Vanilla Bean Vengeance (Claire's Candles Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Agatha Frost

  “Do you want to see an innocent woman get the blame for something she didn’t do?”

  “No, I don’t,” he said glumly, “but I don’t see why it’s our problem.”

  “It has to be someone’s problem.”

  Damon squirmed on the spot, pouting like a child. She could tell she was getting to him; he’d always been easy to persuade.

  “I think I know a way in,” he admitted quietly, glancing at the police car outside the garage as DI Ramsbottom struggled out of his tiny Smart car, toupee fluttering in the breeze, “but it won’t be easy.”

  Claire had lived in Northash her whole life, but even she hadn’t ventured into the depths of the forest that surrounded it. When they finally broke through the treeline on top of the factory hill thirty minutes later, she realised why. Roots had tripped her, bushes had scratched her, the streams had soaked her shoes, and thanks to the previous day’s downpour, mud caked her jeans up to the calves.

  “Exciting, you said?” Damon panted for breath, hands planted on his knees as he looked back at the forest. “I think I’m going to die. Feel my pulse. It’s a heart attack, Claire, I’m sure of it.”

  “You’re just unfit,” she said, panting just as much. “We both are. Maybe my mum was onto something with the gym membership.”

  “How dare you!” Damon straightened up, sweat dribbling from his thick hair and down his beetroot-hued cheeks. “I’m not fat, I’m fluffy.”

  “And I’m Kate Moss.” Claire cleaned her glasses on the edge of the t-shirt poking out through her jacket before looking up at the factory looming over them. “We made it, that’s the main thing.”

  Sneaking past the police behind Gary’s Mechanics would have been impossible, so they’d been forced to follow the pathway down to the canal behind The Hesketh Arms. When they couldn’t see the police anymore, they crossed the canal and trekked into the forest, following the steep curve of the hill up to the factory. Though it was the same hill Claire climbed whenever she had to work, it felt less treacherous hiking up a paved road; she’d never complain about the walk again.

  “How do you even know about this secret way in?” Claire asked as they set off on the last small section of the hill, which led all the way up to the high back wall of the factory’s yard.

  “Long story.”

  “Then give me the short version.”

  “I was drunk.” Damon glanced back at the forest. “That hike didn’t seem so bad ten vodkas in.”

  “Ten?”

  “It was my brother’s fortieth,” he explained. “All my cousins were there. We went on a pub crawl around Manchester. Ended up back in The Hesketh Arms. Theresa and Malcolm stayed open as late as they could, but they turned down my brother’s suggestion of an illegal lock-in. You know what lads are like when they get together.”

  “Never thought of you as a ‘lad,’” Claire joked, nudging him with her shoulder. “More of a geek.”

  “I prefer nerd, actually.” He nudged her back. “My brother was dead set on hunting down some more drinks. At that point, he would have had white spirits if you’d handed them over in a glass. It was his fortieth, after all.”

  “Standard.”

  “I remembered a bottle of brandy I had in my locker,” he continued. “Secret Santa. I got Martin the full Alien series Blu-ray box set, and he gave me a dusty old bottle of brandy he’d pulled from his drinks cupboard at home. I should never have mentioned it. When my brother gets an idea, it’s hard to shake it out of him. He kept calling it ‘the mission,’ so we came up here to get the bottle. I blame all those years in the army.”

  “Wasn’t he a chef?”

  “A chef in the army.” Damon chuckled. “Never even went to war, but don’t tell him I told you that. Ever since his divorce, he uses the army thing to chat up ladies.”

  “Does it work?”

  “He talks to more women than I do. Somehow ‘I work in a candle factory’ isn’t as appealing.”

  The hill flattened out and they reached the wall, which was as tall as the two of them combined. Just when Claire thought Damon meant to suggest they climb it, he walked right along the wall until they came to a large chunk of missing stone.

