Murder most fancy, p.26
Murder Most Fancy, page 26
‘Does she talk out loud when she’s thinking,’ James translated.
‘Nah,’ Esmerelda said. ‘Like your lips move but totally nothing comes out.’
Thank God.
‘So, you need someone to break into the coroner’s office with you?’ James asked, helping himself to a small bottle of sparkling water from the fridge.
My head turned towards Esmerelda like a predator eyeing an annoying animal lower on the food chain. ‘You said I didn’t talk out loud!’
‘Oh, like you totally don’t,’ she said, reassuring me, hands up defensively. ‘Not a word. Like your hands and mouth move, but no words.’
‘You told him?’
Esmerelda raked her eyes over James. ‘Well, he’s like obviously not a cop. And see, I’m still on parole. I can’t break into a state government facility. Once I’m off parole, I’ll totally break into government shit with you, but like, until then, you might want the young Irish Brad Pitt over here to do you a solid. He’s clearly shady. No offence, dude. Like in a good way. Respect a professional.’
‘None taken,’ he said, raising his eyebrows and unscrewing the cap from his—my—bottle of blood orange mineral water.
‘And we’re running out of clues,’ Esmerelda continued, pointing to the whiteboards. ‘Like I said, we might not want him, but we totally might need him.’
My issue was that I did want him. My greatest fear was that I would end up needing him too. Wanting was bad; wanting and needing would be a catastrophe.
‘We still have clues!’ I said, stalking up to a board. ‘The implants!’
‘Oh yeah,’ Esmerelda said, pulling out her phone. ‘While you were doing your thinking thing, Rachael White got back to us. She found out where the batch went. It was a small batch, custom. They all went to the same guy. Dr Lucas Carr. He’s a period-dontist?’ she read, a look of confusion crossing her face. ‘Why would an old dude need a period doctor? And how would that help with his teeth? And isn’t that a gyno?’
‘He wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. And it is peri-o-dontist,’ I clarified. ‘A periodontist is a special kind of dentist. Completely unrelated to gynaecology.’
‘That’s still fully hinky,’ she returned.
James nodded in agreement with Esmerelda. ‘Very suspect.’
‘Thank you, James,’ I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster, and then to Esmerelda, ‘It’s not hinky. It’s a lead. A good lead. See! We don’t need James.’
‘Oh sure, no offence taken, Heiress,’ James announced, arms wide. ‘I travel halfway round the world, fifteen hours straight, dead concerned, to make sure you’re safe and sound, offer you a wee hand, and I’m kicked to the kerb! Oh no, why would I be offended?’
I must have drunk too much wine while in my brain-musing coma. I felt bad. About James Smith. The enigma. The chameleon. The human equivalent of a Barbie doll: race car driver, astronaut, tennis pro, Marine Corps sergeant, computer programmer, yoga teacher, seal trainer. Just strip and redress for a new persona. He could be anything.
Actually … that might be quite helpful. Also on the redeeming side, no matter which skin he appeared in, the personality he presented, to me at least, stayed the same.
‘Are you really upset?’
He took stock of himself, performing an internal emotional assessment. ‘I was winding you up, but I might actually be a little offended. Huh.’ He seemed surprised. ‘Regardless, Ma and Pa would be most upset if you were hurt. Or arrested.’
Despite thinking Richard’s parents were dead for the entirety of our marriage (or perhaps because of it), I had developed a strange bond with them. And with an Irish bond came black-belt level guilt.
I rolled my eyes and huffed loudly.
‘What about the periodontist?’ I said, trying to get back on track.
‘Yeah, so, like the custom batch went to the … the fake tooth dentist dude.’
‘It’s a bit unusual for a homeless man to have dental implants, isn’t it?’ James asked. ‘They’re pricey.’
‘Yeah, totally.’
This was good news. The batch could have been comprised of hundreds of implants, thousands even. However, Max had had twenty-four implants, so the entire custom batch could well have just been for him.
‘Where is Dr Carr’s surgery located?’ I asked. ‘We could take a drive.’
‘Like, that’s a long drive,’ Esmerelda said. ‘He worked at Darwin Dental, in like, Darwin. And also,’ she said, referring to her phone again and reading, ‘he had “rooms in Broome”.’
