Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1)

by Jean Saunders

  She wouldn’t want it put into words that she used him, but in this business people used one another in all kinds of ways, didn’t they? And she had learned very early on that you got your information where you could and by whatever means. There was no university course for private eyes, and the sources weren’t always as savoury as Nick. All the same, he shouldn’t take it for granted that she was always so damn accessible to him. Or pleased to see him.

  ‘You scared me half to death, creeping up on me like that,’ she yelled. ‘And if you want coffee, you’ll have to make it yourself. I’m going out of town in exactly twenty minutes from now.’

  He grinned at her scratchiness, helping himself to the coffee she always kept percolating, and took no offence. In Alex’s opinion, that was part of his trouble, charisma-wise. Despite his great looks, he still had the ability to merge into the background, as effortlessly as a chameleon.

  In his job, it was a rare strength too, of course. Everybody, crims and contacts alike, thought his personality value was zilch, while Alex knew that it wasn’t. Underneath, he smouldered. As the word came into her mind, she felt more than a stirring of interest at the thought, and quickly smothered it. Now wasn’t the time. She had too much to do.

  ‘Do you know how you turn me on when you’re angry?’ Frobisher said, mentally backing off as the emerald eyes resembled chips of ice. ‘Actually, I was in the area on business, and thought you might be interested in hearing about a body we recovered from a lake yesterday. The circumstances sound just about up your street,’ he added, with the usual callous patronage he could never quite resist.

  ‘Sorry, Nick. I’m already on a case,’ she said coolly, her accent as cut-glass now as the proverbial Austrian crystal, and betraying no interest at all.

  ‘OK. I just thought this one might have stirred even your hard heart. It was probably a crime of passion, though as far as the clothes went, she looked like one of those Stepford Wives before the drugs got to her. She was no oil-painting, mind, though she might have been once. Still, they never look good in the state I get to see them. Once the water’s got to them for a few days, and blown them up—’

  Alex was no longer listening to detail, knowing he’d go to town on the gory bits if she gave him the slightest encouragement. She didn’t want to know about bloated bodies and green-tinged skin right now, thanks. But her interest had definitely been caught.

  ‘She? Did you say she? Where? And how old?’

  She musn’t sound too eager. Bodies weren’t found every day of the week, even in Nick’s job. And there was no possible reason to suppose that this one had been Caroline Price. Only a fool would think such a coincidence could happen. And so quickly. But just sometimes Alex knew you had to let the long arm of coincidence in for a few minutes.

  ‘She was a well-preserved forty, the doc thought, though the autopsy reports haven’t come through yet as to actual cause of death. She could have been killed and then dumped in the lake. Why? Is it any interest to you?’

  Frobisher’s eyes became keener. His laid-back manner hid a canny ability to sense when somebody else was on to something. Especially something he should know, and which the other party wasn’t telling. Alex recognized the trait in him, since it was part of her own make-up. Trading information or keeping it to yourself was very much a two-way affair. She gave an unconcerned shrug, not yet prepared to confide in him.

  ‘Oh, it just triggered my memory about something I read in the paper, that’s all. Wasn’t there some group being suspected of starting up that kind of caper in deepest Wales recently? Stepford Wives and all that stuff, I mean,’ she added vaguely, thankful that he’d given her a lead by mentioning them.

  ‘Yeah? I don’t remember seeing it. But I wouldn’t mind seeing you play up to my every whim like one of those Barbie dolls, kiddo,’ Nick said with a grin, his eyes roaming over Alex’s curvaceous figure.

  ‘And I’d like to see you out of here before I have you thrown out,’ she said crisply, her smile firm.

  He laughed, draining his coffee and getting to his feet. He was never riled by anything she said. He often told her he fancied her rotten. They both knew the routine, just as they both knew it was probably never going to get him anywhere. It didn’t stop him rising to the challenge though, in more ways than one, as he frequently hinted.

  ‘All right, I’m going. But one day, Alex, one day... ’

  ‘In your dreams. And it’s Alexandra.’

  She didn’t know why she bothered to say it, except that the grandiose name she’d bequeathed herself gave her a feeling of superiority. It distanced her from the punters, and anyone else who came too close for comfort.

  But she was still smiling when he’d gone, wondering, just for a minute, how he’d be... there was a damn sight more to him that he showed on the surface, and she wasn’t being facetious in her thinking, either. He had a calculating brain, and a relentless way of never letting go of a case... and she liked a man with brains.

  But she had her own case to think about. She reverted at once to business mode and dismissed the thought of considering Nick Frobisher as anything more than a good mate. She gathered up everything she needed in her leather holdall, switched off the coffee percolator and watched from her window until she saw Nick drive away.

  Then she gave him ten minutes more before she switched on her answering machine and fax, and went down to her car.

  She wasn’t born yesterday and she wouldn’t put it past him to follow her out of sheer bloody-minded curiosity, and even though the thought of police back-up had its merit at times, it wouldn’t do her any good at all with this particular client. He had made that abundantly clear, and she didn’t want to lose her retainer before she’d even begun.

