Claire's Candles Mystery 03 - Coconut Milk Casualty

by Agatha Frost

  Ste nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said, opening the app to pay the fare. “You’ve just saved me an awkward conversation with my gran.”

  “She’s the little woman with the dog, isn’t she?” Ste asked, back to looking at Claire in the mirror again. “She was there too.”

  “My gran?” Her stomach flipped. “Part of an underground gambling ring?” She paused to put her phone back. “Saying that, she does put the lottery on four times a week without fail.”

  “Explains why your uncle told you to ask her,” Em said as she unclipped her seatbelt. She leaned over to kiss Ste on the cheek. “Thanks for getting us back so quickly. I’ll pop ‘round later.”

  Claire waited until Ste’s car rounded the corner before turning to look at her shop. Three customers browsed inside, and Sally seemed to be handling it with ease – not that Claire doubted she could. Maybe Sally wasn’t the best timekeeper, but she juggled more than anyone else Claire knew and made it look somewhat easy.

  “Even the stains scrubbed hardest leave shadows,” said Em, reaching out to scratch a little remaining red paint from one of the small windowpanes. “I assume your uncle didn’t confess to putting Nick up to the vandalization?”

  “He went one step further,” Claire replied, biting the inside of her cheek. “Made out like he had no idea the shop even existed. His denial was pretty convincing, but it’s not like he has a problem with lying. I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Listen to your heart,” Em said, giving Claire a hug. “Which is what I’m going to do. I need to help Ste figure this out. He might put up a brave front, but he’ll be a wreck on the inside until his brother has some peace.”

  “Do you think it could be connected to the cellar card club?” Claire asked, looking in the direction of Lilac Gifts.

  “It’s as good a place to start as any,” Em said, already stepping back into the road. “I’ll talk to Gwyn. She won’t lie to me. If anyone knows what Nick was up to in his final days, it’ll be her.”

  “Hopefully, you don’t have to go through the lawyer.”

  “Joey Smith doesn’t scare me,” she said with a laugh and a wave. “Keep your ear to the ground.”

  As Em began her walk across the square, Claire hesitated at her shop door. She needed to keep more than an ear to the ground. She might not have declared her intention to solve the mystery aloud like Em, but she couldn’t stop her mind scratching for a solution, especially now that DI Ramsbottom had officially opened a murder investigation. Once again, she was too connected to the case to look the other way.

  For now, at least, she had a shop to close. As soon as she stepped inside, the sea of scents immediately brought a smile to her face. Sally was behind the counter serving a young woman with a full basket; her two daughters, Ellie and Aria, sprawled on the floor at her feet with their faces buried in computer tablets.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” she said after the customer left. Sally kissed her on each cheek. “We missed the bus and then had to wait for a taxi.”

  “Don’t apologise! Compared to running around Lancashire showing posh people posh houses, this was a treat. Nice to stand in one place.” Sally peered into the bag of candles Claire had bought. “And here I was thinking you had enough.”

  She laughed. “It’ll never be enough.”

  “How’s your tooth?”

  Claire clutched her cheek, remembering the alibi Em had given over the phone. She immediately dropped it, glancing at the kids over Sally’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” Sally whispered, leaning in closer. “Don’t mind them. I could scream their names at top volume and they wouldn’t look up from those things.”

  Claire waited until the last customer left and immediately flipped the sign to CLOSED. Once alone, she pulled Sally into the kitchen, out of the kids’ earshot.

  “I went to visit my uncle.”

  “I knew it!” Sally slapped her on the arm. “Em can’t lie in the slightest. She’s too nice.” She bit her lip and rested the same hand in the same spot, gently this time. “How are you feeling, mate?”

  “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.” Claire leaned in. “Estate agents keep copies of keys, don’t they?”

  “When we manage the property on behalf of landlords,” she said, folding her arms. “This is going where I think it is, isn’t it?”

  Claire and Sally had been able to read each other’s minds since childhood. She scrunched up her face and nodded.

