THREE

The tires on Neil’s red Monaro hummed hypnotically as we followed the grey ribbon of road on the way to Treehaven Stables.

Instead of Tayla’s mum driving, it was her latest dreadlocked, vegetarian boyfriend who sat behind the wheel of the car, while she, dressed in black leather, curled up in the passenger’s seat beside him. Sarah, Tayla and I shared the back seat with riding boots, horse-magazines, suede chaps, riding helmets and anything else that wouldn’t fit into our cases.

For the last half hour we’d played a dreary game of Sevens. Tayla was too wired to concentrate. Sarah was itching to start an argument. And I kept thinking about the missing dinosaur egg and kept playing the wrong card.

Bored, and wishing I was at home, I yawned and flicked a casual glance through the open car window.

My mouth still in mid-yawn…I froze in disbelief at the view.

For there, pulling out of a rutted driveway onto the roadway, grey smoke billowing around it like a winter mist, was a battered grey utility. And it was heading straight for our car.

“Look out!”

My warning was lost in a screech of tires and the clatter of boots, cards and helmets as they sprayed into the air and onto the floor.

Neil stamped on his brakes, wrenched the car sideways and let out a string of explosive four-letter words that left my eardrums ringing. The driver of the rusty grey ute with the words, Professor T. Goodenough, painted in heritage green on the passenger side door, also braked, then looked vaguely around, like a sheep separated from its flock.

For a couple of seconds—time stood still.

I could see this skinny old man hunched behind the wheel. He sat there, a dreamy look on his face. His white hair straggled onto his shoulders. His long beard, like tangled barbwire, rested in his lap. And then, without warning, he crunched the gears and his car leap-frogged forward again.

Neil’s ear-splitting roar broke the spell. “You stupid imbecile!” Caught in the act of taking off, Neil slammed his foot on the brake again. “The man’s a moron!”

Now tootling along in front of us, the ute stalled, coughed, spluttered, then hiccupped forward with a deafening bang.

Once more Neil’s shiny red Monaro slithered and fishtailed across the road. My fingers, now in the shape of eagle’s talons, dug into the leather upholstery as though attempting to rip the driver’s seat from the floor.

“What’s happening?” gasped Tayla her face the color of sour milk.

As our car came to rest on the verge of the road, my step-sister, Sarah, rubbed at a red mark on her forehead, where she’d been crowned by a flying missile.

“Ooowwch!” she whined, her bottom lip trembling. “That really hurt!”

Confused, I stared at the property Professor Goodenough’s car had come from. Grass and weeds ran riot between the trees. And the driveway was full of ruts, so deep, cows could disappear into them and never be seen again.

But what really caught my eye were the roughly painted signs. They were everywhere. Stuck in the ground—nailed to trees—wired onto fence posts. And all painted in this grisly shade of blood red.

What was it with this guy?

“Everyone okay back there?” Tayla’s mum peered over into the back seat. She must have been touching up her lipstick when the car braked because there was a vivid streak of red that ran up one side of her nose. Except for the ugly red slash, her face was whiter than her daughter’s.

“I feel sick,” moaned Tayla.

“Me too,” sniveled Sarah.

“What about you, Cha?”

My mind whirled as I studied the writing on the signs. ‘Do Not Enter’. ‘Danger’. ‘Vicious Bull—eats People’. ‘Trespassers Shot on Sight’.

“Cha?”

I blinked at Tayla’s mum then nodded my head at the bewildering signs. “That old guy seems a bit unfriendly, doesn’t he?”

“Bit crazy you mean,” Tayla grumped, winding down the window and taking great gulps of fresh air.

“He’s stark raving bonkers!” Neil started the car again. He checked the rear-vision mirror before edging back onto the road and driving slowly in the direction of Treehaven Stable, which was only a hundred meters further up the road.

Wiping the lipstick from her nose with a scrunched up tissue, Tayla’s mum said, “I want you girls to promise not to go anywhere near that horrible place while you’re staying here.”

“Mum—are you for real?” Tayla gave an eye-roll and shook her head. “Nothing short of an earthquake would get me inside that mad-man’s front gate.”

I didn’t answer.

The old guy in the ute might look vague, almost dreamy, but there was something weird going on. What was he trying to hide? Why didn’t he want people on his property? I could feel my detective’s nose twitching and itching, preparing itself for a gargantuan sneeze—a sure sign of a mystery in the air. I couldn’t wait to dig out my notebook and write down the important points of this new case. In my mind I could even see the opening paragraph of the new Rebecca Turnbull P.I. mystery I’d write for Kidlit magazine…

*

Rebecca Turnbull slid her right hand into the deep pocket of her trench coat feeling for the cold hard metal of her trusty snub-nosed revolver.

“Trespassers shot on sight? Vicious bull – eats people? Ha! Bring them on”, she growled.

The private investigator business had slowed to a crawl lately and she and her slavering Doberman, Fang, were edgy. They couldn’t wait to take on a people-eating bull or a gun-toting psychopath—whichever came along first.

*

As Neil’s car pulled up in front of a large rambling old country house surrounded by tall trees and white fenced paddocks, I flipped my mind back to the present. Treehaven Stables looked okay—and would look better if they’d ship all their horses to the forests of Transylvania. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the helmet and riding boot off my lap and slowly opened the car door.

Okay, I’d left one unsolved mystery behind at the museum—but with the hint of another mystery around the corner—perhaps these holidays weren’t going to be such a complete waste of time after all.