She pulled up Luke’s number (no response to her message of last night) and called him, then listened to thebrrrof the phone’s engaged signal …
If only fixing this gap that had grown between her and Luke was as easy as those high school competitions she’d excelled in.
But then she scrolled through her messages looking for the one from swim camp that clearly hadnotarrived, no matter what malicious insinuations Craig had so enjoyed poisoning her day with, and found—
Two.Two. Not messages, but emails. Last night, the first at 6.15, when she’d been at the bar busy planning the next few days digging, then the follow-up at 6.58:Please be advised your son needs to be collected either this evening from the sports centre in Runaway Bay, or for those parents without immediate transport options, a coach will be driving the minivan to Fortitude Valley Pool in the morning for students to be collected at 7am prompt from the entrance. Please confirm ASAP how you will be collecting your son.
What had she been doing then?
Drinking wine. Eating pizza. Listening to the man she’d once loved, and who she’d run away from because she hadn’t known how to handle what she was feeling, telling her how much he’d missed her.
What she hadn’t been doing was prioritising her son.
She slumped, resting her head on the steering wheel and feeling her hopes of rebooting her life puff into dust.
Luke ghosting her wasn’t the problem.
Thereasonhe was ghosting her—that was what needed to be fixed. By her.
The phone made a ringing noise when she tried again, so that was a plus; his phone wasn’t switched off. But then it rang, and rang, and rang, and rang, and the hated voicemail recording played.
‘It’s Mum,’ she said, suppressing the word ‘again’ before she could say it. ‘I hear swim camp’s been cancelled. Sorry I didn’t get the message earlier but I’m still up in outback Queensland. Dad tells me he’s on his way to get you, and, um …’ She tried to think of something upbeat to say, but there were so many off-limits topics these days that by the time she’d run through everything she couldn’t mention—his father, custody, whether the length of his hair flouted school rules, whether the correct term was ‘lucked in’ or ‘lucked out’, the etymology of the wordwoke—the message had bleeped its way to a close.
She dropped her phone back on her notebook and listened to the steady hum of the aircon and the static cutting up the song playing on the radio.
There really was only one thing to do. She had to abandon the dig and head back to Brisbane.
Checking her mirrors to make sure she wasn’t about to get taken out by a stock truck, she flipped on the indicator and did a U-turn.
CHAPTER
21
‘Charlie’s taking this hard,’ said Phaedra. ‘Why don’t the police just charge him and be done with it, if they think he and this missing guy were in cahoots on some drug racket? Or clear his name and bugger off to annoy someone else with their search warrants and their sniffer dogs? This wait-and-see stuff is bullshit.’
Hux had figured the same as Phaedra—the missing guy would be found or the investigation would move elsewhere, and that would be that. Charlie would feel comfortable taking the charter work once more and Hux could clear off back to the coast and deal with his mounting deadlines before his agent came out to see him and brought her thumbscrews with her.
But that hadn’t happened; not only was Charlie’s trouble not over, but the police now thought Yindi Creek Chopper Charters had been carrying drugs.
‘They’ve got to have reasonable cause,’ Hux said. ‘To charge Charlie, I mean.’ And hopefully whatever forensics results the police got would beunreasonable. Unrelated. And, fingers crossed, unnewsworthy.
The landline in the donger started pealing and Hux turned away from the murder board where all he’d been able to add since yesterday were the questionsDrugs in duffel bag? Hiding under groceries? How much drug residue needs to be in a bag for a sniffer dog to notice?and grabbed it.
‘Yindi Creek Chopper Charters. How can we help?’
‘Is that Charlie Cocker?’
‘Charlie’s not available just this minute. I’m Gavin, the other pilot. What can I do for you?’
‘Nigel Frawley, Channel Six.’
Shoot. Channel Six was an ominous step up from the local media studies students having a crack at journalism in theWestern Echo.
‘I’m in town doing a story on the mystery man who’s currently presumed missing out past Yindi Creek. Charlie Cocker was the last person to speak to him and I’d like to get his input for my story.’
‘You’d have to speak with him about that, mate, sorry.’ Crap, crap, crap. These guys were like snakes—they saw their chance and sank their fangs in anywhere they could.
‘Yes, that’s why I called. Can you give me his direct number? Since he’s not at work? Is there any reasonwhyhe’s not at work?’
