Julian frowned. Had Veronica told her just how bad things had become since the shut-down? ‘The town’s a bit of a powder keg at the moment.’
‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s understandable that people are angry. I just wish they’d leave Mum out of it.’
‘Let the police handle it. They’ll speak to Warren Leadbeater. He’ll have a good idea of who might be involved.’
Her gaze lowered, lingering on the geometric tattoo on his left arm. ‘So, if you can’t see Dad, what will you do now?’
‘Take my lube and drop it over to Willow—where it might actually be useful.’
She laughed at the unexpected reply, a low rich sound that travelled along his central nervous system and set his nerve endings abuzz. It had been too long since he’d heard Lynsey laugh.
‘I have Dad’s number in my phone. Would you like me to call him and ask if you can speak to him?’
Julian raised his eyebrows, as grateful as he was taken aback by her unexpected offer. ‘That would be great, Lynsey. I’ve mortgaged the depot to build this plant. If the mill doesn’t re-open I’d be better to pull my builders off the job now and cut my losses.’
‘Oh, Julian. I’m really sorry. He’s my father, and—’
‘Hey.’ He held up his hands. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. There are others worse off. Still, I won’t say no to you ringing him.’
‘It’s time I spoke to him anyway.’ She looked around and snatched up her keys from where she’d left them. ‘I’ll need to get my mobile out of the car. If he sees it’s me calling he should pick up.’
‘I’ll get it for you.’ He’d run to the other side of town to fetch it if it meant he could get in touch with the elusive Don Carter.
She hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind. ‘That’d be great. I’ve been out at Mum’s storage unit all morning and I need to use the bathroom. Just bring my handbag in. Don’t worry about the other stuff.’
He took the keys from her outstretched hand. ‘Do you mind if I straighten the car up? Veronica doesn’t need the Camry rear-ended on top of everything else.’
She smiled more easily this time. ‘If it makes you feel better, go right ahead.’
She walked off in the direction of the bathroom and Julian went outside, unable to wipe the smile off his face despite his financial worries. He and Lynsey were talking again. If he ever found the person who defaced her mother’s fence he’d have to buy them a beer.
He slid into the car, not bothering to adjust the seat to the length of his legs as he turned the car on, pulled the Camry closer to the kerb and killed the engine. Lynsey’s leather handbag was on the passenger’s seat. He scooped up the handles and dragged it onto his lap. A fabric shopping bag sitting next to it overbalanced and landed upside down on the floor.
‘Something heavy in that,’ he muttered, leaning over to set the shopping bag upright and scoop up a stray sheet of paper that had fallen out. Julian glanced at it, the letters scrambling and jumping around like they always did. He picked out the words ‘certificate’ and ‘jewellery’—something belonging to Veronica Carter by the looks of it. Not the kind of thing she would leave floating around.
He looked inside the shopping bag, wondering whether the certificate had been sitting loose on top or had fallen from deeper within the bag. There was a retro-looking laptop, a mouse, a charger and two files inside. He stared at the first file. The letters on its label flashed then settled.
Mindalby Cotton Company bank statements.
The other file didn’t have a label. He slipped the certificate into the unmarked file, hoping that was where it belonged. He had no idea why Lynsey would be running around with bank statements in a shopping bag, but who knew what would be required of the Carters at a time like this.
He locked the car and jogged back along Veronica’s camellia lined driveway with Lynsey’s bag hanging from his shoulder. With luck, she’d have time to call her father before Boyd Dunbar turned up.
‘That looks good on you,’ she said with a cheeky smile as he came back into the family room. He slid the strap off his shoulder and handed her the bag, watching as she unzipped it and took out her phone.
‘Thanks for this, Lynsey.’
She gave a faint nod and called the number, switching on the speaker phone so he could hear.
Julian stared at the phone, counting the rings. Four, five … six … seven …
‘Hello, Lynsey.’ Donald Carter’s voice crackled through the speaker.
