Live and Let Diet (Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 1)

by Morgana Best

  Chapter 10

  I watched Blake leave, and wondered if I should order a second coffee. I stood up to look around for the waitress and saw Mr. Buttons reading, or rather, hiding behind, a newspaper at the booth just behind my seat. How long had he been sitting there? Had he heard everything Blake had said?

  Mr. Buttons saw me watching him and waved me over. “Sit down, Sibyl. We need to talk.”

  I did as I was asked and sat opposite him. “What about?”

  Mr. Buttons leaned forward. “I heard Blake tell you all about Mr. Higgins. I was suspicious of that man, right from the time he arrived. He was always looking too hard at the antiques, and asking Cressida questions. The Moon was always coming up when I did a tarot spread about him.”

  “Do you always do tarot spreads about everyone you know?” I asked, picturing him sitting in the privacy of his room, finding out information about others from his cards. “Have you done tarot spreads about me?” I added.

  Mr. Buttons shook his head. “No, I’ve only pulled a card about you, not a full spread. It’s always the same one: Two of Swords. There’s something you’re not seeing, Sibyl, and you need to figure it out.”

  I shuddered, but at that point the waitress walked over and I ordered coffee, before turning my attention back to Mr. Buttons. “You said Tim Higgins was always asking Cressida questions. What kind of questions?”

  Mr. Buttons shrugged. “He asked the sort of questions that only someone who knew about antiques would ask. I did wonder if he was looking to steal something. And his body was found in the storage room which is usually locked. That adds up as suspicious to me. Here, I brought these.” He pulled two pairs of latex gloves from the pocket on the breast of his shirt, and handed me a pair.

  I looked at him, aghast. I knew he was OCD about cleanliness, but this was carrying it a bit too far. Before I could speak, he continued. “Put those on. I have some evidence to hand you.”

  I did as I was told, and Mr. Buttons pushed a folded piece of paper across the table at me.

  I opened it with my gloved hands, and there was my suicide note. “Why didn’t you give it to Blake just then?”

  “I didn’t want him to know that I was listening into your conversation,” Mr. Buttons said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’ll go to the police station today and give it to him.”

  I looked at the writing. To my surprise, it did in fact look very much like my handwriting. “It’s lucky you found it,” I said, peering at it.

  Mr. Buttons snickered. “I didn’t lose it. I wanted to photograph it and show Cressida before I handed it over to the police.”

  I was utterly shocked. “But why, why would you do such thing?” I stammered.

  “Well, to see if we recognized the writing, of course.” Mr. Buttons looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

  “And did you?”

  “No, but we now have photographs so we can keep comparing it to any handwriting samples we come across. I doubt the police will go to so much trouble.” Mr. Buttons took a sip of his tea, set down his tea cup, and leaned forward. “Sibyl, someone murdered Tim Higgins, and now they want to do away with you,” he whispered. “According to the principles of logic, that means that they think you know something.”

  “I don’t know anything,” I said loudly, and Mr. Buttons waved at me to hush me, while the waitress arrived and set down another coffee in front of me.

  When she left, he again addressed me in the whispered tone. “Obviously, the murderer thinks you do. Think, Sibyl, think! Have you stumbled across anything, anything at all that could give a clue as to the murderer’s identity?”

  I sat and sipped my coffee while I racked my brains. I came up blank. “No, nothing at all, unless…”

  “Unless what?” Mr. Buttons prompted.

  “Well, unless it’s the fact that I can smell cyanide.”

  Mr. Buttons thought for a while. “No, it can’t be that. It must be something else. Did you see anything that made you suspicious, even slightly?”

  I thought again before answering. “No, nothing at all.”

  Mr. Buttons frowned. “It’s all about memory, Sibyl. I’ve noticed that memory can be misleading. Have you ever watched a movie, and then later watched it again and certain parts weren’t at all how you remembered them? As that is the case, I wonder then how accurate any memories are. Do you know, I read once that people think their memories hold an actual record of their past just as if it was being replayed on a DVD, but the fact is that people remember only segments. The mind has a strong compulsion to weave these segments together into a running story. In some cases, people can have vivid and specific memories of events that never happened. Are you sure you can’t remember anything, even little segments?”

