Hindsight (18 page)

‘Oh,’ Mira said, and felt her cheeks turn pink. ‘Then you’ll have to excuse me if I edit her a little.’

Frunnen answer me!
Chloe shouted at her phone.
Frun, look, I’m going over there right now to frunnen confront him, you gutless frunnen … Frun answer me, Dean! I mean it!

‘Or maybe a lot …’ Mira smiled; she couldn’t help it. For all Chloe’s pretty femininity, she had a smaller and rougher vocabulary than the dumbest of last century’s inmates at Serenity.

‘She always did spell class with
K
,’ Ben said, then he chuckled, as if recalling a fond memory. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he added a moment later, ‘Dean would have been in custody by then — I mean now. I mean, the time you’re looking at now, of yesterday. Only I’m a little surprised that Chloe didn’t know that’s where he’d been taken.’

‘Was she his next of kin?’

‘Not married so far as I know. However, they were living together — off and on between break-ups. Unless he was out of town for a job? Dean is a carpenter. Cabinetmaker, really. He renovates homes and does shop fit-outs.’

‘Did you meet him through Chloe?’

‘Hell, no. I introduced them — ungrateful scum. He was a volunteer surf lifesaver at Palm Beach, same as me, while I was living and commuting to uni with Chloe. Chloe’s uncle Theo was my boss, remember, and when he needed a carpenter to expand with more checkouts, I put them together.’

‘She’s changing lanes,’ Mira warned. ‘Turning right at that green light …’

Ben swerved, causing another horn to blare out behind him, but he warned her that he had to brake.

‘Man, this adds a whole new dimension to peak-hour traffic.’ He followed her directions as soon as the invisible traffic would allow, and accelerated to catch up, zigzagging through back streets, heading further and further inland after Chloe’s ghost, until they crossed under the Pacific motorway, past a school with noisy invisible students arriving, and saw a sign for Tallebudgera Creek.

‘This is getting too familiar,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling.’

‘They’re only illusions,’ she said with a grin. ‘Isn’t that what you said the first day we met?’

‘I was blinder than you. If you can’t trust your gut instinct, what can you trust?’

‘Your subconscious. It’s an internal hard drive, remember?’

‘Same thing, Mira.’

‘Sharp right!’ she warned. ‘Up that hill.’

‘Oh, great. I knew it!’

Broad but winding, the main road led them around the blunt end of a ridge to a hamlet perched precariously near the edge of a sharp escarpment. Ahead, at the brink of the cliff, was a long squat shed labelled ‘Corner Convenience Store’ with rows of car parks on both sides and four ghostly cars out front, all fuelling up.

‘She’s pulling in,’ Mira said, without needing to. Ben was already braking with his indicator ticking.

‘Bingo!’ He skidded to a halt. ‘We found the crime scene. The rear of the car park is roped off with police tape — but didn’t the headlines say she was found on a beach?’

‘I’m only following, and that’s where she went.’ Mira pointed downhill to a large umbrella-shaped jacaranda tree on the rear boundary of the car park, offering shade but clinging to a cliff that was guarded by no more than a knee-high timber fence. Busted in one place. Two police cars were already down there, a short distance away at the loading bay. ‘How many police can
you
see?’ she asked.

‘None, at the moment. It’s only roped off from the public and it’s still early.’ Ben pulled into the shade of the tree, dropping the temperature inside his car, noticeably.

‘That’s odd, because there were two cop cars here yesterday.’

‘While she’s alive?’

Mira nodded. ‘Chloe just pulled in behind them.’

‘Crooked cops. It has to be.’

‘Maybe not.’ Mira’s skin prickled with excitement as she climbed out, thinking of Lockman and how he must have felt, tailing her and Ben from Serenity to Point Lookout — only now she’d become the shadow lurker. ‘Come on,’ she called to Ben. ‘Let’s go see.’

‘Act casual,’ Ben said as he ducked under the crime-scene tape. ‘There’s a woman up there, packing groceries into her car.’

Mira suspected that already. She could hear two kids screaming over who’d get to ride in the front seat.

