Читать книгу Bleeding Hearts - Lindy Cameron - Страница 5

Victoria Bennet had done quite nicely out of the divorce settlement her errant husband had been forced to agree to the previous month. Kit smiled broadly as she turned in through the gateway in the three-metre high sandstone fence, and headed up the steep driveway to the house.

House? This is not a house, she thought, as an uncontrolled 'wow' took over her face. This is a mansion's mansion, with a panorama and a half!

Kit figured the split-level, multi-balconied and windowed residence probably commanded a 240 degree view, sweeping around from Red Bluff, to the north of Half Moon Bay, then west and south across Port Phillip as far as the eye could see.

Residence, mansion, beach house - whatever it is! - it's now Tori's. Which just proves that sometimes the right people win, Kit thought, deciding it was bloody marvellous that she'd a hand in making that so.

She queued her RAV behind a Beamer, a Merc and a VW Beetle and got out, noting again the difference a half-way-decent vehicle can make to a person's self esteem. Acknowledging, also again, how incredibly shallow that was as a concept, she gave herself a mental slap and amended her original thought to: 'a professional person's self esteem'.

While her old car had always been reliable, she had frequently disowned it as a rent-a-bomb, and had often worried that it would be towed to a wrecker's yard if it was parked anywhere for too long. So, as she jogged up, and up, the steps to Tori's front door she had to agree with herself that a Toyota four-wheel-drive better suited her reputation as a PI who could secure this kind of outcome for her client. Stopping on the second landing, which was at least another 35 steps from the front door, she wondered, however, why the hell this outcome hadn't included a lift.

The prenuptial agreement that Frank Bennet had required Tori to sign before their marriage five years before had ultimately worked in her favour. This had obviously not been his intention. The deal had been that in the event of a divorce she would get nothing more than eight per cent of his financial assets, plus their $250,000 city apartment. Tori had agreed without question. Eight per cent of Frank Bennet was a great deal of money. Besides, she really did love him.

In the only acknowledgement of their age difference - Frank being more than twenty years her senior - he had worried that Tori would be tempted to take a holiday from their marriage bed, so he had included an extra clause: if an affair was the reason for the divorce then the agreement would be null and void and the offended party would retain the entire estate.

Frank Bennet was a self-made multi-millionaire, with two houses and an apartment in Melbourne, a house in Sydney, a luxury unit in Noosa, a villa in Tuscany, seven cars, a pleasure cruiser and a light plane. Frank Bennet also had an idiot for a solicitor; an idiot related by marriage to his sister, and currently serving time in prison for fraud. The prenup was so unspecific that Tori's solicitor - armed with Kit's video surveillance tapes - had no trouble arguing that, as the 'offended' party, Tori was entitled to everything that Frank Bennet owned. Given that she was only asking for twenty per cent of his money, one house - this $2.8 million one in Black Rock - two cars and the boat, the judge had no trouble ruling in her favour.

While Kit had been working Tori's case they had only ever met in cafes and in court, so Kit had never been to the beach-mansion before, although she had seen pictures of the interior. When occupied by the first Mrs Bennet, now known simply as Sharlie (emphasis on the second syllable) the 'face' of Flair Cosmetics, the house-mansion had been featured in a print version of 'lifestyles of the obscenely wealthy and vacuous'. Actually Sharlie's soulless but expensively furnished 'suite of entertaining spaces' had been given a four-page spread in one of the designer-decor magazines that Lillian bought every month. Which was the same thing really.

Lillian had exhumed the six-year-old article when Kit had asked her if she'd ever heard of Frank Bennett. While Kit had long ago stopped asking her mother why she kept every magazine she ever bought (mostly because the only time she ever thought to ask was when Lillian had just provided some useful info gleaned from those very magazines), she had, on this most recent occasion, questioned why she bought them in the first place. What was the point, Kit had wanted to know, in paying for pages and pages of ads for slate tiles and bidets, just to see a few photos of someone else's lounge, bath or bedroom - which always looked unlived-in and never seemed to include pets or televisions. Who the hell lived like that?

