Downward Facing Death (2 page)

Now Ben looked both amused and perplexed. Jack jumped in before Keeley could embarrass herself any further.

“This is George Carpenter's girl. It's her that's taken on the old shop.”

Was Keeley imagining things, or had there been a meaningful tone to Jack's voice? As if they all knew something she didn't. Ben looked at her, his expression grim, and Keeley felt her stomach sink. Something was very definitely wrong here. Ben held an object up to her face, and it took a moment for her to register what it was. A police badge.

“I'm Detective Constable Taylor,” Ben said, “and I'm going to have to ask you a few questions.”

“Er, about what?” This homecoming was rapidly turning into an episode of
The Twilight Zone.
Ben looked surprised.

“She doesn't know,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“Miss Carpenter,” Ben said, his words dropping like stones, “someone tried to burn down your shop last night.”

 

SITALI
—COOLING BREATH

To soothe and calm the nervous system in times of stress or anxiety. Such as being confronted with your high school crush in less-than-optimal circumstances. Also useful for hot flashes.

Method

• Purse your lips as if blowing a kiss.

• Curl up the sides of your tongue.

• Let your tongue “float” so it doesn't touch the roof or floor of your mouth.

• Inhale and exhale slowly, using your tongue like a straw to draw the air in and out.

Recommendation

Try not to whistle. Particularly at your former crush!

 

Chapter Two

Keeley sank farther into her chair, her legs trembling.

“Burn it down?” she parroted, her mind skittering in a hundred different directions, trying to get a grasp on this new information and failing. She had a sudden and vivid craving for a bacon-and-sausage sandwich—for years, her favorite comfort food.

Breathe,
she told herself.
Find a focus point and breathe into your center.

Taking a deep breath, she focused on a point on Ben's shirt directly in front of her and noticed how it skimmed over obviously defined pectorals to tuck neatly into the waistband of his dark trousers, which fit his lean hips and strong thighs in a way that reminded her more of a catalog model than of the quintessential country cop.… Okay, maybe this wasn't helping.

“Miss Carpenter?” Ben looked more than a little bemused, and Keeley's eyes snapped back up to his face.

“Yes. Sorry. It's just a shock.”

Jack patted her arm in sympathy again, and Tom pushed a glass of water over the counter toward her. Keeley went over and took it from him with a smile, grateful for the small kindness. This, as well as her father's shop, had been one of the things that had pulled her back to Belfrey; the sense of community and of looking after their own that had felt so suffocating to her at the age of seventeen was like a balm ten years later.

Except that when she looked again at Ben, his eyes didn't seem kind at all. They looked suspicious.

“I've been trying to call you all day, Miss Carpenter. We spoke to your mother, and she told us you should have arrived in Belfrey two days ago.”

Keeley froze as the meaning of Ben's words sank in. He thought
she
was to blame for this. She took a sip of water to calm the stab of anger in her belly.

Which she then spat all over that well-fitting shirt. As Ben jumped back, cursing, Keeley turned horrified eyes to Tom.

“What on earth was in that water?”

“Water? That was vodka,” Tom said, grinning. “It's good for shock.” Across from her, she heard Jack starting to chuckle. Keeley slammed the glass down onto the table, spilling the offending vodka, and stood up, glaring at Ben, who was now wiping his shirt with a bar towel and looking less than pleased.

“Can I see the premises?” Only now did the full implications of the news hit her. If the damage was severe, then her plans to open the café would go up in smoke along with the building! There was no way she would convince her mother to pay for a full renovation.

Ben cocked his head to one side a little, as if weighing up both her words and the possibility that she was responsible for the fire.

“I'll take you over there now.”

“It's my shop,” Keeley pointed out. “I hardly need a chaperone.”

“It may be your shop,” Ben said, unfazed by her curt tone, “but it's also a crime scene.”

