G'Day to Die: A Passport to Peril Mystery - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,62

and Roger were at opposite ends of the room, and Conrad and Ellie ate with Henry. Your grandmother and I spent a relaxing hour drinking tea and reading the Adelaide paper.”

So the police still hadn’t arrived? Uff da. What was the hold up?

“The obituary section took my breath away,” said Nana. “It went on for pages.”

I regarded her oddly. “Why are you reading the obituaries in a place where you don’t know anyone?”

She shrugged. “Habit.”

“Were you able to learn anything when you called Peter Blunt last night?” asked Tilly.

“I got sidetracked last night,” I confessed guiltily, “so I, uh, never made the call.”

Nana beamed at me. “’Bout time you seen some action, dear.”

“Nooo! I didn’t see any action. I was about to see some, then Duncan showed up, so I spent the rest of the night sipping wine and eating parsley ravioli while the guys threw epithets at each other in Italian.”

“Are you sure they were cursing?” asked Tilly. “They seem to have become such good friends.”

“It wasn’t so much the words, as how they said them. On a brighter note, the parsley ravioli was surprisingly good.”

Nana tapped her watch. “If you wanna try Peter, I seen public phones downstairs. Maybe you can call before we board the bus. But we better move it ’cause we only got twenty-eight minutes to catch the elevator and make it out the front door.”

After spending ten minutes analyzing how to make a long-distance call on a pay phone and another five minutes gathering change, I got Peter Blunt’s voice mail and left a message for him to call me at the hotel at his earliest possible convenience. “It’s a matter of life or death.” Which was probably a slight exaggeration, but I figured it might grab his attention.

As soon as I took my seat on the bus, Henry veered into morning traffic. “Mornin’, folks. Wilcome to day five of your Great Aussie Advinture. Today we’ll be taking a thirty-minute flight to Kangaroo Island, which is a hundred and twinty-three kilometers off the coast. At Kingscote we’ll split into two groups since tour buses on the island accommodate fewer passengers, but no worries. You’ll all be seein’ the same sights.”

“Have you heard anything from Heath Acres?” Lola Silverthorn called out.

Wow. The woman didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

“Thanks for asking. He rang me up last night. They haven’t released his mum’s body yit, but whin they do, he’ll be taking her back to Coober Pedy for burial.”

“Do they know what killed her?” asked Dick Teig.

“No word yit, but he’ll probably know by the ind of the day. And speaking of that, I bought a sympathy card that I’ll sind around for all of you to sign, if you like. Make sure it gits back to me sometime today, and I’ll post it to Coober Pedy.”

Aw, that was so thoughtful. I dug out my memo pad and wrote a note to myself. Things to pack for next trip—sympathy cards. Maybe if I prepared for the worst, nothing bad would happen. It was worth a try. Nothing else seemed to work.

Two snazzy Mercedes-Benz buses awaited us at the Kingscote airport. “Doesn’t matter which bus you git on,” Henry announced as he herded us toward the parking lot. “But once you decide, stay with the same group the entire day so you don’t foul up my hid count.”

My group charged toward the nearest bus like race-horses out of the gate, Nana and Bernice in a footrace at the head of the pack, elbows flying and boots clacking.

“Marion! Marion!” shouted Conrad.

Nana arrived first and did a little jump-around to celebrate. In fact, she looked fast enough to challenge Bernice in the five-yard dash at this year’s Senior Olympics. Conrad caught up to the group, staggering against the bus as he gasped for air.

“Hey, back of the line,” Dick Stolee admonished.

“I’m not in line,” Conrad choked out. “Marion, I have exciting news from the university search team.”

“They found the rat?”

“Not yet, but the photo you took is the desert rat kangaroo, so they’re pulling out all stops to track it down. They’ll want to interview you when it happens. You’ll make headlines all across Australia. You’ll be the celebrity du jour!”

“You s’pose they’ll take pictures?”

“Of course, they will. You’ll be a media darling!”

“I better find me a beauty parlor.”

“I’ll keep you informed. They’re going to call Henry with any news. Has anything this noteworthy ever happened to you before?”

“Well, I found a hundred-million-year-old plant earlier in the