by steve higgs
That was why the oven gloves were out.
I opened the oven, unsure what I would find. The answer was frozen pizza. Or more accurately, defrosted frozen pizza that was just as cooked as it had been when I put it in there. It hung limply over the bars of the oven shelf at the edges. At least I had taken it out of the packaging even though I hadn’t turned the oven on.
I shrugged and cranked the dial on the oven as I closed the door. Pizza for breakfast sounded really good and my stomach gave a growl at the thought.
Patience had managed to get to her feet. Her dress had gotten all turned around as she slept in it, so she was fighting to straighten it out without taking it off.
‘I might have drunk too much last night.’ She admitted, then yawned deeply, lost her balance as she closed her eyes and fell over.
I flicked the kettle back on to make more coffee.
Just as the clock flicked over to ten o’clock, Patience came out of my bathroom with a towel wrapped around her hair and another around her torso. ‘I need bacon.’ She announced.
‘You just ate half a pizza.’ I pointed out.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘That little thing? That was barely a snack. It’s breakfast time. Patience needs bacon.’
I changed the subject. ‘I’m going to the houses of the college kids this morning. You want to see them again?’
‘You damned skippy I do. I owe that skinny, little dick a smack in the trousers. Bacon first though.’
‘There’s some in the fridge.’ I looked at the clock. ‘Tell you what, I’ll make you a bacon sandwich, you dry your hair and get dressed and we’ll set off once you have eaten, okay.’
‘Fine by me.’ Patience flounced into my bedroom as I pulled out my grill and loaded it with bacon rashers.
The hair drier came on as Patience began singing to herself.
Five minutes later I walked the bacon sandwich into my bedroom to find Patience back in her outfit from last night.
‘You’re going out in that?’
‘Patience looked at herself in the mirror. ‘Yeah. I look hot.’
It was not the adjective I would have used but I went with it. ‘Not exactly the outfit for investigating crime though. Will you be comfortable?’
She slid her feet into four-inch-high heels and stood up. ‘It’s what I’ve got. If you want me to change, we need to go via my house for a new outfit.’
I was closing in on the case, but I had plenty to do today without adding in delays and detours. ‘You look hot.’ I agreed. ‘Let’s go kick some ass.’
Patience grabbed the sandwich, took a hefty bite from it and let her eyes roll back in a display of ecstasy.
Thirty minutes later I stopped the car in front of 54 Hopkirk Drive in Twydall. It was just before eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning in a pleasingly well-tended housing estate. The houses were all detached with garages and neat front lawns. There were lots of trees and the cars parked on driveways were mostly new. The ones that weren't new were most likely the property of teenage children. It looked like a nice place to live.
The driveway of the house had a fifteen-year-old French-made P.O.S. car on it that had to belong to Christian Rogers. This was the house of his mother. A fast check this morning had revealed the father had absconded some years ago.
Patience accompanied me to the front door which was answered before I could knock. The woman inside was in a business suit and heels with a briefcase under her arm. She looked like a lawyer. We caught her by surprise as she was clearly opening the door to leave, not because she had seen us.
‘Oh!' She exclaimed. ‘You gave me a fright. Sorry I was just leaving.'
She looked the pair of us up and down. If she thought Patience’s outfit choice for this time on a Sunday was odd, then she kept it to herself. Patience flashed her police ID. Since she had it with her it seemed the simplest way of getting the woman’s attention.
‘Mrs. Rogers?' I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Is Christian home?’
The question seemed to catch her off guard. ‘Has he done something?’
Patience spoke, ‘That’s what we hope to find out.’
‘What do you know about his dealing with crop circles?’ I asked.
The woman was hovering, half in and half out of her door, keys in one hand and briefcase still tucked under her arm. Until I asked that question, she had looked like she was going to push through us at any second. Now she sagged. ‘I knew it. I knew that device would cause problems.’
‘What device?’ Patience and I asked simultaneously.
