Grace Smith Investigates

by Liz Evans

  A fist lashed from below and whacked him on the chin. He jerked his head away and lost his grip. Carter erupted up, his hand slapping sideways hits, which mostly failed to land. Peter was trying to block on his forearms. I’d seen more violence in the qualifiers for the Senior Citizens’ Indoor Bowls Tournament.

  Stepping between them, I jabbed an elbow in their respective chests. They both collapsed, Peter on a footstool and Carter on the sofa.

  ‘Are you both crazy?’

  Peter concentrated on drawing his bath robe tight rather than look at me. ‘I was running a bath. I heard him down here. Thought it was you. He was looking for things to steal again.’

  ‘I was not,’ Carter said. ‘I just wanted my stuff back. I thought the place would be empty. I didn’t know he was here.’ Tears were filling his eyes. ‘He’s mad. He wants locking up. I’m going to call the police. He tried to kill me.’

  ‘If you feel you must, Carter. Mind you, we’d have to explain you were trespassing. And not for the first time. I’ll just get your bits and pieces.’

  We’d stashed the seduction kit in a carrier in the hall. I retrieved it. ‘We had to throw the roses out, but you can check the rest is still here.’

  I laid them across the coffee table. A pair of candles. The bottle of sparkling wine. And one paperback, title: How to Have Her Begging for More.

  ‘The police will want to see them.’

  ‘They will?’ Carter said doubtfully.

  ‘They’re proof that’s why you came in. To get your property. You’d best warn your gran. They may want her there if you’re making a statement about an assault.’

  You could read the hesitation all over Carter’s pudgy face. His burgeoning confidence didn’t quite stretch to sitting in a room with his grandmother and a police officer leafing through that paperback.

  ‘You can keep the stuff,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t want it now that perv’s touched it anyway.’

  He thrust past me and fled. The crash of the front door reverberating was the only sound, apart from a clock I hadn’t noticed before and Peter’s short, shallow breaths.

  He and I finally looked directly at each other. What had happened was painfully obvious. He’d taken off Rainwing’s clothes and wig but hadn’t got around to removing her make-up. The lipsticked mouth, smokily shadowed eyes and blushed cheeks that had looked so sexy on Rainwing gave Peter the appearance of a camp drag artist. And Carter had walked in on that.

  ‘You didn’t need to be so rough with him,’ I finally said. ‘You could have caused him some serious damage.’

  ‘I meant to. I’m sorry. But what he said ... the way he looked at me ... and I really did think he was stealing ...’

  ‘He’s just a kid. You overreacted.’

  He hunched defensively into the robe. ‘Don’t lecture me. You’re not my mother.’

  ‘Just as well. She’d have got an even bigger shock.’

  ‘I’m going to finish my bath. Shall I make up a bed?’

  ‘You’d better make it a single.’

  ‘Bit too real for you, is it?’ He made one of those elegant circling gestures over his face of the kind used by mime artists.

  ‘It’s not that. I’ve a job on tonight. Bodyguarding.’

  ‘Sure you do.’

  ‘Peter, I don’t play those sort of games. If I say I’m working ... I’m working.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  This was more mood than I wanted to handle. ‘Maybe it would be best if I went now. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.’

  ‘If you like. Leave the car keys.’

  ‘We’ve had this conversation. You aren’t insured.’

  ‘I’m not being stuck here without transport. If that kid starts spreading it around that there’s a pervert camped out here, I want an escape route in case the rent-a-bigot brigade start burning crosses on the lawn.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. At least,’ I amended, ‘I don’t think he would, but if you’re worried, come back and use my flat. You’d have it to yourself.’

  ‘No thanks. I’d rather stay here. And since Luke was my friend, I think I’ve more right to the car than you. I’ll take the risk on being picked up.’

  ‘So how do you expect me to get home?’

  ‘Bus? Taxi?’

  ‘Cheers, Peter. You’re a real star.’

  As far as I was concerned, there was only room for one moody sulker in this relationship - and I’d got that corner covered. I stalked out with a satisfactory front-door slam.

