The Detective's Secret (21 page)

Dale settled beside her on the sofa and popped a scone in his mouth. He was wearing a chef’s outfit: white shirt, chequered trousers. He had been happy to wear Clean Slate clothes when he cleaned yesterday. She hoped he wasn’t going to get her cooking and expect her to dress up.

‘Not as good as our mum’s, you’re thinking!’ He was calling Suzie ‘Mum’. His adoptive mum was dead. Dale had said he was sure that from above she approved.

Stella didn’t say that Suzie hadn’t baked after she left Terry. She moved the plate away from the edge of the table in case the dog was tempted to take one. With an explosion of crumbs, she tasted butter, fruit and cheese. It was, she had to admit, delicious. She took another and was contemplating a third when Suzie breezed in carrying a tray with three mugs of tea. Stella noticed how well her mother looked. Even without the expected suntan, Suzie glowed with health. She had put her hair up in a bun, which gave her an air of authority. Sydney – or maybe Dale – had transformed her.

‘Dale wants to open another restaurant. We’ve got a proposal.’ Suzie clapped her hands upwards as if releasing doves. Stella couldn’t help glancing at the ceiling.

‘No, he has
not
!’ Dale shook his head, a hand in front of his mouth to catch crumbs. ‘This is Mum’s idea. Sure, expansion is on the cards, but not until I’ve accumulated capital. I will
not
borrow.’

‘I’m not suggesting borrowing, or not like
that
,’ Suzie continued undaunted. ‘Not from a bank. Stell, if you sell Terry’s house, you could invest in Dale’s restaurant business.’ Her hand hovered over the plate, then quickly, as if stealing, she took a scone from the furthest side and appeared to swallow it without chewing.

‘What did I say this morning? Stella’s known me for five minutes. Days ago she didn’t know she had a brother. It’s “no go”, OK? I’m good as things are.’ Dale reached for another scone.

Stella felt the usual mix of annoyance and respect for Suzie. She never let the grass grow under her feet. Although once unwilling to venture further west than Richmond Park or, until relatively recently, from her armchair, her mum dreamt up expansion plans for Clean Slate and a job for herself and her dreams came true. Not this dream. Dale Heffernan was right, she hardly knew him. Besides, she rarely ate out, knew nothing about the catering industry or his cooking. A few scones wouldn’t have her putting the house on the market. Jack thought she was holding on to it for her dad, which was obviously nonsense since he was dead. She wasn’t ready to sell the house. It needed cleaning.

‘Show Stella your book.’ Suzie lit upon another scone and tossed it into her mouth like a seal receiving a fish. ‘You have a magic touch, Dale-kins,’ she mumbled into her hand, hunching her shoulders in delight. Stella had only ever seen Suzie like this with Jack.

Dale-kins
.

‘What book?’ Stella managed to ask. Recipes, she supposed. Suzie must know she wouldn’t be interested. Stella didn’t cook, she microwaved a variety of ready meals, among which shepherd’s pies predominated. She took another scone. Stanley was dozing, his chin on her boot. She kept still so as not to disturb him.

‘Stella’s a busy woman.’ Dale flapped a hand and flashed Stella what she had come to think of as one of his smiles.

‘No, I’d like to see it.’ Stella inhaled a cloud of crumbs and coughed. She slurped some tea and washed them down. The tea was hot. She had expected it to be tepid. Few people made it as she liked it. One of these was Jack. Again she found herself musing on how odd this was when he only drank hot milk.

‘Consider it, Stella, it’s a sound investment,’ Suzie hissed in a stage whisper when Dale was out of the room. He was sleeping in Stella’s bedroom. She had peeped in on her way down the passage. Apart from a sleek black suitcase, tucked under the desk, it looked no different. ‘Keep it in the family!’

‘
Enough.
’ Dale was back, a fancy-looking photograph album under his arm. Patterned with silver and gold flowers, it put Stella in mind of a memorial book. A black ribbon tied in a bow reinforced this impression. ‘The restaurant business is volatile, customers are fickle, food prices erratic. Barry left last month to work for a vineyard out in W. A. I put my sous-chef out front and a customer complained he had the eyes of a serial killer! Lost a lot of covers! I took out a loan so I could come back with Mum. If you get a kick out of pumping ten-dollar bills down a plughole, I’m your man!’

Suzie pulled faces at Stanley, still dozing at Stella’s feet, implying this was nonsense. Stella steeled herself; her mother on a mission was unstoppable.

