Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (20 page)

‘Yeah, yeah, poor chicken. You’re too nice for your own good, Tish. Has it occurred to you that Jason Avery is acting guilty as hell?’

‘Wash your mouth out.’ But yes, I had that prickly uncomfortable feeling again. Once someone you have fed and smiled at and given romantic advice to turns out to be a killer, it’s kind of hard to think of people being universally good and innocent and honest.

Of course we were snooping around a teenage boy’s bedroom without his permission so moral high ground was somewhere in the far distance.

‘He’s been peering into The Gingerbread House recently,’ said Xanthippe.

‘Tell me he hasn’t bookmarked the night when you took your top off. Apparently it’s a popular one.’

‘They put it up as an archive highlight,’ Xanthippe said proudly. She tapped a bit and looked thoughtful. ‘Interesting. Jason’s been trying to access the archives from before French Vanilla joined the merry band. But they’re locked. I guess when Pepperminty left, she really left. Ginger said they had to take all the material with her offline.’

‘Why would Jason care who was there before Annabeth?’ I asked. ‘I mean, Alice.’ Hmm. ‘You know, Stewart has Alice’s email address. Maybe we could ask if she knows where Jason is. It couldn’t hurt.’

‘I’m not convinced she has Jason’s best interests at heart,’ said Xanthippe.

I could go along with that. ‘Me neither.’

A sound of car on gravel sent me to the window. ‘Oh, holy crap,’ I said looking out the window.

‘Who is it, Daddy Warbucks?’ said Xanthippe.

‘Um, no,’ I said. ‘No one arriving. Someone leaving. Two someones.’ I winced as I turned to break the news to her. ‘Stewart and Shay just stole your Spider.’

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Xanthippe go quite that colour. She’s always cool and collected: gorgeous hair, immaculate clothes. She wears black every single day, and fluff never clings to her. Her boots are eternally shiny, and her nail polish never chips.

Seriously. I thought she was about to stop breathing she was so angry. Her skin went all splotchy. ‘They stole my
car
?’ She pulled out her phone.

I took it off her, for safety’s sake. ‘Are you calling the police or an assassin?’

‘My brother,’ she hissed. Oh boy. If Xanthippe was actually turning to a) the police and b) Leo Bishop in her hour of need, then things were dire.

‘He can’t know what we’re doing, and he really can’t know Jason has shot through yet,’ I said desperately. ‘He will be mad at me and Jason will get
arrested
.’

Xanthippe just stared at me with cold, reptilian eyes. ‘Your Scotsman took my
car
, Tish. Do you know how many hours I put into the Spider?’

Why yes I did. I also knew she was still mourning the Lotus that had met an unfortunate end at the hands of Darrow and the Richmond Bridge. This was her rebound car. She had spent many hours a week on its restoration over the last several months, and she loved it with a passion greater even than my attachment to the Collette Dinnigan handbag that I found for five dollars in the local Salvos.

‘Even so,’ I said weakly. ‘
Our
Scotsman has to have had a reason.’

‘Besides,’ Xanthippe said, tilting her head at me. ‘If we’re talking about things you’ve done lately that will make my brother mad at you, I don’t think protecting Jason Avery will be top of the list. Will it?’

Oh, double crap on a stick. She knew about the kiss. How did she know about the kiss?

She read the question in my eyes. ‘There’s a hashtag, Tish. Every piece of footage that has already gone up on YouTube gets announced all over the place, and everyone involved in the film has been following it. Your little performance piece was retweeted many, many times.’

Now it was me who was having trouble breathing. ‘I’ll get the car back for you,’ I promised. ‘And — I’ll tell Bishop about the other thing. After all this has calmed down.’

Xanthippe put her phone in her jeans, still scowling at me. ‘You’d better.’

Ten minutes later, Ceege pulled up in front of the Avery house, in Jason’s Holden. Luckily he still had the keys. ‘What’s the emergency? I’m supposed to be taking down the sets to stop Flynn looking like 1940s San Francisco.’

‘Hate to break it to you,’ I said, sliding into the backseat. ‘Flynn never looked like 1940s San Francisco.’

‘You wound me, babes. Where are we going?’

‘To kill Stewart,’ said Xanthippe, taking the front passenger seat. We were slow enough off the mark that Pippa Avery made it to the car too, strapping herself into the back beside me and silently daring us to challenge her presence.

