“You can’t really think she did it,” Megan said, her voice a whisper even though there was no one but the two of them in Crystals and Candles.
Keeley felt guilty even voicing the thought. After her mother had gotten in late last night and went to bed without even speaking to Keeley, smelling of wine, she had begun to wonder if her mother was in fact developing a drinking problem. That might explain the lying about her whereabouts.
Or maybe she was drinking heavily because she felt guilty? Was trying to block out what she had done? Keeley’s imagination was running riot.
“No,” she nevertheless said to Megan, trying to convince herself as much as her friend, “it can’t be. She’s probably just got herself a boyfriend.” She squirmed in her seat, the idea making her uncomfortable again as soon as she expressed it, and Megan eyed her astutely.
“And how would you feel about that?”
Keeley shrugged. “She’s a grown woman, it’s up to her.”
The truth was she didn’t know how she would feel about that. The idea of Darla with anyone but her father was anathema to her, yet as far as she knew her mother hadn’t had a partner since her father’s death. Ten years was a long time to be alone. No wonder she had gotten so cold and shut off.
“It does look suspicious, though,” Megan mused. “What do you think Ben would say?”
“He would consider it grounds to question her, I’m sure,” she said.
“Do you think he would expect you to tell him?”
“I’m not going to tell him,” Keeley said. She had pondered that question again last night and had no intention of telling Ben about her mother’s affair with Gerald. At least not unless she found out something more substantial.
“I was thinking of following her next time she goes out,” Keeley admitted. She expected her friend to dissuade her, but instead Megan nodded.
“Sounds like a good idea. After all, if she’s already lied once then there’s not much point in asking her, is there? She’ll only lie again.”
“Still, it feels wrong somehow. I mean, she is my mother.”
Megan steepled her hands together on the desk in front of her, looking Keeley intently in the eyes.
“If there’s even the tiniest chance your mum’s up to no good or knows anything about Gerald and Edna, then you’re probably doing her a favor by finding out before Ben does.”
“You’re right.” Keeley wondered how Ben was in fact getting on with the case now. For all she knew, there could have been new developments that would put her mind at rest concerning her mother. But there was no way of knowing now; he certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
“I wonder if Ben found out anything about Gerald’s secret daughter,” Megan said, echoing Keeley’s thoughts so closely that it made her blink. Sometimes her friend was so attuned to her that she wondered if she wasn’t a little psychic after all.
“I lost the amulet you gave me,” she said, remembering. “I think it came off when Edna went for me.”
Megan looked shocked. “Really? I put a powerful protection on that. I was thinking Edna must have been really very full of darkness to get through that.”
“Right,” said Keeley, resisting the temptation to roll her eyes. Then she had a thought. “Megan, do you do love spells and things?” She flushed as she heard the words coming out of her mouth and waved her hands in front of her as if she could get rid of them.
Megan bit her lip. “I do, but, I don’t really agree with them. It’s bending another person’s will to suit your own. I could give you something to aid reconciliation, though; some herbs to put in Ben’s tea, maybe.”
Keeley flushed even harder.
“It was just a general question,” she murmured, “I wasn’t referring to me and Ben, specifically.”
“You don’t want the herbs then?” Megan asked, all wide-eyed innocence. Keeley shuffled on her chair. “Well, maybe, if it’s only herbs. Although how I would get them into his tea when we’re barely talking I don’t know.”
Megan didn’t answer, but got up and went out to the back of the shop. Keeley heard her unscrewing jars, and then she came out with a small bag.
“Put this into your teapot when you’re brewing tea. It improves communications and generates feelings of love. You could even use it on your mum.”
“Thanks.” Keeley slipped the brown paper bag into her hemp satchel, feeling embarrassed.
“I’d better go, I’ve got a class at the center. Norma and Maggie will be there; I might even ask them a few questions.” Keeley was always wary of any information from Norma and Maggie, who were more interested in salacious rumor than fact.
“About your mum?”
“No; I think if they knew anything like that then they would have mentioned it already. But maybe I could get some information on who the mother of Gerald’s daughter might be.” Keeley still couldn’t shake the notion that the mysterious girl might just hold the key to it all.
