The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

26

‘Thanks for meeting us, Sergeant King,’ said Josh. ‘I didn’t get a chance to speak to you at the fire, but Tom Krauss speaks highly of you. I’ve lived away for the last decade and a half. Old Reg Grady was in charge of the Hanrahan Police Station when I left.’

‘Call me Meg. Old Reg still pops in to the police station from time to time and brings a batch of biscuits he’s made himself. He likes to talk war stories about the good old days when no-one had mobile phones and the tracks up past Crackenback were so bad in winter he had to go on horseback.’

‘He was a good guy.’

‘He was a drunk for the last ten years he was in office and used to pat the office staff on the backside according to Kev Jones. He wouldn’t last a day on my watch.’

‘Good on you,’ said Hannah.

Josh crossed his ankles under the picnic bench in the park where he and Hannah and the sergeant had arranged to meet. He was beginning to understand why Tom had suggested he call Meg King. She might look like a sweet-as-sugar tuckshop mum, but she had the flat-eyed stare of a street cop.

‘We want to talk about the fire,’ he said. ‘Lorraine told us it was no accident.’

‘Have you seen the fire brigade’s preliminary report?’

‘Yeah, Lorraine rang us this morning. She said it was too soon for definitive results, but she could give me the gist of what they discovered last night. Deliberately lit, but no accelerant. Some weird pyrotechnic device was found in the ground floor.’

‘Yep. First I’ve seen like that. Your garden variety arsonists want a light show, but they also want destruction. Your fire was different.’

‘There’s plenty of destruction in the front room.’

‘Yes, the reception area behind the plate glass windows was ground zero all right. Smashed glass, lit device chucked in, and the pyrotechnic device thrown in with it. So the flooring and furniture caught alight, window treatments, doors, skirting, paperwork—enough to cause you a lot of heartache, but not enough to destroy the building. The pyrotechnic device made the blaze look far worse than it was—like a firework in a contained space.’

‘It’s nuts, all of it.’

Meg opened the file she had in front of her. ‘That’s not the most nuts thing.’

‘It’s not?’

‘I spoke to the dispatchers at emergency after I read your statement. You said Graeme Sharpe, the café manager from The Billy Button Café, put in the first call to triple zero.’

‘That’s right. He had a sense something was up; we arrived just after the blaze started.’

She nodded. ‘Thing is, Josh, he wasn’t the first to call it in.’

He scratched his head. ‘Crap. The arsonist?’

‘We think so.’

‘Because he—’

‘Or she.’

He grinned, for what felt like the first time in days. He wished Poppy had been by his side to hear the sergeant correct him. Equality for all, arsonists included. ‘Thank you, Meg. Because she or he wanted to make sure the building wasn’t destroyed in the fire?’

‘Bingo. Which brings me neatly to the other nuts thing.’

He raised his eyebrows at Hannah, who shrugged.

‘Why,’ said Sergeant King, ‘have I been the lucky recipient of a Crime Stoppers call, suggesting that the owner of the Cody and Cody Vet Clinic might have burned their own building down?’

‘What?’

‘Something to do with’—Meg’s eyes dropped to a printed page in her folder—‘sour grapes because of a refused building permit.’

‘No freaking way,’ he said.

Hannah was shaking her head. ‘That bloody council. What is up with them?’

Meg frowned. ‘What do you mean? Have you had other problems before this?’

‘Er, sure. A few nuisance complaints have been coming our way. They seem trivial, but we have to address them, or our business licence renewal is under threat. It’s been a headache, but it’s not been a problem. Some animal activist who doesn’t like us working with farm animals, perhaps, wanting to stir up a bit of trouble.’

‘You want to tell me why this is the first I’m hearing of it?’

‘We were frustrated, sure,’ said Hannah, ‘but we didn’t think anything illegal was happening, so we didn’t think to call the cops.’

‘Harassing law-abiding people in Hanrahan is always my business. The fire just makes it more so.’ Meg looked down at her notebook. ‘I’ll have to investigate the claim that you torched your own building. I’ll need alibis, a copy of your planning permit and so on. What about these nuisance complaints, have you got copies of those?’