‘Excellent,’ said Ceege. ‘More the merrier. Where to, dollfaces?’

That was the million dollar question, now wasn’t it? I tried texting Stewart again. WHERE ARE U????

Of course, since he was the one at the wheel of the Spider, I had to hope that he wasn’t going to text back anytime soon. Damn him for being a responsible driver.

‘Head into Flynn,’ I ordered Ceege. ‘We’ll figure out something from there.’

When all else fails, call Darrow.

‘Darling,’ he said into the phone, sounding as luscious as ever. Did everyone feel the need for a cold shower after a conversation with that voice of his, or was it just me?

‘Turn right!’ Xanthippe snapped as the Holden reached the foot of the hill.

‘You said back to town,’ Ceege complained. ‘Make up your mind, sweetcheeks.’

‘Logic says back to town, but those tyre marks say the other way,’ she said. ‘They also justify why we never ever let Stewart do the driving. That fucking Scotsman is going to total my precious, precious Spider. Do they even drive on the left side of the road in his country? Does he have a licence?’

‘He will be careful,’ I assured her. ‘He knows it’s more than his life is worth and he is very, very afraid of you. It’s all good.’

Darrow coughed, still waiting on the line. ‘Fascinating though this is, it’s not about me. Did you want me for something, Darling?’

‘I was going to ask you if Xanthippe’s runaway Spider had buzzed through Flynn, but we’re heading the other way now,’ I told Darrow. ‘Um, if Bishop asks where we all are, can you pretend we’re doing another scene for you?’

‘Easily done,’ said Darrow. ‘Who’s we?’

‘Me, Zee, Stewart, Jason and Pippa Avery and Shay French.’

‘Darling,’ he said in a pained voice. ‘You’re doing something stupid, yeah?’

‘Even by your standards,’ I agreed, and flipped the phone shut. ‘So what’s along this way? Where could they be going?’

We were heading into greenery and wilderness from what I could make out — deep mountainous bush with no noticeable destination. There were a few other towns further south of us, but nothing that leaped out at me as an obvious destination. Surely fugitives from justice should be heading towards Hobart, where there was an airport and highways with occasional straight bits that might be suitable for proper car chases.

‘I think I know where to try,’ said Pippa quietly. ‘You — you’re really not going to call the police about Jason?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Believe me, we’d have done it long before now. And Xanthippe doesn’t want anyone finding out about her imminent murder of Stewart, so we’re good.’

‘My husband owns a property about forty kilometres south,’ Pippa said. ‘There isn’t much on it — an old house, barely habitable. He’s planning to build a holiday resort.’

‘Does Shay know about the place?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘He and Jason helped to survey the property when Greg bought it.’

Worth a try.

‘Can I put on the radio?’ Ceege asked, some time later. ‘Or do you want to chime in with a hundred green bottles hanging on the wall? Much though I love how you’re all working this awkward silence well beyond its use by date.’

‘I’d rather we used the time constructively,’ I said. ‘Zee, what did you mean when you said you didn’t think Jason and Alice were an item?’

‘Jason and Alice?’ said Pippa, folding her arms. ‘Who is Alice?’

Xanthippe smirked, meeting Pippa’s eyes in the mirror. ‘Oh, you know exactly who Alice is. Don’t think I haven’t figured out who you are.’

‘I’m Mrs Greg Avery,’ said Pippa in an extreme ‘don’t mess with me’ ice queen voice.

‘The digital world is a wonderful place,’ Xanthippe replied. ‘Once you’re on there, it’s very hard to erase yourself completely. You’ve done well — I mean, you deleted the archives, and it was all under pseudonyms. You even dyed your hair to conceal the resemblance. But if you think a dedicated person can’t find archival Gingerbread House footage of Pepperminty on Youtube, you have a very strange idea of how the internet works.’

I stared at Xanthippe, and then at Pippa Avery, whose hair had always been that bit too dark and glossy to be natural, especially for someone who dressed like such a hippie. ‘Oh, you are freaking kidding me.’

Pepperminty. Who was good with computers, and set up The Gingerbread House website, and whose overprotective bloke didn’t like the idea of her staying in the webcam house…

‘You’re from The Gingerbread House,’ I said softly. ‘That can’t be a coincidence. I mean, I know this is Hobart, but still…’

‘Believe me, I didn’t want him to get mixed up with all that,’ Pippa said angrily. ‘Jason’s dad was furious when Annabeth’s death connected our family to The Gingerbread House after I have worked so hard to keep my past hidden.’

