by Agatha Frost
“Oh, shut up, Kerry.” Stacey appeared between Julia’s legs, clutching both of her hands in her lap. “Remember everything I’ve been teaching you at the classes. Breathe, Julia, and explain to me exactly what you’re feeling.”
“A tightening,” she said, motioning back and forth across her stomach. “And . . . it’s just stopped.”
Everyone, including Kerry, let out a sigh of relief.
Shaking, Julia rested both hands on her belly as the muscles quickly unclenched. It was still a little uncomfortable, but whatever had taken hold had released its grip on her.
“Is this it?” she asked as Stacey helped her out of the chair. “Is my baby coming?”
“Maybe,” Stacey said, leading Julia around the room in a circle. “It seemed a little short to be a contraction. Did it come on like a wave?”
Julia shook her head. “It was sort of like a cramp.”
“I used to get those all the time when I was pregnant with you, Stacey,” Debra offered, “especially when I was about as far along as you are. Probably Braxton Hicks.”
“I was going to say that, Mother.” Stacey sat Julia down again and, crouching, asked, “How are you feeling now?”
“Fine,” she said. “Normal.”
“Unless another happens soon, I’d say it was false labour,” Stacey said with a wink. “If I hadn’t cancelled, that was one of the points I’d have touched on this week. It’s common this far along. Here, drink this.”
Stacey passed Julia one of the glasses of water, and all thoughts of poison left her mind. She gulped it down, and when she’d finished, a kick sprang against her left side before she felt the baby shift a little, hopefully to settle.
“I’m not going to lie,” Julia said in a low voice, “I was scared for a second.”
“You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.” Stacey glared at Kerry over her shoulder. “It would be best for everyone to remember that stress can contribute to false labour pains. Unless you need your eyes testing, it’s obvious just how pregnant Julia is right now.”
Kerry fiddled with her bracelet. “She started it.”
Julia wasn’t sure that she had, but she wasn’t in the mood for another argument. Stacey’s phone rang in her pocket, and she answered it while walking into the corner of the room.
“That was the police,” she said as she walked back. “They wanted to know where I was. They’re coming to talk to me.”
“And you told them to come here?” Kerry sighed. “Don’t you think I’ve had enough of that this week?”
“Did they say why?” Debra asked.
“Probably to arrest her,” Kerry said. “Was it you, then? Did you kill Lynn?”
“They didn’t say,” Stacey said, slowly sitting down. “It was DI Christie. He sounded different from the other times.”
“Different how?” Julia asked.
“Almost . . . nice.”
Before long, the doorbell rang again. This time, Stacey was the one to stand, although she walked into the hallway so slowly that her fear was palpable. Debra rushed after her.
DI Christie smiled tightly as the door opened, his eyes going down the hallway to Julia. He nodded, and she returned the gesture. She knew what was coming.
“You’re both here,” he said, puffing up his chest as he inhaled deeply through his nose. “Is there somewhere we can go to sit down?”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Stacey demanded, blocking the detective’s way. “My dad?”
Christie nodded solemnly, and Stacey burst into tears, her hands covering her mouth.
His eyes said it all.
“Have you found him?” Debra asked, her voice straining against a lump in her throat as she wrapped an arm around Stacey’s shoulders. “Have you found Terry?”
“We believe so,” Christie said firmly, fixing his eyes on the ground. “It’s not good news. I’m sorry to inform you that at ten-thirty this morning, human remains were discovered in Whinlatter Forest, up in the Lake District. We believe they belong to Terry Trotter.”
Stacey collapsed in a heap on the floor as a harsh scream forced its way through her lips. Debra sank with her, clinging to her grieving daughter like any mother would. After minutes on the floor, Debra managed to lead Stacey into the library.
“I think we need to be alone right now,” Debra said, offering Julia a tight, misty-eyed smile. “You’ll understand.”
“Of course.” Julia nodded, eyes stinging with tears of her own. “I’m here if you need me.”
Debra gave Julia’s cheek a little pat before shutting herself in the library with Stacey.
“I hope they’re not going to be lingering all day,” Kerry muttered under her breath as she set off up the staircase.
Knowing the remark extended to her too, Julia pulled out her phone and messaged Barker to pick her up if he wasn’t too busy before joining Christie on the doorstep.
“What happened?” Julia asked as she pulled the door shut behind her. “Are you sure it’s him?”
Christie nodded. “From the looks of it, he hasn’t been dead long.”
“How did he end up all the way in the Lake District?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” he said, pulling back his sleeve to check his watch. “I’ve got Cumbria Police liaising on a conference call in fifteen. I could have sent one of the uniforms up here to tell her, but I wanted to do it myself.” He gulped, glancing at the library window as the crying continued behind it. “She’s been in the station demanding answers twice a week for months. This was the first real piece of information I’ve been able to give her – and I know it’s the last thing she wanted to hear.”
Barker’s car parked next to the Rolls Royce. He jumped out and hurried over, eyes going straight to Christie.
“Looks like your Trotter case has been solved, pal.” Christie patted Barker on the shoulder as he passed. “I can’t even say it was good old-fashioned police work that did it. It’s always the dog walkers . . .”
