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“Yes, well . . .” Jack broke off as he heard the familiar rumble of the Hispano-Suisa. “Collins, take her statement, if you will.” Upon arriving at Mr. Dolan’s residence to serve a search warrant, he and his constable had found a ragamuffin girl of no more than ten years of age peeping through the hedge. Staring at Constable Collins’ uniform, she’d asked if he was truly a policeman and, getting an affirmative answer, she’d declared that she’d seen “a pretty lady” breaking into Mr. Dolan’s house the night before.
That, combined with the evidence he’d needed to get approval for a search warrant appearing on his desk overnight, was enough to make him very nervous. Very nervous indeed. Since their return to Melbourne, he and Phryne had managed to establish a routine of sorts. They acted professionally at crime scenes (or as close as Miss Fisher ever came to ‘professional’) and they spent most nights together. The nights they spent apart were mostly for Jack’s peace of mind. Phryne and the strict limits of the law were never going to be on cordial terms and he simply didn’t want, or need, to know.
That being said, Phryne had known that he didn’t have enough to search Dolan’s place. Plausible deniability was one thing, but if a witness fingered Phryne as the one who had obtained his evidence, well . . . Her freedom and his employment would be in jeopardy. He stepped quickly beyond the hedge, waving as the car came to a halt along the curb.
“Hello Jack!” Phryne waved as she set the engine to idle - she wasn’t certain he could hear her over the squeal of her brakes, but all the more reason to get closer. “You didn’t think you could start without me, did you?” Her shoes skittered on the pavers as she hopscotched around a puddle from a dripping pipe to meet him.
Jack rolled his eyes. “I rather think it was you who started without me, Miss Fisher. Or did I imagine the very helpful file you left on my desk last night?” He stepped in front of her, attempting to halt her progress.
She paused for only a fraction of a second - was he… cross with her? “I haven’t the foggiest what you mean. If you found helpful information, then that’s excellent for you. I’m merely here to investigate on a- a tangential matter.” She paused. Still cross? “Did…” her lips pursed, “you find anything?”
“I haven’t actually entered the premises.” He had rather been waiting for her - or he had been until the surprise witness appeared and put his plans in a tailspin. “There’s a slight problem.” He went to put his hands on her arms, desperate to slow her progress.
“Jack, surely you can’t have been sitting around waiting for me to turn up with my lockpicks. Did you turn your ankle on this puddle too and can’t kick in the door?” She stepped to one side to assess the entrance/exit situation.
“I’m quite capable of opening a door without your assistance.” He shifted his weight, again trying to impede her progress. If she was identified here and now, there’d be no way to avoid arresting her. And that would definitely put a crimp in his plans for this weekend. “We encountered an unexpected witness.” A quick glance over his shoulder assured him that his constable and the witness were still out of sight beyond the thick hedge.
“An unexpected witness?” She leaned still further around him, her voice lighting with interest. “I wouldn’t have thought many people lingered about here this time of day. Shall we go see what he has to say? Or would you prefer to open your mysterious door while I do it myself?”
“She, Miss Fisher, and no, definitely not!” He gave up on not touching her, deciding that keeping her out of gaol was a sufficient deterrent to his libido. He set his hands on her upper arms to keep her squarely in front of his body. He immediately realised he’d been wrong and desperately tried to picture her aunt instead. Considering Prudence Stanley was a good head shorter than her niece and a fair bit stouter, the image was hard to hold. “You can’t be here right now.” No matter how much he wanted her to be.
“Beg pardon?” She was too distracted by his curious behavior to be entirely offended -- she’d heard that objection far too many times in her life to pay it much mind. “I could be in many places, including interviewing your witness, but you seem to be holding me here, Inspector, with your intentions quite possibly of mixed motivation.” This was accompanied by her own smile, with just a little implacable steel behind it. His hands were lovely most of the time, but she wanted to see what was in that building now that she wasn’t shinnying along the downspout trying to find an unlocked window from which to gain entry.
