Claire's Candles Mystery 01 - Vanilla Bean Vengeance Page 15

  They parted ways at the bottom of the lane. As Claire walked home, she accepted that she had believed every word Ben had said. Perhaps he was an excellent liar and she was a gullible fool, but his words had felt honest.

  “Your father and Uncle Pat are in the shed,” Janet said with a roll of her eyes when Claire joined her in the kitchen. “They’re playing Cluedo again with this case. If you’re going to join them, take this tray of tea.”

  Claire did as she was told, overhearing their louder than usual voices from halfway down the garden path. When she reached the shed door, they were arguing. She knocked with her foot and waited for her father to open up.

  “What’s all the noise?” she asked, setting the tray of tea and biscuits down on the cluttered workbench.

  “This!” Pat cried, shaking the sheet of paper with Abdul’s name and motive written on it, his cry so deep he had to pause to cough. “Your father won’t let this go. I don’t know how many times I have to say that Abdul had nothing to do with any of this, but I’ll say it again for effect. Abdul had nothing to do with it!”

  “It’s only a theory,” Alan snatched the paper from Pat and stuck it back on the shed wall with a drawing pin. “We can’t cross out any lines of enquiry until they’re fully confirmed. I know he’s your friend, but it’s staying up there.”

  “Hasn’t the poor man been through enough, losing his son?”

  “I never said that but—”

  “You’re retired!” Pat cried, ripping the paper down and tearing it in two. “This isn’t a game, Alan.”

  “If I’m retired, why does it matter so much?” Alan pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, wrote ‘Abdul – Bilal. Suicide/covered-up accident’ on it, and stuck it back on the wall. “My shed, my rules! It stays up, or you get out.”

  “You’re acting like boys,” Claire said from her upturned plant pot in the corner. “The bickering isn’t going to get us anywhere, and besides, don’t you want to know what I’ve just found out?”

  They both calmed down enough to sit and listen to Claire relay everything Ben had just told her. Her father scribbled down notes the whole time before sticking them up on the wall.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Pat said, his voice calmer now. “It lines up with Abdul’s theory about Bilal.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe that?” Alan pointed out, hobbling back to his chair to stare at the wall. “But you’re right, it does. I’m not sure how it connects, though. If someone knew Nicola killed her father and used that as a motive to murder her, why Jeff?”

  “Graham,” Claire said again, sitting bolt upright. “It links back to Graham. He told me he liked William Warton. Called him the only father he ever had. If he knew his wife murdered her father, and then found out she was having an affair, surely that’s enough to push him over the edge to – Well, to push her!”

  “That makes sense,” Pat said, nodding slowly, his finger tapping against his chin. “But the police don’t even seem to be looking at Graham. There must be a way to catch him out before he sells the factory.”

  “He told you about that?” Claire asked.

  “That’s what the meeting was about,” he replied, sighing heavily. “You might not be the only one out of a job by the end of the week. He wanted to warn us in case he couldn’t pull things together, but I’m not sure how honest he was being. His mind seemed to be made up. We need a way to disprove his alibis, or all of this was for nothing.”

  “Alibis?” Claire asked, not realising he had any.

  “I met with DI Ramsbottom this morning to ask if Graham was on his radar,” her father explained. “At home both times, and apparently with a witness to back it up.”

  “Who?”

  “Wouldn’t say,” Alan said, clearly frustrated. “But whoever it was, it seems to be enough for them.”

  “He must have paid someone to lie for him,” Claire thought aloud. “How can we prove he wasn’t at home? There must be a way.”

  They contemplated it for a considerable amount of time but came to no conclusions. When they finally left the shed, cups of tea drained, Alan and Pat seemed to be in better spirits with each other and parted on a handshake.

  After eating some lunch, Claire locked herself in her bedroom to continue work on her vanilla candle formula. Writing in her little black book, an idea popped into her head. The more she tried to push it away, the deeper it burrowed, growing so unbearable that she had to pick up her phone.

  “Damon,” she whispered into her handset, peeking through her curtains and into Graham’s garden on the other side of the fence. “How do you feel about breaking and entering again?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Y ou were fine earlier,” Claire’s mother said, a hand on Claire’s forehead. “You are a bit warm.”

  “It hit me like a ton of bricks a couple of hours ago.” Claire coughed before pulling the covers more tightly up to her chin. “If you really want me to, I can come?”

  “No, no!” Janet backed away, holding up both hands. Claire almost felt guilty for playing into her mother’s constant fear of catching the common cold. “If you’re ill, it’s best you stay there. Don’t want to be passing it onto the whole family, do you? I’d offer to bring you some leftovers, but you know your grandmother can’t cook. Considering how insistent Greta was about us coming tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wants to poison us all. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Play nice.” Claire coughed again. “Honestly, I’ll be fine. I’ve got Sid and Domino to keep me company.”

  “Hmmm.” She peered down at the cats, who were curled up on either side of Claire’s head. She looked as though she was about to attempt to stroke Sid, but he hissed before she could get closer. “See! They’re evil little things.”

