Downward Facing Death (6 page)

“You look … different,” Raquel allowed, and in a flash, Keeley remembered just how catty her old friend had always been.

“You've lost that weight, anyway,” Raquel went on, “you were always quite chunky, weren't you? Do you remember that nickname you had at school? Lardypants, wasn't it? Too funny.” Raquel gave a thin laugh, a malicious glint in her eye that Keeley now remembered all too well.

“Hilarious,” Keeley mumbled through gritted teeth. It was becoming apparent just exactly why she hadn't bothered to stay in touch with Raquel after her move.

“Exactly what is it you're planning on doing here?” Raquel asked, abruptly changing the subject. “I own the diner just around the corner, you see, and I do hope we aren't going to clash. My customers are absolutely devoted to me, of course, and I'd hate to think of your little enterprise failing to get off the ground because of
me.
”

Obviously, this wasn't just a social call. Keeley eyed Raquel in surprise. “A diner? Wow, that's great.” Somehow the image of the silk-clad Raquel working behind a café counter didn't fit.

“Yes—well, I went to university, of course, and went to Europe for a while, then Mummy and Daddy bought me the diner as a little gift. I have people in to do the cooking and serving and everything, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Keeley echoed, trying to suppress a grin. No doubt Raquel, who had never been at all academic, didn't do very well at university and also clearly failed to land a rich husband, one of her often-stated ambitions. It would be just like the Philipses to buy her a little business to keep her occupied. She wondered if they were also bankrolling her wardrobe.

“Anyway,” Keeley offered, feeling a little more charitable now, “I doubt we will clash at all. I'm serving vegetarian food mostly, and fresh juices, that kind of thing.”

“How quaint. Still watching your weight, then, I take it?” Raquel gave her a sickly smile, and Keeley sighed to herself. It didn't look as though she and Raquel would be renewing their friendship anytime soon.

“No, I'm a yoga teacher. My café will reflect that: healthy, fresh food that's good for body and soul.” She gave a genuine smile, impressed at her own sales pitch. “I'm quite sure there's room on the High Street for both of us.” Perhaps it was only natural that Raquel should be worried, Keeley thought, trying to be understanding. After all, there were quite a few eateries on the High Street as it was, and they must all be in at least indirect competition with each other.

Raquel's response, however, banished any warmth that Keeley might have felt. The other woman narrowed her eyes at Keeley in a way that was almost certainly designed to be menacing.

“There had better be,” she said before sweeping past Keeley and letting herself out with only a flick of her hand to signal a good-bye. Keeley stared after her, feeling a chill that came from more than just the swinging shut of the door after Raquel's departure.

Raquel's last words had sounded very much like a threat. Almost against her will, Keeley's head turned toward the stairwell, her gaze focusing on the shadows from the room above. She wondered if Raquel had known Terry Smith.

*   *   *

After finishing her cleaning and calling the kitchen installation crew to arrange a new date, Keeley realized she was more or less at loose ends until the interior work began. She rather tentatively walked across the road to the Tavern for a very late lunch. The first face she saw as she walked into the smoky gloom was Jack's, again in his usual spot. His patronage must have kept the Tavern going through the recent recession, she thought with a smile as he nodded toward the empty chair next to him. With another grateful smile, Keeley ordered a sandwich and pot of tea from a glassy-eyed Tom and then slid into the offered chair. A large Irish wolfhound sat next to Jack, wagging his tail as Keeley sat down and fixing her with dark and mournful eyes that looked almost comical peeping out from under the shaggy gray fur that covered him. He smelled vaguely of mud. This must be the dog that scared off the would-be arsonist, thereby saving her shop. Keeley stroked his huge head, acknowledging her debt, and was rewarded with a slobbery lick to the hand.

“He likes you,” Jack commented as Keeley surreptitiously wiped dog saliva from her hand onto her jeans.

“He's lovely,” Keeley said, then asked, “What's wrong with Tom?”

Jack snorted.

“Too much of that whacky-baccy the youngsters smoke. I hope you're not into all that”—he peered at her disapprovingly—“what with all that hippie stuff you're into nowadays.”

