A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 (11 page)

The woman with the knife couldn’t reach the band, because people were grabbing, hauling her back. She lashed out with her feet and hands, and twisted free of their grasp, all without actually using the knife.

Stewart was taking photographs, his hands steady on the long-lens camera. I resisted the urge to kick him. Instead, I wormed my way through the crowd towards the woman with the knife—or at least, to a position between the woman and the door at the far end of the room.

Sure enough, when she started running for the exit, I was smack bang in her way. She shoved me aside and kept going through the door, leaving nothing behind her but a trailing fragrance of limes and coconut.

Stewart reached me a few minutes later, looking angry and worried. ‘What was that?’

‘Did you know?’ I yelled at him. ‘Did you know that was going to happen?’

He didn’t answer straight away. ‘I knew something was going tae happen.’

‘Because she told you.’ I had guessed even before I saw her face under the platinum blonde wig. Legs like those don’t come along every day. Xanthippe fucking Carides.

‘Aye.’

‘Damn it.’ I shook his hand off, and stood up on my own. The band announced that they would play on through the party, and the whole crowd started cheering and yelling. ‘I need a drink.’

‘Tabitha…’

I glared at him. ‘Go away. I’m going to find Ceege and my actual friends.’

I
found
Ceege with some mates of ours, and the kitchen, and the tequila, not necessarily in that order. A few hours after that, I stumbled out of the party in order to preserve my dignity and/or life. Never try to outdrink a bunch of engineering students.

Stewart was lying on the grass in the front garden.

‘What are you up to now?’ I demanded.

‘Waiting for ye.’

‘Hmph.’ I sat down on the grass next to him, and called a taxi on my mobile. ‘I’m not feeling the trust right now, Stewart.’

‘I should have told ye. I wasnae thinking. She told me nothing, just to be prepared with the camera. I sure as hell didnae know there would be a knife involved. Is Xanthippe totally insane?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ I sighed. ‘She’d be less of a danger to society if she were.’

‘It was a publicity stunt.’

‘Oh, you’ve figured that one out?’

‘It’s no’ difficult. Xanthippe’s been hanging around the building for days—says it’s tae find yer precious landlord, but that doesnae hae tae be the only reason. We know the band have some new PR manager encouraging them tae dae daft things tae get media attention—hell, I’ve been blogging most o’ them.’

‘Feeling used?’ I asked.

‘Just a tad.’

‘Will you post the story anyway?’

‘Fuck aye. Knife-wielding woman attacks band? How can I no’? Tempted to run it with a “band stages dodgy publicity stunt” headline, though.’

‘Wouldn’t blame you if you did.’ I yawned. The grass was snuggly. ‘We’ll think about it tomorrow.’

‘Still angry at me?’

‘No, I’m over it.’ I rolled over on one elbow to look at him. The gel spikes had softened in the heat and sweat of the party, and there wasn’t much makeup left on him, though his skin still glittered. ‘Your lipstick’s smudged,’ I told him.
Very strong hands. Deep grey eyes.

Stewart grimaced and put a hand up to his face, stroking glitter on to his fingertips. ‘Imagine tha’.’

Oh, and sexy accent
, I added sleepily to my list of Stewart’s good qualities.
Even when sarcastic.
‘Want me to remove it?’

‘Given that the only preferable option is for ye not tae have put it on in the first place…’

I looked speculatively at him for a moment, then leaned in to remove the last of his lipstick by my favourite method.

For the first split second, Stewart’s mouth tasted of surprise, and then he relaxed and kissed me back, warm and soft. I sighed happily, and let my face drift down to his neck.

‘Tabitha, how drunk are ye?’

‘Very,’ I murmured, burrowing close.
Mm. Sleep
. He wasn’t overly comfortable, and his shoulders were kind of bony, but it would do.

‘Taxi’s here.’

‘Hmm?’

But Stewart was up on his feet, and holding my hand, and somehow we made it to the taxi without me losing consciousness again. ‘How’s the lipstick?’ I asked him as he put my seatbelt on.

‘Cured,’ he said with a wicked grin, and I heard him giving the taxi driver my address as he slid into the back seat beside me.

