by JD Nixon
Why did he have to mention that for? It was Big Town’s most expensive restaurant, one I’d always dreamed of dining at, but would never be able to afford. As if I needed reminding about my relative poverty. It wasn’t like him to gloat about being so well-off, but it was strange all the same. I deleted the messages, mentally shrugging. It made no difference to me what he decided to do. I would do my own thing, just as I always had, with or without him.
Turning my attention to the Lucy list again, I struggled to concentrate with Liz’s exceptionally loud and discordant voice in the background. She’d finished an impressive both verses of the national anthem and had moved through tormenting ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Twice. At the end of that agony, she started singing about the shears going click, and then how she was bound for Botany Bay. After that she began lamenting that Jack Doolan was a wild colonial boy, followed by how she loved to have a beer with Duncan, and was now making me suffer the version of the poem ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ set to song. I knew it had about a hundred verses and she had only just started singing about how she had written him a letter . . . Frigging hell! I nearly went out to shove my boot in her mouth to stop the cacophony. Hadn’t she ever heard of Eskimo Joe or Powderfinger or even bloody AC/DC? Or anything remotely this century?
I tried to work for a couple of minutes with my fingers plugged into my ears. But it was to no avail, as I soon realised that it was virtually impossible to manipulate a keyboard or mouse with your nose or your elbows. I would have shut the door between the two rooms, but there wasn’t one. The town’s forefathers had strongly held the value that the activities of the Little Town constabulary would always be open to public scrutiny.
After another couple of minutes of pain, I quietly rang Brett again and throwing all my dignity to the winds, begged him to come to the station. He was Little Town born and bred, about three years older than me. Dad had frequently socialised with his parents and I was still good friends with his little sister, Caroline, who’d been in my class. The Cusacks were loyal and friendly, and we’d all run around together like wild things as kids. Brett had always had a soft spot for me, being such a nice guy, and I could tell he was finding it hard to turn me down. Unscrupulously, I piled on the guilt and pressure.
“Okay! Okay!” he finally capitulated. “Just keep her away from me, promise.” I duly promised that I would. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I almost wept with relief. Liz was up to the bit in the song where she was sitting in her dingy little office. She could have been describing my life at the moment, I thought, as I stared out at the depressing greyness of the sky. I went to the front room to let her know that Brett was on his way, but only if she shut the hell up. Now!
Her mouth snapped shut and she sat up in her seat, pulling out her compact, her comb and her lipstick from her handbag. I observed those small grooming routines, frowning. She still cared what he thought about her. Could this all be a beat-up just to reconcile them? I was going to come down on her heavily if it was. The state’s police force wasn’t to be used as a lonely hearts service. Didn’t she know that I had missing teenagers to find and rescue?
There was blissful silence for the next nine and three-quarter minutes and I managed to wipe another three Lucys from my list before the bell rang again. I sprang up, not wanting to leave Brett and Liz alone together, remembering my promise to him.
He stood ill at ease, hat in his hands, well away from the haughty Liz, who had her face determinedly turned away from him – a deliberate snub. He was a very average man, medium height, medium weight, average looks. Mid-brown hair, mid-brown eyes, skin not dark but not fair. No distinguishing features at all – no tattoos, no scars, no piercings, no interesting body parts. You’d easily overlook him in a crowd. You wouldn’t even notice him if someone like Jake came into the same room. But Liz tensed with suppressed emotion with him standing there. She noticed him, all right.
“Hey, Brett. I haven’t seen you around for a while,” I said, smiling at him. He blushed.
“Been busy, Tessie. Always busy. Those potatoes don’t grow themselves.” And he hefted a couple of kilograms of them on to the counter. “I had some spare spuds and I thought you might like them. Especially after . . . you know.”
“That is so sweet of you, Brett. Thank you very much from Dad and me.” His blush turned into an unflattering flush of red.
