Free Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood

there’s, like, one nice parental unit and one nasty one. This sounds gross.’
    ‘My view entirely. Mrs O’Ryan is, however, as thin as her husband is fat. He’s covering it with good tailoring and she probably lives on communion wine or whatever they have in the happy-clappies. She’s very religious, or so her husband says. He told me that Mrs O’Ryan made the girls go to church every day on the holidays.’
    ‘And what did she say about him?’ I asked. Couples like this always have a favourite fault with which to flay their opposite half.
    ‘She says he bellowed at the girls and scared them,’ said Daniel, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘They both blame each other for not keeping a closer eye on Brigid. Mrs says that Mr is away most of the time and Mr says that so is Mrs, going to all these church activities and spiritual retreats.’
    ‘Yeuk,’ commented Goss. I had to agree.
    ‘All right, now what about the staff?’
    ‘There is a housekeeper called Sandra Beecham. Not Irish or evangelical, oddly enough. Sensible woman of about forty. Handsome and well dressed. She has a legion of cleaners and people to assist her, but they are casual and only come in for the day. That includes the gardener and his boy. They hire a caterer for any important dinners, but usually Sandra does the cooking and runs the household. I don’t get the impression that the O’Ryans are home much for meals. Typically he would beat a working lunch and an even more working dinner, and she probably exists on no-cal frozen dinners and the occasional sip of Evian.’
    ‘You didn’t take to the clients, did you?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t have to,’ he responded seriously. ‘My real client is that poor girl and her heavy burden. And the missing boy, who is a good boy. The sister and only child still at home is Dolores. She’s fourteen. Not pretty like her sister but the same type: dark hair and blue eyes. She has spots. She didn’t say a lot to me but she seems intelligent enough. Her sister is good at maths and science, while Dolores is getting very good marks for English and such. Her mother made me read the school reports. Reading between the lines I got the impression she’s dreamy and disconnected and her teachers are concerned about her. Not so her mother, who says she’s greedy and lazy.’
    ‘With a mother like that, who needs enemies?’ I asked.
    ‘I gather that Brigid was the apple of the parental eyes, and poor Dolores comes in a distant second.’
    ‘Right,’ said Goss, getting to her feet. ‘I know enough about her now. And we need to stop off on the way.’
    ‘Why?’ I asked.
    ‘To pick up a few things.’
    Goss refused to tell me anything more. Timbo, Daniel’s driver, was waiting in the big car. It was, fortunately, air-conditioned, as the weather was getting into its stride. The coolness brought by the rain had burnt off and the sky was that achingly cloudless blue which presages heat rash before bedtime. Timbo, who is the nicest possible big fat slob, was sweating. By the evidence of the wrappers strewn all around him he had been reducing his temperature with frequent applications of ice cream.
    Goss grinned at him. He smiled back. A smile from Timbo is a wonderful thing.
    We sped off to Kew, stopping only at a food hall where Goss directed. She came back carrying a large bag, which she concealed in the patchwork carrier she had brought along. I sniffed. I could smell food.
    At the house, we left Timbo in the car with the air conditioning running and spoke into the radio thingy at the gate. It swung open and admitted us.
    A woman opened the front door. This must be the handsome and well-dressed Sandra, who was indeed well dressed, in a linen shift and jacket. And handsome, if you consider perfectly dressed hair, immaculate fingernails and immovable lipstick handsome. She smiled an exact two centimetres at Daniel, swept Goss and me with a glance which priced our clothes, shoes, makeup, hairstyles and