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

by Diana Xarissa

  Fenella just nodded and then sipped her drink. After an awkward pause, Neil continued with the introductions. “Adrian Graves is the man with the unsuitable moustache.”

  “I think it suits me perfectly,” the man replied easily. “It’s nice to meet you,” he told Shelly. “And it’s nice to see you again,” he nodded at Fenella.

  “Next along is Jared,” Neil continued.

  “Lance told us a lot about you,” Jared said, staring at Shelly.

  She flushed. “I didn’t realized he’d even bothered to mention me to anyone,” she said.

  “He seemed quite taken with you, although I believe that was as much from the letters he’d read about you as from actually meeting you,” Neil told her.

  “I’m not convinced that my husband ever sent any letters to Lance,” Shelly said. “He certainly never mentioned the man to me.”

  Neil nodded. “There were always inconsistencies when you talked to Lance, but he wasn’t a bad person, really.”

  Fenella frowned. What sort of inconsistencies was the man talking about? Before she could ask, Neil spoke again.

  “And the man next to me is Eric Palmer,” he told Shelly.

  “Nice to meet you,” Eric said. “I probably know the least about you, because I rarely listened to Lance when he talked. If I’d known how lovely you were, I would have paid more attention.”

  Shelly flushed and then looked over at Fenella, who rolled her eyes.

  “But please, sit and join us,” Neil suggested. He got up and moved a few chairs around to add the two women to their circle. As soon as she and Shelly were seated, Fenella asked her first question.

  “You said something about Lance telling lies. What did you mean?”

  Neil shrugged. “The police have been back to me today. It seems Lance Thomas wasn’t who he appeared to be.”

  “Meaning what exactly?” Fenella demanded.

  “Meaning that Lance Thomas wasn’t his real name,” Neil replied, looking amused. “And that, as far as the police can tell, he’d never been the island before he moved here.”

  Shelly gasped. “Then everything he told me was a lie,” she exclaimed.

  “I don’t know what he told you,” Neil said, “but I’d be willing to wager that he was lying most of the time.”

  “Why did he come to visit me, then?” Shelly asked.

  Neil shrugged. “I only know what I heard from Lance, and clearly that isn’t information that can be relied on, but I suspect he thought you were a wealthy widow.”

  “And he was planning to try to separate her from some of her money?” Fenella guessed.

  “I’m afraid so,” Neil sighed. “He wasn’t at all the sort of man I thought he was. I feel as if I should apologize for him, although of course I was just as taken in by his stories as everyone else was.”

  “Men can never be trusted,” Laura said. “None of them.”

  “That isn’t fair,” Neil objected.

  Laura laughed. “You don’t think I trust you, do you, darling? I mean, you were flirting with Fenella right in front of me the other night. Goodness knows how you behave behind my back.”

  Neil patted the woman’s hand. “I behave exactly the same way,” he told her.

  Laura laughed again. “I’m sure you do. But you were talking about Lance. Don’t let me interrupt. Tell Shelly and Fenella all about the man. You knew him for a great many years, after all.”

  Neil frowned. “It seems I didn’t actually know him at all,” he protested. “It seems he wasn’t honest with anyone about anything.”

  “Who was he, really, then?” Fenella asked.

  Neil shrugged. “His real name was Robert Hanson, if that means anything to you?”

  Fenella looked over at Shelly and both women shook their heads.

  “He’s been using the name Lance Thomas for years, apparently, but only some of the time. He had a number of other aliases, as well. He traveled a great deal, and as I understand it, he had different identities in different parts of the UK.”

  “My goodness,” Shelly exclaimed.

  “Does that mean that he did have some family or friends out there?” Fenella asked.

  “I don’t believe the police have located any family members, but they might find a few friends, I suppose. They should certainly find other business associates,” Neil told her.

  “Do the police have any idea why he was killed?” was Fenella’s next question.

  Neil looked surprised. “It was just something random, a burglary gone wrong,” he said.

  “I know that’s what you said originally, but in light of the sort of person Lance truly was, I wondered if the police had changed their minds about that.”

  “Not as far as I know,” Neil told her. “Although now that you mention it, I suppose it’s just possible that someone who knew him came over here to kill him.”

  “They’d have done the job and been on the next ferry back home,” Jared suggested. “The police will never track them down.”

  “The police can check the flight and ferry records,” Fenella said. “They’ll have access to those.”

  “Whoever it was probably came over using a fake identity of his own,” Jared said. “I mean, I hope they get caught, but I wouldn’t expect them to be.”

  “How did he know about my husband, if he’d never been to the island?” Shelly asked.

  “From what the police have told me, Lance was something of a professional conman,” Neil said. He shook his head. “He’d always seemed to be a legitimate businessman to me, but I gather he’d earned a lot of the money he’d invested in my various businesses through illegal or immoral means. I can’t tell you how upset I am to have learned that.”

  He didn’t look upset, Fenella thought as Neil leaned back in his seat and took a drink from his glass. He seemed more smug than anything else. Perhaps he was feeling superior because Lance had been caught and he had not.

  “But that doesn’t explain how he found me,” Shelly said.

