G'Day To Die Part 7

"He came out of hiding," I rasped, transfixed by the sight of this broad-headed, small-eyed, piglike marsupial gnawing through the skeleton of a creature who'd been lower in the feed chain. He was black with fur, had pink vampire bat ears, and sported pointy teeth that smacked of the "Big Bad Wolf." I swallowed with difficulty. "What do you suppose he's eating?"

"Another exhibit," said the crone.

I stashed my camera back in my shoulder bag. Stuffed toy was looking like a really good idea for David.

"They look ferocious," said Heath, "but they're inept killers. If not for roadkill, the Tasmanian divil would probably go the way of the Tasmanian tiger. Total extinction." Looking my way, he doffed his Akubra hat and smiled. "I'm Heath. This is Nora."

"Emily." I returned his smile. "You probably see animals like this all the time."

"I live inland, so what I mostly see are desert rats and scorpions."

Inland? "You live in the Outback?" "You live in the Outback?"

"I live in South Australia-a little place called Coober Pedy. Have you seen Mel Gibson's Mad Max Mad Max movies? The third flick was filmed near Coober Pedy, so if you remimber the desolate scenery with its scrubby saltbushes and dried-up watercourses, you git a fair picture of the town." movies? The third flick was filmed near Coober Pedy, so if you remimber the desolate scenery with its scrubby saltbushes and dried-up watercourses, you git a fair picture of the town."

What I remembered about Mad Max Mad Max was how well the terrain conformed to the apocalyptic images of a post-nuclear war landscape. The featureless desert. The unbearable heat. Kinda like Las Vegas without the casinos. "Why do you live there?" was how well the terrain conformed to the apocalyptic images of a post-nuclear war landscape. The featureless desert. The unbearable heat. Kinda like Las Vegas without the casinos. "Why do you live there?"

His smile broadened. "Opals."

"Rabbits," said Nora, conversing with the Tasmanian devil through the chain-link fencing. "I've eaten rabbits. But you've gotta skin' 'em first, else the fur gets stuck in yer teeth."

Heath placed a cautionary hand on her shoulder. "Not too close, luvy."

Nora's behavior suddenly seemed as unnerving as Jake Silverthorn's. I s.h.i.+fted my attention back to Heath. "Coober Pedy is a big mecca for opals?"

"The biggest. It's the richest opal field in Australia. If a man can brave the heat, tolerate a skyline of brick and corrugated iron, and doesn't mind living like a mole most of the time, he can earn a decent crust."

"Ferrets," said Nora, wagging her finger at the animal. "I've eaten ferrets. But I didn't like 'em much. Too stringy."

"Tell you what, luvy." Heath coaxed her gently away from the pen. "We should catch up to the other gists and let the Tazzy finish his meal in peace. Does that sound like a good idea? You don't want to miss the saltie, do you?"

She twisted around, confusion clouding her brilliant blue eyes. "Where'd everyone go?"

"They've gone on to the nixt exhibit. Come on. Maybe Imily will walk with us."

She tossed me a dismissive look before clutching Heath's forearm. "I don't know that girl. Who is she?" Then in a more animated voice, "Is she from the orphanage?"

"Imily's a gist on our tour. A Yank. You like Yanks."

She nodded docilely. "My da might have been a Yank."

"You coming?" Heath asked me, looking as if he'd appreciate the company.

"So how hot does it get in Coober Pedy?" I asked, as we strolled down the path with Nora between us.

"Midsummah will average a hundred eighteen degrees Farenheit. Hotter on some days. Not much greenery survives back home. The sun cooks everything."

Including skin. No wonder Nora's face was so wrinkled. I'd probably look the same way under similar circ.u.mstances, then be forced to squander so much of my savings on miracle creams that I'd have to declare bankruptcy. Wow. Who'd have guessed that overexposure to the sun had the potential of being as disastrous to a person's finances as investing in survival equipment for Y2K?

"You wanna see my picture?" Nora asked, thrusting her well-handled photo at me.

I angled it into the light, picking out details I'd been unable to see in the visitor center yesterday. A field-stone wall. An ornamental bench. A young woman with bobbed hair smiling shyly into the camera. She wore a plain housedress and against her bosom hugged two toddlers in frilled pinafores, their heads a riot of pipe curls.

"That's my mum," Nora said proudly. "She lived in England."

"She's beautiful." I held the photo gingerly, fearful that one of the dog-eared corners was going to fall off. "And the children are so adorable. They must be about-what? Two years old? I have five nephews who all went through the terrible twos. Is that you in one of the pinafores?"

"Me and Beverley. See the writing on the back? It says Nora-that's me, and Beverley-that's my sister. Do you see we're dressed alike?"

"Yup. Exactly alike. Are you twins?"

