Claire's Candles Mystery 01 - Vanilla Bean Vengeance

by Agatha Frost

  She rolled over and the sun blinded her through a crack in the heavy blackout curtains. More evidence: it was too bright to be as early in the morning as she needed it to be.

  After a dragged-out minute of denial, she pushed herself up and slapped her phone.

  10:34 am.

  Her shift started at 9 am.

  A younger Claire might have sprung out of bed and run straight for the door, but she’d worked at the factory long enough to know she’d only get a verbal warning, and she rarely even got those.

  She slammed her head back into her pillow, her mind fully awake. Phone in hand, she checked her alarms. Last night, she’d asked Siri to set the alarm for 8, but Siri had seen fit to set it for 8 pm and not 8 am.

  Just my luck, she thought.

  Her two precious cats, Sid and Domino, were curled up next to each other on the other side of the double bed, their contrasting colours making an almost perfect yin and yang symbol.

  Sid, the fluffy ball of black fur, had come to her by accident three years ago. Claire had never suspected she was a cat person until Sally got Sid as a small black kitten and quickly realised both her young children were allergic. Claire had begrudgingly taken Sid in to avoid him going to the animal shelter. She had fallen in love before the end of their first day together.

  Domino came a year later, this time on purpose. Sid went through a phase of scratching the wallpaper, and after asking around, she concluded he might be bored and lonely when she was working her long shifts at the factory. A quick trip to the local animal rescue resulted in bringing home a tiny stray kitten, white with little black patches. She had barely grown since. Claire and Sid fell in love with Domino before the end of their first afternoon together.

  Once upon a time, they’d have woken her up long before the alarm, but their personalities had softened since they’d all been forced to leave their two-bedroom terraced workman’s cottage on the other side of the village. Claire’s landlord returning to Northash and needing his house back had been a blessing in disguise; with her new work hours, she’d never have been able to afford the rent.

  Even though Sid and Domino had a giant four-bedroom detached cottage with a never-ending garden to explore, most days they confined themselves to the bedroom. Unlike Sally’s kids, Claire’s mother wasn’t allergic to cats, but it didn’t stop her from claiming she was. She’d only had to chase them away a couple of times for them to learn to keep their distance.

  After giving them a little attention each, Claire forced herself out of bed, grateful she’d had a shower at 1 am. She’d hoped it would help her sleep after staying up all night, tossing and turning and thinking about the shop, but she’d still been awake late enough to see the clock get close to 3 am.

  She dressed quickly in a blue jumpsuit, the standard uniform for the Warton Candle Factory. It did nothing for her figure, but then, it did nothing for anyone’s figure. They all looked like blue Oompa Loompa’s without the fun of bursting into song and dance every five minutes.

  After flinging the curtains open, she fed the cats and cleaned up what they’d left her in the litter tray overnight. As she left the room, she passed by the dressing table, which had become a makeshift candle-making station. She’d borrowed the equipment from work. Technically, she’d stolen it, though she’d heard on good authority it was being thrown out to be replaced anyway. Her mother thought she was insane bringing her work home with her, but Claire couldn’t be creative and make the candles she wanted at the factory; she was a body on a production line and nothing more.

  “Morning, dear,” said Janet, barely looking up from the cake batter she was mixing at the island in the lavish, recently refitted kitchen. “Thought you weren’t working today?”

  “Apparently, so did Siri. He got confused.”

  “You don’t have a man up there, do you?”

  “No, Mum, it’s on my phone.” Claire put a small cup under the coffee machine she’d brought with her from her old cottage and pressed the double espresso button. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Because if it were a man, I’d quite like to meet him.”

  The beans ground and began their slow drip into the cup.

  “There is no man, Mum.”

  If Claire’s weight was Janet’s first priority, Claire’s eternally single status came in a very close second.

  “You won’t have eggs forever, dear.” Janet put the chained reading glasses on the edge of her nose and peered at the recipe she was following. “I’m the only one at the Women’s Institute without a grandchild, you know.”

