An Alibi A Day
A Cotswolds Cozy Mystery
A.R. Winters
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Sneak Peak: Innocent in Las Vegas
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
An Alibi A Day
Copyright 2019 by A. R. Winters
www.arwinters.com
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.
This story takes place in England and is written in British English.
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Prologue
Allie Day sat on the edge of her bed in her London apartment, trying not to move.
She was, however, getting increasingly annoyed by her phone conversation. “How could I have won seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds? I didn’t enter anything!”
The lady at the other end of the line reiterated once again that, despite not having entered the competition, she had apparently won it. And it was quite a substantial prize at that.
Holding the phone against her ear with one hand, Allie stood up and turned around to inspect the bed before leaving the room. She narrowed her eyes and gave a small shake of her head. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do it all.
She was going to have to make the bed again as soon as she was done with this phone call.
“Can you hold on just a moment?”
Allie stepped out of the bedroom and into the small living space which was actually quite roomy by London standards. Well, outside of the homes of the mega-rich anyway.
Unfortunately, neither working in a call centre, as she did, nor working as a fitness instructor as her adoptive sister and best friend Jackie did, had led to them to become ‘mega-rich’.
“Jackie?”
Unfortunately, Allie spoke at the exact same time as Jackie pressed the power button on the blender.
Allie knew that the blades spun at twenty-five thousand RPM, chopping and pulverizing the mixture of fruits, vegetables, powders and juices that Jackie insisted was just amazing for her health. The noise of the blender had completely drowned out Allie’s call.
Jackie was dressed in workout clothes: white sneakers, running tights, and a midriff-baring running top that showed off a glimpse her flat stomach. This wasn’t because she was about to exercise or had just finished, but because it was her standard attire. Even when she wasn’t exercising, she dressed like she was.
Allie peered unblinkingly at Jackie, who was staring down at the blender, oblivious. She counted the seconds. One, two, three, four, five…
“Jackie!”
This time, Allie’s timing was spot-on—so much so that Jackie yelped in surprise.
“Allie! How in the world do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know exactly when to frighten the trousers off me?”
“The first pulse of the blender is always five seconds.” Allie had counted every day for the last six months—and so the moment the sound of the blender had stilled, it was easy to grab her flatmate’s attention.
“This is why we all insist you have OCD, missy,” she said with a smile, dropping her hands from the blender’s base to the worktop, which had three small drops of mixed fruit juice spilt on it. “Anyway, what’s up?”
“There’s a woman on the phone. She says I won some money.”
“Brilliant! How much?”
Allie stepped towards the worktop, while Jackie raised one leg behind her, grabbing the toe of her shoe and beginning a light stretch.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t enter any competition. Hold on. I’ll put her on speakerphone.”
Allie pressed the little icon that would make the caller’s voice audible to Jackie as well as her.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I’m still here.”
“Could you briefly explain it again from the beginning? I just don’t get it.”
An audible sigh eked out of the phone.
Before Allie had come to consult with Jackie, the woman had already explained three times. This meant her next, and final, explanation was going to be exceedingly brief.
“My name is Krista, and I am calling from Garrett’s department store. Okay?”
Allie looked to Jackie for guidance, who gave her an affirmative nod.
“Okay.”
“You are Allie Day, correct?”
With another guiding nod, raised eyebrows, and an excited smile on her lips, Jackie indicated for Allie to confirm again. She did.
“Yes.”
“Then, I am pleased to inform you—again—that you are the winner of the seven hundred and fifty thousand pound ‘Our Londoner’ jackpot prize.”
“But I didn’t enter any competition,” said Allie definitively.
Jackie was shaking her head back and forth like she was trying to remove her head from her shoulders. Her mouth was open, and she was saying something silently with her lips. It looked something like join the army. Or possibly take the money.
“Our records show that you did enter the competition. Perhaps you just forgot.”
Allie and Jackie both snorted with disbelief. Like Allie would forget something major such as entering a competition. What Jackie called “OCD”, Allie knew was just her passionate attention to detail.
“Anyway, this was just a courtesy call. The money is already in your account.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Allie.
Allie knew it wasn’t in her account because she checked her account every morning, evening, and lunchtime to make sure that nothing nefarious was going on.
