Aunt Bessie Provides (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 16)

by Diana Xarissa

  “I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me,” he told Bessie as they walked out of the building. “I was getting bored at home and thinking it was going to be a long summer, but now I have plenty to keep me busy for the next month.”

  “Helen asked me to remind you to check with her on the final plans for the decorations.”

  “Oh, I will,” he assured her.

  “She also forgot to ask you about prices. I’m sure everything you have planned will take many hours. I hope it won’t make the cake too expensive.”

  “I already agreed with Pete that I’m only charging them the cost of my ingredients. As I’ve never done a wedding cake before, there’s no guarantee that my designs will come out the way I’m planning. I’ve been baking long enough to be sure that the cake will taste good anyway, but I don’t feel as if I can charge for the decorating, not when I have no idea if I can actually do it or not.”

  “The drawing is beautiful,” Bessie said.

  “Yes, but it’s only a drawing. Turning a two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional cake isn’t easy. Anyway, you know as well as I do that I don’t actually need the money.”

  Bessie smiled. Andy was right, he didn’t really need the money. Bessie still felt delighted whenever she thought about Andy’s unexpected windfall. Sometimes good things happened to good people and she couldn’t think of many people that she considered more deserving than Andy and Anne Caine.

  The trip from Douglas to Laxey didn’t take long. Bessie enjoyed the scenery while Andy told her about culinary school and some of the things he’d enjoyed most there. “Of course, we also did courses in financial management and human resources. Those weren’t my favourites, I must say. Still, if I’m going to have my own business one day, I’ll need to know about those things as well.”

  “Maybe you should just bake fabulous cakes for weddings and events. You could do that from home and not have to worry about having to manage other people.”

  “It’s a tempting thought, but my mother’s kitchen isn’t ideal for proper baking. I keep trying to persuade her to let me buy her a new house, but she loves that little cottage. She won’t even let me put in a new kitchen. She doesn’t use much beyond the microwave, so she doesn’t think there’s any need to update things.”

  “Maybe when you move back for good you’ll be able to change her mind,” Bessie suggested.

  “Or maybe I’ll just get my own place,” Andy said. “That would probably be better for both my mother and me.”

  As Bessie climbed out of the car, Andy got out as well. “I don’t have time to come in now,” he told Bessie. “But I wanted to give you this.” He’d opened his boot and taken out another large box. Now he handed it to Bessie.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Just a little treat for you for later,” the man explained. “I ate so many biscuits and cakes at your cottage over the years that I could never repay you. But I was baking yesterday and I thought you deserved a treat.”

  Bessie gave the man a hug and then took the box from him. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m sure whatever it is will be delicious.”

  “I certainly hope so. Do let me know if you don’t like anything in the box. I’m always testing new recipes and I can sometimes get things badly wrong.”

  Bessie could hardly wait to get inside her cottage and open the box. She set it down on the counter and lifted the lid. “Oooohhh,” she breathed as the stared at a collection of fairy cakes, each one differently and elaborately decorated.

  A glance at the clock showed her that it was too close to dinnertime to indulge in a cake. Reluctantly, she shut the box and pushed play on her answering machine. After listening to a dozen messages about the unidentified body, all suggesting that Hugh should look for Craig Fox, Bessie sat down at her table and sighed. She needed to ring Hugh to tell him what she’d learned from Agatha and Adam and she needed to start planning what she was going to make for dinner. All she could think about, though, were the fairy cakes on the counter.

  “One won’t spoil my appetite,” she said loudly. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour or more anyway.”

  She ignored the little voice that wanted to argue with her and opened the box again. A chocolate cake with chocolate icing caught her eye immediately. A delicate chocolate wafer was balanced on top of the icing. After taking it carefully out of the box and putting it on a plate, Bessie gave the fairy cake a good look. Etched into the chocolate wafer were the words “thank you.” It took Bessie a moment to blink back unexpected tears before she could actually enjoy the sweet treat.

  When it was gone, she had to admit to herself that she had totally spoiled her dinner. The last thing she felt like doing now was making herself something to eat. What she really wanted to do was have another cake. Shaking her head at her behaviour, Bessie went into the sitting room and curled up with a book. After a short while she discovered that she was still too close to the cakes that seemed to be whispering her name over and over again.

  She took herself up to her office and shut the door. There she spent an hour rearranging books on the shelves and just generally pottering around. By the time she went back into the kitchen, she was ready for a light meal. At least, that’s what she told herself as she ignored the white box and reheated some soup. Having two fairy cakes for pudding was indulgent, but she simply couldn’t choose just one. Both were delicious and both had tiny “thank you” notes in their decoration. She put the box into the refrigerator to help keep the cakes fresh, and then decided that she needed a nice long walk to burn up all the cake calories she’d just consumed.

  She was past Thie yn Traie before she remembered that she hadn’t rung Hugh. It was amazing how easily distracted she was by a few little cakes, she thought as she turned and headed for home.

  “Hugh, I saw Agatha Marsh and I bumped into her son as well,” she began when Hugh answered the phone in his flat. “Neither one of them would give me an address for Christopher, though.”