I
woke up very slowly
, unwrapping myself from a nest of doonas, sheets and novelty cushions. The blinding sunlight through the upper windows illuminated a room full of clothes, clothes and more clothes, draped over every available surface. Well, that was something. After a night on the tequila and fizzy lemonade, it’s a good thing to wake up in one’s own bed.

There was something I was forgetting.

My sheets were full of glitter. I moaned and pulled a few limbs out to peer at them. Obviously I hadn’t been in good enough shape to shower before bed. Damn it. I tried to remember getting to bed, and couldn’t. Last thing I remembered was the taxi, and getting in the taxi, shortly after I…

Kissed Stewart. Huh.

Speculatively, I slid one arm across the length of the bed, just to check whether I had company. A shape twitched under the doona, and my fuzzy black cat licked my hand. I relaxed. ‘We seem to be alone, Kinky Boots.’

Kinky Boots crawled out and stared at me, unimpressed. Then he
mrrowed
at me. A breakfast
mrrow
.

‘Keep your whiskers on, puss puss.’ I rolled out of bed and peeled the silver party dress off my body. It had left tight creases in my skin, and my waist was all squinched. I draped on an oversized green kimono, the best thing I ever stole from my mum’s wardrobe. The fabric was cool and light against my skin, and it felt as calming as green tea, or scones and cream.

If only I could get my eyes all the way open.

I remembered kissing Stewart on the grass outside the party—also, I remembered pashing him again in the taxi, and snuggling up as close to him as the seat belt would allow. I hadn’t been blacking out drunk. Did that mean I had fallen asleep before we reached my front door? ‘Shit,’ I said aloud, combing my fingers through my hair and discovering that the damn silver wig was still partly attached. I didn’t have the brain power to remove it yet. It would have to wait until tea and breakfast, and more breakfast. And more tea.

In the kitchen, Ceege looked about how I felt, only he had showered and found some actual clothes (back in jeans and t-shirt, his secret identity).

I eased myself in and sat at the kitchen table very, very gingerly. ‘Make me a cup of tea,’ I moaned, ‘and I’ll love you forever.’

‘Tell you what, Tabs,’ said Ceege as he switched on the electric jug. ‘Are you sure you’re a size ten? Cause you’re bloody heavy.’

‘Ten-ish,’ I replied, which was almost completely true except when it wasn’t. ‘It was you who put me to bed last night?’ I tilted my head at the fridge, where the big mirror was still resting from our dress up session the night before. ‘Of course. Who else would think to remove my eye makeup first?’

‘Too right,’ said Ceege, lifting the lid of the washing machine and glaring at it, as if challenging it to work better. ‘Though your man Stewart did most of the carrying. I was more in the directorial, project management line of things.’ He smirked. ‘Came home at three and found you two crashed out on the couch. Cosy.’

It was far too early in the morning for me to deal with this. ‘I need breakfast.’

‘You know where the corn flakes are.’

I made little mewling noises. Pathetic, but I was hungry. ‘Waffles?’

‘You’re a professional cook. You run a freaking café. Why should I make you waffles?’

Shit, the café. ‘Nin is going to kill me.’

‘You’re only about four hours late.’

‘I wasn’t stupid enough to go to a party last night without rostering Lara
and
Yui on for this morning,’ I said defensively. No, it wasn’t that. Nin was going to kill me when I told her my new plan to find Darrow.

After the mess with Xanthippe the night before, I couldn’t put it off any longer. Darrow wasn’t just my landlord, he owned sixty percent of my business. If he was involved with something dodgy, I needed to know. ‘If I have a ten minute shower, and I give you unlimited access to my lipsticks this week, will you
please
have waffles on the table when I come out?’

‘Take fifteen minutes,’ he grunted. ‘You look bloody shocking.’

I blew him a kiss as I staggered for the bathroom. ‘Love you, Ceege.’

‘I wouldn’t have you—you’re as hard on your blokes as you are on your frocks.’

I
t was
after eleven by the time I had sorted things out with Nin, paid off Lara and Yui, and closed the café for the rest of the day. I left Nin furiously scrubbing the kitchen floor. She only does that when she’s really narked at me. I think she pretends it’s my face.

