“You can count on it. Maybe I’ll holiday in outback Queensland. I’ve heard of these lovely little cabins in the middle of nowhere with trail riding.”
“You don’t need to book a cabin,” I said. “You can stay with me anytime.”
Then we flung the bags in the boot, and Josie slid behind the wheel once more and took off as if the hounds of hell were after us.
The traffic was light, and we made good time, the little Victorian towns and the rolling landscape sliding past. We stopped at a winery, and Josie rushed in and bought a bottle of pinot noir for Sue and Moni. But other than that, we kept going. We detoured slightly to drop Pen at her friend’s place in Seymour, a little out of Melbourne. Her friend would drive her home, she said.
Josie and I hugged Pen, and then Pen encompassed us both in a three-way hug. “Look after each other,” she said.
I nodded, and the mood might have got sentimental except that Pen stuck to practicalities. “So you’ll call me when you’re home, sometime tomorrow, and then we’ll call our respective police?”
“Yeah. We won’t be able to get home from Townsville tonight, not without risking it by driving in the dark.”
“Call.” Pen kissed us both on the cheek again, and then with a wave of her hand, she swung away up the drive of the neat brick house.
It was back to me and Josie again. Bonnie and Clyde. Thelma and Louise. Except neither of those had ended well, if I remembered rightly.
The flight back was nearly full, and because we had booked late, we had to sit separately. I was crammed between two bulky men who glared at me every time I tried to turn a page of the in-flight magazine. Josie fared better. She entertained a young child she was seated next to by pulling faces while his mother enjoyed some quiet time.
Thanks to the time difference, it was mid-afternoon when we arrived in Townsville and retrieved the ute.
Josie and I hadn’t had much time to talk. Not about things that mattered. Not about Flame. Not about us. I hadn’t wanted to raise the subject of us with Pen around. Then we’d had to race to return the hire car, and the rush and stress of airport security and boarding hadn’t left much time for a heart-to-heart. But the journey back to Jayboro stretched ahead of us—long hours, the two of us in the car. It was inevitable we would talk, not just about us, about her and me together, but also about Flame and what was likely to happen there. In particular, there was Josie’s involvement to discuss and, to a lesser extent, mine.
Josie caught my hand as I opened the ute. “Hey,” she said. Her smile was a little out of kilter, a little hesitant, compared to her normal exuberant confidence. “You okay?”
I was okay. I’d swung like a pendulum over who and what to believe, and knew that I might change my mind again, but right now, I was okay. It was still just me and Josie, with no outside world to intrude.
“Yeah. I’m good.” I turned from the ute and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She pulled me tight, her own arms encircling my waist.
“Any regrets?” Her voice was muffled by my shoulder.
“No.” I thought they might come later, but right now, I had none. Last night and the memories of lovemaking still thrummed in my blood.
“Good.” She lifted her head to regard me with a steady gaze. “Me neither.”
I bent down, and she reached up, and I don’t know which of us had moved towards the other first, but then we were kissing, and that was the thing that mattered.
We eased apart.
“Want me to drive?” She grinned as she said it, and I knew she knew I would turn her down.
“I’m fine. I’m more used to these roads.”
We didn’t discuss it, but we drove without stopping. I knew it was unlikely, but if there was any chance of making Jayboro safely tonight, then I wanted to take it. But even though I pushed the speed limit and we only stopped once for fuel, a coffee, and a sandwich eaten as we drove, when dusk fell, we were still five hours away.
I slowed as we passed through a small town. There was a motel, and the pub offered accommodation.
“What do you think?” I asked. “We can keep going, driving slowly, and we’ll get to Jayboro in the middle of the night. Or we can stop here and leave early.”
As I said the words, I knew what I wanted. Real life, drama and discussions would take place tomorrow. Any thought of Josie and me together would have to wait, and with the future uncertain, I wasn’t sure if we would even regain what we had. I wasn’t sure if I would want to. But now, it was still just us, in the darkness of a small town.
“We told Pen we’d be back tomorrow. And Sue and Moni are fine at Jayboro.” She turned so her back rested against the door, and she shrugged. “I know what I want. But it’s not entirely up to me.”
