Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
It was about then I spotted the color of bucket-head’s nails
. Petal Pink
. Immediately the simmering storm inside me erupted into a force ten hurricane. “Hey—you’re wearing my nail-polish!”
The open bottle on my dresser
was my first nail polish
ever
and I was saving it for special occasions only.
Like Sarah’s funeral…
That girl
really
knew how to wind me up. Big time. My teeth gnashed together like broken spokes on a wheel. Sarah merely shrugged, then studied her nails as though they’d been painted by Picasso.
At last she lifted her baby blues in my direction.
“You are
so
lame, Chiana,” she scoffed in a bored, I-don’t-know-why-I-bother-talking-to-you voice. “
Everyon
e knows
Petal Pink
doesn’t go with carrot colored hair. You’ve got the fashion-taste of a frog. I keep telling you to use
Lime
Green
.”
Carrot-colored hair? That was it. She’d crossed the line. “And I keep telling
you
to stay out of my room. Now…let’s see if
Petal Pink
goes with
your
hair.” I snagged the open bottle from my dresser and advanced like her worst nightmare.
“
Maaaaaarg
!”
Geez…the way she was yelling for Mum you’d have thought I was going to cut off her ears and stick cauliflowers in their place.
Hmm…
On second thoughts…that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Sarah dodged behind the bed. “
Maaaaarg
…Chiana’s gone crazy,” she squealed. “She’s going to tip nail-polish in my hair.”
I bounced across the bed, the mattress a trampoline beneath my grubby sneakers. Sarah ducked behind the dresser. Wrong move. I had her. There was nowhere else to go except straight into the bottle of nail polish.
“Gotcha!”
“
Maaaaaaarg!
”
A missile in the shape of a large wooden hair brush zinged past my left ear and kept going.
Ha…missed me…
In the act of upending the bottle, I heard the brush land. Then a startled grunt. I hesitated. Turned around.
Mum reared up in the doorway, one hand covering her nose, the other waving a fist in the air.
I grinned in anticipation.
Hooo… Hooo! Now Sarah was for it…
This was going to be worth watching; could even be better than a Star Wars rerun. Making myself comfortable for the entertainment, I plunked myself down on the bed. Couldn’t wait for Mum to blast Princess Sarah to the moon and back.
“What are you doing to your poor sister, Chiana?”
“
Huh? Me?
” I was totally gob smacked.
Pillows hit the floor. The bed squeaked as I leapt to my feet. “Sarah comes into
my
room, pinches
my
nail-polish and you—you—blame me!”
I couldn’t believe it. I ran past Mum and headed for the stairs. If I hung around any longer I’d either say something that got me grounded for the rest of my life or I’d chop off Sarah’s hair and use it to line the rabbit’s cage.
My footsteps thudded on the polished floorboards as I thundered down the stairs, Mum three steps behind.
“Chiana! Wait! I want to talk to you.”
“Sarah clouts you with a brush and you want to talk to
me
?”
Too steamed up to watch where I was going, I didn’t see my dog Leroy lying on the bottom step, his wrinkled brown and white body stretched to its full length. That is until I tripped over him.
While I hopped up and down holding onto my twisted ankle, the dog’s rhythmic breathing never faltered. His face, looking like it had slammed into a brick wall as he was born, never even twitched. Leroy, my energy-challenged bulldog could sleep through the final roars of a football-match.
Mum came up behind me and put her arm around my shoulder. “You okay, Chiana?”
I shrugged her arm off. Turned to face her. “Why do you always stick up for
her
, Mum? Why?”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t.” Mum’s frown deepened.
“You do!”
Mum shook her head as though clearing it of cobwebs. “I’m not arguing with you about it, Chiana. Anyway, what’s wrong with you two? You’re both the same age. Why don’t you get along?”
“Mum—she’s a pain in the—”
“Sarah needs our love and support.”
“Sarah needs a head full of cooties,” I mumbled.
“Your step-sister is still grieving for her mother. On top of that her father remarries and suddenly she has to fit into a new family. Isn’t it any wonder she’s proving difficult?”
I hadn’t really looked at it that way before. Could I cope with losing
my
mum? It was too horrible to even think about. Before Sarah came into our lives, Mum and I had this absolutely cool relationship. She was more like my big sister and best friend rolled into one. Perhaps I
should
try a bit harder. Be nicer to poor Sarah.
