ARC: Peacemaker (14 page)

“You mean her?”Caro tossed her head, indicating I should look over her shoulder out the window and onto the pavement.

Chance stood there, staring straight in at me.

“Jees, did she follow us here as well?”

“Looks like it.”

I got up. “Let’s go say hello to Chef.”

We left the booth and threaded through the party goers, over to Chef Dab’s stainless steel stage. He saw me almost immediately and blew kisses which I smiled at, and nodded. He then glanced to my side, saw Caro, and his expression shifted to obvious disappointment that I hadn’t brought a man.

That really made me want to laugh, but the nausea bubbled up in my throat in a way that made my eyes water.

I said in Caro’s ear. “I need to get this done.”

She lent me her shoulder to get back across the room.

“How about I go up?” she said.

“No, I know the layout upstairs. I’ll be quicker.”

“Not if you faint.”

I grabbed another passing shot glass. “I’m fine.”

“Virgin?”

Sixkiller
was suddenly in my face taking up space.

The room started to spin a bit and I stumbled despite Caro’s support.
Sixkiller
grabbed my other arm and righted me.

“Virgin?” Another voice.

I turned. “Heart?”

An influx of people though the door thrust us all together in a tight and awkward circle.

“Virgin, I didn’t know you had it in you. Such outstanding male company,” said Corah, piercingly clear above the chatter.

“What are you doing here?” said Heart in my ear. “You left a message saying you were staying in sleeping.”

His voice held all sorts of accusation.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said.

I pushed away from them all over towards the bouncer at the stairs.

“Bathroom,” I croaked at him.

“Over there.” He pointed to the queue that had formed near the downstairs customer restroom.

“The lady needs somewhere private. She’s unwell,” said
Sixkiller
from behind me.

The bouncer folded his arms not about to be told anything when Caro launched in on him.

“The girl’s a friend of the Chef’s and she’s about to chuck her guts. You want the entire party to think it’s something she ate here? The Chef be happy about that, do you think?”

He wavered and touched his ear to consult whoever was on the other end of his bud.

I let myself dry reach out over his foot. It wasn’t much of a stretch. The next time would be a hurl. I must have been convincing because he stepped to one side.

“Make it quick.”

Sixkiller
took my arm to help me.

“Not you… her,” said the bouncer, indicating Caro.

She took my arm from
Sixkiller
and helped me to the top step where we paused to catch our breath. A glance behind me showed
Sixkiller
engaging the bouncer, and Corah already drifting off towards one of the judges again. Only Heart was watching me still, with curious intent.

“Where to?”Caro whispered.

“Bathroom’s on the right.”

Turns out I was going to need it. I made the pan just in time to lose most of the vodka and cheese. After a quick sluice of water across my face, I felt clearer in the head.

Caro stood by the basin and handed me a towel.

“Wait in here. Shut the cubicle door and pretend I’m inside.”

She nodded. “Will you be alright?”

I squeezed her hand and slipped back out into the corridor.

Chapter Nineteen

I’d been up here many times in the past and knew my way around. Chef’s live-in suites took up the rest of the floor, opposite
to
the restroom. The rooms on the other side were kept for visitors and the occasional live-in waiter. At the end of the corridor was a small stairway that led up to a room which always stayed locked. Dab liked to act out his kinky habits in a safe place. His version of a dungeon was more of an attic; a split level room that you could only get to from the far end of the first floor.

The spare bedrooms would give me the view I needed into Jusco’s. I tried the doors of the first two and found them locked. The third was open and being lived in. Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark I saw a voluminous dress laying out on the bed and a collection of ribbons slung across it, suggesting the occupant was female and large. Greta perhaps? She’d worked for Dab for a long time, but I knew nothing about her personal life.

The blind hung crookedly across the window like a broken arm. I studied it for a moment, the angle and height, and then pulled it up.

The side wall of Jusco’s was only little more than a body’s length away. It was like that with all the terrace houses in the area. Some even had tricky little bridges made from cast off doors or planks, joining the buildings.

I scanned the opposing windows and counted them off. Number five, the one at the very back was in darkness. The good news was that its window was open. The bad news, the closest connecting room was Chef’s private attic.

A whole bunch of things ran through my mind, the foremost being that the only way in, without a whole lot of hoo-hah, would be to plank it across. A bunch of doubts and reservations chased that thought like…I should get Sixkiller to help me but he’d never get past the bouncer… I was too weak to do something like this right now, but it had to be done… What if the bouncer came looking for me and Caro… How would I get into Chef’s locked room?

