Fetch a Pail of Murder (We're Not Dead Yet Club Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  It was whilst I was tidying the cups and saucers away in a cupboard, that I noticed something rather peculiar. I reached inside and allowed my hand to grasp hold of a small, owl kitschy salt shaker and brought it down to examine it in the light.

  “I remember this,” I muttered, smiling slightly. “Aunt Ruby always used to call it her lonely little owl.”

  Don looked over and smiled fondly at it. “You can keep it, if you like. I doubt the new house owner will miss it.”

  I stared down at it for a long while, allowing my fingers to gently rub over the intricately decorated china shaker. “It wasn’t like Aunt Ruby to have an incomplete set,” I muttered. “She was always so proper when it came to everything being in its right place with its right partner.”

  Don laughed. “Yeah, but I think that one was a little different. Ever since we lost the pepper shaker, she kept it. Couldn’t let it go, I guess…”

  “When did you lose the other one?”

  Don thought for a moment. “It would’ve been in that burglary some time back. A few things were taken, but we never found out who did it.”

  “An odd thing to take in a burglary,” I mused, placing the shaker back in the cupboard. “That was about twenty years ago, wasn’t it?”

  A flicker of surprise crossed over Don’s face. “As a matter of fact, it was. How’d you know that?”

  I shrugged. “Just a guess.”

  As we made our way back down the road into town, I could feel the girls watching me with dread as though they expected me to keel over at any moment. Don had volunteered to drive us back but, given what had happened, I much preferred to walk. Besides, I think I needed an early night and – doubtlessly, the girls would want to parade me into the Senior Center to regale the others with my terrifying ordeal.

  It was only when we were half way back that I even realized that they were still talking about my attacker. It seemed that, since leaving the house, the pair of them had gone through every old gentleman in the town in their attempt to narrow down who it could be.

  “Cecil?”

  “Don’t be daft,” replied Ida May. “He’s Jasper’s father, and besides Clara’s met him twice today alone…”

  “Oh yeh,” Hazel thought a little harder. “How about Milton? Maybe he was having a skulk around to find out what he’s inheriting. ”

  Ida May gave a snort of laughter. “That’s even more stupid. Clara knows Milton well and besides, unless you hadn’t noticed, the man can’t walk…”

  “Oh,” Hazel replied. “Are you sure?”

  Ida May raised an eyebrow. “Fairly sure…” We walked a little further before she spoke again. “Besides, he isn’t inheriting anything. Don as good as told us.”

  “Don knows that. We know that. But does Milton know that?”

  “I think that’s kind of irrelevant considering he’s chair bound until he pops his last,” Ida May laughed, closing her eyes and breathing in the late afternoon air. “Well, that’s pretty much every old guy in town. I guess we’re going to have to look further afield.”

  “One things for sure,” Hazel replied. “Whoever attacked Clara hasn’t got anything to do with our murder victim…”

  “I’m not so sure,” Ida May replied, waggling a toying finger. “The same day our body turns up, someone breaks into Aunt Ruby’s house. The two have to be connected…”

  “Well, I don’t think you’re right…”

  “Then don’t think then. That should cure that problem…”

  “Ida May!”

  I stopped and turned sharply towards them. “Will you two pack it in? You’re giving me a migraine.”

  They both looked shocked for a moment – Hazel almost looked like she was going to cry. I apologized to them both and we silently continued our way along the street. When we came to my house, I gave them both a hug and apologized again. They said they understood:

  “Having a crack to the head can do funny things to a gal,” Ida May explained sympathetically.

  We chatted for a few more minutes and arranged to meet up the following day at the diner on the end of the street the next afternoon.

  “I’ll have a little surprise for you,” Hazel muttered excitedly.

  “So will I…” put in Ida May.

  I didn’t wait around to hear them squabble about whose surprise was going to be better. I needed to take myself off to bed and sleep off the pounding headache that seemed to be ripping through my skull.

  As I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take hold of me, a thought crept into my mind – a thought that I think must have been lingering there for some time because I’d felt very uneasy ever since I’d regained consciousness after my attack.

  At no point - from the moment I’d come to – did Don seem at all surprised that someone had broken into Ruby’s house…

  As soon as the idea came to mind, sleep finally took hold and I slept right through the night.

  Chapter Te n– Very Many Social Engagements

  It turned out that Hazel had more than a little surprise for me. In fact, it was rather unexpected to say the least. After a whole morning – and most of an afternoon – nursing my throbbing head, I gratefully headed down the street to the diner, expecting to find Hazel and Ida May already waiting to dive in for their early bird specials.

  There were two of them sat at the table when I arrived – but Hazel’s companion was not Ida May.

  As I slowly moved around the table, I found myself staring eye to eye with none other than Vera Landsborough herself – elegant in her appearance, but obviously over dressing in an attempt to impress whichever younger man happened to be closest at the time. She stared up at me, her eyes squinting as they slowly traced up and down my body, scrutinizing my choice of purple blazer and trousers. When she was quite done, her lip seemed to curl upwards and she turned her shoulder towards me as though daring me to try taking the seat next to her.

  I exchanged a quick look with Hazel.

