Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons) Read online

  “Yeah?” she said, looking Miriam up and down.

  “Um—”

  “No. Not interested in your religion, or cult, or whatever.” Violet started to shut the door, but Mortimer put his paw in the way, and she looked down, bewildered. “Are you – why won’t this shut?” She swung the door back and forth a couple of times, but Mortimer kept his paw in place even though it looked rather painful to Miriam.

  “It must be jammed,” Miriam said politely. “Are you Violet?”

  “Why?” She glared at Miriam. “What do you want?”

  “I’m from Toot Hansell,” she began, not quite sure how one went about getting someone to confess to murder. Violet’s face tightened, and she renewed her efforts to slam the door, eliciting a grunt of protest from Mortimer. Not the best approach, then. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the vicar.”

  “What are you, police?” The slamming stopped, and Mortimer shook his paw, wincing.

  “I’m, well. I’m an investigator,” Miriam said, figuring that was close to the truth.

  “Yeah? Show me some ID.”

  “I, well, I don’t have any on me.”

  Violet snorted, and told Miriam to leave in fairly impolite terms, then slammed the door again. This time Mortimer braced his shoulder against it, and it hit hard enough to shudder. Violet peered at the floor in astonishment, but with no sign of having seen a dragon. “What the—” Even as she spoke, there was a crash from further back in the house, and she forgot the door, spinning around. “Who’s there? Is there someone else here? You b—” She abandoned the door and sprinted back down the hall, shouting that she was calling the police.

  Miriam and Mortimer looked at each other.

  “Would a murderer call the police?” Miriam asked.

  “Unlikely,” Mortimer said. “Unless she’s bluffing.”

  There was shriek from inside, then Beaufort came racing out the front door, looking alarmed.

  “Beaufort? What did you do?” Miriam asked.

  “I knocked over a vase. And maybe a small table. With fruit on it. Then she came in and stepped on my tail, and fell over when I ran.”

  “Oh dear,” Miriam said, as Violet reappeared at the door. She was holding a pineapple, and had her phone clutched in the other hand. It was on speaker.

  “I’ve got her here! She’s right in front of me! But she must have an accomplice who went in the back while she was talking to me!”

  “Please calm down, ma’am,” the voice on the phone said. “We’re dispatching a unit immediately. Do not pursue the suspect, but please describe her to me.”

  Violet brandished the pineapple at Miriam. “Some old hippie chick with grey hair and a tie-dyed dress.”

  Miriam looked offended.

  “Please be more specific, ma’am.”

  “Hang on, I’ll take a photo.” Violet tried to juggle the phone and the pineapple, and the voice on the other end spoke up again.

  “She’s still there? She hasn’t run away?”

  “No, I told you – she’s right in front of me!”

  “Ma’am, are you sure she tried to rob you?”

  “Of course I am!” Violet shrieked into the phone.

  “We should go,” Mortimer said.

  Beaufort was watching Violet with the fascination of a biologist discovering a new species. “Why does she have a pineapple?” he asked.

  “Yes, we should go,” Miriam said. “She really has called the police. And murderers don’t call the police, I don’t think.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Violet demanded. “And who’s a murderer? Are you a murderer?” She screamed, a full-throated yell that made Mortimer scuttle backward straight into the birdbath, and threw the pineapple at Miriam. Miriam ducked, and Beaufort caught the fruit, then dropped it hastily to the ground in case Violet thought it was floating in mid-air. She was very indisposed to see dragons. “Have you come here to murder me?”

  “Of course not!” Miriam exclaimed, even more offended than before. “Do I look like a murderer?”

  “Well, I don’t know what murderers look like! And someone in your stupid village killed my brother!”

  “It’s not stupid—” Miriam started hotly, then stopped. “Your brother? The vicar was your brother?”

  “Well, foster brother. Same thing.”

  “Excuse me?” the phone said. “What’s this about murder?”

  “It was Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the candlestick,” Miriam blurted.

