Love, Honour & O'Brien
Page 30
Holly considered the irony of her own sighting of what was almost certainly Andrew’s getaway car at the Springwood service centre, and decided it was not worth mentioning.
‘So you just let Andrew out of the gates on Tuesday night, after all the others had gone to bed, and off he went,’ she said instead. ‘Where is he now?’
Una shrugged. ‘I have absolutely no idea. As far as he can get from our thuggish friends of yesterday, I suppose.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Not perhaps, as far as he’d like,’ she added. ‘The best of the stones in my mother’s rings were replaced with imitations long before I left France.’
‘Maybe you and Andrew are related after all,’ Holly said, and left her.
Returning to Stillwaters Road, Holly found Mrs Moss and Abigail waiting for her in Mrs Moss’s blue and beige living room. Rufus the cat sat on guard by the security screen, gazing across the stairwell, his amber eyes fixed on the red heart door behind which the parrot was singing variations of ‘My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean’.
‘Well, I’ve never heard of anything so devious!’ said Mrs Moss, when Holly had finished telling her story. ‘More tea, dear?’
‘The woman’s a snake,’ Holly agreed, accepting her refilled cup with a smile of thanks.
‘I suppose she was desperate,’ said Abigail. ‘And reading about Andrew McNish at the critical time—’
‘Actually, I think Lily was her first candidate as a potential murderee,’ said Holly. ‘Una would have sized Lily up as someone who had her eye on the main chance, and Lily had told her she had no ties. She got Lily installed in the house, established herself as Lily’s doting patron, and was probably just getting ready to put the idea of playing the disappearing protégée to her when Allnut ferreted out the information that Lily in fact had plenty of ties in the area—a mother and aunties, not to mention a coven! Una would have realised then that whatever else Lily might do for money, she wasn’t going to disappear. So she was back to square one.’
‘Bummer,’ said Mrs Moss, pouring more tea for herself.
‘Yes,’ Holly agreed. ‘Her money was running out. She didn’t have time to develop another believeable protégée. Then she read about Andrew, and got the idea of pretending she believed he was her half-brother. That would make a very quick decision to write a will in his favour seem quite natural. Well, natural for Una, anyway.’
The mobile phone rang in the kitchen. Mrs Moss didn’t move.
‘I must have forgotten to turn it off,’ Mrs Moss said, noticing Holly’s enquiring look. ‘All the excitement. But I never work on Sundays. I don’t feel it’s appropriate. Going back to what we were saying before, I just hate to think of that woman getting away with what she did.’
‘She won’t get away with it forever, Enid,’ said Abigail serenely. ‘There is such a thing as karma.’
‘Possibly,’ said Mrs Moss, looking unconvinced.
‘It might be working already,’ Holly told her. ‘It turned out Eric was eavesdropping. He heard everything she said. He’s furious, and he’s leaving. Today. He and Cleopatra are going to move into his old dad’s garage till he’s fixed something else up, and he’ll buy a tarpaulin for the hearse. Una won’t find life so pleasant all alone in that house, with no one to run her messages for her.’
‘She’ll have her money to comfort her,’ snapped Mrs Moss.
‘Not for quite a while. The police will probably hold on to the things that were buried with Lois for ages. And the house will take a long time to sell, according to Len Land. He’s the real estate agent Una’s using. I met him on the way out.’
She smiled involuntarily, thinking of Len Land’s startled look of recognition, of his hand reaching into the breast pocket of his sagging suit jacket, and the rather worn-looking, yellow-stickered envelope he handed over.
‘This was in the letterbox at Clover Road when I called in there yesterday, Miss Love,’ Land said. ‘Redirected mail for you. I thought I’d have to return it to sender, but here you are! What a coincidence, eh?’
‘It’s a small world,’ Holly had agreed faintly, tearing the envelope open and finding inside, to her great surprise, a note from her cousin Liz.
. . . snail mail because your phone seems to be off, and emails keep bouncing. What do you think about Lloyd and Angie getting engaged? I was so surprised. Hope you’re not upset. Also, I don’t know if you’re still seeing Andrew McNish, but if you are, could you possibly remind him that he owes Leah forty dollars for that sponsorship thing?I know it’s a lot, but he did promise and Leah’s already written to him twice . . .
Forty dollars . . .
‘Well, it’s nice to see you smiling, anyway, dear,’ said Mrs Moss.
‘It’s good to get the loose ends tidied up,’ said Holly. ‘Most of them, anyway.’
‘And you will stay, Holly, won’t you?’ asked Abigail. ‘Till old Droopy Drawers comes for the rent at the end of the month, anyway? Someone’s got to look after the parrot, after all. I feel you two have formed a genuine bond.’
‘I’d love to stay,’ Holly said sincerely. ‘But I really think I‘d better go. Una won’t report me to the police, and Dulcie’s taken Sebastian back to Queensland, but Cliff Allnut isn’t going to let it drop.’
‘Oh, I think he will,’ said Mrs Moss complacently. ‘I had a little word with him. I told him that there’s nothing illegal about using a pseudonym for professional reasons, as long as you diligently perform the service you advertise, and pay your taxes.’
Holly smiled at her. ‘That’s really kind of you, Mrs Moss, but I don’t think . . .’
‘It’s not as if Cliff and I are strangers,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘We’re quite old friends, in a way. I knew it the very first time I heard his voice—probably because he was saying something about chains at the time.’
‘Oh, Enid!’ cried Abigail, clasping her hands. ‘You don’t mean . . .’
‘Certainly,’ said Mrs Moss, beaming. ‘Cliff—every Tuesday night, around ten-thirty, almost without fail. Mind you, I mightn’t be hearing from him again. I think he was quite surprised to find out how old I was. I thought he was going to faint when he heard my voice, the naughty boy. And when I told him my second name was Natasha, after my mother’s sister, he—’
‘Enid, you blackmailed him!’ Abigail shrieked joyfully, and from behind the red-heart door the parrot screeched a maniacal reply, in a sort of Indian love call across the stairwell.
‘Abby, really !’ said Mrs Moss with dignity. ‘I would never put the black on a client. I simply told poor Cliff that Holly was a good friend of mine, and reminded him that we all have our little weaknesses, which it was just as well to keep private, between friends. Especially when we are solicitors, and respectable members of the golf club, with reputations to keep.’
Holly stared at her, open-mouthed.
‘So you can stay, Holly!’ said Abigail.
‘And you mustn’t worry about money,’ Mrs Moss chimed in. ‘On the way back from breakfast we ran into that lovely girl Dimity—who looks so much better now she’s got two eyebrows, by the way, doesn’t she, Abby?’
Abigail nodded. ‘And Dimity told us that her grandmother thinks someone is embezzling the church funds, and she wants to hire me to find out who it is. So of course I told her that wasn’t a job for me. It was a job for a private detective, and it just so happened that I knew the perfect—’
‘Abigail, I’m not a detective,’ Holly protested, laughing.
‘Well, you do a very good imitation of one,’ said Mrs Moss. ‘And you get results. That’s all that counts. After all, I’m not a dominatrix or a busty blonde with a warm, caring nature, but I get by.’
Holly slumped back in her chair. She felt dizzy again.
‘Give us a biscuit!’ the parrot shrieked across the stairwell.
‘O’Brien senses you’re staying,’ said Abigail. ‘He’s overjoyed.’
‘Bless him,’ said Mrs Moss fondly. ‘More tea, anyone?’
AUTHOR’S NOTE