A Taxing Affair Read online

  ‘It doesn’t appear we’re going to get much business done today, either,’ he said as they prepared to part. ‘Not that it matters much; I’m in no screaming hurry. It might be better, all things considered, if we waited on the book stuff until the family audit is finished. What do you think?’

  Vashti wasn’t about to create any new misunderstandings. ‘If it has to be, it has to be,’ she replied. ‘This business seems to have more delays than real progress sometimes.’

  Phelan Keene merely laughed. ‘With the amount of provisional tax I’m usually up for, any delay is a blessing in disguise,’ he retorted. ‘I suppose I’d be in terrible strife if I somehow managed one year to have all my records just disappear in a puff of smoke?’

  ‘You could try,’ Vashti replied with a grin. ‘Remembering of course that tax law is perhaps the only area of law where you’re automatically presumed guilty until proven innocent — and the proof usually has to come from you!

  ‘Records have been lost, of course. But I really would have to advise you to try and avoid it, and to have a very, very good accountant or tax advisor if it did happen.’

  ‘Ah, but of course I have,’ he replied. ‘The very best, and extremely attractive in the bargain. I’ll be right. And thanks for joining me for lunch, by the way. Even if we didn’t get any business done, it was very enjoyable.’

  As Vashti headed north towards her office she found herself reflecting not on the lunch — which had indeed been enjoyable — but on Phelan’s comment about his accountant.

  The ravishing Janice Gentry, of course, she thought, and shrugged off a vague sense of disquiet. Of course he’d have Janice Gentry as an accountant. It was only logical, since she handled the family’s affairs. And certainly she was extremely attractive, no sense in denying that.

  Too attractive, she found herself thinking on several occasions during what turned out to be a cow of an afternoon. Vashti put her bad temper down to too much dessert, knowing she was fooling nobody, including herself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Vashti didn’t see or hear from Phelan Keene for more than a week, at least not in the flesh. He turned up on the ABC’s book programme one night in what she thought must have been an old interview, but there was nothing old about the picture of him in the Hobart Mercury social pages.

  He was resplendently dressed in evening wear, as was his predictable companion. Janice Gentry, if the grainy black and white picture was any guide, might have been wearing an evening gown — what there was of it — in leech-green, so tightly was she attached to Phelan’s arm.

  Vashi told herself it was irrelevant and none of her business anyway, and used that section of the paper to wrap up her rubbish.

  The radio programme was quite a different story, sneaking up on her without warning as she was wishing herself to sleep after what had been a fair bitch of a day.

  Having Keene’s rich voice right there, next to her ear on her very own pillow, somehow sounded different from how she remembered it. It was gentler, more mellow. And, she quickly realised, it was a highly revealing voice — too revealing!

  She’d turned on the radio part-way into the programme, at a point where he was reading bits of his own work and explaining some of the background.

  Only after a few minutes did the interview itself begin, and Vashti was immediately wide awake with interest.

  ‘Any man who says he understands women is either a damned fool or a liar — or both!’ he was saying. ‘In fact there are times I don’t think women understand women; certainly I don’t make any claims in that direction.’

  ‘And yet your heroines seem ... well ... so well rounded, as people, I mean,’ cooed the interviewer, and Vashti could literally see Phelan pouring on the charm. The interviewer’s first few questions had clearly been designed to set Phelan up for something, but without even appearing to notice, he’d turned the entire thing round to his favour.

  And he continued to do it. He’s playing her like a piano, Vashti said to herself, fully awake now and fascinated by the whole performance. If she hadn’t personally seen and heard Phelan Keene in action, his performance on the radio mightn’t have been so obvious, she thought. And then she recalled how he’d done much the same to her both in person and over the telephone.

  ‘Weil, you won’t do it again, and that’s for sure,’ she said aloud, then wondered if the opportunity would even arise.

  As the interview continued, Vashti found herself swinging between anger, laughter and downright astonishment as Phelan manipulated the poor woman asking the questions.

