The Fine Color of Rust (29 page)

Please note that the protection of the public interest and private and business affairs may cause some information to be exempted from access.

It's signed by Bree Howarth, another girl who used to babysit my kids while she was at school. I didn't know she was an admin assistant at the council now. How handy.

The wad of paper is thick. I think about putting it aside until after tea, but I can't wait so I start to leaf through, which is when I find out what they mean by “some information to be exempted from access.” About two-thirds of every page is blacked out. They've left phrases like “from the zoning regulations”
and “pertaining to the regulatory framework” and “in the” and “with reference to.”

This makes me madder than ever.

Next afternoon I leave the Neighbourhood House at lunchtime, jump in the car, and race to Halstead. After a quick appointment at the Legal Aid office about my assault charge, I scoot over to the park across the road from the shire offices in Halstead to eat my sandwich. Around me a few pigeons burble. The fountain sits dry and empty in the center of the park, shut down by water restrictions. The plants are struggling and the grass is brown, but people still sit here in the dappled shade of the gum trees, eating and chatting and reading newspapers. At half past one, Bree trots down the council steps and heads in the direction of the shops.

“Hi, Bree,” I say chirpily as I hurry up beside her. I hope I haven't got curried egg on my face. It wouldn't be the first time.

“Oh, Mrs. Boskovic.” She looks at me in shock and starts to walk faster. I have to trot to keep up. Kids these days have beanpole legs. She's probably also heard that I'm a maniac who goes around assaulting people.

“Got your letter, thanks, Bree.”

“Oh?” she says. She's starting to breathe faster now with the exertion of running away from me. The shops are within sight. “I send out so many letters. They're not really from me, they're from the bosses.”

“Ah, I see. So you weren't the one who blacked out everything.”

“I do what I'm told, Mrs. Boskovic. The documents come to me marked up by hand and I do it on the computer. I don't read anything.”

“All I need to know is who gave you the marked-up documents.”

“I don't know if I should say, Mrs. Boskovic. Isn't council business private?”

“No, Bree, it's not. The council is supposed to be working for us. It's our business.”

We're outside the fish and chip shop. The colored straps of the fly curtain are flapping in the breeze. Three young men in blue overalls lean against the walls inside the shop, leafing through car mags as they wait for their orders.

“Who did the blacking out? You will never be mentioned, Bree. Not one word. You can trust me.”

“I do trust you, Mrs. B, but . . .”

“If there's corruption in the council you have to make sure no one can accuse you of being involved, Bree. When it comes out, I can only back you up if you've been honest with me.” I don't want to frighten her, but this is urgent.

Bree begins to sniffle. “I don't want to get into trouble. That horrible John Ponty made me do it and he's not even my boss! He's always telling me to do things and not to mention it to anyone. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.”

“No one will know you told me, Bree, unless you need me to stand by you when it comes out. I promise.”

It's starting to fit together. I need to sit down and work it out properly, and I need space to concentrate. Child-free space. Helen's busy minding the Tim Tams. Brianna already has Kyleen's little girl because Kyleen's working in Halstead. In the past I would have had Norm as my emergency babysitter. After I've dabbed away the tears that welled up at the thought of Norm, I decide to call Justin.

“You don't need to do anything,” I tell him. “If you come
over and sit with the kids in the lounge to watch TV and I can have some time to myself, that'll do the trick. Two hours maximum.” I nod at the phone encouragingly, as if he can see me. “Or three or four,” I add, realizing how many years it is since I attempted sustained intelligent thought.

“I don't know anything about children,” he warns me. “I've spent the last fourteen years living in close quarters with violent, damaged men.”

“Well, this will obviously be a bit more of a challenge, but I'm sure you're up to it.”

He arrives bearing lollipops and a teen fashion magazine. He's a natural. I usher him into the lounge room, where the zombie children are watching a cartoon, and when he sits down on the couch Jake scoots across and snuggles up against him exactly the way he used to with Norm.