I hurriedly swept the potatoes out of sight under the counter, wanting to maintain a professional environment. “Okay, you two, out the back, please,” I ordered, opening the hatch in the counter.
They both moved to the entrance and like the gentleman he was, Brett let Liz go through first. I locked the hatch after them and hustled them to the two brand new visitor chairs that the Sarge had somehow conjured up for us in his mysterious way. I instructed them to sit, and they both took a chair, then did that awkward shuffle of moving a chair while you were sitting on it. There were a few moments of scrapings and thumpings, permanently scratching the old timber floor, as they conspicuously shifted apart.
“This has got to stop,” I insisted. “You both need to grow up. You had a relationship and it didn’t end well. I’m sorry about that. The whole town is sorry about that, because you seemed so happy together. But the fact is that you’re adults and you need to be able to be in a room with each other without all of these unnecessary dramatics.” My eyes burned Liz, then Brett. “Do we understand each other?”
They both nodded reluctantly.
“Brett.” I went for the easy mark first. “Liz says you had an arrangement for your horse to stud hers. Do you agree?”
“We did have that agreement. How could he disagree?” Liz burst out angrily, half-rising from her seat.
“Liz!” I snapped. “I’m not talking to you at the moment, so zip it.” I’d always found in life that blunt people needed to be talked to bluntly, because they didn’t understand anything more subtle. She simmered down, reseating herself, and I repeated my question to Brett.
He nodded, staring miserably at his muddy boots. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed emotional confrontations. But hey, what man ever did?
“Your horse didn’t perform as expected and there was no consequent pregnancy. Agreed?”
Liz muttered angrily and I shut her up with a pointed stare.
Brett gave another faint nod, again directed at his boots. He was blushing again, which was strange. He couldn’t be that shy, could he? Most farmers were fairly matter-of-fact about sexual matters relating to their animals. I forged on.
“Liz paid you for this service, and she was rightly disappointed when you failed to deliver. Are you in agreement about that fact too?”
Another nod, but if his head was hanging any lower, I was afraid it would snap off at his neck.
“Well, Brett. You either have to give her the money back or try your horse on hers again,” I said patiently. “That’s just common decency and I know you’re a decent man.”
There was uncomfortable silence in the room for a couple of minutes.
“I’ve offered to give her the money back heaps of times, but she won’t be reasonable about it. She hangs up on me all the time,” he erupted, heated. “And I can’t stud my stallion with her mare again.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because he doesn’t want to!”
Okay, I thought, trying mightily not to roll my eyes. Obviously Brett had deep and meaningful conversations with his horse about its feelings. My gaze fell on Liz, noticing with surprise the emotions on her face. When he said that, devastation rippled across her features before they hardened again.
“What he’s trying to say is that his stallion isn’t capable of either satisfying a mare or getting her pregnant,” she said viciously.
Brett bounded to his feet, his chair tumbling to the floor with a crash. “That’s just not true, Tess! My stallion is perfectly capable of performing and has proved that with other mares. There’s nothing wrong with my stallion!”
She
stood up as well, slamming her chair against the filing cabinets as she did and faced him belligerently. “Are you saying that my mare is incapable of arousing desire in a stallion?”
“Yes! I’m saying that your mare is so demanding that my poor stallion shrivels at the prospect.”
“Maybe your stallion should harden the hell up!”
“And maybe your mare should drop the dictating attitude! My stallion finds it a real turn-off.”
“My mare does not dictate!”
“Yes, she does. All the bloody time. She won’t just let things happen naturally. She has to try to control everything. Move here! Do that! Harder!” he mimicked words that no horse had ever uttered. “No stallion could perform in those circumstances.”
She turned, appealing to me. “Tess, that’s just not true. Admittedly, my mare can be strong-willed and demanding at times, but that stallion made her so calm and content. I just want her to be happy again like she was with him.”
