The Roadhouse

by Kerry McGinnis

  The woman had more to say but I finally got rid of her and hung up muttering ‘… and why should being foreign make any difference?’

  It was typical of Annabelle. Even dead she was still the centre of attention. If her murder was never solved she’d become an enduring outback legend – maybe they’d even run tours so tourists could gawp at the place where she died, I thought crossly.

  Mum continued to improve; she was back in the ward on Thursday and on Friday afternoon told me she could be discharged next day, only it transpired that she’d have to wait until Monday for transport back to the Alice. That suited me for I intended, if I could, to organise for her to stay a few days in Alice Springs, where she’d be closer to medical help if it was needed. Taking a deep breath, I broke the news of Annabelle’s complicity in the crimes of robbery and murder and felt her shock in the breathed ‘Dear God!’ that came faintly down the line.

  ‘Mum, are you okay? I thought the police might already have spoken to you about it. Tom said they were going to.’

  ‘Two policemen came to see me, yes. They told me about finding her body. I mean, I knew she was dead, but it was still a shock to … They said they thought she was an accomplice to robbery but nothing about murder. She wouldn’t … All right, she was greedy and unscrupulous, Charlie, but not vicious.’

  ‘I don’t think the law draws a line between the accomplice and the actual murderer these days,’ I said. ‘And unless she waited outside … Even then, she had knowledge of the crime – either before or after it was committed, which makes her an accessory. She was wearing a stolen ring.’

  ‘Why was she so desperate for money? How much did the jeweller lose?’

  ‘I heard eighty thousand. It was Centre Jewellers, you know, that big place in the Mall? High-end stuff. But they’d have to fence it, and that’d cost them as well as taking time, Tom said. He told me that the person handling the stolen goods usually makes more out of the heist than the actual thieves.’ Inspiration hit me. ‘Maybe they were planning to leave the country – or she was, without telling him? And she was worried about what he’d do. Perhaps the jeweller’s death scared her enough that she wanted to get away from him. Could that be why she needed cash? Do you remember anything at all about him, Mum?’

  ‘Paul? No. The police already asked me. I served him a meal, and Annabelle and I went over to the house to talk. I returned to the roadhouse after we quarrelled, and she went for a shower before she left. I think I told him she wouldn’t be long, and I was back in the kitchen cooking when she came through, dressed differently. She didn’t say goodbye – not to me or Bob. Just looked at us and left. I assume they drove off then, but I didn’t go to the door to watch. There were customers waiting.’

  A brief silence ensued. A part of me marvelled that it wasn’t uncomfortable. My mother and I were talking, actually holding a conversation. I said thoughtfully, ‘I should have asked Tom what a fencer of stolen goods would actually charge. Ten per cent, do you think, or twenty? Bearing in mind nobody’s going to get the full value and what’s left presumably gets split between the thieves, it’s not much, is it, for the risk? Not when it includes murder.’

  ‘Perhaps the murder wasn’t intended? And with Annabelle dead there’s no need to split it.’

  ‘You’re right. Grief!’ I shivered at a sudden thought. ‘Could he have meant all along to kill her, to keep it all for himself? It doesn’t bear thinking about!’

  ‘Well, let’s not, Charlie.’ She sounded weary all at once. ‘Tell me how things are going at the Garnet instead. Did Bob remember the benefit night?’

  We talked about the plans I’d made for it, and I retailed some of Ute’s misunderstandings of the vernacular for her amusement before a glance at the clock reminded me how long we’d been on the phone.

  ‘You should be resting,’ I said. ‘Bye, Mum. I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for calling, Charlie. Bye.’

  Turning our conversation over in my mind, I wandered out into the garden where Bob had already set out the tables for tomorrow night and stood contemplating them. The thud of boots on slate made me glance back across the fence at the house and the man strolling calmly along the verandah towards me. He saw me notice him and waved, the action fragmented by the latticework between us.

  ‘There you are, Charlie. Long time no see. I’ve missed you, girl – you’ve no idea how much,’ he called cheerily. ‘Welcome home, by the way.’

