Southern Sunset: Book One of 44 South Page 9

Luke was fuming. I don’t think I’d seen this level of lost control outside of his bed. Either the sheep had thrown him or the thought that Red Tussock was under some sort of smear attack had.

  I wanted to soothe his worries. Reach out and run a hand down his back. Make contact.

  I did nothing. Following him silently down the stairs, his amused brother trailing in our wake.

  The voices reached us first and then the smell of breakfast. My stomach rumbled loudly. Luke glanced over his shoulder, his face softening when his eyes found mine. Even fuming, he was tuned into my discomfort.

  “Breakfast first, then,” he murmured.

  “The sheep can wait,” Justin added.

  Luke scowled and then leaned down just before we made the kitchen, and whispered, “You up for this?”

  “Of course,” I replied, and headed into the kitchen first.

  It’s always been my downfall, this need to prove a point. That I’m strong enough. Hard enough. Competent enough. For anything. A wise cop would have hung back and assessed the situation. Tailored their approach to the level of threat.

  I stormed right into the Drake kitchen as if I belonged there.

  It was full. Several familiar faces around the big farm-style table. Mr and Mrs Drake. Finn and Momo, the wedding couple. Her parents. The twins. And Senior Sergeant Matt Drake. The rest of the room disappeared. Just his face. I couldn’t decipher the emotion on it. He was closed down, much like he’d been closed down since I’d arrived here.

  There were other people present, but I’d done my dash; my confidence leaving me in rush of noise inside my ears. Seeing Matt Drake made everything real.

  “Sergeant Blackmore,” Mrs Drake exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  I doubted it.

  “Make a space, Matt,” she instructed her son. “Let the sergeant sit down.”

  Matt shifted his seat sideways, not offering up a comment. He looked haggard this morning. His dark blond hair messed up, several days’ worth of whiskers on his firm jaw. His eyes were bloodshot. His hand trembled when he lifted his coffee cup.

  I sat down next to him in equal silence, my heart thundering inside my chest, trying to get out.

  He could fire me over this, I realised. Oh, sleeping with his brother wasn’t a crime in the literal sense. But when he found out about the dead body, if he didn’t already know, my sleeping with the station manager of Red Tussock could lose me my job.

  And I hadn’t even really wanted to come here.

  I could have stayed in Auckland. Faced the memories head on. Faced Michael head on. But I’d run when given the opportunity. And now I could lose my job.

  My hand shook, too, when I reached for the coffee Luke had poured.

  Warmth infused me when his palm landed on my nape, the heat of his body sweeping down my back. He squeezed gently, then took the seat on the other side of me. One that had appeared out of nowhere. I hadn’t noticed the twins get up.

  “You have gorgeous girls,” I said to Matt, for want of something to say.

  He grunted and drank from his cup.

  “How’re you finding Twizel, Sergeant?” Finn asked, his arm casually wrapped around his wife’s shoulders.

  “Interesting,” I supplied. Several chuckles travelled around the table.

  “I bet,” he said with a genuine smile.

  “What made you come here?” Mrs Drake asked.

  I’d had an answer rehearsed for just such a question. I’d practiced it in front of the mirror, much like I should practice my fake smiles. It deserted me now.

  “Um,” I said, staring into my cup.

  “When do you leave, Finn?” Luke asked loudly from beside me, his hand slipping beneath the table and landing on my thigh. He didn’t squeeze it this time, just rested it there. A presence. Warm. Firm. Comforting.

  “Today. Off to Fiji for a week.”

  “Nice for some,” Justin offered, stuffing his mouth with bacon.

  “Find a beautiful girl to marry and you, too, could be honeymooning in style,” Finn countered.

  “Steady on,” Luke drawled. “One thing at a time. Justin married?”

  “It could happen,” Justin replied.

  “On what planet?” Luke demanded.

  “And how do you pick just one?” Finn enquired.

  “I ask myself that every day,” Justin mused, smirking.

  “I hope they give you the run around, Justin Drake,” Mrs Drake offered. “The sooner you pick just one, the better for everyone.”

  “Aw, Mum,” he complained, but I could see the sparkle in his eyes. “Where would the fun be in that?”

  “If you ask me,” Mrs Drake said, just as Matt threw down his napkin on his uneaten plate and pushed back his chair. Loudly.

  Mrs Drake’s voice trailed off.

  “Sergeant,” Matt said gruffly into the silence. “A word outside, please.”

  He strode out of the room expecting me to follow. I took a slow sip of my coffee, my chest restricting. Then offered a completely fake smile to Mrs Drake and left the room. Footsteps followed. I knew they belonged to Luke, but I didn’t turn around. The moment I’d entered the kitchen, I’d been aware this confrontation was going to happen, no matter what. I just wanted it over with now.

  Luke was standing out in the driveway, staring off over the pastures in front of the homestead. His hands were on his hips, his boots shoulder width apart. His back rigid.

  “I know what this looks like,” I started, deciding offence was better than defence.

  “When were you going to tell me there’d been a body found on our property?” he demanded.

  I stilled. This wasn’t about me spending the night with his brother?

  “You’ve been hard to reach,” I said carefully.

