An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy Collection - ABC

by Diana Xarissa

  “I hope I can answer at least some of your questions,” a cool voice cut across Kara’s increasingly shrill questions.

  Fenella smiled to herself as she saw the relief on Constable Corlett’s face when he saw Inspector Robinson in the doorway.

  “There’s been an unfortunate incident,” the inspector said. “I think it might be best if we all go back to my office for a chat.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Kara said. “Not until someone tells me what’s going on.”

  The man who climbed out of the black car that pulled up next to them was a stranger to Fenella, but Kara seemed to know him instantly.

  “That’s the coroner,” she shouted. “What’s he doing here? Is someone dead?” She looked from the inspector to the constable and then back again. “It’s Mr. Potter, isn’t it?” She spun around and looked at Fenella. “What did you do to him?” she screamed.

  Fenella took a step backwards, shocked by the anger she saw on the other woman’s face. Inspector Robinson took Kara’s arm and pulled her away from the building.

  “Come on, let’s go down to my office and have a chat,” he said soothingly. “You can have some tea and I’ll explain what’s happened here.”

  “I don’t want tea,” the girl said, tears beginning to fall. “Something awful has happened to Mr. Potter, hasn’t it? First Mr. Collins and now Mr. Potter. I’m going to be next, aren’t I?”

  “Of course not,” the inspector said. He had his mobile phone in his hand and he was tapping away at it. As Kara began to sob quietly, another black car slid to a stop on the street. A uniformed policeman got out of the passenger seat and greeted the inspector. They had a short conversation and then the inspector spoke to Kara.

  “Constable Harrison is going to take you over to my office and get you some tea,” he said in a comforting voice. “I’ll be there in a short while.”

  Kara grabbed his arm and stared into his eyes. “Please don’t leave me,” she begged. “I’m sure my life is in danger.”

  “You won’t be in any danger when you’re with Constable Harrison,” the inspector said.

  “But I’m terrified,” the girl countered. “And I feel as if you’re the only one I can trust.”

  The inspector nodded curtly and then turned back to his phone. After a minute, with Kara hanging on his arm the entire time, he turned and spoke to Constable Corlett.

  “I’m going to take Ms. Newstead over to my office for a chat,” he said. “Another constable will be along shortly to collect Ms. Woods and bring her to the station.”

  “Yes, sir,” Constable Corlett said.

  Fenella watched silently as Kara was ushered into the back of the unmarked police car. Inspector Robinson followed without giving Fenella so much as a glance.

  6

  “Someone will be here for you soon,” Constable Corlett said a few minutes later after receiving a text message.

  Fenella nodded. Time seemed to be all out of shape at the moment, speeding up and slowing down as she waited. It felt as if it had been five or six hours since she’d been happily window-shopping, but a glance at her watch told her that only a single hour had passed. A moment later a police car pulled up and stopped in front of her.

  “Ms. Woods?” the uniformed officer who emerged from the car asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If you’d like to come with me, please?”

  Fenella sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was ride anywhere in the brightly marked police vehicle. It felt very much like she was being arrested, which couldn’t possibly be the case. The man held open the door to the back of the car and waited for her to climb in.

  “Good luck with the baby,” Fenella said to Constable Corlett before she reluctantly climbed inside the car. She didn’t hear the man’s reply, if he gave one.

  The drive to the police station was a short one. Fenella looked around, trying to work out exactly where they were going as they went. Having not been very far from her apartment yet, she was interested to see more of Douglas.

  The driver parked and then came around and opened Fenella’s door for her. Fenella would have climbed out herself, but she’d found herself locked in.

  “Right this way, please,” he said politely, gesturing toward the front door of the building.

  Fenella walked briskly, suddenly eager to get everything over with. The sooner she could put this day behind her, the better. Inside the station, the uniformed constable led her through the small foyer, past a desk where several people were sitting. They walked down a short corridor and boarded a waiting elevator. A few moments later, the elevator doors opened into what looked like a small waiting room. There were a few lumpy-looking couches and a wooden coffee table that was scarred and stained.

  “I’m afraid this is the best we can do,” the man told Fenella. “Please have a seat and I’ll let the inspector know you’re here.”

  Fenella sat gingerly on what she hoped was the nicest of the couches. There were a few magazines on the table, so she picked one up at random and flipped through it. Her mind was racing and she felt close to either tears or screaming, maybe both. A minute later the man was back.

  “I’m just going to keep you company while you wait,” he told her.

  Fenella bit back an angry retort. It wasn’t the man’s fault he’d been assigned to babysit her, but she didn’t have to like it, either.

  “Are they afraid I might run away?” she asked.

  “I think they’d rather just not have you sitting here alone,” the man said. “Inspector Robinson said you’ve had something of a shock. He wanted to make sure you had some company.”

  She pressed her lips together and then nodded. “I’ll just read this, then,” she said, turning her attention back to the magazine on her lap.

  The man raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond.

