A Valentine's Kill

by Mona Marple

  “It was hardly planned,” Isabelle said. “I haven’t had time to ask anyone. I just realised, that horrible man’s dead, I can’t see how this decision can still stand.”

  “You mean you haven’t got permission to be open again?” Sandy asked, as her nostrils reacted to a smell of rancid oil cooking.

  “This is my livelihood, I’m not waiting for the council to hire a replacement and come out and do a proper assessment. Let them give me a telling off. Cripes, can you smell that?”

  Sandy nodded. “I think you need to change the oil.”

  Isabelle sighed. “I should have sold this place, it’s brought me nothing but bad luck. I thought, a mobile home park or a chip shop. Why on earth did I choose this?!”

  Sandy shrugged.

  “Have you got any other suspects yet, then or am I still numero uno?” Isabelle asked, fiddling with switches in an increasingly manic way.

  “I… I know he didn’t see the attack coming.”

  “Oh! Move over, DC Sullivan! What an explosive discovery in the case!” Isabelle said.

  “Okay then,” Sandy said. “If you were me, where would you be focusing.”

  Isabelle sighed. “I wouldn’t be you, for a start, trying to do police work for them, but if I had to play this game, I’d be speaking to the witnesses, of course.”

  “There aren’t any witnesses. I discovered his body, there was nobody else around.”

  “Oh, Sandy. There are always witnesses. Whether they come forward is another thing altogether. He was killed right on the village square, there must be twenty houses overlooking the scene. People might not talk to the police. But they’d talk to you.”

  Sandy grinned to herself in disbelief. She couldn’t believe she had missed such a vital step. If she was going to solve the case, she had to stop following her hunches as they appeared and investigate - like the police, but with the advantages of her being a local.

  “You’re right, Isabelle. You’re right.” She said, and left the woman to her attempts to learn how to run her own business.

  **

  She hadn’t been back in Books and Bakes for over five minutes when the door burst open and Isabelle Irons walked in.

  “Is Bernice here?” She asked, her forehead glistening with beads of sweat.

  “Bernice!” Coral called. Bernice appeared from the kitchen, took one look at Isabelle and her mouth contorted into a frown.

  “What’s wrong?” She asked. She clearly didn’t have the friendly relationship with Isabelle that she did with Sandy.

  “I’m attempting to open the Fryer.” She began. “And I may need a little help. Are you free?”

  Bernice glanced down at the apron she was wearing, then back up at Isabelle. “No, I’m at work.”

  “I’m sure Sandy could manage without you for five minutes…” Isabelle said.

  Sandy bit her lip. She didn’t like being placed in situations like this, where her co-operation was assumed, but she didn’t want to be difficult and cause Bernice problems. “We’ll be ok for five minutes, but that’s all. We’re really busy today.”

  “Five minutes will be perfectly sufficient, I’ll have everything under control easily then,” Isabelle said, then returned her gaze to Bernice. “Come on, chop chop!”

  She left Books and Bakes and Bernice followed, casting Sandy a look that was gratitude or frustration.

  “She runs that place like a dictatorship.” Benedict Harlow said, to Sandy’s surprise. He and his wife Penelope were eating jacket potatoes with their son Sebastian.

  “Benedict.” Penelope scolded. As Waterfell Tweed’s closest thing to the aristocracy, the Harlow family distanced themselves from gossip and turmoil. Or at least they had until their lives were affected by two murders.

  “He’s not wrong.” Dorie Slaughter called. “Fancy coming and pulling poor Bernice from one workplace to sort another. She should know how to get her own business set up for the day?”

  “Some business owners aren’t that hands on.” Sandy said, with a shrug. She agreed that it was strange but didn’t want to throw flames on the subject. There wasn’t a single element of her business that she didn’t understand how to do. Bernice was a more talented baker, and Coral was a natural saleswoman, but Sandy was capable of preparing the food and running the till, and everything else too.

  “I wonder why DC Sullivan hasn’t charged her yet,” Dorie muttered in between bites of a sausage sandwich.

  “Think she did it?” Coral asked.

