Limbo (19 page)

Joy nodded. Eve made perfect sense. But the fact remained — Joy had never felt a lot of
joy
. Apart from her music and skinny rocker guys with come-fuck-me voices, she’d always felt like she was just on some huge conveyer belt, going through the motions.

‘I’m not sure I even know what happiness is, Eve.’

She looked at the older woman who had known the absolute worst of human nature but could still smile and laugh and obviously believed in the mythical beast called happiness.

‘I’m not sure I ever knew.’

Eve smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s different for everyone.’

‘I suspect it’s easier for buxom blondes than short up-and-down brunettes.’

‘You shouldn’t sell yourself short, Joy Valentine,’ Eve murmured and looked at her again like she was assessing her for a position next door. ‘You ever want to earn some extra money, just ask.’

Joy gave her a don’t-shit-me look. ‘Okay.
Whatever.
’

‘No. Not
whatever
.’ Eve shook her head. ‘Give you some smoky eyes, a push-up bra and one of those clingy Asian dresses with the mandarin collars and you’d be a hit.’

Joy was temporarily stunned. For a start she wasn’t a dress kind of gal. Secondly, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do with a john. Thirdly, she freaking loved mandarin collars.

Eve was making it sound kind of tempting.

Thankfully the front door chose that moment to open and Dash entered. Joy, whose brain was about to explode, could have kissed him for his timing. ‘Hey,’ he said, looking from Eve to Joy. ‘Did I interrupt something?’

Eve turned to face Dash. ‘Not at all. Just telling Joy she had a job with me if she ever wanted to earn some extra cash.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That explains her rabbit-in-the-headlights look.’

Eve laughed. ‘Leave her alone. I think she’s coped very well. It’s not every day a brothel madam offers you a job.’

Joy laughed too, finally recovering from the shock of actually contemplating Eve’s suggestion. They should send Eve to the UN. She could be their secret peace weapon. She had some serious you-are-in-my-power juju going on.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll stick with the dead. They don’t offer to pay you for anything.’

‘Daddy!’

They all turned as Katie appeared from the direction of the lounge area and launched herself at her father, wrapping her arms tight around his middle, like she was afraid he was going to leave again.

He was dressed in his regulation jeans and t-shirt. Joy wondered if he actually had one for each day of the week. Maybe the name of each day was sewn into the waistband.

‘Hey baby.’ Joy watched as he let her cling and kissed the top of her head. ‘Whatcha been up to?’

Katie looked up at him but didn’t let go. ‘Joy and I put gravel in Ralph’s bowl and planted the weed, and tomorrow we’re buying a castle.’

He glanced at Joy and she shrugged. ‘Not a real one I hope?’

Katie smiled at her father. ‘No silly. For Ralph. Look,’ she said breaking her grip to tug on his hand, pulling him over to the bowl. ‘Aren’t they pretty, daddy?’

Joy watched him from the back as he said, ‘Yes. They’re very…pink.’

‘And blue. Some of them are blue,’ Katie pointed out. ‘Joy said I have to ask you if it’s okay if I go with her to the pet shop tomorrow.’

His body turned and a warm brown gaze flared over her like the beam of a flashlight. ‘Sure baby, that’s fine,’ he murmured, kissing her head again.

Katie hugged him again and Joy winced at the level of constriction. She may have only been small but she dished out a mean squeeze.

‘I’m going to ring Rebecca back,’ she announced. And as quickly as she’d appeared she was gone again.

Dash shoved his hands on his hips and looked down into the bowl. ‘You gave my fish pink rocks?’ he said as he turned to face her.

Joy shrugged. ‘I didn’t really look at the colour I just grabbed the nearest bag.’

‘It had to be
pink?’

‘There’s some blue as well.’

He looked into the bowl again. ‘Not really.’

Joy couldn’t believe she was having a conversation about pink rocks when the bigger question of what the hell he’d found out about the robberies was still unanswered.

‘You think it’s going to turn Ralph gay?’ she asked sweetly.

‘Given that he’s living his life out solo it’s kind of a moot question, don’t you think?’

‘You’re right, I think he needs a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend.’

‘With those rocks? I think he needs Fishtank Barbie in there.’

‘Is your masculinity threatened because your fish has pink rocks?’

Dash folded his arms. ‘He’s a
bloke
. He doesn’t
do
pink.’

