Memoirs of a Garroter (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries Book 4)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “True that.” Morrie nodded across the aisle as more people filed into the church. “There’s Brian and Amanda. My, they are the picture of marital bliss, aren’t they?”

  I squinted, but in the dark church filled with black-clad mourners, I couldn’t distinguish anyone. “I can’t see.”

  “Brian’s shirt is rumpled and he’s wearing mismatched socks. Amanda’s tits are spilling out of her dress, and she’s got on that grotesque necklace Danny bought her. She’s also recording something on her phone for her Youtube channel. And look,” Morrie flipped over the program, which was printed with a full page ad for The Somerset Strangler. “Brian’s trying to drum up sales.”

  “Gross. Do you see Penny Sledge anywhere?”

  “Yes, she’s sitting down the front with Angus. She’s the perfect mourning widow, complete with black veil and everything. That purple-haired guy, Jim Mathis, is a couple of rows back, looking very dapper in a 20s cut suit. I might ask him for the name of his tailor.”

  The service got underway. Instead of hymns, they played a Metallica song. The priest made a vile face as the congregation stood to bow their heads during the guitar solo. Despite myself, I nodded my head along with the drums. Danny may have been a philandering tosser, but he did have excellent taste in music.

  After the priest spoke a prayer and made his usual speech about the journey of the immortal soul, Angus got up. He spoke with eloquence about Danny’s career, and what it meant to him to have seen Danny turn his life around and share his stories with the world. He even teared up a little toward the end. “I didn’t just lose an inspiration. I’ve lost a dear friend.”

  Next was Penny. “Danny was a complete wanker with no sense of propriety or decorum. I don’t miss his stupid face or his crass jokes or the way he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. I will, however, miss his money. But the proceeds from his estate will buy me a respectable home amongst respectable people in London, and that’s as good a legacy as he can hope for.”

  Wowsers. Danny was a dick, but that was a pretty harsh thing to say at his funeral. I reminded myself that although Angus and Amanda both had alibis for Danny’s death, Brian, Penny, and Jim were still unaccounted for, and all three had pretty strong motives for wanting to see Danny dead.

  Angus and Brian joined the pallbearers to carry the coffin out. Morrie and I waited until most of the mourners had followed them outside. Even so, when we stood up to join the throng waiting to place flowers on Danny’s coffin, I overheard the villagers whispering about us.

  “They’re from the bookshop where he was murdered, aren’t they?”

  “It’s a bit sick, them showing up like this. They must be raking it in by being the place where the famous author Danny Sledge met his grisly end.”

  I wish, I thought with annoyance.

  “Hmmph. It would be just like that new girl to do that. She’s been trying to commercialize the place with events and whisky tastings and such. Whisky tastings? At a bookshop? I’ve never heard of anything so crass. Apparently, she’s from the estate, which isn’t a surprise, now, is it? Those girls are always hungry for money. I’ve told everyone I know not to set foot in that place. It’s despicable.”

  “No class! I’ll tell the ladies at church. We’ll boycott.”

  Great. Just great.

  After the service was complete, guests milled around the parking lot in front of the church, drifting into the Sunday School room where tea, coffee, and a spread of food had been set out. I made a beeline for the food, figuring that if I was going to get gossiped about for being a money-grubbing poor girl, I would at least get a free meal out of it.

  “Look who Penny’s talking to,” Morrie nudged me, his hands filled with sausage rolls.

  He gestured to the other end of the room, but I couldn’t see. “Let’s get closer.” I touched Morrie’s hand and we made our way down the food table. I knocked back three sausage rolls as I shuffled forward. Finally, I was close enough to identify Penny, her head hunched as she talked with a tall, weedy fellow I instantly recognized. Jim Mathis.

  Did the two of them know each other? Interesting. I didn’t think Danny would have anything to do with Jim after he sold him down the river. So how did Penny know him?

  After a few minutes of conversation, Jim held up his phone and indicated he had to make a call. Penny nodded, and Jim disappeared outside.

