Live and Let Bondi Read online

  “You don’t like Bruno?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “But he spends so much time announcing loudly how large his penis is. How could anyone not like him?”

  The corners of my mouth tugged upwards. “You’re not a fan of him either?”

  “What gave you that impression? Maybe I love hearing about his dick.”

  “His entire personality is dick.”

  I could have been imagining it, but I thought I saw the hint of a smile cross her lips, just for the briefest of moments. Huh. So maybe she was capable of smiling.

  When we reached the Baxter & Co. car park, we wove through the maze of vehicles and I tried not to feel bitter about the one I’d been stuck with – a silver Toyota Prius. Not that there was anything wrong with the car per se. It just… well, it looked like a Prius.

  “Yeesh,” said Natalia when she saw it. “I think I would have taken the minivan.”

  “It’s this or the bus.”

  She seemed to be genuinely weighing up her options.

  “Seriously?” I said.

  “I don’t like the way the front of the car looks like it’s leering at me,” she said.

  I frowned, looking down at the hood. Now that she’d mentioned it, those headlights really did look like eyes. Scheming, creepy eyes.

  “Oh god,” I said. “I don’t think I can ever unsee that.”

  “Despite being brand new, this car looks like it’s seen things,” said Natalia. “And enjoyed them.”

  “I don’t trust it.”

  “I wouldn’t let this car mind my drink.”

  “With good reason.”

  We both stared at him for a while.

  “I think we should give him a name,” said Natalia. “Maybe it’ll humanise him.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that idea. “I think humanising him is what started this problem in the first place.”

  “He looks like a Bazza to me.”

  I frowned, considering what she’d said. “Now that you’ve said that, he kind of does.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “So are we taking the bus or going in the car?”

  “I don’t think I have any money on my Opal card.”

  Nat sighed. “Guess we’d better slip inside Bazza then.”

  I could have sworn I saw Bazza wink when she said that.

  Chapter Three

  Natalia

  We drove along in silence for a while, me trying not to touch any more of the interior than I absolutely had to. I knew it didn’t make any sense, but I was convinced Bazza would get some sort of perverted satisfaction if my knee brushed his glovebox. I couldn’t get the image of him leering out of my mind.

  As we drove, I pretended to be looking through the case file, but the truth was that I’d already studied it plenty over the weekend. My mind was elsewhere. Partly on Bazza (what designers had thought this car was a good idea?) and partly on Billy’s comment about Bruno. Was he telling the truth about disliking him? Maybe Bruno had paired Billy with me for precisely that reason – to make Billy suffer. But I still wasn’t totally above suspecting that was a lie and really Billy had been put with me to try and find a reason to get me fired.

  I’d read all the information about him that I could, but his files didn’t really paint much of a picture of the type of person he was. I needed to ask someone about him and find out whether I could trust him. Trouble was, I didn’t really have anyone whose opinion I trusted. There was one person I could maybe talk to, but he was five hundred kilometres away. Besides, last time I’d spoken to him about something, it hadn’t exactly ended well for me.

  If only I knew what had happened to make Billy choose to swap back to working security and transfer to another state, that might have shed some illumination. It had to have been pretty big. Before that, he was on a fast track to taking over as manager of not only the investigation department, but probably the entire Sydney office. His record was impeccable. He had a car that looked like a car and not someone who’d tell you at length what a nice guy they were while trying to look up your skirt. Why had he thrown that all away?

  I hoped he was telling the truth about his feelings on Bruno. It would be nice to have someone else in the office who hated him as much as I did. Bruno had the kind of face that just begged to be punched and a personality to match it. I couldn’t understand how anyone liked him. That’s not an exaggeration. I literally could not find one positive – or even just neutral – quality about him. Every aspect of him was utterly rage inducing. Seriously, since working for him I’d had to see my dentist four times because I’d ground my teeth until they cracked. I’d only been at the job half a year.

  “There anything I should know?” Billy asked, snapping me out of my clench-fisted daymare thinking about Bru-No-Redeeming-Qualities.

  “Uh, what?”

  “About the case. Or the lady who hired us. The guy who got murdered. I’ll admit, I didn’t really take a good look at that file back at the cafe. I was expecting to have a little more time to read over it while I sipped my coffee.” He shuddered.

  “Having flashbacks?” I guessed. “The coffee from that place can do that to a person.”

  “I just don’t even know how the texture of that coffee was possible. It was thick. How on earth do you make thick black coffee?”

  “Scientists have long been puzzled by that cafe’s barista,” I said. “On the case, there’s not really much. You heard about the guy who got murdered at Bondi Beach a month ago, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, the stabbing. It was all over the news.”

  “Well, that’s the ghost this woman claims to have seen.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “The ghost? It’s a dude.”

  “The client.”

  I shrugged. “Couldn’t find much info about her. In her seventies. No history of delusions as far as I could see.”

  “Until this one.”

  “Potentially,” I said. “She says the ghost specifically requested that she hire the best PI money could buy and told her the name of our company.”

