Claire McNab - Wombat Strategy

Ariana felt it too. She took out her weapon, a sleek automatic. Black, of course. Her body was coiled steel, ready to react to any threat. I think that was the moment I really fell for her.

She pushed at the front door. It swung open. "Mr. Perkins?" I called. "It's Kylie Kendall. I've got the stuff from Deerdoc for you."

Silence. Ariana, not moving her eyes from the hallway in front of us, said, "Is his assistant, Sven, supposed to be here?"

"Perkins never mentioned him. He just said he expected me at ten."

The house was furnished in generic rental style. It had an empty feeling. I didn't know whether to trust my instincts, but I said, too loudly, "Ariana, no one's here."

She signaled to me to be quiet. "Room by room," she said.

The living room was empty. So was the kitchen. We went into the master bedroom together. The bed was made, everything was tidy. I pushed open the door of the adjoining bathroom. "Ariana."

She moved to stand beside me, then grabbed me when I sagged. Jarrod Perkins was sitting in the shower recess, legs splayed, a gun in his lap, his brains blown in a red-and-white pattern across the tiles.

Ariana handled the LAPD when the patrol car arrived. Until then I'd wandered around the house, trying to hang on to the contents of my stomach. Ariana had found me in the study, checking out the papers on the desk. "Don't touch anything."

Now I sat quietly to one side while Ariana talked to the two young patrol officers. I'd seen dead bodies before, my grandparents, for example, but their passing had none of the violence of this. Perkins had been a despicable human being, but I felt hollowed by his death.

More cars arrived, more cops conferred with Ariana. It was obvious she knew one bloke personally. Even before the coroner's people had arrived, I heard the cops talking suicide.

We gave brief statements and were about to go when Sven arrived in a huge black vehicle. I peered at it, and Ariana said, "It's a Cadillac SUV."

Sven flung his bulky body out of the SUV and demanded of the nearest cop, "What the fuck's happened?"

"Your name?"

"Sven Larsen. I live here. Personal assistant to Mr. Perkins." He swung his head around, his angry expression fading. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

"Where have you been, sir?"

"The gym. I go every morning. What's going on?"

We left as he was led into the house. Ariana drove, because I was still too shaky. After a long few minutes, I said, "Was it suicide?"

"Hell, no," said Ariana. "Can you really imagine Jarrod Perkins killing himself? Killing someone else, yes. Himself? No."

"Are you saying murder?"

Ariana shot me a hard blue stare. "I'm saying murder."

I thought of begging oft" my date with Chantelle, having seen a corpse that morning, but I was looking forward to going somewhere new, with someone I didn't really know. It would be an escape from the indelible picture of the slumped body in the shower recess. I kept myself busy checking through Dad's things in the boxes Ariana had packed up and customizing his computer to suit me. Ariana had gone out, and nobody disturbed me, except for Harriet, who sweetly checked to make sure I was okay then left me alone.

Chantelle had told me to dress casually, so I put on freshly ironed jeans and a blue tunic top. My battered face was a disaster area beyond repair, so I decided to tough it out with dark glasses until the lights in the theater went down.

I explained to Julia Roberts I was going out and might be quite late. She checked that I'd filled her dinner bowl then made it clear she didn't care.

Chantelle was picking me up, and she arrived as Melodie was leaving. "You're Melodie!"

"You're Chantelle!"

I realized they had never met in person, though they'd certainly shared quite intimate information via the receptionist gossip network.

Melodie was appraising Chantelle with approval. "Acting?"

"Amateur stuff mainly. You?"

Melodie assumed a modest expression. "Some. I have a callback for Angel Rejects"

"Angelique?"

"How did you know?"

"You're perfect for the part."

Later, in Chantelle's car, a red Jeep, I said, "I didn't know you were into acting."

"I'm not, really. Practically everyone in this town dreams of being an actor. The rest are aiming to be scriptwriters." She gurgled with laughter. "Sweeping statement, of course, but with a core of truth."

Something was puzzling me. "If you and Melodie have talked so much, how come you didn't know she was"-I was about to say a would-be actor, but Melodie would hate that-"an actor?"

"We don't talk about personal things, we're at work."

"But I know for a fact you and Melodie discussed me."

"That's different."

Plainly there were receptionist networking rules I'd never understand.

Sooner or later the subject of Jarrod Perkins had to come up. It was sooner. "You found Jarrod Perkins."

I made an indeterminate, let's-not-discuss-this noise. Didn't work. She repeated the question.

I said, "Yes, it was horrible."

No way was she going to drop the subject. "Shit, Kylie, you saw Perkins yesterday. Right off the wall. Never heard a man scream that way. He said something about blackmail…" She trailed off, sending me a fill-in-the-blanks look.

"Did he?"

"When the news came he'd shot himself, I wasn't surprised. Obviously, he was losing it. Maybe this blackmail thing pushed him over the edge."

"I'd rather not talk about it tonight."

Clearly disappointed, Chantelle said, "Sure." Two minutes later: "Melodie said you were white as a ghost this morning when you came back."

"Thank you, Melodie."

"And she's been fending off reporters all day."

"She has?" This would be the first time Melodie had failed to spill the beans.

"Ariana Creeling told her not to worry you."

Crikey, Ariana had more clout than I'd realized. I hadn't thought anyone or anything could shut Melodie up. And I hadn't thought of Ariana for minutes, and now here she was, popping up again.

"So did you actually see the body?"

"Chantelle!"

She took both hands off the wheel to gesture she was giving up. "Okay, subject's off the menu."

I pushed Ariana out of my mind and concentrated on Chantelle. She was looking spectacular tonight. Her silk shirt was a rich golden yellow and glowed against her dark skin. I felt a tickle of anticipation, but that may have been my stomach. I'd got over the shock of the morning's discovery and was feeling ravenous.

We ate in a little Indian restaurant in the same block as the theater. The place was semi-dark and packed full of noisy patrons. I loved it because it was so full of life, and life was something I found myself valuing more than ever.

The theater was hardly larger than the restaurant. I'd taken off my dark glasses, as I reckoned no one was looking at me anyway. We sat in the front row on a low bench, our knees protruding into the stage area. The play, Chantelle confided, had been written by a friend of hers; it was called Voices From the Walls.

I steeled myself, expecting something perplexing and experimental, but it turned out to be a broad farce about the entertainment business. The audience roared with laughter through most of the performance. Being a foreigner, I didn't get all the references, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Afterward we went backstage and crammed into a tiny dressing room to meet the cast and Chantelle's friend, the writer-director. He was a puppy-dog type of bloke, hopeful and ingratiating. If he'd had a tail, he'd have wagged it madly.

A spontaneous party was starting, and suddenly I wanted to get away. Reading my mind, Chantelle murmured, "Let's get out of here. My place?"

I looked into her eyes and felt a sudden jolt of freedom. No one knew me, no one cared what I did. This was someone I didn't really know, and she didn't know me.