by Agatha Frost
“Jack the Strummer?” Barker asked.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t comment, but I read along with the Q&A,” Barker told Julia. Turning back to Desmond, he raised a questioning brow. “The police traced all the internet records?”
“Right back to my house.” He dropped the books onto the counter. “Now, you could cook up a story about me paying someone to be there or rigging some elaborate button-pushing mechanism so I could be in two places at once, but I know the truth. I wouldn’t have, and didn’t, touch a hair on Penelope’s head.”
“You still loved her,” said Julia.
“Yes.” He squinted at her. “I did. For all her faults, I went to bed beside her and woke up next to her for forty years. I thought I’d die first, and she’d have to live without me. I never suspected we’d divorce, but it was what she wanted. Ask anyone; I didn’t stand in her way.”
“But you would have taken her back?”
“In a heartbeat.” He scooped up the books and stepped back. “Penelope was a loyal and kind woman to those closest to her, but very few were lucky enough to be in her inner circle. I never left it; she just fell out of love with me. We were still friends. We shared a daughter and a grandchild. She only did what she thought was best. I pray you never find out what it’s like to love a troubled addict. Their eyes beg for forgiveness while they take with both hands. We were getting him help, getting him on the straight and narrow, but the accidents sent him back to rock bottom. We lost all control of him. We thought there was nowhere else for him to fall, but I’ve grown to learn that rock bottom always has a trapdoor to take you deeper.”
Desmond loaded the books onto a trolley and pushed them into the library, empty aside from a woman with three children in the kids’ corner.
“Two things,” Barker said as they left. “Hit and runs? Accidents? One slip of the tongue maybe, but two?”
“I noticed that.” She ducked into the shade of the library. “The second thing?”
“He knew the entire time about what Callum did,” he whispered. “He had to, or how else could he have known the accidents were what sent Callum to rock bottom?”
“Do you think he killed her?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” She reached the top of the street and looked around, at a loss for where to turn. “What are we missing, Barker? Even discounting Desmond, we’re still left with Ethel, Gus, and Vicky.”
“Ethel’s still my number one,” he said, taking over pushing the pram to give Julia a break. “And it’s not like we don’t know where to find her.”
“And Jack the Strummer?”
“Oh.” Barker’s cheeks tinged red. “Gothic guitar music. It’s . . . you wouldn’t get it. He’s popular locally.”
Wondering how Jack the Strummer and his gothic guitar had passed her by, Julia followed behind until they reached the green. Ethel had ceased her protest now that the parking rules applied to the small section of road. Julia’s disappointment didn’t last for long, though.
Barker gestured towards the green. “Your gran seems in better spirits.”
They hurried ahead and caught up with Dot, Percy, and Amy as they cut across the village green in the direction of the graveyard. Julia walked around the edge to avoid the bad combination of wheels, grass, and having to weave through picnickers and kids playing football.
From her gran’s smile alone, Julia could tell the storm cloud had blown over.
“Julia, you’ll never believe what I found out yesterday,” she announced giddily, cutting to the corner to meet on the road outside of the church. “Vicky and Gus are – or I should say were – having an emotional affair.”
“She did it!” Percy revealed as he caught up. “She had to. It’s all there.”
“Lines up with what we’ve just found out,” Julia said, waiting for Amy Clark to catch up; a stray ball heading her way had sent her off course. “Callum was behind Johnny’s hit and run, and presumably at least one more. From the looks of it, Vicky knew, and she told Johnny.”
“The revenge!” Dot’s fingers snapped. “Yesterday, I accidentally sent her off on a revenge mission against Gus.”
“We think Vicky killed Penelope,” said Amy.
“To get Gus to herself,” added Percy.
“And she wanted to get revenge on him for dumping her,” Dot finished. “And now that we know what she did, it’s all there. Motive and opportunity! We were just on our way to the graveyard to write down the name on the headstone. Or, rather, the murder weapon.”
“We’ve compiled a file.” Amy pulled it from her cardigan. “We’re going to take it to the police.”
