Friends and Frauds (An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy Book 6)

by Diana Xarissa

  “You rang the police? Why didn’t you just go inside? Maybe you could have worked out what the man is after if you’d gone inside.”

  “Someone was already in there, dead,” Fenella snapped.

  “Dead? My goodness, you do seem to have a talent for finding dead men, don’t you?”

  “That isn’t even funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  Fenella dropped into the nearest chair and buried her head in her hands. She wasn’t actually sure why she was crying; she simply felt completely overwhelmed. After a short while, she lifted her head and then took a tissue from the box at her elbow. She didn’t remember leaving the box there, but there was no way Mona could have moved it, was there?

  “Who is dead, then?” Mona asked.

  “I don’t know. I know who isn’t dead, but that isn’t the same thing.”

  “Who isn’t dead, then?”

  “I saw Neil, Adrian, Jared, and Eric as I was leaving after talking to the police inspector. That suggests that it truly is Lance who is dead. Inspector Hammersmith said something about him not being who he claimed to be, though. I’m not sure what he meant.”

  “And whoever is dead, he was murdered?”

  “Yes, or at least I think so. The police certainly seem to be treating it as a murder investigation.”

  “You should know,” Mona muttered.

  “It isn’t my fault,” Fenella snapped.

  “No, of course not,” Mona said soothingly. “But I’ve been busy all day and I’ve missed everything. How was your driving test?”

  “My driving test? Oh, it was fine,” Fenella replied, wishing she could recapture the happiness she’d felt earlier in the day.

  “Congratulations. Now you must take my car for a ride. Maybe not tonight, though.”

  “No, not tonight. I split a bottle of wine with Shelly over dinner. Although that feels as if it was many hours ago, I’m probably still over the limit for driving.”

  “I never drank a drop when I was driving,” Mona told her. “Although I doubt most people who knew me would believe that if you told them. I was very good at pretending to drink heavily, even when I was sipping sparkling water.”

  “That sounds like a useful skill.”

  “It was just one of my many hidden talents,” Mona laughed. “What happened after your driving test, then?”

  Fenella told her aunt about the fun she and Shelly had had, and then what had happened when they’d arrived at apartment 312.

  “What a horrible way to end the day. At least when you used to find bodies you got to see Daniel,” Mona sighed.

  “He was there for my conversation with Inspector Hammersmith, well, on speakerphone. He didn’t say a word, though.”

  “I would imagine he’s in an awkward position. I’m sure he wants to come home and make sure that you’re okay, but he probably can’t.”

  “He was with another woman when he rang me earlier,” Fenella said, just barely not sobbing.

  “Tell me,” Mona demanded.

  Fenella repeated the conversation she’d had with Daniel earlier in the day. She’d omitted it from her statement to Inspector Hammersmith.

  “It was kind of him to ring to check on you,” Mona said thoughtfully when she’d finished. “The other woman is worrying, though.”

  “What should I do?” Fenella asked, feeling as if she was just about desperate enough to take advice from a dead woman.

  “I’m going to have to think about that one,” Mona replied. “I never had any problem with men chasing other women when they were involved with me. Maxwell never strayed. But you must go and check on Shelly. As I said, I could hear her crying earlier.”

  Fenella nodded and then gasped. “I never gave Katie any dinner.” She filled Katie’s bowls as quickly as she could. Katie had been sitting on one of the living room chairs when Fenella had first come home and she hadn’t moved while Fenella had been talking to Mona. Now Fenella walked over to her and rubbed her head.

  “I’m very sorry that your dinner is late,” she said. “My evening didn’t go exactly as I’d planned.”

  “Meeerrowww,” Katie said crossly. She jumped down and stalked off into the kitchen to eat her meal.

  “I’ll be next door if you need me,” Fenella called to Katie and Mona, feeling foolish as she did so. Neither of them could simply pop over to get her if they did need something. She locked her door behind herself and then crossed to Shelly’s apartment. Maybe I should have called her first, she thought as she knocked on the door.

  “Are we allowed to talk now?” Shelly asked as she let Fenella into her apartment.

  “Inspector Hammersmith didn’t say that we weren’t,” Fenella replied. “Anyway, we aren’t guilty of anything, he has to know that.”

  “He didn’t look as if he believed anything I told him,” Shelly said with tears in her eyes. “I started feeling guilty for things I didn’t even do, just because of the way he was frowning at me whenever I spoke.”

  “He’s just like that,” Fenella replied with more confidence than she actually felt. “You shouldn’t let him bother you.”

  “But what if he thinks that I killed Lance?”

  “Why would he think that? What possible motive could you have for killing Lance?”

  “He upset me because he brought back memories of John.”

  Fenella nearly laughed out loud. “I’m sure there are lots of things in your life that bring back memories of John. You even have his picture on your wall. If you wanted to avoid remembering John, you’d have a lot of work to do before you got around to killing a random stranger who may or may not have known him.”

  “Maybe Lance knew some secret about John that I wanted to keep hidden.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t think so, but maybe he hadn’t told me yet.”

  “If he hadn’t told you yet, you didn’t have any motive for killing the man.”

