3

Back in my car, I pondered. Gary had agreed to my terms without protest: the Monday Family Special. That’s code, of course. Given Dean’s disapproval of my activities, I figured it’d be best to make it sound like something shop-related. I’m actually closed on Mondays. The harmonious mother–cop-son relationship is one that requires a degree of footwork.

The zip on Natalie’s bag was stuck. After a short struggle, I managed to force it open. I had a quick rootle through. One brown leather handbag, a mangled laptop and a charger. The laptop didn’t respond to my attempts to switch it on.

I pulled out the contents of her handbag. A leather purse with a jazzy floral design, containing a drivers licence, credit card, library card and a fifty-dollar note. One lipstick, Russian Red. A mobile with a cracked screen. A scrunched-up receipt. One fluff-covered musk stick, half a pencil and a tin of pepper spray.

I suddenly had a chilled sensation on the back of my neck, the kind of weird feeling you get when you think someone is watching you. I whirled around, peered out my back window. Nobody there. Just an old car parked behind. Chocolate-brown Fairlane, early seventies by my guess. Settle, Cass. Dean’s unwavering surveillance can get to a person.

I opened the envelope Gary had given me and took out Natalie’s photo. Red hair in a thick plait hanging over a shoulder. Large blue eyes, a big smile, but somehow a little sad-looking. Although that was possibly just because I knew she was dead. She was hugging a small dog. White, fluffy, with a torn ear.

I fiddled with her phone, but that wouldn’t switch on either. Sifted through everything from her bag again. Eyed the scrunched-up receipt. I unscrunched it; smoothed it flat. The top left corner had been ripped off.

	…asey International
	BULLETS	$5.95
	BULLETS	$5.95
	BULLETS	$5.95
	BULLETS	$5.95
	BULLETS	$5.95
	FIRE DRUM	$43.95
	TOTAL	$73.70
	GST	$6.70

Jesus, what was Natalie doing with all that? I chewed my lip. Grabbed my phone and dialled.

‘Dean? Something important I need to discuss with you.’

‘Hang on. Bloody alpacas.’ He sounded breathless.

‘Alpacas?’

‘Hundreds of them. All over the road. Agh! The bastard spat on me.’

I hoped he wasn’t trying to book them for jaywalking.

‘Err, shouldn’t you be focused on something a bit more…significant?’

A grinding sound that might have been Dean’s teeth. Or maybe it was the alpacas—I’m not right up with their range of sounds.

‘Point number one: animals on the road constitute a traffic hazard. And point two: I do not need my mother telling me how to do my job.’

Right. ‘Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about was…’

‘Why you met Gary Kellett this morning.’

Dean’s mind-reading skills can be a little terrifying.

‘No point lying about it, Mum. I know what you’re up to. Claire told me.’

Thanks, Claire. All I’d said to her was that I was meeting a potential client. And I’m sure I’d asked her to keep it confidential.

‘Yeah, funny you should mention him. It’s actually to do with his daughter.’

‘Don’t get yourself involved in police business.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ Generally, the best way to handle Mr Defensive is to appear to agree with him. Then you can quietly get on with whatever it is you’re planning to do. Once you’ve worked out what it is you’re planning to do.

‘Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about this receipt,’ I said.

‘Bit busy here. You’ll have to save your latest shop drama for some other time.’

‘It’s nothing to do with the shop. The receipt was in Natalie Kellett’s bag.’

‘I want you staying right away from Gary Kellett.’

‘Point number one: I’ll talk to whoever I like. And point two: it’s still a free country, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Two can play at this bloody numbers game. ‘Now, this receipt…’

‘Listen, Mum, don’t go falling for Kellett and his conspiracy theories. Natalie died in a simple car accident, speeding. Tragic, I know. And, yes, Kellett’s gone into decline since she died, poor bastard. But that doesn’t mean there was anything dodgy about her death.’

‘So you looked into it all, in detail?’ He’d know about the receipt, course he would. Good old Dean, he’d have the whole thing under control. Wouldn’t he?

‘Yep. Third time unlucky for her.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘She’d been booked twice for speeding. Shoulda taken her licence off her.’

‘But Gary said Natalie was a careful driver.’

He snorted. ‘That’s one parent who managed to close his eyes to his child’s behaviour. She was travelling at 125 k’s an hour when she swerved off Jensen Corner and hit that tree. Bane of my existence, that corner.’

