by Janine Grey
About to put the box on the mottled and spotted handwritten letter, she couldn’t help but read the first line.
My darling Mairi
At that point Eliza knew she should stop, but instead she kept reading.
You’ll hate me for this, I know, but it’s for the best. I’d rather you hated me than pitied me. The thing is, you deserve a proper husband who can give you the decent life that I can’t.
Knowing she was prying and tempted to unfold it so she could read on, Eliza took it to where Fin was serving the food.
‘How much . . .’ He trailed off when he saw what she was holding.
‘I didn’t mean to look. It was just there when I moved your stuff.’
Immediately, his face got that closed look. He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. You can read it. You know about Logan anyway.’
‘Are you sure?’
He looked away, continued serving up dinner. ‘Why not? It doesn’t change anything.’
Eliza remembered Mick’s words, that Fin might feel himself tainted by his father’s actions. If she tried to get Fin to discuss it now, she knew from his posture that he wouldn’t acknowledge the possibility of truth in Mick’s observation.
The temperature had cooled dramatically with nightfall. Eliza put a match to the fire he’d laid, while Fin finished serving their meal. As the twigs began to crackle, she read the rest of the short note – and in the words on the paper she felt the failure and shame of a man who’d bet everything on one roll of the dice and had lost it all.
When she’d finished, she carefully refolded it and put it back on the paperwork pile. Fin was silent, sitting beside her, staring into the fire as he ate. She did the same, thinking about what she’d read and feeling impossibly sad for Fin, Mairi and Logan.
‘How old were you?’ she asked eventually as she put her empty plate aside.
‘Six months.’
‘And you never heard anything else from him?’
He shook his head. ‘Quite a way to finish it. No conversation, no phone call. Just a note, left right there pinned up.’ He jerked his chin towards the mine shaft. ‘He took his tent and some tools. Everything else he left behind.’
‘Did your mother divorce him?’
‘Eventually.’ He looked at her. ‘For a long time she held out, convinced he’d come back. But in the end, she accepted it wasn’t going to happen. She got the mine – not that she wanted it, but I think she thought she could sell it if things came to that. Maybe she tried to, I don’t know. She turned it over to me a while back.’
‘She must have been quite a woman, to face something like that and somehow find the strength to go on, to raise her child.’
‘Plenty do,’ he said quietly. ‘But, yes, she is special.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘She doesn’t know me,’ he warned. ‘Occasionally she thinks I’m him, my dad, but most of the time she’s just . . . somewhere else. It came on so quickly; in less than two years she went from being a little vague to the way she is today.’
Eliza reached out a hand, clasped it around his. He resisted for a moment and then relaxed.
‘I wish I’d spent more time with her. Before, I mean. I was travelling so much with MineCorp, between New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. Occasionally I was overseas for conferences. Usually it was just a day or a weekend squeezed in between all the work that I saw her, and she was always so damned happy to see me.’
‘The nursing home seems very caring.’
‘They’re good people. I know she’s well looked after, which is why I want to make sure she doesn’t have to move somewhere inferior.’
‘And why you need a good find.’ Or sell the mine, she thought, but didn’t dare voice the words.
He gave a ghost of a smile. ‘It’s been a good week so far.’
Eliza stared at him. ‘You found something? Why didn’t you say? Is that what you wanted to show me?’
Fin got up, went to the tin box sitting on top of his papers and passed it to her. When she opened it, the box seemed to be full of dull dark rock. None of them were nearly as pretty as the pale sliver he’d given her that day in the mine.
‘Is this black opal?’
‘It is.’
She lifted out a small plastic bag that contained two pieces of greyish rock, and tipped them out onto her hand. In the firelight, she held them up and gasped as she saw the flash of blue, more intense than anything she’d seen before.
Excited, she turned to Fin. ‘I see it! These are beautiful!’
‘They need to be cut and polished, but yes, I think they’re fine stones. The best I’ve found, but small.’
‘You think there’s more?’
‘I do. I’m convinced of it.’ He plucked a different piece from the tin box, held it up.
Eliza saw the pin pricks of magenta in the blue. ‘Oh, this one is striking, but I prefer the blues and greens.’
‘So do I,’ he said. ‘But a black opal with red fire is the most sought after. The pink suggests to me that there’s more in the mine with that hue – and, with any luck, a more intense red.’
‘If you believe it, so do I,’ she said. ‘Let’s get the explosives guy in. Can we do that? Cash the opals in to pay for it.’
She winced as the words emerged. As far as he was concerned, there was no ‘we’ when it came to the mine. Fortunately he didn’t seem to have noticed.
Fin sighed. ‘I’ve made some calls. One guy is available next month, but the heat could be a problem. In any case, with what I’ve found this week, I think I need to go slow. If there’s only one big black opal with a red heart and the explosives destroy it, the last four months have been a write-off. I can’t risk it.’
‘I can help,’ Eliza told him, relieved. ‘I can carve out some time. I’ve got cases but one is already underway. The other can wait a week. Or Mick, we could ask Mick.’ She held up a hand. ‘And before you mention money, these opals could pay for it, couldn’t they?’
