Claire's Candles Mystery 05 - Fresh Linen Fraud

by Agatha Frost

  Claire almost said she’d witnessed the interview live on the telly, but the news clip on social media had been edited to within an inch of its life. The frame zoomed in on the sweat dribbling down DI Ramsbottom’s red face. The old-fashioned noise of dial-up modem internet screeched in the background as Ramsbottom realised he was on live television. He walked off at double speed as music more suited to a circus played him out. Though the situation, as a whole, wasn’t funny, Claire stifled a laugh at the antics of the fast-acting video editor.

  “Haven’t seen this much fuss since the woman with the twenty-three cats,” Sally said as she put her phone away.

  “It’s twenty-six now,” said Claire.

  “Aw, did Molly have her kittens?” Damon asked as he walked around the counter. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you had a viewing in Christ Church Square?”

  Claire narrowed her eyes on Damon. Since when did he know the details of Sally’s daily schedule? Claire hadn’t even known Sally was working so close today.

  “Couldn’t get into the property,” said Sally as she gave one of the mango candles a sniff. “The chain’s been drawn from inside, and I didn’t have the back door key. It’s probably that new girl who cries whenever you tell her she’s done something wrong. I don’t know when working with twenty-year-olds started feeling like babysitting ten-year-olds, but she’s about on a level with my Ellie.”

  “I think that just means we’re getting old,” said Claire.

  “Speaking of old, your birthday is coming up,” Sally said, seemingly uninterested in the madness unfolding behind her. “One of the lads at work was talking about a new bar on Canal Street. Fire-breathing drag queens and cheap shots.”

  “Oh, no.” Damon pressed his hand to his mouth and ran to the bathroom.

  “Was it something I said?”

  “He’s tender after one too many pints last night.” Claire pulled open the shop door. “Can you watch things until he gets back? I have a feeling it’s about to be a quiet day.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “Two doors down while the police are distracted. I’ve had an idea.”

  “You’re going to get a reputation for being nosey.”

  “In a village where everyone seems to know the goings-on of someone with twenty-six cats, I’ll fit right in.”

  The crowd across the square had left the post office devoid of customers. Behind the counter, Leo was resting his head on his arms, but he shot up when Claire entered. The black eye had faded to a purple smudge, though he’d replaced his shiner with rings dark enough to announce he hadn’t slept in days.

  “Hi, Claire.” He struggled to form a smile. “No chocolate today?”

  “No,” she said, glancing at the shelves she usually stuck to. “I’m here to see you. How are you doing, Leo?”

  “Fine.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite true,” she said, offering him a smile. “You worked with my mother for too long.”

  Claire attempted to laugh, but he only blinked slowly, his mind clearly somewhere else. Breaking his eye contact, the wall behind him caught Claire’s attention. She hadn’t noticed the change at first, but it was drastic.

  Stationery had replaced the wall of alcohol.

  “Had a change around?” she asked.

  “Oh, I, um—”

  “I saw the police here last night,” she revealed before he scrambled for a lie. “Carrying out boxes of glass bottles, by the sound of it. It looked like a raid.”

  Leo fiddled with his glasses as his face darkened. He glanced back at the wall of stationery before nodding.

  “Yeah,” he said, his shoulders tensing up as he wrapped his arms around himself. “Turns out Eryk was buying fake alcohol. A girl’s in the hospital from drinking too much of it.” He paused before adding, “I only found out about it yesterday.”

  “I guess they took you in for questioning?”

  She decided not to mention she’d seen him being ducked into a police car. Given how strange he’d been acting lately, she wanted to see if she could catch him out. He nodded again.

  “I didn’t have anything to tell them,” he said with a tense shrug. “A few people complained here and there, but people complain about all sorts these days.”

  Claire wondered where – or even if – Eryk’s supply preferences fit into the picture. Filing it away for later examination, she turned to why she’d come to the post office in the first place.

  “Do you know what’s going on out there?” she asked, noticing the black screen of the television in the corner. “The police are all over the square again.”

  Leo’s eyes widened. “Why?”

  “A body in the forest,” she replied, watching for Leo’s reaction. “They’re saying it might be Tomek.”

  Leo’s brows tightened low over his eyes as his focus vanished. From the slow blinks as he seemed to process the information, his surprise seemed genuine, at least to Claire.

  Above them, the ceiling creaked as footsteps paced from one side to the other.

  “My dad’s upstairs sorting some stuff out,” he explained, glancing upwards before looking at Claire. “Are you saying Tomek is dead?”

  “It’s looking that way. When did you last see him?”

  “Two days ago,” he said without missing a beat. “He didn’t turn up for work.”

  “Didn’t you call him?”

  “I don’t have his number,” he said, staring down at a mobile phone atop a stack of the latest issue of Northash Observer. “We’re not really friends.”

  “I got that impression.” She chose her words carefully. “Did you hear about Tomek’s prints turning up on the gun used in the burglary?”

  “The police said something about it last night.”

  “You didn’t mention Tomek holding the gun,” she reminded him. “Was there a struggle with the gunman?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded quickly. “A struggle. I forgot.”

