Rebecca’s alarm on her iPhone buzzed at six in the morning. She rolled over, fumbled with the phone in the dark to switch off the alarm, and flopped back in her bed, reluctant to stir. She was physically and mentally exhausted.
When Rebecca had arrived home the previous evening, she’d written up a piece on Will Oliver and his love of greyhound dogs. Rebecca had described the night at the Angle Park Greyhounds and exposed the more seedy side of the industry, being careful not to name or identify any sources that may be in danger if exposed. She added weight to her article by quoting representatives of various activist groups she had phoned. Rebecca was never embarrassed by calling people late at night for a story. She saw it as the lot of a journalist working on a morning paper. Rebecca had found a range of suitable sources on the Advertiser’s extensive contact database, and if a contact turned out not to be a great source, she was able to extract a name and phone number of a better one. Her motto was to never waste a phone call.
She had also called the various members of the management of Greyhound Racing South Australia and put a series of questions to them. Rosco’s confidential background briefing informed Rebecca’s strong line of questioning. As for Snakehead, she thought it best not to identify him just at that moment and referred to him obliquely. Rebecca knew she needed to do a bit more digging and be on solid ground before naming Snakehead. She had sent the copy to Reg. He would take a red pen to her work and get it ‘legalled’ as well.
Today was olive harvest day. Normally it was a day Rebecca looked forward to, but this time was different. She wanted to sleep in. But she also knew she couldn’t let the team down, particularly Jonathan. Besides, it was a chance to mingle with a few of the suspects in Leong Chew’s murder and possibly Will Oliver’s murder.
Rebecca ran through in her head the names of those who were attending the olive harvest that day: Jonathan, Francois, Dorothy, Nick, Jo, Lisa, and Penny. Dorothy had only started to attend a couple of years ago when Nick invited her. Rebecca would have preferred it if she wasn’t there. Reg came some years but was very erratic. He wasn’t coming today.
In the early years, partners and families had come too. The partners and families had tailed off, and now only the diehards turned up, although sometimes a family member would show up for the picnic lunch.
They were all due to meet at the olive grove near Mann Terrace at Gilberton at seven o’clock. Everyone was tasked with bringing something for breakfast and lunch unless they were bringing the myriad of other inventory for the day. Rebecca’s job for breakfast was coffee. For the first few years she had persevered with making up espresso milk coffee in thermos flasks, but by the time they had gotten to drink it, it had never been hot enough—and they had always run out. For the past few years, Rebecca had hired a mobile coffee van with a barista. It cost her a small fortune, but she decided it was worth it.
For lunch, Rebecca had ordered a large spinach, ricotta, leek, and fennel spanakopita from her local caterer. Normally Rebecca baked something herself, but this week had been crazy, and she just had to let go of some of her traditions. But Rebecca had used this caterer many times for various functions, and the food was good. It was also fortunate that the caterer opened at six thirty on Saturday mornings to begin baking for the day. Rebecca would need to drop in on the way to the olive grove to pick up the dish.
Eventually Rebecca slid out of her bed and poked her feet out into the cold air. She made a grab for her bathrobe, which lay on the wing-back chair in the corner of the room. Next to her bed, the chair was the most important piece of furniture in the room. Rebecca would sit in the chair for hours, mostly reading. She had the chair and matching ottoman covered in her favourite colour combination, pink and green. A large lettuce-green woollen throw lay across the chair, and an industrial-looking metal standard lamp sat next to it. It was one of Rebecca’s favourite comfort spots in the house. She passed it longingly.
She shuffled into the bathroom, barely lifting her feet. Ever since she had been a child, family and friends had known that when she didn’t lift her feet, it was a signal to stay clear. It was an indication of exhaustion, which often led to a short fuse.
She stayed in the shower for nearly fifteen minutes, luxuriating in its heat. She particularly liked to feel the hot water fall on her back, and it was an effort to turn the shower off. She brushed her teeth and put on her makeup. At last she was beginning to feel awake and ready to face the day.
