One Sunday by Joy Dettman Page A

suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
    He’d known her in the city a long time ago, and knew a bit too much about her. That was half of the problem. And she knew that he remembered her – and that was the other half of the problem. Not that he’d told anyone in town what he knew – or ever let her know he remembered her. She’d come to Molliston as Mrs Harry Dolan, so he always made a point of calling her Mrs Dolan.
    The drinkers liked her, the teetotallers wanted to be rid of her, but that pub had been in the Dolan family since the coach service to Merton ceased, when the Dolans went into the production of apple cider. Harry continued the family tradition, and had gone through a lot of his own cider in sixty-odd years. He’d gone through three wives too, then wasted no time in finding his fourth, who he’d wed in the Molliston Catholic church. This one, apparently more than a match for him, had him back in that church in a box twelve months after the wedding.
    After the funeral she’d committed the unforgivable sin of selling Harry’s twenty acre bottom paddock to Joseph Reichenberg, which had got a lot of the old guards’ backs up. There were a few in town who’d prefer to lose money than sell to a German. A week after the sale, she’d taken off in Harry’s truck, grinding gears and raising dust out on the Willama Road, leaving four lodgers down here to fend for themselves. Tom had been relieved to see the back of her, but she’d returned, driving a little green roadster which she’d had no licence to drive. He’d given her one, with reservations.
    â€˜Take it slow,’ he’d warned. ‘And keep it out of town until you can control the thing, Mrs Dolan.’ He might as well have told the man in the moon when to rise.
    By the bejesus, he resented that car, or resented her owning it, and him still pushing a bike – resented her whizzing past him, spraying grit and tooting her horn while he pushed those pedals up that hill.
    â€˜Who did you have in that ambulance this morning, Thomo?’
    He ignored her question. ‘I’m here to get a list of the names of those you had at your alleged party last night, Mrs Dolan.’
    â€˜It was Len Larkin’s mother’s birthday party. I just supplied the music.’
    â€˜I hope she enjoyed it.’
    â€˜Due to illness, she couldn’t attend – and when you start ringing bells out the front of my place at the crack of dawn, then come knocking down my door and waking me up again a few hours later, I’d say I’ve got a right to know why.’
    â€˜I doubt you would have been in your bed at the crack of dawn, Mrs Dolan, and if you were, by the sound of your greeting this morning you were up to no flamin’ good in it –’ He bit his tongue, closed his mouth, looked over his shoulder and scratched at his jaw. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. As I was saying, I want a list of the guests, male and female, and I want to know what time they arrived and what time they left.’
    â€˜Then you’re wanting to know more than I’m knowing, Thomo, my lad.’
    â€˜If I can give you the respect of your dead husband’s name, then I’ll thank you to reciprocate, Mrs Dolan.’
    â€˜Yes, officer. To be sure, officer.’ She curtsied, lifting her colourful satin dressing gown enough to show one long white leg with a mole above the knee. He turned his back fast.
    â€˜Get that list on my desk by noon, if you please.’
    â€˜That ambulance was out front of Reichenberg’s place. Did old Joe finally murder one of those boys?’ He made no reply, so she shrugged and stepped outside, leaving the door gaping wide as she walked to the eastern end of the low-slung veranda where a breath of cool was coming off the water tank.
    The hotel, constructed room by room over a longish period of time, wasn’t much of a hotel as hotels go. Its