Blood Guilt. Lindy Cameron
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except that you guys were covering my tail.'
'God forbid that anything should happen to your cute little tail.'
'Ooh Nick. I bet you say that to all the boys.'
'Too right. Speaking of which, you may have a cheque waiting but I can hear a cocktail shaker being warmed up at my place. What's that noise?'
'What noise?' said Kit feigning deafness.
'Sounds like a blowfly in a bottle,'
'Oh, you mean that strangled blirp blirping. It's my mobile. I dropped it earlier and it went into hiding. It's Mum's ringtone.' Kit bent down and fished under the car seat. 'Shut up you pretentious piece of plastic,' she said pressing the loudspeaker as she slipped it into it cradle on the dashboard.
'...so I thought I'd take Diedre there. What do you think?'
Kit shrigged at Nick, who whispered, 'I believe Mrs O'Malley has been at the sherry again.'
'Are you there Katherine?'
'Yes Mum. What do I think about what?'
'About taking Diedre to that lovely little place we went to that time.'
'Which place Mum? You really should wait till I've answered the phone before you start talking to me.'
'Yes of course darling. But do you think she'd like it?'
'I don't know which place you're talking about.'
'Yes you do. You took me there. Or maybe it was your brother.'
Kit took the phone from her ear and glared at it as if it was responsible for her mother's mental leapfrogging.
'Mum, Michael has never taken you anywhere. He never has any money. He's starving in a garret, remember.' Kit shrugged her shoulders and leaned over to give Nick a kiss goodbye before climbing into her car. She switched the phone onto the speaker before starting the engine and pulling out.
'Well, there you are then. I knew it was you,' her mother was saying.
'Okay it was me. Where did we go?'
'That little Japanese place in Chapel Street of course. Why are you asking me Katherine? You took me there for lunch with Constance that day.'
'Mum, I think maybe Constance took you there for lunch.'
'Good heavens, so she did. You weren't there at all. It was Evelyn. Now how did I confuse you with Evelyn? You don't look anything like her.'
'I should hope not. Evelyn's a good quarter of a century older than me,' Kit said, taking off again as the lights turned green. 'By the way who's Diedre?'
'You know Diedre, darling.'
'Oh, OK, if you say so Mum,' she said shaking her head and making a left turn to run the gamut of Toorak Road traffic which tended to ignore all vehicles with a price tag below fifty grand.
Kit and her car were in dangerous territory now. This was where the locals, rather than walk around the corner from their fully serviced apartments to grab a fashionable sushi, spent 15 minutes getting sports cars out of maximum security garages just to give their personalised number plates an airing. The Range Rovers that cruised this street wouldn't be seen dead in the bush, the Stags were all driven by gallery owners, hair dressers and groupies, and the Mercedes always came in his and hers colour-coordinated pairs. Pedestrians were fair game in Toorak Road, no matter where they bought their clothes.
Two cars in front of her, a Volvo made an unsignalled U-turn while its driver adjusted his passenger's breasts, confirming the joke, the truth of which Kit had never doubted, that the only difference between a porcupine and a Volvo was that the porcupine had its pricks on the outside. Kit slammed on her brakes to avoid running into the back of a car that had obviously never ventured this far from the suburbs before. The driver of the maroon Torana festooned with bumper stickers boasting the sexual prowess of plumbers, was demonstrating a perfect example of completely wasted effort in this part of the world - hurling abuse at a Volvo driver from this part of the world.
'Mum, I've got to go now. I'm about to do battle with the porcupines,' Kit said.
Despite the weather, things here were as busy as usual for a Thursday night. The shops were open, spilling light and customers onto the footpath and sending subliminal messages out to Visa cards everywhere. Yuppies, dinks, professional groovers - whatever they were being called this season - were milling outside the right places to be seen, casually greeting or ignoring each other depending on whatever it depends on.
Kit figured most of them never actually got inside these nightclubs and cafes, but had to be seen to be trying, and those who did came straight out again with their boutique beer or iced orgasm because it was too hard to tell at such close quarters if they really wanted to stand so close to the person whose pelvis was thrust up against their backside.
Kit finally managed to find a car park three blocks from the restaurant owned by Enrico Conte. All she had to do was inform her client that she had tracked down his ex-partner and found him to be living quite well in Apollo Bay on the proceeds of the cappuccino machine, juke box, microwave and 30 tables he had stolen from Enrico, not to mention the two months' restaurant takings he had neglected to bank before disappearing with Enrico's second wife. Kit figured it would take about one cappuccino, from Enrico's new machine, to close the case.
She should have known that nothing is ever as easy as it should be. Enrico demanded to hear every single detail of the case three times over. He wanted to know what to do next about his ex-partner and, most of all, he needed Kit's womanly advice on how to get his wife back. Kit didn't have the faintest idea about the latter but as Enrico kept her prisoner with the best gnocchi in town she could hardly refuse his plea for a friendly ear. By the time she got home, however, it was after 3 a.m.
So, barely six hours later, she was driving down Toorak Road again, feeling decidedly grumpy from lack of sleep and suffering a slight case of deja vu. The harsh light of day had little affect on the air of pretentiousness that ran the length of this road. All the nightclubbers were sensibly home in bed but now their mothers were out in force, armed only with their credit cards and a readiness to display their best 'do I know you?' expression.
As she swung her car left off Toorak Road and down a couple of blocks she made a solemn vow never, ever again, to make any appointments before noon. Her prospective client's suggestion that they discuss the case over a late breakfast had seemed generous at the time. But 9 a.m. was not late. It was, in fact, without doubt, the most uncivilised time of the day to be out and about, no matter what the reason.
Kit was not at all in the mood necessary for trying to impress a new and wealthy client. As last night's storm had failed to eventuate, the weather was still muggy and the temperature was already in the high twenties. The inside of Kit's car, even with all the windows down, felt like a sauna. She could almost see the heat rising off the dashboard and the smell of overheated plastic was getting right up her nose.
'Oh God, I hate mornings!' she growled, as she tugged irritably at the skirt of her suit, knowing it would do little to prevent the hard-edged creases forming at every point where her sweating thighs and back were touching the car seat. So much for power dressing. So much for getting up early enough to drag the iron out from its hiding place at the bottom of the basket of clothes she never wore because they never got pressed.
She made a right turn into the very heart of old money territory - overstated mansions, tennis courts, electronically operated wrought iron gates with rampant lions on the bluestone posts, a Rolls and a Range Rover run-about in every sweeping drive - and then a final turn into McGill Crescent, typically tree-lined and quiet with high walls that no doubt hid more than a secret or two. The tally-ho set were alive and well in this neck of the woods spending their weekends riding innocent foxes to death and their weekdays working out ways to spend the extra money they'd made from the money they'd made the week before.
This was Kit's first call on Celia Robinson and her eclectic collection