Thicker Than Water (Alexandra Best Investigations Book 1)

by Jean Saunders

  The ambulance man spoke again. ‘We need to check you both over at the hospital in Norwich, miss.’

  ‘I don’t need any checking over. I only passed out. Miss Price is the one who needs medical attention.’

  ‘Mr Frobisher insisted that we should take you as well, and I’m sure he was right,’ the man said. ‘You both had a nasty shock back there.’

  Well, God bless Nick, Alex thought in some annoyance. She was fine, and she wanted to be home. The fact that she knew she was ungrateful towards him didn’t help her feelings. She thought Gary might have come in the ambulance too, but if he had any sense he’d clear off and be thankful he needn’t have anything more to do with Alexandra Best, Private Eye not-so-extraordinary...

  Conversation dried up after that. They must be nearly there, Alex thought thankfully, as the outskirts of Norwich came into view. All she wanted was to get this over and take a taxi back to collect her car. She glanced towards Caroline to tell her it wouldn’t be long now, and then her intention was stopped in mid-thought.

  Norman was making signs to his daughter now, and she was looking at him intently. It took a few seconds for Alex to realize that it was the sign language Caroline pretended not to understand, and she groaned inwardly.

  From what she had learned of Norman’s daughter, she had wanted none of that. Caroline hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge to the outside world that she was deaf or had a problem. Caroline was the feisty one, the fiercely independent one...

  And Norman could be blowing it all now with this clumsy attempt at being the Caring Father.

  She saw Caroline’s face flush with colour. She wasn’t so bad-looking when she wasn’t scowling or glaring at people, Alex thought. As Gary would say, she’d probably scrub up quite nicely... she saw Alex watching her and smiled faintly.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Alex said, knowing she had to ask. ‘I love you,’ Caroline said softly. ‘And I love him too.’

  ***

  ‘It was bloody creepy, I can tell you,’ Alex told Gary, when she had got the all-clear from the hospital and they were both at the B&B preparing to leave. ‘I mean, all this time I’ve thought Norman didn’t have a compassionate or fatherly bone in his body, and there they were, hugging one another like two lost souls.’

  ‘It’ll never last,’ Gary said cynically.

  ‘Maybe not, but that’s up to them. I’ve done my job.’

  ‘Except for getting paid.’

  She smiled. ‘Oh yes, there’s that. And I do want to thank you, Gary, for everything you did, especially facing Daneman. He was completely mad, you know, and you were marvellous.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  Alex turned slightly away. ‘For now. Let’s see how it goes, shall we? Unless you were expecting a cut?’

  He laughed. ‘I wasn’t. We had plenty of laughs along the way, didn’t we? I dare say you’re glad to get the Prices out of your hair, and you deserve to take some time off now. We’ll be in touch again sometime soon.’

  ***

  About a month later, Nick Frobisher came breezing into Alex’s office. Life had been fairly mundane since then. She hadn’t seen Nick for some time, and she greeted him cheerfully.

  ‘Got over your little jaunt yet?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks, Nick. So what’s the latest? I’m sure you’re not just here for your health.’

  ‘One of these days, Alex, I’ll tell you just why I’m always hanging around, but I’ve a pretty shrewd feeling that you’re not ready to hear it yet.’

  ‘So why are you here now?’ she said, not denying it, and knowing only too well that he was right.

  She loved him as a friend. Someday it might be something deeper, but not yet. Any more than she loved Gary, whom she hadn’t seen since the day of Caroline’s rescue. A fine fair-weather friend he had turned out to be, but she had to admit she was secretly relieved about it. In her business, it was better if you walked alone... most of the time.

  ‘I thought you might like to know that we’ve been keeping tabs on Norman Price’s business affairs. It seems he was in debt up to his eyeballs, but now his daughter’s got him off the hook by way of her inheritance.’

  ‘Really?’ Alex said incredulously. ‘Then I’m disappointed in her. I didn’t think Caroline would turn out to be spineless after all she’d gone through—’

  ‘She’s not. Far from it,’ Nick said. ‘Your Caroline has got a business head on her shoulders, and it seems she put certain conditions on paying off Daddy’s debts. She’s become a partner in Price Chemicals, and has come out of her shell enough to work part-time in his office. I reckon it’s mostly to see he doesn’t cheat on her, though.’

