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

  DI Adams groaned and put her indicator on, pulling out into the dark road.

  “How can you call this a 24-hour police station?” she demanded of the PC on the desk. He smiled at her nervously.

  “Um, because it is?”

  “You, one person, PC”—she wiped rain out of her eyes and peered at his name badge—“PC McLeod, do not constitute a 24-hour police station.”

  “Well, it’s not just me.”

  She looked around the empty office beyond the desk, then back at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Everyone’s out. The storm. We’ve got one car patrolling, keeping an eye on things in town, two out checking on villages near the river, another out helping with road diversion signs, and someone’s cat’s stuck on the roof and won’t come in.”

  She glared at him, half-suspecting he was joking, seeing if the city cop would believe such a cliché. But he was still giving her that anxious smile, and looked mildly terrified, as if she might drag him out of his seat by his ear or something. She sighed.

  “Isn’t that more the fire brigade?”

  “They’re busy.”

  “Of course they are.” She waved at the locked door to the offices. “Can I borrow an interview room?”

  “Sure.” He buzzed her in, relaxing visibly now that she’d stopped her interrogation. Then she paused and turned back, and his shoulders bunched up around his ears.

  “Anywhere I can get a takeaway and a decent cup of coffee, or does that all stop at 5pm as well?”

  “I can call for delivery, if you want. Pizza or curry?”

  She considered. Curry was nicer, but pizza was better cold, and she had a feeling she’d be here a while. “Pizza. Vegetarian, with some chillies on it.” PC McLeod grabbed the phone as if she’d just entrusted him with the most important task of his career, and she added, “Coffee?”

  “We’ve got some of those sachets back in the mess room. Those lovely frothy ones. Instant cappuccino, you know? They’re really good.”

  DI Adams mentally hit her head against the wall, but managed to say, “Great. Can I get you one?”

  “Ooh, please. Three sugars.”

  She nodded and headed for the mess room. Maybe she should try three sugars. It might make the lovely frothy coffee palatable.

  DI Adams slumped in her chair with one arm on the table, eyes sticky with weariness, chewing on a piece of tepid pizza that really needed a lot more chilies, and stared at the tablet and her yellow notepad. That was it. That was all she had. Everything else, every forensic report and interview and crime scene photo was in a file on her desk in Leeds. She could access the electronic ones, of course, from one of the computers here, but she liked paper. She liked laying things out, moving photos around, writing lists and crossing things off and adding new things, using Post-its for ideas and drawing doodles on the corners of files. It helped her to think, no matter that everyone from her DCI to the PCs thought it was old-fashioned. It worked for her.

  She straightened up and poked idly at the personal email folder again. The vicar’s secretiveness, his fear of being connected to his past, suggested some pretty bad people could still be looking for him. She should get some sleep, then go down to Manchester in the morning, interview Stuart Browning properly. Even if he hadn’t had anything to do with it (and despite some misgivings she had an odd faith in Alice’s hunch that he hadn’t) he might be more willing to share some names with an inspector who could choose to look or not look into his business dealings as she saw fit.

  Violet Hammond was covered, but most likely a dead end. The more DI Adams thought about it, the more it looked like it was going to be someone from the vicar’s past. It had to be. Who else could have had a grudge against a village vicar like this? Especially one who, by all accounts, had been quite a good sort.

  She put the tablet back down, stretched, and took a last mouthful of the dusty-tasting coffee, making a face. Jesus, people drank this stuff by choice. She pushed back from the desk, walked a small circle around the interview room. It all pointed to someone from his past, but it didn’t feel right. Something was missing. Pretty strange choice of murder weapon, for a start. It had certainly thrown the Women’s Institute straight into the role of most likely suspects, which was a nice bit of distraction.

