"So, again, why am I here?"
Sarah Boyes-Lang sighed a sigh that hinted it was a sad thing indeed that her world had come to this. "I'd like you to check him out, Katherine, to make sure that his own history is legitimate. Lorenzo is investigating the family tree aspect because it's part of Gregor's story, but I don't really care about his claim to royalty..."
Pig's bum, Kit thought. Sarah's lie had been delivered with the dead-give-away eye-twitch.
"...but I do care about his life. I need to have it verified that he is the independently well-off second son of New York doctors; that he was studying in Russia; and that he was on the Grand Tour en route home to America. Is that an investigation appropriate to your agency?"
"Oh yes. My agency has a high success rate with cases like this." Kit rubbed her eye.
"I feel a great sense relief knowing the two of you are on my side. Hopefully we'll be able to resolve this before any announcement is made. I do so hate being suspicious."
Kit pulled a standard contract from her briefcase. "Well, just think Sarah, if Comrade Tereshenko had come fully-equipped with proof, then Lorenzo and I would still be needed to find out why he would go about the world with that proof in his pocket."
To help Enzo maintain his straight-faced impression, Kit began quietly explaining her rates of investigation to one of the richest women in Melbourne; while wondering, abstractly, why no one had yet invented a lipstick that didn't come off all over glassware and linen serviettes. Or if they had, why no one had told Mrs Richer-than-a-Supermodel about it.
Three hours later Kit lounged against Enzo's kitchen bench watching him in his element - or rather one of them. They had dined together, sans their mutual client, at a Thai restaurant in the city and were now about to partake of coffee and exotic liqueur out on Enzo's eighth-floor balcony. Kit had agreed to venture outside only because the evening was unseasonably warm and on the condition that she was not required to approach the edge for any reason.
After Melbourne's lack of summer - or rather enough hot days in a row to designate an actual season - most of the population now took every advantage of any sign of warmth to pretend that April and autumn weren't already dragging them towards winter.
Enzo handed Kit a coffee and a glass of something sticky and ushered her outside onto...
Enzo's balcony? Kit smiled. That was not exactly the association she usually made with this piece of overhanging real estate. Oh, no. Her true and lasting, tingling memory of this tiny terrace high high above the street way way below, was that night in January; that first night; that hot, wild, sexy, trembling, breathtaking...stop-it! She shook her head.
Okay, O'Malley, she thought. Balcony, you, Alex, sex, vivid! But you can sit out here without the orgasmic flashback.
"Are you okay," Enzo asked.
"Fine," Kit squeaked as she sidled into the nearest chair.
"Tell me more about this crime family you're investigating," Enzo prompted, taking a seat against the railing and leaning his head back into the high night breeze.
"Enzo, I am not investigating the Rileys."
"But you'll have to, won't you, to find out who left the naked nephew at Angie's."
"I'm not allowed to investigate homicides. I wouldn't want to investigate this one," Kit said emphatically.
Enzo looked puzzled. "But Kit, you do, you have. It was because of a homicide that you met Alex. Not to mention that mess in Collingwood earlier this month."
Kit shrugged. "I wasn't investigating that mess in Collingwood, I just ended up in it. And, technically, I met Alex because I was checking out a philandering husband."
"Oh, I see," Enzo smiled, "it depends how you word it."
"No. Private investigators are not supposed to get involved in murder investigations. Apart from which they usually have no reason to. Me? I just keep turning up in the wrong bloody place at the most inopportune times."
"What if this cop starts hassling Angie because he has no other leads?" Enzo asked.
"Then Angie could hire me for any number of things, such as: to act as her bodyguard; to check the security of her premises to ascertain how an unauthorised person managed to gain access; to find out - very quietly - whether a recently-deceased member of a prominent local family had any connections to any of the Terpsichore's patrons; or, perhaps, whether the now-departed had any designs - legitimate or ill - on the business, unlikely, or the site it occupies."
Enzo looked worried. "If the latter were the case, then Angie would have to know about it; and that scenario could prove incriminating for her."
"True," Kit acknowledged. "And that would also mean sussing out the Rileys, something no sane person would do without the backing of the entire Victorian police force."
"Or another crime family," Enzo suggested.
"Yeah," Kit said, as if that was a good idea. "Except it was probably another crime family that killed Gerry." She pursed her lips. "I could go undercover, forever, to find someone willing to cross the Rileys. But they pull so many strings in this town that it wouldn't even pay for their rivals or enemies to shop them, let alone their cohorts who'd know more.
"The best way to help Angie, should Chucky Parker get lazy and try blaming everything on her, would be to work out why the body was left at the Terpsichore."
"Was he killed there, or just deposited?" Enzo asked.
"Ruth Hudson, the forensic pathologist, reckons he was killed elsewhere. There were blood slops near the emergency exit inside and a couple of little puddles in the lane out the back."
"Blood slops," Enzo repeated, pulling a disgusted face.
"The guy had very little left inside him, Enzo. It had to go somewhere."
Enzo wiggled his shoulders as if to cast off a nasty feeling. "Well my dear, it seems like you've given this murder case you're not investigating quite a bit of thought."
"Hey, I was there," Kit threw her palms up and grinned. "And I can't help myself, Enzo. That, and that fact that I'm really pissed off that someone trespassed in our space; that they left a dead naked male in our space; and that the Terpsichore seems to have been chosen specifically to draw maximum attention to... to I don't know what. And that pisses me off too.
"But, as I have no client and no facts other than a dead man in a place no man should be, dead or alive, then anything I might be mulling is half-baked and borderline ridiculous."
"Ooh, you're scowling my precious," Enzo declared. "It's bad for the complexion. We need to change the subject. And we need more caffeine." Enzo sauntered inside and returned with the coffee pot. "Now, can young Hector really trace Gregor Tereshenko's movements?"
"Sure," Kit smiled. "It took Hector a couple of days last month to find the actual bloke in Adelaide that someone else was impersonating in Victoria, so I he'd have trouble tracing the movements of a travelling Russian-American. Unless Tereshenko is a complete phoney."
"To be perfectly honest Kit, I found him to be quite charming. He appears to be smitten with Vanessa and she... What? Why are you looking like you've just had a thought worth voicing but haven't finished translating it yet?" he asked. He finished pouring the coffee.
"Because Enzo," Kit beamed, "I was thinking we should ask those feral feds of yours to check on Gregor for us. They could be productive while they're watching you and Alex - when she's here - get on with your ordinary every day married life."
Enzo groaned. "I just wish those silly bastards would get their own lives and leave us alone. They've been loitering in our affairs for months now; it's way too long."
"Yeah well, our affairs are probably the problem, Enzo," Kit laughed.
"You've got that right Honey, but how long are we going