That is until I heard ‘poor Sarah’ giggling and singing at the top of the stairs, “Chiana’s in trouble. Chiana’s in trouble.”
Immediately I batted the be-nice to Sarah image away, replacing it with one of me shoveling Sarah into a rubbish bin and nailing down the lid.
“Mum, you’ve been married to Ken for six months now. How much more time does the little princess need to adjust? She’s totally screwed up my life ever since she moved in.”
“There you go again!” Mum threw her hands in the air, the red mark on her nose from the flying hairbrush almost pulsating in her frustration. “Screwed up
your
life…why don’t you try looking outside the square sometimes, Chiana and see what your behavior is doing to us as a family?”
“
My
behavior? What about Princess Sarah’s behavior?”
By now I was wailing at Mum’s rigid back as she marched towards the kitchen. “How come
she
gets to stay inside the square,” I yelled, “while
I’m
the one who’s made to go outside?”
Life in our house would never be the same again. Not only had my mum turned into an alien, she was expecting me to be nice to the step-sister from Hell.
The front door slammed behind me as I stormed out.
“It’s not fair,” I yelled at next-door’s skinny black cat as it slunk past me then skittered up the tree in fright. “Nancy Drew never had these distractions to put up with when she was solving a mystery!
Three
Later that afternoon, Jack, Tayla and I met outside No. 16 Edward Street—the house where Patsy found the dead body. Cops were crawling over the grounds like ants at a picnic. Blue and white crime tape fluttered in the breeze. Sightseers laughed and gossiped on the footpath or drove past beeping their horns.
All that was missing was a Mr. Whippy ice-cream van.
Jack sprawled against a police-car parked by the curb. His
Port Power
baseball cap turned back to front, his eyes darting lizard-like over the scene.
“Crikey,” he said, shaking his head. “What’s with all these people? Anyone would think we were on reality TV.”
“No way are we getting into Patsy’s for a snoop today.”
Was that relief I heard in Tayla’s voice?
“Of course we will,” I growled back at her. “Nancy Drew wouldn’t let a slight hitch like this get in her way. All we need is a plan.”
“Who’s this Nancy character you’re always on about?” asked Jack whose reading consisted mainly of cheat sheets for his Play station games.
“She’s an amateur detective in a series of books written years ago,” I explained. “Nancy always caught the bad guy.”
Tayla had changed into her new denim shorts and red boob tube which made her look even more like a movie star. It was okay though. I’d accepted Tayla was much prettier than me from the time we wore matching Barbie tee-shirts in a year three look-alike contest. The judge awarded
her
a chocolate and
me
a rubber stamp on the back of my hand.
Anyway, Tayla’s looks often came in handy. Like now.
“What about the young cop standing by the gate?” I quizzed her. “Reckon you could worm some info out of him?”
“The cute one?”
“If you say so!”
To me, you see one male you see them all—scruffy hair, smelly socks and even smellier armpits.
Tayla tossed her blonde curls and beamed her adorable smile, a habit that won hearts and normally got her out of detention early. “Don’t you just
luuuv
the dimple.”
Jack put his finger down his throat and made sick noises. “Call that a dimple? Looks more like a hole in his face.”
I nodded wisely. “Probably fell on a nail when he was a kid.”
“Or got his chin caught in a lawnmower.”
“
Very funneee
.” With another toss of her hair and a slight adjustment to her boob tube, Tayla walked toward the young cop guarding the gate.
“She won’t get him talking. It’d cost him his badge.” Jack pushed himself away from the car and rubbed the back of his neck, almost poking out a lady’s eye with his elbow in the process.
“Don’t forget to ask him if they’ve dug up any clues,” I called out. Hey, if anyone could start a cute cop with a hole in his chin blabbing—it was Tayla.
While Jack and I held our breath, Tayla zeroed in on her victim. I mean…
selected policeman
. Smiling that alluring, I’m-just-adorable smile, she leaned one elbow on the gate and stared up into his eyes. “Hi. My name’s Tayla. What’s yours?”
“Don’t lean on the gate, kid. It may not have been fingerprinted yet.”
Hmm…so much for I’m-just-adorable!
