The Roadhouse

by Kerry McGinnis

  I laughed. ‘What an optimist. Of course, he could’ve broken an axle and be stuck somewhere with not a gem in sight.’

  ‘Pessimist,’ he teased. ‘If the ruby proves elusive, perhaps we’ll find him instead and get some tips for next time.’

  So he was already envisaging a next time. The thought, along with the memory of his engaging smile, carried me through the evening and was with me still as I prepared for bed. Inevitably then my thoughts turned to Annabelle. She’s some looker, Mike had remarked, but her death guaranteed that this time there could be no comparison between us. I was only too aware that with her in the room no normal man would give me a second glance. I had known it and so had she, and even separated by half a continent the knowledge had affected me. It was why the dating I had done in Melbourne had led nowhere. You needed confidence to be interesting, and trust to build a relationship on. I’d had neither, but perhaps this time it could be different? It was too soon to tell if the attraction between us would last, though it was undeniably there, on my side anyway. But he had asked me, I thought.

  I fell asleep smiling, and sometime later was jolted awake from a dream about shoes, of all things. Wondering where that could have come from led me to think of the parcel of clothes Annabelle had worn to the beach. My subconscious must have been at work but the message remained unclear. There was something … something about shoes. Could that be the reason behind the dream, which was now a hopeless fading memory? What was wrong with her shoes apart from them being heels, which one normally wouldn’t wear on a beach, but would this necessarily hold true of a person bent on suicide? Surely shoes would be unimportant then – one wouldn’t be thinking about the difficulty of walking in sand. Well, I might, I conceded, but not Annabelle. Practicality came a slow second to appearances with her.

  Then I had it. The colour was wrong. With a scarlet top and white pants, why had she worn green shoes? Annabelle, who had footwear to co-ordinate with every dye known to man? There was no way she wouldn’t have packed matching shoes for each outfit in her bag. I lay thinking about it, picturing her in the clothes, the pretty floaty top and cotton pants, and the green shoes. Visualising her narrow waist, her dainty ankles, and the polished line of her collarbones that would have been revealed by the shoestring stra—

  I sat bolt upright then, a hand flying to my mouth. The black lace bra was wrong, too! Of course she would have worn a strapless one with that blouse, and flesh-coloured at that. How had I not seen it before? And would any woman about to don white pants choose black underthings to wear with them?

  My mind raced. It meant – it had to mean that the clothes were planted, left on the beach with the letter and watch, to suggest something that had never happened. The world spun as I considered the only possible conclusion supposing my theory was right. No wonder her handbag had been missing! She had kept it. Annabelle hadn’t killed herself, she’d simply staged her disappearance to make us think that she had. It would also explain why no landlord had reported her missing. If she had checked out and taken her luggage with her …

  Dawn had almost arrived before I slipped back into sleep, only to jerk awake within minutes to re-examine yet again the idea the night had thrown up. Was I reading too much into a choice of clothing? Who would believe that anyone bent on suicide would care what she wore? Only they didn’t know Annabelle as I did. Tossing restlessly, I was suddenly stilled by another thought. Why had she done it? Being presumed dead was final, not a situation that once arranged one could easily reverse. So, why? Why had she felt the need to disappear into the anonymity of death? Was she, in fact, in trouble as Mum had feared and, if so, how bad was it? Or – another possibility – was fear behind it? If some man had threatened her (with Annabelle, any trouble would concern a man) why wouldn’t she just go to the police?

  The first bird calls sounded as the east lightened, and still I was no wiser. I rose and dressed and ate breakfast, wishing, as I buttered toast and sipped tea, that I could confide in someone. I couldn’t bother Mum with it, and Bob wouldn’t be convinced by the subtleties of dress; besides, he lacked the patience to consider possible motives. Strangely enough it was Ute, presently cooking breakfast for Rob’s crew and Mike in the roadhouse kitchen, I would have chosen to tell. Her solid common sense and unflappability would have provided the perfect sounding board, but this was a family matter, so that was out too. I shrank from taking my suspicions to Constable Cleary, for most likely they were no more than that. If, I realised, the police couldn’t prove that she had killed herself, then neither could I prove that she hadn’t. Besides, it might be wise to discover the reason before involving them.

