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isabrellaChapters: 1/1
Fandom: Deadloch (TV 2023)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dulcie Collins & Eddie Redcliffe
Characters: Dulcie Collins, Eddie Redcliffe, Tammy Hampson, Miranda Hoskins
Additional Tags: Canon-adjacent, Case Fic, Light-Hearted, Yuletide 2024
Summary:
Eddie's leaving. There's a very important case for her to solve.
“A fucken’ potato?” Eddie says, looking at Dulcie judgmentally. It seems fitting, somehow, that someone has brought them a completely meaningless case on Eddie’s last day in Deadloch.Notes:
“A—bumming potato, yes,” Dulcie says. “In the gutter.”
“Well, someone threw it up there. Case closed. I’m off to catch my plane.”
Originally written for shrift on AO3 as part of Yuletide 2024.
Thanks to falsenine and resurrecho for betaing; any non-Aussie-isms are entirely my fault.
This work on SqWA.
Rebloggable on Tumblr.
The Mysterious Case of the Gutter Potato
On Wednesday morning, Cath drops Dulcie off at the police station. She’s on her way to pick up decorations to help Skye decorate the Bush Pig.
Eddie’s going back to Darwin tomorrow, so they—the choir, mostly, not Dulcie, at all—are throwing her a surprise leaving do tonight.
When Dulcie crosses the road to the police station, she finds Mary Odiley waiting outside with a basket of plums on her arm.
“Morning, Mary,” Dulcie says, unlocking the door and switching off the security alarms. Mary follows her inside, depositing the basket of plums at the reception desk. She frequently drops round baskets of various excess fruits and vegetables.
“There’s a potato growing out of my gutter, Dulcie,” Mary says without preamble.
“A potato, Mary?” Dulcie opens up the door through to their offices and looks back at her.
“Yes, Dulcie, a potato. It’s a whole plant, with leaves and everything.”
“Right,” Dulcie says. It’s no murder case, that’s for sure. She gets her notebook from her desk and starts taking notes just to look like she’s doing something. “And how long has the potato plant been there?”
“About a week, I’d say.”
“Do you have any pictures?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know how to do that,” Mary says. “My grandson, he’s always trying to teach me to use this ‘smartphone’ and I haven’t the faintest idea about any of it.”
“Why don’t you just show me, then?” Dulcie says, relocking the office door and stopping herself from sighing with a very great effort.
“Tammy, what are you doing?” Miranda hisses.
“It’s bloody Piper, isn’t it,” Tammy says. She gestures to the roof.
“How the hell did she get up there?” Miranda yelps.
The oystercatcher chick that they found next to its dead mum last week and nursed back to health with a diet of handfed worms hops once along the nape of the roof and he-eeps pitifully.
“She can fly now,” Tammy says unnecessarily.
“Well, how are we going to get her down?”
“I dunno,” Tammy says. “I’ve been waving my arms. Dunno if she can actually see with her little birdy eyes.”
“What if you... banana-d... a football up there to try and scare her?”
“So not what that means, sis,” Tammy says. “Anyway, Aunty’d have our guts for garters if we broke any windows.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
It’s a good five metres above where either of them would be able to reach even on tippy-toes. Miranda can’t think of anything long enough to reach. A super-long stick, yeah, but where would they find one of those anyway?
“What if we throw something smaller up there to try and make her come down? If she gets scared and hops down to the gutter, at least we could use a broom or something to sweep her down.”
“A lacrosse stick,” Miranda says; they’re a weird shape, kind of like a cup. They could probably scoop Piper up with it.
“Where the fuck would we get a lacrosse stick?”
“There’s a bunch of old sports equipment in that shed at the Centre.”
“Sweet,” Tammy says, and they both stare up at Piper for a long minute.
“Is it possible that a bird... dropped a seed... in the gutter?” Dulcie says.
Mary is indeed correct that a plant is growing out of her gutter, right above her garden shed. Dulcie really couldn’t say whether it was a potato plant or not, because she has the opposite of a green thumb and has killed every plant she’s ever had the misfortune of trying to grow. Once she killed Skye’s cactus by watering it too much while she was away.
“Potatoes don’t grow from seed,” Mary says disapprovingly.
“Huh?” Dulcie says, squinting at the waving tendrils growing out of the gutter and the single heart-shaped leaf at the end of one of them.
“You propagate them by planting a seed potato. It’s a tuber.”
