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

  Alice touched the tablet where it lay on the garden table next to the jam and butter dishes. Miriam always went to such effort, she thought. Tea in a proper teapot, milk in a jug, jam and butter decanted into their own little containers. She had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t how Miriam usually ate, especially judging by the fact that the containers in question looked distinctly like those pots you could buy desserts in at the supermarket, but still. It was nice.

  “Have you looked at the tablet yet, Miriam?” she asked.

  “No! Oh, no. I didn’t want to look at it.” Miriam wrinkled her nose and poured some more tea. “It feels like prying.”

  “That’s investigating for you.”

  “I know, but still. It feels wrong,” Miriam said, and wiped her mouth. There were a few crumbs still stuck to her cheek from those dreadful cheese things she ate whenever she was stressed.

  Alice nodded in understanding and took a sip of her tea. Not everyone was suited to investigating.

  They sat together quietly in the warm morning sun, listening to the soft chatter of the stream beyond the gate, and to the bees going about their business amid the blowsy roses and sweet-smelling honeysuckle, and they waited for dragons.

  The dragons weren’t late, exactly. Alice always wondered how they knew what time to arrive, given that they didn’t use clocks. Mortimer had been the first to start embracing modern technology, although it had so far been mostly limited to the gas barbecues, and a fascination with both Miriam’s TV and Etsy. The barbecues had been a huge success among the Cloverly dragons, and made their caverns much less smoky as well as saving them spending an inordinate amount of time searching for firewood. Mortimer, however, was already calculating how many dragonscale toys he’d have to sell in order to be able to buy the older dragons AGAs. He was very taken with Miriam’s.

  However they told the time, it was only a few minutes after nine when the dragons let themselves in the gate and came padding up the path, having stopped flying a safe enough distance from the village to avoid being seen. It’s hard for even the most stubborn brain to argue against the existence of dragons when they’re winging across the sky. Miriam patted Mortimer on the shoulder and got up to put another pot of tea on.

  “Good morning, Beaufort, Mortimer,” Alice said gravely. “How’s everyone feeling this morning?”

  “Terrible,” Mortimer announced. “I had nightmares about that huge dog all night.”

  Beaufort inspected the table with interest. “Now, lad. I’m sure he’s very nice if you get to know him.” He selected a scone, and Alice dolloped jam and cream on it before he could try doing it himself. Spoons are tricky for dragons.

  “He’s drool-y,” Miriam announced, reappearing with two oversized soup mugs and a new, catering-sized pot of tea. “Not very clever, and drool-y.”

  “There you go, lad,” Beaufort said, and gave Mortimer the scone Alice had handed him. “He doesn’t sound dangerous at all.”

  Mortimer sighed, and took the scone. “Maybe not, but I’d rather not meet him again.”

  Alice doled out more cream and jam while Miriam poured the tea, and for a moment there was just the soft rumbling sound of contented dragons, and the click of claws against porcelain. Then Alice said, “So. Shall we proceed?”

  “Oh, do we have to?” Miriam asked. She’d been looking the happiest she had since discovering the vicar two days ago, but now anxious lines popped up on her forehead. “I really think this is a bad idea. We should just put it back.”

  Mortimer spluttered on his tea. “I’m not putting it back! That was quite enough criminal activity for my entire life.”

  “You’re only a hundred and twelve, lad,” Beaufort said. “Don’t limit yourself like that.”

  Mortimer gave him a distinctly murderous look and took another scone.

  “Well, we could just leave it somewhere where someone else will find it,” Miriam said. “Like in the hall, or the church or something.”

  “And what if that someone steals it?” Alice asked. “Then no one gets to find any clues on it.”

  “But the vicar would have had a phone. And there was a computer in the vicarage, I know. He asked me to help him update his blog on it once.” Miriam was a firm believer in both the power of essential oils and spirit guides, and the necessity of having a good web presence for the modern self-employed clairvoyant.

  “Then no one will miss this one.” Alice looked at the tablet, the screen flat and black and innocuous in the sunlight. “Unless you think you might not be able to get into it, or something. I imagine it’s probably pretty tricky, even for someone as good with computers as you.”

  “No,” Miriam said firmly. “No, don’t do that. I’m not silly enough to fall for that.” But her hand twitched toward the tablet.

  “Of course, if we did give it back, we’d have to make up a story about where we found it,” Beaufort said innocently. “And that detective inspector already sounded rather suspicious.”

  “She’ll have been talking to that Graham at the vicarage,” Mortimer added, sounding glum. “She’ll know you were both there last night.”

  “What, you think we should do this, Mortimer?” Miriam demanded. “Snoop in a dead man’s business?”

  “We may as well,” the young dragon said. “I didn’t go through all that just to put it back again.”

  “Well.” Miriam looked deflated, then pushed up her sleeves. “Fine. But I still think this is not a good thing to be doing. It must be terrible karma.”

  “Hopefully only for the murderer, when we catch them,” Alice said.

  They stared at the tablet, propped against a flowerpot full of basil in the middle of the garden table. Hello, Vicar, the screen said, making Alice think of one of those old and slightly dodgy TV shows. They’d been staring at it for a while now, long enough for the last of the tea to grow cold.

