The Zachery Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Book 26)

by Diana Xarissa

  “Breakfast at eight,” Janet reminded Edward on the landing outside of their rooms.

  “I’ll see you then, darling,” he replied, pulling her into a kiss.

  Janet knew she was grinning hugely as she let herself into her room. “He’s wonderful,” she told Aggie.

  “Meeoww,” Aggie replied.

  Curled up under her duvet, Janet began to wonder about the dead man who’d been found in the carriage house. Was it actually one of Maggie Appleton’s former boyfriends or was it more complicated than that? And was the dead man the ghost who’d been haunting the carriage house? The ghost had been absent since the police arrived, or, at least, Janet hadn’t heard anyone complaining about the lights going out or the door shutting on its own. Was it possible that removing the body had allowed the ghost to rest in peace?

  “You’ll be a good deal happier once we’ve identified you,” Janet whispered. “And once your killer is behind bars, as well.”

  “Meww,” Aggie told her.

  The next thing Janet knew, her alarm was ringing. She switched it off and sighed. It hadn’t taken long for her body to adapt to having breakfast somewhat later than she had been having it. When she’d risen at six every day, she’d always thought that another hour of sleep would have made a world of difference, but now that she rose at seven each morning, she still felt tired and in need of coffee when the alarm rang.

  Joan was alone in the kitchen, which was unusual these days.

  “Good morning,” Janet said, grabbing the loaf of bread to start making toast.

  “Good morning,” Joan replied. “How are you this morning?”

  “Fine, and you?”

  “I’m fine. You seem quite happy to have Edward here.”

  “I am, although it’s odd, too. We’ve talked a great deal over the phone recently and I’m starting to feel as if I’m getting to know him, but then I find out that he’s friends with the head of Derby CID and I feel as if I know nothing about him.”

  Joan nodded. “If it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way about Michael sometimes and we’re married.”

  “Really?”

  “He had an entire life before he met me. He was married and he had a business. I had an entire life before I met him, as well, with a career of my own. I don’t think you can meet someone at our age and expect to ever know everything about that other person.”

  Janet nodded. “I never really thought about it that way, but I suppose you’re right.”

  “You’re friends with Edna Green, and I’d imagine you don’t know everything about her life,” Joan continued. “Does that bother you?”

  “No, not at all,” Janet said. “It feels different with Edward, though.”

  “I know, but maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe you should only expect to know everything about Edward’s life from now on.”

  Stuart wandered into the room before Janet could reply. Edward and Michael weren’t far behind. They had breakfast in the dining room, which meant someone was almost constantly running back and forth to the kitchen for more toast or juice, but they took turns and no one really minded.

  “What shall we do today?” Edward asked Janet after the breakfast dishes had been cleared away.

  “What do you want to do?” she countered.

  “Really, I just want to get to know you better,” he said. “Maybe we could take a picnic lunch and go for a long walk in the dales?”

  Joan laughed. “You really don’t know Janet well. She doesn’t enjoy eating outdoors.”

  Edward looked at Janet. “No?”

  “I don’t care for bugs,” Janet replied.

  “We could walk for a short while, find a pub for lunch, and then walk some more,” Edward suggested.

  “I think I’d prefer that,” Janet agreed.

  “Michael and I will have dinner ready for half five,” Joan reminded her.

  “We’ll be back,” Janet promised.

  The day seemed to rush past as Janet and Edward walked and talked. When they were in the car heading back to Doveby House, Janet felt as if she knew Edward just a tiny bit better. Robert was just getting out of his car as Edward pulled into the car park.

  “Did you have much luck with your missing person reports?” Edward asked as he and Janet caught up to Robert on the Doveby House doorstep.

  “I found three possible candidates from March of eighty-eight,” he replied. “I pulled the files from four years earlier and four years later as well, but there weren’t any missing person reports for men around the right age around either of those dates.”

  While he’d been speaking, Janet found her keys and opened the door. They all walked into the house and then straight through to the kitchen. Joan smiled from her usual spot by the cooker.

  “Steak and kidney pie,” she said. “I thought we should have something light for pudding after that, so I’ve made chocolate mousse.”

  “She never made chocolate mousse when it was just the two of us,” Janet told the men as Joan began to serve dinner.

  “I must have made it once or twice,” Joan protested.

  “Never,” Janet said. “Thanks, Michael.”

  Michael chuckled.

  “Maybe she’s only making it because I’m here,” Edward suggested.

  “Or maybe it’s because Robert is here,” Janet said. “Thank you all for coming tonight. I love chocolate mousse.”

  They settled around the dining room table and ate the delicious meal. When Joan brought out the bowls of chocolate mousse, Edward looked at Robert.

  “Now might be a good time to start talking about our possible victims,” he said.

  Robert nodded. “As I said, there are three of them. I’ll talk about them in alphabetical order. The first is Trent Abbey.”

  “I remember when he disappeared,” Michael said. “I don’t remember much about him, though, really, just the name.”

  “He was fifty-five when he was reported missing,” Robert told them. “His wife filed the report after he’d been gone for three days.”

