Terror Stash by Tracy Cooper-Posey Read Free Book Online Page B

lifted her eyebrows. “I do hope you’re not asking me where you might find him. I would be one of the last people to know something like that.” She gave a delicate laugh.
    “Not him specifically, but his clients. You know the type, at least. Where do the surfers tend to hang out now? The nonink crowd?” The euphemism was one that he and Ria used between them. In the Margaret River-Yallingup area, there were a significant number of people that fell into the low income-no income bracket. They lived off the land and most often it was a deliberate lifestyle choice.
    Ria put her hands together neatly in her lap. “Oh, I should think the Pink Galah would get most of their business.”
    “Still at the Galah, huh?” Caden knew the place well. He glanced at his watch. “I have a bit of time, then.”
    “You’ll have lunch with me?”
    “Sure.” He grinned easily.
    Ria began collecting up her gardening implements and gloves, dropping them into the basket on the table. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of doing further business with that Connie man, either?”
    Caden’s grin broadened. “Ria, Ria,” he chided. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
    “Alas, I do.” She gave a delicate sniff. “You can’t blame me for trying.”
    He sat back. “I stopped handing out blame for anything when I was ten. It doesn’t fix a damn thing.”
    * * * * *
    Montana knew the location of the Pink Galah well enough. Anyone who had driven through the town of Margaret River at least once knew where it was. In the late eighteen hundreds the corrugated iron building had been an open-walled logging shed. A mad Englishman who had intended to ship the excellent Karri hardwood in the area back home had built it. It straddled the riverbank, in a perfect position to snag felled logs as they floated down the river...only the river never flowed. Margaret River was a high-season-only waterway. For most of the year the water lay still, a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes.
    After changing owners a dozen times, the shed had acquired an outer shell of corrugated iron cladding and other accessories. The current owner had slapped a dash of neon pink paint on the iron cladding, hoisted a “public bar” sign onto the roof, installed a beer tap or two and opened the doors.
    That had been thirty years ago, but the Pink Galah was still the most popular watering hole in the district. Perhaps its marginal location on the very edge of the town, straddling both water and land, was what drew the fringe folk. Customers included surfers, people living off the land and do-it-yourselfers who had caught the religion enough to sell up everything and move to Marg’s. Also loners, outcasts, the occasional brave tourist, a dozen or so hippie wannabees who wished fervently that it was still the sixties—and those who had mentally never left the sixties despite mourning John and George every time they heard a Beatles tune.
    Montana looked around and catalogued the creeds and philosophies represented in the bar. What was missing were the middle-of-the-road, respectable, salaried business professionals and yuppies. It was most definitely not that sort of a bar.
    For a start, most of the customers were outside, under the wisteria-covered lean-to. It was explosively hot inside under the iron roof and no one lingered there.
    Nearly all the customers had kicked off their shoes and were padding barefoot about the packed earth floor. Sometime in the past, the owners had cut a long rectangular flap in the iron cladding, added a couple of hinges and pushed a cabinet up beneath the new window. That became the bar that served the rickety pergola. A dozen barbecue tables with attached benches were the only seating on offer. There were no small tables for little groups.
    The noise spiraled. No band played. She doubted there was a single electrical outlet available out there and any band would have had trouble being heard, anyway.
    She asked for a glass of