Cars and Cold Cases

by Diana Xarissa

  “Oh, dear,” Fenella said.

  “Depending on what my investigation here reveals, I might have to go across to try to speak to the woman, but I’d rather not bother her if I don’t have to. If she doesn’t remember her daughter’s disappearance, I wouldn’t want to be the one to remind her of it.”

  Fenella nodded. “So who else can you talk to?”

  “That’s a good question,” Daniel said. “Many of the witnesses have moved off the island in the past thirty years. Some of them have passed away, as well. I’ve been going back through the files, jotting down names for people to ring or visit, but I haven’t found much.”

  “Do either Mel or Kay have siblings?”

  “Kay was an only child,” Daniel said. “Mel has a brother who is a few years older. He’s on my short list of people to talk to in the next few days.”

  “Who else is on the short list, then?”

  “Kay worked part-time at the local ShopFast. I’m hoping to track down a few of her former coworkers. Several were questioned when she first disappeared.”

  “Thirty years is a long time to remember someone that you worked with on a part-time basis,” Fenella mused. “Especially at a big grocery store like ShopFast. They must have tremendous staff turnover.”

  “They do,” Daniel agreed. “But at least Kay had coworkers for me to try to find. Mel’s always been self-employed and a one-man operation. It’s no use trying to track down former students of his, either. The young man who had his lesson the night of Kay’s disappearance moved off the island less than a year after Kay vanished.”

  “And you can’t track him down?”

  “He moved to Australia, according to the notes that the original investigator left. I don’t think he’d be easy to find.”

  “And the original investigator didn’t get anywhere?”

  “Not really,” Daniel said. “He talked to several people, but no one had any idea what had happened. The flat was the upper floor of a small house, and the couple who lived below them were on holiday in Spain when it happened.”

  “You said Kay and Mel weren’t necessarily happy,” Fenella said.

  “A great many of their friends and family members talked to the press,” Daniel said. “A woman who claimed to have been Kay’s closest friend told the papers that Kay and Mel were just an ordinary couple. They fought sometimes, but it was never anything serious. She thought they’d been getting along well in the weeks before Kay disappeared.”

  “And nothing turned up after she’d gone to suggest a reason why she might have run away?”

  “Not that I can find. They had a mortgage and bills just like everyone else, but there weren’t any huge debts or anything like that. Her parents didn’t know of anyone she might have been fighting with.”

  “What about the opposite? Was there anyone she might have been getting along rather too well with?”

  “Again, not according to her husband or her parents,” Daniel said with a sigh.

  “And the apartment wasn’t burgled?”

  “No, there was no sign that anyone went inside the flat, even though the door was ajar.”

  “So what do you think happened?” Fenella asked.

  “You first,” Daniel said.

  Fenella shrugged. “Doesn’t the file have any updates over the last thirty years?”

  “All open cases are reviewed annually,” Daniel told her. “In a case like this one, though, there isn’t much that can be done. A few years ago someone had a go at tracking down all of the witnesses to revisit their statements. He didn’t have much luck in finding anyone.”

  “So what can you do differently?”

  “I don’t know. I just have a feeling about this one. But before I tell you about that, I want to hear your thoughts.”

  “She ran away,” Mona said from the opposite side of the room. “Mel probably bored her to tears, so she left.”

  “It seems most likely that she left voluntarily,” Fenella said slowly, trying to ignore her aunt, even if she did agree with the woman. “But that doesn’t explain why she disappeared. Surely she’d stay in touch with her parents, wouldn’t she?”

  “Sometimes people want to start over and they cut all of their ties,” Daniel said. “There’s something about this case that reads that way to me, but I might be seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m meeting with Mel on Wednesday morning. He’s always insisted that he and Kay were happy together. I’m hoping that the passing of years has allowed him to reevaluate their relationship.”

  “What about the best friend? If she’s still around, maybe she could give you more insight into the relationship.”

  “She is still around,” Daniel said. “And she’s also on my list of people to speak with.”

  “I suppose that was too long ago for mobile phones,” Fenella said.

  “It was. Today’s technology makes it a lot easier to find people, I must admit. It’s also a lot more difficult to disappear without a trace these days, although it does still happen.”

  “If her handbag was gone, that suggests she went out somewhere.”

  “But no one could suggest anywhere she might have gone,” Daniel replied. “Her friend was home alone, the couple downstairs was away, and her parents hadn’t seen her in several days.”

  “Maybe she had a secret lover,” Mona suggested.

  Fenella opened her mouth to reply and then snapped it shut when she remembered that Daniel couldn’t see or hear the other woman. After a moment’s thought, she broached the idea with Daniel. “Maybe she was seeing someone behind Mel’s back.”

  “The original investigator did his best to check into that possibility. He spoke to the handful of men who had been linked with Kay before she met Mel. None of them had spoken to her in quite some time.”

  “Perhaps she’d met someone else.”

  “Of course that’s possible, but who? According to the original case files, no one else disappeared from the island around the same time. If she did leave with a man, he wasn’t someone who was living on the island.”

