Limbo (33 page)

‘Jasmine sounds like a real find,’ Dash said eventually.

‘Yes. She’s got a bit of…baggage which might be a problem but, she can
really
sing.’ Joy took another sip of her coffee then tipped her chin at the covered fish bowl. She shouldn’t bring sex up again — even goldfish sex — but the devil rode her hard sometimes when she was around Dash.

Sometimes she won. Sometimes she didn’t.

Maybe she should have had Stan take her confession before she’d left the Good Shepherd. Although god alone knew what form of absolution existed for women who wanted to fuck older men and really freaking shouldn’t.

‘They weren’t done, huh?’ she said.

His mouth went all soft and full as he looked at her, the crooked line of his upper lip ratcheting up his ugly-handsome a little higher. ‘They lulled me into a false sense of security.’

Joy hid her smile behind the mug as she took another hit of caffeine. ‘So,’ she said finally, bugging her eyes at him. ‘
Did
you hear from Jean?’

He grinned at her then, dimples on high beam, and Joy almost fell out of her chair.

‘I did actually.’

This must be good. She sat forward in her chair. ‘Oh my god. What?’

‘The parole guy from south of the border knew Ronald Stewart quite well,’ he said. ‘Knew he moved up Gympie way about seven months ago. Apparently he wanted to go straight, get a fresh start, look after his own. Get away from the memories. You want to know what memories?’

Joy shot him an exasperated look. Of course she freaking did. Was he enjoying this?

‘Ronald’s six-month-old granddaughter, Keisha, died from SIDS a year ago when he was serving his last sentence. He was heartbroken. She was the apple of his eye apparently. They put him on a suicide watch.’

Joy blinked. ‘Holy shit.’

‘Indeed.’

Her heart was thundering in her chest at the import of such information. ‘Do we know where
exactly
near Gympie?’

‘Nope. Apparently the place is Mc something. So I’ve been having a look,’ he turned his monitor around, ‘at Google maps. There’s a small cluster of Mc places about twenty clicks out. Looks like a bunch of villages or something, probably settled by Scots way back in the day, I guess.’

Joy stood, leaning over the desk as her eyes roved over the enlarged map on the screen. She looked at all the place names trying to make sense of them. Trying to see if any of them jumped out. And then, damn it all, one did.

‘There.’ She pointed. ‘
McAlester
. That’s it!’

Dash frowned. ‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Tom Joad was in prison in McAlester.’

He looked at her for long seconds. ‘Who the fuck is Tom Joad?’

‘The patriarch of the Joad family,’ she said mysteriously as she reclaimed her seat and smiled at him. She folded her arms for extra affect. Two could play at the dragging it out thing.

His brows drew together in a frown, which only seemed to emphasise his freakishly full lips. ‘Okay…?’

‘
The Grapes of Wrath
was the Joad family story.’

It was Dash’s turn to sit forward and say ‘holy shit’.

Joy smiled. ‘Exactly.’

‘So reading the book did pay off?’

‘Well I hope so. I think I’m going to be scarred for life by a woman breastfeeding a starving man.’

‘
What?’

Joy shook her head. ‘Don’t ask.’

Dash looked relieved and she didn’t blame him. There were some pictures you just didn’t need in your head. ‘Well, I don’t know how it fits but there’s too many coincidences for me not to pay attention so McAlester is as good a place as any to start.’

‘Are you taking this to the cops?’

‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘Not until I’ve checked it out first. They have an agenda and nothing short of turning up Isabella Richardson is going to sway them.’

‘So we’re going to McAlester?’

‘Yep,’ he said as a One Direction song floated in from the lounge.
You don’t know you’re beautiful…

Joy scowled at the song. ‘We’ll have to wait to Monday now, right? I’m working but I’ll see if I can swap my day with somebody else.’

‘No. We can go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Katie’s going for a sleepover tomorrow night and I don’t have to pick her up until five on Sunday arvo.’

Tomorrow.
They could find Isabella tomorrow
. Something settled in Joy’s gut. Something solid and certain and her heart gave a tiny little flutter.

Hang in there Isabella, we’re coming to get you.