  “And we’re sure this isn’t just some weird new tactic from our marketing department?” he said. “Dress up as ghosts and scare old ladies into hiring us?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past Hennessy.”

  Billy glanced at me, giving me a look of disbelief. “Hennessy’s in charge of marketing? Whose idea was that?”

  I shrugged. It seemed like a weird choice to me too – I felt slimy just looking at Hennessy, and his ads were equally as sleazy as he was.

  “Drew interviewed me,” said Billy, “so he’s still in charge, right?”

  Drew was the branch manager of the Sydney office, overseeing both the PIs and the security part of the business. It was the highest position in the hierarchy, and he answered only to the Baxters themselves.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “What do you think of him?”

  I looked at Billy, raising my eyebrows.

  “What?” he asked, glancing at me.

  “Why do you care what I think of him?”

  He took a second before he answered. “Well, I thought he was a good manager when I was here,” he said. “But Bruno and Hennessy seem like weird choices for the positions they have. Maybe they’ve changed, I don’t know.”

  “If they have changed, it’s not for the better,” I said. It was hard to imagine either of them being worse. I intentionally ignored his question about Drew. I could maybe get away with bitching about Bruno, but if word of what I thought of Drew ever made it back to him…

  Well, I wasn’t going to let that become a possibility.

  “So what’s the plan for today?” Billy asked. “I went into the office earlier after I finished at the gym, but the receptionist wasn’t there yet so I didn’t have anyone to ask where my desk was.”

  “It’s in a storage cupboard,” I said. “Along with my desk. Just so you know, I see you eat anything with beans in and you’re banned from entering for twelve
hours.”

  “A storage cupboard?” He didn’t seem to believe me.

  I nodded. “They ran out of offices a while back. They’re still renovating the building next door, but until that’s done we’re shoved in a tiny room with no heating or ventilation.”

  He frowned, staring out at the road. He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off. “Does –”

  “Turn left onto Moore Park Road,” the phone ordered. She was hooked up to the bluetooth in the car so when she spoke it sounded like the thundering voice of Lady God booming down from above. Billy actually jumped at the sound. I smirked.

  Billy did as Lady God told him, then said, “Does the room at least have a window?”

  I shrugged. “Kind of. It’s right up near the ceiling and about thirty by thirty centimetres, but yeah, it has a window. Sometimes a sliver of sunlight even peeps through it for a few minutes.”

  Billy opened his mouth to speak once again, and once again the robotic voice cut him off.

  “Continue straight for one point four kilometres,” the phone boomed.

  Lady God had wonderful comedic timing.

  Billy tried again. “Well, I guess that’s –”

  “Continue straight for one point three kilometres.”

  He sighed. “I give up.”

  “She’s just trying to help.”

  “She’s being obnoxious.”

  I snorted. If Billy didn’t turn out to be an evil spy, maybe I could one day befriend him. That would be exciting. A friend. “Don’t worry about the office,” I found myself saying. What was I doing? Comforting him? Calm down, Nat. You don’t know that he’s not here to get you fired yet. “I don’t usually spend a lot of time there anyway. Most of the cases I get lumped with involve going out in the field and getting knee-deep in the crazy.”

  That was true, but the reason I spent so little time in the office wasn’t just because of the cases I worked. I tended to go there to do my research after hours so I could avoid people as much as possible. I did my paperwork in big chunks at night as well. As long as I cleared cases, no one worried about the weird hours I kept. Honestly, they were probably happy that they didn’t have to see as much of me.

  Except Bruno. I had a strong suspicion he wanted to see more of me, and that very thought made my skin crawl so much it felt like it might leave my body and head for the next state. Even if that state was Queensland.

  Chapter Four

  Billy

  “Wait,” I said, finally realising what direction the phone was taking us. “Are we meeting this woman at Bondi Beach?”

  “She lives in one of the apartments overlooking it,” said Natalia. “We’re meeting her at home.”

  A smile made its way onto my face and I couldn’t have suppressed it if I tried. Bondi! Ah, how I loved it. I mean sure, Queensland had beaches, and yeah, they were nice, but they were no match for my favourite place in the world. Not to mention they had, like, swimming snakes and deadly jellyfish all over the place. No, Queensland could fuck right off.

  Our client had a house here, in Bondi. Interesting. That meant she was absolutely loaded, then. I’d expected to meet up with her in an apartment that reeked of incense, old lady smell and a hundred cats, but I definitely liked this option better. So maybe she was crazy, but she was crazy with a view. I hoped she had a balcony. I’d stay questioning her for hours if we were allowed to sit outside overlooking the beach. And oh, god, if she could make me a decent coffee too…

  I wondered if she was in the market for a toy boy. That was a solid backup plan if Bruno decided to fire me.

  “I think a little drool just dripped into your lap,” Nat said.

  I realised my mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Got a thing for older women?”

  “Got a thing for Bondi,” I said. “But I’d happily marry an older woman if it meant I could live here.”

  “It’s not even ten in the morning on your first day back and you’re already looking for an escape route?”

