Finders Keepers Losers Die (4 page)

I opened my door and Lou stumbled backwards
before regaining his balance. "Hey," he said. "Careful. Don't spill
my drink." He held up his glass, sloshing some of the liquid over
the sides.

"Put that wire back in my car."

He threw it through my open door.

"I meant, inside the hood."

"What do I look like, a mechanic?"

I tried to remain calm, practicing the
breathing techniques I'd learned on the set of
The Avengers
.
"If you don't get my car working in five minutes, my boot will be
so far up your ass you'll be walking like a cowboy for a week."

His gaze shifted past me and his jowls
dropped. Oh yeah, the look on his face was worth every cent I paid
for the Doc Martens.

"Everything all right here?"

I spun round to see who had the nerve to
steal my thunder. Scarface. Now that he was standing, I could gauge
his full height. He was tall, about Will's height, but not as
solid. That didn't make him any less intimidating. In fact, I bet
every inch of him underneath the snug black jeans and black T-shirt
was packed with hard muscle.

Lou must have agreed with me, going by his
reaction. He meekly retrieved the wire and handed it over,
shrugging an apology. "She was asking for it," he said without much
conviction.

I rounded on him. "Asking for it! I was
sound asleep in my car, you asshole. The only thing I was asking
for was your fat, ugly face away from me."

He held up his hands, spilling some of his
beer. "Hey, sorry, little lady."

I
hate
it when men use condescending
words like little. Cute's another one that drives me nuts. I
really
hate cute. I'm not a goddamn kitten!

Scarface opened the hood of my Civic and
disappeared under it. A moment later he dropped it back into place
and dusted off his hands. "All done. Now, if you two don't mind,
I've got business to attend to."

"Thanks," I said. It sounded pathetic
considering he'd just helped me out, so I added, "A lot."

"No problem." He locked his one-eyed glare
on Lou for a few beats then sauntered off.

I gave Lou a glare too then got into my car.
But I couldn't resist a parting shot. "You're scum."

He smiled. Something about that smile
unnerved me. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but then I
realized. It wasn't lopsided or accompanied with spittle. In fact,
he didn't sway either.

"And you're a liar," he said in a measured
tone. Not a slurred syllable in sight.

He wasn't drunk.

"Stop following me, Girlie," he added.

My shaking fingers fumbled the keys. The
hesitation gave Lou a chance to shove his face through my window.
"Who do you work for? My stupid, frigid wife?"

Stop fucking shaking!

Lou laughed. "Yeah, she'd be dumb enough to
employ someone as crap as you. Well, let me tell you something
about that bitch—"

I turned the key and thanked the God of
Automobiles when the Civic spluttered to life. I pressed my foot to
the accelerator and shot out of there as fast as she would go.

All the way home, the chant
he knows he
knows he knows
echoed through my head like the chorus to a bad
song.

After I checked all the locks on the doors
and windows of my apartment, poked a broom handle under the bed and
stashed a knife under my pillow, I climbed under the covers, even
though it was too warm for anything more than a sheet.

When sunrise seeped through the bedroom
curtains, I turned off all the lights and finally fell asleep.

I awoke around eleven and screamed. I was
so
late for work. Will was going to kill me. Or fire me. I
grabbed the phone and dialed the office. "Carl? Is Will in?"

"Cat? Are you sick?"

"No. Yes!" I coughed. "Really sick. Don't
think I can make it today. Please tell Will—"

Muffled noises came from the other end.
"Tell me what?" Will sounded grumpy.

"Hi, Will. Look, I'm not feeling well today.
Got a major headache and I've been throwing up all morning. It
might be stomach bug. I don't want to give it to you or Carl."

"Oh. Okay. Better get yourself to a doctor,
Cat. Get better soon." Wow, he actually sounded sympathetic, kind.
"We need you back here ASAP. This place is a mess and I want to go
through the accounts with you. There's some discrepancies." So much
for Mr. Sympathy.