‘Mick’s busy.’
Eliza bit her lip and looked at him guiltily. ‘He’s not, actually. I told him to make himself unavailable so you’d have to wait for an explosives expert.’ She braced for his face to close in the way it did when he was angry and trying to control it, but it didn’t come.
‘I kind of suspected that. Well, right now Mick won’t be of any use here, in any case. The level I’m working in is low and narrow, cramped for even one man – or woman. Two people will just get in each other’s way. All I can do is keep chipping away, and hope that the next ten days yield what I need.’
‘You’re not yelling at me or threatening to run me off your land,’ she pointed out. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘I don’t recall ever having yelled at you,’ he replied, eyebrows raised.
‘It’s a kind of quiet, cold yelling. But you’re not doing it.’
‘I imagine you had a vision of me blowing myself to bits. I do know what I’m doing, you know.’
‘Yes, it’s just – as you said a while back, mines are inherently dangerous places.’
Eliza held the two blue opals up to the firelight, admiring them as she mentally replayed their phone call from a couple of nights earlier. ‘Of course, mines are magical too, when they produce stones as lovely as these. I assume these are what you wanted to show me?’
Fin sat back in his chair and reached out to play with a strand of her hair.
‘What else could there possibly be?’
*
He sat in the corner table of Helton’s bakery, cup of tea in hand as he stared out the window. The Mayberry woman wasn’t back yet from her love-fest with McLeod. He could stick around to see if she showed, but he’d have to buy something else. The woman behind the counter – Maggie, according to the name embroidered on her apron – was already glaring daggers at him for nursing his single cup for an hour.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like something else before we close?�
� She approached again, menu in hand. ‘Our pepper steak is very popular.’
‘Thanks, no.’
‘More tea?’ She folded her arms, the message clear. Order or be ordered out.
He sighed. It wasn’t exactly teeming with customers at six. In fact, only one other table was occupied. He couldn’t see how it mattered if he sat here a while but clearly she wasn’t going to leave him be.
‘Time I was off, in any case,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Or the queue of customers might stampede.’
‘No need to be unpleasant,’ she said.
‘Maybe I just enjoy it.’ He slammed a five-dollar note on the table and walked out without waiting for the change.
Annoyed with her – and even more with himself for getting riled – Twomey stomped to his car. In his line of work, he was used to waiting around but there was bugger all to do in Helton.
Hitching up his pants – which felt even tighter than they had yesterday, despite the fact he’d foregone dinner – he stepped off the kerb. Only the screech of tyres and the blast of a horn prevented him from being squashed like a bug.
Heart pounding with fright, he stepped back on unsteady legs as the car drove on up the street.
Where had that idiot come from? Precisely two cars had driven past since he’d arrived at the café around seven, and number three had to choose the very moment he crossed the road to make an appearance. The driver hadn’t even stopped to make sure he was all right.
Checking right and left this time, he made it across the road and slumped into the driver’s seat of the car. The sooner he got the job done and left this place in his wake, the better. For something to do, Twomey did another drive-by past Treloars Cottage. Her car still wasn’t back.
She was probably going to stay the night with McLeod and, as tomorrow was Friday, she might not even return until after the weekend. Hell! He needed to get things moving. He parked the car twenty metres from the Mayberry woman’s front door.
A catalyst, that’s what he needed.
He stared at the house, thinking over his plan to use the Mayberry woman to draw McLeod away from the mine. Something to make her feel threatened should do the trick, nothing life-threatening. He had nothing against the woman. In fact in this particular instance, she would prove quite handy.
Planning the accident was vital to ensure he wasn’t linked to Mayberry or the mine, which meant he needed to get busy perfecting his cover. It was time for some noodling.
CHAPTER 15
Easing naked from the sleeping bag a little after five the next morning, Fin was careful not to jostle Eliza, who slept on. Only a slight lightening of the sky hinted that dawn was on its way.
Ruefully, he looked at the woman buried so far into the bag that only the crown of her dark head was visible. Somehow he’d been seduced into agreeing to a date weekend in some small town near Brewarrina with a burgeoning food-and-wine scene, where Eliza had booked them into a boutique hotel overnight. It surprised him that he felt not one iota of resentment, not for the fact he’d succumbed and definitely not for the means by which that capitulation had been achieved.
He was, after all, only a weak and foolish male when it came to Eliza Mayberry. And he was aroused from just thinking about the night they’d just had.
Fin was tempted to wake Eliza. Mornings were his favourite time of the day for lovemaking, although last night had been exceptional. He stretched and scratched his chest. She was probably exhausted and in any case he had work to do, given that he’d promised to pick her up Saturday afternoon for the romantic getaway.
Grinning to himself, he turned on the shower with a jerk of his wrist. With any luck, he had a couple of hours in the mine before Eliza stirred. He needed to make the most of the time before summer closed in. The small pinkish opal he’d found this week had him convinced the big find was there somewhere. In this game, luck came through perspiration.