  She sat down again and leaned back in the chair, tapping her teeth with her pen. A lot of work to frame Alice. Risky, too, planting the cupcakes and leaving the knife with PC Shaw being right outside. Strange someone hadn’t just come up from Liverpool or Manchester or wherever, offed the vicar using a more usual method, and scooted. All this effort to direct the investigation toward the W.I. As if the vicar wasn’t the only target. As if – she grabbed her phone, flicking through the photos quickly, and pulled up the shot of the note on Alice’s door. Unlocked the tablet again and ran down the email list until she found what she wanted. Stared from one to the other, a smile starting to curve the corners of her lips. Then she jumped up and ran to the front desk, startling a squeak from the officer when she banged on the door. He fumbled with the buzzer to let her in.

  “DI Adams?” he asked, his eyes huge. “Are you okay?”

  “I need a computer tech. Right now. Immediately.”

  “I, well, we do have one—”

  “Get them.”

  “She doesn’t usually—”

  “I’ll sign off on any overtime. This is a murder investigation, PC McLeod. Get them.”

  She glared at him until he got off the phone and told her the tech was on the way. Then she went back to the mess room and made another cup of crappy coffee. She was going to need it.

  21

  Mortimer

  They met the grey car on the road as they drove away from Violet’s, and the man in the driver’s seat stared at them in astonishment as they went past. They stared back, and Miriam grabbed the pineapple off Beaufort, holding it up to try and hide her face.

  “That was him!” Beaufort exclaimed. “That was the man who was following us!”

  “He works with DI Adams,” Miriam said, lowering the pineapple cautiously now that they were past the police officer’s car. “That’s where you’ve seen him before.”

  “He’s police?”

  “Yes. So now we’ve damaged a police car, too.” Miriam had a horrible tremble in her voice. “Has he turned around? Is he following us?”

  Mortimer peered anxiously out the back window. “No, he’s stopped at Violet’s.”

  “Oh no! Oh, she’s going to tell him we broke in!”

  “We didn’t, though,” Beaufort said.

  “You kind of did,” Mortimer pointed out, then gave a nervous grin when Beaufort looked at him.

  “Nonsense. Look, there’s nothing to worry about, Miriam. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Other than damaging police property. And interfering in an investigation. Oh, and probably something to do with withholding evidence, with the tablet. Or maybe that was stealing? Or both.” She hiccoughed. “Oh no! And now I’ve got the hiccoughs.” She hicc’d again.

  Beaufort and Mortimer exchanged glances. The little green car was crawling along, and if the officer wanted to catch them he could just jog after them, really. Mortimer checked the back window again. The man was talking to Violet, who was waving wildly and pointing down the street.

  “We should probably go a little quicker,” he suggested. “And maybe get off this road?”

  “Shhh! I’m concentrating. Hic.” But she did put the indicator on and guide them carefully around the corner. “Hic.”

  “Boo!” Beaufort made the sound into a roar, the reverberations shaking the car, and Mortimer let out a surprised little belch of flame. Miriam screamed and swerved, narrowly avoiding a lamp post as she drove the car straight into the kerb, where it stalled.

  “Beaufort! What are you doing?”

  “I thought scares were good for hiccoughs?” he offered.

  “You frightened the life out of me!” She had her hand pressed to her chest, an
d Mortimer hoped her heart was strong. It paid to have a strong heart if you were spending any length of time with Beaufort.

  “But are your hiccoughs gone?”

  “I—” She paused, waited. “Oh. I think they are.” She rubbed her face with her hands, then started the car again and pulled carefully away from the kerb. “Honestly though, Beaufort, I— hic.” She glared at him. “Don’t do it again!”

  Beaufort looked faintly disappointed.

  Mortimer kept watch out the back window, wondering when the sirens would start. He was still worried about tasers. But there was no sign of the grey car, and while Beaufort’s roar might not have scared the hiccoughs out of Miriam, it had at least shaken her out of the panicked contemplation of her possible jail term. She drove the old Beetle at what was quite a brisk pace for her, hiccoughing regularly, and pulled in at the next petrol station she saw. She made the dragons lie down on the floor to ensure no one saw them, filled the car up with a very un-Miriam-like efficiency, and only after she’d bought three large mugs of takeaway tea and an iced fruit cake did she finally check her phone.

