Not fair! Her mind screamed. She thrashed around looking for someone to blame. No good blaming a dead man, it was too late for that. Her life hadn’t been happy with Rod but surely this was worse, to lose her home, her security, to be left with nothing. She’d already checked Rod’s bank statements and there wasn’t more than a few miserable pounds saved but she hadn’t cared, she had her home and it was enough. Now it was about to be taken away from her and someone needed to take the blame.
Beth.
If her neighbour hadn’t put the idea in her head, hadn’t suggested that for twenty pounds she could have her husband murdered and out of her life, then she wouldn’t be in this predicament. It was all her fault. And she wasn’t the only one whose life Beth had ruined, was she? It was all becoming clear now and Fiona made a noisy sobbing sound that glued up her throat. Beth had sold her poor next door neighbour, Bert, an innocent old pensioner, a wish too, Fiona was sure of it, and now he was dead and suddenly Fiona was angry. She tore up the letter in front of her, sweat running down her face. She needed a word with Beth, the woman owed her.
Chapter 10
All of Joe’s clothes lay scattered on the bed and Abby rubbed her eyes. So far she’d found nothing. The suitcase was empty now, there were no secret pockets, no hidden compartments in it, it was just an old battered empty suitcase. So why had that woman, Shandra, told her to look inside it?
Abby closed the lid down and took it to the closet. She was just about to slide it on top of some other boxes when something caught her eyes; another suitcase right at the back of the closet, this one much smaller. Abby frowned. She didn’t remember seeing it before. Maybe she’d dislodged it from where it had been hidden at the back of the closet. It was dark blue and when she pulled it down she could see the initials CJ embossed in gold on the front of it.
CJ, who the hell was CJ? Maybe Joe had picked it up from a car boot sale but Abby didn’t think so, he would have no need for it. Curiously she ran her hands over the top, it was nice, expensive leather, used though, there were scuff marks around the edges.
Abby went to the door and stood on the landing listening for a moment. She could hear Joe downstairs whistling. That was good, she didn’t want him to know she was snooping on him, she was already ashamed of herself. She trusted him completely, she didn’t need to poke into his business. She turned back into the bedroom and Vera was sitting on the bed next to the small blue suitcase.
“So you found it.” Vera said, patting the suitcase, a sly smile on her face.
She looks real, thought Abby, standing by the door watching her. Her mother-in-law was wearing the same dress and cardigan she’d been wearing the day she died. Apart from her face which was paler than usual she looked the same. She wasn’t wearing her dentures because Abby knew they were still sitting in a mug on the bathroom shelf. For some reason she hadn’t been buried in them which struck Abby as odd. Maybe the devil didn’t want to listen to her rhetoric. Vera seemed to be chewing her lips together and when she spoke again her words were slightly slurred as she attempted to wrap her gums around the vowels.
“So, aren’t you curious?” Vera asked.
Abby couldn’t find her voice and Vera laughed harshly. “Cat got your tongue? I know what you did, my girl. You stole my last Will and Testimony. Tore it up into shreds and buried it in the dustbin. You took an old lady’s dying wish and destroyed it.”
Abby let out her breath. “You had no right to take Joe’s inheritance away from him.”
“You stupid girl, you think you know your husband? You haven’t got a clue what he gets up to. I’m his mother but even I’m embarrassed by what he’s done.” Her eyes danced merrily. “It was fun watching you pander to him not knowing, thinking you were lucky to have such a good reliable husband.” Her voice turned mean, “Don’t you want to know if he’s been cheating on you, or are you so pathetic you’d rather pretend everything’s just fine and dandy?”
Abby walked slowly into the bedroom. “Go away,” she said.
“Oh, no, not until you open his special suitcase.” Vera stood up and seemed to glide towards the window. “Go on then, what are you waiting for?”
