North Star (29 page)

The search continued for a further seven days and almost thirty kilometres of bushland was scoured, yet no further evidence was found—perhaps unsurprising after all this time. But they had a body and Kate finally had to accept that she'd played some part in Len Jackson's death. Although how he had ended up with a bullet wound was beyond her; the police hadn't been able to locate a murder weapon anywhere on the property.

A story appeared on the front page of the local paper, under the headline
Body found on local property
. Beneath it was a grainy picture—God only knew where it had come from—of her mother when she was in her teens, in school uniform. Her hair was long and stringy, and her eyes were dulled by too much experience of life at too young an age. It was there for the world to see if anyone had bothered to take the time to notice.

At that moment, staring into those big sad eyes in the newspaper, Kate felt a wedge of her frozen heart begin to thaw a little. The person her mother had become, the one Kate remembered, was not the person Eve had always been. That woman had emerged from the chrysalis of a long, lonely and brutal childhood.

Although Andy had accused her of lacking compassion, of never understanding his addiction, Kate knew only too well that her mother's addictions masked the pain and misery of her upbringing. She also knew that those addictions had ruled her mother's life and eaten away at her soul until there was nothing left of the person she had once been, only a selfish, hollow shell. Her experience with Andy had taught her that if you didn't escape, the addict would drag you down right alongside them and suck the very life from you.

Her mother, just like every other addict, had made a choice. She had chosen the easy way out, and that one simple truth tore at Kate's heart: her mother hadn't loved her enough to choose her over the drugs, alcohol and men.

Kate had known even as a young child that she would never be like her mother, would never put a child through the lonely life she'd had. She'd vowed the moment she'd dicovered she was pregnant with Georgia that her child would be loved and cherished, protected from the world in a way she'd never been. And until now she'd thought she'd almost managed to pull that off.

With a small desperate laugh, she covered her face with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. Here she was, back in the town she'd run from all those years ago, and the local paper was running her whole sordid past on the front page for her children to read.

The days passed and life returned to normal . . . if normal now meant her children had to deal with the fact their mother had killed a man. If they were being hassled at school, they weren't telling her.

After a week burying herself in cleaning and daily farm life, the day came when Kate could no longer put off going into town for supplies. She gritted her teeth against the pointed stares as she drove down Main Street in search of a parking spot.

‘It's just human nature,' she murmured in the quiet cabin of the ute. ‘Let them get it out of their system and then life can go back to normal.' Of course, if they saw her talking to herself they'd be adding ‘nutcase' to her list of infamies.

In the grocery store, she forced herself to push the trolley down the aisles when what she really wanted to do was run as fast as she could back to the safety of her vehicle.

Rounding the corner of baked beans, tins stacked in a giant pyramid, Kate almost ran down a woman coming the other way.

‘Oh my hat! You nearly got me,' Madge said, her voice carrying through the store.

‘Sorry, Madge, I wasn't looking where I was going. Are you okay?'

The older woman brushed off her concern with a wave of her podgy hand. ‘No worries, love, tough as old leather I am. How are
you
doing?' she asked pointedly.

‘Oh. Fine. We're all doing just fine.'
Considering the entire community has been out searching my property for the body of a man I may have killed
, Kate added silently.

‘I didn't ask how everyone else was, I asked how you were,' Madge said.

‘I'm . . .' What?
Gutted? Destroyed?
‘Dealing with it.' Kate gave a flicker of a smile.

Madge searched her face for a moment before leaning forward and placing her smooth old hand on Kate's forearm. ‘This town doesn't deserve your forgiveness. God knows, nobody ever stood up to Henry, but I think you should know, nobody around here thinks less of you for all this business. If you ask me, what most people are feeling at the moment is guilty.'

‘It was a long time ago.' Kate's voice was husky with a flood of unexpected emotion.

Madge patted Kate's arm comfortingly. ‘Just don't you go worrying about what people around here are saying. Most of us have long memories, and all this business of making that mother of yours and her boyfriend out to be some kind of victims won't wash. We remember.'

She pushed her trolley away and left Kate blinking in surprise. She wasn't entirely sure whether Madge's little speech was supposed to be a comfort or a threat.

Seated at her computer that night, after the kids had gone to bed, she cautiously scrolled through real estate websites. Perhaps they should just leave town, make a clean start.

Her phone buzzed on the benchtop beside her, and her heart kicked into overdrive as John's name appeared above a text message on the screen.