  “Seems like something you’d have remembered.” She smiled again, but his surprise had shifted to suspicion. “Leo, was Tomek making you lie for him?”

  “What are you getting at, Claire?” He snapped in a tone she’d never heard from him before. “It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, okay?”

  “Weeks?” She arched a brow. “It’s only Wednesday, and the shooting was—”

  The phone on the newspapers jumped to life, and the lit-up screen drew Claire’s attention. Even upside down, she could clearly read the contact’s name before Leo silenced the call and flipped the device.

  Berna.

  And there was a red heart next to her name.

  “I’m shutting the post office,” he said, walking around the counter and motioning to the door. “You’re going to have to go.”

  “Leo, I just want—”

  “Why should I care what you want, Claire?” he snapped, eyes filled with rage. “Please, just leave.”

  Leo frogmarched Claire to the door so quickly she didn’t have time to register what was happening until she was on the pavement. The locks clicked behind her as a screen came down over the slightly frosted window in the door.

  That wasn’t like Leo.

  That wasn’t like Leo at all.

  She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her recent contacts. Sally, Damon, Mum, Dad, Gran, Ryan. Only the latter had a heart next to their name.

  Claire returned to her shop, expecting to see Sally and Damon – or at least one of them. A lone customer browsing the shelves offered Claire a tight smile, but no one was there to serve her.

  All at once, Sally and Damon rushed out of the backroom.

  “Right, I should get going,” Sally announced, eyes fixed on her phone as she hurried to the door. “Showing some people around a place in Pendle, and they seem keen. See ya later.”

  Sally gave Claire a quick kiss on the cheek before she left. She smelled suspiciously like Damon’s aftershave.

  “I was born on a day,” she whispered to Damon
as she joined him behind the counter, “but it wasn’t yesterday.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure, you don’t.”

  Claire and Damon didn’t talk much throughout the morning, content with their own thoughts. On the other side of the clock, the crowd swelled and shrank repeatedly.

  Ramsbottom appeared infrequently, always in some sort of tizzy. Some of the ‘Death Watchers’ – a term Damon broke an hour-long silence to coin – passed through.

  Unfortunately for Claire, the Death Watchers were also Candle Watchers. Some inhaled Claire’s homemade creations, but most used the shop floor as their personal meeting ground to exchange gossip. They were no help in boosting the low sales Claire had seen since the shooting.

  To make matters worse, she spotted Linda and Joan amongst the crowd early in the afternoon. She hadn’t seen them since she’d overheard their gossip about her mother in the supermarket.

  “Looking like suicide,” Linda whispered to Joan as she half-heartedly poked around in a bowl of wax melts. “Poor lad was swinging from a tree.”

  Claire had been hearing similar rumours all morning.

  “Guilt will do that,” Joan replied.

  “Did you see the video of that police fool online? Looked like he was going to burn his hair off with all that thinking.”

  “I’ve heard it’s a wig.”

  “I thought it was too shiny.”

  “What was he even on the news for anyway? I missed that part.”

  “Dead lad’s fingerprints were all over the gun that killed his father,” Linda whispered as they moved onto the diffusers section. “Maybe Janet had nothing to do with it, after all. It looks like he killed his father and then killed himself.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “Not a peep, Joan. She’s dodged the last two WI meetings. She’s going doolally again, I swear. It’s the 1993 church Nativity all over again. Remember when she lost her mind over losing that megaphone? Complete psycho. I don’t know how poor Alan puts…”

  Linda’s voice trailed off as Claire stepped into their peripheral vision. She cleared her throat, and both women spun around, their polite smiles snapping into place like they had magnets pulling at the corners of their mouths from behind their ears.

  “Ladies,” she said, matching their smiles. “Please leave. You’re barred.”

  “Excuse me?” Linda stiffened. “How dare—”

  “How dare you,” Claire cut in, remembering what Em had told her about a calm delivery helping others receive strong points. She inhaled and said, “You’re supposed to be her friends.”

  “We are. It’s just—”

  “Too scandalous not to be discussed?” A lump rose in Claire’s throat, but she fought it back; she wouldn’t let them see her crack. “I know you all like to keep your smiles wide and your upper lips stiff, but my mum isn’t well right now. More than ever, she needs a friend, and she’s too proud to admit it.”

  “Well, I suppose we—”

  “No.” Claire shook her head. “Not you. She needs anyone but people like you right now. Don’t you see that you’re part of the problem?”

  “You cheeky so-and-so!” Joan clutched her cardigan together. “No wonder you’re not married, Claire Harris. Just you wait until your mother hears about this.”

  “I look forward to her grounding me,” she said, stepping to the side and offering them the door. “Now, in case you didn’t hear me, you’re barred. You’re not welcome here.”

  “We wouldn’t come back anyway.” Linda examined Claire from her feet to her hair. “Didn’t smell a thing I liked. C’mon, Joan.”

  “And just so you know,” she said before they reached the door. “My mother didn’t lose that megaphone all those years ago. Ryan hid it. And in case you don’t know who Ryan is, he’s the hunky redhead who works at the gym, and he’s my boyfriend. We might not be married, but he’s worth a hundred of you. So, respectfully, you can stick your comments where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  The two women left, deep in conversation as they scurried across the square. Despite the lava boiling in Claire’s veins, she’d kept quiet enough that barely anyone had noticed the altercation – though she’d felt Damon’s eyes on them the whole time.

