Deadly Secrets

by Sarah Barrie

  ‘But what happened to you?’ Reid repeated.

  ‘It was just a panicked steer.’

  ‘I’m calling Tim — the local doctor,’ Joel added for Reid, and pulled out his mobile. When the call was made, Harry took a pen and notebook from his pocket, and sat himself down.

  ‘Right-o. Sounds like I need to get a statement.’

  ‘I’ll handle it myself, thanks.’

  ‘Jordy…’ Joel began.

  ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere near Hal Carter!’ He took a deep breath, knew he had to get through to her. Reid’s talk had rattled him and he couldn’t let her take any chances. ‘You’re going to get checked over by the doctor and you’re going to talk to Harry. You’re going to let him deal with this, Jordy.’

  ‘I’m fine. It’s the cattle we need to worry about.’ The look she sent Joel had Reid’s teeth clenching. She’d never looked more devastated. ‘The fence was cut and they were deliberately herded into the park.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Harry asked.

  Jordan frowned at that. ‘Unless the cattle figured out how to ride motorbikes and use bolt cutters, then yeah, I’m pretty sure.’

  ‘Okay, calm down.’

  ‘Is this the first trouble you’ve had?’

  Reluctantly, Jordan shook her head. ‘Hal came round here the other day checking up on me — scoping the place out. He basically warned me to watch my back.’ She sighed and leaned forward to rest her head in her hands. ‘If I don’t get those cattle to the sale, I’m done. He wins. He knows it.’

  ‘This was the conversation I interrupted?’ Reid moved to sit beside her.

  ‘Yeah. I told him to go jump. He threatened me. You turned up.’

  ‘What exactly did he say, Jordy?’ Harry asked.

  Jordan thought about it. ‘I don’t know…he made some comment about…about me being a woman out here all alone. Mack growled and he said I might need the protection, something like that…’ She petered out when the men all looked at each other.

  ‘What else? Has he been around before? Made any other threats?’ Joel was furious.

  She laughed humourlessly. ‘Quite the opposite. I even got flowers a few times.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Joel snapped.

  Jordan had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Usually only on the anniversary of the accident, but this year I’ve had a few bunches of them. One lot had a nice little note saying “not long now” attached.’

  Something triggered in Reid’s memory. ‘Were they the flowers sitting in your vase the day after the break-in?’

  ‘You put them in a vase?’ Harry asked sceptically.

  ‘No I…’ she dragged her eyes off Joel’s furious ones and shook her head. ‘I threw them in the bin, then Reid pointed them out after the break-in and I couldn’t understand…’

  Reid and Joel swore in unison, and Harry stood and paced the room. ‘That’s just a little too cosy, Jordy. Someone sends you flowers, breaks in, takes them out of the trash, pops them in a vase. That’s not just a break-in, that’s a message.’

  ‘What else haven’t you told us?’ Joel demanded in disbelief.

  ‘Nothing! I can handle a few scare tactics.’

  ‘You said there were bike tracks everywhere?’ Harry prompted. ‘I’ll take a look in the morning. You didn’t hear anything?’

  ‘Not this time. I was in town.’

  ‘Not this time?’ Joel cut in, ready to fly off the handle again.

  ‘I’ve heard bikes up here a few times, somewhere in the distance, but definitely on my place.’

  ‘Yet you haven’t checked it out, reported it?’ Reid asked.

  ‘Of course I checked it out. I couldn’t find anyone.’

  ‘You went up there to check it out…alone.’ Reid shook his head.

  ‘I figured it was just kids using the trails to hoon around on. The national park doesn’t have many trails coming out from this side of it. I don’t have time to waste on a few harmless kids.’

  ‘But you don’t think it’s kids anymore,’ Harry stated.

  ‘Kids don’t cut fences into the park — not into a spot where there are no trails to follow. They’d come in off Valley Road. There’s a gate there for the RFS in case of fires coming through. Makes no sense. And those cattle didn’t let themselves out of their paddock.’

  ‘So you only lost two?’ Reid asked.