Keeley suppressed a smile. “I'm not sure yoga qualifies as ‘hippie,' but no, a glass of wine is about my strongest vice.” She eyed the large and sour-smelling tobacco pipe that Jack was happily puffing away on. It appeared that the indoor smoking ban hadn't reached Belfrey.

“Did you know him?” she asked suddenly, not realizing she was going to speak the words until she did so. “Terry Smith, I mean?”

Jack eyed her for a moment, taking a long inhalation from his pipe and then coughing out a stream of smoke that made the dog sneeze.

“Aye, I knew him well enough. Most of us did; he came in here for the football sometimes. Ran the betting shop, you see. Ben told you what happened, then?”

Keeley nodded. “I think he suspected I had something to do with it,” she confided. Jack just nodded, not at all surprised, and Keeley couldn't help but wonder if that was because he thought Ben likely to suspect anyone in the vicinity, or because he thought of Keeley as an automatic suspect as well.

“I wasn't even in Belfrey at the time of the murder,” she said, her words coming out more defensive than she would have liked.

Jack shrugged. “Got nothing to worry about, then, have you?”

Keeley wasn't quite sure what to say to that, but was saved from responding by the arrival of Tom with tea and a limp-looking sandwich. Keeley smiled at him and he stared at her for a minute, then gave her a slow, unfocused smile of his own before sloping off. Jack shook his head at Tom's retreating figure.

“Course, it could have been anyone,” he said suddenly. Keeley swallowed her bite of sandwich—which, in spite of its limp appearance, had the texture of cardboard—and looked at him in puzzlement.

“Terry's murderer,” the old man clarified. “No one liked him, you see. Mean man, had a nasty streak in him, I reckon.”

Keeley nodded. Annie had said as much, albeit more diplomatically. Although she wouldn't wish his end on anyone, the fact that Smith didn't seem to be well liked did hint that his unfortunate demise was due to someone's having a grudge against him, rather than against Keeley or her family. Perhaps rather than Terry interrupting the arsonist, the killer had attempted to cover the evidence with a fire. It made a great deal more sense, considering that the murder must have happened first. The burning of her shop then would have been a cover-up attempt that had unfortunately just happened to be on her premises.

Of course, that didn't explain why on earth Terry Smith and his killer had been there in the first place. Keeley sat back in her chair, deflated that her theory didn't stack up quite so neatly after all.

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” she asked Jack. He shook his head sharply, looking around as if afraid of being overheard, though there was no one else in the pub other than a few youths by the pool table in the far corner and two middle-aged men drinking bitter in the other.

“No,” Jack said, “and it wouldn't do for people to go around accusing people, either. Belfrey's a small town, you see. Gossip gets around.”

“Does everyone think it's me?” Keeley blurted. Jack seemed to think about his answer for a few moments, which didn't reassure her.

“I reckon not,” he said finally. “Though it's a bit strange, all the same.”

Keeley shifted in her seat uneasily. If Jack Tibbons, who had known her since she was tiny and who had been a dear friend of her father's, didn't seem completely convinced of her innocence, then what could she expect from anyone else? She thought about Raquel's less-than-friendly welcome. Although the other woman hadn't even mentioned the murder, seeming more interested in the prospect of Keeley setting herself up as a business rival. She told Jack about her encounter with her old friend, leaving off the part where Raquel had spitefully alluded to her high school nickname. Jack pulled a face.

“She's a right sort, that girl. All fur coat and no knickers, if you ask me.”

Keeley laughed in surprise at the old saying, coughing on the piece of sandwich in her mouth. She took a sip of tea to wash it down and grinned at Jack, who smiled back, a wicked glint in his rheumy eyes.

Looking at the clock, Keeley remembered she had a date with Duane in a few hours and had wanted to visit Megan's shop before returning home. She swigged the last of her tea and said good-bye to Jack, who gave her an affectionate wink, and waved at Tom, who, although he was apparently looking right at her, appeared not to notice.

