Rough And Deadly (A Much Winchmoor Mystery Book 2)

by Paula Williams

  Even though she was engaged to your brother at the time? I wanted to ask. But didn’t. Instead, I gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.

  “Of course there was nothing to it. I was there, remember? And I tried to tell Mum that. But she’ll be ok now she’s calmed down. She was just a bit disappointed because she’d been looking forward to an afternoon out, just the two of you.”

  He sighed. “I know. And I feel bad about that. It’s just… I don’t know. I just can’t seem to do anything right at the moment. It’s like everything I do or say gets on her nerves. I don’t know what it is with her.”

  I had an uncomfortable thought. “You don’t think it’s because of me, being back home. Getting in the way and all that, do you?”

  “Of course not. Your mother loves having you back home.”

  I noticed he didn’t say that he loved having me home. He was obviously still hankering after his snooker table.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much she worried about you when you were in Bristol,” he went on. “She’d like nothing more than to see you and Will, happily settled and living—”

  “Whoa, hang on there,” I cut in quickly. “Will and me – it’s not like that.”

  He gave a wry smile. “Maybe not. But you know your mother. The first time you went out with him, she wouldn’t stop going on about how happy Will’s mum, God rest her soul, would have been to have seen the two of you together. I think from the day you were born, Sally and your mum were planning the wedding for you and Will. I dare say she’s already bought her hat.”

  “Then she’d better return it and get her money back,” I said quickly. “Because Will and I…” I broke off and kicked at a loose stone on the path with the toe of my shoe.

  “Go on, pet,” he said, but I shook my head.

  “Come on, Dad. Let’s go and unload that rhubarb before you drop the lot.” I gave him a quick hug and opened the back door for him.

  He went in ahead of me. I almost bumped into him as he stopped abruptly and swore. Rhubarb cascaded to the floor, landing in an untidy heap at his feet.

  I eased past him and the rhubarb to see what had happened.

  Talk about kitchen sink dramas! This was getting seriously weird.

  It was almost an action replay of yesterday afternoon. Only instead of Dad and Tanya in a clinch up against our kitchen sink, it was Mum and Uncle Richard.

  They broke apart at the sound of the rhubarb avalanche and turned to stare at us, eyes wide, faces white and strained.

  “Terry, Katie.” Mum was the first to find her voice, although it came out as a strangled whisper. “I was just – Richard was just—”

  “Richard was just going,” Dad said in a voice I’d never heard before. Not even the day of my twelfth birthday when I was showing off my new bike to Jules, lost control, and ended up crashing through his precious sweet peas just three days before the village Flower and Produce Show.

  Then he’d been scarlet with rage. But now, he was all ice cold, quiet fury. He didn’t look like my dad at all. Instead, he looked like a stranger who was really, really struggling to control himself.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Terry,” Mum snapped. “Stop being so ridiculous.”

  It was an unwise choice of words. His tenuous hold on his self control slipped.

  “Oh, ridiculous, am I?” he snapped back as he stepped over the rhubarb and advanced towards them, fists clenched, eyes sparking with fury. “That’s all I am to you both, isn’t it? A figure of fun. To be laughed and sneered at. Well, I can tell you, I’ve had enough of it. Get out, Richard.”

  “Terence – sorry, sorry.” Uncle Richard said quickly as Dad rounded on him. “I mean, Terry. Look, I—”

  “Get. Out.”

  “But—”

  “You heard me. Get out of my house. Now.”

  Richard shrugged, looked across to Mum and said quietly: “Will you be all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Ok then, I’ll go. Thanks for listening, Cheryl. I appreciate it.”

  Then he left by the back door with as much dignity as was possible for someone who’d had to wade through a forest of rhubarb to reach it.

  ***

  There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Uncle Richard’s car driving off.

  My parents were still facing each other across the kitchen table. Mum with her back to the sink, Dad gripping a kitchen chair so tightly, his knuckles were white.

  Both were breathing heavily as if they’d just run a marathon. Neither spoke.

  I’d never seen them like this before. They’d had their spats in the past, of course they had. Mum would rant and rave and Dad would go all quiet and mutter. And then, a couple of hours later, they’d get over it. And everything would go back to normal.

  But this was something else.

  They were looking at each other like two angry strangers. And I didn’t know what to do.

  I wished Gran Latcham was still alive. I still missed her terribly, but never more so than at that moment. She’d been a feisty, birdlike little woman, who barely came up to my shoulder, let alone Dad’s or Uncle Richard’s. Yet her sharply spoken, “Boys! Behave yourselves!” would have the pair of them trembling like naughty kids who’d been caught raiding the sweet jar. What would she say if she could have seen her ‘boys’ just a moment ago, I wondered, squaring up to each other like a pair of bare knuckle fighters?

  “Mum. Dad,” I said but neither of them took any notice of me.

  “It was always him, wasn’t it?” Dad said bitterly. “I was only ever the consolation prize. And now it looks as if he’s a free man again – that’s what he came here to tell you, wasn’t it? That Tanya is absolutely set on a divorce.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. If you must know, he came to warn me – to tell me that Tanya said she was going to—” she broke off, looking across the room as if she’d only just noticed me.

