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Rachael just shook her head. "Will you come with me, please?"
Dread curdled in Tacey's stomach, though she had no idea why. Unless Wystan was somehow a health code violation...
But Rachael didn't head upstairs. Instead, she ducked through the kitchen and out to the store room. She pushed the door open and backed away. "Explain this, please."
"What the f..." Tacey spluttered. The place was crawling with giant cockroaches, like something out of an Indiana Jones film. "None of these were here yesterday!"
Rachael nodded with apparent sympathy. "They never are. Look, I'll tell you what. This is your first offence, so I'll issue you with a warning. No fine this time. If you get this seen to immediately, like today, I might be able to avoid closing you down entirely, instead of just temporarily. I can come back on Friday to do a follow up inspection, and if there's evidence you're taking action, and this place is safe to serve food again, maybe you can open on the weekend."
Tacey gaped. For a long moment, she had no words. And then fury surged through her veins, and she had all the words. "I can't stay closed all week! Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow. They'll all be gone by then, just like they were yesterday, I swear."
Rachael frowned. "You do realise that if I come back tomorrow and they're still here, I'll have to close you down indefinitely, right? But Friday..."
"Tomorrow," Tacey insisted. "I'll call the pest control guy who was here yesterday and get him here today."
Five minutes and a desperate phone call later – during which Dave, the pest control guy, sounded as confused as Tacey felt – and Dave was already on his way.
Rachael didn't have time to wait for him, but she agreed to return first thing in the morning, to determine whether the café would be allowed to open tomorrow, or at all.
TWENTY-TWO
"Sorry it took me so long. Some idiot had rolled his truck on the freeway, and traffic was backed up halfway to Joondalup. Now, did you say you found a cockroach? It must have flown in from next door, because this place was cleaner than my mother-in-law's bathtub on rent inspection day." Dave marched in with a toolbag in hand.
Tacey hadn't been able to even look in the store room. She really, really wanted to believe she was hallucinating. "The health inspector found a plague of cockroaches in the store room. See for yourself."
Dave raised his eyebrows, then strode off, muttering. The muttering turned to loud swearing when he found them.
Several hours later, when Dave announced that every last bug was dead, Tacey almost didn't want to go in to see the carnage. But Dave insisted.
"I told you, if any pests moved in, they'd have come in with your supplies. All it took was one bag of flour – this one." He nudged the offending sack with his foot.
Unlike the others, this one had been sliced open along the top. Then Tacey looked at it more closely.
"This didn't come in yesterday's delivery. It's the wrong flour. Strong flour. We got this stuff a month ago, because it was all the supplier had, but the muffins and cookies just weren't right. So I tossed out the one open bag we had, and sent the rest back. This bag was in the bins out the back. Someone must have brought it in here, full of bugs..." Tacey shuddered.
"Only if they filled it with roaches first. You might get a couple in a bag in the bins, or half a dozen, what with the plague they had next door, but this many? Someone filled that bag right up before they put it into your café," Dave said.
"One of the people from the backpackers?" That's where the complaints had come from, so someone over there must have known.
"Someone over there must really hate you, do to something like this," Dave said.
Tacey could only shake her head. "But they all get ten percent off here, if they show their key. I can't imagine why anyone over there would want to close this place down."
"Well, someone sure hates you, is all I can say," Dave said. He nodded at the window, now wide open to vent the noxious fumes from the store room. "You should get that latch fixed, too. It doesn't close properly. Anyone could come in that way."
That was probably how the sack of bugs had been brought in in the first place. Which made no sense, because Tacey had never opened that window. She'd tried when they first moved in, but it'd been jammed shut. Now, it looked like someone had taken to the latch with a chisel, chipping away decades of paint to reveal the timber frame beneath.
"Someone's really got a grudge there, if you ask me," Dave said. "Are you sure you don't have any enemies?"
Tacey opened her mouth to deny it, and then remembered Matt. He'd pranked the school canteen once with a bag of bugs when they'd changed the garlic bread recipe. He'd boasted about it to her in private, afterwards, because he'd been so proud of not getting caught.
Was he trying to torment her, now, too?
"Tacey?"
She shook her head. Dave had been talking to her, and she'd been lost in her thoughts. She didn't have time for that. She needed to fix this, now. "Sorry?"
"I said, I've just asked the office to email yesterday's inspection report. I'll get today's one written up, and send it through tonight. Or would you prefer me to deliver it personally?"