  ‘I need every animal I’ve got! There’s a couple of thousand dollars in those dead cattle out there and some of the ones I brought back are injured. Even the ones that aren’t are bruised and battered and will have run off their weight. Besides, it’s just such a pointless waste!’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘I know, sorry.’ She flinched from the pain in her shoulder as she shrugged.

  ‘You should go have a shower. I’ll make us all a cuppa while we wait for the doc.’

  It was hard to argue, the way she was feeling. ‘Yeah. Yeah alright.’

  ‘Hal hasn’t done this himself.’ Reid stood, paced as he thought it through. ‘Someone else was involved — maybe a few of his men.’

  ‘I agree. It’s going to be hard to prove much, but we’ll look at the tyre tracks, take photos of everything and get what we can. Then I’ll front Carter,’ Harry decided.

  ‘Is it true Jordan could lose the farm without a successful sale?’ Reid asked Joel.

  ‘Yes. Elizabeth, Jordy’s mum, died instantly in the crash. Tom didn’t, but he was never the same afterward. Then he had a stroke and the property had to be mortgaged to pay for everything, then a few months later he died. Jordy, she was nineteen, lost two parents in a matter of months and has been working every day since just to keep from going under. The point is, she’s almost pulled it off. Granted she’s had to renege on a few payments to build enough stock to get here, and the banks threatened foreclosure, but I think she’s got herself in a position that, with a bit of luck, she’s going to make enough from the sale to pay them out. She’s taken a big gamble to do it and just about all of us around here really want to see her win.’

  ‘Except Hal.’

  ‘Something’s going to have to be done,’ Harry said. ‘He might have gone after the cattle rather than Jordy this time, but…’

  Reid nodded slowly. ‘He’s trying to scare her. This latest stunt tells me he’s getting desperate to make sure she doesn’t make the sale. Hal’s not stupid; he knows if anything happened to Jordy he’d be on top of your suspect list. That he has motive because of the accident.’

  ‘I’m not taking the chance,’ Joel said, and took a deep breath. ‘Reid, you’re one of those drug squad guys, aren’t you?’

  Reid didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then, ‘If I was?’

  ‘I’m guessing, with all the questions about Hal and his men, you’re here after Hal. That maybe you think that, because Jordy was caught with some of that meth stuff on her, she might be involved.’

  ‘I don’t think Jordan’s involved. Do you know more about Hal than you let on?’

  ‘I do. And I know that when I tell you, he’s going to have a few things to say about me as well.’

  Reid was completely focused. ‘This is the stalemate you mentioned?’

  Joel pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. ‘Ever been in one of those situations where you just don’t know the right way to go, but if you get it wrong, there’s no going back?’

  Reid grinned wryly. ‘A few too many times.’

  ‘Jordan wasn’t driving the truck in the accident. I was.’

  Harry swore. Everything about Reid closed up, then threatened to erupt with a dangerous violence. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I was driving. And I’m happy to cop whatever’s coming at me if it means Hal’s locked up and can’t hurt the girls.’

  Reid struggled with that a moment. ‘I think I need the whole story.’

  Joel sighed and nodded. ‘I guess you know about Sean hitting Madi and the AVO?’


  When Reid simply nodded, he continued. ‘After Sean hit Madi the first time, she moved back in with Carol and me. Sean practically set up camp on our front doorstep, begging for another chance. No matter how many times Harry came round and took him away, he’d just come right back. One night he broke in high as a bloody kite. I called Hal and told him, AVO or not, if he wanted Sean in one piece he’d keep him away from Madi.

  ‘Hal had a few interesting things to say, like that if Madi made any more complaints about Sean, something unfortunate would happen to her — that he hoped I would just so much as lay a finger on him, so he could see to it I was put away. Because then I’d be leaving Madi and Carol all alone. He made a couple of particularly threatening references to Frank Bralie’s “accidental” drowning. He told me that I should remember who he was — that he could do whatever he liked and get away with it because he was a judge and I was just a farmer. I believed it.’

  ‘He made threats against Madi’s life? Against Carol’s?’