I hung up and stepped into the shower. Was
he blaming me for the incorrect accounts? Huh. It seemed I was lazy
when I was in the office and incompetent when I wasn't. Although he
couldn't blame the discrepancies on my accounting skills. When I
started at Knight Investigations and actually did some work to
clean the place up, I'd noticed a few things didn't add up. There
were a lot of petty cash receipts for stationery. If the receipts
were to be believed, the office would be wall to wall staples,
pencils and sticky notes. I'd mentioned it to Will but he'd been
too busy to discuss it. Eventually I gave up pestering him. It
didn't seem to matter to him, so why should it matter to me?

Those discrepancies couldn't be pinned on
me. It must have been his last incompetent secretary. I smiled into
the streaming water. Ah yes, the perfect Tanya—that's pronounced
Taaarnya
—his on again off again girlfriend.

I'd met her several times when she'd visited
Will. We'd smiled politely, mentally compared outfits, and joked
about how mean Will was to work for. Despite her smile and her
wiggly finger wave, I'd never warmed to Tanya. And it wasn't just
the way she reminded everyone how to pronounce her name or that she
was now a model. It was her entire attitude. Or should I say her
perfection. Her snow blonde hair didn't have a kink in it, her nail
polish was never chipped and her toothy smile was as white and as
fake as some of the Hollywood stars I'd worked with.

It'd be fun to see Will's face when I told
him the discrepancies were all from the time Tanya was his
secretary. Just to see her crown slip a little in his eyes would be
oh so sweet.

According to Gina and Carl, he worshipped
her, although their relationship was tumultuous at best. It wasn't
surprising they were so on/off. Will was way too busy to devote the
sort of time that a high maintenance woman like Tanya demanded.

I turned off the shower and wondered what I
was going to do with my free day. I couldn't visit Gina's in case
Will or Carl saw me, and shopping was out because I had no money.
There was always my mother…

Or Lou Scarletti.

Shudder
. After the fiasco at The
Grotto, a sensible woman would steer clear of any place Lou hung
out, but no one ever accused me of being sensible. Especially my
very conservative ex-cop-turned-P.I. father. He'd be reaching for
the antacid tablets if he were alive. He always said worrying about
me would kill him one day. In fact, I think it was my overnight
stay in a jail cell that finally did kill him. Not that I was a
criminal or anything. I was never charged, thanks to Dad's contacts
and my lies.

I'd been involved in a minor scuffle at a
protest march and my knee had
accidentally
hit a policeman
in the groin. He could never prove it had been
my
knee. I
think it was around that time that Dad's health took a
nosedive.

I'm nothing like him. I inherited my
fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants attitude from my mother. She was always
trying out the latest fad and changing with the times the way a
chameleon blended into different environments. In the Seventies it
was macramé, in the Eighties it was the share market and in the
Nineties she signed up for every adult education course going
round, and in the Noughties she blogged. That was the great thing
about Mom. She might have been bad at something—don't get me
started on her attempts at hairdressing—but she never gave up.

I suppose I've got that dogged attitude too.
I wasn't giving up on Roberta because of a fat liar who got a kick
out of intimidating women. But even I had to admit my unwillingness
to give up on this case had more to do with my curiosity about Lou
Scarletti than my sympathy for his wife.
Where
had I heard
his name before?

Lou knew my Civic, so following him in that
was out. I could borrow Mom's car, or maybe her motorcycle, but I
wasn't sure tailing him around the city was the way to go anyway.
It wasn't like he'd lead me straight to the jewelry box. And
anyway, chances were he kept it close.

Maybe I could pay him a visit and plant the
bugging device I'd borrowed from work right under his bulbous nose.
Then all I had to do was listen in—

Oops. I'd kind of forgotten about the
receiving piece. Oh well, I could hide the little sucker first and
do the listening part later. Once I learned how.

Mom would know, and if she didn't, she'd
know how to find out. A crash course in bugging devices and other
detective gear might be useful anyway.

I dressed in a short denim skirt and a tight
T-shirt, then switched the skirt for a pair of jeans and put on
sneakers. It might be hot outside but I needed something practical
for climbing through windows. I put my hair up in a ponytail and
didn't bother with makeup. On my way out the door, I grabbed a
banana and ate it as I drove to Mom's.

