© Victoria
Kinmont-Moir (Robyn Bowles)
‘Ten
thousand dollars!’ A long skinny arm, liberally sprinkled with freckles,
shot up like an exclamation mark at the back of the auction room. The face
beneath the bid was flushed behind square set emerald-framed glasses and
lots more freckles.Slowly, the other
bidders’ heads turned, as if on a joint axis, to study the tall young woman
in an emerald silk mini-shift, whose carroty curls blazed above almost
every other head in the crowd. She’d just topped the previous bid by $5000.
‘Sold—to the young lady in the back row!’ yelled the auctioneer, a whack
of his gavel endorsing the decision.
Impatient
to leave with her prize, Cornelia Finnigan P.I. nevertheless had to wait
until the auction was over—another 127 lots. Tantalisingly, but now almost
within her grasp, the little bauble she’d stalked during the past seven
months lay on its side behind the toughened glass of the display case,
winking wickedly at her frustration.
To
pass the time, she let her mind out for a run, re-traversing the titillating
track she’d followed to obtain this golden yo-yo. ‘Walking the dog’, ‘round
the world’, she dredged her memory for yo-yo games and matched them with
her real-life adventure.
***
The
call to her office had come from the mother of Ace Courtney, tennis coach
to the stars. The woman was hysterical, jibbering about having found her
son lying in the tennis-court spa room, his head beneath the water, still
wafting thin ribbons of red into the pristine blue of the silent spa. His
gorgeous sun-tanned face, which smiled from the bedroom walls of thousands
of teenagers, had been beaten to a bloody pulp with his own tennis racquet,
which lay on the floor beside the spa, partly clutched in his smashed right
hand. A damp, blood-spattered suicide note was resting on his YSL terry-towelling
bathrobe, beneath his left hand, which was also badly damaged. ‘I can play
no longer. My service is over. Love, Fifteen’.
Mrs
Courtney explained that ‘Fifteen’ had been roughly crossed out and replaced
with ‘Ace’. Apart from this small anomaly, and the fact that Ace had become
famous for his punishing left-handed service, the police were convinced
this was ‘simple suicide’ and had already completed their investigation.
Ace Courtney was now lying refrigerated in his coffin, an exact replica
of Elvis Presley’s, waiting for his bereft mother to bury him.
‘But
I just can’t…’ she wailed into Cornelia’s ear. ‘I’m sure he was murdered.
You solved that famous case of the Poisoned Pekinese Puppies and I want
you to help me find my son’s killer.’
Cornelia
was pretty chuffed she’d said yes as she encouraged her aging VW along
the dazzling white gravel driveway. ‘What a house,’ she thought. ‘Worth
every zero.’Mentally doubling her
fees, she ensured her plain features were rearranged sympathetically as
she approached the oversized front door.
‘Ace
is such a darling,’ his mother gushed. ‘Sit down, do dear,’ Mrs
Courtney instructed, waving at the Louis XVI armchair.‘Everyone
adores him. He’s only recently returned from America where he was the personal
coach for the great Elvis Presley himself, you know. He’s brought me Elvis’s
autographed photo. I’ll show you later on.’She
spoke of her son in the present tense, as if he’d stride in any minute.
Swinging that deadly racquet. ‘Elvis wasn’t much of a tennis player really,
he was putting on a bit of weight by the time Ace arrived at Gracelands—Ace
had his own little apartment and everything. Tea, dear?’ she asked rhetorically,
pouring from a solid silver pot into fragile little porcelain cups, smothered
in a fantasy of red roses.
‘Elvis
was so lovely to Ace, even though they only played tennis a couple of times
in the three months Ace was there. Elvis gave his staff lots of presents.
He got hundreds as well, of course, from fans—truckloads of stuff. The
parcels weren’t even unloaded, just re-routed to charity shops. But not
the good stuff. The Coca-Cola Corporation, that’s what they call Coke in
America, gave Elvis a beautiful golden yo-yo, in recognition of his being
the biggest Coke consumer in the whole world. Of course he didn’t use all
the Coke himself, you know, he had a big house-hold. Ace said they consumed
so much Coke in that house, it could’ve sunk a battleship.
‘Anyway,
it was the most beautiful thing. The yo-yo, I mean. Eighteen carat gold
(Ace told me twenty-four would’ve been too soft), with filigree work to
round out the sides, which were each studded with 66 diamonds—132 beauties—and
a string made of spun gold. It worked too. Ace did all kinds of tricks
with it. Oh, did I tell you? Elvis gave it to Ace! ‘ she squealed.
