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  He tells her she sounds like a cop.

  'Always wanted to be one,' she says.

  The fluorescent signs and sand-bags of road-work look sad and neglected in the increasing rain. The traffic is steady. People, just outside town, have small parcels of land for their one horse, their six steers or hobby protea plantations. They pass an ostrich farm with camera-toting tourists under an umbrella at the fence. Several wildlife parks are advertised. Other hoardings show graphics of resort-style accommodation with the ubiquitous palm tree emphasising the postcard syllogism of tourism.

  'What do you think of our new regional commander?' she asks. 'If he is so into drug law enforcement, why isn't he pulling out the finger on this one?'

  'Big reputation in narcotics, our man.' Philippoussis wonders whether they should discuss the unusual procedure of the investigation into the two accidental deaths as he does not trust Colleen one iota.

  Colleen is cunning and gives her opinion. 'If he hates poofters as much as he is supposed to, why isn't he pulling it out, either, hey?'

  'Yeah, well, call me politically correct but I don't think hatred is an incentive for proper policing.' Phillip Philippoussis turns into the hospital grounds past the pencil pines and dwarf cypresses and parks. Paedophilia has little to do with homosexuals, he thinks. 'Whatever,' he shrugs, 'my hunch is there are adult men in the picture somewhere.'

  The police wait inside their conspicuous vehicle for the appearance of the Gilmores' truck.

  'They won't be long,' Colleen assures him.

  'Did you like Hugh?' Phillip asks.

  'Nuh, not really,' Colleen says honestly. 'I'm sorry he's dead, but you know, he didn't fit. He was moody.' She continues fishing, 'Superintendent Crankshaw, who has just arrived, knew I was related to this kid.'

  'He told you that?'

  'Yeah, that's why I'm here. It blows me away how much that man knows. See,' she points at a muddy ute entering the car-park, 'Told you.'

  Philippoussis turns the ignition key. The police car guides the farm vehicle around to the bay where it says, Ambulances Only.

  'Been here before,' Elias Gilmore grumbles, scrubbed up like a garbo on holiday.

  'Dad,' pleads Marji, equally crisp in ironed clothes and neat shoes.

  10

  …the warrior women…

  Precipitation must have been heavy in the mountains. The estuary had great swathes of brown mud indicating rushing waters upstream, removing the topsoil from where it is useful and putting it where it is not, silting up the mouth of the river. I own a Suzuki Sierra with pretty surfers' waves painted along the sides with dolphins popping up. Hardtop, fortunately. In the afternoon, I took the river road to Lebanese Plains. The water was rising fast and carrying down to the delta whole trees, branches, plastic barrels, all manner of thing, dancing on flat swirls impelled by the surging and swelling. Like a parade. A cut-out drum looked like someone's letter-box had taken off to join the fun.

  The world closed in, with adamant rain, all grey and green. Deafening at times. Newly formed puddles grabbed my wheels like a field of magnetism and twisted with the vicious intent to throw me off course. So I slowed right down, opening the window a little to lessen the condensation. I swear I could smell earthworms moving in the mud.

  When the downpour eased a bit, further upstream, frogs croaked like a chorus of rusty hand-saws going forward and back. I had spent most of the day indoors making my way through a paper maze. Under different possible scenarios, I listed questions to ask Meghan Featherstone. Each headed: if, a, b, c. Then, why, what, where, who, et cetera. It was quite neat really. But as I drove west in the monochrome light, I knew firing them would be another story altogether, as I'd have to delve into her personal life. She had acted surprised when I called to confirm her invitation, as if she had forgotten about me. In a straight reading of the investigation, there was a troubling trend. Whoever was ripping her off was very close to her and doing it systematically. This thief was not acting out of passion. No. Clever cold cunning, not hot heart was behind it. At a T-intersection, I turned the corner and began climbing away from the course of the river which I saw rushing through a small gorge up from the bridge. Was Meghan Featherstone an A-grade fool, perhaps? Lump sums from the Federal Government, of that I could vouch for only March and August. Although not a salary, I suspected it to be a source of regular income. In the documents there was evidence of money coming from somewhere else, as well. Anonymously. Otherwise, she was transferring amounts from venture capital, stocks or debentures. No indication of an investment account but there had to be one. Big irregular deposits to her core savings, and consistent withdrawals, were circled for my benefit on the statements. The paperwork was so incomplete. I did not know whether, for instance, there was a joint bank account. No suggestion of share portfolio. There was the statement from a mortgage bank referring to a property in Brisbane with a note attached that it was partially paid by someone else. The tenant? If so, cheap rent. Considering her income she could have houses all over Australia. Why has she got a mortgage? Negative gearing? Why would she pay a lot more in interest, when if her deposits are right, she could earn the money in a month to buy it outright? Negative gearing is a concept I have never got a handle on; rich enough people buy property to rent out as a tax deduction? Indication of her 'incomprehensible' losses was in a typed note to me and circled debits on both credit card and cheque account statements. This in itself was not particularly odd. The cents and specific numbers in dollars meant that they would be easily explained as ordinary bills paid. A lot of used air travel tickets looked as if they had been retrieved from the bin. Again incomplete, but nonetheless a record of a hectic, haywire itinerary. She may be a trouble-shooter, out there in the world as some sort of Sigourney Weaver character, Captain Amazing, Ms Fixit. The trail of her expenses put her in major cities as well as outback posts. The Regent in Sydney, for instance. Eucla and Yalata, roadhouses near the Nullarbor?

