The Hana Du Rose Mysteries Collection

ABOUT HANA-2-2

“What about my face?” Pete demanded. “It’s lovely.” He stroked his own cheek and Hana grimaced as he found a spot and began to pick at it.

“Nothing.” She inhaled. “Nothing at all.” Her gaze flicked towards Logan and she watched his eyes narrow as they caressed the cut to her lip. Anger flashed across his face, leaving a trail of heightened colour. Hana pulled the neck scarf closer to hide the horrid marks on her throat, self-consciousness blossoming. Logan’s lips parted as though desperate to question her, but Hana evaded his piercing grey eyes with painful deliberateness. Between them the men blocked the door to the common room and Hana felt panic flutter in her breast at Logan’s magnetic proximity. His familiar Māori authority snaked across the room towards her, enveloping her in his mana, the ethereal sense of power which came with tribal leadership. Instinct told her that within his culture, he held great importance to someone.

“Who’s the hottie out there, aye?” Pete asked, jerking his chin upwards. Hana looked at him in confusion and Logan Du Rose peered at his friend, his lips parting in surprise.

“What? Who?” Hana said.

“Woman out there bending over.” To Hana’s horror, Pete held cupped hands up to his chest and wiggled his fingers in a graphical display. “Gorgeous!”

Hana’s mouth gaped open and the English teacher turned away and rubbed his hand over his face, his shoulders shaking. His white shirt rustled against strong biceps, the material sumptuous and expensive. Hana narrowed her eyes as she heard him stifle a snort.

She looked at Pete, misunderstanding. “Sorry, who’s gorgeous?” Miss Dawlish’s shambling mound didn’t seem to qualify as a ‘hottie’ and Hana assumed she’d missed someone else’s arrival.

“Oh, there you are. Do you have that cable?” Miss Dawlish popped her broad face around the door and the look of pure lust on Peter North’s weathered face, left Hana feeling nauseous.

As Miss Dawlish simpered into the cramped room through the front door, the English teacher headed for the back. His tall, muscular shape slid past Hana with incredible grace. “See ya,” he said, his fingers brushing her wrist. His full lips suited the look of amusement, banishing his customary severity. “Who knew?” he whispered, raising an eyebrow in Pete’s direction. “True love in the strangest of places.”

Hana gulped and swallowed, sensing great weight in the statement. She’d sampled true love. Sampled and lost it. She pressed herself against the cupboard, feeling the sharp edges of the shelves against the backs of her legs. A shutter crashed down over her emotions, not liking her attraction to Logan Du Rose or the suspicion that she might be at the centre of an awful joke. He sensed her sudden reticence and a frown crossed his expression. His reassuring smile melted Hana’s insides, an awkward, lop-sided motion which showed lovely teeth and defined cheekbones. Hana felt the aching pang in her stomach, a craving to be held and loved. She bit her lip in confusion, but by the time she looked up he’d gone.

Behind her, Henrietta Dawlish warmed to the appraising smile of Peter North and they stood in front of each other like blind date contestants.

“Excuse me. Please excuse me.” Hana squeezed between them to retrieve her evaluation sheets from the desk. “I’ll hand these out so the boys can rate your talk afterwards.”

Pete snatched for one and missed as Hana pulled them away. “But I want to rate her now.”

“Not that kind of rating,” Hana hissed.

“I’m Henrietta.” The woman smiled with encouragement at the sports teacher and he rose to the occasion.

North’s chat up lines were basic and often invited a slap at staff parties, but Hana gave him ten out of ten for persistence. “Do you come here often?”

Hana kept her eyes facing the carpet to hide her snigger as he worked up to asking Henrietta to look at his etchings. Or worse. The one which achieved the most slaps was...

“They tell me I’m hung like a...”

“Pete!” Hana screamed. Miss Dawlish jumped. “Get the boys ready for the presentation, please?”

Henrietta assumed a ballerina pose and acted like a horse in season, sticking her proverbial tail in the air as invitation. Hana brandished the power cable like a bucket of water over amorous dogs, thrusting it between them without looking. Both reached out for it, missed and let it clatter to the floor. Hana used the diversion to say one more, “Excuse me.” She escaped to the common room to greet the few boys who used their lunch hour to learn about the school for hotel management.

Twenty boys graced the common room to hear Miss Dawlish. She proved scintillating and entertaining. Sheila appeared towards the end and waggled her eyebrows at the laughing boys hanging off Henrietta’s every word. “Is this the same woman as last year?” she whispered and Hana nodded.

“I know! You wouldn’t think so.”

“I wish I’d supervised her talk now. It’s that crusty chap from the student loan office tomorrow,” Sheila sulked. “I should make you sit and listen to him as punishment.”

Hana grinned in victory and watched Henrietta answer questions about fees and food science. Three Year 12s signed up for more information and a Year 13 seemed keen to join at the end of the year. “That went well.” Hana sounded impressed as she congratulated Henrietta. She dodged sideways and slapped Peter North’s hand as he reached for an enrolment pack. “No. You can’t go, you’re too old. Sort out Miss Dawlish’s belongings for her please. And don’t steal anything!”

Chapter 8Hana knew of the forthcoming swimming event, even before conceding the purple marker would not wash out of her blouse.

Sheila Jennings rushed around, calling boys and press-ganging them into entering various underwater exploits in the name of competition. She cajoled and entreated with the practiced expertise of a mother. “I want our tutor group to beat my husband’s,” she stated with maniacal insistence.