  ‘Bryan,’ I said frostily. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Apart from trespassing, I mean? Was this your mother’s idea?’

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be like that. Can’t a man call on his sweetie without needing prompting? But Mum’s dead right, you shouldn’t be here alone with a killer on the loose. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you.’

  ‘Very touching,’ I sneered. ‘But I’m not alone, and even if I were, you’re the last man I’d turn to. The very last. So you can take yourself off, and don’t come back!’

  ‘You don’t mean that, Charlie. Look, I’m sorry. Will that help?’ His blue eyes were hopeful, his hair still the same coppery red; in fact, he didn’t look to have changed at all. That was the trouble, I thought. His betrayal had sat so lightly upon him that he doubtless saw it as a boyish misdemeanour, easily excused. ‘Come on, Charlie,’ he coaxed, smiling. ‘We’ve always been good mates and the very fact that you’re back and not wearing a ring means you must still feel something for me.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you that too?’ I said furiously. ‘You Mallorys! Your ego is beyond belief! Go! If you don’t I swear I’ll set Bob’s dog on you. You’ve got five minutes.’ I turned and stormed back to the roadhouse, slamming the back door loudly enough to bring Ute from the kitchen.

  Her eyebrows shot up at the sight of my heated state. ‘Something else is wrong, yes?’

  ‘There will be,’ I muttered direly. ‘If a man comes through that door in the next five seconds you lay him out with your biggest frying pan. Got that?’ And leaving her gaping after me in bewilderment, I took myself off to the storeroom to calm down.

  By midday Saturday the barbecue had been scrubbed down and seating arranged around the tables under the roofed extension near the staff dongas. The kitchen, meanwhile, was giving off the enticing odour of freshly baked bread.

  Ute, pulling trays of rolls from the oven, brushed off my compliment on her skill. ‘Is simple, Charlie. One follows a recipe, yes? You should try – all new things you should try. Not to be the fraidy-puss. That is right?’

  ‘Cat,’ I said. ‘Fraidy-cat. I just wish I had your confidence. As a matter of interest, how many languages do you speak, Ute?’

  She shrugged, ‘Four. For Europe is normal. Polish I learn at home. French and English at school, German for my work. English is hardest, so many idi– idiots? No, the quaint sayings?’

  ‘Idioms.’ I shook my head. ‘You’re amazing. Most native-born Australians can’t speak more than one. Have you someone special waiting for you back home?’

  ‘Like your Mike?’ she teased, then sobered. ‘There is one but he does not wait – he is married. He has family too, I am like the sweet bun for him, to eat and forget. So I come away to show him is not so easy, yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said sincerely. ‘You deserve better than that.’

  She frowned. ‘You think so? Me, I think we make our – what you say – luck? We earn by what we do, Charlie. If I stay I am forever mistress, not wife. So maybe I find better man and be wife. Maybe I don’t, but either way I am no longer sweet bun.’

  ‘I’m sure you will find someone. I just hope he deserves you. Now, what you said about trying new things … you’re absolutely right. Do you think that tomorrow you could teach me how you make those rolls?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  We had a full house for the barbecue: all the stations, the road camp, and several lots of travellers who saw the notice Bob had posted up and decided to stay, asking permission to camp overnight and
use the facilities.

  ‘Five bucks a head,’ he said without a blink, ‘and you don’t leave no mess be’ind.’

  They agreed readily and later, when I remonstrated at what I considered a rip-off, asking if Mum charged for use of the ablution block, he looked up from the fridge shelves he was stacking with cans to scowl upon me.

  ‘She don’t, but she oughta. An’ we ain’t benefitting – you’ll be cleaning the block an’ the CWA’s getting the dough.’

  ‘It just seems a bit mean.’

  ‘They’re paying for protection, Charlie, not just a shower ’n a dunny. Yer won’t find travellers pulling off the road just anywhere to camp, like they used to. It’s got too chancy. Besides, every bugger’ll have heard about the murder and it’ll have made ’em extra jumpy. Safety in numbers, you know.’