I then fled to my favourite hiding spot, the sloping well of trees and greenery that is St David’s Park. It’s the best park in the city, a huge expanse of grass at the older end of town, surrounded by crumbling stonework. If you go down deep enough into the park, you can almost forget that there are things like cars and traffic lights in the world.

I lay on the grass (trying not to think of a similar patch of grass the night before) and started plotting my campaign against Darrow and Xanthippe.

All right, and I had a snooze. Just a little one. I was woken by a Scottish accent, and the smell of coffee.
My
coffee. Well, Nin’s coffee.

‘Good morning,’ said Stewart.

I cracked an eye open. ‘S’practically afternoon.’

‘Aye, well I thought it wouldnae be overly polite tae mention that.’

I stuck out my hand. ‘Give.’

He passed me one of the Café La Femme takeaway cups, and kept the other for himself.

Sitting up, I blew on my coffee and tasted it.
Mm, latté good, coffee yum
. ‘How did you get this, with the café closed?’

‘Promised Nin it would annoy ye. And about that—why is the café closed, exactly? I thought her eyebrows were going to explode off her head when I asked, so I didn’t push it.’

‘And she told you exactly where you’d be able to find me?’

Stewart shrugged. ‘She said ye usually come to this park when sulking…’

‘I am not sulking.’

‘…or hungover.’

‘Ah.’ I took another long suck of coffee. ‘Listen, Stewart, about the kissing thing.’

‘Oh, aye,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

‘You have?’ I squeaked, trying not to sound paranoid. It was important to be very cool about random snogging, just in case the other person a) read too much into it or b) didn’t read enough into it. To give you some idea of my state of mind at the time, I had no
idea
which I wanted from Stewart. So that was helpful.

‘Mmhmm. Now, Tabitha, when ye were kissing me … were ye imagining Bishop in or out of his uniform? I cannae decide which one’s kinkier.’

I stared at him, not sure whether to be relieved or insulted. Then I smacked him. ‘I was not thinking about Bishop.’

The horrible truth was that I wasn’t. Not at the time, not one bit. But maybe it was better Stewart thought so. Less complicated.

Stewart took a long swallow of his coffee. It looked even stronger than the stuff I make for him. ‘Why don’t ye throw yerself into his arms and say, take me, ye big manly policeman?’

‘It’s complicated,’ I muttered. ‘And that is so wrong, by the way, on many levels.’

‘Ye know what I mean. Why no’ jump him and get on with it?’

‘A lot of reasons.’ I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with Stewart, of all people. Especially the morning after I had kissed him. Well. Really, drunken snogging hardly counted at all, right? Apparently not to him. Should I be this irritated that he was dismissing our smoochage as if it was nothing? Possibly I was a crazy person.

‘Like?’ he said, waving for me to expand on that.

‘He still treats me like he’s the grown up and I’m the teenager. I was friends with his little sister before I even met him, and he’s never reclassified me. He doesn’t even think of me as being … adult and beddable.’

‘Apart from the snogging.’

‘That’s a recent development.’ I eyed him. ‘How do you even know about that?’

‘I photographed it.’

‘That’s sick—oh, wait.’ I realised he was talking about the kiss after the siege, and hadn’t been spying on us in stairwells. ‘Well, okay, then. Then there’s the fact that my parents adore him, and have been dropping hints about us getting together since I was seventeen.’

‘Parental approval! Doomed.’

I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t used to having to vocalise why Bishop and I would be a bad idea—all my other friends took it for granted. ‘He doesn’t fit the pattern, okay?’

‘There’s a pattern?’

‘It’s mine, and I’m very attached to it.’

‘G’on, then.’ I still couldn’t tell if Stewart was making fun of me, and if his eyes should be quite that warm if we were just friends and the kiss had just been a kiss? ‘What’s yer pattern?’

I slugged down the last of my latté, not wanting to tell him. ‘Unreliable men with foreign accents who dump me for other women and whose mothers take pity on me and expand my culinary repertoire,’ I mumbled.