‘Just pressed it into his hand one day and told him he didn’t want to play
tennis any more, or with the yo-yo, so he wanted to get both out of his
system together, before all the strings wore out, sort of thing. Ace loved
that yo-yo. Showed it to everybody. He really treasured it all the more
after Elvis’s body was found only days after Ace got home. So sad.’
She burst into a torrent of tears. ‘And now my boy is dead too. I can’t
find the yo-yo either and he always had it with him, until the last couple
of days before he died, when I can’t remember seeing it. I’m sure someone
killed him for it!’
Cornelia
mumbled non-committally through her creamed scone. Privately she thought,
this case had potential. She had Mrs C. sized up. Thin, fashionable and
rich.‘I don’t care what it costs,’
Ace’s mother assured her. ‘Just find that yo-yo. Then you’ll have the killer,
and we can have a proper funeral, with Ace not being a suicide and all.
Invite lots of people and do it properly. I’m counting on you, Cornelia.
You come highly recommended.’
***
The
Tennis Club seemed a good place to start. With her brand new racquet, a
little white skirt and Size 10 tennis shoes Cornelia morphed into an eager
novice seeking attention. Her wallet bulging with Mrs Courtney’s money,
she soon got it. Peeling off a few bills to pay for a lemonade, she jumped
when a smooth athletic type flashed his impossibly white grin at her bony
elbow. ‘Great arms for tennis,’ he commented to her blushing face.Within
minutes a $500 cash advance payment had bought her ten lessons with ‘Darren,
but call me Deuce.’ Pronounced the American way.
Her
tennis didn’t improve much. Cornelia did not have any aptitude for sports,
even basketball. She’d known since high school she had more brains than
brawn, but she did learn lots about Ace. She discovered his affinity for
sports extended to an addiction to the ‘sport of kings.’ Ace gambled seriously
on the gee-gees.
‘It’s
a well-known secret,’ Deuce confided as he snuggled close to demonstrate
the service follow-through, ‘that Ace’s Auntie Violet and her partner run
an SP bookie joint at the back of their exclusive South Yarra antique shop.
It’s got a rear entrance so the punters don’t scare off the antique hunters,
if you get my drift,’ he nudged. ‘Old George and Auntie Vi are both married
to other people, but they’ve been lovers for years. They look so respectable,
it’s a great cover for the SP and the love nest above the shop,’
he winked.
Cornelia’s
interest was tickled more than her fancy. Between volleys, Deuce told her
that Ace was gambling heavily before he died, placing many bets on credit
with Auntie Vi. He was hoping to crack an outsider, to pay her off along
with his more serious creditors, who smelled of gunpowder rather than violets.
Considering
Mrs Courtney’s $500 well spent on this bit of intelligence, Cornelia gave
Deuce the flick. He could have been a good coach, but otherwise he was
about as sharp as a donut.
Cornelia
donned a Harris tweed skirt and cashmere twin-set, slung her big Hong Kong
Louis Vuitton bag over her shoulder, jabbed on some lipstick, tried to
smooth her corkscrew curls and went antique hunting.
***
An
old servant bell tinkled into the dimness of Auntie Vi’s Antiques. A stooped
man, wearing what looked like a melted caramel as a beret, materialised
from the gloom. His pleated face was punctuated by a large mole, stuck
to his chin like a raisin. Cornelia watched as the raisin rose and fell—‘Hullo.
I’m George. Are you looking for anything in particular?’ its owner almost
whispered. She shook her head, cursing herself for not being better prepared
for this engagement. What was she looking for? A golden yo-yo, actually.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself whisper back—not wanting to unduly disturb the
dusty silence. ‘I’m looking for a golden yo-yo.’ The elderly man regarded
her intently, then seemed to glide through the ambience towards an up-lit
glass counter.
‘Something
along these lines?’ he inquired silkily.
Cornelia
peered through her emerald frames. She felt weak. Glowing and twinkling
between the vesta boxes and watch chains, mourning brooches and Victorian
rings, she saw the golden yo-yo.
‘That’s
it!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she continued hastily, in a stage whisper.
‘I didn’t mean to yell. It’s exactly the sort of thing I was looking
for.’ At this moment, a woman who had to be Auntie Vi made an entrance—also
from the rear.She was carrying a
balding one-eyed teddy bear in one hand and a steaming King George V Coronation
mug in the other. She looked frail and sweet—a pale imitation of Mrs Courtney.