  “But maybe Lance really did tell me something horrible about John and now I’m just pretending he didn’t.”

  Fenella took Shelly’s hands and stared into her eyes. “I know this is all very difficult for you, but you aren’t helping matters any by coming up with a bunch of silly reasons for killing the man. You need to stop letting your imagination run away with you.”

  “I keep telling myself that, but it’s hard. Lance didn’t know anyone else on the island and he seemed almost obsessed with meeting me.”

  “But he hadn’t met you, at least not really.”

  “Unless I did it behind your back,” Shelly suggested.

  “When? We were together all afternoon and evening.”

  “But I was free all morning. Maybe I went down and paid Mr. Thomas a little visit while you were out taking your driving test. It could have happened.”

  “If it did, I’m impressed that you still found time to get the balloons,” Fenella replied.

  Shelly chuckled and then shook her head. “I know I’m losing my mind, but I can’t help but feel as if I’m the inspector’s chief suspect.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. You didn’t even know the man and you hadn’t spoken to him enough to learn what he really wanted with you. If I were Inspector Hammersmith, I’d be investigating Lance’s friends. Surely they’re the only ones with any possible motive.”

  “His friends? Why didn’t I think of that? Of course one of them must have killed him. Maybe one of them even came to the island just to get rid of Lance.”

  “I suppose that’s possible. Anyway, what isn’t possible is that you had anything to do with it, so you can stop worrying about that.”

  “I’d feel a lot better if Daniel were the one investigating,” Shelly said softly.

  “Yes, well, I’m sure Inspector Hammersmith is going to do a good job,” Fenella replied. “And he had Daniel on speakerphone when we talked, so he’s including Daniel in the investigation, as well.”

  “That makes me feel a little bit better. I thought Inspector Hammers
mith asked me some odd questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “He said something about Lance calling himself Lance Thomas. Do you think it’s possible that Lance wasn’t who he claimed to be?”

  “At this point, I think anything is possible. He’d certainly had some work done on his face. He claimed it was because of a car accident, but he might have been lying.”

  “What did you tell me about pictures?” Shelly asked.

  Fenella frowned. “He said that after his accident he’d destroyed all of his old photographs. He was hoping you might have some photos from John’s childhood that he might have been in.”

  “I have a few photos, but not many. People didn’t take as many pictures in those days as they do now.”

  “Cameras were costly and so was film,” Fenella recalled. “And you never knew until you got the pictures back whether you’d actually taken any good photos or not. I can remember getting entire rolls of film back from my college days and having maybe two or three good photos out of a twenty-four pack of film.”

  “Yes, I remember that, too. We’re rather spoiled now with cameras in our phones and digital photos that we can email or message to one another. I remembering ordering prints and then taking the negatives to the store and getting extras printed of the really good shots. Truly, though, good shots were few and far between.”

  “We had a family vacation one year and my father got a new camera for it,” Fenella remembered. “When we got the pictures back, he’d managed to cut off everyone’s heads in every single picture. The new camera didn’t line up like his old one had, and he hadn’t realized it. My mother was furious, as they’d saved up for years for the trip and the camera.”

  “Do you still have the photos?”

  “Of course we do. They even went into an album. They were the best we could get, so we kept them.”

  Shelly laughed. “Kids today will never appreciate albums full of bad photos.”

  “Maybe you should dig out John’s old photos and see if you can find any with Lance Thomas in them,” Fenella suggested.

  “I probably should, but I doubt I’d recognize him, not after all the work he’d had done.”

  “Maybe John or his mother wrote on the back of the pictures?”

  “That would be handy, wouldn’t it? I’m not up to it tonight, though. I really just want to get some sleep tonight.”

  “I should get out of the way, then,” Fenella said quickly.

  “Don’t rush away yet. Come in the kitchen and have a cup of hot chocolate with me. Warm milk helps me sleep and the chocolate can’t do any harm.”

  Fenella wondered about adding sugar and caffeine to a bedtime drink, but she didn’t argue. Shelly poured milk into a pan and set it on the stovetop. While she was pulling down mugs, Fenella gave Smokey some love.

  “She’s been very affectionate tonight,” Shelly remarked. “I think she can tell that I’m upset.”

  “Of course she can, and she’s worried about you, I’m sure.”

  “And so are you.”

  “And so am I.”

  “I know I didn’t have any reason to kill the man, but I wish I had an alibi for this morning.”

  “We don’t even know when the man was killed. He was probably alive and well when we were in Ramsey, sailing our way around the lake. Remember, I didn’t get the message from him about meeting at his apartment until after my driving test.”

  “Maybe it isn’t even Lance who’s dead, though,” Shelly said as she mixed cocoa powder into hot milk. “Maybe it was one of his friends, and maybe Lance killed him and left the body in his flat.”

  “Neil and the others were waiting to talk to the inspector when I finished speaking with him.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yep, all four of them. I was thinking the same thing until I saw them, actually.”

  Shelly sighed and then handed Fenella a mug of hot chocolate. “I wonder who will identify the body,” she said thoughtfully.

