‘Making headway?’ he asked when he finally found her in the bathroom, stacking toiletries into the mirrored cupboard above the basin.
As he’d left the station tonight, Spencer had offered to come around and help to move the furniture into place, but Dave had thanked him and said it would be best if he went home first and saw what was going on before he said yes. Now he was glad of that. It looked like Melinda had everything under control…Maybe. He couldn’t be sure.
‘Yeah, I think so.’ Melinda turned around to face him, her face covered in dust and her cheeks red. ‘I’ve got the bed in the right spot and made up, so at least we won’t have to stay in the hotel again.’
The furniture had arrived yesterday just as the sun had been going down, so Spencer had suggested the department fork out for a night in the local pub. Dave had jumped at the idea; they didn’t need to be unpacking well into the night after a day like they’d had. Leaving Bunbury that morning had caused floods of tears from both Melinda and her mum. Her father, Dave had noticed, had also teared up a little. Melinda hadn’t stopped crying until they were a couple of hours down the road. Of course, she had started again when they’d arrived in Barrabine.
‘What’ve you been doing?’ Dave reached over to wipe a cobweb from her head. ‘The house isn’t so dirty that you should be getting cobwebs in your hair!’ He grinned at her and tried to reach his arm around her waist, but she was too far away.
‘Did you know there was a shed out the back? I didn’t notice when we arrived. I went to have a look to see if we could store the suitcases and stuff in it, and it’s filthy. Hence I look like this.’ She spread out her arms and pirouetted on her toes.
Dave grinned. ‘Well, I guess that’s better than having rolled in the dirt.’ He passed her a can of deodorant and a tube of moisturiser from the box at her feet so she could stack them where she wanted.
‘How was your day?’
Dave reached back into the box and handed her more toiletries. ‘Fine. Police station is okay. Met a couple of the other blokes, who seem nice enough. We went through some files Spencer is working on and had a bit of a drive around. But the most interesting piece of information I learned today is that the police station is haunted.’
‘Haunted?’ Melinda flicked her long hair over her shoulders and looked up at him, her tone disbelieving. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yep, apparently so. There was a gold squad detective back in the early 1920s who was murdered and—’ he dropped his voice to a low rumble ‘—they say his headless body roams the station at night. There are noises and happenings that people can’t explain.’
‘Happenings? Really, like what?’
‘Pieces of papers being moved, rubbish bins emptied. And it seems you can’t leave a dirty mug on your desk overnight. The ghost is a bit of a clean freak. They always end up on the kitchen sink. The guys have tested it heaps of times, apparently. Every time there’s a dirty coffee cup on a desk or somewhere other than the sink, it gets moved to where it can be washed.’
‘Right.’ Melinda drew out the word. ‘I think everyone has a dose of the sun.’ She reached into the box and picked up another bottle.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Dave said. ‘I thought I might test the theory myself.’ He gave her a grin. ‘Always wanted to know if I’m able to get in touch with my spiritual side!’
Melinda rolled her eyes at him and Dave knew the conversation was over. Spiritual was something Melinda didn’t do. She was practical and didn’t believe in anything to do with religion or an afterlife. Even when her oldest nursing friend, Tash, told her the story of a man who had arrived on her ward in the hospital and stood in front of a patient who was stable and expected to make a full recovery. The man didn’t say anything to the patient, who was asleep at the time, only stood and watched him for at least ten minutes, then left. Not ten minutes later the patient went into cardiac arrest and died, despite everyone’s best efforts. Dave knew that to this day Tash still believed she’d seen the Grim Reaper. Melinda didn’t.
He changed the subject. ‘Did Kathy come over?’ he asked. ‘What was she like?’
‘Yeah, she did. Turned up about ten this morning. She was nice enough. Much taller than Spencer—I think they’d look strange standing next to each other. And she was quite slim. I’d say the two of them are opposites in every sense of the word.’
Dave gave a chuckle. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting her then.’
‘Hmm. She asked lots of questions. Wanted to know how we got together and why you’d wanted to be transferred here. Said it was strange. Not many people ask to come to Barrabine apparently.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say ‘You’re mad’ and then stretched her back out before letting out a groan. ‘My back is killing me.’
‘Come on,’ he said, reaching out a hand to help her over the box. ‘Let’s go and find a pub to have a drink. You look like you need one. And let’s have tea there. Neither of us needs to be thinking about cooking tonight. If the bed is made up, that’s all we need.’
Finally she smiled. ‘That would be nice. I’m tired.’
The shrill noise of the telephone made Dave jump. ‘Where’s the bloody phone?’ he asked, walking towards the noise.
‘Kitchen,’ she said. ‘On the wall, next to the door going into the lounge.’
‘Hello?’ Dave answered, picking up the receiver.
‘Dave, g’day. It’s Mark Beattie. Settling in okay?’
Grimacing, Dave tucked the phone in between his shoulder
