Georgie Harvey and John Franklin Collection

Chapter 19

Franklin nicked himself shaving, swore and reached for a tissue to staunch the blood. He knocked Kat’s uncapped lipstick into the vanity bowl, cursed again and used the tissue to swipe the wine-coloured goo.

Why can’t she put her stuff away?

Why can’t she put her stuff away?He drifted to the previous night and breakfast this morning. He and Kat had achieved a truce, yet he felt uneasy. Was this new makeup the spoils from a previous shoplifting dalliance? Wasn’t she too young for warpaint anyway? She was pretty without it; didn’t need to make herself look cheap. Although she would no doubt complain, Oh, Dad. I don’t want to be pretty. I want to look hot.

Oh, Dad. I don’t want to be . I want to look .A drop of blood splotched the basin. Hand lifted to rinse the bowl, he paused. The lipstick residue on the white porcelain resembled the substance on Christina van Hoeckel’s bonnet. He rubbed, sniffed and even tasted it.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said, then smiled at the image of himself in an English Bobby’s hat and rocking on his heels.

So lipstick had found its way onto Christina’s damaged vehicle. But why would she conceal graffiti? Why be uncooperative? It indicated a motive more personal and difficult to fathom than bored youths.

As Franklin left the house, there was a bounce in his stride, and he stretched taller than his five-foot-eleven.

He had until four o’clock to revisit the van Hoeckels and progress the poison-pen case. He’d donned his spare uniform to disguise the informal nature of his inquiries. While he managed to keep it quiet from the detectives in the crime investigation unit located half an hour away at Bacchus Marsh, or even Lunny, he could work the cases his way and get a taste for being the detective he’d aspired to be but was stymied by circumstances.

Pumped, he hummed the Rocky III theme song, Eye of the Tiger. The overnight rain had cleared and roads dried. So far it was fine but not a stinker. It called for a spin on the Ninja.

Rocky IIIEye of the TigerNot surprisingly, by the time Georgie reached Daylesford the area had lost any illusion of charm. It closed in. It grew darker than the so-called mean streets of Melbourne. She drove with the convertible top up, cocooned in the Spider.

Abergeldie also oozed menace. This was where Roly had disappeared in the middle of the night. Where Susan had suffered smoke inhalation, head injuries and second-degree burns to forty per cent of her body and had been left to perish. Where, after rousing from her five-day coma, she’d returned to face horrific accusations against her husband and live in limbo.

Georgie realised that Ruby literally meant Susan had lost her husband. She shivered and entered the kitchen following a cursory knock.

lost‘b****y hell.’

The previously pristine floorboards were mud-smeared. Tomato-sauce-and-egg-encrusted plates filled the sink, along with cutlery and a frying pan. The aroma of fried bacon lingered in the air.

Excitedly, she called, ‘Susan? Are you home?’

Silence.

She retraced her movements of two days before. The loo had been recently used – an odour clung in the closet-sized room. Dirty water spots lined the basin. A racing form guide lay next to the telephone in the hallway. Nothing else differed.

‘f**k!’ She jumped and looked down.

Oscar had brushed his tail against her legs.

‘Oh, you gave me a fright,’ Georgie said, picking him up. To a melody of purrs, she gave him food and fresh water.

Pressing redial on the landline connected to the local betting agency. Georgie sat at Susan’s desk, fiddled reflexively and contemplated. After a while, she admitted that she’d run out of ideas at the house. She checked the outbuildings on the way back to Grimwells Road. No sign of Susan or her Land Cruiser.

Despite her initial excitement over the disorderly kitchen, Georgie questioned whether Susan would leave it in such a mess. Added to a lonely feline, she guessed the older woman hadn’t returned – although someone had.

someone Georgie babied the Spider along the rough surface of Grimwells Road and turned into the next property. Minutes later, she faced a woman on a tired verandah, both with a stoop that belied gravity. The old woman dried her hands on a floral apron with bright pink flounce. Her eyes creased against the sun. She glimpsed Georgie’s outstretched hand and wiped her apron again.

Georgie dropped her hand and thought fast. The woman struck her as chary of strangers and doubtless would be more so of writers. It called for a family-friendly tack.