Not the second Mrs Bennett, that's for sure, Kit thought. While Tori was definitely lapping up the lifestyle to which her ex had introduced her, she was basically a delightful, down to earth, no bullshit kind of person who had no desire to be frivolously famous and was not letting her good fortune, or even her huge fortune, go to her head.

Kit knew that Tori was not the sort of person who, having acquired the house and goods and chattels would rearrange them all, and then call the editor of Vanity Home and demand her turn at fulfilling their mission statement: 'to show off your home to people who'll never be able to afford what you've got, because they spend all their spare money on our magazine'.

Kit had liked her now-ex client the first time they'd met, and when the front door was flung open just as her hand reached the doorbell, she knew her initial impression was a true and lasting one.

"Kit, it is so good to see you!" Tori greeted her with a warm and laugh-filled hug.

"You 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 don't," Kit lied.

"There's a truly amazing thing that probably goes with that mildly interesting revelation," Paula Bracken noted sullenly. The woman had been quiet for most of the lunch, due to the residual hangover she'd owned up to on arrival.

"What's that, oh grumpy one?" Dee asked.

Paula curled her lip at her friend and then looked at Kit. "It probably means that, until today, Katherine was the only person in the country who couldn't have picked RJ out of a line-up."

Kit feigned puzzlement as she briefly searched Paula's angular face and brown eyes for a sign that her statement carried any more animosity than a slightly envious tone. It didn't seem to, so she glanced around the table, as if it took her a moment to recall which of the other women was Rebecca. She flashed her a wide-eyed apologetic smile. "She's right. Sorry."

"I find it refreshing," Rebecca stated, trying not to laugh.

"Speaking of refreshing, where's Tori with that bloody champagne?" Miranda demanded.

"I'll go see if she needs any help," Kit offered, struggling up from her chair on the huge shaded patio at the side of the house, where they had adjourned for lunch. She wandered inside, calling out Tori's name so she'd have some idea of which direction to head.

"Last door on the left," Tori called back.

Kit glanced back at the seven laughing women and wondered what a reunion of her schoolmates would be like. She hadn't attended the function that marked her 10th anniversary of leaving school, because it was the same year that her best friend Hannah had been killed by a drunk driver. And birthday cards were the only contact she still kept with her other three closest school friends, as they'd all left the state. Jane now lived in Hobart with her husband and three kids, Karen had gone feral in Byron Bay, and Ruth was playing the hotshot lawyer in Adelaide.

Kit's closest friends now were people she'd met as an adult and, while they were without doubt the most precious things in her life, she wondered what it would be like to be still attached, in some way, to someone you'd known all your life. It made her feel strangely disjointed to think that she possibly already knew more about the women she'd spent the last two hours with than she did about Jane, Karen or Ruth; and that she wouldn't even recognise half the girls she'd gone to school with.

Tori and her mates, on the other hand, had such a long history they would no doubt survive all the things that are regularly sent by the mean and spiteful Muck-up Troll to test the friendship concept; including, perhaps, a really good reason for one of them to be sending a batch of poison pen letters and maybe, at a pinch, even FredAndGinger.

OK, she thought, shaking her head to switch off the gooey Big Chill scenario that was trying to influence her judgement of this group of women. She had observed something oddly askew about their interactions, as if they either had a reason for wanting to forget an aspect of their shared past, or they hadn't always been such an intimate group.

Kit found Tori in the cavernous and stainless steel kitchen where she was defying the laws of physics by flinging biscuits and pieces of fruit and cheese willy-nilly onto a huge platter and having them land in an artistically appetising configuration.

"That is a talent I'd kill for," Kit stated.

"What?"

"The elegant art of the food toss."

"Nothing to it," Tori claimed, licking her fingers.

"There is when your own kitchen has a vendetta against you," Kit pronounced.