  ‘You should be in politics, my lad,’ she found herself muttering after one exchange in which he deftly managed to appear to answer a particularly awkward question without really answering it at all.

  And when the question came, as she had already come to expect, about money and how much a famous writer could make, it was no surprise to find him evading that one too. The real surprise came afterwards.

  ‘The taxation system is enough to drive any sane person quite mad,’ he said. ‘One of these days I think I’ll write a book about it, I think. Like every other businessman in the country, I spend half my time working for them anyway; it might be useful to get something back. Of course I’d have to find the right sort for a heroine, which might be tricky.’

  It drew a chuckle from the woman interviewer. ‘The tax — er — person as a heroine?’ she asked. ‘I’ll look forward to reading that one, Mr Keene. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.’

  ‘Anything’s possible in fiction,’ he replied. ‘That’s what makes it so wonderful — the ability to create impossibilities like honest politicians and tax systems that make sense, and actually make people believe them.’

  From that point, the brief remainder of the interview returned to discussions of his books, but Vashti didn’t, couldn’t, listen any more. She’d read the books, even enjoyed them. Now she found herself wondering, dreading the thought, if she was going to somehow be in one!

  The concept, she realised with actual surprise, was worse than terrifying. A very, very private person, she found the whole idea so unnerving that she hardly slept all night. Because it was just what she might expect from Phelan Keene, she realised, especially considering his apparent opinion that she might in some way be responsible for having driven his father to his death. It was all too, too complicated. And scary!

  You cunning, devious, rotten sod, she thought, staring past her morning coffee after a troubled night. Through the window of her small flat she could see cloud perched like a gay pink bonnet round the crown of Mount Wellington, heralding a day in which it should be safe to walk to work.

  The radio confirmed it, only to become a liar when Vashti was half a block from the office. By the time she’d actually reached her desk and could begin work she had run her tights trying to open an umbrella that exploded into useless tatters, dropped an armful of papers into a muddled heap that clogged the corridor, and broken the back off an earring.

  The entire week seemed to get worse from that point on, as Vashti found herself haunted by the entire concept of Phelan Keene’s double-damned book.

  She found herself hearing the interview over and over in her mind, then wishing she’d had the facilities to tape it, because she quickly became unsure of the accuracy in her memory.

  How old had the interview really been? Had he decided to write this book before her field audit on the family business dealings? Or after? And was she to be purely an accuracy consultant, or did he have far more sinister plans for her involvement in the book?

  The worries did nothing for Vashti’s week and even less for her weekend, especially when she found herself face to face with Alana Keene in one of the city’s second-hand book shops just before Saturday noon.

  ‘What have you been doing to my big brother?’ Alana asked, eyes wide with what Vashti thought might be astonishment that anyone, female at least could be guilty of doing anything disagreeable to Phelan Keene.

  ‘
I can’t imagine,’ she replied evasively, tucking a copy of his very first book under her arm in the vain hope that Alana might miss seeing it. ‘Why? Is he upset with me or something?’

  ‘More something, I expect,’ was the reply. ‘He’s been going round for the past few days like somebody kicked his dog. He’s living alone out there in Dad’s old house, you know, and he really shouldn’t be. I think isolation is quite wrong for him, being a writer and all. You’ve got to observe if you’re going to write about people, and out there the only thing to observe is himself in the mirror. I finally had to leave in the end, or else I’d have been saying something that would have got me kicked.’

  ‘Oh, surely not,’ Vashti answered, not one bit sure the remark was even half logical. Phelan Keene, she suspected, might be capable of almost anything when crossed.

  ‘Figuratively speaking. He’s a marshmallow, really,’ was the bright reply. And then, in a whisper that carried like a cannon-shot through the shop, ‘Surely you’re not going to buy that? I’ve got all his books at home and I’d be more than happy to lend you one.

  ‘Although,’ she sniffed, ‘that’s the last of his books you’d ever want to read. It’s nothing but sex and violence and sex and violence and more sex and violence. His later stuff is much, much better,’

  Vashti was caught floundering. Indeed this was the ‘last’ of his books she’d want to read; she’d already read all the others, hoping against hope that he’d already done the tax book he’d mentioned on the radio. But she didn’t dare tell Alana that!

