Crystal Coffin (6 page)

Scotty threw the last bucket of soapy water on the cafe floor and scrubbed the electric doodlebugger over it as hard as he could. When he was finished, the sweat on his forehead was nearly as thick as the froth on the floor scrubber's twin brushes. The kitchenette was spotless, but his arms and back ached like they'd been hit with a giant dentist's drill.

He looked at the clock over the microwave and wished he could get away with winding the hands forward a few hours. Four o'clock. And he still had four and a half hours before closing.

Who's stupid idea was this? he wondered. But the Yamaha key in his pocket answered that question. Cleaning the store was hard work and figuring out correct change for customers was even less fun, but the job paid well enough for a fifteen year old.

Janet Slaney's mother could talk, but she wasn't half as annoying as her two daughters and he had to admit she was honest when it came to employing him. She'd hired him as casual instead of part-time, which meant that instead of saving up sick pay, holiday bonuses and superannuation, she had to pay him an extra nineteen per cent higher hourly rate. Being casual also made his hours more flexible. If business was slow, she let him go home early. And best of all, it meant he only had to give her two days' notice before quitting instead of two weeks.

He was really looking forward to using that little perk. Just three more weeks and he'd have enough cash to pay for his new muffler and maybe a hot flame deco for his fuel tank as well.

He leaned on the doodlebugger and pictured himself challenging Sergeant Knox to a race up Main Street past the police station. ‘Ready when you are!' he shouted. Then he twisted back on the throttle, rearing back on the hind wheel and tore off up Main Street with Knox Pox and his jelly gut straggling behind him.

Then something hit his helmet and he was falling. And night fell on top of him.

He'd barely hit the floor and blinked before Janet Slaney's face was looming over his. Her claw-like fingernails messed through his hair and she was talking at him, but it dawned on him slowly that she wasn't calling him mister anymore.

Her fluorescent pink lips puckered and he leapt up from the floor.

‘Oh, Scott!' she cried, as he staggered against the microwave. ‘Are you all right?' Her fingers went back into his hair and he pulled away when she prodded a new lump. ‘I thought you said you were ready for me to throw you the box.'

‘What box?' he said, seeing whole cartons of Mad Murphy's free-range eggs scattered on the floor. Egg white and orange yolks oozed from the cartons, like the innards of giant caterpillars that someone had squashed under a boot.

‘You
threw
a box of
eggs
at me?' he said, shaking his head. ‘Who throws eggs?'.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry,' she prattled. ‘Do you need a doctor? I can call a doctor. Here let me,' she said, reaching for the phone and dialling. ‘Oh cripes, Mum's going to be so mad.'

Scotty looked at the box. It wasn't actually big or heavy. It was just large enough for about ten dozen-sized cartons of Mad Murphy's eggs, and most of them were only small eggs, like from a bantam. But the box had caught him by its corner and a little trickle of blood was oozing from a cut in the centre of his lump.

‘Hello? Hello, Dr Crowley's office? This is Ja —'

Scott punched the disconnect button and cut her off.

‘You won't get in trouble,' he said slowly, ‘if no-one knows what happened.'

Her lips puckered again while she thought about it. ‘What's the catch?'

‘You pay for the eggs,' he said, not wanting to put off buying his new muffler. ‘Get rid of the evidence and I'll tell your mum I sold them.'

Janet smiled. ‘You'd do that for me?'

‘Well it's in my interests too,' he said, and her smile widened until he saw her teeth. Nice teeth in a nice smile, he thought. Then he wondered if Janet could like motorbikes as much as he did — for about four seconds, until her mouth started exercising again.

‘Here, let me bandage you then,' she said, fussing over his head. ‘I'll clean you up first, then I'll do the floor. You sit down. I'll get the first aid kit. You'll see. I was thinking about being a nurse after high school — or a doctor. Doctor's get more money, don't they? Well, maybe they do, but they work long hours too. And I don't want to work long hours. Do you? I don't. I mean, what's the point of being able to afford a jacuzzi if you're never home to enjoy it?'

His ears hurt from listening to her. Now the back of his head hurt even more from not listening to her. He reached around and turned her Madonna tape up louder and Janet stopped yapping and started singing. Not a bad voice either for a thirteen year old, and it sure sounded sweeter with music over the top of it — almost as sweet as the purr of his Yamaha through a paddock full of wildflowers.

She cleaned up his wound, rubbed ice over it, and gave him dab by dab commentary between choruses while he tried to picture himself somewhere else.

She was always more yappy in the afternoons, he realised, almost as if she had a word quota that she'd use up on him, if there weren't enough customers coming through the shop. She must have been close to her quota now, though. She was slowing down. Actually, she'd stopped, he realised, and she was looking at him like she was waiting for an answer.

‘Well,' she repeated. ‘Was it who I thought it was?'

‘Who? Which who?'

‘The guy who was just in here. The one in the black hat and chequered shirt.'

Scotty's heart trampled his lungs. ‘You mean the guy with the Winfields?'

‘Cigarettes?' she said, scratching her nose, and he wondered if she could see him sweating. ‘Your cousin doesn't smoke, does he? I thought he was an asthmatic, only not as bad as you.'

‘Jayson? Yeah, he is,' he said, letting her think that.

