Dearest Milton James by N.R. Walker

Chapter Twelve

“We havea date on Friday night. Sex is definitely on the table. Some kind of sex, anyway. He has a monster cock. It’s so big it could very well need its own postcode. And before you can ask, dear Moni, we talked about work and our responsibilities and all that boring adult stuff, and we decided that we could be worth the complication. He acknowledged his position of power, given he’s my boss, and we talked about how that could affect us. But holy fuck, Moni, he kisses like the fucking devil. I’m telling you, my toes curl. He does this thing with his hands and his whole body when he kisses. It’s not just his mouth. It’s a whole-body experience and something I’m very much looking forward to experiencing a lot more of on Friday night. God, do you know how many times I had to jerk off last night after he left?”

“TMI, Malachi.”

“You said to tell you everything.”

“True. I did.”

“Anyway, I’m just about to walk into work. I better get off the phone.”

“You’re taking me out for brunch on Sunday. Then we can hit up the second-hand store.”

“Deal.”

“And you can tell me everything that happened.”

“There will be a lot of TMI.”

“It’s why I love you, Malachi.”

“Awww.”

“And Malachi?”

“Yes?”

“I’m happy for you.”

“I’m happy for me too!” I almost did a little jig in the car park near the front doors to work. I was ridiculously happy.

This whole romance, getting to know someone, flirty-fun stage was a helluva ride.

I went inside and headed straight for the breakroom. I knew Julian was in his office—his car was in the car park—but I walked past. As a rule, I’d never stopped past his office first, so I wasn’t about to start now. Regardless of how much I wanted to see him, how excited I was to see him, I made myself walk to the breakroom instead.

I spotted Cherry in her usual seat, her raven black hair covered her face with her head down as she read something on her phone. Paul and Theo were at their table, discussing something political that I was staying well-clear of, and I slid into my seat next to Cherry.

“Morning.”

She looked up, her lipstick a dark dusty rose colour today instead of black. It matched a square of pink plaid on her otherwise black shirt, and it was amazing.

“Morning,” she replied, expressionless as always.

“Love your lip colour.”

“Thanks. Love your shirt.”

I grinned. It was a lavender Care Bears shirt. The chunk of purple in my hair was fading so I had to match it accordingly. My lavender Converse high tops were a perfect match. The black skinny jeans and distressed black jacket gave the whole fit enough credibility that I didn’t look like an overgrown toddler.

“Can I ask a favour?” I asked. “I know you’re super busy, but I believe your google-fu is the strongest in all the lands and I am yet to learn the ways.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled, which I took as a yes. I took the folded piece of paper from my pocket. “Here are my notes. I was up early this morning trying to search online,” I said. “But I didn’t get far.”

I handed them over, and while she read through it, I made myself a coffee. By the time I was done, she was nodding to herself.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I’ve worked with less.”

“So you’ll help?”

“I’ll try.”

“Oh my god, thank you. I’ll take some of your caseloads today to free up some time.”

That earned me a smile. Then she eyed me cautiously. “Does Julian know I’ll be helping?”

“I told him that I told you about me and him. I’m a firm believer in full disclosure.” Then I shrugged. “And I lack the ability to keep secrets or to stop talking sometimes.”

“Okay, I wasn’t sure if I was hiding this.” She nodded to the piece of paper. “Have you seen him today?”

“No, why?”

One perfectly sculptured black eyebrow raised slightly with a gentle tilt of her head. “He’s back in brown. I wondered if you two had a fight or something.”

“Oh, no, not at all. Actually, if anything it’s the opposite . . .”

“Well, his pants are brown and his shirt is a cream-of-wheat colour but it’s definitely tighter than he used to wear.”

“Oh, that sounds like a school principal. That shouldn’t be hot, right? Why does that sound so hot?”

She chuckled. “And there was also no tie, and his top two buttons were undone.”

I gulped down my coffee. “Christ. I’ll never make it to Friday.”

There was a deafening beat of silence. “What’s happening on Friday?”

“Nothing,” I said far too quickly and probably a few decibels too loud and an octave too high.

Cherry stared, her dark gaze humoured and curious. “Mm-hmm.”

And then, right on fucking cue, Julian walked in. His trousers were brown, yes. But they were well-fitted and bulged in all the right places. And his shirt . . . also fitted, sleeves rolled just once, top two buttons undone.

Fuck. Me.

