‘You’re very precise with your times,’ Dave said.
‘Sweetheart, when you’re my age, you don’t sleep so good. Anyway, Mary’s been waking me up a lot more recently. She’s pretty bloody noisy with that mop and bucket of hers.’
‘Mary?’
‘Our resident ghost.’
Dave managed not react. ‘I see.’
Spencer opened his mouth to say something, but Dave beat him to it. ‘And how does, uh, Mary wake you up?’
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ she said with a grin. ‘I know people think I’m mad, but I don’t care. I haven’t been out in the sun and had me brain fried. I’ve heard her. Even seen her once. One night in the hallway. I was getting up to my sick grandkid, but she’d already beaten me to it.’
Dave felt goosebumps spread across his skin and looked around as if Mary might be standing behind him.
‘Mary lives here and has done for the whole time I’ve owned the place,’ Dee continued. ‘I’ve done research on her and everything. She’s a chambermaid from the late 1800s and she used to rattle her mop and bucket when it was time for everyone to leave.’ She leaned closer to Dave. ‘That’s what I hear. The rattling of the mop and bucket,’ she whispered.
Spencer cleared his throat. ‘You’ll have to work harder if you want to frighten Dave. He used to be a farmer and now he’s a cop, so he doesn’t frighten that easy.’
Dave nodded in agreement, pretending her story hadn’t affected him.
‘I’m just telling it how it is,’ Dee said. She gently thumped Spencer on the arm. ‘You know about Mary, dontcha?’
‘I do and I’ve heard her,’ Spencer said quite seriously.
‘Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t believe!’ Dave put in.
Dee burst out laughing. ‘No need to sound so defensive, love! Gotta tell you my stories while you’re here. Now, back to poor Timmy Tucker.’
‘Yeah, let’s focus on the work,’ Spencer said. ‘You heard one vehicle at three-thirty and one at four?’
‘Yep, sure did.’
‘Both coming from the same direction?’
‘Nope. One came in from west of town and the other came in from the main road to Barrabine.’
Dave wrote down the information in his notebook. ‘Was it strange enough for you get up and have a look?’ he asked.
‘Only because I had to get up and go to the loo. It was a red wagon of some sort. Not a mining vehicle.’
Dave looked at her quizzically and Spencer explained quickly, ‘There’s a difference between leases, tenements and mines. When people talk about the mines it’s the big company-owned mines, like the ones I showed you on the first day. They have shift changes every twelve hours and mostly the blokes drive around in white single- or dual-cabs with orange flags on them. Sometimes they have an orange flashing light on the roof. Not all, admittedly, but ninety percent of them. When Dee says it wasn’t a mine vehicle, she’s saying it didn’t look like a vehicle which would be carting mine employees around.’
Dave nodded. ‘Okay, so red? Nothing to do with mining. Privately owned then?’
‘I couldn’t say that, but certainly not a mine one. And it’s not local ’cause I would’ve recognised it otherwise.’ She took the tea towel from her shoulder and started to wipe the bar.
‘How can you be sure it was red? It would have been dark.’
‘There was enough moon to see. I couldn’t say it was fire-engine red, but red, burgundy,’ she shrugged. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘China or Killjoy been in recently?’ Spencer asked, switching subjects.
‘Nope. Not for about a week. Killjoy said he was heading north to work his lease up outta Karralie.’ She mentioned a town about two hundred kilometres away. ‘He’ll probably only be gone a couple of weeks though. And I don’t reckon he’ll be leaving until after the social club catch-up on Saturday night.’
‘Social club?’
‘All the locals come in once a month and have a catch-up. It’s this Saturday night, so he won’t be going until after.’
That tied in with what Tim had told them about meeting his friends this weekend. Dave ran through what he knew and at this point it wasn’t much.
‘Do you think it could have been the same car?’ he asked.
‘What, going to somewhere and back again?’ Her smoky voice held a ring of disbelief. ‘Can’t get anywhere out here in half an hour, love.’
‘What if they were going somewhere and had forgotten something, so turned around to go back and get it?’ he asked.
‘If you live out here and are driving around at that time of the day, I’d think you’re going to be a lot more organised than that. Who’d want to start off at three-thirty and have to turn around?’ she said in a scornful tone.
‘Point there,’ Spencer said.
Dave jotted down: Camped one side of town, killed on the other, back again? He’d talk more to Spencer about it when they were in the car.
‘Oh, bugger me,’ Dee said and put down her tea towel, wide-eyed. ‘I’ll tell you what I just remembered. Couple of nights ago there was a bloke in here who had a huge nugget, and I mean huge.’ She held her fingers about an inch apart and Spencer whistled. ‘He was bragging about it and no one does that. Not much anyway. I did hear him say he’d heard a dog barking in the distance that had put the wind up him, so he hightailed out of wherever he was.’ She turned excitedly to Spencer. ‘Timmy’s not the only bloke who’s got a dog, but he’s probably the most ferocious one I know of out here. He brought Chief in with him last time he came and he put up a bit of a woofing when my new barmaid walked in. Scared the pants off her, poor love. So they might have been talking about Tim’s