"The secret," Tori laughed, "is don't ever let it think it's got the upper hand."

"Too late, I'm afraid," Kit said. "My kitchen appliances have formed their own street gang."

"Oh dear, in that case you need an exorcist." Tori opened a jar of sundried tomatoes and scooped some out for the platter. "Speaking of the occult," she continued, "what do you think about the old witches gathered around my cauldron? Do you suspect any one of them of sending the you-know-whats?"

Kit shrugged. "I doubt it Tori. But until we know why the whats are being sent, it really could be anyone. Can I ask a couple of personals before Miranda sends FredAndGinger to hunt us down and bring us back with the champagne?"

"Fire away."

"Do the seven of you have some deep dark secret that you would kill to protect, or that you could be threatened or blackmailed over?"

"What?"

"You know, did you all have an affair with your English Lit mistress or accidentally kill your Drama teacher, or steal the principal's bra and put it on the vicar while he was asleep? Anything like that?"

"Not that I can recall, no," Tori replied, with bemusement. "Where the hell did you go to school?"

Kit waved a hand in dismissal. "It's a cliché, Tori. In the movies, whenever you have a mystery that involves someone who is about to, or has just been to, or is at a reunion of school friends, you know that when the weird things start to happen it's because of something diabolical in their past; something that happened at school, that they've all kept hidden for years."

"The movies, huh? What about real life?" Tori asked.

"It doesn't happen in real life," Kit assured her. "Except maybe on this occasion," she grinned.

"Well, as far as I know, the worst thing any of us did together was get suspended for two weeks for smoking."

"OK, observation time," Kit continued. "You didn't all go all the way through school together did you?"

"How the hell did you figure that out?"

"It's my job," Kit grinned again.

"So it is," Tori said. "OK, let me get the sequence right. Rebecca and I have been friends since I started school at Griffith Hall in Grade Four; Miranda and Carmel, like Rebecca, went all the way through from the Prep Grade to Form Six, but they weren't our friends until Form Two; and Dee and Paula didn't start until our final year but they joined our little group straight away."

"I thought so. I had a feeling they were latecomers." Kit popped a piece of cheese in her mouth. "They talk more about what they're doing now, than what you all did then," she explained in response to Tori's questioning half-shrug. "What about Grace? She seems, ah, how shall I put it? She seems aloof."

"Grace sort of floated. She was one of those popular people who never tied themselves to any group. Good at sport and quite smart. You know the type?" Tori handed Kit the platter, picked up three bottles of champagne and headed towards the door. Kit followed her out into the hall.

"We were friendly on and off over the years," Tori continued, "but RJ and Grace hated each other at school. When we had our 15 year reunion though, they couldn't remember why."

"And now they're the best of friends?" Kit queried. "Really?"

"Yeah." Tori stopped and turned to face Kit. "Really."

Rebecca leapt up from her chair when she saw Kit and Tori approaching the patio. "Ladies," she said with a sweeping gesture as she held the door open for them.

"I ain't no lady," Kit smiled.

"Me neither RJ, and you of all people should know that," Tori stated, as if she was seriously insulted. "They tried and tried, all those lady-making people, and this is the best they could do." She punctuated her statement with a loud burp.

Kit placed the platter on the table, took one of the bottles from Tori and popped the cork.

"Has our return interrupted your soapbox slander of the local council, Dee?" Tori asked.

"No. I finished my rave ages ago, thank you very much," Dee stated, feigning miffedness.

"Thank god," Grace exclaimed, poking her tongue at Dee. "Since then we've done the 'skinny model whinge', followed by the 'collective outrage number' at what that prick Carter Walsh said about women pollies, and now we're onto whether or not we should keep our ex-shit's surname."

"What's to discuss?" Tori demanded, as she did the rounds to fill the empty champagne glasses. "Unless you can get some kind of mileage out of keeping it, you know like he's a Windsor of the royal variety, or an offspring of clan Packer, why the hell would you want to keep the bastard's name? Get your own back I say."

