Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (26 page)

Bishop would never have come with me to do this, not without interrogating me until I couldn’t see straight. Right now, therefore, he was not what I needed.

‘I still cannae get used tae Christmas in summer,’ said Stewart, raising his voice against the growl of the engine. ‘Feels wrong. We should be inside, feeling miserable and slagging off
EastEnders
with the thermostat pushed up as high as it can.’

‘I don’t think Jason killed anyone,’ I told him. ‘It’s been running around and around in my head.’

Stewart glanced across at me, and his voice had that careful pitying tone in it that Xanthippe had been trying out lately. It didn’t sound any better in a Scottish accent. ‘Tabitha. The lad confessed.’

‘I know. I don’t believe it. There’s something wrong, and I’m going to find out what it is.’

‘So we’re away tae Flynn?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said grimly. ‘To Flynn.’

Stewart sighed and pushed himself comfortably against the side of the car. ‘Wake me when we get there.’

Shay French came out of the back door of his parents’ house, and found Stewart and me leaning against his back fence. ‘What do you two want?’ he said warily.

‘Dropped in,’ I said.

‘On Christmas Eve? It’s kind of a bad time for our family, in case you haven’t guessed.’

‘Yer need a break, then,’ said Stewart lightly. ‘Get away from it all.’

‘What’s this about?’ Shay folded his arms defensively.

‘Tabitha has a theory,’ Stewart told him. I was glad he’d come along. Somehow all my ideas seem more sensible when endorsed by him.

‘I do,’ I said, nodding.

‘Going to make things better, is it?’ Shay glared at us both. ‘The Averys left town, went to a hotel or something. Someone threw a brick through their window.’

‘Was it you?’

‘No,’ he said, coughing on something that wasn’t quite a laugh. ‘Everyone reckons it was, though. People keep stopping me in the street — a couple of guys congratulated me, and rest of them want me to know how much they
understand
. They don’t understand anything. Anna’s gone, and Jase didn’t do anything to
her
, but no one seems to remember that part. It wasn’t his fault.’

‘Jason did admit to killing someone,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Shay growled. ‘Anna’s fucken murderer. Wish I had.’

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes about how teenage boys are ridiculous. ‘This is serious, Shay. He’s in a lot of trouble. He took his father’s gun — an unregistered one — and he shot someone.’

‘If we were in America they’d give him a fucken medal.’

‘Even if they agree it was self-defence, he wasn’t supposed to have that gun, let alone point it at anyone. You know he could get jail time.’

‘You came all the way out here to tell me Jase isn’t a good bloke?’ Shay said, furious with me now as well as the universe.

‘No! Something’s wrong about the story. Alice’s story. Jason’s. I don’t know why. But I want to figure it out.’

‘You’d better not be trying to prove that Jase hurt Anna,’ Shay said warily.

‘I’m not trying to prove anything. But I have a plan to figure out if we really do know everything about what happened that night.’

‘With a camera?’

I nodded grimly. ‘With a camera.’

‘You people are unbelievable.’

‘But no’ boring,’ Stewart said, grinning over at me. ‘Never boring.’

24

Sick of the usual New Year’s crap?

Fancy a night with a kick to it instead of a whimper?

Cassidy Crème invites you to join her at Noir

Nights, a new late night cinema club in Salamanca for

a special New Year’s Eve event — Le Cabaret Noir!

The theme is 1940s film, so dress to impress.

Featuring the gorgeous DJ CJ, the hot instrumental

vibes of Ljungberg, & the first screening of local film

Flynn by Night

plus a midnight performance by Catfang!

BE THERE OR BE NOBODY

New Year’s Eve is big in Hobart. I suppose it’s a big night everywhere, but what do I care about other places? The docks area turns into one enormous drunken party as the whole city hangs out for the fireworks, and the Taste of Tasmania. There’s a swanky affair out on the water, champagne and gourmet local cuisine. There’s wall to wall yobbos everywhere else. Much booze. So drunken.

We were crammed into Noir Nights, a new club on an upper floor of one of the sandstone terrace buildings in Salamanca. I could see straight away why the manager was a mate of Darrow’s — this place was so stylish it hurt the eyes. The decor was startling black and white, and the ceiling was plastered with a painted montage of images from old movies. I looked more closely. ‘Stewart, have you been cheating on me with other murals?’

