Murder in the Aisle Read online

  Chapter 8 – A visit from surfer John

  I was wishing now that I’d asked Alex for his cell number. I could hardly phone Jim Drizzle and ask him to give Alex a message from me without making His Lordship suspicious. However, the teddies were always on for a walk so I decided to have lunch, follow that up with another look at the files, and then take the road past Drizzle Farm again – me hoping for a glimpse of Jim or Alex, and the teddies no doubt looking forward to another whiff of stinky boots.

  There was most of a bag of sliced bread in the freezer and cheese in the fridge. Surprisingly good cheese. Blue from Kapiti and Vintage cheddar from Mainland. I ate some chunks of the lovely blue while I waited for two slices of bread to toast under the grill. Then I flipped them over and layered some Vintage on the other side, peppered it well, and slid it back until the cheese had melted and was hot and runny and delicious. A glass of wine would have made it a perfect lunch but no wine in sight, sadly.

  I added some to my mental shopping list. Steak for the curry, wine for whenever, something to make a change from the Pup-E-Love for the teddies, real butter (because Isobel only had a pot of something pale yellow, ambitiously labelled ‘spread’), and I’d better check she had decent rice in the pantry, too.

  The teddies were snoozing in the dotty dog bed so I tiptoed out with my laptop and locked the house. That may have been overkill, but if I was going to be concealed in the secret office then anyone could sneak into the house. A surfer, a vicar, a motorbike courier…

  I signalled the garage door to open. The teddies heard it rolling up of course, and two little white bodies came barrelling out of the dog door and across the concrete, determined to be given a ride to wherever I was going. I felt terrible beeping my Ford Focus so they’d scamper in that direction but it gave me time to get into the garage and start the door closing again. They glared at me from the other side of the yard, knowing they’d been duped.

  ‘Teddies, I’m so sorry,’ I muttered. ‘Good dinner later to make up for it.’

  I unlatched the shelves, holding my breath in case it didn’t work this time, but I needn’t have worried. The unit opened smoothly and I pulled it closed again behind me. There was plenty of light streaming through the ceiling window at this time of day so I barely needed the desk lamp.

  I settled onto the very nice chair, pushed Enter so the screen sprang to life, (and relaxed a little once it did), and opened my laptop so I could research stuff without leaving a trail the Police could follow on Isobel’s iMac. Or possibly Tom’s iMac.

  I opened the Burkeville Bar file first. Once I’d given it a much more in-depth read than my quick squiz the previous evening, I started to shake. This was no plot for a fanciful novel. It said John Bonnington was ex-Black Ops. According to the file he was one of the ‘cleaners’. I did a search on my laptop for that. An assassin who also gets rid of the body and makes it seem as though nothing has happened.

  I buried my chin in my hands and stared at those awful words. The shakes got worse. Surfer John killed people? The man who’d made me tea and looked after me when I’d been upset? Who’d bothered to slosh the church-flowers bucket of water over Isobel’s berries? Who’d brought the teddies a drink when I’d been sitting working at his sunny table? Surfer John who was charming to customers and wanted a house at the beach?

  I wrapped my arms around my waist and stared at the screen for a while longer before reading the notes on Erik Jacobsen. OMG – they were Black Ops buddies! Retired. But still… They’d left the States, bought the Burkeville as a front, and no-one suspected a thing. Except Isobel. Or possibly Tom. And now me.

  Although how had anyone got hold of information like this? It was hardly Wiki-Leaks. Maybe it was Fake News?

  I tried very hard to believe that, and to put it out of my mind.

  Hoping for something more peaceful I tried the ‘Soapworks’ file. It was all crafting information – probably much more Isobel’s thing than Tom’s, although I’d not seen any new patchwork quilts or knitted throws in the old cottage. Not a hint of a recently embroidered cushion or cunningly découpaged picture frame. So why…?

  There was a website link so I clicked on that. A dark-haired woman with beetling black brows stared back at me. Elsa Hudson. It could have been Alex with a medium-length bob. She was an artisan soap-maker. Avocado and olive oil soap. Peppermint and pumice soap for exfoliating rough skin. Peony and pecan. Orange, grapefruit and calendula soap, and plenty more. They sounded delicious. In fact they sounded as though they’d taste delicious. Well, maybe not the pumice…

  So was Soapworks among the files because of Tom, who secretly knew about his teenage son? Had he always had suspicions? Had he somehow tracked Alex down?

