The team nodded their assent and they set off jogging through the woods.
The trees crowded around them in the darkness. The moonlight glanced off the smooth trunks of the silver birch as they jogged to the rustling sound of their uniforms and crunch of their boots. Soon they could hear the river burbling to the west.
“Keep your eyes peeled for the path,” said Constable Palmer.
They stumbled upon it within a minute, and saw the fallen tree that the reporter had mentioned. There was only one slope steep enough to possibly house the coal store. They came at it from above and, as they looked down the slope, saw a faint flicker of orange light cast over the ground from below.
Laura Conrad emerged from behind a tree, put her finger to her lips, and moved aside for the professionals.
The officers split into two teams and silently descended the slope. They saw the flat top of the bunker and went down either side of it. The front of the building had no door, and warm lamplight came from within along with the quiet chatter of two men.
On D.C. Downey’s signal, the five officers burst into the bunker.
Chapter 26
Pattie and Elliott sat in plastic chairs at the police station. The station was a slightly eerie place at night time, lit only by harsh fluorescent bulbs and echoing with the snores and shouts of the recently arrested.
Two of those arrested were James Farrell and Toby Draper. D.C. Thomas Downey had returned to tell Pattie the story of the arrest, which had happened swiftly and without incident. The officers had stormed the empty coal store, clapped the two shivering men in handcuffs, and hauled them back through the woods to the station.
Timothy Jeffries had also been strongly urged to stick around at the station, though he hadn’t formally been charged with anything. Nor had Blossom Carter, who was now about to spend her second night in a cell. D.C. Downey was waiting to get some solid answers out of their two new suspects, however…
“They’re not telling us anything,” he said, storming down the corridor. He spotted Pattie and slowed for her. “Pattie, you’re still here.”
“Like I told the girl at the desk, I have something important that you need to see,” Pattie replied, standing. “I decided to be patient.”
“Well? What is it?”
Pattie showed him.
“Good Lord! Where the heck did you get this?”
“It’s all part of the story. Maybe we should get all of our new festival friends all in one room? Assuming you’ve got their statements already?”
“You’re that sure you’ve got this all figured out?” asked the D.C. “Better to keep them separated…”
“I’m sure,” smiled Pattie. “Let me at them.”
It was arranged. A meeting room was populated with the four out-of-towners and a handful of officers to watch them. Even though they were all handcuffed, at least one of them was involved in a double murder and they were taking no changes.
Someone brought in a much-needed cup of tea for Pattie, who thanked them for it.
“I have a story to tell, and please correct me if I’m wrong about any of the details,” she began, sipping her tea. She looked first at Blossom Carter. “Ms Carter, you and Daryl Hardy drove into town the day of the festival and had an argument with Seth MacGowan over a near-miss with one of his farm animals. Daryl, you told me, had something of a bad temper, didn’t he?”
Blossom nodded. “He and the farmer had a real row over it.”
“Was Daryl the vindictive type?” Pattie asked. Blossom said nothing. “I believe that the same day, Daryl went back to that farm and, when he couldn’t find Seth, who was busy getting drunk after hearing about a break-in at his farmhouse and a subsequent argument with his wife, Daryl played a childish prank and committed a kidnapping – or, rather, a cat-napping. Seth MacGowan thought that the cat had run away during the break-in, but it was Daryl that took Seth’s cat, wasn’t it, Ms Carter?”
“Alright. Yes. I told him he was stupid for doing it. He could be really immature sometimes. I thought the cat would just wander off home.”
“But it didn’t. There were too many interesting smells in the campsite. And there were things that you found interesting too, weren’t there, Ms Carter? Like Harry Widmore, a handsome young man in a nearby tent who you befriended? You started an affair, but you had no idea what kind of man Harry was – or what his friends were like.”
Pattie looked pointedly at James Farrell and Toby Draper. “Blossom complained to her new lover about Daryl’s childish behaviour and his temper, and Harry decided he would play a prank of his own. In the middle of the night, as Harry and Blossom found somewhere private to be, Misters Farrell and Draper carried out a plan that they had worked out with Harry just beforehand. They would go to find Daryl in his sleep and give him a scare – possibly scare him off for good, so that Blossom would have a chance to be with her new beau without any difficulty. Daryl had a temper, after all. And so, James and Toby went to the tent where Daryl was sleeping and, finding a knife in the tent, proceeded with the prank … Only, it got out of hand, didn’t it, boys? Something happened, maybe a fight broke out, and the knife ended up in Daryl’s back, killing him – not the plan.”