  ***

  Part of her morning’s work had been to track down just what Norman Price did. It had been pathetically easy to discover the name and address of Price Chemicals. Alex found the rambling buildings just outside London in an insalubrious area. The company may have prospered once, but there were several incongruities that hit her at once. From the look of the peeling paintwork and general shabby appearance — compared with the sleek forest-green Mercedes parked in the company director’s parking space — Alex made a shrewd guess that if the CD needed his daughter’s money, there had probably been too many dips into the profits to make the company viable any longer.

  Before she made her way to his daughter’s cottage. Alex sat in her car at a discreet distance for some while, watching the comings and goings of the various folk who inhabited Price’s world. She was definitely curious about him, wishing she could be a mind-reader when it came to the deviousness of some of her clients. And she was damn sure that applied to this particular charmer.

  From the look of the run-down buildings here, and the fact that he was so interested in his daughter’s future inheritance, she’d put even money on his Achilles heel. She’d seen too many just like him. Throwing their money about like water, gambling the profits away. Men like Norman Price often had a habit that was hard to break. It was how so many of them came to grief. They got in deep before they knew it, and the consequences often led to crime or suicide.

  It was all speculation so far, of course. But she prided herself on her woman’s intuition when it came to such things. And if it happened that a man who had got so badly out of his depth was lucky enough to have a daughter with a promised inheritance waiting in the wings, what then?

  ***

  Norman Price was thinking about Alexandra Best at that precise moment. She was nearer the truth in her assessment of him than she realized. His gambling debts hadn’t seemed any problem until six months ago when he realized he was taking far more out of the business than was coming in.

  Now he was in Queer Street. And if he couldn’t persuade Caroline to invest heavily in the family business once she came into her money... well, Price didn’t want to contemplate what would happen in that case, with the blood-sucking creditors already breathing down his neck like v
ampires. He hadn’t anticipated any problem in persuading Caroline that being a sleeping-partner in the firm would be a good move. She didn’t have a head for business, and the second set of books he would show her would convince her of the annual dividends she could expect.

  But why the silly bitch had disappeared just when he was going to make his move, was a complication he could do without. She had no men friends that he knew about — although, as they had never communicated on such delicate matters, Caroline’s little country cottage could be the scene of raving sex orgies for all he knew.

  He scowled. Knowing her as he thought he did, he doubted anything of the kind, and anyway, he didn’t want to think about it. Sex was the last thing that mattered to him these days, and if ever there was a case of anxiety — not to say panic — squashing what little libido he’d ever had, he knew it in full measure now.

  Anyway, if this bloody drop-dead gorgeous detective woman with the child-bearing thighs couldn’t even stir him to erotic thoughts, then he might as well forget them for ever. He was cute enough to have seen the glances between her and that leather-clad sleaze at the Rainbow Club last night though, and even his limited imagination had put two and two together. Or even one and one.

  And for a man with no sense of irony, let alone humour, that little notion wasn’t half bad.

  ***

  He switched his thoughts away from the two of them, and concentrated on getting ready to drive to his daughter’s cottage to meet the woman. There had never been any love lost between him and his daughter, and the distance between them had widened considerably since Caroline had become so hostile and defensive because of her deafness.

  Norman Price was a cold customer, but since father-daughter affection had never rated highly for either of them, they were better apart, and they both knew it.

  But he had to find her now, he thought savagely. It all came back to that. He had to find her, and make up to her, because without her bloody money he’d probably end up in a debtors’ prison, if there was still such a thing.

  His face was dark and furrowed as he slid behind the wheel of his Mercedes. He breathed in the clean, expensive smell of the interior and caressed the wheel more lovingly than he’d ever caressed a woman. He was in danger of losing everything and if that included the motor, it would be comparable to almost reaching orgasm and never quite making it. The worst kind of hell.

  ***

  Alex reached the small village of Wilsingham just before noon, having been held up on the motorway by an accident. Not that she had wanted to arrive before Price himself, but the delay had given her no time to call in at the village post office to make a few casual enquiries about Caroline Price, nor to stroll around the village green where the old men were gathered on the wooden seats circling an ancient oak, as predictably as summer follows spring. But there would be more opportunity for strolling later, if not today, and for buying a pint or two for the more garrulous locals in the village pub.

  Right now she followed Norman Price’s directions to the far end of the village, where the isolated cottage stood in tranquilly rustic surroundings. It really was picture-book stuff, Alex thought, if you liked that kind of thing.

  But she had left such isolation behind long ago, and vastly preferred the hectic, noisy vibrancy of the city. The country was nice for a day of nostalgia, but to her, civilization meant London.

  She saw the now-familiar Mercedes parked outside Greenwell Cottage. She had deliberately taken her time so that she wouldn’t arrive there before him. She mentally noted that a guy who could afford such a car was unlikely to need the daughter’s money on his own account and was still unconvinced that Price was all he appeared. A bit more investigation on the man himself was definitely on the cards.

  The cottage was partially hidden by a dense thicket of evergreens, and it was the ideal place for somebody who didn’t want to be disturbed by neighbours. Caroline was obviously a very private person, and she could be as isolated as she chose here without performing some disappearing act.