  “It’s a good job you’re probably the only person I trust lately,” Sally said, grabbing her handbag off the hooks on the wall. She plucked a set of keys from her bag and held them up. “I need a favour in return.”

  “Anything.”

  “I think you’ll regret saying that,” Sally said, still holding up the keys. “The property needs to be empty before people can view it. We also need to give the family a chance to recover anything they’d like to save. Your gran’s listed as Pat’s next of kin, but I’m not about to ask a woman in her eighties to sift through her son’s bedroom before the removal people come to clear it out.”

  “Toss it all,” Claire replied flatly.

  “Your choice.” Sally threw her the keys. “You might as well have a look though, mate.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A fter locking up the shop, Claire went straight to her gran’s cottage. She knocked and waited for a few moments, but no answer came. Greta didn’t have a mobile phone, but she did have an active social life and the list of places she could be was a long one. Claire wasn’t in the mood to search the whole village for her.

  She also wasn’t in the mood to go home and look her father in the eye without telling him where she’d spent a good chunk of her afternoon. After the awkwardness of breakfast, she imagined dinner could only be worse. She sent her mother a text message fibbing about having a girls’ night with Sally before heading to The Park Inn.

  Though The Park Inn was the more attractive of Northash’s two pubs, it couldn’t compete with The Hesketh Arms on much else. Even ignoring the better food, award-winning locally famous homebrew, and lower prices at Hesketh, a chain pub like The Park Inn just couldn’t replicate the homey welcome Theresa and Malcolm so effortlessly created. Some joked The Park Inn was the pub people in the village went to have affairs since so few locals ever darkened its doorway. Others called it a decoy pub, leaving the Hesketh for locals to enjoy – the best-kept secret in the village.

  Alone in the corner, Claire sampled the cheese and onion pie off the new menu. One rubbery bite was all she needed – obviously, it was fresh from a microwave. Claire Harris: the one fool in Northash gullible enough to pay £8.99 for a meal based on a rumour of ‘the new menu not being so bad, apparently.’ She’d happily report her findings to Theresa and Malcolm the next time she was in her true local.

  Of course, Claire wasn’t in The Park Inn to sample the microwave pie and chunky chips still slightly frozen in the middle.

  She scanned the room for faces she recognised but none jumped out. Tonight, a room full of strangers suited Claire fine. She’d rather not risk being exposed by the ever-observant eyes and ears of Northash as she hid out until the sun wasn’t quite so high in the sky.

  The sky blackened before Claire could decide if she wanted to risk the dessert menu. She glanced at the clock, but it was still hours before sunset. A deep, distant rumble of thunder echoed around the pub, silencing the few strangers. Claire stood, finishing her pint with one hand while reaching for her denim jacket with the other. She wasn’t alone. One by one, people settled their bills and headed for the door. The people passing through Northash were probably keen to get home, but Claire had somewhere else to be. She tucked a shiny, red ten-pound note under her plate and left.

  A whistling wind whipped her short hair into her eyes as she hurried down the steep road towards the square. Pausing outside the closed post office on the corner, she glanced up at Starfall Park. Ominous, velvety black clouds had already advanced beyond t
he observatory at the top of the steep incline.

  Taking advantage of the absence of rain, Claire sped up until she was very nearly at a jog. She turned left at the butchers on the corner and headed towards Christ Church Square, but skidded to a stop on the corner of Warton Lane across from the church when she saw Damon and Ryan deep in conversation a little further up the narrow pavement. Damon was in his factory-issued lumpy blue jumpsuit, and Ryan in his usual gym wear, chunky white headphones around his neck. Under the natural rooftop created by the lush leaves of the trees on either side of the road, known locally as The Canopies, the sudden change in weather wasn’t noticeable.

  “Not really the right time for a casual chat outside,” Claire called up the road as she hurried towards them. “What are you two doing up here?”

  “Just catching up,” Ryan said, grinning down at Claire. “You been running, mate? You’re as red as a beetroot.”