  I tried so hard to remember so hard that my forehead hurt from frowning. “No,” I said after a long pause.

  Mr. Buttons appeared disappointed. “Well, let’s go and look through Tim Higgins’ room. We might find something useful in there.”

  “Haven’t the police already done that?”

  “Well, yes,” he said, “but they might have overlooked something. It won’t hurt to look.”

  I chewed the end of my thumb. “Are we allowed to look?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Buttons said, averting his eyes and taking another sip of tea. “If we hurry, we can have a good look around before Alison returns from her afternoon off.”

  I agreed. I figured I had nothing to lose. Perhaps there was a snippet of evidence in Tim Higgins’ room, or perhaps Mr. Buttons himself was the murderer. He was certainly on my list of suspects, as was everyone I’d met in this town, apart from the police. I had a vested interest now; someone had tried to kill me. The police didn’t appear to be in a hurry to solve the case, so I would have to look into it myself, for my own protection.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was following Mr. Buttons up the wide staircase to Tim Higgins’ room.

  “Let’s get started,” Mr. Buttons said, handing me another pair of latex gloves. “In here,” he added unnecessarily as he opened the door to a large bedroom.

  The bedroom was tidy. I always imagined that if police searched something, they made an awful mess. Perhaps I had watched too many crime shows on television after all.

  The carpet was an unappealing deep blue and sickly pink pattern, and the wallpaper was floral in shades mainly of navy blue. The heavy, wooden bed was king sized, and had a thick blue and white quilt on it. There was a very feminine looking dressing table with, of all things, a piano stool in a worn tapestry in front of it. The slight breeze through the partly opened window carried with it the faintest scent of mold.

  Heavy, crimson velvet curtains completed the picture. I tried to draw them back further to let in more air, but they wouldn’t budge. I crossed to the huge old desk upon which was a large pile of books.

  “What are we looking for exactly?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” Mr. Buttons said.

  I smiled and nodded, and we got to work.

  Mr. Buttons was working through the dresser full of clothes. They were all folded nicely. I watched him as he pulled each drawer open in turn. He reached in and pulled some of the pants up, and ran his gloved fingertips along some paper. His brow quirked and he pulled the pants out, setting them on the floor. “Sibyl, look at this.”

  He pointed to thin stacks of loose leaf paper, with slanting, scribbled writing in blue pen. He pulled out some of the sheets and handed them to me. I tried to read them, and at first had trouble because the handwriting was so bad. There were words followed by numbers.

  “I don’t have a clue what this is,” I said, handing the paper back to Mr. Buttons, once he had the rest in his hands. He was still crouched down, and he looked up at me.

  “It doesn’t look like a real language, like French, German, Spanish, or whatever. No language has words and numbers mixed together, and it can’t be prices as there are no dollar signs. He does have some English words, b
ut then there are the strange symbols and the numbers.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t look like a language. Perhaps it’s some sort of code.”

  Mr. Buttons pulled out his iPhone and took photos of each sheet.

  I turned back to the desk. There were numerous, heavy volumes of Carter’s Guide to Antiques and Collectibles, as well as stacks and stacks of every antiques, fine art, and collectibles magazine under the sun.

  Half an hour later, we had not found anything useful. “Just a lot of books and magazines,” I said, as we stood near the doorway.

  “He was a reader, that’s for sure,” Mr. Buttons said. “I wonder if I could match the handwriting on these papers to Mr. Higgins’ writing. Did you come across anything that was obviously his writing?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I hurried over to the bed. I pulled a small book from under the pillow and brought it back, handing it to Mr. Buttons, who opened it to reveal a date book. It was a year old, but there were various things scribbled on some of the dates, including birthdays and phone numbers.