  “They think hiding it with the bins means it’s not here,” Damon muttered as he pushed a giant bin out of the way with his foot. “I only found this because I tripped over and fell flat on my face. Saw right under the bin and through the hole.”

  When the gap was big enough, he squeezed through on hands and knees. His whole body grazed the stone, but he just fit. Claire copied him, holding her breath against the stench of whatever was rotting in the bin.

  “Those are fake.” Damon nodded up to the cameras on either side of the back of the factory. “They don’t look it, but they are.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Martin, who gave me the brandy? He fitted them on Nicola’s orders. Got them off the internet. There wasn’t a penny that woman wouldn’t try to save if it meant money in her own pocket.”

  Claire still hadn’t told Damon about Graham’s warning. They could have been lies or even exaggerations, but she knew they weren’t. The factory’s financial difficulty was the only thing that had yet to make any sense.

  “Damon, there’s something I need to te—”

  Claire stopped mid-word and they looked at each other, hearing the voice at the same time. Without needing to discuss their plan of action, they ran back to the bin and ducked behind it. The voice grew closer and closer, and even though Claire couldn’t see the speaker, she recognised the voice as Graham’s.

  “I know,” she heard him say. “I know!”

  Remembering what Damon had said about falling over and seeing under the bins, Claire wiggled down onto her stomach with only her hand to separate her cheek from the dirty cobblestones. From this distance, she made out the lower half of Graham’s face as he emerged from the left side of the factory. He held a phone to his ear.

  “I know!” he repeated. “I’m trying. I know we’ve waited a long time, but we’re going to get what we – yes, I know. I know! I told you, I’m trying. I’ll get the money, just give me more time. You know what’s been happening. I know. I know! But what do you want me to do? Sell up now? It’s going to look suspicious. Of course, I care. Yes, I do. Yes, I love you! Listen, I need to go. Because I’m in a meeting with the shift managers to sort out the mess Ben made. Yes, I know. Of course, I’m still selling, but I need to get things back on track. It could take months. You of all people should know how slow things like this sell. It needs to make money before then, or we’ll never get what we want. Okay. Yes. We’ll talk later. I love you too.”

  Damon pulled at Claire’s coat, as though to ask what was happening, but she held her hand up. Graham stopped pacing and tucked his phone into his jeans. Both hands vanished up to his face. He leaned against the factory wall, breathing heavily for what felt like a lifetime. When he finally moved, he pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, lit one, and walked back the way he came. Claire counted to a full minute before she dared move.

  “He’s gone,” she whispered. “C’mon.”

  “Are you crazy?” Damon nodded at the hole in the wall. “We’re going back right now!”

  “We’ve come this far.”

  “And we almost got caught!”

  “But we didn’t.”

  “What has got into you, Claire?” Damon pouted, clearly wanting to dive through the hole; she knew he wouldn’t unless she did. “It’s almost like you’re enjoying this.”

  Claire gritted her jaw, not wanting her grin to spring forward. As much as she didn’t enjoy the reason for her snooping, the snooping itself was thrilling. She’d never truly understood why her father had so loved being a detective, but now she got it. No wonder he was going crazy in his retirement.

  “Did you know Graham smoked?” Damon asked, changing the subject. “He didn’t strike me as the type.”

  Claire remembered the attempted kiss; she had detected
stale smoke on his breath then.

  “I didn’t realise I knew until now,” she said. “He tried to kiss me.”

  “What?”

  “He tried to—”

  “I heard that part!” he hissed. “When? How?”

  “Emphasis on tried,” she said quickly. “I went to his house last night to try and get some more information from him. Found my black book there with the vanilla page ripped out, so you were right about that.”

  “Forget about the candle. Graham tried to kiss you?”

  “I was leaving, and it just happened.” Claire shrugged. “I pulled away and left, but that’s not important. I was trying to tell you something before Graham showed up on the phone, and you’ve just heard half the story from Graham himself. Nicola was going to sell the factory to property developers to turn this place into flats, and Graham is thinking of doing the same. I didn’t understand why he’d want all that money, until now.”