  Claire hadn’t noticed Ryan and Damon talking much since Ryan’s return. They’d all gone to the same high school, but they’d moved in different friend groups. Claire and Sally stuck together like Velcro, Ryan had his art friends, and Damon hid away in the library.

  “Storm’s coming.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the park. “Didn’t you hear the thunder?”

  “What thunder?” Damon pushed up his glasses as he squinted up at the dense trees. “Although, now that you mention it, it’s a little dark. Usually still bright when I walk home from work this time of year.”

  “And when I go for my after work run,” Ryan added, his gaze echoing Damon’s.

  “You go running after work?” Claire asked, arching a brow. “You work in a gym.”

  “Old habits die hard,” he said, wiping the humid shine from his freckled, flushed cheeks. “I miss running on a beach, but the English countryside is the next best thing.”

  “Yeah?” Claire flinched as another rumble of thunder boomed up the narrow lane. “That countryside’s about to be washed away any second. Fancy coming with me to check out my uncle’s cottage? It’s only around the corner.”

  Purple lightning lit the sky even through the canopy of leaves, and the thunder followed seconds behind. Warm rain fell in a heavy sheet, like someone had just twisted a shower knob to full pressure. Claire didn’t wait around for an answer. She sprinted towards her destination faster than she’d done since the days of P.E. and forced runs up Killer Hill.

  Guided by desperation and familiarity, she ran at the cottage’s front door with the key outstretched. It slotted into the lock. She twisted it and fell into the dark cottage without resistance. Ryan sprinted in right behind her, with Damon bringing up the rear seconds later.

  “Woo!” Ryan let out a cheer as he shook rain from his red hair. “Doesn’t that just make you feel alive?”

  “Sure. Alive.” Damon slammed the door and leaned against it before pulling off his wonky glasses. “Just the word I’d use.”

  While Claire and Damon caught their breath, the three of them lingered in the dark hall, eyes fixed on the textured ceiling. Outside, the downpour somehow intensified. Lightning lit up the hallway, and the nearly simultaneous thunder was loud enough to make them all jump. Sturdy as the cottages in Northash seemed, Claire wouldn’t have been surprised if the entire top floor of the house had ripped off just then.

  “Looks like we’re waiting it out in here for a while,” Claire said, testing the light switch several times to no avail. “Good job it’s warm, I guess.”

  “I’ll go look for towels,” Ryan said, removing his headphones before peeling off the soaked vest that he then balled up and threw on the floor by the door.

  “And I’ll go and look for something to drink,” Damon said, waiting until Ryan had sprinted up the stairs to unzip his blue jumpsuit and reveal his equally soaked undershirt. “It’s enough to make you sick, isn’t it? Just think, if we’d kept up with the gym like he did, we could look like that by now.”

  “We went three times twelve years ago,” Claire reminded him, leaning her head against his shoulder as they entered the dark kitchen. “I like you just as you are, Damon Gilbert.”

  “But if I looked like that,” he said, nodding up at the ceiling, “I’d have the women on the dating apps liking me too.”

  Claire’s gaze followed Damon’s but she had to glance away again when the beams in the ceiling reminded her of what she’d seen from the square the afternoon of Nick’s murder. Though she’d looked away before she could absorb any of the details, she had a feeling they were directly where he’d been.

  “You’re back on the apps?” she asked, hurrying out of the hallway and heading straight to the fridge. “I thought you’d sworn off them?” She opened the door, and even though the light didn’t turn on, she spotted three four-packs of beer. “Jackpot.”

  Claire reached for one of the four-packs, pulled out a can, and tossed it to Damon. Without complaining about the beer being warm or cheap, he cracked it open immediately.

  “Just having a look at who’s out there these days.” He took a long pull of his beer. “It’s a small dating pool ‘round here. Starting to think my mum’s right. Maybe being alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “You’re not alone, Damon.”

  “I know,” he replied, blushing. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . I’m thirty-six next month, and I can’t help but feel I should have a family or something by this point. Instead, I’m planning to meet up with my internet mates again for a convention.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “They’re my best friends,” he said before quickly adding, “besides you.”

