The Appleton Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 1) (8 page)

Back in the
kitchen, Janet pushed Joan into a chair and then refilled the kettle.
 
She busied herself with meaningless
tasks until the kettle boiled and she could make the tea.
 
She put a great deal of extra sugar in
her sister’s drink before she handed it to her.
 
Anything that might help sweeten her
sister’s mood was worth trying.

“I’m sorry,”
Janet began with after she sat down across from Joan.
 
“I shouldn’t have just agreed on your
behalf like that, but you were babbling and I thought the poor man needed an
answer.”

“You should
have said no,” Joan told her quietly.

“Why?
 
He seems very nice and he must be smart
if he was a chemist.
 
What’s wrong
with him?”

“I don’t know,
but there must be something or he would have asked you out and not me,” Joan
said sulkily.

Janet shook
her head.
 
“Don’t start with that,”
she told her sister sternly.
 
“You
could have had lots of dates when you were younger, but you never gave anyone a
chance.”

“It was more
fun watching you go out with every man you met,” Joan shot back.

Janet
laughed.
 
“I had lots of fun, but
never got serious about anyone,” she replied.
 
“I didn’t want to get married and be
expected to give up teaching to raise a family.”

“I didn’t
either, so it was easier to not even date.”

“But dating
was really good fun,” Janet told her.
 
“And now we’re both retired, so we can date as much as we like.
 
We could even get married if we wanted
to.”

Joan shook her
head.
 
“I’ll have dinner with
Michael tomorrow since you’ve told him I would, but then I’m done.
 
One date in my lifetime is more than
enough.”

“We’ll see
about that,” Janet answered.

Chapter
Eight

Joan was less
certain about even having that one date the next day.
 
Janet felt as if she spent all of the
time from lunch until seven o’clock talking her sister into going.

“This is a bad
idea,” Joan said as the sisters waited for Michael to arrive.

“This is one
dinner, two hours, out of your life,” Janet said for the five-hundredth
time.
 
“Just go and have fun and
stop making such a big deal out of it.”

“That’s easy
for you to say,” Joan muttered, plucking at her skirt.

“Stop
fussing.
 
You look lovely,” Janet
said soothingly.
 
She took both of
her sister’s hands and looked into her eyes.
 
“Really, you look wonderful, and you’ll
have fun, I promise.”

“Make sure
your mobile is on,” Joan told her.
 
“I might want you to come and get me.”

“Do you want
me to ring you every half hour to make sure things are going okay?” Janet
asked.

“Would you?”
Joan replied.

“No,” Janet
said firmly.
 

Before Joan
could argue further, someone knocked on the door.
 
Janet watched all of the
colour
drain from her sister’s face.
 
She shook her head and headed towards
the door.

“You’re way
too stressed about a simple dinner,” she told Joan just before she opened the
door.

Michael stood
on the other side, a bouquet of flowers in his hand.

“Ah, good
evening, Janet,” he said with a small bow.
 
“These are for you.”

He handed
Janet the flowers.
 
She took them,
feeling confused.

“I remember
you said that Joan does most of the cooking,” he told her.
 
“I figured you deserved a little
something for my making you get your own dinner tonight.”

“That’s very
kind of you,” Janet told him, giving him bonus points for being so
thoughtful.
 
She looked over at her
sister.
 
Joan looked more pleased
than Janet had ever seen her look before.

“I did make
sure she’d have something to eat,” Joan told Michael.
 
“I made soup.
 
She just has to heat it up.”

Michael
laughed.
 
“But she’ll miss out on
your company,” he pointed out.
 
“Surely that warrants a few flowers.”

“Whatever the
reason, they’re beautiful and I very much appreciate them,” Janet said.
 
“Now off you two go.
 
Have a wonderful time.”

Janet nearly
shoved her sister out the door.
 
Michael took Joan’s arm and escorted her down the steps to the
pavement.
 
Janet watched as they
crossed the road and Michael helped Joan into his car.
 
Only then did she shut the door.

For a giddy
moment she felt like shouting.
 
From
what she’d seen, Michael was a lovely man and he and Joan seemed well
suited.
 
