28

Heidi’s street had not changed much since Teddy was last there, but the house itself had: there was a tall planter next to the door, and a set of wind chimes, unmoving in the still air. When Heidi, prepped by Alice’s call, opened the door, she looked them up and down and said, ‘I’ve already done this, once with those investigators and again with the police.’

‘We’re with the same company,’ Alice said smoothly. ‘We’re following up after the discovery of Cole’s car. I’m Alice.’

‘And I’m Brooke,’ Teddy said, putting out her hand. Brooke had short, chestnut hair, blue eyes and an unbelievable pair of tits that were keeping Teddy so warm she was debating their ongoing use as a winter accessory.

‘This seems like a useless time to follow up,’ Heidi said. ‘He was trying to sell his car. He was taking a train or hitching – who knows? He clearly wanted to leave. Good for him. I already told this to those other people your company sent, by the way. The man – he was nice enough. Nice-looking, too. But that girl was a pain.’

‘We’ve heard that before,’ Teddy said.

‘We’ll bring it up with management,’ Alice said.

Teddy peered through Heidi’s front door, and said, ‘I’m sorry for looking – I just saw your couch, and really love it. I’m looking for a new one and that’s exactly what I have in mind. Where did you get it?’

‘Furniture Lovers online,’ Heidi said smugly. ‘It’s great.’ She tapped the door with long nails and said, ‘Do you want to see it?’

‘Only if that’s okay,’ Teddy said.

‘Brooke has been going on about couches,’ Alice said.

Heidi let them in. The couches were white leather, puffy, and too big for the room. Teddy sat down on one and said, ‘This is divine. And I love the view out of your backyard.’

There was a fence now, and plants, still in black pots with price stickers on them. Heidi said, ‘There are going to be a lot more houses here soon.’ With uncharacteristic good cheer, she added, ‘It’ll be a really great community.’

Alice said, ‘Do you think Cole will come back eventually?’

‘Who knows?’ Heidi said. ‘He does his own thing.’

‘You haven’t heard from him?’ Teddy said, examining the rug below her feet so Heidi couldn’t see her facial expression.

‘No. Barely heard from him when he lived here,’ she said.

Teddy said, ‘We just wanted to check in, since the car Cole was putting up for sale wasn’t his, it was Adrian’s. And somebody else we spoke to mentioned that Cole once stole from you. What did he
steal?’

She crossed her arms. ‘I shouldn’t have told Adrian about it. It was him who said that, right? Did he tell you how he reacted? I just asked him to keep an eye out for it and he told me he wouldn’t even try. He’s such an asshole. Always has been. Why were we ever together?’

They gave her a moment, but she wasn’t interested in answering her own question. Alice prodded, ‘And what did he steal?’

‘I guess I don’t know for sure he stole it, but I’m ninety-nine per cent sure he did. It was a jacket. One of mine, but like, one of those unisex things. Cost me a shitload off eBay. He nicked it not long before he left.’

Alice and Teddy looked at each other: this was not exciting.

‘Reminded me of that guy who came last time from your company,’ Heidi added. ‘The nice one. It was the same kind of jacket. Brown leather. Sexy as shit.’

Alice touched Teddy gently on the back.

As they went to leave, Heidi wrote down the name of her couch for Brooke, and they thanked her.

‘Let us know if you hear from Cole,’ Teddy said. ‘Anything at all. I guess it might not even be a call, but something else. A postcard.’

‘He paid back his rent, at least,’ Heidi said.

‘Oh?’ Alice said, underreacting.

‘He owed me so much,’ she said. ‘I’d given up saying anything. He never listened, said I owed him and all this shit. Paid once in a blue moon. But then he put money in my account, called it ‘rent for mum’. That was it. Helped, though. Months-worth of it, I reckon.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Teddy said. ‘When did he do that?’

‘A couple weeks ago.’

‘That’s so nice,’ Teddy said. ‘I hope he enjoys his travels.’

‘He’s fine,’ Heidi said. ‘Enjoy your couch when you get it.’

The car was quiet as they drove away. Teddy was tipping her head back, trying not to cry.

‘He’s not fine,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Alice said.

‘He didn’t pay that rent. And Streets wasn’t lying about that money she got, either.’

‘I know.’

‘So who did pay them?’

‘That,’ Alice said, ‘is the question.’

~

Alice was thinking about Art’s jacket – how buttery smooth it was when he hugged her goodbye after they were done with a job – so when Teddy said she was hungry, Alice tried to remember if there was anywhere nearby they had gone with Art.