She smelt of Ashes of Violets and wore a faded print dress that looked
like it had once borne the same floral design as Mrs Courtney’s porcelain
cups. But now the flowers had faded to what looked like pale pink scribble.
Her hair looked like scribble too, only grey.
‘I
see you’re interested in our golden yo-yo,’ she yelled. ‘It’s not for sale.’
Cornelia jumped at Auntie Vi’s unexpected forcefulness.
‘Don’t
mind her,’ whispered George. ‘She’s deaf. Always shouts. Bangs things about
a lot, too. Don’t be taken in by the way she looks,’ he warned.
As
if he hadn’t spoken, Auntie Vi continued loudly. ‘It’s a rarity. One off.
Used to belong to The King himself.’
‘She
means Elvis Presley, not George V,’ George’s papery voice unfolded at Cornelia’s
ear.
‘And
my poor dead nephew,’ Auntie Vi shouted, unperturbed. ‘Tennis champion.
Such a business. I told him we’d wait, didn’t I, George? No need to
top himself like that. Such a waste of a young life. My baby sister’s only
child. Just for a few thou’. We feel responsible in a way. Don’t we
George? Gordalmighty—poor Primmy, can’t use the spa at all now, I shouldn’t
wonder. And it used to be so good for her artheritis. It’s really
affected her, you know. She won’t bury him and get on, she just can’t accept
he’s gone.’
Auntie
Vi slapped the mug onto a spindly pedestal wine table and tossed the teddy
into a nearby basket, sagging herself more gently into an Edwardian rocking
chair. ‘So I can’t sell it to you, duck,’ she repeated. ‘Sentimental value.
My nephew gave us that yo-yo to partly off-set a little debt he had with
us, you see. We were the least of his worries, I shouldn’t think.
There was lots worse than us after him. But anyway… ’ Her voice trailed
off thoughtfully. ‘Have a look around. You might see something else that
takes your fancy.’ Auntie Vi’s chair creaked as Cornelia moved further
into the cavernous darkness while she tried to think of what to do next.
Maybe she could think of an excuse to get them to open the counter. Perhaps
once she was holding the yo-yo, a big wad of cash might change Auntie Vi’s
mind. Fidgeting with a huge swag of heavy velvet curtains draped along
the side wall, Cornelia was just about to pop the question when she heard
the scream of brakes and the screams of shoppers outside.
Three
men burst through the front door, wearing masks fashioned from pantyhose
with eyeholes cut out, the legs tied together behind their heads like grotesque
bows in their hair. They were waving guns and shouting. Cornelia melted
into the space behind the curtains, confident her drumming heartbeats would
be muffled by the shots and yells filling the previously silent space of
Auntie Vi’s Antiques. Glass smashed. Men grunted. A woman screamed and
something fell to the floor. Cornelia thought she might pee, but she held
on valiantly. An emerging puddle could be a dead give-away. Literally.
Perilously
close to her, she felt the passage of rushing bodies. More shots out the
back. More shouts. A door slammed. Silence returned for a minute or two.
Then she heard sirens approaching. She did not want to be a material witness.
It could be bad for her future. She decided to slip out the back way too,
as it was unlikely the men would still be hanging around. But first—the
golden yo-yo. Once Mrs Courtney recovered from the shock, she’d surely
want it back. Stepping over wrecked antiques, Cornelia made her way towards
the counter. Poor George and Violet were entwined in death on the floor,
both shot in the head. A gruesome job for the undertaker, Cornelia thought,
somehow unruffled by the double murder. They had seemed almost unreal anyway,
both of them, she consoled herself. Pleasant enough, but if they’d been
books I wouldn’t have read them. Before moving to the glass counter she
did spare a brief thought for ‘poor Primmy’, who now had another family
member to bury. The counter was smashed. The golden yo-yo was gone. As
sirens faded to a whine out the front, she leapt over the dead book-keeper
in the SP kitchen and fled down the back lane into the bustle of Chapel
Street.
***
Cornelia
was stumped. The golden yo-yo had disappeared from circulation and none
of her regular informants could shed any light on its hiding place. She
put out feelers everywhere, in the meantime visiting Mrs Courtney to offer
both her condolences about the appalling incident and her account for more
funds. She kept quiet about her own visit to Auntie Vi’s, just made appropriate
noises in the right places as Mrs Courtney told the story as if she herself
had been there. Mrs Courtney didn’t mention the theft of the golden yo-yo,
so Cornelia assumed she’d been kept ignorant of her beloved boy’s naughty
habits.