With trembling fingers Abby unclasped the suitcase, wincing at the loud popping noise it made. She glanced at the open door but she could still hear Joe whistling downstairs. What was she going to find? Her first thought was women’s underwear; maybe Joe had a secret fetish for wearing lacy knickers. Or maybe the suitcase was full of the worst kind of porn magazines brought on the dark web. Worse than that, the suitcase could be full of secret love letters from another woman. Her hands rested on the top of the case. She could feel her mother-in-law’s eyes boring into her but she didn’t look up, wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
Very slowly she lifted the lid.
At first she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. There was a long sharp knife with a large dried bloodstain on; a pair of white stained rubber gloves and stranger still, several very long needles and a large reel of thin green twine. Abby frowned. She didn’t touch any of the items just stared at them bewildered.
“I don’t understand,” she said. She looked up but Vera had gone and she could hear the soft tread of Joe’s slippered feet coming up the stairs.
Miss Lavinia Danvers was enjoying herself. She’d phoned the number Beth had given her and she was now engrossed in a battle of words with some nosey old dear on the end of the line.
“Why should I tell you my birth date?” she asked again settling more comfortably in her armchair.
“I’ve already explained, my dear, I need to know your star sign.”
“Yes, but why?”
The creaky voice sounded exasperated. “I can’t give you your wish without it.”
“So you say. Well, we’re at a stalemate. I won’t tell you when my birthday is and you won’t let me have my wish. Where do we go from here?”
There was a pause and Lavinia thought she could detect the old woman breathing into the phone. She decided to put her out of her misery. “Okay, I’ll tell you my star sign, Leo.”
The old woman seemed to sigh. “Very well, my dear. I understand now, you’re very temperamental, not your fault. I can tell you’re not in a relationship at the moment, maybe you’re being a bit fussy?”
“You mean because I won’t go out with any old bugger who asks me?”
“You’re not exactly God’s gift, are you my dear? Say yes to the next man who invites you on a date, it will be worth it to you financially. He won’t be much good in bed but a dried up old spinster like you can’t be too choosy.”
“You cheeky old mare,” Lavinia said, thoroughly entertained.
Now, I’ve told you your fortune, what is it you want?”
Lavinia raised her eyebrows. What did she want? Not much, she was perfectly happy with her life as it was; this was just a bit of fun. Still, it appeared she needed to ask for something to justify spending twenty pounds.
“I have a friend, Jenny who I haven’t seen for fifteen years, I’d like to meet up with her again.” That seemed harmless enough, though it would truly be a miracle if Shandra could accomplish it. Her friend Jenny had been dead for the past five years. Lavinia grinned to herself.
There was silence on the end of the phone.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
Well, what do you know, Lavinia thought, the old tart had put the phone down on her. No matter, she’d had her fun, it had been a small distraction but worth it.
Actually it had been nice to finally meet one of her neighbours. Lavinia was fully aware she had a poor reputation for turning away people who stood on her doorstep rattling a tin at her, or occasionally wiping the smiles of little children’s faces when she shook her head glumly at them a few days before Christmas after they’d given her a one line rendition of “We wish you a merry Christmas.” If they’d bothered to learn a verse of Silent Night things might have been different. Her income came from a pension she’d built up for twenty five years
working at the same contracting company. Half of it was siphoned off every month into her chosen charities. Not that she’d tell anyone that, she enjoyed playing the part of the miserly old half crazed villain too much.
Lavinia paused and frowned slightly. She realised she’d now started thinking about herself as old when in fact she was a mere fifty two years of age. Living alone could do that to you, she decided. Still, it was a small price to pay for the freedom she enjoyed.
Not for her husbands and children and all that entailed, she was more than content to be single, though it was nice occasionally to go out with a charming man who would entertain her with amusing chit chat while she was being wined and dined. The trouble with that was they always expected something in return. A kiss on the doorstep didn’t satisfy the modern man any more, for the price of steak and chips and a few glasses of white wine she was expected to offer up her body in part payment. According to Shandra, her fate was to hitch up with the next available rich man and put up with a lifetime of messy unsatisfying sex. Was that a better option, she wondered, than to hitch up with a poor man who was hot to trot in the bedroom? Neither idea appealed.
