I flicked to the photocopy. “This is your signature?”
He examined it. “A forgery,” he dismissed. “Yes, that’s how my signature looks. But I did no such thing. Not me, never.”
I grabbed the photo next. “Well, I believe this was taken the same day,” I said. “Do you—”
He snatched it from me. “No, that’s not right.”
“What is it?”
“That’s me.” He stabbed a finger at the man in the back. “I’d never be caught dead with her. We had our fling, but never again.”
“Fling?”
Knock. Knock.
Mortimer dropped the papers and took a hard grasp of his stick. “Is that someone with you?” he growled, stabbing his cane on the ground. “My last nerve.”
“I can get it—”
“No!” Mortimer marched forward out of the kitchen.
I dipped to grab the paper and photograph. Something wasn’t right, he was unimpressed with everything I’d shown him. But that was him in the back of the picture. It made sense; he’d signed a document too.
“Dad,” a voice cried.
Dad?
THIRTEEN
I knew as soon as I saw her, the woman standing at the front door. It was Doreen’s daughter. She stood with the largest smile on her face, and a boy wavering behind her, his face buried in a mobile phone with a pair of large headphones over his head.
“Oh, you’re busy,” she said softly, locking eyes with me.
“No, no,” I said.
Mortimer didn’t mutter a word.
“I shouldn’t have sprung this on you,” she said, teary-eyed. “But, you’re my dad.”
He was shaky on the walking stick in his hand. I hurried to his side, propping him up somewhat with my body.
“You okay, Mr Forster?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It can’t be—it—it.” He blew out of his cheeks. “Amanda?”
She smiled. “Yes, Amanda.”
“Your—your—Doreen always said you weren’t mine.”
I definitely shouldn’t have been privy to listening to everything here. “I should go,” I said.
“No,” Amanda said. “Don’t leave. I need to thank you and your husband for everything you did for me.”
Now, I was shaky and my mouth dry. A drip of cold travelled the length of my back as my lips moved without sound. “My—my—what sorry?”
“Can we sit down?” she asked, glancing at Mortimer, either he was about to collapse, or I was.
My husband seemed to have been more involved with Doreen and her family than I had originally assumed or counted on. This definitely wasn’t information hiding inside the paperwork.
“The living room,” I said, nodding to the doorway.
I walked in with Mortimer, he planted himself on the seat, mixed in with all the newspapers. It seemed messier than yesterday, perhaps he’d been in a rage and acted out against all the mess after Paul’s visit.
Amanda took a seat beside Mortimer, and I took a seat on the single seater, body hitting against the wood and old papers acting as cushioning.
She snapped her fingers at the boy in the doorway.
Where was Charlie? My eyes explored the room, he couldn’t have been far; still in the kitchen? Perhaps with his new friend. It would’ve been rude for me to leave.
The boy grunted, removing his headphones.
“Ben,” she said. “I’m going to talk; you can wait in the hallway.”
He nodded, snapping the headset over his ears and dawdling back out of the living room.
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Turning sixteen next month,” she said into a sigh. “He’s the reason why my mother kicked me out, the reason why I was thrown out onto the streets.”
“You said you wanted to thank my husband.”
“Yes,” she said with a huge smile. “He helped me when it happened, got me set up with an apartment, some money for baby things, and an interview as a receptionist.”
I always figured she’d been kicked out for drugs or stealing. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “My husband passed away five years ago.”
“Oh, gosh.” She butted her lips together. “I’m sorry. He really helped me out when nobody else would. Not even my mother, and after Ben was born, she didn’t want to know a single thing about him.”
Mortimer coughed. “You can’t be.” He reached out and grabbed Amanda’s hand from her lap. “I—I—I can’t.”
She turned her body to him. “She told me, and I thought you knew. She told me never to tell you, but now she’s not here.”
“I should—I should really go, leave you two to get to know each other,” I said, pressing myself up out of the chair. “It was really nice to meet you, really.”
Mortimer sobbed. “But Doreen told me, she said you weren’t mine. Swore on it. Every time I asked, you were someone else’s.”
I couldn’t be in this memory for them, me, intruding in something as personal as a long-lost daughter and father reconnecting. “I’ll give you some space,” I said.
Amanda stood and accompanied me as I walked out.
Charlie was, as suspected, in the kitchen staring at the cat as it walked across the counters, looking down at him as if the cat was regal and Charlie was in her colosseum below.
She tapped my arm. “I heard you found her,” she said. “My mother.”
“I—yes, I did.”
“They called me into the police station,” she said, raising her brows.
It’s only a small building, I could tell she didn’t think much of it. “What did they say?”
“They were acting weird about it,” she continued. “I think she was—” she sucked in deep. “Murdered.” Quickly, looking back to see her son, sat at the bottom of the stairs, busy in his own world.
“You do?” I asked.
She nodded. “And I think they’re treating me like a suspect.”
Was she? It was possible. But why tell me, unless she thinks I’m looking into it. Or perhaps because of my connection with Paul, of which many people seemed to really overestimate; there was nothing familial about our connection.