Dash was stunned the next morning when he picked Joy up at nine to find her slice of pink fringe was no more. It had been dyed to match the same brunette as the rest of her hair. She’d even taken off her black nail polish.

She looked like Joy but she didn’t.

She looked like a much more lethal version of herself.

The pink fringe, the black nails, had been a constant reminder to him that she was a twenty-six-year old grunge-country-punk chick and he was a thirty-eight-year old divorced single father.

That they came from two very separate worlds.

Now they were gone, she looked like she could have been anyone in his world. Not to mention how much less like a teenage drop-out it made her look.

Older, more mature, was not what he needed. In fact it was pretty damn dangerous when her age had been the Exhibit A he presented to his libido every time it threatened to take over.

‘Wow,’ he said as she buckled up. ‘Katie’s going to be crushed.’

Unlike his libido.
Which was sitting up and panting.

She shrugged. ‘If I’m going to do this cloak-and-dagger bullshit then I figured I’d better blend in.’

With that she plugged in her earbuds and fiddled with her phone and they didn’t come back out again until he drove into McAlester at ten-thirty. Which had suited Dash just fine. She hadn’t bitched about being hungry or chatted at him in that animated, cross-legged way of hers that enticed his peripheral vision way more than it should.

She’d handed him a reprieve from the attraction that flared in all the wrong places whenever she was near and he’d never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

‘We’re here?’ she asked as they passed the
Welcome to McAlester
sign, sitting up from her slouch and pulling the buds out of her ears.

‘Yep,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

They’d just driven through the sleepy hamlets of McNaughton, McKellar and McMullen but, with a population of eight hundred (according to the welcome sign), McAlester was clearly the bigger centre. Although it was hardly a thriving metropolis either.

The road in was lined with houses that looked like they’d been around for quite a few decades — nothing flash or new. Most of them were set high, with small, narrow, neat yards. The occasional low-set house broke up the sameness of the landscape.

Dash dropped his speed down to obey the big forty sign once they hit the town proper, and the road separated, divided down the middle by a wide strip of central parking dotted with big old shady trees.

Shops and businesses on both sides were set back by a couple meters of pavement. Dash noticed a bank, a pub, an IGA supermarket, a newsagent, a bakery, a café, a butcher, a pharmacy and a petrol station with a garage attached that boasted a repairs sign. He also noticed a couple of shops were empty and looked like they’d been that way for many years — their names painted on the awnings above completely faded by years of harsh UV rays.

Opposite the newsagent, in the central parking strip, stood a World War I cenotaph. Several names formed a neat column down its stark white face. A square of grass and low hedge bordering it were well tended.

A small farmers market closed off the end of the main drag and explained why the street was surprisingly busy for a small rural town on a Saturday morning. Cars of varying ages and conditions lined either side of the street and sat in the middle under the glare of the mid-morning sun, warm now despite the overnight chill. Some people had been lucky enough to score a space beneath the cool embrace of a shady tree but the rest were bound to return to oven-like interiors after their leisurely wander through the market.

Dash pulled into a space that had just been absented in the middle — not under a tree.

‘So?’ Joy looked at him. ‘Where do we begin? Or are we just going to wander around and ask if anyone knows him? Flash his picture?’

Dash looked at her properly since she’d first gotten in his car back in Brisbane. She was her usual serious, frowny self. Even more so without the distraction of the pink fringe.

He shook his head. ‘No. Small towns tend to be very parochial. They protect their own. If he is harbouring Isabella, he’ll be hyper alert to anyone asking around about him and in a place like this somebody’s more likely to tell him. Let’s just…get a feel for the place first.’

She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You think we’re going to run into him and Isabella at the market?’

Dash almost laughed at her sarcastic reply. ‘No.’ Unfortunately, in his business, nothing ever came that easy. ‘But how cool would that be?’

She smiled back grudgingly. ‘Way cool.’

They got out of the car and crossed to the pavement as they headed in the direction of the market. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Dash said to her as they entered the cordoned-off area and the aroma of garlic and basil enveloped him. ‘Stay alert.’

She shot him an exasperated look. ‘I know,’ she grouched. ‘I may be new to this whole P.I. biz but I’m not stupid.’

