Pumpkins, Peril and a Paella (A Charlotte Denver Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Bryan, Sherri

  Damn, I’ll have to go down to the marina and try him again when I get there.

  She grabbed a pen and paper and wrote him a note in case he came back home before she’d managed to get hold of him.

  Hi sweetie,

  Harriett called. She thinks someone’s broken into the café - have gone to check it out but don’t worry, I won’t go in! Will keep trying you. xx

  She propped up the note on the kitchen table before picking Pippin up and making a fuss of him. She hated leaving him on his own, but she wasn’t about to take him out at this time of night in the snow. “Be a good boy, okay. I’ll be back soon.”

  ººººººº

  As Charlotte approached the marina on the back road, the café was in darkness.

  Pressing her ear up against the wall she could hear the faint knocking that Harriett had spoken of, muffled voices and the sound of people moving about inside.

  Sounds like they’re dragging something across the floor. Probably a big bag filled with everything they’re about to steal from my café. She was fuming and fearful all at the same time.

  Creeping up the footpath, she saw four tracks of footprints leading all the way to the front door of the awning. Three were partially covered in snow and one was more visible, indicating that they had been made more recently.

  Peering through the transparent polythene window, she saw that the thick chain which held the doors secure with a padlock had been cut.

  She crept back down the footpath and crouched down underneath the kitchen window. Her heart was pounding as she fumbled for her phone and she wasn’t sure if it was her thick glove or the fact that she was shaking from the adrenalin rush that was making it difficult to dial Nathan’s number.

  She held the phone tightly to her ear and with every ring, she willed him to pick up.

  It took a while before she realised that she wasn’t only listening to the ring in her ear, she could actually hear it nearby. It stopped ringing as it went to answerphone and she redialled immediately. If he was nearby, Nathan must have gone home and seen her note and was on his way to the café.

  The phone rang again.

  She heard it clearly this time.

  But it wasn’t coming from outside the café.

  It was coming from inside the café.

  Her stomach churned.

  What on earth is Nathan doing in there?

  She had a bad feeling. A really bad feeling.

  In a blind panic she swiped her phone screen again and called Ben Dillon. The phone rang six times before he answered sleepily. “Charlotte? What time is it? What’s up?”

  “Ben,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry to call you so late but I think Nathan’s in trouble. Big trouble. Can you get some help down here? What? Oh, I’m at the café.”

  She quickly told him what she knew and he immediately jumped into action, promising to get help to her as soon as possible.

  “And for God’s sake, Charlotte, stay outside, okay? Don’t for one minute think about going in there. Okay?”

  “Okay, I won’t. But hurry, Ben.”

  As she hung up, she was caught in the headlights of an approaching car.

  She looked away, the high beam temporarily dazzling her. She waited for it to pass, but the car slowed down and came to a stop in front of her.

  The driver’s door opened and, as she squinted through the snow that had just started to fall again, saw that the car’s occupants were Lavender and Marigold Burridge.

  “I say, Charlotte. What on earth are you doing out here at this time of night? Is everything alright?” Lavender swung her leg out of the car and pulled up the hood on her jacket.

  Charlotte shook her head frantically and put her finger to her lips. “Sshhh! Keep your voice down - someone might hear you! No, it’s not alright. There’s someone in the café and I think they’ve got Nathan in there with them. I called him and I can hear his phone ringing inside but he’s not answering.”

  “Oh, good Lord! That doesn’t sound very good, does it?” Marigold whispered as she zipped up her anorak.

  “Come on, let’s take a look. Come on Charlotte.” Lavender took Charlotte’s hand and began to lead her up the footpath.

  “No!” Charlotte pulled back but Lavender kept walking. “We can’t go in there! We don’t know if they’re armed or dangerous - or both! We have to wait for the ...”

  Her feet slipped and she looked down at the snow on the path.

  She saw the footprints in front of her.

  From Lavender’s boots.

