Murder with the Lot (9 page)

Monaghan stopped mid-march and glared. ‘You're a foolish woman, Mrs Tuplin,' he snapped out. ‘But I suppose plenty of other people have told you that.'

I bristled. This man had no business coming into my house and insulting me. And after all I'd done. Terry stared at the floor, like he had an appointment with a fault line due to split open at his feet.

‘Do you make a habit of phoning the police with stupid lies? Telling them you've found a body?'

I stared at Monaghan a tick. And then I understood. Not a blissful type of understanding. Monaghan swished his coat and stamped out. Terry followed, turning briefly to give me a sad look.

How could a body just keep on disappearing?

Next morning, Brad announced he was heading out. ‘Claire needs a lift to Hustle. She's visiting some people there.'

‘Oh? Anyone I know?'

‘Um.' He glanced at Claire. He bit his lip.

‘It's, ah, some research. To do with my family history,' said Claire.

‘Claire, does your family in Perth know you're here? Do you want to call them?'

‘My mother's…ah, she's not really interested.'

‘Oh?' I said.

‘Um, she joined this cult…'

‘Right. Does she know you're expecting?'

‘Not really. She's pretty occupied.' Claire shrugged.

I looked at her, worried.

Claire must have seen my expression. ‘It's OK, Mrs Tuplin. I'm fine.'

A pause.

‘Thing is, I could do with your help in the shop today, Bradley.' I adopted a brisk tone. ‘I've got things I need to do.' Like find my car. Maybe Vern could help. He was bound to have something useful in that notebook.

‘Can you lend me fifty bucks, Mum?'

‘Brad. Listen, we need to have a little talk about money.'

‘It's just a loan. I'll pay you back.'

‘When?'

He glanced at Claire. ‘Well, when I can. You know I don't get paid for what I do.'

‘I know. That's the problem. Look, all the passion in the world isn't going to pay the bills, son. You need to get yourself a job.'

‘And who exactly is going to employ me? Activism doesn't make the most attractive CV. Or my police history. Anyway, you should think of the money you give me as an investment.'

‘In what?'

‘In a better world, Mum. In the environment. In the continuation of our species into the future. And it'll help to compensate for what you're doing in the shop. I've told you enough times about flake and snapper. You have to stop selling stuff that's overfished. Seriously.'

Claire nodded, staring at me with those pale blue eyes, so pale they made me think of polar ice shelves melting.

‘You have to get out of this business,' said Brad. ‘It's not sustainable. You've got to move on from all this pre-climate-change thinking.'

I really had to talk to the boy properly when I got a minute. It was time he made a few decisions about life. Especially if that was his baby.

‘This shop provides a vital service, Bradley. And every job has its crappy side,' I said.

‘Oh yeah? So what if you were, say, a marine biologist? Studying live fish, instead of cutting up dead ones? What'd be the crappy side of that?'

I thought a tick. Piero would have known what to say to these sorts of questions. He was always good with Brad. It was Piero who'd got him started on environmental goings-on in the first place. Nursing injured ex-racing blue-tongue lizards, back when Brad was nine.

‘Well, there'd be a lot of sand rubbing around in your togs. That'd have to get annoying, day after day.'

Brad humphed and walked out.

I started shredding some cabbage for the coleslaw. One thing was clear. Brad definitely wasn't going to make it as any kind of takeaway monopolist.

Rae tramped through to my freezers, boxes of frozen flake, whiting and snapper stacked in her sinewy arms. Tall and wide, she's a woman that could shovel out a mallee gum without assistance.

‘Couple of cops in the district asking questions, Rae.' I side-stepped out of her way.

‘Drugs, is it? Cops snapped down on that meth lab at Weerimilla, after their silos closed. Kill a town and the dropkicks move right in.' She thumped the boxes into my freezer.

‘Dunno. No mention of drugs. They're after a fella called Clarence Hocking-Lee. Done something suss, sounds like.'

‘Not that little shit from Muddy Soak?'

‘You know him?'

She laughed, a sound more like a throat being cleared. ‘Bastard crashed my van, trying to nick it. Full of crays. Special delivery for Stefano's in Mildura.'

‘But I thought Muddy Soak was crime free? Since 1980-something-something.'

‘Yeah. This was in Hustle. That kid'll soon bugger up the record for Muddy Soak though.'