Stewart blinked. ‘How many times has this particular pattern repeated itself?’

‘Eight.’

‘Nae wonder yer sae good with pasta.’

I nodded sheepishly. Then a thought occurred to me. ‘Hey, what’s your mum like in the kitchen?’

Stewart waved a finger at me, sternly. ‘No. Bad Tabitha.’

‘I’ve always wanted to learn about bannock and cock-a-leekie soup…’

‘No!’

‘Sorry.’

Stewart tried not to smile, but I saw it sneaking out the side of his coffee cup. ‘So. Why is the café closed?’

I snorted. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a post-traumatic reaction to kissing you. It’s part of the plan.’

‘What plan?’

‘The plan to drag Darrow out of the woodwork, and find out if me and my business are implicated in whatever dodgy scheme he’s up to his neck in, with or without Xanthippe.’

‘Oh. Is it a good plan?’

‘I hope so. If it doesn’t work soon, Nin’s going to bake me in a pie crust.’

Stewart said nothing, meaningfully.

It occurred to me that he was expecting me to tell him my plan. ‘So,’ I said brightly. ‘What are you doing for the rest of the day? Need more of my people to blog about?’

‘I’m good, ta. Found some people of me own. But if the café is closed, do ye mind if I work on the mural?’

‘Not going to stop you.’ I stood up, and brushed grass from my skirt. ‘I have an expedition tomorrow. You can come along if you like—might be
Sandstone City
compatible.’

‘Works for me.’ Stewart drank the last of his coffee, and looked bereaved about it.

‘You’re not really interested in painting my walls,’ I teased. ‘You just don’t want to be parted from my coffee machine.’

‘It is the one true love of me life,’ he admitted, and held my gaze for a little longer than he had to. Hmm.

S
o
, breaking and entering. Not exactly my area of expertise. But everyone has to start somewhere.

I already regretted having closed the café. Apart from anything else, my staff insisted on being paid for all their regular shifts, because of the short notice. Still, if Darrow was driving around Hobart in that taxi of his, he was sure to spot that the café was closed.

If there’s one thing Darrow hates, it’s not being in the loop.

I hadn’t bought much time. I couldn’t afford to keep the café closed for more than a day or two—plus Nin would actually murder me if I carried it on longer than that, using sharp knives instead of eyebrows. I had to find out what was going on, fast. That meant a visit to Darrow’s place.

I’d assumed he wasn’t there—he hadn’t answered the phone or returned a message for six weeks. Either he’d been deliberately avoiding all contact and was actually still at home, or the place would be empty and thus potentially full of clues about his absence.

Which brings us back to breaking and entering.

The way Darrow looks and dresses, not to mention the way he throws his cash around, most people expect him to live in a shiny bachelor pad apartment, maybe with a view of the river.

But he has this fetish about Tasmanian heritage buildings, and his home is one of the collection. It’s a tiny, old-fashioned stone cottage that belonged to the mistress of one of the colony’s governors, a couple of hundred years ago. The street is so narrow that it can only fit one line of parked Saabs and Land Rovers, and the gardens are all of the tiny, overgrown ‘this plum tree has been here since 1808, and these roses have a better lineage than you’ variety.

I stood in Darrow’s garden, wondering how old the glass in the windows was, and whether it would be a moral and aesthetic crime (as well as, you know, a criminal one) to break it.

It was really, really important that I figured out what Darrow was up to, and whether it was going to endanger my business. But I wasn’t sure if I was willing to risk arrest to find out. Particularly not if the arresting officer was someone I knew, and the odds of that were hardly in my favour.

I stood back, and circled the cottage. Along the side, one of the windows was slightly open. Entering without breaking. Much better. I slid my arm into the gap, trying to lever the window up with my shoulder.
Ow. Bruised something
. I pulled my arm back out, and shook it until it stopped feeling numb.

I needed to get into shape. Zee wouldn’t have trouble with a titchy little window like this, not with her sleek arm muscles and great self confidence. She’d just give it a little shove, and…

The window flew open, and I screamed. Strong arms hauled the pane of glass upward, and a head appeared. ‘Can I help you with something?’ asked Xanthippe.

Crap.