“But not for the glory,” Dot insisted. “For accuracy. We don’t want to leave anything out.”
“Is that one of my folders?” asked Barker.
“We’ve been in your office all morning,” said Dot as she crossed the road. “Peaceful down there, isn’t it? And before you ask if we broke in, we found your key under the plant pot.”
“Technically trespassing,” he said, tipping his head from side to side. “But I’ll let it slide. This time.”
Dot, Percy, and Amy slipped through the half-open church gate, leaving Barker to drag it fully wide for Julia and the pram.
“She probably didn’t even hear Ethel,” he said. “You can only really make out what’s going on in the café.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” she whispered. “She’s in a good mood.”
Julia negotiated the headstones and found the trio at Gerald Martin’s final resting place – not that he’d had much rest of late. While Amy wrote down the details, Dot crouched and read the cards. Percy kept the dogs entertained and let their sniffing lead him away.
“Only forty,” Dot said with a sigh, pulling the card from the crinkling wrap around the stolen white and pink flowers. “Did you ever find out why Callum left this?”
“No,” she said, slowing to a halt next to them. “Maybe it doesn’t matter? If you’re right about Vicky, it answers a lot of questions.”
“He’s still out there, though.”
“Half the battle with burglaries is the who,” Barker pointed out, leaning over the headstone from behind. “Once the police have an identity, it’s hard to evade them, especially since Callum’s still at it.”
“I saw that on Peridale Chat this morning,” Amy said with a shake of her head. “Made off with jewellery three doors down from me.”
“Aaaaand Desmond’s already deleted it,” Barker said after a quick check. “We should have asked him about that.”
“D-Dorothy?” Percy waved from three rows down. “A word?”
Dot pushed herself up and scurried after him. Amy finished writing her notes and slapped the pad shut before flipping to a checklist at the back written in her gran’s hand. She ticked off ‘Graveyard name’, but ‘Apologise to Evelyn’, ‘Apologise to Shilpa’, ‘Apologise to Julia’, ‘Give file to police’, and ‘Save the day’ remained unchecked. Julia took the pen from Amy and gladly ticked off the one regarding her.
Dot slowly made her way back to them in a diagonal line, touching the headstones to either side as she passed. Coming up behind Amy, Dot gently grabbed her by her pastel-clad shoulders and mimicked the movement of hitting someone’s head on the stone. Shutting her eyes with a shudder, Amy straightened as Dot continued and pointed back at Percy in the general direction of the unseen green.
“She came from over there,” Dot revealed, scanning the graveyard. “Yes, that’s it. That’s why Gerald Martin.”
“Gran?”
“It’s a straight line,” she explained, gesturing towards Percy. “Gerald Martin is slap bang in the middle if you want to go from there to the front gates. Do you think she’d have been running? Would she have known?”
“It’s a great theory,” said Julia as Barker joined Percy, “but where’s it come from?”
Barker looked down at the headstone Percy was hovering beside. His eyes lit up as he summoned Julia. With Dot and Amy
following behind, she pushed the pram on a perfect diagonal through the slabs of rock. These old graves didn’t have as many flowers, but the one near Percy and Barker was decorated with a fresh bouquet of sunflowers.
Born 1970.
Died 1983.
‘RIP Our ray of sunshine.’
If forty was too young, and twenty was no life, thirteen was a cruel blip.
“The name, Julia.” Percy urged, pointing above the dates. “Gerald Martin might have meant nothing, but this one certainly matters.”
Julia read the name, and though it seemed to take her longer than anyone else to connect the dots, a line formed between the points. Like Barker’s, her eyes attempted to leap from their sockets.
“Shawn Morris,” Dot whispered, looking around. “Amy, you might want to shred that file. We were a little off. I only know one Morris with a dead son.”
Percy crouched and turned over the tag.
“‘Love, Dad.’”
“Today is the anniversary of Gus Morris’s son’s death,” Dot said after a dry gulp.