‘And his nanna, Mona Hocking-Lee? What's she like?'

‘Yeah, she's all right. Paid for the repairs to my van, no mucking around. Can't be easy for the woman. Raised those two grandkids on her own.'

‘What about their parents?'

‘Dead.' Rae wiped her ruddy face.

‘Oh? How?'

‘What's this, some sorta Hocking-Lee inquisition? S'pose you're doing this for Dean. His career, huh?'

‘Yep. Could be a good little opportunity for him. Just need to get him galvanised.'

‘Well, Ford Hocking-Lee, that was Mona's son, he died in a car crash. His wife died in it as well. Ages ago, have to be getting on for fifteen years. Mona raised those two grandkids like they were her own. Shame Clarence turned out the way he did. He's one fella they should chuck to the bloody chook house.'

A beat-up Holden pulled up outside the shop. Jill McKenzie got out, followed by her four kids. I hurried over to the door. ‘Good to see you, Jill. You got a minute? I need to ask a favour.'

She strode in, towing the kids behind her. Jill's a lean, brown-armed, horse-breaker type of woman with short blonde hair, worn just below her ears and cut in savage swipes. She doesn't often come into town. There's not much point when you can't afford to buy anything.

The kids stood in a row beside their mother, a row of appealing fair-haired tykes, aged from five to thirteen. A bit like a row of von Trapps stepped out from their movie, although dustier, thinner and without the singing.

Jill and Stu McKenzie have had it pretty hard, not that it's something we discuss. Their farm's too small to scratch out a living even on twelve inches of rain, and we haven't had twelve inches since I don't remember. Vern reckons the corporate farm up the road is waiting for them to bail, keen to expand its portfolio.

I piled up my largest basket with flake and potato cakes and lowered it into the oil. ‘Thanks for coming in. I've got some fish and potato cakes need using up today, they won't keep. Would you kiddies help me eat some leftovers? Be grateful if you would.'

I got the row of quick blond nods I was after, before Jill had a chance to speak. The McKenzies aren't people who'd accept anything resembling charity.

‘And Brad mentioned when he was stocktaking there were some ice creams needed using up. On the house, of course.' I jigged the basket in the oil. ‘We can't charge for leftovers.'

‘Thank you.' Jill looked at me through black-lashed, curtained eyes that never gave anything away.

The kids rounded up some chairs and they all sat down at my plastic table.

‘And there's a nice bowl of coleslaw needs eating up, if there's any volunteers.'

No crazed delight for the coleslaw.

‘So what's been happening in town?' said Jill.

‘Not much.' Well, apart from the odd murder getting no attention from the police. ‘Some visitors from Muddy Soak. The Hocking-Lees.'

The tykes were eating their potato cakes with some concentration.

‘That old bitch Mona Hocking-Lee was here?' said Jill. I stared at her like the proverbial mullet, post-stunning. Mona had been in Rusty Bore less than forty-eight hours before she died, but clearly that had been enough time to get up Jill's sunburnt nose.

‘Yeah, think that was her name,' I said carefully. ‘You know her?'

‘Don't you watch TV?' Jill put down her fish. ‘She was on
Australian Story
. S'pose you would have missed it,' she looked around the shop, ‘working here in the evenings. I'll tell you, she's one misguided do-gooder, that woman. She single-handedly suspended drought relief from the Ramsay Fund.'

‘Oh?'

‘Yeah. She made this big donation to them. Then asked to see how they spent the money. Wasn't satisfied with what they told her, now they're being investigated. While that happens, they've frozen payments. So no drought relief from them.'

‘There's still government money though, isn't there? For people who need it?' I said.

‘Yeah, but the Ramsay Fund paid out faster than the bureaucrats. Melanie Fanshaw at the council kept telling everyone to apply. I mean, I don't want anyone's handouts.' Her voice was fierce. ‘But it's what kept Adrian going. For a while. Adrian, well, you know what happened.' She glanced quickly at the kids, but they were too busy with their food to notice. ‘It was just after the fund froze its payments.' Her voice was low.

I knew about Stu's brother Adrian, that's the kind of news that travels at warp speed. And poor old Dean had been first with it. He'd called in to Adrian's place after seeing his sheep on the road. No answer at the front door. No answer at the back. And then Dean saw the old sugar gum and what was hanging from it.

Adrian was always good with knots.

