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

  She smiled at him. “It’s also very useful.” She swung it a couple of times, enjoying the feel of it in her hands, then headed across the parking lot with her shadow stretched ahead of her in the headlights and the big dragon at her side, following his own enormous winged image. They didn’t look back.

  No one answered at the front door, which was dark-painted wood and had a gold plaque mounted on it, inscribed with Harold Minnow’s name. The bell didn’t seem to work without power, and even when Alice pounded on the door with the head of her walking stick, there was no movement inside.

  “This whole place smells awful,” Beaufort said.

  “Really?” Alice sniffed. “I can’t smell anything.”

  “Not that sort of smell. Despair. Anger. Jealousy. So much of it, it’s seeping into the stone.” Beaufort nodded at the ivy, fluttering desperately on the walls in the onslaught of wind and rain. “It’s killing everything.”

  Alice peered upward, sheltering her eyes against the storm, and thought he was right. Even in the uncertain light, the ivy looked withered and brown, and the wind was having far too easy a job of tearing it away from the walls. “How awful,” she said.

  “For everyone,” Beaufort agreed, and led the way around the building to the back door.

  The screen door to the kitchen had come unlatched and was banging violently against the frame, a shrill and angry staccato of sound. Alice was fairly sure that if no one was coming to check on that, no one was coming to answer her knock, either. She tried the door, but it was locked. She looked at Beaufort.

  “I suppose we have to drive to town and call the inspector,” she said, somewhat reluctantly. Beaufort looked equally crestfallen, but nodded.

  “I suppose it’s better,” he said. “He really does smell like a most unpleasant man.”

  Alice sighed, and shouldered her cane to walk back to the car. As they emerged around the side of the building, headlights appeared on the road, coming from the direction of Kingston Womoor. Whoever was driving had the beams on high, and he was going much too fast, faster even than Alice had been. Alice and Beaufort paused where they were, watching, and the dragon let out a low, wary growl.

  The newcomer pulled into the pub car park almost without slowing, narrowly missing the stone wall that surrounded it and sending gravel spitting out from under the wheels as the SUV rocked alarmingly. The headlights flooded the front of the building in bright white light, and the car headed straight for them. Alice looked at Beaufort in alarm. There was no point trying to hide - the driver could hardly have missed them.

  The SUV growled to a halt, sliding in the gravel, and Alice raised her arm to block the light. The engine stalled, and a man scrambled out of the driver’s side.

  “Hey!” he shouted, his words not quite slurred, but soft at the edges. “Hey, what’re you doing here? You’re trespassing!”

  Alice took a step toward the car. “Harold Minnow?”

  “You!” He wasn’t much more than a rotund silhouette, but she thought she recognised the voice, even without the self-satisfied edge it had had the last time she’d heard it. “You – you cow! What are you doing here?”

  “Did you think I’d be in jail, Mr Minnow?” Alice asked politely.

  “I – you – what?” He was trying to sound blustery, but Beaufort had growled when he’d called her a cow, and even against the light she could see the man looking around, as if he’d heard the sound over the roaring of the storm.

  “That was the plan, wasn’t it? Pin it all on me, with your nasty little cupcakes?”

  “You crazy old trout! What the hell are you talking about?”

  Beaufort growled, more pointedly this time, and Harold spun in a wobbly circle, looking for the source of the sound.

  “What is that? What? Have you got dogs out here?”

  “No dogs.” Alice adjusted her grip on the walking stick as he took a step toward her. “Why kill the vicar, Harold? He was a nice man. He was just doing his job.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re insane! Everyone knows it!”

  “Really?” Alice pretended to give this some thought. “And you. What are you? Some little man with a gimmicky restaurant, who killed the vicar because …?”

