Claire's Candles Mystery 03 - Coconut Milk Casualty

by Agatha Frost

“Mine too.”

  Claire linked arms with her father as they strolled up the garden path. She glanced up at her bedroom window on the way, finding she wasn’t upset to be sticking around for a little while longer. Ryan needed her help, after all. Before they reached the back door, Claire heard a familiar hiss from over the fence. Leaving her father to go inside, she peered into Graham’s back garden.

  As expected, Domino was standing off against a black cat next to Graham’s knocked-over bin. Though last night’s storm had probably tipped it, she knew without a doubt Domino’s had been the claws to rip open the bags. Despite being the slenderer and more innocent-looking of Claire’s two cats, Domino’s schemes to get more food never ceased. The other cat – one of Mrs Beaton’s, she assumed, though she wasn’t close enough to get a whiff – didn’t stand a chance when there was a half-stripped chicken carcass on offer.

  “Domino?” Claire growled, motioning for her to return to the appropriate side of the garden fence. “Are you trying to get us in trouble? Get over here.”

  But Domino wasn’t listening. She growled deep in her throat at the black cat before hissing and swinging with claws outstretched. Domino didn’t make contact, but he scurried off all the same. With deceptive elegance, Domino returned to picking at the chicken.

  Knowing Domino wouldn’t take her threats seriously with a barrier between them, Claire tiptoed down the side of her parents’ cottage and hopped over the place where the fence lowered at the front. Ryan and his mother, Paula, had once lived in the house Graham now inhabited alone. It had been far too big for two and was definitely far too big for one.

  Claire reached the kitchen window and ducked when she saw Graham washing something at the sink. Holding her breath, she crept along in a thigh-burning squat and snatched Domino up. The cat wriggled, but Claire gripped her for dear life. She was about to pivot back but, in a sea of scrunched up beer cans, something bright and plastic caught her eye.

  A red lid.

  A red lid attached to a can of spray paint.

  Claire didn’t hesitate. She turned and hurried back under the window, standing when she could. With Domino still in her arms, she hopped over the wall and through the front door. She bumped straight into Ryan’s back.

  “Look at that for timing,” he said, steadying her with a hand on her arm. “Ready to start on the furniture at the flat?”

  “I know who sprayed my shop.”

  His eyes widened. “Who?”

  Claire peered past him into the kitchen. Alan was chatting at the table with Sally as he tucked a napkin into his collar, and Janet had the kids on a stool at the sink, already washing their hands.

  “It was my next-door neighbour,” she said, glancing through the side window at the cottage. “It was Graham.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A fter lasagne and the kids’ baths, Janet insisted on putting them to bed with a story – something they were both eager for. Claire wasn’t sure they would be so keen after hearing one. Janet’s thinly disguised village gossip spun into strange but boring fairy tales were about as interesting as reading the phonebook. Although, those stories had always sent Claire straight off to sleep, so perhaps her mother was actually a devious mastermind.

  Neither in the mood for an early night, Ryan and Claire walked Sally home. She suggested a taxi, but Claire knew the fresh air would do her good before she stumbled home wine-drunk. When Sally was somewhat soberer and safely on the other side of her front door, Claire and Ryan strolled through the park to the square. The last of the sun had already slipped away by the time they reached the flat above the shop.

  Ryan started taking the pieces out of their boxes while Claire made them strong cups of coffee in the small kitchen. Before taking them through to the bedroom, she glanced through the front window to the brightly up-lit clock tower in the square. Less than a week had passed since the opening. The nerves she’d had that first morning almost felt silly now, especially considering everything that had happened since. The electrics, mice, and tiles felt tame in comparison.

  “I wonder if things would have played out differently if we’d somehow figured out it was Graham and not Nick,” she said, setting the cups on the narrow window ledge. This view wasn’t nearly as lovely, as the window looked out on nothing more than the dark alley behind the shops. “Would our paths have entwined with these murders? Would they just have been something we heard about through the gossips?”

