Murder most fancy, p.7
Murder Most Fancy, page 7
‘I’m not sure I understand the direct correlation between an end in my mourning period and my …’ I thought about it and, taking into consideration the intense look on Grandmother’s face and the look of—what was that? Concern?—on Dame Elizabeth’s face, rephrased from the singular to the plural, ‘… our finding the identity of the man in your garden. With all due respect, again, I really do think the police are the best people for that job.’
‘I’m sure Detective Winters is a very capable officer,’ Dame Elizabeth said, failing to mention his less astute partner, Rope. ‘However, I believe you, you two,’ she said, looking up at Esmerelda in the window, ‘are uniquely qualified.’
I had assumed when she’d asked me to investigate the dead man’s identity the week before, it was more of an off-the-cuff request, an emotional appeal in the moment, soon forgotten. Why was she so determined to identify him?
‘Like, you seem like a sweet old lady,’ Esmerelda said, sensing my scepticism, ‘and I’m not saying I’m not awesome at investigating stuff, but, like I feel like there’s some shady bullsh—’
‘Oh, uh,’ I interrupted. ‘I wonder—we wonder, Dame Elizabeth, why you think we are so uh, uniquely qualified? Why you feel we would have any more luck than the police. Professionals.’ I thought back to Detective Rope. Maybe professional was a stretch. ‘Professionally trained police.’
‘She doesn’t need to give you a reason, Indigo,’ Grandmother snapped. ‘Dame Elizabeth made a request of you; you accepted. You’re obligated to follow through.’
I sometimes wondered how being overseas on business so often had impacted my relationship with my grandmother. Did she know me at all?
‘Like, I totally didn’t agree to working with the cops,’ Esmerelda put in, shaking her head, leaning back, arms still crossed.
‘Oh, no, you would not need to work with the police, dear,’ Dame Elizabeth said with her patient doe eyes and soft smile. ‘They needn’t even know you’re having a quiet look around.’
‘Oh,’ Esmerelda said, relaxing her arms. ‘I could totally be into it then. Wait,’ she backtracked. ‘I’m getting paid, right?’
‘Is she paying you?’ Grandmother gestured to me.
‘Yeah,’ Esmerelda said, insulted.
‘Then yes, you will be paid.’
So, Esmerelda did like money.
‘Thrilled you two were able to come to an agreement,’ I chimed. ‘I’m so sorry, but I’m busy.’
‘Doing what, may I enquire?’ Grandmother asked, casting a lazy eye around the dishevelled room. My bedroom was strewn with half-unboxed shopping packages, shopping bags, wet towels, a half-eaten fruit platter, a tea tray, two sets of wet bathers (to avoid tan lines without the embarrassment of going topless, one needed swimmers with a variety of strap lines), a recently closed laptop, a mostly eaten box of Maltesers and a stack of magazines. The magazines may not have been stacked so much as scattered. At least the bed was made. Okay, so Patricia made the bed.
‘I am assisting Esmerelda with a legal matter,’ I said, eating one of the remaining Maltesers.
‘What?’ spurted Esmerelda who, once alerted to the presence of chocolate, had managed to lean in through the window, scoop up a fistful of the candy and half consume it. She had the reflexes of a hummingbird and the metabolism to match.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to telepathically signal her to go along. ‘She has a rather sticky situation with Laurie Heinsmann.’
‘Pazzia’s Laurie Heinsmann?’ Dame Elizabeth asked, surprised.
Grandmother glanced at Dame Elizabeth for verification of the name.
Unlike artistically inclined Dame Elizabeth, Grandmother held little genuine interest or heartfelt regard for fashion beyond it being an expensive annoyance. She had a stylist who shopped and chose her outfits, outfits she wore because it was expected that the head of a billion-dollar company dress a certain way, and because wearing a $10,000 Jil Sander jacket and matching $8,000 pants intimidated people. Moreover, not wearing a $20,000 outfit might give some in the business community the impression you were suffering financial restrictions. One misplaced rumour about fiscal vulnerability and sharks started circling. Cauterising that kind of rumour inevitably costs substantially more than a designer wardrobe.
‘He’s after me,’ Esmerelda said between malty bites, crumbs falling from her perfect mouth onto the table.
Dame Elizabeth appeared charmed by this. Wide-eyed recognition crossed her face. ‘You’re the mystery cover girl, aren’t you? How delightful!’
