Doctor and Protector Read online

  ‘I’ve put all the perishables into the car,’ he told her, lifting the case off the bed, then collecting his own bag at the door. ‘You can have a look through them when we get to the motel. You’d know better than me who might appreciate anything you don’t want to keep.’

  Cassie knew she should thank him, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter the words. For one thing, she was still angry with him. For another, saying thank you wasn’t really enough for all he was doing.

  ‘I’ll have to lock up,’ she told him. ‘I know this is a safe town, but I can’t leave the house open to anyone who might want to wander in.’

  She made her way around from room to room, locking all the French doors that opened onto the wide veranda, thinking happier thoughts now, of growing up in the big, rambling house, she and Em playing hide and seek. Then later, when Anne was born—the little sister only she called Annie—they’d delighted in having a real live doll to play with.

  By the time she’d locked the back doors and joined McCall at the car, where Blondie was already settled in the back, tail wagging happily in anticipation of a drive, Cassie’s mood had mellowed sufficiently for her to smile at the man she should be thanking.

  ‘All set?’ he said, his voice so gentle she felt tears prickle behind her eyelids.

  He must have sensed her melancholy, for he put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug.

  ‘Would you feel better if we kept Blondie at the motel? I’m sure if we asked nicely, and explained how good a dog she is, they wouldn’t mind.’

  Cassie forgot she was angry with him and smiled.

  ‘Nice as that would be, it’s hardly fair on her, is it? Derek has big runs for the dogs, and Lennie takes each of them out for a walk every day. Blondie actually likes going out there. She’s far more spoilt at Derek’s than she is at home, and she’ll get a break from the twins using her as an ambulatory toy.’

  ‘OK, so Derek’s it is. Should we phone ahead to make sure he’s there?’

  McCall saw her glance at her watch, then she looked up at him and he was pleased to see the sheen of tears he’d glimpsed earlier was gone from her eyes.

  ‘No, he’ll be doing his evening clinic. So much of his work is out on properties around the district, he’s rarely at home during the day, but from six to eight weekdays he does small-animal stuff—the townsfolk’s pets—then after that he often has an hour or so of surgery. I reckon he’s the only person in town who works worse hours than I do. We’ve cattle studs in the district, and a stud animal can get into trouble giving birth at two in the morning just as easily as a woman can, and so it’s Derek to the rescue.’

  She explained all this while she patted Blondie through the car window, gave a last long look at the house, then walked to the driver’s side of the car.

  ‘No, I’ll drive,’ McCall told her. ‘And that’s not a safety precaution but because you’ve had a traumatic day and need a break. Just sit and let someone else do something for you for a change.’

  She looked startled, as if he’d unearthed some secret she’d been keeping hidden, but he hadn’t needed to know her for long to guess she was fiercely independent.

  ‘OK, but don’t think you can make a habit of it. I’m as good a driver as any man, and I’m not going to pander to any masculine not-liking-being-driven-by-a-woman idea.’

  She came around the front of the car with a determined stride, but when he opened the car door for her she didn’t argue. In fact, she smiled.

  ‘You did that to goad me, didn’t you?’ she said, then, with the smile widening into delight, added, ‘Well, it didn’t work!’

  She slid into the seat and he shut the door, pleased he hadn’t given in to the temptation to touch her, oh, so casually, as she’d ducked past him. Trouble was looming ahead. Trouble caused by his attraction to this woman, which, if he let it, could distract him from the job he was here to do—to protect her from a killer!

  She directed him to the road that led out of town, then sank back against the car seat and sighed.

  ‘I can’t believe we lost Joe,’ she said. ‘You’d saved him with the work you did and a bloody bone ricochet tore another piece of the artery.’

  ‘Was he married?’

  ‘Yes, though not, I think, very happily. Jackie, his wife, plays up a bit. She and Joe were total opposites. He’s—was—quiet, didn’t drink much, loved fishing more than anything, probably more than Jackie. She likes a good time. She works as a secretary for the cotton company, and goes out with the staff for a drink every Friday. There’ve been rumours about the affairs she’s had, but I don’t know. People in a small town talk too much.’