‘Hi, Dad. How are you?’
There was a pause, then, ‘I’m alright.’
‘I’m at Mum’s place. I came home last night.’
‘I hope you didn’t come all this way because of what’s happening with the mill.’
‘Of course I did.’ A flush rose in Lynsey’s cheeks. ‘Mum called me. She’s worried.’
‘It has nothing to do with your mother.’
The colour in Lynsey’s cheeks deepened, a sign that her relationship with her father hadn’t improved since high school.
‘If you give me a time that suits, I’ll come around and see you.’
Lynsey has to make an appointment to see her own father?
‘Things are a bit crazy here at the moment.’
‘I understand that, Dad, but you have to talk to me about what’s happened, and how it affects me.’
‘I’m talking to you now.’
‘That’s not what I mean and you know it.’
Lynsey’s gaze clashed with Julian’s and he shifted uneasily. Whether Lynsey believed it or not, he had zero chance of speaking to Donald Carter. The man didn’t have enough decency to keep his own daughter in the loop.
‘Anyway, I have Julian Stone with me,’ Lynsey was saying. ‘He’d like to have a quick word with you, if that’s alright.’
‘No, it’s not alright!’ Carter’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘The business is in the hands of an administrator. You can tell Stone he can wait for the report along with everyone else. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’
Julian stared at the phone as Carter disconnected the call.
Lynsey shook her head. ‘I’m really sorry, Julian.’
If anyone should be sympathetic it was him. Donald Carter was a dick for speaking to his daughter that way. ‘It’s okay. I appreciate you trying.’
‘We’ve always had a strained relationship. I wasn’t confident he’d even answer. As you’ve probably guessed, I haven’t been able to get in touch with him either.’
It was an extraordinary way for a father to behave, as least to Julian’s way of thinking. Of course, he couldn’t remember his own father, but his mother had always made sure he knew what a fine man his father had been before a tragic mining accident had taken his life.
‘It’s not your fault, Lynsey. Your father never liked me.’
She frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’
Why had he? Why bring up personal issues when the previous talk had been all business? ‘Because it’s true.’
‘But … you said he’d gone into a business arrangement with you. He wouldn’t have done that if he disliked you.’
‘That’s business. You’re his daughter. And he shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’ Ignoring the voice in his head urging him to stop, he added, ‘I’m surprised he didn’t warn me off again.’
Lynsey’s eyes widened. ‘He warned you off before?’
Julian ran a hand around the back of his neck. He’d long suspected Carter had never told Lynsey of their conversation. ‘He only told me what thousands of fathers have told horny young males sniffing around their teenage daughters. That I wasn’t good enough. That you were going away to university and probably wouldn’t be back.’
Lynsey’s eyes widened. ‘And you believed him?’
‘Yeah. The thought had crossed my mind.’
Lynsey’s lips parted, and then she inhaled like she’d suddenly remembered to breathe. ‘That’s why you gave me an ultimatum. What would you have done if
I’d decided to stay?’
‘Honestly? I would have been disappointed. You were destined for better things than life in Mindalby.’
‘According to the two men who made the decision for me.’ She shook her head and continued to stare at him through disbelieving eyes. ‘I thought I knew you back then, Julian. I realise now I didn’t know you at all.’
Shit. ‘You knew me.’
‘I didn’t know you were a wimp.’
The insult stung but he ignored it. ‘Your father employed half the town, including my mother. You came in the top ten per cent of the state in the final exams.’ He jabbed a thumb into his chest. ‘How d’you think I’d feel about holding you back? Me? A dyslexic truck driver.’
She fired up in front of him, gold flecks sparking within the deep green of her irises. ‘Don’t use that as an excuse. You know it never made a difference to me.’
‘It made a difference to me.’
‘Then that’s your problem.’
