Limbo (17 page)

Joy nodded. ‘Okay.’

And she launched into the facts again.

***

It finally came to him at three minutes past two that night as he was drifting off to sleep. He sat bolt upright in bed, his heart pounding as adrenaline surged through his system, and he was suddenly wide awake.

‘The balaclava.’

He threw the covers off, glancing over at Katie sleeping peacefully in her One Direction pyjamas. He reached for his t-shirt and track pants, pulling them on before grabbing his phone and tip-toeing down stairs.

He flicked the lights on and strode over to the board of death, dragging it into the middle of the room and swivelling it around. He’d turned it over to the other side so Katie couldn’t see its gruesome contents. His gaze zeroed in on the grainy image of the Night Owl, dialling Joy as he stared at it, his pulse swooshing through his ears like Niagara Falls.

‘Come on Joy, answer,’ he muttered as her phone rang and rang.

She picked up after more than a dozen rings. ‘You better be ringing to tell me you’ve found Isabella because surely whatever else it might be could just wait until a normal hour,’ she bitched in his ear.

Dash grinned, despite his galloping heart. ‘Nope. I’m afraid not.’

‘Jesus Christ Dash,’ she swore. ‘It’s like half past stupid hour. Not even vampires are up this late.’

‘Hailey definitely said balaclava?’

‘What?’

‘You said that she said she didn’t know where she was because they’d put a balaclava over her head, right?’

There was a long pause. He knew for a fact that she functioned
exceptionally
well at two in the morning so he had to believe she was just mentally checking to be sure.

‘Right.’

‘Balaclava. It was definitely a balaclava.’

‘That’s what she said, yes.’

Dash smiled then. A huge smile as he sat. He pushed a hand through his hair as his thrumming heart settled. ‘I think I know what happened that night. Well some of it anyway.’

‘Okay…’

‘Why would they have put a balaclava over her head? I mean, who has a balaclava just lying around, right? She didn’t say they blindfolded her, or put something else over her head, she specifically said balaclava. Where did the balaclava come from?’

‘I…don’t know…’

‘Who wears balaclavas in
Australia
except for maybe if you’re skiing? Certainly not in
Queensland
in
January
where it’s forty degrees in the shade.’

Another pause. ‘People who…rob banks?’

He nodded, his grin getting bigger. ‘Or liquor stores.’

More silence and then, ‘Oh. My. God. Do you think…?’

‘I do.’ He said. ‘I think that somehow Hailey got caught up in a robbery job. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But I reckon if we find the people who were knocking over those liquor stores I reckon we might be one step closer to finding Isabella.’

‘But…that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Why would they turn a robbery into an abduction? And it wasn’t even a robbery, was it? The liquor store wasn’t hit that night. Are you saying it was going to be but they found Isabella alone in the car and decided to…
steal her
instead and Hailey got caught up in that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know the answers to any of those questions but it feels right.’

‘So…what? Now we’ve got to solve some liquor-store stick-ups as well as find an abducted child?’

‘Right.’

‘Just like that.’

He chuckled. ‘They could already be solved for all I know. I need to look into it.’

‘How do you do that?’

‘I’ll poke around online and see what I can find out. Plus I have a contact in armed robbery who’ll be good for information.’

‘A contact, huh? Someone else who owes you a favour?’

‘Yes.’

‘You seem to know a lot of people who owe you favours considering you’re persona non grata these days.’

Dash shrugged. ‘Policing is collaborative, or it’s
supposed
to be anyway. Oftentimes crimes or criminals overlap and interlink. You’re on the force long enough, you meet enough people, you do a favour here and there, it gets remembered.’

‘So what did you do for this robbery bloke?’

‘It’s a woman actually, Kimberley.’

‘Oh I
bet
it is. Let me guess, you help her with her handcuff skills?’

Dash laughed. If she hadn’t sounded so grumpy-tired saying it he might have been insulted. ‘I took a bullet for her, actually.’

She didn’t say anything for long moments and Dash could almost hear her mental castigation.

‘Oh crap, sorry…that’s the scar on the back of your thigh.’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘We were executing a warrant at a residence where we suspected stolen goods were being stashed. I spotted a guy acting as a sentry at the side of the house just before he started shooting at Kimberley. I tackled her to the ground and copped a bullet.’

