Murder at the Maples: A Flora Lively Mystery (7 page)

Keep digging, Flora. ‘Only the silly nonsense they all talk about, you must have heard them.’

‘No. Do enlighten me.’

‘Oh, all that “no one who moves up there lives longer than three months” stuff. They’re scared of losing their independence is all, you know how these rumours start.’

Flora wondered, as the warden turned a vivid shade of pink, how this particular rumour had started. The Maples village had only been open for a year.

‘Have
you lost a lot of residents from the third floor?’

‘We’ve said a sad farewell to three wonderful people in the entire time we’ve been operational,’ snapped the warden. ‘And as you can imagine, they were each very elderly and infirm. Otherwise, they would not have been receiving special care.’

Not that special perhaps, thought Flora, but this time she kept her thoughts to herself.

‘And I think it’s best for everyone concerned that we don’t feed these wild rumours. It can’t be good for the residents’ peace of mind.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And if you are finding it hard to distance yourself from your contract here by being friends with Mrs Martin, maybe that’s something we need to deal with.’

Flora nodded, understanding the warden perfectly well. Keep your beaky nose out. Or else.

‘Sorry. I just wanted to ask you to keep an eye on her, that’s all.’

‘Which is exactly what I’m paid to do.’ The warden turned her back on Flora and opened her office door. ‘As for the flowers,’ she said, turning around again, her face back to its usual expression of rosy-cheeked benevolence, ‘maybe Joy has a secret admirer. Isn’t she rather close to the Captain? I’m sure it’s nothing to get in a tizzy about.’

Flora stood looking at the blank oak door for a full minute after the warden had closed it. Resisting the urge to stick out her tongue like a five-year-old, she turned on her heel and stalked off towards the exit. She rounded a corner and walked directly into a woman carrying a stack of magazines. The magazines went flying, and the woman nearly joined them.

‘Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry.’ Flora dropped to her knees to help pick them up. She recognised the woman as the Maples’ main receptionist, Elizabeth.

‘No, it was my fault entirely. I wasn’t looking where I was going. In a little world of my own, I was.’

Flora smiled, her tension ebbing away. The woman’s long blonde hair was loose and flyaway, held off her face with a silver Alice band that would have been cool on a teenager but looked incongruous on a woman who must be pushing fifty. She’d noticed Elizabeth around, noticed her leopard-skin tops and maxi-skirts, and she’d certainly noticed Stuart and Steve noticing her too. Elizabeth was an attractive lady, with a breathy voice and a distracted air. Just crying out to be rescued, Steve had said admiringly. And he was at least twenty years her junior.

‘Here,’ said Flora, passing over the last of the magazines. ‘Where are you off to with these?’

‘The medical centre – someone donated them this morning. We keep having to replace them over there, people are always stealing them.’

Flora laughed, and Elizabeth smiled uncertainly.

‘Well, sorry again. I need to be more careful when I’m in a bad mood.’

Elizabeth looked concerned. ‘What happened? Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. Just had a run-in with … Never mind.’ Flora stopped herself in time. For all she knew the warden and her chief receptionist might be the best of friends. ‘I was worried about a friend, that’s all. But I’m sure it will all be okay.’

‘Good. Well, thanks for helping with these.’

Flora watched Elizabeth trip away along the corridor. ‘Can I ask you a quick question?’ she called out on impulse.

‘Of course.’ The other woman turned and smiled openly. ‘What do you need to know?’

‘You have a resident here, a Mr Felix. Would you happen to know his first name?’ Flora held her breath. What was she doing? Surely she was out of line even asking personal questions about a resident?

Elizabeth didn’t seem to think so. She thought about it for a moment, hoisting the magazines onto one sharp hip. ‘I know who you mean, but I can’t remember his first name. He likes to be called
Mr
Felix,’ she added with a smile. ‘I see quite a lot of him, he’s always having parcels delivered to reception, a new one every week. Vitamins, they are. He’s obsessed with his health. The warden, she wasn’t too happy about it. Said she didn’t want the other residents getting ideas.’

‘Ideas?’

‘About the health benefits of vitamins bought over the internet. She runs a pretty tight ship, you know. Likes all that kind of stuff to go through her.’