Christie climbed into his car and reversed out of the gate.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he pulled her into his chest.
“I think so,” she replied. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“I . . . might have been parked on the road waiting for you.”
Julia pulled away from the hug and one look at her husband’s guilty smile confirmed that she had been right to think something was going on.
“Please,” she begged, “no more secrets.”
“I was going to tell you this evening,” he said, pulling yet another familiar piece of cream paper from his pocket. “This turned up at the cottage last night, and I panicked.”
Julia read over it, her heart sinking with each line. When her own name came up, she clutched Barker’s arm to steady herself.
“Explains a lot,” she said, gaze drifting to the sprawling countryside. “‘I would have thought you’d have ample inspiration for your next novel by now’.” She gulped. “It’s almost like they’re confessing to killing Lynn for the sake of giving you a plot.”
8
BARKER
T he soothing patter of heavy rain later that afternoon was almost enough to send Barker to sleep in his office chair. Blinking hard, he slurped his now-cold coffee and peered at Julia over the top of his laptop. She groaned in her sleep and pulled the heavy blanket closer to her chin, exposing her fluffy socks. Sleep had taken her the moment her head hit the pillow on the chesterfield.
Even with an unmarked police car secretly parked outside the cottage all night and a cricket bat tucked under the bed, he’d resisted sleep. When he did nod off, he’d dreamt of cloaked figures creeping around the cottage brandishing larger-than-life fountain pens, ready to strike them all down. Whenever he awoke, he checked on Jessie, sprawled out in the sitting room in the glow of the fire’s dying embers, and was glad she wasn’t alone in her flat. If the letter writer knew where they lived, they likely knew where Jessie lived as well.
The days
of dismissing the letters were over.
Shaking his head, he returned his attention on the laptop screen. He didn’t need to type up a closing statement for the Terry Trotter case, but shaking official policing habits wasn’t so easy. As much as he wanted to help find out what had led to Terry Trotter dying in the Lakes, three hours north, he knew when to step back.
Besides, he’d been employed to solve a missing persons case, not a murder investigation.
The wireless printer across the room groaned and spat out his closing notes. Once he’d tucked them in the back of the cardboard file, he filed it in the cabinet with the other closed cases. After all the adultery cases and background checks he’d carried out, he’d really wanted to solve the Terry Trotter case.
He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Terry’s death might be connected to the Lynn Sweet case.
Debra and Stacey were both in the book club, but Terry’s disappearance predated Lynn’s death by months. He didn’t have anything to work with other than the overlapping names between the two cases. Still, he wrote ‘Terry?’ on a sticky note and added it to his green velvet investigation board. A red string went to Debra and another to Stacey.
All the book club members were up there. At present, Jade had the most notes under her name. He scribbled down Julia’s information about Lynn having been employed at the mansion and added it as the first piece under Kerry’s column.
He also needed to address Julia’s suggestion that the letter writer had killed Lynn to give Barker material for another book. He hadn’t considered the connection, but it was an interesting theory. It strengthened the notion that the letter writer was one of the book club women. He’d checked the letters against Debra and Stacey’s handwriting in the Terry file, and neither matched the calligraphy. Not a complete rule-out, but both had scruffy handwriting far from the precision evidenced in the letters.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Jessie hurried down, dampened by the rain. Her thudding steps turned to soft creeping when she noticed Julia asleep in the corner.
“Rain has scared everyone off.” Jessie flopped down in the chair on the other side of the desk. “What did you want me for?”
“Do you know if that video doorbell records footage?” he asked, turning the screen. “I had a fiddle around with it, but I couldn’t figure it out, and since you set it up, I thought—”
“Let me have a look, old man.” She scooted her chair up to the desk. “You could have just had a look online, you know. There’s a video or an article for everything these days.” Squinting, she tapped on the screen. “What’s this for, anyway?”
“I’ve been getting letters.”
“I get those too.”
“What?” Barker’s heart sank. “Why didn’t you say?”
“Because they’re usually bills and bank statements,” she said, her grin widening. “Postman usually delivers them.”
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“I know I am.”
While Jessie tapped away, Barker opened the secret biscuit drawer in his desk. He hovered over the different coloured shiny sleeves before selecting a packet of chocolate bourbons. He ripped the wrapper and offered one to Jessie.
“What kind of letters then?” she asked through a mouthful of biscuit. “Or do I not want to know?”
“These kinds.” He crossed to the investigation board and removed the pins from the photocopies. “The police have the real ones. The top one turned up at the cottage last night. The rest were delivered here.”
As Jessie scanned the letters, her reaction mirrored those of everyone else who had read them. She went from mild amusement to slight concern to absolute horror.
“Who the heck does that?” She tossed the letters onto the desk like they’d poisoned her. “I’m surprised you haven’t forced Mum into witness protection, the way you’ve been acting since she got pregnant.”
“I haven’t treated her differently.”
Jessie arched a sceptical brow and snorted before turning the tablet’s video screen around.
