Chapter 6 Jemma #2
Stalker? She snorted and turned into a street that led away from the river, picking up the pace as though to punish herself for entertaining such a ridiculous word. Besides, Kain would have neither the initiative nor resourcefulness to be vindictive; he was more prone to dramatic sulking.
Yet, while logic urged that she rule out any real danger attached to the notes, still her gut tensed each time she checked her letterbox, and the shadows that wandered her apartment at night had become terrifying.
She knew they were caused by the shifting branches of the trees waving above the streetlights yet she’d taken to childishly leaving a light on.
The gentle hill was longer than she’d anticipated and her calves ached.
She took several corners, jogging along a street a few blocks back from the main road.
Here, kerbs were apparently optional, the bitumen road giving way to a gravel-edged verge where flowering weeds grew despite council mowing schedules.
If such things existed here. The trees glittered with damp-spangled cobwebs so she moved to the middle of the wide road and picked up her pace back to the centre of town.
In quick succession, she passed a business selling farm supplies, a printer and a second-hand shop apparently trading in spider carcasses, judging by their window display.
An assortment of old garden tools in a forty-four-gallon drum outside the door attested to either the honesty of the locals or their disinterest in rusty implements.
She huffed out a breath and grunted with dark humour as she noticed the sign for a medical clinic in front of an old house: appropriate timing, given that she was fighting for oxygen.
The air seemed so thin here, slicing through her lungs like a crystal blade.
Almost opposite the practice was a high-roofed stone building with an impressive facade and multipaned windows. Embossed lettering above the door proclaimed it ‘Council Chambers circa 1880’.
Curiosity slowed her as she caught sight of another sign, this one partially hidden by the canopy of an ironbark tree.
She ducked beneath the clusters of narrow grey leaves, her feet crunching through red scoria gravel as she approached the sign.
A library—open Thursday afternoon only. The tourist centre—surely open even less frequently?
The historical society, an MP’s office. A portion of the sign had been taped over.
Jemma prised up the masking tape. She snorted: the lawyer someone had mentioned the previous evening.
No one she’d ever heard of, and the tools outside the secondhand shop probably explained the demise of the practice.
No crime was fine—unless you were a lawyer.
She hit the bitumen again, taking every side street or passageway she saw so that she would be forced to vary her pace. Her pedometer beeped, signifying she’d hit her goal, and she glanced at her Garmin tracker. Just shy of an hour. Not her best time, but fine for ten clicks on unfamiliar terrain.
She slowed, hands on her hips, as she monitored how quickly her breathing returned to normal. As with everything, it was imperative she maintain control. Taking a moment, she got her bearings.
The mist had blown away—along with the brief, teasing hint of sunshine—to reveal a drab day.
‘Oof!’ A solid force slammed the back of her legs. She staggered and spun, reflexively taking a defensive stance, hands raised and muscles tensed to respond.
‘Chance! Sorry.’
She scowled as she recognised Hamish striding toward her.
‘Chance is at that awkward age,’ he said, as though that excused the dog’s behaviour.
‘Thought farmer’s dogs were supposed to be well trained?’ She switched her scowl to the medium-sized dog as she straightened.
‘He’s Amelia’s pup,’ Hamish said. ‘He’ll work out all right eventually, just gets a bit excitable with changes to routine.’
‘Attacking a jogger being a change to routine, I take it, not the status quo?’ she said, refusing to be seduced by a lolling tongue and comical golden eyebrows above hazel eyes as the dog licked her hand. ‘You might want to teach him some road sense, too.’
A smile quirked Hamish’s lips and he lifted his gaze to the street beyond her, then turned to survey the emptiness in the opposite direction.
Jemma rolled her eyes. She could do without his unspoken humour at this hour. Or any other.
‘Anyway, sorry about your pants,’ he said.
‘It’s fine. They’re Emamaco.’
He looked nonplussed, and Jemma felt like she’d scored a point.
She indicated the leggings. ‘They repel dog hair.’
‘Uh-huh. Don’t reckon they do much for mud, though.’
Jemma twisted to see the back of her thighs. ‘Great. I don’t want this muck all through my car.’
Hamish tilted his head toward the houses. ‘Come over. Tracey might have some paper towel.’
‘You don’t know if your partner,’ she stressed the title, determined to remind him how not interested in his marital status she was, ‘has paper towel?’
‘Not really my job to oversee her shopping, is it?’
‘Of course not.’ Chauvinism was evidently thriving out in the sticks.