“And I was in Briarbury for a couple days as well. He came this way to look for his father.”
“He ran away?”
She nodded. “But I can’t tell them that, they’ll have social services here like that.” She clicked her fingers. “I can’t lose him. He’s everything in my life, without him, I’d—I’d—I’d be a wreck.”
“Does he know his father?”
“No,” she said. “He was someone I shouldn’t have got involved with. Ever.”
“Married?”
She nodded.
No. I looked at him. He wasn’t—was he?
“Oh, oh—” she quickly gasped. “It wasn’t Harry,” she said. “Sorry, I just realised how that sounded. No, Harry was someone who helped me out in a dark place. I never told his father about him. Apparently, it’s a trait which runs through in my family.” She snickered.
It wasn’t a laughing moment. “So, he still doesn’t know?”
“Him, or the father?”
“Both.”
I couldn’t straight up ask, but it wasn’t Harry, and that was the relief I needed. “Well, I should go. I have to get to work.”
She threw herself at me into a hug. “Thank you, Eve.”
In a python’s grasp, I seized up. “Ok.”
A little tear fell down her cheek as she pulled back. “To make matters worse, he was kicked out of school last week,” she said. “I can’t catch a break.”
“He’ll be fine,” I said. “Take a couple deep breaths, maybe talk with him. Tell him the truth. It must hurt him, not knowing.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “But I—I—I don’t want to ruin a man’s life by dropping this on him. It’s like some bomb.”
I never had any experience with this. My advice was probably
worthless. “Make sure Mortimer is okay. He boiled the kettle earlier. He’s probably in shock. And I don’t think his memory is altogether there.”
She smiled and nodded. “Thank you, again.”
“Thank you,” I said. I clicked my tongue. “Charlie.”
He skittered out, chased by the cat.
“Oh, and he has a cat,” Amanda said with a large smile. “Hopefully I’ll see you again later.”
I nodded. “Take care.”
Leaving the house with Charlie. I clung to my handbag with my shaken hands clasped over the strap at my shoulder. There was a side I never knew to Harry, and even after his death, he was still surprising me.
I sat in my car for a moment, steadying my breath. In through the nose, and out through the mouth, I recalled to myself. It helped.
“We’re going home,” I told Charlie.
I needed to find out what else Harry hadn’t told me about.
Or, I was just plain ignorant to everything going on in his life.
It gave me a lot to think about as I drove home. And then, once I was home, I kicked off my boots and pulled away my jacket. There was something in the mess of papers with Amanda’s name on, and I was going to find it.
After all the papers I’d stumbled across earlier, detailing my husband’s business transactions. I needed to tackle a different area of the island counter.
I knew Harry did a lot of things as charitable favours; it was one of the many businesses he’d created. I beat myself up over not knowing more, but likewise, he didn’t know much about my work either.
FOURTEEN
Nothing. Absolutely nothing in all the papers I’d combed through. I’d given myself two papercuts, and a headache from smelling all the old papers.
I freshened up; putting plasters over my fingers and readied myself for the lunch date I was about to have with Ruth at Wiches. I knew she’d be interested to know what I knew, including Mortimer’s secret daughter.
When I arrived at the sandwich bar, Ruth was already seated, drinking coffee from a take-out cup. I carried Charlie in, hooked under my arm so he didn’t wiggle out of my grasp. Everywhere in Briarbury was dog-friendly; if they weren’t, they’d go out of business.
It wasn’t a café, or anything nearly as nice. Wiches sold sandwiches, and if you wanted, they had a little machine for coffees, nothing too fancy, you can add powdered chocolate to the foam if you wished, and sugar came in little packets you had to pay ten pence apiece for.
Ruth sat at a table close to the window. She snapped her fingers at me, as if I hadn’t seen her through the window before entering.
“Have you ordered?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “Just grabbed one of these.”
“Don’t know why we couldn’t go to Briars,” I grumbled, placing Charlie on a chair before sitting beside him.
“We’re always there,” she said. “And here they don’t have those dim lights.”
“But we have to look out across all the parked cars.”
She waved a hand, moving the conversation away from my complaints. “What happened to your fingers?”
“Papercuts,” another grumble came.
“Goodness, Eve.” She pulled my hand into hers. “Well, did you clean the cuts before applying the plasters?”
I stared back at her, my lips in a straight line, unmoving. “No, I stuck them in some dirt first.”
“Pfft.” She grinned back. “I’m in nurse mode. Anyway, I’ll go up and order, what do you want?”
“Prawn cocktail sandwich,” I said, smacking my lips together, craving the slight tang.
“Right,” she hummed, moving out from beneath the table. “Then I want to know what else you were doing this morning.”
“Well, you’re never going to believe what happened,” I said, biting my bottom lip. “It’s going to make you scream.”
“If it was juicy, you’d have already told me.” she said with an eye roll before leaving the table.
She was right. I should’ve called and told her. I’d been so preoccupied with information I’d learned about Harry and him helping Amanda, I’d completely forgot to tell Ruth any of it.
I stroked Charlie behind the ears. “Harry would’ve loved you,” I said to him.
