by Agatha Frost
“Know what?”
“What I know.”
Julia sat across from her gran, one brow arched as she tried to figure out what she was hinting at. There was not enough coffee in Peridale to make Julia’s brain function at full capacity after her sleepless night.
“Gran,” Julia said sternly, “what did you rush in here to tell me?”
Dot bit her lip, looking as though the excitement of her news wanted to burst out. Julia assumed they were on different pages of a book, unless Dot was happy Leah had vanished.
“After that commotion at the bridal shop, I went to the pub with Sue, didn’t I? After a couple glasses of sherry—”
“A couple?”
“Well, six.” Dot pushed a hand through her curls with a satisfied smile. “I might be old, but I’m not dead yet, dear. After all that sherry, my memories loosened up. I knew there was something fishy about that Leah girl, I’d just forgotten what. Do you remember why Leah left Peridale?”
Julia shook her head.
“Not many people seem to,” Dot continued. “I took a poll of the people in the pub, and only Amy Clark remembered, but that’s because she was attached to Emily’s hip. Emily tried to sweep it under the rug, and she did a good job. I think most people even forgot she had a daughter. She was a sneaky woman, God rest her soul.” Dot glanced up at the ceiling with puckered lips. “Of course, I heard all about it at the time. You know me, dear. I always have one ear to the ground. Not much gets past me.”
“Heard about what?”
Dot smirked as she leaned in, glancing around to make certain no ears were to the ground anywhere near them.
“Leah ran off with an older man,” Dot whispered.
“Oh.”
“There’s more.”
“Oh?”
“Leah ran off with an older man,” Dot repeated, her smile growing with each word, “on the day of his wedding.”
“Oh!”
“Exactly!” Dot cried, startling Shilpa as she walked to the door. “Leah was eighteen and he was in his mid-twenties, if I remember correctly. The rumour was they’d been having an affair for months, and he left his wife at the altar to go gallivanting with a teenaged girl. It would have been quite a scandal, but Emily lied through her teeth and told everyone Leah had gone off to university. There wasn’t enough evidence to prove the rumour, so it fizzled out, and people forgot. You know what folk around here are like. They can be a little…” Dot leaned in even further “…simple.”
“Leah said she married young and divorced young,” Julia thought aloud, her fingers drumming on the table. “So, that would line up. Why have I not heard any of this before?”
“You were busy with college and working all the hours God sent in that bakery. Roxy and Johnny went to university around that time, so maybe you thought she drifted off with them? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I remembered. Mystery solved!”
“Who was the man?”
“Hmmm,” Dot said, her face scrunching up. “I don’t know. I don’t know who the ditched bride was, either. Why don’t I know?”
“Maybe they weren’t from Peridale?”
“That makes sense.” Dot nodded, still deep in thought. “It’ll come to me.”
Julia waited for Dot’s revelation. She looked around the café and watched as Katie cut a giant slice of carrot cake for Father David. It was double what Julia would have sliced, but she decided against interjecting.
“The bridal shop lady!” Dot snapped her fingers together. “What was her name?”
“Brooke.”
“It has to be Brooke! She wanted to kill Leah—and she might have done if you hadn’t ruined the fun and broke them up. If the woman who ran off with your husband-to-be on the day of your wedding turned up, you’d want to kill her.”
“Would I?”
“Well, I would,” said Dot defiantly. “It makes sense.”
Julia could certainly see some sense in Dot’s argument. Brooke’s reaction lined up with such a situation, but it didn’t explain where Roxy and Johnny came into the story.
“So, what do you know?” Dot asked, edging forward. “Spill!”
Julia paused, reaching for words that wouldn’t come. If she told Dot anything, the information would surely be talked about all over Peridale by teatime.
With perfect timing, Sue burst into the café as Father David left. She had a bottle of champagne in each hand, a pink feather boa around her neck, and two stacks of bridal magazines under each arm.
“Champagne!” Katie exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “What’s the occasion?”
“Wedding planning!” Sue placed the bottles on one of the empty café’s tables before dropping the stacks of magazines. “Just because yesterday was ruined, it doesn’t mean we should lose momentum. As an official bridesmaid, it’s my duty to keep the train moving. Katie, grab some glasses.”
Katie teetered into the kitchen with a squeal. Sue skipped over to Julia and wrapped the boa around her neck, loose pink feathers flying into the air around her. One landed in Dot’s mouth as she yawned. Dot choked and coughed it out before giving Sue a frosty look. On any other day, Julia would have been touched by Sue’s surprise, but today was different. She unravelled the boa and placed it on the table.
“Loosen up, big sis.” Sue picked up one of the bottles and popped the cork into the corner of the room. “Glasses, Katie!”
Katie hurried back with four latte glasses. Sue directed the foam into them and topped them up, emptying the bottle in one go.
“Where’s that wedding planner of yours?” Sue looked around the café with a wrinkled nose. “Licking her wounds, no doubt?”
Julia sighed and collapsed into the nearest chair. She rubbed her temples; a headache was forming rapidly.
“Something happened last night,” Julia began, her eyes fixed on the stack of magazines. “I went to Leah’s cottage to try and get an explanation out of her, and she wasn’t there.”
