The Hana Du Rose Mysteries Collection

ABOUT HANA-1-1

ABOUT HANA

The Hana Du Rose Mysteries Book 1 K T BOWES AcknowledgementI dedicate this book to my husband, who inspires all the best traits of

Logan Du Rose.

ABOUT HANA

Chapter 1The New Zealand sunrise did not disappoint Logan Du Rose. He perched on the edge of the elevated ridge and dangled his long legs over the precipice, his angular face pointed out towards the sea. Muscular biceps moved beneath the light summer shirt, causing ripples in the cloth as he fidgeted as usual. Orange and yellow bled into the navy and cobalt of the sky behind him, justifying his decision to make the half hour trek up the mountain on his white mare. She snuffed at sweet blades of grass in the dim light, her coat glistening with sweat from the uphill climb.

The man took a handful of the loose soil beneath him; his soil, bequeathed to him by the Māori elder over three decades earlier. It crumbled in his fingers, cascading back to earth as dust. He was high enough above the rugged, green landscape to face east, but instead he craved the effect of the sunrise on the Tasman Sea as it cast its glow over the familiar, comforting waves. He never tired of the constancy of the mountain which grounded him in the tangata whenua; his ancestors, the people of the land.

Logan held the next handful of soil in his long, scarred fingers before tossing it away on the wind, sending with it his hopes and dreams into the scattered blaze of colour. “Twenty-six years,” he murmured. “Searching for nothing. It stops here.”

He recounted the moments in his memory, wasted years spent scouring the earth for his soul mate. From England to New Zealand and back again, seeking her out after a single meeting in which he’d known she belonged to him. After twenty-six years he relinquished his precious dream to the breeze and watched the shards of his heart drift away, fragmented and broken like the crumbled loam.

Turning, he greeted the new day. He whistled to the mare whose ears pricked forward in anticipation of the gallop down the mountain at their usual breakneck speed. The people of the township called him King of the Maunga, the Māori word for mountain. They whispered he would die one day, hurled from his crazy horse at speed on a landscape which had swallowed his forebears for generations.

As Logan crashed through the bush undergrowth on the capable mare, the old kauri tree on the topmost part of the mountain basked in the early rays of sunshine from the east. It warmed its aged knots and the scarred trunk bore the names of the family, carved into its smooth, branchless bark. A family tree in the truest sense, its history beginning with the mark of a tribal chief, a rangatira and his offspring. An aged tui bird cackled from the lower branches, sensing the disquiet in the earth as the man left the tapu sacred site, not just to grace the homestead with his presence but to leave; heading south for pastures new. It pained the earth as he fled yet again, his heritage and his ancestors crying out in dismay for a higher power to intervene.

In the city which lured Logan to a different future, a striking redhead rued the irritating sound of the alarm. It pulled her from a comfortable sleep and into the first day of a new school term. “Oh crap,” she groaned, knocking it to the carpet in her efforts to mute it. After a six-week summer holiday, Hana Johal struggled to face the day, idling in bed and making herself late. In her haste, she burned her toast, spilled a mug of coffee and laddered her stockings, flying from the house feeling rumpled and unprepared for work. “It’s a new year,” she muttered to herself. “New resolutions and a nice, new start.”

She tripped over a black and white cat on the front steps and saved herself by grasping the metal banister at the last minute. Grimacing at the welt rising on her shin where it contacted the metal, Hana stopped to catch her breath. “I am not a failure; I’m a strong, independent woman.” She chanted the mantra under her breath and tried to believe it.

Shaking off the spectre of loneliness as she gripped the steering wheel of the people mover, Hana fixed a smile onto her rosebud lips and studied her green eyes in the rear-view mirror, galvanising herself against the growing sense of disquiet. “Get a grip, Hana.”

With a sigh which betrayed her sense of futility, she started the engine and headed off to work at the desirable, private boys’ school in a different suburb from her own.

A battered, white saloon drew into the heavy traffic behind her, lurching with imperfect gear changes as it switched lanes to keep up. The driver’s head wobbled as he argued with his passenger. Their fortuitous interception was a thing of pure chance and they bickered as they shadowed an oblivious Hana into the staff car park. “I told you she’d go this way!” the driver exclaimed, blaming the passenger for time wasted watching a different road into the grid locked city.

“Well, just stick close,” the passenger bit. “But don’t attract attention. We need to get it back now; it’s urgent!”

In the seven seater, Hana’s auburn hair blew in the breeze from her open driver’s window and she hummed to a tune on the radio and wedged the vehicle into her usual space. The white car poised in the entrance to the car park and staff vehicles bunched behind it.

Hana navigated her slender figure between her vehicle and the car next to it. While attempting to squeeze past without dirtying her clothes, she caught the strap of her handbag on the high wing mirror. She took a few steps into the car park before it yanked her backwards and she missed the white blur which passed far too close.

“Hana!” A colleague cried out in alarm as the car missed her with millimetres to spare. The school typist clapped her hand over her mouth in shock as the white car sped out onto the main road, tyres screeching as it blended into the rush hour traffic. Oblivious, Hana fumbled with her spewing handbag, its strap caught around the mirror and the pockets disgorging contents onto the floor. “That car almost hit you!” The woman squatted next to her and retrieved four stray pens and a packet of tissues from beneath the adjacent vehicle.

