Claire's Candles Mystery 03 - Coconut Milk Casualty

by Agatha Frost

  Sally looked up and shook her head. “There’s a visiting order attached to this one for last month.”

  “This one too.” Damon held up a small piece of card. “From two weeks ago. Are you sure you want us to read these?”

  “Yeah, this is pretty deep,” Sally said as she turned her letter over. “It sounds like he’s really struggling in there.”

  “Keep reading.”

  Claire cycled through three more letters, all of them similar in content. They were almost word for word identical, with the levels of apology and begging increasing or decreasing depending on how recently they’d been sent. Claire waited to feel something, but nothing penetrated the shroud of numbness.

  “I’m not even the one he needs to beg for forgiveness,” she said almost to herself after finishing another letter. Her gaze drifted to the tiles above the oven, precisely where Graham’s cottage sat next door. “I’m not the victim of what he did.”

  “You’re the victim of the vandalism,” Sally pointed out. “But I still haven’t seen any mention of your shop.”

  “Me neither,” Damon said. “Although he seems to be sick of eating potatoes with every . . .”

  Damon’s voice trailed off as he turned his ear towards the door with a slight squint in his eyes. Claire heard the familiar rumble of an engine seconds later. Leaving her final letter on the side, she rushed into the hallway and pulled back the curtain. Through the light shower of rain, her father’s rear headlights reversed onto the driveway.

  “No, no, no!” she cried, hurrying back into the kitchen. “They’re back already. What do we do?”

  “I don’t know!” Sally cried, jumping up. “Maybe let him walk in and see?”

  “And admit I was sneaking around behind his back?”

  “He’s been sneaking behind yours, mate.” Sally stuffed one of the letters back in its envelope and slapped down the still sticky glue along the flap. “These are addressed to you. You have every right to open them.”

  “Stall him.” Damon pushed Claire into the hallway. “We’ll figure it out.”

  He closed the kitchen door behind her, leaving her to wait in the hallway until the car doors slammed. Through the net curtains, she watched her mother hurry up the path, her face as panicked as Claire felt.

  “It was bloody closed!” Janet hissed when she opened the front door. “One of the water mains burst and flooded the damn road in front of it. I tried to get him to another, but he wasn’t having any of it.” She looked around Claire’s shoulder at the closed kitchen door. “What’s going on in there?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she said, immediately pushing forward a smile as her father hobbled up the path with his cane. “No luck?”

  “Burst pipe,” he said, obviously relieved. “I’ll go sometime in the week.”

  “Shame you didn’t get to have lunch there,” she said, leaning against the doorframe. “Why don’t we go into the village? I heard The Park Inn has a new food menu that’s meant to be half decent.”

  “And overpriced.”

  “The Hesketh Arms, then?” Claire reached for her denim jacket. “I could just murder a pint of Hesketh Homebrew.”

  “I’m really not in the mood, little one,” he said, mustering a weary smile before pushing past her. “I just want to sit down and put my feet up with the crossword.”

  Claire held her breath as he walked down the hallway, knowing she couldn’t say more without completely giving herself away. She hurried after him, hovering in his shadow and preparing to explain herself. He opened the door and shuffled in.

  “You win!” Sally cried from the dining room table. A board of Scrabble between her and Damon. “I’m rubbish at this.”

  “Scrabble?” Janet arched a brow, her lips pursing as she scanned the kitchen. “You were playing board games?”

  “My idea.” Damon held up his hands. “Can’t get enough of it.”

  Claire looked around the kitchen, but the envelopes had gone. The iron was still out, but the stove was off, and the pot was upturned on the draining board next to the sink. Alan went straight to the kettle and pulled out enough cups for everyone.

  “I should get going,” Sally announced, standing and nodding for Damon to do the same. “I’ll give you a lift into the village since it’s raining.”

  “Right,” Damon said, rising. “I have that thing I need to do anyway.”

  “I’ll show you out,” Claire said, already following them into the hallway.