  The outline of a cheetah was clearly visible.

  Chapter 11

  Her blood ran cold, every instinct telling her to run. With all her strength, she pulled to get away from Lavender but Marigold’s surprisingly strong grip caught her arms from behind and pushed her forward.

  “Why have you been hanging around outside my window?” Charlotte struggled to get free from Marigold’s clutches. “What are you up to?”

  Lavender sighed. “You know, it’s a real pity you couldn’t stop meddling, Charlotte. We never wanted you to come to any harm but we can’t let you go now. It’s too risky.”

  The sisters hauled Charlotte into the café, the windows of which had been covered with blackout paper.

  “What the bloody hell’s she doing here?” Trevor Slade looked out from the kitchen, the knocking of his hammer and chisel against the tiled wall coming to a brief stop.

  “Don’t worry about it. She’s a minor inconvenience. We’ll take care of her later.” Marigold pushed Charlotte down into a chair. “Where’s Richard?”

  “Dunno, but I’ll kill him when I see him. Bloody idiot, should have been here ages ago. If it hadn’t been for him not turning up, we’d have been out of here by now. He’s been moaning about a gut ache since yesterday but I’m telling you, his guts’ll be the least of his worries by the time I’m finished with him.” Trevor turned back to the task in hand and continued tapping at the wall tiles.

  Intuition told Charlotte to say nothing about Richard’s death but, despite her anxiety, she was livid that Trevor appeared to be demolishing her kitchen. “What are you doing to my wall?”

  “There’s something that belongs to us in your kitchen, Charlotte.” Lavender settled herself on a bar stool. “We thought we might have been able to reach it from the outside, but it would have created too much of a disturbance. So Trevor’s accessing it from the inside. That’s why we’ve been hanging around outside the window.”

  “But what could possibly be behind my kitchen wall that belongs to you? And why do ...” Charlotte suddenly spotted Nathan’s phone on the bar and all thoughts of what Trevor Slade was up to went out of her head. “And why is Nathan’s phone here? Where is he?”

  The kitchen door swung open and Charlotte’s mouth dropped. Without any sign of the debilitating arthritis she claimed had virtually confined her to a wheelchair, Maureen Slade strode out purposefully.

  “Where’s your wheelchair?” Charlotte gaped.

  “Oh, that old thing.” Maureen smiled sweetly. “I don’t actually need it, Charlotte, but it makes things so much easier that people think I do. I mean, whoever would have thought that a crippled, wheelchair-bound old lady like me would have had it in her to pull off a plan like this?”

  Charlotte shook her head in disbelief. “Where’s Nathan? I want to see him.”

  “Oh, let her see him, Maureen, for God’s sake. It might stop her whining,” said Lavender. “She can’t cause us any trouble if we keep an eye on her. When we’re finished here, we’ll get rid of them both, her and Costello.” She took a newspaper from the pile on the bar and began idly flicking through the pages.

  “Your boyfriend’s down there - on the floor behind the bar,” said Maureen. “I’ve no idea why he was skulking around here so late at night so you can imagine our surprise when he poked his head in.” She laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh. “If only he’d stayed outside, he wouldn’t have got hurt. Poor Laurence - he almost put his b
ack out dragging him round there.”

  Charlotte rushed around to the other side of the bar where Nathan was lying on the floor, blood oozing from a gaping wound on his forehead. He was breathing, but unconscious.

  “Oh, good God!” She dropped to her knees, desperately wanting to cradle him in her arms but knowing that she mustn’t move him.

  The graveness of the situation dawned on her.

  If these people are prepared to attack a police officer, they’re prepared to do anything.

  She had to do something. Surreptitiously, she felt in her pocket for her phone and pressed redial.

  “I do hope everything’s alright, dear.” Maureen Slade’s voice dripped sarcasm as she looked down at Charlotte.

  “No, it damn well isn’t alright! What did you do? What did you do to him?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Maureen. “Laurence did.”