  He spun around and stared at me and then caught sight of Luke over my shoulder.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Just observing.”

  “This is official business,” Matt countered.

  “This is Red Tussock business.”

  “No,” Matt argued. “This is a sergeant on my team keeping me out of the loop. It has nothing to do with the station.”

  “The body was found here,” Luke said levelly.

  “I wasn’t told!” Matt shouted.

  Matt Drake was unstable, I realised.

  A crushing sense of disappointment engulfed me. I didn’t want Matt Drake to be unstable.

  I let out a slow breath of air.

  “Senior Sergeant,” I said. “I didn’t rush to inform you, because you can’t be involved in any of this.”

  “I’m in charge of Twizel Police.” Not for much longer at this rate. “You should have at least had the courtesy to advise me you were heading up an investigation on my family’s land.”

  “When?” Luke demanded. “When should she have advised you? When you were out cold in one of the storage sheds? When you’d drunk a fifth of whisky? When?”

  Matt looked devastated. “How could you?” he rasped.

  “She knows. Maggie’s not stupid. She can see what’s in front of her face. I’m not telling her anything she hasn’t put together in the past three weeks of you practically ignoring her presence here.”

  “Luke,” I warned.

  “Damn you,” Matt growled and stormed forward, thrusting his shoulder into his brother’s chest, making him stumble back a step.

  We both watched him disappear around the back of the homestead.

  “Sorry,” Luke said, sounding contrite. “You didn’t need to see that. Tough love.”

  “Does he have a drinking problem?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “Six months.”

  I had to ask, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.

  I opened my mouth just as Justin clomped down the front stairs of the house.

  “Ready to see those ewes?” he asked.

  Luke nodded his head grimly and started toward
his Ranger.

  All I could do was follow.

  Chapter 18

  Murder Was A Flash In The Pan Compared To All Of That

  Luke

  God, damn it. I was trying to be patient with Matt, I really was. But when he went after Maggie, I simply saw red. Six months was long enough to wallow. And taking it out on his staff was taking it one step too far.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew my jumping to Maggie’s defence was more about last night than the six months prior. I knew, had it been anyone else, I would have let Matt handle it. Even consumed in grief and anger, Matt was a damn good cop.

  Why else had he put in for a new sergeant? And hired one with investigative experience within a fortnight of receiving her application.

  Matt wanted answers. I just wasn’t sure if he was whole enough to ask Maggie the questions first.

  I flicked concerned eyes across the cab of the truck to Maggie. The atmosphere was a stark contrast to last night. I shifted in my seat, remembering her electric touch under the moonlight; the way her hair had shone softly in the artificial glow from the dash.

  “What do you really think is going on?” she asked.

  With Matt? “I don’t know,” I hedged.

  “Has anything like this happened before? Sheep turning up dead where they shouldn’t be?”

  Oh. Clearly my family’s dysfunctional dilemmas weren’t as pressing as a potential crime.

  If only she knew.

  I scratched at my stubbled jaw. “Not in all the years I’ve been doing this.”

  “It seems illogical,” she mused. “Why move them, if you’ve poisoned them? Shouldn’t the poisoning be the message?”

  “That’s if they were poisoned at all.”

  “You think it a natural cause of death?”

  “Well,” I said, “Justin might have got it wrong.”

  “Is he wrong often?”

  I shook my head. Justin’s focus might be on the vineyard now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a farmer through and through. Besides, Justin saw things others didn’t. His photographer’s eye was quite acute. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t already taken photos of the scene, documenting in digital what he had seen.

  “There he is,” I said, spotting Justin’s ute already parked up at the far end of a row of sharply pruned vines. Charlie was standing off to the side, smoking a cigarette. He nodded his head as we climbed out of the Ranger, his own Red Tussock ute parked behind him.

  “You want me to move ‘em?” he asked in way of greeting.

  “Not yet,” Maggie replied, stepping closer.

  Charlie raised his eyebrows at me, then took a long drag on his ciggie, blowing smoke all over the morbid scene.

  “This is Sergeant Blackmore of the Twizel Police,” I said. “Maggie, this is our head foreman, Charlie Davis.”

  “Mr Davis,” Maggie said with a nod of her head, but she was already looking back at the sheep.

  There was a distinct slaughter house smell, even though there appeared to be no blood. Some of the ewes had foam at their mouths. Some had bulging eyes. Lips were peeled back off several, revealing their very blunt teeth.

  “I’m no vet,” Maggie said, “but I can’t believe they all died at the same time.”

  “Tyre marks,” Justin offered, from several feet away.

  “One hundred head of sheep would require a large trailer or truck to move,” I said.

  “Or they made several trips in the middle of the night,” Maggie offered.

  “How come you’re not in uniform?” Charlie suddenly asked.

  Maggie blushed, just a brief flare of red to her cheeks, and then she straightened her shoulders and said, “Didn’t have time to change.”

  “And dead sheep require a fast response?” Charlie enquired. “Not the usual reaction we get from the police.”

  I expected Maggie to say something else, but she just flicked her eyes over Charlie and then returned her attention to the scene.

