16

At five the next morning, I stood at the kitchen table, breakfasting on a slice of toast and a giant mug of white coffee with four sugars. Cold hands wrapped around the warmth of my Simpsons’ mug, I debated whether to confide in Ben about my coming meeting with Scott Brady. And decided against it. Unwise, perhaps, but being all macho man, Ben would insist on accompanying me to the car park and if Scott saw Ben, maybe he wouldn’t show.

Bottom line—I needed information on how to find Liz. And if it entailed taking a risk and meeting Scott alone…so be it.

Anyway, I thought, gulping down the last of my hot coffee, with dog trainers and punters and race-goers only a hundred yards away, how dangerous could meeting a guy in the car park be? Plus I wouldn’t go empty handed. I wasn’t that stupid. My brass knuckle duster and trusty double strength hair spray would be part of the weapon cache secreted in my tote bag. Maybe I’d even take along that gray, lifelike water pistol I discovered at Target last month, while buying Lucky a cute purple fluffy dragon toy.

Through the chink in the curtains I could see it was still semi-dark outside. Probably another hour before sunrise. Ben was picking me up in four hours and I had my team of dogs to work plus a trip to the trial track with two breakers before leaving for Port Augusta.

Time to start my day.

I placed my empty plate and cup in the sink and pulled on the warmest coat I owned. A thick sheepskin outback coat that had proven time and time again it was the best defense against the frost and icy wind of a South Australian winter’s morning.

“See you later guys,” I said to the dogs as I walked through the lounge toward the front door.

My two guard dogs were cuddled together on the sofa. Only Tater’s tiny head showed above their thick orange blanket. He opened one eye. Blinked. And then closed it again. The only sign of Lucky was a large immobile orange lump.

“Back door’s open for when you need to go out,” I told them and pulled on a pair of thick wooly gloves, leaving the two sleeping beauties to their dreams of chasing rabbits and gnawing on dirty old bones.

The ground, white with frost, spread out in every direction. Within two minutes, my nose and cheeks turned to ice and my boots crunched underfoot as I made my way along the dirt path that wound toward the temporary kennel house.

I loved this time of the day. It was as if I was alone in my own little world with no outside nasties to spoil the peace and quiet. No noisy traffic, no soaring electric bills to worry about, no freaking bad guys to send my heart into cardiac arrest. The only sounds in my little world were birds exchanging greetings somewhere high in the trees and oh yeah, a cacophony of barking so loud I expected the roof of the temporary dog shed to lift off and fly away. My greyhounds had heard the front door closing.

By the time Jake arrived two hours later, I’d already worked the racing team and had Zorro and Suzie, the two young breakers, in the back of the station wagon, ready to take them to the trial track.

Jake, his ropy dreadlocks damp, his jeans and T-shirt stained and his eyes red from lack of sleep, dropped his back pack on the floor with a thud and nodded blearily in my direction.

“You look a bit the worse for wear, mate. Been on an all-night drunken binge?”

I grinned at Jake’s scowl. I knew he was a health freak and would rather drink rat poison than let a drop of alcohol pass through his body. But it was fun teasing him.

“Yeah, man, been an all-nighter,” he agreed propping himself up against the wall. “A baby whale washed up on the beach down South overnight. We only like won the battle to get the poor little guy back with his mama ’bout an hour ago.”

“Oh, Jake,” I said, guilt washing over me, “why didn’t you ring and let me know? I’m covered here. Go home and get some sleep—if you can find the space to lie down in that overcrowded apartment of yours. If not, bunk down in my spare room for a few hours.”

Jake’s tired smile was ragged around the edges. “You sure, man?”

“Of course I am. I’m almost finished here then I just need to take these two pups to the trial track and I’m outta here,” I assured him. “As long as you can take care of the dogs for me tonight. I won’t be back from Port Augusta until late.”

“Hey, no probs, man.”

I had a sudden thought. Saving baby whales was the sort of action Liz thrived on.

“Don’t suppose you saw my hippie sister, Liz, on the beach helping out with the baby whale?”

“Nah. Too dark, man. We were like using torches and car headlights and there were masses of people like pushing and pulling and throwing water over the little fellow to keep him alive.”

Oh, well. Worth a try. Anyway, Liz probably wouldn’t leave her old friend, the endangered tree, in case the bulldozers snuck in while she was away saving the marine life.