A while back Alice had driven the two of them to the next suburb to dig up and move someone’s lemon tree two metres left, fixing a property line dispute that had come dangerously close to a gunfight. Afterwards, Art had taken her for toasted sandwiches at some place that only had four choices and no changes allowed, and she drove Teddy there now; to somewhere he had been. It was run out of the front of a house that bordered a reserve, and Alice ordered truffle mushroom, Teddy macaroni and cheese. The man at the window asked if they wanted drinks and they both gave coffee orders until Alice interrupted herself and said, ‘Wait, Art always asked for sarsaparilla at these places. Can I have one of those?’

The guy said, ‘We’ve only got organic cola and lemonade, sorry.’

‘I’m sure there was an off-menu sarsaparilla,’ Alice said to Teddy. ‘He got it in a red cup that day, like we were in an American college movie. Maybe they stopped making it.’

‘I’ll go ask,’ the guy said, and disappeared into the house.

‘Are we being difficult?’ Teddy said.

‘We were polite,’ Alice said. ‘We probably won’t make a scene if they don’t have it. Will we?’

The door swung back open, and a woman came out. She looked both of them up and down and said, ‘Have we met?’

It seemed like a lot for a drink that Alice didn’t even like; she was losing her energy to fight for one. ‘I don’t think so,’ Alice said. ‘We were just with a friend of ours once who ordered one. And now he’s, well …’

Teddy put her arm in Alice’s, and said, ‘He died, and we miss him, and we wanted to just do something he always did, which was having sarsaparilla in all these places he liked.’

The woman barked out a laugh and then covered her mouth, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Teddy tightened around Alice’s arm and said, ‘It’s all right.’

‘His name was Art,’ Alice said.

‘Oh,’ the woman said, and she didn’t look like she was about to laugh anymore. ‘Always wearing that leather jacket, looked like he should have been surfing?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘Give me a moment.’

She left, and the man came back and started making their sandwiches. They waited patiently, and then he disappeared and returned with two red cups of sparkling soda, which he passed to them.

‘On the house,’ he said.

The sun bore down on them as they ate on the wet grass. ‘Why did she laugh?’ Alice said. ‘At the cafe back there.’

‘People react strangely to death,’ Teddy said. ‘We know that.’

They did know that. When Alice’s father died, she had been a teenager. She spent all her time sobbing in the car her father had been planning on restoring, and Pick showed no reaction at all until they realised, too late, what she had been doing to keep herself so numb. When Teddy’s father had died, she just lay facedown on the floor of his apartment for days and nothing could rouse her. Alice knew Teddy still did that sometimes; she would answer the door with a grout line across her cheek. Laughter was nothing, but Alice hadn’t liked it anyway.

Alice finished her sarsaparilla with a grimace. Teddy, who had taken a polite sip and ignored the rest, said, ‘It’s all right just that we tried it.’

As they walked back to the car, Teddy called Adrian.

‘Listen, you don’t have to call me anymore,’ he said. ‘My son is not missing, he’s just off travelling, all right? Living the fucking dream.’

‘So I heard,’ Teddy said.

‘He paid back the money, it’s fine, all right? He dropped the money in an envelope under my door. Wrote that he was sorry.’

Teddy blinked. ‘He gave you cash?’

‘All that was missing he’s paid me back, with interest. If he comes back, I’ll see him. Let him stay if he needs. Maybe.’ He hung up.

‘How magnanimous of him,’ Alice said as they got in the car.

‘So Cole returned his father’s money,’ Teddy said. ‘How about that.’

Alice started the Golf. ‘Money we’re not even that sure he stole, but here it is, delivered to his door. Someone with so much money – yes, Darwin, sure – but who was it that paid for him to be dead? It seems unlikely it would be Darwin, right? Because how does he benefit from this random guy’s death? What does Cole have to do with Australia’s richest man? Nothing seems to tie them together.’

‘I know,’ Teddy said, ‘but something must. Because Cole’s body was in Darwin’s coffin.’

Alice wondered what she would have done, weeks ago, if she had found who she expected in the coffin. Would she have been fine because she didn’t care, or pretended she didn’t because he was a corporate hack, or, with nobody to witness her reaction, would she have cried when she saw his dead face?

‘What if we don’t figure Cole out?’ Alice said, looking intently at the traffic lights and not at Teddy. ‘What then? We’ve left others unsolved before.’

They could count their unsolved cases on a single hand. Teddy said, ‘None of those unsolved cases were missing people, just missing things. Is Cole just a thing? Would people just consider us things, too? Because he’s not a good person, he’s not worth it? Was my cousin not a good person, either?’