  “Well, say hello to it,” Beaufort said, for at least the third time.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Miriam said. “It needs a password, Beaufort.”

  “Try Toot Hansell,” Alice suggested. It was what she used for most things, even though Miriam had told her more than once that it was too easy to guess and that she needed different ones for everything.

  “I did. All one word, all lower case, changing the o’s for 0’s, the s for a 5. That’s not it.”

  “Hello, small internet machine,” Beaufort said, loudly and very close to Alice’s ear. “We would very much like to look at some things on you.” Alice leaned away and rubbed her ear briskly.

  “It’s not voice-activated,” Mortimer said, sounding superior. Beaufort glared at him, and the young dragon buried his nose in his mug. “I mean, some things are. But not this. I imagine it’d have to be fancier than a tablet.”

  “Or just a fancier tablet,” Miriam said, trying “vicarage”.

  “Can you not get in without the password?” Alice asked. Computers remained a mystery to her. Her phone she could just about manage, and the GPS in her car, but her laptop she only turned on when strictly necessary.

  “I’m not a hacker.”

  “You fixed my laptop for me before. You’re very good with them.”

  “Alice, you had no anti-virus software. I just ran a scan.”

  “They have viruses?” Beaufort asked, moving away from the table. “Are they catching?”

  “Not that sort of virus,” Alice said, and pointed at the screen suddenly. If the vicar was the sort of person who had trouble with computers, too … “Try ‘hello’.”

  “Well, it won’t be that,” Miriam said, typing it in.

  The screen blinked, then the plain Windows blue slid aside to reveal icons scattered haphazardly across a Minions background. They were waving bananas.

  “I said you had to say hello to the machine,” Beaufort said. “You youngsters. No etiquette.”

  Alice wasn’t quite sure what they were hoping to find. An email with the subject line, “ha-ha, I did it,” perhaps? But it felt go
od to be doing something. It was the helplessness she couldn’t stand. She’d known when the inspector had started asking about useless old Harvey that it was all going to come back, but she’d tried to ignore it. It hadn’t been until late last night, lying in her bed and staring at the ceiling, that she’d felt that terrible constriction winding down over her chest, the sweat rising on her forehead despite the open window and the curtains moving softly in the night breeze.

  She’d gone downstairs and made herself a decaf coffee with a healthy dose of whisky in it, and drank it sitting on the bench in the quiet, safe dark of her garden, listening to the little snuffling noises of the night creatures. It had been twelve years, and she could still smell the interview room at the police station, still taste the bleak coffee and anaemic toast that she’d made herself eat, just to keep her energy up. Getting too tired, getting teary or emotional, that wasn’t an option for her.

  She’d answered the questions they threw at her in a flat, reserved tone, denied the accusations, direct and implied, without ever raising her voice. And she knew what they said: cold, hard, emotionless. That was fine. She would not – she would never – have them call her irrational. The situation was ugly enough as it was without enduring that.

  And eventually they had let her go, as she’d known they’d have to, because there was no evidence against her. And maybe she should have been the one to report him missing, and not his golf buddies, but it had seemed so unimportant. The marriage had limped along because she had been stationed away most of the time. When she came home, it had seemed inevitable that it couldn’t continue. And the way it had happened had saved her having to deal with the messiness of a divorce, with all its attendant petty squabbles and emotional bubblings.

  But the helplessness, not able to do anything more than affirm her innocence over and over again, to answer the same questions over and over again, and to wait for people she didn’t know to decide on her freedom …

  That had been intolerable.

  And now here it was again, being dug up in another village, another time, and the spectre of all those hours of questioning, all that hideous confinement, loomed over her like some stalking giant. But she would not be helpless. Not this time. She cleared her throat slightly, and took a sip of tea, pleased to see that her hand wasn’t trembling. “Do we have anything, Miriam?”

  “A lot of junk,” Miriam said. “He must have been signed up for every rubbishy newsletter in existence.”

  Alice peered over her shoulder. Holiday brochures. Double-glazing companies. Clothing. Movie offers. A wine club – no, two – no, three of those. Things for comparing utilities, or car insurance, or life insurance. “This is why I don’t like email,” she said. “At least with the proper mail, you can put a note on the letterbox and you don’t get all this rubbish.”

  “It should all just go into spam,” Miriam said.

  “Spam?” Beaufort asked. “Isn’t that some sort of sandwich meat?”

  “If you can call it that,” Alice said.

  “I wouldn’t say no to a sandwich,” Beaufort said, regarding the empty scone plate sadly.

  “I’ll make some in a moment,” Miriam said, and Alice watched her tap over into the email folders, swiping past things like Church Accounts, and Fete Bookings. “Ah, here we go. Personal.”

  “Ooh,” Mortimer said as soon as she opened it, and Beaufort forgot about the sandwich.

  “Oh dear,” the High Lord said.

  “What?” Alice couldn’t see anything in the innocuous email headings that could have them so worried.

  “Can’t you feel it?” Mortimer asked.

  “Feel what?”