‘Well, it sure sounded like him,' she insisted. ‘Just his shoulders seemed bigger, more muscled up. I couldn't see much else, but I heard him clear as water.'

‘Jays' unit is in Timor,' he said, trying not to lie. ‘If he was in town, you'd think the whole unit would be back, wouldn't they?'

Janet screwed her hot pink lips into a knot. Then she laughed and he knew by the heat in his cheeks that he must have blown it.

‘Sure it's him, kidder,' she said. ‘I'd recognise that chicken's voice under a ten tonne pillow in a blizzard. Too gutless to show his face, that's all. He didn't even have the guts to turn up at the funeral. Meggie was looking for him, you know. He still owes her an apology and an engagement ring, running off to Timor like that without even trying to get her back.'

‘She broke up with him!' Scott protested.

‘Yeah, but he didn't try real hard to make up, did he? Seven or eight letters and a few phone calls! She was nearly ready to talk to him. And then he just stopped. We thought he must have died or something. Serve him right too, if he did cark it over there for making us worry,' she added. ‘Then we could spit on his grave, like the whole town did for his cop-out dad.'

Scott had heard those whispers before. People were worried. By selling Freeman out to Fletcher Corp, Locklin's father had let an interstate company get a foothold on some of the best land in the valley. When that happened in a neighbouring shire, the big corporations had used their own marketing networks to cut out local businesses and then undercut local farmers in stages that eventually drove the rest of the shire broke.

‘Yes, Janet,' Scott said, trying not to argue and hoping Jayson would kick Fletcher Corp out again. ‘But don't you go telling your big sister he's back now, okay? There's no point stirring Meggie up again, since he's going back to barracks soon anyway. Got it?'

Janet frowned as Scott got a cloth to soak up the broken eggs. ‘Be sure you don't tell her,' he repeated, shaking the cloth at her. ‘Or I'll tell your mum you threw eggs at me and nearly cost her heaps in worker's compensation.'

Janet's lips screwed around on her face again. Worker's compensation meant the cafe would have to pay bigger monthly premiums because Scotty would get paid time off until he got better. And the cafe was struggling already. Her mum wouldn't like that idea one bit. So she nodded, reluctantly.

‘You might as well go then, Mr Nolan,' she said caustically. ‘Mum'll be back soon and I can take care of things until then.' She put the smashed egg cartons into the box and pushed the box into his chest. ‘Dump this in the big bin out back and we'll call it even.'

‘Righto,' Scotty said, grinning. He had to run an errand up to the church for his gran anyway. She'd loaded a sack full of ostrich products onto the back of his Yamaha to take up to Father Connolly for auctioning at the carnival, and the town pool was only two hops and half a skip from the church. He'd have time for a quick dunk on his way home to help his gran feed the ostriches. And as a bonus, he'd also have time for a quick stir of Knox Pox, by pushing his Yamaha up the hill so the sergeant wouldn't hear the busted muffler too early. Scotty could rev it right under his station window before escaping down the hill towards the river flats.

‘Thanks, Janet,' he added, already seeing Knox Pox chasing after him with the sirens blaring. ‘You're a peach. And don't forget now, shhhhh.'

She nodded, mimicking him with a finger over her lips as he left. But he didn't see her other hand, the one behind her back, which was already reaching for the telephone.

Locklin gripped the girl's wrist, put his hand around her waist and hefted her up into the cabin of the Bedford like a sack full of chicken feed. It almost made him smile — the look on her face and the way she pulled her hand away — as if he had hurt more than just her pride.

She was pretty enough in a delicate, crushed flower kind of way. And her body — well, no complaints there either. But coming here with a name like Fletcher was like waving a red flag in his face. She had to know what she was getting herself into, and none of it, until now, was his fault.

He slammed her door closed twice. The catch wouldn't stick the first time. Then he bounded around the bullbar to wrench open the driver's door and hoist himself up behind the steering wheel.

One of her sleeves had caught on a tear in the vinyl seat and she was still trying to unhook it when he slid onto the seat beside her. From the look on her face, she wanted to sort it out by herself and that suited him. She deserved it, if she was stupid enough to wear clothes like that in November heat.

She fussed over it carefully while he clicked over the ignition.

Nothing.

He worked the key again and heard her grumble as the Bedford backfired and jolted to life. From the corner of his eye, he saw her sleeve pull free from its catch. He glanced over and thought he saw something else, but the ice-princess look on her face told him to mind his own business.

Locklin shook his head a second later, realising that he'd been staring at her for much longer than he'd realised. His mind had shot back to Timor, to another girl and another place that he'd much rather forget. He could only see her face now, slim like a chocolate elfin, and he wondered what it was about the Fletcher girl that made him remember the first girl, lying dead in her village.

The wrists maybe, he thought. They both had skinny wrists.

He sat there for another second, staring at his lap with the motor idling.

‘Well?' the Fletcher girl said, as the stallion stamped restlessly in the back.

‘It has to warm up,' he lied, shaking his head again to chase the village girl's ghost from his mind. He turned the Bedford into Main Street heading north, but he was still thinking about her as the truck grumbled its way up past St Joseph's.

It was done. The black Mercedes chimed obediently to life, emerging from behind a modest church to spin about in the unfinished roadworks and make its own billowing dust trail out of town.