A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 (4 page)

When grilling people for gossip, I find it’s best to nod and smile a lot, as if you know exactly what they’re talking about. So I nodded and smiled. ‘Wait—what traps?’

Gary finished his last bite of brownie, and I waved at Lara to fill us up. She gave me the finger, and went back to cleaning the cappuccino machine. Fair enough, really.

‘It looked like stupid pranks,’ Gary went on, without the extra lubrication of a second brownie. I pushed mine in his direction, just in case. ‘The cat stuck up the tree, then the postman who fell into a cage. No one thought it actually meant anything. But then there’s this net with a dead body in it, and no one knows how it got up there. Those rock band blokes turned out to have some Super-lawyer, and we can’t prove they were involved, so who could it be? The body was some junkie busker, but still … Inspector Clayton reckons that finding the Trapper could be really important now. Pivotal to the case.’

‘The Trapper,’ I said encouragingly.

‘I came up with the name,’ said Gary, puffing up a little. ‘And everyone around the station picked it up—he’s sort of sneaky and cunning. And he sets traps.’

‘Clayton,’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘Is that Des Clayton? I think my dad knew him, years ago.’ Big surprise there. There aren’t many senior officers in the country who don’t know Dad, one way or another. ‘Ran the training college in Adelaide?’

‘On active duty now,’ said Gary. ‘Anyway, that’s why Bishop’s all cranky. So don’t take it personally.’ He smiled at me. ‘That was really good lasagne, Tabby.’

There was a firm cough from Lara, and I glanced at the clock. Quarter to five—that’s time to start looking inhospitable and wave chairs around, so we don’t get any customers sneaking in at two minutes to closing. ‘Great seeing you, Gary. Pop in again soon.’ I cleared the plates briskly, leaving him to give a little wave on his way out.

No sooner had he left than the bell jangled as he stuck his head back in. ‘Hey, Tabby. If you’re interested, there’s stuff about the traps up on your friend’s blog.’

‘What friend?’ I said. ‘Wait, what blog?’

S
andstone City
. I’d contributed a few stories to the blog over the last few months, mainly due to the fact that Simon, Head Geek, spent a lot of time hanging hopefully around our coffee machine until he figured out that Nin really isn’t into blokes. Also, I talk a lot. Apparently some of the things I blurted out randomly were worth writing down.

I’d never actually looked at the site, though.

Once the kitchen was halfway clean, I sent Nin and Lara home and cracked open my laptop. The blog came up in Google easily enough, and the top post was one of Stewart’s glamour shots of Bev Darrow and her meringue erotica. He’d asked her some interview questions, and the whole thing came across pretty well.

Underneath was a post by
simoning
reporting the dead body found swinging in a net in Crash Velvet’s spare room and that police were considering it a suspicious death. There was also a bit of a blurb about the Crime Management Unit handling the case, with a link back to the Tasmania Police website about how the unit was made up of general officers as well as members of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). No mention of the body being a junkie busker, as Gary referred to him, but Simon had published interviews with all the band members about how shocked they were and how weird it all was.

The final tagline of the post was: Publicity Stunt Gone Wrong, or has the Trapper Gone Homicidal? Have your say on our forum!

The word ‘Trapper’ had a link to an earlier post by
random_scotsman
, so I clicked through.

‘
S
uch a hack
,’ I sighed, but kept reading.

S
ometime later
, I lay in wait for our resident Scotsman.

‘Tabitha,’ said Stewart as he stepped out of the office to find me sitting on the stairs. ‘Wha’s up?’

I smiled winningly. ‘Fancy painting my walls?’

He gave me a suspicious look. ‘According to my sources, when ye smile like that, I’m supposed tae start running.’

‘Where would be the fun in that?’

Apparently I had a good point.

‘The meringue erotica story is daein well,’ Stewart said as we went through to the café. ‘Bringing a heap of readers to the site. I could do with a few more like that.’

‘More hits than the cat-in-a-net story?’

‘Are ye kidding me? Real news versus patisserie porn? No contest. Though cats do rule the internet.’ He gave me a knowing grin. ‘Have ye been reading my blog, Ms Darling?’

‘Maybe a little. Looks like we’ve got our very own Trapper here in the building.’

‘Aye, maybe.’ He didn’t look convinced. ‘Can I really take those rubbish posters down?’

‘Be my guest.’

Stewart removed them carefully and meticulously. ‘See, much better already.’

I think he meant soulless and boring, but I was still trying to tease information out of him, so I kept that opinion to myself. It only hurt a little. ‘So, who’s this anonymous postal worker?’ I asked.