  “You could figure out what that conversation was about?”

  “You couldn’t?”

  “I’m not psychic, Claire.”

  “He’s obviously having an affair too!” Claire rolled her eyes. “Nicola wasn’t the only one. Can’t say I’m surprised. The way he talked about her last night, you’d think their marriage never had a happy moment. Seemed he preferred his father-in-law to his wife. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “That I need to start looking for another job?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, “but it means Graham has just given us a third motive for murder. Revenge, money, and now love.” She nodded decisively. “Back to the mission.”

  “You sound like my brother.”

  “Where’s this secret way in?”

  Wide-eyed and clearly confused, Damon stared at her like he didn’t know the woman he was looking at. Claire wasn’t sure she’d recognise that woman herself if she were in front of a mirror. Perhaps Damon was right. Had she gone mad?

  “This way,” he said with a reluctant sigh.

  They walked towards the fire escape door that would take them into the locker room. Unfortunately for them, it only opened from the inside, but that didn’t seem to concern Damon. He gathered some strewn plastic crates and created a makeshift stepping ladder up to one of the windows on either side of the fire door. Even from the outside, Claire knew where it led.

  “It’s been broken for years,” he explained as he lifted up the edge of the window with ease. “Been complaining about it for ages, but when does that ever work around here? Not so bad this time of year, but it makes the bathroom freezing in the winter.”

  Unlike the hole in the wall, the window was big enough to comfortably climb through. Damon went first, and Claire followed, dropping into the men’s bathroom. It was identical in size to the women’s, but instead of a row of ten cubicles, it only had two, and the rest of the wall was lined with urinals.

  “No mirror,” Claire remarked, nodding at the bare wall above the sinks.

  “You have a mirror?” Damon huffed. “I hate that. Why do people building bathrooms think only women want to look at themselves?”

  “I never took you as the vain type.”

  “I’m not, but even I’d like to know if I have something on my face.”

  “I can be your mirror.” Claire scrutinised his face. “You’re clean … for now.”

  A reluctant smile pricked up the corners of his lips. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for their current adventure, she knew he wouldn’t hold it against her.

  They left the men’s bathroom and crossed the messy shared locker room to the women’s bathroom on the other side. The scent of stale cigarette smoke hung thick in the air as if every tile and cubicle door had absorbed the years of Belinda’s secret smoking like a giant nicotine patch.

  “If you were a secret camera,” Claire said, opening each cubicle to check they were alone, “where would you be?”

  They scanned the ceiling for secret devices or holes a camera could peek through, but nothing popped out. Her stomach twisted. Had they done all of this for nothing?

  “Wait a second,” Damon said, staring at the mirror. “What if it’s a two-way mirror?”

  “The factory is on the other side of that wall.”

  “Maybe there’s a gap?” He pushed his face up against the wall, closed one eye, and attempted to look behind the flat mirror. “Can’t see anything.”

  “There must be a way to detect secret cameras,” she thought aloud. “An app, or something.”

  He arched a brow. “An app?”

  “I don’t know.” She huffed, checking over the middle cubicle usually favoured by Belinda. “There must be a way. Don’t cameras give off radio waves or frequencies or something? You’re the geek – sorry – nerd. You must know something.”

  Before Damon could look offended, his face lit up like a light bulb had flipped on in his mind. He pulled his phone from his jeans and opened up the camera. Just when Claire was about to question if he’d joined her in madness, he flicked off the bathroom lights, and a red light, naked to the eye but not the phone, blinked from one of the slots in the tampon and sanitary towel vending machine – another difference between the men’s and women’s bathrooms.

  “That hasn’t been restocked for years,” Claire said as they walked towards it. The flashing light grew more erratic. “We all make sure we keep that stuff in our lockers – more for the newbies than anything. They see that and think they’re covered in emergencies.”

