Abby and the Bachelor Cop

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE sight of Wallace Baxter’s face as the Crown Prosecutor asked a seemingly insignificant question about a bank account in the Seychelles was priceless.

As Crown Prosecutor, Malcolm might be too tired to do hard research, but when something was handed to him on a plate he shed twenty years in twenty seconds. Raff slipped him a question with a matching document, and suddenly Malcolm was the incisive legal machine he’d once been.

Wallace Baxter was heading for jail. The people he’d ripped off might even be headed for compensation.

And there’d be more, Raff thought with grim satisfaction. Raff had spent half an hour with Keith, poring through documents, listening to snatches of conversation, before Raff found the Seychelles document and they knew they had enough to pin Baxter.

They also suspected this was the tip of an iceberg. Philip’s tapes might have been intended for blackmail, or maybe they were simply a product of an obsessive mind, but they covered this case only, and there’d been murky cases in the past. By the time Philip finished in court there’d be forensic investigators on his doorstep, Raff thought with satisfaction. With search warrants.

Keith, though, was in charge at that end. He was calling for backup. Raff’s role was to return to court, focusing on this case only. So he listened to Malcolm ask his question and wave bank statements. He saw the moment Philip realised Abby had taken the wrong briefcase, and he watched his face turn ashen.

What had Philip been thinking, to record everything? Who knew? All he knew was that he was very, very pleased Abby was no longer marrying him.

He wanted to find her, but that was stupid. Wanting Abby had been stupid last night and it was stupid now.

He could leave the case to Malcolm now. He left. He should go back to help Keith-but he didn’t. Instead, he stopped at the baker’s to buy lamingtons. Sarah’s favourite. They’d sit in the sun and eat them, he thought. He needed to settle.

But when he got home he remembered Sarah was at the sheltered workshop on Mondays. What was he thinking, to forget that?

Maybe he’d been thinking about why he couldn’t go find Abby.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Should he go back and help Keith?

Keith would do just fine without him-and for some reason he didn’t want to see the grubby details of Philip’s profit-making. He didn’t want to think about Philip.

Instead, he turned his attention to the garden. There was plenty here that needed doing. His grandmother would break her heart if she could see how he’d let it run down.

This was a gorgeous old house, but huge. There were four bedrooms in the main house and there was another smaller house at the rear where he and Sarah had lived with their mother before her death, to give them some measure of independence.

Sarah would like to live there now. She hankered for independence but she couldn’t quite manage. She loved it here, though. To move away…

He couldn’t, even if it meant spending his spare time mending and mowing and tending animals and feeling guilty because his grandmother’s garden was now mostly grass.

And he was too close to Abby.

Do not go there, he told himself. He started tugging weeds, but then…

The sound of a car approaching tugged him out of his introspection.

Abby.

The car door opened and Kleppy flew to greet him as if he was his long lost friend, missing at sea for years, feared dead, miraculously restored to life. This was the new, renewed Kleppy, sure again of his importance in the world, greeting friends as they ought to be greeted.

He grinned and scratched Kleppy’s stomach as he rolled, and Kleppy moaned and wriggled and moaned some more.

‘I wish someone was that pleased to see me,’ Abby said.

She was right by her car. She was smiling.

He couldn’t roll on his back and wriggle but the feeling was similar.

She’d been crying. He could see it. He wanted…he wanted…

To back off. What she’d said… If I can forgive what happened with Ben… He’d gone over it in his mind a hundred times and he couldn’t get away from it.

He could not afford to love this woman.

‘I came to apologise,’ she said.

He stilled. Thought about it. Thought where it might be going and thought a man would be wise to be cautious.

‘Why would you want to apologise?’ He rose. Kleppy gave a yelp of indignation. He grinned and scooped Kleppy up with him. Got his face licked. Didn’t mind.

Abby was apologising?

‘The forgiveness thing,’ she said, and he could see it was an effort to make her voice steady. ‘I didn’t get it.’

‘And now you do?’

She was standing beside her little red sports car and she wasn’t moving. He didn’t move either. He held her dog and he didn’t go near.