He turned, appealing to me as well. “Tess, my stallion loved being with that mare, and there was so much love between them that he was in heaven, but the pressure to have a . . . foal . . . was too intense. It crippled his ability to, um, perform and crushed their relationship to pieces.” He righted his chair and sat heavily, staring down at his boots again.
I shifted my eyes between the two of them, arms crossed, wondering how we’d crossed the line between horse and human relationships. I was starting to feel like Oprah.
“Brett?” I asked. “Apart from . . . um . . . performance issues, how does your stallion feel about Liz’s mare?” I felt like I’d swallowed a bucket of stupid by even asking that.
“My stallion just isn’t interested in any other mare,” he said quietly, examining those muddy boots again. I glanced at them, but they just weren’t that interesting.
“Liz? Your mare?”
“Not interested in another stallion, Tess. And that’s the truth,” she said, equally quiet. She was staring bleakly over my shoulder at the wall.
I suppressed a huge sigh. They didn’t train us for this kind of shit at the academy. “Liz. Brett. Please look at each other.” They did slowly, unwillingly. “Life is short and uncertain. I know that more than anybody. Any one of us might be taken tomorrow or even tonight, so it’s almost a sin to waste a moment of living. Or to let a chance of real happiness slip through our fingers because we are too proud to get over ourselves.”
Their gazes locked on each other.
“Brett. Liz. Time to be honest with each other. Please.”
Liz spoke up first, of course. “I miss you so much, Brett. I’m sorry I pressured you for a baby. I didn’t mean to, but I feel as though my body clock was ticking down quickly.”
“I miss you too, Lizzie. And I do want a family, but I really need for us to be married first before we have any kids. It’s my background, my religion. It’s what I believe in and it’s very important to me,” he said simply.
“I didn’t realise that it meant so much to you, Brett. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“Me too, darling.”
They had a touching reunion, which I tactfully turned away from, giving them a moment of privacy. But then it went on and on. Restless and bored, I returned to my computer, ignoring the horrible slurping noises and heavy breathing in the background. I picked up the Lucy list and tried to concentrate. But after another minute, I’d had enough, turning to the couple. They were becoming inappropriately ardent.
“Oi, lovebirds!” I said loudly, causing them spring apart. “It’s not a frigging motel here! Shove off home. I’m trying to work.”
They both blushed at that and after thanking me profusely, they headed off, hands clasped tightly, probably to resume their studding activities, both human and equine. Pushing that unwelcome mental picture from my head, I returned to the Lucy list, only to be interrupted by a personal call on my mobile.
It was Gretel, wanting frantically to know if it was true that the Sarge’s fiancee had arrived in town. Regretfully, I confirmed those facts and broke her heart in the process. She’d always been keen on the Sarge and had probably convinced herself that Melissa didn’t really exist. Her fragile bubble of bliss had just been cruelly popped. I consoled her for ten long minutes before she felt able to get on with her day. When I hung up, I immediately ruled her tiny flat out as a possible place to stay tonight. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to hours of her weeping and moaning over ‘losing’ the Sarge, and if that made me a bad friend, then I was a bad friend.
Thankfully, things were very quiet for the next few hours until by the late afternoon, I was able to cross off every Lucy except for five possibles. But the lack of sleep the night before was catching up with me and I was yawning my head off uncontrollably by the time I finished.
The phone rang. “Mount Big Town police station,” I said and unfortunately was at that exact moment overcome by a huge yawn. “Sorry about that.”
“Sounds as though someone didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Oh, hi Sarge,” I said and yawned again.
“You sound exhausted. Go home, Tessie.”
“I can’t. It’s not ready.” Shit! Why did I say that for? I didn’t want him to know that little fact.
“You better haul your bag back up to my place then,” he ordered. I was about to protest when he continued dryly. “We’re not going to be there, so you don’t have to worry about avoiding us.”
“What?”
“Melissa wants to stay here in Big Town overnight. We’re going to stay at the Chancellor.” Of course they were. It was a five-star luxury resort just out of Big Town, overlooking the beach.