He placed a hand on the small of her back, the briefest of touches, as he guided her toward the door. Keeley flinched away at the heat of his palm through the thin fabric of her blouse, an image of him in the school canteen flashing through her mind unbidden. He hadn't given any sign of recognizing her, though he must know who she was by the name; everyone in Belfrey knew everyone else. Ignoring the outstretched hand ready to take her luggage, Keeley stepped out into the warm air, blinking as the bright spring sunshine hit her. While she followed Ben down the meandering hill of the High Street, her heart thudded as she waited to see what damage had been done. Thankfully, the front of the shop at least looked fine. Fumbling for her keys in her handbag, she noticed her fingers shaking. A few openly curious faces peered out of shop windows nearby, but Keeley ignored them, swung open the door, and stepped inside, Ben close behind her.

A wave of nostalgia hit her. Although the shop itself was empty apart from a small counter, she immediately pictured her father behind his rows of meat, a smile on his adorably fat face, and felt again like a schoolgirl running in to embrace her dad on her way home from class. He had never judged her, never made her feel less than adequate or pinched the roll of puppy fat at her waist with a pursed mouth and disapproving eyes—unlike her mother. Darla Carpenter's dissatisfaction with both her husband and her daughter had been evident pretty much every day that Keeley could remember.

Pushing the memories and sting of tears aside, Keeley strode through to the small kitchen at the back of the shop, aware of Ben's keen eyes upon her. The smell of charred wood and brick hit her instantly, and she surveyed the damage with an unsettling mixture of emotions. Relief that it wasn't as bad as she had feared—though the back door and frame were all but burned to a crisp and the back wall was seared black—and horror that someone, anyone, could deliberately do such a thing. It seemed almost a macabre joke that it should happen here, in this very room, defiling her father's memory.

“Was it kids, maybe?” she asked hopefully. Teenagers perhaps, hanging around, playing a silly game, a prank that had gotten out of hand. Ben paused, obviously unsure how much to tell her, and Keeley felt like stamping her foot with frustration.

“It's my shop,” she pointed out. “I have a right to know what happened.”

Ben shrugged. “As I said, Miss Carpenter”—she wondered why he didn't call her Keeley and concluded that he didn't remember her at all—“we have been trying to reach you. Your mother seemed to be under the impression you were arriving here before today. You're renting Rose Cottage from Mrs. Rowland, I believe.”

“My mother,” Keeley said with impatience, “barely remembers I exist, never mind keeps track of my plans. I had my things sent up to the cottage two days ago, but I've been staying in London with a friend. I wasn't due to arrive until today, as I'm sure Mrs. Rowland will be able to confirm.”

Ben didn't respond to that, and she had a suspicion that Mrs. Rowland had already been questioned.

“Your phone?”

“I had no signal on the train, and the battery was going anyway, so I turned it off. See?” Keeley pulled her phone from her bag and thrust it in Ben's face. He looked at her calmly.

“Thank you.”

Feeling foolish, she returned her phone to her bag and walked toward the back door. Ben followed, placing a hand on her arm. He was very close, standing over her so that she had to tip her chin to look at him, and she could smell the musky scent of his cologne and the faint tang of male skin. Her mouth felt dry as he gazed down at her and lifted those full lips into a half smile.

“It's still a crime scene, so I'm going to have to ask you not to touch anything. We've cordoned it off round the back, and upstairs.” He nodded toward the stairwell in the far corner of the kitchen that led up to a small studio flat.

Stepping away from him, Keeley felt her cheeks burning with a combination of embarrassment, desire, and anger. Even so, she didn't miss the mysterious way he had said the last two words, hinting at darker things. Things he wasn't sharing with her.

“Why upstairs? You didn't say the damage was that bad,” Keeley accused. “I'm supposed to be opening in two weeks! I'm going to be delayed as it is, sorting this mess out.”

“Don't you want us to find out who it was? These things take time, Miss Carpenter.”

His constant use of her surname was getting on her nerves. “It's Keeley, or at least
Ms.
,” she snapped. “As for uncovering the culprit, it would help if you told me exactly what has happened. Like I said, couldn't it just be kids?”

Ben looked serious.

“I'm afraid not. Thankfully, the fire services were alerted almost as soon as the blaze started, thanks to Jack Tibbons's dog barking its head off, but it was no prank. There's evidence that gasoline was poured all around the back door. ‘Kids,' as you put it, don't tend to go to those lengths. If help hadn't arrived so quickly, you may not be opening at all.”