She explained that Ruby and Michael Padley were pals of Susan Pentecoste and they’d asked her to visit. So far the truth. The white lie was that the Padleys were her grandparents.

‘Oh, well, Georgina –’

‘Call me Georgie. Or George.’ She softened the correction with a smile, while wondering how the woman made the jump from Georgie to her full name, when she could just as easily have assumed Georgia. She figured it was because Georgina was a name from the woman’s generation.

‘I’m Mrs Patterson. You’d better come in, Georgina.’

Georgie bit her tongue. The woman could call her what she liked if it meant her cooperation.

Mrs Patterson offered a cuppa while she chopped green tomatoes for chutney, but all through the introductions and beverage making her husband gawped at their visitor. He frowned when Georgie’s grateful smile turned to a grimace after the first mouthful of coffee came with a syrupy hit. So much for black with none. She quickly planted on a smile.

black with none‘And how do your folks know Mrs Pentecoste?’

‘Ruby, ah, Grandma and Susan grew up together. Grandma’s been worried about her because Susan promised to call last Sunday and apparently hasn’t been home since.’

She couldn’t raise the dirty dishes in the homestead’s kitchen without revealing her intrusions but expected Mrs Patterson would tell her if Susan had been home.

Mr Patterson pushed his battered hat high up a forehead beaded with sweat on a map of wrinkles. He clicked his false teeth decisively. ‘Well, jeez,’ he drawled. ‘She did go away awful sudden-like. She asked you to collect her mail, didn’t she?’ he checked with his wife.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Mr Patterson added, ‘And she asked you to feed that cat o’ hers. Said she was goin’ away. For a couple a days. When would that have been, Mum?’

Georgie cringed. Pet hate: men who called their wives missus, mum or the old lady. Also impatient with slow thinkers, she sipped the awful coffee while Mrs Patterson dithered.

‘Well, I guess. Hmm. It couldn’t have been Satd’y because we always have the children here. We have five children, thirteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.’

She stopped, brandished the vegetable knife in mid-air and beamed at Georgie, who obliged with, ‘You both must be very proud.’

Mrs Patterson bobbed her head and continued to dice and talk. ‘It might have been Sund’y. Let’s think.’ She sucked her teeth. ‘Must have been.’

The couple nodded in unison perfected over decades of marriage.

‘Yes, Sund’y; around dinner time. You know, Mrs Pentecoste doesn’t often get away. And not usually out of the blue. But I guess she can.’ Mrs Patterson looked doubtful, then thought it through. ‘Yes, I suppose what with young Roger and his son, Mick, running the farm these days, other than the mail and feeding the cat, everything else cares for itself.’

‘Roger and Mick manage the place now?’ Georgie pretended to know the father and son.

‘Yes, that’s right. They laboured on Abergeldie for years and years. And then, was it two or three years after Roly went?’

The husband shrugged, and Georgie mulled over the way his wife referred to Susan formally but didn’t for others. She supposed even she had quirks.

The wife went on, ‘Well, there or thereabouts, Mrs Pentecoste handed over the reins via one of them leaseholds. She stayed on in the house, though.’

Georgie backtracked. ‘So, she told you she’d be away a few days. Did she say where or why or who she’d be with?’

‘Now that I come to think of it, Georgina, and correct me if I’m wrong, love,’ Mrs Patterson glanced at her husband, ‘but I don’t actually think she said where. I assumed she was going to stay with her niece Margaret in Ballarat. Or that she and Pam Stewart,’ she said the latter with a sour-taste contortion, ‘might have been doing one of those little trips with the Community Centre. Oh, that Margaret is so good. She looks a lot like Roly, too. She comes down to stay with Mrs Pentecoste at least one weekend every month, she does.’

wherePam StewartSo, Margaret-the-niece occupied the other bedroom. ‘And Pam is?’

‘Oh, I’m s’prised you don’t know – what with your grandparents being such good friends of Mrs Pentecoste.’ She narrowed her gaze but explained, ‘Pam Stewart is Mrs Pentecoste’s closest friend. Though I don’t know why. She’s a floozy! And Mrs Pentecoste is such a respectable lady.’

‘Mum,’ Mr Patterson cut in. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Well, she is a floozy. She lives on her own in Daylesford. Always has a bevy of men sniffing around. Another cuppa, dear?’

isOver a second cup of coffee, this one without sugar, Georgie tried her last questions.