Esmerelda’s eyes narrowed, the happy-go-lucky crunching disappearing. I thought she might attempt to bite Dame Elizabeth.
‘No, no,’ I quickly corrected, sitting down opposite the pair. ‘Not delightful. We are not delighted. Esmerelda would very much like to be discharged from her contractual obligations to Heinsmann.’
‘I don’t understand. Promotional obligations for the summer issue must have finished many months ago. What further commitments could she have?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘She accidentally signed a two-cover deal.’
‘The pen just slipped out of her hand and onto the contract, did it?’ Grandmother said.
Esmerelda gave Grandmother a single, sharply arched, never-seen-tweezers-in-its-life eyebrow in addition to her death stare. ‘Yeah. It slipped.’
‘You seem like a sweet young lady,’ Dame Elizabeth said, quick as an old fox, ‘and I’m not saying you’re not awesome, but I too know a line of BS when I hear one.’
This got a wry chuckle out of Grandmother.
I was speechless. I had never heard Dame Elizabeth utter anything remotely resembling profanity before. Not a crap or a damn or even a darn.
Esmerelda swallowed whatever was left of her Maltesers and said, ‘You’ve got a kind of petrifying pink sugar vibe going on. Like, you’re totally on-the-down-low scary.’
I agreed. It was most disconcerting.
‘Esmerelda didn’t think Heinsmann would want a second cover,’ I blurted, slightly throwing Esmerelda under the bus.
‘That I believe,’ Grandmother grunted.
Esmerelda side-eyed me. ‘You’re totally crap at this game.’
‘I can see it,’ Dame Elizabeth said, assessing Esmerelda. ‘Esmerelda has something.’
Esmerelda had something? That was an insult opening too wide for Grandmother to resist walking through and if Dame Elizabeth was a nine out of ten on the down-low-scary scale, Esmerelda was a twelve. Despite appearances, my bedroom had been cleaned that morning. Blood would leave a terrible mess.
I quickly interjected. ‘I’m busy trying to get her out of the contract. I would otherwise have loved to help you. Sorry.’
‘I can have a word with Laurie Heinsmann. I’m sure he can be persuaded to nullify the contract,’ Dame Elizabeth said. ‘That would free you two up, wouldn’t it?’
‘Deal!’ Esmerelda said, poking her long, tanned arm through the window at Dame Elizabeth. Dame Elizabeth had her hand pumped by Esmerelda. My fate had been sealed without my consent. Again.
‘You’re not so hot at this game yourself,’ I muttered to Esmerelda.
Grandmother stood to leave. ‘We’re all in agreement then.’
‘No!’ I squealed, bolting up off the chair. ‘Not in agreement. I … I have … I am …’
‘I simply do not have time for this,’ Grandmother said, briskly walking to the door. ‘I have a twelve o’clock.’
‘It’s already one thirty,’ Esmerelda said, peering at the sun. She was like a surfing mystic, divining the time.
‘It is one thirty!’ Dame Elizabeth said in delight, looking at her watch. ‘Esmerelda, you are special!’
Esmerelda attempted to fist-bump Dame Elizabeth in response.
Grandmother narrowed her eyes and said flatly, ‘My twelve o’clock is midnight in New York.’ To me she said, ‘You borrowed two important paintings from the main salon in my Sydney home last week. I can either view that—and I do mean “view that” literally—event as grand larceny, or I can view it as granddaughter loan-ery. What’s it to be?’
As out-of-character as her flagrant blackmail and almost playful grammatical aside was, it was not enough to suppress the spike of panic that ran through me. She could be serious. She was my grandmother, but she was also seriously controlling and a complete barracoota.
Grand larceny. There was video. There could be memes. This was neither Good Behaviour nor Zero Publicity. My legs grew instantly weak.
‘No! No, you don’t!’ she barked. ‘No fainting! It was bad enough I had to put up with it from your grandfather. You could be twice the man he was if you just put your back into it, Indigo!’ She leaned towards me, one hand on the door. ‘You need a purpose. A drive. As sad as Richard’s passing was, it pumped some jazz back into you.’
‘Back?’
‘You were an extraordinary child, Indigo,’ Dame Elizabeth said with a smile. She patted me on the arm as she stood. ‘So curious!’