  “Three days?” Joan gasped.

  “He worked as a travelling sales representative for a building supply company,” Robert said. “He was usually away during the week and home on weekends. Remember, this was before mobile phones were everywhere. He would ring his wife from his hotel room every evening, but if he had to work late, he’d often miss out a night here or there. He missed ringing home on a Wednesday, but his wife didn’t give it much thought. When he didn’t ring on Thursday, either, she just assumed he hadn’t bothered because he was due home the next afternoon. When he didn’t come on Friday, she rang the police.”

  “And they discovered that no one had seen him since he’d left his hotel on Wednesday morning,” Michael said. “It’s all coming back to me now. He’d cancelled all of his appointments for the rest of the week and simply vanished.”

  “Yes, and because he’d cancelled the appointments, it was believed that he’d gone voluntarily,” Robert said.

  “That seems the most likely explanation, under the circumstances,” Edward said.

  “His wife had a number of convoluted theories about him being forced to cancel appointments, if I remember correctly,” Michael said.

  “She did. The papers printed a few of her ideas, along with her detailed explanation of why he would never have cheated on her,” Robert replied.

  “And he’s never been found?” Edward asked.

  “He has not, but I’m not certain how hard anyone looked,” Robert told him. “It appeared he’d gone voluntarily, after all.”

  “What else can you tell us about him?” Janet asked.

  “He and his wife lived in Little Burton. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The children were in their teens back then, so they’ll be adults now. Trent’s wife was killed in a car accident about five years ago,” Robert said, flipping through his notes as he spoke.

  “One of his children may know where he is now,” Edward said. “He may have contacted them
after their mother died.”

  “I’m hoping to speak to both of them tomorrow,” Robert replied. “I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to cross Trent off the list fairly quickly.”

  “Did he have any connection to Doveby House or Margaret Appleton?” Janet asked.

  Robert shook his head. “None that I could find, anyway.”

  “Who’s next, then?” Edward asked.

  “Simon Harris,” Robert replied. “He was fifty when he disappeared.”

  “I remember him, too,” Michael said. “I actually knew Simon, although not well. He and Trent disappeared around the same time and the local papers went wild speculating that the disappearances were connected in some way.”

  Robert nodded. “They were both reported missing in the first week of March in eighty-eight. The police never found anything to link the two disappearances, though. Although Trent was from Little Burton and he was reported missing from there, he actually disappeared from Penrith.”

  “And Simon disappeared from Doveby Dale?” Janet asked.

  “He did. He had a small house just outside the centre of the village. He was a military man who’d been able to retire while still quite young. I’m not certain why he’d chosen to retire to Doveby Dale, but he’d moved here about a year before he went missing.”

  “No family in the area?” Edward asked.

  “No family anywhere, from what I could find. He was reported missing by his lodger, who rented a room in his house. The lodger, a man called George Jackson, couldn’t tell the police how long Simon had been gone and seemingly knew next to nothing about him. George had seen a sign on a notice board in one of the local shops about the room and he’d only moved into it in early February. When he spoke to the police, he said he rarely saw Simon but that he’d noticed that the man hadn’t been collecting his mail for the last several days.”

  “He rarely saw him?” Janet repeated. “That seems odd.”

  “It was a small house, but George’s room had a separate entrance, which was why it appealed to him. He was allowed to use the kitchen and the sitting room, but he said he rarely bothered, preferring to eat most of his meals at the local pub.”

  “How long was Simon gone before George rang the police, then?” Edward asked.

  “The last confirmed sighting of the man was in late February. He generally did a large grocery shop once a week at the local shop, and one of the shop assistants remembered him being there at his usual time,” Robert replied.

  “Did he buy more or less than normal?” Janet asked.

  “The shop assistant didn’t notice any difference in what he purchased that day to his usual shop,” Robert told her.

  “He could have been gone as long as a week before George rang the police, then,” Edward said thoughtfully.

  Robert nodded. “Because of the unusual circumstances, George was permitted to remain in the house. He pays the council tax and maintains it, but Simon is still the legal owner. I don’t believe George has been questioned about the man in the last ten years. It’s possible that Simon has been in touch and George simply never thought to inform us.”

  “Simon didn’t have a mortgage?” Janet asked.

  “He did not,” Robert confirmed.

  “Did he have any connection to Maggie?” Michael wanted to know.

  “Not that I could find, but Doveby Dale is a small village. They almost certainly crossed paths at some point in the time that they were both living here,” Robert said.

  “And the last one?” Edward asked.

  “Wes Zachery. He was fifty-one when he disappeared. His wife reported him missing on the tenth of March,” Robert said.

  “I remember him as well,” Michael said. “If I remember correctly, the papers suggested that Wes had run away with his girlfriend.”

  “They did suggest that, but they never found the girlfriend,” Robert said.

  “But they’re certain he had one?” Janet asked.

  “According to Wes’s wife, Alice, he always had a girlfriend or two. They’d married young and had a couple of kids, but the kids were already out of the house. From what Alice said, they were basically living separate lives. She had another man in her life and didn’t much care what Wes was doing,” Robert told her.

