The Peridale Cafe Cozy Box Set 2

by Agatha Frost

  “What painting?” a voice asked through the open door.

  They all turned and watched as Brian ducked inside, a sheepish smile on his face. Sue looked like she was about to bolt and make for the door, so Julia hurried around and stood between them, smiling kindly at both of them.

  “Thanks for coming, Dad,” Julia said, apologising with her eyes to her sister. “That is actually a question I was hoping you would be able to answer. Tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Julia quickly made him a pot of tea. She put it on a tray with a cup, saucer, milk, and sugar, before remembering what he had told her about the sugar. She quickly removed it and carried it to the table, which he had taken directly next to Sue’s. She was trying her best to look in every direction apart from his.

  “So, you want my antique expertise?” he asked as he pulled off the teapot lid to check if the tea had steeped. “I can’t say I’ve been asked for that in a while. What’s this painting? Something you’ve found in your attic?”

  “Not exactly,” Julia said, pulling up the chair across from him and catching Sue’s eye to let her know it was okay to speak. “We don’t actually know what the painting is, or where it is.”

  “Is this connected to Anthony?” he asked as he poured himself a cup of tea.

  “You know the painting?” Jessie asked.

  “No, but everything seems to be connected to him at the moment, which is why I guessed you called me here.”

  Julia smiled her apologies. She wondered if a small part of him had thought she had called him to talk about what had happened at Sunday dinner. That was currently the bottom of Julia’s priorities list, even if she had noticed it was a good opportunity to get her sister and father in the same room again.

  “What does it look like?” he asked. “Who painted it?”

  Julia looked at Jessie, who looked at Sue, who stared down at her nails.

  “I need a manicure,” she whispered absently.

  “We don’t know,” Julia said, pursing her lips at her baby sister. “We don’t know anything other than that it could sell for nearly a million pounds, and it’s worth slowly poisoning a man for.”

  “A million?” Brian replied, sucking the air through his teeth. “Not many paintings fetch that. It has to be something special by one of the greats. That narrows it down slightly.”

  “Do you think you would be able to make some calls?” Julia asked hopefully, nodding her head, feeling like she was clasping her fingers around one of the final puzzle pieces.

  “It won’t be that easy,” he said after sipping his tea, ripping that puzzle piece away from her. “Anthony didn’t exactly work by the book. If he were buying a painting to sell it, he wouldn’t have been going through the proper channels. Do you know who the previous owner was?”

  “Remember how you gave me Timothy Edwards’ name?” Julia asked, the name sticking in her throat. “He was poisoned yesterday. I’m certain it’s connected to this painting.”

  “Edwards, you say?” he said, furrowing his brow and looking down at the teapot. “Edwards. Edwards. How do I know an Edwards? I got Timothy’s name from an old friend, but now that I think about it, I know an Edwards of my own. I’m sure the name rings a bell.”

  Julia stared hopefully at him and waited for a grand revelation. After less than a minute of thinking, he shrugged and resumed his tea.

  “Have you asked Rosemary if she knows anything?” he asked, setting his cup back onto the saucer. “From what I can remember she wasn’t all that bad at antiques. She had style and taste, and that accounts for a lot. You can buy something worthless and give it worth by the way you position it or frame it. She used to help out in the shop with your mother when I lacked inspiration.”

  Sue suddenly sat up straight in her chair at the mention of their mother. She whipped her head to face him to let him know he shouldn’t have dared to speak about their mother. Julia pleaded with Sue with her eyes to calm down, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

  “I overheard Rosemary saying they would never find the painting,” Julia said, hoping the detour would give Sue a moment to calm down.

  “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what it looks like,” he suggested as he filled his teacup again and added more milk. “Or at least who painted it.”

  Julia sat back in her chair, realising he was right. She stood up and hurried behind the counter to grab her car keys and coat.

  “I won’t be long,” she said to Jessie. “Sue will stay and keep you company, won’t you, Sue?”