  ‘Well, if even his sister doesn’t recommend it, perhaps I won’t buy it after all,’ she replied finally, only to contradict herself by then saying, ‘Actually, I’ve got all his others, so yes, I will buy it.’

  ‘Oh, not you too,’ was the surprising reply, followed by a wide-eyed gasp. ‘Open mouth; insert feet. I do a lot of that,’ Alana said, shaking her head as if to deny any form of insult. ‘I’m sorry, Vashti. It’s just that every damned woman Phelan meets seems to fall for him like ... well ... you know! And he just laps it up like ... like it was his due.’

  Alana stamped one small foot, her eyes bright with feeling. ‘What my brother wants is a woman who’ll give him a bash around the ear occasionally; he’s had things all his own way for far too long.’

  Vashti didn’t know what to say, which was obvious to both girls. Alana suddenly grinned, saying, ‘I do love him and he’s really a wonderful person, deep down inside. But I’m afraid he’s going to get spoiled even more rotten than he already is, if everybody in a skirt treats him like, well, like that prize bitch Janice Gentry. Surely you saw that photo in the paper; she was all over him like a rash!’

  Vashti had to laugh at the comparison between her own mental picture of leech-green and Alana’s description. Then she had to explain her laughter — easy enough, because she truly did like Alana — then share it.

  ‘He’s leading a more dangerous life than I thought,’ Alana said with a final giggle. ‘Leeches and rashes and ... speak of the devil...’ She raised one eyebrow in a quick caution, but it was too late.

  ‘Child sisters ought to have more respect,’ said a familiar voice from behind Vashti.

  She turned to look up into Phelan Keene’s face, trying frantically to hide his book under her arm as she did so, but it was a futile gesture.

  Long, tanned fingers reached out to pluck the book from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

  ‘Shocking literary taste,’ he growled, shaking his head in mock-dismay. ‘And I suppose, having bought the thing second-hand — thus denying me my paltry royalties — you’re going to expect me to autograph it.’

  ‘I ... was not.’ Vashti managed to get out the denial, but she was wasting her breath. Phelan had already turned his attention to his sister.

  ‘Give us a pen, little one,’ he demanded, and was reaching out to accept the meekly provided object when Vashti managed to squeak,

  ‘But I haven’t even paid for it yet!’

  ‘Oh! Well, you’d best do that first. Good thing you mentioned it, because of course an autographed copy would have cost you more,’ he said sternly.

  The book was thrust into her hands, then she was gripped by the shoulders, turned around, and quite forcibly shoved towards the cash register where a clerk — young, female and attractive — was staring wide-eyed at both the performance and at Phelan Keene.

  Hardly surprising, Vashti thought as she hunched forward in an obvious attitude of self-consciousness. The man looked like an advertisement for a catalogue. His blue checked shirt was crisp and snug-fitting, as were the faded jeans he wore so well. His boots gleamed as brightly as the eyes that followed her. In the rather crowded confines of the small shop he loomed above the other browsers, fairly exuding a sort of roguish male vitality.

  ‘Is that really...?’ The sales clerk’s whisper boomed through the quiet bookshop, her eyes never leaving the author as she took Vashti’s money, rang up the sale, and counted the change.

  Vashti didn’t bother to answer. The photo on the dust-cover did that for her. All she wanted to do was somehow escape this ludicrous situation. But Phelan was watching too closely for that, unless she dared to just turn and flee, which would be adding insanity to ludicrousness, she thought.

  To hell with it, she thought, and straightened her shoulders as she returned to where he and Alana stood waiting.

  Suddenly aware of just how ratty she looked, in faded, paint-stained jeans and an over-sized sweatshirt, her hair gathered loosely at the back in a rubber band, Vashti went overboard in her reaction now to Phelan Keene’s stirring.