  My intention was to check out that bus stop along the main road and hope the Bank Holiday service included a late- afternoon run to Seatoun. It didn’t.

  I’d have to hike back to the village to find a phone box and ring Annie. Still in a huff, I refused to use the lane past Brick Cottage even if it did mean another half-mile to the main approach turning.

  As I reached it, it belatedly occurred to me that I could have taken the motorbike from the garage. On the other hand, that would mean I’d have to go back to Brick Cottage. Whilst I was weighing convenience against swallowed pride, Lee’s car bowled up to the white stop lines. ‘Wanna lift?’

  ‘I’m going into Seatoun.’

  ‘Hop in.’

  I hopped. In doing so, I rammed my knee into the glove compartment - which snapped open, releasing a cascade of junk on to the floor. Had I found myself knee-deep in controlled substances and porno magazines I shouldn’t have been at all surprised. But once again it was the lifestyle of Mr Ordinary. I started stuffing back the sweet wrappers, tissues, sunglasses, and half a dozen of those free toys they give away at burger restaurants.

  ‘Don’t break ’em,’ Lee said sharply when I attempted to force a brontosaurus into the last remaining corner.

  ‘You collect them?’

  ‘Not for myself. It’s for the kid.’ Delving in his shirt pocket, he fished out a slim leather holder. There was a photo in one side of a girl with long dark hair clutching a boy of about three years. ‘That’s my Jenny. And Rhys. He ain’t mine. Her bloke walked out, didn’t want to know. We’re engaged.’

  ‘Congratulations. She’s pretty.’ She was actually a dead ringer for his mum in her first wedding pictures to Sean Delaney.

  ‘Yeah. Not bad. And Rhys is a brilliant kid. He already calls me Dad.’

  ‘Best of luck,’ I said. There was something else in the other side of the wallet. An identity pass for the Silver Springs Health Resort and Country Club in East Sussex (RAC and AA ****; two Michelin stars). According to the lump of plastic I was holding, one Lee Delaney was the assistant chef at this posh fat farm.

  ‘You’ve got a job?’

  ‘Had it nearly four years now. Started off as general dogsbody in the kitchens. Chef trained me up. Me and Jen’s thinking of going for our own place after the wedding. That’s why I was checking out that B and B place in Seatoun the other day. But it’s not a goer. Right price, wrong area.’

  ‘Your mum thinks you’re a no-hoper who can’t hold down a toilet flush, much less a steady job.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So what’s the idea?’

  Lee spun the wheel, taking us into the streets of West Bay that I’d last driven down with Luke. The kamikaze pedestrians were even more in evidence now that the tag end of Bank Holiday fever was gripping the place.

  ‘She thinks I’m rubbish. Always has. Every time something bad went down where she worked, she’d reckon it was me. Most times it weren’t. Not after I was sixteen or so. I really tried to get my head together, but she never noticed. Just kept rubbishing me to everyone she met. So in the end I thought, right, give the public what they want.’

  ‘So you turn up every few months, play the moody ratbag, and then change back into Mr Nice Guy on the way home. Don’t you think that’s a bit childish?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Nothing. It just seems an incredible waste of time and energy, particularly when your mum is ...’

  ‘Is what?’ he asked, gunning th
e car round the curve that took us on to the cliff road that ran parallel to the promenade. Down below me I could see the wet sands and seaweed-encrusted groynes of the bay where I’d skinny-dipped to prove thirty wasn’t a one-way ticket to respectable oblivion.

  ‘Is lonely,’ I said. ‘Since your stepfather died, the neighbours have been freezing her out of the cheese-and-wine wing-dings. I bet she’d like a family around.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. She’s so keen on me company, she’d rather leave her money to a bunch of people she don’t know from sweet FA. And then rub my face in it by telling me all about it. Over and over in case I missed the point that she still thinks I’m worth less than what sticks to the bottom of yer shoe.’

  ‘That’s not why she’s doing it.’ I made a quick decision. Somebody had to stop this daft carousel Lee and his mum had got themselves on. ‘Do you know where your mum’s solicitors are?’

  ‘London. Strand way. Why?’

