by Jaye Ford
When Skiffs opened ten years ago, Max was the first person in Haven Bay to get past Trish and Pav’s newcomer status. In what Trish described as their concerted effort to become valued members of the community, she and Pav befriended the other shop owners, insisted on local tradesmen for the renovation of their old cottage and sponsored a couple of sports teams. Which was how Max found them. He was a stalwart of the sailing club, veteran of the soccer club and lover of a hearty laugh, the last of which made the three of them instant friends.
Rennie reminded herself she didn’t own the licence for worrying about Max. ‘Sorry. You must be upset, too.’
Trish opened her mouth to speak, closed it again.
Maybe there was more to it. ‘What?’
‘Excuse me.’ It was the cop and he was speaking to a woman beside the people mover that was now trapped behind the crime scene tape. ‘Is that your vehicle?’
‘Yes.’ She had a shopping bag in one hand and car keys in the other.
‘I have to ask you to leave it there. This area is part of a crime scene.’
She was one of the tennis mums who came in for a coffee once a week after a hit in their short skirts and runners. Right now, Rennie couldn’t think of her name. ‘How long will it take?’ she asked.
‘It’ll be a few hours,’ the officer told her.
‘I’ve got to pick up my kids in twenty minutes.’
‘I’m sorry but you won’t be able to move your vehicle until we’re finished here.’ He walked towards her, pulling a notebook from his shirt pocket. ‘And I’ll have to get some personal details from you.’
She frowned, irritated. ‘What for?’
‘Hey, Maureen,’ Trish said, edging around the tape.
Maureen glanced over as if she hadn’t looked past the cop and the tape before now. ‘Can you believe this? My car . . .’
‘Max Tully’s gone missing,’ Trish interrupted. ‘And that blood might have something to do with it.’
‘It’s blood?’ Her eyebrows shot up as her gaze found Rennie. ‘I heard Andrew saying something about it in the newsagency. I thought I must have heard wrong. Max taught my kids to sail. What happened?’
Haven Bay was like that. Everyone was connected. That meant Rennie, too. She didn’t want to go through the details again but Maureen deserved some information in return for her impounded car. ‘Trish had her fiftieth birthday party at the cafe last night. He went out to the car and . . .’ disappeared into thin air ‘. . . no one’s seen him since.’
Maureen’s eyes flicked back to the blood and the cop. ‘Well, don’t worry about the car. It can stay there as long as you need. I’ll get Mum to come down.’
Rennie finished off her coffee, eavesdropping as Maureen told the cop the stain was there when she’d parked two hours ago. When she’d left, the officer had stood to one side of the people mover and folded his arms.
‘What happens now?’ Rennie asked him.
‘I’ll stay at the crime scene until the forensics are done.’
‘What’s the other officer doing?’
‘The patrol car is needed for general duties.’
‘So . . . what? You just wait here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You don’t go and, I don’t know, investigate?’ She heard the sarcasm in her voice and saw the cop square his shoulders.
‘A detective will be here shortly. He’ll want to speak to you but you don’t have to wait here. I have your details. Just make sure you keep your phone on so he can contact you.’
‘My partner is missing. I’m not going to turn my phone off.’
‘Rennie,’ Trish said quietly, ‘why don’t we go sit in the cafe for a while?’
She didn’t want to sit. The sitting and the waiting and the standing around were making her uneasy and irritated. She clenched her teeth, closed her eyes, heard her sister’s voice in her head. We don’t wait. Get your backpack. We’re leaving.
Trish slipped a hand around her forearm. ‘Have you had anything to eat today?’
Rennie pushed the memory down and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Then come on. You need to eat.’
Is that what other people did when they couldn’t make sense of what was going on? Comfort themselves with food instead of hard-and-fast rules and backpacks and distance?
Trish didn’t give her a lot of choice, steering her in the direction of Skiffs, looking back at the cop as she did so. ‘Can I get you a coffee, officer? I own the cafe in the main street.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘A cappuccino?’