Peter North skived in the office and enjoyed a post lunch nap under the guise of student mentoring. He sulked at the constant foot traffic as boys responded to the flurry of notes generated by Sheila. “Why are you doing this to me?” he bawled, ushering another knot of scrawny Year 9s into his darkened boudoir. He greeted their polite knock with an angry demeanour, glaring from beneath bushy eyebrows.

“Come in, come in, ignore him.” Sheila bustled the boys into her office and closed the door.

“That was a group of six and her office only seats two. Do you think she’s wall mounting them?” Hana turned to face an irritated Pete and he growled in reply.

“I don’t bloody know. Why does she have to do it here?” he grumbled.

“Because it’s her office?” Hana retorted and Pete laid his head on his desk and covered it with a textbook. Each new arrival intensified his irritation and eventually he slammed out of the office. Hana heard him attack a group of Year 13s in the common room.

“Why are you drawing t**s on that brochure?” he yelled. “Can’t you see it’s a dude? What’s wrong with your generation? You just want it all!” He left a nervous hush in his wake and Hana delayed her need to pass through on the way to reception.

“Right, don’t forget to meet by the stands at the swimming pool after school. We need to run through our game plan.” Sheila pushed the boys out of her room and emerged flapping her hand in front of her face. “Gosh, it gets hot in there.”

Hana indicated the pile of slips on her desk. “I’ll take these down to reception in a minute. Pete just had a tantrum in the common room so I’m waiting for the dust to settle.”

“Did he fart?” Sheila lifted her eyebrows in horror. “If he farted, I’d use the back stairs and not go in there until tomorrow.”

Hana shook her head. “Na, he exploded in a different way this time. It’s fine. I’ll go now.” She wandered to reception armed with yet another pile of notes calling for Sheila’s boys.

“Not more,” the receptionist groaned. “Everyone else dealt with this during tutor class.”

“She wants to beat Martin,” Hana said with a grimace. “She’s got some secret plan.”

“I could tell you a secret about him.” The receptionist’s eyes glinted with mischief behind her spectacles. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. “But you don’t listen to gossip. I won’t waste my breath.” She placed the slips on her desk. “Anka will be here to relieve me for my break soon. I’ll leave them for her to do.”

As Hana turned away, the unmistakable sound of tinkling glass heralded something shattered beyond repair. She glanced at the receptionist, who shrugged. “Someone with a rugby ball. Yesterday it was the door at the back of Q block.”

“But everyone’s in class,” Hana replied with confusion.

Moments later, a student ran in through the doors, twisting his body as he cast around him for something. His eyes rested on Hana and he barrelled towards her with relief. “Miss, someone’s busted your window!”

Believing she’d find a group of guilty boys wielding a rugby ball, or a cricketer shifting from foot to foot, Hana walked towards the chapel and her parking space. The Year 10 boy bounced up and down next to her in agitation. “It’s fine Rewa, accidents happen, love,” she said. “The windscreen company will fix it on my insurance. It’s happened before.”

The boy bustled along next to her as they made their way across the courtyard towards Hana’s car. At a turn off the main thoroughfare, a window in the science block opened and a teacher stuck her head out. “He wore a hood and ran away before we realised what he’d done.”

Hana’s steady footsteps halted. “What? Someone did it on purpose?”

The teacher nodded and pulled her head back in, turning to rebuke the boys behind her who rubber necked through the glass.

Hana’s smashed windscreen hung like a crystal curtain across the front of her truck. Glass glittered on every surface and she approached the stricken vehicle, hearing shards crunch beneath her shoes.

“Told ya, miss.” Rewa bounced on the balls of his feet. “Someone busted it.” He jabbed his finger at a clay brick sitting atop a dent in the hood. “Look.” Before Hana could react, the boy reached across and hefted it in his palm. “He chucked it but the glass repelled it enough to bounce it back onto the bonnet. Did you know that windscreen glass is designed to shatter and stay in place in case of accidents? We learned about it in physics. It’s clever, in’it?”

Hana nodded. “Very clever.”

Sickness rose into Hana’s throat, not helped by Rewa’s excited tactlessness. “Did you upset a gang, miss? I can ask my bro’ to sort it out for you. He’ll put the word out.”

“No, I don’t believe I’ve upset anyone, Rewa,” Hana said, her hands shaking as she plucked the brick from his hand. A note clung to it beneath a child’s elastic hair tie. Hana slipped it free. ‘Give it back!’ the note stated.

With a nervous gulp, Hana shoved the note back into place and sat the brick in the centre of the dent. “Someone’s being silly,” she said, forcing calm and dignity into her poise.

“Is it the same person what made them marks on youse neck and lip?” the boy asked and Hana’s blood pressure hiked.

“No,” she replied, offering reassurance she didn’t believe. She walked back to reception on trembling legs, her pulse pounding in her head.

Anka, already ensconced behind the reception desk, rose to greet Hana’s pale face and wooden expression. “What’s happened?”

“Please could you put a call through to the police?” Hana replied. Again.

She climbed the winding staircase up to her office on shaken legs, feeling victimised and afraid. She heard Rewa recounting her misfortune with the added details of gangs and shoot outs. At the top of the stairs, Hana heard Anka ask, “Why were you out of class?”