  I cleared my throat. “Look, um, you two, well, you obviously need to talk. I – I’ll just pop up and get my laptop then I’ll head off. Give you some space.”

  “There’s no need,” they both said at the same time. At least they could agree on something.

  “You’re going nowhere,” Mum said suddenly. “I am.”

  She picked up her car keys from the hook by the door, grabbed her coat and left.

  “Where’s she going?” I asked Dad.

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  “Don’t you think you should go after her?”

  Again, he shook his head.

  “She looked pretty upset, Dad. She shouldn’t be driving when she’s in that state,” I fretted. “Shall we go after her? I’ll come with you.”

  “No need,” he said. “She’s probably gone to see your Grandma, who’ll tell her what a waste of space I am and how she married the wrong brother. It’s what she’s always thought.”

  “Of course she doesn’t,” I lied, because, in fact, that was exactly what Grandma Kingham thought – and said. Whenever she got the chance. And if she didn’t use those exact words, it was what she implied.

  Before Elsie told me about Mum being engaged to Richard, I’d always thought it was just because she didn’t like Dad. She was a terrible snob and looked down on his job as a stone mason. She thought he should be doing a ‘proper’ job, like his accountant brother who went to work in a collar and tie, rather than dusty old overalls.

  “And if she hasn’t gone to her mother’s, then she’s with Richard,” Dad said. He let go of the kitchen chair, pulled it out and sat down heavily. His shoulders sagged as all the fight went out of him. He looked sad and defeated.

  “Don’t be…” I was about to say ridiculous but stopped myself as I remembered how he’d reacted when Mum had used that very word. “Of course she hasn’t. For goodness sake, there’s nothing between Mum and Uncle Richard. What we saw when we came in just now was as innocent as what I saw when I walked in on you and Tanya yesterday.”

  “You reckon?” He didn’t
look convinced.

  “Look, call her. Not yet, obviously, because she’ll still be driving and won’t pick up anyway.”

  “There’s no point,” he said. “She won’t answer.”

  “Of course she will.”

  “I don’t think so.” He pointed across to the dresser, where Mum’s phone lay on top of her well-thumbed copy of Recipes to Cleanse Your Body from the Inside Out.

  “Do you want a cup of tea?” I asked him. “Or something to eat? I think there’s probably some of yesterday’s mac and cheese in the fridge.”

  He pulled a face. “No thanks, love. I’m not hungry. I think I’ll just…” He looked down at his watch.

  “The pub’s shut,” I said quickly. “Shane was leaving as I went past just now. And you know Mary doesn’t stay open too long on a Sunday afternoon.”

  “I wasn’t planning on going to the pub,” he said. “At least not for a drink.”

  “Dad!” I scowled at him. “You weren’t thinking of going to see Tanya, were you? How’s that going to help anything?”

  His chair scraped across the tiled floor as he stood up. “I just want to know what’s going on, love. You heard what your mother said. Something about Tanya saying she was going to… going to what? That bloody woman has been dropping hints ever since she got here that she has something she’s dying to tell. And I intend finding out what it is. Once and for all.”

  “But there’s no point. Tanya’s not there. She drove off while I was talking to Shane.”

  His shoulders sagged again and he looked like a little lost boy. “In that case, I might as well go back to the allotment. There’s plenty more onions needing hoeing.”

  I gave him a hug and let him go. He obviously had more thinking to do. I picked up the abandoned rhubarb, piled it on the draining board and opened the fridge.

  Yesterday’s tofu and sesame soba noodles looked even less appealing that they had then. I closed the fridge door and opened the freezer instead.

  Today was turning out to be one of those days when only a huge tub of double chocolate chip ice cream was going to hit the spot.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ice cream helped. It helped a lot.

  I loved my parents and didn’t want them to split up. But on the other hand, if they were making each other miserable, that wasn’t good for either of them. Dad had been right about one thing. Mum had been getting more and more edgy recently. But it had started way before Tanya’s arrival.

  I still worried that I was part of the problem. After all, our house wasn’t that big, particularly as a good proportion of the downstairs was taken up by the salon. So, we were rather jam-packed in, which was fine when we were all getting along. Not so good when we weren’t. Like now.

  I thought about Will’s suggestion last night that I should move in with him and his dad and, for a moment, I was tempted. Until I remembered Anna and the way she and Will had been laughing together in the yard. And the way he’d looked at her when we’d bumped into her in Dintscombe.

  If Will really was interested in her, I didn’t think I could bear seeing their romance blossom.

  When we were growing up and were still good mates, I always used to take a keen interest in his love life and, to a lesser extent, he in mine. I’d pester him for details of each new romance and would often give him a nudge as to which girls fancied him and whether they were worth bothering with.

  Now, of course, it was the last thing I wanted to hear about.

  Not for the first time since it happened, I wished we’d never had that first kiss. Or any of the other ones. Not that I hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed them at the time. Will was a fantastic kisser. And even now my knees turned to water just thinking about how warm and soft his lips were, how the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, how he made me feel safe and warm in his arms.