She sighed. Things had been very different in her day. And then she laughed, listen to me, she thought, you’d think I was eighty and past it.
She stood up, walked to the living room door and stopped abruptly, her eyes widening in shock.
Sitting in her favourite armchair was her late friend, Jenny.
Lavinia blinked several times but her friend remained sitting quite still staring at her. She looked a little different from what Lavinia remembered, somehow older. There were lines etched into her face and her once chestnut brown hair was almost obliterated by grey hair that tumbled untidily around her neck.
“You took your time,” Jenny grumbled.
Slowly Lavinia stepped into the room and took a seat on the settee opposite her friend.
“So what do you want with me?” Jenny asked. “You couldn’t be bothered to come and see me when I was dying so why are you messing about now?” Her eyes narrowed. “Bit of fun, is it? Typical of you. No sense of decorum.”
“I’m sorry,” Lavinia whispered.
“For what, Vin? Abandoning me when I needed you or killing me in the first place?”
“Dear God, Jenny, I didn’t kill you!”
“Yes you did. You left me to die. You knew I wasn’t feeling well yet you went ahead and buggered off to your party.”
“No, it wasn’t like that.” Lavinia didn’t like the way Jenny was staring at her. Her friend’s face seemed to be changing. Her eyes, once grey, were now milky white and her fingers were clawing at the arms of the chair. Lavinia rushed on, “You said you had a headache, that was all, I couldn’t have known you had a brain tumour. I phoned you and you told me you were having an early night.”
“And yet I died a couple of hours later, alone.” Jenny sounded vexed. “No matter.” She looked around the house, “Nice set up you’ve got here, landed on your feet like you always do.”
“My aunt left the house to me.”
“Of course she did, you always were the lucky one.” She grinned suddenly and Lavinia huddled backwards. There was something unpleasant about the way she was moving her lips as if she couldn’t quite synchronize her words. “Lucky, lucky Vin, always getting what she asked for.” She shifted slightly in the chair, dropping her head slightly and Lavinia cringed. The top of her head was bald with jagged stitch lines running across. She remembered they’d done a post mortem on her friend to establish she’d died of a brain tumour.
But, Lavinia thought, she wasn’t to blame, no-one was, it was just one of those things. They’d been sharing a flat together. It was true that Lavinia had wanted to go to the party but she remembered asking Jenny if she minded. Of course she didn’t, why should she?
Jenny said, “You only visited my grave once, put a small bunch of wild flowers on it and then scarpered. I bet you haven’t given me a thought for years.”
“That’s not true,” Lavinia replied hotly. Though in fact it was, until today Jenny hadn’t occupied her thoughts hardly at all. They hadn’t even been best friends, just flatmates really, thrown together by circumstances. She wished with all her heart that she hadn’t asked that wretched Shandra to arrange a meeting with Jenny, but how could she have known it would happen? Stuff like this was beyond her comprehension. She stood up. “I have to go out. It was nice seeing you again.”
“Liar.” Jenny stood up and appeared to shimmer. Her lips moved but no sound came out and she closed them, pressing them tightly together. Her voice seemed to come from a long way away. “Enjoy your life, old friend, at least what’s left of it.”
Frightened, Lavinia almost ran into the kitchen and stood panting. She’d thought she’d put one over on Shandra requesting a meeting with her dead friend but the old woman tricked her. How, Lavinia couldn’t imagine. Had she been hypnotised on the phone? She began to relax and that’s when the first signs of the headache began. Not too bad at first, just a light thumping at the base of her skull but within a couple of minutes it had grown to a terrifying drilling that covered the top half of her head. She slumped down on the chair and put her head in her hands. Was this what happened to Jenny? Now she felt sick, she could feel the nausea rising in her stomach and she just managed to lurch to the sink before throwing up. Running the cold water to clear the mess made her gag again and the retching became almost uncontrollable.