  “What are the other possibilities?”

  “If she didn’t leave voluntarily, she might have left involuntarily.”

  Fenella frowned. “That’s a scary thought.”

  “It isn’t pleasant, but it is possible. She might have been kidnapped for some reason and taken off the island.”

  “I assume no ransom note was ever received.”

  “No, nothing like that. A ransom note would have been fairly pointless, anyway. Mel couldn’t have paid much.”

  “You hear about people trafficking and modern-day slavery. Is it possible she was taken and forced into something like that?”

  “It’s possible, but highly unlikely,” Daniel said. “People traffickers prefer young runaways, not married women in their mid-twenties. They prefer to take people who won’t be missed. Kay certainly doesn’t fit that description.”

  “If she was taken somewhere else, you’d think she’d have spent the last thirty years trying to get back here,” Fenella said thoughtfully. “Thirty years is a long time.”

  “It is, which is why we also have to consider the possibility that she’s dead.”

  Fenella frowned. “Poor Mel,” she said.

  “Unless he killed her,” Daniel replied.

  “You think Mel killed her?” Fenella asked, feeling as if her heart had skipped a beat.

  “No, I don’t,” Daniel said quickly. “But it is a possibility that has to be considered. There are a million different scenarios that could have happened. My job is to try to narrow that down to the truth.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill her? From what you’ve said, she was just an ordinary woman.”

  “If I knew the answer to that, I’d be closer to finding out what happened,” Daniel replied. “It could be something as simple as her having an accident and someone panicking and hiding the body, or it could be
as complicated as murder.”

  “Maybe she went out for a walk and fell into the sea,” Fenella suggested.

  “The body would have turned up fairly quickly under those circumstances,” Daniel said.

  “This is getting quite sad,” Fenella said, grabbing a cookie and taking a huge bite.

  “Maybe we don’t want to talk about the other case, then,” Daniel replied.

  “What’s the other case?” Fenella had to ask.

  “The murder of Christopher Manderly.”

  “Murder? Oh, dear.”

  “We can leave it for tonight,” Daniel said quickly. “You’ve given me your thoughts on Kay Belsom’s disappearance. Let’s talk about something pleasant for the rest of the evening.”

  “No, I said I’d help with cold cases and I meant it,” Fenella told him firmly. “I’d probably feel better if I hadn’t just met Mel today, though. I feel awful thinking his wife might be dead somewhere and he doesn’t even know.”

  “All the more reason for us to reopen the case,” Daniel said.

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “Are you sure you want to hear about the other case?”

  “Absolutely, go for it,” Fenella said.

  “As I said earlier, this one also took place in 1986. Christopher Manderly and his wife, Sophia, had been married for about six years when his car rolled down a short cliff and into the sea.”

  “That sounds sad, too.”

  “It was initially thought to be a tragic accident,” Daniel said. “Until the coroner discovered that Christopher was already dead before the car hit the water.” He handed Fenella a newspaper clipping that told how the small black sports car had been found partially submerged some hours after the accident.

  “Had his wife reported him missing?” Fenella asked, the other case still very much on her mind.

  “No. When the police arrived to notify her, she was asleep, or so she claimed. She told the police, and subsequently the papers, that she’d gone to bed around nine, as she had an early appointment the next day. She thought her husband was still at work. He owned his own small investment company and apparently often worked late when the US markets were volatile.”

  “Means, motive, opportunity,” Mona called from her seat. “It was such a long time ago, I’d forgotten all about the poor man. If I remember correctly, there was no shortage of suspects, though.”

  “So who had a reason for wanting the man dead?” Fenella asked.

  “The original investigation centered on the man’s business,” Daniel told her. “Christopher made a great deal of money very quickly, and someone went through all of the business records, looking for anything unusual. They didn’t find anything, though.”

  “So he wasn’t doing anything illegal?”

  “Not as far as anyone could tell in 1986,” Daniel said. “One of the things I’m doing now is having our financial fraud team take another look, though. It’s possible that the original investigators missed something.”

  “How did he and his wife get along?”

  “That’s a good question. I wish I had an answer,” Daniel said with a sigh. “She gave several statements to the press, both when it was believed to have been an accident and once it was discovered that it was murder. In them all she claimed to have been devastated by her loss. No one went out of their way to contradict her, but the inspector who spoke to her on the night of Christopher’s death didn’t seem to think her grief was genuine.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “It was one man’s opinion, at one moment in time,” Daniel said. “As I never met the man myself, it’s difficult for me to know how much weight to give to his notes.”

  “There must have been other suspects.”

  “There were a few, including one who was arrested, but no charges were ever brought against anyone.”

  “So run me through the list of suspects,” Fenella urged.

  “Let’s call them witnesses for this discussion,” Daniel suggested with a small smile.

  “Sure, if you prefer.”

  “As I said, the widow must be at the top of the list, although everyone who was interviewed insisted that the couple were tremendously happy together.”

  “Everyone? That sounds suspicious to me.”