Neutral territory between them. A chasm…

‘I’ve…changed,’ she said.

He nodded, still cautious. ‘You got rid of the diamond. That’s got to be a start.’

‘It wasn’t the diamond. It was Kleppy. One dog and my life turns upside down.’

‘He hasn’t ended you in jail.’

‘Not yet.’

‘How much did you know about what was in Dexter’s briefcase?’

‘Was there anything?’ She couldn’t disguise the eagerness. She didn’t know, he thought with a rush of relief, though he’d already felt it. The Abby he once knew could never have collaborated with dishonesty. She hadn’t changed so much.

Maybe she hadn’t changed very much at all. This was the Abby he once knew, right here.

‘There’s enough to convict Baxter,’ he said mildly-there was no need to go into the rest of it yet-and he watched the rush of relief.

‘I’m so glad.’

‘So are a lot of people. Me included. Is that why you’re here? To find out?’

‘No. I told you. I came to say sorry.’

Sorry. What did that mean?

He couldn’t help her. He knew she was struggling, but she had to figure for herself where she was going.

Abby.

He wanted to walk towards her and gather her up and claim her, right now. He ached to kiss away the tracks of those tears.

But he had to wait, to see if the figuring would come out on his side.

‘Kleppy and I have been up at Isaac’s,’ she said. ‘We’ve been sitting on the road where Ben was killed.’

‘Mmm.’ Nothing more was possible.

‘We were all dumb that night.’

‘We were.’ Still he was neutral. He was having trouble getting a breath here. Abby took a deep breath for him.

‘Sarah and I were seventeen. You and Ben and Philip were nineteen. I’d made my debut with Philip and you were mad at me. Sarah was mad at you, so she accepted a date with Philip to make you madder still. Ben was fed up with all of us-I think he wanted to go out with Sarah so he was fuming. Then the car… The rain… It would have been far more sensible to wait till the next weekend but Ben had to go back to uni so he was aching to try the car.’

‘Abby…’

‘Let me say it,’ she said. ‘I’m still trying to figure this out for myself so let me say it as I see it now.’

‘Okay.’ What else was a man to say?

‘My dad came up here that afternoon and he was angry with Ben for spending the weekend here and not sitting in our living room giving Mum and Dad a minute by minute description of life at uni. So Dad didn’t take any interest. He should have said, Don’t try the car until next weekend. Or even offered to go with you and watch. And Sarah… I remember her trying on the dress I’d just finished making for her, and your gran saying, “Don’t you crush that dress, Sarah, after all the time I spent ironing it.” And I was home, fed up with the lot of you.’

‘So…’

‘So it was all just…there,’ she said. ‘Pressure on you to drive on a night that wasn’t safe. Excitement. Knowledge that no one used that track except loggers and no loggers worked over the weekend. Stupid kids and unsafe decisions and a slippery road, and pure bad luck. Sarah not wanting to crush her dress. Ben being too macho to wear a seat belt. Philip wanting to show off his car, his girlfriend. You weren’t charged with culpable driving, Raff, and there was a reason. My parents took their grief out in anger. Their anger soured…lots of things. It enveloped me and I’ve been too much of a wuss to fight my way out the other side.’

‘And now you have?’ It was a hard question to ask. It was a hard question to wait for an answer.

But it seemed she had an answer ready. ‘You kissed me,’ she said simply. ‘And it made me realise that I want you. I always have. That want, that need, got all mixed up, buried, subsumed by grief, by shock, by obligation. I’ve been a king-sized dope, Raff. It took one crazy dog to shake me out of it.’

The dog in question was passive now, shrugged against Raff’s chest. Raff set him down with care. It seemed suddenly important to have his arms free. ‘So you’re saying…’

‘I’m saying I love you,’ she said, steadily and surely. ‘I know it seems fast. We’ve been apart for ten years so maybe I should gradually show you I’ve changed. But you know what? I can’t wait. I’ve messed the last ten years up. Do I need to mess any more?’

He didn’t move. He didn’t let himself move. Not yet. There were things that needed to be said.