“Oh,” Dulcie says. That makes less than no sense to her, but Mary is the one who’s always dropping buckets of edible produce to the station, so she trusts she knows what she’s talking about in terms of gardening. “So, there’s a whole potato up there?”
“One can only assume,” Mary says drily.
“I’ll look into this and get back to you,” Dulcie reassures her, before hopping into her police car and driving back to the station.
“This is never going to work,” Tammy says, staring up at the roof again, brandishing a lacrosse stick. “What the fuck even is lacrosse, anyway?”
“It’s like if you played rugby with sticks,” Miranda says.
“Gross,” Tammy says, waving the stick up at the roof. Miranda’s holding a broom.
“We need to throw something up there,” Miranda says.
“Yeah,” Tammy says. She bends over and picks up a handful of gravel.
“You think that’ll work?”
“No,” Tammy says, and starts throwing them anyway.
Piper hops along the nape of the roof, but she’s not getting any closer to coming down, by the looks of things. Miranda’s not even sure if she’s noticing the gravel chips hitting the tiles next to her. She read once that a sparrow’s brain was the size of a pea. If that’s true, Piper’s brain must be even smaller.
“Oi, Tammy, give it up,” Miranda says after half a minute.
“We need something bigger,” Tammy agrees.
“Like what?”
“A fucken’ potato?” Eddie says, looking at Dulcie judgmentally. It seems fitting, somehow, that someone has brought them a completely meaningless case on Eddie’s last day in Deadloch.
“A—bumming potato, yes,” Dulcie says. “In the gutter.”
“Well, someone threw it up there. Case closed. I’m off to catch my plane.”
“It’s our job to find out who,” Dulcie says. “And your flight isn’t until tomorrow morning,” she adds, calling her bluff.
“It’s your job to find out who. I deal strictly with dead bodies, homicides, murder-durder.” Eddie spreads her hands, case closed.
“Yeah, because what Deadloch needs is another serial killer,” Dulcie snaps back.
“Fine! Fine,” Eddie says. “I will investigate who threw a potato into a gutter. Hey, any chance it was just a seed?”
“Apparently potatoes don’t grow from seed.”
“The fuck?”
“Mary says that they grow from other potatoes.”
“Well, fuck my ass.”
“Potatoes?” Miranda asks doubtfully.
“They’re cheap, there’s tons of them in the Centre kitchen—Mum won’t even notice—”
“I admire your optimism, Tammy,” Aunty Faye says from behind them. Tammy jumps. “What are you girls up to now?”
Miranda and Tammy share a glance.
“It’s just Piper,” Miranda starts, then shuts up as Tammy says, “Nothing!”
“That oystercatcher chick? Hmm,” Aunty Faye says, looking between them. “What about her?”
“Well, she’s on the roof.”
“She’s flying now?”
“She didn’t climb,” Tammy says, kicking her foot along the ground absent-mindedly.
“Hmm,” Aunty Faye says. “Birds are meant to fly, you know.”
“But it’s going to rain and she might die from exposure,” Tammy says, a touch dramatically.
“Where do you think birds live, Tammy?” Aunty Faye says in an exasperated tone. “Outside. Where it rains. She might’ve gotten used to the cushy Centre life, but Piper is actually meant to live on a beach.”
“But not yet,” Miranda protests. “She’s only little.”
“If she can fly, she’s not that little. Anyway, back to the point: what were you planning to do with my potatoes?”
“Throw them,” Tammy sighs.
“I think hitting her with a potato will be worse for her health than spending a night in the rain.”
“Aunty’s got a point,” Miranda says, turning to Tammy.
Tammy just shrugs.
“Ma’ams, respectfully, I don’t really know what a forensic pathologist can do for this case,” Abby says, squinting up at the roof.
“Abby, tell you the truth, me neither,” Dulcie says.
“You don’t think the big-time criminal who put a potato in the gutter will have left fingerprints all over the roof?” Eddie puts a hand over her eyebrows as she squints up at the gutter.
“That seems unlikely, ma’am,” Abby says, and Dulcie covers her smile with a hand.
“It certainly does,” Dulcie murmurs. “Although Eddie raises an interesting—if not, strictly speaking, purposeful—point. Why would someone throw a potato in Mary’s gutter?”
Abby bites her lip thoughtfully.
“How are you ladies getting on out there?” Mary opens her front door. “I’ve got some lamingtons and tea if you’re hungry.”
