The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

40

‘This information was gold. Your girlfriend knows her stuff, Josh. Sorry I’ve been out of town or I could have acted on this sooner.’

Josh didn’t care about a couple of days’ delay. What he did care about was the pissed-off feeling churning in his gut. ‘She’s given me the brush-off about a dozen times now, Sergeant. Vera is not my girlfriend.’

He could feel Hannah’s eyeroll from beside him. It was too early in Josh’s morning for sarcasm, and he hadn’t had a coffee, and he was feeling pretty darn ticked off with just about the whole world.

Meg didn’t care. ‘Whatever. She’s given us a motive so tight all I need to do is type it up and hand it in to secure a search warrant. She ever needs a break from grilling prosciutto and baking figs, you tell her she’s got a job waiting in law enforcement.’

‘I don’t think her opinion of the law’s too high at present.’

‘Yeah, I heard about that. Anything I can do to make a difference, I’ll do it.’

Josh turned the words over in his mind. Every offer of help or support had been brushed aside. Vera was determined to see her troubles through alone.

Hannah spoke up beside him. ‘You really think this persecution of our business is going to stop, Meg?’

‘I really do. As soon as the courts open, I’ll be applying to Judge Bamfrey for a search warrant. My constable’s heading in to Cooma for a ten o’clock meet with Pamela Hogan, which I’ll be joining once I have the search warrant in my hands. Her house, her car, her records. Every damn thing she owns, we’ll be going through looking for evidence she knew about the fire in your building before it started. If she’s involved and we find evidence, we’ll charge her.’

‘You might not find anything.’

‘If she’s involved and we don’t find evidence?’ The cop smirked. ‘Yeah, we’ll be putting the wind up her so high she’ll be thinking twice about pulling any more stunts.’

‘I hope you find something,’ said Hannah. ‘I’m not sure how much more of this we can take.’

Josh rested his hand on his sister’s back.

‘Oh, and here’s a little something Barry O’Malley gave me when I stopped by his office last night when I got back to town,’ said Meg.

Josh eyed the official yellow envelope she handed him. ‘Crap. Not another one.’

Meg smiled. ‘Open it before you start bitching, Cody.’

He slid his finger under the seal and a thick, embossed page fell out.

‘Is that—’

‘Our business licence renewal?’

He looked up at the sergeant, who was smiling at him like she’d just abolished global warming.

‘Yep. Now look at the second page.’

He flipped the business licence over and found a letter, addressed to him and Hannah, on gilt-edged council letterhead. The most important word was in bold type, smack bang in the middle of the first line: APPROVED.

Holy shit, his building permit had come through.

‘Barry asked me to let you know how much he enjoyed reading last week’s edition of the Hanrahan Chatter. Seems that article about the Cody commitment to remembering the town’s gold rush history struck a chord with him.’

‘Well, hell,’ said Hannah, reading the approval letter over his shoulder. ‘Maureen came through! You think that’s what got the permit approved? A bit of publicity? I wonder if Sandy kept a copy for us.’

Meg shrugged. ‘He also asked me to extend his apologies for all the complaints you’ve had to respond to in the last few months. There was some other stuff he said, like junior officials not having more sense than a blue-arsed fly, and he hoped this wouldn’t get in the way of the Cody family supporting his next election, yada yada.’

Josh shook his head. ‘You are the best, Meg.’

She got to her feet. ‘Much as I’d love to agree with you, in this case, Vera was the best. I’m not saying we wouldn’t have found the link between Pamela Hogan and the neighbouring building, but we sure wouldn’t have been on to it this swiftly.’

A squawk burst out of the radio the sergeant wore clipped to her jacket. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Duty calls.’

‘Dispatch? Sergeant King.’

The voice through the radio was loud enough to fill the room. ‘There’s a snarl-up on the Crackenback Road, Meg. Two cars and a ute that’s rolled, spilling a ton of lucerne. No serious injuries reported, but we’ve called an ambulance as a precaution.’

‘I’ll take it. Send another car to meet me there.’

Meg gave them both a nod. ‘Duty calls, team. I’ll let you know how we get on with that warrant.’

Josh became aware of Hannah giving him the hairy eyeball when she snapped him on the arm with a disposable rubber glove.

‘Earth to Josh.’

‘What?’

‘You’re brooding,’ she said. ‘My new pot plant’s going to start wilting if you don’t get that glower off your face. Just go see her already.’

He dropped his head into his hands and pulled on a tuft of hair just to remind himself there were other things that hurt besides this empty hole in his chest. ‘I want to and I don’t want to all at the same time, Han. It’s messing with my head.’

‘The mighty Josh Cody, not sure if his chick magnet status has lost its allure. How happy am I to see this day.’

He knew she was joking. His sister would crawl over broken glass for him in a heartbeat … but still, the words stung. Had he started flirting with Vera just assuming his usual brand of charm would win her over?

He was sure he hadn’t.

In fact, he was pretty darned sure he’d lost his head so fast, he’d fumbled every attempt to be the wannabe charming suitor.

A paperclip, or two, smacked him on the cheek.

‘I think my heart’s broken, Hannah.’

His sister stopped tossing paperclips at him and dropped to her feet from the desk she’d been perched on. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and tucked her face into his neck.

‘Oh, Josh,’ she said.

He closed his eyes. ‘I know, right?’

‘Go see her.’

‘She’s turned me away. How often does a woman need to turn a guy down before he actually listens? I’m trying to do what she wants.’

His sister’s sweet hug shifted into a headlock. ‘Josh, honey, you know I am the very last person to give advice on boy-girl stuff.’

‘Agreed.’

‘But even I could tell that when Vera came here the other day to offer up information about the Hogan woman, that wasn’t the only thing she was offering.’

He pulled Hannah’s bony wrist away from his Adam’s apple so he could breathe.

‘She offered us a box of paperwork and search records.’

‘Yep. What else?’

‘An apology?’

‘I cannot believe you won a scholarship. Seriously, bro, you are the dumbest person in this room.’

Jane Doe’s tail thwacked against the filing cabinet in agreement.

‘You’re going to have to spell it out, genius. Your brother’s brain has turned to mush.’

Hannah gave his hair a ruffle and let him go so she could skewer him with her favourite my-brother-is-a-moron look. ‘She was offering you an olive branch.’

He sat up. ‘She was?’

Hannah shrugged and walked over to her side of the office. ‘Yup. So get outta here already and go make some kissy noises in her direction, would you? I’ve got some Back in Business flyers to create.’