by JL Merrow
“She never even used it,” I said, staring at the key in my hand. “Could have given it to you days ago.” Dunno why, but I’d never thought about Phil giving me a key to his place. In a lot of ways, he was very private. Hah. It was in his job title and everything. The key was still warm from where it’d been in his pocket. The heat seemed to spread right through me.
Was I being daft, reading too much into it? Sometimes a key is just a key.
Then again, sometimes it isn’t.
“Would have saved your front door a world of pain,” Phil went on, apparently not noticing we were having a moment here. “Not to mention my shoulder.”
Shit, I hadn’t even thought about that. “Oi, are you all right?” I twisted around to look at him in concern. I’d have pulled at the neck of his sweater to try to get a peek at his shoulder, too, but the thought of a hundred cashmere goats in tears at the mistreatment of their wool restrained me.
“I’ll live.” Phil’s smile faded. “Christ, when I finally got in and saw you dripping wet with that stuff…” He closed his eyes briefly.
“I’ll get the key,” I said, scrambling into the kitchen where the spare key lived, when it wasn’t stuffed uselessly into the bottom of my sister’s handbag. I pulled it out of the drawer, then stood there for a moment, staring at it. Was it just a key? Just a practical solution to life’s little problems, like being locked in the house with a murderess?
I was still staring at it when strong arms slipped around my waist from behind. “Look, if you don’t want me to have it, that’s fine.”
“What?” I twisted in his arms until I could see his face. “That’s not—it’s just, I dunno.”
“That was eloquent. Ever considered taking up writing?”
“Piss off.”
He smiled and ruffled my hair. I hate that. “You know I love you, don’t you?” he said, like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
I swear my heart stopped. I did? I mean, he did? I started to say something—buggered if I know what, but it didn’t matter anyway because my throat caught.
Phil just carried on smiling. And then he kissed me.
We popped along to Waterstones next day, Cherry and me, after she’d driven back over from Pluck’s End. I half expected her to bring Greg along from hers, but apparently he’d dropped her off home, then spent the night at the Old Deanery. Which seemed a bit weird to me, but hey, it was their relationship, not mine. I wasn’t surprised she’d become a bit more careful about sleeping with blokes after the teenage pregnancy scare, but come off it, that was decades ago. Then again, it being Sunday, he was presumably up in a pulpit somewhere, preaching to the faithful, so maybe he hadn’t wanted to chance a bit of fornication the night before.
No one had told the bookstore staff about Hannah yet, so the books were still on sale, although the manager kept looking nervously at the door, probably wondering when his author was going to turn up for her book launch. I picked up a copy of the book. Like a blood-soaked newspaper, it was black and white and red all over, the title in hard-hitting capitals.
It was from a publisher even I recognised the name of, so I guessed it was one of the “major” ones she’d been talking about at Raz’s do. No wonder she’d sounded smug back then. I wondered if she’d had the five-figure advance too. With a bit of luck, they’d make her pay it back.
It went against the grain a bit, handing over money for something that’d nearly got Cherry—and me—killed, but I had to admit I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.
Cherry was flicking through the book before I’d even got my change. “Yes. I recognise this. It’s changed very little since I first saw it. David was a fantastic writer, poor man. Have you got a pen?”
I patted my pockets. “Sorry, no. What did you—”
Cherry was already striding back up to the sales counter. “Can I borrow that, please?” She grabbed hold of a marker pen without waiting for an answer—and with vicious strokes, scribbled out Hayden Mead’s name on the cover of the book we’d just bought. “There. That’s better.” She handed the pen back to the bemused sales assistant. “Oh, and she won’t be turning up this morning. She’s been arrested for murder and attempted murder. Come on Tom, let’s go get a coffee.”
I let her grab my arm and march me out of there and over the road to the Merchant Café.
“I spoke to Mr. Morangie again, by the way,” she said over a couple of skinny lattes. “He’s willing to let you have another look in his house.”
