by JD Nixon
I patted him on the shoulder, consolingly. “Never mind, Sarge. You’ll get used to it. Or more likely, you’ll just get jack of the place, run away and find another posting somewhere sane and leave me behind.”
“Why do you stay, Tess?”
I regarded him steadily, meeting his dark blues, choosing to be brutally honest with him for once. “My father. He’s too sick to be put through the trauma of a move. And . . .” I turned away so he couldn’t see my face. “He wants to die in this town and be buried here, next to my mother. I can’t deny him that last wish.” I wouldn’t deny Dad anything, no matter what it cost me. When I thought I’d mastered my emotions, I turned back to him brightly. “If you don’t need me anymore, I think I’ll head off. It’s been quite a day, even for this place.”
“Okay then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said quietly.
I left him, made it to the carpark and realised I didn’t have a lift. Damn! I was forced to ask him to give me a lift home, which he did without complaining. I felt obliged to invite him to dinner, but he declined saying he had a lot of unpacking to do, giving me a toot on the horn as he drove off.
Chapter 14
The chickens were settling nicely into their new home. Jake and Dad had done a wonderful job and the coop was mended, freshly painted and spacious. During the day my chickens would be free-range and could wander our yard at their whim. It was only at night that I’d lock them away in their coop. There were always foxes and feral cats to worry about around these parts.
I made the men dinner, gave Dad a big hug and kiss in appreciation of his help and thanked Jake heartily for all his hard work later in the privacy of my bedroom. The fact that he had to be up early the next morning to get himself off back to work at the prison and I was in a great deal of pain restricted our nocturnal activities. We didn’t over-indulge as we had the night before, but shared enough good loving to send us both off to sleep as soon as we had finished with each other.
I loved it when he stayed over, loved sleeping in his arms, loved waking up with him lying next to me in my bed. I had suggested once that he think about moving in with Dad and me, but could tell that he wasn’t keen on the idea. He enjoyed his carefree single lifestyle, seeing me often enough to satisfy his emotional and carnal needs, but not enough to suffocate him. He had a strong case of commitment-phobia. That was okay with me at the moment, but it would become an issue between us sooner or later. I didn’t know what would happen when it did rear its ugly head. Like most women, I harboured dreams of one day marrying a good man, settling down with him and having some kids. But I was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be Jake that I’d be settling down with, no matter how strong our feelings were for each other. And that unwelcome truth overwhelmed me with sadness whenever I thought about it, so I tried not to think about it very often.
In the morning before he rushed off to work, I asked Jake to take some photos of me for evidence using his own digital camera. He was one of the few people I could trust not to send them around to everyone. I was sure I could also trust the Sarge not to do that, but I still didn’t want him to see me in my underwear, so I wouldn’t reconsider my decision not to ask him. My body was looking a right mess with the bruising on my torso from the kickings and my hip already turning an ugly dark red colour. That was going to be a spectacular bruise. No bikinis for me for a while, I thought with resignation.
I kissed Jake goodbye as he headed off to work. I knew that Dr Fenn would probably advise against it, but I decided to go for a jog anyway. Neither the Sarge nor Romi turned up that morning, probably assuming that I would wisely decide not to jog after being hit by a car the previous day. They obviously had a higher opinion of my intelligence than was warranted.
It quickly became apparent that going for a jog was an extraordinarily bad idea. But I felt as though I was caving in to my weak body to stop, so I kept pushing myself further and further, disregarding the screaming pain coming from my hip. Eventually though, I just couldn’t continue and limped to walking pace. The problem was that I’d come so far that it was going to kill me to turn around and walk back home.
Feeling sorry for myself, I turned around and started the long walk home. Wrapped in my own self-pitying thoughts, I nearly jumped out of my skin when a car tooted from behind me. I spun around, eyes wide with fright, my knife out, ready to run or fight for my life.
It was only the Sarge. He pulled up next to me. “Get in,” he ordered.
I didn’t argue but opened the door and eased into the passenger seat gratefully. His hair was wet and he smelled of the sea, so I presumed he’d been for an early morning swim in the surf.
“You scared the hell out of me. I thought for sure that you were going to be a Bycraft.” I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, trying to get my heartbeat back to normal.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” His eyes lingered on my knife, which I still clutched tightly in my hand. Noticing his interest, I re-sheathed it.
“I thought I’d be able to jog, but I can’t. It just hurts too much,” I answered sheepishly.
He stared at me for a moment. “I could have told you that. A preschooler could have told you that. In fact, one of your chickens could have told you that,” he said in exasperation.
I laughed. “I didn’t think to ask my girls for their advice first.”
He zoomed off and it wasn’t too long before he was dropping me off back home. I offered to make him breakfast and he agreed, but admitted feeling guilty about it.
“I’ve had breakfast at your place every day I’ve been in this town,” he said.
“People will start gossiping,” I smiled, only half-joking.
“They probably already are,” he replied. “Do you mind?”
I shrugged. “People will always gossip about something,” then changed the subject. “Have you tried your eggs yet?”
“No, because you keep making me breakfast all the time. I haven’t had a chance.”
