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He hurried home on foot, the laptop getting heavier all the way. He’d never felt so scared, walking along with a paper bag full of money in a strange town at night. He was relived to get back to Tammy’s and see Nikki’s car out on the street.
The bedside light was on in the sleepout. Randy excitedly heaved open the screen door and went blundering in, shouting, “We did it! He gave us the money!”
He stopped, frozen in horror. Nikki was there. She and Piho were very busy kissing. How disgusting!
Piho was instantly furious. “I told you not to do this to me. I told you!”
“Er...”
“Outside! Now!”
“But...”
“Get!”
Randy got, and waited nervously by the pool. He had a terrible sinking feeling that he had just screwed up again. Piho appeared a few moments later, even madder than he had been before. It seemed Nikki was asking some tricky questions in there.
“Damn you, Cathro!” he raged in a violent whisper, “You’re the bane of my life! Haven’t you got any manners? Haven’t you got any decency? Haven’t you got any brains?”
Randy felt terribly wounded. “I ah, I just ... Sorry. But... see: he phoned while you were out and I just had to go without you, but ...”
“You’ve seen him already?”
“Yes.”
“And...?”
“He likes it!...” he glanced towards the sleep-out where Nikki was lurking and probably listening. He dropped his voice even further, “...Saw the photos. Just loves it! Says there’s a million in it for us, no problem! A million, man! Oh, and he gave us the cash we asked for, no problem! Here:” Randy thrust the paper bag at Piho.
Piho, also glancing nervously towards the sleep-out, peeked into the bag.
“You beauty. You bloody beaut!” He pulled out a bundle of money and tugged off the rubber band. It was cash; real fifty dollar notes. He took another three bundles and stuffed them into his pockets.
“We’ve got some serious work to do, buddy,” he whispered feverishly, “We’ve got to work out how to get that thing out of the bush next.” Randy was about to answer but Piho cut him off, “Tomorrow, okay?”
He turned towards the sleep-out, then hesitated, turned back to Randy and whacked him hard over the top of his head with his open palm.
“What was that for?” whined Randy.
“For doing exactly what I told you not to!” Piho turned and stomped off, leaving Randy bewildered by the pool.
Slowly, sadly, he returned to the house. He put down his empty toiletries bag, stuffed his money into his travel bag without even looking at it, and sat with a sigh on the edge of his bed. Strangely, he felt the opposite of how he had expected to feel. Everything was going exactly to plan, and it worried him deeply.
#
WHEN HE BELATEDLY EMERGED for breakfast Tammy and Nikki were in the kitchen. It was well past the time that they usually went off to work in the Peppy. The moment he appeared in the room their eyes swivelled towards him suspiciously.
“What?” he said, as innocently as he could.
Tammy let loose an annoyed sigh and stood up. Her face was set like concrete, her eyes were as hard as steel and her voice had all the charm of a jackhammer. She was a veritable construction site. “Randy, what have you been up to this time?”
He stopped on the spot, silent, trying to work out what she might have worked out about his secret venture. His eyes swivelled around to meet Nikki’s.
Nikki started counting off things on her fingers, “Monday night you guys went out really late for some reason. Yesterday you took a taxi out into the bush...”
“How’d you know that?” blurted Randy in amazement.
She shrugged, “Hey, it’s hard not to know what’s going on when your flatmate is the local taxi driver. I mentioned it to Tammy yesterday and she said you were probably out there trying to find your wristwatch...” (he nodded vigorously) “...but now we doubt it.” (he stopped nodding vigorously) “Then yesterday afternoon you bought a laptop computer and loaded some photos into it. Then last night you burst into Piho’s room shouting about some guy giving you ‘the money’.”
This was bad. Things were seriously off the rails. He had to say something bold, something that would destroy their suspicions at a stroke.
“Ummm ...”
“Well?”
Randy continued to stand frozen halfway across the kitchen, a possum in the headlights. He was thinking. Thinking hard. But the only thought he managed to have was: ‘Oh crap.’
Nikki stood up. “I’ll try Piho,” she said to Tammy, “It might be quicker.” And she went out. Randy glanced guiltily back towards Tammy.
“Well?” she said, “This had better be good. This had better be about doing something positive for our future, and it had better be legal!”
Randy relaxed. He edged forwards under her jagged gaze and slid into a chair. “Of course it’s legal,” he said, trying to add a relaxed chuckle which came out more like the death rattle of a poodle.
“So you are up to something?”
“Uh, yes,” he admitted cautiously, “Very hush-hush, you know. Commercially sensitive information and all that.”
“Uh-huh,” she said tiredly, “So what is it this time?”
“Sorry, can’t say. If people start to find out, the guy said he’d call the deal off.”
“Deal?”
“Y-yyyyes, a deal. See we just have to wait a few more days to confirm the funding and stuff, then, like, it’ll be a done deal and I’ll be able to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“About the fossil.”
Her face lit up, “Fossil?!”
Randy buried his face in his hands. Tammy heard two muffled words, “Oh crap.”
“What fossil?” she demanded as his silence grew longer.
Randy did not emerge from his shelter. He just repeated his previous utterance.
“Randy,” she asked stiffly, “have you been selling fossils?”
He nodded. There was a long silence. Cautiously he peeked up, hoping to see admiration on her face. She, after all, would appreciate how valuable they were to museums and such. It was probably even a good time to tell her how much he had made so far. “It’s been pretty good so far,” he began cheerfully, “we’ve made twelve thousand, and the guy says the next million won’t be a problem either.”
“A million?!”
He tried to shrug casually but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face, “Yeah.”
