by JD Nixon
By the end of the day, we hadn’t advanced a mite.
“That’s enough for one day, Tezza,” Baz declared, stretching his arms, his uniform shirt threatening to burst open again. He winked at me. “And besides, I have a date with the delectable Foxy.”
“You should be glad I didn’t mention that to the Super,” I snarked, shutting down my computer.
“A man must have his desires,” he merely smiled. “And she is one desirable woman.”
“Foxy?” I wondered how much of her history she’d disclosed to him. I hadn’t said a word to fill him in, figuring it was none of my business.
“Mmm-hmm. That is one classy lady.”
“Are we talking about the same Foxy? Because there are many things I might call her, but classy isn’t one of them.”
“It’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it?” he said, pushing his chair in under his desk and neatening up some piles of paperwork. I left my desk in the mess it had been at the beginning of the day. No point trying to tidy up now, I rationalised to myself. “See, I’d only touch a Bycraft with an electrified javelin pole, but you and that Bycraft –”
“Jake,” I interrupted. “His name’s Jake. And you’ve met him, so you know that.”
“It’s all a matter a taste. Give me a full-bodied, experienced firecracker like Foxy any day.”
“She’s all yours,” I said sourly, stung by his implied criticism of Jake. I was getting pretty sick of people questioning my romantic judgement. “Nobody else wants her.”
“Tezza, you really need to add a dollop of honey to that vinegar sometimes. It makes a real difference for a woman. Have a chat to Foxy about it one day. She said she’s more than happy to help you out.”
Pissed off at that comment, I left him to lock up, slamming closed the front door of the station extra hard (because I usually slammed it everyday anyway), more than a few flakes of paint floating to the veranda boards as a result. I span off in the gravel of the carpark as speedily as I could in our ancient Land Rover, which wasn’t anywhere as near as fast or furious as I’d like.
There were a multitude of reasons why Baz annoyed me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why any criticism, overt or implied, of my relationship with Jake bothered me the most. My only answer was that I hated being judged. None of them had bothered to get to know Jake as I had, so I didn’t know what made them think they were qualified to judge me for being his girlfriend.
But how well do you really know Jake? My mind taunted me, internally voicing one of the main current worries in my life. After all, he’d admitted to visiting Red in jail twice without telling me. And today I’d learned he’d obviously told Lola of my intentions to attend Denny’s funeral, otherwise how could she have known? Jake was the only person I’d discussed it with, apart from Dad, and I knew Dad and Lola had never been on any kind of speaking terms. And then there was still that lingering doubt about who’d installed that hatch in Lola’s ceiling through which Red had escaped a few months ago.
So many questions, and yet I couldn’t seem to overcome my hesitance to demand real answers from Jake for once. Why? I suspected it revolved around my deep-seated fear of failing at another relationship. That would make it three from three in my entire, almost twenty-eight-year-old life. I knew I’d never have the confidence to become involved in another romantic relationship if something happened between Jake and me. It would just prove to myself that some people were born to be alone – especially Tess Fuller.
Depressed by those thoughts, I arrived home to find it empty, a note from Dad saying he was spending the evening with Adele as she remained so upset about the accident. Sighing to myself, I opened the pantry, noting I hadn’t found time to go shopping for far too long. I settled for a lonely dinner of peanut butter on crackers, a tub of strawberry yoghurt, and a glass of orange juice.
I turned on the TV and plonked on the lounge to munch on the crackers, having to brush the crumbs off myself every minute or so. Our home phone rang. I let it, not budging a centimetre from the lounge. I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone, and we had no answering machine, so I was safe from being bothered.
Fat chance.
My mobile, which I’d instinctively placed on the coffee table, buzzed next. Groaning, I picked it up. Some folk just didn’t know how to leave other folk alone.
“Tess Fuller.”
“Hi, Tess,” said a hesitant voice. “Um, it’s Harley here. You remember me? Finn’s friend, Harley?”
“Yeah, I remember. I just met you yesterday,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “How did you get my number?”
“Um, Finn gave it to us.”
“Ookaay,” I said, dragging the word out to make my disapproval blatantly obvious. “What do you want? Have you remembered something about yesterday?”
“No. Um, geez. Um. Oh boy. You make me so nervous.” A longish pause. “We thought you might like to have dinner with us tonight at the bistro,” he burst out in a rush.
“I’m already eating dinner, thanks anyway,” I said with a clear conscience, hanging up without another word.
It was only later in bed that night that I thought about what Dad had said, and what Baz had said. Perhaps I had been a little ungracious to the two visitors. I suppose it wasn’t their fault they were friends with Maguire.
I rolled over and fell asleep, promising myself to spend some time with them tomorrow. But I almost didn’t get the chance.
Early at the station the next morning, my first callers were Trig and Harley.
“Enjoy your dinner last night?” I asked politely, leaning one arm on the counter.
“No,” Trig said bluntly. “Frankly, we haven’t enjoyed anything about this place since we arrived.”