‘Another car just pulled in behind Chloe.’ Mira hurried closer, trying to be discreet as she peered in through the ghostly passenger windows. ‘Dark sedan with two men in suits. Nothing on the back seats.’

They got out promptly as Mira peeked in through the ghostly trunk of their car, where she spotted a stash of padded vests and a metal box. ‘Hello, hello,’ she said as she leaned through the ghostly box and found weapons. ‘They have guns. Long ones. With bullet-proof vests and a couple of clubs back here.’ She wondered if she should peek inside that envelope in Chloe’s car while it was motionless, but Ben ushered her closer to the building with a whispered warning to act casual and keep to the cool shadows, out of sight from the early customers.

‘Plain-clothes detectives?’ he asked.

‘Maybe. Chloe doesn’t seem worried. She’s there by the roller door to the loading bay, talking to the cops. She’s saying, “Why haven’t you cordoned off the building already? I told you, the counterfeiters were here.”’

‘Counterfeiters?’ Ben repeated.

‘That’s what she said. There are four cops, but none are answering. The other two plain-clothes guys have met up with her now. One’s big and thick-necked, like a footballer, and the other is weedy. Looks kinda slimy. Chloe just nodded to them, though, as if she was expecting them.’

About frunnen time,
Chloe’s ghost said.
Federal crime not frunnen high enough on your list of things to do today?

‘Did they introduce themselves?’ Ben asked.

Mira shook her head, but noticed a familiar bulge in the big guy’s back trouser pocket, so she crouched to see if she could check inside, just as she had with the trunk of Chloe’s car.

Wavering on her heels, she leaned forward just enough to see through his ghostly trousers into his well-padded wallet.

Inside his pocket, though, was very dark. Almost impossible to read any details through the blurry purple haze since inside his wallet was even darker — made all the more difficult, since he kept shifting his weight and forcing her to lean to compensate. At first, she caught more glimpses of the mole on his butt than the contents of his wallet, but after her eyes adjusted and he stood still long enough, she could just make out his name from his ID card.

‘The big guy is federal police — Detective Clyde Moser, and—’

‘
Moser?
’ Ben swore under his breath. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Ninety-nine per cent. Light penetrates everything, more or less. Why?’

He answered only with silence for a long moment, as if he was trying to figure it out for himself. ‘Nothing,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t want to say anything that might cause you to misinterpret what’s going on. What about his companion?’

‘The slimy one? Yeah, he does kinda look like a partner in crime.’ She saw his detective’s badge clipped onto his belt in plain view near his buckle. ‘He’s federal police too — Senior Detective Sydney Symes.’

Symes stepped into Mira unexpectedly, and despite flinching away, she glimpsed inside the thin cotton of his shirt, where a small tattoo of Daffy Duck swung off his right nipple, dressed as a spaceman with a speech bubble that read:
Duck Dodgers, of the twenty-first-and-a-half century.
Only then did she notice that his nipple had also been inked to look like the remnants of a planetoid or meteor.

‘These guys are both weird,’ Mira said, shaking her head, ‘but I don’t think they’re the types to kill Chloe.’

‘Past tense,’ Ben reminded her. ‘Why? What are they saying?’

Mira sidestepped to better position herself in their triangle, between Moser and Chloe.

‘Symes is saying, “We’ve been over this place with a microscope …” and now Moser: “You’d better have more than accusations, Miss Greppia, because if you upset the wrong people prematurely …” Mira blinked and missed a word or two as the rest of the sentence passed to Symes. ‘“… could end up as dead as your friends.”’

… and we wouldn’t want that,
Moser added with a genuine look of concern on his big dopey face.

Mira wondered briefly if Moser had any cartoons on his body too — although he didn’t look smart enough to know if Daffy Duck was a dog, a cat or a bird.

Mira glanced to Chloe, hoping she hadn’t missed her reply, but Chloe was just standing there with a stunned look on her face.

‘Say something,’ Mira goaded, and coincidentally Chloe did.

Frun! Are you implying their deaths have something to do with this?

‘What’s happening?’ Ben asked.

