A Slice of Murder, page 22
Mason and Alison were both dead. Their deaths were most certainly connected. Her gut told her that while Steven may have had a hand in Mason’s death, he wasn’t the killer, and Theo said they hadn’t charged him, which proved they had insufficient evidence. Alison had evidence to put the killer away. Shilpa’s comment about the woman in the black dress had triggered something, and her words may have been what got Alison killed. It was therefore her responsibility to find out what she could to help catch her killer.
Whoever had killed Alison had killed Mason too. Theo had as good as confirmed it. Yet it seemed like the police had given up on Alison’s flat. Even her comment about the bag as she was dying seemed to have been brushed aside.
‘It’s a dead end,’ Theo had said.
‘Did any of the guests have a bag with them?’ Shilpa had asked.
‘All the women,’ Theo had answered sarcastically.
‘You know what I mean. A bag of note.’
Theo had cut her short. ‘If we could find her phone, that would be something.’
Maybe Alison’s apartment was a dead end, but Shilpa wanted to take a look. She had been at the engagement party. Theo and the rest of the Otter’s Reach police had not. There could be some clue that she might pick up on that they hadn’t.
‘Leave Theo out of this,’ Shilpa said to Tanvi. ‘Just keep looking. Anyway, you have your own criminal to deal with.’
‘I know, right?’ Tanvi said, sounding a little bit more cheerful. ‘Who’d have thought Brij would be into hacking. Do you think he’s doing something more than fixing phones at his new job?’
‘Definitely. I did think it was odd that someone would give up a lucrative career in pharmacology just to repair old phones.’
‘Do people even fix their phones these days? Surely they just buy a new one,’ Tanvi said. ‘I’ve gotta say though, a hacker makes a better boyfriend than a phone repair guy.’
‘Snob.’
‘It’s just more exciting, that’s all,’ Tanvi said. ‘I don’t think he’s hacking into anything major, that’s if he’s hacking at all. He’s got too many morals.’
‘He didn’t seem too shy when it came to looking into Alison’s photos. He was raring to go,’ Shilpa said.
‘That’s different. Firstly, she’s dead, and secondly, we’re trying to catch her killer, not fleece her bank account. There’s a difference. Hmm, my boyfriend, the hacker. I quite like the sound of that.’
Shilpa laughed. ‘Did you just use the term “boyfriend”? This week is getting weirder and weirder.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Tanvi said. ‘I’ll have a look in the bedroom.’
Shilpa ran her hand under the desk she was looking in. A tiny fox and rabbit looked up at her as she did it. The felt animals were putting her on edge with their tiny beady eyes, watching her illegal activity.
‘I’m trying to find your killer, Alison,’ Shilpa whispered. ‘Just help me out here. Her hand felt something, like a piece of paper taped to the underside of Alison’s desk. Shilpa bent down to take a look.
‘Are you talking to yourself now?’ Tanvi asked. Shilpa bumped her head as she tried to manoeuvre out from under the desk. ‘Nothing in her bedroom or bathroom. A few bags, ugly ones I would never wear. Maybe she was referring to her poor taste in bags when she died. It could have just been a possible regret.’
‘Look at this,’ Shilpa said. Tanvi squatted and craned her neck to see where Shilpa was pointing.
‘I don’t get it,’ Tanvi said.
Shilpa grinned. ‘I think we have what we’re looking for.’
‘Don’t you think it’s strange that the police didn’t find this?’ Tanvi asked, and Shilpa couldn’t help but agree. She felt uneasy as she took a photo of the email addresses and passwords. How had the police missed this?
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Shilpa whispered.
Tanvi stood up. ‘You’re the boss, and quite frankly I’m glad,’ she said, eyeing a felted leopard. ‘This place gives me the creeps.’