  Leaving her parents in the kitchen, she closed the door. A trio of audible sighs escaped as they made their way to the front door. Sally pulled it open, the rain thickening by the second.

  “I put them back in the shed,” Damon whispered as he hugged her goodbye. “Top drawer, like you said.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered back. “I owe you one.”

  Sally and Damon climbed into Sally’s parked car on the edge of the cul-de-sac. Claire waved them off into the rain and waited until they’d gone before returning to the kitchen. Alan had put two of the cups away and was now making two cups of tea, and a cup of coffee for Claire. Claire slipped into one of the chairs at the dining room table and tried not to let her frustration and confusion register too much on her face.

  “All the words are gibberish,” said Alan as he set a cup of coffee in front of her, tilting his head at the beige letter tiles on the board.

  “You know what Damon is like.” Claire picked up the board and dumped the pieces back into the box before cramming it in the dining room console table. “He insisted we play by his weird internet rules. No wonder he won.”

  Alan nodded that he understood, but Claire knew she couldn’t get anything past him. As much as his limp had physically slowed him down, and as forgetful as he could be since the operation, his inner detective was as active as ever. She didn’t mind him thinking she was up to something as long as he didn’t figure out exactly what. Much as she’d insisted her father was the one not ready to have the awkward Uncle Pat conversation, the more she thought about it, neither was she.

  “I think I’ll have this in my shed,” he said, already hobbling to the back door with the assistance of the furniture, his cane – as always – abandoned by the front door. “I need to have my new bedding flowers ready for when the rain eases.”

  “Going to last all week, apparently,” Janet called as she cranked up the blind over the kitchen window. “So much for the first day of summer.”

  “Typical British summer,” Alan said with a half-hearted chuckle as he opened the door. “I’ll be back in for dinner.”

  Janet waited until Alan was shut in his shed before marching across the kitchen. Before she reached Claire, her eyes went to something on the floor and being the neat freak that she was, she picked it up. Claire immediately recognised it as one of the postcard-sized visiting orders from Pat’s letter.

  “Polling card,” she said, snatching it off her mother before she could get a closer look.

  “But there’s no election coming up.” Janet folded her arms, one brow peaking up her forehead. “Claire, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I swear, I’ll – I’ll—”

  “Send me to bed without supper?”

  “I’m warning you, Claire!” Janet planted one hand on the counter before her gaze went to the end of the breakfast bar. “Why is the iron out?”

  “I needed to iron something.”

  “And here was me thinking you didn’t know how.”

  Before the barrage of questions came, Claire adopted one of her father’s avoidance techniques and locked herself in the small water closet under the stairs. Sitting on the toilet lid, she pulled the visiting order from her pocket and unfolded it. It must have fallen out of one of the letters, and just by chance, it must have fallen out of the letter he sent four days ago. The visiting order was in two days.

  The thought of visiting Uncle Pat in prison had crossed her mind, but each time, she’d dismissed it without a second thought. She didn’
t want to go and see him, nor did she want to hear him out as desperately as he seemed to want her to.

  But her mind went to Nick. She didn’t know him enough to say he hadn’t killed himself, and yet the disconcerted feeling that had settled over her when he was found dead in the cottage he used to share with her uncle had yet to ease. The feeling in her chest only itched more with each new titbit she gleaned from people’s perceptions of the deceased man.

  Flushing the toilet, she pushed the visiting order back into her pocket, knowing what she had to do.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Breakfast the next morning was so awkward it made Claire wish she had prioritised setting up the flat above her shop. As much as she had loved temporarily living with her parents, at thirty-five, she felt too old to be walking around on eggshells.

  Alan silently wolfed down a bowl of cornflakes while the promised rain poured outside. Janet did the same, glaring at him the whole time as her spoon forcefully hit the bottom of her bowl. When they were both finished, they went their separate ways, leaving Claire to load the breakfast things into the dishwasher. Her parents had bickered late into the night. Even though her bedroom shared a wall with their master suite, she hadn’t been able to make out the specifics – not that it was difficult to assume the subject.

