Local Secrets (Penny Plain Mystery Book 3)

by Jan Jones

  He hunkered down so he was at eye-level with his son. “I’ve got to get back to work, Daniel. I can’t take everyone out in the boat today. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “We knew that might happen, didn’t we?” said his mother in a sensible voice. “That’s why we came up here to Salthaven instead of you coming down to us. Don’t worry, Leo. Daniel has Penny’s trains to play with. He and your father have been itching to get them out of the boxes. We can have our picnic on the lounge floor and go up the river to visit Uncle Charles tomorrow.”

  Noel’s attention was caught. “You’ve got Granny’s trains down from the loft, Ma? Oh, brilliant. Can Caitlin and I come and play with you for a little while, Daniel?”

  Daniel - who had been looking upset - gave a wide smile.

  “Thanks,” said Leo to Noel, straightening up.

  Penny’s son shrugged diffidently. “We have a nice time playing trains. You raise hell on our behalf. Where’s the contest in that?”

  Penny waved them off back to the bungalow, thoughts jostling for attention in her head. She really needed a period of quiet to make sense of all this, but there was little chance of that with Leo around. Foremost in her mind was that she was solidly unconvinced by the suggestion that Alice had let her council duties slip while she stood for Parliament. That woman could keep more balls in the air than the entire World Cup training squad. “I need to let Alice know,” she said aloud.

  Leo was locking the boat up. “Pardon?” He stepped ashore and made for New Cut and thence towards the newspaper office. Penny hurried after him.

  “Alice. I’m going to ring her.” Generally she kept contact with Julian and his new partner to a polite minimum - if only to save Alice the grief of imagining she might want Julian back - but right now her duty was crystal clear.

  “Great. That’ll save me some time. Ask her if she’s got a comment for the paper.”

  “Leo! I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Salthaven. I want to know how the scheme got by her. She was banging on and on about the Local Development Plan last year and saying Salthaven needed one.”

  Leo stopped dead. “I get the feeling I’m being monumentally stupid here. Talk me through this, Penny. What have you locals seen that I haven’t? Why, for example, is a covered shopping mall such a bad thing? I only ask because non-Salthaven folk might think bringing extra trade to the area was good.”

  “Leo, the lanes around the market square are tiny.” She pulled him towards the end of New Cut and gestured to the cluster of narrow, winding roads branching away from them. “Picture it. They are all one-way to start with, there will be construction work on the Lowdale Road for months to put in new pipe-work, mains cables and sewerage systems. It will make access difficult, no one will be able to get in to deliver new stock or buy anything and all these little shops will go bust. Then Terry Durham will gobble them up just as he’s been trying to for years and either knock them all together or put his own tenants in and charge double the rent. It’s not just that one of Salthaven’s tourist assets is the ambience of these lanes and the interest of having lots of small independent shops to browse in. The staff here, the owners, they’re all local people - it’s their livelihood. That’s why Alice has been opposing chain stores all this time. It’s what the Local Plan is for.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. So why is Terry Durham in favour of them?”

  It was Penny’s turn to stop in her tracks. “I don’t know,” she said slowly.

  Leo grinned and started walking again. “Lovely,” he said with satisfaction. “I do like having a puzzle I can get my teeth into.”

  Penny phoned Alice from Leo’s office. She was amused and not a little charmed by the man Leo had become as soon as he walked into the newspaper building. She’d seen glimpses of it before - working on his laptop, immersed in research, puzzling out a story - but this was the first time she’d seen him in his own environment with a deadline to beat. He was totally focused. High-speed motion personified. Working almost telepathically with his editor, producing version after version of the front page article until it gelled. She almost envied him his single-mindedness.

  Back to the phone. Penny had to ring Alice’s mobile several times before finally getting through. When she did, she wasted no time in telling her about the notices.

  Leo was evidently monitoring her progress with half an ear whilst working. “Quote?” he asked.

  Penny rolled her eyes in exasperation, but handed him her phone. “Speak to her yourself. She had no idea about it and she’s furious.”