‘I can drop them round to the station.’ A thought struck him. ‘I’ve just remembered something. When the refusal came in, I rang a mate, an experienced developer. He’s working on my objection letter for me. He told me—but I’d forgotten about it—that objections to a development proposal are public documents. Somewhere at the council office there’s got to be a letter in from someone with a name on it.’

Meg nodded. ‘It’s a start, and until we get forensics back on the clinic fire, it’s the only lead we’ve got. You get the name, and if they give you any grief, you call me, all right?’

‘Will do.’

He kept his eyes on the policewoman as she strode off back to her car. She was pursuing the arson investigation, his mate Frank was writing up his objection to council’s refusal, but what was he doing? Sitting here like a shag on a rock in a park in the middle of a workday with the charred ground floor of his building mocking him from fifty metres away.

His eyes wandered from the Cody building, along Dandaloo to the art deco cinema, back to Salt Creek Flats Road where the stately three-storey Victorian buildings glowed in the midday sun. Holy sh—

He cut his eyes across to his sister. ‘I’ve just had an idea.’

‘I hope it’s a good one.’

It was. It absolutely was.

‘Some dickhead objects to our reno on the grounds of it being out of character.’

‘Yeah, I know this, Josh.’

‘Hear me out. I’m going to gather some ammunition of my own.’

‘Like what?’

‘Between us, we know a lot of people in this town, right? Let’s speak to them. Let’s walk around the town park and ask the other business owners what they think of our plans. We’ll ask tourists, couples eating out at the winery, the people down by the lake queueing up for sunset cruises on the steamboat. I’ll show them my sketches of the restoration we’re planning, and ask them to send in their opinions to council.’

‘Sure, that’s going to help with the building permit, but is it going to stop this vendetta someone has against us?’

He leaned forward and squeezed his sister’s arm. ‘That’s why we go public.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What’s the one thing about Hanrahan that I was worried about when I came back here to live?’

‘Being outclassed in veterinary skills by your bad-ass little sister?’

‘Besides that.’

‘Gossip. Everyone knowing your private business and blabbing about it.’

‘Correct. And I was right to worry; the Hanrahan Chatter has splashed my personal life all over its column, and god knows what else. Well, guess what?’

‘I dread to think, but that evil smirk you’re wearing isn’t boding well for anyone in your path.’

‘I’m calling Maureen.’

‘Mrs Plover? Condom guardian and gossip columnist?’

He gave his sister a wink. ‘The very same. I’m going to invite her to do an article on me and my mad heritage restoration skills currently being volunteered to restore the ceiling of Hanrahan’s community hall.’

Hannah sat back on the bench seat. ‘Josh, that is brilliant. You can work in your plans for our building … share a bit of Cody history from the gold rush era … it’ll be like thumbing our noses at whoever this idiot is who thinks they can destroy our home from under us.’

‘Marking our territory,’ he said with relish. Finally, something he could do to protect his family. ‘You going to be okay if I spend a bit more time at the hall the next couple of days? The electrician’s done, so if I can get in there now and finish the project before I contact Maureen, she’s more likely to take the bait. Maybe I can persuade Marigold to perform a little ribbon-cutting ceremony or something.’

‘Sure. I’d offer to help, but I’ll be more use on the road visiting sick animals in their homes than mixing up plaster.’

‘Thanks. Last question: you know where I’ll find Kev this time of day? He and I have a deal going. I fix the hall ceiling, he does my archive research for me. I’m going to need that research done, too, if I want to track Maureen Plover down in her lair and convince her to direct her evil skillset towards a win for us.’

Hannah grinned. ‘Kev will probably be down at the cemetery tending his roses. You tackle him and Mrs Plover, and I’ll go rearrange your appointments.’

‘Thanks.’ He pulled out his phone, found Marigold’s number, and typed in a message.

Time to hold up your end of the bargain, Mrs Jones. I need that archive stuff ASAP.

A message flashed up on his screen a second later. You finished my ceiling yet, my love?

Soon,he typed, then shoved his phone in his pocket. He had to visit city hall and get the name of whoever had objected to his proposal before he could even think about plaster and cornices and fanciful frilly fretwork.