“What do we do, my Dorothy?”
“We gather Peridale’s Eyes,” she said, looking in the direction of the village hall. “Where it all started. Julia and Barker, find Vicky. Percy, call Gus and tell him there’s urgent choir business. Amy, go to the library and get Desmond here.” Stiffening, she adjusted her brooch. “I’ll get Ethel.”
Barely able to believe they might finally have something, Julia stopped at the café to drop Olivia with Katie. Her visit stopped flying when she turned to see Johnny crying at the corner table, just out of the window’s view.
“Tell me she didn’t say—”
“Why do you keep asking if she’s said no?” Johnny blubbered up at her as he scrubbed his eyes with a napkin. “And no, it’s got nothing to do with that. I shouldn’t even be crying. I don’t even know her.”
“Know who?”
“Abigail Smith.” He pulled up his phone and showed a teenage girl’s smiling school picture; much more modern than the one she’d recently seen of Melinda, but the same uniform. “Hit an hour after me in Riverswick. Apparently they’ve known for weeks that the same car did both, but nobody bothered to let me know. I had to look up the articles in the Riverswick Chronicle.”
“Did she—”
“Survive?” He sighed and looked through the window. “She’s been in a coma ever since. I don’t know if you’d call that surviving.”
Julia thought back to the eyes she’d seen through the dirty window in Evelyn’s garden shed. So much pain, but even Julia hadn’t foreseen how deep that wound had cut.
No wonder his arm had looked like it did.
“Get into your paper’s database and find out everything you can about this boy,” she said, scribbling the details on the edge of a paper abandoned on the crossword page at the next table. “Village hall in half an hour.”
“Is it about to kick off?” he whispered a little too excitedly. “About time!”
“Let’s just say that if you bring your camera,” she said, giving in and matching his excitement for a second, “you’re going to have another bestselling issue.”
14
“O ver here,” Julia whispered to her dad when he finally gave up trying to sell a hunched-over woman with a cane a brass drinks trolley. “Do you know where Vicky is?”
“Has she still not opened up?” He rushed over, his blow-dried hair as bouncy as ever. “Missing out on some good trade today. I flogged a wardrobe I’ve been trying to sell for years this morning, and I almost sold that woman a drinks trolley.”
He’d been nowhere near, but Julia wasn’t going to squash his self-esteem, so she smiled with him, though her jaw clenched with each passing second spent standing around.
“I’m in a bit of a rush,” she said. “Don’t suppose you know where she lives?”
“You know, I haven’t the foggiest idea.” He chuckled, inhaling with a sense of ease that Julia, with pure adrenaline storming through her system, couldn’t imagine. “Funny though – doesn’t that look like a washing line?”
They ducked into the shade of the large tree and looked up at the string hanging from an antenna on the van to a thick branch.
“Pegs,” he said. “You know, I could have sworn I heard someone in there this morning. Scared me half to death because I was up with the crow for a delivery.”
“Delivery with the crow?” Julia’s insides squirmed. “Nothing dodgy, I hope?”
“All above-board,” he said with a wink. “Trust me, there’s nothing to worry about.”
If her father had a catchphrase, that was fast becoming it. The trouble was that him speaking the words almost always led to something to worry about.
“What did you hear?”
“Sounded like laughing or crying or both at once,” he said as they turned to the van. Its coffee-bean colour gleamed in spots as the sun shone through the tree’s leaves. “And this is going to sound odd, but I could have sworn I heard cutting. Like when you’re at the barbers.”
“Or paper?”
“Could have been.”
Julia walked around to the door and, after clearing her throat loud enough that someone might hear, gave it three sharp knocks. Glass bottles clanged together.
“Closed,” Vicky croaked. “There’s a café round the corner.”
“Actually,” she said, injecting cheeriness into her voice, “it’s Julia.”
Julia waited so long for a response she felt awkward saying anything else; it was obvious she was being ignored. Something clicked inside, and the door opened. Vicky threw up her hand against the pinpoints of light, squinting like a vampire emerging from their tomb at the wrong end of the day.