"You haven't taken yours back," Paula pointed out.

"Ah! My case is an acceptable exception to my own rule. I didn't want my own back. One of the best things about marrying Frank, especially in retrospect, was getting rid of my maiden name."

"What was it?" Kit asked.

"Horney," everyone else chorused.

"I really hated being Tori Horney," Tori snarled. She sat back, looked thoughtful for a moment and then in the sweetest voice, as if it was a new and surprising idea, she added: "Also, I never really liked my father. Actually he was an arsehole, so I couldn't see any reason to give up the perfectly nice name of one utter bastard to return to the surname of a bodily orifice."

"Here, here!" Carmel cheered. "But, I'm still tossing whether to keep Fisher or go back to Reece."

"Tori's case aside," Kit said. "I don't understand why you'd take his name in the first place."

"So you can take the prick to the cleaners, when he cheats on you," Grace explained. "It's much easier if you've shown your good faith in the marriage by taking his name."

"You make it sound like you expect it not to work," Kit said.

"No! Do I, honey? " Grace queried, with a melodramatic flail of her hands. "Of course I didn't mean to and, like, the tabloids tell the truth and a colourful box of tampons gives you enjoyable cramps. Yeah, sure!"

Kit raised her eyebrows.

"Well, how many marriages do you know that last the distance?" Grace asked.

"A few," Kit shrugged. "My parents for one."

"Mine too," Dee declared, giving Kit a proudly supportive nod.

"You can't count your parents," Tori remarked. "Not our generation's parents anyway. Most of them only stuck it out because it was the thing to do, for the kids' sake, even though they hated each other. After that they stayed together because they were too unimaginative to do anything else, and in the end they're too old or scared to change."

"My parents adored each other until the day my father died," Kit stated.

"Mine are still madly in love," Dee said. "And Robbie and I expect to be exactly the same."

"Yeah, well we don't talk about you and Robbie," Miranda snarled.

"Why not?" Kit asked.

"Because they're the perfect couple. Teen sweethearts, married at 20, still cooing," Paula said.

"So?" Dee asked.

"So, we're all as envious as hell. Always have been," Tori admitted to her, before turning to Kit. "Robbie is handsome and honest and thoughtful and, worst of all, not in the least bit boring."

"He's also as faithful as all get-out," Miranda complained. "Which, as a concept, is as rare as truth in advertising. For that reason alone we all think Robbie is the man of the century, this one and last, and we all hate Dee because she won't share him."

"God knows I've tried to make him notice me," Paula admitted.

"Ooh, me too," Carmel said, pressing her hand to her heaving breast.

"Jesus, you lot!" Rebecca laughed. "You admire him for being a one-woman man, yet you admit to trying to seduce him?"

"Of course!" Miranda declared. "What choice do we have? It is, truly, the greatest dilemma facing women, here at the dawn of this new millennium: the only men worth having are already being had."

The greatest dilemma? Bloody hell, Kit thought. Men and women are from Mars and Venus; and I am from somewhere else entirely - thank god! Or somebody more appropriate.

"I thought that was the oldest dilemma," Paula frowned. "I mean the nineties - remember them girls? - they were also completely void of available men with dicks and brains."

"But if you did have it off with Robbie," Dee was saying, seemingly not fazed by all this drooling over her husband, "then he wouldn't be what you admired any more. He'd just be another cheating husband. And, to be perfectly honest, I'd have no choice but to kill you. With my own bare hands."

The three-second silence was followed by an eruption of laughter, which included Dee herself snorting champagne all over the table. "I'm serious," she insisted.

"Please don't deny us our fantasies, Dee," Carmel begged. "You and your Robbie are safe, but Miranda is right: all that's left to us are the dregs or," she grinned, "our continuing adventures in the commitment-free-zone with someone else's lying bastard."

