Bleeding Hearts. Lindy Cameron
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look great, Tori," Kit smiled. "I, however, need a drink and a good lie down."
"Well don't just stand there, come in. But look out for the...uh, oh," Tori began. A clackety-clack and a skippety-clicker across the slate floor tiles, accompanied by a whirlwind of writhing furry excitement, interrupted her warning or, rather, finished her sentence for her.
A golden Labrador puppy tried to leap into Kit's arms, and a peculiar prancing thing trod all over her feet and then bolted out the door.
"Shit," Tori said. "Hang on to Bumble will you, while I retrieve that silly flying widget."
Kit squatted down and allowed herself to be trampled and Bumble-licked, while she watched her hostess pursue the scrawny-hairy, possibly-canine creature around the potted cumquat trees that bordered the huge patio.
Tori Bennett was honey-haired with blonde tips, blue-eyed with contacts, slim, attractive, fresh-faced and recently forty-four. Today her lippy matched her nail polish and her canvas shoes and, despite the dog chase, she looked a lot more relaxed than the last time Kit had seen her. That had been outside the court, just after her victory, when she'd kneed her 67-year-old ex-husband in the balls because he still didn't count bonking his 19-year-old bimbo secretary as an affair because they'd only ever done it at work.
"I think I know that dog," Kit admitted as Tori shooed the creature back inside.
"That is not a dog. It's an alien entity," Tori said, helping Kit to her feet. "It escaped from the mother ship and Miranda, thinking it was an earth species, took it home and taught it how to be ridiculous."
"I heard that," came a familiar voice from the first room off the hallway.
"Well, it's true," Tori called out, indicating with a nod that Kit should precede her into what turned out to be a sunbathed sun room.
The lanky body of Miranda Prentice, with whom Kit had a passing acquaintance because of their mutual friendship with Del, was stretched languidly along a four-seater white wicker couch. Her long brown hair was braided and draped down one shoulder and she was wearing sea-green linen trousers and a white silk T-shirt. One hand held a smoking cigarette and the other a daiquiri.
"Well this is a small world," Kit smiled. "But you weren't on my list for today."
"But she was on my list for today, and she was supposed to be here for lunch with RJ last week," Tori explained. "Would you like a daiquiri?"
"No thanks. I'll have a light beer if you've got any."
"Not because you're working, surely?" Miranda asked, as if it was a foreign concept.
"Yes and no, but mostly because I'm driving," Kit said, strolling over to take a look at the view of Port Phillip Bay from the sunroom's wrap-around windows. "So I gather you went to school with Rebecca too."
"Of course, O'Malley," Miranda stated, in a tone that made Kit feel like there was nothing more stupid than stating the obvious. Miranda Prentice always spoke like that: like a school teacher berating the smart but naughty child in front of the whole class. She never meant anything personal by it, according to Del, but it probably explained why Brigit couldn't stand the woman.
Kit ran a hand through her hair and sat down in one of the four matching wicker armchairs. "I just wasn't aware that you knew her, or Tori either for that matter."
"Well, before you ask, it's not me who's sending the notes," Miranda stated, swinging her long legs around and onto the floor so she could sit up properly.
"I wasn't going to ask," Kit shrugged. "Although, if you're not sending them you're not supposed to know about them." She cast a glance at Tori. "Does everyone coming today know about this?"
"No, of course not," Tori reassured her. "Just we two. You do know it was Miranda who put me onto you in the first place, Kit."
"And then Tori passed you on to Rebecca," Miranda smiled.
"Not to mention the Traders' Action Group in Fitzroy," Kit added. "And no, I didn't know that first referral came from you, Miranda. Thank you."
Miranda waved her cigarette around in a 'no big deal' kind of way. "Del told me you seemed to know what you're doing. And your success with Frank the Jerk, on Tori's behalf, certainly validated that opinion. Let's just hope you can help catch this letter-writing person as well." Miranda managed to make the word 'person' sound like the proper noun for a plague-infested swamp being.
"I'll drink to that," Kit stated, accepting her beer from Tori. "So of the six people having lunch today, three including Rebecca, know who I am. Have we given any thought to my cover?"
"Yes, we have. You're a friend of mine from Uni," Miranda said. "No one is expecting a ring-in today, so you can be a rocket scientist, a taxi driver with a Ph.D., or whatever you like. They don't know Del either, so we can use her as a point of reference should we have to bring up old times for any reason. But aren't there seven of us for lunch, Tor?"
"Eight, counting Kit," Tori said. "Us, Rebecca, Dee, Paula, Doodle and Carmel."
"Doodle?" Kit asked.
"Grace Markham," Miranda explained. "She runs a headhunting employment firm. You know, gets the best people for the top jobs with the most money for the highest commission."
"And the others?" Kit asked.
"Dee, ah Dierdre Clay is CEO of a private hospital in Kew; Paula Bracken's an accountant with a city firm; Carmel Fisher is a history teacher; Tori, thanks to you, is a lady of leisure; and I, as you know, am an art dealer of impeccable taste and gallery owner of some renown."
"And speaking of herself, she has a favour to ask," Tori added.
"Hey," Kit threw her hands up, "ask away. You've obviously been responsible for most of my work in the last two months."
Miranda sighed, dramatically. "I seem to have attracted an opportunistic thief to my Tuesday soirees at the gallery."
"An opportunistic thief?" Kit repeated.
"Yes. Some miscreant using the throng and bustle to cover his, or her, actions."
Miscreant? Kit thought. "What is he, or she, taking?" she asked.
"Wallets, mobile phones, cigarette cases, that sort of thing. He-she is picking them up off tables, and sometimes taking them straight out of pockets and bags."
"A pickpocket? Interesting," Kit said. "I gather you'd like me to look into it."
"Oh yes please. Would you, O'Malley?" Miranda enthused, as if that hadn't been what she was asking for. "Tonight would be great. My featured artist this evening is Frankie Diajo, a splendid young painter, and we're also having the Hojo Blues Quartet so we're expecting quite a crowd."
Kit's response was lost in the clackety-clack and skippety-clicker commotion that heralded the arrival of the silliest watchdogs in Melbourne who barreled into the room and then out again to let the humans know, in case they hadn't heard it, that the door bell had rung.
"Fred and Ginger," Miranda snapped. "Come here, immediately."
This time Tori chased the dogs back into the sunroom and shut them in before going to open the front door.
"Come on precious," Miranda cooed at the animal that bore no resemblance to any breed of anything.
"I thought this one was called Bumble," Kit said as the Lab squirmed onto her lap.
"It is," Miranda replied.
"So who's Fred? Or Ginger?"
"Not or. This is FredAndGinger," Miranda explained, stroking the description-defying-thing.
"Let me guess," Kit said. "He-she's a transgender dog."
"No," Miranda snorted with laughter. "It's because he can dance - forwards and backwards."
"And you really don't own a television, Katherine?" Carmel Fisher queried.
"I really