  Or was Soapworks there because of Isobel? Did she love luxurious soap? Or was she on the snoop? Had she checked on what Tom was researching? Was she possibly into blackmail?

  Had she, by any awful chance, accused Tom of being a bad father and threatened to expose him? Had he then followed her into the church, thumped her on the head with that vase or a bottle of communion wine, left her in the aisle to bleed out, and escaped on a cruise liner?

  But only for a week, and then he was coming back, so maybe not.

  A sudden flurry of barking erupted from somewhere outside. Two yappy teddies and something a lot bigger and deeper. Were they being attacked?

  I hurriedly closed my laptop, knowing the iMac would go to sleep on its own. Then I swiveled the shelves into place, peered quickly through the cobwebby window, saw nothing, and signaled the garage door to roll up.

  John stood there, a skeptical expression on his face, with Fire and Ice on short leads. The teddies, knowing they were safe, were darting up close, growling, and then skipping out of the way again.

  “You gonna call off these attack dogs?” John drawled, eyes never leaving mine as I walked out of the garage and reversed the door. “What are you hiding in there you need to close the door for?”

  I shrugged and tried for an innocent expression. “Just exploring. I dropped the keys inside. The ‘close the door’ button must have hit the concrete.”

  John didn’t move any of his many gleaming muscles. Didn’t look as though he believed me, either.

  “They’re sometimes touchy,” I added. “I wonder if my car remote got a bump as well?” Of course it had! I’d unlocked the car to fool the teddies. I aimed it and pressed. The lights on my Focus flashed and it made its usual locking noise. “Good thing I checked,” I said nonchalantly. The teddies’ heads had of course swiveled in that direction, full of hope that a ride might follow. “Are you going surfing again?”

  He continued to stand there, weight resting more heavily on his left foot so one thigh relaxed and the muscles of the other pulled tight and caught the sun. He was as streamlined as an underwear model, bronzed, graceful, and possibly an assassin. I had to remember that last bit, plus the nasty fact that those two big dogs could snap the teddies’ necks in a flash and then bring me to the ground an instant later.

  If he let go his firm hold on those leads.

  I don’t know what made me do it but I pressed the ‘door up’ button again, stood there trying to look relaxed while John peered inside, and then I pressed the ‘door down’ one.

  “Just a boring old garage,” I said.

  He finally glanced at Fire and Ice. “I brought these two for a run on the beach. Low tide. More sand. And it gets around the ‘no dogs off leads’ ruling closer to the village.”

  Huh. Well, he was a law-abiding assassin at least… And now I’d got over the shock of finding him, I saw they weren’t the same shorts he’d been surfing in. These were shiny black and cut a lot higher at the sides, which I guess wouldn’t get in the way of the long strides those very long legs were going to be taking on the long sandy beach.

  Overcome by so much masculinity – dogs and man – I blurted, “I’m going into the village to buy meat for a curry.”

  John turned slightly and the sunlight flashe
d off his nipple ring. How had I not noticed he was shirtless until then? Maybe because he looked the same as he had the other evening. That’s the excuse I’m sticking with, anyway.

  “Everything’s okay then?” he asked. “No delayed reaction to finding Isobel?” He stared across at the garage again still looking far from convinced I wasn’t concealing something secret in there. Little did he know!

  I shook my head, unable to tear my eyes away from him. “I haven’t heard anything about them discovering who killed her yet. I’ll feel better once someone’s locked up for it.”

  A gleam of sanity finally found its way past the muscles and nipple ring and short shorts. “Why have you come all the way along here for a run? There’s sand across the road from you in Burkeville.”

  He didn’t bat an eyelid. One cool customer for sure. “But no pretty ladies to check on,” he said, turning, clicking his tongue at the dogs, and loping away through Isobel’s garden and down the slope to the beach.

  I stood there like I’d been turned to stone. Couldn’t move anything except my hungry eyes which of course followed him avidly all the way. “Did you hear that, teddies?” I croaked once I’d recovered from the possible compliment. Itsy and Fluffy had both lost all their courage the moment John had given the Shepherds permission to move and were now pressed in behind my ankles. “Pretty ladies.”