“While he may not be quite up to your calibre, Miss Fisher, I’m quite certain Collins is capable of taking the statement of a ten-year-old girl.” Her words automatically had drawn drew his gaze to her lips which he’d been resolutely NOT looking at before. “I really don’t want to have to arrest you, Phryne,” he hissed, taking a step and attempting to herd her back towards her car. He hoped desperately that she would forgive him.
She stepped to one side yet again, this time moving in a near half-circle, with him following her every move. “Arrest me? For what? I’m not going to hurt a ten-year-old.” She still had no sight line on the building but Jack remained implacably in front of her - a wall of wool that on other occasions she would have had no trouble scaling whatsoever. “Let me in the building then. Go deal with the dangerous girl yourself and you can put me in irons…” she dropped her voice to a low, but knowing, hum… “later.”
“I should certainly hope not.” He shifted as she attempted to maneuver around him. Any other time, he’d be quite happy to let her have her way. Her keen eyes had found any number of valuable clues in their past cases, a fact he would have been happy to include in his police reports if not for the fact that Russell Street had rather rigid ways of looking at things and giving due credit to female private detectives was not part of that perspective. And now she’d just planted a very lascivious image that actually made him want to arrest her - he had to get her out of here. Now. “Phryne, please!”
“Yes?” She tilted her head to one side, eyelashes fluttering innocently. “Did you need something?”
Jack closed his eyes in a desperate bid for fortitude. “Phryne, please…” Since their return from abroad they’d worked practically hand-in-glove and shutting her out of this case hadn’t even occurred to him. There were plenty of cases that City South dealt with that were simply too mundane to draw her interest and if investigations were never as much fun as they were when she was working with him, well, who ever said that police work was supposed to be fun? It just so happened that he much preferred it when it was. “I need you to go.”
“I don’t know if I should be offended by that or not,” she began. “I don’t believe I’ve acted in any way that you could plausibly consider a liability, but if…” she broke off at the sound of a high, uncultured voice interrupting her.
“I wanna see!” Both detectives’ heads whipped around as Jack’s star witness and potentially Phryne’s untimely downfall scrambled past Collins, her threadbare shoes making the tiniest whisper of noise in the puddles. “She’s the right size, that bird.” The girl paused, head to one side, and Phryne’s heart made a sort of bounding motion in her throat. “And she mighta had a blondie wig - they sellem down the way at the fancy stores.” She considered longer, then, blessedly, shook her head. “Nah. That weren’t her. She’s too short and her face ain’t got the shiner. Lady I saw had a fight wiv a fist, and ain’t enough cake in the world to cover it that neat.”
“Taller than me, light hair, and a fading black eye?” Phryne addressed the girl, who nodded.
“Yep, she were right pretty though, nicer dress than you expect roundabout here too.”
“Jack,” Phryne exclaimed. “You’re a dear, trying to keep me out of it. But you should know me better than that by now. While I might let myself be compromised, I’d be damned if I let it happen to you.” She leaned over and placed a firm kiss on his lips, leaving the stamp of her lipstick shining bright even in the shadowed light of the alley. “And now, I must be off before one Eliza Greywell disappears into the back of a taxi and never returns. I’ll bring her to the station when I find her!” She leapt back into the car and threw it once more into gear. “I’m sorry I can’t stay and watch you bring the door down - I do love that part of policing.” She flung one hand out in an irrepressible wave and roared back down the street, leaving one lovestruck policeman,one dumbstruck constable, and one starstruck little girl in her wake.
Jack sighed as he swiped at his mouth with his handkerchief, his lips still tingling pleasantly. “Wait, wh—?” She was already gone. Then her words clicked into place, two steps ahead as usual. Shaking his head, he grinned. God, he loved that woman. “Collins!” he bellowed as he started jogging toward the car. It wouldn’t do for the police to be too far behind.