Ghostly Hitchhiker Box Set

by Rodney Strong

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Son of a…’ He bit down on his lip to prevent the final word from tumbling out.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Jill looked shocked.

  ‘Sorry, I just…never mind. Does the name Nick Rawlings mean anything to you?’

  Jill did the scrunched up face again, then gave a dismissive laugh. ‘Oh yes, the tortured artist. He was only about thirteen or fourteen but he wrote lots of anguished poetry about the world. I read some of it once, it was complete rubbish. Although maybe it was fantastic, I was only ten and thought all poetry that didn’t rhyme was rubbish. Shows what I knew.’

  ‘Did you ever see him with Brigid and Debbie?’

  ‘Not really. I mean it was a small community so you ran into everyone at some point, but I don’t remember him with the girls in particular.’

  (She’s just jealous because Nick wanted to be with us and not her.)

  Oliver decided the best thing would be to end the call and start interrogating Debbie. He promised to get in touch with any news and clicked the button and the screen went blank.

  ‘Debbie,’ he said calmly, although his fingers were clinched tight. ‘Do you think something important like you and Brigid having a boyfriend might be something I should know?’

  (Why? He didn’t have a yellow car.)

  He took a deep breath, held it a fraction longer than comfortable, then let it out with an explosive puff.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about him now.’

  (He was amazing. He would write poems about us, and he used to just sit there for ages without moving and say he was feeling the earth move.)

  ‘Feeling the earth move,’ Oliver repeated.

  (Yeah.)

  ‘And he was boyfriend for both of you?’

  (Yeah, we couldn’t decide which one of us got him, and we both liked him the same, except I think I liked him more than her, but instead of fighting about it we figured we could share him.)

  ‘Share him? How civilised.’

  (I know. We shared everything.)

  Knowing he was destined to have a similar conversation with Rose in the future, Oliver pressed on. ‘Debbie, what exactly did it mean, that Nick was your boyfriend?’

  (Don’t you know what a boyfriend is? It’s just like a girlfriend but with a boy. We held hands and he kissed us.)

  ‘Kissed you!’

  (Yeah, only on the cheek but it still counts. And he said he loved me.)

  An unsettling chill ran through Oliver as he imagined a fourteen-year-old telling an eight-year-old that he loved her. There was always a chance it was completely innocent, but too many news stories from around the world made Oliver cynical about these things.

  (What do you mean it’s weird? You’re weird!)

  He realised he’d made his feelings too obvious.

  ‘I just mean it doesn’t happen that often,’ he told her.

  (Oh.)

  ‘I think it would be a good idea to have a chat with Nick though.’

  (Oh, yes please.)

  ‘And Debbie? From now on how about you tell me everything about the days just before you were killed, no matter how small.’

  (Okay. We had pizza.)

  Oliver stared blankly at the blank wall opposite him. ‘Excuse me?’

  (The night before I died we had pizza for dinner, ham and pineapple. It was yummy.)

  ‘Okay. Is that important to your death?’

  (No, but you said you wanted to know everything, no matter how small. To tell you the truth I didn’t eat the pineapple, I wrapped it in my napkin and threw it in the garden after dinner. I think the birds ate it, do birds like pineapple?)

  He blinked a couple of times, then went to bed.

  (Do they?)

  ‘I’ll add it to the list of things we need to find out,’ he said as he lay down next to Jennifer.

  ‘What’s that?’ She looked up from her book.

  ‘Whether birds eat pineapple.’

  She studied him quietly, then went back to reading.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said and went to sleep.

  SEVENTEEN

  He woke up the next morning to find Reed standing on the bed, completely naked, with a gun.

  ‘Go put some clothes on,’ he told his son, keeping his eyes closed so Debbie couldn’t see anything she wasn’t supposed to. He heard the thump of feet hitting the ground. ‘And put your water pistol by the door so we don’t forget it,’ he called out.

  ‘Sure thing, Dad.’

  (Why didn’t he have any clothes on?)

  ‘I’m sure there was a perfectly invalid reason for it,’ he muttered.

  (Why did he have a water pistol?)

  ‘Because apparently when you get to the end of the school year your education includes things like getting as many of your friends wet as possible.’

  Jennifer was using the shower in the ensuite so he stumbled down the hallway to the main bathroom. It wasn’t until he switched the kitchen light on that he remembered he was supposed to be at boxfit ninety minutes earlier. He glanced at the time and realised he hadn’t set the alarm. Not the best start.

  Reed was dressed and slurping from a bowl that contained more milk than cereal and Rose was at the bench. He was watching the iPad, which he knew not to do while eating, and had been sitting in the dark, which he also knew not to do in case it damaged his eyesight.

  ‘Morning, Dad. Morning, Debbie,’ Rose said as she attempted to butter a piece of bread. Next to her on the bench her school lunch box sat open. With a little trepidation Oliver peered into it, and was pleasantly surprised to find it contained a peach and an apricot, as well as the expected crackers and mini Oreo cookies.

  ‘Morning, honey,’ Oliver kissed the top of her head, then watched as the too-hard butter completely mangled the too-soft bread.