Need to talk. Coming out.

Her nerves went into complete meltdown at the thought of adding John Cafferty into the equation. Was it too much to ask that she only have
one
crisis at a time?

Kate went out to wait for him on the verandah, and a few minutes later headlights appeared down the drive. He must have texted her on the way out of town so she wouldn't have time to find an excuse to avoid him.

She watched as he opened his door and unfolded his large frame from the vehicle. He was dressed in jeans, workboots and a red-checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked tired and in need of a good night's sleep. Some holiday!

As he reached the second last step, he stopped, bracing his booted foot on the top step, his large hand circling the railing. He watched her silently.

‘You've been away a long time.' Her voice sounded hollow, sad.

‘I had something to do.'

Kate couldn't help the apprehension that crossed her face. ‘What was so urgent you needed to talk to me tonight?'

‘Len Jackson.'

The name hung between them, as volatile as a landmine.She closed her eyes, as if to block it all out.

‘I found him.'

Kate heard the words and felt as though he'd shot her. She sank to the top step and stared out into the darkness, unable to comprehend what he was telling her.

John immediately dropped to the step beside her and took hold of her arms, and Kate turned her startled gaze to his face.

‘He died a year after he left here.'

‘What?' Kate said, her eyes wide.

‘You didn't kill him. Whatever happened here that night, he survived it and ended up back in Melbourne.'

‘What?' Kate said again, struggling to understand.

‘He was caught up in some pretty nasty stuff. That's where I've been, back in the city, interviewing every scumbag and lowlife Len Jackson ever knew, and thank God it paid off . . . A tip-off gave us the location of a body and the lab was able to identify it. Turns out he double-crossed some of the guys he'd worked with on that last armed hold-up he was wanted for. They caught up with him, killed him and dumped the body. He wasn't reported as missing, so without your lead, he'd probably never have been found.'

‘He's dead.' Kate was unable to focus on anything other than the fact that he was dead . . . and she hadn't killed him.

‘It's all over. You're in the clear,' John told her gently.

Tears fell but she couldn't be bothered to wipe them away. They were tears of relief, but also of loss. Somewhere along the line, she'd lost a part of herself. And she'd lost John too.

Kate shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. She was so damn exhausted. ‘What about the body they found here—if it isn't Len, then who is it?'

‘That's the other thing I had to tell you. They dated the bones—the body had been lying out there for over seventy years.'

As shock gave way to confusion, a small ripple of excitement ran through her. Seventy years ago was around the time Harry died—Harry, who was supposed to have drowned. Could Grace have been right?
Had
Henry murdered his own twin all those years ago?

‘Can they find out what happened?'

John shrugged. ‘I have no idea. They'll investigate, try and find some answers, but it won't be a high priority, since it happened so long ago and all the evidence has probably long gone.' He held her confused gaze steadily. ‘The important thing is that you are finally cleared of all this mess. It's all over, Kate.'

It's over.
The statement echoed in her head. For so long she'd refused to think about how it would feel when she finally heard those words.

John stood up. ‘Come inside and get a warm drink in you,' he said, bending down to help her to her feet.

‘I think I need to be alone for a while,' she told him quietly, blinking away the last of her tears and straightening her shoulders.

Through blurry eyes, she witnessed the hurt that flashed across his tired face at her dismissal, but he gave a brief nod of his head, and went back to his car, leaving her to walk inside alone.

Kate had been worried the publicity about North Star would damage her business, but she needn't have been. Enquiries came flooding in and they were booked solid until Christmas.

Nathan and Jenny were busy converting North Star to organic production, with the next step being two more years of farm inspections and audits to gain full certification. It was a slow, stressful and exhausting process, but Nathan and Jenny seemed to be thriving on the challenge of their new venture.

Slowly things began to settle down around town. Talk once again turned to the weather and politics and the latest scandal. She'd been upstaged by Clive, who had entered his cheesecake at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney and won first prize. The celebrity chef who'd awarded Clive the trophy—half Clive's age and with suave Mediterranean good looks—apparently found Clive's sex in the morning too hard to resist and the pub was now looking for a replacement chef.

Georgia had surprised Kate by announcing she was going to become a psychologist, casually presenting her school report card full of Bs and B pluses to Kate then waiting around for her to read it.

‘Georgia—' Kate blinked back tears of happiness.

Georgia couldn't contain her grin. ‘I know—next time I'll do better,' she said, grabbing a chocolate biscuit and dipping it into her glass of milk.