  “Course she did!” Dorie said. “Closed her chip shop down, didn’t he? She gets him out of the way and then opens her shop again. It’s obvious. If they’d just let my Jim lead the case, it’d all be solved by now.”

  “Do you think she did it, Jim?” Coral asked.

  Jim’s cheeks flushed, which was common whenever he was asked a direct question. “I don’t know, and I can’t talk about it.”

  “He has to be discrete, my Jim does,” Dorie said, as she reached across the table and patted his arm. Jim winced and Elaine stiffened and moved closer to him. “Of course, he can tell me things as his mother, things I could never repeat in here.”

  “Dorie, Jim can’t tell either of us about police business. You shouldn’t say things like that or you’ll get him in trouble.” Elaine said. Her timid voice was rarely heard in a confrontation and the whole of her chest and neck flushed a deep pink as she spoke.

  “He might not trust you enough to divulge important information, missy, but I’ve been around a lot longer than you have,” Dorie said. “You shouldn’t let your fancy woman speak to me that way, James.”

  Jim sank as low as he could in his seat, clearly wishing the ground would open and swallow him whole. Elaine, to her credit, said nothing more, but Sandy couldn’t help but imagine the trouble he would be in with both women back at home.

  “Anyway…” Coral said. “About the murder. If Isabelle had done it, do you think she’d draw attention to herself by opening the chip shop again?”

  It was a good point, Sandy thought.

  Dorie shrugged. Her interest in Isabelle’s guilt had been overtaken by a need to sulk.

  Coral turned to Sandy and raised her eyebrows.

  “I’m going to head out later, I want to speak to some more people about the murder,” Sandy whispered to her sister. Coral’s eyes opened wide.

  “Suspects?” She mouthed.

  “Witnesses.” Sandy corrected.

  “Please be careful,” Coral said, reaching across and giving her hand a squeeze. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be all Dorie on you, I just worry about you.”

  Sandy’s laugh was interrupted as the door burst open, the bell ringing to signal the person’s arrival. Sandy looked across to see Bernice, her cheeks rosy red and her mouth set firm in a stern line.

  “All sorted?” Sandy asked with a sympathetic smile. She had worked for some awful bosses herself and had always tried to be more understanding with her staff.

  “I’ve rung one of the young girls to come in and sort it,” Bernice explained, then walked straight past the counter and back into the kitchen. The dirty dishes were neverending. Sandy knew she would have to consider investing in a commercial dishwasher, but she had no idea where she would fit one in the tiny kitchen and she didn’t have the budget (or the landlord’s permission!) to extend the premises.

  “I’m going to get off then, you’ll be ok?” Sandy asked.

  Coral had just taken an order from a customer Sandy hadn’t seen before, and her attention was focused on the coffee machine that she was still nervous about using. The look of panic in her eyes made Sandy stifle a giggle. Coral was so confident when it came to convincing customers to add extra items to their orders, but the coffee machine stumped her every day.

  “Need some help?” She asked.

  “I’ll get my head around it one day, I’m sure!” Coral said with false bravado. Sandy knew she was desperate to prove herself as a valuable employee and was conscious of any mistakes she
made. On one of her first days, she had given a customer £20 change when he had paid with a £20 note and when the mistake had been discovered as they cashed up she had burst into tears.

  “Come on, what is it?”

  “It’s a hazelnut latte. If it was a cappuccino, I’d be fine I think.” Coral said. She stepped to one side to allow Sandy to take over and demonstrate how the drink was made.

  “There’s so much choice, that’s the problem,” Sandy said. “I took months to remember the names of them all; mochas and macchiatos, cappuccinos and cortados, and then the syrups and the extra shots and the almond milk crowd. You’ll get your head around it all, don’t worry.”

  Coral flashed her a grateful smile and took the cup from Sandy’s hand to deliver to the customer.

  “I can stay?” Sandy asked when Coral returned behind the counter.

  “No, it’s fine, honest… I know what it’s like to be on the tail of a story.” Coral said, referring to her past as a journalist. “You catch the bad guys, and I’ll stay here and study the coffee machine manual a bit more!”

