A Good Result

by Marg McAlister

  “Not right now. Nine thirty.” Viv’s voice brooked no argument.

  “Well, fine.”

  She heard the sound of footsteps walking out, and the door closed.

  Maureen felt the cushion beside her dip, and a slim hand closed over hers, stopping her from turning more pages. She looked up, and it was Lissa, looking at her with compassion. “Are you really all right, Maureen?”

  Feeling as though she was in some kind of alternate reality, inhabiting the body of a totally different Maureen Beggs, she nodded. “I just needed a break. Don’t worry, he won’t come over here.” She glanced back to their cafe across the road, and was suddenly struck with how shabby and unwelcoming it looked. No wonder the locals were starting to go to places like this.

  Places filled with light, and friendly faces. Places where you could get nice coffee and cupcakes baked by Viv.

  Jim, apparently done with giving Coffee, Cakes & Crepes the stink eye, turned on his heel and slammed his way back inside.

  Maureen put the magazine down.

  “Lissa,” she said, “Can I watch you make that coffee? See what I’m doing wrong? I know I’m coming to your class on Sunday, but—”

  Lissa smiled, her warm light brown eyes kind under the bright orange hair that Jim hated so much. “Of course you can. Come on. I’ll make your coffee, and you drink it and take a few moments for yourself. And Maureen? Any time we’re not busy, I’m happy to show you. You don’t have to wait for a class.”

  Maureen got up. “Thank you.” Turning her back to the window, and the shop where she’d spent far too much of her life, she followed Lissa and watched carefully while she prepared the coffee and the milk, explaining every step.

  And then the door opened again, and she heard Irene Wilson’s gasp before she said in amazement, “Maureen Beggs? What are you doing over here?”

  Jim would be watching, for sure, knowing that the town’s biggest gossip had seen his wife go over to the opposition.

  He’d be livid, and Maureen was glad.

  She’d have to go back over there soon, but it was so good to have a break.

  “Hello, Irene,” she said, hoping her smile was convincing. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—which morning does Adele’s quilting group meet?”

  Over the road, Jim savagely chopped at the lettuce and swept it into a bowl. What in tarnation had come over Maureen, he couldn’t begin to imagine. She knew he had a new backpacker to train, and she was the one who usually showed them the ropes while he got on with things.

  She’d better get herself back on over here fast, or there’d be the devil to pay. Ever since those Mowbray women had opened the cafe things had gone downhill. His regulars were still happy enough with a pot of tea or coffee from the old percolator, but now the tourists all wanted cappuccino and latte and other things he didn’t know the name of, and Maureen was the only one who knew how to make them.

  Not that she seemed to be very good at it.

  Despite himself, he kept going to the doorway between the kitchen and the cafe and looking at Coffee, Cakes & Crepes. Already, there were two grey nomads sitting outside, watching the early morning street traffic while they waited for their order.

  Stupid idea, tables out on the footpath. Why would you want to sit outside when there was perfectly good seating inside? Maureen could carry on all she liked; he wasn’t going to give in on that one.

  Behind the tourists, sitting inside on the other side of the window, he could see Irene Wilson and Janet Cox, gossiping away as usual while they drank coffee and ate cake. No wonder Irene was the size of a house.

  He squinted, but couldn’t see Maureen. Was she still in there? If she was, he’d be willing to bet that Irene would be across here on some excuse to rub it in.

  He fumed for another ten minutes, until finally someone walked up the steps and into his cafe. Someone young, tanned, with a ready grin and a cocky walk. The backpacker who’d called in yesterday to see about work, saying he’d met a guy who used to work here, said it was worth coming in to ask.

  Jim couldn’t remember his name.

  “So, you’re here.” He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “Hope you’re a fast learner.”

  “Don’t worry, I am,” the kid said.

  “What was your name again?”

  “Anton. Remember, I told you that I met someone who worked for you?”

  Jim grunted. He’d had so many casual workers over the years, it could have been any one of dozens.

