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And the rumours... Rife, rife, bloody-rife will be the speculation about gay-Melbourne's connection with every crook and criminal activity in town; while the triple-merde cherry at the top of every story will be the 'exposure' of the city's secret lesbian vampire cult.
"Think I'll go to New Zealand until this blows over," Kit told her dashboard, then remembered a nice distracting something she'd offered to do for Del. Instead of making a homeward left turn into the broad expanse of Victoria Parade, she continued straight on into the city centre grid, then hooked right into Lonsdale Street in an attempt to get near enough to Swanston Street for a quick walk to Slowglass Books.
This was not a simple process. It should have been simple, but it wasn't because there was never a parking space where needed in the city, all traffic everywhere was being diverted around and around the CBD for no reason whatsoever, and four-thirty in the arvo was an idiotic time to drive in Melbourne.
After circling several blocks herself, Kit finally gave up and parked at the north end of Swanston and jumped on a tram that took her back down past the green-domed State Library. Moments later she vented justifiable getting-off-a-tram rage towards the taxi-bastard who didn't think the huge green vehicle's STOP indicator applied to him and, as a consequence, scared her f/f-hormone into wailing fright by screeching to a halt one inch from her knees.
After regrouping - and vaguely wondering how, given there was only one of her - Kit ducked into the sf-fantasy shop as fast as humanly possible. She took just enough time to pick up the fifth novel in a trilogy for Del, but not nearly enough to be seduced into spending all her money on everything they had, that she didn't yet, but really wanted.
Kit took a tram back to her car and then swore at the traffic all the way home to Richmond; in between singing along badly to Roy, then Dusty, then the Pretenders, then the Doors - no, yuk, change the station. She finally turned off Swan and into her side street, pressed the button on her new garage door opener and felt ridiculously pleased at the perfectly timed door-up car-in manoeuvre. Parking at the bottom of the outside stairs to her apartment she noted, for the thirteenth time since its installation, that the thing her remote control opened was a misnomer incarnate, because there was no actual garage - just a door.
Small things and small minds, O'Malley! she observed, and then noticed the time.
"Bloody hell! Twenty minutes to drive 4.2 kilometres! What a serious waste of a lot of important things like...like time, oxygen, brain cells, petrol, life, Wednesday."
No, that was yesterday, O'Malley, she thought. Today be Thursday.
Kit glared at the challenge offered by the back stairs to her first-floor habitat and then, for the usual vertiginous reasons, turned her back on them in defeat. She had no choice. It would be so uncool for a grown woman, a professional woman, a private investigator no less, to freeze half-way up or down those evil planks, convinced that she could fall through - not off - but down through the gaps in the stairs.
That's so illogical and, like, impossible, she reminded herself. Again.
Katherine Frances O'Malley escorted herself out into the street, closed her not-garage door behind her, then shook her head as she was forced to concede: Okay, one person can regroup.
And, having done so, she strolled into Swan Street then stomped in through the front door of Aurora Press and just stood there, arms akimbo, as if she had a dramatic announcement.
"Whoa," remarked the ever-observant Brigit. "A trés-serious individual has arrived."
"Ah," Del mused, "but will this be a typical O'Malley gross-exaggeration of a minor event, or is the sky really falling in?"
"You have no idea, Del Fielding," Kit exclaimed, holding up her friend's book, "how close I came to cactus, by running this wee errand for you. I was an inch and a nanosecond away from being taxied-flat in Swanston Street."
"Oh darling, I'm sorry," Del mocked. "Do you have bruises?"
"No," Kit grinned. "But I do have the lowdown on a late-breaking scandal, ah, in exchange for a cuppa and one of those cakes I see over there."
Del's partner in love and business leapt to her feet with such agility that Kit imagined her ample body was made entirely of flummery. Brigie's rep as a gossip junkie meant that, given the right incentive, she was capable of motion lighter-than-air and faster-than-light.
"Speak," Brigit demanded, placing a mug of coffee and a pastry on a plate on the corner of Del's desk in the same moment that Kit took a seat in the arm chair next to it.
Kit obliged. "I have spent most of the afternoon at Angie's overseeing the consequences of our dear friend finding a naked, blood-drained bloke and ex-crook posed in a huge tray like," she flung her right arm up to demonstrate, "like ET on a feverish Saturday night."
Del was shaking her head to indicate something like...
"What, who? Where did she find what?"
...ah, confusion.
"Angie found a dead man." Brigit was so helpful. "Where, Kit?"
"In The Red," Kit replied. "In a very big baking dish."
"Why?" Del asked.
"Buggered if I know," Kit shrugged.
"Who, then?" Del asked.
"Gerry Anders: late of the notorious Riley family; nephew of matriarch Marj herself; estranged husband of Poppy Barton-Anders, one-time Saturday Show dancer now weight-loss guru; father of three or four Gerry juniors; owner - woops, past tense - of the very hip Moshun Club; suspected killer of drug dealers Mike and Julie Sherwood; and, what else, oh yeah, currently under investigation for arson, kidnapping and a lot of parking fines."
"Good god!" Del exclaimed.
"No such thing," Kit noted.
"Rewind," Brigit requested.
Kit licked custard off her fingers. "Which bit?"
"To the bit about the bloke being naked and drained of blood. In fact, start from the start."
Kit filled them in on every little detail, suddenly feeling just like Booty the Crime Scene Queen but without her nose-studs and cowboy boot tattoo.
"Oh," Del sighed, "this is going to be a brutal QPRD."
"A what?" Kit asked.
"A queer public relations disaster," Brigit explained.
Kit laughed. "Also awkward for our Angie, who might be in a spot of bother with the law."
"Why? Angie didn't kill him." Del pronounced.
Kit shrugged.
"Don't be ridiculous Kit," Del reprimanded. "You can't possibly think it's a possibility."
"Didn't say I did, Del. But Detective Senior Sergeant Parker already has his own unique take on this bizarre little crime."
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