Cooking the Books (31 page)

‘I expect she will smile wryly and murmur that she is very disappointed,’ said Daniel, chuckling. ‘She can’t go back to shrieking again. Not after calling herself a bitch.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ I muttered. ‘I refer my colleague to previous comments on actors. I had a heart-to-heart with Emily. She’s determined to tough Ms Atkins out, so nothing to be done there. Let’s go back to Insula,’ I suggested. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Yes, all this emotion is wearing, isn’t it?’

‘Have you got more research to do?’

‘Yes, I’ve got the company searches—including Circum and Co, and also the actors. I vaguely suspect that one of the company might be Zephaniah. I found that he left the nice respectable Christian family when he was fifteen and I can’t find another record of him. He must have a Medicare number and maybe a tax file number . . . somewhere.’

‘Under one name or another,’ I added.

‘But probably not Zephaniah. You can stay off the record if you don’t get sick or try to establish a credit rating. Otherwise, you are there. He also seems to have taken rather a lot of money with him.’

‘Stole the church funds?’ I asked.

‘No, won the lottery. Really,’ said Daniel, as I stopped and stared at him. ‘He won more than a hundred thousand dollars. Lied about his age in order to enter.’

‘That would mean that he wouldn’t need to register for unemployment benefits, or anything else,’ I reasoned as we resumed walking. ‘That’s a lot of money!’

‘Yes, I gather he left because the Smiths were expecting him to tithe it to their church. Fifteen and loose in the world with sums beyond the dreams of avarice. Must have been interesting for a boy from a modest home.’

‘Challenging, even,’ I murmured.

‘Indeed. I am looking at Harrison. His background is very sketchy. And he’s the right age.’

‘I thought of him myself. A complete narcissist. And you would expect a child of Ms Atkins to be beautiful.’

Daniel smiled. ‘They’re all beautiful. I need to ask the Lone Gunmen to find that poisonous correspondent of Lena’s, GerGer, for me. I am also getting somewhere with the trickster. He made an error when he carried out the lip gloss prank.’

‘Which error?’

‘He ruled out Bernie,’ said Daniel. ‘She wasn’t there. She was with you.’

‘You suspected her?’ We had arrived at our own building. The sun was getting into its stride and I longed for a cool drink and some climate control.

‘Well, yes, that’s what detectives do,’ he explained as we went inside. ‘The rest of the kitchen staff have been with Tommy for a long time, in some cases from the beginning. They have no reason to want to ruin her. But Bernie is new and desperate for a job. She might not see any harm in carrying out some little commissions for one of Tommy’s rivals.’

‘But Bernie’s a very good pastry chef,’ I protested as we gained our own apartment and I slumped down onto the sofa.

‘She’s ambitious,’ said Daniel. ‘She has her way to make in the world. In any case, I think that she actually believes Ethan when he says that he’s going to take her to LA and help her to establish her cake shoppe.’

‘I know, poor girl; he hasn’t got a good track record, she must know that,’ I said weakly.

‘So,’ said Daniel, pursuing his thesis, ‘if she was doing the tricks, she’d stop once she thought she had a way of escape and a flourishing business in prospect. She’s a nice girl and would not like making life miserable for Tommy, who has been kind to her.’

‘Do you think Ethan will take her to America?’ I asked, which was not on the topic of Zephaniah but I really was interested. I liked Bernie.

‘I have no idea,’ said Daniel. ‘Possibly she is the love of his life. Such things do happen, eh, ketschele? But I would not be putting any serious money on it, myself.’

‘Me neither. Oh well. All right, having eliminated Bernie, who is left?’

‘The kitchen staff and Emily,’ said Daniel. ‘They start early, before the actors arrive. They transport food and ingredients from the home kitchen to the TV set. They have the run of the place from five thirty till about seven. Provided someone had a key or could jiggle the lock—and that’s a pretty paltry lock—they could plant the wasabi-flavoured lip gloss without anyone noticing. You will note that the path to the staff toilets passes Ms Atkins’ room.’