  8

  Wrapped up in her yellow mac and chunky scarf, Sandy braved the outside. She walked into the middle of the village green and looked around, her eyes taking in each building that offered a view of the place where Dick Jacobs was murdered.

  The village green was surrounded on four sides by a mix of cottages and businesses. Books and Bakes sat on High Street and looked out over the green, as did other shops and businesses including The Tweed. The Village Fryer was a few doors to the left of Books and Bakes with a view of the green obstructed by the doctor’s surgery, which took up the whole length of the village green along which she had found Dick Jacobs.

  The length opposite the surgery was taken up with the library, which kept odd opening hours and was never open later than 4 pm, and a cottage that had no windows overlooking the green.

  Opposite High Street was Manor Way, the road which lead to Waterfell Manor. Gus’ butchers and Cass’ LA Nails were on Manor Way, and so were several cottages. Rob Fields, Cherry Gentry, and Dorie Slaughter lived on that road, as did Coral.

  Sandy decided the best plan was to take a lap of the green and speak to as many people as she could.

  It was 2.30pm and to her surprise, the newsagent next to Books and Bakes was closed. A tatty piece of paper with ‘GONE FOR LUNCH, BACK IN AN HOUR’ scrawled on it was stuck in the window. The next shop was a charity shop that had even more restricted opening hours than the library. The opening times sign in the window suggested the shop should have been open at 2.30pm on a Thursday, but in reality, Sandy couldn’t remember seeing it open for weeks and suspected the woman who owned it chose her operating hours day by day as the mood took her.

  Sandy stood outside the next building and took a deep breath. Her throat tightened as sadness tore at her chest. Just a few days earlier, thinking of Tom Nelson or the prospect of seeing him made a warmth spread through her, and now she winced at the knowledge that she had to speak to him.

  Gulping down her nerves, she pushed open the heavy door and walked into the heat of the pub. A fire crackled away and the ring of laughter was in the air. A table of men who Sandy recognised by face only were supping a pint of dark ale each and pointing to some sporting match being shown on the large TV.

  Sandy walked past them unnoticed and stood at the empty bar for a few moments until Tom emerged from the back with a cardboard box in his arms. Sandy watched him for the few seconds before he noticed her, how at ease he was with his work, how easily he tore open the tape that sealed the box and took out various crisps and nuts to restock the snack tubs behind the bar.

  Eventually, she coughed to alert him to her presence, and the spell was broken. He stiffened and gave a terse smile.

  “Sandy.” He said as he returned the crisps to the box and walked down the bar towards her. “What can I get for you?”

  “Oh, nothing, thanks, Tom.” She said, his name feeling foreign on her lips. “I wanted to have a chat with you, do you have a few minutes?”

  Tom glanced around the pub. Apart from the table of men, the place was empty.

  He nodded to her. “Let’s grab a booth.”

  Sandy allowed him to lead her to a booth in the corner of the pub and let Tom sit at an angle that allowed him to watch the door to see if anyone came in.

  “So… you’re ok?” She asked. Making small talk had never been a strength of hers. She’d much rather speak about things that mattered than discuss the weather.

  Tom nodded, not taking his eyes off the door. “You?”

  Sandy sighed. “I’m fine. Look, I’m here about Dick Jacobs.”

  The colour blanched from Tom’s face at the mention of the dead man. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Nothing.” Sandy scoffed. “I found him, Tom. I found his body. And I’m going to find his killer.”

  Tom groaned and met her gaze. “I didn’t know you’d found him. I’m sorry.”

  Sandy shrugged. Even his sympathy seemed forced, stiff. “I’m speaking to everyone who might have seen something. Your windows look out over the surgery. Someone in here could have seen something. Will you help me?”

  To her surprise, Tom shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t know anything. It’s not like I sit looking out of the window when I’m in here, I’m at the bar or in the back. Monday night I was sorting the deliveries, I wasn’t even in here. Speak to Tanya if you want, but we don’t know anything.”

  Sandy nodded, noting the ease with which he described him and the barmaid as a ‘we’. She stood up as disappointment sagged through her. “Ok. I get it. I get it.”