  “I thought that, considering Ruby was her friend, she might enjoy the company…”

  Vera didn’t look like she’d much enjoy anyone’s company, particularly Hazel’s. She let loose a grim, overbearing type of smile and muttered: “Your friend was kind enough to invite me out for dinner. It really wasn’t necessary…”

  Something told me that Hazel had been more than a little pushy in extending this invitation. I settled down into the seat next to Hazel, browsing through the menu as I tried eagerly to avoid engaging Vera in any type of extensive conversation. Hazel, on the other hand, seemed completely oblivious to my discomfort and seemed to be probing Vera, rather inexpertly, for information about her son.

  “And he’s been in antiques for how long?”

  “Oh, many years, dear,” Vera replied. “It’s far too many to count. He’s much like his father – very passionate about things that others might find a little, well, unimportant. There’s a certain class to his nature…” A small scowl crossed her face. “Shame he doesn’t have his father’s business sense. But you can’t have everything.”

  Hazel nodded feverishly. “It’s an interesting logo he has for his business. He seems to think it’s unique.”

  “Oh, it is unique, dear. People all over the state can recognize it – people with class I mean. His shop is a legend in itself…”

  After a while, I began to run out of excuses to stare at the menu. I’d already known what I was going to order long before I ever arrived, but the façade of pretending that I didn’t was almost as wearisome as listening to Hazel prattle on about Vera’s beloved son. With a sharp movement, I swung closed the menu and leaned right across the table, enjoying myself slightly as Vera retreated back a little as though I were some dangerous, filthy animal that needed to be squashed quickly.

  “I saw you at your window yesterday afternoon.”

  Something crossed over Vera’s face. “Really? I can’t say I remember…”

  “You stared straight out at me.”

  Vera thought for a
moment before gracefully shrugging her shoulders.

  “Must have been in a dream, dear. It happens from time to time when you have such heavy thoughts weighing on your mind…”

  “I was attacked shortly after entering Ruby’s house.”

  For someone as condescending and uncaring as Vera, she still managed to muster some sort of look of surprise and shock. She raised a hand to her mouth and left it there for a moment too long before lowering it down again.

  “You are joking, of course…”

  “No, Vera,” Hazel confirmed. “She was attacked. It was awful…”

  Vera’s eyes narrowed on me. “Well, it can’t have been all that bad. You don’t appear any worse for wear.”

  “I was lucky,” I fired back, letting my words sink in for a moment before asking: “Did you see a man leaving Ruby’s house shortly after I entered? He would have entered through the front door.”

  “No,” Vera replied instantly. “No, I can’t say I did. What did he look like?”

  “I can’t really remember.”

  She smiled in such a way that I might have thought it sadistic if I didn’t know better. “Then I’m afraid there’s little I can do to help you.”

  I opened my mouth to reply.

  “Am I late girls?”

  Ida May’s voice drifted soothingly over my shoulder. In that instant, Vera’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly as she watched Ida May move briskly towards our table and squeeze herself roughly into the seat next to her.

  “Thanks, doll,” Ida May muttered, before turning to Hazel and I and gently prodding at her hair. “What do you think, girls?”

  “Ida May. What have you done this time?”

  I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to think. It was still the same old Ida May sat opposite me, but now her purple hair had vanished and was replaced by a color that I could only really describe as some sort of sickly green. She’d even made an attempt to match her outfit to her hair, as she was wearing a light green top over dark green trousers and held in her hands a small clutch handbag that, whilst it was not green, was a dark enough shade of blue that it made the effect complete.

  Hazel gawked at her open mouthed. “Ida May. You look like a frog that’s climbed out of the swamp.”

  Evidently, Vera thought the same. She shuffled a little further along her seat as she tried to put as much distance between herself and the new arrival before finally having the courage to scoff and shake her head solemnly.

  “Times really are changing for the worse if respectable women like yourselves can go about like that.”

  Ida May seemed almost pleased with the comment. She smiled wickedly and gave me a slow, deliberate wink. “As far as I’m concerned honey, you only live once. If you want to live like a stuck up, old bat that is entirely your affair, but don’t expect me to live like one as well. You catch my drift?”

  “Let me guess,” I asked, enjoying the discomfort that Vera was feeling. “Lucy?”

  Ida May winked again. “That girl will go far. You know she got herself a new tat? Pretty little thing too. I can’t wait to see it finished…”

  “A tattoo?” Vera muttered. “How dreadful…”

  Ida May’s eyes swooped around to glare at her. “And what, may I ask, is so bad about that?”

  Vera’s lip curled and she shuffled her shoulders from side to side as though trying to shake her discomfort away. “Well, if my son did anything as ridiculous as getting a tattoo or dying his hair, he’d lose his inheritance. You mark my words.”

  Ida May shook her head in mock sorry. “Poor boy.” Her face quickly erupted into a smile. “So, girls. What are we eating?”

  It seemed that Hazel had made something of a tour for us to follow her on. After bidding our farewells to a rather shaken and irritated Vera, she led us back down to the Senior Center. She said little about what she was expecting us to do when we got there and, everything we asked what it was all about, she would simply tap her nose and whisper: “It’s all part of the game.”