  “Really?” Claire tossed back the hot espresso – bitter and strong, just what she needed. “Why didn’t you mention it?”

  Claire pecked her mother on the cheek, grabbed her handbag from the hat stand, and ran out the back door. She’d usually take the front, but it was quicker to cut through the fields behind the cul-de-sac. Ian Baron, the owner of the farm, wouldn’t be too pleased if he caught Claire running through his farm again, but the day couldn’t get any worse than how it had started.

  Except it could.

  As her foot sank into the large, warm pile of cow dung, she was forcibly reminded of the other reason she usually chose to walk the long way around.

  AFTER A QUICK TEXT MESSAGE, Claire’s Uncle Pat met her at the front of the large factory. Much like everything else in Northash, the factory’s exterior had remained untouched for over a century.

  “I’ve been covering for you,” he said, glancing down at her foot and already walking back to the factory doors. “What happened?”

  “It’s been one of those mornings.” She jogged to keep up. “Don’t ask.”

  “Said you were at a doctor’s appointment. Didn’t go into specifics. Nicola didn’t ask, not that the Warton Witch seems to care about any of us at this point.”

  People had been calling Nicola the ‘Warton Witch’ ever since she took over running the factory after her father’s death six months ago. Her ruthless cost-cutting changes hadn’t put her at the top of anyone’s Christmas card list.

  “I won’t make a habit of it,” Claire said, knowing her uncle was technically her superior in the rank of things. “Messed up my alarm.”

  “Don’t worry, love.” Pat chuckled, yanking the front door open for Claire. “Think you might have got away with it this time.”

  “My foot says overwise.”

  Uncle Pat, her father’s slightly younger brother, looked every inch a Harris. He was just as short and round, with the same thin hair and glasses. He was one of the few people who had worked at the factory longer than Claire, although thanks to his promotion to shift manager five years ago, he was spared having to wear the lumpy blue jumpsuits.

  They split up, and he got back to his job, leaving Claire to quickly clock in. Instead of going straight to her place at the label assembly line, she rushed across the factory floor to the bathrooms and changing rooms on the other side.

  Damon Gilbert, the man she worked next to and her only other close friend aside from Sally, gave her a ‘where have you been’ stare. She waved that she’d explain later.

  Claire dug around in the open lockers before moving onto the spare jumpsuits bin, already knowing none would fit her. The sizes were unisex, but most of the women at the factory were smaller than Claire. She wasn’t sure she fancied an entire shift with the gusset of a too-small jumpsuit crammed up her behind.

  “Where’ve you been?” Belinda Lang, the woman who usually worked across the assembly line from Claire, appeared from the bathroom, smelling slightly of cigarette smoke – as she did most days. “Nicola was asking around after you.”

  “Slept in.”

  “Easily done.” Belinda opened her locker and tucked away a packet of cigarettes. “Oh, can you smell that? Smells like…”

  “Cow dung.” Claire chuckled and nodded down at her foot. “It’s me. Cut through the farm.”

  “Ian wouldn’t like that.”

  “Well, his cows did his dirty work befor
e he had the chance to chase me off with a shotgun.” Claire kicked off the shoe, glad she had a spare pair in her locker. “Don’t suppose you have a spare jumpsuit, by any chance?”

  Belinda, the only other woman bigger than Claire at the factory, pulled a blue jumpsuit from her locker and tossed it across with a smile and a wink.

  The spare jumpsuit was far too big and stank of stale smoke, but Claire would take too loose over too tight any day.

  BARELY AN HOUR INTO HER WORK, the bell rang to announce lunch. Most spent their free hour in the windowless canteen and break room. The rest piled into cars and went into the village to eat in the pub or café. Claire and Damon, on the other hand, had their own routine.

  Leaving the looming Victorian factory behind, they walked down a short path to the wall bordering Ian’s farm, crossing the stream separating the two. As usual, Damon, the taller of the pair (but only by a couple of inches), climbed over first before helping Claire.