‘That’s not true,’ I said weakly. I had no recollection of ever having ‘jazz’ or being ‘extraordinary’ or ‘curious’. Had I been?
‘I’m not here to chat with you or cuddle you. I am your grandmother.’
Dame Elizabeth regarded Grandmother with an ironic gaze. Perhaps those were indeed the qualities of a grandmother? It was lost on her.
‘Grand larceny or granddaughter loan-ery?’
‘Loan-ery,’ I said, deflated.
‘Excellent,’ she said, all business. ‘Elizabeth, you have your undercover investigators.’
‘I am ever so pleased!’ Dame Elizabeth squeezed me with a hug in clear view of Grandmother. Nothing like a little blackmail to embolden the hidden intimacies in one’s relationships.
I was flabbergasted. How on earth was I going to find the identity of the homeless man from the oriental lilies? And what did she mean by ‘undercover investigators’? Perhaps I could appeal to Dame Elizabeth’s reasonable side.
‘Dame, I mean, Aunt Lizzy,’ I said, desperately clinging to her arm. ‘While I appreciate your incredible generosity of spirit in attempting to give that man a resting place, this all seems a little … extreme.’
‘Tell her, Elizabeth,’ Grandmother said, holding onto the door handle, the expression on her face saying she was actively resisting the urge to tap her foot with impatience.
Dame Elizabeth made a flapping motion past the front of her face with her left hand. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’m sure it’s completely unrelated.’
‘Her boyfriend stood her up the night before the body was found and he’s been missing ever since.’
Boyfriend? Dame Elizabeth?
‘Knew it!’ Esmerelda exclaimed to everyone. ‘What’d I say? BS shady!’
‘No, no, that is not it at all,’ Dame Elizabeth defended. ‘I do not have a boyfriend. Max is a friend. Max and the man you found—’ she stumbled.
‘In the lilies,’ I helped.
‘Yes,’ she said, recovering her footing, ‘are different people. The man you found in the lilies is not Max. Max spends almost as much on his wardrobe as your grandmother. Unlike your grandmother, he makes some attempt to wear our wonderful Australian designers as well as those European ones.’ And with that, she gave Grandmother’s not-remotely-locally-designed-or-made ensemble a satirical scan. ‘Max is unlikely to be mistaken for a homeless person while dressed head to toe in Armani. No, I wanted you to find that poor lily man’s name and family so he could be buried, not frozen, just as I said to you on the day. No, Max cancelled our dinner at the last moment because he had an urgent family matter to attend to at home, in Western Australia.’ She eyed Grandmother. ‘He said he would be away for a few days, and so he has been. It’s a coincidence, that is all.’
I could see Esmerelda doing maths. Mainly because her fingers were moving.
‘Eight days,’ I said, articulating for her.
‘Yeah,’ Esmerelda said, nodding in agreement. ‘It’s been like eight days since we, I mean she, found the dead dude.’
‘Eight is a few,’ Dame Elizabeth said, not noticing Esmerelda’s slip. She unpeeled my fingers from around her wrist and walked towards Grandmother.
‘Like more like a few few,’ Esmerelda whispered, leaning into the window frame.
‘Besides, we have only been … friends for a short while. He is not obliged to call me every day,’ Dame Elizabeth said, joining Grandmother at the open bedroom door.
‘Two months,’ Grandmother piped. ‘For over two months, you two have been attached at the hip. The man was clearly gaga.’
Esmerelda looked quizzically at Grandmother, then at me.
‘No,’ I said before she could ask. ‘Nothing to do with Lady Gaga.’
‘You are being dramatic, Florence,’ Dame Elizabeth said, following Grandmother into the hallway. ‘Max will call when he is ready.’ She turned back to address us through the doorway. ‘Just find out who the man in the lilies was.’
A moment later, the front door closed and they were gone.
Esmerelda gave a guarded smile and a nod in the direction of the departing duo. ‘I dunno how he got homeless so quick, but her boyfriend is totally toast.’
‘Max is not the man in the lilies,’ I said optimistically, wondering how many bottles of wine were currently chilling in the pool house fridge. ‘It’s just a coincidence.’
‘Dude,’ she said in mild exasperation. ‘Seriously?’
I had a sinking feeling she might be right. The manicure. The cutthroat shave. The hair oil. Although, theoretically, a homeless man could have shaved and manicured himself. He might have been an extremely hygienic, well-groomed homeless man.
