Hana Du Rose Mysteries Boxed Set: Books 1 - 4

by Bowes, K T

  Bodie hovered at the door, seeming unsure whether to come in or not. He also looked as though he hadn’t slept and despite his exit the night before, Hana felt pleased to see him. “Come in, love. You can entertain me. I’ve got myself into a bit of trouble.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he smiled woodenly. Bodie sank stiffly into a chair next to the bed. He wasn’t in uniform, but the dark vest he wore under his jacket looked like one of those from underneath his work shirt during the winter. He sat forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, dark head low and eyes raking the floor. Hana’s son sat that way for some time not speaking and she was loath to break the silence.

  Before Vik’s death, Hana would have rushed in with questions or suggestions about how he might be feeling and he would have responded with half-truths to satisfy her maternal desire to fix everything. But on a single-day years ago, their lives detonated and while Hana was sorting herself out, Bodie grew into a man and the depth of his emotions spread way beyond her understanding. Hana remembered how at the funeral, her gangly son put his arm protectively around Izzie’s shoulder, shielding her from the well-meaning glances of those in attendance. He had only been a head taller than his sister and yet he effectively sheltered her. Next to him, Marcus, deeply affected by Vik’s death, shivered and shook throughout the service. As Bodie increasingly shut down to her, Marcus opened up easily but for a time, Hana lost her son almost completely. Only in later years had she regained something of what she lost in him. Until now.

  She waited patiently while he wrestled with the thing he wanted to say. When finally he spoke, his voice sounded husky and strangely cracked. “When…is…the…baby…due?”

  “Around the end of January, we think,” Hana answered carefully and then waited again. She was desperate to know how he felt about having a sibling this many years later, needing to know if he would be able to accept him or her…to love them. But she couldn’t ask. Bodie sat up straighter and rubbed his hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as though staving off a headache. He blinked rapidly and shook his head before continuing on a different tack. “How are you feeling? How’s the arm?” He waved his own as though in demonstration and Hana felt a sinking feeling as the candid moment passed. He wasn’t going to talk to her about anything important. From here on in, it would be small talk.

  Hana felt angry. He could freeze her out as easily as dropping the security shutters on a bank robber. Anger and irritation were lost on Bodie Johal. He would just get up and walk away. At least he was talking to her. It was a start. Hana sighed loudly but didn’t get the opportunity to answer him as her long-suffering nurse re-entered the room and did it for her. “She’s feeling rotten and her arm is painful I believe, judging by her delirious wandering in the night and exploits this morning.”

  Bodie looked interested and sat up a little straighter. “What did you do? The nurse on the way in just said you were bored.”

  Hana waved the whole thing aside with her good arm, racking her brain as to how to pull things back round to talking about the baby. But it was fruitless. The nurse, young and attractive, expanded on the tale of Hana’s attempts at twice removing her own drip. Judging by her stance and sudden enthusiasm the nurse was developing an affinity for the stunning young man in front of her. Bodie paid polite but attentive courtesy, listening and laughing in all the right places without overtly flirting.

  Hana sat lonely on top of the covers while the nurse moved on to questions about what Bodie did for a living, possibly sizing him up as husband material, or worse. She had a hunger in her eyes, not minimised by his statement, “I’m a cop.”

  Hana wanted her to go, but didn’t know how to make her. In the end, a simple question did it. “When does breakfast come? I feel thirsty.”

  The nurse looked taken aback, drawn down into the real world of her job. “Oh,” she looked perplexed, “I don’t know why you missed it. Maybe you were in the bathroom.”

  She flounced off to see. Hana sighed again, wishing she knew what to say and yearning for the peace and regularity of Culver’s Cottage more than anything. Bodie picked up on her desperation and came over to perch on the bed next to her. He stroked her hand gently. “Does Izzie know…about the baby?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Hana replied, “nobody in the family knows. Except you.”

