by Agatha Frost
“You’re welcome to come to my place,” Julia offered. “I don’t think it’s safe here.”
“That’s what they want,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “I don’t have many things, Julia, but I have my pride. If they have to take me away from here in a box, so be it.”
Tommy pointed his chin to the cloudless sky and squinted into the sun, more defiant than she had ever seen the old man. Julia believed him when he said he would be here until the last minute, she just hoped it wouldn’t get to that.
“We need to go,” Julia said to Jessie, glancing at her watch. “The café needs opening and we both need to get changed first.”
“Go,” Tommy said sternly, nodding to the gates. “Don’t wait around on my account. I’ll be fine. I always am.”
Julia and Jessie looked at each other, both seemingly as uncomfortable as the other. Neither of them wanted to tell the man he was being reckless and putting his life in danger for no reason. Despite this, Julia did understand his pride, she just thought it was misplaced. Without the people, Fenton Industrial Park was no more a home than any street corner in any city.
“He’ll be okay,” Julia whispered to Jessie as they walked towards her car. “He’s tough.”
“He’s being an idiot,” Jessie said, looking over her shoulder at Tommy as he curled up into his blankets.
Julia unlocked her car and opened her door. As Jessie climbed inside, she paused, resting her hands on the roof as she looked down the street. Carl Black had just pulled up in a black sports car. He jumped out, a phone crammed between his ear and shoulder. As he swaggered down the street, he clicked his key over his shoulder and the car beeped, its lights flashing.
“Another one’s dead,” Carl said smugly into his phone as he passed Julia, ignoring her presence entirely. “I’d be surprised if there’s anybody left. Call the guys and tell them we’ll be able to start demolition in a matter of days.”
After quickly changing, they drove down to Julia’s café, ten minutes late for opening. Dot was already standing outside, tapping her watch as Julia pulled into her parking space.
“Sorry,” Julia said as she reached around her gran to unlock the door. “I couldn’t get the car started.”
Julia glanced to Jessie, making sure that she wasn’t going to correct her. Jessie nodded her acknowledgement that it would stay a secret. The last thing she wanted was for her gran and her neighbourhood watch gang wading into things.
“I can’t stop,” Dot said, pulling up the seat nearest to the counter. “But I’ll have a cup of tea, and any cakes if they’re going begging.”
Julia pulled a slice of yesterday’s chocolate cake from the fridge, hoping her gran wouldn’t notice it wasn’t fresh. She was going to have to spend most of her morning catching up on the baking she had missed.
“Mary’s husband didn’t take the news very well,” Dot mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate cake.
“Huh?”
“Remember how I told you Mary was cheating on her husband with that lad from the butchers?” Dot mumbled, cramming even more cake into her mouth. “Well, as it turns out, the butcher is gay and actually Mary’s cousin.”
“So you’re telling me your meddling almost ruined a marriage?” Julia said with a sigh as she sat across from her gran.
“How was I supposed to know?” she cried, spitting chocolate cake all over the tablecloth. “They were laughing and joking on the village green like lovers. It’s an easy mistake.”
“Maybe you should hang up your binoculars.”
“Why? Things are finally starting to get interesting,” Dot said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I think the vicar has murdered Amy Clark. She hasn’t been to our meetings since last week.”
“She’s gone to stay with her sister in Brighton,” Jessie called from behind the counter. “She told me last week.”
“Oh.” Dot rummaged in her small handbag and pulled out her notepad, scribbling something down and crossing out something else. “I wonder why she didn’t tell me.”
“Probably because she knows you don’t like her,” Jessie called again. “She told me you told her she wasn’t a good organ player.”
“I didn’t say that,” Dot protested. “Not exactly. I told her it wouldn’t do her any harm to get possessed by the ghost of Gertrude Smith, or at least just her fingers. We all know Gertrude was the better player. The church hasn’t been the same since.”
“You’re unbelievable, Gran,” Julia said as she stood up. “And don’t pretend you go to church.”
“Well, I hear things,” Dot said, waving her hands. “Why read the book when you can watch the film? It cuts out all the fuss. I have eyes all over the village. What have you been up to anyway? I feel like I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Not a lot,” Julia said through almost gritted teeth, glancing back to Jessie who rolled her eyes. “This and that.”
“How are things with you and Barker?” Dot asked as she stood up, brushing the crumbs off her pale pink blouse and readjusting the brooch that pinned the collar together under her chin. “Do I need to buy a new hat yet?”
“We’re not getting married, if that’s what you’re saying.”
“Chop chop, Julia,” Dot said, tapping her watch again. “Time’s ticking. You’re not getting any younger.”
“As you keep reminding me,” Julia said, her eyes widening and her jaw gritting. “Me and Jessie will come around for dinner tonight and we can catch up.”
“No can do, I’m afraid,” Dot cried over her shoulder as she hurried to the door. “I’m holding an emergency neighbourhood watch meeting at my cottage to announce Amy Clark’s murder. I’ll have to find something else to announce before then, but I’ve got the whole day ahead of me, haven’t I? See you later, girls.”