“Oh. Right. Him.” I’d almost forgotten about Auntie Lol’s legacy. Again. I was frankly amazed Cherry had managed to find the time and energy to deal with it what with everything else going on, but maybe she’d wanted the distraction.
“You can go over there on Monday. Do you want me to come with you? In case there’s any more…difficulty?”
“Nah, don’t be daft. You’ve had enough of all this confrontational stuff lately.” Not to mention, I’d feel a right wuss turning up chaperoned by my big sister. “Why don’t you spend some time with Greg? Argue about the flowers for the wedding, that sort of stuff?”
“Actually, I really need to get back to work. If you’re sure, that is?”
“I’ll be fine. Trust me,” I added with a wink.
She didn’t look reassured.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“We’re taking my car.” I folded my arms, determined to assert my manly independence no matter what argument Phil might come up with.
Phil just shrugged. “Fine.”
“You sure?” I blurted out and could have kicked myself.
Phil was giving me a funny look. “Yeah, why not? Unless you reckon we’re going to need boot space for whatever your auntie’s left you. In fact, tell you what, why don’t we take the van?”
“You’re a bit optimistic, aren’t you? It’s probably just an envelope with a tenner in. If that. Probably an out-of-date book token. Or a packet of those choccy biccies she always used to keep in the house.”
“Whatever. It’s your call.”
We took the van.
“Want me to come in?” Phil asked as I pulled up outside Morangie Mansion.
“Nah, best not. Don’t want to give the old bloke anything else to complain about.”
I was about to open the door, but he put his hand on my arm. “You sure? Bad things tend to happen when I let you out of my sight.”
I smiled—and then pulled him in for a kiss for good measure. “I’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday? Go on, then. And try not to take all day. Some of us have got livings to earn, and my last client never even paid me, the bastard.”
“Oi, payment to be in sexual favours, remember? And there were plenty of those flying around last night as I recall.”
Phil squeezed my leg. “That was just the retainer. You still owe me for hours worked and expenses. Now piss off, before I start demanding an instalment.”
“Promises, promises.” I winked at him and got out of the car.
I knocked on Mr. M’s door and waited. I was starting to get a bit, well, nervous. Excited, I suppose. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for here. If she’d left me something big, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it. I mean, it wasn’t like we were related. She didn’t owe me anything—the other way around, more like. But if it was only something little, it’d be a hell of an anticlimax after all this fuss.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and I took a deep breath. When the door opened, the wrinkly face that looked out at me wasn’t the one I was expecting. “Mr. Paretski?” this one said. “I’m Mr. Wood, Mr. Morangie’s lawyer.”
Seemed he’d been let out of detention. Clearly, he wasn’t all that much of a danger to society in general. I just hoped that also held true for yours truly in particular. And weren’t we all formal this morning? I wasn’t sure whether to shake his hand or drop him a curtsey. Seeing as I’d probably have fallen on my face on the doormat if I’d tried anything that daft
, I shook his hand. It was like grasping a paper bag full of twigs. I was paranoid I’d snap one of them, and let go probably a bit sooner than was polite.
“Mr. Morangie wishes to apologise for his conduct to you the last time you were here,” he continued.
Personally, I thought if he was that keen to apologise to me, he’d have come out and done it, not left it to the lawyer. Still, gift horses, mouths, don’t peek. “Yeah, no problem. I’m just sorry I hit on a sensitive subject.”
Mr. Wood nodded. Woodenly. “Mr. Morangie would like me to reiterate that he is quite prepared to make you an offer pertaining—”
“Nope.” I cut him off before he could get into full-on legalese. “This isn’t about money, all right? It’s about what Auntie Lol wanted.”
He recoiled. “You’re referring to the second Mrs. Morangie, I take it?”
“Yeah, about that. What happened to the first Mrs. Morangie?”
“She died.” Could his expression get any more disapproving?
“How?”
Apparently it could. “I really don’t believe that’s any of your concern. Now, if you wouldn’t mind…?”
