Unfinished Sentence (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  Unfinished Sentence

  Clare Kauter

  Unfinished Sentence

  Copyright © 2015 Clare Kauter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is dedicated to Alexi. Again. Because he cried when I said I was going to give this one to someone else.

  Chapter One

  It was a typical beginning-of-summer in Gerongate – the birds weren’t chirping, the sun was throwing down harmful UV rays, and although my phone said that it was 7:30 p.m. (and hence technically night time), the amount my armpits were sweating suggested it was still roughly 40 degrees out here. Had I put on deodorant this morning? I gave myself a surreptitious sniff. Yeesh. I needed a shower.

  Another shower already? I thought. I’ve already had one this week!

  Perhaps I had moved out of my parents’ house before I was ready.

  I checked my phone again. Technically, it was only 7:25 p.m., which meant that I was still working. I was filling in for a guy named Tim Carter (also known as Sharps). Tim’s sister had called him last minute because she needed someone to baby-sit her daughter. According to Tim, declining his sister’s offer would not be wise, and apparently this was a good enough excuse to ditch work. Tim was one of Baxter & Co.’s star employees, so he could get away with that kind of thing.

  Since I had asked for a few extra jobs to help boost my bank account, and since no one else was available, I got called in to act as bouncer.

  A bit over a month ago, I had made a bet with a guy named James McKenzie. James was about two years older than me and although I’d known him my whole life, we didn’t really get along (to put it mildly).

  Anyway, a few weeks ago we’d made a wager that I could find out who’d murdered his uncle. If I won, I would get $20 000 and one of his houses. We didn’t figure out what the prize would be if he won, because we both knew I would come out on top. (Not in that way.) Or perhaps it was because he was a millionaire/billionaire (I don’t know – once you get to those levels of money, does it really matter?) and I’d still lived with my parents.

  When I won (well, I happened to be there when the murderer confessed, so that counted, right?), I split the money with Lea Walsh, my partner in crime, and we ended up sharing the house. Since I technically hadn’t solved the case, though, we compromised and ended up paying a vastly subsidised amount of rent.

  A little while before I’d taken up the bet, I’d quit my job as a checkout attendant at Lea’s ex-husband’s grocery store and started working as an administration-assistant-slash-secretary-slash-receptionist-slash-fill-in-slash-anything-else-you-can-think-of for a security and investigations company, Baxter & Co.

  So, all of a sudden I had ten grand to spend, plus my not-so-tiny pay packets from B-Co. I lasted three weeks without buying anything (not even groceries – we moved into James McKenzie’s old place and he’d left a heap of food behind when he moved out), but one day I logged into my bank account on my (company provided) phone and had more money than I’d ever seen in one place before. I cracked. I gave in to that little voice in the back of my head, that little voice whispering:

  ‘Treat yo self…’

  Personally, I’ve never really liked shopping. My last job didn’t pay an awful lot, so whenever I went ‘shopping’ with my friends, I technically went ‘looking’. Plus there was the unappealing prospect of having to get dressed and leave the house and stand up for long periods of time. And then you’d inevitably end up eating in a food court. Shudder. I used to take packed lunches to shopping centres, no lie.

  But now I was living in a mansion on Madison Hill (the snob-centre of Gerongate), I had thousands of dollars to spend, and there was a fast internet connection. No one could resist that temptation.

  I even ordered my computer online from my phone.

  So I now had a laptop, a Vitamix blender (it blends everything! Probably even small children!), an espresso machine and grinder (because I was going to become a world famous barista!), a dehydrator (because I was also going to be a goddess-like raw foodist!), about 50 pairs of gorgeous but hideously expensive shoes (most of which I could not walk in!), roughly the same number of handbags, a full walk-in wardrobe, an en-suite full of cosmetics (no animal-testing, I’m not a monster!), and a bill of over $3000 on my credit card.

