A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

  From the little she’d been allowed to learn of his early life, Miss Chada guessed that when Mylan’s father and mother died and he’d gone to live with his uncle and aunt, they had neither shown love nor affection for each other, let alone for Patrick. The farm and the animals always took preference over human relationships, maybe even to the point that having relationships was a sign of weakness, a weakness that could not be tolerated on his uncle’s farm.

  Her biggest problem was that for several years - “Seven,” she said, “if you count from the time he awoke my desire to love him and please him” - he had been completely her life. Nothing else really existed for her apart for Mylan and keeping him happy for those seven years.

  Kennedy reflected on how Chloe Simmons, with all her other “outside” interests, had chosen an easier path. She wasn’t to be a concubine for life. It was as a way to give her a good, well actually “great” would have been a better word, leg-up on her life’s path.

  Miss Chada claimed that for her the breaking up with Mylan was all over in a week. Patrick mentioned that he was going away on a trip in ten days and that when he returned they would no longer see each other. She pleaded with him: was she doing something wrong? Was there something more or different she could do?

  He explained to her that she was just perfect, and that was the way he always wanted to remember her. He did not want to reach a point where he went off her, tired of her. Never for one second did he imagine she might tire of him.

  She saw little of him in the final week, and even when she did it was just to talk through details. They were no longer intimate with each other.

  The more they were apart, the more she hurt. She admitted that her original plan had been to seek out her successor and kill her. Miss Chada was shocked by how easily murder came into her area of consideration. Pretty soon she realised that if she were to have any chance with Mylan after she had gotten rid of her successor, she could not be connected to the crime. She said she really enjoyed plotting how she could get rid of someone without being connected to it. She grew preoccupied with the murder of her successor.

  Around the time she finally figured out how to do it, she started to realise that her anger should be directed towards Mylan himself and not towards someone else, someone like herself for instance, who through no fault of her own found herself enslaved by this man.

  She had pretty much worked out how to commit her murder when she decided to give him one final chance. She went back to see him and was both shocked and relieved that he wasn’t as cold as she’d imagined he would be. But she soon realised why. One of his favourite treats was getting an underwater BJ; something Miss Chada had in fact turned him on to. Apparently, her successor (who Kennedy obviously knew to be Chloe Simmons) had never managed to master this feat of pleasuring him, and in fact at one point she had nearly drowned while attempting it.

  After Miss Chada had preformed her few moments of underwater magic, Mylan, just before his customary nap, had once again reiterated why he and Miss Chada did not have a future. He suggested she should use the house he had given her in Half Moon Bay, in fact, as the perfect opportunity for a new beginning. A new life, he said.

  Miss Sharenna Chada finalised and refined her plan. When she was working out her alibi, the seduction of Kennedy was just too obvious a choice for her to ignore. She manipulated Kennedy’s back to the point where he became dependent on her and she knew he would be on hand as her alibi.

  She also knew that one of the few things Mylan loved more than his Saturday’s alone was her unique BJ, which he’d christened a UBJ. She visited him, told him she had taken his advice and was off to the West Coast the following Friday, and offered a UBJ as a parting gift.

  It was a gift he was unable to resist.

  She had given Mylan one final chance to take her back. He had said no and hadn’t been particularly polite about it. He also insisted that she never ever come around again, when she returned to England, no matter how brilliant her UBJs were. She claimed that Kennedy was incorrect in that she hadn’t got Mylan drunk. When he fell asleep contented, she injected some of Mylan’s own neat whiskey directly into his bloodstream, choosing the very discreet location between his toes to do so.

  Apart from that, Kennedy, she claimed, had worked out all the rest.

  She was surprised, no shocked, at the release she felt by killing him. She had dreamed of a time when she wouldn’t feel bad all the time, and when Mylan was dead that really happened; all her bad feelings disappeared.

  “I thought I would feel differently in other ways when I killed him,” she said in a gentler tone, looking directly into Kennedy’s eyes. “I looked at myself in the mirror to see the change. There wasn’t one. I was a murderer for heaven’s sake; I believed I would look different. I remember thinking the whole experience was a bit similar to losing your virginity. You think everyone who looks at you realises you are no longer a virgin. I thought people would see I was a murderer. I certainly thought you, a policeman, would be able to see that I was a murderer.

  She looked at Kennedy as if she expected him to say something. When he didn’t she continued, “At the time I considered murdering my successor I was experiencing mental turmoil. I knew I could never do that. But when I addressed the issue of removing Patrick instead it seemed to me to be something I just had to do.”

