The Cafe by the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  The squeal of exhaust brakes brought their attention to the window. A gas-delivery truck and trailer quivered to a stop, double-parked on the road out front, rear tray heavy with fat steel gas cylinders. The side of the truck had Gasinator spray-painted over a classic skull and rose.

  Will sprang to his feet. He’d been mid-sip on his beer, and the dregs slopped the front of his shirt. He bumped the bottle on the kitchen counter, nearly toppling it. Left it to wobble itself straight like a skittle that wouldn’t fall.

  Will’s reaction had Abe up in a heartbeat. Only Taylor hadn’t moved.

  Will got to the window, kind of hunched over like he didn’t want to be seen. He peered out at the street for two seconds and then started twisting and hauling at the cords at the side of the window, making blinds swing to and fro until he got them closed.

  The driver of the truck swung around the back of the cab, lowering the tailgate on his trailer with a squeal of steel. Heavyset man, built squat and square as a fireplace, tattoos snaking his arms and legs like flames; he looked like a guy who knew how to handle himself.

  ‘What’s going on, Will?’ Taylor asked.

  It took a while before her brother answered and when he did, his eyes were wilder than his hands, frantically twisting blinds this way and that. ‘It’s that gas guy. Amanda’s ex. The biker!’

  Will flipped the blinds on the smaller window across the lounge, then the kitchen. The room faded dull and duller grey, and then Abe couldn’t see the street or the truck.

  ‘Did you order gas, Will?’ Taylor asked.

  ‘No. I didn’t order gas last time either. Just everybody be quiet. Same guy. Same damn guy. Let me think,’ Will muttered, coming to a stop in the kitchen near the fridge, leaning on the wall. ‘Last time he went away.’

  ‘How do you know it’s her ex?’ Abe asked.

  ‘Who else is it? She told me he works at a gas place. She told me he’s with an outlaw bikie gang. Amanda said if I talked, if I went to the police—’ He swung to Taylor. ‘I told you this would happen. I told you this guy was nuts. You’ve been putting your nose in where it’s not wanted and look what happens. These people don’t play around!’

  ‘Calm down, mate. Are we in any danger?’ Instinctively, Abe put himself between Taylor—who still hadn’t moved from her seat at the kitchen table—and the front door.

  There was a clang on the side gate that made Will flinch. He whispered, ‘He’s going around the side.’

  ‘He’s looking for your gas tank is all,’ Abe said, trying to calm things down.

  A dull ringing slap. The bloke’s palm on one of the gas cylinders, checking for the empty.

  Heavy boots on the same step where, half an hour ago, there’d have been a squashed rabbit to step over.

  Then an almighty bang on the front door, like the guy lifted a gas cylinder and was using it to break open the gates to Hell.

  CHAPTER

  30

  ‘Will, it’s okay,’ Taylor said, getting out of her chair to go to him.

  ‘Stay there,’ Abe said, putting two fingers on her chest, pressing her back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Taylor hissed at Abe.

  ‘There’s three of us, okay?’ Abe said. ‘What’s he gonna do? I’m opening the front door.’

  Taylor snatched her bag and phone from the kitchen counter. ‘If anything goes wrong, I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Like they can help,’ Will said. ‘No one can help.’

  Her brother’s eyes were dead. Face grey.

  Another knock on the door, like a bear stood outside and he’d huff and puff till someone let him in.

  Taylor heard the suction hiss as Abe opened the door.

  ‘Oh, there is someone home. Didn’t think anyone was in. I was about to ring the depot,’ a voice said. A surprisingly high-pitched voice for such a big man with such a heavy knock.

  ‘Mate, we didn’t order any gas,’ Abe said.

  ‘Well, someone did. I’ve got the delivery docket here.’

  Taylor took a couple of steps so she could see the front door. Gas Guy stood there, holding a clipboard, turning it around to show Abe. ‘See? Right here. Order for 13/107 Trinder Court. Mr W. Woods. Payment on delivery.’

  ‘I never ordered any gas,’ Will said in a monotone from the space near the fridge.

  Bugger this. Taylor stepped up behind Abe.