  Rain or not, Claire didn’t consider asking her mother for a lift into the village. They’d driven in together on Saturday, but the post office’s new limited opening times had slashed Janet’s Monday shift off the schedule for the first time in her near-forty years of employment. Though she had promised to take Claire into the village on Mondays regardless, Claire preferred the rain over another awkward silence; the humid air was thick enough.

  After packing a change of clothes and a fresh pair of shoes into a plastic bag, she pulled on her father’s large raincoat. The hood hung way over her eyes, but it kept the rain out like nothing else. Her mother’s raincoat was more for show – not that it would fit Claire anyway. Alan’s smelt like him, forcing her to think about him alone in the shed at the bottom of the garden. She wanted to go to him, to make things better, but she couldn’t think of a way to do it without making things worse. After adding her handbag to the plastic bag, Claire knotted it and left without so much as a goodbye.

  Head down and bag held tightly in her hand, Claire set off straight into the cul-de-sac. The rain fell thick and fast, but there was no wind to alter its course to the ground. Summer-warmed rain made for a far less unpleasant walk than the same journey come wintertime.

  The opening of the lane into the village appeared in no time, and it wasn’t long before she reached the bridge over the canal. When she did, headlights shone from behind, forcing her to the side of the road. The car pulled up next to her, and the door opened. As he had done many times before, Graham motioned for Claire to get into the car.

  “You should have knocked for me,” he said, offering a smile. He set off as soon as she’d fastened her seatbelt. “I knew spring had been far too kind to us. We’re paying for it in buckets by the looks of the forecast.”

  “And here I thought my coconut milk candle would be perfect for the season,” she said, lowering her hood. “If only there was a way to develop a rain-scented candle. I’d probably make a fortune.”

  Graham offered a laugh, but Claire didn’t detect much humour in it. The awkwardness she had been hoping to avoid with her mother now hung in the air, albeit for different reasons.

  Not terribly long ago, she and Graham had simply been neighbours, knowing each other enough only to nod and smile. Claire hadn’t even known his wife, Nicola – who eventually became her boss – until her death. As a couple, Graham and Nicola had kept themselves to themselves, and Janet stopped trying to invite them to her annual garden barbeques after they ignored three in a row.

  Graham had been the one to make right his wife’s theft of Claire’s vanilla candle formula at the factory. That money had become the deposit on the shop.

  Nicola’s death, however, had stitched their paths together before that. Not only had Claire suspected (and accused) Graham of the murders her uncle had committed, Graham had misguidedly attempted to kiss her at the same time he and Sally were having an affair during a break in her marriage.

  The water under the bridge was too deep for there not to be awkwardness

  “How was the opening?” he asked, breaking a minute-long silence. “Sorry I couldn’t get down. Those Saturday shifts at the factory have really taken off. People seem to appreciate the extra hours after so much uncertainty.”

  “It was great,” she said, “until it wasn’t. I’m assuming you heard about Nick?”

  “I did.” He sucked the air through his teeth. “I feel for the guy, I really do. It makes me feel terrible about having to fire him two weeks ago.”

  The detail made Claire sit up and pay attention, all awkwardness temporarily forgotten.

  “You fired him?”

  “Belinda caught him trying to steal her fundraising money from her locker,” he said in a low voice as though someone might overhear them. “Her niece isn’t very well, and they’re trying to get her to Disneyland. They didn’t raise much, so I bumped it up enough to take them to Disneyland Paris. Didn’t leave me much choice. It was so out of the blue.”

  “That’s awful,” Claire said, almost to herself. “Had he done anything like that before?”

  “Model employee until then,” he said, taking the turn into the square rather than up to the factory. He stopped outside Claire’s shop and pulled on the handbrake. “I’ve heard stories about his turbulent youth, but between you and me, I think your uncle’s influence straightened him out. I overheard a few people say Nick had changed for the worst since Pat went to prison. Pat seemed to take him under his wing.”

