She checks quickly to make sure no one’s listening, but lowers her voice anyway. “Rumour has it he’s got Flower Child checking up on you, Stef. But you didn’t hear it from me, okay.”
Back at the office, I head for the elevator and up to the library. Glenys is stooped, sorting out a copier that’s had some sort of digestion issue with a ream of paper.
“Your fan club’s just gone, if that’s who you’re looking for,” she says, anticipating my question.
“Description?”
My blood pressure racks up several notches when the usually strait-laced Glenys goes all coy. Then starts giggling.
“Well, he was... you know, kinda... well, tall... and a real gentleman... and dammit, Stefi, he just wanted to know all about you. Even read some of your stories, imagine that?”
“And this fruit loop got past Security?”
“Overrode them. The Chief of Security showed him up here, personally. Said he had a police pass.”
Alfie spends a restless night, tormented by my nightmares. Somewhere after 3 A.M. my dad gets busted by Saxon Swayne for taking payment from growers in return for preferential treatment. Then Gudgeon swims into the picture and Dad lands in jail. The worst of it is waking up and remembering it’s all true.
But that’s nothing to the dread I feel next morning when the editor fleet-foots it over to my desk and slams the morning edition of our arch rival on my blotter.
“Ice Theory in Wine Chiefs Death” screams in 48-point Times New Roman from the front page.
The article goes on to congratulate DC Jack Darwin for his scientific approach. He’d come up with the theory that a lump of ice had fallen from an aircraft on its final approach to the airport several kilometres south of Swayne’s estate.
Soil tests had confirmed that a “significant volume” of water had seeped into the red dirt near the body, consistent with the melting of a sizeable chunk of ice.
“Flights from the east were diverted due to the dust storms, and entered air space over the mountain ranges where there’d been freak snowfalls,” the DC says with his usual enthusiasm when I front up for a “please explain.” “It’s reasonable to assume there’d have been an opportunity for ice to form, then drop off as the aircraft began its descent through warm, tropical air. The victim wouldn’t have known what hit him.”
“Then why did Swayne scream? It suggests he was expecting trouble.”
“Chances are it wasn’t Swayne at all. It was more likely the high-pitched whistle that accompanies an ice fall, not unlike a short whine from an air-blast mister.”
Spanner attempts to chip in with some technicalities here, but I stop her. I haven’t quite finished with Darwin.
“You had the gall to steal my stories to come up with this theory, then handed it on a platter to our paper’s rival?”
Darwin doesn’t even blush.
“Least you’re in the clear,” he says.
Gudgeon has the last word.
“Not a crime, is it?” he smirks.
Typical.