Joy glanced at the bowl. ‘It works,’ she said. ‘It…blends.’

‘He’s
orange,
’ Dash said. ‘Since when have pink and
orange
gone together?’

‘Okay,’ Eve announced shaking her head at both of them. ‘As
fascinating
as this…conversation is, I’m going to go now.’

Dash looked away from the bowl. ‘Thanks,’ he said looking at Eve. ‘I appreciate the help.’

Eve smiled and Joy felt a pang of something not very pleasant as Dash smiled back. He didn’t smile at her like that. She got the feeling that most of the time he barely tolerated her and if it hadn’t been for Pete, he’d have probably kicked her out before she’d even managed to get to the end of her Hailey Richardson story.

‘Any time,’ she said. ‘See you later, Joy.’

‘Bye,’ Joy murmured as Eve sashayed out the front door.

She’d never met anyone who
sashayed
before but Eve did and it was utterly mesmerising. Enough to take both their minds off the sexuality of a neglected goldfish as they watched her leave.

Did she take lessons for that or was that just one of the advantages of being a curvy woman?

‘I would totally turn gay for her,’ Joy murmured as the door clicked shut. She hadn’t meant to say it but Eve inspired such awed confessions.

He chuckled. ‘As long as I can watch.’

Joy glared at him. Time to get this conversation back on track.

Do
not
think about Eve’s wild assertion that a five-foot-four pixie could make him happy. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship. And besides, she needed to figure out how to make herself happy first.

She folded her arms. ‘Where the hell have you been, Dash Dent?’

‘I was working. You know I do actually work on other cases, right? Cases that involve real, living, breathing people.’

‘And are your fingers missing. Or perhaps badly burned? Or suffering from a sudden case of leprosy?’

She stared pointedly at his perfectly normal, perfectly unharmed, perfectly functional fingers. Fingers that were not only capable of tapping out a text message or returning a phone call but also pretty damn deft when it came to finding just the right spot to make a woman cry out in delirious abandon.

Not that she was going to think about that either.

‘Is there some reason you couldn’t have returned any of my calls or texts?’

Dash shrugged. ‘I haven’t really got anything to report. Plus, I figured I’d be seeing you today anyway.’

‘Nothing?’ Joy plonked herself down in the chair opposite his at the desk. She’d been pinning her hopes on this new line of enquiry ever since he’d woken her about it at half past stupid hour. ‘What about your police contact?’

He reached for the coffee pot and poured himself a cup, holding it up towards her and raising an eyebrow. She shook her head.

‘Kimberly is off until Tuesday so we’re going to have to wait until she gets back.’

‘Don’t you have her number?’

‘No,’ he said, sitting at his desk.

‘Can’t you just…look it up in the White Pages?’

‘No. Cops don’t have their numbers in the White Pages where every ex-crim with an axe to grind can find them. They have silent numbers.’

Joy supposed that made a lot of sense. Except Dash had his printed on a freaking business card. ‘You don’t.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not a cop any longer.’

‘So, what, you stopped being a target?’

‘Mostly.’

Joy didn’t think that sounded very definitive but he clearly wasn’t concerned about it. And, as she’d told Eve, Dash was more than capable of looking after himself.

‘Did you discover anything useful online?’

‘A little about the particulars of the stick-up jobs from a bunch of different news outlets. Nothing very specific. Kimberly will have better info.’

‘So we just sit tight until then?’ The thought was depressing as hell. Martin had been charged with Hailey’s murder and remanded in custody and Isabella was still out there somewhere. Was she
really
okay? And didn’t it make her harder to find the longer it dragged on?

‘Yep.’

‘It feels wrong to not be
doing
anything,’ Joy said. ‘I feel like we should be more…frantic about it.’

‘I know,’ he said, leaning forward, his elbows on his desk. ‘But Hailey did say Isabella wasn’t in any danger, right? So we’ve got to trust in that and be patient.’

Joy chewed on her lip. It seemed like she’d been told to be patient her entire life and she was thoroughly sick of it.

‘Maybe we should go to the cops again? Tell them about the link between the robberies and Hailey?’

Dash put his mug down. ‘I will. As soon as I can establish it as a possibility I’ll take it to Baz.’

‘How likely are they to follow through?’

‘Depends on what we can establish. But for now, it’s just another piece in the puzzle.’

