“I’d rather not say,” he answered. “I want it to be a surprise when I ask her. You don’t mind, do you? I’m sorry if that seems impolite.”
“Hmmm, I understand, Adam,” Martha said. “Would it be convenient for you to come into Marsden-Lacey on Wednesday evenings after your shift? I’ll ask around for a place to practice that has enough room and a good floor for dancing.”
Adam’s expression was pure elation. “Perfect. I’ll wait to hear from you. May I have your number, Martha, and I’ll give you mine.”
He bent down again extremely close to her window, and for an instant, he fixed her with his gaze. Martha felt herself blush. This may not be such a good idea after all, she thought.
They exchanged cell numbers. She promised to call as soon and drove away down the canopied lane towards the main house. It was hard to be certain, but she was pretty sure Adam was flinging flirty signals in her direction. And even though this was a pleasant ego booster, Martha suddenly wished she hadn’t agreed to be Adam’s teacher.
“I’d better be upfront with Merriam about the teaching. The tango of all things. That would be a tough one to explain if he walked in on us,” she muttered.
The new spring growth gave the hedgerows a fuzzy, wispy look. Martha rolled down her window to take in the earthy smells. Primrose and dog rose plants mingled with blackthorn and holly. The delicate scents were so enticing they made her wish she could stop the car, stop her forward motion, stand quietly in the middle of the road and simply meld with the freshness of a renewed Mother Nature.
But it wasn’t to be. She was supposed to meet Helen and Piers to help decide on some things for their upcoming nuptials. Martha loved a wedding and this was going to be a doozy. Helen’s dress fitting was going to be in London and as her maid of honor, Martha was making sure everything was as stress free as possible.
She pulled her car up the drive and saw an exotic model of a BMW sitting within the curved parking area directly in front of the house.
“Probably the wedding planner, Kirsten, up from London,” she murmured to herself. Martha watched though as Helen stepped out from the front door and was followed by a tall, well built man.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “That’s rotten old George! What in the love of Pete is he doing here?”
Martha slowly pressed down on the car’s gas pedal. This was going to take all the restraint she had in her not to kick him in the chins for showing his selfish face at Healy.
“I’ve got to stay in control,” she said, trying one or two of her deep breaths and puffing out again like a woman in labor. “That flea-bitten old, rounder of a dog is probably here to put a wrench in things for Helen.”
She tried to focus on Helen’s face. “I’m right! She’s upset. I can see it. What a jerk! Breathe deep, Martha. You’ve got to be cool-headed,” she said gripping the steering wheel tighter.
The Mini Cooper slid up to stop beside what must have been George’s ride while he was visiting his homeland. Martha, with a stoic expression, threw open her door and stepped free from the car. Helen and George stopped their conversation and turned to Martha who walked briskly with determination up the flagstone steps.
“Thought I smelled something of the swamp lands of Florida as I got closer to the house. Oh! Why it’s you, George. Where’s your sweet, young wife, Fiona?” Martha made the first landing right below where the other two stood together. “Should I check the nursery? I’d love to say gitchy gitchy goo. She’s such a young, young, young thing if I remember right.”
Her face lacked any sign of warmth and slowly devolved into a witheringly, cold smirk.
George’s entire expression writhed with an incensed sneer.
“I’ve left Fiona. She’s staying in Florida and I’ve come home,” he turned to Helen and finished, “for good.”
“Eww!” Martha said, pretending to dig in her purse for something and returning her gaze back up at George. “Oh, I’m sorry, that probably sounded like I meant ‘eww’ at your intentions to return to England. Actually, I was thinking about how Gus, my cat, left me a filthy, stinking rat on my doorstep this morning and I had to toss it into the incinerator. Vermin, vermin everywhere these days. Well, I’ll let you two finish your little tête-à-tête. Got to get to work planning Helen’s future happiness with the man she loves and who treats her like a princess.”
Martha walked past George, leaned in close to him and looked up.
“Eat dirt,” she hissed.
As she disappeared through the front door, George, with difficulty, lowered his hackles. He perceptibly shook himself in what was probably an effort to wriggle back into his previously slick human form.
“I really don’t care for that woman,” he said.
“It’s no matter to me, George, what your opinion might be,” Helen replied. “You’re lucky she’s currently in a forced anger management class, otherwise you would probably be in some form of gut wrenching physical pain at the moment.”
George laughed archly. “That little red-head? She’s half my size, Helen.”
It was Helen’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, George, if you only knew.” Helen turned to leave and George grabbed her hand.
“I meant what I said, Helen. Will you please give me a second chance? I was such a fool, such an absolute fool to have ever left you. I was so confused. I don’t know why it happened. I made the biggest mistake of my life. The thought of losing you forever made me wake up and leave Fiona. Don’t come back for me, Helen. I don’t deserve you, I know that. Will you try and remember what we had together. Our wonderful kids. You don’t owe me this, but will you please think about it for the sake of our family?”
Helen had ascended three of the steps and from her vantage point, she was almost a head above George. In his eyes, she saw that he might actually mean what he was saying. She had loved him so deeply and his betrayal had shattered everything she’d built her life upon. Was she capable of forgiveness? Was she capable of believing in him once more? Should she?