The woman paused on the other end of the phone. She took another audibly deep breath. “Do you have online banking? Can you check your account again?”
“I checked it at seven this morning. But I suppose I could check it again.”
With a couple of quick button presses to activate the shortcut she had set up, Allie pulled up her account details on the screen. As soon as Jackie saw what she was doing, she hurried around the worktop to the other side, dropping an arm over Allie’s shoulder as she peered over the other in a mixture of excitement and curiosity.
“No way!” Jackie flung her arms into the air in celebration.
Allie’s frown just became more intense.
“It’s there, but—”
“Wonderful,” said Krista down the phone, interrupting Allie’s misgivings. She sounded keen to terminate the call with the ungrateful winner. “Congratulations on your winnings.”
“But—”
�
��Thanks!” Jackie stabbed at Allie’s phone, disconnecting the call.
“What did you do that for? I was trying to find out what went wrong. I don’t like it when things go wrong.”
Jackie grabbed Allie firmly by both shoulders. She twisted her sister and best-friend-forever around so that they were face to face.
“What do you mean ‘going wrong’? You mean ‘going right’. You’re rich! You’re a millionaire!”
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds doesn’t exactly make one rich in London,” said Allie, twisting her shoulders to try and escape from Jackie’s overexcited squeezing. “And I’ll have to pay it back when they realize what a mistake they’ve made. Also, I’m only three-quarters of a millionaire. And change.”
“Face it. Garrett’s loves you, and they paid you three-quarters of a million pounds. You’re just going to have to accept it, rich girl!”
Allie remained stock still, staring at the now blank screen of her phone, running through different scenarios in her head that would explain what had happened.
Jackie gave her shoulder another squeeze and went back around to her blender. She lifted the glass jug and began to pour the contents into the cup she had prepared.
Allie’s eyebrows went up in alarm, and she slapped her hands down on the worktop. “What are you doing?”
Jackie took a sip of her drink. “What?”
Shaking her head, and muttering “No, no, no,” Allie hurried around the counter to the other side.
She snatched the cup out of Jackie’s hand, emptied the contents back into the blender’s glass jug, slapped on the lid, and then placed Jackie’s hand back on the device.
“What?”
“You only did the first blend. You hold the button down for five seconds, then you stop, look at it, and then you hold it down again for another twenty to twenty-five seconds.”
“I do?”
Allie gave her a very determined nod of confirmation. “You do. That’s the way you always do it. Every day.”
“If you say so.” Jackie did as she was instructed and pressed the button down again to make the device spin.
She knew better than to argue with Allie about routines or the correct way to do something.
While the device whirred, Allie counted in her head, not trusting Jackie to do it right today. She was obviously disturbed by the phone call and wouldn’t be able to focus. Allie would need to keep her on track.
“Stop!” Allie raised both her palms up, flat out, just in case Jackie couldn’t hear her voice or see the word she was mouthing.
“So, can I drink it now?”
“Of course you can. It’s your drink.”
“Mmhmm.” Jackie poured the contents of the jug back into the cup. “So, what’re you going to do? You’re going to keep it, right?”
Allie had begun to pace across the small living-dining room of their flat. It was four of her small steps each way, so it wasn’t ideal for pacing, but at least it wasn’t three or five steps across. Dreadful, those odd numbers.
“It’s a mistake. So the money has to go back. Hopefully before I get fined or arrested for the mistake Garrett’s made.”
Jackie took three large gulps of her drink, finishing half the glass. “Ah, that’s just the stuff.” She set it down on the worktop, foolishly placing it right on top of two of the little spots of spilt juice.
They would now stick to the bottom of the glass, and each time she set it down, she would spread stains and mess.
Doesn’t she ever think about her actions? Allie wondered.
“Except that’s not the way it is,” said Jackie. “The woman explained you had won the competition. She knew your name. She knew your bank account details. It’s no mistake. We may not know the reason why, but the facts are the facts.”
“The facts must be wrong.”
“Facts can’t be wrong, can they? If they were wrong, they wouldn’t be facts. They would be… wrongs.”
Allie walked over to the kitchen sink, picked up the bright white dishcloth that hung from the small dishcloth rack she had installed herself, and began to clear up Jackie’s mess.