Rebecca walked to her wardrobe, no longer shuffling, and opened a couple of the doors that stored her day-to-day casual clothes. Rebecca’s wardrobe ran for the width of her bedroom and had seven doors. The wardrobe was very organised, laid out according to formal, sport, casual, work, and daggy. Clothes were even hung in order of colour. The shoes were stored in their original boxes.
Today was a comfort day and a day to dress warmly. It had continued to rain heavily overnight, so the ground would be muddy. A Wellington-boot kind of day. She dressed pretty much as she had for the dogs the previous night. Old jeans, long-sleeved white T-shirt, and the bottle-green jumper. Rebecca slipped on a loose pair of boat shoes, carrying a pair of thick socks and her Wellington boots with her to the car. She needed coffee. She knew the espresso van should have already pulled up at the olive grove, and the barista would be warming the coffee machine.
Rebecca threw her boots into the car and took the short walk around to Hutt Street and the caterer to pick up the spanakopita. The smell of coffee was overwhelming. She couldn’t resist, and along with picking up the spanakopita, she ordered a long black.
Rebecca sat at the café table on the footpath, sipping her coffee in the cold early morning, knowing the olive grove could wait. Cupping her hands around the mug, Rebecca felt the warmth of the coffee seep into her fingers. Just then, her mobile phone rang. Putting down the mug, she fumbled in her handbag. The display screen on the phone showed it was Gary. Rebecca’s heart skipped a beat.
‘Hello,’ said Rebecca.
‘Hi, Rebecca, it’s me,’ he said, adding more formally, ‘Inspector Gary Jarvie.’
Rebecca looked at her watch. It was five minutes to seven.
‘Yes, good morning, Inspector.’ She tried to sound confident.
‘I’m just ringing to see if you have anything else you need to tell me. I know you have been making your own inquiries.’
Rebecca gave a little gasp and said, ‘Well, I’m only doing my job, Inspector.’
‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what you have managed to find out. It could be helpful to us in our murder inquiries.’
Rebecca understood where Gary was coming from. It wouldn’t hurt her to work with him and tell him what she knew. She ran through the events of the last twenty-four hours, including her trip to the dogs. She told him of what she had found out about the bikie gang involvement in the greyhound-racing industry and that Will Oliver had been onto something prior to his death. She gave him the outline of what would appear in her next article, probably due to be published in the Sunday Mail and online. She noticed it hadn’t made the Saturday edition.
Gary seemed to be listening intently. However, Rebecca suspected her information wasn’t new to him—he probably had eyes on the likes of Snakehead already.
‘Just be careful, Ms Keith,’ Gary said. ‘What are your plans for today?’
‘I’ve got the olive harvest today. I’m heading off to it now,’ said Rebecca.
‘Who’s going?’ inquired Gary.
Rebecca ran through the list of names, knowing this would excite and possibly concern Gary.
‘Well, you certainly have an interesting guest list. I wish I could be there,’ replied Gary.
‘Yes, well, if the circumstances were different,’ said Rebecca. ‘I would have invited you, but I think, given that many of us are murder suspects, you may make a few people uneasy, and my attempts at getting any clues may be thwarted.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid, Ms Keith. You’re not the police.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll be fine. And the reality is that Leong’s and Will’s killer or killers may not be among those who were at the dinner at Wattle House the night before Leong’s head turned up on that platter. Neither you nor I have anything to connect any of them to the killings. At this rate, the whole of Adelaide could be on the suspect list. And if that is the case, I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without being in danger. By the way, what did you find out about the holly that was found in Jonathan’s shed? Is it a match?’
‘You know I can’t divulge any police information, Rebecca.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes then. You would have said there was no connection if there was none. So I take it that Jonathan has been bumped up the suspect list? He didn’t do it, Gary.’ It was the first time during the murder investigation that she had called the detective chief inspector by his first name, and she liked doing so.