“That’s stupid,” said James. “It’s not true! We never went near that tent; we had nothing to do with that guy’s murder!”
“Oh, no?”
Pattie produced a small yellowish object from her coat pocket. She had been keeping it in a small baggie, and now she removed it and held it up. It was a scrunched up piece of paper in the shape of a large pill. Pattie proceeded to coax it open until everyone could see what it was.
“A Polaroid photograph,” she said. “Showing Misters Farrell and Draper in a tent by the sleeping Daryl Hardy, grinning and holding a knife. You had a habit of taking photos of your silly pranks, didn’t you, boys? I saw you do it when I visited your tent for the first time. Unfortunately you didn’t count on O’Malley chewing on this photo and swallowing it. Maybe you should be careful what you spill tasty food onto, hmm? This is why you captured O’Malley and kept him in your van. You knew what he’d swallowed and you couldn’t let him run off with the evidence of your crime.”
The two men said nothing.
Pattie continued, leaving nothing out. “What you hadn’t counted on was the weak will of your friend, Harry, who had asked you to play the prank in the first place. When he heard that it had accidently evolved into a murder, he was going to give you up. He snatched up the cat and ran for Seth MacGowan’s place, across the river. You caught up to him and drowned him in the river – your own friend, to protect yourselves! You took back the cat with the evidence in his belly, but you must have missed the collar that had come loose in Harry’s hand, which we found by his body.”
The two men buried their faces in their hands. They knew that the game was up.
But Pattie hadn’t finished. “After committing a second murder, this time deliberately, you put the fear of God into your other friend, Timothy Jeffries. Mister Jeffries, maybe you can pick it up from here?”
Timothy had been quietly crying. “I couldn’t believe what they’d done. I didn’t have proof, but it was obvious. When I saw them with the cat trapped in the van, I didn’t know what it meant – although I do now. They must have been waiting for the cat to cough up the photo it ate. I guess they thought that I was going to tell on them, and they chased me through the woods. That’s when I found you.”
“And it’s probably when they discovered the handy coal store, where they would later hide out once they knew the game was up. Everything you’ve done proves your guilt, gentlemen,” finished Pattie. “The only question remaining is whether Blossom knew anything about all this, or if Harry kept it from her.”
But one look at Ms Carter showed that she could not have known: she was sobbing freely, a look of shock on her face. So, it was true that she had gone back to the tent so buzzed on new romance that she hadn’t noticed her boyfriend was dead.
D.C. D
owney crossed his arms and looked at James and Toby. “Got anything to say, gents?”
“We want a lawyer,” snarled James Farrell.
Chapter 27
The police car pulled up outside the Pat’s Whiskers Feline Retirement Home. D.C. Downey switched off the engine and smiled at Pattie. “You know, sometimes I wonder how we ever got along without you. How do you do it?”
Pattie smiled and stroked O’Malley, who had been sitting patiently in her lap. “My son was a policeman, you know.”
“I know. Well, thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it, Thomas. Go home and get some well-deserved sleep. They should make you Chief after solving this!”
“Actually, I think Juliette – Um, Constable Palmer, has her eyes on that job,” he replied, flustered.
“So what is going on with you and ‘Constable Palmer’…?” Pattie asked slyly.
D.C. Downey grinned. “About the same as what’s going on with you and Doc Knight. Goodnight, Mrs Landsbury. I’ll leave it to you to get the cat back to the MacGowans.”
“I’ll call them first thing in the morning,” Pattie promised. “Tonight I want to give O’Malley a tasty reward for cracking the case. I’m sure I can come up with something tastier than a photograph!”
*
*
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Other books by Nancy C. Davis:
Deirdre the Cat lady sleuth
Cat Sleuth: A Pattie Lansbury Mystery
Crosswords and Puzzles
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Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Page 7