  Bodie looked uncannily pleased about that fact and Hana saw a small smirk play across his lips. It seemed sibling rivalry was never over. “I want to tell them all myself,” she warned and Bodie nodded. Hana cringed inwardly at the thought of telling Logan’s mother. She nursed horrid thoughts about the woman until she corrected herself. Anyway, she would let Logan break the news and then make sure they stayed away from the hotel. Forever, if at all possible.

  Bodie looked out of the window. “Has the detective been back?” he asked innocently.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Hana replied, but then started to wonder. She had a couple of memories of him, but they could have all been the same hazy occasion.

  Bodie continued, “They got heaps from Pete. He’s awesome. All that forgetting classes and boys’ names is a load of rubbish. He remembered their rego plate, the type of car, right down to the alloys, the whole lot. And he described the guys down to the last freckle, up until he passed out. After that, he was a bit lost. Interesting hey?”

  To a cop! Hana thought sarcastically. But not to someone who lived through it. A sudden awful thought permeated Hana’s mind and she panicked inwardly. “How’s the guy I ran over? Will they charge me with grievous bodily harm or something?”

  Bodie looked at her curiously. “Not unless you did it on purpose and I don’t think anyone thought you did. I know we get a hammering in the media, but we do know what self-defence looks like when we see it!”

  “But I didn’t hit him in self-defence…” Hana started, alarmed when Bodie jumped off the bed and held his hand up to silence her.

  “Mum! If you’re going to tell me you did it on purpose, then don’t! I would have to arrest you and I don’t want to!”

  “No, no,” pleaded Hana, “I meant it was an accident! I thought it was reverse and he was running at us and it was really first-gear and the car lurched…and…”

  “Fantastic!” said Bodie, with a real edge of nastiness in his voice, “Dangerous driving…Mum…stop talking will you?” Hana’s son started to move away from her, backing up towards the door. Hana felt frightened. Prison loomed ahead of her and other tortured thoughts crawled over the surface of her tired and drugged brain. Maybe he was dead. A sob escaped her and she put her good hand up to her mouth to stop another one coming and the one crowding behind it. Bodie was paralysed on the other side of the room near the door, not really knowing what to do. The visit hadn’t gone well at all and he felt guilty.

  They both felt him enter the room even before they saw him. He carried a presence which intimidated even the young experienced police sergeant. It was too late for Bodie to put things right. “Excuse me,” said Logan in a polite but hard voice, moving past Bodie into the room. He wore blue jeans with a denim jacket and white tee shirt, looking every bit the capable cowboy and Bodie promptly resented him with every fibre of his being. Both men were tall, olive skinned and handsome. They could have been related, even down to the hard looks they issued each other silently across the room. But they weren’t. And Bodie realised suddenly with horror he was jealous. Jealous of Logan. The older man had stolen away one of his anchor pins, leaving Bodie feeling very much out in the cold and he didn’t like either the feeling or the realisation. Not one bit.

  Logan went straight to Hana and without asking what was wrong, parked himself on the vacant corner of the bed right next to her. He pulled her head onto his shoulder, pushing her hair back from her face and speaking quietly and soothingly to her. “It’s all gonna be fine,” he whispered.

  “I don’t want to have the baby in prison,” Hana sobbed. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I messed the gears up and…and…”

  �
��Shhhh,” Logan pacified her. It was an intimate moment and Bodie felt like a boat that had slipped its mooring and bumped aimlessly along the harbour wall. Out of place. Cut loose. He gritted his jaw, waved a general goodbye to the room and left quickly. Hana didn’t need him anymore. He was redundant. And furious.

  He marched from the ward without seeing the practiced smile from the nurse who clearly fancied him. Bodie banged his way into the lift, wanting to kick the sides of it in until he fell down the lift shaft, but resisting. His dark eyes blazed like coals in his face as he stomped to the car, slammed its doors and drove it cruelly out of the car park. He narrowly missed the barrier as it raised too slowly for his BMW, which he gunned towards it way too fast. His teenage years ran like a movie through his head.