I slowed down even more. The motel was small, and the sign said vacancy. “It’s dangerous to drive at night. Kangaroos. Cattle. Road trains. I try and avoid it; there are too many accidents, too many people killed.”
“I’m not arguing loudly.”
I pulled to a stop outside the motel.
“Or at all.”
“Let’s see what rooms they have.” I rotated my shoulders after the long drive. “If they have a queen room with air con and it’s not too expensive, then let’s stay.”
The ute door slammed as Josie leapt out without another word. I turned off the engine and sighed. Random thoughts rolled through my head: I had to call Sue. How were Tess and Ripper doing? How many bookings did I have? The daily thoughts that had been pushed aside while we were in Victoria came crowding back. Already, the caper was over. Already, I was thinking of home. With an effort, I pushed the thoughts away, at least until tomorrow.
Josie came back within five minutes, waved a key, and pointed to the row of units. I started the ute and followed her to the end one. When I joined her inside, she gave me a tour as if she owned the place.
“King bed. Flat screen TV. All the fancy toiletries you could want. Kettle, coffee, biccies, and there’s a discount voucher for brekky at a café in town.” She named the price and it was extremely reasonable.
She darted back to the ute, dragged in our bags, and dumped them on the bench before falling backwards on the bed.
I sat next to her, and she rolled over so that her cheek rested on my lap. I stroked her hair, twisting her windswept curls around my fingers.
“I should call Sue and Moni. Let them know what’s going on and when we’ll be back.”
She nodded against my leg. “I think I’ll take a shower. I’m all sweaty from the journey.”
She bounced to her feet like a jumping jack and disappeared into the bathroom. Her head popped back around the door. “Scented soap and body lotion. You better hope I leave you some.”
I called Jayboro and Sue answered on the first ring. “Jayboro Outstation, this is Sue.”
“What happened to ‘real outback, right here’?” I asked. “I liked that phrase.”
“Felix! Thank goodness.” Sue’s tone was harried for such a laid-back person. “Did you get my messages?”
‘No.” I looked at the display on my basic phone and only then saw the two text messages and a missed call. “They must have come in when we were out of range.”
“Never mind now. Where are you?”
“Small town about five hours west of Townsville. We’ll be back before lunch tomorrow.”
“Good. Moni’s down at the barn at the moment. We’ve brought Flame in for the night. Someone appeared here yesterday in a rattly old cattle truck. The driver said he had authorisation to take Flame.”
Worry settled in the pit of my stomach. “What did you do?”
“I can spout legal bullshit with the best of them.” The smile in Sue’s voice came clearly across the line. “I asked him for the authorisation to take the horse signed by the owner, the owner being Josie. He said Josie wasn’t the owner, to which I said that Josie had brought the horse here and had been paying the bills. As far as I was concerned, I said, Josie was the owner. H
e got a little nasty, said that was crap, and that he would take the horse. I told him if he did, the charges would be trespass and stealing. He left empty-handed. However, we don’t trust him not to come back, so Flame’s in the barn where he can’t get to her as easily. What happened down in Victoria?”
“Short version is we found two more look-alike horses, both with a microchip saying they were Fiery Lights.”
Sue was silent for a moment. “You have to go to the police, Felix.”
“I know. Pen is waiting until she hears we’re back, and then we’ll go to the police at the same time. I want to be back at Jayboro when they arrive.”
“I don’t think you’ve got that long. I think you have to call them now.”
She was right. “I’ll call Pen first. Have her check if her Flame is still there.”
“Call me back if there’s anything you need to tell us. Otherwise, we’ll see you tomorrow.” There was a noise in the background, and then Moni’s American twang came down the line. “Josie’s horse—well, someone’s horse—is fine. Happy as a pig in shit in the barn.”
I ended the call and moved to rest against the headboard. The sound of the shower had stopped, and Josie appeared, wrapped in a towel. She took one look at me and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. “I guess now isn’t the time to seduce you.”
I rested my hand on her leg, just below the towel. “Wait until later. We have to call Pen.” I filled her in on what Sue had said.
