“Fine, fine,” I grumbled. “Let me crack a window. I’ll be five minutes.” Although realistically ten minutes. I lowered both the windows. “Don’t bark at anyone.”
I hadn’t been for coffee; it wasn’t that type of social call.
“Morning, Bea!” I waved, my head turning as I glanced left-to-right. “Where’s Ruth?”
“With Frank in the—”
I headed straight to the doctor’s office.
The door was wide open.
Frank and Ruth were talking quietly.
“Morning!” I exclaimed, alerting them I was here.
Ruth turned, her wide eyes batting back in my direction. “Eve, you’re early?”
Frank raised his brows. “Or late,” he said. “I think I know why you’re here.”
Approaching them, I took a seat. “Oh? Did Ruth—”
He checked his wristwatch. “I had you in the calendar for last week,” he said. “It’s for the roses, right?”
Ruth laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Colour me impressed, Mr Martin.”
“Doctor,” he offered back with a wink.
“Ooh, save it for Valentine’s Day,” I said.
“I know what I want to order.”
Ruth gently swatted her husband’s arm. “You do?”
“Same as last year,” he chuckled.
“Your final answer?” I asked. Pulling my jacket sleeve to check the time. “I can’t be long; I’ve got Charlie waiting in the car. He’s being stubborn today.”
Frank nodded. “The white ones,” he said. “Those were nicely fragrant.”
“Oh, yes,” Ruth sighed. “We did talk about using the petals for perfume, or at least a room spray.”
I pressed two fingers to my temple. “Noted.”
Ruth chuckled. “Good. I hope so.”
Like a whirlwind, I was on my way out again.
I headed back to my car, back to Charlie as his head popped up from his seat; seeing me and then sighing away.
“Come on then,” I said to him, stroking a hand across his back and rubbing at his neck. “One more stop, then we can head back to the office.”
We drove through the village and across the bridge of Silver Lake. I drove at a leisurely pace, passing my home, the neighbours, and the path leading to Ruth’s house.
Wee-oo. Wee-oo.
Sirens blared from behind. I checked the rear-view mirror. A police car approached. I pulled to a slow roll, letting the car pass by. My fingers jittered, tapping at the wheel. The roads weren’t wide enough for one car coming and another going in quick succession.
Charlie’s ear pricked to two stiff peaks on his small head.
“We’re almost there,” I said. “You can have a nosey in a little while.”
We continued, passing all the neighbours. We were getting closer to red rose drive and the farmland attached. Straight ahead, the light of the police car pulled into the next house over; Doreen’s neighbour.
Doreen Maidstone’s house was a similar size and structure to mine, except she had much more space around her, and she used it well.
The short driveway into her house was fondly dubbed ‘red rose drive’ given the stone mural tiled into the bricks of a red rose in bloom.
I drove up, passing the large recycling bins at the front. I parked behind Doreen’s small red hatchback.
Charlie perked from the sound of the sirens and the flashing lights. He was well aware of the action going on around him. Opening the driver’s door, he jumped across my lap and out into the driveway.
“Wait, wait,” I grumbled back. “Let me grab my bag.”
He yapped back, nodding his head as calling me over.
I grabbed my bag, double checking the contents to make sure I had my list.
There was no saying how long the interview would go on for, or what we would talk about. In the past, we had spent hours talking and letting her show me around the different greenhouses and sheds she had.
Doreen had had business dealings with my husband while he was alive. I didn’t know much about it, but there were few businesses in Silver Lake, Harry did have a hand in.
Charlie ran in circles around my legs as I walked to the front door.
The curtains were drawn.
Knock. Knock.
My knuckles collided with the wooden door.
I knocked once again. “Doreen? It’s me, Eve.”
It was entirely possible she was in the gardens, tending to the flowers.
Charlie hurried by my feet and around the house, heading straight for the open gate.
I knocked again.
Trying the handle. It opened.
“—you’re not listening,” a man called out, his voice growing louder.
Turning, I saw two young police officers, they were both approaching with an older man, stomping a cane on the ground as he moved.
“Okay. Mr Forster,” an officer said. “We appreciate your input, but we need to speak with Ms Maidstone.”
“You should probably head back home,” the other officer said.
“No, no, no,” Mr Forster said. “I want to talk to Doreen myself.”
“She doesn’t need to talk with you,” I said, walking towards them. “But I have an interview scheduled, so I do need to talk with her.”
Mortimer Forster scoffed. “About those greenhouses?” He thwacked his cane twice. “You should be interviewing me. It’s my ground which they’re on anyway.”
Every year, Mortimer would go off on some mad tirade about how Doreen had stolen his land from beneath his feet. Nobody could say for certain if it was true, but she didn’t seem to take any of it seriously, so nobody else did either.
I glanced over the officer’s surnames tagged on their uniforms. Barker and Healey, tall and short; in that order.
“Is Ms Maidstone in?” Barker asked.
I turned back to see the door standing ajar from where I’d pressed on the door handle. I shrugged. “Her car is here.” I nodded to the red hatchback in front of mine. “And she knows about the interview. She complained to me it had taken so long.”