As usual, the shower produced only a mean trickle of water but at least it was some relief for his aching body. Over his shoulder, he glanced back to where Eliza was tucked in, to ensure she still slept. Satisfied he had some privacy, he began the long, firm strokes that would get the job done. He closed his eyes, found his rhythm and imagined he was in Eliza’s silken grip rather than his rougher one. His balls tightened, he felt his breath hitch —
Smooth skin touched his back, and he bit back a curse. ‘What —’
‘Don’t stop,’ Eliza murmured, lips against his right shoulder. Her arms twined around his waist, coming to rest on top of his, still now.
This isn’t happening, he thought wildly. She can’t mean to —
But it seemed she did. He looked down at her pale, smooth hands gripping his, urging him back into the rhythm, firm and steady, lingering at the head. He could feel the hard points of her nipples against his ribs, the nip of her teeth against his shoulder, and her breath running faster now to match his.
His brain – the part that hadn’t yet detonated – told him that a man’s self-pleasure was a solitary thing. But how could he tell her to go when it felt so —
He groaned as one of her hands dropped down to his testicles and squeezed.
So out-of-this-world good.
Fin felt the first tremors of orgasm rush from his fingers and toes and scalp through his body, coalescing where their hands maintained the carnal rhythm.
‘I can’t,’ he stuttered as his body reached the point of no return.
But his body and she knew better, and even when his hands finally fell away, hers continued on, stretching out his pleasure to the very last.
Fin’s legs were like noodles and his brain was mush. He wasn’t quite certain how he’d remained upright throughout.
‘Bloody hell,’ was all he could manage once he could speak again.
‘I’ve wanted to do that since the day I interrupted your shower.’
He gave her one of his inscrutable looks, but he knew she spotted the flush on his face, and was amused at the thought she’d been able to embarrass him.
‘A man should be able to – to see to himself without a woman interfering,’ he muttered.
‘If you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
His eyes narrowed as her smile widened. She was far too pleased with herself. He knew what to do about that.
Turning the water to cold, he tugged her under the spray and grinned as she squealed.
*
Sitting in the kitchen of the cottage, Eliza had to admit that her mind wasn’t fully on her work. Oh, she’d paid lip service to progressing the second case from Lincoln Bassett, and set some initial enquiries in train, but she couldn’t say she was completely immersed in the work. Though a little less challenging than the Laurie Farthing case, it was still interesting. Usually, she became so absorbed in the details and in her pursuit of answers that time flew past. Not today.
She forced herself to work through until midday, but by then her concentration was shot. For another hour and a bit, she worked stoically on the penultimate assignment for her genealogy certificate, dutifully submitted it and then called it quits. Maybe she was tired; she hadn’t slept much last night. But she didn’t feel tired. She felt strange in her own skin. She prickled where Fin’s fingers or tongue had touched her, she was liquefied inside where he’d loved her until the sunrise had glimmered on the horizon. She felt as if she stood on a high ledge about to step off into the unknown. No parachute, no safety net, just faith.
Closing her eyes, she stood at the kitchen table and breathed deeply until she felt more in control. When she did, she opened her eyes and looked around for something to do, but her workspace was already orderly. She picked up the mine ownership paperwork, and found a plastic sleeve, knowing she should have said something to Fin long ago. But the longer she left it, the less important it seemed. Christmas, she promised. She’d tell him at Christmas, when he’d be relaxed and receptive to what she had to tell him.
As s
he slid the document into the sleeve, something struck her about one of the signatures.
Taking it with her to the kitchen door, she looked at it under the direct noon light. No, she hadn’t made a mistake. Logan McLeod’s signature here was bold and fluid, little like the one in the letter in which he’d told his wife he was leaving her. The loop in the L was vaguely similar . . . she probably needed to look at them both side by side to be sure. But the writing, the signed name in the leaving letter had been tight, somehow constricted in comparison to the one she was looking at now.
People’s signatures changed over time, of course. They changed for a range of reasons, physical and emotional. Logan would have to have been in a highly emotional state to leave Mairi and Fin that way, to throw away their life together. The difference between the signatures had only popped out because she’d seen them on consecutive days – and because she spent most workdays poring over signed documents.
She shook herself. It was just her brain, trying to distract her from the work she should be doing by manufacturing mystery where there was none. Even if she was right, what could she do about it?
Eliza knew how Fin would respond if she mentioned it to him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look into Logan’s disappearance, did it? Excitement flared. What if Logan had been under pressure to disappear? Had he been involved in something illegal, or known about it? That kind of stress might explain the signature on the letter. Perhaps he had left to save his family rather than to escape them.
Galvanised by her theory, it struck Eliza that the only thing she knew how to do was to trace people – and it was the one thing that could answer the mystery that had haunted Fin’s life, and his mother’s. If she could find Logan, if she could reunite the McLeods . . .
But what then?
Fin had little sympathy for his father. Logan’s real reason for leaving would have to be enormously powerful for Fin to overcome the bitterness he felt towards him.
Probate investigation, with solicitors and statutory organisations as intermediaries, was different from meddling in the private affairs of the man she was involved with. She knew Fin well enough to be sure he wouldn’t thank her, regardless of her good intentions or what she uncovered.