- BOX OF TRICKS
Monday, December 20th 2021
Wendy was rummaging through her handbag for her key when the clip-clop of footsteps made her turn to see who was coming around the corner. She usually had the post office verandah to herself at this hour, just before dawn.
A spooky yellow glow seeped from the fluorescent strip bolted to the sandstone wall, while the only other lights came from the flashing red-and-green reindeer in her cafe window next door and the glowing tip of the cigarette bobbing in her mouth.
When an old man appeared carrying a briefcase, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Wendy?” James Northan said. “I thought I could smell cigarette smoke. What are you doing here?”
“Merry Christmas to you, too, love,” she replied in her gravelly voice. “You scared me half to death.”
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about at your age. But if you don’t feel safe at this hour, why are you even here?”
Wendy bit her lip. “Like I have a choice? More to the point, what are you doing here? If I were your age, I’d be home in bed.”
“Yes, well, we can’t all be sloths.”
James had been the town’s mayor long ago, and he still spoke down to everyone, his attitudes stuck in a chauvinistic time warp. His neatly pressed three-piece suit didn’t surprise Wendy. While others had spent weeks lounging in pyjamas during the COVID-19 lockdowns, James Northan had dressed each day as if heading to the office.
She hadn’t even realised he was renting one of the 45 private boxes now that he was free to roam the streets again. Why would he? The letterbox at his gate was more elaborate than some houses in town.
But he went straight to P.O. Box 15 and unlocked it.
* * *
When he stepped back with two letters in his hand, he noticed Wendy glaring at him.
“Is something wrong?”
“How long have you had that post office box, love?” Wendy jabbed her cigarette towards it.
“Not long. Why do you ask?”
She took a long drag and blew smoke into the darkness. When she finally answered, her voice was edged with sharpness. “I’ve had my name down for one higher up for two years! Bending down to the bottom row every day does my back in.”
“What can I say?” James adjusted one of his hearing aids, more for delaying tactic and thinking time than function. “The local postmaster seems to think I’m behind the new development. He’s wrong, of course. But if people want to curry favour, who am I to stop them?”
“What new development?”
“You really don’t know?” James twiddled his other hearing aid. “I thought you’d have been advised by now!”
2. THE BOTTOM LINE
Wendy sensed James knew more than he was letting on. She hadn’t just served him thousands of cups of tea over the years, she had observed how he used those hearing aids as a shield.
But he owed her.
She liked to think she had made his 83rd birthday a little less miserable.
He was being forced to share a three-bedroom, one-bathroom weatherboard house with two other old men, Clarence ‘Oodles’ Noodle, 85, and Bert ‘Wish-Wash’ Whish-Willson, 84, for three months of quarantine.
Friends and relatives wanted to keep the three elderly men out of reach of COVID-19.
But James hated being locked up with lesser beings. Oodles had once worked for him at the council and was still wearing the same overalls, Bert had once been the town drunk.
Wendy had tried to cheer James up on his birthday by taking him a strawberry cheesecake and setting it up with candles on a table in the front yard. You’d think that would be worth something?
* * *
James studied her for a moment, like he was trying to work out a clue for one of his beloved cryptic crosswords. “I know what is different about you,” he said. “Your hair looks grey and lifeless in this light, Wendy.”
Wendy blinked, momentarily stunned. She wasn’t about to offer an explanation.
Something had to give as money got harder to come by. She had a packet-a-day cigarette habit, and the comfort of a nicotine hit rated higher right now than her monthly trips to the hairdresser for blonde tints.
But what was the use of answering him? Instead, she changed the subject, her voice a little sharper than usual. “How come I haven’t seen you with Oodles and Wish-Wash at the cafe since you came out of quarantine? Was my cheesecake really that bad?”
James looked at her sourly as he twiddled with his hearing-aid controls. “Actually, Clarence and Bert seem to be missing. Perhaps you might have run into them?”
She shook her head slowly, confused.
“I normally would not be worried, you understand,” he said, twiddling a hearing-aid control again. “It is just that I lent them money.”