Cherry nudged her foot to mine. “Close your mouth,” she whispered.

I fumbled to put my coffee down before I spilled it all down my Share Bear shirt, and Julian smirked as he walked past me. “Morning,” he said brightly.

He even had the audacity to smell good.

Jerk.

I leaned in toward Cherry. “Should we start on the list? At your desk?”

“Uh, sure,” she agreed. She picked up the piece of paper. I took our coffees and made our way to the door.

“Oh, Julian,” Paul asked. Theo was nodding beside him, smile wide. “What do you think of the state’s government push for—”

Julian spun around to look at me, finding me at the door with an expression on his face that was a lot like ‘help, I can’t do politics with these two,’ but I just gave him a wink before I made my escape. I put the two coffees on Cherry’s desk and pulled my chair over to hers.

She chuckled. “Want to tell me what that was about and why you’re grinning like Willy Wonka right now?”

“Oh, no reason.”

“I take it things with you and Julian are going well?”

“He’s a surprising amount of fun,” I said, trying to play it cool. “And he’s smart, and he’s considerate, and—”

“And you like him.”

My gaze shot to hers. “I do. It’s crazy, and it’s hellafast, but yes, I do.” I leaned in and whispered behind my hand. “And when I say the man can kiss, I mean kiss. Like out-of-body-experience kind of kiss.”

Cherry laughed. “Well, he seems happier. It’s good to see him smile.”

I couldn’t help feeling happy about that, and a little proud if I was being honest. “Anyway,” I said, patting the piece of paper with my notes on it. “I wrote down all I could find and what I narrowed my search down to, but I didn’t have much luck.”

I had it shortlisted down to twelve possible towns throughout the state, going from no cinema, one council office building, and the mention of classmates going to work in the mines. The road name out of town was more popular than I ever thought possible. Almost all towns had an Acacia Road, but even with all this, I’d hit a dead end.

“You actually refined it pretty well,” she said. “But I think I’ll start with the hardware store owner because we have a name.”

“I looked for half a second at the business registrations for that surname around the late 60s and early 70s but I didn’t find anything.”

She mumbled something about companies and proprietors but was already tapping away on her keyboard; then Denise came through on her way to the breakroom. “Cages are in,” she said with her usual grin.

I was quick to my feet. “I’ll start on yours,” I said to Cherry before rushing to begin the first cage. It was only fair I help her with her quota when she was doing work for me.

I was almost halfway through the first cage before I saw Paul. “Everything okay?” he asked. “You’ve got a motor underneath ya today.”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” I replied, trying not to get caught up in conversation which would lead to questions—

“So what are you and Cherry working on?”

Questions exactly like that.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, dropping my wrist like the queerest queer who ever queered.

“Hm.” Paul’s mouth was a thin line, matching the unimpressed crease of his brow. “Anyone ever told you that you can’t lie for shit?”

“All the time, actually.”

“So you are both working on something . . .”

“It’s secret squirrel stuff. But it’s approved. It’s not like we’re not doing work, because it is work-related. I just asked Cherry to help because she’s good at the cryptic stuff.”

He eyed me in that creepy serial-killer way. “Well, if you need any help . . .”

“I’ll be sure to ask,” I added cheerfully, because I was sure this little chat had come to its natural end. “I better get back to work.” I pushed the cart away, gave Paul a smile over my shoulder, and hightailed it out of there.

I got through my first cage, which was actually Cherry’s, and started on mine, barely a few parcels in when Theo found me in the bottom of aisle L-M. “Oh, Julian was looking for you,” he said, ever so casually.

“He was?”

“Yep.”

“How long ago?”

He shrugged and gave me a goofy grin. “About five minutes.”

“Better go see what that’s about.”

I wheeled my cart to the side wall and headed up to the front of the warehouse. Cherry had her head in some huge directory, her fingers trailing down the page. She looked engrossed and I didn’t dare interrupt her, so I bypassed her and lightly tapped on Julian’s office door.

“You wanted to see me?”

He looked up and grinned when he saw it was me. “Come in.”

I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, quickly taking the seat opposite him. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I gave my notes on the Milton James letters to Cherry. I broke it all down and I tried to google stuff this morning at 6am because I couldn’t sleep, but I kinda got to a dead end. I narrowed down the townships I think were possible. Anyway, I know we said we’d keep it on the down-low, but she’s better at the Scooby-Doo stuff than me. Actually, she’s more like Velma. I’m the Scooby-Doo one. Incredibly cute but not overly helpful.”

