Sharp Turn (22 page)

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you’re still finding your feet. Things will change for you, and that’ll include who you want to spend time with. So I’m just giving you time to work that out before . . .’

‘Before?’

Before I get my feelings trampled all over. Before I get deserted again. Before you run off with someone. ‘Before we get into anything.’

He stared out the front window considering what I’d said, and I got a chance to admire his flawless profile.

‘Tara?’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Why would someone be watching us with binoculars?’

My breath caught. ‘Where?’

‘Over by the hedge in the next block of apartments. Leaning against the mailbox. You can just see a lens reflection.’

It took me a few seconds to locate the watcher.

I slid the keys out of the ignition and dropped them into Ed’s hand. ‘Stay with the car so it doesn’t get stolen. Please.’

‘Tara, you can’t –’

I didn’t hear any more because I was out of the car and running flat out towards the hedge. It took my stalker a few moments to realise I was onto him. I launched myself and managed to latch onto an arm before he could escape.

I held on doggedly, digging my nails in, but strong fingers ripped my grip away and I fell face-first into the hedge. By the time I’d got to my feet and staggered around the letterbox, my stalker had vanished.

Then a hand gripped my shoulder.

Without thinking, I used Hoshi’s
break-hold
to rid myself of the hand and swung around, letting go the same roundhouse punch that I’d taught Smitty’s son Joe. The person behind me went down with stunning effect.

Trouble was, it was Ed.

‘Oh, fuck!’ I fell to my knees alongside him.

He was clutching at his nose while blood streamed out of his left nostril, and coughing horribly.

I held up two fingers. ‘How many?’

He pushed me back. ‘I’m al-wight.’

‘Ed, I’m –’

‘Save it. I’m gow-ing.’

‘Let me –’

He held out a hand, signalling me to shut up, and tossed me my car keys. Then, hand pressed over his nose, he got to his feet and headed towards the stairs up to his apartment block. The lobby door banged with meaning.

I hastened back to Mona. The rear-view mirror told me that I looked nearly as bad as Ed: fresh bloody scratches from the hedge to add to the cactus scars on my face, and my hair sticking out. Lifting my top, I spied a large graze just above my belly button.

I drove home feeling miserable in so many ways. My phone rang as I pulled up outside Lilac Street. It was Wal.

‘Yo, boss,’ he said.

‘Yeah, Wal?’ I didn’t feel much like talking to anyone.

‘Ignatius got another threat.’

‘When?’ I asked, immediately alert. ‘How?’

‘Text again. Another picture.’

‘Can you send it to me?’

‘Yeah.’

I waited for it to come through. It was even more graphic than the last one: a man naked and caught in a vice with a knife resting on his back.

Cass was right. Something about the image seemed like porn.

I had a think and rang Wal back. ‘Does Bolo have a laptop or PC there?’

‘In his study.’

‘Think you can get a look at it without him knowing?’

‘Maybe later tonight. When he’s asleep.’

‘Good. Check his browser cache for the last few days. I want to know what he’s been looking at.’

‘Got it.’

I didn’t tell Wal about the stalker. He’d be conflicted about who he should protect, and right now I wanted him with Bolo.

After a good look in the rear-vision mirror and several glances up and down the road, I got out of the car. As I walked past the birds, they screeched loudly and jumped around in their cage, trying to attract my attention. I felt guilty that I’d barely given them any time lately.

I offloaded my bag and had a quick shower to clean up my face. I had to go to Hoshi’s nightclub job tonight and I didn’t want to scare his client.

By the time I got back outside to the birds, I felt a little calmer. I opened the cage door and Hoo jumped straight out onto the ground, as indignant as could be. JoBob mustn’t have been around much either. He strutted up the driveway onto the grass and began happily beaking for goodies. Only about a half-hour of light was left, so I changed their water and filled their feed container. That meant scooping into a tub of bird pellets and topping it up with bird mix. They didn’t like the pellets (the bit that was good for them) but they’d kill each other for sunflower seeds. Really, they were so human!

Brains tried to bite me as I put the filled seed container back in the cage.

‘Bad bird!’ I said, withdrawing my hand.

We engaged in a strategy-and-dare game where I pretended to put the food at the other end of the cage and she chased me there. I then had to quickly move back to the original position and slot the container in before she –

‘Owwww!’ I screeched, losing another round.

I left her happily crunching and went to check on Hoo, who’d found his way along the pool gate to the window ledge above my kitchenette. Cage birds tended to become astounding climbers. My phone rang as I was squeezing along between the pool fence and the side of my flat to retrieve him.

‘’Lo?’

‘It’s me. What are you doing?’

‘Hey, Bok. Wrestling creeper.’

‘Say what?’

‘Never mind. Are we cool about Jenny?’

He didn’t hesitate. ‘Yeah, we’re cool.’

I believed him. He’d tell me straight out if it was a problem. ‘That’s good.’

‘You sound upset,’ he said.

I told him about the guy following me and how I’d punched Ed in the nose.

‘You have to tell the police this time,’ he said sternly.

‘Don’t be so dramatic.’

‘Don’t be such an idiot.’

No one told it to me like Bok. I squeezed along the last bit of the narrow space to the window and reached up to get Hoo. He was chewing on a roughed-up section of the wooden frame.

‘Tara? You still there?’

‘I’m just getting one of the birds – oh, shit!’

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘I’ll call you back.’

I shoved my phone into my pocket and set Hoo on my shoulder. He began happily tearing at the vine behind me while I ran my finger along the window ledge. There were gouge marks there, fresh from the look of the wood. Someone had been trying to force entry. I tested the window. It didn’t shift, but that didn’t stop a cold hand rattling my spine.