Not one bit bothered by the rebuff, Tayla upped the megawatts in her killer smile and adopted her ‘little girl’ voice. “Have you found that nasty old body yet, Mr. Policeman?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“It makes me
sooo
scared knowing there’s a big bad killer around. Are you any closer to finding him?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Is Patsy inside? I’m a friend of hers. She’s probably expecting me.”
“I’m not —”
“Okay. Okay.
You’re not at liberty to say
.
” Tayla’s voice turned septic and her smile slumped.
The constable’s lips tweaked.
“At least tell me your name,” she persisted, leaning against the gate again. “Or aren’t you at liberty to tell me that either?”
“Constable Nick Roberts of the Port Adelaide Police Department.”
We were getting nowhere…
I glanced at the riot of purple and yellow pansies bordering the lawn next to the veranda. Wasn’t that where Patsy said she’d found the body? Or was it where the knife dropped after she’d kicked him?
Something pink and fluttery and resembling a handkerchief caught my eye. It was in the middle of a geranium bush, not far from the pansies—and the police were searching the other side of the garden. What if they missed it? What if the handkerchief belonged to the killer? My knees suddenly turned to toffee and excitement bubbled in my chest.
Could this be a chance for me to snare my very first clue?
“Jack,” I whispered, digging my nails into his bare arm and dragging him closer. “There’s something I want to check out on the other side of the crime-tape. Can you cause a disturbance while I sneak in?”
“
What?
” Jack’s eyes boggled.
“Jump up and down on the hood of the police-car. That should do it!”
Jack, his face the color of a ripe plum looked like he’d swallowed his spit and almost choked on it. “I-I c-can’t do
that,
Cha!”
“Okay—okay. Now listen…I want you to collapse—act like you’re real sick. Whatever it takes. Just distract the police while I sneak in and snag that clue.”
Leaving Jack to create a diversion like a true P.I.’s assistant, I strolled along the fence-line, casually whistling
Three Blind Mice
. As soon as I heard a loud moan and someone shouting,
“Hey, get back. Give the poor boy some air!”
I was over the fence and belly down on the ground, my tee-shirt hitched up around my armpits. Then, like a snake after a mouse, I slithered towards my target. The bright red geranium bush.
Hunching my shoulders forward I dug my nose deeper into the lawn and wriggled another half dozen centimeters. The smell of fertilizer and dry earth crept up my nose. Strands of dry grass tickled the soft bits inside my nostrils.
Oh! Uh!
I could feel a giant sneeze coming. It was like a simmering pressure-cooker ticking away somewhere deep inside, wherever sneezes have their launching-pad.
It was only the scrap of pink that urged me on. Of course this could be a wild-goose chase—that’s more P.I. talk—and the hankie could belong to Patsy or Zoë, but my gut instinct told me this was a very important clue.
I read somewhere that all Private Investigators have a highly developed gut instinct. Probably comes with the trench coat and the dark glasses.
Just as I reached out and snagged the evidence, the pressure-cooker blew its lid and I launched the biggest sneeze of the century.
Aaaaaaaah! Choooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!
“Hey, kid, what do you think you’re doing there?” I felt myself being lifted bodily in the air and set roughly on my feet. “Okay, what game are you playing at?”
It was Dimples. From close range the hole in his face looked more like a bomb crater.
“I-I dropped a dollar and it-it rolled under the fence, constable.”
“And pigs fly. What’s your name?”
“Cha.”
“Cha?” His eyebrows, fair, with a touch of ginger, lifted. His mouth thinned to a grim line. “What sort of a name is Cha?”
“It’s short for Chiana. Look, I’m sorry, but that was my last dollar and I need it to catch the bus home.”
Tayla wasn’t the only actor in our Investigative team. I sniffed, rubbed my eyes and thought of the saddest movie I’d ever seen.
Titanic
. Almost squeezed out a tear.
“Please don’t send me to jail, constable.’ I sniffed again. ‘My mum’ll kill me!”
“Where’s the dollar?”
I felt around in my pocket until my fingers settled on a one dollar coin.
Thanking God and all my lucky stars, I thrust it under the cop’s nose. “See. Now can I go?
Pleeeese.
If I miss my bus I’ll be late home and—”