‘If Stu had his way that Mona Hocking-Lee would disappear,' said Jill.

I stared. ‘Have another potato cake.' She obviously didn't know. Or she was a bloody good actress. Stu wasn't a violent bloke, was he? He was built of cast-iron muscle and fond of snug-fitting black T-shirts but that didn't mean he'd shoot a woman in the head.

‘She should've kept her mouth shut.' Jill's voice was flat. ‘You can't keep rats out of a granary.' Her face looked tired, like she'd been breaking in horses since before breakfast.

Jill and the kids ate their ice creams, then left. I started auto-wiping the spotless counter while I worried about Stu. Adrian's funeral had been at the cemetery, a kilometre out of town. A plume of orange-red dust had followed the procession of cars and utes. When I offered Stu my condolences, he gripped my hand and said, in a quiet voice, ‘Justice comes to us all.'

Justice? Was that really what he'd said? Would Stu kill? Nah, surely not the type. But what is the killing type?

Brad got back just after lunch. He'd left Claire visiting her relatives. ‘Mind the shop,' I said and headed out to Vern's. Maybe Vern had seen Aurora. Maybe he could help me find my car.

Boofa was out, as usual, sniffing the air. We walked together, the heat rising from the footpath, heading past the closed hardware shop, the ex-op shop and the long-closed pub. Next to the collapsing town hall were two bewildered-looking sheep, glancing around as if they were wondering how to get back into their paddock.

Vern was out in his hammock as usual, notebook in his lap. He was scratching his arm stump. A lizard scuttled across the road.

‘Cass Tuplin, my favourite bloody woman in this entire town,' Vern put aside his notebook. ‘You been thinking over my merger proposal, haven't you?'

A big grin stretched across his face. ‘You've come to tell me
yes
. I can see it in your eyes.'

‘Vern. Look, I appreciate your interest, I really do. Flattering, in fact. But, well, I'm just not…ah, you know, Piero's a hard act to follow. I don't mean any offence by that.'

Vern's smile faded. He blinked, looked down at Boofa and stroked his head. Boofa looked up at him with dark liquid eyes; he's a lovely dog. He won Best Dog in Ute at the Deni Ute Muster five years ago. ‘Yeah,' Vern's voice was gruff. ‘Well, people aren't always exactly what they seem on first sighting. And even later on. Thing is, you can miss things about a person. Important things.'

I'd hurt his feelings. I stood there, unsure of what to say next.

A van pulled up outside Vern's. A familiar white van, with a broken side-mirror, driven by a man with wild white hair and a beard. Noel opened the door and stepped out.

I was pleased to see Bubbles was staying in the van. She pressed her nose against the window and growled, a throaty sound the colour of tar. Boofa gave a startled yelp and ran away.

Noel didn't say anything, just headed into the shop. Vern picked up his notebook and followed him inside. I hoofed along behind Vern.

It was dim and musty inside Vern's shop. The overhead fan fluttered the Australian flag he keeps beside his till. I suppose that little flag reminds Vern of where he lives, although I'm not sure why he'd need reminding. There's nothing wrong with his memory.

Noel drifted around the shelves, shopping basket in one hand. He put six tins of spaghetti, two tins of milk powder, a jar of coffee, seven tins of dog food, a hacksaw and a pack of moist-wipes in the basket. I stood with Vern up the front, pretending to chat.

At the till Vern had a go at some extraction tête-à-tête but Noel wasn't co-operating. He smiled in a distant way, offering no answers to Vern's line-up of probing questions, then paid in cash and left. We followed him outside and stood watching him execute a six-point turn with a lot of gear crunching. Finally, he drove away.

Vern made a note in his book and said, ‘Northerly direction. Could be headed to Perry Lake. Just a working hypothesis, of course.' He made a minor adjustment to his groin.

Back in my shop, I pondered on those moist-wipes. Without being sexist, there's not a lot of fellas in my acquaintance that would think to buy a moist-wipe. And Noel didn't strike me as a moist-wipe type of man.

Three regulars came in for potato cakes. I cooked and served, pondering some more. I considered phoning Terry. But I couldn't give him the full picture regarding Noel without mentioning finding Mona the first time, which would make Dean look bad. There were a lot of secrets I was keeping. I wasn't used to keeping secrets, not other people's anyway. The whole point of knowing someone's secret is so you can talk it over with someone else.