That made sense. Broome was in Western Australia.
‘Darwin as in the Northern Territory Darwin?’ James enquired. ‘Isn’t that where the crocodiles live?’
‘They don’t let them wander around the town, James,’ I said with much more bravado than I felt. That said they did seem to let an awful lot of them wander into the Hermès factory, where they morphed into a rainbow of $30,000 Birkin bags. ‘But Darwin is a little too far to drive. How long is it by plane?’ We could arrive before sundown or leave first thing tomorrow morning. The chances were much greater that we would catch Lucas Carr at the larger surgery.
Esmerelda plugged the question into her phone. ‘Four and a half hours.’
Maybe not by sundown then. Wait …
‘Did you say worked? As in, he does not work there anymore?’
‘Totally.’
James squinted at Esmerelda. I sipped my wine and decided to let someone else have a dip in the quicksand.
‘So, he doesn’t work there anymore?’
‘No. Well, like kinda, but nah.’
Much clearer. I thought about it. Max was in his seventies or eighties. He might have had implants thirty years ago. Or ten years ago. I was going to go with thirty.
James persevered. ‘Esmerelda, is Dr Carr retired?’
‘Totally.’ She nodded.
‘Great. Good for him. Did he retire in the Northern Territory?’
‘Like when he like retired? Or like now?’ she asked, leaning on the island. ‘Because I don’t know where he’s been. I just know where he is now.’
‘Why would you say he kind of works there still?’ James asked before I had a chance to tell him it didn’t matter. We were on the cusp of finding out if the man was in Guatemala or Fiji or Bondi.
‘Oh, because the dude’s retired, but like he still does the occasional client. Like the old ones, the special ones, they said. He’s still the boss, but not like, in the place.’
‘So, he’s still in the Northern Territory?’
She tsked in annoyance. ‘Ah, no.’
James glanced at me for support. Amateur.
‘Where does Dr Carr live now?’ I asked.
‘Palm Beach.’
‘You have his home address?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay, let’s go,’ James said, suddenly on top of the conversation. He patted his pants, checking for keys.
I was so close to asking him how he knew where Palm Beach was when I realised Palm Beach was to Sydney what Malibu was to LA. And while Baywatch was only set in Malibu, a local beach soap opera with a revolving cast of ever younger and more beautiful actors was actually filmed at Palm Beach. It was also where the Sydney elite had enormous beach compounds, successful professionals like Dr Carr retired and where humblebragging local homeowners, for reasons unknown to me, all wore white shirts with navy blue stripes, drove Range Rovers and were obsessed with sourdough.
I doubted James knew about Palm Beach because of the bread.
If we could convince Max’s periodontist to give us his real name, a large slice of this mystery would slot into place and this whole mess would be a lot less complicated.
How much cooperation could we expect from a retired dental worker from the Top End where, truth be told, crocodiles did roam? And what kinds of lies would we have to tell him to get it?
It was not the worst idea to let James drive. It was unlikely that someone would have tampered with his brakes, and it saved Esmerelda and I from our usual skirmish over who drove what where.
James didn’t drive a Ferrari, or a Maserati, or a Porsche, or even a Mercedes. He drove a Volvo. Safety was clearly top-of-mind for him. The car was examined Bali-style at the gates: square mirrors mounted on selfie sticks were poked under the chassis, the boot was opened, the engine examined. Nothing except James’s black leather carry-on. It was probably the most exciting thing Shane and Carlo had done all day, apart from the dry-cleaning and the fruit. They nodded terse goodbyes as James, Esmerelda and I drove off the property.
We made good time to Palm Beach in the Volvo. I telepathically asked Esmerelda to add Volvo to the list of cars I might like, because despite having a deep-seated and unreasonable bias against them, I liked being driven in this car. It was a shame all Volvos did not come with a James Smith driver. I could guarantee a dramatic increase in sales.
I peered into the back seat to see if she had caught my unspoken request. Esmerelda, however, was asleep. It was the first time I had ever seen her sleep. This was an impressive feat given we had been virtually joined at the hip for months. There were moments where I’d felt sure she simply didn’t need sleep, like a vampire. But there she was, head wedged between the beige headrest and the door panel, her breath on the glass, mortal after all.