Mrs. Rogers led us to her garage. Before she opened it though she put her briefcase down on the old French car and used the key to plip open a Mercedes across the street. ‘I haven't been able to park it in my garage for six months. He said he had an idea for an invention and, as a mother does, I supported him and even gave him some money for parts he said he needed to buy.'
She was opening the garage door with a key as she talked. The handle turned with a squeak of protest, then the door swung upward to vanish into the ceiling. Inside was an odd looking… Vehicle? I wasn’t sure what to call it. It looked like a ride-on lawn mower with the seat removed. Beneath it, where the wheels should be, was a rubber apron.
‘He makes crop circles with it.' Mrs. Rogers explained.
Patience and I looked at each other, then went in for a closer look. Behind us, Mrs. Rogers was muttering about the boy never tidying up, never helping out, etcetera. Her biggest gripe was that she had to park her car in the street like a peasant.
I ignored her as I inspected the device.
‘Mum! What are you doing?’
My head snapped up to see Christian in an ill-fitting pair of jogging bottoms and pair of slippers. He was naked from the waist up, his pale skin complementing his skinny frame perfectly.
‘What have I told you about wearing your slippers outside of the house?' Mrs. Rogers demanded.
He stared at her. Then waved his arm at Patience and me. ‘Bigger concerns right now, mum.’
I had a question for him, ‘What is this, Christian? Someone has written Crop Circler 5000 on it with a black marker.’
He gawped at me, then at Patience and then at his mother. He was caught, and he knew it.
‘Do you need me?' Mrs. Rogers asked.
‘Is your son eighteen?’ Patience asked.
‘Yes, he is.’ She replied happily, understanding the implication. ‘Good luck, Christian. It’s about time you started taking responsibility.’ She picked up her briefcase and went to her car without a backward glance.
Christian was twitching on the spot, clearly unsure what his next move was. He was also getting cold and he wasn’t the only one.
‘Shall we go inside and have a chat and a cup of tea, Christian?’ I suggested.
It didn't take long to get the full story. The device was hand-built in his mum's garage by Christian and Lee using parts they reclaimed from scrap yards mostly. They had to buy some of the electronic components as the crop circler was radio-controlled. It was a giant radio-controlled hovercraft.
They were art students. They had one lecturer they wanted to impress after he set them a tough assignment about naturally forming art. The assignment carried points for the final grade, but while their fellow students had been looking at patterns on butterflies or birds or in rocks, the two boys had hit upon the idea of crop circles. Their intricate spiral designs were unexplained by nature or man but had a beautiful symmetry to them. They were required to find live examples though, which was impossible if one didn’t know where a crop circle might appear. The phenomenon was also far rarer than it had been a decade before and there had never been a crop circle in Kent, so they would have to travel if they heard about one.
The plan to make their own arose. Christian had proudly boasted that they had scored an A and got a special mention by the lecturer for their originality. When Patience and I had appeared at their college, the two boys had been terrified
we would reveal the truth and they would be ejected from the Master’s program with their Bachelors qualifications rescinded.
I felt like I should lecture the boy about cheating, but I was mostly glad to have solved a piece of the case and to have found it was in no way related to the milk or the lights or the spacecraft. Instead of a lecture, I thanked Christian for being candid. I did say that it might be best if he dismantled the crop circler now and forever keep quiet about it, but then there was nothing else I needed to say, and it was time to leave.
I checked my phone. Still no reply from Kieron. I called his number again – still no answer. I had a voice in my head telling me I could just go home now, put my feet up and have the day off. Something wasn’t right though, and I wanted to hear from Kieron why he felt the case no longer needed solving.
If the baby had come, they would still be at the hospital so that was where I was going.
Not a lot of Grey Area. Sunday, November 13th 1117hrs
We told the lady on the post-natal reception desk that we were friends of Lara Fallon and were instantly rewarded with her room number.