* * *
Before the pandemic, the three old men had been among her best customers. They didn’t have much in common other than outliving most of their contemporaries, but they came at least once a day, drank tea, and squabbled.
But, like many older people, Oodles and Wish-Wash had stopped visiting the cafe as often—and James never came.
As much as she needed the business, she couldn’t blame them.
The Wind Tunnel Cafe was an imposing building. But it was a bit like a reverse Tardis—smaller on the inside than it appeared from the outside, with room for only two tables. Social distancing restrictions now limited the cafe to just three customers at a time, and to enter, they had to log in by smartphone with a QR code.
* * *
“It was foolish of me.” James said. “Bert visited me at my cottage and told me Clarence did not want me to know he had cancer.”
Cancer? This was news to Wendy, which was another consequence of the pandemic. She used to be first to hear the town gossip. But fewer customers meant fewer wagging tongues.
“I am worried now they might have absconded with my money,” James said. “I cannot for the life of me fathom how they executed this. I have heard of old people going on cruises so they can die in style, but I thought all the ships were tied up in port at the moment.”
“I’m sure Oodles and Wish-Wash will turn up, love.” She hesitated. “Just what kind of cancer does poor Oodles have, anyway?”
He adjusted a hearing aid. “Do I look like a doctor?”
“Well, he looked fine the day you all came out of your quarantine—before he succumbed to food poisoning, anyway.”
“Did you have to remind me? We could have died because of Dave Jenkins’s illegal behaviour.”
“Dave wasn’t even there. He was conducting a funeral.”
“Yes, well, we will see about that flimsy alibi.” He twiddled with a hearing aid again. “Bert said Clarence was too proud to tell me he needed help paying his medical bills.”
Her voice dropped even more. “How much did you lend him?”
“I am now thinking too much.”
“How much?”
“OK, but this is just between us. $10,000.”
Wendy started coughing and spluttering. Everyone knew James had money hidden away in family accounts, even though he claimed to have lost all his dough in a bad investment. But $10,000? She only dreamed of having that kind of money. The cafe needed repainting and she could really do with a holiday.
Now her husband Gordo was in prison, fetching the mail from the Post Office fell to her—and the short trek to next door was the nearest to a holiday she got these days.
The only time she got to relax was when she took the letters back to the cafe and opened them over her first cup of tea and her third cigarette for the day. If they were bills, that might call for a fourth cigarette.
* * *
James studied the return addresses on both of his letters before putting them inside his briefcase. “I need to attend to this mail as soon as possible.”
“Should I be worried about this development, love?” Wendy said.
“I am sure you will find out about it in the fullness of time.” He lifted his head. “You will have to excuse me. I’m very busy. Amongst other things, I need to go to the police station as soon as it opens this morning. Clarence’s and Bert’s suspicious disappearance is just another thing I have to raise with Sergeant Stretch.”
“But . . .?”
“Merry Christmas to you.” He bowed his head, then turned and trotted back around the corner.
* * *
Wendy resumed the search for the keys in her handbag. She sifted through lipsticks, tissues, hair bands, hair brushes, breath mints, fingernail polish, cigarette packet and matches before she found them.
She bent down, opened P.O. Box 32, on the bottom of three rows, and saw a letter waiting inside.
She took it out and turned it over to see who it was from.
Kipling and Howard Property Management Pty Ltd.
She sighed and dropped the unopened letter into her bag. Please don’t tell me they’re raising the rent again!
3. JOHNNO’S RETURN
Sergeant Johnson’s knees ached as he rifled through the musty old charge books in the cupboard beneath the counter.
The door chimed, and someone he couldn’t see entered the room.
“How are you proceeding with the food-poisoning case, Sergeant Stretch?” came a loud demand.
Footsteps approached the counter, followed by a pause. “Where the dickens is everybody?”
Sergeant Johnson recognised the voice instantly. It was higher-pitched than it had been 28 years ago, with a tremor of age, but it could only belong to one man.
He reached up to grip the edge of the counter and slowly lifted himself to his feet.