  And as if that weren’t bad enough, my housemate had done the exact same thing, only she’d cleaned out her bank account to buy a car (which made sense now that she had a licence). Also, she didn’t have a job to get the money back.

  So, in essence, our situation was:

  Bank accounts: empty

  Cupboards: empty

  Refrigerator: empty

  Stomachs: empty

  Rent: due

  There was a time, roughly four weeks ago, when I was concerned that I was putting on weight. But between my ten hours of exercise a week (no, I’m not kidding) and not eating anything, I’d had my fears totally assuaged.

  Anyway, this meant that I had to pay off my credit card plus pay the full rent of our house until Lea got a job and could reimburse me. Which is why I was now filling in as a bouncer, despite being unqualified and totally unsuited to the job. I was a 5 ft 3 teenager. Not the most imposing figure you can imagine.

  Adam Baxter, the other guy on the door, was an obnoxiously attractive Indigenous guy who looked like a male model, seemed to hate me, and was my boss. His dad owned Baxter & Co., but Adam had been given the job on merit. He was ridiculously smart (he had two degrees – two – and could not be older than his mid-twenties) as well as ridiculously buff. He was not perfect, however, because he clearly had no sense of humour. I’d been regaling him with hilarious anecdotes about my life for the past three hours and hadn’t even gotten a smile out of him.

  Sad, I know. He didn’t even like my puns.

  To tell the truth, his silence was really starting to get to me. In the entire time we’d been here, he’d said a total of 19 words. Yes, I’d counted. It was driving me up the wall. I’d been bored since I arrived here at 4.30. (Goodness only knows why anyone needed bouncers outside a nightclub from 4:30 in the afternoon on a Monday when people weren’t even allowed to enter until it was dark, but I wasn’t complaining. No one was trying to get in and I was getting paid for doing nothing.) His lack of interaction wasn’t helping the time pass more quickly. Finally, with just five minutes of this torture left to go, I cracked.

  “Why won’t you just say something?”

  His facial expression barely changed, but there was a slight twitch that I thought might have been him trying not to roll his eyes at me.

  He spoke. “I’ve just had a case come in that I’m considering. I’m not really in the mood to talk.”

  I made no effort to hide my own eye roll.

  “I’m so sorry I interrupted your dark brooding. I didn’t mean to ruin your angsty aesthetic.”

  Yeah, I forgot he was the boss for a second there.

  “Fuck, you’re annoying. I don’t know why everyone likes you so much.”

  I smiled sweetly and said, “Everybody likes me?”

  It was an accidental and certainly backhanded compliment, but I was willing to take it.

  “Well, maybe ‘likes you’ isn’t quite right. ‘Finds you amusing’ is probably more accurate. Like watching a video
of someone injuring themself. You don’t really like it, but you laugh anyway.”

  Harsh, Adam. Harsh. At least he was talking now, though. And I’d gleaned an insight into his life. Apparently he watched funny internet videos. Who knew? I wondered if he liked YouTube cats.

  “You’re not being very professional today, boss.” I emphasised the last word in the hope of getting a rise out of him.

  “You’ve never behaved professionally, employee.”

  Ouch.

  “Wow, you’re really cranky.”

  He sighed. “Sorry. It’s a big case. I’m distracted.”

  I nodded and tried to change the subject. “So… Have you found any more jobs for me? You know, distractions, easy cases, bouncing, watching security monitors, attending meetings, planting bugs, luring someone into my car?”

  I was desperate and it showed. In hindsight, I probably should have saved insulting him until after I’d begged for more shifts and money.

  Adam thought for a while.

  “I have a couple of things you might be able to do for me. I’ll fill you in tomorrow morning over breakfast,” he said. I was looking forward to breakfast (insert sarcasm). I had currently limited myself to one gluten free apple muffin each morning. Yum. The reason for this is that over the last month, I’ve become friends with Jenny, the girl who works at the B-Co. cafeteria, and this is the cheapest thing on the menu. The taste of food no longer matters.