  “Then that sounds like a birthday well spent.” Claire opened her beer and tapped the rim to Damon’s. “Em would say something like ‘love comes in all forms,’ or ‘don’t sit around waiting to be happy,’ and she’d be right. Live in the moment.” Sipping the warm beer took her right back to her teen years and sneaking drinks with Ryan when their mothers were looking the other way. “It’ll all slot into place when you least expect it, I’m sure.”

  Ryan bombed down the stairs with three towels and a handful of large, dry t-shirts. Neither asked if he’d pulled them from the murderer’s or the dead man’s room, but they changed into them all the same. In separate rooms, on Damon’s request.

  “So,” Ryan asked as he reached for one of the unopened cans of beer, “you here to find the spray paint?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, looking around. “I suppose it could be here if he didn’t throw it away immediately. But no, that’s not why I came.” She looked up at the cursed beam in the ceiling and gulped. “I went to see my uncle today, and before either of you ask, no, I don’t know how I feel about it yet.” She paused to swallow another mouthful of beer before adding, “Long story short, my uncle mentioned something about a casino, and Nick’s brother confirmed that some kind of card ring was being run in the cellar.”

  “You think it might be connected to Nick’s death?” Damon asked, voice slightly muffled as he towelled off his dark hair.

  “My uncle thought it was important enough to mention.” She looked around the dark kitchen as another flash of lightning momentarily lit up the shadows. “That, or he’s playing more games with me.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Ryan took a big gulp of his drink before slamming his can of beer down on the kitchen counter. “Where’s the cellar?”

  “I’m not too sure,” she admitted, scanning the doors in the kitchen. “My uncle had lodgers for as long as I can remember. It was something of an unspoken rule that we didn’t turn up at his house all that often. Nick had to have been here for at least a decade, and we really never got to know him.” Her stared blurred out of focus as she gazed at the kitchen tiles. “I suppose there’s a lot about my uncle’s life that I didn’t really know.”

  “Mate,” Damon called, nodding for Claire to join him in the shadowy corner where he was shining his phone. “Think I fou
nd the door to the cellar.”

  “How do you know?”

  Damon shone his light over a shiny gold plaque mounted in the middle of the door. ‘Pat’s Casino’ was engraved in large, bold letters. Claire smiled and, for a moment, forgot about her uncle as the murderer and remembered him instead as the man with a dry sense of humour who gave his all to everything.

  “Hardly a big secret,” she said, pulling open the door. “After you?”

  “Nah, I’m alright.” Damon looked down the dark staircase as more lightning briefly illuminated the kitchen. “I only came because it was closer than my house – and how many times can you say you’ve visited the house of a murderer? No offence. But I am not walking down into a haunted cellar. I’ve seen enough films to know how that pans out.”

  Claire was about to laugh off the suggestion that the cellar was haunted, but the storm outside offered its brightest, loudest performance right on cue.

  “Why don’t we go down and find out,” Ryan said, lighting a jar candle with a box of matches from the sideboard. He lifted it up to his face, and with a creepy, shadowy grin said, “Or are you too scaaaared?”

  “Very funny.” Claire whacked him with the back of her hand – thunder punctuated the contact. “I vote you go first. You have the biggest muscles.”

  “I second that,” Damon said, edging behind Claire. “Although I’m not sure what good muscles would do against a ghost. Theoretically. We’d be much better off with a proton pack, like the ones from Ghostbusters. Yes, they’re technically fictional and they—”

  “And just like that I’m not scared,” Claire announced, taking the candle from Ryan. “Thanks, Damon. I ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

  Taking the steps quickly and firmly, Claire descended the smooth stone staircase into the darkness, guided only by the faint, flickering light of the candle. At the bottom, she reached a wooden door with another plaque: ‘Members Only Beyond This Point.’ Claire hadn’t considered that her uncle would have been the founder of the ‘casino.’ It was impossible not to imagine him having a chuckle as he put up the signs; so far, the level of detail had ‘Pat’ written all over it.