  Sue grumbled and nodded, not looking up or speaking as she obsessed over her nail beds once more.

  “Dad?” Julia called as she opened the café door. “Are you coming?”

  “Oh,” he mumbled, draining the last of his tea before standing up. “Right. Am I coming with you?”

  “You’re the expert,” Julia said.

  “I suppose I am,” he replied with a nod as he hurried after her. “See you later, girls.”

  They both grunted back, neither of them seeming able to communicate like proper human beings when the time called. Ignoring that, Julia unlocked her tiny car and she set off towards Rosemary’s cottage for the second time that day.

  When they were outside the cottage, Julia was surprised to see a removal van parked outside, and she was even more surprised to see that they were taking things into the cottage, instead of out.

  They jumped out of the car and followed the movers through the open front door. The men carried an ornate chair up the stairs, but Julia and her father slipped through to the bright, open-planned kitchen.

  “Julia?” Rosemary exclaimed from the stove where she was stirring something in a pot. “I was just making lunch. Brian, is that you?”

  Rosemary turned off the gas and squinted at Julia’s father.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Long time no see.”

  “What has it been?” she asked with a chuckle. “Twenty-five years? Or even longer? I haven’t seen you since – well – you know.”

  Rosemary’s eyes flickered sympathetically to Julia. She knew exactly what Rosemary was talking about, but she let it glide over her head because she had more pressing things to discuss.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Rosemary mumbled as she shuffled over to the kettle to distract herself. “Still take two sugars, Brian?”

  “Katie’s got me on the no-sugar thing,” he said, patting his small stomach. “Diabetes scare.”

  “Ah, yes,” Rosemary said, grinning over her shoulder. “The younger model.”

  Unlike most people, Rosemary didn’t look offended that Brian had married a woman almost twenty years younger than him. Instead, she almost looked proud. It took Julia a moment to realise there was probably a similar age gap between Rosemary and Jerrad. It sent a shudder down her spine. Not because of the difference in age, but because Rosemary seemed pleased with the man she had managed to catch. Julia wanted to tell her there and then that no matter how much younger Jerrad was, she deserved far better, especially being such a stylish and vivacious woman.

  They took the tea through to the conservatory, and Julia stopped in her tracks when she saw Barb sat in one of the wicker bucket chairs, staring out at the garden while the young nurse from Oakwood painted her nails red. Unlike when she had seen her at the nursing home, her thin grey hair was out of its bun and flowing down her shoulders. It was so long it rested in her lap.

  “Barb, you remember Brian and his daughter?” Rosemary asked jovially as she set a cup on the table next to her mother-in-law.

  Barb looked Brian up and down, a strained smile twisting her lips. When she spotted Julia, she smiled a little easier, but there was still a flicker of confusion at their visit.

  “Barb’s moving in for a while,” Rosemary said, the smile growing from ear to ear, her cheeks blushing a little. “Thinks I need the help.”

  “It’s the least I can do,” Barb said as she looked down at her freshly painted nails. “Yelena, will you b
e a dear and fetch my blood pressure pills from upstairs? I think I’m due a top up.”

  “Of course,” Yelena said with a soft smile, her Eastern European accent sticking out. “One moment.”

  The tall and pretty young nurse excused herself from the room, smiling at Julia as she passed.

  “Yelena was kind enough to leave Oakwood to be my private nurse,” Barb explained when she met Julia’s eyes after she had watched Yelena hurry down the hallway and up the stairs. “She’s a lovely girl. You find the Ukrainians are very grateful for the jobs.”

  Julia was a little shocked when nobody picked up on her casual racism. If it had been her gran, she would have corrected her immediately, but she held her tongue because it wasn’t her place.

  Rosemary pulled two more chairs from the side of the room, and she took the one next to Barb where Yelena had been sitting. Julia and her father sat across from them, awkwardly sipping their tea as they sat in silence. She was almost glad when she heard Yelena padding down the carpeted stairs, if only for something to break the silence.