  “Probably,” he said as he set the tufted, grey fabric headboard against the wall in the space where the double bed would most naturally fit. “Although, your uncle was technically still connected to Nick, and everything is out in the open with your dad now. Swings and roundabouts.” He motioned for Claire to pick up the left side of the bed. “You really think Graham would do that? I thought you were all cool after what happened with your uncle?”

  “How could it ever be ‘cool?’” she asked as he drilled in the screws. “My uncle murdered my neighbour’s wife and his wife’s lover. All this time, I’ve felt sorry for myself for having to keep up appearances with him, but . . . Graham is the real victim here. Well, the only one still left alive.”

  “He sprayed your shop, mate,” Ryan said, arching a brow. “No matter what’s happened, that’s out of line.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed, nodding her head from side to side. “Maybe it made him feel better.”

  “It made you feel awful.”

  “I got over it,” she said, suddenly remembering the lift to the village. “And so did he, I think. He picked me up when it was raining and brought me to work. We talked, and even if he was a bit intense, he didn’t seem to want to strangle me.”

  “Must have felt guilty. But, Claire, he owes you an apology, at least.”

  “It’s done now.” She held up the right side of the bed while Ryan glanced at the instructions and gathered the screws he needed. “This has gone up easier than I expected. I don’t know why I was putting it off so long. Lucky I did, really, or I might already be in here.”

  “I still feel weird about this.” His cheeks were red when he glanced up at her over the drill. “Can I give you some rent, at least? I was paying Agnes and Jeanie over four hundred a month. I can stretch to five-fifty, but the houses on the market ‘round here start at six-fifty. And that’s for the small ones.”

  “Then save your money,” she said. “I don’t need your money, Ryan. Like I said, it’d only be sitting empty, and you need it more than I do. I could have gone weeks before I started on this stuff.”

  They attached the bottom of the bed, and after rolling out the slats, the bed was up. Claire unwrapped the plastic covering the mattress, and Ryan made the bed better than Claire ever could. Her mother was so strict about how she liked the beds – which she made in every room every day –Claire had always been scared to try anything more than throwing her duvet up and down a few times. When Ryan finished smoothing the quilt over the fitted sheet, they lay down side by side and stared up at the textured ceiling and the bright domed light above them.

  “Isn’t this mad?” He rolled onto one side to face her as he spoke; she mirrored his movement. “After all these years, after all we’ve been through and all the changes, here we are. And it’s still us, just like it used to be.”

  Claire tried to gulp around her suddenly parched throat.

  “Just like we used to be,” she said, glancing at his lips. “Ryan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you ever think about what would have happened if you’d stayed?”

  “All the time.”

  “And . . . what do you think?”

  “Dunno,” he said, rolling back to look at the ceiling. “I’d probably never have got in shape. Maybe wouldn’t have had kids so young, not that I regret them. College? Maybe I would have followed my passion for art when the dust settled after my mum died. Who knows?” He glanced at her. “Is that what you meant?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, rolling off the other side and standing. “
Like you said, who knows.”

  “Em keeps telling me not to regret things,” he said, rising to join her. “‘Live in the moment.’ I always think I am, and then I look at the moment and realise I’m not. I’m so distracted with work and the kids and trying to find us a new home.” He looked down and smiled before wiping the creases out where he’d laid. “This is going to sound cheesy.”

  “Go on, I like cheesy.”

  “Sometimes I think the only time I really live in the moment is when I’m with you,” he said, scratching the back of his head as his brows reached for his hairline. “You make me feel like myself. A ‘myself’ I don’t think I took to Spain.” He paused and stared at the floor before his eyes shot up to meet Claire’s. “ I-I really missed you, and I didn’t even realise it until I came home.”

  Claire smiled, touched more than she knew how to express. In the months since his return, she’d felt them slowly opening up and figuring each other out after their years apart. Still, tonight the flower of their friendship fully blossomed again. And as she stared at him, still in his gym clothes and looking nothing like the Ryan she remembered, she knew, just like she’d known when they were teenagers, exactly how she felt about him.