She just hoped her sister
would get over her nerves and actually enjoy herself.

In the
kitchen, she arranged the flowers in a vase and then heated her soup.
 
She sliced some fresh bread to have with
it and washed the meal down with a cup of tea.
 
After washing up, she sat back in her
chair, uncertain of exactly what she wanted to do with an evening to herself.
 
Before she’d made up her mind, she heard
a knock on the door.

“Constable
Parsons, this is a surprise,” she said when she’d opened the door.
 

“I just have a
few questions about the box you brought in to me,” the young man replied.
 
“Can I have a few minutes of your time?”

“Certainly, do
come in,” Janet offered.

“I’m sorry
I’ve come by so late,” he said after he’d taken a seat in the small sitting
room.
 
“I was rather busy yesterday,
and today was one of my days to be in Little Burton.
 
It was only an hour ago that I stopped
back at the station and found the box.”

“What about
the missing child?” Janet had to ask.

“She was at
her grandmother’s house,” the policeman replied.
 
“It was all just a big
misunderstanding.”

“And what
about the little girl from
Clowne
?”

“That child is
still missing,” he said with a frown.
 
“It’s quite sad and a very difficult case, but that isn’t why I’m here.”

“No, of course
not, sorry,” Janet said.
 
“What did
you want to ask me?”

“Is your
sister at home?”

“No, does that
matter?”

“I suppose
not.
 
Do you mind if I ask where she
is?”

Janet
frowned.
 
“I guess not,” she
answered slowly, wondering why the man was asking.
 
“She’s having dinner with a friend.”

Robert
nodded.
 
“As you both were parties
to finding the box, I’d like to hear the whole story from each of you.
 
I suppose it’s better that she isn’t
home.
 
I can interview her
separately another time.”

“So what we
found is important?” Janet asked.

The man
shrugged.
 
“I just want to be clear
on how you came to find it,” he said.
 
“I haven’t gone through the whole box
yet, but at first glance it seems as if some of the contents might be
interesting.”

“Interesting in
a criminal context?”

“Let’s just
leave it at interesting, shall we?”

Janet felt a
hundred questions flood to her lips, but she rejected most of them before
speaking.
 
“What do you need to
know?” was the question that she finally let out.

“Where did you
find the box?”

“It was in the
back of the wardrobe in one of the guest rooms,” Janet answered.

“Were there
other boxes there, or just that one?”

“There were
two others, but they just contained paperwork.”

“Can I have a
quick look at the other two boxes?”

Janet thought
for a moment, but couldn’t think of any reason not to let the man go through
the boxes.
 
“Let me go and get
them,” she told him.
 

They’d left
the boxes in Joan’s small sitting room.
 
Janet carried them both into the main sitting room.
 
Constable Parsons was sitting exactly
where she’d left him when she returned.

He quickly took
the boxes from her and then set them on the coffee table.
 
He sat down and opened the top box.
 
After only barely glancing inside each
box, he was back on his feet.

“Thank you,”
he said.
 
“I think I’ve seen enough
for tonight.
 
I’ll probably be back
tomorrow to have a better look at what you have there.”

Janet opened
her mouth to reply, but the man was already leaving.
 
She hurried behind him, getting to the
door after he’d already pulled it open.
 

“Thank you for
bringing me that box,” he said as he headed across the porch.
 
“We’ll get everything sorted out
tomorrow, I imagine.”

Janet shut the
door behind him and sighed.
 
Get
what sorted out?
 
And
why tomorrow and not tonight?
 
What had the man seen in the papers that Margaret had left behind?

Back in the
sitting room, Janet flipped through the first box, looking for a clue as to
what the policeman had seen.
 
Nothing in the pile of utility bills and correspondence caught her
eye.
 
She opened the second box and
looked at the first few sheets.
 
The
third item in the box caught her eye.

The paper was
thick and felt expensive.
 
It was
from “Powell, Brown, Abbot and Grey, Solicitors.”
 

Without her
sister there to stop her, Janet read the letter, which simply confirmed that
Margaret had made an appointment to make changes to her will.
 