  ‘Well, good for her,’ Alex said. ‘And what about the slimy cousin? I hope he’ll get a good long sentence for his part in all of it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s all under control. Unfortunately, Caroline has refused to nail him, and she and her father want nothing more to do with him. And since Daneman fried on his boat, there’s no one else to come forward.’

  ‘But you had Jeremy Laver’s statement. He admitted it! Damn it, Nick, you can’t leave it like that. He’s got to go down for it!’ She felt close to tears, remembering how terrorized Caroline had been, and that her cousin was just as responsible for it as Daneman.

  Nick shrugged. ‘If the Prices won’t testify there’s not much we can do to force them. And you have to remember that Caroline never actually saw Jeremy at any time. She didn’t know he had anything to do with it until she saw Daneman’s reflection in the mirror and read the name Jeremy on his lips. But if you think about it, he ends up with nothing. No inheritance. No family. No funds for his theatre. He’s a loser all the way.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t satisfy me,’ she said angrily.

  He came around her desk and pulled her into his arms. She stood there rigidly, not prepared to be mollified.

  ‘Let it go, Alex,’ he said coolly. ‘As far as you’re concerned, the case is finished. But don’t worry. We haven’t done with Jeremy Laver yet. As you say, we’ve got his statement, and he’ll get what he deserves. So why don’t you shut up shop for the day? Go home and take a break — and have dinner with me tonight.’

  She hesitated for a few minutes, and then she nodded. Why not? She knew he was right about one thing, anyway. As far as she was concerned, the case was well and truly over. Norman Price had lived up to his word and paid her fee, and he had added a nice fat bonus into the bargain.

  Presumably he’d allocated all her expenses before Caroline’s inheritance had come through. Now that it had, she guessed he was laughing. And so was she.

  But since the two of them had formed a new and apparently amicable alliance — she mentally crossed her fingers at the thought — she might as well forget them. It was nothing to do with her now. She let out her breath without realizing she had been holding it in, and smiled at Nick.

  ‘Dinner sounds great. I might have something interesting to tell you by then.’

  ‘Oh? What’s this? Another baffling case you want me to help you with?’ he said arrogantly, his eyes becoming keener at once.

  Alex laughed. He wasn’t the only one who could keep someone guessing.

  ‘You’ll have to wait until tonight to find that out, won’t you? In any case, I haven’t sorted out the details yet.’

  When he left her office, after she had succumbed to a very satisfactory kiss, Alex decided to do exactly as he had suggested. Shut up shop and go home. Then she was going to take a long leisurely bath, relax with a large glass of vodka and lime, and drink a silent toast to Caroline Price for her strength of character and her determination to survive.

  But first of all there was somewhere else she had to go, and something else she had to do.

  ***

  ‘Hello again,’ said the chatty girl at the travel agents where she had been before. ‘Have you decided to take a holiday on the Broads after all, then? You’ve left it a bit late for this year. The season’s
more or less over, and the weather’s on the change now, so next year would be your best bet. Not that you can ever guarantee the weather in this country—’

  Alex stopped her in mid-flow, with the feeling that if she hadn’t, the girl would have gone on with her sales pitch for ever. ‘Thanks for the advice, but I’m not worried about the British weather right now. What I’ve got in mind is as far away as possible, and something rather more exotic than a boat on the Norfolk Broads. So tell me what you’ve got in the way of winter cruises. Luxury, of course.’

  If you enjoyed reading Thicker Than Water by Jean Saunders you might be interested in A Real Shot in the Arm by Annette Roome, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from A Real Shot in the Arm by Annette Roome

  Chapter One

  The years had crept up on me while I wasn’t looking, and there I was, forty, standing in an untidy kitchen, having done very little since I was born but stand in kitchens in varying stages of untidiness and wonder what I was going to do next. It was just after Christmas, and the light filtering in from outside was as grey and as bored with what it touched as I was. I looked in the mirror. There was my face, looking like a weather map just before a particularly windy day: masses of lines running together into converging depressions. My hair, once auburn, was dull as a winter pond, and my eyes, which Keith in youthful passion (and with wild inaccuracy) had described as “traffic-light green for go”, were now sunk into dark recesses. It was a bad moment. I looked around the kitchen, festooned with the unappetising debris of family festivities, and was overcome with a raging desire to destroy everything in sight. I didn’t do it, of course; I’d have had to clear up the mess.

