Twenty minutes after I got back to my shop, a police divvy van pulled up outside and a tall woman stepped out. Navy uniform, police hat, blonde hair in a ponytail: Sergeant Paula Vandenberg.
She opened my shop door, the bell jangling.
‘Hot enough for you, Cass?’ Her tone was jaunty but there were shadows under her dark blue eyes. ‘How are you? And Dean? Bet he’s busy.’
I gave her the welcome smile. Paula always makes a special effort to ask after Dean, since our slightly awkward start. I often wonder if she’ll ever get over that.
‘The hit man…?’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘No sign of him.’ She pulled out a notebook. ‘I’ll need to take your statement.’
‘Of course.’ I went through the details of my morning in Sheep Dip. Gave a detailed description of the bloke. His spider-web tattoo.
‘He said he’d come on the bus,’ I said.
‘From Melbourne? Or Ballarat, maybe? I’ll talk to the bus company. The driver might remember something.’
I nodded.
‘And so you went to the Book Bonanza…why?’
‘Err. To pick up a book.’
‘At,’ she looked down at her notebook, ‘seven in the morning.’ She paused; a steady gaze. ‘On a Sunday.’
‘Well…I didn’t quite realise the time. And I needed the book in a hurry. It’s a gift for Helen.’ I swallowed. Sounded a bit unconvincing, even to me.
‘So there’s…nothing you’re not telling me?’
I smoothed down my apron. Bloody Vern. So, OK, Joanne mightn’t like cops, but frankly, things had gotten seriously out of hand. It was time to talk—I explained about Vern’s bag of rats; Joanne’s weird humming phone calls.
‘Humming what exactly?’
‘Hard to say. It wasn’t a song I recognised. She’s got at least one of the calls on her answering machine though.’
‘Right. We’ll check it out.’ Paula scribbled in her notebook. ‘Any idea why she’d decide to hire a hitman? Something to do with the fire at Patterson’s place? And/or the phone calls?’
I shrugged. It seemed an extreme approach to a nuisance phone caller.
Paula closed her notebook. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find this bloke, and Joanne Smith. But we’re short on resources right now. Everyone’s on Project Ice—I’ve just been assigned myself. Still, you’d know about all that from Dean. I bet he’s up to his eyes. Anyone with half a brain’s been pulled in.’
‘Ah…’
Paula blushed. Like she did the first time we met in Whitey’s, the chemist in Hustle, way back. Our first awkward encounter, and one of many.
‘Nice to meet you, the name’s Paula,’ she said that day, standing straight and true in her navy uniform, mid-way along the sports tape and bandaids aisle.
I shook her hand. ‘I’m Cass. From Rusty Bore. So you’ve replaced Dean.’
She leaned in. ‘Look, I want to reassure you that we’re not all like that.’ She paused. ‘Yeah, everyone’s already briefed me…word is he was pretty useless.’
‘Tuplin,’ I said.
‘Yep, that was his name.’
‘Mine as well.’
‘Oh?’ She swallowed. ‘You’re not…related though, are you?’
‘Well, a bit. I’m his mother.’
Her face turned brick red. ‘My God, is that the time?’ She bolted from the shop.
Ever since, Paula has done her best to talk up Dean. Her very best.
And here she was, trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to do it again.
‘Well, things to do. Thanks Cass. Better leave you to it.’ Paula slipped her notebook into one of the zillions of pockets in her navy vest and headed out.