  “My restaurant’s amazing!” he shouted, closing the distance between them until he was only a pace or so in front of her. His face was puffy and red, heavy shadows under his eyes. Alice could smell alcohol and cigarette smoke even through the rain. “You just couldn’t understand haute cuisine if it bit you on—” Beaufort’s growl rose over the wind, and Harold broke off, gazing around wildly. “What is that? I can hear something!”

  “Your guilty conscience, perhaps? We know you killed the vicar, Harold. Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t kill the vicar! Stop saying that!” He glared at her with bloodshot eyes.

  “I think you did,” she said, shifting her weight. “I think you held him responsible, because he didn’t award your pathetic, pretentious little desserts all the prizes at the fete, and because he was honest about what a rude and horrible man you are. I don’t think you’re used to being told the truth.”

  “Pretentious! As if! My food is a thousand times better than any of that crap you dish up at the fetes,” he snarled. “You think you’re so fancy, Chairwoman of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute, like that means anything in the real world! You’re nothing but some washed-up, dried-out, bitter old crone – ow!” Because he’d reached out to grab her, and Alice had stepped neatly back and snapped the cane around in a warning little tap, straight to his shoulder. “You cow, that hurt!”

  “It was meant to.” She had the cane back up now, waiting. “We have the emails. The weight you threw through the window, which I believe will belong to a set in your dining room, or up in your guest rooms. We have your knife, which will match your set.”

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked, rubbing his shoulder. “Tell this fairy story to the police? Here you are, on my property. I’ll charge you with trespassing, tell them it’s not the first time. Say you stole all the stuff from me. Who do you think they’ll believe? A successful businessman, or some demented old woman?”

  Alice felt the rumble of Beaufort’s growls next to her leg. “I think you’ll confess,” she said.

  “Oh, really? And how do you intend to pull off that neat trick?”

  “No trick,” Alice said, and found herself smiling. He really was a horrible little man. If anyone ever deserved this, he did.

  “Crazy old witch,” he hissed, and grabbed for her cane. She brought it around in another of those quick little raps, catching him on the knuckles this time and making him cry out in pain. He shoved his fingers in his mouth like an overgrown schoolboy and glowered at her. “Where’s the dog? I can hear a dog.”

  “No dog,” Alice assured him, and this time he took her by surprise, lunging at her while she was still speaking. She jumped back, but he had hold of the cane, twisting it as he tried to wrestle it away from her, and she kicked him in the shins. He yelped but didn’t let go. He jerked the cane and she staggered, slipping in the gravel.

  “Stop it, Mr Minnow!” Her voice was sharp, but her arm was hurting and her heart was going too fast for comfort.

  “Out here on your own, are you? So you’re stupid as well as crazy.” He’d stopped trying to pull the cane away from her now, and was using his weight to push her back, trying to force her to the ground. Her knees were buckling.

  “Mr Minnow, you don’t want to do this.”

  “I think lots of people have wanted to do this to you,” he said with a very unpleasant grin, and as she saw his shoulders bunch, ready to shove her down, she dropped the cane and spun away sideways in a crouch, twisting out of his path as he staggered to one knee. He snarled and raised the cane to swing it at her. And stopped.

  The growling reverberated off the walls and shivered the rain, low and furious and full of the promise of terrible things.

  Harold Mi
nnow squeaked and dropped the cane, and Alice picked it up and smiled, toothy as a dragon.

  23

  DI Adams

  DI Adams would not have minded if she never had to drive the bloody ridiculous stretch of road from Skipton to Toot Hansell ever again. She hadn’t even been able to recruit anyone else to do the driving, or at least to keep her company. The storm had been getting steadily worse, and the station was full of police pulled in from off duty, gulping coffee and vending machine snacks, and pouring out again into the night to check on pensioners and monitor water levels and probably rescue more bloody cats, for all she knew.

  “I’m sorry, DI Adams,” the commanding officer said, not sounding very sorry at all. “The murdered vicar can wait till the town is secure against flooding and storm damage. He’s not going anywhere, after all. You’d be very welcome to help us out, of course. Then we might be able to spare someone to help you sooner rather than later.”