  “Nick,” Anton said, watching him as though the name should mean something. “Nick Egan. Met him down at Woolgoolga, last week.”

  Nick Egan. Okay, he knew who that was, his memory wasn’t that bad. Nick had been with them for two months. He’d worked out all right, until a couple of weeks ago when he’d said it was time to leave.

  Leaving him in the lurch, like they all did.

  Still, he’d certainly had his uses.

  “All right, yeah, I remember.” Jim looked at the messy kitchen and then at the coffee machine. “You said you can cook fish and chips, make hamburgers, make fancy coffee, clean up. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wife’s not here to run you through it. Can you handle it?”

  Anton gave him a pitying grin, cocky as all hell. “Yeah, man. What do you want me to do first?”

  Behind him, Jim saw Irene and Janet leave Coffee, Cakes & Crepes and step off the footpath, heading in his direction.

  “See those two women crossing the road?” he said. “I can’t stand a bar of either one. You serve them, tell them I’m busy.”

  He grabbed Maureen’s apron, tossed it at the kid, and went to hide.

  When Maureen came back, she was going to cop the sharp edge of his tongue. After that, she and the new kid could run the place while he met up with his mates for a round of golf.

  She had some bee in her bonnet, and he just didn’t have the patience for this kind of nonsense.

  16

  Teeing Off

  Stan Lambert did a lot of wheeling and dealing on the golf course. The way he figured it, the Yamba Country Club had done a lot to line his pockets over the years.

  He reserved one Friday afternoon a month to schmooze with three of the local yokels. They convened at around 1 o’clock: nine holes in winter, eighteen in summer, and then conducted business in the club afterward.

  Right now, he was waiting for Jim Beggs to show up while he and the local dentist talked to Ron Foley about offering incentives to his ex-wife to move out of her shop. The developer who’d approached Stan was ready to buy the premises now, but Linda was stalling. After being married to Ron for two years, she sensed there was something in the wind. Probably digging her toes in until Stan paid out her lease, and that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

  He hadn’t accumulated wealth by throwing money away.

  Between the four of them, they had some profitable investments in Yamba and surrounding towns. Jim’s dull wife Maureen had no clue that her husband, slaving away selling fish and chips every day, was worth nearly two million dollars.

  After grooming the four men for years, Stan knew how to play them. Jim Beggs and Ron Foley had gone to school together, played football together, and got into trouble together. They’d both done it tough in the early years before getting onto the property bandwagon. Ron was a bullet-headed, hard man who still wasn’t averse to interpreting the law in creative ways. He could be a bully, and was open to a bit of trickery, which was useful to Stan, because he liked to keep his own reputation squeaky clean.

  Stephen Patterson was a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out a good deal, which was somewhat surprising seeing he spent his days in a dental surgery staring into people’s mouths. Being married to Kerry probably helped: she was one of those people on every committee going.

  As for Jim: he had his cronies who came in most days to his old-fashioned fish and chip shop, and those cronies had cronies. Jim had brought just as much to the table as the
other two, but the only investment that his wife knew about was the modest duplex over near the mall.

  “Here’s Jim now,” Ron said. “Unusual for him to be late.”

  They watched Jim approach, and it was clear by the way he stalked across from the clubhouse that he was not a happy man.

  “Uh oh,” Ron said. “What’s old Maureen done this time?”

  “Made him drink her attempts at fancy coffee, probably,” Stephen said, and they all laughed.

  Jim’s frown deepened when he reached them, his eyes moving from one face to another. “What?” he demanded truculently, heaving his golf clubs on to the cart.

  “You’re late,” Ron said, needling him. “That means an extra round of drinks after the game.”

  “New backpacker,” Jim said shortly. “Are we going to get this moving or not?”

  Stan exchanged a swift glance with Stephen. When Jim was in a mood, he was in a mood. The best chance to get him out of it was to dangle money in front of him.

  “Forget the new backpacker, Jimbo,” he said. “They’re a dime a dozen. Think ‘new investment opportunity’.”

  Jim grunted.