Julian’s smile widened. “Cherry would make a great Velma.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Not at all.”

I sagged with relief. “Phew. Love that shirt, by the way. And the undone buttons at the top. Lord, I almost fell off my chair this morning.”

“I noticed.”

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you? You deliberately decided against the tie, then undid one button, thought to yourself, ‘Oooh, that’s kinda hot. And you know what would be even hotter and what would make Malachi have visceral bodily reactions when he sees me? I’ll just undo a second button. That oughta do it.’” I shook my head in mock disgust. “Cherry told me to stop drooling, by the way.”

He chuckled, but his fingers went to his exposed neck and down to his collarbone, distracting me until he spoke. “That’s exactly what I thought this morning.”

“And the pants,” I said with a sigh. “They fit very well, lemme tell you. Now I’ll need to search up suit porn when I get home. So thanks for that.”

Julian smiled at me for a long moment. “So I, uh, I have a meeting with your father this afternoon.”

I stared at him, the blood draining from my entire head. I think I squeaked.

He laughed. “It’s a monthly department head meeting. Nothing to panic about.”

“Christ, Julian, you could have led with that.” I pulled at the collar of my shirt. “Is it hot in here? Are the walls pulsing, or is it just me? I think the blood returned to my brain too fast.” I tried to catch my breath. “Warn a guy next time.”

He was still amused, apparently. “But I need to be in the city by five and they usually run late. So I won’t be able to drive you home today. I just wanted to let you know.”

“That’s fine. I don’t expect you to.”

“I know. I just . . . like doing that for you.” He shifted in his seat. “I like . . .”

The way his voice dropped when he said that made my insides curl. “You like what?”

His gaze met mine. “I like . . . making sure you get home okay.”

That was absolutely not what he meant. “I get the feeling you’re not being absolutely truthful.”

He laughed. “Driving you home gives me an excuse to see you.”

“You don’t need any excuse to see me. You just have to say you want to see me.”

“I want to see you. Though that would be three night’s this week, and we have plans for Friday night, which will make four, and I’m trying to decide if it’s too much too soon.”

“Eight o’clock at my place sound okay? Because the Great British Bake Off is on TV tonight, and if you want to bring some takeout to my place and we can get cosy on the couch, I will have absolutely zero objections.”

Julian smiled all warm and lovely. “I can do that.”

“And although I would like to stress that there is no pressure on you whatsoever for any housecleaning duties, I’d just like you to know that I’m very open to any possibilities. You know, like a little precursor for what you plan on doing to me this Friday night.”

His nostrils flared, then he shook his head with a laugh. “I’m very open to any possible suggestions.” He cleared his throat. “Though we probably shouldn’t be talking about that here.”

“No, we probably shouldn’t.” I stood up. “I have a lot of work to get done today, so I better get back to it.” I walked to the door and stopped. “I’m thinking Japanese dumplings for dinner sounds great, and also when you’re in the meeting with my dad this afternoon and he asks you how I’m going, which he probably will, look him right in the eye and try not to think about what you want to do to me tonight.”

Julian’s eyes lasered into me. “Now you’re just being cruel.”

“You can thank me later. And when I say thank, I mean punish.” He glared at me and I gave him a sassy grin before I walked out. I only took two steps before Cherry spotted me.

“Oh, I think I found something.”

“You did?” I zipped over to her. “Tell, tell, tell.”

“Okay, so Mr Killian,” she said, turning to the three huge directories open on her desk. Her computer had two minimised screens side by side. God, she should work for the Federal Police. “I found a Frankston Holdings company that registered, amongst others, a hardware store in 1953. Frankston Holdings’ subsidiary director was a Mr George Killian.”

“Mr Killian.”

She nodded. “Business directories back then weren’t as complete as they are now, but yes. George Killian’s son, Peter Killian, was the lessee of Northbury Hardware from 1966 until 1985.”

“Northbury. Where is that?”

Cherry opened a tab on her computer to reveal a Google Map. “Northbury. A town with a population of ten thousand, thirty kilometres west of Milldale, about five hours northwest of Sydney.”

“Oh my god.”