Long moments of silence followed. Julian’s mind continued to race while Lynsey stared at the floor. Shit! When he’d followed her inside he hadn’t banked on them getting to this point so quickly. But bottled-up emotions were like a body that kept floating to the surface, and this showdown had been nine years in the making.
‘Oh, what the hell.’ She waved a dismissive hand and squared her shoulders. ‘It’s not like anyone cares now. It’s all water under the bridge.’
He cared.
He’d always cared.
Julian took a deep breath. He’d come this far. Might as well go the whole hog. ‘That’s not all. He threatened to fire Mum.’
Her body went rigid and the fire went out of her eyes. ‘No. He wouldn’t have done that.’
‘I could hardly believe it myself at the time.’
‘So, why are you telling me now—nine years later?’
‘Because you rarely come home and when you do you don’t give me the time of day.’
She shook her head and backed away from him. ‘I don’t believe you. Dad has his faults, but he’d never do anything so … hateful.’
‘Lynsey …’
‘You’d better go.’
‘I wouldn’t lie to you about this.’
‘Just go.’
‘Police!’
Julian sighed as a loud rap came from the front of the house.
‘Coming,’ Lynsey called, giving him a pointed look.
‘I’ll get going then.’ He slipped past her and into the hallway. Boyd Dunbar’s silhouette was visible through the screen door. Julian opened it and the town’s newest constable stepped inside. His brown hair, wiry build and brand-new uniform had become a common sight on the streets of Mindalby these last few weeks.
‘I was just on my way out,’ Julian said. ‘Lynsey’s down the back.’
Still shaken from their bitter argument, Julian was reaching into his breast pocket for his sunglasses when he caught sight of a recent portrait of Lynsey hanging on the lounge-room wall. She was standing by a window, her mood pensive, her blonde hair contrasting with the smokiness of her eye makeup. The portrait was in black and white and she was staring into the distance as though lost in her memories. All she needed was a cigarette and she’d look like a 1950s jazz singer from an underground bar in New York City.
It was stunning.
An older, more sophisticated Lynsey he didn’t know.
Julian covered his eyes with his sunglasses and got out of the house. On St George Boulevarde he stared at the defaced fence and vowed he’d get even with Donald Carter. A man who had little or no affection for his daughter. A man who’d driven a wedge between him and the girl he’d completely fallen for all those years ago.
A man who’d switched off Mindalby’s life support and didn’t seem to care.
Chapter Eight
The shop lights went off and the group of women emerged onto the street. The older one turned to lock the glass door. From the passenger-side mirror he could see that Lynsey Carter was among them, talking to the dreadlocked feral he’d noticed around town. At least the feral’s offspring wasn’t in tow today, he thought to himself. Long-haired little shit that he was.
Lowering the car window he tried picking up some of the women’s conversation.
Jewellery.
They’d been looking at jewellery earlier in the older woman’s shop, heads bent over the counter as he’d walked by. That was the connection. They’d bought jewellery off the feral to sell in the shop.
He looked long and hard at Lynsey Carter. She was a city type. Good hair. Too skinny for his taste but for her he’d make an exception. Nice arse too, especially when it was filling out those tight black jeans. He’d badly wanted to stop his car and have a good perv at that piece of arse just this afternoon. It had taken a shitload of willpower to keep driving when he saw her crouched in the nature strip with her bum in the air, painting out those words on the fence.
The feral was hugging the others now, getting into a ute, driving away. He couldn’t care less. Lynsey Carter was the only one who mattered. She’d come home because the mill had closed. What else would bring a fine piece of arse like her back to this hole? But what had she been looking for in that storage shed? Maybe he’d take a look in there himself in the not too distant future.
He turned the engine over. She and the other woman were getting into the Camry. There’d better be a good supply of little black dresses in that shop of theirs, because pretty soon the whole town would be mourning.
Chapter Nine
Lynsey sat at the old wooden desk in her bedroom and stared at the password prompt flashing on her father’s laptop screen. Sounds drifted up the stairwell. The rattle of pots and pans, the clunk of water pipes as her mother turned the kitchen tap on and off— the comforting sounds of the evening meal being prepared that she never grew tired of listening to.