I believed it to be highly probable that Kieron was here, that I would push open the door to their room and find him sitting next to his wife as they cooed over their brand-new baby. Even if he wasn’t, and ignoring the bit where Lara seemed to loathe the sight of me, I was sure I would be able to learn from her what had changed with the case.
I was wrong though, very wrong. As I gently pushed open the door and saw Lara nursing her baby, I understood just how wrong I had been. Not just about finding Kieron but about everything, and the case turned on its head again.
The tiny infant clinging to her chest had black, curly hair and beautiful, chocolate brown skin.
Patience shoved into the room because I had frozen halfway through the door when I had seen the child. She froze beside me, but in contrast to my silent observation as Lara grimaced, Patience had something to say, ‘That white girl has a brown baby.’ She observed with a chuckle.
I had just one thought: It's Glen's. With that everything slotted into place.
I turned to leave the room and bumped into Patience. ‘We have to go. I have to check something right now.’
I was out the door and running back along the corridor. The thing that had been itching away at the back of my head had just surfaced. I had seen the evidence, the connection I couldn’t find. It was in the pack of information Jane had pulled together at the start of the case.
My pulse was racing as I skidded to a stop at my car and yanked the door open. ‘Come on, Patience!’ I yelled. She was hurrying but it was more of a sashay than a jog.
She was out of breath anyway. ‘What the hell is going on, Amanda?’ She puffed as she flopped into my car.
‘I think I know who did it and why.’
‘Who, why, what? Slow down, girl.’
I left the car park, heading for town. I needed to drop Patience off and get home. On the way, I explained my thoughts, ‘The milk. I was originally hired to find out what was causing the milk to glow. I think they might have hired someone else, like a normal PI, if it were not for the crop circles and the aliens and all the weird lights at night. I have been trying to find the mastermind orchestrating it all, or at least I had been until yesterday when I decided it had to be Jack pretending to be the Alien. If he is guilty of that bit and the crop circles are nothing more than art class homework, then all I am actually trying to solve is the milk.'
‘Who stands to gain. That is the question I started with, but there seemed to be no one involved that would benefit from the farms going under. I wondered if the farm manager, Gordon McIntosh might be to blame but I reckon I am about to rule him out.’
‘So, who is it?’ Patience asked.
‘I need to check something first, but if I am right, we have a murderer to catch and maybe another killing to stop. Get your uniform on and get to the farms.’
‘Righto.’ Patience was happy to just accept my request.
‘One more thing.’
‘Yeah?’
‘How many of the sniffer dog guys do you know?’ I asked.
She thought for a second. ‘All of them, I think.’
Okay. ‘How many of them do you know well.’
Patience grinned at me. ‘All of them.’
She was such a slut.
‘Well, we need a favour. Can you call it in?’ I explained my thoughts and let her make a phone call as we sped toward her house.
Solving the Case. Sunday, November 13th 1200hrs
I didn't even shut my front door as I ran to my kitchen counter to open my laptop. As it booted up, I dialled Jane's number and prayed she would answer on a Sunday.
‘Hi, Amanda.’ Her deep voice came on the phone.
‘Jane.’ I had urgency in my voice. ‘I need your expertise. Are you near a computer?’
‘I will be in about three seconds.’ There was a pause. ‘Okay, shoot.’
I told her what to look for and what it meant and left her to get on with it. As the phone clicked off, the image I wanted to see finished loading and displayed on my laptop.
The mystery hoody had told me to look at a university photograph. An unhelpful cryptic clue which only made sense now. He hadn’t meant the photograph of Kieron and Richard. He meant Lara and Michelle. I sent the picture to the printer, grabbed my bag and phone and legged it back to my car.
As I drove, I listened to Kieron's phone ringing. I was seriously concerned that I might not get to the farms in time, but he wasn't going to answer. I tried the number for Glen but he didn't answer either. I swore in my frustration, then, as I left the main road and went out into the countryside, I drove faster.
The call from Jane came ten minutes before I got to the farm. She had found more than I expected. And the truth was more surprising than I could have anticipated.
