Peridale Cafe Mystery 22 - Scones and Scandal

by Agatha Frost

  “I’m going to talk to him,” she said.

  “What?” Leah pulled her back. “You’re insane.”

  “The police will be here in seconds,” she said, freeing her arm. “He’s not trying to escape anymore. Let me talk to him.”

  The shed drew Julia down the garden path, and the click of crutches told her Johnny was right behind her. The face came into focus, and though he looked up, the shadows around his eyes still didn’t clear.

  He looked far too young to be so exhausted.

  “I’m sorry about my grandmother,” she said.

  “Then open the door,” he commanded through gritted teeth, the bones of his jaw tautening sallow skin. “Don’t make me ask again.”

  Ah, the tough guy act.

  In her early days with Jessie, Julia had seen that act a lot. She’d caught Jessie stealing from her café via a trap she’d set up, though she hadn’t locked Jessie anywhere. She’d offered the lost, angry teenager a bed, a shower, and a home.

  The more she paid attention, the more she saw Jessie everywhere. They were the system’s lost children – and this boy was a child, despite his weary, hollow eyes.

  “I saw you recently,” she said, “in the graveyard. Only from the back, but I saw you. Did you lay those flowers? For your grandmother?”

  His eyes lit up, focusing harshly on Julia. The bones of his jaw appeared again, and it wasn’t hard to imagine his clenched fists. She’d seen that enough times too.

  “I don’t know your story,” she said softly, ducking to meet his downcast eyes. “I don’t claim to. Those flowers you stole and left. ‘You were right’. What does that mean?”

  The jaw tightened further and he turned away, exposing a sprawling tattoo of a single word on his neck.

  Cal.

  “Callum?” Leah asked, stepping forward. “Callum Newton?”

  The fury in his eyes was confirmation enough that Leah had hit the nail on the head. Julia was about to ask how she’d made that connection when she remembered Melinda and her baby. It had been years since she’d seen the legend who burnt down the girls’ toilets, but Julia still recalled the deep line in her narrow chin; she was looking right at it again.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said, his voice scratchy and deep. “If that’s what you think.”

  “It isn’t,” she said, remembering Barker’s comment about the distance. “But you have been breaking into people’s houses?”

  The silence that followed said it all.

  “Mine being one of them,” Leah said shakily, stepping back into the safety of Johnny’s open arm. “The nightmares I’ve had because of you.”

  Callum rolled his head back and laughed. Bony shoulders shook beneath a tracksuit zip-up, like at the graveyard.

  Maybe he hadn’t been crying at all?

  “Why?” Leah pushed in a louder voice. “Why would you do something like that to honest, hardworking people?”

  “You people always think you’re honest,” he said, deeper still. “You walk around thinking you’re safe, only looking at people like me out of the corner of your eye. I didn’t break into your house. You left the back door unlocked.”

  Leah inhaled as though to rebuke the claim, but the breath stopped dead as her expression revealed her doubts.

  “Still doesn’t answer why,” she muttered, stepping further back. “It’s not right.”

  He laughed again, though like Leah’s breath, he cut it short. Clenched fists beat against the frame, shaking the shed’s structure. A light shone from the B&B, casting Callum in a distant light just bright enough for Julia to see and understand the ‘why’.

  Like Jessie’s ears after travelling, his forearms were covered in tiny pinprick holes, though his weren’t for piercings. All at once, she realised she was out of her depth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to meet his gaze when his thrashing paused. “The police will be here soon.”

  Leaving the garden, Julia returned to the B&B. By the back window, Dot and Percy were enjoying glasses of Baileys.

  “It’s okay to celebrate, dears,” Dot said, raising her glass. “The village can sleep soundly tonight.”

  Hurried knocking at the door pulled Julia into the hallway before she could say something she regretted. Shilpa, though not here, had been right, as had Barker. Naively, Julia had hoped a picture would be enough for her gran.

  “Where is he?” Christie urged, flanked by uniformed officers. “I had to see this for myself.”

  “Shed. He’s in a bad way, so go easy on him. Please.”