A hostile glare greeted him. “You are not Sergeant Stretch?”
“I can see nothing still gets past you, sir.” It was James Northan, all right. It looked like he was still wearing the same grey pinstripe suit, but those hearing aids were definitely new.
James reached up and twiddled the controls. “Do I know you?” he asked slowly, then added more quickly, “What have you done with Sergeant Stretch?”
“Didn’t he tell you? COVD-19 fatigue. He asked to be transferred out of here. I’m his replacement, Les Johnson.” The policeman lifted his elbow. “Sorry, I’m not allowed to shake your hand. The directive from head office is that we must be careful. We can still do the elbow thing, if you like, sir?”
“Do you have to be so ridiculous?” James Northan snapped. “And whatever happened to the height restrictions the Tasmanian Police Force used to have? Sergeant Stretch had his shortcomings, but height was not one of them. But you? If I hadn’t seen you stand up, I would assume you were kneeling on the other side of that counter.”
“You really don’t recognise me, sir?”
“Should I?”
Sergeant Johnson had him at a disadvantage. When he found out he was coming back to Windy Mountain, he had dredged up old memories of events and people he had met way back when.
All the former mayor was seeing now was a stout, mature man with a shaved head and a blue uniform.
Sergeant Johnson guessed his name had been enshrined in angry handwriting in the 1993 charge book, which he hadn’t found yet.
HEIGHT: 5’7”. AGE: 24. HAIR: Reddish brown. ADDRESS: Blackstump Road, squatter settlement he shares with a deadbeat alleged Tasmanian Tiger hunter, a suspicious bikie, and a dubious part-time artist.
It felt strange being on the other side of this counter, even though it wasn’t the same counter Sergeant Birtwistle had commanded back in 1993.
The new cop shop was further up High Street in a sandstone building that had served as the town’s bakery in the mid-1800s, left derelict until it was gutted, refurbished, and repurposed for the police in 2015.
The sergeant’s residence occupied the front half of the building.
He had a 30-second commute from the front door, around the verandah, to the office door at the back, which overlooked a garden in full bloom.
“I presume Sergeant Stretch brought you up to date on the food-poisoning case he was working on?” James Northan asked.
Sergeant Johnson stared back blankly. “What case would that be, sir?”
“You must know. We nearly died! You need to interrogate the undertaker, Dave Jenkins.”
The policeman frowned. “The undertaker gave you food poisoning?”
“For goodness sake! You have a lot of catching up to do.” He sighed, exasperated. “Jenkins also owns the milk bar and runs an ice-cream van. That’s how he gave us food poisoning—tainted ice cream.”
“When did this alleged poisoning happen?”
“July.”
Sergeant Johnson tilted his head and whistled toward the ceiling. “That long ago? No wonder Stretch didn’t leave me a note about it. Deliberate food poisoning is very hard to prove. I’m sure he would’ve investigated it thoroughly, but there comes a point when you have to pursue higher priorities.”
“What are you saying? That he might have dropped the investigation?”
“Not at all, sir. He probably reclassified it.”
“For goodness sake! He never told me he was re-categorising it as a cold case!”
“I wouldn’t go that far. It’s more likely he put it in the too-hard basket. He probably didn’t tell you because he guessed what your reaction would’ve been. Have you ever taken ‘no’ for an answer?”
James studied the policeman’s face. “Who are you?”
“I’m sure it’ll come to you, sir. My advice is not to try to force it.”
James thumped the counter so hard a bottle of hand sanitiser toppled over. “Well, can you not do something about it?”
“Like what?” Sergeant Johnson righted the bottle and moved it further along the counter.
“Use your head, man. Show some initiative. Any intelligent officer would reopen the investigation.”
“What good would that do? You look fully recovered now.”
“The Tasmanian Police Force is now offering medical diagnoses, is it?” He banged his fist on the counter again. “This brings me to the second reason for my visit today. Clarence Noodle and Bert Whish-Willson are not only missing, it’s possible Clarence has died without paying me a great deal of money he owes me.”