  “It was not!” Violet snapped.

  There was a sigh from the phone. “Very funny. Has anyone broken in or not?”

  “No,” Miriam said.

  “Yes,” Violet said, just as firmly.

  “So do you need the police or not?”

  “No, it’s a misunderstanding. I’m leaving,” Miriam said.

  “You can’t leave! You broke in!”

  “How did I break in? I’m standing right here!”

  “You’re wasting police time,” the phone voice said wearily. “Call me back if you make a decision.” The line went dead.

  Violet huffed and glared at the phone. “This is what I pay my taxes for?”

  “Why were you chasing him?” Miriam asked. “The night he was murdered, at the hall. You were chasing him.”

  “I wanted him to come to my oldest’s birthday,” Violet said. “It’s his eighteenth on the weekend. But Norm wouldn’t. He said there’d be too many people from his past there, and he didn’t want to deal with it.” She sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “We weren’t super-close, you know? But he helped me out a lot, after he got clean. He helped a lot of people. I wanted him to feel he had family.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam said, and the woman nodded.

  “Sure. Just leave it, okay? I never want to hear about your horrible village again.” She stepped back and closed the door, and Miriam caught a hint of relief on her face as it shut smoothly.

  She turned back to the dragons. “I guess it wasn’t her.”

  “It might be the man who was following us, then,” Beaufort suggested. “He did smell familiar.”

  Miriam nodded wearily and trudged back to the car. “That doesn’t help us get Alice out of jail.”

  20

  DI Adams

  “So you got a flat,” DI Adams said, with less patience than she’d have liked. “It happens.”

  “I know,” James said, his voice tinny over the Bluetooth in his car. “But this was weird. I pull into the car park behind her, and since she’s in the toilet already, I take the car around the back, so she won’t see me when she comes out. And I’m just sitting there, waiting to hear her start the car, when, pssht!”

  “Pssht?”

  “Pssht. The tyre goes. I mean, there was no one there, I’m not saying anyone did it, but there’s a gash in it like someone stuck a knife in the damn thing.”

  DI Adams gave Alice a suspicious look, but she had armed herself with dusting cloths and polish and was heading into the hall to tackle the fingerprint dust residue left by the crime scene team. “You’re sure there was no one else there?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And you don’t think she saw you?”

  “Not there, no. That was before you messaged to tell me to intercept her. And I didn’t catch up to her again until I was pulling into the house they’d gone to. A Mrs Violet Hammond, it turned out.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She waved a pineapple at me.”

  “Mrs Hammond?”

  “No, Ms Ellis.”

  “A pineapple?”

  “A—”

  “Never mind. But she was leaving. You didn’t get there in time to stop her talking to Mrs Hammond.”

  “No. And she must have shaken Mrs Hammond up quite a bit too, because she screamed at me when she opened the door. Wanted to know if I was conspiring with the crazy hippie and was I the one who had broken her fruit bowl.”

  “Her fruit bowl?”
DI Adams sat down in one of Alice’s kitchen chairs and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Is that where the pineapple came from?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “Is that important, d’you think? I could go back and ask if she’s missing a pineapple.”

  “I doubt it’s relevant to the investigation at hand.” DI Adams was tired. The conversation was making her tired. The whole investigation was making her tired, and DCI Temple had been on the phone twice on the drive back to Toot Hansell, asking her what she was playing at, and should he turn her desk into a ping-pong table since she had so little use for it, and was this the speed the police worked at down south, because it was unacceptable here.

  And she still had to drive back to Leeds with the bloody tablet. Preferably before the world ended, judging by the weight of the clouds hanging about the place. Everything had the hot, humid feel of a thunderstorm on the way, something violent and packed with fury, and on the drive up she’d glimpsed the occasional stab of lightning in the clouds already. She wanted her bed, and a large bowl of something spicy and hot and probably terribly bad for her. She wanted to not be talking about the relevance of pineapples.

  James had said something, and she’d missed it. “Sorry, what?”

