Fresh Linen Fraud: A Cozy Murder Mystery (Claire's Candles Cozy Mystery Book 5)

by Agatha Frost

  Dark tinted windows.

  No licence plates.

  Through the rear-view mirror, Claire watched them slow and turn down a lane.

  “Eryk’s wife thinks she’s being followed by black cars,” Claire said, slapping the dashboard. “Turn around and follow them.”

  “Have you lost the plot?”

  “Probably.” Claire slapped the dash again. “Seeing them once could be nothing. Twice is a coincidence, but that’s the third time I’ve seen them.”

  “We’re nowhere near Northash.”

  “But considering where we’re heading, it looks like that’s where they’ve come from.” Her foot tapped as the black cars grew smaller in the mirror. “If we hang back, they’ll never know we’re following them.”

  “The question is why.”

  “To find out where they’re coming from,” Claire said. “Mysterious black cars suddenly showing up in the village … aren’t you even a little curious?”

  Sally’s fingers drummed on the wheel as she continued down the road. She ground to a halt and performed a messy three-point turn before speeding back.

  “Isn’t Anna being behind everything the current consensus?” Sally asked as they trundled down the sloping, bumpy road into the countryside. “I saw the boards on the post office this morning. Looks like she did a number on the place.”

  “The police mustn’t think so,” she said, unable to see the black cars ahead as they ventured deeper. “Charged with criminal damage and released on bail.”

  The road ended at a footbridge over a river in the shallow of a valley. Sally ground to a halt and pulled up a handbrake next to a row of allotments.

  “Dead end.” Sally clutched the steering wheel as she looked around. “Did I miss another turning?”

  Shielding her eyes from the setting sun, Claire climbed out. The black cars had vanished.

  “You’ve had your excursion,” Sally said through her rolled down window. “Let’s just get back.”

  “One second.”

  Claire walked down to the footbridge, too narrow for a car to pass over. Clutching the metal railing, she peered at the gushing river far below, wondering if they had missed a road. Wherever the cars had driven, they’d be long gone now.

  “You’re right,” Claire said as she walked back up to the car. “I was being silly, anyway.”

  “Perhaps not.” Sally climbed out of the car and pointed down a lane bending around the back of the allotments. “I heard car doors slam down there. You wear glasses. Can you see anything?”

  “They don’t give me super vision.” She pushed them up and squinted down the lane. “No, I can’t see—”

  Where the lane curved, a bright, artificial light banished the dusky darkness. Claire and Sally looked at each other with arched brows. Without a word, they set off.

  “You’re right,” Sally whispered. “I am curious.”

  As tight as the lane was, two trenches the width of tyres ran the whole way down, turned to mud by the recent rain. They hopped between the dry sections, sticking to the bushes, fences, and chicken wire surrounding the various allotments.

  “What the…” Sally’s voice trailed off as they peered around the bend. “Have they robbed a brewery?”

  The three black cars were parked in front of a block of five storage units. Light poured from the only unit with its shutter open, giving them a clear view of the hundreds, if not thousands, of alcohol bottles lined up on metal shelves inside. One guy pulled bottles from a shelf while ticking things off on a clipboard; the others boxed them. The men were moving around, but Claire counted at least ten.

  “They haven’t robbed a brewery,” she whispered. “They are the brewery.”

  “The fake alcohol!”

  “We should go,” said Claire, gulping. “The alcohol might be fake, but I don’t think those guns are.”

  While the men worked inside, two more patrolled back and forth with shotguns, their eyes constantly scanning.

  Claire clutched Sally’s arm. “Is it me or—”

  “It’s not you,” Sally replied. “He’s looking right at us.”

  Without another word, they returned the way they’d come. They tried dancing over the muddy patches as best they could, until Sally glanced over her shoulder. She clutched Claire’s hand and dragged her along at a sprint. The opening of the muddy lane came into view, as did Sally’s car, suddenly lit up by more glowing light.