  She still loved him.

  She loved him in a way she had never loved anyone before.

  “I missed you, too,” was all she could bring herself to say. “Shall we crack on with the bedside cupboards?”

  “Why not?” He picked up one of the boxes with the picture of the mid-century white and light-oak style cupboards she had chosen. “When we’re done, a pint at the pub before last orders.”

  The race to get to The Hesketh Arms for a pint of homebrew before closing pushed them through the two bedside tables at lightning speed. They even had time to slash the plastic off the small, L-shaped corner sofa she’d picked for the open-plan living and kitchen area at the front of the flat.

  “Kids can have the bed,” Ryan said, sitting on the soft grey fabric couch as Claire’s phone vibrated in her pocket. “I don’t mind crashing on here. Pillows and a quilt and I won’t know the difference. Might even be comfier than the beds at the B&B. I spent most nights counting the springs in my back, not sheep.”

  Claire opened her phone to find a text message from Sally: Might be the wine talking, but I just realised your uncle’s cottage is bang in Ryan’s price range and has three bedrooms. Dunno when it’s going on the market after Joey’s tumble, but it shouldn’t take too long. Could probably even negotiate a discount. Double murder site … too weird?

  Without even thinking about her response, Claire sent back a quick two-word text: Too weird.

  “Pub?” she said.

  “Pub.”

  After flicking off the lights, they went downstairs and out through the front door. Claire locked up and turned to see Damon walking towards them from the direction of his flat above Marley’s Café, a box of toffee apple cider in his hand.

  “Looks like I’m too late,” Damon said, patting the small case. “Saw your light on and assumed you were flatpacking again.”

  “We were,” she said, looping arms with Ryan on one side and Damon on the other. “And now the three of us are off to the pub for a pint before closing.”

  “What about these?” He held up the cider.

  “Stuff them under your jacket,” she said. “Like I said, a pint before closing. Those’ll do us nicely on a bench in Starfall Park when Malcolm and Theresa kick us out.”

  “Drinking on a park bench?” Damon grumbled. “Like a bunch of delinquent teenagers?”

  “Less of the delinquent,” Ryan called across. “We used to call ourselves ‘cool,’ thank you very much. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, mate.”

  The three of them laughed as they approached the pub, but the laughter quickly faded when they spotted the lone occupant of the outside beer garden. In the middle of a sea of benches, Gwyneth stared blankly into a glass of white wine. Her red lipstick was merely a smudged stain, and the eyeliner had gone, washed away with tears by the looks of it. Without her trademark make-up, Gwyneth was a shadow of Northash’s Marilyn.

  “Gwyneth?” Claire said softly as she approached. “I was sorry to hear about your loss. I know you were close to Joey.”

  “Hmmm?” She didn’t look up from the wine. “Oh, yes, Joey. Thank you, honey.”

  Gwyneth finally summoned part of a shaky smile and glanced up, but the expression didn’t touch her eyes. The pain of her recent losses was etched in every line of her face. Though Northash residents called her ‘Marilyn,’ Claire didn’t think anyone could fake such a blank and harrowing stare into nothingness.

  “He stopped my brother going to prison for a silly drunken scuffle,” Damon offered with a meek smile. “Good lawyer.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Gwyneth replied, her lips twitching into a smile. “He was a terrible lawyer. No moral compass. But, then, Mum always said I had terrible taste in men.” She picked up the glass and sipped it for what seemed like the first time. “At least Nick knew he was no good. He always said I was too good for him. We met at my twenty-year school reunion.” She paused, her smile widening. “He came with Ste. I’d never seen him before, but there he was, dancing in the middle of the empty dance floor with a bottle of beer in his hand. No shame, no embarrassment, just dancing. He didn’t care who was watching. He didn’t know anyone there but his brother, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. That was the type of man he was.” She paused to smile. “I think I fell in love with him before we’d even said two words to each other. Under it all, he was good.” She dabbed away a tear. “Joey thought being a lawyer made him a good man, but he screwed over so many more people, just in a different way. The people he knew were guilty . . . and he fought to let them walk free. It turns my stomach. If we hadn’t known each other since childhood, I would have dropped him years ago. It’s hard to see who someone has become when all you can think about is who they used to be. The list of people who would want to murder either of them could be as long as my arm.”