Okay, so that wasn’t suspicious at all, was it?
Mr. Wood (or “Morning” as I liked to think of him) led me to the cosy little sitting room I’d seen on my last visit. And then stood there, watching me.
“Any chance you could leave me to get on with it?” I asked without a lot of hope.
“I don’t think that would be appropriate, Mr. Paretski. You may start in here.”
“Right. Fine. Just need a mo to think about it.”
As I stood there, psychically limbering up—all right, just gathering the nerve to get on with it and finally find out what all the fuss was about—I wished I’d asked Dave to check up on the first Mrs. M. But he’d been a bit busy lately, what with arresting and charging the St Leonard’s Poisoner, as the papers had dubbed her.
I hoped I wasn’t about to meet Raz’s mum. Still, if I was in for an unpleasant discovery, it wasn’t going to get any better for pratting around for half an hour first. I took a deep breath and listened.
I found the trail almost immediately. Oh, there was some background noise, always is—but the main thread was loud and bright. There was a sense of…mischief. Of fun. I suddenly found myself missing Auntie Lol like mad—which was daft, because I hadn’t seen her in years before she died. I suppose it just made me remember what she’d been like when I was a kid. Although weirdly, there was something masculine about it too.
Of course, we’d speculated that Auntie Lol might have had some help hiding stuff here. I wondered who the bloke was—Raz? It’d make sense; he was still on the spot, even if he wasn’t exactly welcome at the old homestead.
I was definitely going to give him a call after we were done here. I had a feeling we had a lot to talk about.
“Are you planning to start searching sometime soon?” Wood’s voice jolted me right out of my train of thought.
I turned on him. “Do you mind?”
There was actually a flicker of discomfort on that crepe-paper face. “Ah. My apologies. Please proceed.”
I felt a bit guilty myself, so I just nodded and mumbled, “Thank you.”
It took me a mo to catch the thread again, but this time, when I had it, I followed it. Out of the living room, across the hall and into the kitchen. Huh. If only I’d known—I’d been right in the room with it last time I’d been here.
Once I’d got in there, I stood for a moment in the middle of the room, spinning around slowly. Listening.
There. I looked up.
Someone had clearly been having a laugh, because the trail was leading to the top of the kitchen units. They were fake olde-worlde, pine-fronted ones that finished about six inches under the ceiling and went nicely with the chickens on the tiles, in a feminine, twee sort of way. A tall bloke—like, say, Phil—could probably reach up and over the lip that jutted up at the edge. Me, not so much. I cast my eye around for something to stand on and caught old Wood watching me. “Need a leg up,” I explained, grabbing a chair from around the kitchen table.
He nodded and carried on playing the hawk to my wood pigeon as I climbed up on top of the chair and felt carefully over the top of the cupboard. The first thing I noticed was that Mr. M was definitely of the “out of sight, out of mind” persuasion when it came to dusting. I hoped I wasn’t going to run into a wasp’s graveyard up here. Those bastards can still sting you even when they’re dead.
The second thing I noticed was the corner of something that shifted when I touched it—but not before I got the telltale tingles all up my arm confirming this was what I was after. I fumbled for the corner, grabbed it and brought the thing down in a cloud of dust.
It was an envelope, one of those ones a bit bigger than a normal letter, but not big enough to hold an A4 sheet without folding it. I could feel there was stuff inside, and it had neatly typed on it, “Codicil to the Last Will and Testament of Laura Morangie, née Fernside.” But it was what was handwritten underneath that made me stare. It said, “Keep Looking.”
Yep, definitely someone having a laugh here.
I stared at it for a moment longer, then waved it at Wood too fast for him to see it properly. “Just a clue,” I said breezily, then rolled it up and shoved it in my back pocket. “It says to keep looking.”
He raised an eyebrow, causing ripples in the forehead wrinkles. “Impressive. Although, of course, you could have known already that would be the place to look.”
I just shrugged. No skin off my nose if he didn’t believe in my “thing”, as Cherry put it.