  “Anyway,” said Adam, “Time for you to go. Panther’s here.”

  Panther was another of my colleagues. I wondered when I’d get my street name. ‘You Crazy Bitch’ didn’t count, did it?

  “See ya.”

  “Later.”

  I beeped open my silver convertible. (No, I don’t have enough money to eat, but I live in a mansion, own a Mustang and have a wardrobe the size of a small clothes store. Incredibly logical, I know.)

  As I was driving along, my mobile rang. I took the call through the car’s bluetooth.

  “Hello?” I never identify myself on the phone. Makes it easier to say ‘wrong number’ and hang up on anyone you don’t want to talk to.

  “Oh, hey Charlie! I know it’s really short notice and everything, but I’m having a party tonight for everyone to come and meet Lonny.” It was Stacey Griffith, one of my old school friends. Lonny Lionel was her latest plaything – an older guy, if I knew Stacey at all. Probably rich and very ugly, but she wouldn’t notice how unattractive he was. She had a tendency to only see the good in people, which is probably why she was friends with me. As for the rich thing, she worked as a receptionist for a marketing company and met most of her gentlemen at work events. They tended to be loaded, and they all fawned over her. “It’s at his nightclub, Rift. Do you know it?”

  “Yeah, I know the place,” I answered. Of course I did. I’d just been working there.

  “Great! So you’ll be at the party? It’s up on the VIP floor. We still get a fair few people coming through, even on a Monday night, so we’re restricting the top area to my friends only.” We? Wow, things must be getting serious if they were a ‘we’ now. “OK, well, I’ve gotta go and call the others. I’ll let everyone know you’re coming. See ya!”

  I hadn’t realised that I’d actually said I was coming, but the damage was done now.

  Ideally, I would have just ditched, but my friends were all still angry that I’d left the party they’d thrown for me a few weeks back – at my own house – to hang out with James McKenzie. They didn’t know that last bit, of course. They’d have a field day if they knew I’d willingly spent time with him. All my friends were in love with McKenzie in high school, whereas I was in hate with him, and it was absolutely reciprocated. We’d called something of a truce recently, and now I didn’t quite know where we stood.

  Oh, man. My friends were going to start questioning me about where I’d disappeared to again. What would I tell them? Should I let them know what had actually happened? No way. I needed to come up with some sort of believable lie.

  I pulled into the right-hand side of the garage and walked into my house. Lea’s car wasn’t here, so I guessed she was having dinner with her parents, as we’d both been doing since we ran out of tinned goodies last Thursday.

  I walked upstairs to my bedroom, stopping at the top of the staircase to admire the view. We had a walkway around the top floor, meaning we could look down into the lounge room and, from different angles, various other parts of the ground floor. Hardly any of the downstairs rooms were closed in. The house was massive, beautiful, and almost worth starving for. (Only almost, though. No house was that pretty.)

  Sitting on my (king sized, deluxe) bed, I pulled off my work boots. I stripped the rest of my uniform off as well and had a quick shower. (Day-to-day I didn’t have a uniform, but when I was doing security work they dressed me up in black cargo pants, lace-up boots and a black shirt. Not to brag, but I looked pretty awesome.)

  When I was all washed, I wrapped myself in a white towelling bathrobe and waltzed over my (white, soft and extremely impractical) carpeting to reach the wardrobe. I walked in to my walk-in (heheh) and found some underwear. You, get your mind out of the gutter. No, I’m not going to tell you any more detail than that.

  What was I going to wear tonight? Sure, I now owned a hell of a lot of clothes (and most of them fit! Online shopping was a miracle!) but I was still no better at choosing outfits than I had been previously. I decided to go for a dress, because then the only thing I could really mess up was the choice of shoe. The floral number I chose looked a little like my grandma’s bathroom curtain, but was totally cool by today’s fashion standards. Right? Right?