  I walked slowly across to the garage again, thinking about that. I wasn’t going to ‘do an Isobel’ and dash away leaving the shelves unlocked, so once I was sure John was really gone I put the garage door up again, grabbed my laptop, slid the latch home to lock the shelves, rolled the door down yet again, and high-tailed it into the cottage for my bag. His comment about ‘pretty ladies’ kept running through my mind. Not just one of them. Not just me. Maybe not even me at all. The pleasure of it started to diminish.

  I snorted out a breath like a fire-breathing dragon, uncertain whether to be angry or not, and looking forward to a good savage session of pounding up curry spices as a stress-reliever.

  I drove slowly past the entrance to Drizzle Farm in case anyone was visible from the road. Luck was on my side. Lord Jim Drizzle was stumping toward his rural mail-box with a black and white Border collie. Not fast progress from either of them, so I stopped and lowered the windows a little to make sure the teddies could breathe but couldn’t follow. I really didn’t fancy mud all over the seats of the Focus. Their little faces and bright dark eyes reproached me through the glass, and I could practically feel the death-rays hitting my back as I walked across to the farm gateway.

  “Uncle Jim!” I exclaimed, seeing it had gone down well yesterday.

  “Little Merry,” he boomed.

  “Not so little these days,” I replied with a rueful grin. “Look – about the lawn-mowing. I found a solution but thought I’d better check it out with you. Your Alex phoned and offered to do the job for a bit of pocket money. Is that all right with you?”

  Jim scratched his neck. “Not a worry.” He bent and gave the collie an affectionate scratch as well. “Good to keep the lad occupied.”

  “I don’t want to steal him if you need him for other jobs.”

  “The more we can find for him, the better,” Jim surprised me by saying. “He’s not ‘mine’ in any sense of the word. I found him in the village a couple of days ago. I’d just collected Lizzie from Lisa.” He gave the dog a couple of hefty pats. “And she was waiting for me outside the café.”

  I had visions of Lisa the vet waiting until he added, “I’d tied her to the seat by the old oak tree for a few minutes. When I came out young Alex was squatting there and giving her neck and ears a good going-over. I told him Lizzie could take any amount of that and sat down and took the weight off my feet for a while.” He pulled the brim of his hat lower against the sun. “The lad’s a bit lost. His mother’s here for some sort of conference and he’s bored silly.”

  “A conference? What sort of conference gets held in Drizzle Bay?” St Agatha’s is the only large building with seats, and they plainly weren’t holding a conference there when Isobel met her untimely death.

  “Some sort of arty-farty thing,” Jim said. “Patchwork quilts and pressed flowers and so on.”

  “Soap making?” I suggested, as a prickle of excitement ran up my spine.

  “Possibly. Home-made gifts for Christmas, according to Alex. At Betty McGyver’s old place. With caravans, and camper vans, and so on.” He bent and gave the dog a few more thumps and she looked up at him adoringly. “So I asked if he wanted to come back here and earn a bit of money for the week. Thought it might keep him out of mischief. My last lad’s moved on to learn about avocados.”

  Wanting to deflect Jim from thinking I was being unduly curious about the craft conference, I asked, “Has Jasper put a back on that seat around the oak tree yet?”

  Many of the Drizzle Bay-ites had objected to the Roading Authority’s suggestion of cutting down the out-of-place oak, and one night ‘someone’ had ringed the knobby trunk with a circle of seating and attached it so firmly its future was safe. Jasper Hornbeam was the number one suspect – a rebel from way back and very handy with a hammer and saw. He’d told me once there was one like it in Hampstead when he’d been a teenager. It’s many, many years since Jasper was a teenager and almost as many since he left Hampstead for the antipodes so it might be gone by now.

  “No – lumpy as ever,” Jim confirmed. “He could do it for the village for Christmas.”

  “If it was really him who did it in the first place,” I suggested.

  Jim slapped his knee and gave a wheezy laugh. We both knew no-one else was likely to have built the seat.

