Heller's Girlfriend

by JD Nixon

Copyright JD Nixon 2012

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

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of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. All
characters and locations in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real locations, is
purely coincidental.

JD Nixon is an Australian author
and Australian English and spelling have been used in this
book.

Discover other titles by
JD
Nixon
at
Smashwords.com
:

Heller series

Heller
(free ebook!)

Heller’s Revenge

Heller’s Girlfriend

Heller’s Punishment

Heller’s Decision (due 2012)

Little Town series

Blood
Ties
(free ebook!)

Blood Sport

Blood Feud (due 2012)

Cover design by JD Nixon

~~~~~~ ###### ~~~~~~

Chapter 1

“Excuse me, pretty little lady,”
drawled a friendly southern-US accent in my ear.

I spun around, coming face to
face with Elvis.

“Good morning, Mr Presley,” I
said with casual cheerfulness, an easy smile ready on my lips. “I
don’t want to be a hard-headed woman, but can I see your ticket
please?”

He winked at me and handed it
over with a flourish, striking a pose while I checked it carefully.
I handed it back to him with another smile and waved him through.
“Well, that’s all right. Good luck today, Mr Presley sir, and I
hope you enjoy yourself.”

He flicked me a brief salute and
winked again. “I will, little lady, I will,” he promised,
sauntering through the doorway.

I watched after him from my
place in the foyer, noticing that his sequinned jumpsuit wasn’t
kind to his podgy butt. In fact, as I cast my eyes over the large
number of people milling around inside the cavernous room, I
decided that I’d never seen so much straining white polyester in my
life.

Of course it wasn’t the real
Elvis I’d just spoken to, but merely an impersonator, one of many
gathered in the convention centre for the city’s biennial Elvis
talent competition. Its $10,000 first prize attracted Elvis
wannabes from all around the country. I guess that kind of money
would keep you in sparkly jumpsuits and fried peanut butter and
banana sandwiches for quite a while.

“That was two for me,” I
boasted, shooting my colleague a smug look.

“Don’t be cruel, Tilly,” he
smiled. Whoops – one for him.

“You’re just too much for me
sometimes, Ben.” One for me.

“I’m happy to be anyway you want
me.” Another for him.

It was like Elvis tennis.

I’d been assigned to the
security detail at the competition with a man I hadn’t met at work
before, but instantly liked. His name was Ben Nguyen and he was
tall and hugely muscled like most of my colleagues, with a shock of
black anime hair and an amiable smile. We both worked as security
officers for a small but growing business,
Heller’s Security
& Surveillance
, and presented as a matching pair in our
uniforms – black polo shirts with a gold
H
monogrammed on
the pockets, black cargo pants, black utility belts and black
boots. We were currently amusing ourselves while we worked by
seeing how many Elvis song titles we could incorporate into our
small talk during the morning.

Even though I was trained and
licensed as a security officer and crowd controller, I didn’t
normally work events. My duties were usually confined to one-off
special jobs that required a woman’s touch. But when I’d found out
that we had won the contract to provide security for the Elvis
competition, I’d bugged and begged my boss, Heller, to let me be on
the security team. For two reasons.

Firstly, my mother was a
huge
Elvis fan and I’d grown up listening to little else
during my important formative years. So I was quite fond of the man
myself, always associating his music with my happy and loving
childhood memories. I remember as a little girl colouring-in and
playing with my dolls and Lego while humming Elvis songs
contentedly to myself.

Secondly, I personally think
that there’s almost nothing funnier in the world than a bunch of
Elvis impersonators gathered together, all sparkling jumpsuits,
high-heeled boots and black quiffs. A group of Elvises (Elvii?)
made me laugh every time I saw one, and I couldn’t bear to miss the
opportunity to chuckle while I worked. And so far, they hadn’t let
me down.

There were Elvises in every
shape, size and skin colour present – large Elvises, thin Elvises,
tall Elvises, short Elvises, juvenile Elvises, elderly Elvises,
female Elvises. You name it and it was here at the convention
centre. I’d been struggling to keep a professionally straight face
all morning.

But despite this assorted
chocolate box of Elvis delights, most of the contestants had
predictably come decked in one of two of his career stages – the
hot Elvis from the 1950s or the Las Vegas Elvis from the 1970s.
Unfortunately, from what I could see, the over-stretched jumpsuits
far outnumbered the leather-clad hotties.

Ben confessed to me that he was
quite the Elvis fan himself and bragged about his encyclopaedic
knowledge of the man’s songs and movies. He had also begged to be
allowed on the security team. Heller, who was normally a hardarse
about everything, particularly business matters, had indulged the
both of us out of all the others who’d also asked him for the
opportunity. It amazed me how many secret Elvis fans
Heller’s
harboured.

Ben and I weren’t expecting any
trouble during the day, but muted excitement buzzed in the air and
sometimes excited people can be unpredictable.

He took a ticket from a female