I’m going to die, Lavinia thought with sudden clarity. The pain in her head was so bad that she almost welcomed the thought.
And then it stopped.
She clung onto the taps and breathed deeply. Her headache was ebbing away and all at once she felt okay again. Was this her punishment, to suffer the same way Jenny had? On wobbly legs she made her way into the living room. Of course there was no-one there, Lavinia hadn’t expected there to be, but just as she was turning away she thought she saw the seat of the armchair move as if someone was getting up.
Chapter 11
The clock in the kitchen told Beth it was ten past three. Jason had come back from his bike ride and without speaking to her had gone straight to his bedroom and slammed the door shut. Rude, even for him.
Beth was curious. She stood beside his bike staring at it. There were patches of sticky brown mud coating the frame and the pedals but it seemed okay. She looked closer and drew her breath in.
Two spokes were jutting out of the rear wheel. Marching upstairs she pushed open Jason’s bedroom door and stormed in.
“You’ve been in an accident,” she said accusingly.
“I haven’t.” Her son’s face was set in a sullen expression. “It was nothing. A car swerved into the lane and I had to get out of the way. I just fell into a hedge.”
“Show me your hands.”
Reluctantly Jason held out his hands while Beth inspected them. The palms were scratched but nothing serious. Why had that awful woman put the idea in her head that her son was in danger? The sooner she got rid of her, the better. She couldn’t shake the feeling it had been a warning; she could almost hear Shandra’s words crackling in her ear; “Look what might have happened, what could still happen if you don’t complete the task I set for you.”
But time was running out. Seven o’clock tomorrow evening seemed a long way ahead but it was little more than twenty seven hours away, take away her nine hours of sleep and she was left with a frightening eighteen hours to find five more people.
The phone in the living room rang.
I won’t answer it, Beth decided. I know it’s her. She’s just trying to spook me.
The phone continued to ring out.
Beth knew she was sweating even though it wasn’t a hot day. I’m frightened, she thought. Shandra’s watching me right now, she can see me dithering, I know she can and she’s not going to give up until I answer her call.
Beth ran into the living room and snatched up the receiver. There was silence on the other end of the pho
ne so Beth waited. There was no way she was going to make this easy for the hateful old bitch.
“Hi, Beth.”
“Abby, I thought you were on your holidays.” Beth relaxed.
“Changed my mind. I thought you might like to come over.” Abby’s voice sounded strange, wired, as if she was keeping a tight rein on her emotions. “Joe’s gone out to the garden centre, I’m here by myself, I could use the company.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in ten minutes.” Beth put the phone down, surprised. Even though they were friends they rarely saw each other outside work hours. Still, she thought, a couple of hours away from the house would do her good.
Abby replaced the receiver back and smiled. “She’s coming over now,” she said.
Vera grinned, her tongue protruding from her purple lips. “All this is her fault,” she told Abby. “You know we were perfectly happy the way things were, now she’s gone and spoilt it for us.”
Abby nodded, still smiling. “I don’t like change,” she agreed. “Even though you were horrible to me, I liked the routine. I suppose I need you now for moral support. I still can’t believe what I found in the suitcase. What does it mean, Vera, what has Joe done?” Abby could hear the panic in her voice though it seemed to be coming from a long way away. A part of her was surprised she was going along with Vera’s plan, deep down she knew it was wrong but she couldn’t seem to think for herself any more, she just wished her mother-in-law would stop smiling that awful lopsided grin. It was obvious that Vera knew what was going on and it was something bad. “You should have warned me about Joe,” She bleated.
Vera nodded her head. “I spoke to him about it but he said I had to keep it a secret from you. I’m his mother after all, I’m on his side. He thought you might leave him.”
“Leave him?” Abby looked like she was considering it. “It would be the right thing to do wouldn’t it?”
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