by Vicki Delany
With all the light from the outside, the intruder—if that’s what it was—would not be able to see me.
I listened. A car came down the road and carried on past. Close to the house, a branch moved, louder than would be caused by the wind.
Violet growled, low in her throat. It was a sound I’d never heard from her before. She weighs about thirty pounds and has been trained to be nothing but obedient and friendly. I didn’t want her going out there.
I tightened my grip on the knife. The lights behind me were off, so I might be able to step outside without being noticed. Then again, I’d be momentarily blinded by the light from the garage. I had the entire backyard to search with a glance. Whoever was out there would be concentrating all their attention on the mudroom door.
I considered going out the front and creeping around, but I’d neglected to lubricate the gate recently, and it squeaked when opened.
At that moment, it squeaked. Violet woofed once more and then turned and trotted into the kitchen. She found her bowl and took a long drink of water.
A few minutes later, the motion detector light went off.
I exhaled.
They—whoever they might be—were gone.
I pulled out a chair and sat in the dark for a long time, listening and thinking, the phone and the knife on the table in front of me. Seeing that I wasn’t going back to bed, Violet curled up on the kitchen floor and fell asleep.
I let about half an hour pass. Not even another car had gone by. I stood up. Violet opened one eye.
“Let’s have a peek outside, shall we?” I said. She leapt to her feet.
My pajamas had no pockets, so I had to keep the phone and the knife in my hand. I switched on the kitchen light and then the one over the back door. I stepped outside and breathed. The night air was warm and moist, and a breeze ruffled my hair. I smelled nothing out of the ordinary. No scent of tobacco or of unwashed clothes. Whoever had followed Violet and me earlier, this was not the same person. I waved my hands, and the motion detector light came on.
Violet immediately found something to sniff at. A set of muddy footprints led from the gate, up the flagstone path to the back door. I placed the knife on the ground next to one of the prints for scale and snapped pictures. I kept one ear open and my senses alert, but I had no doubt my intruder had left.
The footprints were big, huge even. A very large man, or a smaller man or woman attempting to make themselves look bigger. They’d carefully kept to the path, leaving the imprint of their soles but no impressions deep enough for me to judge the person’s weight.
I examined the back door and went around to the kitchen windows but could see no sign of an attempt to force entry. The prints did not leave the flagstone path.
What, then, had my nocturnal visitor wanted? A simple robbery, maybe—a snatch-and-grab foiled when the dog raised the alarm?
Maybe.
I should call the police. But what would I say? My dog had barked in the nighttime? The footprints might be evidence, but no attempt had been made to break in.
I studied the door itself and the ground around, thinking my nocturnal visitor might have left me a warning. Nothing.
I called Violet, and we went back inside. I left the light on over the back door and put the kettle on. I hunched over a cup of tea for a long time, the knife still on the table in front of me.
I finished the tea, put the knife away, and went back to bed. My intruder would not be back. Not tonight anyway.
I wouldn’t completely discount that it might be a random burglar, scared off by Violet, but it was more likely to be a warning. A warning by someone who knew me and knew there was no need to leave a note nailed to my door. Someone who knew I’d read the pattern in the footsteps and the behavior of the dog. It had rained heavily today, and the streets were wet, but the shoes in which this person had walked seemed excessively muddy. Those tracks had been laid deliberately.
* * *
The next morning, Violet and I walked through the quiet streets. There’s nothing nicer than a morning after the rains have passed. The air is fresh and clean, the scent of rich, moist earth rises up, and flower petals and blades of grass sparkle with drops of pure clear water. This morning, I didn’t let my mind wander but instead focused my attention on everything happening around us. I didn’t expect to be followed, not in the light of day with so many people and cars around, and from what I could tell, we weren’t. Except by Stanford, a bichon frise who lives the next street over and has a hopeless crush on Violet.
Stanford is frail and elderly, but although the body is weak, the spirit is still willing. He tries to follow us every morning, while Violet (heartless creature) ignores him. I try to shoo him back home while his equally elderly owner, Mr. Cruickshank, totters along after us, feebly calling Stanford to heel. I consider it unlikely that Stanford knows how to heel, even if he could hear, which doesn’t appear to be the case. Every incident ends in the same way: I scoop up the protesting little dog, walk him and his owner to their yard, and deposit Stanford inside the dog fence. Mr. Cruickshank then invites me in for a cup of tea, saying, “I know you Englishwomen love your morning cuppa,” and I decline on the grounds that I have to go to work.
I once asked Uncle Arthur if he thought it would be rude of me to offer to fix the hole in the dog fence myself. Mr. Cruikshank’s home and garden are so beautifully maintained, I thought it strange that he didn’t have the fence repaired. He couldn’t be that fond of his dog, could he, as to deliberately allow Stanford to pursue his unrequited love of Violet?
It wasn’t the dog, Uncle Arthur said, who wanted company.
When I asked him what that meant, he just laughed and turned the page of the newspaper.
After returning Stanford to his owner and declining a cup of tea while Violet sniffed under bushes and checked out the news from the doggy neighborhood, I considered my options. Estrada couldn’t arrest me, but she could make my life a misery. I wasn’t a police officer, and I didn’t have the resources to conduct a modern investigation on my own.