‘You know I can’t confirm or deny, so you are just jumping to a conclusion that may not be correct,’ said Gary.
‘Yeah, yeah. I know,’ she said dismissively. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go now, Gary.’ She was now revelling in the freedom of calling him Gary. ‘Anything else?’
‘No.’ He sounded a bit hesitant, almost as if he didn’t want the conversation to end. Rebecca had to admit that she liked that—but now wasn’t the time to drag out the conversation. She had places to be.
‘Okay, then. See ya around, Gary.’ Rebecca waited for a goodbye, and then she hung up, smiling to herself.
Gary hung up the phone. He had been dying to tell Rebecca all he knew. He’d wanted to tell her that the holly was a match. He’d wanted to tell her that he had brought Jonathan Riddle in for questioning again yesterday and that Jonathan claimed to know nothing about how the holly had gotten into his shed or where it had come from. But Gary had not told Rebecca any of that—he couldn’t.
He couldn’t tell her that Jonathan Riddle was now more in the spotlight as a suspect than ever.
Rebecca looked at her watch. It was ten past seven, and she was now officially late. She hated being late.
She drove to the olive grove and onto the park lands, where she stopped next to half a dozen other cars and the espresso van. Everyone had parked away from the olive trees so that they wouldn’t be in the way of the netting. Rebecca had the olive-collection license from the Adelaide City Council tucked in her purse, ready to be shown to any officious parking inspectors. The license gave her and the group permission to park their vehicles temporarily on the park lands while they picked the olives. In the last few years, Rebecca had taken over the job—previously done by Jonathan—of procuring the license. Jonathan’s interest in the olive harvest had diminished, and she had no doubt this had coincided with his intensifying relationship with Leong. Leong had made it clear he did the olive harvest under sufferance. Rebecca guessed Leong’s sufferance had had something to do with Francois Bacone’s involvement.
The Advertiser photographer and self-confessed olive-oil connoisseur Jo Sharpiro had brought the trestle tables and fold-up chairs on the back of his battered Holden Ute. Jo was setting the tables up with the help of Lisa.
Penny and a few of the others were mingling around the espresso van, waiting for their first order of coffee for the morning.
Rebecca heard a rumbling and turned to see Jonathan pull up over the curb onto the park lands in his fire-engine red 1948 Ford F1 pickup. Jonathan’s father had bought the truck in the late 1970s and lovingly restored it to its former glory. Jonathan kept the truck, along with a number of other vintage farm vehicles, in an enormous shed at what had been the family farm—and was now his farm—at Oakbank in the Adelaide Hills. All the olive harvesting gear was in the tray of the pickup.
Francois Bacone was there, having arrived with Dorothy Plant. Francois was carefully arranging his bacon, egg, and leek filo pies on serving platters in the middle of the trestle table. Dorothy had made her annual treat of apple-and-cinnamon golden-syrup scrolls. Dorothy took off the aluminum foil that was keeping the scrolls warm.
Lisa wasn’t much of a cook, so her task had been to bring the crockery, utensils, and napkins. Lisa plonked her plates and bowls at both ends of the table, along with two ironstone cream jugs crammed full with forks, knives, and spoons. Lisa had brought paperweights to make sure the napkins didn’t blow away, as they had done in previous years.
Nick Pecorino arrived, carefully carrying to the table a white porcelain bowl full of cut winter fruits. Into another large bowl, he emptied a nut-crumble mixture from its plastic storage container. Into the last bowl, he poured three large tubs of Udder Delights Yoghurt, specially bought from the Hahndorf artisan producer the day before. Wooden serving spoons were placed into each bowl.
Once Penny had finished her first coffee for the day, she took out her basket of artichoke-and-feta tarts and placed it on the table, folding back the green-and-white checked tablecloth. Penny had also brought large sprays of wattle and old milk bottles for vases, which she artfully arranged down the table.
‘Okay,’ said Rebecca. ‘Looks like the food is up. Bring your coffees over to the table, and let’s get stuck in.’