Kate threw her arms around her daughter, biscuit and all, and gave a squeal of delight. ‘I'm so proud of you.'

‘
Mummmm
.' Although Georgia protested, Kate caught the glimmer in her eye and knew she was just as proud of her achievement as her mother was.

‘I love you, George. Don't you ever forget that,' Kate said, kissing her daughter's nose.

‘I love you too, Mum,' Georgia said, then disappeared to talk to Amy on the phone.

Kate let out a long shaky breath. Everything they'd been through was worth it for this moment. The daughter she thought lost to her was back and, even better, happy. Of course, there were bound to be further clashes, but she knew in her heart the worst of it was over.

Liam's confidence radiated from him these days. He could ride almost as well as Matt now, and even though he still didn't like school much, it was only because he'd rather be outside riding than stuck indoors learning—she had to constantly bite back a smile when she realised who he'd got that from!

She hadn't heard from Andy, which was both a blessing and a curse. She was nervous that she didn't know where he was, or whether he'd turn up unexpectedly again. But she no longer had anything to fear from him and she told herself she could handle anything he might throw at her in the future.

Kate had tried hard to stop thinking about Harry, but she just couldn't let it rest. As John had predicted, the police force had more than their fair share of unsolved murders in the present day to worry about, without adding to the pile a case that was well over seventy years old. So she'd taken it upon herself to try to solve the mystery.

Kate decided to return to Grace's diary, certain there had to be something there she'd missed.

She reread the last few pages, forcing herself to look beyond her gran's heartache to see whether she had left any clues.

Why had Grace been so convinced Henry was a murderer? What could she have known?

The one thought that continued to play on Kate's mind was almost too shocking to consider, but it made so much sense that it seemed the only logical explanation.

Jake Campbell had made Henry marry Grace because Grace was
already
carrying an heir to North Star. Kate had a strong suspicion her grandmother was carrying Harry's child when he died. It would be easy to confuse Grace's symptoms she'd inadvertently included in parts of the diary. The insomnia, lack of appetite and not being able to stomach food. Why else would there be such a hurry to be married a short time after Harry's death? Why else would Henry hate Grace so much? Was it resentment over a marriage he didn't want, or resentment for getting the woman he wanted but only as second best? Either way, it would help explain the coldness Kate remembered between her own mother and Henry. Henry seemed to hate Eve in a way that couldn't be explained away by his drinking or her irresponsible behaviour.

Then there were the three newspaper clippings Grace had kept in the back of the diary. Conspicuously absent was Eve's birth notice—was that deliberate? Would the dates be easily traced back by every old biddy in the district and the secret exposed for one and all to gossip about?

She knew in her heart this was Gran's secret. She wondered if her mother had ever known.

That didn't explain why Harry had been shot and not drowned as Henry had claimed, though. Had Henry shot his own brother and covered it up as a drowning? Had he discovered Grace was pregnant and killed his brother in some jealous fit of rage? She had no answers, and realised she would probably have to live with the uncertainty.

Kate debated whether or not to share her suspicion about her mother's paternity, but in the end decided to keep it to herself. Grace had never spoken of it and Kate felt as though she owed it to her gran to continue that silence.

There was just one more thing she needed to clear up before she could let it all go, and she'd been putting it off for weeks now.

She hadn't seen John again after his late-night visit. It had taken a few days to get her head around the fact that her nightmare was over. It wasn't until later that she was able to process the magnitude of John's part in clearing her name. His ‘holiday' had been spent in the back streets of Sydney and Melbourne, investigating the case. How could she stay unmoved by that?

She'd tried—desperately, in fact. After everything she'd been through, a relationship had seemed more than she could handle.

Dropping the kids at school one Monday, she made a quick stop at the hotel and purchased a frozen cheesecake, all that was left of Clive's stockpile since he'd left town for love, and headed for the police station.

She noticed with disappointment that his work car was not in the driveway. She decided to take a casual drive around Widgerry. How hard could it be to find him in a town this size?

An hour later, she was feeling more than a little disgruntled and was wishing she'd waited for him at the station, when a flat tyre stranded her on the outskirts of town.

With a flat battery in her phone and not a car in sight, she climbed out, cursing, and set about saving herself. She gave a humourless laugh as she jumped on the wheel brace in an attempt to loosen the nuts.