  ‘Yeah. I told him to shove his threats, but I was worried. Madi had to go back to the rental she and Sean had been sharing to collect her things, so Harry kept Sean and Hal busy at Hal’s place with some random matter, while Carol took her over to pack everything up. They threw everything into boxes, put it all in the garage for me to pick up after the morning’s delivery run, and took off. When I got there with the truck, Brian was there.’

  ‘Brian Dunmore?’

  ‘Yeah. He said he was just checking on things for Sean and he offered to give me a hand getting Madi’s stuff in the truck.’

  ‘Brian did?’

  Joel smiled wanly. ‘Back then we still had a beer every now and then. Anyway, we packed up, and I brought it all back to work. Most of Madi’s stuff was going to be stored at the shed so Jordy, Matt and I unloaded it. All Madi’s boxes were labelled and taped up. But there was one with them — it wasn’t labelled or sealed, and I took a look inside. There was a heap of blue tablets. We figured Brian had loaded that particular box up with Madi’s stuff accidentally. They had to be Sean’s.’

  ‘Define “a heap”.’

  ‘Probably a shopping bag’s worth.’

  Reid stared in disbelief. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Sean figured out his stash was missing and turned up at my place, between Carol going out and me getting home. Madi was only there by herself for a half-hour, but Sean picked that time to burst in and demand to know where his stuff was. Madi said he was ramped up already and she couldn’t make him believe she didn’t know what he was talking about. He chased her around the house, laying into her. She thought he was going to kill her. She managed to hit him with Carol’s bedside lamp and got away. We weren’t sure her face would ever heal properly. We were just glad she was alive.’

  Reid’s sympathy was genuine. ‘She didn’t give up. She fought back and saved her life.’

  ‘Jordan and I were on our way to Harry with the drugs when Madi called us. We found her just before Sean did. We were going to pull over, but Sean was coming straight at her.’

  ‘And I reefed on the steering wheel and turned the truck into Sean’s path to stop him deliberately hitting Madi.’ Jordan stood in the doorway, deathly pale. ‘Why, Joel? Why did you have to bring it all back up now?’

  ‘Because I made an agreement with Hal and he’s not keeping up his side of it. Because I only went along with this in the first place to keep you girls safe.’

  Jordan walked the rest of the way in and sat down. ‘I don’t understand. What agreement?’

  ‘After the accident, Hal was trying to make things as bad for you as he possibly could, so I went ’round to front him.’ His expression begged for understanding. ‘I know we agreed it would be best if it stayed a simple accident, but I just couldn’t live with the idea you might have gone to prison. I couldn’t let that happen, and that is exactly what Hal wanted.’

  Jordan shook her head. ‘The accident was ruled not my fault.’

  ‘Doesn’t necessarily matter,’ Reid interrupted. ‘Not with the drug and alcohol charges.’

  Joel shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. ‘I told Hal to back off Jordy because it was me that was driving the truck. He was pretty happy about that — promised me he’d make sure it went down as murder. I told him I still had most of Sean’s drugs and that I’d turn them over to the feds if he opened his mouth or if Jordy went to prison. Hal argued he’d just deny any knowledge and I said fine, but that he was sure to be investigated anyway and that would undoubtedly put paid to whatever profitable enterprise he had running. Put simply, I’d shut up about what I knew, if Hal made sure Jordy didn’t do any prison time. It wasn’t a hard deal with his connections.’

  ‘You never told me,’ Jordan whispered.

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone. Thought it was best that way. That’s changed.’

  ‘Then we may as well have just taken our chances in the first place.’

  ‘Funny how it tends to work out that way,’ Reid replied tersely.

  ‘Jordy, you should go lie down, wait for the doc,’ Joel suggested.

  Ignoring him, she looked hard at Reid. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t want you to worry about it. Go lie down like Joel suggested.’

  She scowled at that. ‘Of course I’m going to worry about it!’

  ‘So worry about it lying down.’ His tone was firm and Jordan gaped at him before turning to Joel, then Harry. They were all doing it. Just watching silently, waiting for her to do what she was told. Waiting to get on with the conversation without her.

  Furious, she turned on her heel and headed for her room; because she was going to cry again and that would have been the ultimate humiliation.