About all I could do was hope something (or someone) would break and the case would be solved.
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that someone—or two someones, either working together or separately—had been attempting to warn me off.
I could think of nothing else I needed to be warned away from than asking questions about the Elaine Kent and Mary Ellen Longton killings.
If anyone thought I’d stop thinking about the killings (even if I wanted to) because of being followed in the night, they didn’t know me very well.
I took Violet home and got ready for a day at work.
A newspaper box for the distribution of the West London Star sits on the sidewalk outside the kitchenware store at 190 Baker Street. I get most of my news online, but I like to support the local paper, so I usually stop and drop seventy-five cents into the change slot. I opened the box, bent over, and took out the paper. Today’s headline was large, bylined Irene Talbot. “Mayor Demands Answers in West London Brutal Murder.”
As I straightened, paper in hand, a shadow moved behind me. By the time I turned around, it had melted into the alley.
The street was busy with storeowners opening up, business people fetching coffee, and tourists getting a start on their day. I might have imagined that someone was paying particular attention to me. But I didn’t think so. Not after last night.
I went into the shop, performed my daily cat-owner (more like staff person) chores, and then spread the paper out on the counter to read. Moriarty jumped up and settled himself in the middle of page one. I picked him up and put him to one side. He returned. I moved him. He returned.
“Enough of this.” I put him on the floor. “You touch that paper again, and it’s a morning locked in the loo for you.”
He hissed at me before stalking across the room to have a snooze on the reading nook chair.
Our intrepid reporter, I read, had overheard the mayor scre
aming at the police chief to get the murder of Mary Ellen Longton solved, and the chief screaming in return that he was doing the best he could. Words such as police incompetence and political interference had been bandied about.
Irene had later obtained a statement from the chief that they were “close to making an arrest,” which I interpreted as “don’t have a clue.” The mayor replied that he had “full trust in the town’s police service.” Which I understood to mean that he wished he could “fire the lot of them.”
I crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trash can. This was not good news for me. If the chief was under pressure, he’d pass that pressure down the line. I didn’t know enough about Louise Estrada to know how she’d react when the heat was on, but it was unlikely to be in my favor.
She came in around eleven, followed by minions carrying a box of papers and my computers. “We found nothing of interest,” she said, with a considerable degree of ill grace.
I said, “Thank you,” although I’d rather have said, “Told you so.”
“Doesn’t mean you didn’t communicate with the dead woman or make plans to sell the magazine by other means.”
“If you want to search my garage for carrier pigeons, go ahead.”
“You’ll trip up one day, Gemma Doyle. And I’ll be waiting for you.” Detective Estrada stalked out, and her people followed.
I watched them get into their cars and drive away. When I turned around, Ryan Ashburton was standing in the entrance to the tea room, his eyes focused on me.
A heartbeat passed, and then he crossed the room in a few strides. “You okay, Gemma?”
“I’m surprised you’re allowed to talk to me,” I said.
“You need to sit down.”
“I do not. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. You look shook up.”
“Being hounded by the police tends to have that effect on me. What are you doing here? Are you their backup? Were you ordered to swoop down on me when I relax my guard and am vulnerable?”
“I came in for a coffee. I didn’t know Louise was going to be here until I saw her car parked outside.”
I took a breath. Moriarty had disappeared. About the only person, other than me, he didn’t like was Ryan. “I don’t care for the directions her questions are taking, that’s all.”
“You know she’ll have questions, Gemma. Questions for Jayne as well.”
“I understand that, but I don’t like being the object of police interest. She’s wasting her time focusing on me.”
“I know,” he said.
“Thanks, Ryan.” I forced out a smile. “Sorry about what I said.”
He smiled back.
I didn’t tell him that I suspected someone was following me. Anyone else might think I was imagining things, but Ryan knew I didn’t do that. He had, however, been ordered off the case, and I’d be compromising him by implying I needed help.
Estrada, on the other hand, would have said I was either imaging things or trying to divert attention from myself, which is why I hadn’t told her either.
The idea that someone who had no connection to the Longton and Kent murders might be following me or hanging around my house under cover of darkness was one I’d dismissed as not worthy of consideration.
“Does she have any other suspects?” I asked. “What about the rest of the Kent family? Or Mary Ellen’s son? Maybe he wanted the magazine—have you thought about that? And you can never rule out the random passing serial killer or attempted burglary gone horribly wrong.”
“Gemma,” Ryan said, “Louise is not forgetting any of those things. I have to go. Take care.”
“You can’t tell me anything?”
“You know I can’t.”
On the way out, he held the door open for two women coming in. I greeted them with a smile and told them to let me know if they needed anything.
Two minutes later, my phone vibrated with an incoming text.
Ryan: Colin Kent is in town. Harbor Inn. He wants the magazine.