As she made her way to Crystals and Candles, she had to walk past Raquel's Diner, a pretty-looking place with a cheerful poppy stencil in the window and red-checked drapes that matched the cloths on the two small tables outside. Through the window that made up the shop front, Keeley could see the interior was busy, though Raquel herself sat in the corner, drinking from what looked like a champagne flute, with two young male customers hanging on her every word. Like a queen holding court. The menu boards outside offered traditional food: a full English breakfast, steak and ale pie, and the famous Codnor cod. There was unlikely to be fierce competition between the traditional diner and her own Yoga Café, but Keeley did remember Raquel as being highly competitive at school. Not that any rivalry had included Keeley back then, as she hadn't been high enough on the social scale to matter.

Keeley smelled Crystals and Candles before she saw it. The door was open, and the heavy smell of a musk-based incense wafted down the street. Keeley entered, pushing through the velvet strips that lined the doorway, into a shop that looked more like a fairies' grotto. Crystals of all shapes, sizes, and colors lined one wall; candles, the other. A selection of the candles was lit, causing the crystals to twinkle a rainbow of colored lights. In the middle of the shop, a large table offered all manner of New Age knickknacks, from tarot cards to angel statuettes. Megan sat behind a velvet-draped counter, perched on a stool, though she jumped up with a shriek of delight when she saw Keeley, coming round from behind the till and giving her an enthusiastic hug, which Keeley returned awkwardly.

“So nice to see you again! Would you like anything to drink?” Megan waved at a selection of herbal teas in front of her, and Keeley nodded, picking a brand she recognized from New York.

“Yes, thank you. I just thought I'd pop by.”

“Make yourself at home. It's been quiet today, so I may as well lock up. Are you meeting Duane tonight? He's done nothing but talk about you!”

“Really?” Keeley blushed, feeling more embarrassed than flattered. Megan thankfully didn't seem to require an answer as she disappeared into the back room to make the tea, chattering all the while. Keeley sat down, the incense making her feel light-headed.

“I suppose you've heard about the body?” Keeley asked as Megan came back out, then winced at the abruptness of her own words, which somehow sounded harsher in the otherworldly atmosphere of Megan's shop.

Megan pursed her lips and nodded.

“Yes, of course, but we didn't want to mention it. You must be terribly upset. I always did say that man had a very dark aura, but karma catches up with us all, you know.” Megan nodded sagely. Ignoring the other girl's slightly strange conception of karma, Keeley leaned forward over the counter.

“You knew him, then?”

“Only by sight. He was hardly the type to come in here, and to be honest, I wouldn't have wanted him to.” She shuddered as if the very thought of Terry's dark aura had poisoned the serene atmosphere she was trying to create.

“Was he really that bad?” Keeley wondered aloud. In spite of the sympathetic article in the local press, so far no one seemed to have a good word for the man. Megan sipped her tea and gave a worldly wise sigh.

“Some people just have a darkness around them, a negativity. It makes you feel drained being around them. Psychic vampires, they're called. Terry always struck me as that sort of person.”

“Right.” Although Keeley wasn't sure she bought into Megan's spiritual beliefs, she knew exactly what the woman meant about people's ability to leave you feeling emotionally drained. She often felt that way when she was around her mother.

“Why in your café, though?” Megan pondered. Keeley took a long gulp of her tea, completely unable to answer the very question she had asked herself for the last two days. Why indeed?

 

KAPALABHATI
—INVIGORATING BREATH

Will reenergize you when you're feeling lethargic. Also great for clearing the sinuses.

Method

• Sit comfortably, and consciously relax the abdominal muscles.

• Inhale and exhale slowly through your nose.

• Inhale deeply, then exhale through your nose in short, sharp bursts as you contract your stomach muscles—almost as if you are “pumping out” the breath through the nose.

• Continue inhaling deeply and pumping out the exhalation, up to twenty times. Then take a long, slow inhalation, and exhale through the nose to finish.

• The whole exercise can be repeated three times if you are feeling very sluggish or “bunged up” or both.
Kapalabhati
literally means “shining skull” because of its invigorating effect. It is also sometimes referred to as “bellows breath,” due to the pumping motion and sound of the exhalation. Probably not one to try in public.