by Morgana Best
“But I’m sure there are black cats or at least something out there roaming around the Australian bush,” I said thoughtfully.
Carl snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Get with the program, Narel. We’re talking about Bob Jones, not yowies, black cats, or other urban myths.”
“I agree with Narel,” Peter said. “I think there have been too many sightings of the big black cats for it to be a myth. Anyway, Narel, we seem to have got off the track. Sorry about that. What did you want to ask me about Mongrel?”
Thankfully, something popped into my head. “I’m thinking of moving home soon. Actually I’m not thinking of it, I’m doing it. I’m selling my house and buying elsewhere. Do you think that will upset Mongrel?” I had a vague recollection that I had asked him this before, but if I couldn’t remember, I sure hoped he couldn’t.
Peter took a few moments to speak. “Try to keep his routine the same, and try to disrupt him as little as possible. Even have the furniture placement the same in the living room. Now, do you still have his cat carrier basket near the sofa?” I nodded. “All right, so when you move to your new home, place it in exactly the same position. What sort of things seem to upset him?”
I looked at Carl and he shrugged. “Only rope really,” I said. “I can’t think of anything else that upsets him.”
Peter stroked his chin. “I think Mongrel will take it much better than you think, Narel. Don’t forget, he was a rescue cat and has had a very hard life. He seems very happy with you, so I think he’ll be happy so long as you’re there and keep his routine the same as usual.”
I thanked him.
“What other questions do you have for me?”
I could not think of a single other question. I did my best to think of a way to bring the subject back to pumping Peter for information about the murder. “You know, Peter, I should have written down my questions. They have all gone right out of my head with all the fuss over the murder. I can’t think of a single other question.”
Peter bit his lip. “I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t really charge for an hour given that you have only taken up five minutes of my time.”
Carl interrupted him. “I have an idea. What if Narel remembers her questions sometime this week and calls you to ask you over the phone?”
Peter’s face lit up. “That sounds good to me.” His expression darkened. “So long as I don’t have to come to your place to interact with your cat. I’m sure you can understand, Narel.”
I assured him that was fine.
We said our goodbyes, and Carl showed him to the door. Carl waved, shut the door, and then called over his shoulder, “He didn’t even touch that chocolate cake. I’ll have to eat it.” He came back into the living room. “Narel! How could you! You ate the whole thing.”
I would have giggled, but that would have been impolite because my mouth was full.
“There’s only one thing for it,” Carl said firmly. “We’re going to have to question Peter’s cleaning lady.”
Chapter 8
I was still at Carl’s house by late morning. We were waiting for the cleaning lady, Linda Forrester. Carl had called her and asked her to come over to give him a quote on cleaning his house. She was already running half an hour late, and wasn’t answering her phone.
“Do you think she’s going to show?” I asked Carl.
Carl shrugged. “I know! I’ve just had a brainwave. What if we go over to her house and pretend we’re checking on her to see if she’s all right?”
I frowned. “Why wouldn’t she be all right? That doesn’t make any sense. You’ll have to think of a better excuse than that one.”
Carl snatched up his manbag and was already halfway to the door before speaking. “Let’s go! Leave all the talking to me.”
When I made no attempt to move, Carl hurried back and took me by my arm. “Come on, Narel! It will give us a good excuse to snoop around her house.”
“She’s hardly going to let us inside her house, let alone snoop around it,” I pointed out. “And she’s not a suspect.”
Carl raised his eyebrows. “We don’t know who is or isn’t a suspect at this stage.”
I groaned. I had no choice but to go with him. Carl wouldn’t budge once he’d made up his mind.
As soon as we pulled up outside her house, a little pale green cottage with a very pretty garden on the outskirts of town, I turned to Carl. “What if we passed her on the way and she’s already at your house, knocking on your door?”
Carl shrugged. “No harm, no foul. We’ll just drive back and tell her she was late.”
I knew there was no point saying anything else, so I dutifully followed him to the back door. In country towns, most visitors went to the back door rather than the front door. Carl knocked, and a small slender woman opened the door.
“We haven’t met yet, but I’m Carl Camden and this is Narel Myers.”
A look of shock passed over the woman’s face. “But I’m supposed to be at your house soon. If you wanted to cancel, you could have just called me.”
“No, you’re late,” Carl said in surprise. “You were supposed to come at eleven. We did call, but you didn’t answer.”
She shook her head. “No, it was twelve.”
Carl and I exchanged glances. He had called her on his mobile phone which had been set to Loud and I clearly heard them arrange the time for eleven. “Oh, there must’ve been some misunderstanding,” Carl continued smoothly. “Anyway, we wanted to come around to see if you were all right, given that there has already been one murder in the town.”
Linda’s eyes lit up, presumably at the prospect of juicy gossip. “Oh yes, Bob Jones was murdered,” she said in what seemed to me to be a cheerful tone. “Will you come in? I’m not quite ready yet to drive to your house. I just made myself a cup of tea.”
She led us through a large bathroom into a narrow corridor, which in turn led into a kitchen and then into the living room. It was a rather unusual house layout.