  Instead, I did what I always did to drive away what people call “the blues”: I got a black plastic sack and started methodically disposing of the rubbish. Then I would set to with a variety of cleaning liquids and powders and several cloths, and after that there would be the rest of the house, Hoovering, washing, etc. By the time Julie, Richard and Keith came home I’d be feeling a lot better, and anyway I’d be so busy tidying up after them I wouldn’t have time to think about it much. So, with a full programme ahead of me it’s surprising I stopped to read the paper as I spread it on the floor but I did, and that momentary lapse changed my life. What I read was an advertisement in our local Tipping Herald for a junior reporter. Years ago, before babies and sterilising routines took their toll, I had wanted very much to be a newspaper reporter. Now, as I looked at the advertisement, the years closed up like a telescope, and a young girl’s pulse brought colour to my cheeks. Later I told the family about it enthusiastically. My son Richard, age twenty, encouraged me to have a go; Julie, my sixteen-year-old, was thrilled — would we be able to jump queues for the cinema and pop concerts on my Press card? she wanted to know. Keith took a different attitude.

  “You’re nuts, Chris!” he said. “That’s a full-time job! If you want to work, fine — get a part-time job in Marks and Spencer if you’re so anti-office work — you’ll even get a staff discount. I absolutely forbid you to be so stupid about this newspaper nonsense.”

  I went for my interview early in January, the day of the first snowfall. Mr Heslop, the editor, and I, established an immediate rapport. He had also recently suffered a severe trauma by courtesy of his mirror — that of waking up on his fiftieth birthday to be confronted by a bald man with bad skin and a pronounced paunch. He said he detected a kindred spirit in me: I was mature, sensitive, and yet youthful in approach. I don’t know which of us he was trying to flatter. He gave me the job.

  Keith was right of course: I couldn’t cope with the house and Julie’s emotional problems and getting the stains out of Keith’s sports gear as well as the job. Worse, reporting on Council meetings and the appearance of brides at weddings was almost as dull as waiting for another day’s dust to accumulate on the television screen, or daisies to open in the lawn. I only kept on with it because it made Keith angry, and we were entering one of our bad patches. I never knew what brought these on, but they were characterised by arguments he started with the words “you never”, or “if only you would”. If I didn’t want to spend my time apologising for nebulous faults, then my only defence was to work out new ways of making him angry, and I was getting quite good at this.

  Anyway, one Monday morning in early July, Mr Heslop came to see me. He’d just had another row with Pete Schiavo, his senior reporter, who had a quick wit and a sharp tongue and always upset him.

  “That’s it,” said Mr Heslop, breathing heavily. “I’m not sending him, and I think you’re ready for it anyway.” He beamed at me magnanimously. “The Conference on Drugs and Alcohol Abuse at the Clocktower Hotel. It’s going to be quite a big deal, sponsored jointly by Leisching Pharmaceuticals and local businesses. You can cover it. That idiot would’ve just sat there knocking back vodka and embarrassed us. Let’s see what you’re made of. I know I can rely on you. It’s nice to know I can rely on someone.” He went off to his office, muttering, to have another ginseng tablet. A few moments later, Pete sauntered down the corridor, whistling. He was carrying a small off-licence bag crammed with the empties from the bottom drawer of his desk.

  “Goodbye, Wonderwoman,” he said. “I’ve got the rest of the week off. I’ll bring you back a stick of rock. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do — in fact if you can think of anything I wouldn’t do let me know — I might like to reconsider.”

  I learned later that what had actually happened was that Pete had told Mr Heslop he wanted a week’s holiday now, and that if there were any objections, bearing in mind that he hadn’t had any holiday for two years, he would take the full four weeks to which he was entitled, starting 1st September. He knew quite well that Mr Heslop had an Apex ticket to New York booked for 1st September, which he would have had to cancel if Pete were absent. As I watched him disappear out into the sunshine I wondered which of the temporary typists would coincidentally go missing during Pete’s absence.