“Thanks. I’m such an i***t!” With a sigh of exasperation, Hana snatched her bag away from the mirror, mortified when the action sent its remaining contents tumbling to the ground. “I didn’t see a car.”

“Yeah, well thank your handbag strap otherwise you’d be its new hood ornament. Probably a parent dropping off their darling son. I swear some of these mothers don’t think their precious boy’s legs can carry him as far as the front doors. They get as close as they can.”

Another pair of smart shoes arrived in Hana’s peripheral vision as she chased down her mobile phone and clipped the battery back in. “That was close. I didn’t see any students in the car. Did you get the registration number, Hana?”

“No. I’m fine. Just leave it.” Grovelling on the floor in her smart suit and stiletto heels for lipstick and coins, Hana missed the astonished grey-eyed gaze of the tall newcomer as he stood transfixed to the spot. The other women eyed him with interest, their gaze taking in his impressive height and muscular build. He didn’t even look their way, focussing on Hana as she retrieved her belongings, her fingers shoving a sanitary item into a ripped pocket in the hope nobody noticed. A lipstick rolled towards the scuffed toe of his cowboy boot and he watched it without moving.

Logan’s shaking hand clutched his motorbike helmet, his eyes wide and sparkling with the revival of a lost hope. Twenty-six wasted years of searching and there she knelt, grappling on the dirty car park floor for the contents of her bag. She looked no older than he remembered, the New Zealand sun streaking red highlights in her hair and setting her aglow. Embarrassed, Hana gathered her belongings, unaware that a man who had loved her since her eighteenth year, watched her in agony.

Chapter 2“Hana, please can you answer that phone? I’m stuck. Some kid shoved a half-eaten apple behind this shelf and my hands are filthy!” The blonde woman knelt in front of a brochure rack; her hands buried deep in the pile of dog-eared papers. “It’s disgusting. It’s gone soft over the holidays and stuck to the shelf.”

“Yuk.” Hana dropped her bundle of papers onto the floor and ran to answer the phone. Behind her, the newspapers slid into a graceful arc across the walkway. She returned within a few seconds, chewing her lip with anxiety and her cheeks pink with embarrassment. “Sheila, it’s your husband. For you. He has an emergency.”

“I bet I know what.” Sheila hauled herself upright and Hana avoided her sticky, outstretched hands. She watched her boss saunter into the office and winced at the thought of the phone call, having already taken the full force of the caller’s discomfort. Sheila’s voice reverberated through the glass partition from the office. “You did what?”

The high beamed, vaulted roof left the partition walls hanging, stopping in mid-air as though the builders walked off the job half-finished a century earlier. Intricate wooden shapes decorated the ceiling like the inside of a church. Little angels and imps perched on the cross beams or hung from the apex, painstakingly carved into the wood of the Presbyterian school.

Hana tossed her red hair and bit her lip as Sheila’s words filtered over the partition, “What do you mean, you thought you just farted?”

Hana tried not to eavesdrop and gathered the newspapers, stacking them in the brochure rack. Sheila returned sporting a rubber glove and the hint of a smirk. “Did he tell you?”

Hana nodded and then dissolved into giggles.

“Stupid i***t,” the faithless wife remarked as she went back to the rotten apple. “I told him not to come in with a stomach upset, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s gone home to change his underwear.”

“Where’s Rory today?” Hana asked, referring to the Year 13 dean.

“I don’t bloody know,” Sheila replied with venom and Hana winced.

“How long until your house is finished?” She changed the subject.

“Another few months. We should’ve rented somewhere. Moving in with our daughter and Rory was a stupid idea. He tolerated us before and now he hates us for sure.”

“I doubt that.” Hana pictured the gentle dean fighting Sheila for the bathroom and wondered if they’d manage to keep their personal differences out of the office.

The peace shattered as a loud booming voice split the air like an axe and left the molecules vibrating. “Mrs Jennings, where’s Martin? I’ve just found 9MJ without a teacher and they were trashing the place. Where’s your husband? I swear I saw him at staff briefing this morning.”

Sheila gave the angry male a disarming smile, using her Swedish charm to good effect. She used his outstretched arm to raise herself from her awkward kneeling position, then completed her manoeuvre by placing the disintegrating, fly infested apple remains into his open hand. The deputy principal stared at the rotting apple and considered its slimy vileness for a split second before dropping it into the bin. He looked at Sheila without repeating his question, his face unreadable. She smiled with enough sweetness to disarm a charging, wounded bull. “He’s sick. I can cover his class, Alan.”

Alan Dobbs grunted and breezed from the common room as quickly as he arrived. His incredible hairpiece wobbled on his head as he stalked away, in danger of blowing off as the doors slammed. It was blond and curly, stark against his dark features and black eyebrows. Hana knitted her brow and turned to Sheila. “Is his wig on back to front?”

Sheila shrugged with disinterest, used to the incongruous appendage. She muttered something under her breath and strutted off, disappearing through the double doors which slammed behind her. Hana’s eyes widened in horror. “Sheila, the glove! Take the rubber glove off!” Receiving no reply, she poked a strand of red hair behind her ear in exasperation, “First Martin leaves the classroom with diarrhoea and then his wife turns up wearing a rubber glove.”