  “I believe he found the island first,” Eric said. “He mentioned moving here when I first met him, some time back. I believe it had been his plan for some time.”

  “Why?” Fenella wondered.

  “I believe he was genuinely looking to retire and appreciated the tax advantages of the island,” Eric told her.

  “But why pretend to be someone he wasn’t?” Shelly asked.

  “He was a conman. Once he’d decided to move to the island, I assume he started looking for someone to con,” Neil said.

  “I still don’t know how he found me,” Shelly replied.

  “If he was good at what he did, and I understand he was, he probably started getting the local paper as soon as he decided on the island as his future home. He probably spent his spare time reading the death notices and planning to scam new widows,” Neil said.

  Fenella frowned. The man seemed to know a lot about how to run the sort of scam he was suggesting that Lance had been planning. She wondered how much money Laura Munroe had and whether Neil was hoping to get his hands on any of it.

  “That sounds like the voice of experience,” Laura said, putting Fenella’s thoughts into words.

  Neil laughed. “I read a lot of detective fiction,” he said. “The bad guys are always trying to trick rich widows into falling in love with them. I don’t know if that’s what Lance was planning, but it’s one possibility, anyway.”

  “It sound far too plausible to me,” Shelly sighed. “I mean, I’m sorry that he’s dead, but he really wasn’t a very nice man.”

  “No, it seems as if he wasn’t nice at all,” Neil agreed, leaning over to pat Shelly’s knee.

  “And you never suspected anything, in all the years you’d known him?” Fenella asked.

  Neil shrugged and then looked around at the others. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. When your business is investing in other businesses, you work with a lot of different people all the time. When I first started out, I was happy to bring in just about an
yone, as long as they had the money to help me reach my goal. I worked with Donald Donaldson in my early days, remember?”

  “What does that mean?” Fenella challenged him.

  Neil laughed. “Nothing at all. It’s just that Donald isn’t always, well, the easiest or fairest person to do business with. He has his own ideas about how things should be done and he doesn’t appreciate it when anyone disagrees. We both made a lot of money on the two deals we did together, but I don’t think either of us wanted to work together again after they were both completed.”

  “Donald is only trustworthy when you can see exactly what he’s doing all of the time,” Laura added. “That’s why I worry about you, my dear. I’m sure when he’s with you he’s very attentive, but I suspect that behind your back he has at least one other woman, and maybe more.”

  “As I’m seeing other people, I can hardly complain if Donald does the same,” Fenella said in a steady voice.

  Laura stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “If you truly are seeing other people, well done. Donald won’t like it, but maybe it will be good for him.”

  “So you started working with Lance when, exactly?” Fenella asked.

  Neil frowned at her. “Now you sound like Inspector Hammersmith,” he complained. “It was years ago, and I could check through my files if you need an exact date, but the inspector was kind enough to let me off with an approximation.”

  Fenella blushed. “I wasn’t trying to be rude,” she said quickly. “I’m just trying to work out what the man was doing on the island and why he was bothering Shelly.”

  Neil nodded. “As I said, I’d known him for many years. We used to talk about the island a lot. Not long after we met he told me that he’d grown up here, probably when I mentioned that I was from the island.”

  “So he’d been lying about his childhood for years,” Fenella said thoughtfully.

  “Surely it would have been hard for him to pretend to be Manx when you actually were from the island,” Shelly suggested. “I mean, you could have caught him in the lie with just a few quick questions.”

  “And I probably would have if I’d ever thought to question him,” Neil replied. “As it was, I simply took him at his word. When we did talk about the island, it was nearly always to discuss how things were in the present, anyway. We discussed the current cost of housing and changes in the tax laws. It’s all very different from when he would have lived here as a child, anyway.”

  “I suppose so,” Shelly sighed.

  “And none of the rest of us had ever been here before, so we simply believed whatever he said,” Adrian said. “It wasn’t the sort of thing that seemed worth lying about, really.”

  “Did he steal someone else’s identity, then?” Shelly wondered. “I mean, was there a Lance Thomas who grew up on the island and then moved across?”

  Neil shrugged. “You’d have to ask the police about that. I’ve no idea how anyone establishes a fake identity. I’ve always been Neil Hicks and that’s worked okay for me, at least so far.”

  “Of course, you could pretend to be anyone you’d like once you get to London,” Laura suggested. “We’d never know any different.”

  A couple of the men laughed. “She’s right,” Adrian said. “Maybe you should try being someone more interesting in London for a change.”

  “Yeah, maybe Lance had a few extra identities and you could have one of those. Who inherits a dead conman’s fake identities?” Eric asked.

  “I should think you’d want to stay as far away from those identities as possible,” Shelly said. “Someone killed the man, after all.”

  “As I said, it must have just been something random,” Neil insisted. “Lance always carried around a lot of money. He probably pulled out his wallet in a pub or somewhere and someone noticed and followed him home.”

  “What a horrible thought,” Shelly said, shivering.

  “He’d just bought an expensive flat in an expensive building, as well. It’s always possible that someone saw him moving in and made a note of which flat was his. When they went back to help themselves to a few things, they didn’t realize Lance was home and then they had to kill him,” Neil suggested.