“Welcome to Little Town,” I said dryly.
“We’re leaving now,” Harley blurted out. “Going back to the city.”
I was taken aback at that. “Now? But you were staying today too, weren’t you?”
“Why would we bother?” Trig shot back. “We lied about being the hiking kind of people, and you’ve made it clear you don’t want us here. We’ve assured Finn you’re okay, so our job here is done. Plus, that whole accident was just so . . .”
“Yeah, just so . . .” Harley agreed quietly, shaking his hanging head.
All my misgivings about my behaviour last night swamped me. I was ashamed of my inhospitality and lack of sympathy towards them.
“Well,” I said slowly, looking down at the crude graffiti scratched into the old counter. “I’d definitely have dinner with you tonight if you were here. I didn’t last night because I had prior plans.” I lifted eyes to each of them in turn, gauging their reactions to my abominable, and I thought rather transparent, lie. Trig’s eyes were sceptical, so I honed in on Harley, judging him to be the easiest make of the pair. “Maguire used to take me out to dinner a lot, probably because he made the worst food I’d ever tasted.”
“Finn?” Harley asked in surprise. “Really? He’s a great cook.”
“Ghastly cook. Totally inedible food.”
Trig shook his head, smiling. “You really are a piece of work. Finn warned us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I proclaimed, all innocence. “But I’ll happily have dinner with you tonight at the bistro.” I turned to leave to the inner office, before spinning around again. “But only if you’re here, of course.”
“We’ll be here,” piped up Harley.
“You’re paying.”
“Of course,” he promised.
“You’re nice. I like you,” I said to him, allowing the ghost of a smile on my mouth. My eyes flicked to Trig. “Haven’t decided about you yet.”
I left them at the counter, a slow delighted beam spreading across Trig’s face.
Chapter 4
The rest of the day dragged on interminably. With a tiresome methodicalness that I hoped Baz noticed, I rang all the outlying farmers to see if anyone could help us identify our accident victim. But I had no suc
cess.
Baz, convinced that someone in the pub had to know something, hauled his butt off there for some direct questioning of patrons. Had he been Des, I would have resigned myself to that being the very last I saw of him for the working day. But Baz would return, as he advised me at least three times when he hesitantly left me alone in the station to undertake my farmer phone calls. Despite what the Super had demanded of him, he was beginning to face the stark reality that in a two-cop station, it wasn’t always feasible to stick together when a serious matter arose. I had to virtually push him out the door to make him leave.
Having no luck with the farmers, I wracked my brains trying to think of another possible avenue of enquiry. A quick phone call to Mr X, which Zelda picked up, revealed the sad fact that they hadn’t advanced much in their investigations either.
The kid had to have a name.
The counter bell rang and it was Dave, a strawberry farmer, standing there, waiting for attention. Dave, a quiet man who lived with his elderly mother a way out of town, had been charged with indecent exposure after an unfortunate misunderstanding between him and some vigilant parents of children from the local primary school. He’d been lucky not to have a conviction recorded for that offence, instead sentenced to a probation period, which he’d since served out. I was surprised to hear from him, because after that mortifying experience, he’d kept the lowest profile of anyone in town.
“Hi, Dave. What can I do for you today?”
“Officer Tess, I don’t like to be a nuisance, as you know.”
“I know,” I said, with a great deal of genuine sympathy. I’d been first-hand witness to the total humiliation he’d suffered from that incident.
“When we heard about the terrible accident the other day, my mother thought I should speak to you straight away.”
I badly wanted to hear what he had to say, but small talk was always important with the townsfolk. “And how is your mother these days?”
“So-so. She thinks she’s younger than her body will let her be. It’s sometimes difficult trying to convince her otherwise.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Please give her my best wishes.”
“I will.”
“So, Dave. Why did your mother think you should speak to me? Didn’t you want to?”
“No. We’ve been squabbling over it for a whole day.”
“Why didn’t you want to speak to me?”
“I was embarrassed.”
“Any information could be useful. What happened, Dave?” I reached for a pad, feeling what he said might be significant.
He sighed in discomfort, not a man willing to talk. “About a week ago, I gave a lift to two young people who were hitching on the road from Big Town to here.”
“Dave,” I admonished. “You shouldn’t pick up hitchhikers.”
“They were just kids. I give people lifts all time, and so do most of the other townsfolk.”
“Even still.” I was hardly one to scold – I picked up hitchhikers in the police car now and then when they looked particularly desperate. But then, I had a gun to protect myself.
“And you dropped them somewhere in town?” I asked, my pen poised.
“Not quite,” he said, flushing an ugly red. “They dropped me somewhere in town.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“They carjacked me, Officer Tess. Robbed me and carjacked me.”
I couldn’t help but stare at him for a moment in disbelief. “And you didn’t report it to me? What the hell, Dave?”
“I told you. I was embarrassed.”
“What weapon did they have?”