‘Why was Ginger at the house today?’ I asked.

‘Another one who can’t leave the past behind,’ Pippa said bitterly. ‘She kept prodding me about Alice — like I was supposed to know where she was. I never even met the bloody woman. She replaced me as the token blonde in the house, and that’s the only connection between us.’

‘That and she was hooking up with your stepson on a regular basis,’ I said. The look of horror that crossed Pippa’s face was actually kind of funny. I’m a bad person. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ Pippa said, sounding stunned. ‘That can’t be right. Are you sure?’

‘No, actually,’ said Xanthippe. ‘Seriously, Tish. People may tell you all their secrets, but I make the better private detective.’

‘Oh really?’ I shot back. ‘Jason told me himself that they had a thing together.’

‘Yeah, but he was lying,’ said Ceege, piping up from behind the wheel.

‘What? No he wasn’t. He has a very honest face.’

‘I was there too, babe. He said he was texting the Alice chick all the time, and sending those postcards. You assumed they were all smoochy for each other,’ said Ceege. ‘He leaped on that idea of yours like a surfer on a six-pack. Doesn’t mean it was true. All he actually said was that she was easy to talk to, and he was into someone other than Annabeth.’

Did this mean everyone in the car had greater romantic insight than me? Including
Ceege
? The world was topsy turvy.

In my defence, I had been distracted lately. Just a bit.

20

BITTER LEMON GELATO

Ingredients:

1 cup of water

2/3 cup caster sugar (no, not nearly enough, that’s kind of the point)

1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (use squishy ones — barely ripe new lemons will break your heart, they take so much squeezing for such little result — you’ll probably need somewhere between 4-8 lemons depending on squishiness)

2/3 cup thickened cream (or for low fat option, 125g cream cheese, but why even do that to yourself?)

Instructions:

Place water, sugar and juice in small saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Chill in fridge — the colder the better.

Whisk/blend cream and lemon mixture (if cream cheese you will so need to use machinery of some kind).

Freeze-stir-freeze method, or throw in your handy ice cream maker.

Like revenge, best served cold.

I could see why Greg Avery had this property earmarked for holiday cottages or whatever. It was deep in a valley so green that it hurt the eyes, with a view overlooking two small lakes.

‘Am I the only one who finds lakes ominous now?’ I said aloud.

‘Nope,’ said Xanthippe as we drove up the dirt road to the falling-down shack. Three cars were parked haphazardly outside it — a shiny Mazda, the borrowed (and stolen) ute, and Xanthippe’s Spider. ‘It’s ominous for McTavish. He may not be leaving here alive.’

There was a crunch under the vehicle, and we bumped the last few metres to stop near the other parked cars. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Wow,’ said Ceege, opening the door to lean out. ‘Bloody hell. Medieval warfare!’

I got out gingerly, and only just avoided having my sandals pierced by some very nasty hardware. They were little four-pronged spikes of metal, nastily designed so that one spike was always sticking straight up. ‘Thank you, Burgers McCall,’ I said under my breath.

‘How did the other cars get past this?’ Pippa Avery asked.

I had a horrible thought, and checked the other cars. There was a reason they weren’t parked neatly. They all had ripped tyres.

Xanthippe let out a low cry and flew to check her precious Spider for other damage. There didn’t seem to be any bumps or scrapes, which was good, because I liked Stewart in one piece. Not for any particular reason or anything, just for the sake of humanity.

We could hear shouting from the far side of the shack. ‘Save him from this lot first, kill him later?’ I suggested.

‘That does seem wise,’ Xanthippe agreed, straightening up. ‘We won’t want witnesses.’

We came around to a crumbling patio at the back, made from bricks and old mortar. Greg Avery stood there yelling at the top of his voice at his son Jason. Stewart was hanging on to Shay French to stop him leaping in to defend his mate. Shay was scowling and furious.

‘Well,’ I said brightly. ‘Isn’t this nice?’

‘You must be wondering why I summoned you all here,’ Xanthippe added in an undertone.

‘Yes, yes, best private detective ever,’ I said tiredly. ‘Should we applaud before or after we fix everyone’s tyres?’