Chasing Can Be Murder (12 page)

Damn dog. Now I had to go in after him. If the intruder was inside he’d swat Tater like an annoying insect. I flattened my back against the wall and edged forward, eyes and ears alert for the slightest sound or movement. What I needed was one of those cute little designer guns. Which led me to thinking, where
does
a female P. I. hide her gun? Too bulky and unflattering for the waistband of a skirt. Also too dangerous if the thing went off. The mind boggled at what it could hit. And stashing the gun in a handbag wouldn’t work for me. By the time I rummaged through bars of chocolate, hairbrushes, the latest John Francombe novel, a packet of condoms (one never knew when Ben might discover I was a girl), bits and pieces of make-up…

Well, hell, I’d be dead and I wouldn’t need the gun then, would I?

Heart banging like the lead drummer’s sticks at a rock concert, I inched along the wall until I came to the first doorway, poked my head around the corner. And my jaw dropped.

Holy catfish…

The room had been thoroughly and violently trashed. I inhaled deeply, held onto my breath and listened for sounds of an intruder. All I could hear was the
click-click-click
of Tater’s sharp toenails trotting back from the kitchen, a smile on his lips and a thick dollop of strawberry jam on the tip of his nose.

I let my breath whoosh out through my nose and surveyed the mess. If the violator was still inside the house, my jammy-nosed watchdog would have flushed him out by now. DVDs had been hurled against the wall, sofa cushions slashed, dresser drawers upended, books and magazines ripped apart, ornaments smashed, bottles shattered. Even Matt’s dog-racing photos had been wrenched off the wall, frames splintered and glass cracked.

Had mild-mannered Matt thrown a temper tantrum before attending the dog meeting the night he was killed? Perhaps he’d experienced a bad day’s punting. Or won and then lost his winnings through a hole in his pocket.

On legs that shook like autumn leaves on a windy day, I stumbled from the lounge into the kitchen. It too was a shambles. Pots, pans, cutlery, broken crockery and bottles scattered everywhere. Sugar, mixed with crushed biscuits, honey and chocolate flavoring carpeted the floor. Chairs overturned. Tins of fruit, assorted jams, packets of soup, pasta and breakfast foods decorated the linoleum. Even Matt’s precious stack of form-guides filed and religiously notarized, had been ripped, screwed up, and deposited in the middle of a thick sludge of strawberry jam.

I stumbled back into the lounge, blinked at the chaos again, and attempted to make sense of it all. Had the police been searching for evidence? But even as the thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it. No cop would make a mess like this and stay on the force long enough to claim his pension.

I guess the reality was slow to hit, but when it did, I slumped against the wall, suddenly bone weary and in need of support. The same vicious madman who’d killed Matt, threatened me, and put Barney in hospital had been at work again.

But what was he looking for?

A sudden intake of breath behind me sent my heart jerking like a frog on a hot rock. I spun around, both fists clenched and ready for action, only to find Tanya in the doorway.

“
Son-of-a-bitch!
” she gasped nudging aside the remains of a broken coffee table with her boot. “Who let the hippos loose in here?”

“Doesn’t look like the work of kids, does it? Or a burglar. Too systematic.”

Tanya bent to pick up a torn photo. It was a picture of a grinning Matt, his arm around one of his greyhounds. “D’ya reckon they found what they were looking for?”

They
again. The faceless
they
. The
they
who had me spooking at shadows.

The violence of the vandalism impossible to get my head around, I shrugged a vague
how-should-I-know?

“It’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t ring the police.”

“Probably didn’t want to get involved,” I said.

I rescued a CD from the floor.
Dancing Queen
. Matt was such an old Abba fan. Sadly, I slotted the CD back into the empty rack. “If they were looking for something important—why kill Matt? You can’t get information from a dead man.”

“Perhaps they found what they were after and then followed him to your place and killed him.”

“Or perhaps Matt wouldn’t tell them where it was hidden so they killed him and came back here to search for it.” I gazed around the room, shook my head, bewildered. “All I know is whoever did this was either very thorough or very pissed off. And you know what? Both
thorough
and
pissed off
scare the crap out of me. I feel like I’ve been caught in a giant washing machine, set on a permanent spin cycle and I don’t know how to get out.”

Sensing my distress, Tater trotted across the room and rubbed his warm body against my ankles.