I lived in a one bedroom, Sixties style
apartment in an up and coming area of Renford. That's what the
rental agent told me anyway, but I was waiting for the suburb to
arrive. That could be decades away. Around the time my apartment
was built, a whole lot of century-old houses were torn down to
build functional accommodation for the middle-class masses.
Unfortunately those same boxy, brown buildings became a blight on
the streetscape, and the middle-classes moved to the outer suburbs
and squeezed monstrous houses onto quarter acre blocks. So my area
became home to students and pensioners, a strange mix which seemed
to work most of the time. I moved in when I returned to Renford
from L.A. six months ago. I liked the eclectic feel, although I'd
gladly have traded my tiny apartment for one of the few remaining
houses nearby.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at Mom's.
She still lived near the Knight's office in the same three bedroom,
weatherboard house my brother and I grew up. Apart from the color,
it hadn't changed much. It had been plain cream with blue trim once
but after Dad died, she painted it canary yellow. In front was a
rose garden and out back grew a herb garden with every medicinal
plant known to exist.

I opened the screen door and walked in.
"Hey, Mom, it's me."

"Cat girl! I'm in the kitchen. Come see my
new toy."

I followed her voice into the new, white
kitchen. She leaned against the bench, an instruction booklet in
hand and shiny stainless steel coffee machine in front of her.

She wore the same paint splattered overalls
she always wore around the house, ever since her Modern Art class.
She said it allowed her freedom to move. Her hair was tied loosely
in a bun on the top of her head, the gray streaks framing her
fine-boned, pretty face. I used to tell her to color it back to her
natural brown, but she refused. "I like it this way," she'd said
and left it at that.

"It makes twelve different types of coffee
plus hot chocolate. Isn't it gorgeous! Look at all these
buttons!"

Mom loved things that lit up, made a noise
or performed several functions simultaneously. It didn't matter if
she never used those functions. She just loved knowing they were
there. The bells and whistles appealed to the geek in her.

She gave me a hug and offered to make a
cappuccino. "But I haven't got to the part about the froth," she
waved the booklet, "so you'll have to drink it without."

Four attempts later, we sat at her rickety
wooden kitchen table sipping frothless cappuccinos.

"So, why aren't you at work?" The question
came out of left field. Just when I thought we were having a nice
mother-daughter moment, she turned all strict on me. That used to
be Dad's role.

"Research for the agency. I need your
help."

She eyed me over her glasses in that
universal way mothers have when they know you've done something
wrong. I felt like I was in high school again, licking my palms to
make them clammy and coughing my tonsils up so I could stay home
when there was a biology test.

But she didn't say anything. Good old Mom.
She knew I was lying but she didn't make me go to school. Um,
work.

"What do you know about bugging devices?" I
asked her.

She paused, mug half way to her fuchsia
lipsticked mouth. "Like the ones you have at work?"

I nodded.

"The same ones your colleagues would know
how to use?"

"I sort of can't ask them."

"Why not?"

Mom would understand my need to help
Roberta. She was a woman. But if I mentioned Roberta then I'd have
to tell her the whole story and she'd put two and two together and
come up with illegal breaking and entering. I didn't want to worry
her so I just said, "I want to learn the business but Will won't
teach me. So I'm taking the initiative." That should work. Mothers
love it when their children show initiative.

Her gaze held mine for a beat and I stopped
breathing while I concentrated on not looking guilty. I must have
passed because she nodded. "I just bought a book on surveillance
gear because I thought you might be interested. Your father never
bothered with How To books, but I find them useful." She stood and
left the kitchen.

I followed her into the living room. Walking
into that room always made me feel like I was entering a secondhand
bookshop. It was crammed with books. Paperbacks squeezed into the
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined three of the walls; hardcovers
stacked on the floor and used as coffee tables or footstools;
cookbooks resting open on armchairs. It was an anal librarian's
nightmare but my mother could put her finger on any title in
seconds. She went straight to
Tools of the Trade: Private
Investigators
lying on the top of a three-foot high pile beside
the couch.