Downward Facing Death (3 page)

“Okay,” Ben said. “But I have to advise you that I'll most likely be in touch with further questions.”

Keeley swallowed down a retort, not wanting to crank up the tension between them any further. She motioned toward the stairwell.

“Has everything … been cleaned?” She felt suddenly queasy. A corner of Ben's mouth twitched as if he was amused again, though she certainly couldn't find anything funny about the situation.

“Yes, it's all been taken care of, but as I said, I can't let you up until forensics have finished. But there's no noticeable damage upstairs.”

Thank God,
Keeley thought, her overactive imagination having conjured up visions of having to clean up puddles of blood—or worse.

“How did he die?” she asked, her natural curiosity kicking in once more. Ben looked suspicious again and hesitated, as if wondering how much to tell her, before he said in a quiet tone:

“Hit over the head with a blunt object, by the look of things, though our postmortem guy couldn't determine with what, exactly.”

Which meant they hadn't found the murder weapon, Keeley realized. She began to wish she had paid more attention to the reruns of
CSI
that her flatmate in New York had been constantly watching.

“Maybe he just banged his head?” she offered. Ben's lips quirked again in that half-smile she was sure meant he was laughing at her. “Or maybe he interrupted whoever was trying to set the fire?” That was a viable suggestion, she thought, but when the smile vanished and he looked suspicious again, she wished she hadn't said anything.

“We're working on that assumption,” he said carefully as a thought hit Keeley with a jolt of anxiety.

“How did they get in? It should have been all locked up.”

Ben gave her another nod. “The estate agent reports that none of the keys were missing. Before you give me the ‘it wasn't me' speech, an inspection of the back door lock does suggest it was picked. Honestly, I'm surprised the place was left so unsecured.”

Keeley bit her lip, feeling guilty—though in all truth, up until now, security had been her mother's responsibility. The back gate was bolted and the back door fitted with a standard Yale lock. There had never been a burglar alarm installed. In a small, sleepy town like Belfrey, who would want to break into an empty shop?

Perhaps Belfrey wasn't as sleepy as she had thought.

*   *   *

Once she had locked the shop back up, Ben offered to drive her to Rose Cottage, and after a moment of hesitation, Keeley agreed. As much as she didn't relish the prospect of spending any longer than absolutely necessary in the detective constable's company, considering that she seemed to be Suspect of the Moment, neither was she looking forward to the twenty-minute, predominantly uphill walk to Rose Cottage on legs that were now decidedly shaky. Buses in Belfrey came only a few times a day, and even then were rarely on schedule. It was high time she got herself a new car.

Keeley sat stiffly in the passenger seat of Ben's Saab, hoping he wouldn't continue to question her. She had no idea who could be responsible for the fire or the alleged murder of a man she didn't know, and right now wanted nothing more than a cup of soothing herbal tea and some deep stretching. She pushed any thoughts of bacon-and-sausage sandwiches firmly to the back of her consciousness. An hour in Belfrey, and she was already reverting to the chubby teenager of ten years ago. Perhaps it was a good thing Ben didn't remember her.

“You've changed since school,” he said, making it clear that in fact he knew exactly who she was. Keeley felt herself cringe.

“I suppose so,” she said, aiming for nonchalance and ending up with sulky instead.

“When I spoke to your mother, she said you were opening a vegetarian café. Seems kind of funny for a butcher's daughter,” he remarked, his earlier reticence seemingly forgotten. Keeley was wary of his desire to chat. No doubt some tactic meant to trip her up and get her to confess to murdering the poor man found in her café. She shrugged to suppress the chill that came over her and sat staring out the window.

“Not really. I want to show that food can be tasty as well as good for you, and ethical to boot.”

“You think it will catch on? In Belfrey?” Ben sounded doubtful. Keeley nodded, any grudge against Ben momentarily forgotten in her usual enthusiasm to talk about her favorite subject.

“I'm not pushing some New Age fad here; there are proven benefits to a nonmeat, organic diet. And yoga itself is booming—the yoga classes at the local gym are packed full, I checked.”