  ‘You spoke to her?’

  ‘I told her boss first, and he said he’d tell her. I didn’t want to just hit her with it at work without someone there to help her through the initial shock. I spoke to her later—had to explain about the body going to Brisbane.’

  She turned towards him.

  ‘It’s a crappy job, medicine. I don’t blame you for getting out.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get all melancholy on me,’ McCall said, giving in to temptation and touching her lightly on the knee. ‘Losing a patient is always hard, and I imagine in a town this size it’s usually someone you know. But think of the lives you save—like Cynthia’s baby. Where was she taken, by the way? Have you heard how she and the baby are doing?’

  Cassie turned towards him, and he heard the suspicion in her voice as she asked, ‘Trying to cheer me up, McCall? To take my mind off the disasters of the day? Cynthia and the baby went to Mackay and, yes, I’ve heard. They’re both doing fine. The baby’s jaundiced, but that happens. He’ll be OK.’

  McCall, seeing a cluster of well-lit buildings he thought were familiar, slowed the car.

  ‘This it?’

  ‘You’re not bad,’ Cassie conceded. ‘My sense of direction is hopeless. I have to travel a route at least five times before I can be sure of finding my way back to it.’

  ‘It’s a man thing,’ McCall teased, and was pleased when he saw her smile.

  ‘I’m going to ignore that crack. We’ll leave Blondie in the car while I go in and explain,’ she suggested, leading the way towards the best lit of the buildings, where light spilled out into the night from open double doors.

  Inside the room were an assortment of pets and pet-owners, all greeting Cassie, and some, inevitably McCall guessed, asking about Joe Kerr.

  Cassie handled the queries well, explaining that Dave thought it was an accident.

  ‘I don’t know how many times you men with guns have to be told not to carry them loaded,’ she said, addressing a man in a red and black checked shirt who had a galah sitting on his shoulder. ‘And don’t look innocently at me, Wayne, I know you do it. Most of you do it. You’re afraid you’ll miss the chance to kill some innocent animal if you don’t have your gun loaded.’

  ‘No point having a gun if it’s not loaded,’ the man she’d addressed muttered at her.

  The remark was greeted with a chorus of agreement from the other men in the room and a huff of disagreement from the receptionist.

  ‘Is something wrong with Blondie?’ she then asked Cassie. ‘Derek’s running late so you’ll just have to wait.’

  ‘No, there’s nothing wrong, but I wondered if I could board her here for a few days. Mum’s discovered termites, of all things, in the house and they’re apparently bad enough for it to need fumigating—you know, with one of those tent things over the whole house. She and the rest of the gang have gone to the beach-house but with the twins and all their gear Blondie just wouldn’t fit into the car, and she can’t come to a motel with me.’

  Part of McCall was pleased she was spreading his lie so efficiently, while another part of him, having picked up on the name Wayne and noted the man’s approximate age, was sorry she was talking about not having the dog with her at the motel.

  ‘Oh, that’ll be fine,’ the receptionist was assuring Cassie. ‘We’ve got one convalescing
dog at the moment but that’s all. Blondie can have her favourite run. I’ll buzz Lennie and he’ll come out and take her around as soon as he’s available.’

  ‘You can sit here, Cassie,’ someone offered, but she declined with a smile.

  ‘I’d better wait with Blondie,’ she said. ‘Say my last goodbyes to her.’

  ‘Last goodbyes,’ the galah echoed, and a tingle of apprehension slid down McCall’s spine.

  ‘You ever had a talking bird?’ he asked Cassie, as they walked to the car where Blondie waited patiently, her head poking through the window.

  ‘Em had a cockatoo once. She taught him to say the most revolting things. “Cassie’s vomited” was about the best of them—everyone in hearing distance always sniffed the air and checked their shoes.’

  ‘Hard to train, are they?’ McCall asked, hoping he sounded as if he was fascinated by the subject of a talking bird not just suspicious of the owner of one.