  “Wait here,” I said to Morrie, pulling on my coat. “Keep an eye on Penny.”

  If Heathcliff had been with me today, he’d never have let me go after a criminal like Jim on my own. But Heathcliff wasn’t here. He refused to be in the same room as Morrie, so he’d stayed at the shop. Quoth was up in the trees somewhere, but he wouldn’t know what was going on. Morrie nodded and inched closer to Penny. I slipped away and followed Jim as he made his way down the side of the church. He paused at the end of a short concrete path, resting his elbow on a stone gatepost. I pressed my back against a pillar, hoping like hell I was invisible behind it.

  I dared a look around the corner. Jim was looking away from me. He lit up a cigarette, sucking the smoke into his lungs as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Yes, I’m at the service. Didn’t you see me? It was Danny this, Danny that, blah blah blah.”

  The person on the other end spoke for a while.

  “We’ve got to wait for the right time,” Jim said. “There’s too much press around. Too much attention. Everyone thinks Danny’s a fucking hero. I think we should wait—”

  The person on the end was speaking again. I wished like hell I could hear what they were saying.

  “Yes, fine. We’ll do it your way. I’ve got to get back.” Jim stubbed out the cigarette with his toe. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You know I always come through. I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  He whirled around and headed toward me. I bent down, muttering to myself under my breath as I scrabbled through the garden. “I think I dropped it here somewhere,” I said in a louder voice as he wandered past. He didn’t offer any assistance.

  I met up with Morrie across the road, and we watched as Danny’s coffin was lowered into the ground. I scanned the crowd for Jim, but couldn’t see him anywhere in the massive crowd. Refreshments were being served in the Sunday School room. Mourners dawdled in the cemetery, not wanting to appear too eager for free sausage rolls and cream scones on what was supposed to be a somber occasion.

  “I hope you discovered something sordid,” Morrie said, taking my arm and leading me away from the crowd so we could talk. “I listened to Penny Sledge discuss ad nauseam how she’ll be revitalizing Danny’s backlist now that she has ownership of it. New covers, classier branding. She said she may even hire a ghostwriter to produce ‘a more literary series’ under his name. The woman is deluded if she thinks Danny’s fans want his crime thrillers to turn into introspective bollocks—”

  Morrie was cut short by a bloodcurdling scream.

  “What was that?” someone cried.

  “It came from the Bible Study room!”

  Morrie and I rushed toward the entrance of the Sunday School, shoving our way through the confused mourners. Angus and Jim emerged from a second room toward the back of the hall, their faces grave. They blocked the doorway to this room with their bodies.

  “Please, everyone step back,” Angus said, striding forward and waving his arms in an attempt to drive the crowd back further. “Something horrible has happened. The police are on their way and we don’t want anyone to panic—”

  I ducked under Angus’ arm and stumbled into the room. My own scream froze in my throat.

  Brian Letterman lay on the carpet, his body completely still. His hands clasped around his neck, and his glassy eyes bugged out from his contorted face. Around his neck, a gauzy black scarf had been twisted tight.

  Chapter Thirty

  “He was dragged into the Sunday School room and garroted,” Jo explained as she flopped down into a pew at the front of the church, where I and the other main witnesses were
gathered while Hayes and Wilson questioned us. “Exactly the same pattern as the last murder, except this time the material was left at the scene.” She held up a black, gauzy cloth with a pair of tweezers and slid it into a paper bag. Something about it looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place what it was.

  “I’ve seen that cloth before,” I said, touching my father’s letter in my pocket. A headache bloomed across my temples. “I just wish I could remember where.”

  I glanced over to the next pew, where Hayes and Wilson were interviewing Angus Donahue. I strained to listen – as an ex-cop and the first person on the scene after the tea-lady found Brian’s body and screamed, Angus probably had some insight.

  “As we were all heading across the road to the cemetery, I happened to notice Brian walking into the Sunday school with Jim Mathis. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I know Jim’s been working as a ghostwriter for Brian’s wife.”