‘So Susan doesn’t get away much?’

The husband answered. ‘Well, jeez, we reckon she stays close in case there’s news on Roly.’

That was the perfect opportunity to coax more about Roly. Georgie discovered that they’d been initially drawn with the pendulum of public opinion over the violence at Abergeldie. But these days the old couple asserted that Roland Pentecoste was a great man and wouldn’t hurt his wife physically or by voluntarily vanishing.

After all this talk, Georgie still had little to go on. She bummed out on her next two questions also; the Pattersons were clueless about Susan’s state of mind the previous week and had no relevant phone numbers.

Just my b****y luck.

Just my b****y luckGeorgie’s ideas dried up shortly after and she made moves to leave. But halfway down the rickety front steps, a final query struck her. ‘Do you know how to contact Susan’s buddy, Jack?’

‘Jack who?’

The million-dollar question. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Oh, dear. Georgina, there’s so many Jacks. Not to mention Johns, who’re often known as Jack. There’s Jack Rowe, Jack Greenwood –’

‘Never mind.’ Georgie held up her hand. ‘If you think of a special Jack, please give me a call.’

The Pattersons nodded. They’d exchanged telephone numbers in case of news.

Georgie escaped with a headache and few useful facts.

Franklin fired up the Ninja and rode to West Street, the trip too short for the fury of the motorbike. Christina’s damaged Corolla was conspicuous in its absence from the driveway, the glass also purged. The mother grudgingly admitted Franklin to her living room.

Bailey gurgled from the play mat as he performed frenzied pre-crawling break-dance movements. A man lounged in one of the blue velour armchairs. Expression unreadable, he massaged his chin using a pistol grip. Christina perched on the other chair and rubbed her arms. She didn’t introduce the bloke, who left the room.

Franklin remained standing. He drilled his eyeballs into her and coerced eye contact.

‘Christina, about your property damage.’

She swallowed but held his stare.

‘Do you have further information?’

Her headshake was unconvincing.

‘What about the lipstick on your bonnet?’

Her mouth slackened. She didn’t speak.

‘It was lipstick, wasn’t it?’ he pressed.

was Christina said, ‘How would I know? I just found… I just saw what you saw. Some dirty marks. Could’ve been lipstick, I guess.’

‘Your friend in there.’ Franklin jerked his head to the closed door. ‘He the one you were with Saturday night?’

‘No!’ Her denial was shrill. ‘And he’s got nothing to do with what happened anyway.’

‘Car at the repairer’s?’

‘Yes. A friend’s helping out with the cost.’ Her eyes slid to the doorway.

Must be some friend to foot the bill of all that glass replacement.

Must be some friend to foot the bill of all that glass replacementFranklin also wondered if the wife knew; he’d spotted a gold wedding band as the man rubbed his chin.

He persevered further, obstructed all the way. He left Christina’s home muttering, ‘Can’t help those who won’t help themselves.’

Even so, Franklin planned to identify the boyfriend and check whether his wife had retaliated against the affair. He’d also investigate Christina’s ex-lovers.

In yesterday’s door-to-door, a neighbour had named the man suspected of being Bailey’s father. The fellow was of interest to police but only had form for theft. Unless spite was his motive, Franklin found it hard to fit him in the frame. Still, a lead is a lead.

The neighbours opposite Abergeldie weren’t home, and after she knocked on the flywire door of the house on the other boundary, Georgie heard clicks and buzzes.

The crude sign on the front gate saying Keep Out! hadn’t deterred her. But it unsettled her to be forced to converse through the heavy mesh on the screen door. She squinted and just made out an attractive woman in an electric wheelchair with a young boy perched on her knees.

Keep Out!‘Haven’t talked to them from over there in years’ amounted to the extent of the neighbour’s cooperation. Meanwhile, her little boy didn’t speak or move.

His mother said, ‘Got nothing more to say.’

As she manoeuvred the chair around the door to shut it, Georgie saw a painful shiner in a rainbow of black, blue and yellow. The woman silenced her with bloodshot eyes and slammed the door.

Some people have their own secrets and demons to battle.

Some people have their own secrets and demons to battle.