  It took him about three minutes to get what he needed for the Messenger. Penny took back her phone and Leo lifted his hand from the keyboard just long enough to give her a pre-occupied wave as she left.

  She made her way back to her car, feeling in her bag for the keys. Was there anything she could usefully do now? Leo was busy. Caitlin was being soothed by Noel and an eighty-year-old train set. She might as well go home and start marinating the meat for dinner. Her hand closed on the diary Caitlin had given her. That’s what she could do while she was cooking. Read through it for clues about Leo’s missing brewery lad. But as she reached the car park, she saw Alice striding past the other way in an icily controlled fashion. Penny put her plan of a nice loin of Chinese-style pork on hold and followed. This could be important. And as soon as she realised the younger woman was heading towards Market House, she rapidly texted Leo. If Alice Greville was going to have a showdown with Terry Durham, he’d want to know.

  The graffiti was still on the building, which puzzled Penny. Everywhere else in town, people were making strenuous efforts to clear it up, despite the police rather despairingly asking them not to destroy potential forensic evidence. Knowing Terry, he was probably waiting for the Market House management company’s approval before he got his staff to clean it all away - and then he’d bill them for it.

  There were voices coming from the partially open door to Durham Holdings, so loud that even in the wide marble lobby it was easy to hear them.

  “... and I tell you again, Terry, that I don’t accept that. I know how long these things take to organise. You are seriously telling me that the Local Plan was amended under Any Other Business, just like that, at the one meeting I didn’t attend? And for which, incidentally, we still haven’t had the minutes.”

  “I explained that,” said Terry, sounding at his most urbane. “It’s simply that I left the room when the Salthaven Prize came up on the agenda and it was agreed not to circulate the minutes until after the essays were written in case it was thought my son might have an unfair advantage.”

  “How astonishingly coincidental.” Alice’s voice didn’t so much drip sarcasm as fire it at point blank range.

  “The Market House redevelopment will be one season of disruption in return for lower prices and more choice for the townsfolk. The twenty-first century is going to come to Salthaven, you know,” he said. “You can’t hold out against progress forever.”

  “Not on my watch,” she said crisply. “I’m going to fight this all the way.”

  He laughed with genuine amusement. The laughter of a man who knows he has won. “It’s going to be tricky from Westminster. Planning officials listen to the people on the ground - and the people on the ground are fed up with high prices because the chains are being discriminated against. Give up, Alice. You’ve moved on from county level now - and rightly so, given your abilities. You said yourself you’ll be too busy as an MP to take as much interest in the town from now on. Your council days are behind you.”

  “Wrong. The trouble with you is that you don’t listen, Terry. You hear what you want to hear. What I said was that I was too busy to judge the Salthaven Prize. I’ll never be too busy to take an active part in my own constituency. I will never ever not be fully involved with anything that impinges on the way of life of all those people who trusted me with their vote. You may have assumed I’d be resigning from the council, Terry, but you haven’t actually seen me stand d
own, have you? Nor will you. Several members of parliament do both jobs in tandem and that’s just what I intend to do. And to start with, I’m going to convene an open meeting in the library for all Salthaven residents to discuss the amendment to the Local Plan, which was not tabled in the approved manner, nor put to local consultation first. At the same time we will debate the issue in particular of whether this building should be developed into a shopping mall. As a council, we have a duty to preserve the character and infrastructure of thriving areas.”

  A door banged shut. Footsteps clicked a rapid staccato across the outer office floor. Penny realised with horror that she had somehow moved right up outside the door while she’d been listening. She looked around wildly. How was she going to hide before Alice came out? It would be so obvious that she’d been eavesdropping. The front door was too heavy to open quickly, she didn’t think she could dash up the stairs without being seen - and if she was seen dashing up the stairs, she wouldn’t have any business there.

  Business. Of course. The agency that looked after her mother’s bungalow. Penny sped down the hallway just as the door to Durham Holdings started to open.