Tanya gave me a hug. “Hey, you’re not on your own, girlfriend,” she assured me. “Not when you have Ben and me as sidekicks. We’ll kick butt, kick heads, kick balls—whatever it takes to keep you safe.” She gave me another hug then moved off toward the kitchen. “But first, if I dig up a kettle, can you unearth a jar of coffee and two cups? Dunno about you, but I’m gasping for a hit of caffeine. When Ben decides to get his ass over here we’ll get down and dirty and conduct our own search. Okay?”

Tater’s wet cold nose prodded my ankle so I lifted him up for a cuddle, transferring strawberry jam and pickles from his face to my T-shirt in the process. One hug and he wriggled to get down again. I set him on the floor and sent a grin in Tanya’s direction. Okay, a weak grin—but at least it
was
a grin. The image of my best friend, all petite 52 kilos, kicking some big gorilla’s family jewels with the shiny black toe of her Marc Jacob boot went a long way towards extinguishing the nervous tension playing hopscotch in my stomach.

I stooped to set two overturned chairs right side up beside the table. “I wonder what they were after.”

“Money probably.”

“Maybe it was betting tickets.”

She nodded. “Could be. What if Matt bet a pile of their money on a winning dog and now they’re hunting for the betting tickets so they can collect their loot? As I said, it’s usually about money.”

“Or maybe the murderer was making sure Matt hadn’t left any incriminating evidence that pointed directly at him.”

While Tanya filled and plugged in the kettle I sorted through jars on the floor until I came across one that resembled coffee.

“Damn…it’s generic,” I grumbled, wiping sticky globs of honey and jam off the label with a damp cloth.

“Typical.” Tanya took the jar from me and unscrewed the lid. “Men have absolutely
no
appreciation of fine beverages.” She peered inside the jar and her nose wrinkled. “And wouldn’t you know—the coffee’s stale. It’s all lumpy. How could Matt drink this garbage?”

Luckily, I knew where Matt hid his booze. “Fancy a drop of brandy to make the coffee drinkable?”

“Do nuns wear rosary beads?”

Taking that as a yes, I went hunting for the perfect lump-dissolver. The bottles behind Matt’s bar at the far end of the lounge were smashed but there was a bottle of
St. Agnes,
with a few inches of liquor left in the bottom, in its usual hiding place at the bottom of the laundry basket in the bathroom.

“Ta dah!” Grinning inanely, I plunked my booty in the centre of the kitchen table and straddled a kitchen chair. “Let’s rock and roll.”

“Bloody hell!”

I looked up to find Ben Taylor filling the doorway, eyebrows up around his hairline.

“You chicks throwing a party?” he quipped. “Or have I interrupted a premenstrual temper tantrum? If so—I’m outta here.”

Even scowling, Ben looked sexy. Although, to be honest, it was probably the fact that the top three buttons of his shirt were undone and the tempting flashes of smooth tanned skin peeping out from under a fine sprinkling of dark hair made me clench my stomach and sit on my hands. He’d also changed out of his grubby work jeans. Now his legs were encased in pale moleskins, so soft, so creamy-colored and so formfitting, they should be illegal.

“About time you showed up.” Tanya, evidently unaffected by this mythical vision of manhood, scrounged another unbroken cup from the clutter on the floor and waved Ben inside. “Well, don’t just stand there gawping like a fish on a line, Benjamin. Come in and join our Upside-down House party. I’m afraid all we have to offer is lumpy generic coffee—with or without a dash of brandy—but you’re welcome to partake.”

“Nah. Knock yourselves out. I’ll have a poke around, see what I can find.” He strolled across the room, sugar crunching under his boots with every step.

While Ben explored the kitchen and Tanya and I sipped coffee and offered advice, Tater, looking all-important and official, came trotting into the room. He dropped a rotten banana at Ben’s feet then sat and grinned up at him.

“Well, thanks little mate.” Ben bent to scratch the dog behind the ears. Tater sniffed Ben’s boots then stretched up and licked the exposed skin between the top of his boot and the bottom of his moleskins. Which made me
sooo
jealous. Perhaps I should go find Ben a rotten banana too. Being so much taller than Tater, I could lick a lot higher. As the thought of what I could lick slid from my brain to a lower part of my anatomy, I caught my breath.

Ben flicked a puzzled frown in my direction.