‘Two sugars.’ He dug around in a trouser pocket.
‘It’s fine, my shout for guarding the . . . well, you know. I’ll send someone out with it.’
*
Rennie sat on the edge of a chair at Trish’s desk. It was really just a small table like all the others but tucked into a corner by the counter where she could plug her laptop in. ‘Wait there while I organise some food.’ She pointed at Rennie as if she were a beagle that might bound off if left unattended.
‘I’m waiting.’ Rennie rubbed her hands over her face and through her hair, then folded her arms tightly. Most of the tables were full, pretty standard for a Sunday with the mix of late breakfasts and early lunches at this time of the day. Life as usual. Except for Max.
Trish’s computer bag was beside the desk, her laptop not yet unpacked. Some of the ordering and accounts for the cafe were done here but most days Trish sat and did what she’d been doing for thirty years – writing. She was a journalist by trade, had used it to work her way around the world. As Trish described it, not a war zone junkie or a save-the-planet type but scraping together a living writing inspiring, entertaining fluff. Mainly travel, some fashion, food and film, and the odd personality piece – if she bumped into someone high profile she could talk into an interview and photos. All in good fun, she said. No tell-alls, an occasional junket to a luxury resort and plenty of hospitality work to help pay the travel expenses.
She met Pav in Serbia when it was still a part of Yugoslavia. He’d been working in a dodgy, backstreet restaurant and had to leave in a hurry so they did it together. Rennie never heard the why, just that they travelled for ten years, Pav talking his way into kitchens while Trish wrote articles about street markets and fashion houses, alpine dinners, jungle treks and the glorious places she found off the beaten track. They came back to Sydney to nurse Trish’s dying mum and when she’d finally, painfully, passed away, Trish brought Pav out to Haven Bay to show him the old holiday house before it was sold. And they never left.
Now she wrote magazine articles and a popular blog, ran a travel website and organised the occasional tour, all from Skiffs. Someone else who’d given away one life for another in Haven Bay.
‘Pav’s making your favourite,’ Trish said as she slipped into the chair opposite.
‘Thanks.’ French toast, she thought, and another memory surfaced – the first time she’d eaten it, the morning after a bloody and terrifying night when Sergeant Evan Delaney had taken Rennie and her sister home for some of his wife’s cooking. It ended up being the start of the four-month stay during which she’d scoffed down Claire’s French toast with lashings of maple syrup every Sunday morning. Pav’s version was a little fancier with spiced fruit compote and Greek yogurt on the side but it was still comfort food. And it reminded Rennie she needed some help.
‘Hayden turned up last night,’ she told Trish. ‘Rang from the train at three am wanting Max to pick him up at the station.’
Trish’s eyes widened in surprise. She’d known Hayden since before he started school, before Max’s ex-wife Leanne took him to Sydney to live. ‘Did Max know he was coming?’
Rennie shook her head and told her about the ‘Oh, it’s you’ greeting, the conversation with Leanne and missing the plane to Cairns. ‘I
thought . . . hoped Max would turn up this morning and Hayden wouldn’t have to know anything about it. And I wouldn’t have to try to sit him down and talk to him.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I left him asleep in bed. Which is the next issue. I think I should hang around for this detective but I want to ring the house to see if Max has called and I don’t know what to tell Hayden. He’s a kid, he shouldn’t be told over the phone that his dad is missing and I’m not sure I’m the right person to deliver the message.’
Trish cocked her head. She loved Hayden and she knew Rennie struggled with him. She also understood what Rennie meant about not being the right person. She hadn’t tagged her Don’t-Fuck-Me-About Rennie for nothing. ‘What about Naomi and James? Maybe they could be there when he’s told.’
Aunty Naomi and Uncle James were distant-enough relatives and too great a source of good times and nice gifts to warrant Hayden’s sneer-and-grunt treatment. ‘Good idea. What about calling the house? Any suggestions how to handle that?’
