1 Aunt Bessie Assumes (14 page)

“He’s convinced you’re the key to solving
this thing,” Hugh whispered to her once they were safely buckled up in Hugh’s
car.
 
“He told me to make sure I
take especially good care of you.”

Bessie grinned.
 
“Well, that is all very nice, but I
really don’t know anything, you know.”

“But you have the best connections of
anyone in the area,” Hugh reminded her.
 
“Inspector Rockwell wants to tap into your network.”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I doubt that anyone I know actually
knows anything useful,” she told Hugh.
 
“But I’m happy to help as much as I
can.
 
I quite like Inspector
Rockwell.”

“He’s a good guy,” Hugh said, a touch of
surprise evident in his voice.
 
“He
seems to know what he’s doing as well.”

Bessie wondered if Hugh was contrasting
Rockwell to Kelly, but didn’t voice the question.
 
Whatever Hugh thought of his competing
bosses, he would be wise to keep it to himself.

Back at home, Bessie worked hard to find
things to do to keep
herself
busy.
 
She returned every phone message on her
answering machine and called a few other friends as well.
 
If Inspector Rockwell wanted to hear all
of the latest skeet, the least she could do was try to find out as much of it
as she could.
 
 
Luckily none of her friends had heard
about the incident at the Laxey Mine yet, and she wasn’t about to mention
it.
 
An hour later her head was full
of marriage, divorce and baby news, but she had learned nothing of interest
about the murder on her doorstep.

Keeping herself busy, she pulled two
containers of her homemade spaghetti sauce from her freezer.
 
Spaghetti Bolognese would be perfect for
dinner for them all tonight.
 
 
Although she was already tired from all
of the walking she had done that day, she headed up the hill to the small shop
at the top.
 

Catering to a small community that was
increasingly ignoring it, the shop carried a little bit of just about
everything.
 
Bessie bought a few
pounds of minced beef and an extra box of dried spaghetti noodles.
 
She also added a freshly baked baguette,
some butter and a bulb of garlic; a large bag of “mixed salad greens” finished
off her selections.

Back at home, she cooked the mince and
then added it to the sauce in a large pot.
 
She left it simmering on the stove while she curled up with the book she
had never managed to get back to the previous evening.
 
Aside from an occasional break to stir
the simmering sauce, she managed to put the very real victims that she had
discovered out of her mind as she immersed herself in the fictional murder
mystery.
 

She sighed as she turned over the last
page.
 
Everything was wrapped up
neatly and the murderer was on his way to prison.
 
She could only hope for a quick and easy
resolution to the real life case as well.
 
She stretched and then checked the time.
 
It was past six and she was surprised
that Doona hadn’t appeared yet.
 

Her telephone message light was blinking
frantically at her when she headed back into the kitchen.
 
She’d forgotten to turn the ringer back
on yet again.
 
“You did that
deliberately, so you could read without interruption,” a little voice in her
head said accusingly.
 
Bessie
ignored the voice and played through her latest messages.

It appeared that word had now leaked out
about her discovery of the second body.
  
Bessie didn’t even bother to write
down the caller’s names this time; they were mostly the same people she had
spoken to earlier in the day.
 
She
wasn’t in the mood to call anyone back right now and she had no doubt that they
would call again if they didn’t hear from her.
 

There were only two messages that
interested her.
 
Doona had called to
say that she, Hugh and Inspector Rockwell would all be arriving around
half-seven.
 
She was to call Doona
back at the station before seven to let her know what sort of food they should
bring.
 
A quick call to the station
to reassure Doona that she had their evening meal well in hand left Bessie with
only one other call to return.
 
Thoughtfully, she replayed the message that had been left.

“Oh, Bessie, oh darn, I hate these
machines.
 
Oh, it’s, um, it’s Bahey,
Bahey Corlett.
 
I’m still staying at
Thie yn Traie, but I’m having lunch with my sister Joney tomorrow and I thought
maybe you would like to join us?
 
We
could talk about old times and things.
 
Call me back?”

Bessie wrote down the number that Bahey
had left, wondering exactly what “things” the other woman had in mind.
 
There was no doubt that Bahey would have
a lot of inside information about the Pierce family.
 
How much of that she would be willing to
share was another matter.
 
There was
only one way to find out.

She nearly changed her mind about lunch
when she discovered that the sisters were meeting in Foxdale at Joney Kelly’s
house.
 
It wasn’t that she had
anything against Foxdale; it was just a long journey and taxis were expensive.
 
Bahey solved the problem by offering to
pick Bessie up along the way.

“Mr. Pierce is going to have one of his staff
take me in one of their cars,” she explained.
 
“I never learned to drive, either.
 
We can easily pick you up.
 
Mr. Pierce won’t mind.”

It was past seven when Bessie finally got
off the phone with Bahey.
 
She
quickly filled her largest pot with water and put it on to boil.
 
Then she mixed up garlic butter and
spread it thickly over the baguette she had sliced open.
 
By the time her guests arrived, she had
lightly tossed the salad with some homemade dressing and had set the table for
four.

Doona arrived first, and she gave Bessie a
huge hug.

“Kys t’ou?” she asked.

“Ta mee braew,” Bessie answered with a
grin.
 
“Actually, I’m not really
fine, I’m quite upset, but I don’t know how to say that in Manx.”