  “They can sense evil.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” Claire fluttered her lashes as though she were about to pass out. “I’m not thinking clearly. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  Janet lingered for a moment longer before backing out of the room, leaving Claire with the cats. She listened to her mother walk downstairs, followed by her father’s clumsier footsteps. The front door slammed. Claire tossed back the covers and jumped out of bed, fully clothed and perfectly well.

  “I thought she was never going to leave!” Damon cried, bursting out of the built-in wardrobe. “I almost suffocated in there.”

  “There’s breathing holes.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” he replied. “In fact, in an episode of Doctor Who, the—”

  “Damon!” Claire held her hand up. “Another time, yeah? We have a plan to stick to, remember? It’s gone off without a hitch so far, so let’s ride that wave of luck.”

  “I can’t believe your gran just agreed to ask everyone round for dinner.”

  “I told her I’d explain later,” Claire said, hurrying over to the window to look at Graham’s back garden again. “Right, by the looks of the lights, Graham is still at home. My parents will be at Granny Greta’s for at least two hours. I told her to drag out the courses as long as possible, and for the sake of messing with my mother, she seemed all too happy to oblige.”

  “Your family is weird,” Damon said, joining her at the window. “Everyone in my family actually does hate each other, but you all seem to have this weird love-hate thing going on.”

  “It’s all love.”

  “Even your mum and gran?”

  “Deep down. Very deep down.” Claire closed the curtains and quickly fed the cats their dinner. “Okay, since Graham is home and his car is still out front, we need to go to Plan B.”

  “Wait, what was Plan A?”

  “We wait for him to go out so we can sneak inside using this.” Claire pulled a silver key from her pocket. “It’s their backdoor key. They gave it to us so we could water their plants when they went on a month-long cruise a few years ago. It was Mrs Beaton or us. I think they must have forgotten because they never asked for
it back. So, technically, it’s not breaking and entering, just—”

  “Entering?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m noticing a pattern of behaviour here.” Damon scratched at the side of his head. “It’s like you’ve been taken over by a brainwashing alien obsessed with skating impossibly close to the law.”

  “Now that does sound like a Doctor Who episode.”

  “Actually, it reminds me of—”

  “Plan B!” Claire clapped her hands together. “I have an idea to get Graham out of the house, and you’re not going to like it.”

  “Have I liked any of this so far?” Damon perched on the edge of Claire’s bed. “Go on. Lay it on me.”

  Claire sat next to him and gathered her thoughts as she watched the cats finish wolfing down their dinner. Even though she hadn’t eaten yet, it was one of the rare occasions she couldn’t have eaten even if she tried; adrenaline coursed through her body.

  “We need a way to get him out of the house, don’t we?” she started. “So, I was thinking, one of us could call the police and tell them we saw someone breaking into the factory.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Hear me out!”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You could leave, and I’ll do this on my own.”

  Claire waited, but Damon didn’t reply. He exhaled and nodded for her to continue.

  “The police are likely to contact Graham since he now owns the factory,” she continued. “He’ll rush out, and even if he drives quickly, we’ll still have a good fifteen minutes to have a look around.”

  “And what are we even looking for?”

  “Anything.” Claire pushed up her glasses. “I don’t know exactly. A signed confession if we’re lucky.”

  “And if we’re not lucky?”

  “Some documents.” Claire stood up and began pacing. “Nicola had an office, and from the sounds of it, Graham never went in there. If Nicola really did kill her father, she might have something in there to prove it. And that could link back to Graham. If we can prove that he knew about it, it might be enough to show the police, so they don’t think we’re crazy.”

  “I think you’re crazy!” Damon cried. “There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in there. You’re suggesting we break into—”

  “Let ourselves in with a key.”

  “You’re suggesting we trespass,” he corrected himself with a scowl, “in our boss’s home on the night of his wife’s funeral to try and prove that he killed said wife, and then Jeff, all based on what? A hunch and some unconfirmed male DNA on a piece of ciggie gum?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You really are crazy. Utterly barking.” Damon pulled his phone from his pocket. “If you hadn’t been right about the secret camera and Belinda being innocent, I’d have already walked out. Luckily for you, and unluckily for me, I trust you more than I trust anyone else.” He held the phone out and nodded at it. “Who’s doing this?”

  “You,” she said, sitting back next to him. “I know too many people at the station. They might recognise my voice.”

  “They might recognise my voice!”

  “So, put on a different one.” Claire nodded at the phone. “And put 141 before you dial 999, so they can’t see your number. Try to be quick and vague.”

  Damon did as he was told and dialled the number. Before Claire could decide to back out, the operator had put him through to the local police station.

  “Hello, dear!” Damon cried, his voice high-pitched and somehow Scottish. “I was just drivin’ oot and aboot near the candle factory, and I saw a huge group of … erm … yobos! Looked like they were breaking in, they did. Och, aye, you should make sure as they’re not … raving. Got to go, dear! Bye, now!”

  Damon hung up and tossed the phone onto the floor, his face somehow even redder than a beetroot. The cats scattered and darted to the safety of under the bed. Claire and Damon silently stared at the phone, neither breathing.

  “Well,” Claire said finally after an eternity, “that couldn’t have gone any worse.”