  The Clocktower Hotel, where the Conference was to be held, was a converted Victorian mansion on a hilltop overlooking the town. From my kitchen window I could just make out the white blur of the clock faces above the trees. The hotel had been bought in a somewhat run-down condition three years ago by the well-known London restaurateur Mr Eric De Broux. He’d spent a fortune, so it was said, on refurbishing the place, and had had built a superb Conference Hall with state of the art facilities. There’d been a champagne opening attended by everybody who was anybody in the County. Mr Heslop had covered this himself. He had also been invited to become a member of Mr De Broux’s new Gourmet Club, though he had chosen for financial reasons, no doubt, not to join. The Gourmet Club met on the first Saturday of every month at the Clocktower Restaurant, and members were treated (for an astronomical annual subscription) to a gourmet dinner, fine wines, and as much vintage port and brandy as they could hold. I thought there was a nice irony in this, bearing in mind the nature of the Conference, but Mr Heslop told me sternly not to “make waves”; the Clocktower had a regular half-page advertisement in our paper and he’d no intention of losing it.

  On the Tuesday evening before the Conference was due to start, a non-alcoholic cocktail hour was being held for delegates. Mr Heslop told me to go, smile nicely, and get a few quotes. Keith was furious. He had two martinis with ice and pointed out that it was Tuesday and the Sunday papers were still littering the living room.

  “I thought you were still reading them,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly! When do I get time to read? Somebody has to keep up with the weeding and you should see the blackfly on the broad beans!”

  I felt guilty. I had sown the broad beans. “Please leave it,” I said. “I’ll come home early tomorrow and give them a really thorough spraying.”

  I shared my Mini with Richard, who normally used it in the evenings, but he was away that week with the vicar’s daughter (about whom he did not permit us to make jokes), and so one family conflict was avoided. Once away fr
om the house, I felt quite excited about the evening ahead. I wound down the window and the car was soon filled with the heady scent of nettle sap and cow-parsley, bruised by the passage of traffic. The road out to the Clocktower was little more than a narrow, winding lane barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The warm evening air was vibrant with the song of young birds and frantic swarms of insects, and I became so carried away by the sensual delight of it I almost forgot to hoot before the sharp bend round Rampton’s Hollow.

  Mr De Broux himself welcomed me to the Clocktower. I wondered how he could consume so much rich food and maintain his svelte appearance. His dark hair was parted on one side and handsomely sculptured in a way that seemed to accentuate his strong, rather aquiline, nose. The overall effect was of an attractive, but cold, man.

  “If you haven’t been here before, do take a look around,” he urged me. “Will there be anyone else coming from the Herald?”

  I shook my head, and he looked disappointed. It was his first big Conference, and I think he had rather hoped for a battalion of reporters and photographers. He directed me towards the bar, in front of which stood a sign, written in elegant blue and gold lettering. It announced “1987 Conference on Drugs and Alcohol Abuse, jointly sponsored by Leisching Pharmaceuticals and —” The list continued in smaller print. Perhaps Leisching were getting a conscience about the profits they made from the tranquillisers so many of my friends took.

  The bar was plush in an understated, tasteful sort of way. It smelled of cigar smoke and toasted cheese canapés. I helped myself to a thick orange drink sporting a sunshade, and wished there was just a small shot of gin in it. I didn’t drink much, and a small shot would have been enough to make me feel competent to talk to all these important people immersed in deep, meaningful conversations. Sitting quietly in a corner taking notes of what people said was one thing; confronting them and asking penetrating questions was another. I’d been sent out with Pete a few times to see how it was done, but had learned little. Pete would chat people up as though he were their long lost brother, then go away and write whatever he thought made a good story. I didn’t think I could do that. Swallowing a large gulp of orange cocktail (and hoping I wasn’t left with an orange moustache), I approached a couple I vaguely recognised. They were the Goodburns, Dr Rachel and Dr John, a husband-and-wife team; for some odd reason — I’ve been cut off short in my careful description of symptoms often enough — I thought I would be shown a little extra sympathy by the medical profession.