  ‘Here, I’ll do that.’ He took the knife from her hand, decided the bread was a write-off, and got a fresh piece from the bag.

  (Are we going to see Nick today?)

  I have to find him first.

  ‘Who’s Nick?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Never mind, honey.’

  (He’s my boyfriend.)

  Rose nodded with a look of understanding that Oliver didn’t like. ‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’

  Oliver’s mouth went dry and for a fleeting moment he wished he was facing a murderer rather than hearing those words from his seven-year-old daughter.

  ‘Oh?’ he said in an unusually high voice. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Jerome. He’s a boy and he’s my friend.’

  (That’s not…)

  ‘Something we need to talk about now. Go get dressed or we’ll be late for school.’ He gave her a gentle nudge and Rose skipped out of the room.

  Once the kids were safely through the school gate, he called Alice to let her know all that happened.

  ‘How are you going to find him?’ she asked.

  ‘I was hoping you might know of a way,’ he replied hopefully.

  ‘I’m a retired con artist, not a lost and found. Why don’t you ask the detective?’

  Oliver had considered that, but wasn’t sure, given the man’s respect for the law, that he would give that sort of information out to a civilian.

  ‘But he might give it to his uncle,’ Oliver mused out loud.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said, perhaps you could get your new admirer to ask his nephew for the information.’

  ‘Wonderful idea. It’ll give me a chance to see him again. I’ve developed an appreciation for younger men.’

  Oliver stifled his first response that at her age they must all be younger men.

  ‘Leave it with me, what are you going to do?’

  He turned the car north. ‘I’m going to have a word with Barbara Smith. See if there was anything between her and Jasper.’

  (What do you mean anything between them?)

  ‘Whether she liked him,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know what something between them means, Oliver,’ Alice said wi
th a hint of a laugh.

  ‘Yes, but…never mind. Let me know how you get on with Graeme.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Alice ended the call before he could make a smart comeback. A skill she shared with her granddaughter.

  Debbie insisted on listening to the seventies station on the radio and, since he preferred her strangled cat singing style to listening to her complaining the whole way, he agreed. He was surprised by the number of songs he not only remembered, but knew the words to. The journey flew by and soon he was pulling up outside Barbara Smith’s house.

  There was a large half-full sack of weeds next to the driveway, and Barbara was kneeling with her back to him, attacking something on the ground with a small trowel. She turned upon hearing the car door close, and gave him a quick wave before returning to her task. He walked up the driveway and saw she was attempting to extract a particularly stubborn weed.

  Barbara sat back and took a deep breath. ‘It’s how I pay my keep,’ she said.

  ‘Fighting with weeds?’ he replied.

  ‘Mostly killing them, but occasionally…’ She gave the offending plant another whack with the trowel. ‘Could you?’ She held the trowel out to him.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied taking it from her hand. ‘Just don’t tell my wife that I’m pulling out weeds at someone else’s house. There are plenty of our own I should be dealing to.’

  It took a minute of digging and pulling and stifled swear words, but eventually he held the vanquished weed up for the world to see. Lacking any rousing applause, he threw it into the bag with the others and climbed to his feet.

  ‘My hero,’ Barbara said with a smile.

  (It was just a weed.)

  ‘Can I offer you a glass of water?’

  ‘Yes, please, I’m sorry to show up without calling first. I just have a few more questions.’

  ‘No problem, as you can see I’m not unhappy about being taken away from my task.’

  Barbara lead him through the front door, down the hall and into the kitchen, where she pulled two glasses from the cupboard, and a jug of water from the fridge.

  ‘So how can I help?’

  He waited until she had a mouthful of water, mainly because he’d always wanted to see if the movies were accurate. ‘You can tell me if you were having an affair with Jasper Yardley.’

  Oliver leaned back and closed his eyes to slits, waiting for her to spit the water out in surprise. Instead she swallowed and used her thumb to wipe away a tiny drop of water that had escaped from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  He was disappointed that his ploy hadn’t worked and equally surprised at her candour.

  ‘It was a brief thing that happened forty years ago, and we’re both retired now, so there’s no reason to deny it. Although I’m not sure what it has to do with Debbie and Brigid at all.’

  (Brigid and I already knew that)

  What?

  ‘It might have nothing to do with it, I’m just trying to understand the situation back then and all information could help.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see. Like I said, it was a brief thing. He was new to the community, his wife had stayed in Auckland with their son, and I offered to show him around. One thing led to another and suddenly we were sleeping together.’

  (We saw them kissing one day at school.)

  Why didn’t you tell me this?

  (I forgot)

  Try harder to remember.

  ‘It only lasted a couple of months. We almost got caught one day…’

  (That was by us!)

  ‘…we got a little daring and he kissed me in his office and a couple of students might have seen us.’

  ‘Brigid and Debbie,’ Oliver said.

  Barbara looked at him with a surprised expression. ‘I don’t know. I never saw who it was. Jasper did, but he said it was nothing to worry about.’

  He took a drink of water to give himself time to choose the right words. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t remember the date.’

  ‘How soon before Debbie went missing?’

  Shock registered as Barbara realised the implications of what he was saying. ‘About a week,’ she admitted in a small voice.

