by June Whyte
“Your surname isn’t Turner—it’s McKinley.”
Ms. Stratton of the snotty attitude was starting to get up my nose. “Since when has thatbeen a crime?” I asked her. “As a matter of interest, how many cousins do youhave with a different surname to yours?”
The sharp point of Ben’s elbow caught mein the ribs.
“My dear, Ms. Stratton,” he drawled, flashing another valiant smile at Ice Woman. “A lady of your intelligence will appreciate we’re not here to waste your valuable time, only to pay Matthew Turner’s current account. You see, it’s impossible for um...Kat’s cousin to come in person, but he asked us to take care of his account and while we’re here, check the contents of his storage box. Make sure it’s exactly as he left it.”
“I see.” Was that a slight softening of the gimlet eyes behind Ice Woman’s wire-rimmed specs? “That will be $52.50. Will you be paying by check or cash?”
“Cash,” said Ben, his smile tottering on a smirk as he turned to me. “Right, Kat. Pay the nice lady.”
“Me?”
His grin widened.
Suppressing the childish urge to stick out my tongue, I rummaged in the pockets of my jeans and brought out two screwed up $20 notes and a handful of coins.
“$46.10. That’s all I have on me.”
He shrugged then counted the remaining $6.40 from his back pocket before sliding the money across the counter. “So...now that’s all settled, we’d like to check Matt’s storage box. Merely to confirm the contents are safe.”
Ms. Stratton slowly counted the money into a cash register and after making out a receipt, handed it to me. And I swear, just before she opened her mouth to speak, she almostsmiled.
“Password?”
Ben let out a yelp of incredulity. “Password?”
“We cannot allow anyone to examine one of our storage boxes without giving the correct password. Company rules.”
And I thought training greyhounds was an uphill job. If this was any indication of the problems associated with earning a living as a private investigator, they were welcome to it.
“Um—let’s see,” growled Ben. “Would it be…greyhound?”
“Sorry.”
“What aboutracing?”
She shook her head again.
“Queen of Egypt?”
“Uh! Uh!”
“Betting-ticket?”
“Race-form?”
“Win and place?”
“Quinella?”
Ms. Stratton’s head flicked from side to side like one of those painted clowns in a sideshow booth where a customer drops a ball into a moving mouth in the hope of winning a plastic comb, a Kewpie doll, or a stuffed soft animal.
The dragon lady was thoroughly enjoying herself. I could tell. Every time she shook her head, her lips disappeared inside her mouth and her eyes sparkled.
What word would Matthew have used as his password?
“I know! I know!” I yelled, flapping one arm in the air, like a school kid asking to go to the bathroom. “It’s TAB. Matt’s password has to be TAB.”
Just as I caught the imperceptible quiver of Ms. Stratton’s bottom lip, which meant I’d spoilt her day, my mobile began to trill, Stayin’ Alive.
“Hold that password,” I told her and held up one finger before answering my phone. “Kat McKinley of McKinley Greyhounds.”
“G’day, Kat. Dan here. Can I have a word with Erin?”
I blinked. Confused. “Erin? No. Why would Erin be with me, Dan?”
There was a slight pause. I could hear a quick intake of breath before Dan spoke again. “Why wouldn’t Erin be with you? She’s staying with you, isn’t she?”
“No.”
“Well, if she’s not with you…where the hell isshe?”
“How should I know?” We seemed to be going around in circles. Dan could be so thick sometimes so I spoke slowly and distinctly, as to a child. “Dan, the last I heard from Erin was when I spoke to her on the phone last night. She said your car had broken down and she was waiting for some guy to pick her up. Some guy you’d met at the pub, which is pretty damn slack if you ask—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dan broke in. “But when George got there Erin was gone.”
“Gone?” I went cold all over. “What do you mean, gone? And what makes you think she’s with me?”
“She left a note. Said she was staying with you until Tanya got back.”
The cold dribbled into my bones. “And the note was definitely written by Erin?”
“Of course, otherwise I’d have rung the cops.”