Chapter 15
It was a profitable morning. The weather had cleared in time for the weekend and that brought more tourists flooding into the area. One woman bought a copy of every Mary Russell book, along with a hefty selection off the gaslight shelf. “My husband has gone on a golfing weekend with his incredibly dreary business partners and their even drearier wives,” she said as I rang up the purchases. “I simply couldn’t face it, so I persuaded my sister to surprise me with a girls’ weekend in Cape Cod.” Her sister—identical square jaw, thin lips, and cheerful hazel eyes—selected two mugs. “This,” the first sister said, pointing a beautifully manicured finger at the books, “is a peace offering. He’s a big Holmes fan, but I don’t think he’s read Laurie R. King yet.”
“He’s in for a treat,” I said, handing her the heavy bag.
At ten after one, Ruby strolled in to begin her shift.
“You’re supposed to start work on the hour,” I said.
She shrugged. “Traffic was bad.”
“Traffic! In West London? What, a school group on an outing to the ice-cream parlor?”
She looked around the store. A few customers browsed, but no one needed our attention. Her lip curled in disdain. I ground my teeth. She hadn’t done anything to give me reason to dislike her. She was polite enough to the customers, efficient about handling money and goods, but her attitude toward me and my store sometimes grated on me.
A bird in the hand, I reminded myself. Some of my fellow shop owners put up with worse. “Try to be on time, will you?”
She shrugged. More gritting of teeth. Young people these days, thought thirty-two-year-old me, although Ruby wasn’t much younger than I was.
“I’m going out now. If you need me, I have my phone.”
“I won’t,” she said. I pretended not to hear.
I stepped outside my shop, turned the corner sharply, and almost collided with Roy Longton. He leapt back, mumbling apologies. A wave of tobacco residue hit me. He was still wearing the same shirt he’d had on when we’d met.
“Stop following me,” I said.
“I can’t walk down the street?” His eyes shifted to one side. He didn’t do the innocent act very well.
“You can’t walk down the street twenty paces behind me, no. You also can’t be asking my fellow shop owners about me. People don’t keep secrets in this town.”
I hadn’t asked Maureen why Roy had been in Beach Fine Arts. I hadn’t needed to. I could tell by the devious expression on his face that I’d been right.
“You particularly can’t follow my dog and me through dark streets at night.”
“I didn’t—”
“If you have any ambitions of becoming a private detective, you should give up smoking. The smell brands you with a personal signature.”
“Look, I don’t mean no harm.”
“That sounds wise.”
“I figured we have a common interest. You and me.”
“We do?”
“That old man left my mom some of his stuff, fair and square. She looked after him. He provided for her. Nothin’ wrong with that.”
“All of which has absolutely nothing to do with me.”
I might not have spoken for all the attention Roy paid. “I can’t afford to go to court. She gave you the magazine . . .”
“She did not!”
“. . . I’ll let you keep it if you help me get the jewelry. You can tell them she told you she was going to give you the jewelry too and that’s why you went to her hotel room that night.”
“Mr. Longton, your mother gave me nothing, and I have absolutely no claim to the magazine or anything else. I’ve told the police I’d never spoken to your mother, and I’m certainly not going to perjure myself in court.”
“But—”
“No buts. I’m sorry for your loss, but you’ll have to fight this battle without me.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I was . . . out for a walk las
t night, and I saw you and your dog.”
“You didn’t scare me in the least, and you don’t look like a nocturnal exercise junkie to me.”
He studied the toe of his shoe. His feet were of a size to match his short stature. Roy might have followed me on our walk, but I didn’t think he’d been my nighttime visitor. He wasn’t the threatening sort, nor devious enough to try to disguise his footprints. If he had been at my house last night, he would have hammered on the door and demanded I talk to him.
His face was lined by pain and a hard life. I would have felt sorry for him, except that I thought he was more interested in finding out how his mother’s death might benefit him than in mourning her passing. It wasn’t public knowledge that I’d found her, but he seemed to know, and thus I assumed Irene told him. The only thing he wanted to talk to me about was the magazine. No questions about the manner of her death, how she’d looked, if she’d suffered, if I’d tried to help, if she’d given me any last words.
He hadn’t asked because he didn’t care.
“My advice, which I’ll give you even though you’re not asking for it, is to forget about it. You can’t win against the man’s children. If I catch you following me again, and I will if you try, I’ll call the police.”
I left him standing in the street next to a hanging basket of purple-and-white impatiens. He did not attempt to follow me.
I headed straight for the Harbor Inn. It’s one of the nicest places in West London, with room rates to match. Not far from the center of town, it’s a big old house perched on a small hill, looking east out to sea. Until a few years ago, it was a shoddy, crumbling two-star hotel with nothing going for it but the view through the salt-encrusted windows. New owners took over and poured a lot of money into it. Money and their own hard work. They reclaimed the historic formal gardens and thoroughly modernized the house with enough good taste to allow the original features of the building to shine through.
In the small lobby, huge tubs of lush ferns stood on either side of the French doors leading to the veranda. A comfortable brown leather sofa with overstuffed armchairs on either side faced the enormous fireplace, containing an arrangement of birch logs that wouldn’t be lit until the autumn chill settled in. A glass vase full of red roses accented with sprigs of white baby’s breath sat on the mantle. The floors were the original pine and oak, each plank a foot wide and polished to a high gloss, and the carpet in front of the reception desk was a deep red with gold trim.