Oh God…was my tongue hanging out? Was drool running down my chin? Was I that obvious?

“If Matt left a clue it sure as hell won’t be here now,” he said. “Whoever ransacked this joint gave it a thorough going over.”

I let out a deep frustrated sigh and banged my coffee cup on the table. Ben Taylor wouldn’t pick up on
obvious
if it was frozen solid and shoved down his throat. “Maybe,” I grumbled. “But I still think we should do what we came here for.”

Tanya drained the last of her coffee, scraped her chair backwards and stood up. “I’m with Kat. I say we follow through with our original plan.”

“If that’s what you want, let’s do it.”

We split up. Tanya took the bedroom, Ben the bathroom and laundry and Tater and I decided to look for clues in the lounge.

Five minutes into our search Tanya drifted from the bedroom, a pair of iridescent blue underpants featuring naked women in various obscene poses in one hand, a fluffy stuffed animal that could have been either a horse with a long neck or a stunted giraffe in the other. “Does anyone have any idea of what we’re searching for?”

“Beats me.” Ben’s muffled voice came from the bathroom. “But I guess we’ll know if we find it.”

Recessed into the far wall of the lounge room was a brick fireplace with the charred remains of a fire in the hearth. I picked up a blackened poker and jabbed at the grate, scrabbling around in the ashes. Who knows? I might find a half-burnt diary with all the good bits still intact. Or important letters. Or pages of a confession. In the last cozy mystery I’d read,
Murder at Mistletoe Manor,
vital evidence pertaining to the identity of the killer had been discovered in the fireplace. In that story the butler did it—naturally—although I had a suspicion no self-respecting butler would come within ten miles of Matt’s house.

I blew at my bangs and leaned the poker up against the wall. The only burnt paper in Matt’s fireplace was an unpaid bill from a storage depot. Absently, I picked it up by one corner, shook off the worst of the ashes and stored the remains in the side pocket of my tote bag. Probably nothing. Then not knowing where to look next I flopped onto Matt’s cracked brown vinyl settee to think. What had I missed? Scratching my head, I ran analytical eyes over the room. Hmm. What about Matt’s answering-machine? Perhaps if I could find his land-line there might be something worth listening to on the machine.

After burrowing into the mess like a terrier after a rat, I discovered the missing phone hidden under a brandy stained throw rug. Eager to hear any messages, I plugged it in and switched on the machine.

Silence…

Damn. The police—or whoever was responsible for this disaster—must have either wiped it clean or taken the tape.

“No clues in here and there’s nothing on Matt’s answering machine,” I yelled and took a sip of cold coffee before spitting it out in disgust. “What about you guys?”

“Nada,” came from the bedroom.

“Bugger all in here,” Ben informed us from the laundry.

“Okay, you were right,” I informed Ben as he trundled through the doorway, wiping grease from his hands onto a towel. “If there were any clues to start with, they’re well and truly gone now.

“You know, what we really need to find is Matt’s mobile,” Tanya mused as she wandered into the room.

“Good thinking, Watson.” Ben slung his arm around her shoulder. “Then we’d know who he’s been ringing.”

“And who’s been ringing
him
,” Tanya finished, grinning like the proverbial cream-devouring cat.

Ben turned to me and I sidled closer. “Hey, mate,” he said completely ignoring my proffered shoulder. “Can you remember if Matt had his cell phone with him on Wednesday night?”

Humph! No hug for me. Just
mate
. With a sigh, I thought back to when Matt and I returned from the Gawler race meeting. We fed the dogs and settled them in the kennel-house for the night. He talked me into letting him come inside for a coffee. I tossed my jacket on the chair. Matt hung…

“It’s in the cupboard in my hallway! Matt’s mobile is in the pocket of his sheepskin coat and his coat is hanging in my hallway cupboard.”

“Well what are you waiting for?” Tanya grinned.

“You do realize,” put in Ben, rubbing one hand across the beginnings of his five o’clock shadow, “if Matt’s coat was in the cupboard at Kat’s house, the cops have likely confiscated it by now.”

I watched Tanya deflate like a pricked balloon at a kid’s party.

“It’s okay, Tan,” I told her barely suppressing a whoop. At last something was going right for us. “Matt’s coat is still there. I noticed it hanging next to my Drizabone when I grabbed my parka this morning.”