  “Sandy!” Tom called after her, but she walked out of the pub without looking back.

  By the time she reached the next house on her list, her cheeks were damp with tears. She continued walking until she reached LA Nails, where she looked in the window and saw Cass sat sorting through paperwork. She pushed open the door as a sob choked its way out of her throat, causing Cass to gaze up from her work and rush over to engulf her in a hug.

  “Oh my darling, what’s happened to you?” Cass asked as Sandy allowed herself to release all of the tears she had been storing. Finally, they slowed, and Cass lead her to the settee that was meant for customers to wait on, and disappeared into the back to make them a drink.

  “I’m so sorry to turn up like this while you’re working,” Sandy said when she returned with a mug of mocha for her and a black coffee for herself. She smiled at the thought that her best friend had gone to the trouble of having her favourite drink in for her occasional visits.

  “Oh, shush. What’s happened, Sand?”

  “I feel so silly, it’s nothing, I’ve just overthought everything and got my feelings heart.”

  “So it’s a man. Is it Tom Nelson?” Cass asked. Sandy laughed at how quick she had worked it out, then the laugh transformed into tears. “Well, I don’t know what he’s done, but he’s been acting strangely.”

  “Strange?” Sandy asked. Cass didn’t have much to do with Tom so she couldn’t imagine how Cass could have noticed his behaviour change.

  “I saw him on the square Monday night when I was locking up, he was just pacing up and down. In a world of his own, he was. I called out to him, I didn’t realise he’d upset you then or I’d have done more than say hello to him! He didn’t even acknowledge me.”

  A shudder ran through Sandy’s body. “Monday night? What time?”

  “Ooh I don’t know Sand, you know what I’m like with time. I was ran off my feet in here all day so it must have been half five? Six?”

  Sandy pulled her notebook from her bag and scribbled down what Cass had just told her, her heart racing in her chest.

  “What did I say?” Cass asked.

  “Nothing,” Sandy said, reluctant to share her suspicions until she knew more. “Cass, I need to go.”

  “No way lady - oh listen to me - I’m talking like Derrick now!” Cass said with a laugh. “You’r
e staying here until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  Sandy sighed. “I can’t even explain it without feeling like I’m a teenager again, Cass. But I thought things were going well with Tom, and then he just changed. He hasn’t spoken to me for days. No messages, no suggestion that we see each other again, nothing. And I’ve just been into The Tweed to see him and it was so strange. I just don’t understand what changed or what I’ve done wrong.”

  “Hey!” Cass said. She moved from the settee to sit on the floor in front of Sandy, her legs crossed underneath her. “You’ve done nothing wrong, I can tell you that. You’re the loveliest, kindest woman there is. If Tom doesn’t want to see you again, firstly he should have the guts to tell you that and second, it’s his loss.”

  “You say that Cass but why have I been single for so long if I’m so lovely and kind?”

  “Erm… that’s easy, Sand. There’s hardly a huge supply of eligible bachelors around in Waterfell Tweed, and you’ve been so focused on Books and Bakes you’ve not put yourself out there. You only got friendly with Tom while you were trying to solve a murder!”

  Sandy looked down at Cass. “I’ve never thought of it like that. Do you think he got tired of me not making enough time for him?”

  Cass shrugged. “I don’t know. Was he asking to see you more?”

  “Not really,” Sandy admitted. “It wasn’t serious, I mean we weren’t even dating. We just saw each other on our days off sometimes.”

  “Had you even kissed him?” Cass asked.

  Sandy’s cheeks flushed. “Not really. I thought he was taking it slow… oh no!”

  “What?”

  “What if I misread the whole thing and he was just being a friend? I bet he’s backed off because I was misreading the signals so badly. I’m such a moron.”

  “You’re not a moron,” Cass said. “But, maybe this is a sign that you want a relationship after all. You’ve spent so long being miss independent, all happy on your own and stuff, but maybe you’d like a man. I mean, I know I would.”

  “You would?” Sandy asked. She had thought that both she and Cass were determined they didn’t need men.