“So what has one got to do with the other?” He actually sounded interested, and Keeley twisted in her seat toward him. If she could get the local detective on board, that would certainly help her credibility.

“Yoga isn't just a form of exercise, although it can be used like that, it's actually a whole lifestyle system, of which diet is a big part. Not that you have to eat a vegetarian diet to practice yoga, it's a personal choice thing, but they definitely reinforce each other. Lots of people come to yoga as a means to lose weight too—something else a nonmeat diet can assist with.”

Ben glanced over at her, taking his eyes off the road for a moment to trail them down her body. Keeley shifted in her seat self-consciously; the temperature inside the car seemed to have kicked up a few notches.

“Is that what got you into it? The weight loss?”

Instantly Keeley felt herself morphing into the girl he would have remembered; the shy, overweight girl with frizzy hair and buckteeth, and she shrank back away from him.

“Well, I certainly got fed up with being called Lardypants,” she said tightly. Ben snorted in amusement.

“People called you that, really?”

“You were there,” she said in a small voice. At that, Ben slowed the car, a funny expression on his face.

“I'm quite sure,” he said slowly, as if offended, “that I never called you that name.”

“Not you,” Keeley amended, “but some of the kids in your crowd did.” She heard the bitterness in her own voice and winced. She had spent many hours on the yoga mat learning to let go of both old grudges and poor body image; half an hour in the company of Ben Taylor, and it all came flooding back.

Next to her, Ben was quiet.

“Well,” he said after five minutes of increasingly uncomfortable silence, “I'm sorry about that. If I had known, I would have said something. I never have been able to stand bullies.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said, although all of a sudden it did matter, and very much so. She would have preferred him not to remember her at all than to see her as some poor victim. An overweight victim, at that. Still, she supposed it was marginally better than him viewing her as a murder suspect.

They drove the rest of the way to Rose Cottage with Keeley's eyes firmly on the landscape. Amber Valley truly was a beautiful part of the country, and one of the things she had missed most during her ten years away was the views. In every direction lay a visual feast of rolling green and gold hills, merging into a blue and gray horizon dotted with the inland cliffs and heights of the Peak District. There was such unspoiled beauty, it seemed almost inconceivable that anything bad could ever happen here.

Ben finally turned onto Bakers Hill and paused outside the cottage. Keeley breathed a sigh of relief and, in spite of the day's revelations, felt her heart leap at the sight of her new home, a postcard-pretty quintessential country cottage, complete with blush roses climbing around the arch of the doorway and a thatched roof. When she had shown a picture of it to her friends in New York, they cooed with delight. Her mother, more used to the practicalities of living in the country, shook her head with disdain. “You'll get squirrels,” she had said, wrinkling her nose at the thatch. When Keeley was younger, they had lived in one of the more modern town houses in the center of Belfrey, but Keeley always secretly wished to live in one of the more traditional cottages, even those at the end of the High Street that were so old and uncared for, they had subsided into triangular shapes as if the ground were about to swallow them up.

Ben got out of the car with her, lifting her luggage out of the boot. The cottage had been let fully furnished, and the rest of Keeley's things been delivered the day before, so there was little for her to do except unpack a few boxes.

“Thank you,” she said to Ben, feeling awkward and wondering if she should invite him in.

“Call me,” he said, and Keeley frowned, momentarily misreading his intention until he continued. “If you think of anything that might help me figure out who torched your shop, or you remember anything relevant about Terry Smith, let me know straightaway. Otherwise, I'll let you know when the forensics have finished.”

“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled, all but snatching her suitcase away from him. She didn't look back as his car purred its way down the hill away from her. Seeing Ben Taylor again, and in such circumstances, was certainly not the homecoming she had expected. That, nor her shop being turned into a crime scene.

The key was under the mat as Mrs. Rowland had promised it would be, so it surprised her when the front door turned out to be open. Nervous, Keeley pushed open the door and peered around it. In the kitchen, a small, plump woman with a chestnut-colored bob was arranging flowers in a large, brightly colored vase on the table. Annie Rowland. Keeley let her breath out with relief and wheeled her luggage into the cottage, shutting the door behind her. The scent of freesias filled the air as her landlady turned to her, a large and welcoming smile on her face, her small blue eyes shining.

