Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) (10 page)

“I
have Officer Hill with me in the van, he can come too.
 
See you there.
 
Over and out.”

Officer
Hill tutted. “Great.
 
And I thought
I was about to finally get some sleep.”

The van pealed through the campsite and
slid to a halt in the mud by the treeline.
 
Constable Palmer and Officer Hill jumped out and met D.C.
Downey and the two officers who had been staking out the tent.

“I
just had Laura Conrad on the phone,” said D.C. Downey. “She says they haven’t
left the bunker.
 
We’re looking for
a small concrete shed built into a hillside about a quarter of a mile northwest
of here.
 
She says we’ll cross a
path with a fallen tree just before we get to the hillside.
 
The coal store doesn’t have a door on
it and it looks like it’s a single room about fifteen square feet.
 
They just lit a lamp or something
inside so we might see the flame.
 
Let’s go and take these guys in, swiftly and safely, alright?”

The
team nodded their assent and they set off jogging through the woods.

The
trees crowded around them in the darkness.
 
The moonlight glanced off the smooth trunks of the silver
birch as they jogged to the rustling sound of their uniforms and crunch of
their boots.
 
Soon they could hear
the river burbling to the west.

“Keep
your eyes peeled for the path,” said Constable Palmer.

They
stumbled upon it within a minute, and saw the fallen tree that the reporter had
mentioned.
 
There was only one
slope steep enough to possibly house the coal store.
 
They came at it from above and, as they looked down the
slope, saw a faint flicker of orange light cast over the ground from below.

Laura
Conrad emerged from behind a tree, put her finger to her lips, and moved aside
for the professionals.

The
officers split into two teams and silently descended the slope.
 
They saw the flat top of the bunker and
went down either side of it.
 
The
front of the building had no door, and warm lamplight came from within along
with the quiet chatter of two men.

On
D.C. Downey’s signal, the five officers burst into the bunker.

Pattie and Elliott sat in plastic
chairs at the police station.
 
The
station was a slightly eerie place at night time, lit only by harsh fluorescent
bulbs and echoing with the snores and shouts of the recently arrested.

Two
of those arrested were James Farrell and Toby Draper.
 
D.C. Thomas Downey had returned to tell Pattie the story of
the arrest, which had happened swiftly and without incident.
 
The officers had stormed the empty coal
store, clapped the two shivering men in handcuffs, and hauled them back through
the woods to the station.

Timothy
Jeffries had also been strongly urged to stick around at the station, though he
hadn’t formally been charged with anything.
 
Nor had Blossom Carter, who was now about to spend her
second night in a cell.
  
D.C.
Downey was waiting to get some solid answers out of their two new suspects,
however…

“They’re
not telling us anything,” he said, storming down the corridor.
 
He spotted Pattie and slowed for her.
“Pattie, you’re still here.”

“Like
I told the girl at the desk, I have something important that you need to see,”
Pattie replied, standing. “I decided to be patient.”

“Well?
 
What is it?”

Pattie
showed him.

“Good
Lord!
 
Where the heck did you get
this?”

“It’s
all part of the story.
 
Maybe we
should get all of our new festival friends all in one room?
 
Assuming you’ve got their statements
already?”

“You’re
that sure you’ve got this all figured out?” asked the D.C. “Better to keep them
separated…”

“I’m
sure,” smiled Pattie. “Let me at them.”

It
was arranged.
 
A meeting room was
populated with the four out-of-towners and a handful of officers to watch
them.
 
Even though they were all
handcuffed, at least one of them was involved in a double murder and they were
taking no changes.

Someone
brought in a much-needed cup of tea for Pattie, who thanked them for it.

“I
have a story to tell, and please correct me if I’m wrong about any of the
details,” she began, sipping her tea.
 
She looked first at Blossom Carter. “Ms Carter, you and Daryl Hardy
drove into town the day of the festival and had an argument with Seth MacGowan
over a near-miss with one of his farm animals.
 
Daryl, you told me, had something of a bad temper, didn’t
he?”

Blossom
nodded. “He and the farmer had a real row over it.”

“Was
Daryl the vindictive type?” Pattie asked.
 
Blossom said nothing. “I believe that the same day, Daryl went back to
that farm and, when he couldn’t find Seth, who was busy getting drunk after
hearing about a break-in at his farmhouse and a subsequent argument with his
wife, Daryl played a childish prank and committed a kidnapping – or, rather, a
cat-napping.
 
Seth MacGowan thought
that the cat had run away during the break-in, but it was Daryl that took
Seth’s cat, wasn’t it, Ms Carter?”

“Alright.
 
Yes.
 
I told him he was stupid for doing it.
 
He could be really immature
sometimes.
 
I thought the cat would
just wander off home.”

“But
it didn’t.
 
There were too many
interesting smells in the campsite.
 
And there were things that you found interesting too, weren’t there, Ms
Carter?
 
Like Harry Widmore, a
handsome young man in a nearby tent who you befriended?
 