  Norman Price must have seen her coming, because the cottage door opened even before she was halfway up the path. The scent of roses in the white-picket-fenced garden was almost nauseatingly sweet, but it was also clear that no one had dead-headed them, nor weeded the borders, for some time. The paintwork on the cottage was spruce enough, the floral curtains were neatly drawn back with schmaltzy ties, but the garden looked sadly neglected and forlorn.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ Price complained.

  ‘Sorry if I’m a little late. A traffic accident on the motorway,’ she said, perfectly aware that his accusing voice hid unease as well as annoyance.

  He didn’t really want her here at all, thought Alex immediately. She had probably been his last resort in looking for his daughter. And maybe he’d thought a woman would be less inquisitive into his private affairs than a man. She bridled at the thought, because he couldn’t be more wrong. She had a tenacious habit of never letting go, if she thought there was something more to discover. Like the Mountie, she always aimed to get her man... or woman, as the case may be.

  Price was also clearly the sort of man who didn’t take kindly to inefficiency in others — even if they were sloppy enough in their own dealings. She didn’t yet know if that applied to him, but it was hard not to make prior judgements when it was someone you instinctively disliked. And she disliked him intensely.

  She entered the cottage and stood perfectly still in the small living-room, the way she always did when entering someone else’s place for the first time. It was the perfect way to absorb the essence of someone else’s aura. The room had a slightly musty and unused smell. She breathed in deeply, noting the heather mixture carpet and the no-nonsense armchair and sofa, grouped around the TV set. There was no smell of furniture polish, and all the wooden surfaces had a faint film of dust on them.

  All the same, Alex felt that this was the home of someone efficient, yet homely. Someone who might not be a mad keen housekeeper — any more than she was herself — but someone who liked a reasonable sense of order (viz the compiling of crosswords), and most days would be satisfied with giving everything a casual flip with a duster to keep the dust down.

  Masses of books spilled out of bookcases and shelves, but magazines of the geographic and information variety were stacked neatly. There were no women’s mags in sight, and no Homes and Gardens either. There were a few novels, but most of the books were reference books of all descriptions.

  The main focus of the room was obviously the area taking up the whole of one side of the room. There was a large desk on which there was a computer and printer, with piles of crossword grids alongside, and a photocopier.

  At a cursory glance, Alex saw that some of the grids were still in their virgin state, and others had already been partly compiled. She also noted that the drawers of the desk had keyholes, and she’d be willing to bet good money that the drawers were locked. There was no telephone. Presumably there would be no reason for a deaf person to have one. (Wasn’t there some way that BT could get around that? She wasn’t terribly au fait with the details, and anyway, it didn’t matter right now.)

  ‘Are you going to make a start then? I don’t have all day to waste,’ she heard Father Price say as she roamed around, his voice oozing impatience. He seemed oddly uncomfortable in this environment, and Alex could see that he didn’t want to stay any longer than was necessary.

  ‘Actually, I’ve already started,’ she said crisply. ‘And you must let me do things in my own way, Mr Price. I need to feel and absorb the place where Caroline lived — lives,’ she corrected quickly. No sense in worrying him unduly yet.

  ‘I’d like to take some photographs if you have no objection,’ she went on. ‘And I’d also like to photocopy a few of these crossword grids. There’s always an individual pattern to every compiler’s work, and it could be a help in tracking her down through her own particular style.’

  He looked at her as if she was stupid, a
nd she guessed that he had never had the wit or the inclination to unclue a crossword puzzle in his life. She widened her green eyes to disarm any suspicions he might have of her motives. Though why should he, for God’s sake? He was the one retaining her. Yet the feeling that he too had something to hide was very strong in her gut at that moment.

  ‘I suppose it’s all right,’ he said guardedly. ‘Though Caroline’s photo album is probably around here somewhere, and surely you can take what you want from that.’

  ‘That will be useful. but it’s not just photographs of Caroline and any acquaintances that I need: I also want to photograph the cottage as it is today.’

  Blow-ups could often reveal what the naked eye missed. They had been her godsend on other cases. But as she got her Leica out of her bag and adjusted the lens she saw Price give a shrug and stand well back out of camera-range. Interesting.

  ‘Do you have any objections if I go upstairs and look around?’ she asked next. ‘And perhaps you could hunt out that photo album for me to look through while I take a few pics. I’m sure it will be useful.’

  ‘If you like.’

  For somebody supposedly keen to find his daughter, he wasn’t the world’s most communicative man. He was cold and distant, and if Alex had been his daughter the less she had to do with him, the better she would have liked it. But, as she knew now, his need to find her all came down to money.

  Poor Caroline. Poor little rich girl. Poor little dead rich girl, maybe. Alex shivered as the hated thought tripped into her mind. But you had to examine all the possibilities without shirking, and that was one of them.

  She went up the narrow spiral staircase to the two bedrooms and tiny bathroom. The cottage was what was popularly known in estate agents’ jargon as quaint, providing you liked a place where there was no room to swing a cat. (Why a cat, particularly?) She realized she was letting her mind wander, and told herself to get on with the task in hand.