“Well, let’s see what my lovely girls have laid. The disruption to their living quarters might have put them off.” I limped around the back and he followed me, remarking in surprise at the renovated chook house.
“Jake did a good job on it in such a short period of time,” he said sincerely, impressed.
“Yeah, my Jakey’s a great guy,” I said fondly, managing to find four eggs, only one less than normal. Miss Chooky was probably the non-participant, disliking being disturbed in any way. She was sulking this morning, probably still annoyed at being manhandled last night, turning her back to me and refusing to face me. I gave them fresh water and threw some feed down for them, which forced Miss Chooky to forget her huff in the usual frenzy for food. As the dominant hen, it was important for her to have the finest scratchings and I laughed as I watched her abandon her dignity and scrabble with the others for the feed.
I still had a couple of eggs left over from the previous day, so made us a quick omelette, some toast and coffee. We ate together at the kitchen table, inevitably talking shop. I reminded him that Abe was dropping off his spare computer this morning.
“I want us to work together most of the time,” he said, picking up his last piece of omelette. I leaned forward, all ears. “So Monday to Friday we’ll both work during the day and we’ll take it in turns, week by week, to be on-call for evening and weekend work. I want everyone to see and to know that we’re a team. How does that sound?”
“So I’d actually get every second weekend off?” He nodded. “I love it, Sarge. That would be great.”
“Also, I want us to be more of a presence in town. A couple of times a week, I want us to do some foot patrols around the main streets. You know, walk around, let people know that the town has cops, talk to people. Let the kids in the town see us, get to know us. Start learning some respect for the law. Start building stronger community relationships.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
“And we’ll start using the lockup too. Let those Bycrafts know
that their days of terrorising you are over.”
“That would make my life better, for sure.” I looked at him with unconcealed appreciation. I could have hugged him right then. “Thanks Sarge. It’s so great to have some support for once. It’s been a long two years here. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve been spat on or abused.”
He smiled briefly. “No worries, partner.”
We exchanged a long glance. “Thanks, partner,” I said finally, smiling. It felt good to say that. I was beginning to think that Finn Maguire was a great guy himself.
I was in the process of collecting our plates and taking them to the sink when Dad wearily wheeled himself in. He looked palely tired and, I hated to even think it, sick.
“Hey, Dad. How’d you sleep?” I asked, not able to stop myself from fussing over him. He weakly flapped me away with his hand in irritation.
“Not good, love,” he said. “Morning, Finn.”
“Morning, Trev,” the Sarge said politely, then to help take Dad’s mind off his pain. “Did you know your daughter tried to go for a jog this morning?”
“Tessie,” Dad remonstrated, looking up at me with tired eyes. “You must be in ten kinds of pain today.”
“I picked her up on Beach Road looking very sorry for herself and wishing she hadn’t set out in the first place.”
“He’s exaggerating. I was fine,” I lied with bravado. “I just decided to take it slow for a little while.” Nobody believed me.
When the Sarge left, I cleaned up and convinced Dad to go back to bed, worried about leaving him alone for the day. I rang up a few of his friends until I found one free to come over to sit with him for the rest of the day, begging him not to tell Dad that I’d organised the visit. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that and to give them due credit, his friends were wonderful in rallying around when they could.
I showered and dressed in my oldest jeans and t-shirt, carefully packing my uniform in a bag and quietly left the house, driving the Land Rover to the station. I turned up before the Sarge but instead of opening the station, I detoured around to the back and began the tedious and messy job of mucking out the lockup. By the time the Sarge arrived at work and went hunting for me, noticing my vehicle in the carpark, I had cleared out all the straw and was on my hands and knees scrubbing down the floor and walls with a bleach solution. I didn’t want anyone accusing us of giving them an avian disease from being kept in one of the cells.
“Don’t we have anyone to clean the station and do that kind of routine stuff for us?” he asked, leaning on the railing.
I looked up at him, dripping scrubbing brush in my hand. “You’re joking, right?”
He didn’t offer to help, instead rolling his eyes and muttering something under his breath that sounded to my ears like a judgemental comment about “fucking one-horse towns”.
Finally finished cleaning, I left the doors to the cells open to air out the bleach smell and looked at them with satisfaction, pleased at how clean they were. Almost ready for what undoubtedly would be a steady stream of Bycrafts enjoying a brief sojourn inside. I had a quick wash down in the basin of the bathroom and donned my uniform.
When I joined the Sarge, he and Abe were in the process of installing the computer that Abe had brought down to the station, as promised.
“Hey, Abe,” I greeted casually. “Anyone want a cup of tea?” They both did, so I put the kettle on and set out the cups and tea bags, humming happily to myself as I did. It was nice to have other people in the station with me. I’d become used to being here by myself a lot. Des had spent most of his time in his house ‘writing reports’ (napping), at the pub ‘talking to informants’ (drinking beer and watching sport on Abe’s satellite pay-TV) or ‘investigating’ at Foxy Dubois’ place (shagging). He hadn’t graced the station much with his presence in the time I’d worked with him.
The counter bell rang and I abandoned the tea-making to answer it, to find Valmae Kilroy standing there, a battered hardshell suitcase carefully placed on the counter.