  ‘Did you know she was visiting them a few weeks ago?’

  ‘She said when I rang to say I weren’t coming to see Carly this year.’

  ‘Did you follow her?’

  ‘Why the hell would I?’

  ‘She thinks you tried to kill her.’

  There are times when having no bust to speak of is a definite advantage. When a seatbelt locks like an iron bar across your chest during an emergency stop is one of them.

  ‘You what?’ Lee snapped.

  ‘I nothing. Your mum thinks. Great brakes, by the way.’

  ‘Are you taking the Michael?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I filled him in on the mysterious bloke who’d tried to push Barbra under the London taxi a few weeks ago and led to her decision to make that bizarre will.

  ‘And she thinks it was me? That I tried to top her?’

  ‘Who else would benefit from her death? There is only you.’

  ‘That’s a load of bull. It could have been an accident. Or some nutcase. You read about them. They hear voices telling them to kill someone.’

  He was trying to talk me down, but there was something in his voice that wasn’t right. He sounded unsure. Whatever had gone down that day in London, Lee knew more about it than he was letting on.

  ‘Any ideas?’ I prompted.

  ‘No.’ He leant across and opened my door. ‘You’ll have to shove off now. Hike it from here.’

  I didn’t have to hike it very far. We were only a few minutes’ walk from the flat. It was as I remembered it: depressing, too full of bicycle and guarded by a tub of spiky succulents that were clinging to life with the tenacity of a soap star with lousy plot lines.

  I rang Annie’s mobile. She was still at the office. ‘We’re just doing a bit of tidying and decorating. Come round now if you want a lift.’

  ‘We’ I’d assumed to be her and Vetch. But it turned out the little gnome was still poorly.

  ‘It really hit him hard,’ Barbra said, pushing hair behind her ears with paint-engrained nails. ‘I feel dead guilty. Do you reckon the lobster was off?’

  ‘Prawns, according to your Lee. I saw him at St Biddy’s. Visiting Carly.’

  I half expected she might feel the need to explain her tantrum over the will. I should have known better. Barbra Delaney only played to her own rules and didn’t care what anyone else thought. Particularly anyone-else who she was paying to dance to her tune.

  ‘Let’s go then, girls. We’ll have a barbecue tonight. I bought some steaks and stuff when we went up for the paint. When me and Vetchy go into partnership, I might get a proper interior design whatsit in to do down here; scarlet and black, I thought. And your business stationery needs jazzing up. What d’yer reckon to this: a plain white card with the silhouette of a pistol and “This Gun For Hire” under it? I’ve been telling Annie here all me plans to get this place on its feet again. It’s going be brilliant. I’ll see you back at Wakens Keep.’

  I caught Annie’s eye as our potential partner breezed out. She gave me a despairing shrug and started resetting the answerphone and alarm systems. ‘So how’s your day been? Did you get this mysterious client that you don’t want to talk about - or put through the books - sorted out?’

  ‘There’s nothing mysterious about this one. I’ve been doing an inventory up at Brick Cottage for Luke’s mum. She’s strapped for cash and needs every penny she can raise. Pronto.’

  ‘I doubt if she’s going to get much from that place.’

  ‘Oh?’ She had her back to me, relocking the front door, but I knew her well enough to recognise that slight telltale pink stain on the back of her neck. She’d said something she hadn’t intended to. ‘Give, Anchoret.’

  ‘It’s confidential.’

  ‘I’m a naturally discreet person.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘Don’t quibble. Confide in me or I smasha ya face. What have you heard?’

  I had to wait until we were in her car and pointed towards Wakens Keep before she told me. ‘I had to collect a few things from the police station for Zeb. And Emily and I got chatting.’

  ‘Emily? You mean that frosty-faced detective sergeant?’

  ‘She’s a very pleasant person.’

  ‘She doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Lots of people don’t — what’s that got to do with it? Do you want to hear this or not?’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘They took some correspondence from your friend Luke’s cottage. Only it turns out it isn’t his cottage. It belongs to some finance company. Luke’s uncle—’

  ‘Great-uncle.’