That’s when the shaking started and my voice box went rusty. “Dan,” I croaked. “I know nothing about a note.”
Had the little wretch decided to stay overnight with one of her friends and used me as an alibi? Or had something terrible happened to Erin?
I must have looked as rattled as I felt because next minute Ben’s arms were around me, the rough material of his shirt pressing against my cheek.
“It’s Erin,” I whispered. “She’s disappeared.”
“No sweat,” he said into my hair. “You know what a pain in the butt that kid is. She’ll be at a friend’s house playing games on their X-box.”
Ben, one arm still around my shoulders plucked the phone from my fingers as he guided me towards the open doorway.
“Dan. Ben here,” he growled into my mobile. “Listen, mate, Kat and I are on the move now. We’ll ask around the streets and check the river. Meanwhile, why don’t you get some mates out there searching for her and if no one’s found her by 4 o’clock, we’ll meet up at Kat’s house. Right?” He paused to listen to something Dan said. When he spoke again his voice was softer. “Hey, don’t spit the dummy mate, Erin can’t be far away. Ring around and ask if any of her friends have seen her. And mate,” he said before hanging up, “don’t forget to give us a ring back when you find her.”
As we powered through the office doorway I heard Ms. Stratton’s disappointed wail following us. “TAB? Don’t you want to know if that’s the correct password?”
But we were too busy attempting to beat the land-speed record back to Ben’s van to answer.
20
Two hours later Ben and I were still searching for Erin. We’d been to the park, we’d peered into both historical wells, which the town was named after, cross-examined shopkeepers, given joggers the third-degree and stopped locals out walking their dogs. We even poked sticks into the Gawler River. Of course the river at this time of the year wasn’t much more than a trickle, but I figured if Erin was like most kids, she’d be fascinated by water and perhaps set up camp in the bushes nearby.
No camp. No clues. No Erin.
What did I expect? Erin wasn’t most kids!
So, next item on the agenda—door-knocking. If I had a personal list of Things Imosthate doing—door-knocking would come just below having teeth pulled without gas. Honestly, if I had to make a living as a door-to-door saleswoman I’d be sleeping under a bridge and eating dinner from restaurant garbage bins.
And if today’s experience was anything to go by there was no reason to change my mind.
After banging on doors for over an hour we discovered that sixty percent of people have their televisions up so loud they wouldn’t know if a hurricane hit them until their screen went static. Of the rest, ten percent hadn’t seen Erin. The other thirty percent yelled “Go away! Don’t want any!” and slammed the door in our faces before we’d even asked our first question.
It wasn’t until we came across a group of spray-can toting kids doing a graffiti job on someone’s back fence that we stumbled on a clue. Well, actually, it was Ben who stumbled on it. He was so busy questioning me about how long Scuzz intended hanging around, he didn’t see this girl of about thirteen, complete with arm and ankle tats, until he stubbed his toe on her calf muscle. She was stretched across the footpath drawing stick figures in red and blue paints. And boy, what those stick figures were up to would have made a prostitute blush.
After establishing Tattoo Girl wasn’t traumatized or in need of hospitalization due to the hefty size twelve to the leg, I gave the kids the third degree. Seems like Tattoo Girl, who had been sitting on her own roof sharing a bong with her boyfriend on the night of Erin’s disappearance, lived across the road from Tanya. When questioned further, she told us she’d noticed this grey car with a yellow driver’s side door cruise down Tanya’s driveway and pull up at the house. The driver had gone inside and when he came out, seemed to be acting suspiciously. I asked her to define suspiciously. She said he was, like, running from the house.
Instantly my sleuthing antenna went all twitchy. That is until I realized the owner of the car was probably Dan’s pub-mate, George, the guy Dan had sent to pick up Erin.
Still, a clue is a clue.
If we could believe Tattoo Girl, who may have been hallucinating on a bad batch of grass at the time, George was carrying something under his arm when he left Tanya’s house. I asked the girl if it could have been Erin. She hesitated, thought a bit, and then said, nah, too square. I wasn’t sure if she meant the kid he was carrying was too square to be a cool dude like Erin, or that George was carrying a box.
