Free Dead Men Don't Order Flake by Sue Williams Page B

again? Properly? Last night I got the impression that you might not be totally against it…’ His voice was husky.
    There are people of my acquaintance who wouldn’t find it easy to stand firm against a bloke like Leo, a bloke with whom they have a touch of unfinished history. Especially when his voice contains that much husk.
    Our heads, faces, lips moved towards each other.
    My shop bell rang.
    I snatched my hands away; spent a busy moment brushing a stubborn speck away from my pile of white paper.
    Leo stepped back towards the drinks fridge as a young woman wandered in waving a map and a phone. I gave her what she was looking for, which was what most strangers that land up here are looking for: directions back to the highway.
    After she left, Leo said, ‘So if you need me to do anything…’
    I smiled.
    ‘Reckon you could do with someone to look out for you, Cass. I don’t like the idea of you in danger. I’d do anything to protect you.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘And I picked up one or two useful tips in the Congo. So just let me know if I can help.’
    I was considering letting him know that there were many, many other things Leo could help me with, but my shop bell rang again and I was hurtled into my evening rush. Leo smiled and left.
    That evening, I did my best to focus on normality: cutting chips, cooking Edna’s order. Breathing.
    ‘Don’t you go burning my fish cakes, Cass.’ Edna waved her walking stick. ‘I won’t have it. People trying to kill me with their stinking carcinogens.’

15
    I jumped awake to the sound of screaming and sat frozen upright. It wasn’t screaming; just my alarm clock. I grabbed it and switched it off.
    I peered out of my bedroom window. A suspiciously beautiful start to the day. Miles of pale blue sky; the haunting call of a currawong. Golden early-morning light on golden wattle. The kind of start where you know it can only head downhill.
    A cuppa and quick shower later, I was dressed in a navy blue suit, one of my sister Helen’s cast-offs from years ago. Pretty obnoxious as outfits go, and the skirt was tighter than was truly comfortable, but I had a long day of spinning cover stories ahead of me and the suit would probably add more credibility than my shop apron.
    The plan: look through Natalie’s room and then pay a visit to this Morris Temple. Find something concrete so Dean would reopen the investigation into her crash.
    I put Dean’s sausage rolls into my esky, popped a generous pile of Anzac biscuits in a container for Ernie and grabbed my handbag. Drove along Best Street, Rusty Bore’s finest and only street, as Vern always says, although we also have Second Avenue. I passed the row of shining steel silos and turned onto the highway, heading south.
    Frost sparkled on the grass beside the road. I wondered if it was a record for early chill. Those weather people must be getting pretty bored with broken records: bushfires one minute, frost the next. I’d be getting a seminar on all that when Brad got back, delivered in a tone that made it sound like it was all my fault.
    Soon I was into red sand hills and abandoned farms. I passed a derelict homestead, a mass of broken timber, red-brick chimney standing all alone. I sailed on through Hustle, past their public toilets which I refuse to use on principle, no matter how badly I need to go. The bastards nicked the design from Rusty Bore.
    At least I hadn’t had to leave the shop in Claire’s hands today. I don’t mean that in a negative way: Claire’s OK, mostly. And I’ve been grateful for her assistance on more than one occasion: it’s not easy combining the unceasing work of the comfort specialist with the running of a top-notch takeaway.
    But Claire’s help wasn’t exactly my idea—it had taken Sophia about five seconds to sense my weakness.
    ‘High time you get assistant,’ she’d said, tottering into my shop in those high heels. Sophia might be in her nineties but she never leaves the house without her heels