  Fenella looked back at the magazine, trying to force her eyes to focus on the page in front of her. It was an advertisement for golf clubs. She frowned and looked at the cover. Apparently there were entire magazines devoted to the game of golf. She shrugged. Looking the pictures in the magazine felt more desirable than trying to make conversation with the uniformed constable.

  After the golf magazine, she flipped her way through a magazine about football, which to Fenella was soccer and not nearly as exciting as this magazine seemed to think it was. Again, she focused on the pictures and the locations discussed, ignoring the long articles about various players she’d never heard of and the prospects of the myriad of teams she knew nothing about.

  She was just debating between another golf magazine or a three-month old copy of one of the local papers when Inspector Robinson walked in.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said as Fenella got to her feet.

  She just nodded in reply, unable to bring herself to say something polite about not minding. She did mind, quite a bit, actually.

  “Thank you for waiting with her,” he said to the constable. “You can get back out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said smartly.

  “Right this way, please,” the inspector said to Fenella as the young constable disappeared into the elevator.

  Inspector Robinson took Fenella’s elbow and steered her through a large room that was packed with desks and people. Along one wall there were a number of doors, and Inspector Robinson stopped in front of the one that was labeled “Interview One.”

  “Just in here, please,” he said softly. He pushed the door open and Fenella swallowed hard as she took in the plain wooden table and chairs that were the only furniture in the brightly lit space.

  Feeling as if she were about to start confessing to everything she’d ever done wrong from the time she’d stolen Cassidy Smith’s cookies in third grade to the speeding ticket she’d talked her way out of six months earlier, she walked into the room.

  “Have a seat,” the inspector told her.

  Fenella dropped into the first chair, which was just as uncomfortable as she tho
ught it would be. Inspector Robinson sat down opposite her and pulled out his notebook.

  “I’ll be taking notes and recording this, if that’s okay,” he told her.

  She nodded, not trusting her voice as she felt increasingly close to tears.

  The inspector looked at her and then smiled. “You’ve had a rough couple of days, haven’t you?” he said in a sympathetic tone.

  Fenella nodded again and then thoroughly embarrassed herself by bursting into tears. The inspector jumped up and disappeared through the door, leaving Fenella alone to sob. He was back a moment later with a box of tissues which he thrust at her.

  It took her several minutes to bring her crying under control. During that time, Inspector Robinson paced around the room. Fenella could feel his eyes on her, but she was too focused on trying to stop crying to care. When she finally began to feel as if she were back in control of her emotions, she wiped her eyes one last time and then looked up at the inspector.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing.

  “Don’t be,” he told her. “What you walked into at that office was pretty brutal. I should have expected you to be upset and I should have talked to you first and then let you get home to rest.”

  “Ms. Newstead was upset, too,” Fenella said.

  “Yes, but, well, never mind,” he said. He sat back down next to her and patted her hand. “Are you okay to answer my questions now?”

  “I think so,” she replied, feeling like she ought to be tougher.

  The man took her slowly through her day, which didn’t take long, as she hadn’t done much more than a bit of shopping before finding the body.

  “Can you repeat your conversation with Mr. Potter as close to word-for-word as possible?” he asked when she’d finished recounting her day.

  Fenella frowned and tried to remember exactly what was said. She did her best, but didn’t feel as if she’d managed it very well. “It simply didn’t seem important,” she told the inspector. “He wanted to see me and I agreed to go to his office. That was really it.”

  “Why did you tell him that Mr. Collins was dead when you found him?”

  “Because he was,” Fenella replied, feeling confused.

  The inspector smiled. “Yes, I know that, but why did you feel the need to tell Mr. Potter that?”

  “Oh, because that’s what everyone has been asking me,” Fenella explained. “Everyone seems to think that he must have whispered some last words to me when I found him, and I have to keep disappointing them.”

  “Who exactly has asked you about last words?”

  “Suzy Monroe, for one. She stopped me on my way into the building yesterday to ask me about finding the body.”

  “Did she now?”

  “Yes, as I understand it, she and Mr. Collins were romantically involved,” Fenella replied.

  “Who else asked about last words?”

  “Mandy Collins,” Fenella said. “She stopped to see me last night and asked me a few questions.”

  “The victim’s former wife? Interesting.”

  “She seemed devastated,” Fenella said, feeling as if she needed to defend the young woman. “I think she was hoping that he’d called out her name or something just before he died.”

  “Perhaps she’s lucky he didn’t,” the inspector remarked. “If you’d told me that Mr. Collins had called out someone’s name just before he died, that person would probably go to the top of the suspect list.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Fenella exclaimed.

  “So what did Mr. Potter want to see you about?” the inspector asked now.

  Fenella shook her head. “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” she told him. “At the time I assumed he wanted to ask about last words. That’s why I said what I did. But even after that, he said he still wanted to see me.”

  “So if he wasn’t worried about last words, what might he have wanted to ask you?”

  Fenella looked at him blankly. “I can’t imagine,” she said.

  “Maybe he thought you might have found some papers or money or something with the body,” the man suggested.

  “If I had, I would have left them right where I found them,” Fenella said. “I didn’t touch the body or anything else in the alley.”