“Well, Mary,” Dulcie starts, before Eddie barrels right on ahead.
“Lamingtons, you say? Delicious.”
“I’m not going to hit her,” Tammy says firmly. “I’m going to hit the roof and then she’ll jump and then she’ll accidentally fly and then she’ll fly down to the ground.”
“Aunty Faye’s right, Tammy. Birds are meant to live outside. We should just leave her, she’ll come down in her own time.”
Tammy picks up the first potato, weights it in her hand for a second, and then tosses it up at the roof. It’s a conservative throw, and it hits the roof before bouncing off and landing splat on the concrete.
“Tammy—”
“Nah, I got the feel for it now,” Tammy says, ignoring Miranda. She picks up another potato and whips it up at the roof. This time it hits closer to Piper and leaves a wet-looking mark on the tile. Miranda wrinkles her nose.
“Ew,” Miranda says, and: “Don’t hurt her.”
Tammy ignores this again and throws another potato. “It’s pretty much just a tiny, heavy, rugby ball.”
Piper cheep-cheeps and hops along the roof a couple of times. It’s towards the middle of the roof rather than the edge where they need her to be, but it’s a start, Miranda supposes.
“See, it’s working.”
“It doesn’t really seem like a very good prank,” Abby says dubiously, sipping her tea with a slightly tilted pinky finger.
“How long does it take a potato plant to grow, anyway?” Eddie asks, getting desiccated coconut everywhere as she takes an overlarge bite of lamington.
Dulcie can’t believe she might actually miss her when she goes back to Darwin.
“Speedy as anything in the summer,” Mary says, sliding a fine china plate towards her. Eddie ignores the gesture. Possibly she doesn’t even notice it for the hint that it is.
“Are we talking, like, yesterday, or last week, or...?”
“Two weeks, maybe,” Mary suggests.
“So, Saturday two weeks ago some bloke throws a potato in your gutter,” Eddie says.
“Last one,” Tammy says, bouncing the last, purple, potato in her hand. Miranda sighs. The purple ones are the tastiest and Tammy’s splatted a solid six of them against the roof.
Tammy holds the potato up and then whips it, a fast overhand, in the direction of the roof. It’s smaller than the others and it goes higher and faster than the previous missiles, rocketing right over the nape of the roof and out of sight.
“Shit,” Tammy hisses at the same time that Miranda swears, “Fuck!”
There’s the distinctive thud of it hitting a roof, but it’s not their roof.
They race around the house in tandem, just in time to catch a flash of potato as it rolls into Mrs Odiley’s gutter.
“Whoops,” Tammy says, then: “We were never here.”
After a long conversational detour at Mary’s house—apparently she lived in Darwin for several years and wanted to know if Eddie knew anyone up there (which of course Eddie didn’t)—they go back outside.
“Should we try and climb up there?” Abby says dubiously. Dulcie isn’t thrilled at the thought of any of them trying to wobble up a ladder, and, honestly, she’s kind of sceptical that it even is a potato. Couldn’t it be any number of plants? Something dropped up there by a gull?
“I think not,” she says briskly. “We need to get back to get ready for the party—”
“Party?” Eddie says, and, whoops, it was meant to be a surprise.
Abby stares, wide-eyed, in Dulcie’s direction.
“Oh, bum,” Dulcie says, making a rude gesture in the opposite direction from Mary’s house. “We’re having a going-away party tonight.”
“Ah,” Eddie says, then: “Any chance I can get out of that? Bout of gastro?”
“Not a chance,” Dulcie says, grimacing. “Cath’s buying streamers.”
“Streamers?”
“It’s getting dark,” Tammy says, rocking on her heels as she peers out the window.
“She’s a bird, she’s meant to live outside,” Miranda says. She’s said it so many times in the past hour that it must be true now. Right?
“Birds can’t see in the dark!”
“I’m… not sure if that’s true,” Miranda says, tilting her head. Birds haven’t been a big focus in their biology classes. It seems like it would be an evolutionary disadvantage to have poor night vision, but she doesn’t know enough about it to definitively say.
Tammy sighs. “We should go and have one last go—”
“Absolutely not,” Aunty Faye says from the other room. “Go to bed, you two.”
Miranda looks at Tammy and shrugs.