  He has?

  “This is the same Amanda you spent the night with at the Argleton Arms?” Hayes said, while Wilson furiously made notes.

  “That was just a bit of fun,” Angus said. “Amanda’s reputation is no secret in our circle, not even from her husband. Brian knew all about it. I think he almost preferred it when she was out with other blokes. It meant she was spending their money, not his.”

  “And was she sleeping with this Jim Mathis?”

  Angus shrugged. “Probably. He was helping her write a trashy erotic novel. My guess is, they were doing practical research for one of the scenes.”

  Gross.

  “You saw Brian and Jim enter the Sunday School,” Hayes pressed. “Then what happened?”

  “Then I went across the road to the cemetery with the rest of the guests. They should be able to confirm I was by the graveside. I was the first to throw dirt into the grave. I didn’t see Brian or Jim again until…” he shrugged again. “Well, you saw.”

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in the cemetery?” Hayes asked.

  “Apart from Penny Sledge gleefully kicking a clot of dirt on top of the coffin, nope. Seemed a normal funeral for me.” Angus hung his head. “As normal as it ever feels to lose your best mate.”

  “Thank you, Angus.” Hayes snapped his pad shut and headed over to Jo. “Has your team found anything else?”

  “Unfortunately, all those people stomping around in the Sunday School room ruined what little physical evidence there might have been.” Jo patted the small box of evidence bags she was labeling in preparation for transport to her lab. “I’ll know more once I’ve processed the body, but I’d say it’s obvious the crimes are related.”

  “If the murderer is the same person who killed Danny, it means Beverly Ingram has to be innocent,” I piped up. Hayes frowned.

  “Agreed, it does,” Jo said. “But I didn’t say they were the same person.”

  “But you said they were related. You think it could be two separate killers?” I asked.

  Jo shrugged. “It’s not up to me to do the thinking. That’s Hayes’ job. I just supply the data.”

  “Correct.” Hayes tapped his pad with his pen, frowning at Jo. “And you also shouldn’t be sharing private information about our cases with a civilian, especially not a nosy one like Miss Wilde.”

  I let that dig slide. “Did Wilson tell you I heard Jim Mathis on the phone earlier? He was saying to someone ‘we’ve got to wait for the right time. There’s too much press around. I’ll do what has to be done,’ which sounds a little sinister if you ask me. It sounds like someone put him up to murdering Brian.”

  “Thank you for the information, Miss Wilde, but no one asked you for your interpretation. In fact, you’ve been specifically warned to stay out of police investigations—”

  “Jim was also the guy that Danny snitched on in order to get a shorter jail sentence,” I shot back. “Why would he show up at Danny’s funeral, unless it was to cause trouble? I think you’ve got the wrong person in jail, and Brian’s death proves it.”

  Hayes tapped his phone. “This phone call Jim made… it would have taken place around quarter-past-two?”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “The exact same time Beverly Ingram received a phone call at the station?”

  Oh. Shite.

  “I don’t think it was her! Jim made it sound as if the person on the other end was at the funeral. Besides, even if it was Beverly, that doesn’t mean anything! All I really heard was them talking about Danny’s funeral. It could have been about something completely unrelated.”

  “Miss Wilde.” Hayes’ voice was stern. “It sounds to me as if you’re trying to insert yourself into official police business.”

  “No, but I—”

  “We’re currently very busy interviewing witnesses. DS Wilson has already taken your statement, so you’re free to go.”

  “But—”

  Hayes pointed outside. “If you have any further information for us, please speak with DS Wilson.”

  I glared at him as I collected my things. “You’re making a big mistake!” I yelled as Morrie and I left the church. “And I’ll prove it!”

  “I can’t believe they’ve still got Beverly in prison!” I cried.

  “You have to admit, that phone call does link Beverly and Jim Mathis,” Heathcliff said.