  “Suspicious, but maybe true,” Daniel replied.

  “I suppose.”

  “Christopher had a brother called Carl,” Daniel continued. “He was three or four years younger than Christopher. It was suggested at the time that he and Christopher didn’t get along, but both he and his parents always denied that.”

  “Are their parents still alive?”

  “No, unfortunately, both Christopher’s and Sophia’s parents have passed away.”

  “You don’t have any idea why the two brothers didn’t get along?”

  “None, but that’s something to talk to Carl about.”

  “He’s still on the island, then?”

  “Yes, he took over his brother’s investment company and has been very successful with it.”

  “Could that have been a motive?”

  “Maybe, although the decision to sell the company to Carl was Sophia’s. Everything was left to her in Christopher’s will. I’m not sure that Carl could have been certain that he’d end up with the company.”

  “Maybe Carl and Sophia were in on it together,” Fenella and Mona said at the same time. Fenella frowned at her aunt, who winked at her.

  “That’s certainly one possibility,” Daniel said. The look on his face suggested to Fenella that it wasn’t one he was seriously entertaining.

  “Other sus, er, witnesses?”

  “Christopher’s closest friend was a man called Herman Clucas,” Daniel told her. “He was a friend and also an investor in Christopher’s business.”

  “Did he have any motive for wanting his friend dead?”

  “None that was immediately obvious. But friends fall out all the time. The man can’t be ruled out.”

  “I suppose not. Did he gain anything from Christopher’s death?”

  “It doesn’t appear so. It might be interesting, or it might not, that he moved his investments to a different company when Carl took over the business, though.”

  “I find it interesting, but I’m not sure why,” Fenella said.

  “It may just be that Christopher gave him preferential treatment that Carl didn’t. I’ll be asking him about it, though.”

  “So Sophia, Carl, and Herman. Anyone else?”

  “Two more people were interviewed and received a great deal of press at the time,” Daniel said. “Douglas Richards and Roger Starr. Douglas was happy to go on record as hating Christopher, as well.”

  “Hate is a strong word.”

  “They’d been at school together, and according to Douglas, Christopher was a bully who treated him terribly in their school days.”

  “Oh, my,” Fenella gasped.

  “When he was interviewed by the police after the accident, he made no secret of the fact that he wasn’t sorry that Christopher was dead. Once it was realized that Christopher had been murdered, he didn’t soften his stance, either.”

  “What about Roger whatever you said?”

  “Roger Starr was the favorite suspect of the local paper, if not the police. He worked for Christopher for a year or more before he was let go for turning up to work drunk one time too many.”

  “I can see the paper’s point,” Fenella said.

  “Yes, he was an obvious suspect, but that doesn’t make him guilty of anything.”

  “No, I suppose not. Did he have an alibi for the night in question?”

  “None of the witnesses I’ve mentioned had an alibi for the night Christopher died,” Daniel said.

  “If Christopher was dead before he hit the water, what killed him?”

  “A large dent in the back of his head,” Daniel said. “The murder weapon was never found, but it could have been anything from a cricket bat to a large rock. The body was subm
erged long enough that the wound was washed clean before it was discovered.”

  “He couldn’t have banged his head on the steering wheel while the car was falling, or anything like that?”

  Daniel smiled. “Not unless he was some sort of contortionist in his spare time. The dent was in the back of his head. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, facing forward, with his seatbelt fastened, when the car rolled over the cliff.”

  “Was the engine running?”

  “If it was, it stalled before the car hit the water, but it might have been.” He showed Fenella a map from one of the newspaper cuttings. “This is where the car and the body were found,” he said, pointing. “It’s very remote, really. No one in the area admitted to hearing anything that night. It was just dumb luck it was found when it was, really. If a pair of teens hadn’t decided to have a romantic drive that night, it might have been days before anyone spotted the car.”

  “Would the tide have taken it away?” Fenella asked.

  “Not the car, but maybe the body,” Daniel said. “And maybe that’s what the killer was hoping for. Regardless of the tides, if the car had been there much longer, it would have a lot harder to tell what had happened to the man. Did I mention that the car was a convertible and the top was down?”

  Fenella shivered. “I don’t know why, but that makes it more awful,” she said, thinking of Mona’s shiny red convertible in the parking garage below them.

  “Murder is never pleasant,” Daniel remarked.

  “No, I suppose not,” Fenella said with a sigh. “But I don’t know what you think I can help with on this one. I don’t know any of the suspects, or anything about the case, really.”

  “This one is a lot more complicated than the missing person case. I’d like to leave the newspaper clippings with you,” Daniel said. “Maybe if you read through them all, you’ll have an idea.”

  “Maybe,” Fenella said doubtfully. “Leave the ones about Kay Belsom, too, okay?”

  Daniel frowned. “As you’re going to be taking lessons from Mel, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said hesitantly.

  “I think I should know about the man’s past, especially if I’m going to be spending hours in a car with him,” Fenella argued. “Besides, the local papers are all archived at the museum. I can go and find the articles myself. You’re just saving me some time.”