I nearly gagged at the smell of mothballs. In fact, naphthalene pervaded the air to such a degree that I thought I might pass out from lack of oxygen.
Linda gestured to us to sit on a sofa which was covered with all manner of multicoloured crocheted blankets. “Would you like a cup of tea while I’m having mine?” she asked us.
“No…,” I began, but Carl elbowed me in my ribs.
“Yes, we would love a cup of tea, please,” he said.
Linda beamed and left the room. The kitchen was directly next door. Given that it was a tiny cottage, there was no chance Carl and I could whisper to each other without being overheard. I took the opportunity to look around the room. Every available surface—television, coffee table, china cabinet—was covered with yellowing lace doilies. Clearly, Linda was a collector, because china ornaments of every shape and variety sat on top of all the lace doilies.
Linda returned holding two teacups. Her hands were shaking, and as a consequence, the tea spilt over into the saucers. She placed the cups and saucers on top of two large drink coasters. We thanked her, and I picked up the mismatched saucer full of tea and poured it into my cup. Linda disappeared and then returned with a plateful of chocolate-covered shortbread biscuits.
I immediately ate one. “A lovely place you have here,” Carl said, as he too tipped his saucer full of tea into his cup. “Such pretty china cups, too.”
“Thank you.” Linda looked quite pleased. “I know they’re mismatched, but I bought them from the town recycling facility.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t touched the tea. “Bought them?” Carl asked, his teacup halfway to his lips.
Linda chuckled softly. “I didn’t exactly buy them, but I fished them from a pile of rubbish. Don’t tell anyone. It’s not legal, of course. They have that little shop next to the garbage dump where people can buy stuff that others have donated on their way to dump their rubbish, but if I see something pretty on one of the piles of rubbish when I’m dumping rubbish, I�
��ll take it.”
I was rendered speechless, but Carl managed to say, “How clever of you.” He put his cup down firmly in the saucer.
“And guess what I found the other day?” she continued in an excited, yet quiet, tone.
“I can’t imagine,” I said through a mouthful of chocolate biscuit.
She hurried out of the room. Carl and I exchanged glances. When she came back in, she was clutching a large bag, the contents of which she tipped onto a huge armchair. “Look at all these handbags!” she said. “I was up at the town rubbish dump the other day and someone had just thrown these on the pile where we’re supposed to dump metal. Can you imagine? I mean, I suppose some have metal handles, but why wouldn’t the person donate them to the shop? Anyway, go on, choose one.”
Carl and I both protested. “I couldn’t possibly,” I said.
“Me either,” Carl said, “but it’s so awfully generous of you.”
“I insist.” She clenched her hands and then grabbed a handbag and thrust it at me. “You must have this one. The colour matches you.”
It was an over-sized black handbag. I didn’t know how the colour matched me, but I took it and thanked her. I then removed the piece of barbed wire that was stuck into the vinyl and placed it on my saucer.
“And this one would be good for you.” She selected a floral handbag in dubious shades of faded red, orange, and beige, and shoved it at Carl. He clutched it to his chest, looking startled.
“Thank you so much,” Carl said. He seemed to recover quickly, because he presently asked, “We are so relieved to see that you’re okay. After all, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why Bob Jones was killed, so we were worried it might be a serial killer.”
Linda leant forward, her eyes glittering. “I’m not one to gossip, you realise,” she said, “but a lot of people in this town would have wanted to kill Bob Jones.”
“Do go on,” Carl said. “Who?”
“Well, all his customers, of course.” She looked at us as if we were out of our minds.
“What customers would those be?” Carl asked her.
Linda clearly had no misgivings about gossiping, despite her protests. “Well, take Scott and Emily Fowler! Last winter, a water pipe burst. Remember when we had those minus fifteen degrees nights?”
Carl and I both nodded, although I would have been in the hospital at the time. “They called Bob Jones, and instead of digging the new pipes well underground like you have to in these parts, he simply replaced them with pipes close to ground level. In fact, they were even closer to the ground than the ones that had burst. Can you imagine that?”
Carl and I both shook our heads. She pushed on. “Anyway, poor Scott and Emily went on a cruise. While they were on their cruise, it was another cold night like that one, a minus fifteen degrees frost, and the pipes burst. Do you know their house?”
We both shook our heads. Linda shook her head, too. “The water pipe goes around the back of their house and the house is cut into a hill. Anyway, the water pipes burst when they were away. Their house flooded.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
Linda’s eyes glittered even more. “And that’s not all, their council water bill was thousands of dollars.”
“But if that happened last winter, why would they suddenly murder Bob Jones now?” I asked her.
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know, but I clean their house. They always say they don’t have enough money to pay me for more cleaning hours, but you should see all the expensive stuff they bought in Canada! Why, Scott always dresses plain around here, but he bought some fancy boots over there. He paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for them. Wait a minute.”
She scurried from the room. When she returned, she handed a piece of paper to Carl. “This is a receipt for the boots!” Carl said, handing it to me.
