Cherry Pie (3 page)

‘I’m gonna die. Who would joke about that?’

‘You tell me. You’re the one who reported a fake stalker to the cops so they’d send around a couple of hot guys in uniform.’

Chloe shook her head and ashed her ciggie out the window. ‘I was bored in those days, young, irresponsible.’

‘It was last year!’

‘Should I try ringing her again?’

‘Go for your life. But it keeps saying the phone’s switched off.’

Andi’s place was more Ormond than Elsternwick, a dilapidated weatherboard on a street that ran off North Road. In typical student house style the gate was rusted, the garden showcased a comprehensive selection of weeds, and the porch was home to a sagging brown couch and milk crates full of long necked beer bottles. A tatty awning hung from the veranda roof, striped in faded red, yellow and green.

We got out and slammed the car doors shut. High above us fluorescent pink clouds streaked the steel blue sky. A light wind froze the tips of my ears, flapped the awning and made the long grass hush. The house was dark and quiet and I realised my heartbeat had elevated and my pulse was pumping hard and fast at the base of my throat.

Chloe crushed her Winfield under her pointy boot and swigged from the bottle.

‘Spooky,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you reckon the windows look like eyes?’

I ignored her, pushed through the rusting wire gate and walked up the concrete path. When I rapped hard on the front door peeling paint fell to the spiky welcome mat.

‘Hello? Andi? Anyone home?’ I put my ear to the door but couldn’t hear any movement inside.

I turned to talk to Chloe but she was already picking her way through the overgrown grass, heels sinking into the dirt, heading for the concrete driveway that led to the back of the house. I hurried after her. The back was similarly overgrown and home to a wonky Hills hoist and a laundry shed with an old washing machine and concrete tub. The fence was corrugated tin and an open gate led to a cobbled back lane where the wheelie bins congregated. A train sighed as it pulled into a nearby station and I could smell charcoal chicken from the shop we’d passed on North Road. Chloe tried to slide the back windows up, to no avail, then pressed her face against the glass.

‘Can’t see much. A kitchen, I think. It’s pretty dark. What if she’s, like, dead in there?’

I flashed back to the time I’d found a body: the staring eyes and tangy metallic smell of blood. I went dizzy and leaned against the Hills hoist for a second.

Chloe squinted at me. ‘You right?’

I straightened up. ‘Fine. I’m gonna see if the front windows are unlocked.’

I walked back around the side to the front porch, trying each one. No go. When I returned Chloe had her face up against the back door, fiddling in the old fashioned keyhole with a rusted piece of wire.

‘That shit only works in the movies,’ I said, ‘maybe I should find a brick …’

She stood back and turned the knob. ‘Ha!’ The door swung in.

I obviously wasn’t utilising Chloe’s talents enough.

‘Where’d you learn that?’

‘Wagging school in Frankston, hanging out with Colin and Worm.’

‘Worm?’

‘He was in and out of holes a lot.’ She stepped back. ‘After you.’

The gloom inside made the door look like a gaping mouth.

I felt faint again but forced myself forward. It was ridiculous.

I didn’t usually scare easily and I’d been in a lot tougher scrapes than walking into an empty house. Christ, it was kindergarten stuff, Private Investigation 101.

I climbed the concrete steps, crouched and went in low, swinging left and right to check no one was lurking on either side of the door. Chloe snorted behind me, amused.

‘You could have gone first,’ I told her.

‘And got decapitated by the psycho killer? No thanks.’

I felt around the walls and hit a switch. Fluorescent tubes flickered and hummed and my pupils constricted in the brightness. It was an old kitchen. Brown laminex cupboards, an ancient gas stove, orange and brown lino in a fussy, hexagonal pattern, lots of dirty dishes in the sink. A bathroom ran off one side and I checked it before I lost my nerve. Brown and orange like the kitchen. A toilet, sink, shower cubicle with frosted glass.

I wrenched the shower door open. A couple of bottles of Herbal Essences shampoo, a thin sliver of soap, pale blue shower puff hanging off the tap, mould climbing the tiles.