  She returned with a packet of pills in her hand, from which she popped out two. She passed them to Barb, who slotted them between her lips with shaky hands. She sipped a little of her hot tea before tossing her head back. Without the safety of her chess-playing friends to surround her, she looked frailer and much older than Julia first remembered.

  “I’m surprised you’ve left Oakwood,” Julia said after sipping her tea. “You seemed to enjoy it there.”

  “They’ll keep my room open,” Barb replied with a smile as she reached out and grabbed Rosemary’s hand. “I might not have been close with my son, but Rosemary and Gareth are the only family I have left now.”

  Rosemary smiled sweetly while glancing down at Barb’s bony fingers. Julia wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but Rosemary seemed to want to do nothing more than pull her hand away.

  “There is a purpose to our visit,” Julia said as she rested her cup on the window ledge. “We hope you could help us with some information regarding Anthony.”

  “Information?” Rosemary asked, a shaky smile covering her lips. “About what?”

  “A painting,” Brian jumped in. “A valuable painting that your husband bought and intended to sell for an incredible profit. Do you know anything about that?”

  Barb didn’t react, instead looking at Rosemary, whose lips were shaking out of control as she attempted to smile. She sipped her tea and swallowed hard before tilting her head and smiling a little firmer.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about a painting,” Rosemary said, avoiding Julia’s gaze and staring right at Brian. “I didn’t get involved with Anthony’s work.”

  Julia almost called her a liar right then, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep quiet. If she revealed what she knew, it would out her eavesdropping earlier in the day.

  Rosemary opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of smashing glass startled them all.

  “What are they doing with my things?” Barb cried, jumping up and scurrying down the hallway with Yelena hot on her heels. “Not my glass vase! What am I paying you for?”

  Rosemary continued to sip her tea, smiling as though nothing was wrong. Compared to the free smile Julia had seen the day after Anthony’s death, this one was as fake as they came.

  “Do you know Timothy Edwards?” Julia asked, her eyes trained on Rosemary’s.

  Her lips twitched, her smile freezing as she considered her response. She sipped her tea again, swallowing as though she was drinking a cup of sand.

  “No,” Rosemary said, her hand patting her chest as she forced it down. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

  Rosemary put her tea on the table next to Barb’s and hurried out of the conservatory.

  “She’s lying,” Julia whispered. “Why is she lying?”

  “Maybe she’s found the painting?” her father theorised.

  “In a couple of hours?” Julia replied with a shake of her head. “No. She was talking about fleeing Peridale this morning, and now she’s letting her mother-in-law move in. I don’t understand.”

  “That’s just the kind of woman Barb is. It’s almost impossible to say no to her. I know she says she didn’t like Anthony, but he didn’t like her much either. He visited her out of guilt, even if he didn’t really understand the concept of guilt.”

  Leaving her tea almost untouched, Julia stood up, deciding nothing Rosemary said could be trusted anymore. They slipped out of the cottage as two men heaved a chest of drawers up the stairs while Barb dictated from the top.

  “If you hear anything about the painting, make sure to call me,” Julia said as she dropped her father off outside Peridale Manor. “Tell Katie I said hello.”

  He assured her that he would, seeming touched by the gesture. Julia knew it was going to take more than a baby to build long since burned bridges, but it was a better place to try than any.

  As she drove back to the café, she racked her brain to try and figure out the truth about what had happened on the night her café had been broken into. She felt like the answer was staring her straight in the face, but she was missing a vital piece of information that was wriggling right under her nose.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Julia returned to the café, Sue was standing behind the counter flicking through a gossip magazine. She let out a yawn before looking up and spotting Julia.

  “Jessie’s gone for a driving lesson with Barker,” Sue said as she flicked through the magazine. “Do you think I’ll suit this dress after I’ve pushed out the pumpkin?”

  Julia shrugged. She hung her jacket on the hook in the kitchen and tossed her car keys on the counter. She smiled to herself, glad that Barker wasn’t taking his anger out on Jessie. She was an innocent party stuck in the middle of two people who didn’t know what to say to each other to make everything right.