My mind switched back to Scott’s text. L in trouble. I sighed. Hopefully it was just tree-saving trouble. The sort of trouble associated with delayed bulldozers and axes and not the sort of trouble that could leave her lifeless and covered in ice, body jammed inside a refrigerator.

* * *

Stiff and tired after a long, boring, three hour drive along the A1 highway to Port Augusta, I let out a sigh of relief as Ben maneuvered his four wheel drive and dog trailer into the inner car park at Chinnery Park, and slowed to a halt. Port Augusta. A city advertised on most travel brochures as the ‘gateway to the Flinders Ranges. The seaport and railway junction city located on the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula’. But to us, one of the friendliest country greyhound tracks in South Australia.

Ben pocketed his car keys and lifted the lid on the tack box at the front of the trailer. “Here, you take the dogs on that side,” he said passing me two leads and muzzles. “I’ll get these three.”

With half an hour to kennel closing we walked the dogs around the outer circumference of the track, allowing them to stretch their legs, sniff, and empty out before being confined in the kennel house. Then, while Ben prepared his dog for the first race, I wandered across to the betting ring. Used to be a dozen bookies at this track, all enticing punters to donate their money to their worthy cause, but times change and now there were only two.

I approached Big Mick, a familiar bookie I’d had dealings with before. Due to a misunderstanding, there was little love lost between us. At the time, I’d mistakenly thought the burly bookie was involved in a betting scam and while visiting his home, accused him of the crime. Let’s say he didn’t take well to accusations. Anyway, even though it turned out he wasn’t the brains behind the scam, I still wouldn’t put it past him to be in the middle of anything dodgy.

“Hi Mick, how’s the family?” I asked plastering a smile on my face.

Mick cast his eyes away from setting up prices for the first race and scowled. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Triplets doing well?” I persisted, cementing my smile in place, even adding a touch of animation to my voice. Geez. The things a sleuth has to do to wrangle information from a source. “And what about those gorgeous twins of yours?” I went on, in full acting mode. “Little Eddy still throwing everything he can grab hold of? Wouldn’t be surprised if Junior makes the Australian baseball team when he grows up.”

The reason I knew about Junior’s good right arm came from experience. Several well-aimed clumps of spaghetti, plus a spoon that hit their target—my face—the day I’d called in for a visit. The day I’d discovered Big Mick, of the beer gut, receding hair line and wet gooby lips, had fathered seven kids all under the age of seven.

Immediately Mick thawed. Guess it was the proud father syndrome. “Yeah, yeah, kids all doing well, thanks. Little Eddy has progressed from tossing spaghetti. The little bugger threw a chair at me last week.”

Good for Little Eddy. But I vowed to keep all future interrogations with Mick to the race track and well away from his over stimulated offspring.

“Lately, I’ve heard rumors,” I said and nudged my tote bag into a more comfortable position on my shoulder. A position where I’d have easy access to knuckle duster, hair spray and/or water pistol, if needed. “Rumors about unusual things happening at country tracks. Have you heard anything about that, Mick?”

His scowl returned—in spades. “What are you accusing me of this time?”

“Nothing,” I gave a dismissive shrug. “Just heard on the grape vine there’d been some rumbles of discontent at the country tracks lately. Thought you might know something about it.”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

Mick’s bagman, a skinny guy in thick bifocal glasses, leant forward. “Do you mean slow dogs winning at huge odds yet not turning up anything illegal in their swabs?”

My ears pricked. Aha, so that’s what Scott was referring to. “Er…yeah,” I moved closer, all the better to prod the guy into revealing more. “What do you make of that?”

“He makes nothing of that,” snapped Mick and shoved a clipboard in the direction of his bagman’s stomach. “In fact if he doesn’t stop yakking and get to work, the first race will be over before we can lay a bet.”

“Did you lose money when the slow dogs won, Mick? Or did you get a tip-off and make yourself a profit?”

All I got for that question was a stiff finger, so, realizing the conversation was over I sauntered across to the catching pen to catch Ben’s dog in the first race.

Ben’s dog, Vanilla Gorilla, won by six lengths and as Ben didn’t have a runner in the second race we decided to eat lunch at the cafeteria. A whopping plate of fish and chips with lashings of salad. The fish caught locally and melt-in-the mouth tasty.