  The wall wasn’t comfortable, but they were high enough to have a view of the whole of Northash. Hot or cold, as long as it was dry, this was where they ate lunch. Claire wouldn’t have had it any other way. She’d heard people talk about how strange they were to eat their lunch outside, but personally, she thought it was stranger to spend their one free hour cooped up in a noisy, dim room with bad canteen food.

  “Don’t tell me your mum’s got you on another diet,” Damon said, nodding at Claire’s empty lap as he dug his usual meal deal out of a supermarket bag. “You can’t not eat.”

  “Forgot to grab something.”

  Damon pulled out half his sandwich and handed it to her with a smile. She didn’t argue, and she knew he didn’t mind. Bacon, lettuce, and tomato on white bread. It was a good thing her mother couldn’t see them through the fields, though Claire could just make out the back of the cottage from where they sat.

  “I went to view the shop again yesterday.”

  “You’re torturing yourself.”

  “I know.”

  “Still no closer?”

  Claire pulled her phone out and showed Damon her bank balance. £200 down on what she’d shown Sally the day before. If she didn’t have the constant reminder, she wouldn’t have believed the credit card debt from her early twenties was still following her around.

  “You’ve got more than me.” He pulled a tomato slice out of his sandwich and tossed it into the grass before pushing up his glasses with the back of his wrist. “You’re lucky you’re living at home. Marley’s put my rent up again. Can barely afford it as it is. Think I’m going to have to start selling some of my Doctor Who collection.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I might not have a choice.”

  “You’d have more if you made your own lunches.”

  “Where’d be the fun in that?”

  They chuckled and finished eating their halves of the sandwich, staring out at the peaceful countryside with only the mooing of the cows in the fields in front of them to break the silence. Northash might have been an uneventful place to live, but Claire wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

  Damon joined the factory five years after Claire. He had tried to make it as a journalist in Manchester, but when he lost his first job working for a small newspaper and couldn’t find another, he came back with his tail between his legs. After a short, fruitless job hunt, he succumbed to the factory, like people had been doing for the past century. Warton Candle Factory was never anyone’s first choice, but it was always there to fall back on.

  Being similarly a little too overweight and unlucky in love, they’d quickly gravitated towards each other. Like most people in the village, they’d gone to the same high school, but their paths had rarely crossed until the factory. Damon had spent his school years in the top set with the rest of the brainboxes, whereas Claire had settled for average somewhere in the middle.

  While her only other friend, Sally, juggled it all effortlessly, Damon was in the same boat as Claire. Two people in their mid-thirties struggling through adulthood. They knew they were in an ever-shrinking pool of people yet to settle down and find the traditional family life both their mothers would love for them to have.

  “I had another sniff of that new vanilla candle the development team have come up with,” Damon muttered through his first mouthful of prawn cocktail crisps. He offered the bag to Claire, and she took a couple. “I’m telling you, Claire, Nicola has stolen your new scent.”

  “Not this again.”

  “It’s the same!” Damon cried. “She must have got hold of one. Have you sold any?”

  Claire shook her head. She’d given a couple away. One to Sally, one to Damon, and some to family – all people she’d never ask to pay, no matter how badly she needed the extra income.

  “Well, it’s identical.” Damon finished the crisps and folded the packet carefully before knotting it like he always did. “She’s stolen your scent formula.”

  Some people kept a little black book full of contacts. Claire’s had all her scent formulas in it. And she’d lost it. She had no idea where she could have misplaced it, but she hadn’t seen it in weeks. Too embarrassed to admit Nicola might have found out that way, Claire hadn’t brought herself to tell Damon about the missing notebook.

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s no maybe about it.” He sighed. “It’s the exact same. Your vanilla candle is the nicest I’ve ever smelt. It’s unique. Too unique to suddenly show up here two weeks later.”

  “Could be a coincidence.”