She must have been severely sleep deprived to pass out in the back of a Volvo driven by ‘shady’ James Smith, heading for Palm Beach (where a large percentage of the stripe-clad inhabitants were most certainly lawyers. Or judges. Or senior public servants). That alone should have alerted her to a disturbance in the Force and set her into Doberman mode.
It dawned on me, for perhaps the first time, that Esmerelda could be in danger. Real danger. Danger real enough that she was not sleeping.
I resolved to contact Searing once we were back in the city and tell him I’d had a change of heart. That I wanted him to find whoever was trying to hurt Esmerelda. There was no way I was up to the task. I was struggling just to find Max’s real name. Hunting down someone who was methodically orchestrating supervillain type ‘accidents’ against the super-sensory Esmerelda felt much harder. And scarier.
‘You really are beautiful when you think,’ James said to me.
I turned to face him.
‘You worried about your man? Your woman?’
‘Not really,’ I lied. I was in no mood to be vulnerable with James Smith, nor to explain my plan to elicit Searing’s help. Or to explain who Searing was. I didn’t think I would ever be in that particular mood.
‘I see,’ he said, smiling. ‘You might have to work on your feigning skills.’
I was insulted. I had become quite a good liar in recent times. It was, however, not an attribute I was about to defend.
Dr Lucas Carr, retired periodontist, lived in a modest cottage two streets back from the beach. His small front garden was surrounded by a green picket fence with a hip-high gate opening onto a painted concrete path that led to a small veranda. The path was flanked on both sides by neatly mowed grass sprinkled with fallen yellow and pink frangipanis from his neighbour’s trees.
I stared out of the window at the front door. I had been so busy debating the idea of breaking into the FMCCC that I had not thought about how I would perform the task of lying to a retired medical professional to extract confidential patient information. I had absolutely zero ideas.
‘What on earth am I going to say to this man?’ I asked myself and, since he was in the car, James.
‘Just tell him the truth. You can practise on me if you like, since I’m not clear on all the details. Specifically, like.’
What the heck? It might help me get it straight in my head if I went through it all again.
So … Visited Grandmother. Borrowed a tiny painting. Found a body. Dame Elizabeth’s aversion to eternal freezers for homeless. Esmerelda’s Pazzia contract. Favours for favours. Dame Elizabeth’s missing boyfriend. The mystery typed letters via post. Dr Bailly. The Hollys. The things we knew about Max: people liked him, he was rich and well-kept but that had not always been the case, and he was, as far as we could tell, not Max Weller. He bleached his salt and pepper hair white, probably in an attempt to disguise himself. He had a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of dental implants. Neither his name, nor his fingerprints, nor his DNA were in any database. He had two (presumably) adult daughters.
The questions: what was his real name? Where was his family? Why did he lie to Dame Elizabeth? Who killed him? Why?
I skimmed over the blackmail and the parts that involved Dylan and Searing by name.
James scratched his thick dark blond hair and his aeroplane stubble. ‘You know quite a lot about Max already. I think you’re pretty close.’
That was a surprise. I felt like I had a whole lot of nothing.
I got out of the car with a renewed sense of hope. James opened his door and followed me. While I appreciated the support, I didn’t want to overwhelm this poor retired periodontist. I’m not sure how I would react if 007 and Miss Fisher randomly arrived at my front door.
James stood watch by the Volvo, guarding the sleeping Esmerelda.
I guessed Lucas Carr had moved to Palm Beach to retire by the ocean. Although one can retire by the ocean in Darwin, one can only look at the beach. Crocodiles. These highly curious creatures hamper almost all water sports and water-based recreational activities. Which was a shame because the weather in Darwin was toasty year-round. It was a cruel taunt.
I approached the door armed with Dame Elizabeth’s photo from the play and a plan that was no plan at all: the truth.
Lucas Carr’s front doorbell made the sound of an old-school ice cream truck. Lucas was clearly a sophisticate. A man in his early seventies, dressed in open sandals with plastic buckles, pleated khaki shorts and a collared cotton T-shirt that was probably once redder, opened the door. According to Google Images, this was Lucas.