  “What’s got your knickers in a twist?” Unfazed by Jim’s bad temper, Ron elbowed him. “Why don’t you hire somebody decent? You can afford it.”

  “Maureen doesn’t know that,” Jim said. “And I don’t want her to know.” He pulled out a driver. “My turn to play with Stan, right? You tossed a coin yet?”

  “Yes,” Stan said. “We tee off first. You go ahead.”

  With another grunt, Jim pulled on his gloves and bent down to put the tee on the marker. They all watched while he shuffled a bit, wiggled his hips, and finally took the shot.

  The ball veered off to the left, and Jim swished his driver through the air, looking even grimmer.

  “Gonna take him the whole eighteen to cool down,” muttered Ron.

  Stan waved that off. “He’ll be cool once we tell him the profits we stand to make.”

  “Maybe so,” Ron said, “but we’re all over-extended. We need to move things along.”

  “You do your share,” Stan said, “and I’ll do mine. Talk to Linda, do whatever’s necessary to bring things to a head.”

  “I will, I will.” Ron nodded at the tee. “Go on. Make it good.”

  “Just make sure you lose, keep him happy.”

  Stan picked up his driver. To be honest, he’d rather be anywhere else but on the golf course with Jim in one of his moods, but the man had money to burn.

  He also owned a valuable piece of real estate smack in the middle of Yamba that Stan had his eye on, and once he finally got tired of cooking fish and chips he might be persuaded to sell it.

  That old shop, plus the real estate either side and behind that Stan owned, could be parlayed into a pot of gold. And as of now, Jim had no idea that Stan was the well-camouflaged new owner of the shoe store next door.

  Today, he needed to make sure they had a win to get the cranky old devil into a decent frame of mind.

  He set about playing his best game.

  Back at Jim Beggs’ cafe, his wife Maureen was feeling more mellow than she had for months.

  Maybe years.

  She had stayed in Coffee, Cakes & Crepes that morning for a good hour, drinking coffee until she buzzed and sampling Viv’s cupcakes, and talking to that nice Georgie woman from America.

  She felt normal. If this was what retirement felt like, she was determined to get some of it for herself. If Jim wanted to work himself into the ground to save a dollar, let him.

  In two more months, she would be sixty-five, and she wasn’t working a day beyond that. She didn’t care if they were poor—and why would they be, when they had that nice little duplex over in Kingfisher Avenue, and their house? They could live off the rent from the duplex and sell the cafe. The land must be worth a bit, even if the building was old and in need of repair…and she did have her mother’s money, although the will had stipulated that Jim wasn’t to see a red cent.

  He’d be furious. More than furious.

  Naturally Irene Wilson had been agog to find out what was going on, the minute she walked in and saw Maureen in enemy territory. When Maureen refused to say why she was at Coffee, Cakes & Crepes and not at work, Irene had dragged Janet across the road at the first opportunity to ‘put in an order for lunch’, as though anyone couldn’t see through that.

  She’d been back in ten minutes, none the wiser, after Jim had fobbed her off with the new backpacker kid.

  When Maureen finally returned to work, her husband turned his back on her, and didn’t speak a word right up until the time he stomped out of the door to go and play golf, leaving her with their new recruit.

  Right now the backpacker was efficiently making cappuccinos for a couple of tourists. Maureen looked at him thoughtfully. Now that she’d committed to Adele’s quilting group, she needed to organize Monday mornings.

  “Anton?”

  He turned and flashed a wide smile. “Yep?”

  “How long are you planning to stay in Yamba?”

  He shrugged. “A few months, maybe? I need to save some money before I travel again.”

  Maureen beamed at him. A few months, perfect. After that she’d be retired and past caring what Jim did with the cafe.

  “Can you work every Monday morning? Say, eight through until midday?”

  “Sure.”

  Maureen thought about it for another thirty seconds, and hastily revised the time frame. “No, let’s say until one-thirty.” One thirty would give her a chance to have lunch with the women in the group.

  “Whatever.” He expertly jiggled the milk jug, making a pretty design on the top of the coffee.

