by steve higgs
I saw her look at me and then back along the street behind me to where Violet and Vera were now giving chase. Vera had a golf club above her head and while neither was going fast enough to ever catch me, they were making enough racket to attract the attention of everyone else in sight.
‘Stop that thief!’ yelled Violet.
Mindy’s car was ten yards away. I was going to make it, but as I closed the final yards, a young man stepped into my path.
‘Whoa there, lady.’ He held out both hands to stop me. ‘Did you just steal from a charity shop?’
‘Get out of my way!’ I screamed, trying to duck around him to get to the car. Mindy had the engine running and was ready for a fast getaway. Meanwhile, Vera and Violet were catching up now that I had stopped moving.
‘Keep her there!’ yelled Vera. ‘She’s a crazy killer woman. The police are after her!’
The young man’s eyes showed his surprise, and I used it to my advantage. ‘That’s right. So get out of my way or you’ll be next,’ I sneered.
He was half a foot taller than me and twice as wide, but with muscle not fat. He looked like he worked in a gym or something.
My threat startled him, but only for long enough for him assess our relative differences in height and weight. Then a smile flickered across his face. He thought he was being a hero and under other circumstances I would praise him.
I just didn’t need this right now.
I guess Mindy got bored waiting, because she leaned across to open the passenger’s door and that let Buster out.
‘Adventure Dog to the rescue!’ his front paws hit the pavement, followed half a heartbeat later by his back paws. In the next second, he was leaping. The poor young man got hit from behind, Buster’s thick skull taking out his knees. The effect was much like watching a human version of an up-and-over garage door. One moment the young man had been an effective barrier stopping me from getting to the car. Now he was a groaning mess on the floor.
I stepped over him and started to get in. ‘Sorry about that,’ I offered. I held the door for Buster, expecting him to clamber in behind me as he had when we ran from John’s house, but he wasn’t there.
A pair of screams told me where he was.
He was chasing Vera and Violet.
I slammed the door shut and slapped the dashboard. ‘Go!’
Mindy needed no further encouragement, her car leaping away from the kerb and into traffic with yet another blare of horns.
The ladies from the charity shop were trying to get back there but their legs were not going fast enough. Even slow as he is – bulldogs are built for ambling not sprinting – he was going to catch them in the next three seconds.
Perhaps sensing how close he was, Vera abandoned her plan to get back to their shop and barrelled through the door to a local bank branch instead. Violet followed, but as we screeched to a stop again to collect Buster, the scene inside the bank was already one of absolute chaos.
The people inside thought the two old ladies brandishing weapons were there to rob the place! As I yelled for Buster to get his furry backside in the car, the alarm in the bank went off.
How much crazy could I fit into one day?
A lot more, as it turned out. A whole lot more.
Ninja Assistant
Now that I was dressed, I felt better prepared to carry on with what had become a desperate plight to prove my innocence. We were heading for Meopham again where I would find the Bleakwiths’ house and the surgery of their doctor.
I was guessing the last part. From my conversation with Joanne yesterday, I knew I wanted to find Dr Kimble. Joanne said he was Derek’s general practitioner which ought to mean he worked in the local doctors’ surgery. I knew where that was only because I had passed it a number of times.
Mindy pulled into a parking space and paused to think about what we needed to do next.
‘Do I still smell?’ I asked my niece.
Mindy pulled an awkward face. ‘Like the inside of a hippo’s bottom, Auntie.’
‘Got anything I can use to mask it?’ I enquired hoping she might have some perfume in her handbag.
She didn’t. A quick root around in her door bins and glove box produced only an air freshener.
It was going to have to do.
It was one of those cardboard ones that people hang from their rear-view mirror to keep their cars smelling nice. It was slightly moist from the liquid scent it was impregnated with. I took off the cellophane wrapper and rubbed it on my neck and hands.
‘Is that making much difference?’ I asked.
Mindy shot me a sorry look. ‘Now you smell like someone stuffed an air freshener up a hippo’s bum.’