  “Damn!” Sally muttered, tugging Claire through an allotment gate seconds before another black car turned down the lane. “Yeah, I’m not curious anymore. We need to get out of here.”

  As the daylight quickly faded, they crept through the quiet allotment in the direction of Sally’s car. The black cars arrived in an endless stream, but they didn’t all go down the lane.

  “They’ve blocked me in!” Sally whispered. “Bloody hell, Claire. What have you dragged me—”

  Claire wrapped her hand around Sally’s mouth and pulled her down behind a bed of thriving cabbages. The allotment door creaked open, and the gunman walked in. Pinning herself against the wooden planting box, Claire clutched Sally’s hand and held her breath.

  “I think he’s gone,” Sally whispered as another creaky hinge whinged further down. “How are we going to get my car out?”

  “Maybe they’ll move?” She peered around the planter. “Either way, I don’t think we should stay here. Get up a map on your phone.”

  Sally groaned, clenching one eye.

  “It’s in the car, isn’t it?”

  “I didn’t bring my bag,” she said. “I didn’t expect we’d be chased down by a gunman.”

  “Oh, I did.”

  “What?”

  “I just wanted to see the look on your face.”

  “Are you—”

  “Joking.” She looked around the allotment, glad to see a gate on the other side. “The further we can get from the guns, the better.”

  Crouched low to the ground, they slipped through the opposite gate. It brought them onto a tight path almost swallowed by bushes, and beyond that, the rushing river echoed through the valley.

  “What do we—”

  Birds fled the trees as a loud bang cut through the air. This time, Claire didn’t wonder if it was fireworks.

  “That was a warning shot!” a man cried. “The next one won’t be.”

  Sally yanked Claire through a gap in the bushes and onto the other side. There wasn’t another path to speak of, only a few inches of flat ground before the mud gave way to the steep slope down to the river.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” the man cried again, closer. “Go!”

  “I just want to know where my dad is,” a familiar, shaky voice replied.

  Sally and Claire looked at each other, wide-eyed and holding their breath.

  “We don’t explain ourselves to you,” the man said over the click of a shotgun emptying its casings. “Are you trying to test my aim?”

  Further down the river, the silhouette of a skinny man scrambled onto the footbridge, tripping over himself as he ran away.

  Still crouching, Claire turned to confirm the identity of the person from whom the familiar voice had come.

  The mud licked the heel of her shoe.

  And then she fell.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It might have been summer, but the river was freezing all the same. Claire’s ankle, on the other hand, burned hot.

  Water rushed into her ears, fizzing like static. She couldn’t blink fast enough to keep it out of her eyes, and she slapped a hand to her face seconds too late to save her glasses from the force that ripped them off.

  Hands gripped around her arms, pulling her up before she could think about saving herself. She gasped and sputtered, colder than she’d been since winter.

  “Bloody hell, Claire,” Sally muttered as she dragged Claire out of the water. “Are you alright? You’d already gone before I could reach out to help you.”

  Sally hauled her ont
o the muddy bank, where the canopy of trees blocked any remaining daylight and left them in darkness.

  A jacket went around her shoulders, and she realised the second pair of hands belonged to Leo. He put his finger to his lips and pointed to the bushes at the top of the slope.

  Too much water in her ears to hear the whispers.

  Too blind without her glasses to see more than shadows.

  “We’re lucky they didn’t hear that,” Leo said, propping Claire up when she winced at placing weight on her right foot. “Is it broken?”

  “Sprained, I think,” she said, wiggling it as much as she could. “I fell on my backside.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Sally propped her up on the other side. “You rolled. Backwards. All the way down.”

  Sally stared at her, biting her lip as though holding back tears, though the shaking corners hinted at something else.

  “That really happened, didn’t it?” Claire stared up at the incline. “I just went backside over head the whole way down that hill.”

  Claire stifled a laugh.