Bet
Primmy dines out on that story for months Cornelia thought, as she coached
her VW into a parking place behind her favourite pub. It was still early,
but she was hungry. She slid into a side booth and ordered a Coopers and
chicken parmagiana with wedges instead of chips. And sour cream on the
side. As she sat reviewing the talent in the still half-empty pub, fragments
of a conversation drifted across to her from the booth behind. She couldn’t
hear everything, because the juke box was playing the closing chords of
‘Love Me Tender’ , but she was sure she’d just overheard two critical
words—‘golden yo-yo.’ She got goosebumps and prayed that no-one would re-feed
the juke box. Then she realised it was right next to the neighbouring booth.
What if she went to choose a few songs herself? Quite a few. Always difficult
choosing the right ones. It can take a while.
Shaking,
she slid out of her booth and sauntered over as casually as she could on
wobbly legs. The couple in the booth looked evil. The man’s cheek was split
by a scar from the corner of his mouth to his piggy eye and he was carrying
enough luggage under his eyes to get to London. The rest of his face was
deeply lined and jowls had made a good start on his chin.
The
woman looked white-trash and nervous—a lumpy figure contained in a shapeless,
dirty black sweatshirt and faded jeans. Her pasty fingers held tightly
onto a cigarette, which she used in stabbing motions to the music as Elvis
sighed finally, ‘Darling, I love you … and I always will.’
Cornelia
jingled her coins softly in her JAG jacket pocket and listened closely.
‘I
swear to you, I saw the bloody thing meself,’ the woman said loudly as
if she was not being believed. ‘It’s worth a friggin’ fortune, full
of diamonds and even has a golden string! I saw Dormouse walkin’ the friggin’
dog with it.’
‘What,
on a yo-yo string?’ the man said incredulously. ‘Nowyou’re
bull-shittin’. That bloody rotty’d snap a boat-rope, never mind a bit of
gold string.’
‘Nah,
ya bloody idiot. “Walkin’ the dog”—it’s a yo-yo trick ya do,’ she
shouted.‘Look, I’m goin’ up there
tonight, Dormouse owes me a few bucks an’ I need it, so I’m drivin’ there
soon’s I’ve finished me beer. Whyn’t ya come with me? It’s only about an
hour’s drive. You’ll never see anything like it agin and I reckon he might
be a bit short—might wanta sell it.’
Cornelia
chose a few songs at random and slid back into her booth. The head on her
Coopers was disintegrating into large popped bubbles. There couldn’t be
two golden yo-yos, she thought. It’s got to be it. She tried to remember
when she’d last filled the VW. The petrol gauge was broken and permanently
on E. There was movement in the next booth. Her parmagiana arrived. Scoopinga
few wedges into a paper napkin, she left some money on the table, scoffed
the Coopers and followed the couple to the car-park. They headed for a
red Holden. Good, that should be easy to keep in view, she thought. Behind
Cornelia, a thin man dressed in basic black unfolded like a carpenter’s
measure from his table in the corner and followed her outside. Unseen,
he slipped into a big car with darkened windows. The car’s powerful motor
idled until Cornelia kicked her VW into gear, and lurched awkwardly into
the traffic behind the red Holden. The sleek dark car completed the procession
as they each pulled out onto the highway to Ballarat.
***
The
red Holden hovered above the speed limit. Cornelia prayed she had enough
petrol for ‘about an hour’s drive’. You didn’t need that much in a VW.
A cupful went a long way—one of the reasons she’d bought it. And the sun-roof.
She loved the sun-roof.
They
left the outskirts of the city and sped through country-side—green hills,
darkening sky, white houses all blurring together. Cornelia never checked
her rear vision mirror on the open road, although she knew it was something
PIs really should do. She put it down to bad driving, not bad investigating.
She concentrated on the car in front.
About
an hour after they’d left the pub, the Holden turned off the highway onto
a dirt track. It was now dark and Cornelia killed her headlights before
following. Slowing down to protect her sump, she inched along the track,
still unaware she was being followed.Way
behind her, the dark car stopped and then reversed across the track, blocking
it completely. Silently, four men in dark clothing crept from the car and
became part of the surrounding bush.
Soon
Cornelia pulled up. She could no longer hear the Holden and she was worried
it might have stopped. Pulling off the track into a bit of scrub she got
out and sneaked forward. About 100 yards further on a cabin loomed through
the trees. The Holden and two other cars were parked out front. The cabin
was not like the pretty photos in glossy ‘Adventure for a Weekend’ brochures.