‘Could Naomi phone and ask for Max? See if Hayden’s spoken to him?’
‘Yeah, that could work. I’ll call her.’
Trish reached for the cordless phone behind the counter. ‘Here, use this so you don’t tie up your mobile.’
Rennie stood as she dialled, unable to sit still any longer, edging around customers to the street entrance and peering out as she spoke to Naomi.
She’d heard from James and sounded anxious and apologetic that she didn’t have better news. There was no sign of Max at the plant so James had gone back to MineLease and found nothing changed from last night.
As Naomi talked, Rennie watched a kid coast past on a skateboard. He crossed the road, hit the kerb on the lake side, found air and landed shoulder first on the grass. Yesterday, she might have grinned. Today, she just scanned past him to the figures in the park, looking for Max-like bodies among the walkers and joggers and bike riders.
She told Naomi about Hayden, asked if she could ring the house without spilling the beans and come around later to help break the news.
A family group had gathered in the park. It looked like children, parents and grandparents. Food was being laid out on a picnic table, kids were crawling and running and falling over. A couple of men checked out the communal barbecue, another man had a camera out taking snaps of the lake, the park, the kids. Then turned around and aimed the lens at the street.
Rennie eased away from the door, watching him from inside the cafe: older, thin, a brimmed hat covering his face. Tourists weren’t unheard of in Haven Bay, she reminded herself, and the main street hadn’t changed much in a hundred years. Plenty of reason to take photos, even the locals did it. But today, with her past on rewind, it made her uncomfortable.
‘Rennie?’ Naomi asked on the other end of the phone.
‘Hmm?’
‘I said, when do you want to tell Hayden?’
Never. She knew what it was like to be a kid and get bad news and she didn’t want to be the messenger. But pretty soon Hayden would want to know where his father was. ‘Give me an hour.’
Trish was at the table when she hung up. As she sat, Eliza appeared with the French toast.
‘It’s horrible why he’s here and everything,’ she said, depositing the plates. ‘But I just took the coffee out to the car park and how hot is that cop?’
It was possibly a tad tactless, but Rennie smiled. Eliza was twenty, at uni part-time, four days a week at Skiffs, and when she’d started there in her last year of school, she’d been self-conscious and, as far was Rennie was concerned, too sweet for her own good. Rennie made it her mission to toughen her up. Taught her how to handle the customers, to fend off the leery ones and stand up to the complainers – and how to cuss in the kitchen and rib Pav without mercy. The cop comment made Rennie proud. ‘I wasn’t really paying attention. Did you stop for a chat?’
A soft pink crept across her cheeks. ‘Just for a second.’
‘Good for you.’
She grinned proudly. Trish dismissed her with a shunt of her head, looked back at Rennie, her face suddenly solemn.
Rennie’s stomach tightened. ‘What?’
‘This situation with Max, it might not be what you think.’
What she thought was that something like this belonged in her other life. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
Trish reached across the table and took Rennie’s hand. ‘He’s done this before.’
10
Something shifted inside Rennie. She pulled her fingers from Trish’s grasp. ‘What has he done before?’
‘Disappeared.’
Rennie didn’t want to believe her, wanted to tell Trish she had it wrong, that Max had never done anything like that, that he wouldn’t. But Trish had no reason to lie. Still, there was an accusation in her voice when she spoke. ‘When?’
‘Look, I didn’t want to say anything in front of the cop . . .’
‘When?’
‘When he and Leanne were together.’
Rennie had met Leanne, had heard the pissed-off way she spoke to Max. She’d wondered what they’d ever seen in each other. Leanne was attractive in that well-coiffed, fake nails, plenty of make-up kind of way and Max was as unpretentious and laid-back as you could get. Rennie imagined living with someone who had an attitude like that would make anyone want to walk out and slam a door every now and then, just to breathe some clean air. And she imagined Leanne would keep the drama going for as long as she needed to. ‘What do you mean by “disappeared”?’