“But you didn’t take any stuff with you.”
“I know, but that’s typical of Melissa. She’s very spontaneous. We’re about to go shopping and buy some spare toothbrushes and clothes.” Of course they were. I couldn’t have felt more unlike them if I’d tried at that moment. “You’ll have the whole house to yourself tonight. Promise me you’ll stay there so I know where you are. Otherwise I’ll worry.” He’d be frantic with worry right now if he knew where I was planning to go tonight.
“Okay.” I would stay there if they were going to be away. It sure beat sleeping in the lockup or on the station floor. Or with Young Kenny, for that matter.
“What have you been up to today?” he asked.
“Stuff.”
He sighed patiently. “What kind of stuff?”
“Work stuff. What else?”
“Been busy?”
“Yep.”
“Any trouble?”
“Nope.”
“You’re not very chatty today.” I wasn’t very chatty any day. “Don’t you want to know about our lunch at Cybele?”
“Just hang on a sec while I make myself a Cup-a-Soup while I listen.”
He was silent for a moment, before laughing ruefully. “Not very subtle of you, Tess, but I get the message. I’m being a pretentious prick, aren’t I? Telling you about the Chancellor and Cybele? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I genuinely thought you’d be interested. I know how much you like to cook and you’ve mentioned that you’d like to eat there one day.”
I was instantly ashamed at my bitter attitude. “I’m sorry, Sarge. I didn’t mean to snap. You’re right. I’m tired and I need to go home. Or to your place, at least.” I needed some sleep before my nocturnal adventures. “You can tell me all about your fine dining experience tomorrow. I hope you and Melissa enjoy your night together. Maybe you can sort out your wedding plans while you’re there?”
He made some vague non-committed noise and changed the subject. “What are you going to have for dinner?”
“I don’t know! I haven’t even thought about it. Probably another Cup-a-Soup.”
“There’s some homemade chicken and vegetable soup in my freezer. Heat that up instead, okay? It’s in a red container.”
I rolled my eyes, safely knowing he couldn’t see me. “You’re such a mother hen someti
mes.”
He laughed, a pleasant, warm chuckle in my ear. “I guess that makes you my chick.”
I snorted. “No, it bloody well doesn’t! Anyway, your chick’s probably waiting for you and you better get off the phone before she gets angry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay, Tessie. Thanks for covering for me while I’m playing hooky. I really appreciate it.”
“Anything for true love, Sarge. Bye now.”
Geez! Wasn’t I a little cupid today? Which reminded me of my own true love. I rang Jake, but was again diverted to his voicemail. He must be on duty. I left a very loving message, thanking him once more for working on my house and reminding him that I’d thank him personally on the weekend. I hoped to hear back from him soon, because I’d be going to bed early.
At the Sarge’s house, freshly showered and straight into my pyjamas, I duly heated up the soup and ate it, admitting to myself that it was very tasty. The plates washed and dried, I indulged in some naughty phone foreplay with Jake that made me long for the weekend. Then I slumped in front of the TV for a mind-numbing hour. During that time I fielded two phone calls from the Sarge checking up on me. I was a bit short with him on the second call, snapping at him to stop worrying about me so much and to instead spend more time enjoying his evening with Melissa.
By seven-thirty the bed was beckoning me with an irresistible siren call. I slept deeply and didn’t dream about anything I could remember, before my phone rang and woke me up. I fumbled uselessly on the bedside table in the dark for twenty seconds, only to have the call divert to voicemail the very second I laid my hands on the phone. Damn!
Chapter 24
I turned on the bedside lamp and blinking in the bright light, listened to the message. Both the Sarge and I diverted the station phone to our mobiles when we were on night or weekend roster. It was probably an emergency. Why else would someone ring me at – I checked the clock – one-thirty in the morning? I didn’t mind too much though, because it was only thirty minutes earlier than I’d originally set my alarm.