While Ben inhaled the food as though he hadn’t eaten for a month, I took a breath now and then to quiz anyone passing by about whether they’d seen Liz. It wasn’t until we’d almost finished our meal that I scored a hit. A pleasant faced lady of indeterminate age, wearing a long flowery dress and a fringed shawl, large hooped earrings and a rainbow hued scarf around her head introduced herself as Lady Margaret. She said she ran the local craft shop in Port Augusta West and that a young woman answering to Liz’s description had dropped in a few times to buy raffia. According to the lady from the craft shop, the young woman was making sleeping baskets for stray dogs at the pound.

I sighed. Yep. That would be my little sister. “Did she mention where she was living?”

“Can’t say she did, dear.”

“It’s important.”

“Well…not to me she didn’t…but Old Sal, the butcher on Commercial Road, he told Mrs. Papadopoulos, my friend who runs the Greek restaurant next door to him, that when he were delivering meat to one of his out-of-town customers, he’d seen this young woman in shorts, and not much else, outside a deserted rabbiter’s shack. She were like sitting cross legged in the dirt and having a conversation with the sky.”

Ignoring the expression on the woman’s face that clearly said even Lady Margaret of the fringed shawl and hooped earrings thought this behavior a bit off-putting, I placed a hand on her arm to stop her from moving on. “Just before you go, when was the last time my sister came into your shop?”

“Oh, let’s see, only last week. Yes, it were a Thursday. I remember ’cos the little lady said it were her birthday. Said she were going to treat herself with a gluten-free cupcake from the bakery.”

Now I felt guilty. Of course it was Liz’s birthday last Thursday. My little sister had turned twenty-one and it sounded like she’d partied on a lousy cupcake—alone.

“I asked her if she were going out with her boyfriend that night? You know, for her birthday. Said they’d broken up and men were slimy worms and couldn’t be trusted.”

So Scott was lying to me about their current relationship. What other lies had he fed me?

Beside me, Ben looked at the clock on the cafeteria wall, pushed his well-polished plate aside and got to his feet. “I’ll see you in the catching pen, Kat. Okay?”

I gave him a quick wave and thumbs up for luck in the next race, then turned back to the craft shop owner. “Sorry to hold you up,” I said. “But did my sister seem scared or upset that day?”

“Now you mention it, she did seem a bit agitated. Kept looking over her shoulder. I asked her if she were meeting someone and she said no, just in a hurry.”

“Did you notice if there was anyone suspicious hanging around?”

“Couple of youngsters who should have been in school but they were just out the front playing on their phones. And—oh yeah, I did see an elderly gentleman. He was one of those who were like, mutton done up as lamb. You know, dark sunglasses, stomach hanging under a tight fitting shirt and these dazzling yellow trousers that made me blink. Remember thinking how ridiculous he looked. Anyway, I gave your sister some pretty silver baubles to sew on her skirt, seeing it were her birthday, and she left.”

Sounded like Jack Lantana had been hanging around in front of the craft shop. Had he kidnapped Liz? Was that how her bracelet ended up in his house? Or had Liz merely lost the bracelet in the street and Jack picked it up?

“The old guy? Did he follow her?”

“Sorry, dear, I don’t know what happened to the elderly gent,” she said and shook her head. “And now, I must go. My son, Wayne, has a dog in the next race and he asked me to put a few dollars on for him. Dog’s called Sizzler. Should be 50/1 but knowing how miserly those two money-sucking bookies are, I’ll be lucky if they put the dog up at 10’s.”

Leaving Lady Margaret to do battle with the bookies, I bought myself a country-baked vanilla slice. The biggest, mouth-watering vanilla slice I’d ever laid eyes on. Then, cake clutched in both hands, face sticky with creamy custard—not the chewy rubbery custard found in store-bought slices—I wandered over to the catching pen in readiness to catch Ben’s dog at the finish of the race. As I walked, I churned over the new information I’d learned about Liz.

She’d been shopping in Port Augusta last Thursday, so definitely wasn’t missing then. Something or someone made her nervous that day. An old guy in yellow pants was spotted hanging around in front of the craft shop while she was inside.

And Liz had already broken up with Scott Brady.