  I pulled on some faux-leather sandals and grabbed a bag of the same colour, then threw a long necklace with a wooden fox pendant over my head. After blow-drying my hair, doing my make-up (I had recently, thanks to hours of YouTube tutorials, expanded my knowledge of makeup from just mascara and lip-gloss to also include foundation, so now I could make my skin look more skin-coloured), and choosing a green-rimmed pair of glasses to pop with the background tones in the dress (I was basically a stylist – celebrities should hire me), I was pretty happy with the way I looked.

  A few months ago, I would never have imagined myself living the life I was at the moment. But then again, a few months ago I lived with my parents, worked at a grocery store, didn’t own a car, had about three items of clothing and weighed roughly 10kg more than I did now. But, you know, I also had no debt and was very secure in my ‘worst-enemies’ relationship status with James McKenzie. Ah, those were simpler times.

  I grabbed my phone, tissues, dental floss and keys – also known as the emergency survival kit – and packed them into my bag.

  I was finally ready to go. The clock read eight-forty, giving me just enough time to get to the party by nine.

  I walked downstairs, locked the door behind me and drove off to the club, where I found that Stacey had reserved a place for me in the private car park. (The attendant recognised my car and ushered me in. So fancy.) I walked around to the front and marvelled at the long line-up at the door. Who went out clubbing on a Monday? Then I realized that was what I was doing, so I couldn’t really talk.

  The guys on the door worked at B-Co. with me. One was Panther (who’d taken over my shift earlier), so-called because he was big, black and could be kind of scary. (In truth, he wasn’t all that scary once you got to know him, but having accidentally seen him naked once I could confirm the other two points.) The other guy was Hugh, a new guy from Sydney who had not yet earned a nickname. He was pretty cool – he had a fairly laid-back attitude to life, though I’ve heard that he can smash someone’s face in rather quickly if they annoy him enough.

  “Hey guys,” I said. “I’m invited to the party. Can I head in?” They both recognised me, and I was admitted without any fuss. I didn’t even have to flash my ID, because everyone at Baxter & Co. knew that I was nineteen. Everyone at Baxter & Co. knew everything about me. I was their main source of e
ntertainment. (Not in that way, you pervert.)

  I walked inside, pushed my way through the crowd and finally made it to the staircase leading to the VIP section. I didn’t know the two guys standing guard at the bottom. I showed them my driver’s licence and was allowed in.

  There was music I didn’t know playing, and playing loudly, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of conversation coming from the packed VIP area. I couldn’t see anyone I knew and considered leaving before I had a panic attack. Alas, I was stopped – someone had already spotted me.

  “Charlie!” Joanna Riley, my best friend since kindergarten, called as she walked over to me. “How are you? Did Stacey tell you that she was just inviting a few friends? That’s what she said to me and guess what – she invites the whole city. Everybody is here. You know who I saw before? James McKenzie. Don’t you think that’s weird? And slightly annoying? I mean, I’m here with my husband and she’s just dangling that in front of me. He said hi to me before and my jaw locked. And I growled at him. I mean, what was she thinking? You’ll murder him and I’ll try to make out with his corpse. It’s a recipe for disaster!”

  (Joanna was, if you hadn’t yet realised, slightly insane.)

  “I wish she didn’t,” I agreed. If I had to interact with James McKenzie after the last time we saw each other – when I’d left my own party to hang out with him – well, I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe die of embarrassment. Maybe distract him from the memory of that fateful night by explaining why I was going to be late paying rent this week. Perhaps I’d made such a lasting impression that he’d see me and leave before we had to speak.

  “Oh!” Jo said, looking like she’d just thought of a reason he would be invited. “Maybe he’s here because you got him off those murder charges and people think you’re buddies now.”

  “Technically, I just happened to be there when the murderer confessed.”

  “Yes, there in James McKenzie’s kitchen, if I remember correctly? Instead of at the party I organised to find you a mate?” Yes, she actually referred to my potential suitors as ‘mates’. Let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.