  As soon as she was gone, Reid got up and began to pace, tried to get it all straight in his head before he made his next move. He began to nod to himself as he put it together. ‘So Sean went into meth manufacturing with Hal, got hooked and became abusive toward Madi. In the process of assisting her to leave him, you stumbled upon a significant quantity of drugs you believe to have been Sean’s and were in the process of handing them in to the authorities when Madi called to say Sean had beaten her. You went to collect her and arrived just as Sean attempted to run her down. Jordan took control of the vehicle and put the truck between Madi and the speeding car, killing Sean and saving Madi. You contrived the simple accident story due to threats by Hal Carter against yourself and your family then attempted to rectify the situation by bribing Hal to keep Jordan out of harm’s way. Have I got it straight?’

  ‘All except…I still have the drugs.’

  Reid stopped pacing, stared. ‘You what?’

  ‘Jordy had a sachet in her bag — they were what she was charged with possessing. The rest we’d put in the back of the truck and I took them out before I left with Madi. I didn’t want Jordy to be found with them. I would have taken the ones in her handbag too but I thought it would have been destroyed when the truck engine blew. I was going to destroy the bag I brought home but it occurred to me that they might make good ammunition if I ever needed it against Hal.’

  ‘I need to see them. That evidence could tie him up in that business of his for years.’

  ‘I’ll get them to you.’

  Reid considered Joel for a moment, then raked a hand over his head and sighed heavily. ‘Let me start by saying I don’t like what you did, but understand why you did it.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘I believe Hal’s still manufacturing. I intend to shut that down, but it needs to happen my way.’

  ‘If he is, then I’ve got to wonder why he’d provoke all this. Maybe he’s finally lost the plot. If he has, I don’t want Jordy in the middle of it.’

  ‘She won’t be. But you need to keep who I am and what I’m doing to yourself. If you want Hal brought down, it’s in your best interests.’

  They all paused when they heard the car. ‘That’ll be the doc,’ Joel commented.

  A slim older man with a wiry
build and a kind expression appeared in the doorway and Joel got up to open the door.

  ‘Hi Tim, thanks for coming out.’

  ‘Joel, Harry and…?’

  ‘Reid Tallon.’ Reid stood and shook hands. ‘She’s through here.’ He led the doctor through the house and knocked quietly on the bedroom door. ‘Jordan?’

  Harry watched the two men walk into the loungeroom and disappear down the hall. ‘Something going on with Jordy and Reid?’

  ‘Not sure yet,’ growled Joel, ‘but he’s awfully committed to his job.’

  Harry laughed into his coffee. ‘She’s the kind of girl that could make a man committed. Very committed.’

  ‘What do you think he’ll do, Harry? Am I going to prison?’

  ‘I can only say he’s a good man. I don’t think it will play that way.’

  Reid reappeared and sat. ‘Left them to it. While they’re busy, why don’t we talk about what has to happen next?’

  Jordan and Tim appeared a few minutes later. Jordan’s arm was in a sling and genuinely throbbing again thanks to a torturous examination, and she went to the sink to take the painkillers he’d given her.

  ‘So what’s the verdict?’ Joel asked.

  ‘She shouldn’t be up there doing all that by herself. If that steer’s foot had landed on her head and not her shoulder she could have gotten herself killed. As it is she’s got some decently bruised ribs and that shoulder should be x-rayed.’

  Jordan took her cup and joined the men. ‘I can move it. If it works, it doesn’t need fixing.’

  ‘Just make sure you ice it and keep it in the sling for a few days. If it doesn’t improve quickly, I want x-rays. I mean it.’

  ‘Yes doctor,’ Jordan replied with a meekness that had the men grinning.

  ‘Right, I’ll be off then.’ There was a round of thanks and goodbyes and then it was the four of them.

  When the men simply looked at her, she snapped. ‘What?’

  ‘You should have told me what was going on,’ Harry said.

  ‘I can handle Carter.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Reid commented dryly. ‘By the way, that ice pack’s not a table decoration.’

  She sighed impatiently, and slapping it onto her arm a bit too hard, she grimaced, but held it there and waited for whatever else they had to say.