“And where will you look next?” he persisted.
“Gotta think about that one. If you don’t mind?”
“Oh, of course.” He folded his hands together and pretended to look out of the window. There was even the faintest sound of whistling.
I was starting to like old Morning.
The vibes now were fainter. Older. Whatever I was supposed to keep looking for—assuming that was what I was picking up, of course—had been hidden here a long time ago. Years. Lots of them. And unlike the codicil, there hadn’t been a lot of fun involved. Regret. Anxiety. And…maybe just a whiff of annoyance?
At least it probably wasn’t a body, then. Not that I’m an expert on the subject, but when you imagine how a murderer must be feeling when they stash away a corpse, the phrase “a bit miffed” doesn’t exactly spring to mind. Maybe it should, I dunno. I suppose it depends on whether you believe we’re all potential murderers, given enough provocation, or whether you’re of the opinion anyone who could kill another person has got something seriously wrong with their head.
You can probably tell which view I subscribe to. I was pretty sure I was on the right track, though. There were other trails, yeah, there always are—but this one was much brighter, even though it was older. All the rest, I was betting, were just the usual sort of hidden stuff: that letter from Auntie Mary you knew you should have answered five years ago and which now makes you feel guilty every time you look at it; the paperwork for a nice wodge of income that completely slipped your mind when you filled in that year’s tax return (not that I’d have any personal experience of this one. Seriously. I pay my dues); the trashy books and magazines you wouldn’t be seen dead reading by anyone you knew. That sort of thing. Petty stuff.
Anyway, this one was leading me upwards. I jogged up the stairs, hearing old Wood’s slower footsteps behind me, and stopped.
It still wanted me to go upwards. I stared up at the hatch in the ceiling leading to the attic. “Got a ladder somewhere?”
For the first time, I missed Mr. M being around, but we eventually tracked one down in the garage, which gave me a chance to check that place out too. Clean as a whistle; no dirty secrets hidden among the dirty rags and oil cans.
“Mr. Morangie looked up there, you know,” Wood chided me as I set up the ladder under the attic hatch and checked it was firm. “He told me the
re’s nothing there but old clothes, furniture and letters.”
Well, that could be promising. Maybe Auntie Lol had left me an antique clock. Or some vintage Prada. I smothered a grin at the thought of Auntie Lol in Prada. Not really her thing—she was more into long, flouncy skirts and market-stall finds. “A second pair of eyes can’t hurt,” I told him and climbed up the ladder. I’d found a torch in the garage too and flicked it on. The first thing I saw was a lightbulb swinging from the rafters, and a bit of hunting about found me the switch.
The attic was…sad. I mean, not in and of itself, obviously, but when you knew about the bitter old bloke who owned it who couldn’t even stand to have anyone mention his only kid to him: yeah, sad. There was a sturdy-looking wooden cot, in pieces, neatly stacked, and storage bags and boxes labelled “blankets”, “newborn baby clothes” and “6-12m”. Saddest of all: “baby toys”. Maybe they’d thought they’d have another, Mr. M and the first missus, and kept everything in readiness.
I wondered what had happened first: her popping her clogs, or them giving up hope. Maybe Mr. M had thought Auntie Lol was his second chance. It hadn’t happened; was that why the marriage didn’t work out? Funny things, marriages. You find that one person you want to spend the rest of your life with, just the two of you, then next thing you know, you’re not going to be happy until someone else comes along to—
“Have you found anything yet?” Old Morning’s reedy voice quavered up through the attic door, reminding me I had a job to do and wasn’t just here to get all philosophical.
“Not yet,” I yelled back and got my arse in gear.
I found it under some bags of clothes. Women’s clothes. I couldn’t tell, from just a brief glance, if they’d belonged to Auntie Lol or to the first Mrs. M, and it seemed a bit disrespectful to get them out and have a good look. Not that it mattered anyway. I’d got what Auntie Lol had wanted me to find.
