Page 6 of Down the Track
‘I mean help as in get yourself here. Now, you moron. What if they lock him up?’
He shook off the insult the way a working dog shook off water after a dunk in the dam. Being the brother of more sisters than any other bloke in the whole of Australia had given him a very specific set of skills, and accepting their blunt take on endearments was one of them.
‘Why on earth would they be locking Charlie up? Come on, Sal. So they need more information. That’s totally normal when there’s been an accident or a—’ He took a breath before he said it, because Sal was right about one thing: some words did carry weight. ‘Missing person. I’m sure there’s nothing for you to be worked up about.’
‘It’s her manner, Hux. She’s all flat-eyed and serious, like we’ve done something wrong. And the other one? Mr Stickybeak? He’s, like, checking out the stuff I’ve got stuck to the fridge, and picking up all my photo frames and inspecting them. Oscar rubbed against his legs and Acting-Whatever Clifford—she’s really,reallyinto announcing her full cop title like she’s on some freaking ego trip—told me to put him in the laundry and shut the door.’
It took Hux a moment to remember that Oscar was Sal and Charlie’s cat, not one of their kids.
‘Charlie’s going to be fine,’ he said firmly. ‘This bloke will be somewhere and the police will ping his mobile and find him at a pub watching the cricket, and this will all be a storm in a tea cup.’ Not an analogy his editor would let him get away with, but the familiar was comfortable. And Sally was definitely hiding herself and her enormous baby belly in that linen closet trying to find a little comfort.
‘You really think so?’
‘I really think so. Better not mention this to the oldies until I get out there.’
‘I’m notstupid, Hux.’
‘Okay. Sorry. My bad.’
None of the Numbers liked to bother their parents with drama. Besides, whatever was going on with Charlie—if he had indeed had some sort of meltdown as Sal had suggested—had gone down at work, and Hux was still Charlie’s business partner. True, Yindi Creek Chopper Charters was mostly Charlie’s operation now, despite the fact the two of them had set it up together a decade and a half ago. The out-of-the-blue success of Hux’s first novel,Clueless Jones: Deadset Legend, had given him a good enough reason to demote himself from manager to on-again, off-again pilot during the winter season when Charlie couldn’t cope with the demand all on his own.
But Hux hadn’t stepped totally away. He loved flying. And he loved chatting the ears off tourists about the region: its shearing history and flood stories; its opal finds and dinosaur stampede tracks. Western Queensland was in his blood and he wasn’t about to give it up just because he didn’t need to earn a living from (or two thousand feet above, to be more accurate) the land.
‘That’s what’s worrying me, Hux.’ Sal’s voice was low in his ear.
‘Mum and Dad getting wind of this? Or Charlie not being fine?’
‘Charlie. What if he’snotfine? He was acting really off when he came home yesterday, and then just before? When the cop chick told him they wanted more information? He went white.White, Hux.’
As Charlie wasn’t white, if you ignored the Scottish ancestor who lurked somewhere on his family tree and had bequeathed Charlie a red tinge to the stubble on his face and a gene for inventive and fulsome swearing, this was quite a statement.
‘You know he’s never recovered. From before. When everyone in town blamed him,’ Sal added.
Crap. Maybe thiswasmore than a storm in a tea cup.
Hux flew his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop:News—Winton Shire—McKinlay Shire—Richmond Shireand hit the search button. The town Christmas tree in Yindi Creek had been officially ‘lit up’ from December 1st; a funeral notice for pastoralist Jill Kirk:gone to feed the bulls; a light aircraft had narrowly avoided a Royal Flying Doctor plane on a dirt strip up north; and there was a minor floodwater warning out for the Salty River and Georgina River catchments:black soil shoulders saturated, drive with extreme care.
The usual.
Whatever was unfolding in Sal’s front room was not in the news. Hopefully it really was something that’d be all over in a day or two when the missing guy turned up. But despite the muffling effect of the towels and sheets of Number Four’s linen cupboard, he could hear she really was upset.
‘I’ll pack up here and head out,’ he said. ‘The police will leave you in peace once they’ve found another lead to follow, and I can talk to Charlie.’ He’d be talking to their office manager Phaedracilla, too. If Charlie really had missed a charter job because his head space was in a mess, then why in heck hadn’t Phaedra called him?
‘How do you know they’ll leave us in peace?’
Um, because he’d spent the last fifteen years studying crime procedural novels? Just because he wrote books with humour as well as crime and spent hours drawing illustrations didn’t mean he hadn’t interviewed police officers a zillion times to make sure he wasn’t stuffing up details.
‘I’ve got a few loose ends here to tie up before I can get away.’
‘Loose ends like what? You’re a hedonist, Hux, with no responsibilities down there other than remembering which wheelie bin to put out. You can type on your laptop just as easily in Yindi Creek as you can in Mount Coolum.’
He rolled his eyes. He was well aware that the Huxtable sibling pack viewed him as a lucky dog who barely worked and yet somehow managed to bring in enough bucks to squander money on a private helicopter and a three-month visit to his holiday house every year, but still. He wasn’t spending three months swilling beer and scratching his arse, for Pete’s sake. He waswriting. Which he knew was bloody hard work, even if they didn’t.
‘You want my help or don’t you?’ he said.
She was silent, other than a sniff or two. ‘Please come, Hux,’ she said at last in a small voice.
‘I’m on my way.’