That was quite enough of that. I was just going to have to smell.
Out of the car, I could already see I had guessed right. A plaque on the wall of the surgery boasted two doctors’ names and the first of them was Kimble.
‘What do we do with Buster?’ asked Mindy, holding his lead.
‘We take him in,’ I stated, striding toward the surgery’s main entrance.
Mindy questioned my judgement. ‘Will they let us?’
I was way past caring about the opinions of other people. ‘I’m not going to give them a choice.’
The surgery in the sleepy little village was as sleepy and quiet as one might expect. A small dispensary was on the right as we went in. It was closed for a two-hour lunch according to the sign on the outside.
Next, on the same side, was a reception and office area. I could see two women behind the glass, neither one looking excited to have someone approaching them. Beyond reception was a waiting area with several closed doors dotted around the periphery on three sides. The doors must lead to the doctors but there were no name plates to show which one might hide the man I was here to see.
One lonely old man sat reading a tatty old National Geographic magazine. He didn’t look up when we came in.
‘I’m here to see Dr Kimble,’ I announced as brightly and positively as I could.
My smile had zero impact on the sour face of the woman behind the glass. ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she wanted to know.
I kept my pleasant face on when I said, ‘It’s not a medical matter, but it is rather urgent. Dr Kimble will want to see me. If you could just let him know I am here about Derek Bleakwith.’
‘Without an appointment, you cannot see him. If this is a personal matter, you will need to contact him at home.’ The sour-faced woman’s colleague was on her feet and peering through the glass. She wasn’t looking at me though. Or at Mindy.
‘Here they’ve brought a dog in with them.’
Sour face jumped to her feet. ‘Right, that’s it. You need to leave right now.’
‘I am not leaving until I speak with Dr Kimble,’ I stated firmly. She was winding up to start getting excited, but I got in first. ‘He’s facing a malpractice claim,’ I lied. ‘You need to let him know I am here right now.’
I could have told her the world was about to end for all the effect I had.
‘No! You get out right now. There are no dogs allowed in here! And you do not have an appointment!’ Both women were done talking and were now on their way to the office door so they could remove us.
Mindy took a step to the side, whipped an eighteen-inch-long fork looking thing from behind her back and stabbed it into the doorframe.
The door opened outwards and they were trapped inside.
‘What the heck even is that?’ I wanted to know.
Mindy pointed to the weapon now pinning the door shut. ‘This thing? It’s a sai, an ancient ninja weapon. Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fights with a pair of them.’
‘But you only have one,’ I observed.
‘Of course not,’ Mindy frowned. ‘What good would that be?’ She reached behind her back and produced a twin for the first one.
That she was my assistant made me shudder.
Inside the medical centre’s reception, the two women were
going berserk. Shutting them in was much like dropping cats into a bag and shaking it. It did, however, achieve the desired result. Across the waiting room, a door opened, and a man popped his head out.
‘What the devil is going on?’ he asked. Then his nose wrinkled. ‘What is that smell?’
I flashed him a smile, ignoring his question and the caterwauling occurring two feet from me. ‘Dr Kimble?’
‘Yes?’ His eyebrows rose in question.
‘Jolly good. I need to speak with you.’
As I made my way across the surgery, Mindy shouted after me, ‘Auntie, I think they are calling the police. You might want to make this quick.’
I paused, gritting my teeth. How long would it take the police to get here? Facing the doctor, I took out the tub of corticosteroid cream. ‘I need to talk to you about the attempted murder of Derek Bleakwith.’ It wasn’t an accusation and every word of what I said was true. ‘Would you like the ladies to call the police or would you rather they didn’t?’
His face turned to thunder. It was not the reaction I had hoped for. ‘How dare you come in here and accuse me? Who are you?’
I wanted to answer him with something clever, but I had just spotted something. In his surgery there was a desk with a chair behind it for the doctor and a chair facing it for a patient. Behind the patient’s chair was a freestanding coatrack, one of the circular ones, and on it was a single piece of clothing.