  “Yes, but Mr. Potter might not have known that.”

  He held up a hand to stop Fenella from speaking. “I’m going to send you home now,” he told her. “I’ll probably want to talk to you again tomorrow, but I’ll ring you to set something up.”

  “Maybe we could do pizza again,” Fenella suggested.

  “Maybe, after the cases are solved,” the man replied.

  Fenella flushed as she thought about his words. Feeling as if she’d put her foot in her mouth in some way, Fenella got up and followed the inspector out of the room. Back in the lobby, he spoke to one of the women behind the desk and then turned back to her.

  “Emma is going to arrange for a ride home for you. I’ll probably ring you later today to set up another appointment for us to chat. I’m sure, as we process the scene, I’ll have more questions.”

  She nodded and then sighed as he walked away from her, back toward the elevator.

  “Constable Smith will take you home,” the woman behind the desk said. She gestured toward a young woman in uniform.

  The woman smiled. “I’ve heard good things about the Promenade View Apartments,” she said conversationally as she led Fenella out of the station. “I’ll bet the views are amazing.”

  “They are,” Fenella agreed.

  The woman drove her back to her building and then insisted on escorting her to her apartment.

  “Inspector’s orders,” she said when Fenella tried to argue. “He said I was to make sure you got into your flat safe and sound.”

  The young woman seemed quite impressed with the view from Fenella’s apartment and didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave once they’d arrived.

  “Are you quite certain you’re okay?” she asked Fenella after spending several minutes looking out the windows.

  “I’m fine,” Fenella said, just about keeping herself from sounding totally cross.

  “I’ll get out of the way, then,” the woman said brightly. “Take care, now.”

  The unexpectedly kind words were enough to crack Fenella’s fragile emotional exterior. As she pushed the door shut behind the policewoman, she felt fat tears begin to fall again. She sighed and headed to the nearest box of tissues. The emotional outburst didn’t last long, but she felt better when it was over.

  “My goodness, I’d have never left you my estate if I’d known you were such a magnet for trouble,” Mona’s voice cut through her last few sniffles.

  Fenella looked up at her aunt and shook her head. “It isn’t my fault,” she said defensively. “And how do you know what’s happened already, anyway?”

  “News travels fast on an island this small,” Mona told her.

  “I don’t suppose Mark Potter stopped for a quick word on his way from this life to wherever he’s going next and told you who killed him?” Fenella asked.

  Mona laughed. “I thought I told you before that it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “I’ve no idea who killed the man, but whoever it was must have been simply covered in blood, mustn’t they?”

  Fenella shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it,” she said firmly. “Not even for a second.”

  “We’ll never be able to help the gorgeous inspector solve these murders if you don’t put some effort in,” Mona told her.

  “I don’t want to put any effort in. I don’t want to get involved in solving anything. I just want to be left alone to do my research and write my book.”

  “I don’t remember you being this boring when you were young,” Mona said. “I only left you my fortune because I thought you’d be fun.”

  “Solving murders isn’t fun,” Fenella snapped. “It’s dangerous.”

  Mona shrugged. “But think how much better you’ll feel once the murder
er is behind bars. Or murderers are behind bars, I suppose.”

  “You don’t think they were killed by different people, do you?”

  “Maybe,” Mona said. “Anything is possible, but it’s hard for me to guess as you won’t tell me what you saw.”

  “How did you know that there was lots of blood?” Fenella demanded.

  “That much was on the radio,” Mona said.

  Fenella shook her head. “It was awful,” she said, her voice breaking as she spoke. “There was blood everywhere and I really don’t want to think about it.”

  “The poor man,” Mona replied. “But who could have killed him? Did you see anyone else in the building?”

  “No, it was very quiet and it felt empty. There must have been other people in the different offices, but I didn’t see anyone. I just hope they have security cameras in place.”

  “I doubt it,” Mona told her. “Not only is that building one of the cheapest to rent in Douglas, but I don’t think some of its tenants want any record of their clients and their comings and goings.”

  “You seem to know a lot about that building,” Fenella said, her tone questioning.

  “I needed an emergency dentist last year and Reginald Hart was my closest option. On a Sunday morning, he was the only person in the entire building, but he told me while he drilled that that wasn’t all that unusual. He said that none of the other tenants kept anything like regular office hours.”

  “I’m just going to forget all about that building and Mark Potter and Alan Collins, even,” Fenella said. “I didn’t get any lunch and I’m starving.”

  She wasn’t really starving; in fact, thinking about food made her feel queasy, but she was determined to overcome her emotions and get her life back on track. In the kitchen, she fixed herself a sandwich and washed it down with a soft drink. Everything else felt like too much work. When she was done, she felt as if the food was sitting heavily in her stomach, but she washed the dishes and then paced around the apartment for several minutes.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” Mona complained as Fenella stomped past her for the tenth time. “Why don’t you go out somewhere? You can walk up and down the promenade or go do some more shopping. Maybe you could visit the Manx Museum or take yourself for a drive down to the south of the island.”