Downward Facing Death (17 page)

A sudden noise came from the direction of the kitchen and made her jump, nearly dropping her bag. She heard voices, then a sound like a bell ringing. Not quite in the kitchen, but very close. In fact, it sounded as if it were coming from her own backyard. Going through to the back, she saw the outline of a group of people through the windows. They began to talk at once in a strange monotone that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. What on earth were they doing? Then she realized they were chanting. She had heard chanting before, some of the more meditative styles of yoga used it as a technique to calm the mind, but it had never sounded quite like this. Keeley unlocked the back door, unsure whether she should be angry, bemused, or scared. Or perhaps all three.

Five faces turned to her, mouths open mid-chant. She recognized one of them.

“Megan? What are you doing in my yard?” Keeley looked at her new friend, incredulous. Megan and her companions were dressed in long white robes, standing in a small circle. One of them carried a bell, which explained the ringing, and another was waving around a censer on a chain, from which emitted a foul-smelling smoke.

Megan smiled at her, her expression sheepish.

“I didn't think you would be here yet. Keeley, these are my friends from my light-worker circle. This is Merdyn—” she indicated a portly man with long, matted hair, “—and this is Lilith Redfeather.” A small woman with rather helmetlike gray hair gave her a little wave. Keeley held a hand up to stop Megan before she could introduce her other two friends, a woman with short pink hair and a young man with glasses and an earnest expression.

“I'm delighted to meet you. But Megan, what are you doing?” A gust of smoke blew into Keeley's face, and she coughed as she batted it away with an angry swipe of her hand. She was sure she saw curtains twitching in one of the windows from the houses that overlooked her yard. Wonderful.

“We were just doing a little banishing ritual. Of any lingering dark energies from the
murder.
” She said the last word in a voice that, although hushed, somehow managed to sound incredibly loud. Her friends each gave a small shudder in unison. “I knew you were getting the café remodeled, and I thought it would give you an auspicious start. It's better done at the site of the murder, of course, but I wanted it to be a surprise. Of course, now that you're here, maybe we could go in?” Megan looked hopeful, but Keeley shook her head firmly.

“No, absolutely not. I don't want you doing this in my backyard either. How did you get in?”

Megan looked crestfallen, but also guilty. The man with the glasses piped up; “I just reached over and undid the bolt.”

Keeley glared at him. “You weren't aware that a bolt usually means you're not permitted to come in?” She felt inexplicably furious at Megan, whether she had meant well or not. Her property had been invaded quite enough, and she couldn't quite believe her new friend could be so thoughtless. The man looked down, and his friends looked at each other, obviously uncomfortable.

“Perhaps we should go, Megs?” Pink Hair said, giving Keeley a nasty look. Indeed, Megan looked as though she were about to cry. Keeley sighed, relenting, and waved her into the kitchen, shutting the door firmly behind her before the others got any ideas.

“I'm sorry, Keeley,” Megan sniffed, “I was just trying to help.”

“Okay, I know. I'm sorry I was so angry. But, Megan, I've just been broken into, the place set on fire and a man killed.” She stopped herself from automatically looking up at the ceiling. “The last thing I want is strange people coming into my backyard.”

Megan's eyes widened. “Oh, Keeley, I just didn't think. I really am sorry. We just thought it would do the place, and you, good.”

She looked so earnest, Keeley didn't have the heart to stay angry at her.

“Well, maybe when all the work's done, you can come and say a prayer or something? Just you. And no smelly stuff.”

“It's only sage,” Megan said a little huffily, then threw her arms around Keeley and squeezed her before stepping back and looking around. Her eyes went straight to the ceiling as if looking through it. Seeing not white plaster but the room above. Where it had all happened.

“The site of a murder can leave an awful negative imprint, you know. If you change your mind, I'm sure the group will only be too happy to help you cleanse the place.”

“It'll be fine,” Keeley assured her. She let her out the back door, giving her another hug, one that she instigated this time. Megan might be a little off the wall, but she was only trying to help, in her own inimitable way. Keeley hadn't made so many friends here that she could afford to lose them. Nevertheless, she bolted her back gate firmly after her white-robed companions. Then found herself leaning against it, shaking with silent laughter as the ludicrousness of it all hit her.