  “Pfft.” Damon nudged her with his shoulder. “She’s your mother’s neighbour, isn’t she? Surely you could talk to her.”

  “They’re not those kinds of neighbours.”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d confront her.”

  Claire groaned. She had never been the confrontational type. She always kept herself to herself and got on with her work.

  But she knew Damon was right.

  The candle was identical.

  Claire knew she couldn’t own a formula for a vanilla candle, but the scent was scarily accurate. She had spent six months testing different fragrance oils in different quantities, determined to create a perfect vanilla candle different from everything else on the market. It hadn’t been an easy task, and she’d been so proud when she reached the version she deemed to be perfect.

  “I suppose I could.”

  “Go on then.” Damon checked his watch after dusting the crumbs out of his short beard. “You’ve still got forty-five minutes before we’re back to work.”

  “What? Now?”

  “You know it’s better to catch her at lunch than at the end of the day.” Damon jumped off the wall. “She zooms off in that flashy sportscar before anyone can catch her. I’ll come with you for moral support.”

  “Damon, I—”

  “You deserve the credit.” He nodded for her to jump down. “C’mon, Claire. Do you want to open your own candle shop one day or not? If Nicola has somehow stolen your candle, which she has, you at least deserve to be paid what the development team are being paid. They’re on three quid an hour more than us! Do you know how much extra that is a week?”

  “No.”

  “Well, neither do I, but I’m guessing it’s a lot.”

  Claire huffed as she swung her legs back over the wall. Damon held his hand out and helped her jump down. They walked back to the factory, but Claire had no intention of confronting Nicola.

  Not like this, at least.

  She and Nicola barely said two words to each other at work, and even less back at the cul-de-sac. Nicola and her husband, Graham, had lived next door to her parents for years, but the couple kept themselves to themselves, despite Janet’s best efforts to incorporate them into cul-de-sac events.

  “Damon, I don’t think I—”

  “What the heck!”

  Damon held his arm out in front of Claire as they walked across the courtyard in front of the factory. He nodded up to the window of Nicola’s office, but Cl
aire’s eyes had already taken in what Damon was seeing.

  Nicola was kissing a man right by the high window, and without needing to get any closer, Claire knew the man wasn’t her husband.

  Graham was a quiet man, no taller than five foot five, and as thin as a pencil. Geeky-looking, Claire’s mother had always said, and perfect for his job as an accountant. The man Nicola was kissing was tall, broad, and had a headful of thick hair.

  Nicola pulled away from the man and spun, her bright red curls spinning with her. She took a step away from the man, her hand resting on her head. The man reached out, but Nicola pulled away before his fingers touched her arm. She turned to the window, her eyes landing on Claire and Damon immediately.

  “Crap,” Damon whispered, dropping his head.

  “Crap, indeed.”

  They hurried into the shadow of the factory, out of sight of the window.

  “That was Jeff,” Damon said. “The health and safety manager.”

  “I know.” Claire looked down at her uniform. “I’m wearing his wife’s spare jumpsuit.”

  “Claire, you know what this means, don’t you?” Damon whispered, pulling her further into the shadow of the looming chimney.

  “That Belinda’s husband is cheating on her.

  “Well, yes.”

  “She idolises him.”

  “I know.” Damon shook his head. “But forget about Belinda for a second. Think about Nicola. You have something on her now.”

  “Damon…”

  “What!”

  “I’m not going to blackmail our boss!”

  “Then blackmail your neighbour.” Damon huffed and grabbed her by the arms. “You know as well as I do how much money Nicola stands to make off a newly improved vanilla scent. We sell to companies all over the country, and they’re all going to want it. Your scent, Claire. She’s going to make thousands upon thousands, you’re going to be stuck on this assembly line next to me, and someone else is going to get that shop. How long has it been since the last shop came up?”

  Claire swallowed and thought back. She’d been down this road before, viewing what was now a bookshop, dreaming of her candle shop.