  “Ah, Detective Inspector.” Dot rose immediately, hand outstretched and either not noticing or ignoring DI Christie’s slack-jawed examination of their outfits. “To ease the worries felt by some of my fellow group members, a citizen’s arrest is perfectly legal when someone has been caught in the act of committing a crime or is about to flee the scene of one, is it not?”

  “Technically, yes,” he said, looking through the back window, “but that is obstruction of justice.”

  The DI and his officers sprinted through the house, leaving the rest of them to gaze out after them. Dot’s knuckles beat against the window as Evelyn’s bolt cutters slid through the padlock. It sprang off, and without a second glance, Callum vanished into the darkness behind the shed as the two officers bit at his heels.

  “I can’t believe it,” Dot muttered, pushing her hands into her curls. “I . . . we . . . we had him. We had him.”

  Once again, Dot pushed through the crowd, and she and Evelyn met in the hallway. Julia had witnessed many of Evelyn’s moods, but she’d never before seen a nose-crinkling snarl scrunch up the mystic’s face.

  “You silly woman!” Dot cried, tossing her hands out. “I have a right mind to—” A hand rose and immediately dropped. “Why, Evelyn? Why?”

  “No!” Evelyn repeated, finger outstretched. “Why did you do that? A picture, you said. I would never have agreed to any of this if I’d known your true intentions.”

  “You’re talking as though I planned it!” Dot tossed a hand to Amy. “I wouldn’t have had to if she didn’t choose her perfect moment to have us rumbled. It was him before us. Tell them, Detective Inspector,” she said, waving Christie over from the back door. “Tell them I was within my rights as a concerned citizen.”

  “And what about his rights?” Evelyn’s snarl vanished, pulled down by a wobbling lip. “I only wanted to help him.”

  “And now you’ve doomed us all,” Dot said, lifting her gaze to the corner of the ceiling. “Our one shot, and we blew it.”

  Evelyn slipped away and walked to the bottom of the stairs. Clutching the bannister, she looked down at DI Christie.

  “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Unless you have absolute proof that was the burglar,” he said, clearly as frustrated as Dot, “I don’t see how I can.”

  “Ha!” Dot pulled up the camera. “I have . . . Johnny?”

  “That button.”

  “Ah, yes.” Dot pressed it and began flicking through the images. “One of them will be clear. Surely one of them . . .”

  But they were all blurry enough to have DI Christie and his officers retreat through the front door with a warning to call the police if he showed up again—not that any of them expected Evelyn would do it.

  “Dorothy,” Evelyn said from halfway up the stairs. “I would like you to leave my home. The energy you are giving off right now is turning my stomach.”

  “Evelyn, I—”

  “And I quit.” She reached into her kaftan with one hand before glancing over her shoulder at Dot. “You might want to burn this in your cottage. Penelope’s spirit was still lingering when I left.”

  Evelyn tossed a bundle of sage at Dot’s feet before continuing up to bed with heavy footsteps.

  “We had him,” she whispered almost to herself as she picked up the dried herb. “We had him.”

  Whether or not it was radiating from her gran, something in the air had Julia packing up
her things and waiting in the car.

  “I think she wants to talk to you,” Leah said when she was behind the wheel. “Should I set off?”

  Julia nodded, watching the outlines of her gran and Percy shrink in the rear-view mirror. Though she’d feared it would happen, she still wished her earlier warning to her gran hadn’t fallen on deaf ears.

  “She’s still got my camera,” Johnny groaned when Leah pulled up outside Julia’s cottage. “Julia—”

  “I’ll get it back.”

  “When?”

  “When I know what to say to my gran,” she said with a sigh. “Goodnight. I’m . . . sorry.”

  She was getting awfully tired of apologising for her grandmother.

  As they left to drive back to Johnny’s cottage on the other side of the village, Julia retreated into the darkness of her own. After changing into the previous night’s pyjamas in the bathroom, she pushed open the bedroom door.

  Olivia was where she’d left her, sleeping on her back with her arms spread out as though no time had passed. Barker was on Julia’s side of the bed, nearest Olivia, with reading glasses perched on the end of his nose and a book – Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes – open on his chest.

