Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2) Read online

  Small Town Secrets

  Issy Brooke

  Text copyright 2015 Issy Brooke

  All rights reserved

  Cover credit: background vector illustration Denis Demidenko via 123rf.com

  Cover design and dog illustration by Issy Brooke

  Author’s Hello

  Just a quick heads-up on the whole spelling and grammar thing. I’m a British author and this book is set in England. Sometimes, British English looks unfamiliar to readers of other variants of English. It’s not just spelling (colour and realise and so on) and not just the vocabulary (pavement for sidewalk, mobile for cell phone) but there are differences even in the way we express ourselves. (In the US, it is more common to say something like “did you see Joanne?” whereas in the UK we would say “have you seen Joanne?” and so on.) Also, my characters do not speak grammatically correct sentences - who does? Not me. Rest assured this book has been copyedited and proofread (errors, alas, are my own and I won’t shoot my editor if you find any.)

  And another thing - locations. Lincolnshire is real. It’s a massive rural county in the east of England, with a sparse population. It’s mostly agricultural. Upper Glenfield, the town in this tale, is fictional. Lincoln, the main city nearest to Glenfield, does exist and it’s worth a visit. The only thing I’ve fictionalised in Lincoln is the layout and situation of the police station.

  You can find out more about Lincolnshire and the characters in Glenfield at my website, http://www.issybrooke.com

  Why not sign up to my mailing list? You get advance notice of new releases at a special price - but no spam. No one wants spam. Check it out here: http://issybrooke.com/newsletter/

  Chapter One

  “They want to do a naked calendar with the dogs!”

  Penny choked on her lemonade. She lowered the can from her mouth and stared at Lucy, the manager of the shop attached to the dogs’ home near the small Lincolnshire town of Upper Glenfield. Lucy was a dear woman but not the quickest on the uptake. Penny had been volunteering some of her free time at the weekends for just over a month, and had soon realised that Lucy’s reality was not exactly everyone else’s reality.

  Lucy was a woman who warmly embraced the idea of fairies, earth lines, the power of pyramids and how horses knew when it was going to rain. She considered herself a true sceptic, however, and proved it by stubbornly refusing to believe in electricity, certain aspects of modern medicine or any information that came from the government on a glossy leaflet.

  None of that would matter to Penny – she was a tolerant sort of person – except that Lucy tended to mix up her theories and ideas, so that in Lucy’s world, ancient Celtic tribes probably worshipped wicker baskets full of kittens in Ancient Peru.

  So when Lucy declared that Upper Glenfield Camera Club wanted to do a naked calendar involving the dogs, Penny naturally assumed it was actually nothing of the sort. “Think of the hygiene issues,” Penny said mildly, smiling at Lucy.

  “Our dogs have all had their jabs,” Lucy argued. “They won’t catch anything from the photographers or their models.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Penny leaned against the cash register and put her can of lemonade on the counter. She picked up a leaflet about the dangers of Colorado beetles, and fanned herself with it. “Goodness. How hot will it get around here?”

  “Oh, this is just the start of summer,” Lucy told her. In her cream linen sun dress, with her strawberry blonde curls falling around her face, she looked like a sunshine dream. Penny was feeling hot, sticky, cranky and entirely fed up of Lincolnshire already. And she’d only lived there three months.

  “This is madness,” she muttered. “I put some washing on the line yesterday and when I came to bring it in, it was crawling with horrible little black flies.”

  “Oh, thunderflies, yes. They like the rapeseed.”

  “The what?”

  “The yellow stuff in the fields,” Lucy said. “It’s for oil.”

  “Drew said that was mustard.”

  “Yes, the other yellow stuff is mustard. It’s a slightly different yellow.”

  Penny sighed. Her friend Drew was running some increasingly successful field-craft courses, based at the local hotel and conference centre, and she had somehow ended up as his guinea pig, trailing around the countryside with him, and her dog Kali, while he waxed lyrical about the particularly informative shade of green of some moss, or why nettles grew on sites linked to human habitation. He filled her head so full of new information she felt she was in danger of the old stuff getting pushed out.