  “All the anger,” Beaufort said quietly. “All the worry, the fear, the sadness. Every time the vicar opened that folder, it’s all he was feeling. Those thingies there are soaked in it.” He pointed at the screen, and Miriam pulled the tablet back in time to save his talon chipping it.

  “You can tell what he was feeling?” she asked.

  “Emotional traces linger. Over and over he looked at those message things, and felt terrible emotions, and now they reflect it back every time anyone looks at them.”

  Alice tapped her forefinger against her lips gently. “Can you tell what the people who sent them were feeling?”

  “Well, no,” Beaufort said, as if that should be obvious. “If it was real mail, that the person had touched, yes. But this is just thingy. Dingbats.” Alice, Miriam and Mortimer stared at him. “Dinghies. Didgeridoos. Dirigibles. Mortimer, you know what I mean.”

  Alice and Miriam looked expectantly at the smaller dragon, and he frowned, then said, “Oh. Digital?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well. Life is nothing if not a learning experience,” Alice said. “Can you tell if it was maybe one in particular that made him feel like that?”

  Both dragons leaned over the screen, and Miriam opened the first one. It was from a parishioner who had just signed herself Kelli, with a sad face as well as a kissing emoji, and asked the vicar why he wouldn’t come around for tea. Her previous invitation and his reply were below the message. His included lots of sorries and a very firm no.

  “Keep going,” Beaufort said, and she opened the next.

  Hey Norm, it said. It’s been too long. The boys and I are still set on this deal. You in, or are we going to have to come drag you out?

  It was signed only S.B., and Miriam tapped the screen. “That’s been sent to a different email address. It’s not the [email protected] one.”

  “Interesting,” Alice said. “So the vicar had two email addresses? That seems suspicious.”

  Miriam wrinkled her nose. “Not really. I have one I use for important stuff, and one I use to sign up for newsletters and things, so the main one doesn’t get clogged up.”

  Alice thought that one email address was more than enough for any sensible person, but she let it go. “What does that, um, smell like?”

  “The same as the other,” Beaufort said apologetically. “Angry, sad, worried, scared.”

  “I think the whole folder is the same,” Mortimer said. “It’s what he felt about any of his personal things, maybe.”

  “That’s terribly sad,” Miriam said quietly, and clicked on the next email.

  Hello, Vicar! Lol, that still makes me laugh. Didn’t think I’d forgotten you, did you? Get back to me. S.B.

  “This S.B. may be worth looking into,” Alice said. “Did the vicar reply to him?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Miriam said. “The replies should be with the emails, like with the first one. I’ll check the sent items after we’ve been through them, though. Just in case.”

  The next email was from someone calling herself Violet.

  Norman, if you don’t call me back IMMEDIATELY I’m coming up there!!!!

  And another, a few days earlier:

  Norman! Why are you ignoring me??? Answer your phone!!

  “Violet seems very fond of exclamation marks,” Alice said.

  “Never a good sign,” Miriam replied. “I wonder if she was the woman I saw the other night?” There were a few more emails from her and a couple more from S.B., all of which Miriam pointed out had been sent to the vicar’s private email rather than the vicarage one, and then a new one. It was to the vicarage email address, and was from [email protected].

  Why havnt u answred my msg?? Its about my entree in the fate!!!!

  “The fate?” Beaufort asked. “He’s having a starter with Fate?”

  “I’m guessing he means an entry in the summer fete,” Alice said. “But he likes exclamation marks, too.”

  “There’s more,” Miriam said.

  R U listning??? Answr me!!! Ur in bed w the WI, giveing them all the prizes!!! Its corropt!!!!

  “Well, that’s rather inappropriate,” Alice said.

  “It was sent at two in the morning. All the ones from him are around that time,” Miriam said.

  “So he couldn’t sleep?” Beaufort asked, s
cratching his ear. “That seems a poor excuse for being so rude.”

  Alice smiled. “I think Miriam means that BestBakerBoy may have been a little tipsy.”

  “Oh. Well, it’s still no excuse.” Beaufort leaned forward again as Miriam clicked on a third message.

  Dont ignor me!!! I will win the fate and u kno it!!! Not thos old cows in the vilage!!

  “I thought it was mostly sheep around here,” Beaufort said.

  “Not those sort of cows,” Alice said. “The W.I. sort of cows.”

  The old dragon huffed yellow steam. “The horrible man! What a horrendous thing to say. I shall go visit him immediately!”

  Miriam laughed. “We don’t even know who it is, Beaufort.”

  “But he has an address!”

  “It’s an internet address,” Mortimer said, clutching his mug to his chest in both paws. The High Lord had gone a threatening puce colour.

  “Well, I, I—”

  “More tea?” Alice suggested. “Maybe a sandwich.”

  “Well—”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Miriam said, moving the tablet before Beaufort’s furious breath could melt the edges. “Then we can have another look.”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Beaufort admitted. “One doesn’t want to come across such an unpleasant individual on an empty stomach.”

  “Quite,” Alice said, and Mortimer let out a little sigh, his shoulders slumping. Miriam got up to go back into the house, and at that moment a clear voice echoed across the garden.

  “Hello? Ms Ellis? It’s DI Adams. Are you out here?”

  9

  Miriam