The group didn’t need much encouragement. Most were still groggy and on autopilot, not used to the early mornings. Everyone was keen to tuck in to some comfort food.
They milled around the table, either going for the fruit, nut crumble, and yoghurt to start or piling their plates with tarts and scrolls. Once satisfied they had enough food on their plates for their first sitting, they sought out a seat at the table. The conversation was pretty sparse.
Jonathan broke the silence with the inevitable reference to the weather. ‘We’re lucky with the weather. It rained heavily last night, but I heard on the radio this morning that we can expect a fine day.’
‘That’s good,’ answered Penny. ‘We’ve had quite a bit of rain this winter. I’m sure the farmers are happy.’
‘Farmers are never happy,’ responded Lisa grumpily. Rebecca grinned. Lisa wasn’t a morning person.
Jonathan shot back, ‘That’s just not fair. I’m sick of farmers always being categorised as whingers. Where do you think all this food on the table comes from? And do you think it’s easy? The weather is not the only variable. What about the high price of the Aussie dollar affecting our exports—or the dumping of subsidised substandard food into our markets?’
‘Oh, here we go again,’ Jo said. ‘The annual lecture from our resident agrarian socialist.’
‘Okay, then,’ Rebecca interjected. ‘So how much oil do you think we will get from the olives this year? Anyone willing to wager a bet?’
‘Well, we got just over seventy-nine litres last year from the sixteen trees, and it’s been a good season. I’ll wager we’ll pull eighty litres this year,’ said Nick.
‘Why don’t we all put fifty dollars into the kitty, and the closest guess wins the pot? Is everyone in?’ said Rebecca. As no one objected, Rebecca added, ‘Lisa, can you collect the money, write the bets down, and sort it?’
‘Sure,’ said Lisa. ‘I always fancied myself a bookie. That’s why I went into banking.’
With the distraction of collecting the money and taking down people’s guesses, the mood had swung for the better, and the hum of conversation around the table was now genial.
Being that year’s chief organiser, Rebecca called everyone to attention once the breakfast began petering out, tapping the side of her plate with her fork.
‘Gidday everyone. It’s great to see you here at our annual olive harvest. The events of the last week have been very traumatic.’ Rebecca gave a sympathetic glance in Jonathan’s direction. ‘And I know some of us have questioned whether the harvest should have gone ahead today. But I’m very glad we have decided to come together and push ahead with the harvest. It might be a cliché, but life does go on, and as one of my favourite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, says, “You can either get busy living or get busy dying.”
‘So today we are here celebrating life—and what better way than by harvesting olives for cold-press olive oil? If Nick is right and we manage to extract eighty litres of olive oil from today’s harvest, that will be ten litres of olive oil each. And I know this olive oil is famous among the circles we move in. We give bottled olive oil as Christmas presents, we give it to our friends, and we take it to dinner parties. Our olive oil has a special magic about it that breaks down barriers and brings us closer to those we gift it to. Some of us design our own labels, and I know, Francois, that you use some of it in your restaurant to much acclaim. This event and the bounty this harvest brings is a wonderful annual gift. The harvest heralds the closing phase of winter, with the promise of spring and new life. I think now, more than any other year, we need our olive harvest.’
The group spontaneously clapped.
Rebecca hadn’t planned to speak any of the words she had just said. She had intended to announce a perfunctory list of what everyone’s job was going to be that day—but she thought the moment had needed something more.
Slightly embarrassed, she added, ‘Okay, that’s enough philosophising. Now, here is the work list for the day: Jo and Francois, you lay out the nets. As usual, we have enough nets to go under five trees. Once we have harvested the first trees, you will need to move the nets onto the next lot. Dorothy, Lisa, Penny, and I will use the sticks to knock the olives into the nets. Nick and Jonathan, your job is to pick up the nets and funnel the olives into the buckets. Remember, don’t overfill the buckets—otherwise, you will find them too heavy to lift into the truck. We don’t want strained backs. Once you have a truckload, you need to take the load to Maroudas Olives in Thebarton like in previous years. I’ve booked us in, and they are expecting you. Any questions?’