•  •  •

NEXT DAY AFTER
work, I hop in the car and race over to Vaughan's shop in Halstead. These trips are costing me a fortune in petrol. I wait until the customer in the shop leaves with a kettle under her arm, then wander in, peeling a banana. The shelves are stacked with the kind of labor-saving devices and luxury electrical goods people buy as presents for Mother's Day that end up in the back of the cupboard until they're discovered, twenty years later, by a grandchild who thinks they're fabulous and retro.

A young salesman comes to offer assistance, but Vaughan has seen me and he sends the salesman away.

“Need a word with you, Vaughan.”

I've never seen Vaughan angry. He's a good mayor because he doesn't get riled up. He sits like a Buddha through the stormy meetings where councillors are throwing accusations
at each other, and when they've worn themselves out, he stops patting his stomach and starts negotiating.

Today, I am seeing the mayor angry. He's a gorgeous pinky orange, the same color as a cocktail I had once called a Tequila Sunset, and he's patting his poor stomach so fast it's like watching the flitter of butterfly wings.

“No food in the shop, Loretta. And I'm not sure I should be talking to you. Aren't you being charged with assault?”

I wrap the banana back in its skin and drop it into my handbag. “I've been to Legal Aid. They're going to try to get me a bond.”

“Yes, well, don't start on me now, Loretta. You've already ruined my reputation with that article. I have never taken an inappropriate trip. I haven't had time to take a bloody trip at all since I've been mayor, except to Melbourne in the car.”

“I didn't give the information to the newspaper, Vaughan. It was Norm.”

He shrugs. “What does it matter who did it? It made me look like a fool. Anyway, we've had an investigation and it's all been explained. So you can get off your high horse. The report will be out next month.”

“Who investigated?”

“Leave it alone, Loretta. Why are you always stirring up trouble?”

“The whole thing stinks, Vaughan, and you know it. Why would you approve a development in beautiful local bushland that takes drinking water out of the ground to use in a bloody spa?”

He's patting his stomach so fast now it looks like he's got a motorized hand. The gorgeous pink has faded. He's dead white. I hope he isn't getting pains in his chest. I had to take a first aid course when I started work at the Neighbourhood
House, but the dummy was half the size of Vaughan. I don't think I'd even be able to turn him on his side.

“I didn't approve it. It didn't need to come to council because it met all the requirements of the code, so it was automatically approved in the shire offices. You don't know what you're talking about, Loretta.”

“Let's sit down in your office.” I'm really worried. He's about to keel over.

He swings around and stumbles to his glassed-in office. I call the salesman and ask him for water.

“You're killing me, Loretta.” Vaughan collapses into his office chair, which creaks and sinks an inch.

Once he's taken a sip of water and his color is back to normal, I pull out the diagram I sketched last night. At school I did a subject we called veggie maths, for the less mathematically endowed, and I excelled at these diagrams. They are pretty and easy to understand. Overlapping colored bubbles show things that are connected. There are bubbles inside bubbles. Bubbles inside other bubbles connected to different bubbles. A great big bubble picture like soapsuds mixing up in the wash.

“What's this?” Vaughan says crossly, glancing over my carefully drawn and colored-in bubbles.

“See this bubble? This is Samantha Patterson. She is touching every other bubble in some way.”

“Bubbles?”

“It's a Venn diagram, Vaughan.”

He stares at it for a moment. “Why is the John Ponty bubble sitting almost on top of the Samantha Patterson bubble?” he asks.

“Don't make me say it, Vaughan.” I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't know.

“You're sure?”

“I've heard that if you drive to the motel at the Bendigo turnoff on a Thursday afternoon you can see for yourself.”

“Jesus.” He looks off to the side. “So I am a fool.” He looks again at the diagram. “Who told you this? And what's the swimming pool got to do with it?”

“See the crosshatching of the linking bubbles here, here, and here?” I'm so proud of this diagram. It took me hours. “Same equipment used to do all these works. Equipment owned by the development company building the resort. No bets taken that John Ponty's renovations are gratis and that the work for the pool renovations went to a favored contractor with a parent company based in Western Australia.”

