Secrets

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Jane A. Adams from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Epilogue

Footnote

The Naomi Blake Mysteries

MOURNING THE LITTLE DEAD

TOUCHING THE DARK

HEATWAVE

KILLING A STRANGER

LEGACY OF LIES

SECRETS

The Rina Martin Mysteries

A REASON TO KILL

FRAGILE LIVES

THE POWER OF ONE

RESOLUTIONS

THE DEAD OF WINTER

CAUSE OF DEATH

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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Jane A. Adams

The right of Jane A. Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Adams, Jane, 1960-

Secrets. – (A Naomi Blake mystery ; 8)

1. Blake, Naomi (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Ex-police officers–Fiction. 3. Blind women–Fiction.

4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8290-5 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-439-3 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

‘T
here's a man with a gun standing in my garden. I want something done about it.'

A beat of shocked silence met this pronouncement and Molly sighed in exasperation. ‘Did you hear me? I said there's a man in my garden—'

‘Yes, madam, I did hear. Can you give me your address, please and we'll get someone right there.'

‘Beldon Avenue, number twelve. Not that it is an avenue, you understand, it's a cul-de-sac. I'm right at the end. The big house with the high hedges, right at the end. And my name is Mrs Chambers.'

Molly could hear the sound of a keyboard rattling and a woman's voice checking details.

‘Madam, are you sure he has a gun?'

‘Oh, for goodness sake,' Molly exploded. ‘Young woman I have lived long enough and seen enough to know a gun when one is waved in my direction.'

This was a slight exaggeration. So far the young man in the garden had simply stood uncertainly, with the weapon slightly raised. Molly cursed the dusk and her own failing sight; had either been clearer she could have issued a more exact description.

‘At you? He's pointing the gun at you?' That last seemed to have got the call handler's attention, Molly noted with a degree of satisfaction. Sometimes one just had to overstate the case. It was the only way to get attention in these desperately hyperbolic times.

‘Madam, do you believe yourself to be in immediate danger?'

‘Young woman, I consider that to be a very stupid question. In my experience, and contrary to what so many idiots tend to believe, guns do not equal security.'

‘Please madam, if you could just—'

Molly sighed. ‘My dear young lady, I've already made certain I'm not in his sight line. I'm upstairs in the front, that is the master bedroom. I have a clear view of him, but he not of me.'

‘And are the doors and windows locked? Madam, there are officers on their way as we speak. They are just minutes away.'

‘My dear,' Molly said with heavy irony. ‘Unless one lives in some kind of bunker, then the act of closing windows or locking doors will do little to stop a bullet.'

During the conversation she had moved back from the window and no longer had the young man in her view. She returned, now, swearing softly to herself in Swahili, a language she had always considered very suited to such a purpose.

‘Madam? Mrs Chambers? Are you all right?'

‘He's gone,' Molly said sharply. ‘He must have gone round to the back of the house while I was talking to you.'

‘Officers will be with you very shortly,' the call handler said, though Molly could hear the tension in her voice. That and a little bit of doubt.

She thinks I'm off my rocker, Molly thought. She thinks I imagined the whole thing.

Had she locked her back door?

True, as she had told the young woman, if someone with a gun wanted to shoot off the lock, then there was little she could do to stop them, but if she'd been so forgetful as to leave the door undone and thereby made it easy for him, well then she really would feel foolish.

‘I can hear the sirens,' she said.

‘Good, that's good, Mrs Chambers. Just hang in there for a couple of minutes more. Officers will be with you in no time at all.'

She could hear something else, Molly thought as she turned from the window to face the bedroom door. The sirens were louder now, blanketing that smaller but unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Molly straightened, squared her shoulders and lowered the phone. Dimly, she could hear the young woman on the end of the line calling her name.

Slowly, the bedroom door opened and Molly gazed upon the apparition that stood there. For a moment she was more puzzled than afraid, her senses telling her something impossible was happening.

‘Oh,' Molly said. ‘It's you.'

Sirens so close now as the cars sped into the cul-de-sac. The sound of the young woman calling out her name. Then everything overwhelmed by the blast of the gunshot as the noise echoed and resounded through the house.

M
olly Chambers sat on one side of the kitchen table and regarded her honorary nephew with some small disdain.

‘I'm fine,' she said. ‘I don't want anyone fussing over me and I certainly don't need your advice, Alec.'

‘I'm not offering advice. I just came to make sure you were OK. That's all.'

‘Because your mother was making a fuss.'

‘Because, odd as it may sound, we actually care about you, Molly. Mum just thought you might want to go and stay for a few days.'

Molly harrumphed, but she seemed to accept that with reasonable grace. ‘I understand you've resigned from your job,' she said. ‘What do you plan to do now?'

Alec managed to hide the smile. Molly did so disapprove of people not
doing
. ‘I've resigned, yes. I've not decided what is next.'

‘You'll need to earn a living.'

‘I've money in the bank. I've got time to make some decisions. First thing is to get the house sold. We don't feel we can live there any longer.'

‘Why?'

‘Because finding a dead body in your kitchen sort of ruins the atmosphere,' Alec told her.

‘I had a man shoot himself on my landing,' Molly pointed out. ‘Brains all over my stair carpet. You don't find me running away. This is my home and I'm not letting an incident like that drive me out of it. Neither should you.'

‘It's not a competition, Aunt Molly. It isn't a case of who's had the worst case of violent death happen in their living room. It's a matter of, well it's a matter of it being time to move on.'

‘Have you
tried
to get bloodstains out of an oak floor? I got some specialist in, someone the crime scene person recommended. Even
they
couldn't get all the bloodstains out.'

Alec said nothing. He saw her purse her lips and twitch her shoulders, squaring them ready for battle again. Molly had lived an eventful life, he knew. A girl in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising and then the wife of a diplomat who seemed to specialize in setting up shop in whatever happened to be the fashionable theatre of war for that year, Molly had led a nomadic and edgy existence. This house was the first really settled spot. Now death had come calling even here.

‘Show me,' he said. ‘I might be able to suggest something.'

Molly shrugged. ‘Oh, I've got a man coming to fit a new stair carpet,' she said. ‘I've said he can do the landing and the spare bedroom while he's about it. And I've scrubbed the walls. I'll get the decorators in. I'd do it myself, but I think I'm getting a bit too old to be climbing ladders.

Alec could feel a hint behind the words, but Molly was far too direct to merely hint.

‘Of course, you could always come and do it for me now you're not at work.'

‘I could,' Alec agreed. ‘If you want a bad job doing and gloss from here to Christmas. You'd be better asking Naomi. She may not be able to
see
the wall but she'd make a far better job of putting paint on it.'

Molly harrumphed again. Alec knew she was never quite sure how to deal with what she saw as his wife's disability. Molly would say things like ‘I think she copes wonderfully' and ‘She's quite remarkable, considering' but she found it very hard to comprehend just how independent Naomi really was. She also found it distasteful for Alec to make what she saw as a joke about another's misfortune.

He had expected a rejoinder, but for the moment, it seemed, she would let it pass. Molly led the way up the stairs and Alec followed.

‘I've had to get rid of the carpet on the top flight,' she told him, pointing at the bare treads and the naked boards on the landing. ‘I borrowed one of those retractable knives from Mr Johnson, next door, and cut the carpet away. I didn't make the best job, though. Carpet fibres are tougher than you might think.'

Alec nodded, looking at the rather uneven edge that Molly's efforts had left. ‘I think I can at least manage to tidy that up,' he offered. ‘Do you still have the knife?'