“It seems like me and my horse are a lot of trouble.” Her head bowed, and she picked at the edge of the towel where it lay on her thigh.
“Yeah. You are.” Her head shot up until she could see the twist of a smile on my face. “But we’ve come this far now. We’ll sort it out.”
She moved to rest against the headboard next to me, and I dialled Pen’s number and put the phone on speaker.
“Hi, Felix.” Pen must have programmed my number into her phone. “Where are you?”
“Not home yet. There’s a problem. Sue says that someone came with a truck and tried to take our Flame. Have you been out to Casey’s yard?”
She was silent for a moment. “Not today.”
“Any chance you could go out? Or call Casey?”
“I’ll go out. Casey would wonder why I’d called to ask about Flame. I’ll call you back.” She ended the call.
I looked at Josie. Her face was back to business, the edge of flirty playfulness gone. “This isn’t the happy caper anymore.”
“No.” I picked up her hand, played with her fingers for a second, then put her hand down with a sigh. “I’ll have a shower, and then maybe we should get something to eat. Pen won’t call for a while.”
Pen called while we were eating dinner in the pub.
“She’s gone,” she said without preamble. “I rang Casey when I realised and gave her the excuse that I’d left my book at the yard, gone back to retrieve it, and noticed that Flame was missing. She said that she went late this afternoon. Her owner came to collect her. Casey sounded puzzled; she said they gave no advance notice, just arrived at the gate with the truck and called to get in.”
“That sounds like what happened to our Flame.”
“I’m calling the police.” Pen was businesslike, as if she expected me to argue. “Then I’ll call Casey. Assuming the police will come out tonight, I’ll hang around.”
“I’ll call the police too. But hopefully, they won’t come until tomorrow morning when we’ll be back.”
“I’ll do it now. I’ll let you know what happens. Talk soon.” And she was gone.
I relayed to Josie what she’d said. “We better do our bit too.”
Josie ate the last of her lasagne and finished her beer. “I’m ready. Let’s call from the motel. It will be quieter.” A burst of noise from the public bar backed up her words.
We didn’t dilly-dally on the way back to the motel but walked fast and in silence. I wasn’t thinking about the call we had to make. I was thinking of the woman at my side and what would happen to her. Would she face charges? I didn’t think so, but what did I know about such things? My only dealings with the police had been a speeding ticket and the time they’d come to get me out of school when Dad died. I wished I’d thought to ask Sue, but it was too late for that now.
Josie didn’t appear troubled, but then with her float-through-life attitude, she probably assumed it would all come out in the wash. Or maybe, if it all went wrong, she was planning on doing a disappearing act. I pushed down that thought and concentrated on getting back to the motel as quickly as we could.
“Do you want to call or shall I?” I kicked off my boots, sat on the bed, and dug out my old phone. “Which would be better? Maybe you should. Flame was supposed to be your horse. If you call, you can explain how you came to have her. That might make it clearer that you didn’t know what you were getting into.”
“I don’t know.” Josie sat too, and her knee jiggled fast. “Maybe you should call as the business owner with suspicions.”
“Let’s both call,” I suggested. “We can put the phone on speaker and say we’re both here.”
“Okay.” She gave a decisive nod. “Let’s do it.”
My finger hovered over the buttons. “I guess we call Crime Stoppers, not 000. It’s not an emergency. I could call the police station in Worrindi, but it’s not just a local matter.” I caught her hand. “Josie, Crime Stoppers is anonymous, if you want it to be.”
Her gaze was steady. “Thank you. But really, what would be the point of that? They’ll come out to Jayboro. They’ll look at Flame. They’ll talk to you as the owner and Sue and Moni who were there when they came to retrieve Flame. You won’t be able to keep me out of it—and I don’t want to be. I want to clear my name as much as I can.” Her fingers twitched in mine. “I know I lied to you before, Felix. I know I was evasive. But that part is finished. I want you to know that.”
I shifted so that my back was against the headboard. She moved next to me. “Ready?”
She nodded again, and I called the number. A female voice answered.