  “I suppose that will be Neil’s job, unless Lance has family on the island that he didn’t mention to us.”

  “You’d think if he had family here that he’d have visited once in a while over the years.”

  “There is that. And with the work he had done on his face, anyone he hadn’t seen in a while probably wouldn’t have recognized him, anyway.”

  “I wonder if the police have his fingerprints in the system anywhere.”

  “Why would they? Do you think he was involved in something criminal?”

  “I don’t know. I just know I didn’t like him or trust him. And from what you’ve told me about his friends, I don’t like them, either. That doesn’t automatically make any of them criminals, of course, but it does make me wonder.”

  “It would be good if the police did have his fingerprints on file. That would make identifying the body a lot easier.”

  “You should ask Daniel about that.”

  Fenella shook her head. “I’m not asking Daniel anything,” she said firmly.

  “He’s going to want to talk to you about the case.”

  “Maybe, or maybe he’ll wash his hands of me and the entire situation. It sounded like he was pretty busy in Milton Keynes.”

  “She might just have been a friend.”

  “She certainly sounded awfully friendly,” Fenella said bitterly.

  Shelly put her mug down and gave Fenella a hug. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you really care about Daniel.”

  “It’s fine. There’s always Neil.”

  Shelly laughed. “That’s the spirit. There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

  “And if you see me even so much as looking twice at Neil Hicks, you have my permission to smack some sense into me,” Fenella told her. “I wouldn’t go near that man, not if he were the last man on earth.”

  “What about the other one that was flirting with you?” Shelly asked.

  “Eric? I’m not interested, at least in part because he was far too persistent. Perhaps I should just stick with Donald.”

  Shelly laughed. “Talk about persistent. That man has been chasing after you since you arrived on the island.”

  “Yes, but he does it in a much nicer way than Neil or Eric did.”

  “I didn’t think you really liked Donald.”

  “I do like him. I like him a lot, actually,” Fenella admitted. “But I’ve been pushing him away because I like Daniel a lot, too. If Daniel has found someone else, though, maybe I should give Donald a proper chance.”

  “Maybe we both should get some sleep and worry about all of this tomorrow,” Shelly suggested, yawning.

  “I think you’re right. I’m far too tired to think straight. It was a very odd day, with far too much stress this morning and far too much wine tonight.”

  “Next time you pass your driving test, we’ll just get a glass each with dinner,” Shelly laughed.

  “That sounds like a smart plan,” Fenella agreed.

  Back in her own apartment, Fenella made sure that Katie had a full bowl of water and then gave her a few treats. “It’s been a very strange day,” she told the kitten.

  “Merrow?”

  “I passed my driving test. Do you want to go for a ride in Mona’s convertible?”

  “Mrreww.”

  “Okay, maybe not. And then Daniel called me to congratulate me, which was nice, but some other woman was there, which was not nice. And then Shelly and I found a dead body, although we didn’t know we’d found anything except for an open apartment door that should have been shut.”

  Katie looked at her for a minute and then strolled out of the kitchen.

  “Yes, I know it’s time for bed,” Fenella called after her. “I’m just feeling too wound up to sleep right now.”

  Katie didn’t reply, and when Fenella followed her a minute later she found the small animal curled up in the exact center of Fenella’s king-sized bed.

  “It’s okay for you. You don’t need to brush your teeth or wash your fac
e,” Fenella told the animal. Katie didn’t move.

  Still grumbling, Fenella washed her face and rubbed in some moisturizer before she brushed her teeth.

  “Your phone needs charging,” she reminded her reflection in the mirror. She’d noticed that the battery was low when she’d rung the police earlier. It seemed as if everyone she knew used his or her phone all the time to play games, shop, and goodness knows what else. Fenella tended to use hers to make phone calls and send text messages and not much else. That meant it could go several days between charges, which meant she usually forgot to charge it at all.

  Her phone always managed to find its way into the very bottom of whatever bag Fenella was carrying. She dug it out now and then took it into the bedroom. Her charger was plugged in next to the bed.

  “I wonder where Mona is tonight,” she said to Katie as she plugged the phone in.

  Katie opened one eye and then squeezed it shut again.

  “I thought she’d still be here, waiting to hear more about the murder,” Fenella said thoughtfully.

  Now that the idea was in her head, Fenella began to worry about Mona. She paced around her living room for several minutes before dropping onto a couch and staring out at the sea. “She’s probably off drinking and dancing with Max and not giving me a single thought,” Fenella said to herself. She watched as a few cars made their way up the promenade, and then sighed. “I should try to sleep, at least,” she sighed as she stood up.

  Fenella was in her bedroom doorway when her mobile began to ring. Katie jumped and then leaped off the bed, shouting angrily. Fenella picked up the phone and checked the display.

  “It’s Daniel,” she told Katie anxiously.

  9

  I probably should apologize for ringing so late,” he began when Fenella answered. “But I was pretty sure you’d still be up.”

  “I am,” Fenella replied.

  “Perhaps you could tell me what’s going on, then,” Daniel said tightly.

  Fenella wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or shout at the man. “Surely you’re in a better position to know the answer to that than I am,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.