I looked it over, and sure enough, it was a receipt for one pair of boots.
“I took it from their house,” Linda said, as if it were an acceptable thing to do. “I just couldn’t believe how much they spent on their cruise. And cruises aren’t cheap, you know.”
“Who else would have wanted to murder Bob?” Carl asked.
Linda seemed only too happy to supply the information. “Well, there is Celia Carruthers. She’s not a very nice woman, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she murdered someone. She has a two story house, and only last week, her bath fell through the floor. It’s a wonder someone wasn’t killed! Still, Celia isn’t a very clean woman. I clean her house once a week and when she goes out, I go through all her receipts. She rarely buys soap.”
“So it was Bob Jones’ fault that the bath fell through the floor?” Carl asked her.
She nodded happily. “Yes, he didn’t do the waterproofing, and when Celia told him that, he said most houses that old don’t have waterproofing. That isn’t the point though, is it? He took out her old bath and put the new one in, so he should have made sure there was waterproofing then. It’s just common sense, isn’t it!” Without waiting for a response, she continued. “I gave Celia a cat basket that I’d found at the town rubbish dump. It was quite a nice one, too, and it had a nice little blanket in it. She thanked me, but she didn’t even offer to pay me for it. Can you imagine that! All she did was thank me, and she didn’t pay me for it.”
Carl and I exchanged glances. Clearly, she wanted us to pay for the ghastly, filthy handbags. I reached into my purse and pulled out ten dollars. “That reminds me, we haven’t paid you for the handbags you gave us,” I said. “How much are they?”
“Twenty dollars should do it,” she said through pursed lips.
“Each?” Carl said in a high-pitched voice. I elbowed him in the ribs, as I pulled out another ten dollar note and handed it to her. Carl fished a twenty dollar note from his manbag and handed it to her as well.
“Thank you.” There was not so much as a smile. Clearly, this woman was out of her tree. It was apparent she had no idea of basic rights or wrongs. I was surprised, because most people in town spoke highly of her and felt sorry for her. I figured she was a master at playing the victim, while at the same time being entirely dishonest.
“It seems as if Bob Jones had several unhappy customers,” Carl said. “I wonder if there was anyone else with any reason to kill him?”
Linda shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone else. I’ve heard rumours—not that I listen to gossip, mind you—that he has unhappy customers all over town. He was having an affair with Valerie Andrews, though.”
“The rich Hereford breeder?” Carl asked her.
“That’s the one. Married to Daryl Andrews. They’re a very rich family. Still, you would think they could afford to pay me more than two hours a fortnight to clean for them, and their house is always a mess. Honestly, they’re useless. They’re so rich, but they can’t even clean their own house. I clean my own house.” She muttered to herself for a few moments.
“Do you think Daryl found out about the affair and murdered Bob?” I asked her.
Linda put her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. Daryl has a temper. He always screams at his workers. He doesn’t scream at me, of course, because I do such a good cleaning job. His wife has that cane furniture store in town. She doesn’t get me to clean it, so it must be filthy.”
“I know that shop,” I said. “Cane Delights and Homewares.”
Linda nodded. “That’s the one,” she said. “Valerie Andrews is keeping information from the tax department. She has two sets of books, one that she shows the tax department and one that she keeps to herself for all her actual sales. She only declares a portion of her income.”
“How do you know that?” I asked her.
“She keeps the paperwork in her home office at her own house, not in her shop,” Linda explained patiently. She tapped her chin and then sipped her own cup of tea. I wondered if she would catch typhoid or hepatitis B from it. “I can’t think of anyone else who would want to kill Bob Jones,” she s
aid in a pensive tone. “Only Graham Gibson, of course. Do you know about him?”
Carl and I both assured her that we did.
“Now then, Mr Camden, will I come around now and give you a quote for cleaning your house? Drink up first; you haven’t finished your tea.”
Carl shot to his feet. “No, part of the reason we came here was to tell you not to go to my house, because it’s been declared toxic.”
I stared at Carl in shock.
“Yes, toxic, um, toxic,” Carl stammered. “I sprayed for spiders the other day, and when I called you, I’d forgotten that the label said I wasn’t to go inside my house for a month. That’s why I’m staying in a motel at the moment.”
Linda parted her thin lips slightly and looked me up and down.
“Thank you so much for the tea and the lovely handbags,” Carl said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. “I’ll call you as soon as my house has been declared non-toxic.”
He all but ran out the door, with me hard on his heels.
Chapter 9
“We have some suspects to put on the whiteboards now,” Carl said to me as soon as we reached the safety of the car. “I’m glad I didn’t drink any of that tea.”
“Me too,” I said fervently. “I’m sure she washed out the cups first, but goodness knows what chemicals are at the town recycling centre.”
Carl shuddered by way of response. “If anyone murders her, we’ll know why. I wonder if she’s blackmailing any of them?”
I shook my head. “She can’t blackmail the Fowlers just because they spent so much on the cruise, and she seems quite spiteful. I’d say she’s more likely to report Valerie Andrews to the Australian Tax Office rather than blackmail her over it.”