  “But she did report him missing,” Edward said.

  “They were still sharing a house, although not a bedroom,” Robert replied. “She was on a fortnight’s holiday with one of her female friends in late February and early March. When she returned home, Wes was nowhere to be found.”

  “When was he last seen?” was Edward’s next question.

  “He’d had dinner with his son on the twenty-eighth of February. That was a Sunday, and according to the son, Wes had decided to take the next week off work and enjoy having the house to himself.”

  “So no one noticed that he didn’t show up for work,” Janet said.

  “Alice got home on the sixth, but didn’t ring the police until the tenth,” Robert told them. “According to the report she filed, at first she assumed he was with a girlfriend and she wasn’t worried.”

  “What changed her mind?” Edward asked.

  “His employer rang to check on him. According to Alice, even when Wes was off staying with other women, he nearly always went to work,” Robert said.

  “Nearly always?” Janet repeated.

  “He wasn’t the most reliable employee, but he was good at what he did,” Robert said. “He worked for a local builder as a plasterer. Apparently, his supervisor was willing to put up with his occasional absences because he was one of the best in the area,” Robert replied.

  “And he’s never been found,” Edward said.

  Robert shook his head. “No, although with all three cases, I don’t know how hard anyone looked. They were all adults who may have simply chosen to leave.”

  “Did Wes have any connection to Maggie?” Michael asked.

  “Not that I could find, but, again, Doveby Dale is a small village. Wes’s house was only a short distance from here,” Robert told him.

  “What happens next?” Janet asked.

  “I have a long list of people to interview about all three men,” Robert said. “I just have to hope that nothing comes up that’s more important. Technically, I’m not meant to be involved in this case.”

  “Maybe Janet and I should do some investigating,” Edward suggested.

  Janet grinned at him. Looking for a few missing men could be very interesting.

  Chapter 8

  When Janet got up the next morning, she was cautiously optimistic about the day ahead. Either Robert was going to be searching for the missing men, or she and Edward were. Whichever, she was hopeful they might be closer to identifying their skeleton by the end of the day. No doubt such things generally took a great deal more time than a single day, but she pushed that idea out of her head as she left her bedroom.

  “Good morning,” Edward greeted her on the landing just outside of her door. His kiss woke her up far more effectively than coffee ever had. They went down the stairs holding hands.

  They had only just started eating breakfast when Edward’s phone buzzed. He read the screen and then stood up. “I just need to ring someone,” he said before he left the room.

  When he came back into the room, he winked at Janet. “Robert has been called into Derby for a meeting this morning,” he told them. “He doesn’t expect to be back until evening.”

  “Does that mean we’re going to be looking for the missing men?” Janet asked.

  “It does. He’s given me as much information as he could for each of them. Our investigation is strictly unofficial, of course, but Robert and I are both hopeful that we’ll learn something useful today.”

  Once the breakfast dishes had been cleared away, Janet went up to her room to get ready. “What does one wear when snooping?” she asked Aggie.

  The kitten didn’t reply, so Janet was forced to select her own outfit. She opted for a skirt with a plain blouse on top,
hoping she looked somewhat official, even though she wasn’t anything of the kind.

  Edward was waiting for her in the sitting room. “You look lovely,” he said as she joined him.

  “I wasn’t certain what to wear.”

  “That’s perfect,” he assured her. They were only a few steps from the door when someone knocked.

  “Harold, hello,” Edward said to the man on the doorstep.

  “Hello,” the inspector replied. “I just wanted to let you know where we are with the investigation.”

  “Excellent, come in,” Edward suggested.

  Harold shook his head. “I can’t stay long. The body has been identified as that of a man in his mid-fifties. It’s impossible to say when he died, but it was probably at least ten years ago, based on the condition of the remains.” He looked up from his notebook. “I don’t have to tell you how difficult it will be to identify the remains with just that little bit of information.”

  “It isn’t much with which to work,” Edward agreed.

  “Robert is in Derby for meetings today, but once he’s back in Doveby Dale, I’m going to have him start pulling missing person reports. No doubt there will be quite a few for men in their fifties who disappeared between eight and twenty years ago,” Harold said.

  Edward nodded. “He should probably consider reports from Derby in addition to Little Burton and Doveby Dale,” he said.

  “Yes, I was going to suggest that,” Harold said. “I suspect it could be quite some time before we have any idea who was tucked up in your carriage house.”

  Janet nodded. “I suppose he’s waited this long to be identified. A few more weeks or months won’t matter.”

  Harold shrugged. “I seriously doubt that we’ll ever work out who he was, but if Robert wants to spend his spare time digging through old missing person reports, he’s welcome to do so. I have other cases to get back to, though, so you won’t be seeing me again unless Robert finds something interesting.”

  “I may give Robert a hand,” Edward said thoughtfully. “Once I begin to get a bit bored with retirement.”

  Harold laughed. “I should have your problem. If you get bored, ring me. I have a dozen cases you could help me with.”