  I cut sandwiches, raided the smoko supplies for cake and filled a couple of thermoses before seeking out Bob to inform him that I was taking the day off.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said, wrong-footing me from the start, for I had expected if not opposition then only grudging agreement to my plan. ‘A day out’ll do yer good. Young Mike, is it? Where yer headin’?’

  ‘Fossicking,’ I said, ‘in the ranges. Back tonight. And he’s not that young. Thirty, I’d guess.’

  He cackled; there was no other word for it. ‘Wait till yer my age, girl. Fifty’ll look young to yer then.’

  ‘How old are you, Bob?’ The sky was blue behind him, the sprinkler head ticking as it moved back and forth spraying the lawn, the end of one of its arcs spattering the lopped oleander hedge. The laughter left his face and he scowled forbiddingly at me.

  ‘Ain’t none of yer business,’ he said, and stalked off.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was still giggling when Mike strolled out through the roadhouse’s back entrance, putting on his hat as he came.

  ‘Good morning, Charlie. You look happy.’

  ‘So I am. I’ve known old Bob since I was a toddler and I’ve only just found out how to get rid of him. I could’ve done with the knowledge when I was a teenager.’

  ‘Yeah? How’s it work, then?’

  ‘Ask him his age.’ I proffered the cooler bag. ‘I’m ready if you are.’

  He took the bag. ‘Let’s see, hat and gloves? Check. Tucker, water, shovels, billy? Check. A sieve – borrowed that from the station,’ he added in parenthesis. ‘Good to go, then. All aboard the Ruby Cruiser for an educational and entertaining tour of our lesser-known beauty spots.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I smiled at his nonsense. ‘What makes it educational exactly?’

  ‘Well,’ he began, steering me around the corner shrubbery to his vehicle and flourishing open the passenger door, ‘I hope we are going to learn more about each other, and with you being native to these parts there may be some aspects of its history – pioneer, geological, whatever – that will enliven our exchange of views.’

  ‘Right. And of course you’re going to show me how to fossick. You do know how, don’t you?’

  ‘How hard can it be?’ he asked airily. ‘Chuck the dirt in the sieve and shake – see what you get. Isn’t that how it’s done?’

  ‘I think,’ I said, repressing an answering grin, ‘we’d best hope we run across Len and his wife before we start.’

  It was a beautiful June morning, cool enough for me to be glad of my long-sleeved shirt. A slight breeze ruffled the dust-laden foliage of the thin scrub, and the bulk of the range stood clear and aloof beyond the trees, a dreaming lavender shape, its top ridged with buttresses of seamed rock. Mike’s vehicle reached the main road and we headed east along it, eventually catching up with the heavy machinery of the road camp, and the graded detour they had made around the section covering Penny Creek where the new causeway would go.

  ‘How’s Molly getting on?’ Mike asked, breaking the little silence that had fallen between us.

  ‘She seems to be doing well. But you wouldn’t know – she’s always fine, according to her. Today’s the third since the op. I’ve been wondering, once she gets out of hospital, if I might persuade her to spend a week in the Alice before coming home. I know the flying doctor’s always ava
ilable but if something went wrong … well, it’s still a long wait. Strokes, heart attacks – you can die in minutes from them.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. I can see why you’d worry though.’ He glanced across at me. ‘Did your cousin not know about Molly’s health when she did away with herself?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Mum’s …’ I hesitated. ‘She’s a very private person. I doubt anyone but old Bob knew, and that’s only because he cares deeply about her.’

  ‘Are you saying that your cousin didn’t?’ Mike asked cautiously.

  ‘Annabelle cared mostly for herself,’ I said tartly, then winced. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t kind of me. I’m afraid it’s true though. My parents adopted her when she was three and it wasn’t … it didn’t make for a very happy relationship, for any of us. Not wholly. She was difficult even then, Mum said. Very,’ I sought the word, ‘demanding, I suppose. Not just of material things but of affection, attention, people’s time. She couldn’t bear to be overlooked for a moment. It didn’t help that she was so beautiful. She always expected more than her due, and people usually gave in to her expectations. My father did, anyway.’ I shrugged. ‘With looks like hers you don’t need manners, or … or niceness. Things just drop into your lap,’ I added, a shade bitterly.