  Inside Salthaven Lets, the junior she’d seen before looked up with red-eyes as Penny burst through the door. “Oh, Mrs Plain, isn’t it dreadful?” she wailed. In her hand she was clutching the council notice. “No one knew anything about it. Everyone in the building will have to find new premises. We’ve all been discussing where to go. We’re all so worried.”

  They were all worried except Terry Durham, Penny suddenly realised. He hadn’t sounded in the least bit concerned when he was talking to Alice. “It hasn’t been approved yet,” she said.

  The junior gave a huge sniff and tried to pull herself together. “Was it about your bungalow? Or the Westcliff house that your friend was interested in? There’s one empty at the moment if he’d like to view it?”

  Outside, the tap of high heels had stopped, but Penny hadn’t heard the ponderous shuffle of the front door. Was Alice now in the hallway listening to her? “Yes,” she said loudly. “Yes, he’d like to look around it, if that’s okay?”

  “Can you sign for the key? Tomorrow’s okay to bring it back. 16 Westcliff Close.”

  And there at last was the heavy sound of the front door opening. “Thanks,” said Penny, escaping with a sigh of utter relief. Only to be confronted with Alice, standing foursquare in the lobby, and Leo just bursting in from the street, his phone in his hand with her text on it, the very picture of a hungry journalist on the track of a story.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Pure desperation took over Penny’s lips. “Hi, Leo,” she said, attempting to project unhurried calm as opposed to seizing the nearest spade and tunnelling to Australia as fast as possible. “You needn’t have come down. I picked up the key for you as I was here anyway to see about the let. They say you can have a look at the place for your friends any time tomorrow.” She turned. “Hello Alice. If I’d known you were here, I could have saved myself the phone call.”

  “I’m here because of your phone call.” Alice tapped her foot, then said abruptly, “I know we haven’t always got on, Penny, but I’d like you to know that I appreciate very much you telling me about the proposed development.”

  Bless her. That must have been so difficult to say. Penny smiled with great friendliness. “Well, of course I’d tell you. You and I both want the best for Salthaven.” And to give Alice something to think about other than her unlikely presence in Market House just at this moment, she linked her arm in Leo’s as they left.

  “Nice,” murmured Leo, after a startled moment. “We could hold hands if you like.”

  “Don’t push your luck. I’ve never been as mortified in my life as I was just then in that lobby.”

  Leo was unabashed. “I grew a thick skin years ago. What were they arguing about?”

  “That the Local Plan was amended to allow limited town centre development at the one council meeting Alice missed.”

  “Interesting. I ran a trace on the owners of Market House - Murdath PLC - but nothing showed up. Might Julian know the architect for the proposed development? Do you think if we asked Alice, he could find out a name?”

  He half turned back. Penny tugged him firmly onward again. “Almost certainly, but we are not going to ask today. If the Messenger has finished with you, Daniel is waiting.”

  Leo sighed. “I know, but it’s too late to do anything special now.”

  Penny shook his arm. “Silly, he doesn’t want special. He just wants to spend time with you. Do you want a lift? I’ll drop you off.”

  Leo was rocked by the throwaway remark. He just wants to spend time with you. How many times had he been told the same thing - by his parents and by Daniel himself? He was overcompensating again, cramming as much as possible into the few precious days that he was allowed to be a father. He learnt it afresh every holiday, but Penny had seen it instantly. And only now did he realise she’d dropped his arm. That was a shame. It had given him a very comfortable feeling.

  “Tell you what,” he said, “if you haven’t got anything planned for the rest of the afternoon, could we take him with us to see Westcliff Close?”

  “Do you really want to view it?” said Penny, sounding surprised. “Why? I was just using you inventing that story for Salthaven Lets as a heaven-sent excuse for being found by Alice at Market House.”

  He frowned. “I realised that, but I think I really do. The Westcliff Close houses belong to Terry Durham under a different name, remember? I never turn down any sniff of a lead where a story is concerned. Besides, Daniel will love the view from the cliff and I can show him Uncle Charles’s old house where I used to spend the holidays. I’ve told him about the place often enough.” To his embarrassment, he had to turn away to suppress what would have been a jaw-cracking yawn. What was the matter with him? He’d put in many a twenty-hour day in the past without bother. This was a fine time for his body to start rebelling.