Joy snorted.
Fucking jigsaw puzzles
.

Joy glanced at the sign above the Good Shepherd as she passed early the next morning.

If God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it
.

She laughed out loud. She could totally see how Stan’s sense of humour got up some staid noses in a more formal church setting. Their loss, however, was the Basin’s gain and, if for no reason other than a chuckle every morning, Joy was pleased that Stan’s calling had been to her neck of the woods.

Joy drew level with the church. Another, much smaller sign erected on what looked like an old fence paling had been belted into the grass at the start of the path that led to the Chapel entrance.

Free Breakfast.

A line of bedraggled people, with hands shoved in their pockets and steam coming from their mouths, snaked along the path and up the stairs that lead into the church. Joy’s own breath misted into the cold air as she hunched into her hoodie and bypassed the line, bounding quickly up the stairs.

Relative warmth and the smell of bacon hit her as she entered the church. A table was set up in the alcove and Stan was behind it, dishing up food to the waiting line-up. Lance was standing at a barbecue a couple of meters behind his father, flipping bacon with one hand and manning a toaster with another.

‘Hey,’ Joy said as she made her way towards the mouth-watering aroma of cooked pig.

‘Joy!’ Stan greeted her enthusiastically. He was dressed in a
Justified
t-shirt today, his grey ponytail hanging loosely down his back, his huge don’t-fuck-with-me cross hanging low on his belly. ‘Have you come to repent your sins, child, and be cleansed in the holy water?’

Joy was startled at the question and the impressive evangelical delivery. Then Stan cracked up laughing at his own joke and Joy relaxed. ‘Had you worried there for a moment, didn’t I?’

‘Thought you guys might like a hand.’

‘Absolutely,’ he boomed. ‘I think Lance could do with some help at the toaster.’

Joy rounded the table and headed to Lance. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ he replied, concentrating on flipping some bacon before he looked up. ‘
Oh
. Hey.’ His tongs paused mid-air as he swept his floppy blonde fringe off his forehead. ‘You’re that chick from X Factor.’

Joy grimaced. She hadn’t even made it through to the damn show yet everyone seemed to recognise her. Time to dye her fringe again, clearly.

‘Joy,’ she said, holding out her hand.

‘Lance.’ He wiped his hand on his jeans before slipping it into hers. ‘You were
totally
robbed dude.’

Joy grimaced again as their hands fell away. ‘Thanks. So…you want me on toaster duty?’

‘Yes please.’

He gave Joy a quick demo of the industrial toaster and she got to work. ‘Isn’t cooking bacon in a church a little…’

‘Sacrilegious?’ Lance supplied.

Joy laughed. ‘Well I was going to say unconventional’

‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed this or not but dad
is
unconventional. And it’s not like we’re going to get grease stains on the ceiling, right?’

Joy looked up from slapping butter on the four slices of toast that had just slid from the bowels of the toaster. The majestic vaulted ceiling soared high above them, well away from the paltry reach of the smoke from a solitary barbecue.

‘I heard you playing here earlier in the week,’ she said. ‘Highway to Hell.’

Lance grinned. ‘I like to stir Dad a little. You should hear my rendition of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”. And “Spirit in the Sky” is another favourite.’

Joy laughed again. Clearly Lance had inherited his father’s sense of humour. ‘You’re good,’ she said.

‘Good acoustics can make anyone sound good,’ he dismissed as he flipped over the almost-cooked eggs.

Joy knew that acoustics could make a big difference but it couldn’t teach a person how to play guitar like that. ‘Where’d you learn to play?’

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ve just always had a guitar, always played. I pick up a lot of stuff by ear and my mum taught me some. She could play anything.’

‘Could?’

He looked back at the sizzling bacon. ‘She died six years ago. Cancer.’

Joy sensed ‘How old were you?’

‘Fifteen.’

Fifteen. As much as her mother drove her nutty from time to time and they weren’t as close as Joy knew some mothers and daughters were, she knew she’d be gutted when her mum eventually passed on. Her mother had taught her to read before she’d even started school and had always encouraged her to sing.

Maybe that had been purely selfish — how many funerals
had
she sung at, how many renditions of ‘Amazing Grace’? — but she would never forget her mother nodding and smiling in the front row at every performance Joy had ever given up until she’d left home to try her luck on the road.