"Men! What are they good for?" Paula sang, to the tune of War.

"Nothing else, but fucking," Miranda and Grace chimed in.

"Am I right in inferring that you've all had affairs with married men?" Kit asked, when they'd all stopped singing and giggling. Dee looked smugly superior as she shook her head and Rebecca gave her a raised-eyebrow smile, but the other five demonstrated the deadpan-serious look to the ground, the sky, their hands and then each other, and then fell about laughing again.

Kit wondered whether it might be time to go home. It was seriously hard to get a handle on any of these women. The fact that they all belonged to the 'brutally honest' breed of talkers actually made it harder to figure out whether one of them might be harbouring a dark hatred for Rebecca Jones, or a closet fondness for vituperative letter writing. And the alcohol was making them sillier by the second!

"Oh my god, she's so young," Paula intoned, waving a hand at Kit. "Make the most of whatever you think you've got, Katherine, because in another ten years you'll be right here where we are."

"Yeah, at our age, it's the married penis or none at all," Carmel agreed morosely.

Shoot me now then, please, Kit thought desperately. I don't want to go straight!

"There must be some single blokes out there," Dee insisted.

"Sure there are Dee," Paula slurred. "But if they're single and in their forties you gotta ask what's wrong with them. And the only other kind of man out there belongs to the boys brigade and likes to hang his bum cheeks and whatnot out of leathers every year at the Sydney Mardi Gras."

"What on earth are you all complaining about?" Grace asked. "Married man equals sex without laundry, sex without cooking," she reminded them, caressing herself as she spoke. "Sex without having to put up with his obnoxious friends. That kind of sex couldn't be more perfect."

"She has a very valid point," Miranda stated, tipsily prodding the air with her finger for emphasis. "I, however, now prefer my playmates young, unattached, adoring and, temporarily, at my beck and call. I did the married jerk thing once. It only took me three months to realise I didn't have the patience for it. I spent my days getting ready for him to come, waiting for him to come and watching him come. I quite often came on my own, after he'd come and gone, because his time was limited, and sometimes I came on my own because he didn't come at all when he'd said he would. It was very boring and I went through a lot of batteries."

"Do you, um, give any thought to their wives?" Kit asked.

"Who are you? Miss goody two shoes?" Grace asked. "My god that's a stupid expression," she added.

"Not at all," Kit replied. "But, and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like you've all been done over by a cheating husband, yet you're all happy to be the other women in someone else's potential marriage break up."

"We don't want to keep them, honey," Grace laughed.

"Your motives are irrelevant if she finds out," Kit said, throwing her palms up. "The only ones who win in this game, are the men. Again. Still."

"She has a very valid point," Miranda stated again, prodding a different bit of air with her special emphasising finger.

"Yeah, the bastards!" Carmel agreed.

"And I bet you all just loved your husbands' other women," Kit teased. "You can't honestly tell me you didn't want to kill them or at least publicly humiliate them."

"Nah!" Tori stated. "Wasted emotion, wasted effort. It's not their fault, when it's his job to say no, or to choose not to start anything."

"Bugger that!" Paula exclaimed. "Boil the sluts in oil, I say! Take out ads in the paper."

"That's very unsisterly Paula," Carmel remarked.

Paula's reply was a loud and juicy raspberry.

"So, Katherine, I guess you're saying that you wouldn't have an affair with a married man," Paula observed.

"Not if he was the last man on earth," Kit confessed, flashing a smile at Miranda who smirked back.

"We're not talking commitment here," Carmel added.

"Or a sordid little fling in the back seat with some randy salesman with a comb-over. We're talking the fantasy option of long lunches and sexy afternoons with a gorgeous man with lots of spare cash," Grace extrapolated.

"Nope," Kit said emphatically.

"Why ever not?" Paula asked.

"Two reasons really. One, because if they're cheating on their wives they obviously can't be trusted with anything, about anything or for anything."