  The other confession she made to Kennedy was that when she had been with him, he was the only other man apart from Mylan that she’d ever been to bed with. She found it weird being with someone who wanted to please her just as much as she’d wanted to please him. That was the reason she kept turning up at his house, even after she’d secured her alibi.

  Kennedy told Grace Scott most of Sharenna Chada’s confession. He omitted the last bit.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Kennedy used most of the following week getting all the paperwork in place for Miss Chada’s return to London. The process was quite speedy with the Home Office still involved. The Right Honourable Duncan Trower couldn’t thank Kennedy enough for his endeavours. Kennedy still had more than enough time to hang out with Grace Scott, who kept saying, “Well smack my mamma, Inspector, I just can’t believe how you tied that one up.”

  Five short days later, paperwork completed and prisoner secured by US marshals on the awaiting plane, Grace Scott brought Kennedy to San Francisco International Airport. She happily ribbed him about sharing his cabin, well not just his cabin but also his bed, yet nothing happening.

  “You had your chance, Inspector. If you hadn’t been such a gentleman that night they tried to steal our file up at my dad’s, you could very easily have cohabited my lingerie - well, actually, that’s not strictly true, you couldn’t, because I wasn’t wearing any.”

  “But you asked if I could just hold you,” Kennedy said, with regret clear in his voice.

  “Yes, and most men I’ve known would have just agreed tactically just so they could jump straight to home base, but as I said, you were such a gentlemen you kept your word… listen, Inspector, I was so wired that night I’d have even considered being another notch on wrinkly David Letterman’s bedpost. And then…”

  “And then…”

  “Well, if we had made love that night, then that would have been the one and only time. I wasn’t ready then. I would have been guilt ridden, and you would have been the one who’d have suffered, assuming that is, you’d have been interested in anything more than a quick roll in my bed.”

  “Grace…” he started.

  “I know, Inspector,” she said gently, looking deeply into his eyes.

  It was nearly time for Kennedy to go through the security check-point. He shook her hand awkwardly.

  Was that going to be it? After all they’d been through, a quick goodbye with a shake of the hand? Grace Scott had never looked so beautiful to Kennedy. There was always an undercurrent of sadness about her, but she was so full of life, so up for life, that she managed to beat the sadness into retreat. Kennedy wondered wha
t to do. His instinct was to satisfy the powerful feeling he had for her in a kiss. But that would be unfair. That would be taking advantage of a grieving widow. Mind you, she told him, not in so many words, that solving Steve’s case had allowed her to start to draw a line under that part of her life. Or could that have been just the conclusion he’d wished to draw from her words?

  Should he kiss her? His ex, ann rea, and that was the first time he could remember considering her as his ex, had always said that when you have to spend too much time persuading yourself to do something, then the act in question was usually something to be avoided.

  He shook her hand again. She squeezed his hand before finally letting it go.

  “Goodbye, Grace.”

  “Goodbye, Inspector,” she said with a beautiful smile.

  He walked straight through the security checkpoint.

  He turned to steal one final glance at her, but she’d disappeared. That was it. He was homeward bound, and he imagined her returning to the cabin he’d shared with her for the past couple of weeks. He could see her walking through the front door and flopping down into her gigantic sofa. Soon an ocean would separate them, and he’d never hear her say again, “Will you just hold me, please?”

  But that’s exactly what he thought he heard from somewhere behind. He turned and there she was, large as life, totally breathless, and positively demanding his attention.

  “Sorry, Inspector, but I couldn’t just let you go like that. Besides, there’s no sense in being a police officer if you can’t take advantage of your status occasionally.”

  Grace Scott ran up to Kennedy and hugged him. They hugged so tightly he could feel every curve of her full body through her light dress. They had their heads over each other’s shoulders, and she pulled her head back so she could look at his face. She put her cheek gently on his cheek, and they both closed their eyes. Their hugging grew tighter, but she sought out his lips with her lips and they kissed. It was a long, passionate kiss with neither holding back in either reserve or doubt. It was the kiss Kennedy had wished for from the very first time he’d seen her in the Half Moon Bay police station.

  The kiss concluded naturally and gently.

  They hugged again.

  “Okay, shall I tell you what that was for?” she asked.

  Kennedy nodded.

  “I wanted you to know that I... I like you, Christy. I wanted you to be interested enough to come back to me and try and get to second base.”

  “I think we’re way beyond second base,” he replied, remembering the vision in the ripped T-shirt outside the cabin when Green Hat had tried to steal the file.

  “You just might be right, Inspector,” she said sweetly, “so much so that I would predict,” and she paused and subtly moved sensually tight to him, “you’re going to have great difficulty walking to your gate.”

  “Aye, the gate and all the way beyond to Camden Town,” he declared, to her fit of contagious giggles.