  The door jingled. It was busy at the dogs’ home at the weekend, and Penny’s feet ached. They were swollen from the heat. But she plastered on a bright smile and sang out a greeting.

  “Hello!”

  Lucy joined in with the typical Lincolnshire way of saying hello: “Now then, bor!”

  It had taken Penny two months to learn that “bor” was short for “neighbour” and not a bizarre way of calling everyone “boy.”

  The customer was a young woman, slender, with a dark bob and a pale face untouched by the summer sun. She smiled nervously but Lucy recognised her.

  “Nina, my duck! How are you bearing up?”

  Oh, maybe she’s been ill, Penny thought. That would explain her wan pallor.

  Nina smiled tightly, her eyes remaining large and sad. “I’m well, thank you,” she said in the most obvious lie that Penny had seen since the breakfast news interview that morning with a politician. “I’m here to talk about the calendar.”

  “Is this the naked one?” Penny asked, looking sideways at Lucy. Could she possibly have been correct?

  Luckily, no. Nina’s neat eyebrows shot up, and she shuddered. “No. I don’t know about any naked one. My dad sent me from the Camera Club to talk about the dog one we want to do for you. You know, to sell at Christmas to raise funds for you all.”

  “Ahh,” Penny said in relief. “Everyone keeps their clothes on, then?”

  Nina stared from Penny to Lucy and back to Penny again. “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t know what they do where you’re from, Penny,” Lucy said. “We don’t go in for the naked stuff around here.”

  “Hang on a minute! It was you who … oh never mind.” Penny turned to Nina with a smile. “I’m from London,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  Nina’s reaction was one of even greater surprise. “But you came here? Why? Sorry,” she blustered, going pink and looking down. “How rude of me.”

  “It’s okay. Everyone asks. I retired – sort of – and wanted a change of scene. I like it here.”

  Nina couldn’t disguise the look of horror that flitted across her face. She quickly wiped it clear. “Well. Gosh. So, this calendar. My dad wants to know when we can organise a photoshoot.”

  “Oh, how exciting!” Lucy warbled, clapping her hands together. “As soon as possible! I think it would be fantastic. Marge and the committee said in our last meeting that I could just go ahead and arrange it with your club. Come this weekend!”

  “I would suspect we need a little more notice than that.” Nina was younger than the exuberant Lucy, but talked in a much more measured and mature fashion. To Penny’s eyes she looked to be in her early twenties. “We would like to involve as many of our members as we can. Taking action shots and pet portraits will be quite a new challenge for some of them.”

  “What do they usually do?” Penny asked, hoping for something scandalous.

  “Trains.”

  “And…?”

  “No. Just trains.” Nina sounded rather flat. “Sometimes, viaducts.
If there is a train on it, of course.”

  “Right.”

  Lucy wanted to be part of the conversation again. “We could put the dogs on trains! That would be so cute. Are we dressing them up? Bows, and hats, and that sort of thing? I’ve got the sweetest little dress for a Dobermann. If we can find a Dobermann that’s, er, biddable.”

  There were two Dobermanns at the home at the moment, and though both were gentle family dogs, Penny couldn’t imagine either of them being happy in a costume. She shook her head. “Er … Nina, is it? Nina. Did you already have an idea in mind for the sorts of shots that you wanted?”

  Nina nodded. “It’s not really me. It’s my dad. He’s president of the club, you see. He sent me down because … he thinks I need something to keep me occupied at the moment.” She rolled her eyes. “Families, eh? Anyway. So he says that he wants twelve shots of different sorts of dogs. And one group photograph for the front of the calendar. He wants them doing different tricks, like balancing food on their noses or jumping over things or carrying things or whatever.”