Tammy sat down. She looked quite faint. She shook her head repeatedly and dabbled her dainty hand on the table top nervously. Randy felt better. Much better. He sat back in his chair, put his hands up behind his head and said confidently, “Yep, in two or three days we’ll be set for life.”
Tammy lifted her eyes to meet his. “Randy,” she said in a voice as dry as an old pizza and as serious as a teacher at exam time, “it’s illegal! In this country... in any country, you can’t just go finding fossils out in the bush and selling them. They belong to Australia. They’re scientific treasures!”
“YOU idiot!”
He looked really hurt.
“Didn’t you know that?!”
“Um, well, see this other guy was doing it and so I thought... and like the Berlin Museum and all that. I mean...”
“The Berlin Museum? Which Berlin museum?”
TAMMY LOOKED TERRIBLY serious, “Randy, I want you to tell me everything. We’ve got to tell the police or something. What did you sell? Who is this guy?”
Randy got up tiredly. “Just a minute,” he said, and went to his room. He returned with the laptop and her camera. “sorry, we ah, we had to borrow your camera. Hope you don’t mind.” Under her icy gaze he turned it on and got one of his photos into the little viewing screen. “There. The egg.”
She gazed at it for a half a minute, then whispered, “A dinosaur egg? But how do you know?”
“Um, because it came with a dinosaur.” He turned around the laptop with one of their best pictures showing on the screen. She gasped, then she whimpered, then she quivered, then she blathered, “Oh my god. Oh my god! It’s amazing! It’s fantastic! It’s the most beautiful fossil I’ve ever seen. Where is it?”
Randy hesitated about answering. With each passing second he felt his million dollar dream swirling deeper and deeper down the toilet.
“It’s in the bush, isn’t it?” shouted Tammy, “You found it during the flood!”
“After the flood,” corrected Randy lamely.
“Oh this is fantastic! This is going to rock our local palaeontologists right back on their heels! This is going to make Cunnundrom famous!”
“Um, but, like, what about the million dollars? Wouldn’t that be better?”
“No way!” she yelled, “And who is this guy anyway? He’s a criminal, Randy! He needs to be shut down! Rats like that have been ripping off this country for years. It’s been disastrous! Completely disastrous!” She thumped the table so hard it shook. Randy had never seen her like this before.
“Um, yeah,” he said cautiously, “the, ah, the rat.”
“You know the federal government here offers quite a big reward for information that leads to the arrest of crooks like that,” said Tammy, “Quite specifically for fossil poachers. If you want to do anything for our future together, in fact if you even want to have a future with me, then I suggest you start talking to the police as soon as you can, Randy Cathro!”
Randy slumped, barely cheered up by the only positive though he could latch onto in the whole mess, “So, like, you’ll get the reward? For getting me arrested?”
Tammy looked pained, “No, Randy. They’ll want to catch the big fish, not you! I’m sure they’ll see that...” her voice died away, uncertain of what she was saying.
“Anyway!” she leapt up suddenly, “come on! Let’s go see it!”
“Now?”
“Yes! Now!” She hurried out, then turned back from halfway through the door to the garage, “Oh! Winton’s got to see this, he has just got to see this!” she grabbed up the phone and started dialling.
Randy just stayed in his chair, feeling like all the oxygen in the room had been mysteriously shifted over to Tammy. And what was Piho going to say?
“I told you this was too good to be true!” It was Piho, coming in with Nikki. “I told you to be discreet! I told you!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” answered Randy, “It was that nosy taxi driver! It was this whole nosy town!”
Nikki looked at him angrily.
“Uh – I mean; you know what small towns can be like. I mean people like to gossip, everyone knows what you’re up to...”
“No, no, no!” interrupted Piho, “You were just careless! If you hadn’t come blundering into my room last night...”
“Well you should have left a note! You shouldn’t have gone on that date! ...”
Nikki puffed up between them, “Take it outside, guys!”
They took it outside. Piho was so mad he promptly pushed Randy into the pool, clothes and all. Randy dragged himself out and attacked Piho with a wet pool noodle. Piho defended himself with a paddle board. The air was soon filled with expletives and the thock of wet noodle on polystyrene.
After they were good and exhausted, Nikki took their weapons off them and told them they were both being idiots and that selling fossils was a serious crime and they’d better think about what they were going to do about it.
“What I’m going to do about it,” said Randy, still panting from all the exertion, “is get me some breakfast.”
“Good idea,” said Piho, “Eggs, I think.”
#
THE DOORBELL RANG HALFWAY through their tension-charged breakfast.
Randy gasped. “It’s the police.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Tammy, “It’ll be Winton.”
It was. Before Randy had had anywhere near enough to eat, Tammy had them all organised into Nikki’s car. By eight-thirty they were on the road to Scurriburroway.
Randy was jammed in the back between Piho and Winton, who smelt like he’d been sleeping in his clothes for the last week. He, on his part, was sitting alertly with a large camera, a clipboard and a tape measure at the ready, and with the wild gleam of a mad scientist in his eye. “The real Fossie,” he kept murmuring happily, gazing at the laptop image, “the real Fossie, at last!”
“Haven’t you guys got work?” Randy raised enough courage to ask Tammy.
“We called in some chums,” said Tammy in the front, “we job-share anyway.”
They drove on, Tammy babbling happily about what the fossil was going to mean to palaeontology and Nikki trying to give reassuring glances back at Piho – who just scowled frigidly out the side window, murder once again on his mind.
It was a relief to get there. Randy burst out of the car and he and Piho lead the newcomers into the bush until they encountered the familiar stench of dead marsupial.
Randy hurried ahead, veering towards the spot, and as he got closer his feet went faster. Something didn’t look right. The whole place had changed!
Suddenly he stopped. He actually screamed.
The fossil was gone.