‘Rusty?’ Alice asked, confused.

Teddy was thinking of him floating in that dam, and Cole floating in the ether, but did not want to explain herself. ‘What if we’re all that stands between him and nothingness?’ she said. ‘They say you die once when your body does, and again when nobody remembers you, right? I feel like he’s close already to that second death unless we care, unless we figure it out. People deserve to have their cases solved even when they’re not good, perfect people.’

Alice said, ‘You’re talking pretty loud there, buddy.’

Teddy closed her eyes. ‘What if we’re not good people, either? What if people dissected our lives the way we’re doing to Cole? Would people report that we’re awful, unlovable?’ Her voice was shrinking. ‘Are people that aren’t good not worth finding?’

Alice eased the car to the side of the road, feeling like she had broken a snow globe, like Teddy’s true reasons for finding this kid were leaching all over her car seat. ‘Everyone is worth finding,’ she said softly. ‘As for you, Teddy, I would look for you until the end of time, and I wouldn’t even have to do it alone. You are literally the best person.’

‘Alice,’ Teddy said, chewing her nails, ‘remember when I cut off that guy’s finger behind Dan Murphy’s?’

‘He deserved that.’ Alice looked at her own hand. ‘He spat on you.’

‘He deserved something,’ Teddy said. ‘I think the finger was a grey area.’

Alice took Teddy’s cold hands in hers. ‘You’re a good person. Better than good,’ she said.

‘Maybe Cole was better than good too,’ Teddy said. ‘Someone’s paying off his family and friends, and it seems like it has to be Darwin, unless he’s dead. So how do we find out if he really is?’

~

At Gorilla & Giraffe, Teddy paused outside the car, pointed at the service station next door and said, ‘We’re going in there.’

‘You’re still hungry after the toast?’

‘No,’ Teddy said. Then, ‘Well, actually, yes, but that’s not why we’re going in.’

The store was cosy – if you were feeling generous – and Teddy went right up to the counter and asked if the cashier remembered Cole from next door. She did, she said, and gave the same story she had to Art all those weeks ago: cans of Monster, pies, a Twirl almost every day.

‘I miss him,’ she added, unexpectedly.

‘Was he nice?’ Alice asked.

‘Nice enough,’ she said, and blushed, very softly. ‘I was sad when some guy came in a few weeks ago and said he’d left town without telling anyone.’

Teddy bought a Diet Coke, because she was still dressed as Brooke and that’s what Brooke would have, and thanked her. On the way out, she said to Alice, ‘I thought Art said he never thanked the staff.’

‘Maybe he spoke to another person who worked there,’ Alice said. ‘She didn’t have the face of somebody he’d never thanked.’

‘No,’ Teddy agreed, as they crossed the forecourt. ‘She did not.’

Teddy and Art had needed to call out to get help from the Giraffe; the Gorilla, though, was in his doorway, greeting them as they arrived. Seeing him and not Witi, Teddy made the imperceptible sigh of somebody who did not, therefore, still need to be in disguise.

Pete the Gorilla looked like the kind of guy who shaved a lot and had to contend with immediate and relentless regrowth; he wore it well, and on a cold autumn day like this one, it made him look warm. They told him they were there to wrap up Cole’s case, and he gave them much the same as Witi had told them about Cole – average worker, fine but whiny. Teddy asked him about the favour that Adrian said Pete owed him, and Pete laughed and said, ‘Well, he’s the coach of our indoor soccer team, and in our semifinal I asked him to sub in one of the guys from a higher grade to help us win, even though that’s against the rules. He could’ve just said no, but he did it and then went all serious about it, bailed me up against a wall, said I owed him. This seemed like an easy way to get him off my back. And,’ he said, exasperated, ‘we lost the game anyway.’

‘Bummer,’ Alice said.

‘Then I hire his kid, and it’s fine, though Witi wasn’t thrilled about it, and then just when we get used to him he leaves us in the lurch! Goes off and lives his new life somewhere else. Didn’t even give us any notice – but we all forgave him because he sent a pallet, like a literal pallet, on a truck, full of fucking wine!’ He laughed and sat back. ‘I don’t even drink the stuff, but now I don’t have to buy any birthday presents for years.’

‘Huh,’ Teddy said.

‘What label?’ Alice asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘What kind of wine?’

Pete went into the kitchen and took one out of the fridge. Flank Plains Wine. ‘You can have one for your time,’ he said. ‘Didn’t even know the kid knew about wine. I only ever saw him drink Coronas.’

‘Where do you think he ended up heading off to?’ Alice asked.