  “Not all of our dogs are particularly well behaved or trained,” Penny said cautiously. Although many of the dogs in the home had ended up there because of their owners being ill, or moving away, or having no time for them, there were a great many untrained hounds with plenty of excess energy and not a lot of discipline.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Lucy brightly. She flapped her hands at Nina. “It’s fine, my duck. If we set a date for a few weeks’ time, that gives our staff time to train the dogs!”

  Penny blinked, and met Nina’s eyes. Nina, too, looked startled. Lucy had worked in the dogs’ home for years. Yet she still believed that training them was a matter of a loud cheerful voice and simple self-belief.

  “A few weeks’ time would be better,” Nina said. “I’ll try for this weekend. But my dad is … there’s another man in the Camera Club who … well, there are issues between them.”

  “Oh yes!” exclaimed Lucy. Penny hadn’t realised the bonkers shop manager could get any more excited, but yes, apparently she could. “I forgot! How is it going between you and Warren? What’s his star sign? Would you like me to ask my friend to do you a chart of compatibility?”

  Nina froze, her dark eyes now narrowed and full of venom. She said, very stiffly, “There is nothing. Absolutely nothing. At all. Going on between Warren and I. In spite of what you might have heard. It is nothing but horrible gossip. Thank you.”

  Then Nina turned to Penny, and forced a clenched smile. “I will go and talk to the club this week about some available weekends. Are there any in particular we need to avoid?”

  “I can’t think of anything we’ve got coming up in the foreseeable, but I’ll check and let you know. And we will draw up a shortlist of potential stars for you,” Penny promised.

  “Thanks. Great. Your office has my contact details. See you.” And with that, Nina dashed out of the shop and slammed the door behind her.

  “Well,” Penny said as soon as she was alone again with Lucy. “Call me intuitive but I’m guessing that Warren and that poor Nina are not an item?”

  “Are you intuitive?” Lucy said, missing the point.

  “No.” Penny sighed and smiled. “Shall I pop to the office and borrow the diary? So we can come up with some dates to offer the camera club?”

  “Oh, yes! What a good idea! I will hold the fort here.” Lucy nodded and looked around the shop. A couple entered and began to browse along the novelty key-rings. “What a shame about that girl,” she said, as Penny began to leave.

  Penny knew any information she got from Lucy would be unreliable, but she couldn’t resist speaking. “I haven’t seen her around before.” She was already used to knowing everyone’s face in the small town. “Does she live in Upper Glenfield, or is she just here on behalf of her dad in the camera club?”

  “She has moved back from Scotland,” Lucy said. “Which is a relief for everyone, no doubt!”

  Penny charitably chose to interpret that remark in the best possible way. Nina doesn’t look wildly happy to be back, Penny thought as she made her way from the shop and across the courtyard to the dogs’ home office. Although if that failed womaniser Warren has attempted to get his hooks into her, who can blame her? Poor girl, indeed.

  * * * *

  Penny breezed back into the shop a few minutes later, clutching the diary. “Warren and Nina have never dated,” she told Lucy. “That’s what Marge told me just now. Has Warren ever dated anyone?”

  Lucy pursed her lips. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah. That figures.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked, her face becoming coquettish. “Are you interested in him? Ooh!”

  “No!” Penny spoke rather too harshly and Lucy’s kind face snapped closed. “I’m sorry,” Penny said hastily. “I turned him down when I moved here.”

  “Everyone does.”

  It was a fact. Warren was the large and overbearing manager of the local mini-market in the town centre, and he felt he had an entitlement to press his advances upon any single woman in the area. When rejected – as he invariably was – he turned to wallow in bitter resentment as each brush-off simply confirmed in his mind the essential unfairness of women.

  “Oh yes!” Lucy squealed, back in her upbeat mood once more. Penny had never seen her low or upset for more than a few seconds. “You’re seeing that lovely Drew, aren’t you?”

  “No. We’re friends.”

  “Good friends!”

  “Just friends,” Penny insisted. “We are both awfully busy. On the other hand, yes, I will concede we are going out for a meal tonight.”