  “I said, Mrs Hammond was up here the night the vicar was murdered, so it’s conceivable she brought the cupcake up with her and gave it to him. But she couldn’t have brought the others up to plant them at Ms Martin’s last night. She was in London, apparently. That’s if we’re sure that’s when they were planted. And that they were planted.”

  “PC Shaw saw Ms Martin working in her garden last night, and she had a load of clippings. Even if she had been amateurish enough to dispose of the cakes in her own compost, she’d at least have covered them with yesterday’s garden waste.”

  “Makes sense. I’ll follow up on Mrs Hammond’s alibi, and there’s no guarantee she didn’t have an accomplice, but it’s not looking that likely.”

  “Thanks, James. Drive safe.”

  “Cheers.”

  DI Adams hung up, and stayed where she was, examining the slim, un-cobwebbed beams of the ceiling. The answer had to be in the tablet. It had to be.

  “Alice?” she called.

  “Yes, Detective Inspector?”

  The inspector jumped. Alice was standing in the doorway, cloth in hand. She hadn’t even heard the woman enter the room. Jesus, she was tired. “Has Miriam called you back yet?”

  “Finally, yes. I was just coming to tell you. They – she’s on her way back.”

  “Did she say anything about seeing DC Hamilton? James,” she added, when Alice looked puzzled.

  “She did. They passed each other as she was leaving Violet’s, apparently.”

  “Uh-huh. Anything about a flat tyre?”

  Alice raised her eyebrows, frowning slightly. “Not that she said to me, no.”

  It had been a stretch. DI Adams couldn’t quite imagine Miriam, knife between her teeth, crawling around a public rest stop to stab a police officer's tyres. “Or a pineapple?”

  Now Alice looked actively concerned. “Have you been sleeping, Inspector? You drink an awful lot of coffee. It can’t be good for you.”

  “I like coffee. Coffee is how I get through the day without arresting everyone I meet.” Not entirely an exaggeration. She’d tried to switch to alternating decaf and full-power once in her early days with the police, and had nearly punched her partner for chewing his gum too loudly. She worked best when caffeinated.

  “Well, maybe I should put a pot on,” Alice said. “Why don’t you go into the living room and relax on the sofa for a moment? I’ll bring it through.”

  “I don’t need to relax. I need to get this tablet and get back to Leeds before the storm starts. Did Miriam tell you where it is?”

  Alice sighed. “She did. Are you sure you won’t have a cup of coffee to go?”

  DI Adams hesitated, thinking of the skinny, winding roads and the trek back to Leeds. “Alright. Yes. I’ll get my cup from the car. Then let’s get to Miriam’s and get this damn thing.”

  She hurried outside just as the first drops of rain started, fat and full of promise.

  By the time they got to Miriam’s house, Alice leading the way in her Prius, they had to run for the back door to avoid getting soaked. As it was, DI Adams was wearing big splats of rain all over her top and trousers by the time Alice found the spare key under the flowerpot and let them in. Alice, of course, had put on a pale blue rain jacket and pulled the hood up, so only the legs of her trousers above her wellies were damp. DI Adams had a feeling that the woman would be perfectly prepared for monsoons, or forest fires, or tornadoes, or tea with the Queen. It was annoying.

  She plucked her shirt away from her chest, trying to dry it a little, and looked around the kitchen while Alice went to find the tablet in whatever hiding place Miriam had come up with. It was warm in here, the AGA purring to itself in the corner, the small panes of the thick-silled windows whispering as the rain splattered them. It was a cosy place to be, the sort of place you imagined sitting through long winters, while soup bubbled on the stove and the tarnished saucepans that hung from the heavy beams reflected the light of candles dully. There should be a cat, too.

  “Does Miriam have a cat?” she asked Alice as she came back into the room with the tablet.

  Alice handed the tablet over, looking at the inspector curiously. “No. She’s allergic.”