‘I’m nae daft,’ he said in a tone that said ‘sprung’. ‘My sources are protected, Darling.’ Or was it ‘darling’? My last name leads to such emotional ambiguities.

‘We don’t have Freedom of the Press in this country.’

Stewart removed my Twiggy poster, and added it to the stack. ‘I’ve been in Australia long enough. Ye cannae fool me that way.’

‘Bugger.’

He laughed. ‘I’m gonnae need a pencil.’

I brought him a handful from behind the counter. ‘You don’t have to paint my walls. I only used it as an excuse to talk to you.’

Stewart took the pencils from my fingers, then leaned around and pecked me on the cheek. ‘I know. Now back off and let me work. I’ve got plans for this wall of yours.’

That shouldn’t have sounded quite so sexy … right? ‘Hungry?’ I said in a squeak.

‘Oh weeeell, if you’re going to feed me, I suppose I’d better start singing like a canary. No, wait, journalistic integrity … giving me indigestion…’ He faked a messy death scene in front of me.

‘I’ve read your stuff, McTavish. As a journalist, you make a great photographer.’

‘Och! You’re a hard woman, Tabitha Darling.’

I resisted the urge to swoon upon hearing my name rendered in a Scottish accent. ‘I try.’

He started making little gasping noises. ‘So very hungry, cannot make art…’

Reader, I fed him.

A
n hour
and several plates of leftovers later, Stewart had cleaned off my walls with the diligence of a true obsessive (the paint job was recent enough that he wasn’t insisting on an undercoat, though he had then lapsed into arty jargon about what he was going to do with the layering of paint, leaving me to nod and smile). He was now covering my wall in blocky pencil marks that made no sense to me. ‘Um, when you said you knew what you were doing?’

‘Shush,’ he said. ‘Genius at work.’

‘Right. So who put you on to the story about the Trapper, anyway?’

‘Can’t tell. Would hae tae kill ye, and then there would be no more pasta salad for me. Did I mention how exceptional this pasta salad is?’

‘Secret’s in the dressing. What if you know something that the police need to know?’

‘So ye feed me, I spill my sources, and then it gets passed straight on to your grumpy uniformed boyfriend. It’s all strangely unappealing.’

‘Bishop’s not my boyfriend.’ I felt the need to share this information purely for the sake of accuracy.

Stewart was still thoroughly amused at himself. ‘Do ye think solving this crime will make him fall into yer womanly arms?’

‘Oi!’ I couldn’t help laughing at that. ‘I’m not looking to solve a crime here. Leaving that to the experts, thank you very much.’

‘Just nosy, then.’

‘Basically.’

Stewart went back to work. ‘I wouldnae worry about it. The police know everything I know—more, probably. I got nothing out of the mad cat lady. She waved her arms a lot, and howled about how cats were the ultimate pinnacle of creation. And it was one of yer cop friends who put me on to the story, in any case.’

‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure why I was disappointed.

Stewart gestured at the walls. ‘How long can I hae on this tonight?’

‘Don’t you have anywhere else to be? Someone to be with?’ Really subtle, Tabitha, nice one.

‘Me, I like walls. They offer so much, yet ask so little in return.’ I might have thought he was joking, but he was gazing at the blank surface pretty intensely.

‘You can have an hour. It will take me that long to finish cleaning the kitchen, and wiping down in here.’

‘Aye, all right.’ Stewart paused. ‘And will ye be talking to me the entire time?’

‘I’ll try and resist,’ I sniped, and headed for the kitchen. Mopping and scrubbing awaited. Fun fun fun.

F
riday morning
, after fulfilling my crime witness obligations, I drove across the river to my favourite berry farm. They can deliver, of course, but I like to look at their stocks for myself every now and then. I wanted a new dessert for the Saturday shoppers and was hunting inspiration. The clear air, sweet smell and thick greenery of the farm was exactly what I needed to let my brain do its best work.

Hobart is a small city, as Australian state capitals go. The back of beyond, especially if you listen to anyone under twenty. But when adventuring in the big wide world gets old, it’s nice to have somewhere comfy to return to. A boutique city on the edge of a wide river, within a stone’s throw of farmland and fresh produce … oh, yes. There are worse places in the world to settle down.

Raspberries are one of my favourite things in the universe. I loaded up the car with a pallet of them, more than I’d actually planned to buy, plus a bonus box of the last cherries of the season. If I marinated them, they would last me all winter.