  “Who the hell is Laurence?” Charlotte was trying desperately not to panic, for hers and for Nathan’s sakes.

  The door opened and a man in a black ski jacket walked in sending Marigold into raptures as she squealed with delight and ran to his side. They kissed briefly before he took down his hood and Charlotte gasped as her living nightmare took a turn for the surreal.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Charlotte - I hope you’re not taking my name in vain? So sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived but I had to go out for a sugar fix.”

  It was Larry Hall ... and Marigold Burridge was clinging to him like a limpet.

  “You? Oh no, no, Larry ... please tell me you didn’t do this to Nathan?”

  He grinned and took a bag of gobstoppers from his pocket. “’Fraid so, Charlotte.” He was calm and seemingly untroubled by what he’d done. “Want one?” He offered the bag of sweets to Charlotte, shrugged when she refused, and popped one into his mouth.

  “Larry, listen to me.” Charlotte spoke as calmly as she could. “I don’t know how you got involved in all this but my guess is that you’ve been pressured into joining forces with them so they can use you to do their dirty work.

  “Have you any idea of the trouble you’re going to be in for assaulting a police officer? Did you ever stop to think why none of them did it? Please, Larry. Please think about what you’re doing and how this is going to affect the rest of your life. Whatever they’ve made you do, you’re not like them. Deep down, you’re not a criminal.”

  Larry removed the gobstopper from his mouth.

  “Charlotte, I haven’t only just become “involved in all this”. I’ve been a part of this family for a long time. How long’s it been now, Marigold?”

  “Nine years, more or less.” Marigold clung to his arm and put her head on his shoulder.

  “Yeah, around nine years. We got to know each other when Mum joined the St. Eves Ladies Association.”

  Larry was thoughtful for a moment. “Y’know, who’d have thought that Mum joining the Association would change my life as much as it changed hers? Dad was always busy in the shop so I drove Mum to all the events ... and that’s how I met Marigold.” He planted a kiss on the end of her Roman nose.

  “I can tell that you think it’s gross.” He noticed Charlotte’s look of distaste. “A forty-year old guy with a sixty-five year old woman, but we’ve got so much in common. We got chatting because we both love music. We like different styles, but our passion for it’s the same. And she’s a fantastic musician. She can play any instrument, y’know, and any tune, by ear. She’s amazing.

  “Anyway, we ended up spending a lot of time together up at her place. At the weekends we’d stay up all night, listening to music and chatting. She was the first person to have ever taken an interest in my opinions and what I had to say. For the first time in my life, someone made me feel really good about myself.

  “I told her how I couldn’t wait to save enough money to move out from my parents’ house and get my own place. God, their constant nagging about how I still live under their roof and don’t have a proper job really gets me down ... and if they ask me one more time when I’m going to join the family business, I swear, I won’t be responsible for my actions.” Larry laughed and licked the gobstopper he was holding between his finger and thumb.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Charlotte, but you’re wrong ... because deep down, I am a criminal. It was me who whacked the Chief Inspector over the head ... and I killed Samuel too.”

  He took out a pair of drumsticks from his inside pocket and beat out a drum roll on the bar before popping the gobstopper back into his mouth and continuing to read the newspaper.

  Charlotte closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe that quiet, introverted Larry Hall was a murderer. She was appalled. But more than that, she was furious.

  It took all her self-control not to scream at the top of her voice. “Don’t say you’re sorry, Larry, because you don’t mean it. Your parents’ hearts are going to break when they find out about this. They didn’t raise you to be this way. And you know why? Because they’re good people. And they thought they were raising a good son.” The slight tremor in her voice was the only evidence of her rising anger.

  “And by the way, I don’t think that your relationship with Marigold is gross because of the age difference, I think it’s gross because you’re hanging out with the family who inflicted so much pain on your own family.

  “How you can even contemplate a relationship with Marigold is beyond me. She must have known how traumatised your mother was by the robberies as much as you did. Your own mother. My God, you disgust me.” Shaking with fury, she turned away.