  (So?)

  ‘So that’s motive. And he drives a yellow car,’ Oliver said gently.

  ‘No. I mean, yes I suppose, but he didn’t end it because we were almost found out. We stopped because his son came down from Auckland to stay with him.’

  ‘His son.’

  ‘Jasper said that with his son around it was too tricky to keep things going, so we called it off. Just until James went back to his mother, but then the whole thing with Debbie and Brigid happened and we decided it wasn’t that important anymore. It was just infatuation anyway. And a few months later I met my Rod and we got married, so it all worked out in the end.’

  (Except for me and Brigid.)

  ‘Why did his wife stay in Auckland when he came down?’

  ‘Originally it was only supposed to be a short term posting, six months while our DP was on extended leave. Jasper told me his wife didn’t want to move their entire household down, only to move it back when the posting was over. But then it became permanent and she and James moved here too.’

  ‘That must have been a little awkward.’

  Barbara’s face flushed and she gave a nervous laugh. ‘A little. I was pretty ashamed about it all. I think I just got swept up in the excitement. It wasn’t my proudest moment.’

  (She didn’t look ashamed when we saw them.)

  It was Oliver’s turn to feel flushed. He quickly took another drink to try and hide his face.

  ‘Barbara, last time I was here I asked you about Nick Rawlings and you seemed pretty adamant that he had nothing to do with Debbie’s disappearance.’

  ‘The thought is preposterous.’

  ‘Did you know that he wrote poetry for the girls?’

  Barbara frowned. ‘No I didn’t, but as I previously told you he was a sensitive soul. I’m sure the poems were completely innocent.’

  ‘Of course, but he had a relationship…sorry, friendship, with the girls so he might know something.’

  ‘The police questioned him at the time,’ Barbara said with a disapproving sniff.

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘No idea,’ she answered promptly, but Oliver couldn’t help noticing that her eyes shifted to look at a point above his head when she said it.

  (What does that mean?)

  It means she’s lying.

  (Miss Church!)

  Oliver couldn’t help smiling at the shock in those two words. A teacher lying was obviously unheard of for an eight year old. Luckily for him Barbara didn’t see his response. By the time she looked back at him his smile had been replaced with a look of resignation.

  ‘I need to get back to weeding,’ she said.

  She was at the kitchen door before he could speak so he followed her outside where she picked up the trowel and started attacking a new weed with sharp jabs at the ground.

  ‘Thank you for the water,’ he said to her back. ‘And I’m sorry if I upset you.’

  ‘I’m fine. Like I said, these weeds won’t pull themselves.’

  Oliver had enough experience with the opposite sex to know that “I’m fine” meant the complete opposite. He also had enough experience to quickly and quietly withdraw.

  (Can we go and see my sister now?)

  Oliver drove the short distance, but when he knocked on the door there was no answer. He wandered around the back of the house, in case Beth was also attacking weeds, but the garden was empty.

  As he looked towards the corner where he’d dug the biscuit tin up a thought occurred to him.

  ‘Debbie, what did you think was buried in the garden?’

  (I don’t know. Maybe a note from Brigid, or another poem.)

  ‘If you didn’t know exactly, then what brought you back?’

  He walked across the grass and
stared down at the empty hole.

  (Brigid and I used to play this game, where if we weren’t allowed to talk to each other, like if I was grounded, then she would bury something for me in my back yard so I’d know she was still there. One time I left a bracelet that she made me out of paperclips in her garden, but we couldn’t find it again, so we decided to use the biscuit tin. I knew something was happening to my house, so this was the last chance to find out what happened to Brigid.)

  Oliver looked over the back fence where large trucks carrying piles of dirt drove past, kicking up dust with their tires.

  ‘Debbie, where did Brigid think you were?’

  Still silence from his hitchhiker.

  ‘Did she think you ran away?’

  His only answer was the angry cry of a bird that launched itself from the tree above him. Oliver looked behind him in time to see Monty sprint around the corner of the house. He started barking excitedly.

  (Monty! Good boy, who’s a good boy.)

  The dog’s vibrating tail seemed to reply “Me, me, me”. The dog danced back and forth before Oliver, who wasn’t sure whether to pat him or back away slowly.

  Beth appeared into view and took in the scene.

  ‘You have a habit of lurking in my back garden,’ she called out.

  ‘Not by choice,’ he replied.

  She took a few steps closer. ‘I’d offer you tea, but there’s literally nothing left in the house now. I’m just here to do one final sweep, in case I missed anything.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as the sort of person that misses things,’ he said in what he hoped was a flattering tone.

  ‘People always miss something. The key is working out what and how important it is,’ she replied.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he replied, looking back over his shoulder at the hole in the dirt. ‘Tell me something, did Debbie ever run away?’

  ‘Run away?’ Beth sniffed and scratched her forearm absently. ‘There was one time at school, she and Brigid…’

  Oliver waved a hand. ‘Yes, I know about that. I meant outside of school. Did she ever run away, or did she and Brigid ever run away?’

  Beth blinked rapidly a few times, and he decided she probably wasn’t used to being interrupted.

  (She hated it when I used to interrupt her. That’s why I did it.)