  ‘I imagine you’re right.’ I immediately thought of Kathleen’s words on the subject and, as if I’d conjured him up, the door opened and Bryan Mallory strode into the roadhouse in advance of his brother Con, Con’s wife, Amy, and their three kids. I opened my mouth but before I could speak, Bryan gave a beaming smile as if yesterday’s encounter had never occurred and spread his arms as if he actually expected me to run into them.

  ‘Long time, Charlie. You’re looking well. Got a hug for an old friend?’

  Kathleen was smiling smugly behind him, pushing through the knot of road-camp men to keep up. Eric, the one I’d given the paperbacks to, was forced to step hastily back to avoid her. Several other men glanced over to see who had addressed me; I seethed, silently cursing him for the attention he’d drawn to us. To order him out of the Garnet would create nothing but gossip, which I realised was probably what he was counting on.

  ‘No,’ I snapped, keeping my voice down. ‘I haven’t. I thought I’d made it perfectly plain I want nothing to do with you.’ The aroma of cooking meat wafted into the room from the garden where Ute was handling the barbecue. I picked up a tray and, bearing it before me like a shield, ducked into the kitchen to begin loading the salads onto it. I used the back door to reach the garden and got two more loads out before he found me again in the gathering throng. He had a beer in his hand by then and his voice had lost some of its breezy assurance when it sounded again quite close behind me.

  ‘There you are, Charlie. Look, I just want to talk,’ he pleaded. ‘I know you were angry back then, but that was five years ago, for God’s sake! Time to let bygones be bygones, I’d have thought. I really have missed you, and I’ve already apologised. Can’t we just start again, or at least talk about things?’

  I sighed with exasperation. ‘There’s no need to, Bryan, because there’s nothing to say. Whatever we had ended right here in this garden. I’ve moved on and if you haven’t, that’s your problem. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just a neighbour. We’re not friends and we’re certainly not lovers. Is that plain enough for you?’

  He frowned, obviously perplexed by my attitude. All the Mallorys were handsome men with their deep auburn hair, light eyes and fair skin. Bryan, as the baby of the family and Kathleen’s darling, was unused to being refused anything. I was amazed at my own blindness in not having recognised this weakness in him before and realised that I had not only moved on but grown too, while he hadn’t. He was the same spoilt boy-man I had known five years ago, relying on his charm and his mother’s indulgence to get by. Mum had been right after all: had we married, it would never have lasted.

  ‘You can’t still be holding that thing with your cousin against me, Charlie, after all this time,’ he said reasonably. ‘What’s happened to you? You were always kind and forgiving. It’s what I love about you. Fellows make mistakes – it’s not the end of the world! I made one and I’m truly sorry, so you have to let it go.’ The limpid blue eyes I had once adored cajoled me, but with a hint of complacency in their depths. It was how he got his way with his mother and I felt a spurt of irritation at his childishness.

  ‘Get out of my way, Bryan. I’ve got work to do.’

  He grabbed my wrist as I turned away. ‘No, wait – just give me another chance, Charlie. I’ll make it up to you, and I swear I’ll never look at another woman —’

  I slapped furiously at his arm. ‘Get your hands off me!’

  Mike was suddenly beside me, looking not at me but at my companion. ‘Trouble, Charlie?’

  ‘No,’ I said thankfully, ‘because Bryan here is going off to feed his face and find somebody else to annoy. Can you give me a hand to bring the rest of the stuff out, Mike?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said, without taking his eyes off Bryan. They bore a far-from-friendly gleam as he jerked his head dismissively. ‘You heard her. Piss off.’

  ‘Who the hell are you to come butting into a private discussion? Mind your own goddamn business.’ Bryan’s voice flared. ‘You gonna make me?’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ Mike said flatly, and something in his aspect must have changed Bryan’s mind for, with a muttered curse, he turned angrily away.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured. ‘You don’t really have to help. I just said that so he’d go.’

  ‘But I want to.’ Mike picked up the tray and touched my elbow, turning me towards the kitchen. ‘Who is he?’