"What's trust got to do with it?" Paula asked. "We're talking about screwing their brains out."

"And letting them shower you with gifts," Grace added.

"And listening to their pitiful excuses for not staying," Paula snarled.

"The other reason?" Dee prodded.

Kit smiled. "I'd rather have an affair with a married woman."

"Why?" Paula sneered. "Because they're more trustworthy?"

"No. Because I'm a lesbian."

This time it was five seconds of silence before the raucous laughter.

"Wow," Carmel enthused. "I never met an official lesbian before. I mean, a real..."

"Yes you have, Carmy, don't be ridiculous," Miranda said, in that tone.

"Who?" Carmel demanded.

"Barb, Val, Chris and Needle," Tori checked the names off on her fingers.

Carmel's jaw dropped.

"Oh, and Freda," Tori added.

"But... but I thought they were all just good friends," Carmel said. The poor woman was probably never going to get her mouth completely closed again.

"They are, you fool. They also happen to be girl-friendly."

"Oh. Wow. Well I'll be... Do you know them, Katherine?" Carmel asked.

"Ah, no," Kit replied. "Not that I know of."

"For fuck's sake Carmel, you need to get out more often!" Miranda observed.

"Hey, there's no need to get all smarty-britches. Katherine might be one of those people who knows everyone," Carmel said defensively.

"She's a night-shift lab technician who doesn't own a television," Grace said incredulously. "She probably doesn't even know about Ellen - the show or the actor."

"Carmel, do you have any idea how many dykes there are in Melbourne?" Rebecca asked, trying to keep a straight face.

"Obviously a lot more than I thought," Carmel said politely. "And excuse my ignorance, but isn't 'dyke' an offensive term?"

"It depends who's using it," Kit smiled. "And why."

"Of the thousands of lesbians in this city, Carmy, it is vaguely possible that Katherine might know the only four that you've just discovered you know," Grace explained, "but it's kind of like asking a visiting American if she knows Richard Gere."

"Now him I do know. We had dinner last week," Kit joked.

"Your phone is ringing."

"What?" asked the guy who had left the supermarket at the same time as Kit and was now walking along beside her and three or four other people down Swan Street.

"Your phone's ringing, mate," Kit repeated, and then added to herself: "What's the point of having one if you don't answer it?"

"I don't have a phone, you stupid bitch. What do you care anyway?"

"I don't care," Kit said cheerily, feigning surprise. Well, actually she was surprised: firstly by his reaction to her statement - okay, not so surprising, she was being rude; but secondly, or mostly, by the realisation that it was her phone that was ringing.

Escape. That would be a good thing to do now.

Stepping off the footpath, in front of a BMW that had stopped traffic for two suburbs behind it while its owner tried to reverse park into a spot that was way too small, Kit thanked the powers that be that a stationary tram had also blocked all the suburb-bound traffic on the other side of the road. She darted across the street and in the front door that announced the Richmond premises of Aurora Press and O'Malley Investigations.

She pulled her phone out. "O'Malley," she said.

"Oh. Hi, O'Malley, I was just about to hang up."

Kit leant against the wall, for emotional and physical support, as all the connections between all her molecules were suddenly stretched to infinity at the subatomic level. Luckily they snapped back just in time to avoid a paranormal incident.

"Alex," Kit replied casually. "Hi."

"Um, listen I can't talk long. I just wanted to confirm lunch tomorrow and ask a favour."

"Lunch is definitely on," Kit replied, nodding a lot. "What's the favour?"

"Well, I've just heard from Quinn, and she can't get home for Saturday. She says she can't leave London for another two weeks. So I was wondering if you'd like to be my, ah, my best woman?"

Kit laughed. "I'd love to. I think."

"Great. Well, I've got to go."

"Fine. See you tomorrow. Oh, Alex?"

"Yes?"

"Do you like cats?"

"Ah, yeah. I'm more of a dog person, but I quite like cats. Sorry, I've got..." The line went dead.