“And that Samantha has some interest somewhere in this company or its development.” Vaughan lets out a resigned sigh. “I'm an idiot. I didn't see any of this.”

“Norm thought she was too smart to have shares or anything obvious like that. But she's involved. It's clear from the diagram.”

“How could I have been such a fool? I didn't have a clue.”

“You couldn't have known. John Ponty must have made sure none of it ever reached a council meeting by approving it at staff level.”

“I hate it that you're right, Loretta.”

“It wasn't me, Vaughan. It was Norm. He knew something was up when he got the Unsightly Property Notice.”

Vaughan nods. “I was a bit surprised by that myself. But I thought it was a genuine complaint.”

“Will you do something now, Vaughan? We can't let this go on. Samantha Patterson called Norm a filthy old junk
man. And anyway, you'll look good because you'll be the one who exposes the corruption in the shire council.”

“Oh, hell.” Vaughan presses his hand against his belly and burps. “I get it now. Samantha's husband told me they'd bought into some new businesses. The one I can remember was aromatherapy oils and soaps and cosmetics.”

AT SIX THIRTY
, the Gunapan pub, once called the Criterion, now renamed the Toad and Bucket Bar and Grill for reasons no one can explain, is filling up. Jake, dressed in an oversized black suit we found at the Halstead charity shop yesterday, and Melissa, wearing her halter-neck dress and a splendid amount of pink eye shadow, are welcoming people to the auction and handing them tickets for the door prize. Every now and then Jake tells someone that Norm is decomposing at the cemetery. I see them flinch when he does it.

We've been talking for weeks about what being “dead” means. I think Jake still expects Norm to drop in one day soon, so I have been trying gently to introduce the concept of “gone forever.” If his father hadn't turned up for that week it would have been a lot easier.

I had hoped Jake would be satisfied with the “Norm's gone to heaven” idea, but Jake likes bugs and tennis balls and things he can touch. He's not interested in heaven or life and death or abstract ideas. He was particularly intrigued when he heard that Norm is buried at the cemetery. “What will happen to him in the ground?” Jake asked, and I foolishly answered.

A small stage has been erected at the front of the pub
lounge. A microphone and gavel sit on a podium on the stage. We borrowed them from the local stock auctioneer, who is also a part-time barman here at the pub. Waiting to be hoisted above the stage is the banner Helen and I made last night.

Norm Stevens Snr Memorial Auction and SOS Eveni

We hadn't realized how long the title would be. It was ten o'clock when we got to “i” and there was no way I was going back to Brenda to ask her for more of that roll of beige silk she'd bought at a fire sale just in case one day she learned to sew. She did offer it in the first place, like everyone else who came out of nowhere after Norm died. They apologized for missing SOS meetings and promised to donate time and stuff for the auction. Hell, they pretty much offered me their firstborn children. I have enough trouble with my own to want more.

“We know how much Norm meant to you,” Kyleen said. “He was like a husband, kind of. Oh, except he didn't . . .”

“No, he didn't. He certainly did not. He was like a father to me.”

“Yeah, that's what I meant.”

It's been so long for most of the single mothers in this town we've forgotten what husbands do to make us mothers in the first place.

Helen holds the sign up, admiring the finely wrought lettering. “They'll get what it means. When we hang it we'll let the end drape, as if the last letters are hidden in the folds.”

Justin is kneeling at the front of the room fixing the microphone lead to the floor with gaffer tape. He was the one who insisted we go ahead with the auction. He said Norm had been excited about it, had been working hard on restoring
the stationary engine and was even talking about buying a new shirt for the occasion.

He would have needed that shirt. The auction and dinner is a classy event. Ninety-four people have paid twenty dollars for adults—or five for children—for a set menu with a choice of chicken or beef. Mario Morelli's daughter is a vegetarian, due to the trauma of a summer job at the abattoir when she was fourteen, but she's only getting roast vegetables because the pub's cook is hysterical at the thought of cooking for more than ten people at a time. I've already made a quiet call to the Halstead pizza shop as a backup measure.