Keeley blanched as the reality of the situation began to hit her. Ben went on, seemingly oblivious to her distress.

“Forensics will be back tomorrow to see what—if anything—they can find in the way of evidence to identify the perpetrator. It wasn't a particularly professional arson attempt, but it was definitely deliberate.”

“But who would do such a thing? And to an empty shop?” Keeley shook her head. Whatever she had been expecting upon her return to Belfrey, it wasn't this.

Arson. It sounded so, well, sinister.

Ben looked at her intently.

“Unfortunately, arson is often one of the easiest crimes to commit and one of the hardest to prove. But there are usually two reasons: revenge for some kind of grudge, or an insurance scam.”

“Well, I certainly had nothing to do with it.” Keeley drew herself up to her full height—just under five foot four—and glared at him. As gorgeous as he might be, she wasn't going to stand here in her own shop and be accused of something so heinous. Or at least, he was making it sound heinous. She wondered if he really was hiding something, or if the mysterious air was just part of his ego trip.

Ben didn't bat an eyelid at her indignation.

“If you say so. In that case, Miss Carpenter—Keeley—you need to ask yourself this: Who carries enough of a grudge to attempt to derail your business?”

Keeley couldn't answer him. There was no one—how could there be? She hadn't set foot in Belfrey for ten years, and everyone had loved her father. Perhaps her mother hadn't been quite so popular, but Keeley couldn't think of any reason why anyone would want to do this to her. And besides, who carried a grudge for ten years? She shook her head mutely at Ben, who continued to regard her with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. To think, for years at school, she had longed for him to look at her.

“You're absolutely certain,” Ben said slowly, “that you only arrived in Belfrey today?”

“Yes!” she snapped, exasperated. “I told you, you can check.”

He went on as if he hadn't heard her. “And you have no quarrel with any of the residents in Belfrey?”

Keeley was becoming seriously annoyed. She took a deep breath, trying to remember everything she knew about staying calm in the face of anger. It seemed the ancient yoga masters of India had never had to deal with the likes of Benjamin Taylor.

“How about a man named Terry Smith? Remember him?”

His question confused her enough that she momentarily forgot her fury at him. Clearly, his questions were leading somewhere.

“No, I don't think so. My mother might. Why, do you think he did this?” If that was the case, why insist on interrogating
her
? Then Ben's next words took all the breath from her body, like a sucker punch to her stomach.

“Hardly. Considering that he was found dead upstairs.” Ben jerked his head up to the ceiling, indicating the studio flat above the shop, where Keeley had planned on holding evening classes. Her gaze followed the direction of his movement with a kind of morbid curiosity.

“Dead?” she echoed.

Ben nodded, his full mouth flattened to a grim line.

“Not just dead. Murdered.”

Keeley stepped back and away from him, pressing her hand to her chest and feeling her eyes widen in disbelief. She groped for the kitchen counter and leaned against it, forcing herself to relax. Ben just continued to look at her with no trace of sympathy. Surely he didn't think her responsible for
that
?

“Murdered … but why?”

“Well, that is precisely what I intend to find out. You're certain you don't recall him?”

Keeley shook her head. Then she began to feel angry again as he continued to regard her with that level gaze. Despite the neutrality of his tone, there was an obvious implication that she knew more than she was telling him. She let go of the counter and stood straight, if not tall. (Expressions such as “drawing oneself up to one's full height” didn't tend to work very well when the one in question was only five feet four inches, she reflected wryly.)

“I can assure you, Detective Constable, I have no idea who, how, or why anybody was murdered or my premises vandalized. I came back to open a successful business, and certainly wouldn't be involved in anything that would jeopardize that.” She glared at him, feeling quite proud of her little speech. Ben lowered his eyebrows, still looking at her, then gave a slight nod as if he had reassured himself about something. Keeley, whose muscles were quivering because she was so tense, let her shoulders drop and exhaled with relief, though she wasn't entirely sure what she was relieved about.