  After his dad died he, Bodie gathered them up, his mum and sister. He took care of them and now, he was discarded because this cowboy appeared. Who the hell was this guy anyway? Angry swear words coursed through the young man’s head as he experienced the effect of years of suppressed rage. Bodie checked Logan out before, not on the police system where if he got caught it meant disciplinary action, but using other means. “Maybe I just needed to dig deeper, Mr Du Rose,” Bodie muttered angrily. He drove to work not remembering any of the journey, greeting colleagues at the station with the barest of grunts. Amy was on her way out of the locker room as he entered, catching his arm as he soared past.

  “Hey, you’re early. Thought you were going to see your mum.”

  He shrugged her off, ignoring her as he went into the room, banging his locker door hard against the one next to it as he rived it roughly open. She came back in, attempting once again to get his attention. “Did it not go well then?”

  “Understatement of the year!” Bodie answered spitefully, stripping off his jacket and flinging it into the back of the locker. He didn’t bother using the hanger dangling patiently from the overhead rail inside.

  Amy silently ran through the options playing out in front of her. She felt like walking away from him, letting him get on with it, acting the hurt girlfriend and waiting for him to arrive with his apologies. But he was a cop and her professional self knew if he went out on duty in this mood, he would end up in deep trouble. Amy outranked Bodie. While he was off in Northland, diving to forget his troubles, she used her negative emotions to snatch back the stolen eighteen months which gave her Jas and single-mother status. She was her child’s sole provider and she provided. While Bodie could push her away as the mother of his child, he couldn’t ignore her senior status.

  She kicked the locker room door shut with her foot, almost braining a probationer who arrived late for his shift and leapt back in alarm. From the doorway he heard his superior shout, “Senior Sergeant Johal! Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

  The probationer hurriedly decided to borrow some kit from someone else for this shift. He also decided to make sure when he went out clubbing the night before work and met a girl, he set his watch alarm.

  Back at the hospital, Logan calmed Hana down fairly quickly. “You’re not going to be arrested and you definitely won’t have the baby in prison,” he soothed. Though he was annoyed with his stepson for even talking about such things he defended him, suggesting to Hana she was ill advised to discuss it with him as a serving officer. “Of course, he has to follow the letter of the law,” he argued, “we both keep putting him in this awful position, expecting him to fix things when he’s just a cog in a big chain.”

  Hana sniffed and blustered but largely got onto the tack of, “I want to go home,” which suddenly seemed like the most important thing in her world. She wanted to get back to the peace, normality and splendidly lofty isolation of Culver’s Cottage. She whinged and whined in a childlike voice which sounded a lot like nails on a blackboard. Had she heard herself, Hana would have been ashamed.

  Logan as usual, was infinitely patient, even when she rambled about going back to work on Monday to get ready for the Careers Expo a few weeks away. Hana seemed oblivious to the drip, which sat next to them, silently plipping fluid and medication into her veins at a decent rate. He let her groan and complain, waiting until she was spent and then distracted her with Hemi’s plans for the lounge doors and the roof garden at the cottage. “He thinks he can rebuild the French doors and put a deck in, which stretches across to the hill. Then we might be able to carry the widow’s walk around that side of the property to the roof garden. What do you think?”

  Hana listened keenly, envisioning herself in happier times, sipping wine at the table in the late sunshine, bees buzzing around tubs of flowers with a covered awning and grape vines trailing up the pillars. Then she remembered she wasn’t allowed wine because of the baby and it dawned on her the house faced the wrong way to get the late sunshine and her mood swung back into the self-pitying mode Logan almost managed to dispel.

  He sat on the bed next to her, leaning against the pile of pillows behind them while Hana snuggled closely into his chest. She enjoyed the smell of him, washing powder and deodorant and the aftershave she associated with him. “I love you, Logan Du Rose,” she whispered. “I love your sniff.”

  “Charming!” he smiled back, kissing the top of her head. “You saying I stink?”

  Hana nodded into his shirt and ran her hand down his long thigh. She sighed happily.

  “Heck you look heaps better!” came a deep male voice.