“She’s left Peridale already?” Dot sounded disappointed. “Spoilsport!”
“Good riddance.” Sue lifted her glass before slurping the foam off the top. “You don’t need a wedding planner when you have us, does she, girls?”
“Nope,” Katie and Dot said in unison.
Julia sighed again. Lightning cracked through her head, threatening to split her skull in two.
“It wasn’t just that she wasn’t there,” Julia continued as she rubbed her swollen eyelids. “It looked like there’d been a struggle of some kind, and there was blood on the carpet.”
Sue spat her champagne back into the glass and sat down, her cheeks darkening in an instant.
“She’s d-dead?”
“I don’t know.” Julia ran her fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp to try and ease the building tension. “The police are looking for her right now.”
“She’ll turn up,” Dot said airily. “What’s the drama? I’d bet my pension that Brooke went back for another brawl. That’s all it’ll be.”
“She left her phone, car and house keys, the front door was open, and she was in the middle of cooking.”
“Oh.” Dot’s face wrinkled. “That’s unusual.”
“It sounds like she was taken,” Katie announced. “I saw something like that in a film.”
“What film?” Sue asked.
“Taken,” Katie replied bluntly.
Sue and Dot rolled their eyes, but it was one of the scenarios Julia had considered during her long, sleepless night. It was one of the gentler scenes because it was one of the few where Leah was still alive.
“There’s more,” Julia said, reaching into her apron. “I found this in Leah’s house.”
The trio of women squinted at the red hair in the bag. They exchanged unsure glances, none of them piecing Julia’s theory together.
“It’s a hair,” Sue said.
“Or string?” Katie added.
“No, it’s definitely hair,” Dot said. “I can tell.”
“It’s a red hair.” Julia held the bag up to the window. “How many people do you know with hair like this in Peridale?”
“Well, there’s…” Dot’s eyes widened as the puzzle pieces joined together. “Oh! Roxy?”
“Bingo.”
Julia’s eyes snapped into focus, looking past the plastic bag and through the window. She saw a tall figure and realised she was parading stolen evidence around in broad daylight. When she realised the figure was Barker, she stuffed the bag back into her apron.
“Hello, ladies,” Barker said as he walked into the café, the bell announcing his arrival. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“I just came to do some wedding planning,” Sue said before slurping her champagne.
“And then Julia told us about Leah,” Dot added.
“And about that hair of Roxy’s she found at Leah’s house,” Katie said carelessly as she reached for her glass of bubbles. “I wonder if Roxy was the one who took her? I think it was Russians in the movie. Roxy’s girlfriend is Russian, isn’t she? It’s all adding up.”
“Indeed,” Barker said, his eyes trained mercilessly on Julia. “Can I borrow you for a moment?”
Barker marched into the kitchen, leaving Julia to follow him like a mischievous child about to get a scolding. With the hair in her apron pocket, she felt like one. She glanced back into the café before heading through the beads. Sue and Dot watched nervously as they sipped champagne and Katie flicked through a bridal magazine, not realising how badly she had just landed Julia in it.
“Barker, I—”
“I’m an ex-detective inspector, Julia,” he interjected, his hushed tone filled with disappointment. “And even if I weren’t, I would still tell you how reckless it was of you to take a piece of DNA evidence from a crime scene!”
“Barker, let me just—”
“And without telling me?” Barker circled the stainless-steel island, his hands disappearing into his hair. “You can’t tamper with this stuff. It’s important. It could matter.”
“Barker, it was—”
“A mistake?”
“A huge one.” Julia pulled the hair out of her apron and tossed it onto the counter. “I didn’t realise I was doing it until I did it. If it’s Roxy’s hair, I wanted to—”
“Protect her from the law?”
“Get an explanation first,” Julia jumped in, her headache muddling her thoughts. “I wanted to hear it from her lips. If she killed Leah, I—”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Barker’s tone softened. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel it.” Julia sat on a stool, her hand clamped against her forehead. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night and a marching band has taken up residence in my head.”
Barker walked to the sink and filled a glass with water. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a box of painkillers. He popped two out of their foil casing and slid them to Julia with a kind smile.
“I’ll take the hair to the police,” Julia said after tossing back the painkillers. “Just let this kick in first.”
“The police?”
“It’s evidence.”
“It’s too late for that.” Barker sighed as he picked up the hair and held it up to the bright ceiling light. “If you admit to taking this, you could be charged with perverting the course of justice. You don’t want to give them any reason to lock you up, especially since you’ve beaten them to the punch on half the crimes over the last year.”
“But you’re an ex-DI.”
“Exactly.” Barker tossed the hair onto the table. “Ex. There are no blurred lines anymore. It’s them and us, and I’m not going to let you land yourself in it like that. If there’s one hair, they’ll find something. It’s only a matter of time. DI Christie is—”
“DI?” Julia cut in. “I thought he was only a detective sergeant?”
“John was promoted into my old job,” Barker said. “He’s welcome to it. I’m much more suited to the writing. He was gunning for that job before I came to Peridale, so I’m happy for him. Plus, it helps to have someone on the inside for finding out things before The Peridale Post.”
