamlets—Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh and, shit, was that Mel Gibson?

I wanted to throw myself onto the polished floor and roll around convulsing, but instead I took a deep breath and placed a hand on my chin. ‘It’s very … powerful …’

‘Mmm, I think so too. He really captured my eyes. Holly had it commissioned for my birthday.’ He held up a coffee cup and I strolled over to the kitchen to take it, refusing milk and sugar and glancing out the French doors to the timber decking, wall-mounted water feature and padded outdoor setting that made up the back yard.

‘Great house. Do you own or rent?’

‘Own.’ Dillon leaned back on the bench and sipped his coffee. ‘It actually belonged to Holly’s dad. He came out from England in the seventies when some rich rellie died, and inherited a couple of places in Melbourne, a country property and a hotel in Sydney. You might have heard of it—the Villa?’

‘I think I have. Has a really good restaurant?’

‘Yeah. It’s where Holly and I met. I was working as a waiter, you know, in between acting jobs, and Holly was managing the restaurant. She managed Jouissance, too, before she had Eddie.

Of course by rights, the whole bloody hotel should be hers.

I mean it belonged to her dad, but her stepmother Rochelle inherited the lot and acted like we should be grateful to get this place and a bit of land in a one-horse town called Kangaroo something-or-other.’

I saw his jaw work and I must have raised my eyebrows because he shook his head suddenly. ‘Sorry. My stepmother-in-law’s a bitch on wheels. I get angry every time I think of her.’

‘Holly has two step-parents?’ I asked. ‘What happened to her real mother?’

‘Died when Holly was a baby. Then Edwin brought Holly to Australia from England, married Rochelle and after he passed away Rochelle got hitched to Sam Doyle, they adopted her, and basically cheated her out of her inheritance.
Days of Our Lives
shit. I won’t bore you with it. Come to the edit suite and you can ask me about Andi.’

He led me to a small study dominated by a large, matt black desk with an outsized, flat screen computer monitor on top and a Macintosh computer humming underneath. The room was dark and smelled like electricity and warmed-up plastic and the whole set-up looked new, right down to the instruction manuals stacked next to the keyboard. Dillon sat in a high backed leather chair, I took a swivelling stool, and when he swished the mouse the screen crackled to life and I saw a black and white close-up of his pretty, pouty face. A window at the bottom of the screen operated as a control panel and contained film frames and squiggly soundwaves.

‘Final Cut Pro,’ he said proudly, and I guessed he was talking about his software. ‘It’s an amazing program. I had to fire my editor because he just didn’t get my vision for the film, but with this baby, I don’t need him. Most people don’t realise editing is a huge part of the creative process.’

‘Fascinating.’ I stifled a yawn. ‘So, do you have any idea what might have happened to Andi?’

‘Beats me. She seemed fine at the party and we all thought she was off to Sydney to visit her sick grandma. I left before it finished, so that was the last time I saw her. I told all this to the cops …’

‘She wasn’t behaving unusually the week before? It’s just that she withdrew five grand, all her savings, before she disappeared.’ I waited while he clicked and dragged a sound file and punched a button on the keyboard. He sat back in his chair and pointed at the screen. First a title flashed up, ‘In My Father’s House’, and then Dillon himself appeared wearing a flannelette shirt and sitting on a broken armchair in a shabby flat. He stared into space, pale and haunted, and the lighting made his cheekbones jut like rocky outcrops on a cliff face. The music he’d added was a single mournful, wavering note that sounded like someone had pressed a minor key on an electric piano and held it there. A voiceover kicked in, Dillon’s voice. ‘In my father’s house, there were no clocks.’

He seemed pleased with the way the sound and image had hooked up, paused the film and looked at me, a vague expression on his face. ‘Sorry?’

‘Unusual behaviour?’

‘No. Same old Andi.’

‘You get on well?’

‘Yeah, really well, but she got on with everyone. Nice girl.’

He fiddled with the computer as he talked.

‘You have much to do with her outside of work?’

