Crystal Coffin by Anita Bell Page B

flexible. If business was slow, she let him go home early. And best of all, it meant he only had to give her two days’ notice before quitting instead of two weeks.
    He was really looking forward to using that little perk. Just three more weeks and he’d have enough cash to pay for his new muffler and maybe a hot flame deco for his fuel tank as well.
    He leaned on the doodlebugger and pictured himself challenging Sergeant Knox to a race up Main Street past the police station. ‘Ready when you are!’ he shouted. Then he twisted back on the throttle, rearing back on the hind wheel and tore off up Main Street with Knox Pox and his jelly gut straggling behind him.
    Then something hit his helmet and he was falling. And night fell on top of him.
    He’d barely hit the floor and blinked before Janet Slaney’s face was looming over his. Her claw-like fingernails messed through his hair and she was talking at him, but it dawned on him slowly that she wasn’t calling him mister anymore.
    Her fluorescent pink lips puckered and he leapt up from the floor.
    â€˜Oh, Scott!’ she cried, as he staggered against the microwave. ‘Are you all right?’ Her fingers went back into his hair and he pulled away when she prodded a new lump. ‘I thought you said you were ready for me to throw you the box.’
    â€˜What box?’ he said, seeing whole cartons of Mad Murphy’s free-range eggs scattered on the floor. Egg white and orange yolks oozed from the cartons, like the innards of giant caterpillars that someone had squashed under a boot.
    â€˜You threw a box of eggs at me?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Who throws eggs?’.
    â€˜Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she prattled. ‘Do you need a doctor? I can call a doctor. Here let me,’ she said, reaching for the phone and dialling. ‘Oh cripes, Mum’s going to be so mad.’
    Scotty looked at the box. It wasn’t actually big or heavy. It was just large enough for about ten dozen-sized cartons of Mad Murphy’s eggs, and most of them were only small eggs, like from a bantam. But the box had caught him by its corner and a little trickle of blood was oozing from a cut in the centre of his lump.
    â€˜Hello? Hello, Dr Crowley’s office? This is Ja —’
    Scott punched the disconnect button and cut her off.
    â€˜You won’t get in trouble,’ he said slowly, ‘if no-one knows what happened.’
    Her lips puckered again while she thought about it. ‘What’s the catch?’
    â€˜You pay for the eggs,’ he said, not wanting to put off buying his new muffler. ‘Get rid of the evidence and I’ll tell your mum I sold them.’
    Janet smiled. ‘You’d do that for me?’
    â€˜Well it’s in my interests too,’ he said, and her smile widened until he saw her teeth. Nice teeth in a nice smile, he thought. Then he wondered if Janet could like motorbikes as much as he did — for about four seconds, until her mouth started exercising again.
    â€˜Here, let me bandage you then,’ she said, fussing over his head. ‘I’ll clean you up first, then I’ll do the floor. You sit down. I’ll get the first aid kit. You’ll see. I was thinking about being a nurse after high school — or a doctor. Doctor’s get more money, don’t they? Well, maybe they do, but they work long hours too. And I don’t want to work long hours. Do you? I don’t. I mean, what’s the point of being able to afford a jacuzzi if you’re never home to enjoy it?’
    His ears hurt from listening to her. Now the back of his head hurt even more from not listening to her. He reached around and turned her Madonna tape up louder and Janet stopped yapping and started singing. Not a bad voice either for a thirteen year old, and it sure sounded sweeter with music over the top of it — almost as sweet as the purr of his Yamaha through a paddock