She sighed into his ear. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so snippy.’

Dash grinned. ‘No you shouldn’t.’

‘It’s two o’clock in the freaking morning, Dash.’

‘From what I remember you were just hitting your stride at two in the morning.’

He heard a strangled little gurgle on her end and suppressed another laugh. He shouldn’t have said it but he couldn’t help himself — she was so much fun to tease.

Her reply, when it came, was frosty. ‘Anything else I can help you with at two o’clock in the morning?’

‘Sure,’ he grinned. ‘What are you wearing?

‘I’m going now.’

‘It’s the Wonder Woman stuff isn’t it?’ That was slightly better for his sanity than her being in nothing at all.

‘You’ll never know,’ she said sweetly then hung up in his ear.

Dash chuckled as he pocketed his phone and went through into his office. He poured himself a mug of steaming hot coffee and powered up his computer.

***

Joy watched the clock the next day. It was ten past three. She knocked off at four and it couldn’t come soon enough. She’d texted Dash twice and not heard anything back and she was dying to know if he’d turned up anything regarding the robberies yet.

She hunched into her hoodie as she applied fine layers of foundation to old Mrs Riley’s face. The room was cool out of necessity, aided and abetted by a shitload of shiny metallic surfaces, but some days it felt like the inside of a fridge and Joy was pleased she’d invested in some long johns to wear under her clothes.

Nothing at all Wonder Woman about them. They were black and functional and very un-sexy. But they kept her bones warm at least.

She looked down into the lined face she was working on as Kenny Chesney warned her not to blink from the iPod dock in the corner. Apparently a hundred years goes by much faster than you think.

‘What’d you reckon, Edna?’ Joy murmured, sitting back to admire her handiwork. ‘Did you blink and miss it?’

Joy felt that at the age of eighty-nine, Mrs Riley was
theoretically
qualified to answer. Fortunately, though, she wasn’t forthcoming. One ghost crossing the divide to talk to her was more than enough.

Joy kept working, smoothing out the deeper wrinkles and evening up the skin tone. It was important not to make her client look like she was twenty-one again; instead she should look similar to the photo Joy had been provided by the family. She glanced at it as she worked — Edna in a smart navy dress in her late eighties, free from the liver disease that had tinged her skin yellow and ultimately killed her.

There was a pause between songs on the iPod and Joy heard the strains of singing coming from above her. The Neilson funeral. A seventy-six-year-old gentleman who had died from prostate cancer. Closed casket, but Joy had carefully combed his still full head of hair and dressed him in his Sunday suit.

Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound.

The notes of another Kenny song oozed around the cool room and Joy turned it up a bit louder. ‘Amazing Grace’ took her back to her childhood. How many times had she heard that song floating out from the chapel in her house?

A hymn of such sweetness and purity and joy given such a mournful spin. It always seemed kind of wrong to her.

When she died, she wanted the Rascal Flatts version of ‘Life Is A Highway’ belted out for the whole world to hear. She wanted to be sent on her way with full throttle lyrics and a throbbing beat.

Joy worked on Edna, finally declaring herself satisfied at ten minutes to four. She stood up to inspect the job, her gaze flicking from the picture to Edna then back again. Her skin colour and tone looked normal again, the hot rollers in her hair had restored it to its usual cheeky curl and with a light blush in her cheeks she looked very much like the lively woman in the picture.

In fact she looked pretty damn healthy for a dead person.

She just hoped the family and friends were happy with the end result. Open casket funerals were fraught with potential disaster. Grief, high emotions and nostalgia could warp people’s expectations and how their loved one looked was all important.

And
that
was on Joy.

Fucking nostalgia.

***

At five past four Joy was checking her phone as she walked out of the majestic Brentwood entrance and through the two massive columns that held up the portico. Brentwood had gone for a Grecian facade to their premises which seemed a bit like a pimple on a pumpkin, plonked as it was on the edge of a busy road on the outskirts of the central business district.

For the first couple of months Joy had cringed every time she’d approached work, or the Acropolis as she’d come to call it. But now it was just one of the many bizarre, fantastical things that littered Joy’s life and she didn’t even blink as it appeared in her line of vision each day.