I took Hoo back and gave him and Brains an almond each from the treats tin and closed the cage.

I wondered if I should ring Fiona Bligh. Maybe Bok was right. This was getting beyond anything I could deal with.

Chapter 21

I
WENT INTO THE
flat and locked the door. There was a note from Cass stuck to the kettle, saying she’d gone out with Joanna.

I found the length of dowelling that Dad had wanted me to use as an extra security measure and slotted it into the window tracks. Then I drew the kitchen curtains for the first time since I’d moved in.

Stress made me hungry so I grabbed some slices of bread and cranked up my laptop. I had some serious thinking to do and a decision to make before I headed out for Hoshi’s nightclub job.

As Google opened on the screen, Bok called back.

‘And?’ he said.

‘And what?’

‘Oh, how nice . . . you’re still alive,’ he said in an exasperated tone.

I’d clean forgotten that I’d hung up on him. ‘Sorry. Look, I’ve just found that someone’s tried to force the window open on my flat. The one with the vine all over it. Hoo was up on the ledge chewing the wood and I saw the marks.’

‘Oh.’ He dropped the sarcastic tone immediately. ‘You want some company?’

‘Yes, please. I’ve got a job to do at the Gallery in Northbridge tonight. Don’t fancy going up there by myself right now.’

‘What time shall I pick you up?’

‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Ten would be good. We can talk about it all then. I’ve got some things to do right now.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

Ten o’clock left me a good few hours to do some mulling. I opened my Ignatius job file and jotted down some more notes.

To my thinking, Team Riley led the race on suspects. The conflicts between them and Moto-Sane were hard to ignore. Bolo clearly couldn’t tolerate Robert Riley (and I didn’t blame him), but then there was the argument between the mechanics, Clem and Dave (not to mention the problem that Sally, Lu Red’s girlfriend, was causing within the Moto-Sane team).

I searched the Motorcycling WA site and went back over the results for the season so far. According to their stats, Lu Red had won the first two races by a large margin. Race three had been a Did Not Race for him, and since then each race had been much closer. The DNR had been in August. That date rang a faint bell for me, so I jotted it down in my file, wondering why his lap time had dropped off so markedly after it.

I moved on to Team Chesley. An hour later, I hadn’t come up with anything much about Shakes, Hardwick or Frank Farina, besides an unverified article that Shakes had unsuccessfully tried to buy Hardwick out at one stage.

Frank Farina looked clean of any dirt other than a few groupie message boards where girls boasted of sleeping with him. Farina was a player, no doubt, but no worse than any other rider from what I could see. Even if Team Chesley had internal problems, I somehow doubted it would be motivation for them to sabotage Bolo. Shakes’ odd reaction about his partner had to be about something else.

I got out of bed and put on my slippers. Time to beard the dragon in her lair.

Dad was washing up with Cass, while Joanna was sitting at the table with a glass of wine, sorting a bag full of buttons into piles.

‘Evening all,’ I said, staring at her progress.

She saw my expression. ‘There’s a button expo at the showgrounds on Sunday. I’m donating my collection for fundraising.’

‘Oh.’ What else was there to say?

‘There’s some lemon chicken in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.’

I licked my lips and helped myself, reheating it with some leftover rice.

Dad was explaining the intricacies of golf to Cass, so I seated myself next to Joanna.

‘Mum, you know George Shakes, don’t you?’

She raised her head. ‘Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie. Lord, yes. I went to school with him. He used to eat too much even then.’

I smiled. It was such a Joanna comment. ‘I believe he went into partnership with his brother-in-law.’

‘Frosty, the old sourpuss. Yes, that’s right. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s . . . err . . . a job I’m working on looking into some unexplained incidents at Wanneroo Raceway.’

‘Wanneroo. That’s where all that greenhouse-unfriendly car racing goes on?’

OMG. Joanna had discovered global warming. ‘And motorbike racing,’ I said.

‘Well, I don’t know anything about that, but I do know that Frosty has just left his wife of thirty-five years for a man.’

‘The wife being George’s sister?’

‘Indeed. Poor Sonia. They have five children. It’s a scandal of epic proportions.’

I thought about suggesting that it was hardly a scandal, and that it was probably a good thing that Frosty had finally admitted his true sexuality – and then mentally slapped myself. This was my mother I was talking to. Champion of the Conservative.

Instead, I thanked her, told her the chicken was delicious and that I had some work to do.

As I walked out the door, I glanced back. Cass looked more at home there than I ever had. And it didn’t upset me at all. In fact, in a funny way I was kind of glad for her – and them. My parents needed to feel . . . needed.

Back in the flat, I added what I’d learnt to my notes. Shakes and Hardwick were definitely having their own problems, which had nothing to do with Bolo Ignatius. I felt happy to demote them to the bottom of the suspect list.

Over the next hour I did more background work on Team Bennett. Bennett’s Hardware was struggling to compete against Bunnings, and one motorcycling fan blog claimed the team was up for sale on the quiet. I found a year-old interview with Tony Bennett in which he talked about the family’s history in the West Australian motorcycle racing scene, and how much the team meant to him personally. Securing a berth in the Nationals would no doubt boost sponsorship and publicity but my instinct told me it was already too late. Bennett’s Hardware was going down.

I called Garth Wilmot. As an accountant and all-round know-it-all, he liked to keep abreast of who was on the up – and the down.

‘Tara? It’s Friday night.’

Garth and I had a kind of hate–tolerate relationship. Even though our romance had failed because we drove each other nuts, I knew he was good at all the things I was bad at, and he knew that I brought some much needed unpredictability into his stuffy life. We stayed in contact because he was my accountant, and occasionally we compensated for each other’s shortcomings.