  Because of water on the road and limited vision, I drove ponderously, giving me ample time to dream up fantastic plots. If she did change personalities away from home, then she could have had all sorts of partners. Intimate folk would have access to her cards, whether she knew it or not. Whatever, this character was too casual with her money, I mean for someone with so much cash-flow.

  Eventually I found the place through the forbidding curtains of trickles on the windscreen, steam inside and rain outside. The gravel track into her place crossed a creek in several places, one concrete ford and one wooden bridge. I sloshed through sheets of water and half-slid on the dirt road as I breached the hill overlooking the dismal shelter. But everything looked dreary in the dank dusk.

  Meghan turned out to be one of those painfully shy, embarrassingly spirited people who, I've found, always manage to say the wrong thing. Her property was about twenty kilometres up river, twenty-five acres of ex-grazing land which, in energetic stints, she said, she intended to make over to permaculture, with goats for milk and ducks dispatching insect pests. Pigeon coop, a work-in-progress over there, in case sunstorms blew out satellite communications systems. She laughed. Nut trees here, stone fruits there, citrus, apples, vegies, all will have their place. Her hand shot out to draw on the muddy canvas of leaden weather the proposed wind-break, further back the 'canopy'. I could just make out the shapes of one or two dripping eucalypts in relatively close proximity. 'And beside the tank the shade-house,' she continued. I'm sure it looked terrific in her mind's eye. But it certainly had not happened yet. An ex-dairy in a scungy paddock going down to a creek choked with weeping willows was all it was so far. Goats with their scraggy necks in collars, knee-deep in weedy grasses wet around their delicate rock-bounding feet, looked vaguely freaked in the drizzle.

  She greeted me with all this talk of bucolic harmony, as proud as Punch of several stunted carrots extended towards me in her long hands.

  'My first produce, aren't they beautiful?' she asked, as if, for instance, the perfect human form were th
at of the muscly dwarf. Not bad if you like fat basset hounds and two-headed calves. But I didn't say that.

  Nodding, I looked down the paddock at the forlorn goats and thin saplings caged in chicken wire and she rattled off their botanical names.

  Suddenly she grabbed my arm. 'Come in.'

  Inside was pretty rugged. The beautifying project, though under way, was not integral to the nature of the original structure. Cow-bails have gently sloping concrete floors and low roof, full stop. Standing in front of an Early Kooka gassed by a nine-litre LPG bottle was the girlfriend.

  'You know Jill, don't you? Margot? Jill? Margot Gorman,' Meghan introduced, formally.

  I inclined my head slowly. I knew Jill better than I knew Meghan, though not well.

  'Gidday,' I said. I had seen Jill at the Orlando dance with someone else. I was taken aback at her being with Meghan Featherstone.

  Jill's stunningly black eyes gave hints of caves and gas chambers. They had a dangerous quality, and they changed quickly. From threat to wicked humour. She might have borrowed the dress she was wearing from my southern neighbour, Moonsunshine, and over it she wore a daddy's barbecue apron, which could have come from my gentleman northern neighbour in his younger days. Jill David was over-playing the part of kitchen slut.

  'Yeah, we meet at the gym, sometimes,' I explained to Meghan.

  Not that I expected her to say anything deep and meaningful, but Jill's silence was disconcerting. My recollection was of last Friday. Seeing her reminded me of the death in the foreground of my memory.

  Then she said, 'Margot, I've never known your name.' She was blatantly lying in front of Meghan. 'Not been formally introduced,' she continued. We shook hands. The sort of questions I had for my client could not be put in front of the classic main suspect. And this one was shifty. Of course, the black eyes could be a quirk of fate and genetics and not as full of secrets as they seemed.

  There were only two other rooms beyond the kitchen: a lounge with half a varnished wooden floor and a pot-bellied combustion heater, and a loft-bedroom.

  'Are you a vegetarian, Margot?' asked the cook.

  'If I'm hungry and chicken's on the menu, I eat. Same goes for steak and roast. But basically my diet is a rigorous one and not easily described in one word,' I answered, turned and leaned on the kitchen-door jamb to relax. 'I have some wine in the car.'

  'We don't drink,' said Jill. That puzzled me too. 'Megs? Find me some mint and parsley in the garden will you, dear?' I waited until Meghan was out of the room before asking Jill where she lived.