  “Anyway, make use of Alex if you can,” he added. “That’s a big plot of land for a little woman like Isobel to try and keep tidy.”

  “Or anyone on their own,” I agreed. “I’m sure she must have had help.”

  I suddenly wondered if Tom Alsop was the source of the help. Not personally of course. A full-of-himself car dealer wasn’t likely to clip lavender bushes and yank out huge spent hollyhocks and chop them up for the compost heap, but he might have ensured someone else did – and perhaps paid them so Isobel kept quiet about the cars and the Asian people… or something. Well, no need to do that any longer.

  “Don’t suppose you have Alex’s phone number, do you?” I asked with no hope at all.

  Jim looked at me as though I’d suggested he sniffed cocaine.

  “When you see him, can you give him this and ask him to call me?” I dug in the pocket of my jeans, found one of my business cards, and handed it over. Very smart if I do say so myself. Pale grey with faint random white letters on the background and my details in black over the top of them.

  Merilyn Summerfield, Accurate Editing.

  No-one ever calls me Merilyn.

  “Do you do any ghost-writing?” Jim asked, hopeful eyebrows climbing his forehead.

  “Not really, Uncle Jim.”

  His eyebrows descended again. “Thinking of an autobiography,” he said. “For the family, mostly. Memoirs. History of the farm, and the House of Lords, and my early days in racing.”

  Anyone less Formula One-ish I’ve yet to meet. “Cars?” The penny dropped – or I thought it had. “Oh – racehorses!”

  “Motor cycles,” he said with a far-away expression. “Speedway bikes. Best days of my life. The farm four-wheelers aren’t a patch on them.”

  It was bad enough imagining old Jim, closing in on eighty, bouncing around the paddocks on a quad bike. The image of him in one of those old-fashioned bowl-topped helmets with the leather strap buckled under his chin, hitting 100 mph or whatever they did, was terrifying.

  “Wore one of those Marlon Brando jackets,” he mused. “The one like he had in that movie, The Wild One. With the diagonal zipper.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway.

  “Still got it,” he said with a definite smirk. “One of my granddaughters wants it. Calls it ‘a vintage classic
’. Not a show I’ll be parting with it.”

  I grinned along with him. “You could make a start on your autobiography by doing a rough outline. Even if it’s just a list of chapter headings?”

  “Might be enough to finally get me going on it,” he agreed. “But if I wrote it, can I get you to edit it? Shove it into shape? Tell me if I’m on the right track?”

  I nodded agreement. “That’s exactly what I do.”

  “Okey-dokey,” he said, turning his head towards the distant revving roar of a chainsaw. “What are those young devils up to now?” he grumbled. “Excuse me, Merry. Need to make sure they have their safety gear on.”

  I gave him a brief wave as he plodded away, then I headed back to the waiting teddies who told me what they thought of being left behind in the car.

  “Be quiet and I’ll buy you a nice dog roll,” I told them as I fired up the engine. “I can get that at the village butchery while I buy the meat for the curry. Or maybe you’d rather have something in a can, or those pretty little foil packs? Beef, or chicken, or with vegies mixed in?” I’d done a quick search online and I already knew quite a lot because of the spaniels. There’d been nothing but kibble in Isobel’s pantry and surely they’d enjoy a change? “But not that organic stuff,” I warned them. “It costs a fortune. We’re slumming it here because I might have to pay for the lawns.”

  No-one answered with anything sensible and they gradually fell silent as I progressed up Drizzle Bay Road, past the vet clinic, the blueberry orchard, and the depot that sold plumbing supplies and agricultural tanks. I found an angled park in the main street of the village and once again cruelly confined the teddies to the car, this time with a view of Bernie Karaka’s meat-filled window. A band of curving black and red Maori design decorated the top of the glass. Huge dog-rolls hung on strings – far too big for two little Bichons. They’d take a month to get through that, so I decided on the one-meal foil packs from the mini-mart instead. Margaret wouldn’t mind paying.

  Bernie the butcher greeted me with his customary broad smile, teeth gleaming against his bronzed skin, and said he had a ‘nice end of rump’ I might be interested in. I knew from past experience it would be so well hung it was in danger of rotting off the hook in the chiller, and would therefore be absolutely delicious. For me, alone. Not to share.