“Northbury in the early seventies had a population of approximately six thousand. Consisted of a primary school, a high school, a hardware store, convenience store, community swimming pool, and to this day it still doesn’t have a cinema. Local council offices amalgamated with Milldale in the 90s, so there used to be council buildings but not anymore. Mining districts to the west and north. Northbury was founded by the Hindton River, and there’s a road to the south of the town named after a family who settled there by the name of Acacia.”

“Acacia Road.” I couldn’t believe it. “Holy shit. You found it. You found the town.”

Cherry looked up at me from her seat. “Yep.”

“Have you considered working for national security? Or like one of those catfishing shows? Because honestly, you should.”

She smiled, a little proud. “But then I wouldn’t be here to help you.”

“This is very true. Cherry. You are an absolute champion.”

She closed the first directory book with a thump. It was a huge black binder with pages of super flimsy paper with tiny writing. Then she stacked on the second one, having clearly done all she could do. “Now you can search up high school records for the years this Raymond attended and hopefully there was only one Raymond. It will make your job a lot easier. Facebook high school groups are unsurprisingly careless about the information they post. Or try the local newspaper. They have most of the records digitalised now, but some are still on microfiche.”

“On what? What is a microfish?”

“Microfiche is old-school Google,” Paul said behind me. “If you need help using it for anything, I’m your man. Can find anything. Just need a little know-how.”

Goddammit.

“Oh, thanks,” I said. His offer was generous and I probably shouldn’t exclude him so deliberately, but the fewer people knew about this the better. “I’ll let you know.”

“Is this the secret squirrel stuff?” he asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“What secret squirrel stuff are we talking about?” Theo asked, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

Nothing was secret in this place.

But Theo was always so bright and bubbly, it wasn’t like I could be mad at him. “Oh, nothing. Cherry was just helping me with a case. She’s very good at finding random clues.”

“She sure is,” he replied. “Anyway, it’s morning teatime.” And with the mention of that, Theo and Paul disappeared into the breakroom.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Cherry. “I didn’t mean to involve you in anything where you might have to lie to them. Here, let me carry these for you.” I picked up the directories, which weighed a freaking tonne. How had she carried them from . . . “Where am I taking these?”

“This way,” she said, taking the top binder. Down to the bottom storerooms near the back loading dock and where we collected the cages from, there were fire-safe cabinets that had all kinds of books and directories. One of the binders she’d been looking through was a business registry directory that looked older than Noah’s ark.

“How do you even know where to start?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It might sound weird to you, but I love data collation. I love history records and censuses, that kind of thing.” She locked the cupboards and gave me an awkward smile. “It’s almost anthropological, in a way. Records of humans, names, and dates.”

“Like on that show where they research celebrities heritage and find records of some distant relative in Ireland or Morocco that dates back three hundred years.”

That earned me a smile. “Yeah. I guess. It’s fascinating to me that a name in the census records was someone who lived, worked, married, or didn’t. And the death notations, of course. Died of diphtheria at the age of thirty-four.”

The mention of death details might have been odd, but I was talking to a goth girl.

“I’ve always wondered about people who lived in ancient times,” I admitted as we began walking back toward the breakroom. “What kind of shoes they wore, how they made clothing from cotton by hand. Like how clever they must have been to know how to do that before anyone else. Without any machinery. And they dyed them using the most obscure powders and stuff. I wouldn’t have lasted a day.”

So yes, I realised, while she thought about human anthropological sciences, I thought about fashion.

No one should be surprised by this. Cherry certainly wasn’t.

“It is fascinating,” she said. “And once you learn how this data was recorded and kept, it makes it easy to find.”

“Well, you deserve a gold star for your help today.”

“It was no problem. It was fun. And you got through one whole cage for me already. We should swap more often.”

I laughed. “Deal.”

We grabbed a quick coffee but I needed to get back on the floor. I had my own cages to get done and I didn’t even stop long for lunch. Just a quick bite and back at it, sorting letters and parcels, boxes of all kinds, padded envelopes, cards, bills, gifts. The incoming mail never seemed to end. But by five o’clock I was done. It had been super productive, I got lots done, and after a cheery wave to the gang as we all left for the day, I ran for the bus stop.

Not even the funky smell on the bus could dampen my spirits. I calculated by the time I got home and showered, washing off the warehouse dirt and grime. I’d have about two hours before Julian would turn up around eight.

That would give me two hours to see what the internet could divulge about a guy called Raymond who lived in Northbury in 1972.