"O'Malley, O'Malley, O'Malley," Kit remonstrated loudly, as she stomped upstairs to her apartment. Honestly! Is that the best you can do? You could have asked her if she likes you. Or better still if she loves you.

Do you like cats? Bloody hell, that's as deep as: what's your favourite colour, Alex; or what's your star sign? "Idiot!"

"Are you trying to remind yourself who you are?" came a voice attached to a body that loomed out of the small dark corner of her landing.

"Shit!" Kit swore. "And double shit, Hector! Will you stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Frightening the sticky-ickums out of me! Bloody hell!"

"Sorry O'Malley. Boy are you jumpy."

"Here, hold this for me," Kit requested handing him the local paper, her mail, a litre of milk and a brown paper book bag, with books, so she could get her keys out of her bum bag. She unlocked the door, took the milk from him and headed up the steps inside.

"Mwaankel-meee-ang?" demanded The Cat, from the kitchen bench.

"I've been working, sweetie. Where do you think I've been," Kit replied.

"Hello Thistle, you gorgeous thing you," Hector cooed, offering his cheek for a special cat kiss. Thistle obliged, and then showed him her bottom.

"Do you want..." Kit began, as she opened the fridge. Finding it empty, still, she hesitated then looked at the carton in her hand before continuing, "...a glass of milk? Or how about a coffee?"

"Coffee'd be fine. Ta," Hector replied. He put everything Kit had given him on the island bench and then propped himself on one of the stools. "Um, do you ever buy any food, O'Malley?"

"Of course I do," Kit sighed, as she turned on the kettle and grabbed two mugs and the coffee jar from the shelf. "It just so happens that I've eaten out nearly every night since I took on that Traders' Action Group stuff. Those restaurant people, well Adrienne mostly, just kept feeding me."

"What about breakfast?"

"Toast and vegemite, like every good sheila. What do you care, anyway?"

"It's just that I don't want you passing out from hunger when we're out on a stakeout or something together," Hector smiled, pulling the rubber band from his ponytail. He shook his head and ran his fingers through his shoulder-length brown hair.

"Stakeout or something," Kit repeated. "In your dreams, mate."

"But you said..." Hector began. "Are you in a bad mood today?"

"Not especially, why?" she asked, giving him her best perplexed look.

"Just checking," Hector said. "You said, on the phone last night, that you wanted to talk about making my detective aspirations a reality."

"I did?" Kit passed him a cup of coffee.

"Yes, O'Malley," Hector insisted.

"I can't imagine why I would have said that," Kit frowned. "Oh, hang on... delusions. I think 'delusions' was the word I used."

Hector pulled a face. "Whatever! You're a real tease, O'Malley."

"Don't I know it, darling," she grinned, doing a limp-wristed queen-without-the-scream. "But, face it I must: I just can't resist your baby blues."

"Oh yeah. In my dreams again," Hector declared and then looked profoundly embarrassed.

Kit most definitely did not want to know what he meant by that, so a nanosecond was all it took for her to register the words and then turn, casually, to the fridge. She put the milk away.

"OK. What I meant was that we should have some kind of arrangement about the work you've already been doing for me." She turned back to face him. "You know, a commission deal. No, that's not the right word."

"Oh," Hector said, as if he'd had a revelation. "You mean you're going to pay me?"

"Yeah," Kit grinned. "I was thinking of making you an official employee."

"I dunno, O'Malley. I'd have to pay more tax then," Hector mused. "Is there going to be enough stuff to make that a thing worth doing?"

"To be honest, I've no idea," Kit shrugged. "At the moment I can afford to pay you and there is stuff I need sussed out. OK, how about we unofficially make you my official employee. I will fix you up, by the job, for what you do."

"Sounds cool."

"That means, Hector, that you can't work for anyone else - doing this I mean. And you don't advertise the fact that you do do this for me. OK?"

"Fine by me," Hector smiled.