‘How much is a bottle of Atkinsons California Poppy Hair Oil?’ I asked.
‘Can’t find the oil, but the aftershave is two hundred and twelve bucks,’ Esmerelda said five seconds later, staring at her one true love, the latest smartphone.
God help us. Was Dame Elizabeth dating a dead man?
CHAPTER 6
THE NO-FLY LIST
There was no wine left in the pool house fridge. I spent the afternoon drinking gin and tonics, pondering how Dame Elizabeth’s dashing new boyfriend could have wound up dirty, dishevelled and dead in her neighbour’s garden. I could not think of any.
Esmerelda was unable to make Bettina’s drowned phone function again. This was a surprise because Esmerelda’s ability to make smartphones bend to her will was freakishly impressive. Although the newer models were water resistant Bettina’s ‘totally ancient’ handset was unable to resist Grandmother’s fountain, which was apparently more chlorine than water.
Definitively deleting the possible footage of me tripping over the dead man, who was conceivably Dame Elizabeth’s missing suitor Max, was not possible without a working handset. To ensure the footage was either non-existent or contained within the defunct phone and not sitting on a cloud somewhere, we were going to have to go to the source. It seemed that no matter where I turned, I could not avoid the Holly clan.
Dame Elizabeth Holly’s family of origin, the Hansons, had somewhat humble beginnings. Their fortune of origin story was that they’d sailed from England with nineteen dairy cows in tow (three bulls and fourteen cows survived the journey), hoping the grass was greener on the other side. The grass was not greener in Australia; however, millennia of fastidious agricultural care by the First Australians meant the land was ripe for the grazing. Within fifty years, the Hansons had the largest dairy farm on the east coast. Twenty years after that, they had the largest group of dairy farms on the east coast. The Hanson family had a lot of new money, but no social reputation or standing. To rectify this, Dame Elizabeth, then plain old Elizabeth Hanson, the only child and heir to the somewhat distasteful Hanson dairy cow fortune, was married off to Earl Alexander Holly.
Earl Holly didn’t have two farthings to rub together, but he was in possession of respectable lineage, a title and high social connections. While Earl Holly was, by all accounts, much like his father-in-law Dashiell Hanson—extremely proficient in organising female company—he was unlike his father-in-law—not proficient in business.
Dashiell Hanson’s wild financial success and his eventual monopolisation of the dairy industry, along with his and his son-in-law’s flagrant philandering, meant that rumours about the Hanson-Holly family were rife. Mrs Hanson was, apparently, lost between her domineering husband, Dashiell, and her bombastic son-in-law, Earl Holly. She spent most of her time in town, buying furnishings for a country home she steadfastly avoided visiting.
Luckily for young Dame Elizabeth Holly, who was then known as Lady Elizabeth Holly, her husband, Earl Holly, spent most of his time in Turkey, investing in technology to mass-produce women’s shoes. His endeavours were unsuccessful and he died of malaria in Istanbul a month before his forty-seventh birthday. Her father died soon after in a bull stampede. Her mother never visited any of the farms ever again.
Ironically, once Lady Elizabeth Holly was given a damehood—for her years of philanthropic work—and became Dame Elizabeth Holly, she outranked her husband, Earl Holly, dead or alive.
Dame Elizabeth’s eldest son Astor, who had barely survived after being born premature, defied the odds and grew to be a business powerhouse. He took the reins of the dairy farms before he was even out of university. Astor was quite a lot like Mother: tall, blond, very attractive and insanely eco-friendly. Unlike Mother, Astor came from a very wealthy family, had an amazing nose for business at a young age, never married and had thus far produced no heirs (good news for his next-of-kin nieces, Bettina and Gilly, and their father, Astor’s only sibling, Gregory).
Astor was well ahead of the ideological curve in his understanding of cows, methane and global warming. He diversified the family’s interests, first adding real estate, then digital technology stocks. Being a man of environmental consciousness and action, he eventually sold the family’s dairy assets and bought a successful chain of eco-friendly hotels, branding them Holly Oak. He then used the financial resources of their technology stocks to develop the real estate holdings he had accumulated into luxury Holly Park resorts, quickly building a hotel and resort empire. For most people, the dairy farms are a distant memory. For the younger generations, not even that. Born just eleven months after Astor, Gregory was, like his father and grandfather, a serial womaniser.