“What happened to them and us?”
“It’s no different than when you used to extract details from me.” Barker sent her a quick wink. “John is hardly tight-lipped about the particulars anyway. I’ve just been to the station. He filled me in on everything that’s happened so far. I told him it was for book research, and he didn’t question me.”
“He’ll know you’re telling me this.”
“I know.” Barker sat on the stool opposite Julia. “I think that’s why he was so frank with the details. This one has them stumped. A woman vanishes from her house without a trace in the middle of cooking dinner and doesn’t take a single thing with her? Signs of a struggle, and some blood, but not enough to kill someone.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Not even close. Forensics are testing it to see if they can get a match from the DNA they’ve gathered from Leah’s things. Until then, they’re treating this like a missing person’s case.”
Missing person.
It felt so informal and unimportant, and yet Julia knew it was so much more significant than that. An invisible clock ticked down in the back of her mind, and she knew she would soon start chasing the hands to uncover the truth before time ran out. She checked her phone, but Roxy had yet to respond.
“Do you know anything else?” Julia asked, hoping for another revelation. “Any sightings?”
“Nothing.” Barker shook his head. “They’re tracing Leah’s credit cards and banking, but she left everything in the house, so it’s unlikely they’re going to find her that way. Last I heard, Christie was about to set up a door-to-door search to see if anyone saw anything. Until then, it’s like she’s vanished into thin air. It’s going to be a tough one for us to crack.”
“Us?”
“Them and us, remember.” Barker reached across the table and took Julia’s hands in his. “If I can get leads from Christie, I will, but right now we’re one step ahead.” Barker released one of Julia’s hands and picked up the bag. “And besides, we have something they don’t—and there’s no easy way to pass this on without putting you in their bad books. You know what we have to do.”
“Find Roxy?”
“Find Roxy,” Barker echoed, nodding firmly. “Any idea where to start?”
Chapter Six
Leaving Katie in charge of the quiet café, Julia and Barker set off in search of Roxy. They circled the village green, assessing the groups of families enjoying early afternoon picnics in the burning heat. Neither of them acknowledged it, but Julia knew they were searching the crowd for Leah or Roxy. A football from a children’s game darted across the grass towards them, and Barker kicked it back, a smile pricking the corners of his lips.
“And the world keeps turning,” Julia murmured as she rubbed her temples, the sweltering temperature the only thing distracting her from the dull pounding in her head. “Everything feels so normal even when it isn’t.”
“It is for them.” Barker wrapped his arm around Julia’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I know you’re thinking about the worst-case scenario, but thinking doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“That Leah is dead?”
Barker didn’t respond.
“And if Leah is dead, that Roxy might have been the one to kill her?”
Silence.
“I’m tired,” she apologised. “I don’t want either to be true, but I can’t see any other alternatives right now.”
Julia pulled her phone from her small handbag and called Roxy again. She shouldn’t have been disappointed when it diverted straight to voicemail, but she was. She hung up without leaving another message; she had already said everything she could say.
Roxy lived with her girlfriend, Violet, in a small flat above a candle shop at the top of Mulberry Lane, three doors up from Brooke’s Bridal Boutique. S
eeing the dress shop twisted Julia’s stomach into a tight knot. Brooke’s son, Max, was smoking a cigarette outside the shop, one foot leaning against the old stone. He had a white bag from the pharmacy clutched in his free hand. She stopped in her tracks, her mouth going dry as she watched him.
“He knows what happened between Brooke and Leah,” Julia said, nodding to the lanky, dark-haired boy. “He looked like he wanted to throttle Leah as much as his mother did when he realised who she was. I should go over and ask him what he—”
“Maybe we should stick to the task at hand.” Barker nodded to the bright pink door leading up to Roxy’s flat. “If the fight was as bad as you described, we don’t want to cause round two. Your association with Leah might be enough for him to snap.”
“But what if he knows something important?”
“What if he doesn’t?”
Max finished his cigarette, stubbed it against the wall, and tossed it into the gutter. He glanced in Julia’s direction, his eyes meeting hers. She waited for a flicker of recognition, but he gazed right through her before ducking into the shop. Julia wiped the gathering sweat from her forehead as she made a mental note to speak to either Max or Brooke to see how they slotted into the puzzle of Leah’s past.
Abandoning the lure of the dress shop, Julia turned her attention to Roxy’s flat door. It had been a dull grey before Roxy had moved in, but in typical Roxy fashion, she hadn’t wanted anything ordinary, so she had painted it hot pink within an hour of having the keys. Julia had helped paint the rest of the flat, which was just as exuberantly themed. There was no doorbell to ring or knocker to bang, so Julia rapped on the wood with her knuckles. They waited for sounds of movement, but nothing came.
“This is eerily familiar,” Barker said as he took his turn knocking on the door. “If she’s not here, where could she—”
Feet pounded down the staircase behind the door, cutting Barker off midsentence. A chain rattled, and the lock clicked before the door swung open with force.
“Rox—Oh, hello, Julia.” Violet didn’t try to hide her disappointment at their presence, her thick Russian accent transforming the words to ‘uh, hullo, Julia.’