“Men,” Letty said, as if that one word explained every fallacy. “Can’t see further than their own nose, on a clear day.”
Hayley giggled.
“It’s true. Your own grandad, bless his soul, took six months to ask me out. He thought him standing in line to run the pub would make him wrong for me. The poor daft man came close to tying the knot with the barmaid, all the while being keen on me.”
“What did you do?” Eve asked.
“Put on my best dress and flirted with the most handsome man at the local May fair. A black-haired rogue with a roving eye. I wouldn’t have wanted him for all the tea in China, but it spurred my Tony into action.”
Hayley took a framed photo and showed it to Eve. A young Letty nestled in the arms of a broad-shouldered man with Hayley’s infectious smile. “It’s a picture from their honeymoon.”
“It was easier in those days,” Letty said. “You got married, and then you had to make it work.”
“That doesn’t sound easier to me. I like to have the option to go when it’s wrong,” Hayley said.
“Me too,” Eve said. “I don’t believe people were happier in the old days, they simply kept more bad things hidden away.”
Her phone rang. An unknown US number. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said as she accepted the call with mounting trepidation. What if her Dad had an accident, and this was the hospital? Or he and Crystal both sat in the car, and now Eve had to deal with two people in a coma? Or funerals?
“Hello?” Her voice wobbled. Letty and Hayley gave her a worried glance.
“Eve, honey,” Crystal said.
Eve gripped the armrest of her chair. “Is anything wrong with Dad?”
Crystal laughed, a tinkling noise that reverberated in Eve’s ear. “Oh, honey, of course not. I just wanted to tell you how excited he’d be to see you.”
Eve’s breath whooshed out in relief. “I’m definitely coming over for Thanksgiving.”
“That’s wonderful.” Crystal lowered her voice. “And if you want to bring a special someone, we’d be happy to pay for the ticket. Or for yours as well.”
“No. I mean, that’s incredibly generous, but there is no special someone.”
“There might be by Thanksgiving. I only figured out I was sweet on your daddy when I kept bringing up his name all the time.” Her laughter tinkled again.
Eve fell silent.
“Hello,” Crystal said.
“I’ll book my ticket this week and I’ll give you the dates. Promise.”
Crystal blew her a kiss through the phone.
“Bye,” Eve said. “Say hi to Dad.”
Eve put away her phone and chortled.
“Well?” Hayley took the last crumpet.
“Dad’s wife made a pertinent observation. Remember that crush stage, when you can’t stop mentioning whoever you’ve set your heart on?”
“Like talking about Ben?”
“That’s different.” Eve glared at Hayley. “Anyway, you also kind of knew you weren’t that much into a guy when you kept quiet about him?”
“I remember that,” Letty said to their surprise. “Come on, you two. Did you think I sat on a shelf until my knight in shining armour picked me up and dusted me off? I also had a son, and boys are much the same, only louder and more obvious. And then there’s you, my darling Hayley. You were the same”
“Then how is it possible Donna kept her mouth zipped about lover-boy?” Eve asked.
“Discreet? Practice?” Letty looked at Eve.
Don’t ask me, Eve thought. I don’t want to lie in your face.
Hayley wiped a few crumbs off her lap.
Letty pointed at a small table vacuum in form of a ladybird.
Hayley obediently ran it over the crumbs.
“I think she used him for a fling, and she was never serious about him,” Eve said. It was the best she could come up with, without giving Kim’s secret away.
“Which would give him a motive when she broke it off.” Hayley frowned. “That doesn’t add up. She was going to move out, and she had no apartment lined up.”
“Because she was going to stay with a girlfriend.” That sounded vague enough. Kim hadn’t asked for Eve’s silence, but it was implied.
“The key and the sleeping pills?” Hayley asked.
“Donna could have given her lover a duplicate. Just because they used to shag in the cabin doesn’t exclude the occasional tryst in the house, when Ben was away, and John was asleep. Especially if she wanted to spite her husband.” Eve was sure she hit the truth.
“She would have been able to figure out how much diazepam it took to knock out her father-in-law,” Letty said.
“Lover-boy visits, she tells him she’s going to live with a friend, he gets angry, picks up one of the convenient bricks from the floor and, wham, good-bye, uncaring girlfriend.” Eve liked the chain of events. They were simple, logical, and fit all the circumstances.
“There is no shred of proof.” Hayley put her finger on the weak spot. “No name, no face, nothing.”
“Which means he’s clever,” Eve said.
“I’d put my money on Donna being the brains of the affair,” Letty said with an air of finality. “She had to fool John, and he’s as shrewd as they come. If he got wind of her cheating, he’d have kicked Donna out, no matter if he’d signed over the property to Ben.”
“How do we find the elusive guy?” Eve pushed out her lower lip. It was all such a tangled mess.
“I could tell my police contact about Donna having an affair,” Hayley said.
“Which is another thing we can’t prove,” Eve said.
“True enough.” Hayley walked towards the door. “We’ll simply have to muddle through, until something pops up.”
Eve followed Hayley downstairs.