  ‘Not really. Em’s picked up on a lot of the family things we said. We’ve always said “Love you” to each other to end a phone conversation so, although Em didn’t teach that to the bird, he used to say it all the time. I think they pick up anything you repeat often enough, or they hear often enough.’

  This confirmation of what he’d thought led him to wonder why a bird would have either been taught the words ‘last goodbyes’ or heard them frequently enough to have latched onto them.

  He’d phone Dave as soon as he had a private moment and get him to check, firstly, that the Wayne with the galah was the Wayne Dave had mentioned earlier, and, secondly, where the Wayne in question had been at about nine-thirty that morning. Though Dave might already have checked that out—following the instinct he hadn’t liked admitting he had.

  ‘What’s so terrible about talking birds, or has your mind wandered to other topics?’

  He looked down at Cassie and found a smile to reassure her.

  ‘Was I frowning? I’m sorry. I guess I’m easily distracted at the moment.’

  ‘I wonder why?’ Cassie said, but she was smiling as she said it, and when Lennie came towards them, she greeted him cheerfully, reminded him he’d met McCall and let Blondie out of the car.

  ‘Heard you got involved in a bit of drama out at the dam,’ Lennie said, surprising McCall not only by initiating a conversation but by addressing it to him, a virtual stranger. ‘Pulled kids out of a car.’

  ‘Cassie got the kids, I just helped the woman,’ McCall told him.

  ‘It was a good job,’ Lennie said, then, talking in some secret language to the dog, he led the way around the buildings to where long, fenced-in runs provided holiday or convalescent accommodation for dogs.

  ‘That’s Dusty still here,’ Lennie said, pointing to where a dog had struggled out to see what was going on.

  ‘Blondie’s blood brother now,’ Cassie said, and Lennie laughed.

  ‘Blondie’s the blood brother to a lot of dogs in town, isn’t she?’ he said, fondling the dog’s head. ‘You’ve got her blanket, and bowl and lead?’

  ‘Oh, bother, in all the rush, I forgot,’ Cassie said. ‘I know having her own blanket makes her feel more comfortable.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lennie said. ‘She’ll be all right for one night. Her things are in the laundry at your place, right? How about I call in on my way home and pick them up? Then I can bring them out here for her in the morning.’

  ‘Great idea, except I locked the house.’

  McCall saw the surprise on Lennie’s face and Cassie must have seen it as well.

  ‘We’re getting it sprayed for termites and I didn’t want kids seeing the tarps all over it and wanting to play inside,’ she explained, fiddling with a bunch of keys as she spoke. ‘Look, here’s the key to the laundry door. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d be really grateful if you’d pick up her stuff. I’d do it myself and come back out, but I’m really exhausted. This termite thing has just been the last straw.’

  Lennie took the key, and though it bothered McCall slightly that he should, he couldn’t think what harm it could do—Lennie having a key—at the moment.

  ‘What got into Lennie tonight?’ McCall asked, when Cassie had hugged her dog, whispered the ‘Love you’ farewell she’d mentioned earlier, then walked back to the car. ‘He was positively loquacious.’

  ‘I know,’ Cassie agreed. ‘And he laughed. I’ve never heard Lennie laugh. He’s pumped up over something.’

  Successful murder, even if he got the wrong person? A second chill travelled down McCall’s spine, then he decided he must be getting paranoid himself—suspecting every man he met.

  What had happened to the detachment so important to his job—the detachment for which he was noted among his colleagues?

  Gone with the wind that had blown Cassie into his life, that’s what had happened to it.

  Cassie studied the man who seemed to have disappeared into a place where she couldn’t follow. She recalled the conversation they’d just had, but could see nothing in it to have sent McCall into another world.

  Surely he couldn’t think Lennie’s behaviour signified guilt. As far as Cassie was concerned, it was more likely that Lennie, for some reason, had taken a liking to McCall. Lennie talked to Derek, and to the animals he handled—so talking to McCall wasn’t that unusual.

  She wasn’t sure why she was making excuses for Lennie, except that, deep inside her, she really didn’t want Lennie to be the murderer—not Lennie with his gentle hands and soft voice and love of all animals.