“Sounds like her,” Mortimer scoffed.
My eyes widened as Mortimer approached. He’d called the police on Doreen, and yet he figured she was the complainer. It brought a smile to my face, thinking for a moment the rudeness of his accusation.
Charlie yapped, darting from the front door.
He certainly hadn’t gone in that way.
“Charlie, come here.” I slapped my knees.
Bounding towards me, I noticed something dripping from his snout onto the stone.
Oh no. I knew.
It was blood.
THREE
The two officers, Barker and Healey, burst through the front door. Pushing through into the darkness. Their voices called out for Doreen. Echoing. I stood by the front door, listening as they spoke into the walkie-talkies strapped to their chests.
“Requesting back up.”
Back up? My throat became dry. What on earth where they requesting back up for? Their voices in a state of panic now as they spoke to each other.
“What are they saying?” Mortimer grumbled by my side. His eyes squinting in sharp lines and his body hunched at the shoulders, leaning deeply on his cane.
“Nothing, nothing,” I said, placing an arm around his shoulders.
We couldn’t be here, not if what I thought had happened was actual fact.
“Probably doing it for attention, whatever it is,” he continued.
I couldn’t speak on, I couldn’t continue. The words were swollen in my throat.
I dipped to my knees, rummaging through my handbag. I pulled at a paper handkerchief and wiped the blood from Charlie’s nose.
If Doreen was here, they’d have already been out and cleared everything up.
“You know, this is the second time this year,” he said. “She’s doing it to play the victim, when I’m the actual victim in all this.” Stabbing his cane into the ground
for a second time, this time harder, this time I pressure led with a crunch, splintering off a chunk of wood from the side. “Bet she’s—”
“Quiet, please, Mr Forster,” I said. “I want to know what’s happened to Doreen as much as you do.”
Officer Barker approached the door, mumbling into this talkie. “—a body—ambulance—immediately.” He was stood face-to-face with us, his boyish face aged with a pale white sickness. “We need to ask you to move.”
“Move?” I asked. “What’s happened to Doreen?”
What could she have done for Mortimer to call the police twice in the space of a single month? Although Mortimer was the closer of her two neighbours, I doubt she was a noisy woman.
“Please,” he said, gesturing with a hand. “Leave.”
“Leave?” the word swelled in my repetition. It was serious.
Was she—dead?
“Yes,” Officer Healey said, appearing to fill the door with his stout frame. “There’s an ambulance arriving for Ms Maidstone. Unfortunately, she’s—”
“She isn’t alive,” Barker finished.
“She’s dead?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, we can’t discuss anything.”
They nodded to each other.
I turned, inhaling deeply and closing my eyes. The poor woman died alone in there, if I’d arrived earlier, I could’ve stopped her from falling, or whatever accident had taken her.
An officer coughed into his fist. “Actually, we would like to ask you some questions, if that’s okay?”
Turning back to them, I forced a half-smile on my face. “A statement?” Was it now a crime scene?
Healey pulled a small pad of paper from his chest pocket. “What time did you arrive at the property?”
“Moments before you,” I recalled. “I was on the road when you drove by.” I locked eyes with the officers.
Of course, they remembered. It had happened less than fifteen minutes ago. “Okay.”
“You said she’s dead,” I reminded them.
Mortimer stuttered over his words, wobbling on the cane in his hand. “D—D—Doreen’s d—d—dead?”
“We have to wait for the ambulance to arrive.”
“There’s a chance she’s alive then?” I asked. “Let me see.”
They glanced to each other. Contemplation flitting back and forth. I was an in-law of the detective, and both men were fresh in the field. It was my advantage, but Paul would only find a way to chastise me. Me, a woman in her early fifties, worried about being told off.
“Blood,” Mortimer’s voice hiccupped.
I’d cleaned the blood on Charlie’s nose, but there were droplets on the ground.
“Is there a lot of blood?” I asked them.
Barker shrugged. “Fair bit.” He sucked his mouth shut. He’d said too much.
This wasn’t a normal death—at least, not until I saw the body. I connected a bloodied death with murder, and to all dots in my mind, this was a murder.
“Did someone kill her?” my hoarse voice sounded. “Did someone do this?”
She wasn’t much older than me, she couldn’t have died from natural causes. She could, but in my mind, my own mortality, I couldn’t have her die like that.
They continued looking at each other.
They moved to step inside the doorway as Charlie barked.
“You think she’s right?” Healey mumbled.
“Unless you can tell me how those shears ended up in her back,” Barker replied.
A hitched breath in my throat caught their attention. Their quiet voices not quite as expected. “Stabbed in the back?”
Their wide eyes glanced back.
It wasn’t impossible I heard them; they were bad at whispering. They could’ve talked anywhere, but they did it right in front of me, right where I was available to listen.
“Killed?” Mortimer continued, panicked, he was growing further unstable on his cane.
I pulled at his side, clutching at his shoulder with a hand at his waist. “It’s okay,” I told him. “You’re okay.”
With his free hand, I reached for mine. “I—I—I don’t feel well.”
“Let me walk you home,” I said.