Shilpa rubbed her eyes and looked at her pitiful offering. She had done well to bake in the time she had, but it was still a paltry selection, and she wasn’t confident in the taste of her baked goods either. She had let herself down. She was trying to make a name for herself in Otter’s Reach – the go-to baker, the maker of fabulous cakes. She couldn’t let her standards drop, and yet she had. But at least she hadn’t pulled out at the last moment, leaving Kelly with one less stallholder. She had a good enough reason though, with what had happened to her over the last week. She looked at her watch. It was early, but already the market was busy with locals and tourists, and the two strong black coffees she had swallowed first thing didn’t seem to be working.
‘Two of those,’ an old lady said, pointing to the cupcakes Tanvi had helped decorate. Shilpa boxed them and placed them in the lady’s shopper before undercharging her. She sighed as she put the incorrect money into the tin. Perhaps she should have cancelled today after all. One day wouldn’t have hurt, but she could hear her father’s voice. ‘You cancel once, beta, you make it a habit. You have a new business. Turning up is what you have to do to make it work.’ Her father was right. Murder and espionage aside, this was her livelihood. She had to give it her all. But Tanvi was right too. She was delusional. Just what did she think she would accomplish by breaking and entering at Alison Bishop’s apartment so late last night?
‘You’re distracting yourself because of what happened to Dipesh,’ Tanvi had said on their way home in the early hours. ‘Have you spoken to your parents about what happened?’ Shilpa shook her head as she flicked the indicator and turned left. ‘You need time to digest what happened. It has only been a couple of days since you jumped into the estuary, and here you are running about trying to be a detective. Maybe you’re running on adrenaline, but… you learned something shocking about what happened to your uncle. This isn’t something you can brush over with that gung-ho attitude of yours. Pick up the phone and speak to your mum. Dipesh was her brother.’
‘I can’t deal with their grief right now,’ Shilpa said.
‘Why not? What’s holding you here? You could hop on a train with me in a couple of days. Just have some time out. Your business won’t suffer as a result, I promise you. And you’ll feel better for it. Trust me. You’ll thank me.’
‘What’s happened to us?’ was all Shilpa could think of saying. ‘You’re dishing out the advice with a boyfriend at home and I’m committing a crime.’ Tanvi had taken the hint and had dropped the topic, but her friend was right. Her parents, especially her mum, deserved to hear the real reason for her brother’s death, and they needed to hear it from her before the authorities called them. Theo was certain they would reopen the investigation now there was some question over the cause of death.
She picked up a mini muffin and popped it into her mouth. She was surprised that the taste was as good as if she had baked them without all the drama going on. No one would know that after breaking into Alison’s apartment she had returned home and, unable to sleep, wondering if she had left anything out of place during their search, started baking. Perhaps her bakes were better when she was dog-tired and jittery.
In the light of day, the whole escapade to Alison’s home had been foolish. She had realised that as the sun came up over the estuary giving the sky a pink luminosity. She felt foolish giving Brijesh her findings to hack into Alison’s personal photo accounts. So, she hadn’t given him what she had found despite having a photo of half a dozen email addresses and some cryptic letters and symbols which she guessed were passwords. Breaking into Alison’s apartment had been pointless. Tanvi was right. She had been looking for a distraction.
As a woman approached her stall, she put on her brightest smile. She needed to pour all her energy into Sweet Treats and make a success of it. More than anything, she needed to forget about Alison and Mason. It was none of her business.
Chapter Forty-Four
Steven watched his wife water the basil and mint plants on the windowsill. The water caught the sunlight as she poured, reminding him of the simple things in life: warm summer days when Harriet was a toddler, playing in the garden and jumping over sprinklers in the heat of the sun. Life was more carefree then.
Margery had known about his affair with June. She had been into his study and into his bureau. He realised soon after Detective Drayton had asked him. How irrational he had been to think that she hadn’t. To think that she was too timid to look through his things was reckless. He knew her better than that. He had just believed what he had wanted to preserve his own ego, so he could continue with his philandering. Margery was a kind and caring mother. He had seen her nurturing Harriet from a seven-pound baby into a young woman. She had nursed her when she was sick and had comforted her when she had a falling-out at school. Family was everything to Margery, and she wasn’t ready to let that go. Margery would do what she needed to keep her family safe. It was one of the reasons he loved her, but he had lost sight of that, perhaps because Margery herself had lost her identity along the way.