Like a whirlwind tearing through a house, Dot hurried out of the café and across the village green to her cottage, where she immediately took up her post in her garden, peering through her rose bushes with a pair of binoculars.
“Your gran is nuts,” Jessie said as she stocked the display case with yesterday’s leftovers. “I like it.”
Julia spent the rest of the morning baking in the kitchen while Jessie served customers out front. It wasn’t like Julia to hide from the public, but she needed time to mull over her thoughts and there was no other time she mulled more than when she was baking. Whether she was cooking up a simple batch of scones, or a more complicated red velvet cake, her fingers did the work while her brain could focus on other things. Baking had saved her a fortune on therapy bills when her marriage broke down.
No matter where she tried to direct her thoughts, she kept circling around to Carl Black. Everything about him and how he acted made her think he was the man Tommy had whacked over Jerry’s body. She wondered if a man would be so stupid to show up the same day as the murder, but she knew arrogant men like him didn’t think anything they did was ever wrong. Jerrad hadn’t seen anything wrong with his affair with his twenty-seven-year-old secretary, nor had he seen anything wrong with packing all of Julia’s possessions in black bags and leaving them on the doorstep of their apartment, after changing the locks while she was at work. Men like that didn’t have a compassionate bone in their bodies.
“Can I use your laptop?” Jessie asked as Julia flicked through her mother’s handwritten recipe book. “The café’s empty and everything is cleaned up.”
“Sure,” Julia said, tossing Jessie the keys to her car. “You know where it is.”
Julia landed on the page she had been looking for. She ran her finger over her mother’s curly, artistic handwriting. She had always wished her own was more like it, but her fingers were more suited to baking cakes than beautiful calligraphy. She read the recipe for the coconut cake aloud to herself as she gathered the ingredients. She was relieved when she found a packet of desiccated coconut in the back of her pantry.
As she measured out the ingredients, she glanced through the beads to Jessie, who was
leaning against the counter and typing slowly on the keyboard. Julia imagined her tongue was poking out of her lips as she focussed carefully on the words. She tried to see what Jessie was doing but she was blocking the screen from view.
After Julia had finished the cake mix, she preheated the oven according to her mother’s instructions and poured the sweet smelling mixture into a bundt pan. She always liked how the indented curvature inside of the domed pan made the cakes look. She had no idea if it would look anything like Barker’s mother’s favourite, but she hoped it would taste just as good, if not better. Her mother’s recipe always seemed to elevate the classics, and she had spent many years wondering how her mother had gained her precision and skill when it came to writing out her recipes. Most of Julia’s were in her mind, or scribbled down on scraps of paper, which were littered around her café and cottage, some pinned to notice boards, others gathered in boxes in the bottom of her wardrobe.
The timer pinged, tearing her from her thoughts. She had been trying to think of ways to convince Tommy to move on from Fenton Industrial Park. She considered offering him her couch again, perhaps insisting this time. It was a possibility that she would offend him, but she would sleep better at night knowing he wasn’t going to be the murderer’s next victim.
“Did you know there was another murder?” Jessie asked as she carried the laptop in, staring at the screen.
“Since we left?”
“No, before,” Jessie said, placing the laptop on the table. “I just came across this article about a girl who died near the industrial park a couple of months before Bailey died. She was murdered and they arrested the guy.”
“I didn’t know about that,” Julia mumbled, leaning into the screen and scanning over the article. “Does it say how she was killed?”
“Strangled. Sounds like a mugging gone wrong. Those used to happen a lot on those dark paths.”
“Is there a picture of her?”
“No, but there’s a name. Let me search it online. There might be some pictures on an old social media account.”
Jessie copied and pasted the name into the search bar and hit enter. The second the page loaded and the small preview icons appeared, they both leaned back and gasped.
“I know her!” Jessie said.
“So do I,” Julia said, quickly dumping the coconut icing over the cake and messily spreading it around the golden surface. “Can you look after the café? I need to speak to Barker.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“I’ll explain later.”
Julia forced the messy cake into a box, ashamed that the icing was practically melting off the still warm cake, but also knowing she didn’t have much time to convince Barker of her plan before sunset. She grabbed her jacket and her keys, and jumped into her car, securing the cake in the passenger seat with a seatbelt.
With her cake in hand, Julia knocked loudly on Barker’s door, her urgency increasing with each rap of her knuckles on the wood. She pressed her ear up against the door, but she couldn’t hear movement, despite Barker’s car being parked outside. Inhaling deeply, she knocked until her knuckles hurt. Barker didn’t answer, so she tried the door handle. It moved and the door opened. Looking back at Barker’s car, she pushed on the wood. It was an emergency, after all.
“Barker?” Julia called out, stepping tentatively down his hallway. “Are you home?”
Splashing water caught her attention so she spun around at the same time the bathroom door opened. Barker stepped forward, soaked from head to toe and covered in bubbles, a small towel fastened around his hips barely protecting his modesty. Julia quickly averted her eyes, but the definition of his surprisingly muscular physique didn’t go unnoticed.
“Julia!” Barker cried, dropping his hands to his crotch over the towel. “What are you doing in my cottage?”