  “I have two women out there who seem to have taken it as a personal mission to muck up this investigation,” DI Adams replied. “And one of them may be a target for the murderer. Isn’t there anyone nearby you can at least send to check on them? What about PC Shaw? He lives there.”

  “It’s all hands on deck tonight, and we need them all down here, not up that way,” the officer said, sipping the bloody horrible frothy coffee with every evidence of enjoyment. “Besides, no one’s going to be up to much tonight. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  She groaned. “You don’t know them. Are the roads still okay?”

  “No telling. In this, you could have a tree down any moment, flooding, all sorts.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Welcome to the Dales, Detective Inspector.” He smiled at her. “And I hope it’s not the Women’s Institute you’re dealing with on top of all that. Bloody nightmare, they are.”

  DI Adams dropped her head in her hands, and the commanding officer patted her shoulder as he left. “Never mind, Inspector. You’ll get it all tidied up tomorrow, and then you can forget all about them.”

  That was about as likely as forgetting an infected tooth, DI Adams reflected as she coasted the car around a corner. At least the tech had been quick and efficient, even if she’d turned up in a purple unicorn onesie and had said a sum total of five words to the inspector, three of which had been “I’ll text you,” before she took the tablet and scuffed away. The writing style of the emails and the note matched exactly, and she had no doubt that the address the tech tracked down would give her the murderer. The promised text had dinged in already, with not just the IP address, but the closest likely location for the computer using it, which was some restaurant or gastropub in the middle of nowhere.

  The only thing she was worried about now was that she hadn’t been able to reach either Alice or Miriam on their home phones or their mobiles, which seemed like a very bad sign indeed. She wasn’t all that worried that the murderer had come back, but she did have a horrible feeling that the women might just have come to the same conclusion as she had. And while no one in their right minds would be out voluntarily on a night like this, she had some strong reservations about the minds of those two.

  The sign for Toot Hansell flashed past, and she slid into the village, skimming down the rain-flooded streets and barely pausing at the stop signs. No one in their right minds, she reminded herself.

  Alice’s house was dark and silent, and no one answered the DI’s knock. She could just hear the phone ringing inside when she tried the landline. It didn’t mean that Alice was out hunting down a murderer, of course. She might have stayed at Miriam’s. It would make sense. Alice’s own home had been breached by a suspect, and it might be that she’d like some company. Although, admittedly, DI Adams couldn’t quite imagine it. She scrambled back into the car without shedding her jacket and took the corners too fast on the way to Miriam’s.

  Miriam’s was lit, unlocked, and empty. When the inspector pushed the front door open, shouting for Miriam, there was mud smeared across the hall floor, more mess than you’d think the two women could create. Which looked like a good enough reason to let herself in. She called out again, and wiped her own feet, trying to keep to the edge of the hall and not smear any footprints that might be intact. And also not to look at them too closely, because they seemed … odd. And she didn’t have time for that right now. She peered into the living room, and caught the light silvering the broken glass on the carpet.

  “Bollocks,” she told the house, spying the taped-up window. “Oh, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks.” There was a balled-up bin bag on the floor, holding a weight which looked like it would match the hole in the window rather neatly. There was a note next to it, and that matched the note from Alice’s door, and the emails.

  “Well, crap,” DI Adams said to the empty house, and ran back to the car, ignoring the rain. Alice had been right. It appeared that village fetes and bake sales were very risky affairs indeed.

  She drove dangerously fast, trusting to other people’s good sense that she’d be the only one on the road. Stone walls flashed past, unlit cottages illuminated by flashes of lightning that rendered the world in stark blues and greys, and her mind kept drifting back to Miriam’s hall, and the muddy floor. The oddness of the footprints. So many footprints, two sets of wellies and – and what? Dogs? Too big. Too clawed. But they’d been there. She was sure of it. She could see them in her mind, clear and unsmudged. In the dark and the rain and the savage sheets of lightning, they seemed to fit, somehow. London hadn’t fit. Or maybe it had, but she just hadn’t wanted it to. She wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter anyway. That was then, and this was now, and some things just have to be left behind.