  “It’s Alice,” she said, horrified. “Oh, no, what if I was her only call from jail? That’s what they do, isn’t it? You only get one call? Oh no, and I didn’t answer!” She stared at the phone, tea forgotten, and only moved when a car behind her beeped, wanting to get to the pumps. She scrabbled for the keys and pulled them into a parking spot in front of the garage. “What do I do?”

  “Call her back?” Beaufort suggested.

  “Well, yes, but she was arrested. She won’t have her phone on her.”

  “Maybe DI Adams realised it was a mistake.”

  “She seemed very sure,” Miriam said, but she hit the call button anyway, the dragons watching her expectantly. A moment later, her eyes grew round. “Alice?”

  Beaufort grinned, and tore open the fruit cake.

  It was a very long drive to get back to Toot Hansell, and barely any less stressful than the drive to Violet’s house had been. Between the storm and the dark and Miriam refusing to go on any motorways (even though Alice had told her to hurry), and getting lost three times before they even got out of Manchester, it seemed to take twice as long as the drive out. Miriam leaned over the wheel, staring at the road ahead with her jaw clenched, and the building wind shook the little car as if it had a grudge against it.

  At least there wasn’t much traffic to deal with once they were past Skipton and heading into the Dales, but the rain grew heavier and the night so dark and murky that they seemed to be travelling in a shaky bubble, barely illuminated by the Beetle’s yellow headlights. Walls flashed into existence and vanished again, tiny villages passed in a blur of barely seen, dimly lit windows. The rain worked its way in somewhere and dripped on Mortimer’s neck, and a couple of times water splashed up through the floor, and still the old car battled its way on. At least they knew they weren’t in imminent danger of being tasered, he thought. And Alice was no longer under arrest. That made things a lot better, but he’d certainly had quite enough of being in a car. The novelty had well and truly worn off.

  They finally passed the sign that read Toot Hansell, barely visible through the rain, and Miriam let out an audible sigh of relief. From there it was only a matter of minutes until she pulled the car up outside her own gate. The lights were on inside, glowing warm and brave against the storm, and the three ran to the front door, splashing through puddles. Mortimer lifted his face to the rain, delighted to be out of the confines of the car, although he’d had to sneak the tomatoes out with him. At some point he appeared to have trodden in them, and he emptied the bag onto the road as they ran. Hopefully the rain would wash away the evidence, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with the very wet and squidgy canvas bag.

  Miriam was fiddling with her keys, trying to find the right one in the faint light filtering from the small glass panes of the door, when it swung open in front of them.

  “There you are,” Alice said, and waved them in. “I was getting worried.”

  “It’s the storm,” Miriam said, shaking her hair out and splattering Alice with second-hand raindrops. “It’s just awful out there!”

  Mortimer considered the pace of some of the other cars on the road, and thought that the storm might be taking a wee bit more blame than was strictly fair, but decided it was more diplomatic not to mention it. Alice was handing out towels, and he took one gratefully.

  “Make sure you wipe your feet,” she told them, then said to Miriam, “Go take a shower and put some warm clothes on. I’ve made a little bit of soup to keep us going.”

  “Alice, you’re wonderful,” Miriam said gratefully, and Mortimer wholeheartedly agreed. Beaufort was towelling his ears and didn’t seem to hear anything.

  She waved them away. “Don’t be silly. Just come into the kitchen once you’re all dry. Mortimer, feet,” she added, as he started to trot eagerly after her, and he sat down to clean the mud from between his toes. Beaufort sat next to him. He was still holding the pineapple.

  “I don’t think we’ve been very much help, lad.”

  Mortimer made a noncommittal noise. Some things weren’t really meant to be agreed with.

  “Here we are, after all that, and still no murderer. What do we do now?”

  “Maybe we leave it to the police?” Mortimer suggested. “I mean, they don’t seem to be looking at the W.I. anymore, so maybe it’ll be okay?”

  Beaufort humph’d. “I’d rather we sorted it out ourselves, so we knew it was all okay.”