  “Oh! Oh! You’re going red! How sweet!”

  Penny was sure that she was not blushing, at least, not until Lucy pointed it out to her. Then she felt her cheeks burn. For no reason at all. No reason, she insisted in her head. Not at all.

  A customer sidled up to the counter, embarrassed in that wonderfully British way that she was asking to inconvenience the staff by requesting to be served. Penny was grateful for the release.

  * * * *

  When the shop closed up for the evening, Penny helped cash up and then went to find her own dog, Kali. Kali had been a rescue dog, resident at the dogs’ home, when Penny had moved to Upper Glenfield. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. Kali’s behaviour when she saw other dogs – notably, the “I want to kill you for daring to exist” reaction – had sorely tested Penny. But, helped by Drew, and a knowledgeable man in the local walking group, she had been able to recognise Kali’s reactions as born out of fear, not aggression.

  Unfortunately, both fear and aggression looked the same in a large, heavy Rottweiler. Rolling eyes? Bared teeth? Thrashing tail? Foaming mouth? Check.

  These days, however, Kali was able to tolerate being near other dogs. She’d even made a few doggy friends at the dogs’ home, and shared a large run with them while Penny volunteered in the shop.

  Penny collected her, fussed her, and strapped her into her head-collar. It was a mile of walking to get back to her little cottage on River Street, but the air was cooling slightly and it was going to be a pleasant journey past the fields of ripening crops. Rapeseed or mustard? She had no idea. It smelled a little unpleasant, whatever it was.

  Kali trotted alongside, happy to be on her way home. She knew her dinner was waiting at the end, but she also knew she couldn’t get away with pulling at the lead any more. Penny would simply stop. So they moved along nicely, and Penny allowed herself to sink into a happy daydream about what she was going to wear for the meal with Drew that evening.

  Until her mobile phone rang.

  She stopped, asking Kali to wait as she fished around in her tote bag – a linen one, covered with colourful stencilled designs of her own creation. “Hi, Drew! I’m just on my way home. How are you? Did the course go all right today?”

  “It was going fine, but I had to finish early,” he said.

  “Oh. Are you okay?” She imagined he might
have been taken ill. The meal didn’t matter, she decided.

  “Yes. I’m sorry but I’m going to have to cancel the meal tonight.”

  “Why? What’s happened?” she asked in concern. “Are you sick?”

  “No, I’m not ill. I’m fine. It’s just that … I can’t make it.”

  The meal suddenly did matter. “Oh really,” she said, flatly, waiting for an explanation.

  “I don’t know if I am allowed to tell you,” he said. “I will make it up to you–”

  She sucked in a deep breath and channelled her inner Valkyrie. “Tell me,” she pronounced in a leaden tone.

  “Er.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The police need my help. Warren Martin has been found dead.”

  Chapter Two

  As soon as he had imparted that shocking information, Drew had to finish the conversation, explaining that the police were waiting for him.

  Penny was horrified. She stared at Kali, who cocked her head, expecting a command and then a treat.

  “We’ve got to get to Drew!” she told the dog. “Come on!”

  Kali willingly broke into a run, in spite of having been active all day. She panted as she laboured alongside and Penny realised she had to slow down. Hot weather and a thick black coat didn’t make a happy combination for a Rottie.

  As they jogged, Penny thought about Warren. Drew had used the phrase “found dead” but she couldn’t help but interpret that as “murdered.” Maybe it was because of her history. She’d only lived in Upper Glenfield for three weeks before she had discovered a murder victim herself, and taken it on as a personal duty to find the killer – much to the annoyance of the local constabulary.

  Although Warren had been a deeply unpleasant individual, he didn’t deserve to die. Well, who did? Poor Warren. Did he have family? As far as she could tell, he barely had friends. She hadn’t even realised he went to the camera club until that day, when Nina had alluded to her father and Warren being in disagreement.