  “What was that about?”

  “I might have just taken my stress out on two WI members,” she said after a sip of water. “With the things they were just saying about my mum, they’re lucky all I did was bar them.”

  “What things?”

  “Let’s just say if I’d overheard the same things five pints in last night, I might have tried to headbutt at least one of them.” She perched on her stool. “Saying that, they’ve just reminded me why I wanted to look into what happened at the post office.”

  “It’s not like anyone outside their little gang actually thinks your mother was involved.”

  “I know, but she’s clearly in some trouble.” She grabbed her jacket. “Are you okay to watch over things here?”

  “Not like any of them are in a rush to buy.”

  “I’ll be back before close.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Christ Church Square,” she said, pulling on her jacket. “I want to find out what’s going on in that house.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I gnoring the commotion, Claire walked through the village and wondered why the women had got to her so much. She knew her mother wasn’t perfect, but they seemed to view her through a distorted funhouse mirror. They didn’t know her at all, and yet they talked about her like they did.

  That wasn’t what upset Claire.

  What upset her was the realisation that her mother had no friends.

  No real friends.

  Janet was always around people, usually women her own age, at fundraisers, fêtes, and functions. Still, she didn’t have a Sally, a Damon, or an Em. She had no one to talk to about the things she wasn’t comfortable talking about with her family.

  Her mum was surrounded by acquaintances rooting for her downfall.

  The notion punched Claire in the gut.

  Christ Church Square, a smaller version of the main square minus the clock tower, backed onto the wall around Trinity Community Church’s graveyard. There were benches, old-fashioned lampposts, a few parking spaces, and a row of terraced cottages on all sides.

  Ryan’s cottage sat in the middle of the main row, but Claire was only concerned with the house at the end.

  From the outside, the end house looked abandoned. There were no lights beyond the window’s newspaper coverings, and a Smith and Smith Estate Agents’ sign jutted from the old stone.

  “The chain,” she whispered to herself, recalling Sally’s missed viewing.

  She stopped herself as she raised a hand to knock on the front door. While not as busy as the other square, people regularly passed through it with their prams and walking canes. She ventured around the back, taking her mother’s route through the rear garden.

  Like her mother had done, Claire gave the door a couple of confident knocks.

  “Who is it?” a voice whispered through the door. “Janet?”

  “Yep, it’s me,” she said, wincing at how little she sounded like her mother. “It’s Janet.”

  The wooden door creaked open. A pale boy’s face appeared in the dusty darkness, partially hidden behind chest-length dark blond hair. The one eye she could see opened wide, and Claire jammed her foot into the gap before he could slam the door.

  “My name is Claire,” she said quickly, wincing as the stranger attempted to close the door, foot and all. “I’m Janet’s daughter. I’m sorry for lying. I only want to talk.”

  “Claire?” he replied, hidden behind the door. “The candle lady?”

  “That’s me.”

  He stopped hitting the door against Claire’s foot and opened it, remaining hidden behind the back door. With no idea what she was about to find, Claire took one last breath and stepped into the haziness.

>   The kitchen was similar to Ryan’s in size and layout only. Geometric wallpaper yellowed by time coupled with cupboards painted a bubbling green hinted that the place hadn’t been redecorated since at least the 1970s.

  The door closed behind her, drowning out most of the light. One of her signature vanilla bean candle jars flickered amongst empty tins on a small dining table, almost burned down to the wick.

  Hanging back by the door as though preparing to make a quick escape, the boy tucked his long hair behind his ears. A teenager for sure, but she couldn’t quite place an age.

  “Where’s Janet?” he asked meekly, staring at the floor. “Did she send you?”

  “No,” Claire admitted, deciding honesty was the best policy. “She doesn’t know I’m here. I saw her come here yesterday. I was at a party two doors down, and—”

  “I heard the music,” he said. “Janet brought me some cake.”

  “She did?” Claire smiled, sensing she wasn’t in any danger. “Can I ask your name?”

  “Ash.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ash,” she said, stretching out a hand that he didn’t take. “Do you like that candle?”

  Ash looked back at the jar and nodded.

  “Have I got Janet in trouble?”

  “I’m not too sure,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me. She’s been acting—”

  A knock at the back door cut Claire off. She saw the alarm bells ring behind Ash’s eyes before he crept towards the back door.

  “It’s only me,” Janet whispered. “Are you there, Ash?”

  Ash opened the door, and Janet bustled in, staring into a white shopping bag.

  “I bought more of those custard creams since you liked them so much, and some books. I know you didn’t ask for them, but I imagine you’re quite bored here on your—” Janet looked up from the bag, and her gaze immediately snapped onto Claire. “W-what are you doing here?”

  “I saw you sneak over during the party.”

  “Ash, why don’t you go grab another of those candles I brought you? This one is nearly done.” Janet handed over the bag and sent Ash on his way. “That’s a good boy.”