His involvement in the film project was starting to make sense now.

‘Possibly I came back tae town a few weeks earlier than I said I did,’ he admitted, with a guilty expression on his face. I smacked him, without serious intent to harm.

Images from the Flynn shoot were projected up on the walls in dizzying fashion — stills of the various members of cast and crew in costume. Loud, boppy music crashed around us, telling everyone it was going to be an amazing night.

I secured a sparkly drink and circulated, looking for familiar faces. Of course, this was a club in Hobart, so I knew almost everyone. But I was particularly looking for — ah, there they were. The Gingerbread women, dressed to the nines.

Alice’s soft chestnut brown hair had to be her natural colour — it suited her in a way that the blonde never entirely did. She stood between Libby, who was tall and imposing as she stared around the room like it was offending her, and Melinda, who was curvy and nervous and looking like she might need to hurl her lunch out the nearest window at any moment.

They headed for the bar that was serving vodka-injected oranges, Irish coffees, Dutch lager and pink grapefruit soda. Yes, those were the only options. No one was complaining.

It’s amazing, the shit Darrow gets away with in the name of cool.

I kept my eyes on the door, because there was one thing I needed from Shay. The coconut sprinkle on the lamington.

Stewart passed behind me again on his way to help Darrow with the projector. ‘Ye get this look on yer face when yer plotting evil,’ he said in my ear, and I could feel his laughter against my neck. Was he doing that deliberately? It reminded me that I still had very non-platonic feelings about him, no matter how much I didn’t want the complication. ‘It’s a wee bit scary.’

‘Not evil,’ I protested. ‘All my deeds are virtuous.’ But Stewart had already moved on.

I glanced up at the door again. I had almost missed their entrance. Shay stood there, trying to appear relaxed and okay in a borrowed striped suit from the
Flynn by Night
shoot.

Jason slouched in beside him, defensive in jeans and a shirt that had seen better days, his whole body language screaming that he wasn’t going to make an effort no matter what.

At least in Hobart, fewer people knew who he was. They might have seen the newspaper articles, but they wouldn’t know him personally. If he kept his head down, no one would think of him as the teenager who was out on bail for shooting a bloke.

Well, not right this minute.

The music started thumping. Ljungberg, who was sharing DJ duties with Ceege tonight, was in command of the music. She had bare arms and big hair, and only spoke Swedish. She played some less depressing examples of Aussie indie music mixed up with more obscure European. In between the tracks, she cracked out an actual cello and played retro tunes of the Sinatra vintage.

There was space for dancing, there were big squishy couches to collapse on with your friends, and there were a couple of benches along one side of the room to aid the messy and uproariously funny business of eating vodka-injected oranges.

It was going to be a good night.

I wore a cut off white ball gown with pink Eiffel towers printed all over it, and a hem that trailed threads around my knees. I had found the perfect shoes to match: pink and strappy and not-quite Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face
, but good enough for me.

The hair was a disaster, far more Audrey Hepburn in
My Fair Lady
, but my battle with hair products had left a tangled mess to which the only solution was to stack it higher, and add glitter.

In this crowd, I wasn’t over-dressed.

I felt an odd prickle along my shoulder blades, that sense that someone was looking at me. I turned my head and met Bishop’s dark eyes as he stepped into the club. He wore a black shirt and jeans, very casual for him. He raised his eyebrows at me in a ‘Well?’ kind of way.

Hey, the gang’s all here.

As I smiled at him, so glad he had made it, the lights went out. There was an odd sort of embarrassed hush that always happens at moments like this — people don’t want to react too extremely in case this is part of the show, and they’ll look stupid.

After a good ten seconds of blackness, they were proved right. This was the show.

The projections started up again, bouncing off every wall, a flutter of black and white images. They were still at first, but then the moving film started against the back wall, looping scenes from the
Flynn By Night
shoot. They’d chosen the best stuff. A gangster and his moll having an argument. A couple of hoodlums threatening a shopkeeper. A femme fatale strutting past the camera. A dozen femmes fatales strutting past the camera. Heh, a lot of women got into the whole femme fatale thing, huh?