  ‘You ordered the gas, did you, love?’ the tattooed man said when he saw her.

  ‘Nobody here ordered gas,’ Taylor repeated.

  Gas Guy put a fist on his hip. ‘This is the second time this has happened at this same bloody house, ’scuse the French. I’ve got the paperwork right here. Someone ordered a gas bottle. That’s it. I’m calling it in. Wait a sec, hey.’

  He picked his phone out of his pocket—his massive hand made the device look like a box of matches.

  ‘Leanne? It’s me. Yeah. Yep. Hey, I’m out at 13/107 Trinder Court. Got an order here. Bloke and a lady here say they didn’t order it.’ A beat. Two. ‘Yep. Yep. Dunno.’ He put his hand over the receiver and spoke to Abe, narrowing his eyes at Taylor. ‘She says it was a woman what rang it through. Customer said she had to have a cold shower this morning. Said she was desperate that the delivery be today so she could have a hot shower.’

  Abe’s back and shoulders blocked Taylor from the door, and each time she tried to insert herself into the conversation, his shoulders moved that little bit more, keeping her out.

  Nothing could keep a bloke that big out of view, though.

  Taylor studied Gas Guy’s face, trying to run it through her memory of the man she’d seen pick up Keeley late last year and swing her up on his shoulders. At the same time, she was trying to get a read on him using every body language skill she knew. He looked puzzled to her. Pissed off, but not dangerous.

  This guy loved his daughter. If you could love someone like that, surely she’d get a few seconds of rational conversation out of him?

  There was only one way to find out, and doing something positive was better than sitting like a scared kid in Will’s kitchen.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Gas Guy said to the lady on the other end of the phone, before giving Taylor his attention.

  ‘Doc—’ Abe warned.

  ‘Do you have a daughter called Keeley?’ Taylor asked.

  Gas Guy’s face changed in an instant. If he hadn’t exactly been glowing earlier, he was positively glowering now. ‘I’m bringing the bottle back in,’ he said brusquely to the woman on the other end of the phone line before he hung up the call and took a step forward. Only a small step because there wasn’t a lot of room on Will’s porch, but the step was big on menace.

  ‘How do you know my little girl?’

  Taylor pushed past Abe, with her arms out, palms down. ‘Did Amanda ask you to come over here?’

  ‘Who are you?’ His neck bristled. ‘How do you know Mandy and Keeley?’

  ‘I’m not trying to make trouble.’ Not for you anyway. ‘Can we just talk rationally for a minute?’ Taylor said.

  ‘You got a minute and I ain’t got all day. Spit it out real quick.’

  Abe stepped forward so his shoulders blocked her once again. Gas Guy’s eyes narrowed as Abe moved, and there was even less room on the porch in that instant, but Taylor sucked in a breath for courage and off she went.

  ‘Amanda has been in a relationship with the man who owns this house. That relationship has kind of gone, sour, and I think she’s trying to intimidate him. I think she’s using you to intimidate him.’

  ‘Whaddaya mean she’s using me?’

  Another quiet exhale. Abe’s this time from her left, tense as a wire, but solid as a rock at her side. She was so glad he was there.

  ‘She said you’re a member of an outlaw biker gang. She said you work for a gas mob doing deliveries. We didn’t order any gas here, I promise. Not this time. Not any other time.’

  His eyes lost some of their hooded glare. ‘O
utlaw biker gang is a bit much. It’s just me and some mates who like to ride at the weekend.’

  ‘She’s told my brother you’re dangerous, that you’ve been leaving dead animals on his doorstep.’ She glanced at the bloodstain drying near their feet and Gas Guy did too. His nostrils flared in distaste and he moved his boot backwards. His toe had been in the stain.

  ‘Amanda’s told him that you will hurt him if he tells the police what she did,’ Taylor said.

  ‘What did Mandy do this time?’ He said it with more than a hint of resignation.

  That’s what this time meant. Gas Guy had seen all this before. ‘She scammed him out of a lot of money. He should have known better, but still …’

  ‘You the brother?’ Gas Guy nodded his head to indicate Abe.

  ‘Nah. I’m her friend,’ Abe said, indicating Taylor.