Everyone seemed happy with their tasks, as they were mostly the same tasks they were given every year. The difference this year was that they were one man down without Leong Chew. It had been one of the few times of the year that Leong Chew and Francois Bacone had held a semi truce. This year, Rebecca reflected, Francois wouldn’t have to bother about how to handle Leong.
While they waited for Jo and Francois to lay out the first of the nets, Rebecca helped Jonathan and Nick haul down the large plastic buckets from the back of the truck.
‘So, Jonathan, how have you been?’ Rebecca asked, hoping he would divulge what had happened when the police came to search his house for the holly.
‘It’s all been very peculiar. After our lunch the other day, the police came knocking on my door with a search warrant. The police had already been through the place top to bottom, so I’m not sure why they were back, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. They went through the house and shed, and I even saw them fossicking in the garden beds.’
‘Did they find anything?’ asked Rebecca.
‘As a matter of fact, they did,’ replied Jonathan. ‘I didn’t know it at the time, but they found some holly, which they took away for testing. I got a call from that Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jarvie yesterday, asking me to come to his office. When I got there, he showed me some holly he said they had found in my shed, and he said they’d had it tested—and it matched the holly found on poor Leong Chew’s head. I was damned upset, I can tell you.’
‘What did you say?’ urged Rebecca.
‘That I knew nothing about it, of course. And it’s true. I don’t. Leong dried all his herbs in the shed. I knew about the garlic and the chilli and a few herbs, but I didn’t know about the holly. Leong must have been drying it out, but I never noticed it. The police said it could be used for medicinal purposes. That was news to me. I told them I had no idea where he got the holly from.’
‘Right,’ said Rebecca, pleased that Jonathan had confided in her but a little uncomfortable that she wasn’t being as open herself.
Suddenly, Rebecca had a bright idea about how she might track down the distinctive holly. ‘I know what I can do to track down the holly: I’ll put it in as a question in the Sunday Mail garden section.’
‘What, you think someone might respond if they know where it is growing?’ said Jonathan.
‘Of course. Our readers are better than Google.’
Rebecca hoped the holly was as rare as the experts said and that there weren’t multiple bushes all around Adelaide. However, to progress this plan, Rebecca knew she would have to get a photo of the holly.
‘Did the police take all the holly?’ she asked.
‘No, they left a couple of bunches.’
‘What about if I come around later this afternoon and take a photo? I’d like to get it in tomorrow’s paper and online.’
‘Of course,’ replied Jonathan.
Just then Nick Pecorino interrupted. ‘Come on, Jonathan. The first lot is ready for collecting.’
As Jonathan walked away with one of the buckets, Nick said to Rebecca, ‘How about coming over for dinner at my place tomorrow night? We haven’t caught up since Leong’s murder, and there is quite a bit of detail we still need to sort out for the Australian Food Festival coverage.’
It struck Rebecca as unusual to get an invitation for a meal at Nick’s place. While they had shared a meal many times over the years, they had always been at a restaurant or someone else’s place.
As if reading Rebecca’s mind, Nick added, ‘As long as you don’t mind a salad and barbecue steak. I don’t do fancy at home. That’s why I don’t normally invite people home for dinner. It’s just that I know you are so flat-out covering these murders and doing the Taste supplement that if I don’t break my rule, I’m afraid I’m not going to get you exclusively to myself for a few weeks.’
‘Okay. I don’t mind simple. I quite like a barbie. What time?’
‘How does seven o’clock suit?’
‘Sounds good. I’ll bring a bottle of wine,’ said Rebecca.
The olive harvest had its own rhythm. With everyone doing his or her individual job efficiently, each tree took about fifteen minutes to harvest. By ten o’clock, they were halfway through their sixteen allocated trees.