‘Your parents hate me,’ he said at last, because it was important. Hate always was.

‘They have a choice,’ she said steadily now, and certain. Her eyes not leaving his. ‘They can accept the man I love or not. It’s up to them but it won’t stop me loving you. I’ll try and explain but if they won’t listen…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t live with hate any more, Raff, or with grief. I can’t live under the shadow of a ten-year-old tragedy. You and me…’ She gazed round the disreputable farmyard. ‘You and me, and Sarah…’

And Sarah? She was going there?

She’d accept Sarah. He knew she would.

He could never leave Sarah. That fact had coloured every relationship he’d had since the accident, but this was the old Abby emerging, and it was no longer an issue. This was the Abby who held to her friendships no matter what, who’d never stopped loving Sarah, the Abby with a heart so big…

So big she could ignore her parents’ hatred?

So big she could take on the Finn boy?

And then he paused. Another vehicle was approaching, travelling fast. Its speed gave it a sense of urgency and he and Abby paused and waited.

It was a silver Porsche.

Philip.

For ten years Abby had never seen Philip angry. She’d seen him irritated, frustrated, condescending. She’d always felt there was an edge of anger held back but she’d never seen it.

She was seeing it now. His car skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel, and the hens clucking round the yard squawked and flew for cover. Kleppy dived behind her legs and stayed there.

Philip didn’t notice the hens or Kleppy. He was out of the car, crashing the door closed, staring at her as if she were an alien species.

Raff was suddenly beside her. Taking her hand in his. Holding her against him.

Uh-oh.

She should pull away. Holding hands with Raff would inflame the situation.

She tugged but Raff didn’t let her go. Instead, he tugged her tighter. His body language was unmistakable. My woman, Dexter. Threaten her at your peril.

How had it come to this?

‘So that’s it,’ Philip snarled, staring at the pair of them as if they’d crawled from under Raff’s pile of weeds. ‘You slut.’

‘It’s not polite to call a lady a slut,’ Raff said and his body shifted imperceptibly between them. ‘You want to take a cold shower and come back when you’re cooler?’

‘You sabotaged the case,’ Philip said incredulously, ignoring Raff. ‘The bank accounts… Suddenly you leave, and my briefcase’s gone and in comes Finn and the Prosecutor has a whole list of new evidence. You gave it to Finn.’

‘Baxter’s a maw-worm,’ Abby said, trying to shove Raff aside so she could face him. This was her business, not Raff’s. ‘I didn’t know there was anything in your briefcase to convict him, but if there was we shouldn’t have been defending him.’

‘It’s what we do. Do you know how much his fee was?’

‘We can afford to lose it.’

‘You might.’ He was practically apoplectic, and she knew why. She’d had the temerity to get between him and his money. Philip and his reputation. Philip and his carefully planned life.

‘So what about this?’ He hauled the diamond out of his top pocket and thrust it towards her, but he was holding it tight at the same time. ‘Do you know how much this cost? Do you know how much I’ve done for you?’

‘You’ve been…’ How to say he’d been wonderful? He had, but right now it didn’t seem like it.

‘I’ve sacrificed everything,’ he yelled. ‘Everything. Do you think I wanted to practice in a dump like Banksia Bay? Do you know how much money I could have earned if I’d stayed in Sydney? But here I am, doing the books of the Banksia Bay yacht club, stuck here, seeing the same people over and over, even mowing your parents’ lawn.’

‘I could never figure out why you offered to do that,’ she whispered, but he wasn’t listening.

‘I’ve done everything, and you throw it all away. For this?’ His tone was incredulous. He was staring at Raff as if he were pond scum. ‘A Finn.’

‘There’s some pretty nice Finns,’ she said mildly and Raff grinned and tugged her a little closer. Just a little, but Philip noticed.