  Gas Guy bristled again. ‘Where’s the brother then?’

  ‘Inside,’ Taylor said. ‘He’s the guy who owns the house.’

  ‘Alright. Alright. Everybody calm down,’ Gas Guy said, as if he was the one trying to calm two dangerous customers who’d gone off the deep end.

  ‘We’re calm, mate,’ Abe said, keeping his hands in clear view.

  Gas Guy crossed his massive arms across his chest in a way that made the tattoos on his forearms swarm black and orange, like hornets in a fire.

  ‘Which Uncle we talking about here?’ Gas Guy asked.

  It took Taylor a moment to understand what he meant, but when she worked it out, her heart squeezed in one big, bitter dollop, like lemon curd gone bad.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but from behind her, not far away, another voice beat her to it.

  ‘That would be Uncle Will.’

  Taylor moved to let her brother emerge from the shadows, and come out blinking in the afternoon light.

  ‘That would be me,’ Will said.

  Tears glistened on his cheeks.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Abe stooped to study the dials on Taylor’s oven, selected conventional cooking and twisted the temperature knob to 180 degrees. Then he switched his attention to the pantry. He wasn’t sure what he’d make yet, but he had to do something or he’d toss and turn all night.

  It’d been a helluva day for both of them, but he could handle the lack of sleep better than Taylor could. God knew, he was used to it.

  Abe pulled packets of self-raising flour and sugar from the pantry and set them on the bench. Was there anything else he could use? Nuts? Baking chocolate? Choc chips? Glacé cherries?

  Nope. Then he spotted a packet of shredded coconut hiding behind breadcrumbs, and a can of coconut cream, and pulled that out too.

  The freezer?

  When he opened it, he found pre-packaged frozen meals shoved into the space: lasagna, stir-fry, something that might once have been chicken.

  He shut the freezer door fast.

  In the fridge he found eggs and a bag of apples in the bottom crisper.

  It would do.

  Now he had to find mixing bowls without making too much noise, and a muffin tray. Measuring cups would be useful. A sieve?

  Gradually, with the oven’s warming thrum for company, measuring, sieving, stirring, Abe got his mix sorted and his head cleared. All the stuff that had jammed his brain and left him too jazzed for sleep faded to the background where it shut up and stayed quiet.

  A small pair of hands slid around his tummy, just above the band of his tracksuit pants, and snuggly soft breasts brushed into his back. He hadn’t heard Taylor in her bare feet on the floorboards.

  He turned his cheek, and she rose on tiptoe to brush her lips across his jaw.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked him, voice all husky from crying, and from sleep.

  ‘Making muffins,’ he said, enjoying the warmth, the softness of her.

  She poked his hip, digging her fingernail in just hard enough to make him squirm. ‘I can see you’re making muffins, Chef. I mean what are you doing, making muffins without a shirt on at stupid o’clock?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  She leaned her forehead into his back, planted a kiss on his spine. ‘Me neither. Are you thinking about Will?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  He’d been thinking about a lot of things: his parents, the café, Taylor, his session with Dr Palmer. What he was doing with his life. And yeah, Will, Amanda, the crazy scene today with Amanda’s ex.

  Taylor let him go, moving around to get a mug out of the cupboard. ‘Hot milk always works for me when I can’t sleep. Can I make you one?’

  ‘Nah. Thanks though.’

  She microwaved the milk and sat on a stool across the bench from him in her pyjamas with both hands wrapped around the hot mug, watching him scoop mix into the muffin pans.

  She sighed, stretched her neck left, then right, and then she said the words he’d known were coming, ‘I wonder how Will’s doing? I hope he’s alright.’

  They’d dissected the whole thing with Will and Craig—Amanda’s ex—for hours. First at Will’s place, then on the drive home, then until he finally managed to bundle Taylor in the shower, bundle himself in after her and kiss her until she couldn’t think about anything except him driving deep inside her and her with her back against the tiles and her legs around his hips, and all the heat and steam, and she definitely couldn’t talk or worry or think.

  Realisation had finally hit Will as they listened to Craig.