  She hated to wake him, but she’d never fall asleep on his side; she’d only keep sitting up and checking. She folded his reading glasses and placed the book on his bedside table still open to the page where he’d drifted off. She stirred him with a kiss.

  “I thought you’d be later,” he mumbled as he crawled under the sheets. “How did it go?”

  “You were right,” she said, running the back of her finger across Olivia’s cheek. “A picture wasn’t enough.”

  Barker grumbled something, but his was only a whistle-stop visit to The Land of the Awake. While he snored lightly, Julia settled on her warmed side and, facing Olivia, wondered how their night had gone.

  Realising it didn’t even matter and that everything had been fine, Julia let her eyes close. Regardless of how her evening had turned out, she was glad to have pulled off that plaster.

  10

  Harsh morning sunlight burst through the white fluffy clouds, the first since the transition to cheerier spring weather. Julia’s end of the video call flipped its contrast, washing her out except for eyes, lips, and nostrils, and bright enough to make Jessie, in her much darker setting, squint.

  “Where are you?” asked Julia, dragging Olivia’s pram into the shade of The Comfy Corner’s overhanging roof. “It looks like a tunnel.”

  “Berliner Unterwelten,” Jessie said with a tight-throated inflection that made her pronunciation sound surprisingly spot-on, at least to Julia’s untrained ear. “Second World War tunnels and bunkers. It’s all still here under the city.”

  “You’ve not—”

  “Broken in?” Jessie cut in with a snort. “You’ve got break-ins on the brain, Mum. I’m here with a tour group.”

  “I can go if you’re busy?”

  “No,” she whispered, looking ahead as she set off after the tour group. “I need to hear the rest of this story.”

  Julia leaned against a British Telecom ‘Fibre broadband here!’ green metal cabinet that had popped up since her last visit to the restaurant, glad to have Jessie for a little longer. Unlike their last one, this had been Julia’s call to make. She’d awoken needing a Jessie pick-me-up.

  “The padlock sprang off, and he sprinted away before the police could get him.”

  “Why does Evelyn even have bolt cutters?”

  “The same reason my gran has a bulletproof vest and night-vision goggles.”

  “Another normal day in Peridale.” Jessie’s laugh echoed around the tunnel, drifting off in slow stutters. “I miss the place.”

  “We miss you too,” Julia said, swallowing a lump. “And then Evelyn quit the group.”

  “And you haven’t spoken to Dot since?”

  Julia shook her head. She wasn’t proud to admit she’d ignored the ringing phone as she was locking the cottage door that morning. Not wanting to leave Olivia on the doorstep had been a factor, but mostly she’d had a feeling the call was coming from her gran, and she hadn’t wanted to take it.

  “I don’t know what to say to her,” she admitted, looking up as the sun drifted behind the white clouds again, turning them a brilliant silver; in the shade, the video remained consistent. “I’ve thought of little else since this morning, and all I can conclude is that she thought she was doing the right thing. I get why she thought that, but . . .”

  “She should have told you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I know she said it was spur of the moment,” Jessie said as she glanced into a room before continuing her walk through the tunnel, “but wouldn’t she have taken that padlock with her?”

  “I hadn’t even considered that.”

  “Your brain is going to jelly without me there to keep you on your toes.” Jessie winked into the camera. “Whatever the reason, it took guts to do it.”

  “I can’t deny that.”

  “Stupid, but brave.”

  Jessie’s side to side eye darting suggested she’d reached a junction in the tunnel, and her sudden stillness suggested even more.

  “Are you lost?”

  “Nope,” she said merrily. “Maybe . . . a little. It’s fine. I’ll find Alfie. We’re talking again now, so—”

  Julia’s heart dropped.

  “You weren’t talking?”

  “It was nothing.” Jessie sighed, clenching one eye as if pained and wishing she hadn’t said anything. “It’s sorted. We’re fine. After that fight, we . . . Oh, I can hear them.” Her hair, longer than Julia had seen it in a while, floated around the piercings as she hurried towards the voices Julia could just pick up. “Listen, I should probably go.”