I rushed forward to get a look inside his surgery.
I finally felt like I had seen a clue. He made no attempt to stop me, stepping out of my way so I could look inside.
I grabbed the scarf from the coatrack and spun around to face him. ‘Whose is this?’ I demanded.
He wasn’t there though. He was moving to the reception desk where I could already hear the woman with the sour face talking to the police dispatcher.
In my head, two things had just lined up and suddenly I had a motive and a means. It was as plain as day.
Jolted by the revelation, I started running.
‘Go, Mindy! Back to the car. I’ve just worked it all out!’
‘The police are coming!’ the woman with the sour face yelled at my back.
I had no doubt they were. If she had given them our descriptions, chances were all the police in the county were about to converge on my location. By now they must have worked out that we were in Mindy’s car and would have every set of eyes looking out for it.
We needed to get out of the area, but I couldn’t do that yet. I needed to go somewhere else first. That belief was cemented when we ran from the surgery building. Right in front of me, in one of the spots reserved for a doctor, I saw something for the second time today. I hadn’t realised what it was the first time, but now it meant everything.
‘Auntie! Let’s go!’ shouted Mindy already stuffing Buster into the car.
‘Yeah!’ barked Buster. ‘It’s adventure driving time!’
Regretfully, I had to agree with my dog. Mindy needed to floor it.
All Figured Out
The sensible thing might have been to get as far away from where we were as possible, but that was what a criminal would do. I wasn’t a criminal. I was a falsely accused victim and one who had just figured out what was going on. Still heading for the Bleakwiths’ house in Meopham, I tried to explain it to Mindy.
‘This,’ I held up the scarf I took from the doctor’s office, ‘belongs to Joanne Bleakwith.’
‘The wife of the man who fell off the balcony,’ Mindy wanted to confirm.
‘That’s right. This morning, I saw a parking permit on her car. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it was for a golf club.’
Mindy, unable to see where I was going with my explanation said, ‘Okay.’
‘Joanne can’t play golf,’ I explained.
‘Why not?’ Mindy wrinkled her brow.
Feeling clever because I’d worked this out for myself, I told her, ‘Because she has a spinal injury from when she was younger. A car accident she said. She couldn’t possibly play a round of golf, so why does she have a parking permit for the local club?’
Mindy shrugged. ‘She likes to watch?’
I grinned and shook my head, then pointed to a turning coming up on our left. ‘Go down there.’
‘Here?’ Mindy questioned.
The turning was for a dirt track that led through some woods to emerge behind houses on the next street. It was there to access farmland but unless a tractor came along, I doubted anyone would need to use it and that made it not only a great place for us to hide the car, it also meant we could access the Bleakwiths’ house without anyone seeing.
‘Dr Kimble has the same parking permit on his car. I only noticed it when we were leaving the surgery. He’s having an affair with Joanne,’ I felt like my big reveal needed a drum roll. Mindy frowned as she tried to work out what that meant. ‘You see, Dr Kimble and Joanne want to be together, so they hatched a plot to get rid of Derek. He gives her a cream laced with something that will make Derek’s skin condition even worse than it already is and all she has to do is apply it. I guess they were building up the dose until it killed him. No one would question his death because he was so sick and under the care of his doctor.’
Mindy frowned. ‘I guess that makes sense.’
‘However, in the meantime, John Ramsey, a man we know to have little life beyond the firm he co-owns …’
‘Do we count the crossdressing?’ Mindy wanted to know.
I corrected myself. ‘No life outside of his work apart from some dedicated crossdressing. He wants Derek to hand over the reins to the new blood so the firm can move forward. Derek refused, they fight about it, and John pushes Derek over the balcony.’
Mindy’s frown got deeper. ‘Is that a problem for Joanne and the doctor?’
‘Yes, because now Derek is in hospital and the doctors there will use the right cream. That’s why he started getting better straight away. I was there this morning and Joanne was desperately trying to get them to use the cream she had – the stuff that would kill him.’