‘You’d leave me for this…this…’

‘For Raff,’ she said and she gazed steadily at Philip and she even found it in her to feel sorry for him. ‘I’m sorry, Philip, but I’m not who you think I am. I’ve tried…really hard…to be what everyone wants me to be, but I’ve figured it out. I’m not that person. I’m Abby and I love bright clothes and sleeping in on Sunday and I hate business dinners and I don’t like spending my whole life in legal chambers. I like dogs and…’

‘Dogs,’ Philip snarled. The new, brave Kleppy with his brave new life had emerged from behind Abby’s legs and was nosing round Philip’s feet, checking him out for smells. Philip looked down at him with loathing. ‘That’s what this is about. A dog.’

‘I know you don’t like dogs,’ Abby said. ‘It was generous of you to say you’d take him…’

‘Generous?’ He gave a laugh that made her wince. ‘Yeah. I’d even put up with that.’ The word made her know exactly what he thought of Kleppy.

‘Because you love me?’ she asked in a small voice and Raff’s hand tightened around hers.

‘Love.’ Philip was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

‘I…everything.’

‘You have no clue. Not one single clue. Enough. You and your parents have messed with my life for ten years. That’s it. I’ve paid a thousandfold. I’m out of here, and if I never see this place again I’ll be delighted.’

He turned away, fast, only Kleppy was in the way. He tripped and almost fell. Kleppy yelped.

Philip regained his feet but Kleppy was still between him and his car. And suddenly…

‘No,’ Raff snapped, but it was too late. They were both too late.

Philip’s foot swung back and he kicked. All the frustration and rage of the last two days was in that kick and Kleppy copped it all.

The little dog flew about eight feet, squealing in pain and shock.

‘Kleppy!’ Abby screamed and ran for him, but Philip moved, too, heading for another kick. Abby launched herself at him, throwing herself down between boot and dog.

Philip grabbed her by the hair and hauled her back… And then suddenly he wasn’t there any more. Raff’s body was between hers and Philip’s. Raff’s fist came into contact with Philip-she didn’t know where; she couldn’t see-but she heard a sickening thud, she saw Philip lurch backwards, stumble, and she saw Raff follow him down.

He had him on the ground, on his stomach, his arm twisted up behind his back, and Philip was screaming…

‘Lie still or I’ll really hurt you,’ Raff said in a voice she didn’t recognise. ‘Abby, the dog…’

She turned back to Kleppy but Kleppy was no longer there.

He’d backed away in terror. Whining. Horrified, she saw him bolt under the fence and into the undergrowth beyond.

He was yelping in pain and fear and he ran until he was out of sight.

She couldn’t catch him. Beyond Raff’s fence was Black Mountain. Wilderness.

‘Kleppy,’ she yelled uselessly into the bushland, but he was gone.

She turned and stared back at Philip with loathing and distress. ‘You kicked him.’

‘He’s a stray.’

‘He’s mine. I can’t believe…’ She gulped and turned back to the fence, knowing to try and follow the little dog into the bush would be futile.

‘He was running,’ Raff said. He was hauling Philip to his feet, none too gentle. ‘If he’s running, he can’t be too badly injured.’

‘More’s the pity,’ Philip snarled, and Raff wrenched him over to the Porsche with a ruthlessness Abby had never seen before. He shoved him into his driver’s seat like she’d seen cops put villains into squad cars, only this was Philip’s car and he was sending him away.

Or not. Before Philip could guess what he intended, Raff grabbed the keys to Philip’s car and tossed them as far as he could, out into the bush.

‘You’ve lost your keys,’ he said conversationally. ‘Abby, get the handcuffs. They’re in the compartment on the passenger side of the patrol car.’

‘What…?’ she said, and Raff sighed.

‘You want to hold your fiancé or get the cuffs.’

‘He’s not my fiancé.’ It seemed important.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Get the cuffs, Abby.’ Then, as she glanced despairingly at the fence, he softened. ‘Cuffs first. Kleppy second. Move.’

She moved and thirty seconds later Philip was cuffed to his own steering wheel.

‘You can’t do this,’ he snarled.

‘Watch me,’ Raff said. Then he lifted his radio. ‘Keith? You know we were getting a search warrant for Dexter, thinking it might be better to do it when he wasn’t home? I have another suggestion. You come up to my place and pick him up. He’s cuffed to the car in the driveway. He kicked a dog, pulled Abby’s hair. Take him to the station, charge him with aggravated cruelty to animals, plus assault. I’ll be there with details when I can but meanwhile he stays in the cells. The paperwork could take quite some time.’