  Mr. Buttons pulled one of the strange sheets of paper from where he’d put them on the top of the desk. He came around the front of the desk and bent over next to me, putting the date book and the paper side by side on the desktop in front of us. We leaned forward together and studied both items.

  “The ‘e’ looks the same, and so do those letters,” I said, pointing with my index finger.

  “Yes, I’d say it’s a match,” Mr. Buttons said. “I can’t see how that will help us, though.”

  I shook my head. “I suppose not, but perhaps it will help later on, somehow. Hang on a moment.” I peered at the writing. “I know what this is. How silly of me! Those symbols are silver hallmarks. I know because Andrew’s mother was always talking about her huge collection of antique silver. Look at this one, here. It has the words ‘lion passant’, which is, of course, the symbol for sterling silver, and then that symbol there I bet is a leopard’s head which is the place, London I think from memory. Then those ones are date letters and the maker’s mark. He must’ve written this all down while looking at Cressida’s silver, and then gone to check it with one of those books.” I nodded to the pile of books.

  “And the numbers are what he thinks the items are worth,” Mr. Buttons said.

  “Yes, and I’d say he left the dollar sign off, just in case someone stumbled across it. It certainly fooled us for a while. What are we going to do? We have to give these to the police, but they’ll say we’re interfering with their investigation.”

  “Leave it to me,” Mr. Buttons said. “I’ll just say I was cleaning Tim Higgins’ room and stumbled across them.”

  I thanked him, and we made our way back downstairs. After stopping to listen at the dining room door to check that the coast was clear, I followed Mr. Buttons to the kitchen. He went to a small coffee maker in the corner and turned it on, and soon the smell of freshly brewing coffee filled the place. Mr. Buttons also rinsed a teapot under hot water, so I assumed the coffee was solely for my benefit. I was certainly having a coffee overload today. I could almost smell the caffeine that I imagined was oozing from my pores.

  I made myself as comfortable as I could at the kitchen table, and flipped through the small date book. Mr. Buttons set a coffee mug in front of me and a delicately painted tea cup in front of his seat.

  I looked at Mr. Buttons and then realized with a start that he could be the murderer. I had certainly let down my guard with him. I couldn’t afford to be so careless again.

  Chapter 11

  I was at the veterinary clinic asking the receptionist if I could leave my business cards there, as well as a poster. “Oh yes, my mobile grooming van is ideal,” I gushed, waving my business cards under her nose. “It has an electric grooming table, an Autofill hydrobath, and an Airmax dyer. I have special shampoo and conditioner for the dogs with skin allergies, and I cater to all breeds. I do whatever clients want: I can do show clips for several breeds including poodles, full clips for cats, blow dry, hydro baths – I do nails, ears, you name it.”

  I had just paused for breath when a woman burst through the door dragging an unwilling yellow Labrador behind her. She elbowed me aside and demanded to speak with the veterinarian.

  “Come here, you bad dog,” the woman snarled at the dog, who was pulling back, unwilling to proceed further into the waiting room.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to help this young lady first,” the receptionist said, but the woman interrupted her.

  “I tell you, I need you to help me urgently. This dog continues to dig holes in my pristine lawn and keeps on gnawing at our shoes. You have no idea how many times I’ve had to replace everything and pay the gardener to make sure the lawn’s tidy again. You have to help me fix this dog, or get rid of her for me somehow.”

  The receptionist had her lips set in a tight, thin line. It was clear to me that her patience was wearing thin. However, she instead smiled politely at the rude woman and asked her to wait while she called the vet out to the reception room. She quickly mouthed a word of apology at me, the business cards briefly left forgotten on her desk.

  The receptionist soon returned with a vet. “What seems to be the problem this time, Mrs. Davis?”

  “I’ve already explained it to that other woman,” she snapped. “This dog has no manners. She keeps digging holes. She slobbers all over the floor, and she ate some of my sofa.”

  I only managed to stifle a giggle with some effort, but my humor soon left when I saw the dog’s sad face.