  “That’s odd,” Hugh said. “Start at the beginning, please.”

  Bessie sat at her kitchen table and took Hugh through everything that she could remember of her conversations with Agatha and Adam. When she was done, she felt as if she deserved a fairy cake for all of her hard work.

  “I may have to visit her myself,” Hugh said thoughtfully. “Or maybe I should send Pete. He’d probably welcome an excuse to visit Helen anyway.”

  “I don’t think you or Pete will have any more luck than I did,” Bessie told him. “I don’t think Agatha is going to tell anyone anything about Christopher.”

  “The question becomes why, then,” Hugh said. “What is she hiding?”

  “I can’t quite believe that the body is his. I mean, why wouldn’t they have identified it at the time if it was him? Maybe he’s in prison or something like that.”

  “I’ve checked the UK prison system and didn’t find any record of him ever serving time,” Hugh told her. “I checked all of the names you gave me, actually. Clarence was the only one who was in the system, aside from Jackson Blakeslee, of course.”

  “What else might he have done that would make his family cut their ties with him?”

  “I’ve no idea, but I’m starting to think I want to find out. I’ll have Pete go and talk to Agatha and then, depending on how that goes, maybe I’ll try speaking to the siblings. Surely at least one of them must have heard from the man in the past twenty years. Even if it’s been a while, if they can provide an address and I can find people who knew him, I’ll be able to eliminate him from the inquiry.”

  “I wish you luck. Have you learned anything else about any of the others?” Bessie asked.

  “I found Gary Cook, which proved to be harder than it should have been.”

  “He wasn’t still in Salisbury?”

  “No, and he moved from there within weeks of speaking to the inspector about the body here. While the inspector was certain that he was alive and well, I was worried about
him disappearing so quickly.”

  “I can see that. I suppose it would have been easy for someone to answer the phone at his business and pretend to be him.”

  “Exactly. I just wanted to be absolutely certain about him and now I am.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Glasgow.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Right after he spoke to the inspector, he decided that he wasn’t ready to settle down in one place. He sold his white van and started travelling around the country. Somewhere around Aberdeen he met a girl, they fell in love, and you can guess the rest.”

  “And you’re absolutely certain that it was really Gary Cook you spoke with,” Bessie checked.

  “I’m as sure as I can be. I had a local constable talk to him, and Gary was happy to show him his Manx passport and his old Manx driving license.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “He quit plumbing to go to work for his wife’s family business, but one of the men at one of the plumbing registry places remembered Gary. He knew someone who knew someone who knew where Gary had gone. It took a while to track my way through all of the someones, but I found him in the end.”

  “It’s weird how people can just disappear,” Bessie said.

  “He just moved a few times, that’s all. If he had a less common name, I could have tried requesting information from the DVLA, but as I didn’t have any idea where he was living, any list they generated would have been too long to be useful.”

  “I’m glad you found him,” Bessie said. “We can now cross him off the list completely.”

  “Let’s hope we can cross off a few more names soon. I’ll ring Pete now and see if he can visit Agatha Marsh tomorrow. Maybe once she realises how important it is that we find Christopher, she’ll cooperate.”

  “Good luck with that,” Bessie told him.

  A light rain had begun to fall, which meant Bessie didn’t want to walk on the beach any more, even though she would have had it to herself. Instead, she made a cup of tea and enjoyed another fairy cake while she sipped her tea and read a book. Feeling rather more full of sugar than normal, Bessie headed up to bed a little early. She tossed and turned for a short while, but her sleep was sound once she managed to fall sleep.

  The rain hadn’t stopped at six the next morning, but Bessie was determined to walk for as long as possible. A bit of guilt over how many fairy cakes she’d eaten the previous day kept her marching across the sand in spite of the weather. The beach was all but deserted as she went, which made the whole experience more enjoyable for her.

  When she was on her way home again the sun began to try to peek out between the rain clouds, and as she put her key into her lock on the cottage door, the rain finally stopped. With her wet things hung up to dry and another cup of tea brewing, Bessie tried to decide what she wanted to do with her Sunday. The phone interrupted her thinking.

  “Is that Bessie Cubbon?” a female voice asked.

  “It is, yes,” Bessie said. She felt as if she recognised the voice from somewhere, but she wasn’t certain where.

  “I was told you were looking for me,” the woman said. “I’d hate to make you work too hard.”

  “I’m looking for you?” Bessie echoed.

  “Yes, or rather your friend Hugh Watterson is looking for me. I wasn’t going to ring the police station, though, was I? I mean that simply isn’t done.”

  “No, I suppose not. But who is this, please?”

  “How many women are you looking for?”

  “To be honest, I don’t believe I’m looking for any women,” Bessie replied. “Hugh is looking for several men.”

  “Yes, of course, and one of those men is my son, Harry.”

  “Barbara? Barbara Jensen? My goodness, but it’s good to hear from you,” Bessie exclaimed. She’d always been fond of the woman who’d worked so hard to raise her son on her own.