This one clung tenuously to a scrubby hillside, surrounded by empty beer
cans, bits of rusty machinery and a couple of ancient bikes. Wood-smoke
drifted from a broken chimney and the front verandah looked as if parts
of it might have been used for the fire. A wrecked ute was propped up on
logs at one side, awaiting a miracle worker to get it going again. Cornelia
edged up to a side window, praying that the rotty was stretched out in
front of the fire inside.Four men
and the woman were sitting at an old laminex-top table, each holding a
beer. She couldn’t see the dog. She felt very nervous. Her mobile was in
the car, with a flat battery. What now, Cornelia?
‘Put
your hands on your heads and come out one at a time!’ roared a loud-hailer
from somewhere out front. ‘You are surrounded. Do not try to escape!’ Pandemonium
exploded inside the cabin. The rotty appeared from under the table and
his huge fangs were clearly visible even at Cornelia’s distance as he barked
ferociously, adding to the noise. Terrified, Cornelia shrank underneath
the house, crawling through bracken ferns and cobwebs, protecting her Gucci
pants the best she could. This time, fear and the Coopers took their toll.
At least nobody saw.She could hear
everything happening inside.
The
crooks were the ones who’d robbed and killed George and Vi, who’d
owed them SP money. The police had been onto them for a while. The pub
couple, known associates of the stick-up gang, were just in the wrong place
at the wrong time, having led the police directly to their prey. Cornelia
heard the crooks being arrested, read their rights, handcuffed and dragged
out to the police cars hidden in the nearby bush. Drawers and cupboards
were opened and rifled. She waited for the cops to come looking for her
too, but soon footsteps receded and engines revved. After a long, long
time, she wriggled out cautiously. It was very quiet. She crept carefully
into the shack and bumped into a warm body. She screamed. The body growled,
but not very convincingly. The damned rotty! Fortunately for Cornelia,
the rotty was all show and no go. He’d been scared too. He sniffed her
in an intimate place and she pushed him away, embarrassed. She found a
light switch and looked around the chaotic cabin. No sign of the golden
yo-yo. Bugger.
‘You’d
better come with me, Kissyface,’ she ordered the dog. Secretly, she’d always
wanted a rotty. Kind of went with the PI image. A friendly one was a bonus,
really. For her, anyway. She hoped her landlord wouldn’t notice if she
sneaked him in.
At
the police station, the crooks were told to empty their pockets. One of
them, the big hulking creep nicknamed Dormouse, moved towards the rail-thin
cop who’d tracked him down. ‘I’d like a word,’ whispered Dormouse. Sergeant
Slim bent his head towards the crook. ‘I’ve got something ya might like,’
whispered Dormouse, ‘I’ll slip it to ya if yapromise
you’ll try to help me, but otherwise I’m gonna chuck it on the table. I
never pulled no triggers. I’m just the driver.’
Slim
saw the glitter of diamonds between Dormouses’s pudgy fingers. ‘OK you!
Over here,’ he ordered. ‘I want to question you separately.’ Before anyone
could protest, he scruffed Dormouse into another interview room and the
golden yo-yo changed hands. Slim slipped it into his pocket and returned
Dormouse to the group. ‘He knows nothing,’ spat Slim. ‘Lock him up.’
***
Two
days later, Cornelia was sitting in her little office wondering how she
was going to get a Visitor Pass to ask those prisoners what had happened
to the golden yo-yo. After all, it wasn’t going to be much use to them
if they got life for George and Vi. And she could probably arrange that.
She didn’t mind being a witness if the crooks were behind bars. A headline
from the daily on her desk caught her eye. ‘Hey, listen to this, Kissyface.’
The dog’s eyebrows moved slightly, but he was otherwise immobile, occupying
most of the floor.
‘In
a prison riot last night, a prisoner who was dramatically arrested in a
police raid on a remote bush cabin the night before, was killed by other
prisoners who claimed they’d been cheated out of part of his gang’s takings.
The prisoner, known as Dormouse, had his hands smashed when another prisoner
jumped on them and was finally drowned by having his head held down the
toilet.’
Cornelia
pulled a face. ‘Yuk! What a way to go. Makes hanging look positively civilised.
Well, there goes my last chance to get that bloody yo-yo. Mrs C. is not
going to be pleased. But I might have some good news for her after all.
I bet those crooks whacked poor old Ace, bashed his brains in because he
owed them money. Same kind of MO really—broken hands and a drowning, of
sorts. At least Mrs C. can bury her boy now—even if the yo-yo’s disappeared.’
Kissyface went back to sleep.