I can imagine, thought Flora. She’d have a fit if she found out about Joy’s secret stash of daily medication.

‘But you don’t know his first name?’

Elizabeth shook her head. ‘No, sorry. Why do you need to know?’

Flora gestured vaguely. ‘I wanted to send him a … birthday card.’ It was the first thing that popped into her head.

‘Ah. That’s nice. I’ll make sure we get him one too.’

Flora said goodbye and watched the receptionist walk away. She shook her head and headed for the exit. Mr Felix was clearly just a harmless old man with nothing more than the state of his health on his mind. Joy had too much time on her hands, that was the real problem.

She pushed through the glass doors and smiled into the sunshine. The sight of Marshall leaning against the wall with his arms folded, glaring at her, was so unexpected she forgot for a moment what she was doing at the Maples in the first place.

‘In your own time, Miss Lively.’ Marshall turned and stalked away across the quadrant. Flora had no choice but to follow meekly at his heels.

***

At least her love life wasn’t as bleak as her work life. Flora hadn’t dated anyone for over a year – a long time for a woman in her prime, but not for someone recovering from the loss of both her parents. Things had picked recently though, for reasons Flora didn’t analyse too deeply. So far she’d been out on four dates with three perfectly eligible guys; men were indeed like buses, only much harder to catch when they were trying to get away from you.

No such worries with Heston. She’d totally given up on the bad boy vibe this time and was excited to be dating a librarian who thought the sun shone out of her tiny behind. Flora didn’t really have a type – her mum had always said she wasn’t fussy enough – but if she did, Heston probably wouldn’t be it. With neat blonde hair and smooth fair skin that clearly didn’t see much sunshine, Heston was almost as slight as Flora. But he was handsome, with a fine mouth and a chiselled nose and chin, aristocratic-looking and very clever.

And he was a secret. Marshall had made fun of both guys Flora had dated, and he’d only met one of them – an accidental bumping-into situation which had left Flora unaccountably rattled and making excuses to end the date early. The other had been ridiculed merely for his name, job, and the car he drove.

God only knew the mileage Marshall would have with Heston the librarian and his Volkswagen Beetle complete with fresh daisy in the dashboard.

She left work early on Tuesday to get ready for her second date with Heston. Her bedroom at the bungalow was not the one she’d occupied as a child – her parents had moved here when she left for university – but it was the only room in their house she’d managed to make her own. In here she had her vintage tailor’s dummy and the patchwork armchair she’d made at night school during that phase when she’d been heavily into upholstery. The red and blue quilt on the bed was from yet another phase, as was the decoupage bird of paradise tray which sat on her grandmother’s old dressing table, now painted and distressed in a fair approximation of shabby chic.

‘Why don’t you study something practical?’ her parents had asked her over and over: as a child she’d been almost aggressively creative, making complicated collages and odd structures out of cardboard and bits of wool, held together by Scotch tape and sheer determination. But Flora had been adamant psychology was the university route for her. She needed to understand what made people tick. From the moment she found out, aged fourteen and already at the stage of incomprehensible insecurity, that she’d been adopted as a baby, Flora had been on a mission. Not to find her birth parents – she had no intention of going down that route, Kitty and Peter Lively must have been relieved to discover – but to find a way to make sense of the world.

She’d made them proud with her 2:1 in psychology, but the gap year she’d taken to help out in the family business had turned into two years, then four, then six. Her dreams of working as a counsellor had receded even further from her reach, and now she had someone else’s dream to take care of. Besides, she couldn’t even figure out how to stop an old lady obsessing about bunches of flowers, secret societies and canine catastrophes. She’d have no chance with a set of real problems.

She pulled a delicate floral-patterned dress from her creaky wardrobe, smoothing out the creases where the fabric had been packed in too tightly. For work, Flora always wore the same uniform of jeans and T-shirt; cut-offs if the weather was fine. She never made a conscious decision to hide her tattoos – the one on her thigh was a lot easier to hide than the one on her shoulder – but this particular vintage find had elbow-length sleeves, which was probably just as well. She wondered what Heston would think if she changed her hair colour. It had been its natural chestnut brown for too long and she was getting the urge for something brighter, maybe a pillar-box red. Flora looked in the mirror and thought about her mum. What would she have made of Heston?