‘Went east, I think someone said. Don’t know if he was hitching or not. Hard to imagine him voluntarily spending time with other people in their cars. Didn’t really fit in here, and I’m glad he up and left, to be honest. He wasn’t happy here. But he was good with our clients, I think.’

Teddy’s face when he said that was too much.

Alice asked, ‘How so?’

‘One time we had to cut down a tree for this old man that had been holding up the remnants of a treehouse he’d built fifty years ago for his son. The son had died only a short time before we went over, right, but the tree had been damaged in some winds, and he had to get rid of it even though he clearly didn’t want to. We’d keep going up to the damn thing and he’d tell us to wait, he needed to take another picture or just think about it. We felt bad, obviously, but we were running late. Anyway, Cole, right, he goes into this guy’s house – just walks in! Then comes out with a cup of tea, not for the old man, but for himself. Then he says to the old guy, “How’d you build it?”’

Teddy leaned into Alice’s side.

‘And the old man told him. He said he still had the blueprints. He got them out and showed Cole these ancient old drawings he’d made with his kid at the time. Then he cried for about five minutes, and Cole said, “That fucking sucks about your son. Do you mind if I take a picture of these so maybe I can make them with my son someday?”’ Pete put his hands in his pockets and sighed. ‘The guy cried for another five minutes and then said, “Take the tree.” And we did, and afterwards Cole said, “Look how bright it is now with the trees down. The sun’s good for you.” Pats this guy on the back, and then we leave. Guy gave us a hundred-dollar tip. I said to Cole I didn’t know he had a son and he goes, “One day.” Well, hopefully he’s out there meeting a nice girl now.’

‘I bet you he is,’ Alice said.

Teddy cried in the car as they wound their way back down around the ferns. Alice parked on a shoulder when she could and put her arms around her friend.

‘Nobody ever said something nice about him before,’ Teddy said. ‘He listened to that old man.’

‘He did,’ Alice said.

‘And he’ll never have a son.’

‘No, he won’t.’

‘I’m just so fucking sad, you know? Sad, too, that Art didn’t ever know Cole was nice. Or even that he died.’ Teddy squared her shoulders. ‘I didn’t even get in any last “I was right that he didn’t run away”. It’s not fair.’

‘That,’ Alice said, ‘is true.’

Teddy wiped her eyes and checked in the mirror. ‘My makeup’s all fucked up from crying.’ She looked at her watch: nearly twelve-thirty. ‘Can we get lobster rolls for lunch? Art and I went there, the day before …’

She trailed off, and Alice said, ‘Of course we can,’ and did not point out again that they’d just had sandwiches barely an hour ago.

The sky had cleared to a brilliant blue, thin clouds streaking through. They drove past all the same ferns and streets again, and Teddy hated them for not understanding what had changed in the world.

Alice slowed around a hairpin bend. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that maybe it was a drug thing that killed Art? We know he partook.’

‘And I was just collateral damage?’

‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘maybe?’

Teddy huffed. ‘I don’t know.’

Alice asked, gently, ‘Do you remember any more of what the gunman said?’

Teddy prided herself on her stellar memory, but it was fuzzy, that moment, shrouded in pain and shock and grief. She remembered anger, a feeling that Art and the man knew each other, or at least that there was a lack of surprise from Art. The possibly familiar voice. If it was familiar, who could it be? She knew so many people, good and bad ones. Familiar meant almost nothing. Art had done something wrong, she thought. But what, she did not know.

‘Is it strange, do you think,’ Teddy said aloud, ‘that all this happened at once? Art, Cole, Darwin?’

‘How so?’

‘Do you believe in coincidences?’

‘Almost never,’ Alice said.

‘Is this one? Art dying, Cole’s body, all at once?’

Alice was quiet. ‘I believe in them sometimes,’ she said. ‘I’m not even sure this is a coincidence. Everything happened at once, but if it hadn’t been for Nick the Fuck crashing into me, we would never have found out about Cole at all.’

‘We wouldn’t,’ Teddy said faintly. ‘Because we thought he’d been found.’

They drove along.

Teddy was staring out of the window and not saying anything until they turned into the road with the lobster rolls and she said, ‘You said Art must’ve spoken to someone else at the service station, not that girl. But it was her.’

‘Do you remember her now?’

‘No. But she said some guy told her Cole skipped town. Art, she meant.’

‘Or Pete or Witi.’

‘She wouldn’t call them some guy,’ Teddy said. ‘They’re neighbours. I saw so many branded coffee cups from there in their bin the day we went. They know each other, if not by name.’