  Damon rested the camera on the edge of the sink before running his fingers along the edge of the metal vending machine. He landed on the lock in the top left-hand corner, but the front door didn’t give.

  “It’s locked,” he said, staring through the narrow gap around the edge with one eye closed. “It’s only a simple up and down lock, like the bathroom stalls. If we can find something thin enough to get through that gap, we can shimmy it up.”

  “I have an idea,” Claire said, already walking to the door. “Wait here.”

  She made her way to the door leading onto the factory floor. There was every possibility that Graham could be directly on the other side. She paused, wondering if she should risk being caught. She’d nearly decided to search the locker room for something … but she had nothing to lose. If she didn’t get to the bottom of the murders soon, there wouldn’t be a job to lose.

  Luckily for Claire, Graham was up in the office with Uncle Pat, Abdul, and the other two shift managers, Bianca and Oliver. None of them were looking through the window, but she still dropped down to her hands and knees. She shimmed along the old tiles, darting behind machines until she got to the wax-pouring station, where she found six of what she needed; she grabbed one and retraced her steps – or crawl – back to the bathroom.

  “Excess wax scraper,” she said to Damon when she handed over the flat tool. “Is it thin enough?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  Damon slid the tool through the gap. It fit with ease. Usually, it was used to skim the tops of tea light and glass jar candles, scraping off the surplus wax for re-melting. The lock clicked, and the door swung open.

  “Wow,” Damon remarked, shaking his head. “Maybe you’re not going crazy after all.”

  They stared at the tiny camera. It sat where the mechanics for the money slot would have been, but the machine had been gutted.

  “It’s been hooked up to the vending machine power source,” Damon said, pointing to the tangled-up wires. “Badly, but it seems to be working. I think it’s recording us right now. She must have really wanted to catch that smoker.”

  “Enough people complained about it,” she said. “More than the broken window in the men’s, I’m guessing. Where do the videos go?”

  Damon yanked out some wires and pulled out the tiny camera. He turned it around and pointed to a small slot.

  “Internal memory card,” he explained. “The videos will store directly on here and maybe send to a cloud memory for backup, but it should all be o
n here.”

  “So, you can see if Belinda was in here when she said she was?”

  “There might be an automatic overwrite process to save memory,” he said, pocketing the camera. “But if there isn’t, I can see. Shouldn’t take too long to find either.”

  “Then let’s get out of here.” Claire shut the vending machine door. “Before our luck runs out.”

  They left the factory the way they snuck in, but instead of risking the tricky forest again, they chanced Ian’s farm instead. Halfway down the hill, he emerged from his farmhouse, screaming and shouting, forcing them to run the rest of the way to Claire’s cottage. Somehow, they both avoided the cow dung.

  After she settled Damon in the sitting room with a cup of tea, a generous slice of cake, and a laptop to check the camera, she joined her father in the shed. She told him all about her conversation with Belinda, overhearing Graham, breaking into the factory, and finding the camera. She expected a scolding, but he looked more impressed than anything.

  “You’re right,” he said after considering her theories. “Graham does have three motives, and you may have just found additional evidence without even realising it.”

  “Oh?”

  “The smoking,” he said, pulling off his muddy gloves. “While you were hopping walls and playing spy, forensics found something in Jeff’s shallow grave. DI Ramsbottom thinks it’s probably nothing, and I wasn’t sure either, but now it seems too much a coincidence not to be connected.”

  “What did they find?”

  “Chewing gum,” he revealed, leaning back in his chair and staring at the cactus from the bathroom he’d transferred to a bigger pot. “Nicotine chewing gum. The kind people use to help them quit smoking.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Claire didn’t bother setting an alarm before going to sleep that night. Not that she needed to. Her mother woke her bright and early by tossing back the curtains.

  “Why?” Claire groaned, pulling the covers up over her eyes.

  “You need to get up.”