Elvis, checking it before handing it back. “Off through the door
with you, ma’am. It’s now or never. Could be your big chance
today.” He glanced over her head at me with self-satisfaction.

A young Elvis, thirteen perhaps,
handed me his ticket. “Now sir, you’ll think we have suspicious
minds, but I have to check your ticket.” I pulled a theatrical
double-take. “Oh, my God! Are those blue suede shoes that you’re
wearing?”

“No,” replied the kid, peering
down at his feet in confusion. “They’re my black school shoes.”

“My mistake. Off you go. Through
the door please.”

“That wasn’t very subtle, you
know,” Ben chided when we struck a lull. “I don’t think you can
count that one. Non-sequiturs don’t count.”

I mock-pouted. “You don’t want
to be a hound dog about the rules, do you? I just forgot to
remember to forget them, that’s all.”

“Tilly! Now you’re just
cheating.”

“Ben,” I reproached. “I’m all
shook up to hear those accusations from you. It really sounds as if
you’re in a moody blue today.”

“Tilly –” he complained,
smiling.

“Ben, now and then there’s a
fool such as I, but I can’t help falling in love with you. You’re
my good luck charm. I really want you to let me be your teddy bear,
and I wonder to myself if you’re lonesome tonight. I’m stuck on you
and you know I don’t have a wooden heart. If I can dream about our
wedding, I’d want you to love me tender one night, because I think
you’re a big hunk of burning love. I hope you don’t leave me crying
in the chapel, because I sure don’t want to end up in the
heartbreak hotel.”

He gave me a slow clap of
appreciation. “Oh, Tilly Chalmers, the wonder of you! If you keep
talking like that to me I’m going to ask you to wear my ring around
your neck.”

I giggled. “Maybe we should have
a little less conversation and a bit more ticket checking?”

He shook his head, smiling to
himself. “Tilly.”

“Don’t cry, Daddy. Don’t,” I
consoled. “Things are always worse in the ghetto.”

He laughed, his hands up in
defeat. “Okay. You win!”

“So you surrender?”

“Enough, Tilly! You’re the devil
in disguise.”

I grinned at him and we slapped
hands. Elvis had been burned into my subconscious; Ben had little
chance of competing against me.

A surge of Elvises came through
the door then, and we were far too busy checking tickets to banter
for quite a while. Finally, it was time for the competition to
start and we closed the doors to the room behind us, shifting to
crowd control duty. One of the competition staff took over the
ticket checking job, but contestants and audience members would
only be allowed in between acts from now on.

It was planned chaos inside the
room. The organisers made sure that only the ‘serious’ Elvis
aficionados attended by charging a nominal entry fee, a portion of
which was donated to the city’s children’s hospital. They didn’t
want people sullying the competition with stupidity, like the man a
few years ago who’d made the TV news dressed as a mutant version of
Big Bird. He’d worn a slicked-back black wig and a
sequinned-studded white jumpsuit over his bird costume that left
everyone wondering how he’d ever managed to squeeze all his
feathers into it. He’d performed the Chicken Dance, but in an
indescribably Elvis way, with lots of pelvis thrusting, all the
while loudly clucking in tune to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. He’d been a
huge hit with the audience, but not with the organisers who were a
little over-zealous in their Elvis worship. They’d instructed
security to strong-arm Big Bird Elvis out of the venue in haste and
the following year they’d introduced the entry fee to discourage
the time-wasters.

Ben and I stood at the back of
the room, either side of the door, casting our eyes over the
audience. One by one, an astonishing array of Elvises strutted
their stuff on stage, hoping to impress the judges – an allegedly
world-renowned Elvis impersonator; a local Z-grade celebrity
judging for free as part of her community service for a
drink-driving offence; and a business-suited gray official from
some boring government department that issued licences allowing
entertainers to busk in the city’s CBD mall.

“
Geez!
” muttered Ben one
moment when we were standing near each other again. We’d just
watched a very doddery, elderly Elvis almost crack his hips trying
to swivel them with enthusiastic, but imprudent, vigour while
wheezing out ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. He’d had to be helped down the
stage stairs afterwards by the organisers. “The way some of these
acts are delivered, they ought to be marked return to sender.”

I giggled. “You’re not wrong.
Did you see the Elvis ventriloquist with the Elvis dummy? I could
see
his
lips moving, but the dummy’s didn’t!”

“Truly tragic,” agreed Ben,
shaking his head in disbelief as he moved over to the other side of
the room again.

A few diamonds shone amongst the
lumps of coal, but overall it was a depressingly dreary display of
the city’s latent Elvis talent. I could only hope that the next
day’s bunch showed greater Elvine aptitude than this sorry lot.

By delaying the announcement of
the finalists, the organisers forced all of the contestants to
stick around until the end of the day for publicity shots. I’d
brought along my digital camera in the hopes of capturing some of
the madness, so in my sweetest voice, asked one of the organisers
to take a few shots of Ben and me surrounded by the Elvis troupe.
Those photos would keep me giggling for years afterwards.