  I breathed out through my nose. ‘One of the Mallorys from Red Tank. I broke off our engagement five years ago. Five years, for God’s sake! He’s just a bit slow to accept it. I can’t believe,’ I said, ‘that I once fancied him.’ Or, I silently added, that I’d let him break my heart. It seemed Mum had been right when she had told me, with what I had seen at the time as a complete lack of empathy: ‘Someday, Charlie, you’ll look back and marvel at the escape you’ve just had.’ I had thought it was her own disillusionment speaking rather than the wisdom that came from life experience and, wondering what else I’d been wrong about, I sighed.

  Mike, misinterpreting the sound, said grimly, ‘He won’t bother you again, Charlie. I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘It’s all right. Truly it is. I was just sighing for the waste of time and emotion he cost me.’ I had told him so much, I thought, I might as well tell him the rest. ‘I told you we were engaged. I broke it off the day I caught them – him and Annabelle – in the summerhouse back there.’ I remembered again that glimpse of her rose-tipped breasts against the white of his body. ‘I’d had a catalogue sent to me in the mail so I could choose a wedding dress. I just wanted to show it to him, to see if he liked it. And there they were, having sex on the bench. And I’m pretty sure that she planned for me to find them.’

  Mike’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Jesus, she sounds a proper piece of work! I suppose it does make it less surprising, though, that someone knocked her off. I hope the pair of them got splinters in their bums.’

  The image shocked a giggle from me. He grinned and then we were both whooping with laughter. ‘That’s better,’ he said, when we’d sobered. ‘Nothing beats a bit of humour. You’ve got a pretty laugh, Charlie. Now, where’s this stuff you want carried out?’

  The barbecue ran late. I suspected that it was a pleasant change for both the road camp and the station men to meet up with others outside their own circles, while opportunities for the station women to socialise with one another were rare enough to make each gathering eagerly anticipated. The three lots of travellers mixed in, fascinated, if their overheard questions were a guide, with the differences between bush and town living. One, at least, was avid to hear the details of the murder until Bess Himan said levelly, ‘You should ask Charlie, our hostess, about that. The victim was her cousin.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ the woman exclaimed, sounding flustered and chastened. She immediately quit the group of women, taking herself off to the table where the bring-and-buy items were displayed, but still wasn’t beyond earshot of Bess’s parting riposte, ‘Yes, well, every murder is a tragedy for someone,’ which effectively closed down the subject among the rest of the women.

  Mike stuck close to me and, looking round at one stage as we ate, I caught Bryan glo
wering at him. I saw Ute in earnest conversation with Eric and wondered what they would make of each other. He seemed quieter and more thoughtful than most of his mates, almost like Rob, the boss, though a good deal younger. Tom Cleary and his wife were there but they were the first to leave. He’d have had a hard time fending off questions from the men wanting details of the murder. Nor would his wife have escaped a quizzing from the women. I wondered if there was a requirement in the force that wives not discuss their husbands’ work.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Mike said. ‘Can I get you a beer, or a coffee?’

  ‘Coffee would be nice, thanks. I don’t like beer.’

  ‘The one’s coming up, the other I’ll remember.’ He rose from the red-gum log on which we were sitting a little apart from the rest, and made his way to the urn on the table. The barbecue coals were ash, and the uneaten rolls were drying out in their baskets. I should really get up and cover them, I thought, but I sat on listening to the hum of conversation and the bursts of laughter. People were wearing coats and some even had blankets around their shoulders for the June night was cold. Overhead the stars were bright points in the blackness, only a little dimmed by the stretch of bulbs Bob had strung between the kitchen and the summerhouse roof to give light to the proceedings. The diesel thumped reliably on, so much a part of bush living that one rarely registered the noise.

  I watched Mike’s tall form, cast half in shadow, walk back towards me, and my heart gave a funny little flip. Was he really the one? I hardly knew him, yet I had told him things I had told no one else. That surely must count. Then I remembered Bryan and was filled with doubt. Didn’t they say that women made the same mistake over and over when it came to choosing men? Would he prove to be no more trustworthy than Bryan had been?

  ‘Penny for them,’ Mike said, handing me the cup. ‘You look a bit lost, Charlie. What’s up – apart from Molly’s health, Annabelle’s death, and that nitwit who was making a pest of himself?’