  Sally’s finally sprang free.

  “This isn’t funny,” Leo whispered, his soft voice lacking any authority. “We need to get out of here.”

  Claire and Sally coughed away their laughter as they clambered up the other side of the bank. It was just as steep but had more twigs and rocks than mud to provide purchase. At the top, they reached a flat path. An even steeper gravelled slope coiled high into the trees, but without her glasses, she couldn’t tell where it led.

  She loved those glasses.

  “What are you doing here?” Leo demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” Claire fired back, hopping on her left foot to a wooden fence she could lean against. “And of course this side has a fence to stop people rolling backwards into the bloody river.”

  “I asked first.”

  “Leo,” Claire said sternly. “I’ve been trying to find you for days. And now, here you are at the source of Northash’s newest favourite tipple-supplier, demanding to see your father. And let’s not forget the guns!” She took a calming breath. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time. I know it. What’s going on?”

  Sally gave Claire a thumbs up behind Leo’s back before folding her arms, attempting to look somewhat tough.

  “I’m in a bit of a mess,” Leo said, his bottom lip wobbling, “and I don’t know how to get out of it. I’m scared, Claire.”

  Sally’s arms dropped, all pretence at toughness vanishing.

  “That might be the most honest thing you’ve said to me all week,” Claire said. “Let’s walk and talk. Well, you walk. I’ll hop.”

  Fortunately for Claire and Sally, Leo knew exactly where they were. Apparently, he was part of a flourishing orienteering club Claire hadn’t even known existed.

  Unfortunately for Claire, the only way to get home without backtracking through the valley was to keep going up. Even with Sally and Leo’s support on either side of her, she could only hop so fast.

  “A few months ago, Eryk said we were switching suppliers,” Leo started as they traversed the gravel. “I didn’t think anything of it, in the beginning. Everything seemed to be the same. A few people returned things. I thought that was normal. I’d only been there for a few months. But then … men started showing up.”

  “Those men?” Claire asked, squinting towards the blurry lights of the storage units.

  “Those men,” he said, nodding. “They said we were in debt. The post office. At first, I thought they were bailiffs. Eryk always turned up and got rid of them before they made a scene.”

  “Eryk owed them money?” Sally asked. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “He owed them thousands,” Leo confirmed. “He took out loans with them that he couldn’t pay back. Selling their products was his way of trying to get on their good side while he repaid them. But he couldn’t keep up with the repayments, and they kept upping the interest. Every day since Eryk died, they’ve been hounding us, following us. My dad was trying to sever ties and get them off our backs, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. The raid only made things worse.”

  “They don’t seem like the most … reasonable of people,” said Claire.

  “They’re not.” He gulped. “I haven’t seen my dad since the police released him. I thought if I came here, I could reason with them. See if they knew where he was. I think … I think they took him.”

  “Why wouldn’t your dad tell the police?”

  “Because they threatened to kill us.”

  “Is that what happened to Eryk?”

  Leo nodded.

  They reached the top of the gravel path, only to find another steep slope, though at least this one flattened out towards fuzzy yellow streetlights glowing against the outlines of buildings.

  “You should report your dad as missing,” Claire said, breaking a long silence as the climbing evened out. “They can’t help find him if they don’t know.”

  “He specifically told me not to do that if anything like this happened. You’ve seen what they’re capable of.”

  Claire had no idea where they were, but they hadn’t driven that far out of Northash on the other side of the valley. To think there were such underbellies hidden deep away behind allotments in the countryside terrified her. Knowing they’d hawked their wares to her fellow villagers, her father being one of them, knocked her sick.

  “Where does Tomek fit into this?” Claire asked as they walked down the lit-up road of semi-detached houses with fenced in front gardens and TVs on behind every window. “He made you lie for him, didn’t he?”

  Leo nodded. “He took the money from the till and told me not to tell anyone. He said the police wouldn’t be suspicious. They’d expect it.”