  “As if you wouldn’t consider it.”

  “Well, I’d want to take a look first.”

  I frowned. “To make sure she’s hot enough?”

  “A look at the apartment. You know, to make sure the view of the beach is worth becoming a trophy wife,” she corrected, “but it’s good to see you’ve got your priorities in order.”

  I laughed. “I’d marry her no matter what she looked like for a partial view of that ocean.”

  “Well, this should make for an interesting interview.”

  Once I’d parked the car right by the beach, facing out over the ocean, I couldn’t get out quick enough. Not because being inside Bazza made me feel a little squirmy. I just really loved this place. The second I had the door open, I immediately inhaled the salty air. I would have liked to stay and savour it, but Nat was already power walking off in the direction of the woman’s apartment. I strode after her. Couldn’t let her get there first and steal my future wife. (And apartment.)

  We continued along the street that faced onto the beach. There were long benches dotted at intervals covered all over in bright mosaics with various sea themes – scenes of waves, starfish and surfers. I wouldn’t have minded grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down to enjoy it for a moment while taking in the sights and sounds of Bondi, but I was here to work. Sure, this case was a joke, but the sooner I sorted it out the sooner I could ditch this stupid partner program.

  Our client lived on the top floor of an apartment building overlooking the beach, hence my theory that she was loaded. This was Bondi, after all, where even shitty apartments with bloodstained carpets that stank of cigarettes and oozed hepatitis went for millions. Add in a beach view and, well, say goodbye to your earnings for the rest of your life (and a half century after that). That was probably why the company had taken her case – because she was rich. I couldn’t imagine why else Baxter & Co. would get involved with something so dumb and off-brand as investigating a ghost.

  The building my future wife lived in was white with sea-green glass at the front, and I was curious to see what it would look like inside. We buzzed for the top floor and our client let us in the security door. There was a rickety-looking lift, but seeing as we weren’t quite ready to die we opted for the stairs.

  When we reached the top of the staircase, Natalia knocked twice on the door. The woman who answered was not at all what I’d expected. Not that I was entirely sure what that was. Maybe a little more eccentric. Big hair, costume jewellery, wearing a cape. Instead what I got was a relatively sedate looking woman in her seventies with white hair in a neat bob, white capris and a blue blouse. She smiled and held the door open.

  “You must be the investigators.”

  “Yes, I’m Billy and this is Natalia. You can call her Nat.”

  Natalia slid me the side-eye, but I pretended I didn’t notice.

  The lady smiled kindly. “I’m Martha. Please, come in.”

  We stepped inside and I had to stop myself from getting down on one knee and proposing immediately. I’d been expecting the place to have a good view, but I hadn’t been prepared for the full panoramic view of Bondi afforded by the glass front of the apartment. Sapphire sea stretched as far as the eye could see, and off in the distance I was pretty sure I saw a spray of water puff up into the air, a telltale sign that a humpback whale was lazing about just off the coast.

  The interior of the apartment was mostly done up in white so as to not detract from the view. White walls, white countertops, white chairs, white sofa, white owner. There were occasional natural touches to make the setting feel less sterile – green potted plants and a couple of wooden chairs. It wasn’t a new building but it had an amazing view, and it was worth more money than most people would see in their lifetime. Not what I’d expected from the lair of a crazed ghost whisperer.

  “Let’s sit on the balcony,” said Martha, leading us towards the sliding glass doors that led outside. She didn’t nee
d to tell me twice. I followed her so closely I was almost touching her. Natalia and I each took a seat on the ornate white wrought-iron chairs outside, but Martha remained standing.

  “Tea? Coffee?” she asked. “I have an espresso machine, and I promise I make quite a good cup. Not as good as the people I buy my coffee beans from, but perfectly serviceable.”

  Really? This woman was the one who’d hired two PIs to look into a ghost sighting? Maybe there’d been some kind of mistake.

  “I’d love a coffee,” I said. “Long black, if that’s OK. Thanks.”

  “Certainly. And you, my dear?” she asked Natalia.

  “Just a glass of water for me.”

  “Thank you,” I added automatically. Natalia raised her eyebrows at me as Martha went back inside.

  “Did you really just remind me of my manners?”

  “No. I used my good manners to make up for your total lack of them,” I replied.

  She rolled her eyes. “So, have you figured out your proposal speech yet?” she asked. “You’re soaking up that view like you’ve never seen a desktop screensaver before.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed, staring out over the ocean.

  “Don’t tell Martha you’ve got a crush on the Pacific Ocean or she might get jealous.”

  I turned to her, smiling slightly. She was crotchety, but she did have a sense of humour. “You can’t tell me you don’t find the ocean attractive. She’s so…”

  “Salty?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think I’m salty enough as it is. No need to add that briny bitch to the mix.”

  I laughed and looked out at the sea, feeling like I should belt out songs from Moana. I was prevented from putting on a one man show when Martha returned, and I held the music in with some difficulty. (It was a struggle – the princess inside me wanted to be heard.)