bored.’
‘Murder and mayhem?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Yet you keep it under wraps.’
‘If I can,’ the policeman agreed. ‘No sense in airing dirty linen in public.’
Amy was sifting through the cooking cupboard, peering into packages. ‘So if they’re into amphetamine production…’
‘They’d need equipment and there’s no sign of it. And they’d be nervous. The Crammonds weren’t. They were quite happy to let us search the house and the garage.’
‘Do we know what we’re looking for?’
‘No.’
‘Great.’
But Joss was sorting through the clutter on the bench and he’d lifted the lid of the sugar bowl. Without really expecting anything, he’d taken a tiny pinch of sugar and placed it on his tongue. His face stilled.
‘Jeff…’
‘Mmm?’ The policeman crossed to his side and peered into the bowl. ‘What? It looks like normal sugar to me.’
‘Taste it.’
‘Yeah?’ He did-though the look on his face said that he might as well be eating cyanide. ‘Ugh. It’s bitter. That’s not sugar!’
‘No.’ Joss was gazing thoughtfully into the jar. ‘It’s not. They had apple pie and maybe Emma sprinkled it with what she thought was sugar. She might not have tasted it like that, and maybe her grandparents didn’t use it.’
‘But what is it?’ Jeff was poking into the white substance with his finger. ‘It’s a bit finer than sugar but…well, you wouldn’t notice it.’
‘Where do they keep the packet?’ Joss asked, and Amy poked around in the grocery cupboard under the bench until she found a half-empty sugar packet. She opened it and tasted.
‘Sugar. It’s fine.’
‘Then what…?’
‘What’s nearby?’ Joss knelt beside her-it felt good to kneel beside her, he thought, and then gave himself a mental shake. He was losing his mind here. He should be concentrating on things that were important and all he could focus on was how good Amy smelled. Fresh and clean, and there was some lingering perfume about her. It was faint-as if it was in her soap, and not applied out of a bottle-but it was unmistakable. Lily of the valley? Gorgeous.
Groceries. Poison. Get a grip, Braden.
And there it was.
The packet was white with blue lettering. It was smaller than the sugar packet, and its lettering was clear.
Speedy Cure.
‘What the heck is Speedy Cure?’ he demanded, and rose, opening the packet as he did.
It was a white powder, slightly grainy. If you didn’t know better, you could mistake it for sugar.
‘What is it?’
‘My mum used to use that,’ the policeman told them, taking the packet away from Joss and staring down at it in recognition. ‘It’s used to cure corned meats. I seem to remember it makes a great corned silverside.’
‘But what is it?’
The sergeant was turning over the packet.
‘Sodium nitrate,’ he read. ‘Could that be it, Doc?’
‘It certainly could.’ Joss stared from the packet to the sugar bowl and back again. ‘Maybe…if the sugar bowl was empty Mrs Crammond might have asked her granddaughter to fill it.’
‘And if she said the sugar’s in the cupboard…’ Amy was way ahead of him. ‘Emma would have grabbed the first package that looked like sugar.’
‘Problem solved.’ Joss grinned. ‘How very satisfactory. And you won’t have to arrest anyone, Jeff. Not that you would have, anyway.’
‘I would have at this,’ Jeff told them. ‘If a child was hurt because of drug dealing…’ He held up the packet and grimaced. ‘Mind, they should have known better than to keep this where kiddies can get near it.’
‘I think they’ll have learned their lesson.’
‘I’ll go across to your dad’s and tell them.’ Jeff grinned at them both. ‘Well done, the pair of you. You make a good team, you know.’
It was a throwaway line. There was no reason for it to reverberate in Joss’s head like a vow.
Amy was taking it lightly, which was just as well. ‘We know we’re a great team,’ Amy said smugly. ‘I’m thinking of talking to the weather bureau. Arranging it so that it keeps raining and Joss will have to stay.’
‘Put in a word from me, too, then,’ Jeff told them. ‘If it meant we’d get a permanent doctor for this town then I’m all for it.’
‘Why can’t you get a doctor?’
‘Are you kidding? Bowra has enough trouble keeping Doris, and she’s impossible. There’s no specialists this side of Blairglen-the place is a desert.’
‘But it’s a beautiful place to live.’
‘Yeah. It is,’ the policeman said dourly. ‘But the only land without legal building caveats-bans on commercial building-is the land under the nursing home. The old man screwed up our lives when he set this place up and we were all too stupid to see it.’
There followed a horrid interlude with Emma’s grandparents, who were overwhelmed with guilt.
‘I asked her to fill the sugar bowl,’ Margy Crammond sobbed. ‘How could I have been so stupid? I hadn’t realised how poisonous Speedy Cure is. Harold loves his corned beef and the general store only stocks the really basic meats…’
Here was another example of how isolated this place was, Joss thought grimly. The old man really did have a lot to answer for.
‘With this population, surely there’s a way you can get shops?’
‘On what land?’ Amy shook her head. ‘No. He cheated a whole town of retirees out of a great place to live.’
‘Hmm.’
The more he saw the more it intrigued him-and the more the girl by his side intrigued him. They drove back to the nursing home in silence, both deep in their thoughts.
‘When are you and your Malcolm planning on getting married?’ he asked as they pulled to a halt in the hospital car park. She looked at him, startled.
‘What on earth…?’
‘Does that have to do with me? Nothing.’ He grinned with his engaging grin, which could get him anything he wanted. Almost. ‘But I want to know. Are you waiting for six years?’
‘Maybe.’
‘How often do you see each other?’
‘He comes every second weekend-except when there are floods.’
‘Do you ever spend time at Bowra?’
‘I can’t leave Iluka.’
‘The old man’s will stipulated that you live here,’ Joss objected. ‘It didn’t say you could never leave.’
‘But with no doctor here…’ She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Mary and Sue-Ellen don’t accept much responsibility and there are always crises.’
‘What’s the population here?’
‘About two thousand.’
‘And in the district?’