  “That’s a shame. This place looks like it’d suit a cat.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Alice gave her that concerned look again and handed her the tablet. “Are you certain you won’t stay? It’s going to be terrible driving conditions. And a long way back to Leeds.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She looked out at the dark sky as she said it, seeing the bushes shivering in the wind as it crawled about, stirring the garden with furious fingers. She would be fine, but the sooner she was off, the better. “Are you coming?”

  “No. I’ll wait for th— Miriam. I can catch her up on what we talked about, and make sure she knows she doesn’t have to worry about being arrested.”

  “Why do you keep saying they?”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.” DI Adams watched her closely, looking for a tell. It was impossible. Alice looked just as she had all day. A little tired, maybe, but otherwise nothing more than mildly interested in the DI’s questions. Not even the threat of the jail cell had seemed to move her much. Not for the first time, DI Adams wondered if she should be digging a little more deeply into Alice’s past. The missing husband. The move to this tiny village and immersion in the tranquillity of village life after a career in the RAF, which had included active duty and flying helicopters. Not the sort of person you imagine giving their life over to bake sales and garden parties.

  “I must be tired, Inspector.”

  “I imagine. A lot of excitement for a little village.”

  “It is indeed.” Alice smiled, and handed the inspector a plastic bag. “For the tablet. Don’t want it getting wet after all this fuss.”

  “Thanks.” DI Adams tucked the tablet into the bag as she followed Alice to the front door. “Don’t you get bored?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of this. Village life. Fetes and baking and gardening.”

  Alice opened the door, and DI Adams thought her smile was the first really genuine one she’d seen. “A quiet life can be a wonderful thing, Inspector.”

  DI Adams looked at the rain pummelling the path and already forming puddles on the lawn, and said, “But you were RAF. You were a wing commander. This hardly compares.”

  “You’ve obviously never dealt with the Women’s Institute. Or judged a fete bake-off.”

  DI Adams snorted. “I’m sure they’re thrilling.”

  “You’ve met the W.I. Do you think I’m joking?”

  The inspector stared at Alice, still smiling that real, unfettered smile, then returned it with one of her own. “I see your
point.”

  “Indeed. Drive safely.”

  And DI Adams, feeling thoroughly dismissed, ran for her car, protecting the tablet with both the bag and her body while the rain pelted through her hair and ran in streams down her face and the back of her neck.

  The drive to the main road was the sort of experience that DI Adams hoped not to repeat, and which reminded her why she didn’t live in the country. The narrow roads were swept with sheets of rain that were being thrown about wildly by the wind, obscuring the twists and turns ahead, and dusk had already arrived with flagrant disregard for the fact that there should have still been a few hours of daylight left. With no streetlights it was all but impossible to see whether there was a straight or a curve coming up, an uphill or a downhill. Everything was lost in the rain and fading light.

  She crept along, hunched over the wheel and muttering abuse at the 4x4s that roared past her in the opposite direction, throwing walls of water onto the windscreen. At one stage she had to nudge her way through a collection of alarmed, lost sheep, and at another there was a small river washing across the road. She drove through it with her toes curled, as if that’d help keep the tyres on the tarmac.

  After what seemed like an inordinately long amount of time, to the point where DI Adams had taken to accusing the GPS of getting her lost, she came to a stop at a T-junction. Across the intersection were two road signs, reflective in her headlights. Leeds 52 miles, one said, pointing left. The other pointed in the opposite direction. Skipton 11 miles, it said.

  She glared at them through the frantically working wipers, blurring and clearing with each sweep. Fifty-two miles to good coffee, a decent meal, her own desk – even though it would come with a bollocking from the DCI – and, if she ever made it there, her own bed. Okay, so the techs would already have gone home by the time she got there, but she could get a rush on things. Hand over the tablet and be done. Get a shower and a change of clothes. Just fifty-two miles. In a bloody ridiculous hurricane. As if to underline the point, the car shuddered in a howl of wind, and a branch went scudding across the road, pulled this way and that by competing gusts.