‘Shush, please. It’s hard enough keeping up with one conversation.’ She followed Chloe’s accusing glare to the detectives.

We’re concerned for your welfare,
Symes said, despite his much sharper and more piercing leer.
We have Dean and Jake in custody …

Frun!
Chloe shouted. She stamped her foot and pounded a tantrum in circles, raging silently at the sky, the ground, and the world in general. To Mira, she looked hilarious.

‘They just told her they have Dean, and now Chloe’s going rabid. I can’t …’ Mira sidestepped, trying to catch some of the filth running out of her mouth, but realised that half a conversation was better than none. ‘I can’t read her. She won’t stay still.’ So she turned her attention back to the detectives, who were already talking and trying to calm her down.

…
only assisting us with enquiries
, Moser said with one hand raised to warn the four uniformed officers to hold their positions, although they each still kept one hand on or hovering over their sidearms.
It’s for their protection as much as anything.
Then Chloe swung closer to Symes and shook a rigid finger at him.

You want proof?
she raged.
Stay right there! I’ve got your frunnen proof!

‘Chloe’s going back to her car,’ Mira reported. ‘She says she’s got proof.’

The men didn’t follow Chloe, so neither did Mira. Instead, she took the opportunity to rub her eyes, since they were beginning to sting more than usual from the constant strain.

‘She’s got the envelope,’ Mira explained. ‘Handing it to Symes. He’s opening it. Looks like …’ She followed Symes’ glance from the title on the documents to the rear wall of the convenience store and back again. ‘They’re floor plans for this place.’

‘Hand-sketched or professional?’ Ben asked.

‘Professional. Looks like blueprints — purple prints,’ she added to be more precise, ‘with aisles, power points and … Chloe’s pointing to the row of cash registers. Two on this end have been circled, and she’s pointing to them.’

Right there, I told you! Where do you think I frunnen got it? I stole it from Gregan’s other store. Now go fetch it, you lazy frunnen pigs, before I file a complaint of incompetency.

‘Who is Gregan?’ Mira asked. ‘Chloe just said that she stole the plans from his other store.’

‘Well, if she means Gregan Greppia, he’s another of Hector’s cousins. Theo’s brother. He runs two other stores down the valley, but after Theo was murdered here during the robbery, Gregan took over the management of this store too. I’ve never heard any whispers before about counterfeiting, though. I wonder if it has anything to do with the robbery that my good buddies chose to frame me for?’

‘Maybe. It’s all money. Want me to go see? With these glasses, we can come back to this argument.’

‘Not yet, Mira. It’ll be easier for me if we do things chronologically — in one direction through time or the other — and try not to chop back and forward too much if we can avoid it. It’s confusing enough as it is, don’t you think?’

‘Not for me, but it does hurt a little.’ She adjusted her hues back a few minutes and sidestepped to catch a second glimpse of Chloe’s tirade. ‘At least replay is easier with these new sunnies.’

He’s ripping off my father, while you do frun all, you lowlife frunnen pigs! You have to take me seriously! If you don’t get your frunnen arses out the front right now, they could frunnen escape! What the frun where you thinking anyway? You might as well have crept up with your frunnen sirens blaring!

‘Chloe is repetitive to the brink of comical,’ Mira said. ‘She swears more often than she blinks.’

‘That’s Chloe all right. What’s she on about?’

‘Oh, she’s not happy that the cops aren’t taking her seriously. She’s mad that someone is ripping off her father’s shop and …’ Mira saw Chloe stab the plans with her finger. ‘She seems to think there’s some kind of proof inside — at the two cash registers that are furthest from the front door. They’ve been circled in ink, or something similar, on the plans.’

No point wasting a perfectly good search warrant,
Mira caught from the back end of Moser’s private whisper to Symes.

We’ve been through every register last week,
Symes argued silently,
and every note and coin was spanking clean already. Remember how long that took? Do you really think it’s worth spending the rest of the day here?

I do if you do.

What the frun?
Chloe demanded
Get in there!

Symes nodded and Moser did too.

‘Follow me,’ Mira said with a signal to Ben. ‘We’re going in.’