A masculine voice calling “Ms. Carpenter” at the front of the shop brought her attention back to the physical, rather than auric, transformation of the shop into her café. The kitchen contractors were here. Keeley greeted them with a warm smile, relieved to see only tool kits in their hands, not bells and censers.

After Keeley had shown them in and they got to work banging and hammering, Keeley retreated upstairs with her tins of paint. Although she was paying for the café itself to be decorated professionally, she had decided to give upstairs a fresh lick of paint herself. She wanted to be involved in the whole process, and any attempts on her part to cut costs would no doubt appease her mother. The little flat felt lighter than it had done now she had cleaned and aired it, and if any “imprints” of the murder remained, then Keeley was sure they were the product of her own mind rather than any supernatural residue. Although she agreed with Megan insofar as that bad atmospheres could indeed linger in a place, she felt the best way to create a better atmosphere would be to create happier memories there, rather than waft around some smoke. A coat of fresh paint would work wonders too. She threw herself into the task with gusto, relieved to feel that her plans for the Yoga Café were finally coming to fruition and she had work to do, a blessed relief from sitting in the cottage and jumping every time the wind rattled the letterbox.

Or thinking about Ben. His revelation had left her with a feeling she couldn't quite name. Pleasure, certainly, but also a tinge of regret that their apparently mutual interest in each other had never been made manifest. As she moved the roller up and down in continuous rhythm, she allowed herself to wonder how different her life would have been if Ben had been her first boyfriend.

And came up with the conclusion that any liaison would likely have consisted of little more than a kiss behind the proverbial bike sheds. She smiled wryly to herself at the thought of a teenage Raquel's reaction to a plump Keeley walking hand in hand through the school corridors with the best-looking boy in their school year. She would probably have tried to scratch her eyes out.

As she knelt down to put a fresh coat of paint on the roller, something sparkly caught her eye. Keeley frowned as she saw what looked like a gold coin wedged in a gap between the baseboard and the wall. After setting the roller down carefully, she prized it loose, only to realize it wasn't a coin at all, but a button. She stared at it glittering in the palm of her hand, a recent memory nagging at her consciousness. She had seen these buttons before. Then a thought struck her, bringing with it a throb of excitement. Could this have been left here from the night of the murder? Wedged into the skirting as it had been, it was possible the police would have missed it; they were searching for murder weapons, not buttons. Keeley stood up slowly, still staring at the button, her mind whirling through possibilities. It looked new, as though it hadn't been here very long, so it could well have come from the clothes of Terry Smith.

Or the murderer himself. Perhaps they had struggled? Keeley tried to imagine what item of clothing it could have come from. A blazer, jacket, or cardigan, most likely. It didn't look like the sort of thing Raquel would wear, she mused.

Keeley was so intrigued that when she heard Raquel's voice calling her name up the stairs, it took a minute to register that the voice wasn't just a product of her imagination. Then she heard the deeper voice of one of the workmen directing her upstairs and the insistent clip of Raquel's stilettos approaching.

“In here,” Keeley called, slipping the button into the back pocket of her jeans. She drew her shoulders back and took a deep, fortifying breath, steeling herself against whatever vitriol Raquel was about to subject her to. Ben must have spoken to her by now. Keeley prayed that Raquel hadn't managed to sweet-talk herself out of it. Not that Ben seemed a soft touch by any means, but she still wasn't convinced there wasn't some kind of relationship between them, and if anyone could sweet-talk a man, it was Raquel Philips.

Raquel entered the room with a thunderous look on her immaculately made-up face, stopping a few feet away from Keeley, directly opposite her like a gunslinger at a noon showdown. Keeley resisted the urge to pick her roller back up.

“Is something wrong?”

Raquel moved her mouth in what was definitely a snarl.

“Yes, there is. What exactly were you thinking, sending Ben round to accuse me of some kind of smear campaign?”