Now, as he watched his wife trim the stalks of basil, he realised how serene she appeared. The anxiety she’d suffered before he had been arrested seemed to have dissipated. She wasn’t fussing, and in the short time that he had been back, he’d noticed her manner with Harriet had improved. They were both making a concerted effort.
With his return from Glass Bay, things at home were definitely more settled, perhaps because the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. The sense of foreboding had dispersed – certainly for Margery, it seemed – but as he watched his wife and thought about her extreme moods of late, he realised that the threat of something terrible was hanging over them.
‘You went into my bureau,’ Steven said.
Margery turned to look at him, her eyes devoid of any emotion. ‘You thought I didn’t know.’
When Margery had spoken of secrets a day before his arrest, he assumed she was referring to this; that she had an inkling about an affair but that she didn’t know for sure. Now he was confident that she had seen the photos. He looked away from his wife’s cold stare. What have you done, Margery?
‘You saw the pictures?’ he asked.
‘You kept them.’
‘I was going to dispose of them.’
‘Then you allowed that woman in my house the day of the engagement for me to see you two together. Was that the plan?’ She took a step closer to the knife block, but her eyes were fixed on him.
He watched her carefully, waiting for her hand to reach for the thick black-and-steel handle. The knife used to kill Mason was still at the station, along with the knife block, but it had been immediately replaced with an identical set, which was typical of Margery’s efficiency. He couldn’t look at it without picturing Mason, eyes glazed over and bloody in their annex.
‘That wasn’t the plan. She is–’ he started and then corrected himself. ‘She was Mason’s mother. It was his engagement party.’
‘She was fawning all over you that day,’ Margery snapped.
‘She didn’t come near me,’ Steven said.
‘So, you remember what she was doing? That’s why you left to get something to eat, wasn’t it? You lied to me. You could have waited for a burger or whatever, but you couldn’t bear to be so close to her but not with her.’
‘Margery–’ he started, but his wife cut him off.
‘I tried,’ she said. ‘I tried, like you tried with Finley.’
Steven stood up and walked towards her. Her face had fallen, her chin buried in her chest. He lifted her chin up with the tips of his fingers. ‘Tell me,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve got through worse before. We’ll get through this.’
‘You tried to pay off Finley before, so when you made that payment to Mason, I assumed you’d done it again.’ She looked up at Steven. ‘I’m not stupid. I know what money goes in and out of our accounts.’
‘I didn’t say–’
‘Just leave it. You made a large payment to Mason. I was curious as to why Harriet’s fiancé was still here after you had paid him a large sum of money. I thought I’d take a look through your bureau that morning. It was logical. Your confidential items are only ever in that drawer that sticks. You think it’s too much of an effort for me to open, but it’s the place I first look when I’m suspicious. I expected to find something, but not that. Those pictures,’ Margery said, her face pale and wretched. ‘I still can’t get them out of my mind.’ She explained that with the party about to start and being unable to locate Harriet, she had decided to take a look in the envelope. Once she had seen what was inside, she knew it was true. She couldn’t bear to hear Steven’s excuses. She understood what the payment to Mason was for, and she hated him not just for the affair but for turning a blind eye to what kind of man Mason really was and still letting him marry their daughter.
‘You should have come to me,’ Steven said, slumping back into his chair. He put his head in his hands.
‘You’d have only made it worse,’ Margery hissed.
‘Mason was Machiavellian,’ Steven said.
‘It takes one to know one,’ Margery said. ‘I saw red that day. I haven’t felt like that in a long, long time. I thought that part of me had died years ago. That part of me that wanted revenge, wanted justice.’
‘Would you rather not have known?’