“Could be a plan; they seemed to think he had had a good few affairs.”
They kissed each other on the cheek and Keeley left, deciding to get the bus to the center rather than walk when she saw it winding its way up the street. Buses in Belfrey, although scheduled to run on the hour, were in practice a rare occurrence. She really needed to learn to drive, but so far it was a skill she had found to be beyond her. It was easy for her to stand in a complicated one-legged posture while practicing breathing exercises and giving instructions to a class, but driving seemed to be the skill set of some superior being. The last time she had seriously attempted driving lessons she had reduced not only herself to tears but her instructor too, after a near head-on collision with a truck, due to Keeley driving the wrong way, and in the wrong lane.
On her way to the center, she thought about her half-formed plan. If she could get an idea of the identity of Gerald’s ex-lover, the mother of his child, then maybe she could find out where she and said child were now. And then what? She could hardly go bowling up to their house, knock on the door, and say, “Hi, did you kill Gerald Buxby and his housekeeper?” It was a shot in the dark, yet the same intuition that told her Raquel was innocent also told her Gerald’s love child was a crucial part of this story.
She hoped she was right. She had to be right; otherwise the only other suspect seemed to be her own mother.
Most of the class were there waiting when she reached the center, and she started with little preamble. There were no newcomers so she went straight into ten minutes of Sun Salutations, walking around and aiding with posture for the second five. Then she began a series of standing balance poses, her eyes on the clock. Her usual serenity and mindfulness of the needs of her class seemed hard to grasp today, and only during the last twenty minutes, when she got everyone down on their mats for some long, deep hip openers, did she begin to feel her usual calm settle over her, and for a while her worries about her mother and Ben and the murders receded into the background. Then the hour came to an end, and as she got up from Savasana they all came flooding back.
When Norma and Maggie came over to thank her at the end, Keeley kept them talking until the rest of her clients had left the room. Then she said, glancing toward the door to ensure that no one was listening, “I’ve been thinking about this philandering of the mayor’s.” She was rewarded by the eager looks on the women’s faces.
“Go on.”
“Well, are you sure he had that many affairs? I mean, couldn’t it just be gossip?”
Maggie looked offended, shaking her head until her chins wobbled, but Norma answered her eagerly.
“Oh no, there were lots of them. One woman, Jessica Hunter, she was a friend of his wife’s originally, but we all knew there was something going on. They were always being seen around Belfrey together, while poor Mrs. Buxby was at home poorly. Travesty it was.”
“What happened?”
Norma looked at Maggie, who continued the story for her friend.
“No one knows really. She just left town one day. I heard she got married not long after and had a baby. Of course, it was a long time ago, twenty years or more.”
Keeley felt a tingling in her scalp. This was the woman, she was sure of it.
“Why do you want to know?” Maggie peered at her with her shiny black eyes. The smile she gave her was supposed to convey warmth, Keeley knew, but there was something hard and cold about those eyes that made Keeley for a moment wish she hadn’t resorted to asking the pair for information.
“For the same reason anyone does, I suppose. We all want to know people’s secrets.” Especially when they’re not around to hear us, she thought with an unusual dash of cynicism.
She said her good-byes to Maggie and Norma before they could question her more and hurried off, digesting what the women had told her. An affair with Gerald, followed by a relocation and a baby? It wasn’t a great leap of the imagination to suppose that the baby was in fact the love child in question. Now she just had to find Jessica Hunter.
Keeley decided to walk back to the High Street as the way back was all downhill, and as she passed the library she did a detour into it. You couldn’t beat a local phone directory, she thought, for a bit of good old-fashioned detecting. Of course, she had no way of knowing where Jessica had moved to, but it couldn’t be too far away if the news she had had a baby had filtered back. Keeley picked up the directories for Matlock, Ripley, Bakewell, and Derby and sat down at a nearby table, glad that the library was empty except for the librarian, a plump, mousy-looking woman in a long purple dress who sat behind the counter with her head buried in an erotica novel, of all things. That should keep the woman busy enough that she wouldn’t take any interest in anything Keeley was doing.