“Want anything to drink?” Ruth called back in my direction.
“Something fruity, a Ribena,” I said. “And some water for Charlie.”
Ruth joined the table five minutes later, carrying a red tray. There were two plates with freshly made sandwiches, and three bottles, swishing from side to side, smacking against the plates.
“Blackcurrant or strawberry?” she asked, nodding to the bottles.
“Strawberry,” I said, grabbing the red one. “Which sandwich did you get?”
She shrugged. “Asked her to surprise me,” she said. “Think it’s chicken tikka, maybe.”
“Oooh.”
As Ruth took the plates from the tray, she looked to me and raised her brows. “So,” she said. “Are you going to tell me, or keep me waiting?”
“Yes,” I said. “My morning was exciting and confusing, all the same.”
“Confusing?”
I took a deep breath and held it for some time before puffing it through my mouth and cheeks. “Well, I learned that Harry had business dealings with Doreen, but he knew the Maidstone family much more than I thought.”
“Go on,” she said.
I shook my head. “Let me start from when I went to Mortimer’s,” I began, starting the story in a logical order. “I arrived, he was a little stressed, or a lot. It got worse when I showed him the deed.”
“Did you bring it?”
I grabbed my handbag from the floor beside the table. “I did, actually.” I pulled the papers out and planting them on the table. “He didn’t like it. He had all number of wild theories. Apparently, it was all forged.”
Ruth grabbed the photograph. “And who’s—”
“Well, that’s Mortimer,” I said.
Ruth cooed with excitement. “No way.”
I wiggled my brows back at her. “I know, and this is where it gets interesting.”
“Go on.”
“There was a knock at the door,” I said. “Guess who it was.”
“Uhm—I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “Paul?”
I shook my head vehemently. “Definitely not.”
“Then who?”
“Amanda.”
“Doreen’s daughter.”
I continued nodding, my eyes wide, glancing from her to the picture, as if hoping she’d make the connection. “Mortimer is Amanda’s dad.”
“No.” She gasped. “No. Oh—no. Really?”
“Yep, and apparently Mortimer never knew. But they had a fling, and he tried to put the two together, but she always denied it.”
Ruth’s hand settled at her chest. “That poor girl, first a drug addiction, now—”
I shook my head once again. “She found out when she was kicked out all them years ago, which again—you’ll never guess why.”
“Everyone knows it was drug related.”
Another shake of my head and a wider smile grew. “Because she was pregnant.”
Ruth dropped the picture. “Doreen always said it was substance abuse, and now—well, now she can’t even answer for everything she’s told everyone.”
“Well, it’s not like people have to keep their pregnancies a secret anymore, especially when the father is out of the picture.”
“Can’t believe she’d never been back before now.”
“She wasn’t even living too far away either, and Harry had funded her apartment and got her a job interview too.”
“Jeez, I knew he was charitable, but it sounds like a cover—” she paused, glancing at my face. She was heading along the same thoughts as me. Thinking about the child she was having and it being Harry’s.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “She told me Harry was helping, he wasn’t doing it to
save himself.”
“Well, I’d never think Harry would cheat.”
“Me either,” I said. “I near almost fainted when she was talking; my brain was on the brink of melting.”
Ruth finally dug into her sandwich. “What else happened?”
I also took a bite, relishing in the sour cream. I didn’t know what else had happened, my brain blanked after reliving the initial shock, thinking about Amanda and her son.
“And why didn’t you call me after this?” she grumbled, squinting her eyes as if she’d become some Western gunslinger. “I mean, it was a lot to say, so I’m glad we did in person.” She panted out a deep breath. “That thought about Harry helping Amanda, I probably would’ve lost it.”
“And I wouldn’t have known how you’d look over the phone,” I said. “So, there’s that.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“But she did say she’d been back in Silver Lake for a few days.”
“Oh, well—that doesn’t sound good.”
I nodded, scooping back the papers and chucking them into my handbag once again. “Her son came back looking for his father, so he’s in the area, but he doesn’t know who, and she didn’t say—and I didn’t want to press her.”
“Surely, this makes her the number one suspect,” Ruth added.
In my mind, it was up there, alongside the mystery man who had already promised he was going to be seeing Doreen again.
As we sat in thought, eating, a short figure approached us, a large smile on his face.
“Max?” I said, swallowing a whole mouthful of food. I gestured from him to Ruth. “Jonathan’s son,” I said. “From the flower shop.”
“Oh, Max,” Ruth said. “How’s your father?”
“He’s good, thank you,” he replied.
“How can I help you?” I asked, wiping at my mouth with a napkin.
He glanced around. “I came in to pick up a food order and saw you sitting here.”
“Oh, do you remember something about the man you delivered flowers for?”
He gnashed his teeth. “Not him,” he said. “I remember Doreen’s response to receiving the flowers.”
“Happy?” Ruth asked. “Sad? Angry? Annoyed?” she continued in his silence.
“She wasn’t happy,” he finally said. “She slammed the door shut and I left them on her doorstep.”
Silver Lake Cozy Mystery Bundle Page 20