Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) Read Online Free Page B

into it. Graham had made me helpless with laughter with his hard-boiled private eye impressions and we’d decided that I’d always been a bit on the tough cookie side, too. It seemed a great idea at the time. We’d got into quite a crusading spirit about it all — dirty money used to clean up dirty crime, etcetera. But so far the poor and the powerless and manipulated masses had stayed away in droves.
    I’d picked Lorna’s brains, of course, and she had been surprisingly encouraging. She’d even ‘employed’ us before, to do some paperwork for her, researching deadly dull business registrations mostly, though once Graham had had to do a round-the-clock observation on someone she was interested in. She’d never told us whether the information that the subject had apparently gone to bed at nine every night, worked at his office from eight-thirty until five every day, and cooked himself an early dinner every evening after walking his poodle, had been useful to her or not.
    But apart from that, I had to admit, we hadn’t got very far. Which was why the idea of muscling in on the Channing case was so attractive.
    *
    I looked at my notes again, and frowned. Rex Channing seemed the obvious place to start, since Leonie refused to talk. I pulled the phone book over and looked him up — an address in Vaucluse. And his wife and kid still lived in Liverpool. I was dialling before I’d thought of a decent story.
    “Yes?” His voice was gravelly, aggressive.
    “Mr Channing? My name’s Anna South wood. I’m… er… I’m a reporter with the Mirror and I wondered if you could possibly find the time to talk to me…”
    It was surprisingly easy. He agreed to meet me later in the afternoon and rang off. I hoped Graham would be back by then.
    “A good morning’s work,” I said to Toby, who’d shifted to his afternoon position on the back of an armchair, and I decided to treat myself to a curry at the Satasia, up the road in Darling Street. I’d bring back some take-away for Graham, I thought guiltily, imagining him slogging around the western wastelands talking to malicious old gossips. I ran upstairs to get a book — a Dorothy Sayers I’d read several times before — and let myself back out into the golden spring day. It’s one of my favourite habits to eat alone in an Asian restaurant with a good read, and I was already salivating at the thought of chillied lamb with fresh coriander leaves.
    *
    Graham hadn’t come back by two-thirty and I’d arranged to be in Vaucluse by three, so I left him a note under the curry container and went to the garage for my venerable VW. After Clyde’s death, in an excess of hatred for all his expensive toys, I’d sold his Alfa and the little MG Sports and I’d gone to the motor auctions in Five Dock where I’d immediately fallen for the old beetle. It had a home-made convertible black canvas top and was painted in bronze, black and silver tiger stripes. It also had a probably illegally souped-up engine and could beat most cars on the road when the lights changed. I’d had a powerful stereo installed, and leopard-skin seat covers, and I loved it with a passion, in all its tackiness. It’s an ideal car for Balmain, too, where most of the winding streets are just wide enough for one car at a pinch, not counting all those parked higgledy-piggledy on the kerbs.
    I put Chopin to playing loudly on the tape-deck and hummed along as I zoomed around the Crescent and through the outskirts of the city and Paddington to Vaucluse.
    *
    Rex Channing’s house was a real new-money treat. Ornate cast-iron fence, security gate, more white Spanish pillars than in all of Seville and a four-car garage with its own set of the fluted columns. A white late-model Mercedes was parked on the gravel — it seemed a subdued sort of car for this house, I thought. A surly-looking Asian gardener opened the gate for me and looked with disgust at my brave little car.
    “I have an appointment,” I said, turning