“It doesn’t record footage,” she said, scrolling through dozens of grainy thumbnails, “but it does take a picture every time it senses motion. Saves them for thirty days. I’d suggest you go through and pick out any people you don’t recognise.”
While Jessie worked her way through the bourbon biscuits, Barker went through picture by picture. He dismissed his clients and the people who’d come in for consultations and never returned. There were a few of Jessie and Katie throwing bags into the bins. In the end, there were three people he didn’t recognise, and the timing of their photos just so happened to line up with the days the letters turned up.
“Two men and one woman, and I don’t recognise any of them,” he said, returning the tablet to Jessie. “Is there a way to print these off? The letter writer is employing different delivery people. Maybe they anticipated cameras? Are any of them familiar to you?”
Jessie squinted but ultimately shook her head.
“Might have come into the café at some point,” she said with a shrug, “might not. I see too many people in a day, and I don’t remember everyone like Mum does.”
The printer spat out three sheets with the grainy pictures from the doorbell. It wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but it was something to show the police, at least. If they could track down the delivery people, maybe it would lead them back to the source?
“I should get back up there.” Jessie glanced up at the ceiling as Katie’s girlish laugh floated through the floorboards. “Said I’d only be a few minutes.”
“How’s Katie handling working at the café?”
“Surprisingly well,” she said. “Barely making mistakes and the customers seem to really like her. She’s sort of like a new puppy. Sometimes annoying, mostly amusing.”
“One more thing,” he said as Jessie stood up. “Have you managed to tell Alfie yet?”
She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Since last night? I’ve been a little busy at work. I’ll tell him, don’t worry. Like I said, I’m just waiting for the right moment.”
“Jessie . . . are you sure you want to stay?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?” Jessie replied quickly, looking at Julia as she made her way to the stairs. “No point in constantly bringing it up. I’ve made my decision.”
Jessie left the office, and though Barker hadn’t sensed her conflict the night before, he felt it now. Perhaps he’d been so relieved to hear she was staying that he hadn’t noticed anything else? Julia had sounded so certain over breakfast that morning. Maybe, like usual, she’d seen things he hadn’t.
As though she could sense his thoughts, Julia stirred and squinted around the office.
“For a moment,” she said, pushing herself up, “I thought this whole day had been a bad dream.”
“Unfortunately not.” He shut his laptop. “Best not to worry about it now. How about some lunch upstairs?”
The café was, thankfully, as quiet as Jessie had said. Aside from Evelyn, the local mystic and B&B owner, and a woman eating a slice of chocolate cake by the window whom he didn’t know, nobody was there to pry. They took the seat at the table nearest the counter, and Jessie set down a cup of peppermint tea and a black coffee before they had to ask.
“Such a shame what happened to Lynn,” Evelyn announced as she sipped her latte, her bright orange kaftan billowing around her with every movement. “If you’d like, I could come and cleanse the place with some sage? I can feel her spirit clinging to the walls.” Her eyes widened. “Or what about a séance? She could tell us what happened. Jessie tells me you’re on the case, Barker.”
“I am,” he replied with a polite smile. “I think we’ll pass on the séance for now. Thank you, though.”
“You know where I am if you change your mind,” Evelyn said before draining her drink. “I’ll get myself back to the B&B and put some energy into clearing this rain. Those poor traders out there will freeze to death if it carrie
s on like this.”
Julia smiled, following Evelyn’s exit as she floated to the café door, but the smile faded when she noticed the woman eating cake alone by the window. As though sensing eyes on her, the woman turned her gaze away from the quiet market.
“Mavis?”
“Julia!” The old woman wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin as she stood. “I didn’t see you sneak in. I’ve been keeping my eye out for you. I wasn’t sure if I had the right place, but I couldn’t find any other cafés in the village and, well, your name is above the door.”
“We came through the back,” she said, offering Mavis a chair. “I’m on maternity leave. I should have given you my phone number.”
“No matter.” Mavis sat. “Is this the private investigator husband you told me about? You didn’t mention he was so handsome.”
“Barker, this is Mavis, the lady Lynn lived with.”
“Ah.” He offered his hand, and she gave it a firm shake. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.” Mavis tucked her legs under the table as she scraped the chair forward. “I suppose it’s a good thing you’re both here. I keep calling the police for updates, but they won’t offer much. Doesn’t sound like they have a clue what they’re doing. To be honest with you, I can barely sleep at night knowing things haven’t been resolved.” She looked up at the ceiling, eyelids fluttering. “I even miss Lynn watching those loud films. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but I do. It’s so quiet without her.” She sniffed hard. “No matter. I’ll adapt, I’m sure. I don’t suppose you’ve got anywhere with your little investigation?”
“We’re getting somewhere,” Barker said, cupping his hands around his warm mug. “I don’t suppose the police have told you what Lynn was up to before her death?”
Mavis shook her head. “In what way?”
“Blackmail?”
“Lynn was being blackmailed?”
“No.” Barker sipped his coffee. “I’m sorry to say this, but Lynn was the one doing the blackmailing. So far, it’s been several people in the book club she was part of and our daughter.”