  “Convenient timing,” Julia said with mock firmness. “Just promise me you’re being safe.”

  “Sounds like it’s more dangerous there lately,” Jessie said. “In that article that everyone is talking about online, it sounds like you’re all up to your neck in . . . Alfie, I’m coming!” She motioned off camera. “Let me have a look at her before I go.”

  Julia flipped the camera into Olivia’s pram, wondering what article she’d missed, and surprised Jessie was still checking in on the village after all. Jessie’s expression melted like it always did when Olivia was on camera. Olivia was in one of her peaceful ‘content to lie here and stare up at the clouds’ moods and didn’t seem to notice.

  “She’s growing so quickly,” Jessie said as Julia flipped the camera back. “She actually looks like a person now.”

  “What did she look like before?”

  “All babies sort of look like bald old men,” Jessie said, bringing the camera closer. “Sort of like Percy. Love you, gotta go.”

  Jessie kissed the air in front of the camera as she hung up, and Julia left the tunnels under Berlin and returned to Peridale. Across the street, Neil waved as he cleaned the windows of the library. She waved back just as she caught the glimmer of a pink and turquoise sari in the newly gleaming reflection.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Shilpa waved as she hurried. “The line at the post office multiplied every time I looked up.”

  “Managed to sneak in a quick call with Jessie,” she said, pushing away from the cabinet. “Almost got her lost in a World War II tunnel in Berlin.”

  “My Jayesh was just in Germany.”

  Shilpa pulled open the door to The Comfy Corner restaurant and helped Julia lift the pram over the doorframe – always easier with someone at the other end.

  “Oh, I was wondering when I’d get my turn!” Mary exclaimed, rushing to the pram and waving her husband over from behind the bar. “Todd, Julia’s brought little baby Olivia in!”

  Olivia’s face lit up. The attention was just what the silence had needed. Mary immediately had her smiling, and after asking permission, scooped her out for a cuddle while Julia set them up at a table.

  “I know you said it was usually
quiet around this time, but I didn’t expect it to be empty,” Julia whispered to Shilpa as she removed Olivia’s sit-up play seat from the bottom of the pram. “Did you say Jayesh was still travelling?”

  “Him and Poppy have done the world over and can’t seem to get enough,” she said, settling across from Julia and grabbing a menu. “He’s stopped giving me dates for his return because he kept missing them. It would be nice if they made one of those flights a trip home, but who am I to stop their fun?”

  Julia stared through her menu as she mentally worked out how long it had been since Shilpa’s son and his girlfriend had left the village. It was after Poppy’s father died during the debut of the Christmas nativity play Dot had starred in. How many Christmases ago was that? Was it the one when Sue had the twins?

  “Two and a half years?” Both Julia’s brows arched toward her hairline. “That’s . . . a long time.”

  “They’d likely be back if it weren’t for that huge inheritance Poppy’s father left her,” Shilpa said quickly, almost apologetically. “Jessie’s home for Christmas, isn’t that right?”

  Julia summoned a smile and nodded, wondering if it was that obvious where her mind had gone. Mary brought Olivia back and settled her into the play chair Julia had set up next to her on the bench. With a gurgling grin, Olivia continued staring at Mary with her most adoring eyes.

  “Isn’t she just the most precious little button you’ve ever seen,” Mary said, pulling a notepad from her apron. “And I must say, it’s good to see you again, Julia, and looking so well! Any drinks? And can I talk you through the specials?”

  They both ordered lemonades and chicken Caesar salads; the latter salad on Mary’s near insistence for Todd’s new homemade dressing alone. Mary went on her way, and Shilpa pulled her seat in, clearing her throat.

  “You probably know why I asked to meet for early lunch,” she said, resting her hands on the table. “I don’t blame you. I couldn’t blame you. You and your gran are alike in many ways, and very different in others. Most of the time, I find I can forgive her shortcomings because I see her heart. And to tell you the truth, she can be rather amusing. But after seeing Evelyn this morning, I must say something.”