“Just a pissy little knife. But the kid, the boy, grabbed me around the throat from the back seat, and threatened to slit my neck if I didn’t stop and get out.”
“There was a girl too?”
“Yes.”
I scribbled furiously on my notepad. “What was she doing?”
“Mostly crying.”
“She wasn’t involved in the crime?”
“Not really. I mean, she was there, but she mostly just sat in the back seat and cried.”
“Did you get the impression she might have been a kidnap victim herself?”
He thought for a moment, and I was happy to wait while he did. “No. She was with him. They seemed to be together.”
“So he threatened you and you pulled over?”
“Yes.” He glanced down, shamefaced. “You probably think I’m a coward. You probably would have overcome him, and arrested him. But I’m a farmer. I don’t know how to do that kind of stuff. And I have my mother to think about. She needs me alive more than she needs me to be some kind of hero.”
“Absolutely,” I said immediately. “Don’t kick yourself over that, Dave. We’re always telling people not to be a hero in those circumstances. Some people can’t be reasoned with, or overcome. That’s why they give us cops weapons.” He nodded in pensive understanding. “What happened next?”
“I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. He told me to get out, and to throw my wallet on to the passenger seat. So I did. He climbed over the seat to the driver’s seat, slammed the door, drove off and left me standing in the road like a fool. I had to catch a ride home with Brett Cusack.”
“What type of vehicle was it? We can put a watch out for it.”
He sighed, as if expelling copious amounts of disappointment with life. I empathised with him. He meticulously reeled off make, model, colour, and number plate. “Luckily, it was my old ute. It was on its last wheels to be honest, and I have a newer one, so I haven’t been left without transportation. Thank God for that. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise.”
“What was in your wallet? Can you remember?”
He gave me as best a description as his memory allowed. He’d lost an insignificant amount of money and a small-limit credit card during the heist, so the young thieves hadn’t made off with much.
“Can you describe the couple?”
Now Dave could impress you with his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything to do with growing strawberries, but when it came to people, he was infuriatingly vague.
“He was about one-seventy high; she was about one-sixty. He was thinnish with bad acne, floppy mid-brown hair, wearing a flannie, t-shirt, jeans, and runners. She was small, very pretty but chubby, blonde, shoulder-length hair, wearing a button-up shirt and jeans. Didn’t see her shoes.”
“Did they refer to each other by name at any time?”
“No. They didn’t speak to each other, except once when she started crying in the back. He took her hand and said, ‘Babe’. That’s all. Babe. But he sounded upset, so that’s what made me think they were together.”
Though I thanked him profusely, I was disappointed with his evidence, an emotion I expressed at great length to Baz later. I strode around the back office when he finally returned from the pub empty-handed.
“The best witness we’ve uncovered –”
“To be fair, love, he uncovered himself. No credit to us.”
“The best witness we have,” I amended my rant, “and we’re no further forward. We still don’t know this kid’s name. It’s so frustrating.”
“Instead of complaining about what we don’t have, let’s concentrate on what we do have. Sit down and think,” he suggested.
I planted my butt. “We have a solid witness who can recognise them.”
“How is that not a jackpot?”
“I suppose we now also have a car to keep a watch out for.”
“That’s concrete evidence.”
“And we have a dynamite witness, or perpetrator, if we can find the girl the boy was with.”
“Now you’re thinking.”
“And he had Dave’s wallet. Maybe he tried to use his credit card at some point?”
“And?”
I sat up in excitement. “I’ll ring the credit card company for a recent statement.”
“Great idea, but no, you won’t. Instead, you�
�ll ring the dee team in Wattling Bay, tell them everything you’ve found out, and they’ll ring the credit card company for a recent statement.”
“But it’s my information,” I whined.
“It’s their case, Tezza. You’re not a detective. You have to remember that. And I have to keep reminding you that.”
“You’re ruining my day,” I sulked, picking up the phone.
“I’m trying to save your career. You’re not a detective. Start acting like a general duties cop in a small town. Somebody filed a missing sheep report? Sure, knock yourself out investigating its disappearance. But when the Super assigns a case to a dee team, you step back. Got it?”
My irritation wouldn’t be damped down. “Maguire and I solved a murder, you know.”
“And what good came of that? Finn was suspended, and you were placed under disciplinary supervision. That was a brilliant outcome for both of you for taking on things outside your duties, wasn’t it?”
I hung up the phone and stood. “That’s how things work here, Baz. It’s hard to get the attention of the Big Town dees sometimes. Are you suggesting I just allow crime to flourish under my nose?”
He sighed patiently. “Sit down and ring X and let him know what’s going on. And then you can storm off in a huff at my plain speaking.”
“I can handle plain speaking,” I retorted, reluctantly plonking down in my seat again and ringing Mr X. But not even ten minutes of his charming banter had any effect on my mood.
When I finished the call, I proceeded to complete the huff I’d started earlier.
“Don’t forget you’re having dinner with the lads tonight,” Baz called good-naturedly.