“I did knock,” she mumbled, turning back to the door. “I’d come back later, but it’s quite urgent.”
“I was listening to music,” Barker said, trying to laugh through the awkwardness. “I like to listen to the radio in the bath on my days off. Helps me forget about work.”
“A bubble bath, no less.”
“You’ve got to have bubbles in a bath, Julia,” Barker said playfully. “Go through to the living room and I’ll throw some clothes on. What’s in the tin?”
“Coconut cake,” Julia mumbled as she scurried through to the living room, her eyes firmly planted on the ground. “Just be quick. Like I said, it’s quite urgent.”
Julia perched on the edge of Barker’s squeaky leather couch and waited patiently, her fingers clasped around the edge of the cake tin. The cottage wasn’t as clean as it had been on their date, but it was nowhere near as messy as it had been when he first moved to the village. She made a mental note to ask around about a cleaner for him like she had once promised him. He needed a woman’s touch around the place, but Julia had enough on her plate than to be cleaning another man’s cottage.
Less than a minute later, Barker walked into the living room in a pair of grey sweatpants and a tight fitting white t-shirt, a towel around his neck catching the drips from his damp hair. Now that she had seen his chiselled torso, she could see it through the t-shirt without even meaning to. Had she never noticed before because she was used to seeing Barker in shirts and suits?
“What’s so urgent,” Barker asked, as he perched on the edge of the couch, his fingers reaching out for the cake tin. “Did you make that for me?”
Julia slapped his hand away, put the cake tin on the cluttered coffee table, and stood up.
“There’s no time for cake,” Julia said, already heading for the door. “Get your shoes on. I’ll explain on the way.”
“On the way where?” Barker could barely contain his confused laughter. “I’m not going anywhere looking like this. These are my scruffy clothes.”
“Where we’re going, it doesn’t matter,” Julia said, waving her hand over her shoulder as she walked back to the front door. “Shoes, Barker! And bring your keys. We’re taking your car. Mine is too recognisable.”
“You’re a piece of work, Julia South,” Barker mumbled, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was supposed to hear him.
“I know,” she replied regardless.
Five minutes later, they pulled up outside of Peridale’s only charity shop, ‘Second Loved’. Whenever Julia de-cluttered her cottage, she would drive down to the charity shop with her unwanted things so Betty Hunter, the sweet owner, could sell them and raise money for various different local charities. She barely took a wage for herself, and whatever profit she made after covering the rent and the bills, she split amongst the most worthy causes in the village.
“What are we doing here?” Barker asked as he peered over his steering wheel at the small backstreet shop. “Have you dragged me away from my bubble bath to dig through a smelly old charity shop?”
“It’s not smelly,” Julia said as she opened the door. “And yes, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Keep up, Detective Inspector.”
Julia hurried into the shop, not turning to see that Barker was following her. She knew he would, if only to find out what she wanted to tell him. Holding back information was something she only did when it felt necessary, and right now it felt more than necessary. If Barker knew the whole plan and her theories up front, he wouldn’t go along with it, but if she at least got him halfway through the plan, he might not be so eager to back out.
“Julia,” Betty said, peering over her book from behind the small counter in the corner. “What a pleasant surprise. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I don’t have any donations today I’m afraid, Betty, but I have come to do some shopping.” Julia pushed forward her friendliest smile, not wanting to arouse suspicion before she had even gotten started.
“I got some lovely dresses in last week from a stylish woman from the city. They’d suit you perfectly and I think they’re your size. They’re in the back. Let me go and grab them.”
&nb
sp; “Another time, perhaps,” Julia said, just as the door opened and Barker shuffled sheepishly into the shop, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “We’re looking for something very specific today. Where do you keep the clothes that nobody ever wants to buy?”
“In that fifty pence bin,” Betty said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously over her glasses. “Let me know if you need any help.”
Julia assured her that she would. Betty was a sweet lady who lived a simple life. She didn’t frequent Julia’s café because she thought the prices were too expensive, and she wasn’t afraid to let Julia know that. Julia didn’t take offence. Betty harked from an era where you could go to the shop with one pound in your back pocket and buy a pint of milk, a loaf of bread, and still leave with change.
“Get digging,” Julia ordered, clicking at the basket. “We don’t have much time.”
Julia started digging in the huge basket of unwanted clothes. Most of what she was saw was garish neon prints that hadn’t seen the light of day in over thirty years, but she kept digging regardless. She knew exactly what she was looking for.
“Julia, do I need to call your gran?” Barker whispered. “Have you been sleeping?”
“I’m not having a breakdown,” Julia said with a sigh. “I told you I’ll explain later.”
“Maybe it’s delayed concussion? I heard that can happen. It’s wasn’t that long ago that Terry Lewis hit you on the head with that kettle. Maybe you should just sit down for a second.”
“Barker, I told you that I’m fine,” Julia snapped under her breath, making sure that Betty couldn’t overhear her.
Barker sighed and shrugged, glancing awkwardly to Betty and smiling as she sneered at him. Betty kept to herself, so Julia doubted she had seen, or even heard of the new Detective Inspector in town. She wasn’t too fond of outsiders moving into Peridale.