“Ugh,” Eddie says, brushing a stray rainbow streamer off her shoulder. Cath’s decorating looks enthusiastic, if not always fully secured. A few strands dangle from the ceiling where they’re come unstuck.
“Look,” Dulcie says, gesturing to the table. “Nadiyah made an ice cream cake.”
“Am I a six year old boy?” Eddie snarks, then takes a closer look. “Neapolitan is a pretty good choice. For an ice cream cake. For an adult.”
Dulcie stifles a smile. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Skye has a good supply of beer too—”
Conveniently, Tammy appears behind them at that moment with a caddy of beers and upmarket pre-mixed drinks. Tom, Miranda, and Tammy are their de facto waiters tonight. Dulcie’s pretty sure they’re getting a sweet hundred bucks each for the deal. Skye can be such a soft touch sometimes.
“Perfect,” Eddie says, grabbing a beer. Dulcie opts for the same. The label looks rustic and handwritten—a new craft beer brand Skye is trialling on them, she has no doubt.
“Thanks, Tammy,” Dulcie says as she circles away to offer drinks to Sven and Abby.
“Was all this your idea?” Eddie gestures around them at the decorations and the thirty or so people Cath’s managed to rustle up.
“Uh, no,” Dulcie says, taking a sip of her beer. It tastes strongly of grapefruit. She grimaces.
Eddie does the same and makes the same face. “What the fuck is this?”
Dulcie inspects the label. “Popular,” she reads off the label. “I doubt that very much.”
Eddie snorts. “So… who do you reckon did it?” she asks, leaning in close and gesturing to the assorted guests.
“The potato?” Dulcie raises her eyebrows, glancing back and forth between Eddie and the assorted guests.
“Obviously,” Eddie says. “The crime of the century.”
Dulcie purses her lips.
“She’s gone,” Miranda says dolefully.
“No way, sis,” Tammy says. She sets off around the house, and Miranda hurries to follow. The roof comes to a peak in the middle, so it is theoretically possible that the chick is just on the other side, hidden from the biting wind that whistles through Deadloch even in spring.
But Miranda has the sinking feeling that that’s not the case.
And sure enough, when they round the corner back into the front garden strip, there’s been no sign of Piper.
“Fuck,” Tammy says, which about sums up Miranda’s feelings.
“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” Miranda says, more bravely than she feels. “Aunty Faye was right, birds live outside all the time.”
“Yeah, but oyster-catchers live on the beach. And what if she doesn’t know how to forage for molluscs because we hand-fed her worms for her whole life?”
“Do you think she could have gotten to the beach?” Miranda asks. It’s not actually that far — ten minutes on foot for a human, if that.
“I mean...” Tammy looks around, like she’s calculating how far a tiny little bird could hop. “Maybe?”
“Why don’t we go down to the beach and see?” Miranda says. “Maybe if we can retrace her footsteps, we can find her.”
“To Eddie,” Sven says, raising his glass of chardonnay.
“To Eddie,” the rest of the pub echoes.
“I won’t say it’s been nice, because, seriously, Deadloch is the arse end of hell, but...” Eddie starts, before taking a chug of beer. “O’Dwyer, I’ve gotta say… that is foul.”
Skye shrugs. “Swing and a miss.”
“I’ll say. Anyway. It’s been... okay,” Eddie continues. “I might even stay in touch with some of you. Big Eyes. Duleese. Sveg. And Skye... thanks for not giving me gastro.”
“Huh?” Skye says, glancing at Dulcie, who shrugs. Who knows? But Abby is giggling, so clearly it’s some kind of inside joke.
“Never change,” Eddie says, raising her bottle as everyone follows suit. “Keep on solving the mysteries of such importance as gutter potatoes forever, Duleese.”
“Eddie,” everyone shouts in almost-unison, drinks raised, before taking a sip.
Dulcie isn’t watching them, or Eddie, for that matter. She’s staring just a little behind them to Tammy, Miranda, and Tom, who are grouped up, each with a tray of empties.
Miranda is staring wide-eyed at Tammy, who is looking very interested in her tray.
Dulcie sighs, taking another sip of her ‘hazy IPA’ and automatically wrinkling her nose.
Of course. They live right next to Mary. They were probably doing something stupid like practising football with a potato for a laugh.
She gets it. Not like there’s much else to do in Deadloch as a bored teenager.
And it makes for a relatively easy solution; they can go over and clean the gutter out and Mary will probably feed them a lamington and everyone can go home happy.