  “Don’t you dare speak to him like that!” Marigold yelled at her across the bar.

  “It’s okay, Mari. Leave it.” Larry stared at Charlotte and for a moment, she thought she saw a fleeting look of sadness in his eyes before he turned his attention back to the newspaper.

  Blinking back furious tears, she squeezed Nathan’s hand tightly. Please God, let him be okay.

  “You do realise that you have no way of getting out of this alive, don’t you?” Still fuming, Marigold was at her most spiteful. “I’m just telling you because we wouldn’t want to give you any false hopes, would we, Lavender?”

  “No, we certainly wouldn’t.” Her sister agreed.

  Charlotte’s anger had reached boiling point. “You’re all maniacs! For goodness sake, why are you doing this?”

  Maureen considered Charlotte’s outburst as she shook a cigarette from a soft pack. “What do you think? D’you think we should tell her?” She lit the cigarette and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth.

  “You’re not allowed to smoke in here,” said Charlotte, proprietorially.

  Maureen threw her head back and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh, did you hear that? I’m not allowed to smoke in here. That’s priceless.” She bent down and blew her smoke in Charlotte’s face. “And who’s going to stop me? You? Your policeman boyfriend? I don’t think so.” She flicked her ash at Charlotte and hoisted herself onto a barstool.

  Charlotte realised that she was going to have to stall for time until the police arrived so, in desperation, she tried another tack. “Look, if you’re going to kill us, at least have the decency to tell me what all this is about.”

  Maureen looked at her thoughtfully. “Okay, Charlotte. Because I like you, I’m going to tell you what’s going on. We’re going to be here for a while so I might as well do something to pass the time.” She made herself comfortable and began telling her story.

  “Years ago, my husband and I had a little property development business. It was called MB Properties. And just so you know, the MB didn’t stand for Maureen and Bill. It stood for Maureen Burridge.”

  Charlotte’s brow creased in confusion. That’s Lavender’s and Marigold’s surname. And why does MB Properties sound so familiar?

  “Yes, Burridge was my maiden name. Lavender, Marigold and me - we’re cousins. Not a lot of people knew that though, because our fathers didn’t ge
t on. Even though they were brothers, they couldn’t stand the sight of each other, so our families had relatively no contact at all until after our parents had passed away and we were adults.

  “Of course, I got stuck with the non-achieving brother of the family as my father. The one who had nothing and couldn’t be bothered to better his life.

  “Lavender and Marigold, on the other hand, were blessed with the successful, wealthy, go-getting brother for a father. The one who left them with a small fortune and saw to it that they would never need to work a day in their lives if they didn’t want to.

  “I, on the other hand, had to take every job going to earn money. I knew I didn’t want to be like my father. I wanted more and I worked hard to get it. I passed every one of my school exams with flying colours and got a place on a business and accountancy course.

  “When I began to spend more time with Marigold and Lavender, they offered to put the start-up money into a property development company for me. They could see I knew what I was talking about when it came to business and they were happy to invest their money in me. They knew I’d show them a healthy return before too long, which, of course, I did.

  “After Bill gave up his ... er ... shall we say, previous line of work, he became involved in the business too. We were an incredible team and for years, it was as though our life was blessed. Everything we touched became profitable. The money was pouring in and we had everything we wanted. But then the kids got arrested and everything took a nosedive.

  “It started out as petty crime. Nothing more than a few snatched purses and wallets here and there but they began to get used to having money in their pockets and not having to work for it.”

  She lit another cigarette from the stub of the last and blew a smoke ring up to the ceiling. “Anyway, they started robbing houses. Then they progressed to businesses and security vans. Every time they went on a job without getting caught, it became like a drug they needed more of. At first, we tried to dissuade them but when the money they were bringing home began to get serious - I’m talking hundreds of thousands of pounds - we had to rethink the situation.