Chloe stuck close behind me, still clutching the champagne bottle and standing on tippytoes to look over my shoulder. The kitchen and lounge room were separated by a curtain of hanging beads. I clicked through, turned on the light and found myself in a living room furnished with an old cane lounge set, the faded cushions printed with yellow palm fronds and brown bamboo. The carpet was floral and the wallpaper patterned with roses. A small TV sat atop a batik draped pillar, coathanger aerial poking out. I’d done my share house time and would have bet a hundred bucks three milk crates were lashed together under the cloth.

Doors on either side of the lounge had to be bedrooms.

I turned the handle on the left one, and when it clicked open I nudged it with my foot so that it bounced off the adjacent wall and I knew no one was lurking behind it. Chloe giggled again. At least she was having fun. The room was neat and looked like it had been filled with a Fantastic Furniture package deal. A navy blue doona covered the wrought iron bed, IT texts and Dungeons & Dragons figurines crowded the bookshelf and five computer monitors were lined up on a huge desk along the far wall. I dropped to my knees and checked under the bed.

‘Andi’s room?’ Chloe asked.

I slid out a stack of
Penthouse
and
Picture
magazines.

‘I think not.’

We crossed the lounge and stood outside the door to the second bedroom.

‘Can I do this one?’ Chloe asked.

‘Sure.’

She turned the handle and kicked so hard her spike heel dented the wood and the door slammed into the wall. I looked at her and she shrugged, took a slug from the champagne bottle and turned on the light. I scanned the room. No bodies. No blood. No staring eyes, thank Christ. My pulse finally returned to normal.

But Chloe was aghast. ‘Someone’s turned this place over!’

‘I don’t think so.’ I gingerly picked my way into the room.

The futon bed was a jumble of scrunched-up sheets and blankets. An empty beer bottle lay next to it, and a chipped cup with the remains of milky coffee, both balancing on a plate sprinkled with toast crumbs. Books, journals and newspapers covered every available surface and clothes escaped the rim of a wicker washing basket, migrating across the floor in a desperate bid for freedom. ‘I’d say she’s just messy.’

‘And I thought you were a slob. At least she has good taste in music.’ Chloe had wandered over to a shelf jammed with books and CDs. ‘Iggy and the Stooges, Radio Birdman, the Ramones. I used to love the Ramones. Back in Frankston.’

‘With Colin and Worm?’

‘They were more into the Radiators.’

The only neat things about the room were the empty square on her old wooden desk where I guessed her computer had sat, and her two work uniforms. A length of pipe hung on chains secured to the ceiling, and at the end of a row of jackets the black pants and shirts were pressed and the aprons neatly folded and draped through the hanger. I told Chloe not to move or touch anything with her bare fingers, and stretched the sleeve of my jumper to cover my own as I riffled through Andi’s desk.

The top drawer contained the usual detritus: paperclips, rulers, blank CDs. Her completed assignments crammed the next one down and I was quietly impressed that the worst mark she’d got was a distinction. The bottom drawer was stuffed with notes but nothing that appeared to relate to any big hospitality scandal. Her expanding file was overflowing with ancient electricity bills, transcripts, old superannuation statements, receipts, cards, but nothing remotely sinister and nothing that might provide a clue to her whereabouts. Not a single threatening letter composed of cut-out newsprint, no matchbook from a sleazy bar to follow up.

The bin underneath the desk was empty and the corkboard above blank in the middle, just a few current bills hanging around the edges, a card for a mechanic and hairdresser and a printout of library books she’d borrowed. I checked them off against the list and found one missing.
All That Glitters: King’s
Cross in the Seventies and Eighties
by someone named Chris Ferguson.

Chloe was crouched down flipping through a photo album with a tissue over her hand, humming ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. ‘This Andi?’ She held up the album.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘She’s cute. Find any clues?’

I looked around the room, shaking my head. ‘It’s not what’s here, but what’s not. Computer gone, notes on whatever she was working on, a library book …’

‘She could have taken them with her.’

‘… bins emptied. Doesn’t square with the rest of the mess.

She could have done it herself, or maybe someone cleaned the place out.’

‘Look at this.’ Chloe carried the photo album over.

‘A couple of pages from the end, some photos are gone. You can see the outline of where they were.’

‘No shit. You’re turning into a hell of a sidekick, babe.’

Chloe smiled and did a little wiggle. ‘Thanks.’