A guy and a dame exchanging a parcel in a dark alley, shot from a neck-breaking sky angle, and then snogging messily up against a wall. I stared at that one for a long moment before slipping away to do my job.

‘Mesdames and Monsieurs,’ came a deep, confident voice in a slightly unexpected accent. ‘May I present Le Cabaret Noir!’

A spotlight hit the bar, and a buxom figure in a sparkly figure-hugging cocktail dress slithered over the counter, stood up in eight inch heels and threw his arms out in greeting to us all.

Ceege hadn’t glammed it like this since his break up. I was glad to see that something was at least a teeny bit back to normal.

‘Kick it,’ said DJ CJ, and the music exploded around him, vibrating the crowd. Ceege made hushing motions, and Ljundberg brought the music volume down. ‘My friends, you are here to drink and dance and experience a masterpiece of modern noir cinema. Who said film noir was dead? Not us!’

There were some cheers from the crowd, which went to show how many film students Darrow had stacked the place with.

‘But my friends,’ Ceege said in a dramatic voice. ‘Noir is about more than criminals, the seedy underbelly, and black and white cinema. At its heart, noir is about murder. And murder can be found anywhere. Only recently, in a sleepy town here in Tasmania, there was a sinister double death. The police think they have the real story, that the culprit has paid the ultimate price. But they are wrong.’

It was too dark to see the expressions on the faces of the people who might actually be alarmed by what Ceege was saying. The audience loved it, crowing and cheering. The whole crowd was buzzed.

I had stationed myself near the exit. I couldn’t stop anyone leaving, but I would sure as hell be able to see the face of anyone who tried.

No idea where Bishop was. I had to trust he hadn’t turned around and walked right out of here when he saw that kiss up on the screen. I had faith in his protective streak outweighing everything else.

I’d thought of every detail about tonight except for the fact that I had a walk-on (snog-on) role in the movie.

‘That’s right, peaches,’ said Ceege. ‘We are here to solve a murder. Tonight, we are the detectives. Watch closely, for all the clues you need to solve the crime are right here, before your eyes.’

Light swirled around the club, flickering and dancing over faces, and then the film changed. Instead of showing clips from
Flynn By Night
, it showed a single track, a camera’s eye view of a person — a woman, by the shoes — walking down the path to the lake.

There was a hush over the room. Everyone knew the story by now. How could you not, when the murder and the details of the investigation were a constant topic in the newspapers, on the radio, in the blogosphere.

‘Alice,’ a voice cried out across the room, a tinny messagebank recording. ‘Is that you?’

There were maybe three seconds of silence before the film went back to wise-guys and crooked cops. The bare-armed Swede cranked the music higher, and the crowd got the idea that it was time to dance.

‘More clues to come, cherry pies,’ Ceege shrieked. ‘All will be revealed before midnight!’

The montage of shots was interspersed with new footage, of the girl by the lake, running, falling. The sound of heavy breath filled the air.

It was creepy enough for me to see the footage under these circumstances, and I knew for a fact that the feet in Annabeth’s shoes did not belong to her. They belonged to me.

Someone moved towards the door and I braced myself. An arm caught mine, and a deep voice growled in my ear. ‘I have one word for you, Tish. Entrapment.’

‘Me?’ I said, catching my breath. I was pretty sure I wasn’t in danger from Bishop, but I was still running on adrenalin and sparkly drinks. ‘It’s Darrow’s club. Darrow’s film. I’m an innocent bystander.’

‘Yeah,’ said Bishop gruffly. ‘Completely innocent.’

Stewart was kissing me again, on one of the walls of the club. Same kiss, different angle. Hell, how many of those cameras had been up there? Were the film students being given extra-curricular tuition in creepy stalkerness?

‘Method acting?’ I ventured, desperately embarrassed but not wanting to be distracted at this point. ‘Anyway, you’re not supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be…’

‘Ha,’ said Bishop, his gaze flicking towards the obvious image, then back to me. His body language had changed — his shoulders were tight and angry. ‘I don’t actually work for you, Tabitha Darling. In case you’d forgotten.’