So he had spoken to her, then. Quite harshly, judging by Raquel's reaction. Keeley swallowed and lifted her chin, looking the other woman directly in the eyes, determined not to be intimidated in the face of her anger. And she was angry—shaking, in fact, her curves quivering under her ultra-tight linen dress.

“I received some letters,” Keeley said in a neutral tone, “that we thought might have come from you.”

“We?” Raquel sneered. “A member of the police force now, are you? And why on earth would they come from me? You think I've got nothing better to do than harass you, Keeley Carpenter? Well, you're wrong. You came questioning me, remember?”

Keeley nodded. “That's why I thought of you. You were complaining to Ben that I was snooping.”

“Because you were!” Raquel shouted, taking a step toward Keeley. Keeley felt her breath catch in her throat, though she stood her ground. She glanced at the door that led to the stairs, relieved to see Raquel had left it wide open. The banging noises from downstairs had ceased, and Keeley guessed the workmen were listening in the hopes of catching a juicy bit of gossip. Embarrassing, but at least Raquel couldn't try to hit her round the head with anything. She noticed how strong the other girl's arms looked, how stocky her shoulders. Terry Smith had, by all accounts, been a weedy little man.

“I was just asking a few questions,” Keeley protested.

“About Terry. As if I had anything to do with it. And I suppose now the whole of Belfrey will know, won't they? Who told you?”

Keeley felt confused, aware that the subject had been changed but not sure to which topic.

“Told me what?”

Raquel took another step toward her, her face growing redder by the minute.

“Don't play dumb with me. You were always like that at school, with your big cow eyes, all innocent. But I know better. You told Ben about the money I was giving Terry, so who told you?”

Clarity dawning, Keeley shook her head.

“It wasn't anyone. Just something I, er, guessed.”

“So you're psychic now, are you? Like your silly friend with the dreadlocks that was dancing around the backyard earlier.” Raquel laughed, a cold and bitter sound with not a trace of humor in it. Keeley closed her eyes briefly, remembering the twitching curtain. Of course, the back of the diner would overlook her own backyard. Great.

“If you've got nothing to do with it, I don't see what you're so worried about,” Keeley pointed out. Whatever Raquel had been paying Terry for, it was clearly something she wanted kept very quiet. Although she wasn't about to risk asking the irate woman in front of her directly, she couldn't help wondering just what her secret was. A married lover? Some kind of scandal related to the diner?

“I don't want the whole town knowing!” Raquel all but screamed. “How that horrible little man found out, I'll never know. I paid good money to make sure they looked as natural as possible.”

Keeley frowned in confusion, then understood what Raquel was referring to as the woman gestured toward her own torso.

“You've had breast surgery,” Keeley said, trying not to stare at the offending area, “and that's what you were paying Terry to keep quiet about?”
The woman's mad,
she thought.

At Keeley's words, Raquel gave a little moan and seemed to sag like a burst balloon. “You didn't even know, did you?”

Keeley shook her head.

“I knew about the money, but not why. Is it really such a concern to you?” The idea that she had been paying Terry Smith good money to keep quiet about a bit of cosmetic surgery seemed beyond vanity. Keeley had seen plenty of enhanced bodies during her time in London and America, and although in her experience, women didn't generally want to shout from the rooftops that they had had work done, she had never heard of anyone going to such lengths to hide it either. Although in a small town like Belfrey, any bit of gossip would no doubt become as overinflated as Raquel's breasts.

“Of course it is,” Raquel snapped. “When I went away to uni, I had them done and never told anyone. I used the money Mum and Dad had given me to fund my studies.”

“They don't know either,” Keeley guessed. Not just vanity, then, but the very real possibility of having access to Daddy's money cut off. Mr. Philips was a rich man, owning properties and businesses all over Amber Valley. Keeley often thought that one of the reasons Darla hadn't liked Mrs. Philips was pure and simple jealousy. That and the unfortunate sharing of their first name. A few times, Keeley remembered her mother introducing herself, only to follow it up with, “No, not
that
Darla,” with a touch of what sounded like regret in her voice, no doubt due to envy of her namesake's richer husband and more glamorous daughter.