I had solutions to the last two, at least.

First, I texted Caro.

Tell Nate I needa distraction downstairs for 20 mins.
Ignore this note. Highlight for typesetter.

She replied quickly with an OK.

I headed along the corridor and up the steps to Chef’s attic. The door was padlocked because Dab figured no one else used them anymore – we were all about bio-locking mechanisms these days. But then he left a spare key outside – just in case.

Go figure?

I felt beside the door where the wallpaper met the wall paneling and found the piece that peeled back to reveal a little crevice .Chef had never shown me directly but I’d seen him fumbling around here before.

It felt strange inserting metal into metal, and it gave a satisfying click when it opened. I put the key back into its hidey hole and tried to leave the chain and padlock arranged in a way that didn’t draw attention to it being open.

Negotiating the war zone of sex toys inside took a few moments. So did the struggle with the blind which had clearly not been raised for years. By the time I had it up and the window open wide enough to climb through, I was slippery with sweat.

Planks were easy to come by though. He had a set leaning neatly against the wall. Some with leather strands attached, others studded with hard plastic nails. I selected the biggest of the latter and levered it across into the empty apartment in Jusco’s. It was only just long enough, catching on the lip of the opposite ledge.

I climbed out the window. No room for thinking too hard on this one. Either I did it, or I got the hell out of there.

The nails gave the plank some grip at this end but at the other it slid around. I crawled along it on my hands and knees, concentrating on breathing evenly so that I didn’t black out. It only took a few moments to cross the tiny distance but it might as well have been as wide as a canyon.

Sweat dripped from every awkward place on my body. My hands and knees grew slick, making it a struggle to get enough grip to lift the window high enough to get in.

After several heaves which sent the plank into an unnerving sliding motion, the runners unstuck and I was able to crawl inside.

My heart smashed at my ribs so hard when I hit the floor, I had to wait for the dots before my eyes to fade. Normally, I was a fit, strong person but climbing agility and long hours in the saddle didn’t match up so well. Add some transfusion weakness to that and I was running well below par.

My breathing finally slowed then foundered again on the rank smell of unwashed clothes, stale anchovies and an overly-sweet high-end artificial weed scent.

Not planning on leaving trace evidence for Indira Chance, I retrieved a tissue from my underwear and used it to flick on the light.

Barely lived in. Weapons lay out on the bed. A battered pocket-tablet on the bedside table.

Using the tissue again, I pressed it into life and it opened straight to a set of photos. Me, and me, and me– leaving work, in a bar, on the street, in a taxi.

Looks like I had the right room.

I tried to search for other files but the device seemed to be empty other than my pictures.

My phone beeped again; a message from Caro.

All hell loose.Chance on her way to Jusco’s. Get out.
Ignore this note. Highlight for typesetter.

Shit
.

I scanned quickly, looking
for anything that could identify this guy. A quick rummage through his pile of dirty clothes revealed nothing but gum and a loose condom. His knapsack pockets coughed up half a hot dog and two strips of tablets. One was a prescription painkiller I recognized, but the other was had no brand. On impulse, I slipped them in my pocket.

Thumps on the landing outside the door, told me I’d run out of time.

“There’s someone in there!”A man’s voice.

“Open the damn door!”Detective Chance.

I flicked the switch off and ran for the window, scrambling along the plank with no thought for balance or safety. If Chance caught me in there, I’d be in jail tonight, and maybe forever, no explanations required.

The back end of the wood began to slide off as my hand touched Chef’s window sill. I managed to get my knee onto the ledge as the plank fell into the skip bin below. Garbage bags muffled the sound but I couldn’t hear much above the blood rushing in my ears anyways.

I shoved the window closed and wrenched at the blinds. They fell with a clatter and I grabbed them to stop them dancing around.

A slight lightening of the dark in which I stood frozen, told me Chance had turned on the light in the room across from me.

“Out the window,” I heard her shout. “Check… alley.”

Dropping onto my knees I crawled across the room to the door, where I stopped to listen again.

“What about… next door?” said someone else.

“…search now.”

I cracked the door and slid through on my butt, locking up the padlock as soon as I was through. My legs shook as I walked downstairs but no one was watching.

The bouncer had deserted his post and most of the crowd had converged on the bar. From my vantage point of a couple steps higher than everyone else, I saw Heart attempting to restrain Sixkiller and the bouncer sprawled face-first onto the bar littered with broken glass and pretzel confetti.

The crowd seemed titillated by what was going on. Lots of catcalls and whoops. A brawl never failed to garner interest in the Quarter. Especially when the venue boasted free booze and mini chandeliers.