  But that first kiss had changed everything, and not necessarily for the better. Because now, we were not exactly a couple, despite what the Grumble and Gossip Group thought. We had the odd date, like last night, but it was all getting a bit awkward, like we didn’t know how to behave towards each other any more. We certainly weren’t the easy-going friends we used to be, and I missed that like crazy.

  Right now, I needed a friend. But there was as much chance of finding one of those in Much Winchmoor that Sunday as there would be of finding the 167 bus. Maybe I should have gone fishing with Shane after all.

  The house was unnaturally silent. There was no excited chatter from Sunday afternoon football on the TV in the sitting room. No humming from the driers in the salon or the buzz of chatter and gossip. No clattering of pots and pans as Mum whipped up one of her concoctions.

  It was almost as quiet outside. Much Winchmoor on a Sunday afternoon isn’t so much sleepy as comatose. I could hear some of Will’s ewes up on Pendle Hill, calling for their lambs to stay close. And somewhere in the distance came the wail of a siren whilst, nearer home, there was the drone of a tractor.

  I opened my laptop and settled down to work. I checked through the precious few notes I had on Margot and found the press release she’d given me when she’d first put herself forward for election to the parish council.

  “I don’t give interviews to members of the press,” she’d announced as she’d peered down her long beaky nose at me. “But I think you’ll find everything you need in here.”

  It was all about her plans about improving the village, cleaning up the environment, sorting out the recycling collection muddle and various other schemes for saving the planet single handed. But nothing personal and, when I’d asked her for some background stuff, she’d refused. Said it was the future that mattered, not the past, and that was the trouble with places like Much Winchmoor. People kept harping back to the past instead of concerning themselves about the future.

  There was also a load of bumf about her self-styled ‘Winchmoor Estate’ and her holiday cottages, none of which I could use.

  I’d managed to get just twenty-seven usable lines out of it. Most of the available column space had been taken up with Margot’s photograph, more’s the pity. They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but not to someone like me who gets paid linage. I’d settle for the words any day.

  I looked up Stuart Davies’ contact details. I could usually count on him for a quote, and this time was no exception.

  “Yes, of course. I’d be happy to contribute to an article about Mrs Duckett-Trimble,” he said. “Such a tragedy. I didn’t know her very well, but I feel that, if she’d got elected, she’d have made a very valuable contribution to the parish council. She had such drive and energy. It was a pity that both ladies couldn’t have been elected. I did say to them that vacancies arose quite often. In fact, it’s unusual to have a seat contested. People aren’t usually queuing up to serve on the council.”

  “What will happen now?” I asked. “Will Fiona Crabshaw be elected without there having to be an election?”

  “No. The poll will be abandoned and the Returning Officer will order a new election to fill the vacancy, which will have to take place within thirty-five days of the date fixed for the first election.”

  “And will Fiona have to go through the nomination process all over again?”

  “No. At which time, of course, if no other candidate comes forward, she’ll be returned unopposed.” He sighed. “I don’t suppose she’d have wanted to win that way, though.”

  I thought of the way her eyes had lit up when I’d said that she’d now get her seat. She’d smothered it quickly, but not before I’d seen that little gleam of excitement in those unusual lime marmalade eyes.

  “Of course, there’s always a chance another candidate will come forward,” he went on. “But I think that’s highly unlikely.”

  I thanked him for his time and settled down to finish off my article, trying hard to puff it up to more than twenty-seven lines this time. But it was difficult to stay focussed as I kept listening out for either Mum or Dad.

  It was beginn
ing to get dark when Dad came home. Mum didn’t come back at all.

  “Should we call Grandma?” I asked for what was probably the fifth time, later that evening. “Just to see if she’s there.”

  Dad shook his head. “I’d rather not know.”

  “But something might have happened to her. She may have had an accident.”

  Dad gave an impatient sigh. “Of course she hasn’t. You’re worrying over nothing. I can tell you now, love, she’ll be either at her mother’s or she’ll be with my brother. Either way, I really, really don’t want to know, as I’ve already said. Now, I’m off to bed. And I’d advise you to do the same. It’ll all sort itself out in the morning, you’ll see.”

  He stood up and was about to go up to bed when, from somewhere in the house, a phone rang.

  “Is that yours?” Dad asked.

  But it wasn’t my phone ringing. I certainly didn’t have a ringtone that belted out Michael Bublé. But I knew someone who did.

  Mum. I hurried into the kitchen and picked up her phone.

  “Mum?” I said, which was pretty silly, seeing as it was her phone.

  There was no answer. I looked at Caller ID and saw a number I didn’t recognise.

  “Who is this, please?” I asked.

  “Katie? Is that you?” The voice on the other end sounded puzzled. But it was a voice I recognised.

  “Uncle Richard?”

  “Sorry. I thought I was phoning your mother. I must have got the wrong number.”

  “No. You didn’t. This is her phone.”

  “Oh right. Is she there?”

  Relief surged through me. I knew Dad had got it wrong. Of course she wasn’t with him. She must have gone to Grandma’s after all.