We seemed to have hit a dead end with Tattoo Girl so, with nothing else to go on, Ben and I decided maybe it was time to hunt down this George and have a bit of a chat.
So we set off on a pub-crawl.
Three pubs later we caught up with our quarry. He was at the Billabong, a small white-washed pub in the heart of Virginia. And it didn’t take a degree in Investigative Science to figure out George was inside. A grey Holden sedan was parked out the front; its bright yellow driver’s side door a dead giveaway.
It must have been happy hour at the Billabong because the pub was rocking. When Ben and I pushed through the swing doors into the front bar, the noise hit me like a physical blast.
Several curious eyes swiveled in our direction. A drunk, his clothes reeking of cheap booze, begged me for five dollars. Swore he hadn’t eaten in three weeks. Instead of feeling sorry for the guy, which would have been my normal reaction, I returned his smile, pretended I couldn’t hear him over the noise, and just kept on walking.
Mother would have been proud of me!
While scanning the room for George I suddenly realized I didn’t know what he looked like. “How do we recognize this guy?” I whispered in Ben’s ear, resisting the urge to stroke the baby-soft hairs on the back of his neck with the tip of my tongue.
“Just leave it to me, mate.”
I pulled away from him, a snarling tiger. One of these days when he called me mate, I’d shove his words so far down his throat he’d be sitting on them.
Ben’s cousin, Clappers, who was propping up one end of the bar, gestured to the empty space beside him. We muscled our way over. While Ben made subtle enquiries about which beer-swilling customer was George, I ordered two beers—a light, and a full strength—and then nodded towards my mate. Hey, I’d paid the bigger percentage of Matt’s account—Ben could fork out for the booze.
Two beers, topped by white froth, slid easily across the grainy bar towards us. Never had a drink been more welcomed. In case you’ve never spent time searching for an eleven-year-old who is determined not to be found, let me tell you, on a fun level, it’s up there with jumping out of a plane without a parachute. To say I was pissed off with Erin was putting it mildly.
My hand reached for the beer. A quick upward motion and the cold glass met my parched lips. Oooh bliss… As the amber liquid ran slowly and deliciously down my throat, I watched Ben scull his beer in one and bang the empty glass back down on the bar.
“There’s our man,” he said, leaning closer and nodding towards the eight-ball table at the far end of the room. “George is the guy in the baggy khaki overalls doing a con job on the Dale brothers.” He shook his head and snorted in disgust. “Fair dinkum, those two nitwits wouldn’t know a shark if it swam up and bit ’em on the bum. The way George is suckering them in, they’ll be fleeced of their dole money quicker than the time it took to collect it.”
So…that was George. Chubby face. Long greasy yellow hair. Overweight. I frowned. He seemed vaguely familiar. Couldn’t quite put my finger on where I’d seen him before…but I was working on it.
While Ben ordered another round of drinks, I threaded my way through a clutch of noisy punters, all intent on watching shiny-coated horses gallop across the large screen set on the bar wall. At last I reached the eight-ball table and stood behind the guy in the khaki overalls. Up close I could see rolls of fat circling his waist line and the beginning of a bald patch skulking on the crown of his head. I waited. Timed my first question to coincide with the exact moment he pulled back his cue-arm and took a shot at the small white ball lined up with a larger striped ball.
“Hey, you Dan’s mate, George?”
The cue stick missed the white ball and ran along the green baize. Mister Overweight and Flabby swung around, his reddish-purple face twisted in fury.
“Now look what you’ve done, bitch! You’ve made me miss a turn!”
“Are you George?” I repeated, outwardly cool like a professional P I, inwardly trembling like barely set jelly.
His pudgy fingers tightened and his knuckles turned white. “What’s it to you if I am?”
The nasty glint in George’s eye indicated how close he was to taking off my head with his cue stick. Oh crap! Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Involuntarily I lifted one arm to protect my face but was saved the ignominy of running up the white flag and beating a hasty retreat by the arrival of my good mate, Ben, who muscled his way in front of me. Ha…take that George! After whooshing out a sigh of relief, I gave the cue-wielder an infantile, so-there,cocky grin, just stopping short of poking out my tongue.