‘Very well, but you’ve just ruled out the staff because they’ve been with Tommy a long time,’ I objected.

‘Yes, so I fear that it must be Emily,’ he said, sitting down next to me.

‘But Emily needs Ms Atkins,’ I objected in my turn. ‘And if she’s seeking attention, don’t you think that this is a bit extreme?’

‘Possibly,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s a puzzle. Humans mostly are,’ he added. He got up and went to the fridge. ‘How about a mineral water with fresh lime juice and a little research? I am myself wondering about Circum and Co. Can you look them up for me?’

‘Certainly, to both questions,’ I replied.

Horatio was disturbed from his resting place on the keyboard and I fired up the computer. Daniel brought me my mineral water and started work on his own laptop. I was wondering about ‘Lavender’s Blue’. If that reference to ‘when I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen’ meant that we had to tour all the statues of royal personages in Melbourne, this could be a long search.

I found the song. It was old. No one had an adequate definition of ‘dilly dilly’ though someone hazarded a guess that it might be a contraction of ‘delightful’ or ‘delicious’. Which did not help at all, as definitions sometimes don’t. The early version tempted the girl to stay in a nice warm bed with the singer while other people did all the work, which must have been a seductive idea in the eighteenth century. Otherwise the song yielded no clues and I passed on to company accounts, with which I am much more familiar.

Circum and Co was not listed on the Corporate Register. I checked twice. The phone book gave a listing for their office in Collins Street, but no company called Circum and Co had been registered. Odd. I was sure that it had to be horribly illegal to call yourself a company when you weren’t. But that was par for the course in this matter. By my count Mason and Co—which was listed—had committed eighteen offences for which it could be wound up under section 364 of the Companies (Victoria) Code. Or was it section 365? In any case, there was indeed something rotten in this company. Circum and Co listed their occupation as ‘brokers’. A nice portmanteau term which might cover a multitude of disreputable activities.

I paused and rested my fingers and sipped my mineral water. Back to work, Corinna. Circum and Co had a website. I navigated it. Hmm. They borrowed and lent money on stocks. I had never trusted the futures market, which in my view ought to come under gaming legislation. After all, what was speculation in that market other than a bet that some stock will go down or up in future? The website boasted that it had thousands of Mum and Dad investors, drawn by its twenty per cent profits. I snorted. Daniel looked up enquiringly.

‘Twenty per cent!’ I exclaimed. ‘This firm is offering a twenty per cent return on investment.’

‘And that’s bad?’

‘It’s preposterous,’ I said. ‘The only people who offer that kind of return are crooks or people willing to take huge risks. Look at this website.’

Daniel leant over my shoulder. ‘So you wouldn’t be putting money into this company?’ he asked.

‘Not if it was my money. If Mason and Co has a stake in Circum and Co then they are on the nose in a major way.’

‘Good,’ he said, and went back to his own work.

That was enough for me. I exited the computer and went to take a soothing cool shower. I felt that only a strong rose essence would take away the stench of corporate corruption. When I came back Daniel was excited.

‘Look,’ he said, displaying a website. find your roots, it proclaimed. Daniel had called up Zephaniah Smith and got a hit.

‘Same as the birth certificate,’ I said. ‘
Mother, Margaret Atkins, aged eighteen
—poor girl.
Father
—aha!
Elijah Hawkes
. His profession is listed as “electrician”. A film person?’

‘In all probability,’ said Daniel. ‘So it is just possible that Zephaniah the son and Elijah the father—that sounds biblical—are both on the set at
Kiss the Bride
!’

‘Oh Lord,’ I sighed.

We looked at one another. ‘Soap operas,’ we said in unison.

I had something else niggling me.

‘What did you mean, right fol der iddle i day?’ I demanded.

Daniel smiled and leant back in his chair. He began to sing in a sweet tenor voice.