  “I don’t think so. The person Jim was talking to was at the funeral, but wanted to discuss something in private, without anyone overhearing. But even if it was Beverly talking to Jim, why would she want to kill Brian? If she murdered Danny, then surely she got her revenge? And wouldn’t she hate Jim because he was also dating Abigail? He could have just as easily been her killer.”

  “Brian published the book,” Heathcliff said. “Beverly was outside at the reading having a spat with him. She wrote him all those letters demanding he pull the book and he refused. She sees him as equally culpable.”

  Damn. That’s a convincing case. No wonder the police still have Beverly in custody. “So Beverly hired Jim Mathis to kill Brian? Even if Jim was motivated by money, I just can’t see it…”

  “You can’t see it because you want that woman to be innocent,” Heathcliff pointed out annoyingly.

  “You’re no use. Where’s Morrie? I want to rant to him.”

  Heathcliff stared at the page. “He’s upstairs, at his computer.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Oh really? You allowed him back in the shop?”

  “He was scratching on the window. I couldn’t concentrate. He’s so fucking annoying.”

  I grinned. “You let him back in the shop.”

  “He’s on probation. One wrong move and he’s out on his arse.” Heathcliff slammed his book shut and regarded me with his stormy eyes. “Even if he is a fucking majestic kisser.”

  I grinned from ear to ear as I climbed the staircase to the flat. I found Morrie not at his computer as I expected, but risking life and limb by sitting in Heathcliff’s chair, hunched over a scuffed laptop with what looked like tomato sauce smeared across the screen. “What’s that? It doesn’t look like yours.”

  “It’s not.” Morrie didn’t even look up from the screen. “This, my dear, is Danny Sledge’s laptop.”

  I slid in beside him. “How did you get that? Isn’t that in evidence lockup at the police station?”

  “Don’t worry about the hows or whys. I’m going to get it back to the precinct tonight.” Morrie pounded away on the keys with gloved hands. “In the meantime, I thought we should have a poke around Danny’s files.”

  “What have you found so far?”

  “Nothing much. The guy has a search history so sordid it could rival mine, but I put that down to being a crime writer. There are lots of notes, and of course his manuscripts… the only thing I haven’t been able to find is the manuscript he was working on.”

  “His memoir?”

  Morrie nodded. “There’s a folder for it, but nothing inside the folder. At the reading, Danny said he’d already started working on it, so the
re should be something here. I’m checking back through the logs to see… hmmm, this is interesting.”

  “What is?” I leaned in close to look at the screen, but all I could see were lines of code.

  Morrie pointed to some unintelligible twaddle. “According to this log, Danny had been working on a document in this folder. He also had several PDFs – possibly research material. However, he deleted everything.”

  “When did Danny delete the files?”

  Morrie frowned at the screen. “That doesn’t make any sense. According to the log, the deletion occurred on Wednesday, a full day after Danny was murdered.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I stared at the screen, my mind ticking over this latest piece of information. “What you’re saying is that either Danny’s ghost did it, or someone else accessed Danny’s computer.”

  “They’d have to know Danny’s passwords,” Morrie said. “They’ve logged in as Danny. I can’t detect any hacking attempts. It had to be someone he trusted.”

  “And someone who’d have access to his computer in his suite at the Argleton Arms,” I added.

  Morrie and I turned to each other. “Penny Sledge,” we both said at exactly the same time.

  “We know there was no love lost between them,” Morrie ticked off the facts, his face lighting up with excitement. “Danny’s infidelities and other shameless deeds had been well documented in the media. Penny put up with it in order to share in his money, but perhaps when Beverly Ingram walked into the reading, she saw a way that she could finally be rid of him. She knew that Danny was trying to get his rights back and that he stood to make a huge profit from self-publishing. But she didn’t know the reversion hadn’t gone through yet.”

  “Yes,” I cried. “She watched Beverly throw her scarf at Brian and grabbed it off the street on the way home. She called down to the front desk pretending to be Angus, and snuck out of the hotel. But then, how did she overpower him? Jo said that the killer was most likely a man…”