The Pink Panthers were onto their third bottle of prosecco, and Dom’s shirt pocket bulged with tips. His smile had an air of fearfulness.
One of the Panthers leant forward to pinch his bottom.
Hayley whistled shrilly.
Everybody froze.
“Hands off my staff,” she said. “If you want to behave like you’re on a hen-night, I can recommend a few places where you can hire a gigolo.”
The Panthers gasped.
“If on the other hand you behave yourself, Dom will go on waiting on your tables.” Hayley showed her teeth, inwardly wondering if this incident cost her more customers. Nevertheless, if the Panthers got frisky with Dom before sundown, the teenager needed protection.
Ben’s last meeting ended early. The clients had been happy, he’d signed another contract to convert a games idea into software, and he was free to go home. If he called that freedom.
On a whim he steered his car towards a car park close to the stream. From here, a twenty-minute walk would take him to Eve’s door, without his car causing more gossip.
All he wanted to do was talk, and then walk out of her life.
He smoothed back his hair. The business suit and polished brogues gave him a salesman look that suited city meetings, but not strolls in the countryside. A thin film of dust settled in his shoes.
They needed rain. While his father was still in charge of the farm land, he used to keep a rain diary. This weather would have given him into another stroke, had their livelihood depended on it.
He approached Ivy Cottage slowly, facing the camera with deliberation. If Eve preferred not to see him again in person, at least she could decide to ignore the doorbell.
She didn’t. She stood barefoot on the wooden floor, with water dripping from her hair and a bathrobe wrapped around her body.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“If you want to. You could put the kettle on while I get dressed.” She stomped off, still in a decidedly frosty mood.
When she reappeared, her mood had mellowed. Carefully applied make-up and a business suit for her as well made them look like a couple of insurance agents.
She waited for him to speak, her ha
nds folded in her lap in perfect hostess-manner.
Ben’s brain came up empty.
Eve broke the silence. “Did you watch ‘EastEnders’ last night?”
“Should I watch it?” He seemed dumbstruck.
“Don’t you have a set of safe topics, when you’ve got nothing to say?”
He shook his head.
She glared at him. “Then what do you want to talk about? Or, to be precise, what do you want, full stop?”
Ben stretched out a finger to touch her lips. She caught his hand in the air.
“There’s a piece of fluff,” he said.
She dropped his hand and pressed a tissue on her painted mouth. “Thank you.”
He looked different in his suit, and his new-found insecurity turned him into a stranger. Eve shook her head at herself that she had pined for this man. Short-lived as her infatuation had been, it was pathetic. Perhaps she should try life in a big city next, where eligible partners counted more than one, or zero.
“I wish circumstances could have been different,” he said.
She made a haughty face. “It’s perfectly alright. You made your position very clear, and we can still be friendly should we bump into each other.”
Her still wet hair dripped onto the shoulders of her jacket. “Excuse me,” she said and ran off.
She returned jacket-less, with a towel wrapped around her hair and patting dry her shirt with a kitchen towel.
Ben stared at her, with a forlorn look in his blue eyes.
She stood in front of him, arms across her chest. “Anything you want to add? Otherwise –“
“Did you keep the brick?”
Her mouth formed a surprised o. “What? Oh.” She opened a box and lifted it out.
He took the brick from her and examined the writing. “Murderer. Nice sentiment.” Anger built up in inside him, but he’d keep it bottled up. He had enough practice.
“Who cares?”
“I do,” he said.
“About what? I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
He stepped up to her, the physical distance between them shrinking alarmingly. “Are you?”
“Absolutely. Brick-throwers, unexpected visitors, and everyone else included.”
He pushed a strand of her out of her eyes. And then his lips were on hers, and she didn’t think anything apart from a triumphant yes.
Chapter 22
Eve stretched herself luxuriously in her bed and rolled on her side, blissfully aware she’d been right all along. Ben was in love with her, and now she knew how to deal with the situation.
She smiled. He kissed the tip of her nose. “I could stay.”
“No. You don’t want to leave your father waiting.”
“Eve.” He pulled her close.
She wriggled free and grasped her clothes. “It’s okay,” she said. “This was a one-off, and it doesn’t have to mean anything. Easy as that. You go home and do what whatever it is you’ve got to do. No complications, remember?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“It’s the best for everyone, at least for now. And don’t think of bringing up that brick incident. That, it seems, was a one-off too.”
She watched under lowered lashes as he got dressed. A woman could enjoy the finer details of a one-evening-stand.
He reached for her as she opened the door for him.
“Don’t. The neighbours might see us,” she said.
“This isn’t the end.”
She gave him an enigmatic little smile. For one horrible second, she’d feared he’d mention the cabin for undisturbed love-making. And that she might be tempted.
She closed the door behind him, ran into the bedroom and pressed the pillow against her nose. His smell lingered on the fabric. Now that she was no longer chasing him, he’d have to come up with a plan to woo her. In the last three hours he hadn’t made the impression he was keen on another eternity of a celibate lifestyle.
Ben stopped the car on the grass five hundred metres from his gate. He banged his head on his hands. He hadn’t intended to fall into bed with Eve, although he’d been on the brink a couple of times.