‘Hey, if Clean Slate was up the road, I’d hire you! We need excellent cleaners, and you treat hygiene as top priority. Now
that
is a sound investment!’ Dale pushed the empty scone plate aside and laid the album down. It took up most of the table. Stella’s mind raced with excuses to get out of ploughing through Dale Heffernan’s family snaps.

Stella stared at a logo on the inside cover. ‘That’s the same as—’

‘Isn’t it remarkable!’ Suzie clapped her hands again, sending a spray of crumbs over the carpet Jack had cleaned. Stanley pounced on them and moments later they were gone. One good thing about a dog, Stella had noticed.

‘Sixty-Four’ was the street number of Dale’s first restaurant in Sydney and was apparently the year he was born. Set within an oval, the logo was made up of a six and a four back to front – like on a police car, Stella thought vaguely. Stella wasn’t great on design, what had got her attention was the colours. The light blue six was Pantone 277 and the four was a vivid green – Jack used to hate it – Pantone 375. Dale’s logo exactly matched the colours of Clean Slate’s branding.

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ Dale murmured.

For a fleeting moment Stella wondered if it wasn’t weird and he had deliberately chosen them. But then he said he had only just found out who his biological parents were. The logo was over thirty years old.

She was relieved that Dale didn’t fawn over each picture. Not of his family – it was a compendium of reviews and photos of his cafés and restaurants, from the catering service he had operated out of a clapped-out combi in the 1980s to ‘64’, now a restaurant frequented by celebrities and the wealthy in Rose Bay. Ignoring Suzie’s cries to linger, Dale whizzed past five-star reviews, profiles cut from newspapers and glossy magazines, and the sumptuous illustrations of ‘sensational’ dishes. Stella found she was interested and wished he would slow down, but she was due at Lulu Carr’s in half an hour.

‘So, that’s my “brilliant career”!’ Dale shut the book and returned to his corner of the sofa. Suzie put out a fluttering hand and brushed his arm.

‘It’s great.’ Dale had kept a record of every year of his business. It hadn’t occurred to Stella to chart Clean Slate’s history. There had been reviews in trade magazines, a few awards along the way; she cleaned for celebrities, but wouldn’t dream of naming them. Stella hadn’t considered her working life as a career – brilliant or otherwise – it was just a job.

Dale and Suzie went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. Listening to her mum’s laughter, Stella was sure that Jack suspected that Dale had come to London with the intention of worming his way into Suzie’s affections and claiming his share of the inheritance. Jack would never have actually come out and said this, but it wasn’t like him to turn down tea with her mum in Richmond Park. If this was Dale’s plan, he was on the way: Suzie was hooked. Yet he had been quick to slough off Suzie’s idea. Jack must be wrong. The man had asked sensible questions about Clean Slate, he was a sharp businessman. He didn’t want shareholders; like Stella he kept control of the reins. But what if it was an act? More than once Stella had paid the price for being fooled. Perhaps the album had been cobbled together for Suzie’s benefit – a soft sell. If it was, she had bought it.

Stella glanced at the kitchen hatch. Unusually it was closed. Dale must have shut it – Suzie liked it open. She pulled the album towards her. On the first page was an article from a newspaper called the
Sydney Morning Herald
about Dale opening a café on 8 August 1988 in a suburb of Sydney called Redfern. He had chosen that day, he was quoted,
‘…because the date, 8888, is auspicious. I hope it will bring me good luck.’
Just like Jack.

She had been operating Clean Slate from her bedroom that year, resisting Suzie’s demands to lease an office and ‘put a stake in the ground’. Stella felt the prickling of goose bumps. But for the Simon Le Bon hair, the twenty-something Dale, lounging against the door of the café, the proud owner, might be Terry. In the photograph of Terry outside her nana’s house, he had leant on the door in just the same pose.

Dale wore an apron with the legend ‘Dale’s Place’. Her dad had hated fancy restaurants as much as she did. He would have been unnerved by a son who cooked food with French names. Stella rubbed her face. Terry would have been astonished to discover he had a son. He wouldn’t have cared what he did.

People, probably friends rather than real punters, could be seen waving through the café window. Stella had had no official opening for Clean Slate. As she had later told Jackie, people don’t fuss about cleaners. Some even give the impression they do the job themselves and for those Stella used her plain white van. Dale’s Place had served hot food all day. Terry would have liked it there.

Her eye skimmed a shot of a young man and a woman below Dale’s picture. The woman looked vaguely familiar, but she had one of those finely boned faces to be found in every generation. Stella’s attention drifted to the article above the image.