  Abe got it, he really did. Hell, he’d fallen for Amanda as hard as any man could fall for a girl. You wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, even as the gaps in her story started stacking up. Taylor was right. Amanda was a brilliant liar. She’d always known exactly what to say to make a guy cling to hope that she’d been telling the truth all along.

  For Will, Amanda’s candle never stopped burning. He could never quite make himself blow it out.

  It was out now, though. Not even a flicker.

  There was a soft click as the oven got up to temperature and the indicator light went off. Abe stooped and pushed the muffin tray into the middle rack. He closed the oven door and stood with his back to the appliance, enjoying the warm air leaking from it.

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ Abe said.

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘I know. But he’ll be okay. He’s got you. He’s got his family. You have his back.’

  She sipped her milk.

  ‘I feel like he’ll be better after today, you know. After seeing Craig like that. At least he’ll know Amanda’s ex isn’t a crazed outlaw motorcycle gang member trying to kill him. He won’t feel so paranoid,’ she said.

  Craig hadn’t been a bad bloke. Turned out there’d been quite a few ‘undeliverable’ gas bottles for him to deliver to the homes of various single men over the years since he and Amanda had split. Not enough that he’d ever connected the dots, but an odd two or three in the space of a year where the depot said a woman ordered the bottle and when Craig showed up at the place, the existing bottles were full, or close to it.

  Once one of those deliveries had been to a house where a guy had been checking his mailbox when Craig rocked up in the gas truck. That guy had actually done a runner down the street when Craig stopped the truck.

  ‘I don’t get how Amanda knows when the guy she’s threatening would be home? What’s the point trying to scare someone if they’re at work? Like if Craig came earlier today, Will wouldn’t have even been home and all her efforts to scare the crap out of him wouldn’t have worked. I don’t get it,’ Taylor said.

  ‘Don’t underestimate her. She’s smart. You said Mondays Will gets off work earlier, for the squash game, right?’

  ‘Yeah but he isn’t even at work at the moment. He was at the library.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe she remembered Monday is his early day. Guess she figured the odds of him being home were worth the try. Even if he wasn’t home, all it would take is a neighbour mentioning the gas truck came. Say Will got home to
find Craig’s card shoved under the door. Then there would have been the dead rabbit. That’s enough to make anyone freak out, let alone someone having as hard a time as Will.’

  ‘You believe me now? About Amanda leaving the bunny?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  She shivered. ‘Poor Will hiding in his house today. Did you see him mucking about with all the blinds?’ Taylor tilted her milk mug at him. ‘You would never have stayed inside with the blinds shut. You wouldn’t have let anyone scare you so much you couldn’t move.’

  ‘Plenty of stuff scares me.’

  ‘Like what, Abe? What scares you?’ Her green eyes were huge in her face, still puffy from earlier when she’d let it all out after they finished in the shower, clinging to his shoulders as he dried her off, put her in her pyjamas and climbed in the bed beside her.

  ‘Cockroaches.’ He winced theatrically. ‘Hate ’em.’

  ‘Come on. What scares you? Really.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t know, Doc. I’ve never been one for the nine to five. I’ve always landed on my feet whatever I tried, well, till this last year. Now? I guess my biggest fear is I got it wrong. I’ll wake up old and think I fucked my life up. Maybe I shoulda had more of a plan.’

  She digested that for a bit.

  He prompted. ‘What about you? What scares you?’

  ‘Everyday stuff. Usually to do with my patients. That I can’t help them. That I don’t know enough. That one of them will suicide because I didn’t do something or I didn’t say something, or I said something that I shouldn’t and I made things worse.’

  ‘Heavier than my problems then.’

  She laughed. Then her eyes filled with tears and she cried. Sniffed. Drank her milk. ‘I’m really worried about Will.’

  ‘I know you are. Don’t start crying again. You’ll give yourself a headache.’

  ‘I told you I cry at sad movies but I’m not usually such a baby. Seeing Will like that today… I should have helped him. I should have realised how bad things were for him.’

  ‘You did realise. You travelled to Chalk Hill to find me to try to help him out.’

  She wiped the tears with her finger. ‘Abe?’