  “So, it was a fake burglary.” Claire let out a breath, vindicated. “I knew it.”

  “I’m lucky I don’t buy my red wine from the post office,” said Sally. “Not that they sell mine.”

  “Snob.” Arm around Sally’s shoulders, Claire flicked her ear. “Leo, how did Tomek’s prints get on the gun?”

  “I-I told you,” he muttered. “There was a struggle.”

  Once again, he was frogmarching her, and although he was helping rather than ejecting her from the shop, the same feeling twisted in her belly.

  Lies.

  He’d been too honest tonight.

  Now she could easily tell the difference.

  “How are things with Berna?” she asked, intentionally not beating around the bush. “She told me you were together.”

  A lie for a lie.

  “She did?” He scratched at his neck with his free hand as they left the housing estate. “Things aren’t great right now. Terrible, if I’m being honest.

  A lie for a truth.

  “How did you meet?”

  “The post office,” he said with a genuine smile. “She came in to see her father. I’d only worked there for a month. The moment I saw her, I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

  “Leo,” Sally said in a sickly tone. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Her dad never showed up,” he continued. “It was near closing and she asked if I wanted to go for a drink at the pub. I thought she was joking. I asked if she was joking.” He paused as Claire and Sally winced. “She wasn’t. I don’t know what happened we just … clicked.”

  “Chemistry,” Sally said across Claire. “You either have it or you don’t, and it’s probably better if you can’t even explain it. It took meeting a man with whom I had it to realise I married a man with whom I didn’t.”

  “What man?” Claire asked.

  “Oh.” Sally scrambled. “Just some guy. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Claire had a strong inkling who ‘some guy’ was, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She almost congratulated Leo on Berna’s pregnancy but bit her tongue at the last moment. She didn’t know if he knew. She wasn’t supposed to know. It wasn’t like Berna had
told her.

  They were still ten miles from Northash, a fact Leo kept to himself until they reached a bus stop he knew would take them home. Thankfully, he had money as well as orienteering skills.

  After forty minutes of ankle-resting silence, which only made her notice the throbbing more, they climbed off the bus at the stop outside the factory on the hill, the line’s only stop in Northash. Rather than taking the steep Warton Lane path, they risked the shortcut through Ian Baron’s farm; thankfully, he seemed to be asleep.

  The whole cul-de-sac was dark, curtains free of twitching, except for the one house with lights on in every room.

  “Oh my days!” Janet exclaimed, jumping up from the dining table as Claire hopped through the back door. “Alan! She’s here! Claire’s here!”

  Janet pulled Claire into a hug, river-damp clothes and all. Over her mother’s shoulder, the LED screen on the oven let her know it was four minutes from eleven. Claire hadn’t considered the time – or even that anyone would have noticed her absence.

  “Been up to trouble?” her father asked, his tone not jovial enough to hide the clear worry in his eyes. “You’re wet.”

  Janet hurried out of the room as Claire collapsed into a chair at the dining table. Sally fetched a bag of frozen sprouts, wrapping them around the ankle Claire obligingly lifted and rested on another chair.

  “I found the source of the suspect booze,” Claire said, glancing at the two bottles still on the sideboard. “Not intentionally, but I think Leo could point to it on a map.” She smiled at him. “I don’t think we would have got out of there without him.”

  “Claire fell down a hill into a river,” Sally announced, almost proudly. “You should have seen it.”

  “Fell is too kind,” Claire admitted. “I rolled backwards.”

  “Backside over head?”

  “Backside over head.”

  Like Sally earlier, her father struggled to look sympathetic while holding back a reactionary laugh.

  “I kept these for emergencies after you moved out.” Janet dropped a pile of crisply ironed clothes onto the table. “You’ll catch your death.”

  “It’s August,” Claire said, picking up the khaki t-shirt she’d spent twenty minutes looking for a fortnight ago. “What kind of emergencies?”