The handwritten note in the margin was
more interesting.

“Maggie, I know you and Gavin are not
getting along at the moment, but to suggest that he might do anything to harm
you seems extreme.
 
We’ll talk on
Monday about the changes you want to make.
 
George”

The letter was signed by “George Abbot”
and his signature
seemed to match the handwritten note.
 
Janet sat back and tried to think.
 
The appointment mentioned in the letter would have taken place after
Margaret’s death, so presumably the
woman never made whatever
changes to her will
she was planning.
  

Janet paced
around the room, wondering what Margaret had been intending.
 
Had Gavin known about the appointment
and killed his mother to prevent her keeping it?
 
Perhaps Gavin didn’t
realise
that his mother had already cut him out of her will.
 
Perhaps he thought she was going to do
that with this appointment.
 
Would
that have led Gavin to murder her?

When she
couldn’t answer any of those questions, Janet switched to thinking about the
box of car parts.
 
Was Gavin doing
something illegal or unethical at his garage?
 
Was it possible that his mother was
threatening to go to the police with the box of parts?
 

Janet sighed
and sat back down on the couch.
 
Joan was on her mind at least as much as Gavin and his mother.
 
Was her sister having a good time?
 
Janet could only hope that Joan and
Michael would find things to talk about and have a good meal.
 
She looked at the clock.

It was only
half eight and way too early to think about heading to bed.
 
She wandered into the library and pulled
down a book at random.
 
It was an
old detective story and Janet flipped through the pages, unable to actually
concentrate on the story.
 
A passage
caught her eye.

The police don’t seem interested in anything
I tell them.
 
I think it’s time to do
some of my own investigating.

Janet read the
lines again and then frowned.
 
Such
behaviour
was always a bad idea in these sorts of
books.
 
She shut the book and slid
it back onto the shelf.
 
There was
no way she was contemplating such an action herself.
 
She didn’t even know what she ought to
investigate.
 
She couldn’t very well
tell the police that she thought Gavin might have murdered his mother when she
had no idea how the woman had died.

In the
kitchen, she fixed herself a cup of tea.
 
She pulled out a box of biscuits and frowned.
 
Digestives just didn’t sound good.
 
She wanted custard creams.
 
She dug though the cupboard, but there
weren’t any custard creams hiding at the back.
 
As she sipped her tea, she nibbled her
way through a digestive, but it wasn’t the same.
 

Five minutes
later she found herself in the car, heading to the nearby grocery store.
 
It wasn’t like her to be out and about
at nearly nine o’clock, but she wouldn’t sleep until her sister was home
anyway, and she’d feel much better once she’d had a few custard creams.

She slowed
down as she passed Gavin’s garage, wondering to herself if driving past the
garage was the real reason she’d come out.
 
She pushed the thought from her mind and drove on to the grocery
store.
 
As she had no idea where the
man lived, she couldn’t snoop any further than she had, pointlessly driving
past the garage that had been dark and shut up tight.

She pulled out
a trolley and made her way through the store, randomly selecting everything
that sounded good.
 
Ten minutes
later, at the tills, she giggled to herself.
 
Joan would have a fit when she saw all
of the unhealthy food Janet had picked out.
 
Janet knew that Joan would eat her fair
share of the crisps, cakes, chocolate and biscuits, however much she complained.

“Having a
little party?” the cashier asked as she packed everything into bags.

“Just a small
one,” Janet answered, hoping she wasn’t blushing as much as she felt she was.

“I love these,
“ the girl said, holding up a box of cakes.
 
“I could eat this whole box in one
sitting.”

“At my age, if
I did that, I’d gain ten pounds,” Janet told her with a rueful smile.
 

“Oh, I
know.
 
My mum keeps telling me that
I won’t be able to keep eating like I do in a few years,” the young girl said
cheerfully.
 
“I’m studying to be a
dietician at university, anyway, so I do try to eat healthy most of the
time.
 
It would easier if fattening
food didn’t taste so good.”

Janet
laughed.
 
There was no way she could
argue with the girl.
 

“Let me get
Jack to walk you out,” the girl insisted.
 
“He can load up your car.”