Lynsey took a deep breath and tried breaking the password again. She typed in ‘Home Office’, ‘Don Carter’, ‘Donald Carter’, and then her father’s initials. Like before, every entry brought up an ‘incorrect password’ message. Next she typed in ‘home’ then ‘homelaptop’, then ‘personal’, all to no avail. She clenched her jaw and rocked back and forth in the chair. What would make sense to her father? Something easy to recall given he was a man of little patience.
And a blackmailer.
There they were.
The words she’d shut out of her mind all afternoon. It hadn’t been difficult with Constable Dunbar scribbling into his notepad for an hour and taking multiple shots of the defaced fence. After that she’d driven to the hardware store and purchased a tin of paint, matching the colour with the fence as best she could. She’d spent the next few hours with angry rap music blaring through her earbuds as she’d painted over the offending graffiti. She’d barely had time to drag a brush through her hair and take a bird bath in the bathroom sink before it was time to head to the boutique to look at Willow’s jewellery.
She’d told her mother about the graffiti on the way home. It was only a matter of time before she heard about it anyway. She’d been so upset Lynsey couldn’t bear to tell her what she’d found in the storage unit, or about the man who’d prowled around the car. She did ’fess up to finding the old laptop though. As for the certificates for the paintings and jewellery, they’d keep for now.
Lynsey gnawed on a thumbnail, mulling over the kind of man her father might actually be. Had he really threatened to dismiss Donna Stone, one of the most dependable workers at the mill back then?
Donna had once told Lynsey that she’d moved to Mindalby after Julian’s father was killed in an underground mining accident. Housing was cheaper in the country, and she’d wanted space for a four-year-old Julian to run around in. But as he’d grown up, Julian had steadily assumed the role of ‘man of the house’. It was no surprise to Lynsey that he’d never told his mother about her father’s threats. At eighteen years of age he would have decided to handle it in his own way.
Shame washed over Lynsey. Her father was probably guilty of the blackmail Julian had accused him of. She might not have approved of the way Julian had behaved at the time of their breakup, but she’d never known Julian to lie. From the evidence she’d found today she couldn’t say the same of her father.
She blinked at the annoying cursor, her eyes dry from staring at the screen. Her mother had no idea what password her father might have used back then. She could barely remember the laptop.
Lynsey frowned. If only she could change the password to something else, but she couldn’t do that without typing in the one that was assigned to the machine.
She typed in her own name, then her mother’s, and finally Yasmin’s. No luck there. Next she tried her grandparents’ names and the names of every pet they’d ever owned. It was no good. The mocking ‘incorrect password’ came up time and time again.
Unable to sit any longer, Lynsey got up and walked over to the low wooden chest of drawers that had been hers as a child. It was almost empty now, the top drawer holding only a spare bikini and some old running gear. A couple of pairs of black leggings and a few old hoodies were in the bottom drawer alongside her Mindalby High football jersey, with the year she’d finished Year Twelve printed across the back. Underneath the jersey was her yearbook. She pulled it out and flicked straight to the tearstained page where she knew she’d find the photograph of Julian. He stared back at her with brooding eyes like he was barely tolerating the school tie. A bad boy with a chip on his shoulder and a diamond heart. Dependable— always dependable.
Lynsey’s throat ached with unshed tears. How could her father have done it? Blackmailed her boyfriend. A boyfriend he must have known she loved. And why? Why had Donald Carter been so desperate for his daughter to leave Mindalby when she already had a career path open to her at the mill?
Lynsey stilled, her gaze shifting to the folder on her bed holding the certificates for the paintings and jewellery and God only knew what else. Maybe her father had never wanted her to join him at Mindalby Cotton. Maybe he’d feared she’d find out what he was up to.
A Daughter’s Choice Page 6