‘Just saying…there’s food about. And I know how easily distracted you are where it’s concerned.’

Kind of like him. Around her.

She shot him a funny-ha-ha look. ‘Thanks. I think I can manage to control my gastronomic impulses for a while.’

Dash nodded wishing he had a similar control over his
impulses.

They wandered around for half an hour. From the chatter Dash had picked up it seemed a lot of the market-goers were from around the district, as were most of the stallholders. It was a monthly market and everyone seemed to know everyone else.

Joy, who
did
let her impulses get the better of her, ate two slices of pizza that were fresh out of an authentic wood-burning oven, devoured a blended-right-in-front-of-her fruit smoothie, and bought a bag of caramel fudge and a squeezy bottle of locally produced honey.

Neither of them spotted Ronald Stewart. Or Isabella Richardson.

At eleven-thirty Dash needed a coffee
bad.
There was a cart at the market specialising in a bunch of fancy additives but he didn’t want some frothy crap — he wanted a plain black coffee that could be bought with spare change — so they left the market and walked to the café that was next to one of the empty shops he’d noticed when they’d first driven in.

He ordered a chicken and avocado panini with it. Joy ordered a bowl of hot chips and a Coke.

‘What are you thinking?’ she asked as she sat opposite him at one of the three tiny tables that were outside on the pavement. They had drunk their coffees and were waiting for their food.

‘I’m trying to think where a guy like Ronald might settle. All providing they haven’t already moved on, of course.’

She nodded but didn’t say anything for the longest time. She was looking across the road somewhere in that unfixed way that people looked when they were deep in thought.

‘You don’t honestly think he’s living in one of those places we saw as we drove in?’ she asked eventually, flicking her gaze back to him. ‘Surely if you’ve kidnapped a mother and her baby, you’d not want nosy neighbours around? Or any place close to others where somebody you were holding captive could potentially raise the alarm the first opportunity they had?’

‘No. I agree. Which means that he’s out of town somewhere. Places out of town tend to be bigger…usually. We passed a lot of acreage plots between all the different Mc towns.’

She nodded. ‘But surely that’s not cheap? You said that his wife had come into money but…enough to afford acreage?’

Dash shrugged. ‘Guess land’s cheap in pissant towns?’

She nodded. ‘I guess. But unless she came into an absolute fortune then surely he’s going to need an income to continue to support everyone?’

‘Yeah. It’s called sticking up liquor shops.’

‘But that forty K’s only going to last so long, right? Do we know what he does?’ she asked. ‘I mean…what did he do before he decided robbing liquor shops was easier? Did he have some kind of job? Do we even know that? The parole dude said he wanted to look after his own, go straight, right? Be there for them. And would he seriously risk being caught doing another armed robbery
after
he’d abducted Hailey and Isabella, after he’d gone to all that risk and trouble? Surely he couldn’t chance being caught out doing anything illegal? I mean…wasn’t the abduction the reason why we think the robberies suddenly stopped? But he’s still going to need to support them, right, so…does he have any kind of skill other than robbery that he could fall back on?’

Dash liked the way she was thinking. ‘Good question.’ He pulled out his phone. ‘Hang on.’

He swiped his finger across the screen and pushed dial on Jean’s number, which was still in his recent folder from yesterday. She picked up after three rings.

‘Dashiell. Got him yet?’

Dash smiled at her textbook bluntness. ‘Working on it. Did Kev say anything about Ron’s employment history?’

‘Nope,’ came the very definite reply. ‘We didn’t get into that.’

‘Do you reckon you could ring him and find out? I know it’s stretching the friendship on a beautiful Saturday morning.’

There was a snort in his ear. ‘I’m sitting in Wacol reviewing next week’s cases. Saturdays are for pussies.’

Dash chuckled. ‘Do you think
he’ll
pick up on Saturday or does he have a life?’ he teased.

Another snort. ‘Give me five,’ she said and hung up in his ear.

Joy looked at him expectantly. ‘She’s getting back to us.’

Their food arrived. The waitress, who reminded Dash a bit of Jules, smiled at them as she placed their meals down. ‘Where you from?’ she asked conversationally as she handed them their cutlery.