  ‘Not-so-great in this case. He’d used the property to buy an annuity. Which stopped when he died. Or some months afterwards, actually. It seems they didn’t know he’d died and continued to pay. They’d been threatening legal action to evict your friend Luke from the cottage. I guess they’ve saved themselves the court costs.’

  ‘So what’s Emily doing now? Looking for a hit man from the finance people?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. We’re not talking a back-street loan shark. It’s a multinational business. And Emily isn’t looking for anyone in connection with Luke Steadman’s death.’

  ‘How come? She off the case?’

  ‘No. It’s simpler than that, Sherlock.’

  There was only one other possible answer. ‘The police know who killed Luke!’

  ‘Give the lady a cuddly toy.’

  35

  ‘Do you think I’m weird?’

  ‘Is that a serious question?’ Annie stopped shaking out the spare towels in the bathroom rack to look up at me.

  She had to look up, because I was currently standing on the loo seat, fishing in the cistern tank with my yellow Marigolds. Or Barbra’s yellow Marigolds, if you want to be pedantic.

  I hate period houses when it comes to an investigation. Modern rabbit hutches with their low-level bathroom suites and flimsy built-in furniture with lousy locks are so much easier to search. The only real advantage to hefty walls and tree-trunk timbers is they muffle noise and hopefully stop you waking your hostess as you turn her home upside down. (Although in Barbra’s case, the couple of bottles of Valpolicella she’d knocked back with the steaks was a big help in keeping her out of our faces.)

  We’d had another girlie supper party. Barbra had entertained us with her vision of the new agency: ‘Vetch and Delaney’. Annie looked about ready to stick her head in the waste disposal unit by the time we could reasonably plead terminal tiredness. After checking all the locks and rigging a couple of rudimentary booby traps in the back garden, we’d settled down for the night.

  My plan had been to do a thorough job on locating those negatives for Faye when the other two were asleep. Unfortunately the third step of the staircase creaked like an ogre with indigestion under my weight. Annie had appeared on the landing, dragging her sweat pants on over her pyjamas.

  ‘Did you hear something?’

  ‘No. I’ve just remembered something I left downstairs. Go back to bed.’

  ‘I can’t sleep.
Things to sort out - you know?’ She’d twirled a finger by the side of her head.

  I’d sensed there were two ways to go here. Spend the next few hours thinking up increasingly unlikely excuses for prowling, or recruit her help to search this place.

  As you’ll have gathered, I’d gone for the second option. Which meant I had to tell her I was going to take those negatives - without being able to tell her the reason why.

  ‘So you’re planning to steal from your client? That’s unprofessional conduct, even for you.’

  ‘What do you care - you’re leaving the agency anyway. And what the hell do you mean - even for me?’

  ‘Your ability to rewrite the rule book in a language unknown to all law-abiding investigators is legendary, Sherlock.’

  ‘I’m an innovator,’ I’d murmured back. ‘Are you going to help? It’s important, honestly, Annie. I’d do the same for you.’

  ‘I don’t burgle my own clients.’

  But she agreed to be the burglar’s apprentice. We’d already spent a few hours creeping around downstairs, delving into drawers, freezer compartments, sofa backs and all those other places everyone always think are finder-proof. Now we’d moved to the upper rooms.

  ‘Well?’ I repeated. ‘Do you think I’m weird?’

  ‘In any particular way?’

  ‘Man-wise. Take Luke Steadman. He was a good-looking bloke. He was easy enough to talk to; fancied me - or at least he did a good job of pretending to; great car; apparently in an interesting career. But something never really clicked. OK, he turned out to be an Olympic-class scrounger in the end—’

  ‘So you had common interests as well,’ Annie said, returning the last of the towels to the rack and starting to check the toiletry canisters to see if any had false screw-on bottoms.

  I ignored the jibe. I was well into my little bout of self-analysis here. ‘But I didn’t know he was like that at the time, did I? I should have been shaving my legs and checking my roots when he started the chat-up. Instead of which, I didn’t even bother to phone him back until you prodded me. When it comes to Peter, however…..’

  I’d told her all about Peter. Without mentioning who his mother was.