  She accelerated through a straight, and the GPS chirped at her. One more left turn, and she’d be there. She set aside London, and footprints, and concentrated on finding the place through the storm.

  DI Adams had arrived on many different crime scenes. Some of them were tragic, and she tried not to revisit those too much. Some of them were accidental, such as the woman pulled over for a broken taillight, who had had two men wrapped in bin bags shoved in the boot. They’d proved to both be her husbands, and were also both still alive, which had made for an interesting trial. Then there were the out-and-out funny ones, although admittedly not so many of those since she moved into the investigative branch.

  But there were still some.

  The woman who used Tinder to select men whom she handcuffed to their beds and covered in chocolate syrup and popcorn before clearing out their homes. She always chose the ones who were … well, not very nice people. It had been almost a shame to arrest her. The little old lady dealing Viagra out of her sock drawer, contributing to some rather alarming cardiac incidents in all the rest homes in a fifty-mile radius. Plus the literal cat burglar, who had been trained to have an eye for shiny, dangly jewellery.

  But none of these were quite as unusual as what she encountered when she pulled into the pub parking lot, and her high beams hit the little group in the middle of it.

  At first, she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. There was a man with his back to her, as if her arrival was utterly unimportant, his arms raised as if to fend off an attack, and Alice was standing watching him. Her feet were planted wide and her hands were folded over the head of a black cane which rested on the ground in front of her, the rain pouring off her sky-blue jacket, and she looked like Death’s favourite aunt filling in while he took the day off. Miriam stood next to her, arms folded, regarding the man in a manner that said she was very, very disappointed, wearing a bright yellow rain poncho of the sort that comes in a bag, and which you can buy at the pound shop.

  And all that was alright, in a confusing what-the-hell sort of way, except for the other two shapes, coming and going on the edge of her vision and making it hard to look at the strange tableau directly. They were low, and stocky, and she saw them more in the way the rain outlined them than she did by actually seeing them, and she thought they had
wings. The things in London, the things under the bridge that took the kids, they hadn’t had wings. They’d had teeth and claws and breath that stank, but they hadn’t had wings. Which made this something else again.

  “Ah, crap,” DI Adams said again, and stepped out into the rain.

  “Police!” she shouted into the snarl of the wind. Could she hear something else snarling? Maybe. It didn’t matter. She had a job to do. “Harold Minnow, I’m arresting you—”

  He bolted.

  “Every time,” the inspector muttered, and started to run after him. The wind roared – or something did – and Harold Minnow screamed, slipped on the loose surface, recovered himself, and broke into a stumbling sprint. “Stop!” she bellowed, and he did. Not from choice, though. It looked very much as though someone had tackled his legs, sweeping them out from under him and catapulting him face first into the gravel with a wail of horror.

  DI Adams jogged to his prone form and leaned over him, frowning. He was whimpering, both hands over his head and his face firmly planted in the rough surface of the parking lot.

  “Is he okay?” someone asked, from somewhere around the region of her waist. “He was going quite quickly.”

  She ignored the voice, and instead looked at Alice and Miriam as they came to join her. Miriam looked suitably worried, but Alice looked as if she was enjoying herself a little too much.

  “Harold Minnow, I take it?” the inspector said to them.

  “He’s just how I remember him,” Miriam announced.

  Alice poked him with the toe of her welly. “Are you quite alright there, Mr Minnow? You seem to have had a funny turn.”

  He yelped, looked up, then gave a squall of terror and pushed his face back into the gravel.

  Miriam looked at Alice. “I hope that’s not because of us.”

  “What else would it be because of?” the inspector asked, still not looking at the shapes the rain was making.