  Mortimer nodded. “Maybe sometimes human stuff is just human stuff, though. Maybe we have to leave it. I mean, we wouldn’t want Alice and Miriam helping out with cavern disputes, say. Or hunting rotas.”

  Beaufort used the pineapple to scratch his chin. “But they couldn’t help with those. Whereas we can with this. Or I thought we could.”

  Mortimer bundled his towel up with the tomato bag. “We tried. We really did. No one could say we didn’t.”

  “I guess so.” Beaufort sighed, and looked at the pineapple. “Do you think Alice would like a pineapple?”

  “I don’t see why not.” Mortimer led the way into the kitchen, warm and safe and full of soft light and the scent of spices.

  The soup was rich and heavy and smoky and sweet, and Alice had made an enormous pot that even the dragons couldn’t quite finish, not with all the thick slices of soda bread smeared with butter as well. Full, they sprawled on the floor in front of the AGA with their oversized mugs of tea, and Mortimer thought that he’d quite happily curl himself into a ball right here and sleep until the sun came out again. The rain was loud against the windows, and the wind was snarling in the chimney, but in here was a cocoon of safety against the night. He tuned sleepily back into the conversation.

  “Honestly, Beaufort,” Miriam was saying, as she carved the pineapple into chunks. “What were you thinking, leaving a rabbit for the inspector? She thought it was some sort of threat.”

  “Threat?” Beaufort said indignantly. “It was an offering!”

  “An offering?” Mortimer demanded. “You left the detective inspector, who doesn’t know about us, an offering?”

  “She seems very stressed. A nice rabbit always makes me feel less stressed.”

  “A nice, dead rabbit,” Alice said, chuckling. “Oh, Miriam, I wish I’d seen her face!”

  “You don’t. She was very upset.”

  “And flowers,” Beaufort added. “I left flowers. I know humans like flowers.”

  “Flowers … are very dependent on context,” Miriam said. “And the context of a dead rabbit is not one we’re familiar with.”

  “Flowers,” Mortimer repeated, covering his snout with one paw. “Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”

  “Considering the dead rabbit,” Alice said, “The flowers are rather minor.”

  “I thought they were rather nice,” Beaufort mumbled, but he’d gone an embarrassed shade of lilac. “I picked them very caref
ully.”

  Mortimer plucked at his tail. “Look at this. Look at how I’m shedding. And this is why. Dead rabbits and flowers and detective inspectors.”

  “Oh, it’s done now,” Miriam said. “Have some pineapple.”

  “Stolen pineapple,” Mortimer pointed out, but he was reaching for a piece anyway when glass crashed in the living room, and the sound of the wind screaming was suddenly inside as well as out.

  Miriam gave a little scream of her own and dropped the plate of pineapple. Beaufort was already running for the hall, scales flashing back to his usual fierce green and his lips drawn back from his teeth. Mortimer plunged after him, belly hot with fire, tasting smoke on his tongue.

  “Don’t singe anyone!” Alice shouted, her stocking feet slapping on the slate tiles as she ran after them.

  The curtains in the living room billowed in the wind howling through the shattered glass of the window. It wasn’t a big hole, but the rain was tunnelling through, and when Miriam flicked the light on they saw the sofa was already splattered with water spots. Mortimer’s ears twitched at a sound from outside, and he spun back into the hall, Beaufort on his tail. They collided at the door, struggling to get it open and push their way through at the same time, and crashed out into the garden shoulder to shoulder. Mortimer snapped his wings out, growling at the night.

  “No, lad! It’s too windy!” Beaufort shouted, but it was too late – Mortimer yelped as the wind lifted him into the air and dumped him on his back in a rose bush. He struggled free, cursing, and tucked his wings in as he scrambled over the fence and ran down the lane, looking for lights, a noise, a scent, anything.

  “Beaufort!” he called into the teeth of the wind, and a moment later the big dragon came loping down the lane from the other direction. “Did you see them?”

  Beaufort shook his head, steam rising about him as the rain hit his furiously hot scales. “He was too quick. I heard the car, but I couldn’t see anything. Not even lights.”