  “He asked where you were,” Sue said, slapping the magazine shut as she stretched out, letting out another yawn. “Told him you’d gone off somewhere with Dad. Wasn’t sure if you wanted him to know you were snooping.”

  “I wasn’t snooping,” Julia said with a roll of her eyes. “I was just asking some questions.”

  “Same difference,” Sue said with a chuckle. “He seemed pretty upset that you weren’t here. I think he wanted to talk to you.”

  Julia thought back to the brief moment they had shared after finding Timothy’s body. She had buried her head in his chest, and he had put his arm around her, holding her silently until the police arrived at the scene. As soon as the scene was secured, they parted ways, and she wasn’t sure how they had left things. She hoped it would have brought them closer together again, but she also knew it was possible it was a momentary blip, and Barker might never want to touch her again.

  “Are you just assuming he was upset or did he actually look upset?” Julia asked as she dropped a peppermint and liquorice teabag into a cup.

  “He pulled this face.” Sue scrunched up her face and pushed out her bottom lip. She looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid. “And then he started sobbing and fainted to the floor screaming ‘Julia’!”

  Julia tossed a dry teabag at Sue. It hit her on the side of the face.

  “I’m glad my life is so amusing to you.”

  “Oh, cheer up, big sis,” Sue said, tossing the teabag back. “Okay, so I might have stretched the truth a little, but he did look disappointed. And he’s spending his lunch break giving Jessie a driving lesson. That must mean something.”

  “Jessie hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Neither have you,” Sue said with a shrug. “Still being married to a pig isn’t a crime. So what that you didn’t tell him? I bet he hasn’t told you every detail of his past.”

  Julia dropped her head guiltily as she poured hot water into the small cup. She thought back to the time Barker had shared his past with her, about how his fiancé had died. She had almost shared her own past with him after that revelation,
but it felt cheap in comparison. He had told Julia she was the first woman he had loved since, which dug the guilty knife even deeper into her chest.

  She pulled on the string of the teabag and bobbed it up and down in the water as she gazed out of her café window at the quiet village green. People seemed to be heading to Happy Bean’s, avoiding looking in her café’s direction. She wondered if it was time to accept her fate and start thinking about another route she could take, but it ached to think she wouldn’t have her café to come to every day.

  “Maybe I could do corporate events,” Julia thought aloud before blowing on the hot surface of the water. “Or wedding cakes.”

  “Boring!” Sue exclaimed. “I went for my scan this morning. I was going to tell you before, but Dad came, and I didn’t want to show –”

  Screeching tyres interrupted Sue before she could finish her sentence. They both turned to the window in time to see Jessie drifting around the corner of the village green in Barker’s car. Dot, who was tearing out the weeds that were poking through her garden wall, jumped back, tumbling over the low wall and into her garden. Julia caught a flash of Jessie’s hand waving her apology before she sped off again, turning and speeding past St. Peter’s Church like she was drag racing.

  “For the sake of Peridale, I hope that girl never passes her test,” Sue said with a nervous laugh. “She’s lethal!”

  “She’s learning,” Julia said, as hopefully as she could muster. “You failed your test three times, remember?”

  “But I didn’t kill anybody in the process!” Sue exclaimed as she grabbed her handbag from under the counter before pulling out a bottle of red nail polish. “I hit that cat, but it sprung right up and ran away with eight lives still intact. Barker is braver than me to get in a car with her. What do you think of this colour? Does it clash with the bump?”

  Julia chuckled as she sipped her tea. She looked out of the window at the village green again, and something outside Happy Bean caught her attention. She craned her neck in time to see Jerrad bolting out of the coffee shop as the stressed young barista from earlier burst through a crowd of people, tossing her apron to the ground as tears streamed down her face. She ran across the road, narrowly missing the bonnet of Barker’s car as Jessie made another erratic lap of the village green.