  For Ida May, her friends’ coy adventure was nothing short of final proof that Hazel had absolutely lost it.

  “All this detective nonsense has sent her clear over the edge,” she muttered as we entered the Senior Center. “Looney Tunes. That’s our Hazel.”

  I wasn’t convinced. For some reason, and don’t ask me what it was, I got the distinct impression there was a point to Hazel’s mystery tour. It wasn’t like all the other times when Hazel was simply lost and confused with what she was meant to be doing at any given time – this tour seemed to have a purpose and I, for one, was rather intrigued to see where it might ultimately lead.

  Hazel led us down a small passage way and stopped just outside the lounge. “Here is stop number two,” she announced, nodding inside to where Milton sat at a square table, shuffling cards.

  “Oh God, Hazel,” Ida May crooned. “Not more card tricks.”

  Hazel waggled her head playfully from side to side. “Remember, there are three crimes – well two crimes and one sort of crime – to solve here.”

  “They’ll be a fourth if you don’t stop being so mysterious,” Ida May shot back through gritted teeth.

  Hazel simply smiled. “Good things come to those who have the four of diamonds.”

  Without another word, she spun on her heels and marched us inside. The second stop, it turned out, was simply a game of cards. Milton stared at me with a look that I couldn’t quite place, but I imagined was some sort of suspicion as he dealt out the cards to each of us and started the game. Despite Ida May’s attempts to start up the conversation, he stayed incredibly quiet and ventured very little by way of opinion until Hazel suddenly, and rather abruptly, announced:

  “Did you know, Milton, that Ruby’s house was burgled?”

  The effect was instantaneous. Milton almost dropped the cards out of his hands, he was so shocked. His eyes quivered back and forth, staring between me and Hazel until finally – and in many ways rather reluctantly – he shook his head back and forth.

  “How awful,” he replied, weakly, watching as Hazel attempted to shuffle her hand and, instead, ended up flinging most of the cards on the floor around her chair. “I suppose an empty house like that is always going to be a target for thieves. I hope they didn’t take much…”

  His eyes lingered on me as he finished speaking. I almost shrugged in response, but Hazel – having managed to scoop up her cards with unbelievable dexterity – shook her head violently and let out a little laugh. “Oh, don’t be silly,” she replied, tapping Milton playfully on the arm. “I don’t mean recently. I mean a long time ago…”

  “About twenty years ago,” confirmed Ida May, her eyes narrowing on Hazel.

  “Oh.” Milton seemed even more shocked by this news than of the other. “I thought you meant…” His eyes landed on me once again. “Never mind what I thought…” He looked down at his hand and quickly selected a card to place down on the table. “I vaguely remember something about that, actually. Not much was taken if I remember right…”

  “No, not much at all,” I replied, watching Milton carefully as he busied himself with his cards. “Just a pepper shaker.”

  He didn’t react to that at all. It was a shame really. For a moment, I thought Hazel was going to reveal that Milton had somehow been involved in the robbery all those years ago before he lost the use of his legs. It was only a moment though, before this thought had a chance to fester in my mind, Hazel suddenly flung her cards down on the table and shouted at the top of her voice:

  “Go Fish.”

  We were all silent for a moment and, true to form, Ida May was the first to point out her mistake.

  “Hazel, we’re playing Hearts…”

  Hazel’s tour went on to the bingo hall without any explanation of what we were supposed to have discovered from Milton, or of what we were hoping to find at our latest destination. Not that we minded. Bingo was something that Ida May and I were quite partial to ourselves and, as we
played game after game, we began to forget that this had all been part of some wild scheme on Hazel’s part to solve the crime.

  When I finally did remind myself of this, I even began to wonder whether this was really part of our investigation at all. Certainly there was some point in talking to Vera and I suppose Milton might have been useful if he’d any extra insight into the robbery at Aunt Ruby’s – but both had turned out to be absolute duds with no indication of what information we were supposed to have gleamed from them.

  After a few more games, I finally asked Hazel what the point of this all was.

  “Hmmm?” she replied, staring intently down at her sheet.

  “Why are we here?” I asked again. “What’s this all about?”

  “Oh,” she replied, suddenly remembering a thought and spinning in her chair towards me. “Patrick Sheridan was a bingo caller here before he disappeared…”

  “How the blazes do you know that?”

  Hazel turned coyly round to Ida May. “The four of Diamonds.” Before Ida May could react she swung back towards me. “Ruby used to play here a lot and apparently the two became quite close friends…”

  “So,” Ida May muttered. “You think Milton was jealous of him? That he murdered Patrick so he could have a crack at Ruby?”

  To describe the look on Hazel’s face as confusion would be a gross understatement of her feelings on the matter. She swung her chair back towards Ida May and stared at her for a good long while.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “That’s why we visited Milton, right? You think he killed Patrick to make way for him to be with Ruby. And you wanted us to talk to Vera because you believe she knew about Vera and Patrick and you wanted us to get it out of her…”

  Hazel shook her head. “I really do worry about your state of mind sometimes…”

  “My state of mind? You’re the one who has us on this wild goose chase…”