‘Nah. I don’t really socialise that much, now we’ve got Eddie. Stay back for a couple of staffies most nights, and once Holly and I got a babysitter and went out to dinner at the Flower Drum with Patsy, Andi, Trip and Yas. But that’s the only time we hung out apart from work.’

‘Did Andi get on with everyone?’

‘Yeah, even Yasmin, who can be a handful.’

‘Did she ever talk about the stuff she was working on in her journalism course?’

‘Journalism?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘She wasn’t doing journalism. She was doing arts. I remember she was talking about it at the Flower Drum.

Majoring in … shit … linguistics? Anthropology? Something like that. To be honest I sort of tuned out.’

Andi must have been lying to them. I was about to say something when he nodded at the monitor.

‘Check this out, let me know what you think.’

The film started playing again and for the next five minutes I simulated fascination while attempting to work out what the hell it was about. Dillon, looking tortured and gorgeous, ran through empty city laneways to a soundtrack of heavy breathing, a heartbeat and an overwrought cello. He ended up in a cemetery chasing a girl in a white dress who kept disappearing behind gravestones. The film cut to the exterior of the flat, which I recognised as one of the Housing Commission towers in Collingwood, and the girl leaned out of a window and dropped a flower, which spiralled to the ground in slow motion. He ran up some stairs back to the flat, but the girl was gone and he sank to his knees on the carpet, hands over his face.

Again, the voiceover. ‘In my father’s house there were no clocks,’ before the image faded out to the sound of the heartbeat. The film finished and he looked at me.

‘Wow,’ I said.

He nodded as though he understood that the powerful emotional impact of his crap film had left me lost for words.

‘It’s my best yet.’

‘You must have been to film school?’ I laid it on thick.

‘I applied but those fuckers wouldn’t know talent if they fell over it. For a start they’re biased against actors and they just didn’t get what I was about. No wonder the Australian film industry is shit—all these idiots making stupid comedies about ocker dickheads. I come more from the European school of film making. It’s a bit of a homage, really. I’m trying to combine the alienation of Bergman with the … the … stylised realism of Godard. I wanted to make something gritty, something that pulled no punches.’

Stylised realism? I smiled, impressed. ‘So is it, like, based on your own life? Did you used to live in a Housing Commission place?’

‘Not my actual life, no. I grew up in Canberra. My parents work for the government. But the inner life, the existential …stuff … you know what I’m saying?’

‘Absolutely.’

He looked at his watch. ‘Shit, I’ve got to start getting ready for work and Holly will be home soon. Sorry I couldn’t be more help. I told you it’d be a waste of time.’

‘It wasn’t a complete waste,’ I said, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to butter him up in case I needed more info. ‘At least I got to see your movie.’

He nodded seriously, but seemed lit with an inner glow as he led me back up the hallway.

‘Did Andi ever ask you about Sam Doyle, your father-in-law?’ I enquired as he opened the front door.

‘Why would she do that?’ His eyes narrowed slightly.

‘He has a colourful past.’

‘We talked about lots of stuff. You do when you work together, anything to while away the time.’

He looked over my shoulder and I saw his jaw start working again. I turned around. A burgundy four wheel drive pulled up in front of the house, a black and yellow diamond shaped baby-on-board sticker on the back window. I’d never understood those things. Were they supposed to make drunk drivers think twice before slamming into you?

Holly exited the car and pushed through the gate, dressed in a pleated skirt and fluorescent bib and carrying a long, zip-up sports bag with a hockey stick poking out of it. As she approached I stuck out my hand, hoping to ward off a possible jealous scene. I’d had enough of that with Alex’s fiancée Suzy, months before. She shook it.

‘Simone Kirsch, inquiry agent.’

‘She’s looking for Andi,’ Dillon said quickly.

‘And I’d just like to apologise for my friend the other night,’ I told her. ‘She was drunk and totally out of line.’ Simone Kirsch, liar and total suck. I should have run for parliament. ‘Did you know Andi very well? Dillon mentioned you all went out to dinner one time.’