Margery walked over to her husband and sat in the chair next to him. Tears stained her cheeks. ‘Had I not known, I wouldn’t have had to do anything about it.’
Steven reached out to her and took her hands in his as she folded forward.
‘Mason was going to ruin us,’ she said. ‘What we’d built together. You were a fool to pay him and not tell me. He’d have kept taking money, and then what? He would have exposed you and your disgusting secret.’
‘He was marrying our daughter. He wouldn’t do that to her.’
Margery looked up at Steven. ‘Ha!’ she said with a mock laugh. ‘He didn’t care for his mother’s feelings; why do you think he would care for our daughter’s? You fool. You utter fool. You just don’t see things clearly, do you? You didn’t with Finley and not with Mason either.’
Steven closed his eyes.
‘I wasn’t going to sit back and let him ruin our lives and our daughter’s. I have more guts than you do.’
‘What have you done?’ Steven asked.
Margery pulled her hands out of his and sat straight in her chair. She leaned back. ‘I did what you should have done.’
Steven shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It can’t be.’ He tried to see it from his wife’s point of view. He tried to see what she was trying to save by committing this heinous crime, but he couldn’t. He loved June. He knew that when he had hung on to those pictures, but Margery didn’t see it.
‘I saw him go to the annex. It was a strange thing to do in the middle of his engagement party, right before we were going to sit down for the meal. It was a little chaotic getting everyone to their table.’
‘You followed him?’ Steven asked, afraid to look at his wife, remembering that when he had returned to the party Margery was wearing something completely different to what she had dressed in when they had both got ready that morning. He hadn’t been the only one to change that day. Steven held his breath, waiting for his wife’s response.
Margery nodded.
Chapter Forty-Five
‘You’re that policeman’s girlfriend,’ the woman said as she approached Shilpa’s stall. She picked up a small mango loaf cake from the display and handed it to Shilpa.
‘That’s £5.99,’ Shilpa said.
The woman handed her a note. ‘I see they’ve got Steven Drew at long last.’ It was then that Shilpa placed her. She was Finley’s mother; the same woman who had accosted Theo when they had been walking on Estuary Road. With everything that had happened since, she had completely forgotten her. ‘I see that woman was killed by his hand as well,’ she said. Shilpa gave the woman her change.
‘I like mango,’ the woman said. Putting the loaf in her bag, she retrieved a printout from the blog. She showed Shilpa the page. ‘Another Murder’, the post was titled, a picture of Alison, her hair as vibrant as ever, accompanying the story. ‘I always knew the Drews were no good.’ She leaned in towards Shilpa. ‘That Harriet shouldn’t get away scot-free though, should she?’
Shilpa realised why she hadn’t initially recognised the woman standing in front of her. She looked completely different. Her hair had been combed back neatly and put into a bun. She wore fitted black trousers and a cerise top. Was it just the thought of Steven Drew behind bars that had lifted her spirits? She clearly didn’t know that Steven had been released without charge. No one would know as yet, she supposed. That was definitely one perk of going out with a detective sergeant.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Shilpa said when she realised Finley’s mother was waiting for a response. She looked expectantly at a middle-aged couple standing about five metres away, willing them over. They turned away when she caught their eye and headed towards Olivia’s Savoury Bakes.
‘I saw her with this young woman,’ Finley’s mother said, jabbing her finger at the picture of Alison on the paper she held. ‘I saw her with this woman the day she was killed.’
Shilpa looked at Finley’s mother. The woman, although known for jumping to conclusions, or so she had been told, looked quite serious. Then she recalled the look of pure hatred Harriet had given Alison at Mason’s funeral.
‘You saw Harriet Drew with Alison Bishop the day she died?’ she asked. ‘What time?’
‘It was late,’ she said. ‘But I live across the way from Alison, so I know what goes on. Alison keeps herself to herself usually. I can’t say I normally take much notice of her. I only ever met her once, and she was quite polite. She was an orphan, you know. Both her parents died years ago.’