  ‘I see. She doesn’t sound very …’ Tactfully he left the sentence unfinished and shrugged. ‘Siblings don’t always get on.’ He spoke neutrally and for some reason his refusal to criticise Annabelle annoyed me.

  ‘She wasn’t my sibling,’ I snapped and immediately contradicted myself. ‘Actually, she was. She’s my half-sister, something I only recently learned. Look, it’s a lovely day. Can we please talk about something else?’

  ‘Fine by me. Any ideas on a destination? Shall we just try the first turn-off and see where it leads? Or look for where old Len went? His tracks ought to be plain enough to follow if we spot where he left the road.’

  ‘Why don’t we see which comes up first? So, what’s Kevin Gates like? Mum said he was unmarried. Isn’t that unusual for a manager? Who looks after the homestead?’

  We spoke of Gates, and Mike’s job and other stations he’d worked on, his gaze flicking constantly to the right until he suddenly jammed on the brakes. ‘There.’ Two single ruts overlaid with thick buffel grass wound off the verge of the road, heading south. ‘That’ll do,’ he said and swung onto it.

  I grabbed the handhold on the dash to brace myself against the bumps. ‘Did Len come this way?’

  ‘Don’t see any fresh wheel tracks but I daresay we’ll find him somewhere.’ A family of euros bounded away out of mallee shade beside the track, and overhead a kite hawk glided on spread wings, leading the way through gullies and low ridges into the range. The wheel ruts wound like a snake through scrub and rock and over shallow gutters, switching from red sand back to stone until the ridges rose steeply around us. The lavender of the range had changed to ochre, and by then the Land Rover was rocking rather than bumping forward.

  ‘Don’t wreck your new vehicle,’ I said, ducking reflexively from the foliage of a desert oak as it swatted the windscreen.

  ‘It’d take more than this,’ he scoffed, pulling up. ‘It’s a dead end though, no more track.’ We got out and looked around at the rugged ridges and the narrow gully running between them. I spotted the tailings from a half-collapsed shaft driven into the hillside that showed where the mica miners had been. It was very still and the sun-warmed rocks gave off an elusive scent. I breathed it in, hearing the tiny twitter of a bird – one of the drab little wrens, I thought – from within a patch of bush. Overhead the kite hawk, or its mate, still hovered, while a shaky-paw lizard signalled me from a rock.

  ‘Why do they do that?’ I wondered. ‘It’s like it wants the hawk to see it.’

  ‘Territorial behaviour?’ Mike suggested. ‘Are you ready for this ruby, Charlie?’

  I grinned. ‘Oh sure. How do we start?’

  ‘This way.’ He gave me the strainer to carry, took up the shovel and the water cooler himself, and we trod up along the creek to where a shrubby wattle provided a sparse, sprawling shade.

  ‘Looks as likely a spot as any.’ He set his burden down and thrust the shovel into a patch of gravel. ‘Who knows? One spadeful might do it.’

  I laughed. ‘You haven’t a clue, have you?’

  ‘I promised you educational,’ he said with dignity, ‘and that’s what it’ll be. Us, learning together. Let’s have that strainer, woman.’

  We pottered around, sieving dirt and gravel and the detritus of old vegetation, moving along the side of the ridge, laughing a lot and talking, and stopping every now and then to wipe the sweat from our faces and sit in the shade.

  Sipping water from the cooler, I said, ‘Would we even know if we did find something? I mean it’s not going to be faceted and shiny, is it?’

  ‘You hold it up to the light, I think.’ Mike was sprawled back on one elbow, idly tossing up and catching again a bit of gravel from the sieve. ‘Like this.’ He demonstrated, squinting at it against the light. ‘If it’s a gem it’s not opaque. Which means this definitely isn’t.’ He placed the tiny pebble on a flat rock and, picking up another stone, smashed down onto it. Instead of shattering under the blow, the pebble shot violently sideways and hit my wrist.

  I let out an exclamation and grabbed the wounded spot.