‘You’re a jogger, then?’ Hamish asked. He clicked his fingers and the dog matched his pace across the road.
‘Observant.’
‘Bit of a novelty round here. The only joggers are on the oval in footy training season. You know, pain for the gain.’
‘Playing football is the only viable reason for exercising?’
‘Course not. Netballers need to train, too.’ He smirked, and for a second she wondered whether he was teasing. ‘But if you love it, do it.’
Like she needed his permission? ‘I didn’t say I loved it.’
‘In that case, give it up. Life’s too short.’
That attitude was exactly what she would have expected—if she’d been inclined to waste a thought on him. ‘Sounds like the voice of experience.’ She lengthened her stride, making it clear she had better places to be, even though she didn’t know which of the neat cottages they were making for.
‘I guess most of us around here get enough incidental exercise,’ Hamish drawled.
‘Some of us have a somewhat more intellectual career that doesn’t allow for traipsing paddocks to feed cute farm animals. So we make time to exercise.’
‘You think farm animals are cute?’ he asked, oblivious to her slight. ‘I’ll have to introduce you to some.’
‘No need,’ she said frostily.
‘Guess you’re right, though; it doesn’t take too long to scratch our shearing tallies in the dirt, or send out a few smoke signals to check the grain prices.
’ Hamish’s deadpan tone didn’t change, though another slight smile lifted his lips.
‘And it’s not like we need to be on Croptracker to keep an eye on weather patterns, or the AgriSite IPM app to upload photos to get direct feedback from agronomists, so, yeah, I guess we’re not bums on seats all day.
Just out strolling those fields, petting the cute livestock. ’
He was clearly trying to sell farming as being more intellect-heavy than was realistic but, while she could have eviscerated him with a few well-chosen words, their verbal sparring was oddly invigorating.
‘Go home, Chance,’ Hamish said, opening a gate to the front garden of one of the cottages. The windows of the stone house were trimmed in dark green to match a picket fence studded with burgundy blooms.
Jemma made to follow the dog, but Hamish placed a hand on her forearm. ‘Tracey’s is next door.’ He bellowed toward the house. ‘Charlee?’
‘Over here,’ came an almost equally loud response. Evidently, Italians weren’t the only ones who conducted their business at volume.
Hamish gave a short whistle and clicked his fingers, and the dog returned to his side.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he said to the animal. ‘Looks like your second mum’s over at Tracey’s.
’ As he opened the gate of the adjacent cottage, he restrained the dog.
‘Mind your manners, Chance, ladies first. Everyone’s around the back,’ he added, directing Jemma with a nod.
As she passed beneath an arch of variegated white and green devil’s ivy, a swell of noise buffeted along the side passage of the house. ‘Big family?’
‘A muck-in.’ Hamish ducked to avoid becoming tangled in the vines.
‘What?’
‘Guess you’d call it a working bee. Only not that organised, obviously, because we’re country, you know.’
She hid her grin. He didn’t deserve any kind of positive feedback.
He lowered his voice. ‘Tracey’s getting on, needs a bit of help managing the backyard.’
Not his girlfriend, then. ‘She’s family?’
‘Tracey doesn’t have any blood relatives.’ Hamish lifted one shoulder. ‘But, yeah, we’re family.’
Like that made any sense.
As they rounded the back corner of the house, Jemma pulled up short.
Flannel and beanies were clearly de rigueur, from pre-schoolers to septuagenarians.
A dachshund yipped in excitement, darting through a forest of jean- and trackie-clad legs, and Chance gambolled after it, plunging through a jungle of deep green silverbeet bordered by huge clumps of rhubarb.
A magpie swooped in to join the chaos and Jemma ducked; she’d heard tales of the aggressive birds taking out the eyes of joggers and cyclists.
‘Don’t worry,’ Hamish said. ‘That’s Dusty.’
‘Naming a threat hardly makes it less menacing,’ Jemma said.
Hamish shrugged. ‘Dunno. If she was called Lorena, I reckon we’d all be clutching our jewels.’
No one else seemed concerned as the bird wandered about, cocking its head imperiously while assessing their work.
Jemma whipped around at an ear-splitting whistle.
Hamish took his thumb and middle finger from his mouth and gave her a wink. ‘Everyone, Jemma. Jemma, everyone,’ he said into the ringing silence.
A chorus of g’days and waved greetings followed them as Hamish ushered her between the assorted garden tools and piles of weeds mounded on the damp concrete path. Jemma picked her way carefully—if she’d wanted her joggers covered in mud, she could have taken the riverside path at Dad’s place.