Shaking her head, Helen felt the confusion. Why had she been dealt this hand of her ex-husband returning at a time when she was so complete in her happiness?
“I don’t know, George. I… I… I’m at a loss. Go away and let me think. Don’t contact me. I’ll contact you when, and if, I’m ever ready to.”
She turned away and finished walking towards Healy’s front door. A thought struck her and she turned back.
“I will contact you, George. You can be certain of that, but for your own safety, do not come back to Healy and stay away from Piers. Do you understand?”
George laughed.
“I’m not afraid of him,” he said smugly.
Helen cocked her head to one side.
“You should be, George. You really should.”
She didn’t wait for his reply but turned and finished her climb.
“I’m going to see my solicitor, Helen,” George said. “I want to discuss our client list. We left things about our business unfinished.”
Not looking back, she shut the door softly and in the cool vestibule her eyes came to rest on Martha who had waited for her.
“I’m sorry,” is all her friend said, but the love and empathy was thick within that one tiny phrase.
“I’m scared, Martha,” Helen whispered, her voice breaking as tears welled up in her eyes.
Two seconds later, the two friends were holding each other in the kind of embrace all of us have known at some point in our lives. Hands to hold us, hearts to love us and spirits to lift us up. Thank the good Lord for true friends.
Chapter 10
Marsden-Lacey Constabulary
Present Day
“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
-Leonardo da Vinci
“My dear woman,” Chief Merriam Johns yelled into the phone, “I don’t think you are able to hear me properly!”
The voice on the other end of t
he line was garbled and sounded like Mrs. McGillicuddy, the owner of a fine Scottish angling hostelry, was conducting her end of the conversation underwater.
“No! I don’t want the room overlooking the back garden and the heath,” Johns boomed. “I want the room on the third floor with the fireplace and the west-facing windows. The Loch! The room with the Loch vistas, Mrs. McGillicuddy!”
Arriving at his office door was the last person Johns wanted annoying him at the moment. He waved Sam Berry, the junior constable trainee, to go away, but Sam ignored him and slumped up against the doorframe, fiddling with the tall palm plant where Johns kept his hidden flask of whiskey.
This created a conflicting situation for the chief. Should he continue trying to fix his salmon fishing accommodation for next September or hang up and toss Sam out before he fiddled so much the palm fell over and revealed Johns’ stash? He tried another route.
“Get out of here!” he commanded, pointing at Sam who only responded with a hurt puppy look.
The cellular system miraculously cleared of static and those last four words shouted by Johns were the first completely strung four words Mrs. McGillicuddy had heard during their entire conversation.
“Well!” she huffed. “I don’t have to take this from some bad tempered English bully!” She hung up.
Communication, once again, between England and Scotland had ground to a halt.
Chief Johns, with a great sadness in his heart, hit the ‘end’ button on his phone and put his head down on his desk. Salmon fishing in the Scottish highlands in early September was, besides Martha, his one great joy in life. This year he had plans to make it the most memorable time yet.
His voice was muffled, but audible, when he spoke.
“What do you want Sam?”
“Sorry for not leaving chief, but Commissioner St. Stephens is here.”
Johns’ head flung up and he practically leaped from where he sat like someone had hit him with a cattle prod.
“Why the hell didn’t you say something?” he snapped, passing by Sam’s tall lanky figure in the doorway. “Where is he?”
“Waiting for you in the break room.”
“Appropriately named,” Johns grumbled to himself as he hurried down the corridor to where his boss sat. He opened the door with what he hoped looked like a pleasant, professional smile.
“Good morning, Commissioner St. Stephens. Sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” Johns said sitting down across from the portly man who appeared to be of a jovial disposition but was, Johns knew, the exact opposite. St. Stephens took a deep breath and let it out in a way that told his subordinate he was in for rough waters ahead.
“I’ve been looking over your constabulary’s financials. You’ve spent,” he flipped through two pages of an oversized three-ring binder which occupied a substantial portion of the table between them, “miscellaneous funds for building maintenance. I’d like to read to you some of the entries.”
Johns felt his stomach keel over. He had a feeling where this was going.
“Ten rose bushes, thirty bags of landscaping pebble, four pallets of flagstone rock… Any of this sounding familiar to you, chief?”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to direct, if I may, sir, your attention to a section of the financials from three years ago titled ‘Miscellaneous Income’. We had a fundraiser to do aesthetic improvements on the constabulary. We managed to raise,” Johns pointed to a number on the spreadsheet, “a hefty sum with the help of the village. The rest of the monies came from the yearly amount assigned for upkeep of the constabulary.”
“Yes,” St. Stephens said in a way that meant he was about to come to his point. “Up until about three years ago, constabulary chiefs had a great deal of flexibility in the way they apportioned monies, but whether you received the memo or not, you should have liaised with my office before spending money on any project of substantiality.”
Commissioner St. Stephens paused as he looked up from the fiduciary bible which lay between the two men like an anvil. In this situation, Johns was a piece of metal that St. Stephens, the blacksmith, was about to pound into submission.