I was thinking about mini-trifles as I drove away from Sorell, surrounded by bushland and clear blue water. I love trifle, but it’s messy as hell to serve. It would have to be done in individual portions, and that’s a lot of faffing about. Plus, as desserts go it’s chalked up on the old school blackboard. Shades of Nannaland.

I reached the turn-off to Bellerive, the prettiest and poshest of the eastern suburbs (which is the charming local way of saying ‘suburbs on the opposite side of the river to the real city’) and before my conscious brain kicked in, I was heading in that direction, scanning the main street for Margarita’s Pre-Loved Fashions, the home of the netted cat.

This was unreasonably nosy, even for me. What did I care about some lunatic setting traps around Hobart, even if one of them had netted a dead man in my building?

I spotted the boutique, and a handy parking space right beside it. Behind a police car, as it happens. The shop window was full of cute vintage frocks, which officially made it my kind of place.

Inside, a forty-something, henna-haired drama queen was being interviewed by a uniformed senior constable. Who was, of course, Bishop. I ducked behind a rack of faux fur stoles and feather-wool scarves, pretending great interest in the garments.

‘You lot weren’t interested in my poor Moonshine when it first happened,’ Margarita said to him, waving her arms at a ratty old Siamese cat who was asleep in a basket of lace gloves and doilies. ‘I called three times, and none of you came to see for yourselves. One of your little receptionist madams said I was wasting police time.’

‘I do apologise for that,’ said Bishop between gritted teeth. Sounded like this conversation had been going around in circles for some time. ‘Matters have since escalated…’

‘Because a human has been killed,’ said Margarita, with a fanatical gleam in her eye. ‘My Moonshine could have starved in that net! He was three streets away when I found him. Someone thought it was
funny
.’

‘If you could just answer a few questions,’ Bishop said.

A gaggle of girls came in, laughing, and went straight to the counter.

‘You don’t mind if I deal with my customers first?’ Margarita said, and started talking to the girls before Bishop could answer her.

My eye was caught by a cabinet of glassware and cheap jewellery. ‘Shot glasses,’ I said aloud. Tiny trifles in shot glasses. Perfect. ‘Ow!’

A large hand came down and grabbed me by the shoulder, and pushed me out of the shop. ‘Police brutality! I object.’

‘Why are you following me, Tish?’ Bishop said, his face all thundery.

I resisted the urge to be turned on by his dominant personality. ‘It’s not always about you, Leo sweetie. Sometimes, it’s about shopping.’

He gave me a very suspicious look. ‘You’re not playing girl detective again, are you?’

‘Again? That’s so unfair. There’s supposed to be an amnesty about stupid things you did when you were sixteen.’

‘Tabitha…’

I held up my hand. ‘Guide’s Honour. No girl detective. I happened to be in the area, and I remembered reading about this place on Stewart’s blog, and I thought, ooh, a secondhand clothes boutique I didn’t previously know about. You know my lust for pre-1980s cocktail wear is ever and eternal.’

Bishop sighed. ‘To my shame, I do know that about you. Also, that you were kicked out of the Girl Guides.’

‘Well, then.’ I smiled brightly. ‘Any leads on the murder?’

‘
Tabitha
.’

‘I’m interested. It happened in my building. I saw the body. I’m still kind of creeped out by the whole thing. I would like to know that my favourite police officer is going to make an arrest soon, so I don’t have to think about it any more.’ I paused. ‘So does
Sandstone City
have it right? Does your presence here mean there is a connection between the dead busker and the Trapper?’

Bishop looked as if he had eaten something horrible. Not my cooking. ‘You’re still hanging out with that Scottish bloke, then.’

‘Didn’t we already have this conversation? And before you ask, I don’t google my friends. You know, unless I’m bored. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you evaded my question about the murder.’

‘It probably wasn’t a murder.’

‘You said murder inquiry,’ I reminded him.

‘We were considering the possibility, but he died of an overdose. Needle was still in him. Accident and suicide are looking the most likely. And I’d better not see any of this turning up on your friend’s blog,’ he growled. ‘But … you don’t have to worry about murderers running around your building.’

I got that he was trying to be comforting, but was he kidding me? ‘Swinging in a giant net in a building where nobody knew him? How do you get from that to accident? Is that Inspector Des’ big theory? And where does the Trapper fit into that anyway?’

‘Tabitha, you talk too much. Do I come into your café and start telling you what to serve?’

‘Yes, actually. All the time. It’s very annoying.’

Bishop stopped looking like a human being and started looking like a big angry police officer again. ‘I’ve got work to do. Go home.’

I didn’t want to argue any more, and my berries would be getting warm in the car. ‘Fine.’