  “I panicked!”

  “Oot and aboot?”

  “I panicked!”

  “Yobos?” Claire elbowed him. “Rave?”

  “I told you, I panicked!”

  “Why did you panic yourself Scottish?”

  “Because you told me to put on a fake voice,” he said, elbowing her in the ribs in retaliation, “and I went straight to Mrs Doubtfire!”

  They stared at the phone again, this time for much longer. Neither moved until they heard a door slam. Claire bounced off her bed, ran downstairs, and peeked through the hallway curtain.

  “I don’t believe it!” She motioned for Damon to follow. “He’s going out. I think it might have worked.”

  “There’s no way that worked.”

  “No, I think it did.” She held back the curtain enough for Damon to see Graham’s car performing a clunky three-point turn in the cul-de-sac. “Thank you, Mrs Doubtfire!”

  Leaving all the lights on in case her parents came home early, they snuck out the backdoor, and each helping the other, made it over the garden fence into Graham’s. Unlike the perfect garden her father had spent decades cultivating, Graham’s garden matched the inside décor: stark, bare, and the grass didn’t feel real under her shoes.

  “If this all goes wrong and Graham comes back,” Damon whispered as Claire slotted the key into the kitchen door, “we could always go to Plan C.”

  “We don’t have a Plan C.”

  “You’re not the only one who can come up with plans, you know.” Damon looked around as if he expected police helicopters to descend at any moment. “If Graham comes back, we threaten to blackmail him.”

  “Again, with the blackmail?”

  Claire twisted the key, and the door opened.

  “Again, with the trespassing?” Damon replied. “You don’t get the moral high ground when you’re the one holding the key.”

  “I have morals,” Claire whispered, stepping into the brightly lit, stark kitchen, “but I also have nothing left to lose. The candle shop has gone. Well, I never had that, but it’s definitely not happening any time soon. I’ve been fired from my job, and I have a police caution on my record. If Graham catches us, I’ll snap myself into the cuffs. Besides, he has to have done it. All the strings point to him.”

  “What strings?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Claire called from the sitting room doorway. “We’re clear. We don’t have long. Start looking around. Paperwork, receipts, anything that links Graham to either murder. Keep an ear out for Graham’s car, but he shouldn’t even be at the factory yet.”

  “It’s not too late to turn back.”

  “Turn back then.” Claire was already onto the first step. “You trusted my hunch before, and this time I’m even surer.”

  Leaving Damon to dig around in the living room, Claire went straight to what would be her bedroom at home. She opened the door to Nicola’s office, and the chill hit her immediately. The weather outside was pleasant, but this was the sort of chill that only settled into a room that hadn’t been used for a while. She hurried over to the desk and sat in the chair. All of the drawers had locks on them, but after trying a couple, she concluded none were actually locked.

  After five minutes of digging in the left side and finding nothing more than accountant paperwork, she moved onto the right, which had more of the same. The clock ticked louder with every passing second, and the illegality of what she was doing felt heavier with each tick.

  “What am I doing?” she whispered to herself, leaning back and looking around the room. “I really have lost the plot. I’m talking to myself.”

  After checking everything on the desk, she moved onto the filing cabinets lining the walls, but they contained the same useless paperwork as the desk. There was a bookshelf with a couple of framed pictures: one showed Nicola in her cap and gown on graduation day, another was on her wedding day; her smile was bigger in th
e first picture.

  She picked up the wedding picture and brought it closer. Graham had a full head of hair and was much thinner, and Nicola looked almost exactly as she had on the day of her death: pale with bloodred hair.

  Claire wondered how long ago their wedding was. They looked like they were in their early twenties, which put it at least two decades ago. Had they loved each other then? She turned the frame over to find a date but found something else entirely.

  It certainly wasn’t what she had expected.

  It was better.

  Claire squinted at the tiny bag of pills taped to the back of the frame. The tape didn’t look fresh, but it didn’t look too aged, either. A couple of months old? Claire had skipped the drug experimentation section of her teenage years, but even she knew the tiny pills in the bag weren’t the kind you could buy from a pharmacy.

  The door hinges squeaked open. Claire turned, still looking at the pills.

  “Damon, I think Ben was—”

  It wasn’t Damon.

  It was the last person Claire would have ever expected to see in Graham’s house.

  “Sally?”

  “Claire?”

  The old friends stared at each other, the ex-candle factory worker holding a drug-concealing picture frame, and the estate agent wearing nothing more than a loose-fitting silk gown and brandishing a lamp like a weapon.

  “What are you doing here?” Sally lowered the lamp and covered her body with her arms.

  “I could ask you the same question!”

  “I thought you were a burglar!” Sally stepped into the room, keeping her eyes fixed on the carpet. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  Claire arched a brow. “Isn’t it?”

  Sally sighed and nodded. “Actually, yes, it is.”

  “You’re having an affair with Graham?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.” Sally frowned, clearly not liking the judgement. “Why are you in Graham’s house? He’ll be back any second. He’s just gone to—”

  “Check on the factory,” Claire butted in. “I know. I made that happen. Well, Mrs Doubtfire made it happen.”