“Your constabulary will be under a spending moratorium until a complete audit is conducted. Obviously, you will have access to monies necessary to fulfill this station’s mission, but these will also need to be managed through my office.”
With his final judgment passed, St. Stephens flipped the ledger shut, rolled his chair back from the table and stood up. Johns sat dumbly upon his back-end and only after he felt St. Stephens’ critical eyes staring at him, did he finally rise and nod. There was no use arguing or even attempting to state his case. The commissioner was God in this situation and Johns would have to accept the audit.
The chief walked St. Stephens to the door, shook his hand and for all intents and purposes, appeared to be completely compliant and affable. There was no use in showing his true feelings. Furtive glances from Donna, Sam and Michael, told Johns that they'd probably already guessed at what had happened.
“Well, I need the staff in the break room in the next ten minutes,” he said grumpily. “Constable Waters make sure Sam covers the desk.”
Exactly ten minutes later when they were all assembled around the break table, no one spoke as Johns came through the door and sat down.
“We’ve been put on a spending freeze by the commissioner. If you want to fill up a police vehicle or purchase pencils, it must go through me first. I want you to create a complete record of your daily tasks and expenses. Do you understand?”
Ten heads nodded quietly and decisively.
“Good,” Johns said. He explained why they’d been put under the watchful eye of the commissioner and the loyal ten around the table remained mute, but each in their own minds must have wondered at the sudden budgetary inspection.
“Will we each be asked to explain our expenses to an audit committee?” Donna asked.
Johns sighed and answered, “Possibly.” He leaned back into his chair and studied the faces around his table. Each person was someone he had handpicked to be in his station because of their work ethic, their integrity and their commitment to the community. Something needled him about St. Stephens showing up out of the blue. It seemed like a set up.
“I want you to do your best with the restrained financial situation. The most important thing is to give top priority to all of your cases and maintain optimum daily operations. Come to me if you have any difficulties or questions. This shouldn’t last long and once they’ve cleared us, which I expect to be soon, we’ll be stronger and more efficient for having gone through the process.”
He dismissed the group and once Johns was back in his office alone, he sat drumming his fingers on his desk. He watched as Perigrine Clark, one of the men who’d worked so hard to bring the Marsden-Lacey Constabulary back from being such an eyesore to becoming one of the prettiest buildings along the High Street, move from one budding rose bush to another applying fresh fertilizer at the bases. Alistair and Perigrine had won a garden show for their work on the constabulary, even though they’d been inmates at the time. The story had made the national news.
That’s when it hit him, the truth. Since they’d raised the money for the renovations on the constabulary, the old Georgian building had become a Yorkshire photo favorite. If you did an Internet search for quaint villages in England, it almost always turned up a picture of the Marsden-Lacey Constabulary with its flowering window boxes, rose bushes and perfectly manicured hedges. The cobblestoned High Street and central fountain in the square made this particular area of the village the definition of picturesque. Every business and villager had profited in some way from the increase in tourism.
On more than one occasion at the annual meeting in Leeds of police chiefs, someone had sidled up to Johns and mentioned that when he started thinking of retiring, they’d like to be considered for his command. He’d even been given a commendation by a national heritage organization for bringing new life to an at-risk historical building
and declining village.
Johns knew that someone was looking for a reason to move them out of their picture-postcard building. His financial records had never been called into question in the last ten years of him running the constabulary. Something smelled.
That’s when his attention again was diverted by the presence of Perigrine throwing another load of manurer on the roses .
To himself he murmured, “I wonder…”
Catching Perigrine’s eye, Johns gave a friendly wave out through the window which was returned. “I think it’s time to invite Perigrine for a drink at The Traveller’s Inn.” Johns mumbled.
He thought quietly for a moment. The truth behind Perigrine and Alistair’s story was full of dead ends. For about a year, Johns had needled colleagues in London for some kind of information regarding the two men’s possible involvement with a branch of England’s secret service, but each lead dried up. Their arrest for being involved in a counterfeit ring lacked any real evidence to prove they’d even been involved. It smacked of them working as undercover agents. Someone somewhere had pulled some strings and Alistair and Perigrine were allowed to serve their time in of all places, the small jail of the Marsden-Lacey constabulary.
Even attempted conversations with Alistair and Perigrine about their past had been neatly circumvented. But Johns’ bloodhound of a nose had told him there was much more to their story than met the eye.
He got up and went to the window. Throwing open the casement, he called to Perigrine.
“Clark! Hey, could I have a word with you?”
Putting down his shears, Perigrine came over with a pleasant smile for Johns.
“Good morning, chief. Just finishing up and should be ready to start on one or two of the window boxes today.”
Johns shook his head like a man who wished he had better things to say.
“Got to put a stop to the work. The commissioner was here this morning. He’s put us on a spending freeze. It’s got to do with the money we’ve spent on sprucing the place up.”
Perigrine frowned. “Wasn’t that money from the community fundraisers?”
Death Drinks Darjeeling (A Helen and Martha Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 5