You started an affair, but you had no
idea what kind of man Harry was – or what his friends were like.”

Pattie
looked pointedly at James Farrell and Toby Draper. “Blossom complained to her
new lover about Daryl’s childish behaviour and his temper, and Harry decided he
would play a prank of his own.
 
In
the middle of the night, as Harry and Blossom found somewhere private to be,
Misters Farrell and Draper carried out a plan that they had worked out with
Harry just beforehand.
 
They would
go to find Daryl in his sleep and give him a scare – possibly scare him off for
good, so that Blossom would have a chance to be with her new beau without any
difficulty.
 
Daryl had a temper,
after all.
 
And so, James and Toby
went to the tent where Daryl was sleeping and, finding a knife in the tent,
proceeded with the prank … Only, it got out of hand, didn’t it, boys?
 
Something happened, maybe a fight broke
out, and the knife ended up in Daryl’s back, killing him – not the plan.”

“That’s
stupid,” said James. “It’s not true!
 
We never went near that tent; we had nothing to do with that guy’s
murder!”

“Oh,
no?”

Pattie
produced a small yellowish object from her coat pocket.
 
She had been keeping it in a small
baggie, and now she removed it and held it up.
 
It was a scrunched up piece of paper in the shape of a large
pill.
 
Pattie proceeded to coax it
open until everyone could see what it was.

“A
Polaroid photograph,” she said. “Showing Misters Farrell and Draper in a tent
by the sleeping Daryl Hardy, grinning and holding a knife.
 
You had a habit of taking photos of
your silly pranks, didn’t you, boys?
 
I saw you do it when I visited your tent for the first time.
 
Unfortunately you didn’t count on
O’Malley chewing on this photo and swallowing it.
 
Maybe you should be careful what you spill tasty food onto,
hmm?
 
This is why you captured
O’Malley and kept him in your van.
 
You knew what he’d swallowed and you couldn’t let him run off with the
evidence of your crime.”

The
two men said nothing.

Pattie
continued, leaving nothing out. “What you hadn’t counted on was the weak will
of your friend, Harry, who had asked you to play the prank in the first
place.
 
When he heard that it had
accidently evolved into a murder, he was going to give you up.
 
He snatched up the cat and ran for Seth
MacGowan’s place, across the river.
 
You caught up to him and drowned him in the river – your own friend, to
protect yourselves!
 
You took back
the cat with the evidence in his belly, but you must have missed the collar
that had come loose in Harry’s hand, which we found by his body.”

The
two men buried their faces in their hands.
 
They knew that the game was up.

But
Pattie hadn’t finished. “After committing a second murder, this time deliberately,
you put the fear of God into your other friend, Timothy Jeffries.
 
Mister Jeffries, maybe you can pick it
up from here?”

Timothy
had been quietly crying. “I couldn’t believe what they’d done.
 
I didn’t have proof, but it was
obvious.
 
When I saw them with the
cat trapped in the van, I didn’t know what it meant – although I do now.
 
They must have been waiting for the cat
to cough up the photo it ate.
 
I
guess they thought that I was going to tell on them, and they chased me through
the woods.
 
That’s when I found
you.”

“And
it’s probably when they discovered the handy coal store, where they would later
hide out once they knew the game was up.
 
Everything you’ve done proves your guilt, gentlemen,” finished Pattie. “The
only question remaining is whether Blossom knew anything about all this, or if
Harry kept it from her.”

But
one look at Ms Carter showed that she could not have known: she was sobbing
freely, a look of shock on her face.
 
So, it was true that she had gone back to the tent so buzzed on new
romance that she hadn’t noticed her boyfriend was dead.

D.C.
Downey crossed his arms and looked at James and Toby. “Got anything to say,
gents?”

“We
want a lawyer,” snarled James Farrell.

The police car pulled up outside the
Pat’s Whiskers Feline Retirement Home.
 
D.C. Downey switched off the engine and smiled at Pattie. “You know,
sometimes I wonder how we ever got along without you.
 
How do you do it?”

Pattie
smiled and stroked O’Malley, who had been sitting patiently in her lap. “My son
was a policeman, you know.”

“I
know.
 
Well, thanks again.”

“Don’t
mention it, Thomas.
 
Go home and
get some well-deserved sleep.
 
They
should make you Chief after solving this!”

“Actually,
I think Juliette – Um, Constable Palmer, has her eyes on that job,” he replied,
flustered.

“So
what is going on with you and ‘Constable Palmer’…?” Pattie asked slyly.

D.C.
Downey grinned. “About the same as what’s going on with you and Doc Knight.
 
Goodnight, Mrs Landsbury.
 
I’ll leave it to you to get the cat
back to the MacGowans.”

“I’ll
call them first thing in the morning,” Pattie promised. “Tonight I want to give
O’Malley a tasty reward for cracking the case.
 
I’m sure I can come up with something tastier than a
photograph!”

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