  “I’ve already given you the name of a training group,” the patient lady vet said.

  “That won’t help her,” the overbearing woman said. “She needs drugs.”

  The vet shook her head. “She’s only seven months old. Chewing things is normal puppy behavior. Have you provided her with an assortment of chew-toys? Have you been taking her for daily walks like I advised you to previously?”

  The woman’s cheeks puffed up. “I can’t walk. It makes me tired. I can’t have this dog any longer. If you won’t give her drugs, I’ll take her to a shelter and leave her with them.”

  I gasped, and the woman turned her attention to me. “Do you have something to say?”

  “No, I mean yes, um, well, you can’t take that lovely dog to a shelter. Who knows what will happen to her?” The dog walked over to me and chewed on my shoe, then turned her big brown eyes up to my face. I stroked her head and made silly baby noises at her. “She’s adorable,” I cooed.

  “You take her, then!” she snapped in waspish tone.

  I looked up at the woman. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Do you want her?”

  I had been planning on getting a dog, but not yet, and not like this. I had deliberately looked for a cottage with a yard, a place where the landlord would allow me to have a dog, and that, in fact, was written in my lease contract.

  I took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ll have the dog.”

  The leash was in my hand as fast as the woman could get it to me, and she turned to hurry away.

  “Wait a minute,” the vet said. “This needs to be legal, Mrs. Davis.” She turned to the receptionist. “Do you have any change of microchip number forms handy?”

  The receptionist soon produced a form, which Mrs. Davis signed, albeit unwillingly. “I don’t know why I had to pay to have this dog microchipped in the first place,” she snapped. “It’s a waste of money.”

  The receptionist shot me a look and then stood up. “Mrs. Davis, all dogs and cats in Australia by law have to be microchipped. It’s useful for locating owners of missing pets.”

  Mrs. Davis muttered something to herself and hurried from the clinic.

  I filled in the form, and signed it too—and just like that, I had a dog.

  The business cards I had come to deliver were quickly left forgotten and I felt a little shell shocked. The vet briefly smiled at me before hurrying back into a treatment room, and I turned to the receptionist. “I
’ll need to buy dog food. Is there anything else I need to buy?”

  The receptionist looked at her computer. “She’s not due for worming for quite some time. Anyway, we’ll send you a text the week before she’s due. She’ll need a car safety restraint. This one’s good and cheap, and clips straight in.” She held up a small packet. “Did you know that she’s well bred? Mrs. Davis paid quite a lot for her. Her parents had good hip and elbow scores—it’s all in the computer. Which dog food would you like?”

  My head was spinning. I looked at the shelves, and was at once intimidated by the various types and brands of dog food, their silvery plastic packages shining under the too bright clinic lights. “Which one is best for her?”

  The receptionist pointed to one large bag. “Labradors should stay on premium puppy food at least to the age of eighteen months,” she said. “Preferably a brand made for large breeds, due to potential joint problems and the like.”

  “Okay,” I said, handing her my credit card. “I’ll have the car safety restraint and the dog food, thanks.” I also chose some chew-toys. After I had paid, I was about to leave, when I turned back. “What’s her name?”

  The receptionist smiled. “Sandy. Good luck with her.”

  Sandy. Not the most original name, especially for a yellow Labrador. Oh well, she was too old to have a name change now. I shrugged and led Sandy to my car. As soon as I opened the back door, she hopped in nicely and allowed me to fasten her seat belt. “Oh, you’re such good girl,” I gushed and was rewarded with a wet lick on my chin.

  After a quick detour to the supermarket to buy dog bowls, I went back home to my cottage. Home—it did feel like home now that I had a dog to share it with. I led Sandy through the cottage, into the yard, and let her go. I had already checked that the yard was dog proof when I’d first arrived. I had planned to get a dog at some point, after all. Sandy ran around and explored it quickly, and then ran back to me and put her paw on my knee. “I do hope you’re house trained,” I said, and Sandy put her head to one side, as if to try to figure out what I was saying.