His head wobbled and his cold shaky hand grew tighter around mine. “Thank you, thank you.”
“He lives next door,” Barker said. “Make sure to keep clear for cars.”
“There’s not much of a path beside the road,” Healey added.
It was most likely all the land Doreen occupied and the overgrown hedges, keeping her greenhouses private.
I knew I had to take Mortimer home. Both officers took guard of the front door, and they weren’t going to let anything else slip. I didn’t want to push my luck with them and receive the third degree by Paul.
“Are you stable enough to walk?” I asked as Mortimer’s grasp pinched my skin.
“The sooner you get him home, the sooner he can get sat down,” Barker said.
Healey puffed out his chest, forcing his head high on his chin. “We heard about how you interfered with the last case.”
I was wrong. Paul had told the people he was working with about me and they knew not to let me anywhere near this. I suppose it took them a little while to notice.
My face creased, looking at them. The lines of frustration pulled my face taut. “I helped Paul,” I said. “He knows what happened, and without it, he’d be around hanging his head with all the loose ends.”
“Well, could you help and take Mr Forster home before we—”
Mortimer clutched a hand to his chest, letting go of his cane completely.
I knew what they were getting at. Before Mortimer suffered a heart attack, they could see he was pained by the information and he wasn’t doing well with anything he was being told.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you home. Let’s get some water.”
Barker grabbed the cane and handed it to me. “Don’t lose this.”
They nodded and smiled.
We turned and headed towards Mr Forster’s home, only a stone’s throw away from where Doreen lived. He kept a hold of my hand and took his cane in the other. Stomp, whack, thud as we walked.
It was a shock to both of us. My heart raced and my breathing took a hit. Faster and faster. I glanced at Charlie. Did he have a dead-body finding death wish?
FOUR
On the short walk to Mortimer’s house, I continued to stay at his side with an arm hooked at his elbow, keeping us both stable.
Private property signs were posted along the hedgerows. Mortimer scoffed at them.
He’d left his front door open. Charlie ran inside, bouncing across the gravel path into the small two-storey cottage. It was built with a thatched roof, giving the house an appearance of a mushroom.
Mortimer tapped his stick on the ground, it was somewhat soothing.
“Bloody dog!” he griped. “Better not make a mess.”
We reached the doorway. Mortimer pulled his arm from me.
“Let me get you some water,” I said.
“No, no, you can leave me here,” he grumbled. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know, I know,” I cooed back, my face creasing with concern. “But perhaps we can sit down and have a little chitchat.”
He glared, tipping his head back, looking at me from the tip of his nose. “I don’t need to be hand-held, you know. I’m not ready to be thrown into one of those box rooms at Petunia Heights.”
“Of course,” I replied, glancing inside the house. The floor was covered in old newspapers and dry dirty footprints. “Maybe you can tell me about why you called the police?”
“Fine,” he smirked.
I hooked my arm around his once again, entering the cottage.
He halted and hacked at the back of his throat. “First, you need to know she was a thief.”
The poor woman wasn’t alive anymore to defend herself. I nodded.
A sour stale stench permeated the air, tingling inside my n
ostrils.
“Which way to the living room?” I asked.
He whacked his cane against a door to the right, pushing it open. It revealed my living nightmare.
Mortimer Forster was a hoarder. His floor was littered with discount coupons, letters, and once brightly coloured promotional leaflets, now faded from time and footsteps.
I continued helping Mortimer from the hallway into the living room. There was a specific direction, directed by the mess of newspapers piled high, boxing in the living room and obscuring light from entering.
A stark orange light sparked from the bulb in the centre of the ceiling.
“Take a seat,” I told him. “I’ll grab you a glass of water.”
Mortimer heaved himself onto the sofa. “That’ll be grand.”
I navigated the mess, wondering if this is what people thought and felt when they visited me, when they came to my home and saw the mess piled on the counters, the mess on the ground, everything that wasn’t used daily. Covered in mess, people must’ve thought and figured I was also a mess.
The kitchen was directly across from the living room. It’s where Charlie danced around in circles, having found his second bout of energy. It must’ve been a place where most of the smells in the house came from. There were no curtains in the kitchen, however, the windows were covered in mould and decay.
Equally as messy, there were lots of glasses, plates, cutlery, and pans, all stacked inside the sink. Coated dry with old food. I didn’t want my mind to explore, I didn’t want my mind to think about how long the dirt had been there, but it must’ve been a while.
I had offered to get him a glass of water, but I had no idea where there were any clean glasses, and I didn’t intend on getting an emergency tetanus jab from dipping a hand into anything I couldn’t see.
Opening a cupboard, dust spat at me.
There were glasses inside, also covered in dust.
I rinsed a single glass out before filling with water. I noticed an electric kettle on the side. It was possibly the newest and cleanest item. I filled it with water and flicked the switch.
“I have water,” I said, clicking my tongue to encourage Charlie to follow me.
In the living room, I watched Mortimer’s hand twitch as he tugged at a handkerchief in his sleeve. He dabbed at his eyes with it before crumpling it back up.
Silver Lake Cozy Mystery Bundle Page 15