  Hana jumped out of her skin at the abrupt entrance of the newcomer and Logan opened his eyes. “Ouch!” she groaned as the quick movement caused her pain. The stranger didn’t wait for an invitation to stay, but dragged the visitor’s chair to the opposite side of the bed and sat down heavily in it. He jiggled around for a second, getting comfortable with his right ankle resting inelegantly on his left knee so he could write neatly in a pocket book. He slipped off the elastic band which held it closed and flipped the blue cover back. Irritatingly, he clicked the ballpoint pen twice, found the next clear page and looked expectantly at Hana, his fingers poised for writing. Logan let out an inaudible sigh and closed his eyes. Putting his hand up to his mouth he faked a cough which distinctly sounded like, “Tosser!” He had little time for fools and already decided this cop was a full-blown idiot of the highest order.

  “Right,” the man began authoritatively, “I need some more details from you, Mrs Johal…”

  Logan began to react badly even before the use of Hana’s old name, but he sat up too quickly, causing her to let out another, “Ooh,” of pain.

  “Hey! How about some introductions first, officer! Like your name, your rank, maybe even a little showing of a warrant card for starters!”

  The policeman stood up around the same moment Logan’s tan cowboy boots found the lino floor, finding the teacher quicker at moving his lithe form than the more portly detective. Hana cringed as Logan got up close and personal, his nose only a matter of centimetres from the other man’s forehead. He said nothing, stood rigid and threatening, looking the detective up and down while the man inwardly panicked and outwardly bridled.

  “Whoa!” The police detective who had inadvertently let slip about the baby monitor to Bodie the day before, was unexpectedly part of the situation. He put a hand between Logan and the officer and if he noticed the sweat beading on the latter’s now very white face as he fumbled in his pockets for identification, he didn’t comment.

  Logan stepped back. He recognised the newcomer and visibly relaxed. Turning his back towards Logan, a risk he evidently already weighed, the new entrant sized up the other occupant of the room. “What’s going on Simon?” he asked. It sounded as though his teeth were gritted, but neither Hana nor Logan could see his face. The other man, now sweating profusely, pontificated and moved from foot to foot rapidly. Deciding the answer was not going to be rocket science, Detective Sergeant Odering dismissed his junior with a flick of his head and the man gladly scurried from the room.

  Logan remained standing and whilst calmer than he had been, his height and determined stanc
e were still intimidating. Odering was unfazed and indicated the vacant chair, as though asking wordless permission to sit in it. Logan did the slow movement upwards of his head, acceding and returned to Hana’s side.

  “What’s the story?” the regal detective asked, once he was carefully ensconced in the seat and elegantly arranged his trouser legs as he wanted them.

  Logan jabbed his finger towards the doorway with enough venom for the airwaves to reach the retreating back of Detective Simon as he hurried away towards the main exit downstairs. “He,” through gritted teeth, “doesn’t even know my wife’s name!”

  Odering had enough control over his face not to look completely aghast, but surprise still leaked out of his features. Logan went on, “I didn’t see any ID and wasn’t given his name. He wandered in here like a stalker, sat down and then called Hana, Mrs Johal!”

  Odering surmised rightly, along with Logan’s wife, it was the name error which really got him riled. Hana found his possessiveness endearing. The detective shook his well-groomed head, the salt and pepper greys not moving even a hair in the action. “I apologise. It’s not good enough. I will have words.”

  “You don’t get it!” Logan sounded exasperated, “None of you get any of it. Not since it started. He could have been anybody! Do you know how much effort it takes staying safe, keeping my wife safe? Days and days of car switching, driving different routes, parking miles away from work to avoid being followed or worse. Having to get friends and family involved, put at risk, injured. He could have been one of them. He walks in here and starts talking. None of you gets it! My wife was attacked and all that effort was wasted.”

  Odering sat back in the chair and looked from Logan to Hana slowly. His gaze was intense and studious as he took in Logan’s desperation and Hana’s tired, pinched face. Hana saw him chew the inside of his bottom lip as he thought things through. Logan moved back around the room and closed the door for something to do, but even then he didn’t relax and looked as though he struggled to keep himself still and under control. Hana reached out for comfort and found his hand as he came back to the bed. She gripped his fingers tightly.