‘He took off and didn’t tell her where he was.’
Rennie’s pulse picked up. ‘How long was he gone?’
‘The first time, it was just overnight. They’d had . . .’
‘The first time? How many times did it happen?’
‘Four or five, from memory. The final time, it was for a week.’
Rennie stared at her. This was Max they were talking about. Max who didn’t let the sun go down on an argument. Who knew what it was like to be left alone and fearful. She pushed her plate away, the sweet, eggy smell of it making her nauseated now. ‘And what, he just came back and they picked up where they left off?’
‘I don’t think it was as simple as that but yes, he came home, said he was sorry and they tried to work things out. They were unhappy for a long time. They fought a lot. Every time he took off, it was after a huge blue.’
Rennie didn’t remember her parents’ fights but she’d heard the stories and seen the scars on her mother’s body. She shoved back her chair, wanting to move but stuck to the spot by disbelief and horror. ‘He hit Leanne?’
Trish frowned. ‘No.’
‘You said a fight.’
Trish watched her a second. ‘I meant a shouting match, not domestic abuse.’
Rennie ran a hand through her hair as she tried to make sense of what was whirling inside her. Relief and disbelief. Horror and confusion. Max had shouting matches? He’d disappeared before? There was a chance this wasn’t an accident or violence, that he’d just gone somewhere and not told her? It should be good news but it didn’t feel like it.
A rumble from the table made her look down. Her phone vibrating on the timber. A text from Naomi: Spoke to H. No calls from M. Sorry. C u soon. X
She looked at Trish. ‘Naomi.’
‘Anything?’
‘No.’
Trish made a face. There was sympathy in it but she looked uncomfortable, too.
‘What?’ Rennie asked again.
She stirred her coffee slowly, as if she needed the time to make a decision. ‘I saw the two of you having . . . well, words at the party last night and you were both a bit tense when you got here and, look, it’s none of my business but I thought if you’ve been arguing, having problems, whatever . . .’ She didn’t finish.
‘Wh
at are you saying? That he’s gone somewhere because we had an argument?’
‘It might be a reason.’
Rennie pressed her lips together with incensed denial. Max wouldn’t leave over a . . . a spat. It was ridiculous. ‘We didn’t have a fight. We don’t have problems. We . . .’ She stopped, doubt like a fist in her throat.
What the hell did she know about relationship problems? Before Max, she’d never spent enough time with anyone to have a problem. The only problems were that she didn’t get close and she didn’t stick around. Were they having problems and she didn’t know?
She’d snapped at him after the road rage kid finally left. They’d snapped at each other later at the cafe. She remembered Max’s words, the ones he tossed at her before she went to the kitchen. Let’s just file it with all the other stuff you haven’t told me.
She glanced up at Trish. She wasn’t good at talking about herself – had spent most of her adult life revealing as little as she could – but maybe she needed a second opinion from someone who’d known Max longer than she had. Someone who knew how to hold a man for more than a few short years. ‘What constitutes having problems?’
Trish seemed about to smile before a frown flitted across her forehead. ‘I don’t know, hon. Arguing a lot. If it was Pav we were talking about, I’d say throwing things.’
Rennie hesitated. ‘We argued yesterday.’
‘What about?’
‘The kid in the car park. I suppose I should’ve been grateful he wanted to protect me but I didn’t want that, it wasn’t what . . .’ Look after yourself. Don’t do anything stupid. She’d wanted to shout her sister’s standing order at him, surprised that after so long they were the first words on her lips in the driveway of the bottle shop. ‘Then he carried on as though I was a basket case over it, like I couldn’t handle it. And . . . and I was mad at him.’
‘That’s just shock.’
Not shock. She knew what that was like. ‘I told him he was an idiot if he went to check on the car.’