  Mike jerked to a sitting position, plainly appalled. ‘Charlie! Christ, I’m sorry! I’m a bloody idiot.’ His hand closed over mine as he turned my wrist to inspect the damage. ‘I just didn’t think – you’ll have a whopping bruise. Can you forgive me?’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly mortal.’ I gently reclaimed my hand, joking because he looked so hangdog about it. ‘It didn’t break, so maybe it’s a diamond?’ My wrist stung like fury but I was reluctant to add to his guilt by making a fuss.

  ‘No,’ he said gratefully, ‘but you are. I can’t think of another girl who, given what’s happened, wouldn’t be yelling her head off at me for being the thoughtless brute I am.’

  ‘It was an accident. Come on, let’s back to it. Rubies have to be earned, after all.’

  We ate lunch down another track we found that took us deeper into the range. The gully there was almost a creek, and on arrival Mike had wandered along its pale sand drifts to a curve below the bank where he began to ply the shovel.

  ‘Digging a soak,’ he said when I asked what he was doing. Standing at his shoulder I watched the hole dampen as it deepened and, in a few minutes, water was seeping into the bottom of it. He let it settle, then knelt to wash his hands and splash water over his heated face. I copied him, feeling the delicious coolness as a breeze touched my wet skin.

  ‘How did you know the water was there?’

  ‘Saw the tracks. See the scrapes in the sand there? Something’s been digging, dingo, roo maybe. Animals are better equipped than us – they can smell the least bit of moisture.’ His gaze dropped to my hand. ‘How’s your wrist feel now?’

  ‘It’s fine. Don’t fuss.’ I’d unpacked the lunches and now offered him one of the sandwiches I’d made. ‘Let’s eat.’

  Refusing to have the subject brushed aside he said gravely, ‘I would never deliberately hurt you, Charlie. I want you to know that.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I agreed hastily. ‘Who does?’ But the question, meant only to stave off another apology, reminded me instead of Annabelle, whom I’d temporarily managed to banish from my thoughts. Then, because he was there, and uninvolved, and also because during our morning’s exertions and laughter a pleasant rapport had been established between us, I confided my suspicion that her suicide had been rigged.

  He listened carefully, a slight frown between his brows, the sandwich forgotten in his hand. When I’d finished and sat sipping my tea from the flask top, he said, ‘Well, supposing you’re right – it’s damn difficult to prove a negative. Do you want to, that’s the question? If the whole thing was staged, what next? I doubt it’s illegal to pretend to
kill yourself – a misdemeanour at best as in wasting police time. If they believed you, the cops would probably say you were clutching at straws refusing to accept her death. There’d be nothing they could do, anyway. If your cousin – sorry, your sister – wants to disappear, that’s her business.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t tell the police,’ I said hurriedly.

  ‘Well then, who? Your mother – Annabelle’s friends?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know who they were. And Mum …’ I bit my lip, watching him scarf down the forgotten sandwich. ‘It might just hurt her more. I mean it’s a cruel, rotten thing to do to someone who loves you, to put them through that, letting them think you’re dead. Right now she can forgive Annabelle because she’s dead. I don’t know how she’d feel finding out that she isn’t, that it was all a calculated lie. If I’m right, of course.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  I sighed. ‘I just can’t help wondering why she’d want to disappear.’ I hesitated, then plunged ahead. ‘She was home a week or so before they found her clothes. Mum said she came for money. Not just a handout, but real money – to the point of mortgaging the roadhouse, I mean. Maybe she’s hiding from debt?’

  ‘Or someone? Say a relationship had gone wrong and some man was threatening her?’

  I laughed shortly. ‘I thought of that but he’d be a brave man! I doubt Annabelle ever met one she couldn’t handle.’ But Bob had been afraid, I remembered – well, wary – of the one she was with, hadn’t he? Still her beauty made fools of them all, I thought cynically.

  ‘Ah.’ Mike was scratching his cheek, his gaze on my face thoughtful. Flushing, I suddenly wished my observation unsaid. Could he possibly know about my broken engagement? It was five years ago but gossip tended to linger out here. What Melbourne would forget in a week kept its currency longer in the bush.

  I reached abruptly for the thermoses and remnants of our meal. ‘Come on, then, lazybones. Nobody found the Cullinan diamond by sitting about.’