‘You…’

‘Talk among yourself, Dexter,’ he said. ‘Abby and I have things to do. Dogs to rescue. And if I find he’s badly hurt…’ His look said it all. ‘Come on, Abby, let’s go. He’ll be headed for Isaac’s and I hope for all our sakes we find him.’

They drove in silence. There was so much to say. On top of her fear for Kleppy, there was so much to think about. Philip’s invective…

Philip’s words.

I’ve paid a thousandfold. It was a statement that made her foundations shift from under her.

She cast a look at Raff and his face was set and grim. Had he heard? Was he thinking about it?

Philip… But her thoughts kaleidoscoped back to Kleppy.

‘He can’t be too badly hurt.’

‘No,’ Raff said. ‘He can’t be. He’s a dog who’s given me my life back. I owe him more than putting Dexter behind bars.’

Where? Where?

They reached Isaac’s place and it was fenced and padlocked as it had been fenced and padlocked since Isaac’s death.

All the way up the mountain she’d held her breath, hoping Kleppy would be standing at the gate, his nose pressed against the wire. He wasn’t.

She called. They both called.

No Kleppy.

‘We’ve come fast on the track,’ Raff said. ‘Kleppy’s having to manage undergrowth.’

‘He could be lost.’

‘Not Kleppy. Our farm is on his route down to town from here, his route to his source of stolen goods. He’ll know every inch.’

‘If he’s hurt he could creep into the undergrowth and…’

Raff tugged her tight and held her close. ‘He was running,’ he said. ‘If he’s not here in ten minutes I’ll start bush bashing.’ He tugged her tighter still and kissed her, hard and fast. Enormously comforting. Enormously…right. ‘If we don’t have him in an hour I’ll organise a posse,’ he said. ‘We’ll have an army of volunteers up here before nightfall.’

‘For Kleppy?’

‘We have two things going for us,’ Raff said, and his smile was designed to reassure. ‘First, Kleppy’s one of Henrietta’s dogs. She hates having them put down. She’s over the moon that you’re taking him, and she has a team of volunteers she’ll have searching in a heartbeat. Second, if I happen to mention to about half this town that if we find an injured dog we’ll put Dexter behind bars… How many raised hands do you reckon we’d get?’

‘Is he that bad?’ she said in a small voice.

‘You know he is.’

She did know it. The thought made her feel…appalled.

What had she been thinking, to drift towards marriage? She’d been in a bad dream that had lasted for years. Of all the stupid…

‘Don’t kick yourself,’ Raff said. ‘We all have dumb youthful romances.’

She tried to laugh. She couldn’t. A youthful romance that lasted for ten years?

‘I seem to remember I did have a youthful romance.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. They were walking the perimeter now, checking. ‘I should have come home and been your partner at the deb ball.’

She did choke on that one. Her debutante ball. The source of all the trouble.

She’d been seventeen years old. A girl had to have a really cool partner for that.

Raff had been in Sydney. She’d been annoyed that he couldn’t drive home twice a week to practice, two hours here, two hours back, just to be her partner. Of all the selfish…

‘Don’t kick yourself,’ he said again. ‘Dexter does the kicking. Not us.’

‘But why?’ It was practically a wail. Why?

She’d always assumed Philip loved her. He’d given up Sydney, he’d come home, he’d been the devoted boyfriend, the devoted fiancé for ten years.

Why, if he didn’t love her?

‘Let’s walk down to the road,’ Raff said, taking her hand. He held her close, not letting her go for a moment as they walked down the driveway to the gravel road where their world had turned upside down ten years ago.

‘Kleppy?’ she yelled and then paused. ‘Did you hear?’

‘Call again.’

She did and there was no mistaking it. A tiny yelp, and then the sound of scuffling.

She was off the road and into the bush, with Raff close behind. Through the undergrowth. Pushing through…

And there he was. Kleppy.

Digging.