Farm Fight. Sunday, November 13th 1254hrs
I had no idea which farm I needed to go to. I had worked out most of it in my head, but I still had missing bits left unanswered. I wanted to find Kieron, but he was still not answering his phone, so I was going to his farm to see if I could catch him there. He might not be on any of the farms, of course. With his wife delivering a baby that was most certainly not his, he might have just got in his car and driven towards the sunset.
I was driving fast, unsure of what I would find when I arrived. It would more likely be something than nothing, I was sure of that.
It turned out to be something all right.
As I whipped my little car up the path the led to the farm, I saw a scene unfolding in front of me. A dozen farm hands were standing motionless as Kieron threatened Glen with a shotgun. Richard and Michelle were there too, off to one side not far from their car.
I skidded to a stop and leaped out. ‘Kieron, wait!’ I shouted.
His head twitched in my direction but nothing more.
Behind me, a taxi pulled to a stop. I had shot by it less than a minute ago to a blast of horn just outside Cliffe Woods village. Kieron's head might be facing toward me now but his eyes weren't. They were on the cab. His wife Lara was getting out of it with her baby.
‘Kieron don’t.’ She cried out.
He turned his gaze back towards Glen and pulled the shotgun tighter into his shoulder. If he pulled the trigger there would be no doubt about the result. Glen was twenty feet away. At that range, the weapon would cut him in half.
I watched as Kieron gritted his teeth. Richard twitched forward, ‘Take it easy, Kieron. Let's not do something rash.'
‘Stay out of it, Richard.’ He warned. ‘This doesn’t concern you.’
‘Actually, I rather think it might.’ I was adopting my cop voice. The one that insisted authority. The one I had never been very good at.
‘Just shut up and stay out of it.’ Snapped Lara.
I needed to keep Kieron calm. Find a way to disarm him. ‘Kieron, this is all recoverable.’
‘Oh, yeah? How are you going to fi
x my baby, Amanda?’ His voice was strained with emotion as he shouted his reply.
Well, apart from that bit. I thought.
I tried again. ‘Kieron if you kill him you will go to jail. Nothing will stop that from happening. But if you don’t kill him, he will be going to jail.’
Kieron’s eyebrow lifted in question. ‘I’m listening.’
I could hear another car coming up the path toward the farm behind me. Unwilling to take my eyes off the situation in front of me, I assumed it was Patience arriving with the cavalry. Uniforms at the scene would halt his murderous intentions. I couldn't blame him for going nuts. I might do the same in his situation.
A car door shut and feet hit the gravel behind me as they crunched toward me and stopped by my shoulder.
‘Well, this is entertaining.’ Said Jack bloody Hammer. It wasn’t Patience at all.
I held up a warning finger to silence him, my eyes still locked on Kieron. ‘Kieron, I know what is making the milk glow and I know why.'
Glen twitched, his eyes on me rather than the business end of the shotgun now.
Michelle grabbed Richard’s arm. ‘Come on, Richard. I’ve seen enough if this.’ She tried to tug him away, he just looked at her confused.
‘What’s happening?’ He asked. The question was aimed at anyone that wanted to field it.
‘You really don’t know, Richard?’ I asked, my voice filled with mock surprise. ‘Kieron, I would really like you to put the shotgun down before I tell you what I have discovered. The police are on their way. Even if the guilty parties run, they will not get far.’
‘I have had enough of this nonsense.’ Lara was making determined steps toward her farmhouse.
Even though I saw it coming, the blast from the shotgun stunned me. The quiet of the farm was split as a single barrel roared. Kieron had aimed it in the air and wasted half of his two shots. The point had been made though. Lara was frozen to the spot.
‘Stay. Where. You. Are. Lara.’ The words came out through clenched teeth. ‘Keep talking please, Amanda. You said guilty parties, as in plural. How many of my friends are involved?’ He moved his shotgun between Glen and Lara and then swung it toward Richard and Michelle.