Murder with the Lot Read Free

its heyday, but it’s still a goer. The lock on the driver’s door was broken since someone tried to break in a couple of months back. I’d have to ask Brad to fix it, somehow get him galvanised. I sighed. Another pep-talk.
    I got in the car from the passenger’s side, squeezing myself over the handbrake and gearstick into the driver’s seat.
    I drove along Best Street, which some argue is Rusty Bore’s only street, illogically in my view since we’ve also got Second Avenue. I headed past the closed hardware shop, its dusty windows covered in graffiti. Past the old town hall, Rusty Bore’s own leaning tower of Pisa, propped up along one side with steel girders. Me and Piero danced at discos there in the early eighties. Him in his green Miller shirt, me in a silky white dress and long pearls from the op shop, deep into my Ultravox phase. It was there, out the back, that I first encountered Piero’s overactive fertility.
    Piero would have known what to say to Brad. Thing is, the boy needs a skill, something practical to earn a living. What Brad hasn’t realised is that while everyone wants the planet saved, kind of, no one actually wants to pay for it. Still, he’s building important retail expertise in my shop. I hope.
    â€˜How can you do it, Mum?’ he’d asked on his first day, when I got him to cut up a couple of fresh yellowbelly. ‘See their eyes? The way they look at you, full of blame?’
    â€˜You just cut off the heads and pop them quick into the bin,’ I said. ‘Why would you need to look into their eyes? You’re not asking them out on a date.’
    Really, if I faced facts, it was more than possible Brad wasn’t going to make it as a top takeaway monopolist. Not that my monopoly was doing all that well these days, in any case. No, the survival of the Rusty Bore Takeaway was entirely dependent on low overheads.
    Of course it was all different back when Piero and I set up our place nearly thirty years ago. Back then we still had rain and the full attention of the attendees of the annual show. Rusty Bore—Original home of the Mallee Farm Days , proclaims the weathered yellow sign at the entrance to the town. It’s pretty sad our only claim to fame is what we used to have. We lost the Farm Days to Hustle back in ’91.
    I passed the row of three steel silos shimmering in the heat and took the turn onto the highway, heading south. The sun was already a hot glare in a polished blue sky.
    They were good little eaters, those Farm Days visitors. They came from all over the country to look at the agricultural machinery on offer. It’s hungry work, people used to tell me, looking eagerly at our lunchtime specials board. I could understand. I’d have been starving too after a morning of climbing around tillage and seeding machinery, nodding my head thoughtfully as I considered belt grain conveyors, chaser bins and land rollers. Even the Federal National Party member for the Mallee used to come in for a feed.
    What would I say if I got the chance to update that welcome sign? Home to a row of wheat silos and derelict railway sidings might be fair but it doesn’t have the upbeat tone I’d be looking for. We’ve got the Murray Matlock Dryland Tank Museum up the road, of course, with its array of old header parts, remains of a blacksmith’s shop and an extensive bottle collection. They’ve even got a website. Although I don’t think it gets a lot of hits.
    Acres of greying wheat stubble drifted on by. A little dust devil whirled over the paddocks beyond.
    A clammy twenty minutes later I was in Hustle, parking outside the squat apricot-brick building of the Garden of the Gods Extended Care Nursing Home. I struggled out of the car and crunched my way across the gravel car park.
    Sophia was coming out the front door. ‘Ah, Cassie, my little bambina. ’
    I’m not Sophia’s bambina but she’s