  'Here,' she nonchalantly fibbed.

  'All the time?' My astonishment was getting the better of me. Was she a pathological liar or what? My bullshit geiger counter was making a racket in my brain.

  'Most of it,' she grinned. 'Sometimes I stay in my caravan on the coast.'

  'Why did you lie about not knowing my name?' I plied awkwardly. Lying about little things suggested something as big as self-delusion to my suspicious mind.

  'I haven't told Megs about it, yet,' she whispered.

  This reply was supposed to satisfy me. 'What exactly?'

  'It!' she rolled her dramatic eyes.

  The deluge roared on the roof, coming off in cascades, startling me from my attempt to find words to describe Friday night, to skewer Jill. I skipped away from a splash on my ankle-high lace-up Doc Martens. 'Megs' came back in looking like a bee-keeper, so covered up against the weather was she, clutching a straggly bunch of herbs. A goat-kid was missing. Did I have a coat? she wanted to know. Dumbly I shook my head. Meghan was in a big hurry.

  'Darling, would you lend Margot the Driz-a-bone I bought you?' she begged Jill, who shrugged.

  'Sure.'

  The jacket was so new it still sported glossy cardboard tags. I put myself into it, obediently, and felt as stiff as a shop-dummy.

  'Have you got any spare gumboots?' I inquired hopelessly. I guessed that a trip down the soggy paddock was on the cards. Both said yes with their heads. But when they tried to find them, they failed.

  Meghan Featherstone strode urgently off through the mud. Why was this idiot-woman worth so much money? I caught up with her. By the way she was behaving now, it was quite easy to see how she could have allowed signatories to her credit cards, or freely given out her PIN. Or lost one without registering it. This buffoon could be impossibly trusting. But she wouldn't answer any of the questions I shouted. My job was irrelevant, inappropriate. She swatted away my inquiries with 'what? what?' I wanted to know about specific times; where was she when her cards were used? She seemed a bit bewildered that I was interested in her credit cards, but shrugged it off with a frown, a minute hesitation, and then launched into a subject of her own. The land dropped sharply about thirty metres from the house, forcing us closer in our trek.

  Meghan went into an indistinct diatribe through the squawl as we hurried down the paddock. 'My sister,' she stated. Was she giving me another suspect? 'You know? I think I hate her. I got a letter from her today. A response to one I wrote and she gets everything I said wrong. Backwards. She is so aggravating. She's always been like that. Do you think it's deliberate? Sibling rivalry?' She shouted, breathing heavily, 'I should love her.'

  'Have you spent any time, like an overnight or a holiday, at your sister's place?' I yelled.

  'No. Well,' she turned to face me, her hood making side vision impossible. 'Both of us were with my mother at Christmas for a few days. I paid. Sydney. Neither of us will go near Dad, the cold patriarch we call god. He's an utter bastard.'

  'Wealthy?' I asked.

  'Hear that?' Meghan interrupted, running around in circles like a dog on a rabbit's scent. Bleating.

  I saw the little goat. It was struggling in the stream beneath the weeping willow. I ran, hindered by the slippery earth and the ungiving jacket. I slid into the creek. I was grateful for the caught tether. With one arm under its front legs, I used the other hand to yank the rope and pull myself and kid towards land. I thought animals panicked in situations like these, but this one surrendered like a well-trained victim of the sea to the heroine of the Surf Rescue. It took all my strength, then I managed to grab a tree root. Safely on the bank, I took a moment to comfort it.

  Meghan moved another two goats to higher ground, squealing and wailing as she went. My goat was like a human child in my arm, trusting. It and I walked slowly up the hill abreast. The heavy jacket was soaked, but, there's nothing like a bit of life-saving to lighten you up.

  From being at the mercy of nature, the goats were now treated like the animals at Christ's birth in the stable, allowed into the little shelter beside the kitchen where the spout leaked. We told the story to Jill a couple of times and speculated what might have happened if Meghan had not noticed them missing. The young nanny had eaten through the sisal, probably wandered, then the frayed rope had tangled in sticks on the bank of the flowing creek.

  Jill seemed impervious to our infectious enthusiasm, even as she uttered, 'Poor little thing.'

  The fire was lit. Wְile we were having mugs of tea Jill asked me had I read The Female Eunuch? I shook my head. The SCUM Manifesto? The First Sex! Amazon Odyssey? Negative, negative, negative. Instead of suggesting that I do so, she sneered a little, which expression I interpreted as my having failed a questionnaire. She whispered something in Meghan's ear, which could have been, 'Told you.' And went into the kitchen.

  Where was this library of feminist thought? I didn't see any bookcases about the house she said she lived in. Just a coffee-table book on eagles and hawks, which I leafed through, as Meghan set the table. The book was new, the glossy photos of raptors stunning, but I was wondering what my reading taste had to do with Meghan's missing money.