  “Is it? I suppose it’s nice to hear your voice, too, actually,” Barbara replied. “I left the island in something of a rush. My mother was fine one day and dying the next and I couldn’t stand the thought of not being with her. I’d done what I’d promised, anyway, and raised Harry on the island his father loved so much. When my parents needed me, I simply didn’t stop to think. I just dropped everything and went.”

  “And I’m sure they were grateful to you for that.”

  “Oh, yes, they were, of course, but I wish now that I’d done things differently. My mother’s illness was, well, somewhat exaggerated, although I don’t think she ever expected that I’d come running when she told me she was poorly. Anyway, I ended up looking after her for over a year. By the time she passed, my father needed more or less full-time care, although he fought bravely for fourteen years after mum died.”

  “My goodness. And you looked after him for all those years?”

  “Yes, well, someone had to. As I said, I would do things differently if I could do it all again. One of the things I would change was how completely I cut my ties with the island. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of happened. I told myself when I left that I’d stay in touch with my friends, but, well, life simply got in the way, I suppose.”

  “You must have stayed in touch with someone,” Bessie suggested. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have known that Hugh was looking for you.”

  “Actually, Harry works in Liverpool, and there’s a shop there that sells the Isle of Man Times. He buys a copy every so often and he brings them to me when he’s finished with them. When he saw the headlines last Friday, he brought me the paper straight away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he remembered the case. The body washed up on shore right around the same time Harry was getting ready to leave the island, and it worried him slightly. He’d never been on the ferry, you see, and he was convinced that the man had accidently fallen off the ferry and into the sea. He ended up changing all of his plans and flying across, you know, he was so worked up about the whole thing.”

  “My goodness. Has he ever been on a boat since?”

  “Oh, my, yes. Harry and I take cruises together every year. We’ve done at least one a year every year since my father died. I shouldn’t complain, really, because he did leave me very well off. Anyway, once I’d read the article, I rang an old friend from the island to ask her about the case and she told me that you and the police were looking for me.”

  “Who was that, then?” Bessie asked, fairly certain that she knew the answer. Barbara confirmed her suspicions.

  “I hadn’t kept in touch with her, really, but I still had her phone number in my address book.”

  “And you’ve never come back to the island for a visit?”

  “No, but Harry and I were talking about that very thing last night. He has much fonder memories of the place than I do, of course. I did everything I could to shield him from how difficult things were financially after his father died. My parents could have helped, of course, but they wanted me to move back to Cumbria and I’d promised Harry’s father that I wouldn’t take Harry away from the island.” Barbara sighed deeply. “It all seems so stupid now. I never should have agreed, but the man begged me from his deathbed. Once he was gone, I should have simply done what was best for me and Harry anyway, but at the time I did what I thought was best.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “Yes, and now Harry wants to revisit the island and I’m, well, I’m warming to the idea. I did have some good friends there, in addition to the woman I rang last night. I don’t know if any of them will remember me or want to see me. I don’t even know if any of them are still on the island and I suppose some of them may have passed away, as well.”

  “Tell me who you remember and I’ll update you on their lives,” Bessie offered.

  It only took Bessie a few minutes to share basic news about the three women Barbara was most interested in. “So they are all still here and I’m sure they’d all love to see you,” Bessie concluded. “I have mobile numbers for all three of them, if you�
�d like to ring them up.”

  “Give me the numbers, please,” Barbara said. “I may never be brave enough to use them, but I just might. As I said, Harry would love to visit and I’ve always done everything for him, really.”

  “How is Harry?”

  “He’s well,” Barbara replied. “As I said, he works in Liverpool. He went to university once he was settled over here, you see, and now he’s a professor at the university there. He’d always wanted to go to university, but he didn’t want to leave me alone on the island.”

  “What does he teach?”

  “Economics. I don’t understand any of it, but he seems to enjoy it.”

  Bessie could hear the pride in the woman’s voice as she talked about her son. “Is he married?”

  “Sadly, he never managed to find the right woman,” Barbara sighed. “He had a bit of a failed romance on the island not long before he left and I don’t think he ever properly recovered from that.”

  “I didn’t realise that,” Bessie said.

  “The woman in question was a summer visitor who let him take her out and spend loads of money on her and then, when her holiday was over, disappeared without a trace. I think Harry was hoping he might find her if he moved to the UK, but as far as I know he never actually tried.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked Harry.”

  “He’s a good son and I’m selfishly glad that he never married. He has plenty of time for me this way. As I said, we take cruises together every year and he spends Christmas and New Year with me. I don’t think I would have minded if he had married, but I do like that I don’t have to share him with anyone else. I never felt any desire to be a grandmother, either.”

  “If you do come across, I’d love to see both you and Harry,” Bessie said. “I have fond memories of him as a child and as an adult and I always enjoyed talking with you when you had the time.”

  “Which wasn’t very often, sadly,” Barbara said. “I think I shall suggest to Harry that we come across in August. The weather should be at its best, although I suppose the island will be full of tourists, won’t it?”