  “How can you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Talk about Pat so easily,” she said, the words leaving her mouth before she could wonder if they were a good idea. “He killed your wife.”

  “Because if I don’t,” he said, pausing to exhale heavily, “I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.” He yanked his sleeve back, looked at his watch, and said, “I must get to the factory.”

  Claire hesitated, but the moment was clearly over. Graham ducked and looked into the shop, eyeing up the window display. Claire took the hint, thanked him for the lift, and hurried under the canopy that jutted out from her shop to protect passers-by from weather such as this. Once inside, she smiled, appreciating the novelty of stepping into her very own candle shop, about to open to genuine customers.

  “Enjoy it,” she said to herself as she flicked the lights on. “You worked hard for this.”

  Even though she’d arrived early to avoid sitting in the cloud of her parents’ tension, a couple of the shops in the square already had their lights on. One of them just happened to be Lilac Gifts. Instead of emerging from her waterproof shell, Claire grabbed a coconut milk candle and bagged it up with a handful of wax melts and a sampler packet of tea lights, each a different summer scent. She’d intended to slowly introduce herself to her fellow shopkeepers over her first week; this venture was merely killing two birds with one stone.

  Holding the bag close to her chest, Claire sloshed across the square, the road underfoot more puddles than cobbles. At Lilac Gifts, Claire was grateful to find the door unlocked. She hurried inside, squinting in the lights that seemed even brighter after the dim storm. She pushed back her hood, and her eyes went straight to the counter. Clearly, she’d interrupted something – the awkwardness in here was as bad as it had been at home and in Graham’s car.

  Gwyneth was behind the counter, her platinum hair rolled and backcombed to 1950s perfection. She wore a red blouse the same commanding shade as her lips. Gwyneth had drawn one black beauty mark above her top lip and another under her eye, just beneath the sharp point of her expertly drawn wings of eyeliner. A pair of ornate, pink, half-frame glasses connected to a chain of pearls around her neck balanced on the end of her n
ose. Claire would have guessed Gwyneth was somewhere around the fifty mark, although she looked much younger.

  The man on the other side of the counter seemed to be around the same age. His lank, slightly too long combover had thinned to the point where most men would have reached for the clippers. Deep lines were etched in his drawn-out face, and there was a slight sheen to his pastiness. He wore a crinkled brown pinstriped suit, a little too big in all the wrong places and yet still somehow showing an inch of sock above his shoes. A poorly made, bright blue tie looped lazily around an open canary yellow collar. Claire could taste his thick aftershave in the back of her throat; Aramis, she’d know it anywhere.

  Some aged like wine, others like cheese.

  “I’m not open yet,” Gwyneth called across the shop with a smile, her eyes on the clock. “Come back in twenty, honey.”

  Usually, Claire hated being called ‘honey’ because it most often came from men trying to belittle her. Gwyneth said it in such a friendly way, it immediately endeared her to Claire.

  “My name’s Claire Harris,” she introduced, holding up the bag. “I’ve just opened the candle shop across the square. Just wanted to show my face and give you some samples.”

  “Oh, that’s awfully kind of you.” Gwyneth smiled and beckoned for Claire to approach as she peered down through her glasses. “I know your face. You’re Pat’s niece, aren’t you?”

  Claire cringed internally at the comparison, but she nodded. She was used to being referred to as ‘Janet and Alan’s daughter,’ or even ‘DI Harris’ daughter.’ It had been a while since someone connected her so openly to her uncle. Although she had overheard people talking about ‘the situation’ and, in turn, Claire’s family, people weren’t brave enough to be direct about it. Their cutting sideways glances spoke loudly enough. Claire had learned to live with it, but Gwyneth’s smile didn’t falter. Considering only two days had passed since Nick’s death, Gwyneth was holding herself together admirably well.

  “I meant to pop over at some point on opening day,” Gwyneth said, her smile souring for the first time. “I love candles. Even have my own little range, although I buy them wholesale from the factory.”