Chef, flailing his cleaver high in the air, climbed onto a bar stool and bellowed for order.

Spying Caro in the melee, I wove through the bumping bodies until I reached her.

“Thank the Time-Fucking-Lords!” she said.

“What’s happened?”

She looked away from me. “You said you wanted a distraction…”

“Caro what
–
?”

She turned back, putting her lips to my ear. “I might have accidentally knocked your girlfriend from Divine Prov into our bouncer friend.”

Fatigue began to suck me down a drain and I struggled to hold it off. “And?”

“He mouthed off at her and Mr Chivalrous Marshall took offence.”

“What about Heart? What’s he doing getting involved?”

“Beats me, Ginny, but looks like it’s not over. I’m thinking we should be heading home.”

I glanced around and saw the crowd parting to let the police through. Detective Chance coming towards us, leading the march to the bar.

Seeing her, Sixkiller let Heart pull him back.

The crowd cheered some more and chanted something I couldn’t quite understand. They were in a long echoing tunnel.

Or I was.

I slipped the strip of pills I’d take from Jusco’s into Caro’s hand. “I might be held up for a while. Get out of here and keep these safe.”

She arched an eyebrow, and disappeared the pills into her own pockets.

Before I could check back on Sixkiller and Heart, a hand seized me by the back of the neck.

“Take her to the van and search her.” Detective Chance was in a mood. Uniform creased and eyes puffy.

The police hustled me out onto the footpath to their mobile post.

The catcalls from the crowd got louder and more antagonistic. They didn’t like the disruption to the party or the fight. I craned over my shoulder and saw that Caro, thankfully, had vanished.

I told myself to relax. The detective couldn’t prove anything. The only person to see me go upstairs who would talk was out cold on the bar.

The constable halted at the door of the van and waited for Detective Chance to catch up.

When she did, she got straight up in my face, spraying me with spit. “I’m out pursuing a murder investigation and who do I stumble on yet again?”

“You’ve been following me for days,” I said. “I’m not sure that qualifies as ‘stumbling’.”

She gave me the benefit of her nastiest smile and gestured into the open doorway of their mobile station.

I stepped in, ducking my head.

Part tall surveillance van, part Photo’s-While-U-Wait booth, it reeked of stale pies and solvent.

The detective followed me and as she shut the door I glimpsed Heart’s anxious face among the spectators.

Chance pushed me into a chair and activated the console on the wall behind her. A lap belt snapped tight on my legs and another across my breasts.

I flexed against them, furious. “What are you doing? Am I under arrest?”

“Just want to talk, Ranger.”

“Then take these restraints off me.”

“We find they help to focus agitated felons.”

I stopped myself from swearing at her. She didn’t need an excuse to take me downtown. “I am not a felon and I have nothing to say to you.”

“Your cooperation would make this a whole lot better.”

“You don’t want co-operation, detective. You want a conviction. Even if it’s the wrong one,” I said calmly.

She ignored that, turning her head away to speak to whoever was at the other end of her communication channel.

I glanced around while she was preoccupied. The van had several segments from what I could see. Three guys sat hunched in front of screens down the far end, running some type of facial recognition scans on the patrons out on the sidewalk.

The middle section was a semi-circle of fixed stools, all set up to receive pull down sensory helmets. Both those sections were divided by a transparent partition. The third section held Chance, one of her officers, and a row of restraint chairs like the one I was in; a place for short, sharp street interrogations away from the public eye. Was it old blood spatter on the walls or spilled coffee?

She swung back to me, hands on hips, small enough to stand upright in the van even though her officer had to stoop a little. “Tell what you’re doing here.”

“I’m friends with the owner. Chef Dabrowski and my dad were friends. He invited me to his opening.”

She tapped an intercom link. One of the techs down the end, nodded, and got busy verifying my statement.

“You look sick. You wired?” she asked.

“I don’t take drugs. You know why I look sick. I’ve just gotten out hospital after having multiple blood transfusions.”

“An innocent person would be home in bed,” she commented. “A guilty person would be out trying to mop up their trail. I know you were in that apartment in Jusco’s.”

“Pardon me for saying, Detective. But you seem a little fixated on me. Perhaps you should cast your net a little wider.”

She folded her arms and blinked in anger. “Search her!”

Her constable ran a body scanner over me first then patted me down and checked my pockets, removing my One Card and the tissues.

“That’s it, detective,” he said when he’d finished.

“What were you looking for in that apartment? What did you take?” she demanded.

“No idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been at Chef’s party.”