‘Lucas Carr?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said, cleaning his thick spectacles on his fading shirt.
‘I …’ It was all I could get out. ‘I …’
Lucas leaned forward, as if I was just speaking quietly, thinking if he leaned in hard enough, he might pick up a full sentence.
I rummaged through my Givenchy tote until I came out with a printed A4 version of the photo Dame Elizabeth had texted me. It was slightly grainy. ‘Max,’ I said stupidly.
He opened the security screen and somewhat hesitantly took the photo. He studied the faces and said, ‘Yes?’
‘This is Max,’ I said, pointing at the photo.
‘Yes.’
That was all I had. At least we agreed this was Max.
‘Do you know Maxwell?’ he asked, trying to help.
‘Yes,’ I said, instantly coming out with what had become my standard, a half-truth.
‘Actually, my, uh, Aunt Holly. She has been dating Max, Maxwell.’
‘Is that so,’ he said, giving me a small smile, like I was a simple but kind-hearted five-year-old. ‘That’s nice.’
‘You see, she would like to know more about him.’
‘Ah,’ he said, taking a step back. ‘I see.’
‘No, no,’ I said, reaching out to reassure him. ‘Nothing intrusive. Nothing negative. You were his periodontist?’
‘Ye—’ he said before stopping himself. ‘Did Maxwell give you that information?’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying hard to be semi-truthful. Bailly found the implants in Max, so in a way Max had told her, and then she had told me. If you ignored the fact that the mystery informant had given me the batch number, and Rachael had used her Sydney Plastic’s connections to track the batch to Lucas Carr, you could say Max had given me that information.
‘Maxwell’s a very private man,’ he said firmly.
No kidding.
‘Oh yes,’ I agreed, ‘she’s aware of that. Aunt Holly is also extremely private.’
‘I think you need to address your questions to Maxwell,’ he said, stepping back again, starting to close the screen door.
That’s going to be a problem, Lucas.
‘You see Aunt Holly is very fond of Maxwell,’ I said quickly, resisting the urge to wedge my foot in the door. ‘They’ve been spending a lot of time together. Plays, opera, galleries. You know how these arts lovers are. Great supporters of local productions.’
He, apparently, did not know.
‘Here? In Sydney? Not in the Northern Territory?’
‘Yes,’ I said with truth and enthusiasm. I pointed to the photo in his hand. ‘See. There they are at an STC play in Walsh Bay.’
He examined the photo again, tilting it, bringing it closer to his face. ‘Maxwell looks … different.’
‘Love does give a person a certain glow,’ I said, smiling.
‘That’s not it,’ Lucas said. ‘His hair, it’s different. And his beard, it’s gone. That man has had a beard forever!’
‘Ah,’ I said, bubbling with excitement at this new information and delivering him my best smile. ‘Perhaps he shaved it off because he didn’t want to be labelled a hipster? Are there many of those in Darwin?’
Lucas eyed me. ‘No.’
Okay then, moving on.
‘My aunt would very much like to send Ellie and Carley a gift. A nice-to-meet-you gift.’
‘Ellie?’ he said, brows knitting together. ‘Carley?’ He thought for a moment, then nodded in understanding. ‘You mean Lizzie, that is, Elizabeth, and Tahnee?’
‘Yes,’ I said in mock embarrassment, ‘sorry, Lizzie and Tahnee. My aunt’s hearing isn’t what it used to be.’
He bobbled his head and his jowls jiggled a little. ‘I know how she feels.’
‘She’s unsure of their preferences. Perhaps a nice crocodile Birkin bag for Lizzy? A piece of jewellery for Tahnee?’
His jaw dropped. His blue eyes squinted, the eyelids above them almost obscuring them altogether. His whole body withdrew from me. I had made a misstep.
‘No?’ I squeaked.
‘Who are you?’ he asked, waving the photo at me.
‘Me? Just a niece trying to help out an aunt who is very much in love.’ Finally, I had told a whole truth. Almost.
‘And you came to Maxwell’s retired periodontist to do that? Seems like a bit of a strange choice.’