Sergeant Johnson stared back. “Are you talking about Oodles and Wish-Wash?”
“Amazing!” He slapped the counter, this time with his palm. “One minute you know nothing, the next you’re using common-as-muck nicknames!”
“I spoke to them both half an hour ago, sir, when I went for a walk before work. They’re hardly missing. They were sitting on the bench in front of the Wind Tunnel Cafe.”
Sergeant Johnson reached along the counter and dragged the bottle back to its original spot. “I can’t remember the bench being there, but the cafe hasn’t changed, has it?”
4. CROCS AND ROCKS
James stood in front of the bench with his hands on his hips.
One of the two old men in front of him wore a baggy yellow shirt with some kind of fish pattern, the other wore faded overalls.
“We was going to tell you, Jimbo,” the larger man in the untucked, gaudy shirt said. “But we only remembered we forgot after we left on our holiday.”
“You have been on a holiday, Bert?” James’s glare intensified. “Without me?”
“Steady, old mate,” the other man said. “We didn’t think you enjoyed the last one you shared with us.”
“That was then, this is now! Maddie will not even let me leave Windy Mountain because she is certain I would catch the virus while away. But I feel like I am being suffocated here so it would be have been nice to get away for a while.” He looked Oodles in the eye. “Oh, I get it. You are not even sick.”
“Sick?” Oodles seemed puzzled. “I never said I was.”
“No, but he did.” James shook a finger at Wish-Wash. “You deceived me into lending you $10,000 on the spurious grounds Clarence had cancer!”
“Christ Almighty! I didn’t say anything about spewing, Jimbo. I only said Oodles could have cancer.” Wish-Wash flashed a smile. “So could you. Have you checked with Doc Jenkins lately?”
“Do you think I came down in the last shower?”
Wish-Wash looked up at the blue sky and fluffy, white clouds. “Have we had much rain?”
“Oh, very funny. I cannot believe you duped me into funding your holiday.” James held out his outstretched hand. “When do you intend paying it back?”
“Fair go, Jimbo! We only got back on the ferry yesterday morning, then we had a long drive.” Wish-Wash gently elbowed Oodles. “We wanted to be home for a special Christmas. Didn’t we, cobber? We haven’t even unpacked yet.” He looked back up. “Anyway, for your information, your $10,000 was just a top-up. We funded most of the trip ourselves.”
“I thought you were both broke?”
“Technically. But the money we had tied up in a long-term loan became untied.”
James’s voice dropped. “What money?”
“We had $40,000 left over after buying the museum.”
Now James shouted. “You spent $50,000 on a holiday!”
“Fair go! That was for both of us, for two months,” Wish-Wash said.
“People here have been worried sick about you.”
“Who? We were in regular contact with Moose and Joffa.”
“As if I would talk to those hooligans!”
“What about Katy? She helped us book our holiday. Have you ever been on the Ghan? Incredible trip!”
James’s face crumpled. The Ghan was one of the great train trips that had eluded him. They probably knew that.
“We went first-class both ways,” Wish-Wash said. “We went straight to Darwin but stopped in Alice Springs on the way back. Uluru at sunset is pretty spectacular, I can tell you. You should have seen us up on those camels!”
James’s face burned. “You went to the red centre, too?”
“And Kakadu,” Oodles said. “Crocs and rocks.”
“Don’t forget the fun we had in South Australia, cobber?” Wish-Wash said. “I’ve known about their pie-floaters for years, but the Tasmanian Tiger came as a complete shock.”
James moaned. “Not this again!”
“Keep your hair on, Jimbo!” Wish-Wash grinned. “I didn’t say we saw one. During our five-day cruise on the Murray River, we did a land excursion to the Ngaut Ngaut Aboriginal Conservation Park, which has archeological evidence Tasmanian Tigers once lived around the Murray.”
“What?” James’s mouth dropped more. “You did manage to book a cruise?”
