Blood Guilt. Lindy Cameron

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      BLURB

      Private investigator Kit O'Malley has had more exciting cases than following a wealthy client's husband, but Celia Robinson is paying big money to find out what the libidinous Geoffrey is up to with a blonde, a redhead and entrepreneur Ian Dalkeith and his group of shady businessmen.

      Enduring a heatwave and fighting the inanimate objects that are out to get her are the hardest parts of Kit's assignment until a body is found in the Robinson's ornamental fish pond and everything takes a turn for the weird and nasty.

      While the cops do their own thing, Celia's daughter Quinn hires Kit to find the killer and her mother's missing butler. What Kit doesn't count on is Quinn's determination to be involved in the case. To make matters worse she brings along her lawyer, Alexis Cazenove, who is as stunning as she is smart and has an extremely disconcerting effect on Kit's sense of balance.

      After a near miss with a homicidal driver, Kit knows she's getting close to something – even if the truth seems to be that everyone has a secret. And then there's the question of just who the mysterious Mike Finnigan is following; is it Geoffrey, Dalkeith or Kit herself?

      CHAPTER ONE

      It was the sort of night that starts many a bad novel. Kit O'Malley was trying to decide whether to venture out into the midst of it or go back inside and have a long, cold, stiff drink. The rush of steamy, oppressive heat colliding with the unnatural cold of the air-conditioned hotel lobby as she opened the door told her that outside was still not the place to be.

      Raising her arm through the thick and putrid air to block out the street light, she glared at the storm clouds which were still doing what they'd been doing every night for a week - just hanging around, heavy and threatening, taunting a parched and overheated city with the promise of relief only to piss off before midnight and drop their bundles over Bass Strait.

      The distinctive smell of rain in the air was permeated with the sweat, tension and extreme irritability of an entire population which had had just about enough, thank you very much, but couldn't do a damned thing to escape.

      Tonight did feel different though. The air was seriously full of something that indicated change. Kit hated that. It didn't necessarily mean a change in the weather; it would probably just be another downturn in the economy, a petrol strike or a sale at K-Mart.

      Kit's mad friend Brigit would say it was bad vibes or ions, that there were negative emotions running rampant through the suburbs because the moon was almost full, or because it hadn't aligned with Mars or something. Whatever it was, it was producing a lot of shitty weather, not the sort a sensible person would want to be out in.

      Kit was still trying to decide whether or not to go back and join Nick for a beer when a rogue wind, probably sent out as a scout for the raging gale that was almost certainly following, thwacked into the heavy door and pushed her back inside anyway.

      'You know that light wind the Weather Bureau forecast would accompany the cool change?' she said to the two men in the small office off the hotel's foyer. 'Well, it's about to destroy the street.' She sat down heavily on a plastic chair and watched Nick and Simmons as they packed away their equipment.

      'Is it raining yet?' Simmons asked.

      'Don't be silly. It's either not going to happen or it's waiting till I'm half way across the street to my car,' Kit said, realising she should have known from the moment she'd woken up that this was not going to be one of her better days.

      It should have been Sunday, a day to roll over stick your head under the pillow and pretend you couldn't hear The Cat demanding breakfast. Indeed it had felt like Sunday till that precious feline, yowling with a mouth full of something not quite dead, had leapt on top of her to show off the mangled catch of the day. Kit had launched herself from the bed, fighting off the effects of morning gravity, to chase The Cat out the back door. The daily newspaper had skidded across the patio and when Kit bent to pick it up she knew the day was not going to get any better. Thursday's Age meant one of two things: either it was Thursday or she'd been in a coma for four days.

      So, what should have been Sunday got progressively worse as Thursday wore on, culminating in a four hour stake-out topped off by a meeting with a man who had nothing whatsoever to recommend him.

      Not that Simmons is much better, Kit thought watching the dishevelled detective as he tried in vain to hoick his trousers up over a stomach not designed to be contained by them. He gave up, as he always did, and the belt buckle slipped from view beneath a belly barely covered by a shirt too tight for pride to have had anything to do with the man's dress sense.

      'You may as well go Kit. We've got everything we need,' Nick Jenkins said, absently waving the cassette on which was recorded Kit's meeting with the contemptible Jimmy Kerman. 'We'll be able to pick up Manderson with this little lot.'

      'Yeah. Well I hope you've got enough on that sleazebag Kerman as well. The only thing worse than a drug pushing pimp is a drug pushing pimp who betrays his friends because he thinks it'll help him get on in the world.'

      Kit wanted nothing more right now than to wash off the stench of an hour spent with one of the most reprehensible human beings she'd ever had the misfortune to have to spend time with.

      'Hey, you and I know from experience you don't have to be a certified sleazebag pimp to be a Judas.' Nick said slipping an arm around Kit's shoulders.

      Kit grinned. 'Ain't that the truth. Got time for a beer before you go?'

      'God, it's still like a sauna out here,' Nick said half an hour later when he and Kit emerged from the Criterion Hotel. The wind, which had wreaked havoc in the street, had all but died down. 'What a mess! Looks like a mad dog went through every bin in the street looking for leftover McDonalds.'

      'It's more likely that it went mad and did this after finding leftover McDonalds,' Kit said, surveying the garbage that was strewn from one side of the road to the other. Emptied bins had been flung, rolled and battered, sandwich boards had deserted their posts to wrap themselves round telephone poles or leap through shop windows, and several parked cars no longer had windscreens. The footpath, where it could be seen beneath the collage of rotting refuse and flapping waste paper, was splattered with a few huge drops of rain, a sure indication that the black and heavy heavens were finally about to open.

      'You going home now?' Nick asked, removing his jacket and slinging it over his shoulder.

      'I wish. I've got one last stop. A client in Toorak.'

      'A client? It's after eight.'

      'When you work for yourself Nicholas, your clients call the shots most of the time. The good thing about this deal is it's the last visit. You know, final meeting, give me the cheque, case closed.'

      'Two in one day. That's not bad.' Nick followed Kit across the street to her car. 'But aren't we getting a bit above our station by having a client from Toorak?'

      'Absolutely, my dear,' Kit said in her best posh voice. 'And what's more I've got a new one to see there first thing tomorrow. O'Malley Investigations is going up in the world.'

      'I bet they don't pay any better, or on time,' Nick said with a grin.

      'Not that I've noticed, no. But at least my new client should be entertaining. From what I've read in the society pages even the wealthy eccentrics around town think she is a little weird.' Kit opened her car door and threw her jacket onto the passenger seat.

      'Listen, thanks for coming in on this tonight,' Nick said. 'You didn't have to. Even old Simmons appreciated it.'

      'Sure. I could just see he was bursting with gratitude.'

      'Hey, he bought you a drink. For him that means thanks from the bottom of his beer gut. My thanks, however, come from a little higher up,' Nick said placing his hand over his heart.

      'I had unfinished business with Manderson, now it's over. Kerman also gave me info for another case I'm working. So it was no big deal,