“You make a good point.” Allie reached out and took Jackie’s cup off of her, wiping the bottom before handing it back. “I suppose it’s possible someone could’ve entered on my behalf.”
“That’s better. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I most certainly would look a gift horse in the mouth. What if someone was trying to fob you off with an old knackered horse?”
“Forget the horse. There is no horse. Let’s focus on the three-quarters of a million pounds instead. Imagine what we—you—could do with it. We could buy this flat instead of renting it.”
“If it did turn out that it wasn’t a mistake, then I suppose I could put it in an index fund.”
Jackie began raising first one leg and then the other behind her as she stretched.
It was almost a nervous habit with her; she could never stay still. She was always exercising, stretching, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, or doing anything except remaining still—the one thing that Allie really wished she would do.
“An index fund? Is that as boring as it sounds?”
Allie was busy wiping the worktop. Not just the part with spilt juice, but all of it.
The problem with wiping just one part is that it created a clean little oasis in the middle of an otherwise still filthy worktop. That was no good at all.
“Oh, they’re not boring at all. In fact, they’re one of the most exciting investment vehicles for people like us—people who have a good forty or fifty years of investing time ahead of us. In fact, professional fund managers—”
“Fun managers?” Jackie’s face lit up at the thought.
“Fund. Dee, dee, dee. Fund.”
Allie went back to the sink and carefully rinsed and wrung out the white dishcloth. When she was done, she held it up in front of the window above the sink so that she could inspect it. Nope. No good.
The juice had left a small stain, and the pristine white dishcloth was now pristine white with a small couple of circles of greyish red. It needed to be washed. Bleached too, probably.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Jackie had her arms stretched out in front of her on the edge of the work surface while her legs were way behind as she performed a more elaborate stretch that involved contortions which would’ve been painful for a normal person.
“Maybe I should just reverse the transfer. Can you do that? Just get the bank to send it back where it came from. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Jackie stood up straight with a start. “No. No. No.”
“No?”
“No. I forbid it. You’re always stopping me from doing stupid things, so this time it’s my turn, sis. You are not sending that money back. It would be the biggest mistake of your life.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well… I suppose we could give it a few days. Just leave it in my account. Not spend any of it, just wait and see what happens.”
Jackie came over and squeezed Allie by the shoulders again. “That’s better. That’s more like it. Just let it rest in your account. And then, in two or three days when we know it definitely wasn’t a mistake, I can be your fun manager.”
Allie knew it was a joke, so she kept her no way to herself.
Although she didn’t understand her adoptive sister all the time—heck, most of the time—she was getting better. That said, Jackie’s “jokes” still weren’t all that funny.
“I’m going to check my bags again,” Allie said.
“Again? But we’re not even leaving ‘til Friday.”
“It’s always best to be prepared, don’t you think?”
“You know what works for you. But me, I crave the unknown, the excitement and mystery of what will happen if I leave my packing until the very last minute. Just imagine all the possibilities.”
Allie hurried out of the room, thinking of all the ways things could go wrong if she didn’t properly prepare for their upcoming trip to visit some of their family in the Cotswolds. What if she forgot her torch? Or her backup penlight? Or her sewing kit? Or—horror of horrors—her rechargeable stick vacuum cleaner…
“Oh no, this won’t do at all,” Allie said herself as she scanned the room in annoyance. She could still clearly see the indentation where she had sat on the edge of the bed while talking to Krista on the phone, and the top sheet had moved at least half an inch thanks to her weight being pushed down on it. And the wrinkles around her impression…
It was almost too much.
She’d have to remake the bed.
But not until she’d checked everything in her case again, just to be sure.
She always packed her case in exactly the same way: Apfeeiip.
That was her motto.
Apfeeiip: A Place For Everything and Everything In Its Place.
If only the rest of the world would learn instead of creating such terrible messes.
Chapter 1
It was a gorgeous, sunny day in the village of Hawthorne in the Cotswolds, and Allie Day was enjoying herself by busily wiping down the tables in Bree’s Café.
“You’re not going to do all the tables, are you?” Jackie called over to Allie from their place in the corner where she was seated with Grandma Em.
Allie hadn’t meant to start wiping all the tables. She had just been forced into it by circumstances.
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