Her breath rattled noisily in her throat and she grew agitated. "I don't want to talk to you anymore. I want my picture back." She grabbed it from my hand. "You're walking too slow," she snapped at Heath. "Slow, slow, slow."

"You go on ahid then." He released her arm. "You won't git lost. I'll find you."

I grimaced apologetically as she barreled down the path with impossible speed. No small feat for a woman with legs like Bilbo Baggins. "Sorry. Wrong question to ask?"

"No worries. As old as she is, talking about that picture still sinds her on an emotional rollah coastah."

"Why did she ask if I was from the orphanage?" I asked as we continued walking slowly down the path.

"Because her mum put her in an orphanage not long after that photo was taken. We think her da died in the war, and her mum didn't have the means to raise her, so the orphanage was the only answer. It was common practice in those days."

"Did her mother eventually go back for her?"

"Don't know. After the war, the child wilfare groups elected to ease overcrowding by transporting hundreds of orphans to Australia. Mind you, they had the bist of intintions. They thought warmth and suns.h.i.+ne would be bitter for English orphans than damp and rain, but the consequinces were horrid. Children were separated from their siblings. Birth certificates were lost. Personal records misplaced. Not Mother England's finest hour."

"Is that what happened to Nora?"

"She inded up in Sydney with only airy fairy memories of her life in England. That photo of her mum is her only link to her childhood. But she was adopted by fine people, who made a home for her in Coober Pedy."

"Did they adopt Beverley, too?"

"She lost Biverley back in England. Her mum put the girls in separate orphanages."

I stared at Heath in disbelief. "Why would a mother separate her own children from each other?"

"To give thim a bitter chance at being adopted. People couldn't afford to adopt two children, and most filt guilty about parting twins, so it was actually an act of kindness on her mum's part. She had to have loved thim a great deal."

"Those poor little girls."

"We've been tracking Biverley down for years, but there's not much of a paper trail to follow. She could still be in England; she could be here in Australia. We've dug up a few doc.u.ments that's hilped with birth and emigration dates. And there's a couple of new sites on the internet that deal specifically with the English orphan problem. They've given me some good leads. I haven't told Mum yit because I don't want to git her hopes up, but the information is so good, we may be only weeks away from locating Biverley. That would be a happy day indeed."

"Mum?" My voiced cracked in surprise. "Nora's your...mother? But she's-" I stirred my hand aimlessly, unable to think of a charitable alternate to "a thousand years old."

Heath laughed. "She's not aged will, but she's fared bitter than most. Life's harsh in the Outback."

As I looked down the path toward the eagle cage, I noticed a small commotion, followed by a scene that I knew was going to end in disaster. I sighed as I turned toward Heath. "Park officials wouldn't allow large, man-eating birds to roam freely around the park, would they?"

"Hard to find man-eating birds in Australia," he a.s.sured me. "The bist we can come up with is an emu, and they're harmliss."

I regarded the ostrich-sized bird chasing Bernice across the glade and smiled brightly. "Gee, that's a relief."

"I don't care how much money you collected," Bernice sniped, "you're not gettin' my T-s.h.i.+rt. You'll have to kill me first."

"Told you she was gonna be trouble," Nana said in an undertone.

We'd arrived at Sovereign Hill Park and Living History Museum ten minutes ago and were in the souvenir shop portion of the entrance building, waiting for Henry to hand out tickets. Gold fever had hit Australia a decade after the California Gold Rush, and according to what Henry had told us on the way over, Sovereign Hill had proven to be one of the country's richest deposits. No serious mining took place here anymore, but an authentic gold-mining town had been re-created over the footprint of the original diggings to allow tourists to step back in time and experience a typical day in 1851, from panning for gold to slogging through the mud of the wheel-rutted streets.

"All those in favor of killing Bernice say 'Aye,'" Osmond called out.

Bernice thwacked him with a plastic souvenir pickax. "Stay away from me. All of you! My s.h.i.+rt stays on my back." She swung the pick in a threatening arc. "Don't make me use this."

d.i.c.k Teig hitched up the waistband of his trousers and took a brave step forward, which was weird, because d.i.c.k never stepped up to the plate to solve problems; he was usually the one who caused them! Wow. This was huge.

"Stow the ax and listen good to what I'm about to say, Bernice." His voice was nasally from the tissue he'd stuffed up his nose. His cheeks ballooned with righteous bl.u.s.ter. "Emily has something to say to you."

Everyone took a giant step backward, leaving me front and center. "Look, Bernice, I'm sorry about your s.h.i.+rt, but wouldn't you agree that your health is more important than an article of clothing?"

"No."

"It's a scientific fact that inhaling noxious fumes can kill you!"

"Emily's right," Alice said helpfully. "You can keel over dead if you inhale carbon monoxide."

"And smoke," said Margi.

"And Helen's perfume when she puts too much on," said d.i.c.k Teig.

"You stink, Bernice!" d.i.c.k Stolee wailed. "Lose the s.h.i.+rt!"