Philip’s kick had hit his side. She could see grazed skin and blood on his wiry coat.

He looked up from where he’d been digging and wagged his tail and she came close to bursting into tears. ‘Klep…’

But he was back digging, dirt going in all directions. His whole body was practically disappearing into the hole he was creating.

‘You don’t need a wombat,’ she told him, feeling almost ill with relief. She reached him and knelt, not caring about the spray of dirt that showered her. ‘Klep…’

He tugged back from inside his hole. He had something. He was trying to hold it in his mouth and front paws, tugging it up as he tried to find purchase with his back legs.

She didn’t care if it was a dead wombat, buried for years. She gathered him into her arms, mindful of his injured side, and lifted him from the hole.

He snuffled against her, a grubby, bleeding rapscallion of a dog, quivering with delight that she’d found him and, better still, he had something to give her. He wiggled around in her arms and dropped his treasure onto the ground in front of her.

Raff was with her then, ruffling Kleppy’s head, smiling his gorgeous, loving smile that made her heart twist inside. How could she have ever walked away from this man for Philip? Like Kleppy’s buried treasure, his smile had been waiting for her to rediscover it.

She had rediscovered it.

She wasn’t going to marry Philip. Raff was smiling at her. The thought made her feel giddy with happiness.

‘Hey,’ Raff said in a voice that was none too steady and he gathered them both into his arms. He held them, just held them. His woman, with dog in between.

Happiness was right now.

But there was only so much happiness a small dog could submit to. He submitted for a whole minute before wriggling his nose free and then the rest of him. He started barking, indignation personified, because Abby hadn’t taken any interest in his treasure.

Too bad. Raff was kissing her. She had treasure of her own to be finding.

But Kleppy was nothing if not insistent. He was hauling his loot up onto her knees. It was a dirt-covered box, a little damaged at one corner, but not much. It was pencil-box sized, or maybe a little bigger.

She took it and brushed the worst of the dirt off-and then she stilled.

This box.

Philip’s box.

No. Philip’s grandfather’s box. He made boxes like this for all his relations, for all his friends.

This one, though… The shape…

Slowly now, with a lot more care, she dusted the thing off. It was almost totally intact. Cedar did that. It lasted for generations. Something had nibbled at the corner but had given up in disgust.

Cedar was pretty much bug-proof. Obviously it tasted bad. Except to Kleppy.

It would have been the smell, she thought, the distinctive scent, showing him that something was buried here, something like the box he loved back at her place.

‘What is it?’ Raff was watching her face, figuring this was important.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, hardly daring to breathe. A box. Made by Philip’s grandfather. Buried not fifty yards from where Ben had been killed.

A box she might just know.

Her fingers were suddenly trembling. Raff took the box from her. ‘A bomb?’ There was the beginning of a smile in his voice.

‘No,’ she whispered and then thought about it. ‘Maybe.’

‘You want me to open it?’

‘I think we must.’

There were four brass clips holding it sealed. Raff flicked open each clip in turn.

He opened the box, but she knew before she saw it what its contents would be. And she was right. She’d seen it before. It held cassette tapes, filed neatly, slotted against each other in the ridged sections of Huon pine that Philip’s grandpa had carved with such skill.

She didn’t need to take them out to know what they were. Music tapes, with a couple of blank ones at the back.

There was an odd one. Not slotted into place. The ribbon had been ripped from its base and the tape looked as if it had been tossed into the box in a hurry. It wasn’t labelled.

Her mind was in overdrive.

What do you do when you’re panicking?

You grab the tape from the player, rip the ribbon out, throw it into the box with the others that might point to the fact that this tape might exist, and then you head into the bush. You bury it fast, deep in the undergrowth.

And then you come back to the car and you face the fact that a friend is dead and two others injured…

Even if you tried to find it later, you might not. It’d take Kleppy’s sense of smell…

But why?

‘I’m guessing what this might be,’ she said bleakly, and she knew she had to take this further. She was feeling sick. ‘Do you think we could still play it?’

‘It looks like it’s just a matter of reattaching the ribbon. Is it important?’

‘I think it might be.’