‘No.’ Holly sidled up to Dillon and put her hand in the back pocket of his jeans, but she didn’t go mad and I could tell he was relieved. So was I. ‘She started at Jouissance after I left and I’d run into her from time to time but I didn’t really know her. She seemed lovely though. Everyone’s worried about her. Have you found out anything?’

‘Afraid not. Okay, well, I won’t take up any more of your time. Thanks for speaking with me.’

‘No problem,’ Dillon said.

Holly smiled. She seemed pleasant enough on the surface, but something in her eyes told me she was glad I was leaving.

I tried to imagine the eternal vigilance her relationship must have required and felt exhausted just thinking about it. I’d always subscribed to the ‘if you love something, set it free’ school of thought. Not that it had done me any good.

I checked the clock on my mobile phone. I was just in time to catch Gordon at Greasy Joe’s.

Greasy Joe’s Bar and Grill was one in a row of cafés on the intersection of Acland Street, Carlisle and the Esplanade, where fat palm trees sprouted from the concrete and the St Kilda and Caulfield tram lines converged. The outside dining area was circled by a waist high brick wall and ubiquitous café umbrellas, red this time, shaded square wooden tables where people hunched over giant burgers, sipped lattes or got stuck into beers.

I spotted Gordon sitting by himself wearing a grey zip-up jacket over his chef ’s outfit, a light breeze ruffling his receding orange hair and bringing with it the smell of spun sugar and Dagwood Dogs from nearby Luna Park. His plate was empty except for a smear of tomato sauce and his head was down as he concentrated on a hand held video game. I heard the rickety rollercoaster tick along the tracks, took a deep breath, strode over and sat opposite him. Whenever faced with an unpleasant task I found it best to jump straight in.

He looked up, surprised, but covered it quickly by fixing his thin lips into a supercilious smirk and continuing to play his game. With his doughy face and small eyes he looked like an evil gingerbread man.

‘Hi, Gordon.’

He grunted. He probably didn’t like me after I’d dug my nails into his palm and threatened a sexual harassment suit two nights ago at Jouissance, but hey, you couldn’t please all the people all the time. The only trump card I had was his obvious hatred of Trip, so I played it.

‘Tell me about the scam your boss has going on.’

He lifted one corner of his small pink mouth and kept his eyes on the Game Boy. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Trip Sibley’s a model citizen. He’s Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and Gandhi rolled into one, an inspiration to us all.’

‘Yeah, right. I know Trip’s up to something and I think Andi Fowler did too. She was a journalism student writing an exposé of his dodgy deals. I reckon he took exception to it and that’s why she disappeared. If you know anything you should tell me.’

‘Why?’ His chubby thumbs blurred as he hit the controls.

‘Most people like to fulfill their civic duty, get a nice warm fuzzy feeling. I guess you might want to do it because the sooner Trip gets in trouble the sooner you can take over his job.’

Gordon furiously punched buttons, then swore as the game trilled a sad little refrain. He looked up at me, eyes like currants. ‘I know a lot of things about Jouissance.’

I waited but he remained impassive. Over his shoulder the lights on the Club X store sign blinked red and yellow.

‘Like what?’ I prompted.

He shrugged. ‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Besides saving someone’s life and getting your dream job?

Jeez, I dunno. Nothing. What do you want? Sexual favours?’

‘Grow some tits and I might be interested,’ he sneered.

‘I’m talking money. There a reward?’

‘Her mum’s poor. She’s a school teacher.’

He shrugged again and picked up his game.

‘Let me get this straight. You know something but you’re not going to tell me unless I cough up the cash. How much we talking?’

‘Won’t open my mouth for less than fifty thou.’ He started up with the thumbs and the game beeped and buzzed. I wanted to shove the thing down his throat. I stood up instead.

‘What’s your problem? Not breastfed enough? Got picked on at school? What?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s bitches like you have problems. You all think you can wiggle your arses and guys’ll bend over backwards. I don’t fall for that shit.’

And I wasn’t falling for his. He didn’t know anything but was obviously making out he did just to have something over me. I had a flash of what his life must be like, copping abuse from Trip then home to an empty flat, playing computer games and, judging by his prolific use of the word ‘bitches’, probably listening to gangsta rap.