“Hi, Valmae. I haven’t seen you around for a while. How have you been? How are those great kids of yours?”
“Good morning, Tess. Josh is doing great. He’s in third year now. One more year after that then he’s finished his degree. The first one in our family.”
“Excellent. I bet he’s been doing well at university. He was always a smart boy.”
“I don’t want to boast, but he is doing really well,” she said proudly. “And we’re all still so grateful you took the time to talk to him about surviving university and living in the city.”
“That’s okay, Valmae, it was my pleasure,” I said, embarrassed. She had already thanked me about a thousand times for what was essentially nothing. What she was really trying to thank me for though, was convincing her husband to let their only son go to university in the first place. He had been dead set against it, wanting Josh to take over the family avocado farm. But it was more than obvious to everyone, except him, that Josh was a very intelligent boy with an overriding passion for engineering and that his daughter, Tina, was the mad keen budding farmer in the family. It had him taken a while to readjust his prehistoric thinking about gender roles, but he came around eventually. Now Josh was happy at university while Tina was thriving as a learner farmer as well as finishing high school.
“And Tina?”
“You know Tina. Takes everything in her stride. A great little trooper.” She was equally proud of her strong capable daughter. Romi and Tina were best friends and I couldn’t tell you how much it warmed my heart to see so many promising young people being born and raised in Little Town. It kind of made up for all the young Bycrafts. Kind of.
“What can I do for you, Valmae?” I prompted gently.
She roused herself. “Sorry, Tess. Um, I was out with the dogs this morning, checking on the rear fence, when I found this.” And she put her hand on the suitcase. “Lupin went chasing off down the hill into the neighbouring property after a rabbit and it took me an age to get him back on his collar.” Her dog Lupin was huge, disobedient and incredibly stupid. “He’d run into a little lean-to hut that was overgrown with vegetation. I didn’t even notice it at first. But inside the hut I found this.” She patted the suitcase.
“It’s kind of battered, Valmae. It was probably dumped. I’m not sure anyone would want it returned,” I said tactfully. It was an ugly old suitcase, slightly water damaged. I could faintly make out a monogram in faded gold lettering: EAG. I was surprised she’d bothered to drive into town to hand this in. I would have chucked it straight in the bin.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure they’d want this suitcase returned,” she insisted and her tone of voice made me turn the suitcase around and pop the catches. I lifted the lid and my eyes nearly popped out in surprise.
“Bloody hell!” I yelped unprofessionally, taking in the piles and piles of cash sitting inside it. I’d never seen so much money.
“That’s the first thing I said when I opened it up too! Gerry and I didn’t know what to do, so he suggested I bring it down to you straight away. So here I am.”
“Good call,” I turned to the back and bellowed inelegantly, “Sarge!”
He came out, curious, but clearly not appreciating being beckoned in such a summary fashion. But he forgot his irritation as soon as he set eyes on the great wad of cash.
“Sarge, this is Valmae Kilroy, and she’s just found a whole pile of money in this suitcase.” We ran through the story for him.
“So it wasn’t found on your property?” he clarified, and Valmae honestly but somewhat regretfully admitted that was correct. “Do you know who owns that property? We’ll have to contact them.”
“It’s government land, I believe. Nobody’s ever lived on it as far as I know. And this money must have been there for a while, because these are paper notes and look,” she pointed at some brown and green coloured bills, “there are one and two dollar notes in there as well.”
I glanced at the S
arge with uncertainty. “Is this paper money still worth anything? We’ve had the polymer notes and the one and two dollar coins for ages.”
“It sure is,” he assured us and commenced jotting down some details on an incident report form, while I counted the money and issued Valmae a receipt for the whopping sum of $104,383 and one hideous ancient brown hardshell suitcase. I thanked her profusely for being so honest, and hopefully that dispelled any lingering doubts she might have had about the wisdom of relinquishing so much dosh to the authorities.
The Sarge and Abe formally witnessed me putting the cash into the small floor safe in the back room, where Stacey’s gun was still sitting.
“It barely all fits in,” I complained, jamming the money into every available gap. It was only a small safe and it was a lot of cash. I looked up at the Sarge and Abe. “I’ve never seen so much money in my life. Where do you think it came from?”
Abe shrugged his shoulders and the Sarge frowned, perplexed. Nothing had been robbed, no rich miser had died, nobody had come forward complaining that their life savings had been misplaced. How could someone not miss all that money? It was a real mystery.
“We’ll have to take the money to the Big Town station. We can’t keep it here. We’ve got no proper security,” the Sarge fumed. “God, this station isn’t set up to handle anything. I’m going to get some money spent around here to get us up to scratch.”
“I know where we can find an easy hundred grand,” I said with a cheeky grin, slamming the door to the safe closed to temptation. “That could buy us a couple of new computers and some Tim Tams for morning tea every day.”
“Are they the only improvements you’d make?” he asked with a half-smile, reluctantly pulled from his rant.
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, gazing around. “Oh, and a new mug for Young Kenny, of course.”
The Sarge turned to Abe, “She’s cute, isn’t she?”