As
expected, Ace’s funeral was a Grand Affair. Mrs Courtney lavished thousands
on her dead son’s send-off, thrilled by an assurance from Homicide that
they’d ‘have another look at it’—when they weren’t so busy. Unusually for
her, because it doesn’t do to get too close to your clients—even rich ones—Cornelia
went to the funeral. She liked Primmy.Going
home, her VW chugged past a huge car pile-up—two civilian cars and a police
car, its blue light still rotating crazily over the twisted wrecks. ‘Poor
bastards,’ she said to Kissyface, who’d been invited to the funeral too.
‘Funny, this will probably be reported as the cop being ‘a tragic loss’
and the civilians ‘speeding idiots.’ Not much chance of this heap being
involved in that sort of chase, eh, Kissy?’
Cornelia
was becoming very fond of Dormouses’s dog, who, although he farted quite
a lot, was a good listener and never answered back.
***
Six
months later, on a sunny Tuesday, Cornelia bought some mixed gerberas for
her office. Business was booming, spring was coming and Kissyface was about
to become a father. He’d taken a fancy to the Lab-X on the corner and nature
had done the rest. Cornelia loved gerberas—the extroverts of the daisy
family and an inspiration for dull corners. She unwrapped the flowers—‘Just
newspaper will do,’ she’d told the florist. ‘They’re only for me’. A boxed
ad on a dry bit of the local paper’s back page leapt out at her.
‘FOR
AUCTION—A VERY RARE and UNIQUE PIECE.’
‘Rare
or unique,’ Cornelia said aloud, her semantic senses offended. She
read on.
‘As
part of the estate of the late Sergeant ‘Fatty’ Slim, a unique golden yo-yo
will be auctioned at our rooms on Wednesday this week at 10 am. Sergeant
Slim was tragically killed in a collision with a stolen, speeding car six
months ago. The proceeds will go to his widow and seven children.’
There
was more to ‘Fatty’ Slim’s estate, but Cornelia’s eyes had blurred. She
scrabbled frantically through the soggy paper looking for a date. Was the
paper this week’s? Yes! Omigod! She’d get that damned golden yo-yo
yet, if she could bid the next day. A quick phone call to Mrs Courtney
confirmed her attendance at the auction. ‘Pay whatever it takes,’ she was
instructed. ‘It’ll be a wonderful momento of my beloved son. Don’t come
back without it.’
‘Are
we all done and finished? Thank you ladies and gentlemen.’ The final bang
of the auctioneer’s gavel jerked Cornelia from her reverie. She pushed
through all the short people to pay for the golden yo-yo. Her recollections
had brought with them a small pang of anxiety. It seemed that since the
Coca-Cola Corporation had presented that golden yo-yo to Elvis Presley,
everyone who’d owned it had died. A nasty death. Quite horrible, actually.
As
the cashier handed it over she reassured herself that she was only Mrs
Courtney’s agent. She wasn’t the owner, just the messenger. She had the
sale listed in Mrs Courtney’s name, just in case. Not that she had anything
against poor old Primmy. A decent lady and a good client. Always paid on
time. Large accounts, too. Still, now that she’d thought about it, she
couldn’t wait to hand the yo-yo over. Her VW had coughed and died in a
traffic jam a week ago. It was currently in the VW Intensive Care Ward
at Cornelia’s local garage while she decided whether to turn off life support
and use golden yo-yo investigation proceeds to buy a Beamer (with a sunroof),
or inject a bit more life into the old Vee Dub. Once
Kissyface climbed in, there was not much room for anything else, including
the driver. Cornelia thought that might be the clincher. She just hadn’t
had the guts yet to say ‘Wreckers.’
Cornelia
left the auction house still clutching the golden yo-yo. The Toorak tram
was approaching and she made a run for it. An L-plate driver in a nun’s
habit failed to stop and with a sickening crunch, her car and Cornelia
collided. Cornelia was big, but not big enough. Down she went—critically
injured.
The
golden yo-yo bounced away unseen as the nun panicked and the tram’s bell
dinged insistently. A crowd gathered around the sobbing nun saying her
rosary over the unconscious girl with bloodstained red hair. Cornelia sensed
swarms of dark shapes hovering, saw sparkling lights like diamonds, heard
bells and sirens fading in and out and thought Kissyface’s warm wet tongue
was licking her face as the ambulance raced her to hospital.
Unheeded,
the golden yo-yo rolled away. It disappeared down a culvert and lay twinkling
in the muck of the city drain. Awaiting its next victim…