“My name is Felicity Jameson, and I’m here with Josie Beccari. We think we may have some information on the missing racehorse, Fiery Lights.”
The responder was efficient and first took down our details before asking us what we knew.
Josie glanced at me, and her voice shook as she started to tell the first part of the story, about working in a motel in Longreach cleaning rooms and the man who asked her to find somewhere for his horse. “I didn’t think it was strange, after all. I’ve been offered weirder things in pubs. We’d been talking about horses; he knew I rode, and he seemed pleasant.”
“Can you describe him to me?” The responder’s voice was calm, detached, but non-judgmental. I was grateful for that. I had expected blame, censure, and while that might well come in time, right now it was a relief not to have to deal with that as well.
Josie bit her lip. “Forties, maybe. Full head of brown hair on the shaggy side. Clean-shaven. Dressed in tourist clothes, the sort you see on any city person holidaying in the outback—those lightweight travel shorts with zips everywhere, T-shirts—that sort of thing. He said his name was Barney.”
“Do you know his last name?”
“No. I guess the motel would have details, though—it was the Outback Oasis, and he was there, oh, sometime around the end of May this year.”
“So what happened then?”
“I gave him my mobile number and email and said that I’d be in Worrindi in a couple of weeks. He said that was fine and asked if I could find somewhere before July. He said he needed to move his horse—he called her Flame—by then.
“In June, I was working in the Commercial, a pub in Worrindi. I’d met Felix—Felicity—and had been out to her property for a trail ride. Felix knew her stuff and cared about her horses. I thought Jayboro would be the perfect place for Flame. I didn’t say anything to Felix immediately. I hadn’t heard any more from Barney, and I was startin
g to assume it had been the usual bullshit. But then I got a call from him, asking if I was in Worrindi yet and if I’d found anywhere for Flame. Of course, I told him about Jayboro. He said it sounded perfect. I asked him for his details so that I could give them to Felix, but he said, ‘No. The deal is that you find somewhere for the horse, not me. You do this in your name.’”
Josie shot me a glance and her thigh was as rigid as a fencepost beside me. “I admit it sounded strange. I hesitated, and I was about to ask why when he said, ‘I’ll contact you in a week when the horse will arrive,’ and he hung up. I figured that was the last I’d hear of it, but the next day, I received money sent via PayPal to my email address. It was three months’ agistment money. To me, it was a huge sum. I knew I could pay Felix half of it and she would be happy, and I would be happy. I did wonder, of course, but I brushed it aside, told myself he was probably a stupid city businessman with more money than sense. If he didn’t know the going rate for agistment, well, it wasn’t my problem. So I went to Felix with the proposition. She accepted, and I called Barney again and gave him Jayboro’s details.”
“Go on.” The responder’s voice was encouraging. It must be strange, I thought, working for a hotline like Crime Stoppers, never knowing who would call. Doubtlessly, there would be a lot of crank calls, a lot of vindictive people trying to dob in an enemy on some made up reason. But occasionally, there’d something interesting.
“Felix, you better take over.” Josie nudged my knee.
I described Flame’s arrival in the cattle truck, out of condition and without any of the paraphernalia you would expect for such a horse.
“I was suspicious,” I said, “but I pushed it to one side. And Josie gave me explanations for that.” I drew a deep breath, wondering where to continue the narrative. “I had some friends visiting from the UK, and one of them took a photo of herself with Flame and sent it to her brother. He fancies himself as a gambler and immediately picked the likeness between Flame and Fiery Lights. We all laughed it off.” I was rambling and needed to cut to the chase. “To cut a long story short, I borrowed a microchip reader from a friend. Flame has a microchip that identifies her as Fiery Lights. But she can’t be Fiery Lights. I rode her, and she has some sort of chronic condition, most probably her heart. She can’t possibly be the racehorse that won the Jackson Plate a few months back. We went online and hooked up with other people who have also seen horses similar enough to Fiery Lights to raise their suspicions. We’ve just been down to Victoria. There are two horses there, both similar enough to pass for Fiery Lights, and both with microchips that identify them as being that horse.”
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