Bane of everyone’s.

‘So, anyway, you looked into the receipt? The weird note she left Gary? The pepper spray?’

‘I’m not at liberty to share confidential police information. But she wasn’t being chased by gangsters, if that’s what Kellett’s told you. It was a car accident. And all the necessary investigating into it has been done. By me. A proper job, done properly by a professional.’

Somehow I wasn’t reassured.

He swept on. ‘What I can tell you is: speed kills. That’s why it’s vital to uphold the law. Not that anyone ever thanks me for it.’

I wasn’t about to thank anyone for my jaywalking fine. I tried another tack. ‘Did Natalie have a gun licence?’

A groan. Maybe it was just an alpaca trying to deal with Dean.

‘I really don’t need my mother running around doing one of her Miss Marple impersonations.’

A: I’m not that old. And B: ‘Don’t be so damn patronising, Dean.’ I took a deep breath.

‘Anyway, I’ve got to get back to these alpacas. By the way, how much is Gary paying you?’

Ha, I can recognise a trick question when I’m lobbed one. ‘No, no. Can’t charge anything, no licence, as you know.’

I hung up. Sat there a moment, attempting some focused breathing, like Claire always says I should after I’ve been near Dean.

You’d imagine, wouldn’t you, that if, say, there was this person (and, really, she could be anyone) who was asked from time to time to investigate various people’s problems, and this person happened to have a son who was a cop, that the person and her son might occasionally work together to solve those people’s problems. I mean, it’d be an efficient sort of approach, surely?

The person and her not-so-imaginative but (if he was prepared to work at it) potentially affectionate son might discuss all the tricky ins and outs of the investigation, taking their minds off their own problems and life disappointments for a while. They might even have a laugh sometimes, like the person (the first one) used to do a million years ago with the son’s father. Before the father died and it turned out he was just a lying treacherous bastard anyway.

No, the focused breathing wasn’t doing it. I glanced at my watch: already eleven. I’d better get back to the shop. I started my car; pulled out from the kerb.

Maybe I’d rustle up a batch of sausage rolls. Dean’s fond of them, he told me once in a rare relaxed moment. I could call in on him, 1950s-home-based-mother style, complete with wicker basket. Who knows, after a couple of sausage rolls Dean might be more open to finding out what Natalie Kellett was up to with those bullets.

I drove past Hustle’s row of pepper trees, dusted with cream blossom. At the derestricted sign, I put my foot down, then slowed down to swerve around a dead magpie on the road. The brown car behind me swerved as well.

I passed a property surrounded by a double fence high enough to keep out any record-breaking kangaroo, a roll of barbed wire along the top. The abandoned Solar Logic site. There was a piece of tumbleweed flattened against the wire.

I hoped Claire had managed OK in the shop. She’d arrived this morning with a book on how to make your own cheese and a magazine entitled Slow. It was possible we’d have to have a little pep talk about customer expectations. Slow isn’t a word that’s embraced in the fast-food trade.

I flicked a look in my rear-view mirror. The brown Fairlane was still there. It had a missing fog light cover. Not a car I recognised, so not a local. Maybe it was just someone who didn’t mind the peace and quiet of back roads. That’s one thing we offer here, by the bucketload: empty bitumen.

I glided by the miles of wheat paddocks. Leo had a Fairlane, way back; well, his cousin Showbag did. Not brown though, royal blue. Leo, his red Stratocaster and his cousin’s borrowed Fairlane were a bit of desirable combo in Rusty Bore circles; this was back when Australia had a car industry.

I saw Grease with Leo in that Fairlane, at the Hustle drive-in. Well, I saw the first few minutes of Grease. After that I was a touch distracted. Until Showbag whacked his fist on the side window, interrupting us at a critical juncture, and shouted through the window Don’t youse go making a mess on my new sheepskin covers.

Chapter one of my non-history with Leo.

That evening, after I closed the shop, I had another rootle through Natalie’s bag. Definitely no gun. I phoned Gary. No, she hadn’t owned a gun; no, Dean hadn’t asked him about a gun; and, no, she’d never expressed interest in joining a shooting club.

I locked the house and shop before I went to bed. I pay a little more attention to locking up these days. The driver of that brown Fairlane would probably just turn out to be an innocent back-road enthusiast. But still.