‘Tear out the puzzle page for me,’ said Ethel, ‘that’s the only reason we get it. You’re off, then? Make sure you come back soon, or you know I’ll be chasing you to keep your promise.’
Jo grinned. ‘I’ll be back late February,’ she said firmly. ‘Just in time for the Yakka.’
She hurried back to her hotel room, threw herself on the bed where the aircon vent was pointing its noisy, slightly drippy, blast of nineteen-degree air, and started reading.
A man, formally identified as David Engall from Mt Isa, has been arrested in possession of a duffel bag of crystal amphetamine worth an estimated two million dollars in street value and cash in several currencies including the Australian dollar, the PNG kina and the Indonesian rupiah.
The man has been confirmed by Yindi Creek helicopter pilot Charlie Cocker to be the same man who failed to turn up for a scheduled charter flight and was subsequently reported missing. A search by police and local volunteers failed to find any trace of him.
In a joint operation, aided by evidence brought forward by Yindi Creek’s most famous local Gavin Gunn (aka Gavin Huxtable) and Acting Senior Constable Petra Clifford of the Yindi Creek Police, Engall was tracked down via registration records as the owner of a Cessna 172 aircraft which had, shortly before his mystery disappearance, been involved in a near miss with a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane at the Karumba Airfield. The RFDS plane had been carrying a pilot, two nurses and a seriously wounded patient at the time, and police were onsite at the airstrip as they had transported the wounded patient to the plane.
Engall has not provided police with …
Jo stopped reading and dropped the paper to the bed. Huh. Her pterodactyl theory hadn’t been so far-fetched after all.
She’d have liked to call Hux to congratulate him, but she had promised herself she wasn’t going to say anything more until she was sure she wasn’t going to have to leave again. This time, when she spoke to Hux, she wanted to be able to assure him that, no matter what, she meant to stay.
CHAPTER
40
‘You’re joking,’ Hux said to his mother, two months later on the first weekend in March.
‘I never joke about the shearing exhibition. Put this on and stop your whining.’
‘Mum … I don’t know why you and Maggie are so intent on objectifying me. I thought the world had moved on from that. Besides, Possum hates it when I go home smelling of strange sheep.’
‘The world has moved on from objectifyingwomen. And us women have got a lot of objectifying of our own to do before we’re even, so get this singlet on and try to look buff, Gavin, or I’ll call the Numbers and ask them all to come in here and sort you out.’
Far out. Giving up to the inevitable, he shrugged off his t-shirt and put on the navy singlet his mother was so keen on. As threatened, Maggie had managed to have the Yindi Creek Hotel logo plastered on the front of it.
‘It’s a little tight, isn’t it?’ he grumbled.
‘It’s perfect. Now, try not to embarrass the three generations of Huxtables who’ve competed in this shearing exhibition before you, will you? You’ll be competing against your sister and you’ll be the underdog, so the crowd’s likely to want you to win.’
‘Little chance of that against Number One.’
‘True, but none of us want to see you humiliated.’
‘Thanks for the confidence boost, Mum.’
Malvina grinned and stood on her tiptoes to give him a kiss and ruffle his hair. ‘That’s my boy. And, oh, did I mention … that girl you’ve been mooning over since that whole drug dealer episode has been spotted back in Yindi Creek.’
What? ‘Jo?’
‘Phaedra saw her checking out quilts just before. If she’s got any sense at all, she’ll be making her way over here to the shearing exhibition to check out my boy.’
‘Mum. Please.’
‘What? You’re a catch, Gavin Huxtable. Even if you can’t shear a sheep to save your life.’
‘Gee, thanks, Mum.’
‘Oops, no time for chat, that was the bell for the next round. Get on out there, Gavin, and do us proud.’
She gave him a push, and a roar went up from the crowd, and he was on stage. Regina, already straddling a sheep the size of a dragon, smirked at him.
Bloody hell.