“Yes, on the Proud Mary. You would have loved it.” Wish-Wash grabbed the bottom of his shirt and lifted it up, oblivious he was also revealing rolls of tummy fat underneath. “That’s where I bought this little beauty. You probably wouldn’t recognise the pattern? See?” He pointed from fish to fish with the index finger of his other hand. “Lots of little Murray Cods. The cruise also stopped in Mannum, where there is an excellent second-hand shop.”
“I think you have been hoodwinked. How could Tasmanian Tigers have possibly lived in that region?” James scoffed. “Did they get there by catching the Bass Strait ferry?”
Wish-Wash turned to Oodles. “We did see a Tasmanian Devil there though, didn’t we, cobber?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
“Calm down, calm down. It was only a picture of it on a sign. But apparently Tasmanian Devil bones have been found there, too.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” James said more loudly.
Wish-Wash’s face morphed into a frown. “If you haven’t touched base with Moose or Joffa, how did you know we were even home?”
“The new police sergeant told me.”
“Really? You talked to him? You wouldn’t have a bar of him in 1993.”
“1993?” James looked at them blankly.
“You didn’t even want Johnno to stay living in this town when you really were the Mayor.”
James squeezed his eyes shut slowly.
“Are you all right, Jimbo? You’ve gone all white.”
James opened his eyes widely. “The police force recruited him? After what he did? Have they gone mad!”
“Do you need to see the doc, Jimbo? Maybe you do have cancer?”
“Nonsense!” He stamped his foot, and pointed up towards the police station. “That’s where the true sickness resides.”
Wish-Wash looked around at the cafe. “Maybe you’ll feel better after a nice cuppa and a biscuit.”
5. BEFRIEND A PHONE
James swiped the QR code displayed in the window of the Wind Tunnel Cafe.
“Don’t forget to add us on that smartphone,” came Wish-Wash’s voice behind him.
James turned around. “Surely you’ve got your own phone by now, Bert?”
Wish-Wash shook his head. “If it’s any consolation, Oodles has one.” He grinned. “But it’s back at his house and I don’t think the cord will stretch this far.”
“Oh, very droll, Bert.”
“What’s the big flamin’ deal? On our holiday we had to get other people to check us in all the time.”
“They obviously had more trust in you than me.”
“We didn’t know most of them from Adam.”
“They did not even know you? Good heavens! These QR codes are how contact tracers track down infected people. What did you think they did? Pick out a lucky door prize?”
Wish-Wash stuck out his bottom lip. “It’s not our fault we haven’t got one of these newfangled phones and that most people are happy to help out two old men who are almost dying of thirst.”
“Dying of thirst? Has that been your pitch? How pathetic!”
“No one said no.” Wish-Wash turned to Oodles. “Did they, cobber?” He turned back to James. “In fact, you’d be surprised how many times they invited us to share their tables. Have I ever told you my joke about The Green Ping Pong Ball? That was a favourite. I guess parents get tired of their kids arguing in the back seat, and they’re relieved to find a couple of honorary grandfathers willing to distract them for a while with long, corny jokes in exchange for free tea and cake.”
“Spare me!” James looked down at his phone. “I do not think even Wendy would be fooled that either of you is my grandfather.”
“No, but the phone won’t know. You just add us as your dependants.”
“Dependants! You want me to pretend I am your father now!”
“Why not? We could both pass as your sons.”
“You are joking!”
Wish-Wash placed a hand on James’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Please, dad, we’re so thirsty.”
James shrugged off his hand. “Well, now you know how you are going to die? From thirst!” He looked down at his phone again, puzzled. “It is a crying shame I do not even know how to add you.”
Oodles threw out an outstretched hand. “Give your mobile phone to me.”
James watched in amazement as Oodles hit a flurry of keys. Clarence had always been ridiculously practical, and he had obviously picked up a new skill on his travels.
Wish-Wash opened the door and they went in. Wish-Wash led the way, Oodles went second and James brought up the rear, wiping the phone with a white handkerchief as he ambled in.
Wendy wore a Santa hat and acknowledged Oodles and Wish-Wash with a big smile.
But her smile frosted over when she saw James.
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JOHN MARTIN 