‘She would’ve said “the guys next door” if that’s what she meant,’ Alice said.

‘Exactly. She said what she did because Art had told her.’

Alice found a car spot near Snippy’s, parked, and waited for Teddy to do some computing; she could see it in her face, the hard think.

‘But,’ Teddy said eventually, ‘we didn’t know then that he’d left town.’

‘That was Art’s prediction, right? Maybe he was manifesting.’

‘Maybe,’ Teddy said.

‘And when you talk about coincidences,’ Alice said, ‘I don’t know if these are or not. Choker would say nothing’s a coincidence. And Art would say coincidences are beautiful.’

‘Well, for his sake and ours,’ Teddy said, ‘Let’s find some fucking beauty.’

~

They ordered their rolls and some fries and Alice asked for an iced tea, while Teddy ordered a sarsaparilla, because Art was with her there in her mind.

The teenager behind the counter blinked. A guy in the back leaned over the side of a deep fryer to look out at them and called out, ‘You want sarsaparilla?’

‘Sure do.’

He looked her up and down. ‘You had our sarsaparilla before?’

‘Not me, no. But a friend of mine ordered it here one time when we were—’

He cut her off. ‘One sarsaparilla, coming right up.’

This one wasn’t on the house, and it sucked. ‘What did he even order this shit for?’ Teddy asked, as they walked along the footpath with their food. ‘It’s awful. Art,’ she said, looking up to the sky, ‘I’ll pour one out for you, all right?’

Alice watched Teddy tip the whole bottle ceremoniously onto the grassy nature strip, and said, ‘Amen.’

They ate in the car. Teddy was angry that her story about Art had been cut off by the server, and complained about her curly fries. Alice thought the lobster roll – buttery, hot, with fresh herbs scattered over it – was about the best thing she’d ever eaten. Neither of them spoke much. Teddy ate slower than usual.

Alice asked, ‘How’s your arm, Teddy?’

‘Brooke says no pain, no gain.’

‘I didn’t ask her.’

Teddy said, ‘It hurts.’

‘I feel sixty per cent sorry for you,’ Alice said. ‘I’m sure you’re sore after tiring yourself out putting on that face this morning. And after staying up late hitting on some teenager.’

‘Rejecting a teenager,’ Teddy reminded her. ‘And shut up.’

Alice drove them both back to her place, put Teddy on the couch, and gave her some painkillers, a blanket and a bowl of pistachios. They watched YouTube videos for a full hour until Teddy spilled her third bowl of nuts on the floor by suddenly pointing at the screen.

‘It’s him!’

‘Who?’

It was an ad for toothpaste; people in icy blue bodysuits were dancing between sparkling clean teeth. Alice had seen it a hundred times so far this week while Cherry watched videos of a Venezuelan grandmother singing nursery rhymes in a paddock, and it had already been on twice that afternoon while Teddy was zoned out.

‘I use that toothpaste,’ Alice said, ‘but it doesn’t really feel like anybody’s dancing in my mouth.’

‘No, I mean, it’s Hank!’ Teddy said. She was off the couch, pressed against the television. ‘Pause it! No, keep going – him, him!’ She tapped on the screen. ‘That fucking soft hair, I would know it anywhere.’

‘Huh,’ Alice said. ‘Good for him.’

Teddy sat for a moment, her hands still on the screen. ‘He got a message from Cole saying he was okay,’ she said. ‘That means someone had Cole’s phone, and messaged him. Maybe we can see if he’s sent anything else.’

‘If Cole has?’

‘I mean, obviously it wasn’t Cole the first time anyway, right?’ Teddy was flat on the floor, going through her phone. ‘I don’t have his number,’ she wailed. ‘Art was the one who called him.’

‘All right, all right,’ Alice said, helping her back onto the couch. ‘We’ll get Rusty on it. I have to call him anyway to make him book us an appointment at Sadie’s tomorrow.’

‘No,’ Teddy said. ‘Streets. That’s who Art got his number from. I’ll call her.’

Alice looked up the floss online, while Teddy got onto Streets. ‘Hello again,’ she said to Teddy with a purr.

Teddy tried not to hear it. ‘Can I have your friend Hank’s number? We saw him in that floss ad today.’

‘What floss ad?’

‘I’ll send you the link,’ Teddy said. ‘I didn’t realise he was an actor.’

‘News to me too,’ Streets said.

Streets sent the number, and Teddy called Hank. He didn’t pick up, and she left a message when the friendly, robotic American answering- machine voice asked her to. Then she put her phone down, hunkered down into Alice’s blanket, and within minutes, fell fast asleep.