  “Did he buy the flat?” Shelly asked. “Or was he just renting it?”

  Neil looked at the others and then shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, he told me that he’d bought it, but we’ve already learned that he couldn’t be trusted. Why? Do you know something about it?”

  Shelly shook her head. “Not specifically, but I did know the previous owner of the flat. He’d always told me that he was going to leave the flat to his son and that his son would probably rent it out for a few years, as his children are in school in the south of the island.”

  “Maybe the son changed his mind and sold it instead,” Jared suggested.

  “Maybe, but my friend always said that his son was smart enough to know to keep the flat, even if he never wanted to live in it himself. My friend believed very strongly in owning real estate and he always said that he’d taught his son the same thing,” Shelly replied.

  “Maybe the son was just telling his old man what he knew the man wanted to hear,” Eric said. “Lance definitely told me that he’d purchased the flat. He even told me what he’d paid for it. It seemed a bargain, but I’m so used to London’s prices that perhaps that isn’t surprising.”

  “What did he pay for it?” Fenella asked.

  Eric told her a number than made Fenella and Shelly both frown. “If he got it for that price, he did get a huge bargain,” Shelly said. “Flats in our building usually go for twice that.”

  “Maybe your friend’s son didn’t know what the flat was actually worth,” Adrian said.

  Shelly looked as if she wanted to argue, but she took a deep breath and then a long drink from her glass before she said anything. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter, aside from the question of who will inherit,” she said.

  “And that’s an excellent question,” Neil said. “And one I’d very much like an answer to. I’m not that bothered about who will be getting Lance’s money, but we were just finishing up a few business deals. I’d like to get them finished with whoever is taking charge of the estate.”

  “Did he leave a will?” Fenella asked.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Eric said. “I wish we knew the answer to it.”

  Fenella frowned. “You said the police haven’t located any members of Mr. Hanson’s family?”

  “I can only tell you what I’ve heard through various sources,” Neil said. “My sources suggest that they have not.”

  “Do your sources know where he was actually from if he didn’t grow up on the island?” Fenella wondered.

  “Someone suggested Devon, but I don’t know if that’s been proven,” Neil replied.

  “I’d hate to see that flat sitting empty again while this is all dragging through the courts. If he didn’t leave a will, it could take ages,” Shelly sighed.

  “He may well have left one under the name Lance Thomas,” Neil told her. “That was something we talked about before he moved to the island. He told me that he was getting all of his legal matters seen to before he left the UK. I’m not sure that a will in that name would be legal, however.”

  “It probably won’t be,” Laura said with a yawn. “But who cares? It isn’t as if any of us were going to inherit anything, anyway. Let the solicitors fight it out amongst themselves. It’s the sort of thing they enjoy.”

  “Lance might have left something to me,” Neil snapped. “We were very close friends.”

  “So close that you didn’t even know his real name,” Laura laughed. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.”

  “Lance and I talked about wills one day,” Jared said. “He told me that he didn’t have anyone to leave anything to and mentioned leaving everything to be divided up amongst this friends. If he did that, under his real name, we all might be in line for something.”

  “No one woul
d ever really do that,” Laura scoffed.

  “Actually, Fenella and I both just inherited some money from a man who did just that, or something very close to it,” Shelly told her. “He left instructions for his estate to be divided among everyone who came to his memorial service.”

  “We need to have a memorial service for Lance,” Neil said quickly. “Just in case there’s some similar provision in his will.”

  “There’s no point in having a memorial service over here,” Laura said. “No one knew him here. You should have it back in London.”

  “Laura’s right,” Adrian agreed. “We should do something when we get back to London.”

  “He had some gorgeous furniture pieces,” Laura said. “I’d love to get my hands on some of them.”

  “I’m not sure where they all came from,” Eric told her. “His flat in London didn’t have any antiques in it at all.”

  Fenella frowned. “That seems odd,” she said. “The moving company that he used to move over here came from across. If he wanted different things, why not get rid of his old furniture and then purchase new once he arrived on the island?”

  “Maybe he had the antiques in storage or something,” Neil said. “Perhaps he inherited them all from a relative or something and never used them because they didn’t work in his London flat.”

  Fenella looked at Shelly, who shrugged. “I suppose that’s one possibility,” Fenella admitted.

  “We could talk all night about possibilities,” Neil laughed. “I just hope the police can wrap things up quickly. Right now we’re rather stuck.”

  “They’ve asked you not to leave the island?” Fenella asked.

  Neil shrugged. “Not in so many words, but that’s what they meant. They don’t want us to leave until they’ve finished their preliminary investigation. What with Lance turning out to be someone else altogether, things will probably take even longer.”

  “It does complicate things, I’m sure,” Shelly said.

  “We were planning to be here for a fortnight or more, anyway,” Eric said. “I won’t complain about staying until we get past that point.”

  “I’d quite like to get back to London,” Jared said. “A few of my projects are struggling and I’d like to be able to see to them. I had planned on flying back and forth once or twice during the fortnight, anyway. It’s quite frustrating to feel as if I don’t have that option now.”