"All those in favor of Bernice losing her s.h.i.+rt-"

Yup. This was going well.

"Bernice! Just the person I was looking for." Guy Madelyn flagged her down with a black T-s.h.i.+rt with gold lettering. "How hard would I have to twist your arm to be my photographic model for the afternoon? I need someone with great bone structure and presence, and you fit the bill. I'll even buy lunch and provide your wardrobe." He shook out the s.h.i.+rt so we could read the block letters: GO FOR THE GOLD AT SOVEREIGN HILL, BALLARAT, AUSTRALIA GO FOR THE GOLD AT SOVEREIGN HILL, BALLARAT, AUSTRALIA.

"Lunch and and the T-s.h.i.+rt?" She plucked the s.h.i.+rt from his grasp. "Deal. I used to be a magazine model years ago, but you probably figured that out already. Once you have it, you never lose it." the T-s.h.i.+rt?" She plucked the s.h.i.+rt from his grasp. "Deal. I used to be a magazine model years ago, but you probably figured that out already. Once you have it, you never lose it."

He handed her a zippered storage bag. "For your monster truck s.h.i.+rt."

"My, my." She smiled coquettishly. "You think of everything."

We held our collective breath as she sashayed toward the fitting room and erupted into spontaneous whoops as she disappeared behind the curtain. d.i.c.k Teig hammered Guy gratefully on the back. Margi yanked streamers of toilet paper from her nose. Helen grabbed d.i.c.k's ear and dragged him off behind her.

"What's this problem you have with my perfume?"

"Sorry about the wait, folks," Henry announced from the turnstiles at the front door. "I have your tickets and visitor maps. The queue starts here. Synchronize your watches. It's twelve-thirty now; we'll meet back in this building at four o'clock."

The group dispersed helter-skelter, leaving me alone with Guy. He winked good-naturedly. I stared at him in awe. "You do realize that you're about to commit one of the most generous acts in recorded history?"

"I had no choice. I sit directly in front of her on the bus and the drive back to Melbourne will take over an hour. We're talking life or death here."

"I've gotta warn you, she's a handful."

"I cut my teeth on mothers of the bride. Trust me. This should be a cakewalk by comparison."

The fitting room curtain flew open and Bernice stepped out, a vision in black and gold. "How do you feel about my nose? You think I should get rid of the zinc oxide? I'm not sure pistachio fits our color scheme."

Guy's attentiveness to Bernice boded more than unpolluted air; it meant Etienne and Duncan would be freed up all afternoon! All I had to do was find them. I scanned the souvenir shop and, not finding them in the midst of a buying spree, headed for the next most logical place for them to be.

Conrad Carver occupied a bench in the waiting area outside the men's room, talking heatedly into a cell phone. "Tell them to look harder! I don't accept that. I hope you'll have better news for me later." He punched a b.u.t.ton to end the conversation, then muttered a few unintelligible syllables that I suspected might be Polish swear words.

"Problems?" I asked, sitting down beside him.

"Fools." He stared at the phone as if willing it to disappear. "Blind fools."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"You can say a prayer to St. Anthony. Ellie always tells me, 'If you lose something, St. Anthony will help you find it.' Ellie's a believer. Me, I'm not what you'd call a religious man."

"Hey! I pray to St. Anthony when I lose things, and he's never let me down. Honest. It's freaking amazing. And the best part is, he's an equal opportunity saint. He operates under a nondenominational policy."

Conrad looked too depressed to crack a smile. I gave his knee a sympathetic pat. "So, what did you lose?"

"Your grandmother's angiosperms."

Chapter 7.

"What?"

He squeezed the phone until his hand turned white. "Dr. Limeburner and his team have been at Port Campbell all morning. They can't find anything that resembles the angiosperm I described. They're going to continue searching, but he didn't sound hopeful about finding anything. I could hear the censure in his voice, Emily. He thinks I've lost my edge. He thinks I made a mistake. But I didn't! I know what I saw in your grandmother's photo!" He looked about the room impatiently. "If I wasn't stuck in this d.a.m.nable place, I'd go look for it myself."

I leaned back in the bench, deflated. "Nana's plant is extinct again?"

"No! If it was there yesterday, it has to be there today. They're not looking hard enough. A plant of that size doesn't disappear overnight, not unless someone dug it up deliberately. And who would have done that? No one even knew it was there until I phoned Limeburner."

Which wasn't precisely true. The person who stole Nana's photo knew the plant was there, so they could have done the digging. But I'd like to think that if someone had dragged a large chunk of landscape onto the bus yesterday, I might have noticed.

"Sorry to make you wait so long, Connie." Ellie bustled over to us. "They ran out of paper towels in the ladies' room, so I had to blow dry my hands. The buzz is that they offer stagecoach rides here. Wouldn't that be fun?"