When Ben spoke, his voice was soft but it had that lovely hint of steel behind it. Oh, yum. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, George.” Casually, as though the tension in the air wasn’t as electric as a Dick Smith store, Ben handed me a glass of beer and placed his own glass on the side of the pool table, right beside a stack of twenties. Arms crossed, he gave George an up and down visual. “This lady is with me,” he told him, in that orgasmic better-not-mess-with-me voice that had me crossing my legs and biting my lips.
“So?” George’s knuckles remained white as he clutched his cue stick. Violence seeped out of him like a life force. I could so see this guy ramming a knife into poor defenseless Matt Turner.
“So…Dan Ashton’s daughter Erin has gone missing,” Ben said. “And my friend here would like to ask you a few questions about the situation. Okay?”
George’s body gradually relaxed until he looked like a normal person again. “Sorry about that,” he said and threw a rueful little boy grin in my direction. I pretended to miss it. “I was caught up in the game and you put me off. Of course I’ll help. If I can.”
“Fair enough, mate.” Ben firmly extricated the cue stick from George’s reluctant fingers and peered along its length. “Playing for a sheep station, are we?”
George shrugged. “You might say a bit of money’s on the line.”
“Mmm…I’ll bear that in mind.”
“What do you mean?”
Ben picked up the chalk. “While you and Kat have your little chat, I’ll keep the fires burning here for you.” George opened his mouth to object but before he could get a word out, Ben beat him to it. “Hey, don’t worry, mate. Your cue stick is in top hands with me. I won the Billabong Tavern Cup three years in a row.” He turned to the Dale brothers, Bluey and Joe, and I saw him wink. “That right, boys?”
Joe jerked his head up, blinked rapidly and then went back to chalking the end of his cue stick. Bluey nodded vigorously.
Yes, Ben hadwon the Billabong Tavern Cup three years in a row—for sculling twenty schooners in the fastest time. Actually, I reckoned he knew less about the game of eight-ball than I did. And all I knew was if you sink your black ball into the corner hole before your colored
balls, you’re in deep doo-doo.
Evidently satisfied with Ben’s credentials, George followed me to a less congested corner of the bar, where, over the sharp tang of disinfectant, I could still detect the common pub odder of sour sweat, spilt beer and stale cigarette smoke. I set my glass of light beer on a table covered with a plastic cloth the color of sliced watermelon, bagged a chair and sat down.
The legs on George’s chair made a scritching sound as he dragged it to the opposite side of the table. “Can I get you another drink?”
“I’m covered, thanks.”
“Well, let’s start over again, shall we?” He leaned across the table, one pudgy hand outstretched. “I’m George Summers.”
“Kat McKinley,” I answered, touching the proffered soft flesh as briefly as politeness would allow.
“Kat McKinley? The greyhound trainer?”
“One and the same.”
The little-boy grin touched his thick lips yet again. “How’s the classical music going? Keeping those dogs of yours quiet?”
“Of course! You’rethat George. I thought you looked familiar. You’re the guy who fitted the gadget beside the stairs for me. One press and instant Tchaikovsky in the kennel-house.”
“Guilty as charged.” His smile grew larger. Seeing all those predatory teeth made me think of Ben’s earlier analogy. George Summers was a shark. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you before,” he went on. “But as I recall, our dealings all took place over the phone.”
“That’s right, and the day you came to set the gadget up, I was heading off to the trial track with a trailer-load of dogs. Couldn’t stop, so I told you where to find the key and let you get on with it.”
“And the key was in the—” He stopped, examined his bitten fingernails and cleared his throat before continuing. “Anyway, I’m glad it all worked out for you. I’ve had heaps of satisfied customers but if you could recommend me to your friends, I’d be obliged.” He shot a quick look across the room, squinting as he tried to see what was taking place beside the pool table. “Now, how can I help you today?”