‘
Young women, they run, like hares on the mountain. Young women, they run, like hares on the mountain, and If I were a young man, I’d soon go a hunting, with a right fol der iddle i day, right fol der iddle day
.’

Daniel could really sing. He had a light, sure voice.

‘I bet you learnt that from an old man sitting on the verandah of an English pub,’ I said breathlessly.

‘Cornish, actually,’ he said, and pulled me down to sit on his lap.

‘
Young women, they swim, like ducks in the water, young women, they swim, like ducks in the waters, and if I were a young man I’d soon go swim after, with a right fol der iddle i day, right fol der iddle day.
’

He broke off to kiss my neck and a shiver went right through me.

‘
Young women, they sing, like birds in the bushes, young women, they sing, like birds in the bushes, and if I were a young man, I’d go beat them bushes, with me right fol der iddle i day, right fol der iddle day . . .’

We made it to the bed with seconds to spare. I had never been seduced by song before. It was interesting. After a while, he stopped singing.

We fell asleep and only woke when the sun crossed the window and shot a beam into our faces.

‘Busie old foole,’ quoted Daniel, brushing at his face as though to push away a cobweb.

‘Unruly Sunne,’ I agreed, yawning. I could not remember the rest of the Donne poem. Ah, Daniel, what a gift he was. I lay with my head on his chest, tracing the line of hair which ran down his belly with one lazy forefinger. It would be nice to stay in bed all day. But we had things to do and people to locate. Rats!

On the other hand, perhaps Daniel would sing to me again. While working, of course . . .

It turned out that he had a large repertoire of folk songs and a few very rude ones which I had also learnt at university. We rose and went back to our respective computers to the tune of ‘The Sexual Life of the Camel’ (which is stranger than anyone thinks). That song had always amused me.

Daniel found an account of the early life of that paragon of boys, Harrison. He also had been adopted, this time by a stage family, who supported his ambitions. His name was actually John Harrison but he had reversed this for screen purposes; Harrison Johns. His website contained pictures of the baby Harrison, naked in a paddling pool and already working on his pecs; the child Harrison, posing winsomely with a puppy; the adolescent Harrison in his Goth phase, channelling Johnny Depp in
Sleepy Hollow
; and the final product, smooth, gorgeous and as self-centred as a geometry compass. His website hinted at a liaison with Kate Ionesco, a famous film star of whom I had never heard. The Harrisons professed themselves to be just bursting with pride at their son’s success. They were sure that he would go on to be a major star, as he deserved.

Daniel and I read this puffery while performing a song immortalising the Mayor of Bayswater’s charming little daughter. It seemed a suitable accompaniment.

‘Well, all right then,’ I said. ‘It has got to be Harrison.’

Daniel hummed.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But who is the trickster? Harrison doesn’t hang around the kitchen. He thinks he might catch obesity from the cooks. Have you ever seen him in there?’

‘No, never,’ I admitted. ‘But the lost child might not be the joker. They might be two entirely separate persons.’

‘True, true. Well, I must be up and doing,’ he said regretfully.

‘Where to?’

‘Salino’s,’ he said. ‘Just have to find my shoes. I’ve set up an interview with several previous interns from Mason and Co. They ought to be finishing work about now-ish. They meet every Wednesday for coffee and kvetching.’

‘Can I come too?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was going to ask you. You’ll know what to ask them.’

‘Just let me find some going-out clothes,’ I said.

I wasn’t too sure about knowing what questions to ask. I had been out of accounting for a long time. Years. Still, the theory remains the same, global financial crisis, boom or bust. Daniel located his shoes under the dresser, where Horatio had abandoned them after a vigorous game of Jump on the Sneaker and Slide. I put on my work garments again. Salino’s is an unpretentious coffee shop which has a dedicated clientele who appreciate comfortable chairs, friendly service, waiters who know the names of the regulars and very good coffee. My kind of place.