  Penny glanced at him across the top of the car as she unlocked it. “Leo, today started at the crack of dawn. You’re bushed. Just stay at the bungalow and play trains. You can go up to Westcliff Close tomorrow with your parents.”

  How did she do that? Even his mother wasn’t that prescient. “No we can’t. As soon as I’ve manned the early phones in the office, we’re off in the boat to see Uncle Charles, come what may. I just hope the weather holds out.” He glanced up at a leaden sky.

  She shook her head. “Get into the car before you fall down, then.” She put her handbag on the back seat. Oh, I forgot. Caitlin lent me that WW1 diary from the Seagull. Here it is. I haven’t had a chance to look through it yet.”

  “Thanks.” Sitting down in the front seat, the tiredness hit him. He held the diary loosely in his lap. His eyelids drooped. Thoughts tangled themselves up in his head: the Market House mall, Terry Durham and Alice Greville arguing, the brewery man missing from the memorial, Penny, Daniel, Penny’s son rowing down the river, the weather, the height of the water...

  When he opened his eyes, they were outside the bungalow. “That was quick,” he said, disorientated.

  She grinned. “That’s all you know. I drove the long way round. Twice. Don’t you ever take a holiday?”

  “I had months of lying in bed doing nothing after my car accident. That was enough for me,” he replied, shutting out the recollection of those awful days when his body was one long scream of pain and he was constantly scared rigid by not remembering how the accident had happened.

  Penny was silent for the tiniest moment. “It’s over now,” she said gently, and touched his hand.

  “Yes,” he said, ashamed of his grumpiness. “Sorry.”

  Within five minutes, Daniel was wriggling happily by his side in the back of the car and he was letting the boy’s chatter soothe him as Penny drove them back through Salthaven and up towards the cliffs. He fingered the small blue diary. He’d seen several like this. Soldiers weren’t supposed to keep them, so the writing
would be tiny, the useful knowledge probably minimal. Even so, he flicked though the pages looking for dates. There might be that one hidden gem.

  Burrows is to come as my 2nd in command, for which I am glad, for there never was a man like him for cheering up low spirits. He said he’d have signed up already if it wasn’t for the fear of making his mother worse. But now, with her wits gone completely and with his brother running the farm, he has nothing to lose. He jokes that he will come back covered with glory and all that business with the cup will be forgotten.

  He read the entry out to Penny as she drove. So there had been some trouble. But it hadn’t been reported in the school records. Stiff upper lip, he suspected. The school wouldn’t have wanted to point the finger at one of their own. He’d have to check the newspaper archives. There had never been a scandal yet that the local paper hadn’t uncovered.

  “Look, Daddy, hens!”

  Leo gazed obediently at the hens in the farmyard they were passing. “And a tractor,” he pointed out.

  Daniel grinned blissfully, pressing his nose to the window. “Whitegates. Eggs for sale,” he read carefully, as they waited for the tractor to pass.

  “That’s a good name, isn’t it? The gates really are white.”

  Penny drove on, slowing down past a field of pigs to Daniel’s great delight, up to a small enclave of houses with a view of a rather choppy outer harbour.

  “Thank you,” said Leo as they all got out. He knew he was shirking the issue of driving again, and he also knew that he was imposing on her good nature in asking her so often for lifts, but it was so nice and restful being with her in the car.

  She patted his arm. “You can pay for the next tank of petrol,” she said kindly.

  He laughed. “Deal. Where’s this house we’re supposed to be viewing, then?”

  Number 16 was nice enough, but nothing special. It was Penny who pointed out all the shortcuts that had been taken in the construction.

  “Nothing illegal,” she said. “But it’s obvious that the developer chose the cheapest possible option wherever he could.” She rubbed her nose. “Sorry, am I going on too much about it? Blame all those years of marriage to Julian. One of his favourite ways to unwind was to detail the atrocities practiced by the less particular members of his profession.”