"So the answering machine message gets changed. Yeah?"

"Already done." Hector flashed a thumbs-up. "Um, does that definitely mean no stakeouts?"

"Technically yes, because you are not a licensed PI," Kit said. "But, who knows? Sometimes I may like some company."

"Ace!"

"Yeah, groovy," Kit grinned. "Now, why are you here?" She picked up her coffee, her mail and the bag of books.

"Oh. I found out the wanker's real name, birth date and the place he popped out."

"Already?" Kit motioned to him to follow her into the lounge room.

"It was easy," Hector said. "Even you could have done it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Hector placed his mug on the coffee table, dropped into the couch and patted his knee. Kit watched in amazement as Thistle, the tart, leapt off the bench and bounded onto his lap, giving full throttle to her vocal impersonation of a Yamaha motorbike.

Kit shook her head. "Darian Wanker?" she prompted. "I mean Renault."

"He's 34 years old, not 28. He was born in Newcastle, the one 'upon-Tyne' in England not the one in New South Wales. His parents, Mr and Mrs Ferguson, brought him out here when he was four after christening him Todd Ambrose Phillip."

"I knew it," Kit pronounced. "Not that that proves anything else."

"I am still digging," Hector assured her.

"This might help. Or not," Kit said, removing a paperback from the paper bag. "I bought you a copy of Shoot. Let me know what you think. Then, depending on what else you find out, we may do a little job together."

"Like a real 'together' job?" Hector grinned broadly.

"Yep. But don't tell anyone."

Hector drew his finger across his lips. "Sealed," he said. "Why are you into this guy, anyway?"

"For fun," Kit said. "And for choosing such a pretentious name; which, I am aware, does not mean he's a complete fraud."

"No. He might have just hated his real name," Hector suggested.

"That happens," Kit agreed, thinking of Tori Horney.

"Yeah, and I should know."

"What? You've got a problem with your name?"

"Hector?" he sneered. "Are you kidding?"

"What's wrong with Hector?" Kit asked.

"It's um," he said, staring at his wiggling fingers as if they might conjure the words he was looking for. "It's a geriatric or a dweeb's name. It's the name of an unattractive poncy old git."

"You're kidding, right?" Kit tried her best to look only mildly flabbergasted. "Hector is an heroic and honourable name," she said.

The reasonably good-looking young git in front of her looked, a: like he thought Kit was humouring and patronising him; and b: like he'd never believe another word she said.

"Oh yeah, sure O'Malley," he agreed mockingly, and then deepened his voice. "Meet Conan's little brother: Hector - the Herbivorean."

"No," Kit said, with a definite 'der' tone in her laugh. "Hector, tamer of horses."

"Who what?"

"Aagh, you young people," Kit exclaimed in a crone's voice, as she headed over to the wall of shelves at the other end of the room behind the dining table. She scanned the shelves and then dragged a chair over, stood on it and pulled out a paperback from the third top shelf. Reseating herself on the couch she handed the copy of The Iliad to Hector the younger.

"Jesus! This book's older than I am," he snorted.

"Read it. You'll love it," Kit smiled.

"But..."

"No buts. It's got everything: gods, goddesses, warriors, chariots, and lots of blood-and-guts fighting with swords, spears and other pointy things," Kit enthused. "There's Odysseus, the great strategist; brave but sulky Achilles and his boyfriend; Helen, with the ship-launching face; and, most importantly for you, there's Hector, Prince of Troy and tamer of horses."

"But O'Malley," Hector interrupted, holding Shoot in one hand and The Iliad in the other. "This is two books. You want me to read two books?"

"Ha, ha." Kit would have been worried about Hector's inner life, had she not known that he devoured crime and science fiction novels for breakfast.

"It's good exercise," she said. "Your eyes get to go left and right, left and right."

"You are in a bad mood, aren't you?" he said.

"No. But there will be a test," she said, waving a finger at the books. "You mark my words."