She was right to send him away. What sane woman wanted to be entangled with a man who couldn’t show his face with her in public? John wasn’t the only obstacle between them. Whether she was willing to accept it or not, the brick was worse.
Eve had seen it as a warning, or intimidation. Ben had another perspective. To him, it was a threat. After five years, one would have to be obsessed to remember exactly how Donna was killed. The brick looked like the ones he’d used for that cursed fireplace. Whoever hurled it through Eve’s window had put a lot of thought into it. It might as well have been her head.
“I’ll push off,” Chris said as Ben put his suitcase down. “See you tomorrow.”
Ben handed him a cheque, which included a hefty tip. “Thanks,” he said.
“You’re late,” John said.
“Traffic.” Two nights away, and it already was as if Ben had never left. Barring another stroke, his father easily had another twenty years left, the doctors said. Two decades of being ruled by consideration and guilt. He must be a glutton for self-punishment.
He walked past John, to put his suitcase away.
His father sniffed the air. “Traffic, eh? Smells more like perfume to me.”
Eve’s scent, of course. “Female managers still wear it.” He gave his father a smile that consisted mainly of baring his teeth at him. “Now if you’ll excuse me?”
Eve deliberately stayed at home the next day, busying herself with housework. She’d stripped her bed and washed sheet and duvet cover. The pillow case lay folded in her bedside drawer. She wanted to preserve the remnants of Ben’s smell as long as she could.
Had Kim done the same with Donna’s lingering fragrance?
Eve took out the diary again. Working back through the dates and the two places where Donna met her lovers, there appeared a two month overlap. It made sense. If Kim was the first woman she’d slept with, she would have wanted to make sure it was more than a phase. Dumping a male lover, who gave her the exquisite satisfaction of avenging herself on her husband and probably as much on her father-in-law, would have waited until she made up her mind for good.
This meant, after over three months without meeting him for lunch and maybe a quickie, she’d agreed to see him on the day she died. Either they arranged the date for some unknown reason after a long period of separation, or they’d stayed on friendly terms, making it easy for him to come up with a reason why he had to see her. In any case, she hadn’t been afraid. The break-up had to have been on good terms.
What did Eve know about the man? He had to live locally, or at least he used to, to be able to make all these lunch dates. Donna either knew him before they left London, in which case Ben might have been acquainted with him as well. Hayley could find out if any old friends had resurfaced.
The alternative was, she met him after their move. In that case, “Paula’s Parlour” would be the logical place. Brothers, fathers and sons might accompany a woman on a shopping trip. Donna’s colleagues hadn’t mentioned anything though, and they’d seen the man she met with. Not very likely they’d forget if she’d picked him up in the shop. Alternatively, she could have met him online, or started a fling with one of the workmen who did repairs to the house.
John spent a chunk of his time in his own room, and he used to be mobile. It would have been easy for John and Donna to avoid each other, giving her the freedom to flirt with any eligible man who visited the house.
The Polish farm helper said he’d seen a brown-haired man coming from the public path along the stream. Depending on the light, dark blonde hair also looked brown.
Hayley should be able to establish if a man of that description who worked in the same town as Donna lived in the neighbourhood.
She mulled the facts over in her mind as she had a quick lunch. No wonder it was a cold case after Ben was out of the picture. An
unimportant woman, by all standards, cared for by a few people and mourned only by one, who’d died without any obvious reason.
Five years! The murderer could live on the other side of the world by now, except for one tiny thing. She hadn’t mentioned it to Ben, because of the gruesome connotation, but she no longer believed the brick was meant to warn her. The vandal wanted to hurt Ben, by scaring her away and cutting him off from the world again.
Donna’s murderer had been cold-blooded enough to plan the crime and to leave no traces. Only Ben’s unexpectedly late return and the receipt and CCTV picture from the petrol station had saved his neck. Otherwise, there would have been nothing to prove his innocence. Ben Dryden was supposed to be the scapegoat, and the brick through her window might well have been thrown by the one person who hated to see him free.
If her vandal and Donna’s murderer were one and the same, Ben had to be kept in the dark. Or he might ruin any chance Eve had with laying a trap.
Of course, there was the second small snag, apart from needing Ben’s unwitting cooperation. Eve had no idea what form a trap could take.
Hayley declared herself stumped as well. “Unless you want the word to be spread that you’ve discovered the truth and set yourself up as a target?” she asked.
“I might, if we could be sure when the murderer would strike and have a couple of burly constables hiding in my wardrobe.”
“You’d also need a bullet-proof vest. Shooting accidents happen.”
A chill crept over Eve’s body. “Not a funny joke.”
“It wasn’t meant to be one.”
They stood on the landing above the pub, to stop anyone else from eavesdropping.
Hayley said, “I hope you realise you could stir up a lot of danger if you’re not careful.”
Eve had woken up bathed in sweat when the same apprehension first sank into her conscious mind. “That’s why we’re all careful, right?”
Let Sleeping Murder Lie: A cozy mystery Page 18