  How did people do that? Lissa had tried to show her, but she had messed up.

  Well, she had a barista class coming up on Sunday. Only now, she wasn’t going to hide it from Jim.

  It was liberating, not caring what he thought or said any more.

  And if he did carry on? Well, she’d just keep her mother’s money and go and start again.

  And be happy.

  17

  Go Team!

  The next day, after an uncomfortable night sleeping on a camp stretcher at Coffee, Cakes & Crêpes, and hearing nothing but a dog barking a few doors down, Scott decided to work out a few of the kinks by joining surfers at the Angourie surf break just down the road. Georgie was helping out at the cafe while Lissa was running a course in Grafton, so it was the perfect opportunity.

  When he got back to the car and checked his phone, he found a message to call his brother.

  “Hey, bro,” he said when Jeff picked up. “What’s new?”

  “I rang Georgie,” Jeff said in an aggrieved tone, “and she said you were surfing. Surfing. And I’m stuck here in an office with no windows.”

  Scott grinned. “Surf’s pumping here at Angourie. Pity you’re not here.”

  Jeff groaned. “You’re at Angourie? That’s too cruel.”

  “We just bought new kayaks, too,” Scott said, rubbing it in. “Probably go for a paddle along the Esk later today.”

  “Sounds like you’re too busy to investigate crime. Forget it. Have a nice day.” The phone went dead.

  Scott laughed, put his phone on the front seat and stowed his surfboard in the car. A minute later, the phone rang again.

  “I can’t help it,” Jeff said with a martyred sigh. “I can’t let the bad guys get away with it.”

  “What have you got?”

  “First, the landlord. Stan Lambert. When you said he owns half of Yamba, you weren’t kidding. He’s one of those people who have corporations hiding in corporations hiding in corporations. It’s going to take me more than one session to dig deeper.”

  Scott nodded, gazing out across the ocean to the surfers waiting for the next wave. He thought of Georgie saying, there’s more than one person involved. “We need to see what he’s got going with other people in the town. Georgie’s picked up a bit throug
h local gossip; the man’s always on the golf course with someone or other. He’s tied up with various local Council groups as well. You could look at the wife, Yvonne: she’s a bit of a mover and shaker too.”

  “OK. He’s got a number of investments with Jim Beggs, I see. And there’s another guy you might want to take a closer look at, name of Ron Foley.”

  “Ron Foley? Georgie mentioned a Ron somebody. I’ll ask the girls about him. But why?”

  “He’s been the subject of legal action a couple of times, and there’s been a question of bribes. Looks like he’s of those blokes who likes to take short cuts. Intimidation, too.”

  “That would fit with someone who’d break in and make mischief.” Scott deliberated over the information for a few seconds. “But hiding part of a coffee machine for a night? Would he do that?”

  “If not him, then who? Why would anyone do that?”

  “To make the girls doubt themselves,” Scott said, thinking aloud. “Have them wondering if they’d really lost it or just misplaced it. Foley? I don’t know, he doesn’t sound the subtle type. More likely to break in and vandalize something.”

  He leaned on the car, watching one of the surfers catch a wave while he mentally ran through the women whose names had come up. Amber Kaye from the bakery, Linda Malloy in the shop next door, Irene Wilson the town gossip, and Maureen Beggs, who had surprised everyone the day before by leaving Jim fuming across the road while she had a coffee at his sisters’ place. Would any of them break in?

  He couldn’t see it.

  Stan Lambert’s wife, Yvonne…would she? He didn’t know much about her.

  “You still there?” came Bluey’s voice in his ear.

  “Yeah. Just thinking. I’ll send you a list of women’s names, just to see if anything comes up.”

  “Right. For what it’s worth, if this isn’t about petty revenge, you should follow the money. With the kind of guys you’re looking at, it’s always about money—or power.” Jeff’s voice grew fainter on the last word, and Scott could hear him talking to someone. When he came back, he sounded distracted. “I have to go, need to do some work for my real job. Send a text if you want me to look at anyone else.”