‘Which is not an admission of anything. It was a practical decision we made as business owners to protect his reputation.’
‘And this—’ she gestured to the spread of papers open in front of her, ‘—this was a business decision too, was it?’
‘Actually, that was a family decision. Charlie is one of the family and we support him one hundred per cent.’
‘Ah, yes,’ she said. ‘I wondered when we’d get to that.’
Hux narrowed his eyes. ‘You know, then? About Charlie’s involvement?’
‘Of course I know. Not as quickly as I’d have liked. It seems my predecessor, Merv, hasn’t digitised all the local files here, despite having had plenty of time and budget to do so. But yes. When I started digging into Charlie’s background, I found the case file in our archives.’
Clifford gestured to a fat manila folder and Hux took a breath. Jess’s actual police file. He wasn’t ready for the punch in the guts seeing it gave him.
The police officer must have seen. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Gavin.’
Shit. He rested his hands on the counter for a moment, wondering if his parents had once stood here and heard the same. Again and again, for weeks and months and years until they finally gave up wanting to hear it.
He gazed blindly at the noticeboard behind the police officer’s head for a moment while he gathered himself, at the notices about traffic infringements and joint task forces, about black flight Cessnas and avgas sales.
‘I assume this is why you’ve used a pen name all these years. To protect your family from these stories resurfacing.’
He dropped his eyes back to hers. ‘You should be a detective, Petra. That’s exactly the reason.’
‘So why now? Why make such a public splash?’
He couldn’t believe she could be so adept at working out why he would keep his fame and his family separate, but so obtuse when it came to seeing the damage that had come about from the police sniffing around—literally, in Sagittarius the police dog’s case—Charlie and the business.
‘Charlie is suffering, Petra. Really suffering. We had him in at the hospital the other day when he had a panic attack and couldn’t breathe. So is his wife, my sister, who is heavily pregnant with child number three—a surprise baby—and not at all coping with this added stress. This investigation falsely points to him having some involvement in this Dave guy going missing, and he’s been down that road before.’
Clifford opened the file and pulled out two pages marked up with post-it notes. Newspaper articles, carefully clipped and laminated. LOCALGIRLSNEAKSOUT TOMEETBOYFRIEND: NEVERSEENAGAINran one of the headlines. TEENCHARLIECOCKERQUESTIONEDABOUTMISSINGGIRL: CHANGESSTORYsaid the other. She turned them his way up and placed them on the counter. ‘This is what you don’t want getting out again, I imagine.’
He didn’t even want to look at them.
‘Jess wasn’t Charlie’s girlfriend, but she was sweet on him. And she snuck out while she was supposed to be babysitting me to go to a party with Charlie, and Charlie didn’t want to get her in trouble when she was found, so he didn’t mention the party.’
‘Only, she was never found.’
‘That’s right. And he’s spent the last twenty-four years knowing she wouldn’t have gone missing if he hadn’t asked her out.’
CHAPTER
26
Luke’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for all things outback waned a smidge when they drove up the main street of Yindi Creek late on Monday morning. The display he’d clearly been imagining—banners, fanfare, at the very least a table set up somewhere groaning under piles of signed books and a celebrity author sitting behind it, poised to answer any questions that might come his way—turned out instead to be limited to the timber and tin shed out back of Maggie’s hotel where Jo’s crates were stored.
As sheds went, it was pretty fun. It was set up as a shearing and memorabilia display for the tourist season, and there was an old buggy with massive spoked wheels with ‘Cobb & Co’ painted in gilt on one side and a raised plank stage where the shearing demonstrations took place. The pub’s kelpie and sheep show was held at ten am every Wednesday and Friday, April to October, on a small fenced patch of grass (well, dirt) off the back of the shed, according to signs plastered all over the back walls of the pub.
Dust and clippings of dried grass had blown about on the rough cement slab, and Jo wouldn’t have been surprised to find a snake or two lurking in the pile of burlap sacks abandoned in a corner beside a shelf of cast-iron camp ovens and huge enamel teapots, but she could imagine the place scrubbed up well for tourist season.
‘Are you sure we can’t stay the night and head out tomorrow?’ Luke asked Jo when the gear was loaded and they were inside having a final lemonade and loo stop before they embarked on the off-road section of their journey.
‘We’ve got to get out to the dig site.’
‘It’s not all about you, Mum,’ he grumbled.
Maggie was wrapping up a couple of pies in tinfoil for them to have for lunch, but she raised her eyebrows at this and looked at Jo. ‘The pub will still be here when you get back, love,’ she said.
Jo had wondered if Luke’s enthusiasm to hang out with her would wane when it was just the two of them, with no chance of bumping into his favourite author. She hid the hurt under a smile. ‘I don’t think it’s the pub Luke’s wanting more of so much as your upstairs house guest, Maggie.’