  “And yet I’m sure the list of people who would want to murder them both is a much smaller one,” Claire said, sitting across from Gwyneth. “Do you have any ideas who that could be?”

  Gwyneth shook her head. “He came to my shop right before he died. He seemed spooked. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he’d done something terrible but that he could never tell me about it. Said I needed plausible deniability – those were his words. And then he went off to meet someone. If I’d known he was going to . . . I could have . . .”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” she said quietly. “Take it from me, that gets you nowhere. Did he say who he was going to meet?”

  Gwyneth shook her head again. “He called someone. Told them to meet at the usual place. I had a feeling it was the casino. We all had keys for the back door. Your uncle trusted us, but Nick . . . he ruined everything. It got out of control, and they couldn’t stop. Investing and reinvesting, winning more and more. Gambling more and more.”

  “Who?”

  “Nick and Joey,” she said, grimacing into the calm surface of her chilled wine. “Nick always loved betting on the dogs and horses. Reckoned he had a fool-proof system for guessing winners. Worked just about enough times for people to fall for it but he’d never take my money. I knew then that it was just luck. People would place bets, Nick would let them win big at the casino, and then he’d convince them to reinvest their winnings into his races pool. The more money he had to play with, the more chances he had to make it back. For a while, it worked. But it all got too big.”

  “What happened?” Claire pushed, edging forward on the bench.

  “About a week before he died,” she said, blinking hard and freeing more tears, “he lost it all. The entire kitty. He paid out the profits every month, like a business investment, but he burned through the lot. He said he just kept losing and losing, and before he knew it, it was all gone.”

  “How much?” Ryan asked, slipping nex
t to Claire on the bench.

  “Twelve thousand pounds.” She looked up at the sky and blew a steady stream of air through her pursed lips. “He was so stupid. He said the bookies kept throwing him out, so he kept going to different ones to try and win it back. Everyone was furious with him. I knew it would happen eventually. He didn’t care about winning money to pay people back; he just cared about having money to play with.” She drank more wine and shivered, though from the alcohol or her thoughts, Claire couldn’t tell. “Joey, on the other hand, cared about the money. After a lifetime struggling as a lawyer, he got his first taste of what he called ‘real cash.’ He hated Nick, but the money was good enough for him to join the club. Uncle Harry says there’s a chance their deaths aren’t connected, what with the methods being so different. Nick was strangled with a rope, and Joey was stabbed in the neck.”

  “So, he was stabbed,” Claire said, almost to herself.

  “Blunt instrument, Harry said.” She closed her eyes as though to stop more tears. “He said it looked like a fencing blade or maybe even a pen. It went deep enough that he would have died even without being pushed down—” Her hand went up to her mouth. “I . . . I should go home.”

  “We’ll walk you,” Claire offered.

  “No, no, it’s alright.” Gwyneth wiped her tears as she shuffled to the end of the bench. “I only live in the flat above my shop.” She rested a hand on Claire’s shoulder. “You were right about your candle. It really filled the whole room. Welcome to the square, Claire.”

  When Gwyneth was safe inside her flat, Claire turned her gaze across the square to take in her candle shop, enjoying the fluttering in her tummy.

  “It’s still surreal,” she said.

  “I’ve heard nothing but good things,” Ryan said, nudging her arm slightly. “Let’s get that pint before they lock up.”

  Inside The Hesketh Arms, the worn-out and dated décor proved a comfort after that devastating conversation with Gwyneth. A couple of men propped up the bar, and despite the late hour, Malcolm and Theresa, the owners, were still smiling.