  “Is it 1080?” she asked.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Justin replied, crouching down by a sheep at the edge of the pile. “Look here. They ate something and it wasn’t just grass.”

  “Don’t touch that!” Maggie instructed, when Justin reached out to peel back a sheep’s upper lip.

  He lifted his hands as though she had cocked a gun at his head. And then smirked.

  “Worried for my health, Sergeant?”

  “Worried about contaminating the scene,” she replied steadily.

  “I already shifted a few,” Charlie offered.

  Maggie’s eyes snapped back to his face. “Why?”

  Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “Thought one was still alive.”

  “Who found them?” Maggie asked.

  “Charlie did,” Justin offered, “but I was up at the events centre and came out not long afterwards.”

  “Did you touch them before or after that, Mr Davis?”

  “I don’t know. Before maybe?”

  “Why does it matter, Maggie?” I asked.

  “It’s a crime scene.”

  Charlie scoffed at that. “Dead sheep turn up every now and then. Hardly cause for forensics.”

  Maggie straightened up from her crouch and flicked her eyes to me. I wasn’t sure what that look meant. This was Maggie in full detecting mode. Unreadable. Realistically, I knew this was a suspicious looking scene. Add in the fact that we already had one suspicious death on our station, and I understood the severity of this discovery.

  But I couldn’t see poisoned sheep and James Whiting adding up to anything connected.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked Maggie softly.

  “We’ll need a vet to examine the bodies.”

  “All of ‘em?” Charlie demanded.

  “At least a good portion,” Maggie replied, running her hands down her trackies.

  She looked startled at the touch, perhaps having forgotten she wasn’t in her crisp blue police uniform trousers. She shook her head and stared out over the vines toward the main road.

  “How far to section three?” she asked.

  Justin’s head flicked up and he narrowed her eyes at her. Charlie just lit up another cigarette and started to chug like a steam engine.

  “At least five kilometres,” I said.

  “And from here to section four, where you said they’re from?”

  “Another five or so kilometres.”

  “And from section four to section three?”

  I stared at her. She held my gaze unflinchingly. “Five again.”

  “How many sections do you have?” she asked.

  “Twenty.”

  “So, why those two? Three if you count the vineyard?”

  “All three border the main highway,” Justin said.

  “Any other reason?” Maggie pressed.

  “That one alone makes enough sense,” Justin argued. “Easy access to our land and our stock.”

  “Any other reasons?” Maggie repeated.

  Charlie stubbed out his cigarette with purposeful movements, then reached down and picked up the butt, shoving it in his pocket. It was enough to attract Maggie’s attention, and her question went unanswered.

  But I was having trouble forgetting it that easily. Why had those areas been targeted? Because it sure as hell looked like someone was targeting us. First: James Whiting. A man I’d been seen arguing with in public. Second: one hundred head from our main flock currently grazing on our lower pastures. Visible to any who drove by. And third: they’d been staged outside a Drake wedding on vineyard land which was currently attracting a lot of attention internationally.

  I didn’t like where this was going. But more importantly, I didn’t like how this would affect our bottom line. 1080 on our land was bad enough. In our vineyard, it could be devastating. Add in a stock agent mouthing off about dirty wool at Red Tussock and we’re suddenly tainted.

  Murder was a flash in the pan compared to all of that.

  Chapter 19

 
; Tonight

  Maggie

  Luke was distracted as he drove me back to the vineyard’s main carpark so I could uplift my car. The vet was on his way and Justin had said he’d keep an eye on things there. Charlie Davis, Red Tussock’s head foreman, had grumbled about work to do and slunk off. But I couldn't stay in borrowed track pants all day, so retrieving my car and heading home to change was important.

  Leaving Luke, though, when he was so obviously worried, felt wrong.

  “What sort of repercussions does this loss of stock incur?” I queried.

  “Are you asking if it affects our bottom line?” He shook his head, but his eyes remained on the gravel road. “We’re not that small a farm.”

  “30,000 merinos,” I said, repeating what he’d originally told me. “One hundred here or there can’t make a dent?”

  He grimaced. His fingers flexing around the steering wheel. “I didn’t say that,” he said softly. “Our reputation will take a hit.”

  “And your reputation’s important?”

  “Of course.”

  “I mean, it’s important to your bottom line?”

  He pulled the ute to stop alongside my car and turned to look at me. “Why the questions about our bottom line, Sergeant?”

  “Just trying to figure out why someone would do this. One hundred head of sheep is not a small amount, yet financially this wouldn’t harm you.”

  “It could. In the long run. Especially if we can’t contain any contamination on the vineyard.”

  “So, the perpetrator is targeting the vineyard, not the station’s merino?”

  “It’s all Red Tussock land.”

  And we were back to Red Tussock Holdings as a target.

  I stared out of the windshield at the vineyard’s events centre. It looked barren and forlorn without the wedding guests to decorate its barn like structure.

  “How many Red Tussock vehicles do you have?” I suddenly asked. “In particular, utes with the RED licence plate.”

  “Why?”

  “Just trying to get a scale for the size of this place.”

  He stared at me a little too long. “A dozen.”

  “So, RED 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, up to 12?”