  ‘Please, sir,’ she wheedled as she reached him, and slouched into a totally subservient posture. ‘Please, sir, if I pay the royalty may I humbly beg that you autograph this book for me poor old granny? Please, sir! It’d mean so much to her, sir; she’s one of your greatest fans.’

  Fumbling into her handbag as Phelan took the book with a scowl, obviously taken aback by her performance, Vashti found a two cent copper, virtually obsolete because of the country’s most recent currency changes, and had it ready when he returned the book to her after furiously scribbling inside it.

  He handed her the book, accepted the coin without a glance, then did look at it, whereupon he fell into his own role with a vengeance, snarling, ‘Foul little urchin... Get away with you. Your granny probably can’t even read.’

  Vashti took him at his word, and scuttled from the shop, only to find him right behind her, a hand outstretched to catch her by the shoulder before she could continue her escape. Alana, convulsed with laughter, was right behind him.

  Phelan, however, wasn’t laughing. He stood, hand still on Vashti’s shoulder, his touch burning, she thought, right through the bulky fleece of the sweatshirt. His pale eyes, edged with the tiny wrinkles of a man much out of doors, gleamed with a message she couldn’t read.

  "You two should go on the stage; you make a great act,’ bubbled Alana, apparently oblivious to the tension between them. Vashti, having to meet his eyes and squint because of the sun high in the sky behind him, was hardly conscious of his sister’s presence.

  ‘You look about twelve years old.’ His voice rumbled down like distant thunder, barely audible and yet impossible not to hear. The message in his eyes was something far more complicated, too much so. Vashti couldn’t think of an answer. She was caught by his gaze, held by it.

  The sunlight in his dark, coarse, curly hair threw up rainbows, she thought, rainbows tinged with dark auburn. She found herself thinking that it was almost criminal for a man to have such long, thick eyelashes.

  ‘If you two are going to stare into each other’s eyes, how about doing it over coffee or something?’ Alana’s voice, liquid with suppressed laughter, flowed in to break the spell, if spell it had been. ‘Or better yet, lunch! I vote we trot down to the botanical gardens; they do a scrumptious luncheon there.’

  ‘Oh ... no. I ... well, look at me,’ Vashti replied.

  ‘Yo
u look fine. I’m only talking about lunch, not a reception at Government House.’

  Vashti looked at the younger girl, casually dressed, to be sure, but neatly so, in jeans and riding boots and a plaid shirt beneath a jumper that matched her violet eyes.

  ‘I look like a grot,’ she replied. Firmly. Uselessly,

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s Saturday, after all. Not as if anybody’s working or anything.’

  ‘If I’m awake, I’m working!’ Phelan joined the conversation for the first time.

  ‘Oh, stop being so dogmatic, brother, dear,’ Alana sniffed. ‘You’re doing no such thing, and anyway, it’s Saturday.’ She then ignored him, turning again to Vashti and casting an appraising eye.

  ‘Well, I suppose I have to take your point, but it’s no problem. We’ll just whip you home for a quick change on the way.’

  Vashti had no chance to reply.

  ‘Not so fast, baby sister,’ Phelan interrupted, reaching out to take Alana by the shoulder and turn her to face him. ‘I have no objection to having Ms Sinclair join us for lunch; indeed I’d welcome it.’ This was said with a wicked grin tossed in Vashti’s direction. ‘But not if you’re going to start putting words in my mouth, or, even worse, ignoring what I say altogether. You do enough of that. So let me repeat — if I am awake, I am working! Doesn’t matter if it’s Saturday or Shrove Tuesday.’

  ‘But why should it matter anyway? Honestly, Phelan, you do go on about the strangest things.’

  ‘There’s nothing strange about it,’ he replied grimly. ‘You forget, dear sister, that, while Ms Sinclair may be a darling girl, she is still the enemy’

  And he said it with such fierceness that both girls reared back in surprise.

  ‘All the more reason to give it a miss,’ Vashti snapped, the words pouring out in a torrent as she rushed to get her two bobs’ worth in first.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Alana replied hotly, her words muddled with Phelan’s, saying virtually the same thing.