Rebecca knew their sixteen trees were only a drop in the ocean. Over 7000 olive trees had been planted around the Adelaide park lands in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and about half remained today. Rebecca had often thought about extending her council olive permit, but the group always agreed that harvesting the sixteen trees was enjoyable. Any more, and it would become a chore.
The small grove of trees in Gilberton that the group chose to harvest was a convenient location. The fact that it was only a couple of minutes away from Jo Sharpiro’s home in the adjacent suburb of Medindie was a major determining factor. There were no public toilets among the olive groves.
They took a short coffee break at ten o’clock and scoffed the rest of the breakfast food before getting back to work.
By one, the work was done, and everyone was feeling tired but contented.
It was time for lunch. The late-winter sun was shining through scattered clouds. The men and women separated into their traditional roles. Despite Rebecca’s feminist ideals, she knew which battles to take on and which to leave. While the guys packed up the gear and Jonathan and Nick took the last of the olives to the processor at Thebarton, the girls got busy preparing the lunch. Lisa had already packed the dirty breakfast dishes into a large plastic tub and brought out fresh op-shop crockery and cutlery along with wineglasses.
Rebecca put her spanakopita on the table. She also set out a bottle of the previous year’s olive oil and her special offering for the day, a bottle of aged white Leonardi Oro Nobile balsamic vinegar, imported from Modena, Italy. The white balsamic vinegar had cost her a small fortune. The mixture of olive oil with the vinegar made a great dip for bread.
Penny put out her mini pork pies and jars of homemade piccalilli. Penny had brought a wheel of Brie and a large jar of pickled olives, which she placed on a handcrafted eucalyptus breadboard. She scattered some handmade fennel crispbreads next to the cheese.
Dorothy went to her car and brought out both her and Francois’s offerings. Francois had cooked a rolled roast of chicken with couscous and pine-nut stuffing and prepared a haloumi, chickpea, and spinach salad. The salad was still to be dressed with vinaigrette dressing that Francois had poured into a screw-top jar. Dorothy had brought four freshly baked baguettes that she had picked up from the central market that morning. Dorothy had also made a mackerel pâté.
Rebecca opened Nick Pecorino’s boot, looking for his contribution. The boot was crammed with old towels, rubber boots, and various tools, including a couple of large plastic containers. She picked up the plastic container closest to her and pulled off the lid. It wasn’t food. Rebecca was staring at a human skull.
She closed the lid and quickly shut the boot. Rebecca looked around to see if Nick and Jonathan had returned. They hadn’t.
Rebecca stood by the car and wondered what she should do. Clearly there was a skull in Nick’s boot. Did that mean Nick was a killer? Did that mean he was involved in murder? Rebecca wasn’t sure of anything except the fact that she was creeped out. She decided to pull herself together and go on with lunch as if nothing had happened, but to call Gary as soon as she could after lunch. She looked through the window of Nick’s car and saw an esky. She grabbed it, checked that it contained Nick’s picnic food, and brought it to the table.
Everyone was getting seated as Jonathan and Nick arrived back from Thebarton.
Francois and Jo had sorted out the drinks, having placed bottles of South Australian red and white wine onto the tables, along with bottles of sparkling mineral water. The white wine and mineral water had been kept cold in a couple of eskies packed with ice. Although, given the coldness of the day, Rebecca guessed there would be more red than white wine drunk.
‘So,’ said Penny, addressing Jonathan, ‘how many kilograms of olives did we harvest?’
‘This year’s bounty is 840 kilograms. That compares with 790 last year, so that will work out to roughly 84 litres of olive oil. Great result. As usual, the oil will take a week to press, so it will be ready to be picked up next Saturday,’ replied Jonathan.
Lisa was quick to respond, ‘Just because we know how many kilos we have harvested, that doesn’t mean we know how many litres of oil we will get from the crush. We will need to wait until next Saturday to see who wins the $400. I’ll keep the money until then.’
Rebecca noticed Nick eyeing the table. ‘So who was the good fairy that got my esky out of my car and laid out my produce so beautifully?’ he asked.