F
EARS MOUNT FOR MISSING TEACHER

Five years to the day since English teacher Nathan Wilson vanished, police say they have no clue to his whereabouts. The forty-year-old bachelor, on a sabbatical from Menzies High in exclusive Vaucluse, set off last October on a three-month walking tour of New Zealand to ‘feed his soul’ and never…

‘You’ll stay for lunch.’ Suzie swept into the room, bearing a bundle of cutlery and a clutch of wine glasses.

‘It’s nearly eleven.’ Stella shut the album. She would be late for Lulu Carr.

‘Not now. It’s moules marinières with lemongrass. There’s fresh parsley!’ As if parsley was a rarity. ‘Dale’s making fresh crusty bread for it and at the same time he’s preparing sea bream with milk-braised leeks for tonight, with saffron and vanilla cream sauce.’ Suzie picked up the album and held it with the tips of her fingers.

Stella was on the verge of retorting that it must be usual for Dale to cook several meals at once, but Suzie had decided he was extraordinary, so no point. She was secretly impressed. She could be floored by the calculation of timings for microwaving two shepherd’s pies for her and Jack.

‘I’ve too much on.’ She wouldn’t mention the case. ‘Say goodbye to Dale.’

Suzie lifted the album. ‘We’ll do a copy for you.’

Stella snatched up Stanley and pecked Suzie on the cheek. She hesitated in the doorway. The smell from the kitchen was appetizing; she was hungry. Suzie was cradling Dale Heffernan’s life-story album as if it were a baby.

Friday, 25 October 2013

‘Mrs Frost?’

The fridge hummed; the boiler fired up. Silence. Checking the time out of habit – it was ten forty-five; he would stay no longer than an hour on this first visit – Jack glided along the passage on his rubber-soled shoes. He pushed at a door on his right with a finger, the way people do in public toilets to check if they’re free. It swung open. He bent down and looked around the door. People look for intruders at eye level, and don’t see a person crouching ready to pounce. He was the intruder. Jack didn’t want to frighten anyone, not even a True Host who made it their business to frighten others before they snuffed them out. Senses acute, he could pick up a shift in the air, a change in atmosphere. He called out again.

‘Yoo hoo? Mrs Frost? I’m a friend of William. He suggested I drop by.’

In the sitting room, a sofa, an armchair and a coffee table faced a fireplace inlaid with Delft tiles. Jack’s eye was drawn to a flat-screen television on the wall above the mantelpiece. Rick Frost had been in security, he would have rated gadgets and electronic equipment higher than a Rothko or Matisse. The Frosts obviously didn’t go in for fuss or sentimentality. Stella would like the streamlined look: nothing to collect dust.

Stella was all set to do a meticulous internet search into the deceased’s character, but they needed to know the stuff people kept to themselves. Interviews weren’t enough and anyway Stella had gone ahead and interviewed William Frost without him.

Jack must work undercover, which was appropriate, since Rick Frost had made his business from selling surveillance equipment. Stella would be pleased with the results. No need to say how he came by them.

On the mantelpiece was a silver framed photograph of a man and a woman. The man wasn’t Frost, Jack had seen him both dead and in a picture released for the press. The haircuts were 1980s, big shoulder pads, bouncy hair. They must be Tallulah Frost’s parents; she’d be unlikely to keep up a picture of her in-laws after her husband’s death. He thought them both faintly familiar, but as a train driver, he saw a lot of faces; it made everyone look like someone he had seen before.

Along from the picture was a silver Wee Willie Winkie candlestick holder with snuffer. A ball bearing lay in the base. Jack sent it rolling around the candle. His skin pricked with horror; he shouldn’t touch or move anything.
Leave no fingerprints, no trace.

In the kitchen he found the back-door key hanging by the back door. An odd breach of security for a surveillance expert. Jack opened the door and stepped out on to a gravelled patio of about three metres square. The gravel would warn of the enemy’s approach. A log bin under the wall provided escape: one hop and he would be over. A way out and a way in. Jack returned to the kitchen, locked the door and, hesitating, replaced the key. There was plaster dust on the top of the light-switch plate suggesting that the hook had been fixed recently, no doubt since Frost’s death. That explained it. Frost would have known how easy it was for an intruder to smash a pane in the door and reach in. Jack doubted that Rick Frost used to leave the front-door key under the mat. Perhaps, shattered by his death, his wife had grown careless. Generally, the bereaved were keen to keep up the deceased’s routines. Stella cleaned Terry’s house and maintained everything as it had been in his life. Tallulah Frost had transgressed, which made it easy for him. Jack was disappointed to have no tax on his skill or experience. It had been too easy – a bad sign.