Julia had experienced enough heavy nights to know what the aftereffects looked like. The two empty bottles of red wine on the floor next to the sleeping bag only confirmed it. Scissors and cut up flyers covered where she usually prepared the drinks.
“Oh, Vicky.” Julia exhaled through her nose and smiled as the adrenaline suddenly cleared. “Are you sleeping in your van?”
“No?” She collapsed into a heap on the step. “Oh, what’s the point? Yes, I am. I sold my house for this business.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I really wanted to make it work,” she sobbed. “I thought it was all falling into place. Love, work, success. I was so tired of the same old, same old. New Vicky, I thought.” She looked over her shoulder. “New Vicky is a loser.”
“Hard times befall us all, love,” Brian called from around the corner, although he declined to step forward when Julia gestured for him to emerge. “You’ll make it back. You’re busy every day.”
“Not for much longer,” she grunted, rubbing at eyes caked in dried, slept-in, and cried-in mascara. “I couldn’t sleep, so I had a scroll on Peridale Chat. They all hate me. One person left a comment saying it was the worst coffee they’d ever tasted, and then bam, everyone chimed in. This is a failure. I’m a failure.”
“Now, that’s not true,” Julia said. “You just have to learn to do it better, that’s all. If I’d given up after my first bad review, do you think I’d still be here?”
“Three people said I was nothing compared to your café,” she said, eyes watering. “My life is over.”
“Cheer up, love,” Brian called. “Can’t be that bad.”
Maybe it was a good idea he didn’t step forward after all. Julia’s next look sent him tiptoeing back to his shop with a tight-jawed apology.
“Look, we can talk about this for as long as you want, coffee and scones on me, and I’ll even show you how to make a decent espresso.” Julia scooped her hand around Vicky’s. “But right now, I really need you to come with me and not ask why.”
Whether it was the offer of a lesson, the shoulder to cry on, or the wine, Vicky let Julia lead her away. As though it had taken just as long to convince Desmond, Amy and her charge met them at the top of the street.
“I simply don’t understand,�
� Desmond called after Amy as she scurried ahead, a pastel blur. “What urgent library business?”
“The urgentest of urgent,” Amy called sweetly over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. All will make sense when we get there.”
“Is this about the closure?”
“If you like.”
Desmond’s face fell. It seemed the gossip machine hadn’t distorted or stretched news of the library’s difficulties. Julia hoped it was because the council and everyone involved had done an amazing job of keeping things under wraps and not that people didn’t care. Secrets never stayed secret for long in Peridale. For Sue and Neil, she hoped it was the former. And for Olivia, as well. She’d been hearing nonstop about how amazing Neil’s toddler reading hours were.
The four of them joined up, though Amy only gave Julia a polite nod as they all walked in the same direction at the same speed. Desmond gritted his jaw at Julia as though to say, ‘I hope you’re not involved’, but she couldn’t blame him. She did keep popping up at his volunteering job to ask questions – with and without her ‘crazy-lady’ gran.
One interview.
Who had she been kidding?
“Wait here!”
Amy bolted up the path to the B&B and tugged the sing-song doorbell. Evelyn appeared in a mouth-watering peach kaftan and soft pink jewels. Her smile had returned, though it faltered when Amy told her the plan. Evelyn glanced at Julia before tugging the door shut behind her.
“What is going on?” Desmond hissed, though he kept pace with them when they sped up near the green. “You’ve all lost the plot.”
“Girls?” Shilpa called, looking up as she restocked the flower stand in front of the post office. “Anything I should know about?”
“Urgent post office business at the village hall,” Amy said with a wink she didn’t try to hide.
“You said it was library business.”
“Library and post office.” Amy flapped her hand, tangled in her own tale. “It’s a very complicated and serious matter.”
Shilpa hurried along, her pale pink sari so complementary to Evelyn’s peach it looked co-ordinated. They looked so summery; Julia could already taste the return of iced drinks at the café.