Her perusal of the phone books proved less than fruitful, with only one Jessica Hunter appearing. Keeley went outside to ring her, only to discover that the Jessica in question was ninety-seven and very nearly deaf. As she went back into the library, Keeley remembered something Maggie had said and could have kicked herself for her own stupidity. Jessica Hunter was married. And, therefore, Hunter would no longer be her name. There seemed to be no way of finding out any more information without questioning everyone in Belfrey and that, she knew, would get back to Ben.
Then she had an idea.
“Excuse me,” she said to the preoccupied librarian, who looked up in annoyance at not being able to get on with reading her bodice-ripper, “can I use the computers?”
“There’s only one public computer,” the librarian said, waving her hand toward an ancient-looking PC in the corner.
“Okay. Well, can I use that one, please?”
The librarian huffed and puffed with annoyance as she put her book down and wrote login details for Keeley, handing them over without a word and snatching her book back up. Keeley resisted the temptation to ask her what the story was about.
Once on the computer, she pulled up the archives for the local papers, searching for Jessica Hunter. If she had lived in Belfrey for any length of time then it was likely she had attended a fête or festival of some kind, and may well have got a mention in the papers. Thanks to Google, there was no need for Keeley to plough through endless copies of old Belfrey Times editions.
A news story came up straight away, from six years ago, and it was no mere attendance of a jam stall. Jessica Landry, née Hunter, was shown weeping, and next to her a picture of a car crash. A car, stolen by a crowd of teenagers, had crashed and killed or injured everyone inside it, including the fourteen-year-old girl in the back.
Jessica’s daughter, Lydia. She had been killed instantly.
With her heart pounding, Keeley clicked on the thumbnail of Lydia’s picture. It was a blurry image, with the girl’s face turned away from the camera, but Keeley could see that the resemblance was there. Lydia Landry was Gerald’s daughter, and her death explained why Gerald had suddenly stopped paying child support.
Keeley walked back to the café feeling sick, and more than a little guilty, as if she had intruded on Jessica Hunter’s grief. No matter how long ago it had been, she doubted the loss of a child would ever be less than raw. She was glad she hadn’t got through to the woman. She wondered if Ben had found and questioned her yet.
Keeley was just making herself a cup of herbal tea—Darla, once again, was nowhere to be seen—when Ben himself phoned her. Had Norma or Maggie told him about their conversation?
“Hello?” she said, hearing the guilt in her voice.
There was a pause, then he cleared his throat.
“Keeley. How are you?” He sounded heartbreakingly formal, not like a man whom she had been intimate with just a few days before.
“I’m good, thank you. You?”
Another pause, which was loaded with all the things they weren’t saying. Then when he spoke again it was in those cold, clipped tones she was beginning to know all too well.
“I just wanted you to know I investigated the information you gave me concerning Gerald Buxby’s alleged daughter.”
“Oh?” Keeley aimed for nonchalance but felt her cheeks flame and was glad he wasn’t there in person to see it.
“Yes. And it was a dead end. John checked out too; he has a cast iron alibi for both murders.”
I know, part of her wanted to say, but she bit it back.
“I see,” she said instead, wondering why he was taking the time to tell her this, flattered that he would think of her, wondering if he was perhaps looking for a reason to talk to her and if he regretted what he had done. She thought about the herbs in her bag that Megan had given her. Perhaps this was a good time to ask him around for coffee? Then his next words dashed any hope.
“So I want you to leave it there, Keeley. You had no need to go round Edna’s, as it turns out it was useless information.” The reprimand in his voice set Keeley’s teeth on edge.
“Fine,” she snapped. There was an uncomfortable silence, broken by Ben clearing his throat again.
“Right. Well I’ll see you around. Maybe at the art festival tomorrow.” He put the phone down before she could answer. Keeley glared at the phone, a wave of hot anger breaking over her. Who did he think he was, talking to her like that?
“What a jerk!” she said out loud. Then she went into her bag, found the herbs Megan had given her, and threw them angrily into the bin. So much for reconciliation.