The two friends laughed as Doona hugged
her again.
 

“Was it awful?” Doona asked.

“It was pretty bad,” Bessie shrugged.
 
“I’ve been keeping myself really
busy.
 
I finished that book I had
started and I did some shopping so I could cook for us all.
 
As long as I’m busy, I don’t have to
think about it.”

“Well, I brought a bottle of wine,” Doona
told her.
 
“Make sure you have a few
glasses to help you sleep.”

Bessie shook her head.
 
“You know I’m not much of a drinker.
 
I’ll have a glass with dinner, but I
don’t think it will help me sleep.”
 
She shuddered when she thought about trying to sleep tonight.
 
Closing her eyes still brought back that
same unwanted image.
 
She looked at
Doona and forced herself to smile.
 
Doona looked far too worried about her, that wouldn’t do.

“I’m fine,” Bessie insisted.
 
“It was just a shock, that’s all.
 
Some spaghetti and a good long talk with
everyone will set me to rights.”

Doona nodded slowly, doubt still evident
in her eyes.
 
She didn’t get a
chance to reply, however, as just then Hugh arrived.
 
The women heard the car approaching and
Bessie pulled the door open as he parked.

He was holding something awkwardly as he
climbed out of his car.
 
Bessie
frowned, puzzled, as he juggled the oddly shaped parcel and his car keys as he
walked to her door.
 
It was too dark
to figure out exactly what he was holding.

At the door he stopped and then blushed
and pulled the package from behind his back.
 
It was a large bouquet of flowers.
 
Bessie looked at him curiously.

“I, uh, well, that is,” Hugh blushed even
more brightly.
 
“I thought that
you’d had an awfully hard day,” he struggled to explain.
 
“I thought some flowers might brighten
things up for you.”

Bessie was touched beyond words.
 
She took the flowers from Hugh and was
annoyed to find tears in her eyes.
 

“Thank you so much,” she managed to choke
out before turning away and taking several deep breaths in an attempt to regain
her composure.
 
Doona came forward,
chattering excitedly and filling in the uncomfortable silence.

“What a beautiful bouquet,” she
enthused.
 
“Did you get it from that
new flower shop in Lonan?
 
I don’t
know how they expect to do any business out in the middle of nowhere like they
are, but they sure do have beautiful flowers.
 
Let me get them in a vase.
 
Oh, and they’ve included a packet of cut
flower food, very nice of them.
 
I
hope they last a good long time.
 
The last time I got flowers from ShopFast they were brown and horrible
in only a few days.
 
But these are so
lovely, I’m sure they will just last and last.”
 

While she wittered on about nothing, she
filled a vase with water, added the flower food and put the bouquet into
it.
 
Hugh finally stopped blushing
once the flowers were safely settled into the middle of the kitchen table, and
Bessie had managed to compose herself as well.
 
She shot Doona a grateful look as she
heard more tires crunch on the ground outside.

By the time she had the door open again,
Inspector Rockwell was out of his car and heading toward the door.
 
He had something in his hands as well,
and Bessie could only hope that it wasn’t more flowers.
 
She definitely didn’t want to cry in
front of the inspector and it felt as if her emotions were somewhat close to
the surface tonight.
 

“When Doona said you were cooking, I
figured the least I could do was bring pudding,” John Rockwell announced as
Bessie showed him in.
 
He handed
Bessie the bakery box that he had been carrying.
 
She said a polite thank you as Doona nearly
snatched the box from her hands.
 

“Oooh, what lovely
thing
have
your brought?” Doona cooed as she put the box down on the counter
and peeked inside.
 
“It looks chocolatey,”
she said excitedly as she turned back towards the others.

Bessie chuckled at her friend and then put
the pasta into the now boiling water.
 
The foursome ate their salad while the pasta cooked and then Bessie
served up steaming plates of it, smothered in sauce, with the toasty hot garlic
bread.
 
While they ate, everyone
seemed determined to keep the conversation away from the recent murders.
 

Instead, Inspector Rockwell entertained
them all with funny stories from his days in police training and on the force
in Manchester.
 
It was only over
pudding, a rich chocolate
cake, that
the conversation
finally came around to what they had all come together to discuss.

“This is delicious,” Bessie said as she
dug into her cake.

“It’s amazing,” Doona moaned.
 
“Where did it come from?”

Rockwell named a small bakery in downtown
Ramsey.
 
“I had to go back into
Ramsey to meet with Inspector Kelly and some others just before I came here, so
I grabbed the cake while I was there,” he explained.

“That’s lots of running up and down the
coast for you,” Doona remarked.

“I don’t mind,” he told her.
 
“I had a forty-five minute commute in
Manchester and that was on a good day.
 
Anyway, it was important to talk to Aunt Bessie again.”

Bessie grinned.
 
“Inspector Kelly didn’t seem to think
so,” she said.

“We have very different approaches to
investigation,” Rockwell replied mildly.
 
“And we have different theories as to what happened.”

“So what’s your theory, Inspector?” Doona
asked.

The man smiled at her.
 
“While we’re off-duty, I think you can
all call me John,” he said.
 
“But
just because we are off-duty doesn’t mean I’m going to start talking out of
turn.
 
My theories are only that,
theories, and while I can’t prove anything, it would be irresponsible of me to
discuss them.”