  Neither should she be thinking of McCall. They had to get back to town, and settle in wherever Dave had made a booking.

  McCall, however, showed no sign of moving.

  ‘If you’re going to stand there for some time, I’ll ask Derek if I can put the perishables in his refrigerator.’

  ‘What? Oh! Sorry, yes, of course.’

  He sounded as if he had been in another world—and was having trouble transporting himself back to this one.

  ‘OK. Do you want to drive? I’ll phone Dave and find out where he’s booked us in.’

  This time he didn’t open the car door for her. The result of her speech about independence earlier or further evidence of just how distracted he was?

  She heard his side of the conversation with Dave as she drove back to town, but it wasn’t until he’d tucked his mobile back into his pocket that she learnt their destination.

  ‘The Maddox! He’s booked us into the Maddox? You’ve got to be joking! That’s all Dave could come up with?’

  ‘All the rest were booked out.’ McCall sounded apologetic, though it certainly wasn’t his fault they were booked into the worst motel in town.

  ‘I bet they’re not—it’s just more convenient for Dave to have us there. It’s right across the road from the police station and not a tree or shrub in the yard—just asphalt parking area all around it.’

  ‘Practical,’ McCall commented, still sounding as if he wasn’t quite with her.

  She turned towards him and he shrugged.

  ‘I haven’t told you the worst bit yet,’ he said quietly. ‘They only had one room, but don’t freak out about it. Dave said there’s a couch and I’m happy to sleep on that. I can sleep anywhere.’

  Cassie gripped the steering-wheel more tightly. She could hardly tell McCall that the sleeping arrangements didn’t worry her. It was the fact that she’d get no respite from his presence—and the unfamiliar manifestations it was causing her—that really had her bothered.

  Neither did she entirely believe there was only one motel room left in the entire town. Dave had wanted McCall close to her and, given the shadow of fear underlying all she now thought and did, from that point of view it wasn’t a bad idea.

  As long as she could handle her personal problems…

  ‘This is it?’

  McCall’s disbelief made her smile.

  ‘Told you it wasn’t Buckingham Palace,’ she said. ‘At least it doesn’t have a bar so we won’t be kept awake all night by
noisy drinkers.’

  ‘No,’ McCall agreed, though he didn’t sound as relieved as he should. He must be thinking he’d be kept awake because he had to sleep on the couch. Considering his size, she should offer to take his place there, but she wouldn’t make any rash suggestions until she’d seen it.

  The girl on the reception desk was obviously expecting them. She handed McCall the key and told them Dave had explained Cassie’s problem, her eyes on McCall the entire time she spoke, as if registering every detail of his appearance so she could describe him later to her friends and relations.

  ‘Dave said he wasn’t sure how long you’d need the room, but you can have it as long as you want,’ she assured Cassie, eyes still sneaking towards McCall. ‘We wouldn’t want you to leave town because you can’t sleep in your own house.’

  She gave them a small container of milk, explained where the room was, then, after one final good look at the man Cassie knew was already considered by the town to be her “boyfriend”, she wished them goodnight.

  Cassie got behind the wheel to shift the car to their room, pointing out to McCall, as she drove, the empty spaces in the parking areas outside other rooms.

  ‘Some of the CWA ladies might have flown in or come by train,’ he told her. ‘Don’t be so suspicious.’

  ‘This from a man who keeps telling me I’ve got to suspect half the men in town?’ Though she realised now she looked more closely that most of the rooms had lights on behind their curtains so maybe McCall had been right.

  One glance at the couch convinced her she’d been right about not offering to sleep on it, but looking at the bed—at least a queen size, possibly a king—made her feel very guilty.

  ‘It’s a big bed,’ McCall said, picking up on her thoughts, though probably because he’d also sussed out the couch, not because he was a mind-reader.

  ‘So?’ Cassie demanded, guilt vying now with fear of what might happen if she spent one night—let alone a series of nights—in bed with McCall.

  ‘Nothing, just that it’s a big bed,’ McCall said, setting his bag down on the couch then disappearing outside again, presumably to get the perishables.