‘Should I dye my hair again?’ Flora whispered.

What she really meant was: Will it make me a bad person if I start to move on?

It was warm for April, the opposite of an Indian summer, and Flora enjoyed the short walk into town. She wore her favourite sparkly flip-flops with the tea dress and carried a light wool cardigan in case it grew cooler later. She fairly bounced along the pavement, looking forward to an evening of easy conversation and mild adoration. Oh yes, there were definite benefits to dating a man who liked you a little more than you liked him.

Heston was sitting outside on the pizzeria’s terrace, shielding his eyes from the sun with one pale hand. He was wearing a white linen suit, and the effect it created, together with his pale hair and translucent skin, was that of a ghost watching the world go by, insubstantial as a gust of wind.

His embrace was reassuringly firm though, as was the expression in his eyes when he kissed her on the cheek.

They ordered garlic dough balls and a bottle of white wine and sat back to take in the last of the sun. Heston held her hand as though it was made of china, stoking it occasionally with his soft, smooth fingers.

‘How have you been, sweetie?’ he said.

And the great thing was: he really cared.

Flora told him all about Otto’s near miss, then spilled her worries about Rockfords and their imminent move into Shakers’ territory. Heston sighed heavily and dropped her hand back into her lap.

‘I do sometimes wonder about that job of yours.’ He gazed off down the street to where two teenage girls with multiple piercings were posing languidly on a bench. She heard his soft tut, then he shook his head and looked back at her. Flora shifted uneasily and smoothed her dress over her flat stomach. She’d kept the belly-button ring, even though her other teenage rebellion piercings – nose, eyebrow, the usual places – had closed up years ago. What would someone as straight-laced as Heston make of that?

‘I mean, it just doesn’t really seem to suit you.’

She brushed off a momentary feeling of irritation: he wasn’t the first to question a woman being in charge of a removals company, and he wouldn’t be the last.

‘What do you mean, exactly?’ she said, keeping her voice level.

‘It’s just that you’re so feminine, so delicate. I can’t imagine you hulking great lumps of furniture around the place. Don’t you sometimes wish for something a bit less physical?’

Flora laughed. ‘It’s nice that someone sees me as feminine – I’m not sure about delicate, though. And Marshall would say that I’m not physical enough! He’s always going on at me to pull my weight.’

Heston’s expression tightened. ‘That manager of yours sounds like an idiot. I don’t know why you put up with him.’

‘I put up with him because I have to.’ Flora sipped her wine, then looked out across the terrace. ‘He was my dad’s choice, not mine.’

‘Didn’t you say he was American? What’s he doing over here anyway?’

‘He’s my Uncle Max’s stepson.’ She smiled at Heston’s confused expression. ‘Marshall was nine when Max met his mum. My uncle was only visiting, but he ended up living in the US for ten years. Marshall’s mum is a serial marrier – I think she’s on hubby number six now. He’s very sensitive about it.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Max is probably the closest he’s got to an actual father – he stuck around the longest. Anyway, Marshall was between jobs, came over here to visit with Max and while he was here Mum got sick.’ She bit her lip, aware of the tremble in her voice. Heston stroked her arm gently.

‘It’s still pretty raw.’

She nodded, but didn’t trust herself to speak. Heston, sensitive as always, filled the silence by telling her about his day at the library.

‘We’ve started a book group for our older readers,’ he said. ‘One of our members is from that retirement village of yours. Felix, I think his name is. Mr Felix. Nice old chap, comes in on his mobility scooter. Looks a bit the worse for wear.’

Flora was wrong-footed for a moment, hearing that name mentioned again, and in such incongruous surroundings. But then she smiled, picturing Mr Felix and his wispy ginger comb-over. He did look the worse for wear, it was true. Heston no doubt preferred his old people spick and span, shirt and tie for the men, twinset and pearls for the ladies. He’d love the Captain, with his manicured moustache and shining medals.

But thoughts of Mr Felix brought her mind back to Joy and the story of her secret society. Poor old Joy – grief could certainly do strange things with your memory.