I stared at the noticeboard again. There was a drawing pin in the middle with a minute scrap of photographic paper hanging off it, like a picture had been ripped off.

‘You find an address book?’ I asked her.

‘No.’

‘Okay. Since we can’t call anyone who might know where she is, we go to the cops. Report her missing, play them the phone message.’

We turned off the lights and left the way we’d come in.

Back in the car I had an idea. ‘The wheelie bin. I should check it.’ I opened the glove compartment and pulled out latex gloves and a torch. Even though I hadn’t worked a case for a while, it paid to stay prepared.

‘Want me to come?’ Chloe lit up a Winfield, drank more champagne.

‘Nah, finish your smoke. I won’t be long.’

Twilight was long gone and the night was black. My torch must have needed new batteries because the weak yellow light hardly penetrated the darkness, just seemed to bounce off it. I wasn’t scared though. The jitters had disappeared once I’d searched the house and found no nasty surprises.

I wondered about my dizzy spell before. Post-traumatic stress?

I didn’t believe in that shit … well, maybe for other people, but not for me. If I’d suffered from it I’d have been a basket case long before now. I didn’t much believe in counselling either. After the last violent incident I’d been involved in, both Sean and my mum had been at me to see someone, but I hadn’t gone. What was wrong with pulling your own self together, stiff upper lip and all that?

The back lane was narrow and cobbled, built for the shit-cart to travel down a hundred years ago. I imagined being a shit-cart driver and decided it wouldn’t be quite as bad as waitressing or retail. At least people would leave you alone.

I passed through the gate and found the wheelie and recycling bins on the left. Going through rubbish was a huge part of being an inquiry agent, and usually yielded all kinds of interesting bounty. Luckily I had a strong stomach. I opened the lid and peered in. Just a lone plastic shopping bag tied up down the bottom. I’d have to tip the thing over to reach it so I put the torch on the ground.

Just as I started to push I noticed a flash of movement behind the bin, and then a shadowy figure reared up and rushed me. My breath caught in my throat as I was body-slammed back onto the cobblestones, where I lay, gasping and winded, skin prickling with fear. I reached for the torch and had just closed my fingers round the handle when it was kicked out of my grasp and flew down the lane, plastic cracking. The light was extinguished and all I could make out was a shape looming above me, amorphous and shifting like something not quite human, and then the shadow lengthened and there was a rush of air and an incredible cracking pain on my forehead, and after a brief flash of light it was darker than ever.

‘Simone.’

I came to on the cane couch, Chloe softly slapping my face. I batted her hand away. My head was throbbing and I felt like throwing up.

‘Codeine,’ I croaked.

Chloe fumbled in my bag, popped a couple out, checked the champagne bottle and, finding it empty, swished through the curtain to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You got mugged. Your wallet was lying beside you, open.

The cards are still there but the money’s gone. How much they get?’

‘Ten bucks.’

‘You only took a tenner to go out with me? Jeez, we were gonna have a ball.’

‘I’m on a budget. How’d I get in here?’

‘You walked. You said you were fine, picked up that rubbish bag, marched in here and passed out again on the couch.’

‘My brain hurts.’

‘No shit. You’ve got this red mark on your forehead. It’s weird, kind of curved.’

I tried to lift myself up on my elbows but the room spun and little dots danced in front of my eyes.

‘I’m driving you to casualty,’ Chloe said.

‘Forget it. You’ve drunk a bottle of champagne and I’m not sitting there for five hours just so a doctor can give me a couple of aspirin and send me home. Soon as these pills kick in we’re going to the cops. First, open the rubbish bag for me. I don’t think it was a mugger. I think whoever attacked me wanted what was in there.’

‘Why didn’t they take it?’

‘I don’t know, maybe you scared him off. Maybe he freaked.’

Chloe ducked into the kitchen and grabbed some old newspaper and a pair of washing-up gloves and upended the bag. I lay back, praying the tablets would act fast. I hadn’t had a headache this bad since the night I’d mixed vodka, gin, whiskey, champagne and beer.

‘Safeway receipt, tissues, hair. God, other people’s hair is gross. A business card.’

‘Whose?’

‘The Doyle Food Group. There’s a Sydney number and a picture of a fish and some cheese.’