Nuts was exactly what she was. She should never have bothered coming into town to surprise him—what had she been thinking? Why hadn't she called first?
She berated herself as sweat trickled down her back. As far as great ideas went, this was
not
one of them.

While she was struggling with the dusty spare, she heard the crunch of tyres pulling up behind her and dropped her head in relief as she balanced the tyre in front of the gaping hole it was supposed to fill.

Wiping her sweaty forehead along her arm, she looked up and stifled a groan of dismay to see John walking towards her, his face a mask of cool professionalism.

‘I was going to offer a hand, but it looks like you have it under control,' he said, folding his arms, ready to stand back and watch.

‘Looks can be deceiving,' she muttered, turning her back on him and struggling to work the big tyre over to line up the holes.

She heard his deep chuckle behind her moments before he leant down and placed his hands over hers, shaking his head. ‘Scoot over and let me do it.'

‘I can do it,' she huffed.

‘I know, but you don't need to prove anything to me,' he said softly.

Releasing an unsteady breath, she withdrew her hands and stepped away, allowing him to slide into her place and fit the spare tyre with an effortless efficiency that seemed to mock her own pathetic efforts.

‘Thanks,' she murmured and handed him the old shirt she'd used to wipe her hands on.

‘Not a problem. You heading into town?' he asked, noting the direction her car pointed.

‘No. I was, but it's not important.'

He studied her gently, his head tilted. ‘Were you coming to see me?'

Her eyes shot to his in alarm. How on earth had he guessed that? Of course her reaction only confirmed it.

‘What did you want to see me about?'

‘It wasn't important.' Not now, with her smelling as if she'd been working in a road gang all morning.

‘Humour me,' he said.

‘I was just coming in to bring you some—' Her eyes widened as she remembered the cheesecake in the front seat, probably a melted mess by now in this heat. ‘Never mind.'

‘Follow me in,' John said, sounding official and walking away before she could argue. ‘You need to get that tyre fixed anyway,' he threw over his shoulder.

Biting off a curse, she slammed the ute door shut and followed him into town. They dropped her tyre off at the mechanic's then headed back to the station so she could clean up and wait.

‘I could have come back for the tyre later,' Kate protested as she walked into the station, her heartbeat leaping all over the place.

‘But this is easier,' he said with a shrug.

She feebly handed over the box that contained the melted remains of Clive's famous cheesecake and then went into his quarters to clean up.

‘Better?' he asked when she came back.

‘Thanks.' She nodded.

‘So, what really brought you in today?'

She held his gaze with great effort, feeling the attraction between them hanging in the air.

‘I wanted to thank you, and apologise for not doing it before now. Without you going to the city, things may not have worked out . . . the way they did.'

‘You don't need to thank me. If it wasn't for me, none of this would have happened in the first place,' he said quietly.

Kate shook her head and gave him a small smile. ‘You were doing your job. You did what was right.'

‘It may have been right,' he said with a bitter laugh, ‘but it didn't feel right. I'm sorry I put you through all that, Kate. If I could take it back, I would.'

‘No, you wouldn't. You didn't know for sure—I didn't even know for sure—what happened that night. You wouldn't have been able to rest easy if you'd turned a blind eye.'

Kate watched as he fiddled with the handle of his mug.

‘What happens now?' he asked eventually.

‘I don't know.'

‘I want you to know something, Kate. What happened to you . . . finding out that you'd been—'

Kate stood up quickly. ‘Don't. Please. I don't want to talk about all this again. I can't do it, John.'

Standing alongside her, he reached out and put a hand on her arm. ‘Just hear me out and I promise I won't mention it ever again, if that's what you want. You said something to me that I haven't been able to get out of my head. I never meant for you to believe that I'd think any less of you. I handled it badly. I should have made it clear that I'm still crazy about you—more so than ever, actually,' he added ruefully.

‘I wasn't in a good place then. I don't think anything you said would have gotten through to me.' Kate sighed and tilted her head back to look up at the ceiling. ‘My life has been one big screwed-up mess, John. You're probably wise to steer clear of me.'

Sliding his hand up her arm, he moved closer and turned her face to look at him. ‘Haven't you realised yet that I thrive on a good challenge?'

Kate gave a small laugh. ‘You must be insane.'

‘I have been accused of that in my time.' His face was so close that Kate had to tip her head back further to keep him in focus.

‘I can't promise things are ever going to run smoothly,' she warned, weakening as she felt his warm breath against her lips.

‘I love it rough,' he murmured, and goosebumps sprang up along her arms.