She had even grown fond of it.

And at least no-one could complain that their dearly departed wasn’t being given an absolutely grand stay for the duration of their limbo.

She checked her messages. Nothing from Dash.

Damn it. What was he doing?

The number 26 bus approached and she hailed it. If Mohammed wouldn’t come to the mountain, then the mountain was going to Mohammed.

It was five before Joy was yanking open Dash’s front door. She remembered she had to stop at the pet shop first, which set her back a little. And he still wasn’t answering her texts or picking up her calls.

His empty office took some of the steam out of her sails.

Some.

‘Dash Dent,’ she called out, trying to look beyond his open doorway through to the apartment behind.

If only she
was
bloody psychic!

‘There’d better be a damn good reason why you’re ignoring my calls.’

‘Joy?’

Katie’s voice drifted towards her. ‘Katie?’ Of course, Dash had headed straight to school to pick her up yesterday after he’d dropped Joy home.

Dash’s daughter appeared in the doorway, her blonde hair in two neat ponytails with two sparkly hair clips either side, just above her ears, for decoration. It was a far cry from the haphazard arrangement the morning she’d first arrived at Dash’s apartment needing his help.

‘Hi,’ she said, looking unsure as to why Joy was yelling at an empty room. ‘Dad’s at the Purple Parrot.’

‘And…left you here by yourself?’ No wonder the poor kid looked worried.

Katie laughed then and Joy relaxed a little. ‘No, silly. Eve’s here.’

‘Oh.’ Joy vaguely recalled a conversation about that last time she was here.

‘Hey Joy.’

Eve appeared behind Katie looking all Marilyn Monroe in her hot pink cashmere sweater and her tailored pants and Joy felt like a freaking eunuch in comparison.

She was wearing long johns, for crying out loud.

The wool of Eve’s top was fluffy and Joy imagined that the entire male population of Brisbane would line up outside her brothel just to touch it.

Probably some of the females too.

‘Dash shouldn’t be too much longer.’ She smiled at Joy warmly as she entered the office. ‘Can I get you some of this disgusting percolated coffee that he insists on drinking?’

Joy nodded. Right now she needed something to distract her from putting her hands directly on Eve’s cashmere sweater and the impressive boobs that gave it such amazing shape.

Joy
understood
boobs. She got why men were fascinated with them.
She
was fascinated with them — probably because she was so lacking in that department. So many shapes and sizes.

And Eve’s…they seriously were works of art.

‘What’s in the bag?’ Katie asked as Eve played mother.

Joy frowned as she looked at the plastic shopping bag in her hand that she’d apparently forgotten all about. There was a cat, a bird, a puppy and two fish on the front. ‘Oh…yes. It’s gravel. For the bottom of Ralph’s bowl. For his weed.’

Eve raised an eyebrow as she handed the coffee over to Joy. ‘Ralph has weed?’ she asked innocently, her eyes smiling.

Joy laughed. ‘I bought him a bit of plastic greenery for his bowl the other day,’ she said pointing to the object in question, which someone had taped to the side of the bowl.

She narrowed her eyes at it.
Very funny, Dash
.

‘But it kept falling over so I thought I’d better get something to anchor it with.’

Eve nodded. ‘It’s about time that poor fish had something to look at.’

Joy held out the bag to Katie. ‘Shall we?’

Katie’s eyes lit up like Joy had just offered to take her to Disneyland. The kid needed to get out more. ‘Oh yes, please.’

Joy was conscious of Eve perched on the side of Dash’s desk watching her as she supervised Katie pouring in the gravel. ‘It’s pink,’ she exclaimed. ‘Like your hair. Oh and it has blue bits as well.’

Ralph flung himself at the furthest glass side, giving the gravel a wide berth. ‘Can I put the plant in?’ Katie asked.

‘Sure,’ Joy said, handing it to her.

As Katie’s hand entered the water Ralph seemed to go deathly still. Joy was pretty sure his gills had stopped moving. His eyes had certainly grown and he was quite goggly-eyed to start with. She started to worry he was having a heart attack and half expected him to expire on the spot and sink to the bottom. But as soon as Katie settled the fake plant and withdrew her hand his little fishy gills fanned open again, fibrillating madly.