‘That would be me,’ said Rebecca, trying to sound equally unfazed.
Was it Rebecca’s imagination, or did Nick flinch?
‘So, did you find it okay?’ he asked.
‘Obviously,’ replied Rebecca.
Nick poured himself a fruity glass of Shaw and Smith pinot gris. Rebecca thought she could do with a drink herself and poured a glass of Di Giorgio cabernet sauvignon.
As Rebecca lifted the glass to her mouth, she could smell the earthiness of the strong red soil that produced such rich and velvety red wines. Sipping the wine, she immediately felt more relaxed. She did her best to put the skull and its implications to one side, instead piling her plate with a scotch egg and a large slice of brie. She tore off a piece of baguette, scooped out some piccalilli, grabbed a few olives, cut off a piece of roast chicken roll—taking care to get a large amount of stuffing—scooped on a pile of the Greek and potato salads, and felt virtuous for not having touched the haloumi-and-chickpea salad or the mackerel pâté and veggie sticks—for now.
She was relieved Nick didn’t seem to suspect she had discovered the skull and that the hard work of the morning was behind her. She melted into the sagging director’s chair, alternating her sipping and chewing while dreamily watching a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos picking at the ground and the olives left behind.
The group spent the next hour drinking, eating, and doing a minimal amount of talking. They were exhausted and content to sit, eat and drink.
Rebecca thought she showed enormous self-restraint to stick to two glasses of red, knowing she had to drive as well as talk to Gary about the skull. As no one else seemed to be drinking the Di Gorgio, she popped the cork back in the bottle and put it to one side, intent on taking it with her. She would polish off the rest of the bottle that night. No problem.
After everyone said their farewells, Rebecca drove off from the olive grove and took a couple of backstreets until she found a suitable place to pull over. She rang Gary and it went to message bank. ‘Gary, it’s me, Rebecca. I’ve got something really important to tell you. Call me as soon as you get this message.’
She was irritated she couldn’t speak to Gary but resisted the urge to call again. That would look obsessive.
She then drove to Jonathan’s house to take a photo of the holly. Jonathan had still been packing up his truck when she had left the olive grove. The shed was unlocked, and Rebecca let herself in. The interior was dark, so she flicked on the light switch. The lights didn’t come on. Rebecca tried flicking the switch a couple of times, but still there was no light.
‘Damn,’ she said. But she wasn’t going to be deterred. She was cold and tired, and a large belly of food and wine was making her drowsy. Climbing the stairs in the dimness, she approached the top, where a little more light came in through the dormer windows. Dust floated in the shards of light.
Once upstairs, Rebecca made her way to the rafter containing the drying herbs and grabbed a handful of the holly. She jumped as she heard a loud crash from downstairs.
‘Who’s there?’ said Rebecca.
There was no answer. Rebecca warily crept down the stairs, holly in hand. As she turned the corner of the stairs, she could see the cause of the noise. Jonathan had crashed his truck into the wooden shed doors. Rebecca pulled back one of the doors to see him sitting in the driver’s seat looking slightly dazed, with a trickle of blood running down his forehead. Rebecca rushed to the driver’s door and opened it.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Mmmm. I think so. I hit my head on the windscreen,’ said Jonathan. He brushed his hand over his forehead and looked at the blood on the back of his hand. ‘I hit the accelerator instead of the brake.’
‘What the hell were you thinking!’ Rebecca said in an exasperated tone. Could anything else go wrong this week?
‘Don’t yell at me!’ said Jonathan, with tears starting to run down his cheeks. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose!’
‘No, I know,’ said Rebecca more gently. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Let’s get you inside.’
As Rebecca helped Jonathan into his house, she couldn’t help but wonder if he had stuck to only a couple of wines at lunch.
She cleaned Jonathan up and consoled him that not a lot of damage had been done to either the truck or the shed door.
Only after this could she finally get to the point of her visit. She propped the holly on an outside table to get reasonably good light and took a photo.