“Keeley! Look at you,” the older woman exclaimed, wrapping Keeley in a warm, comforting hug that had her blinking back unbidden tears. Finally, someone who seemed pleased to see her back in Belfrey. Although Keeley had not really known Annie in her younger days other than as a customer in her father's shop, she was so relieved to see a friendly face that she returned the hug as if greeting a long-lost friend.

“You look amazing,” Annie exclaimed, then rather ruined the compliment by adding, “so much like your mother.”

Keeley grimaced. After her weight loss, she had indeed seen her mother's more angular features appear from underneath the puppy fat, like a sculpture emerging from a dollop of clay. With the addition of a deep tan from her time in India and some shockingly expensive New York highlights, Keeley had hoped the resemblance had somewhat softened.

“I've made it all as nice as I can for you, dear, made the beds up and everything,” Annie trilled, then picked up her coat from the peg it hung on and started to shrug it on. Keeley felt a little stab of panic. She had been so looking forward to her first day back in Belfrey and to moving into Rose Cottage; had envisaged herself puttering around on her own, arranging her things the way she wanted them and maybe even uncurling her yoga mat in the garden and moving through a few Sun Salutations in the crisp spring sun. Now she felt as though being alone were the last thing she wanted, and wondered if she wasn't having some kind of delayed reaction to the shock.

“There was a murder at my father's shop—well, my café now,” she blurted out, “and someone set it on fire, or tried to.” Annie's mouth dropped open, and she promptly hung her coat back up.

“Oh, dear. Do you know, I saw something on the front of the
Belfrey Times
this morning on my way into Ripley, but I didn't think to stop and have a look. I didn't realize it was your place. You poor lamb, did you know the victim?”

Shaking her head, Keeley filled her in on the morning's events, sitting down at the kitchen table with weak legs. Definitely a touch of shock.

“Ben—DC Taylor—suggested maybe the victim interrupted whoever tried to set the fire. He seemed to think it was someone with a grudge.”
Or me, setting up an insurance scam,
she thought bitterly but didn't want to say that to this kind-faced woman. Keeley didn't think she could take another suspicious look.

Annie waved a hand dismissively. “That Taylor boy, he's been watching too many detective shows on TV, fancies himself as a star in one of them. Not enough going on in Amber Valley for his liking, he should transfer over to Derby. Who would have a grudge against you, or your father? He was a well-liked man. Most likely whoever set the fire got caught in it themselves.” Annie nodded decisively, as though her word were the final say on the matter. Keeley didn't share what Ben had told her about blunt objects. She wondered how much information had been released to the newspapers, and if this Terry Smith was a popular person in Belfrey. What if the whole town thought it was her? Or down to some kind of family feud—but that was preposterous, surely?

Then a cold curl of doubt began to unfurl in her chest as something Annie had said niggled at her. There certainly seemed to be little reason why anyone should wish to target Keeley herself, or her late father, but there was one member of her family who made a habit of getting people's backs up.

Her mother.

 

Chapter Three

A phone call to Darla Carpenter proved unfruitful. As Keeley had expected, her mother was suitably offended at the thought that there could possibly exist anyone who didn't find her utterly amazing.

“Did you know the victim? Terry Smith?”

“Not very well,” Darla admitted. “He was a ratty little man, always stank of ale and always in the betting shops. He came in your father's shop a few times, and he always tried to haggle about prices. Quite unpleasant, really.”

“So you don't know what he would have been doing in our shop?” Although Keeley had been thinking of the shop as
her café
for weeks now, somehow it didn't seem right to describe it like that to her mother—who, after all, still owned the premises.

“No idea. Besides,” Darla went on, a chill to her voice that could freeze lava, “I haven't been back to Belfrey in years. I arranged everything to do with the leasing of the shop through the estate agents.”