“She’s not here,” Miranda says. They’re standing on the grass next to the sandy drifts where the oystercatchers nest. This is where they found her, but breeding season’s over now and nothing really remains of the nests apart from some slight indentations in the ground.
“She could be anywhere,” Tammy says bracingly.
“She could be anywhere,” Miranda points out.
“Let’s just… walk.”
They loop around the nesting area and start up the beach. Tammy kicks the occasional driftwood sticking up out of the sand, creating little explosions of wet-brown sand.
“Look!” Miranda says suddenly, pointing over towards a slight hillock in the sand where runoff from the forest is creating a tiny little path through the sand.
“Oh!” Tammy gasps, automatically reaching over and shoving Miranda to get her attention, even though all of it is already trained on the bird in front of them.
It’s a pied oystercatcher, an almost-adult, with just a few wispy grey baby feathers sticking through her sleek black coat. It’s much less than Piper had yesterday morning, the last time they saw her up close, but Miranda thinks fledging might be a pretty fast project once the juvenile can fly.
It’s pecking at the ground, making little beak-marks in the ground. As they watch, it digs up an insect of some kind and swallows it down.
“Do you think it’s—”
“I don’t know.” Miranda takes a few steps towards it and it hops just one little hop away from her.
“It’s not really scared…” Tammy says, joining her. “Do you think she knows us?”
Miranda doesn’t respond, just keeps moving slowly towards the bird. She’s not really sure what the plan is here—if it is Piper, obviously she’s very happy here on the coastline, and there’s nothing for them to do.
The oystercatcher still doesn’t move.
“Piper,” Tammy whispers softly and it raises its head, tilting to one side before it turns and takes a running leap into the sky, flying away from them.
“Can I borrow you three for a moment?” Dulcie says, following the three teenagers into the kitchen.
“What is it?” Tom asks.
“There is a potato plant growing out of Mary Odiley’s gutter. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, now, would you?”
Tammy looks down at her feet and Miranda presses her lips together. Tom looks genuinely confused, so either he’s a better actor (Dulcie is fairly sure this isn’t true) or he wasn’t with them.
“Oh, you know what that’ll be, Dulcie? That’ll be that giant kelp gull,” Tammy says. “It’s always dropping shit in weird places.”
“Oh, please, I know there’s no giant kelp gull, Tammy.”
“Nah, it was right there—”
“Will the two of you please just go over to Mrs. Odiley’s house and get the potato plant out of the gutter tomorrow? With a proper ladder? Skye can help you.”
Tammy sighs. “Fine. But it wasn’t us. It was that giant kelp gull.”
“Thank god I’m finally getting out of this shithole,” Eddie says.
“Goodbye, Eddie,” Dulcie says, rolling her eyes. “Have a safe flight.”
“Flights,” Eddie corrects her. “This shithole is so far away from anything that I have to stop over in Melbourne.”
“Well, I wish you the best of luck with that.”
“Five hours of the worst television shows known to mankind beamed into my brain? Can’t wait,” Eddie says, clapping her hands.
“Right,” Dulcie says, not sure what else they’re supposed to do. There’s still an hour-ish before Eddie’s flight leaves, because both Dulcie and Cath had insisted on leaving Deadloch an hour and half early in case of unexpected delays.
Eddie protested being woken up at “the ass crack of dawn” (seven-thirty in the morning), but it turned out to be a good thing, in terms of traffic—they’d had to detour around a logging truck crash on the main highway. In terms of Eddie, it was a bad thing, because she kept swearing about how stupid it was to only have one main road.
Dulcie turned the radio up until it drowned her out, even though it was getting more staticky every kilometre they travelled further from Deadloch.
It’s almost two now, and Dulcie has to get back by tonight, for choir practice. It’s a four hour drive, so she should really leave now, but something about the idea of leaving Eddie here seems almost wrong.
She doesn’t even have a suitcase, just an old backpack that Cath took pity on her and provided.
“Okay,” Eddie says, gesturing to the waiting lounge.
“Okay,” Dulcie says, making a weird little hand wave then immediately closing her hand into a fist.
“Okay,” Eddie says again, and goes to sit down, staring up at the TV playing a silent episode of what looks like Home and Away.
Dulcie glances over to the big sliding doors that lead out of Departures.
Then she shoves her hands in her pockets, looks at the doors again, and goes to sit with Eddie until they call her flight.