‘So what happened to John?’ Mindy wanted to know.
‘I think Joanne killed him. The official verdict is that it was an accidental death, but Vince thinks someone tampered with his brakes and I think he might be right. Joanne is trying to kill off her husband so she can be with the doctor but then John messes things up. I think she was so angry with him, she fiddled with his brakes.’
‘I thought she had a back problem and couldn’t do stuff?’
Good point. ‘Then I guess it was the doctor.’ I shrugged. Either one could tamper with a car’s brakes.
Mindy repeated her previous comment, ‘I guess that makes sense.’ She didn’t sound entirely convinced.
I knew I was right though. ‘It all adds up,’ I claimed triumphantly.
Mindy stopped the car when I nodded that we were where we wanted to be.
‘So what now?’ she asked. ‘We try to find evidence at the Bleakwiths’ place?’
I blew out a worried breath because that was exactly my plan. I was about to break into yet another house. It was becoming a habit.
List of Crimes
Just as we were getting out of the car, Mindy’s phone rang. It came through on the car’s speakers.
‘Dad?’ Mindy answered, reading the caller ID from the screen in the middle of her dashboard.
‘Mindy, dear. I have a message from you asking that I call you as a matter of urgency. Are you in some trouble?’ Shane’s voice boomed back at her, filling my heart with hope because not only had I solved the case, we now had a lawyer on our side to straighten things out.
Mindy said, ‘Um, I might be in just a touch of bother, yes, Dad.’
I jumped in quick. ‘It’s all my fault, Shane.’
‘Felicity?’ He sounded surprised to hear my voice. ‘What’s going on?’
Feeling my cheeks warm, I said, ‘Well, you know how you said I should just keep my head down and not worr
y about the police?’
‘Yes,’ he replied in a tone that suggested he already knew where this was going.
‘And you said I shouldn’t worry about the chief inspector and under no circumstances do anything out of the ordinary today. Just go about my usual wedding planner business and act innocent because I am?’
‘Yes.’ Shane now sounded like someone dreading what he was going to hear next.
I closed my eyes and admitted the truth. ‘I didn’t do any of those things.’
Mindy and I heard him sigh. ‘How bad is it?’
‘We broke into a couple of places, threatened some people,’ I started listing my crimes.
‘Stole from a charity shop,’ Mindy added unhelpfully.
‘Yes, that too,’ I admitted. ‘The chief inspector asked me to turn myself in. He thinks I tried to kill Derek and succeeded in killing John. With the other shareholders out of the way, the business is mine. At least, I think that’s his theory.’
Mindy remembered something. ‘I assaulted a police officer too, Dad,’ she bragged proudly. Then she realised what she had said, and told her dad, ‘I didn’t know he was a cop though. We were trapped inside a house and he’d been following us around. I was just trying to escape.’
Shane blew out an exasperated breath. ‘Okay. I need to get ahead of this and quickly. Did you physically break into anywhere today?’
‘As in smash our way in?’ I sought to confirm.
Mindy knew what her dad was asking. ‘No, Dad, we had a key.’
‘Okay, good,’ he replied sounding relieved. ‘Where are you now?’
‘Wait, there’s more,’ I told him.
‘More?’ He couldn’t believe his ears.
‘I know who did it. I figured out what has been going on and why.’ I spent the next couple of minutes explaining what I had seen and what I knew. Going over it again, I felt even more certain than I had explaining it to Mindy.
‘So now we’re going to break into the Bleakwiths’ house to find the evidence,’ said Mindy when I finished.
‘No!’ yelled Shane. ‘Good grief. Look I’ll get straight onto the police. Just sit tight until I call you back. If they find you, let them arrest you. They will do it anyway, but you are innocent and if you are right about Joanne and the doctor then we should be able to prove it. At the very minimum, I can muddy the water and get them to release you. Stay there, do nothing, and wait for my call.’
