Aunt Bessie Invites (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 9) (12 page)

“Either it was something to do with his
attempts to buy a farm or to do with his womanizing,” she surmised.
 
“Although I can’t really see any motive
in either of those.”

“What could his wanting to buy a farm have
to do with his getting killed?” Doona asked.

“I don’t know,” Bessie said after another
long silence.
 
“But I can’t see why
his going out with so many women would be a motive either, unless some woman
was so upset when he broke up with her that she decided to kill him.”

“Or someone’s father or former boyfriend
wanted to be rid of him,” Doona said.

“He was leaving,” Bessie reminded her.

“And he wasn’t leaving anyone, um, in a
family way?” John asked.

Bessie shook her head.
 
“In spite of all the talk about him, I
never heard worse than he was seeing too many women.
 
No one suggested that he was taking the
women to bed.
 
Certainly none of the
young women involved had an illegitimate child the next year.”

“With the possible exception of Susan Black
or Anna Long,” John interjected.

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” Bessie agreed.

“Of course, he might have been killed for
some other reason that hasn’t occurred to us yet,” Hugh said.
 
“Maybe he was involved in something
criminal that got him murdered, or maybe he was just in the wrong place at the
wrong time and he saw or heard something he shouldn’t have.”

“Or maybe he died accidently and someone
just hid the body,” Bessie added.

“All possibilities, especially at this early
stage in the investigation,” John said.
 
“And on that note, I think I’d better get home and get some sleep.
 
I have an awful lot of work piling up
for tomorrow.”

Bessie walked her guests to the door.
 
Hugh and John both waved as they climbed
into their cars and drove away.

“Are you okay?” Bessie asked Doona as she
gave her a hug.

“I’m fine, just a little nervous about
Friday,” Doona told her.
 
“Tonight
was nice, almost like old times.”

“It was nice, even if the subject was
unpleasant,” Bessie replied.
 

“At least whatever happened took place a
long time ago,” Doona said.

“And someone has been thinking that they got
away with it for a long time,” Bessie added.

Doona frowned.
 
“I really do hope, if it was murder,
that the killer moved away after it happened.
 
I’d hate to think he or she is still
around.”

Bessie locked the door behind her friend and
then double-checked that the other door was secure.
 
Tomorrow she’d talk to Bahey.
 
Maybe Bahey would be able to suggest a
motive they hadn’t considered yet.

Thursday was wet and windy, and the next
morning Bessie stood in her doorway watching the rain for several minutes.
 
Finally, sighing deeply, she pulled on
her waterproofs and her Wellington boots and headed out for her morning walk.
 
She walked only as far as the holiday
cottages, waved to Thomas Shimmin, who was hard at work painting one of them,
and then turned for home.
 
An extra
cup of tea and a slice of toast, thick with strawberry jam, cheered her up
after she’d dried off.
 
Her taxi was
due at half eleven, so Bessie settled in with a book for the morning.
 
When the knock came on her door, she was
startled.
 
A quick glance at the
clock told her that she’d completely lost track of time.

Dave, her favourite driver from her regular
service, gave her a bright smile when she opened her door.
 
He was standing under a huge
umbrella.
 
“Did I get the time
wrong?” he asked.

Bessie smiled at the question.
 
She’d opened the door in her bare feet,
not looking at all as if she had a lunch appointment in only half an hour.
 
“I lost myself in a book,” she told the
man.
 
“Please come in and give me a
minute to get ready.”

With Dave waiting in the kitchen, Bessie
rushed up the stairs to change into something more suitable than her casual
attire.
 
She ran a comb through her
hair and applied a quick coat of lipstick.
 
A glance in the mirror told her that she looked pretty much the same as
always.
 
That would have to be good
enough, she thought as she hurried back down the stairs.

Dave smiled at her.
 
“Now you look ready to go out,” he
said.
 
Bessie grabbed her handbag
and followed Dave out of the cottage.
 
He held his umbrella over her head as she locked her door.
 
After tucking her into the passenger
seat, Dave was quick to climb behind the wheel.

“Douglas, right?” he checked.

“Yes, I’m having lunch with my friend who
lives on Seaview Terrace,” Bessie told him.

They chatted about nothing much on the
journey into Douglas.
 
When Dave
pulled up in front of Bahey’s block of flats, he parked the car.
 
“I’ll just walk you to the door,” he
said.
 
He had the large umbrella
open and was at the passenger door before Bessie could object.

“Thank you so much,” Bessie said as she
pressed the buzzer for Bahey’s flat.
 
The lock on the door clicked open and Bessie pushed the door.
 
Inside, she turned back to thank Dave
again.

“Make sure you bill me for all of your
time,” she told him.
 
“I made you
wait at my cottage and now you’ve walked me to the door as well.”

“Ah, I almost forgot, I’m so sorry the wife
and I can’t make it to your dinner on Saturday,” he said.
 
“I’m sure she rang and told you, but I
wanted to thank you myself for including us.”

“I’m sorry you can’t make it,” Bessie
replied.
 
“It should be a nice
afternoon.”

“No doubt,” Dave said.
 
“But we always go across for a short
holiday in late November.
 
It’s my
wife’s sister’s birthday, you see, and we always go over and take her out for a
meal.”

“That’s lovely,” Bessie said.
 
“I hope you have a wonderful time.”

“Ring for me when you’re ready for home,”
Dave told her.

“I will,” Bessie promised.

She walked past the desk where the manager
was sitting.
 
The man was a stranger
to Bessie.
 
He glanced up from his
magazine and then went back to it, ignoring Bessie.
 
She shrugged and headed for the lift.

Before it arrived, the door to the section
of ground floor flats opened and two of her former neighbours walked out.

“Ah, Elizabeth Cubbon, what a wonderful
surprise.”
 
Simon O’Malley smiled
his dazzling smile at her.

Bessie smiled back at the very attractive
man.
 
“It’s lovely to see you,
Simon,” she said.
 
“ And you,
Tammara,” she added, including Tammara Flynn in her greeting.

“We are so excited about next Saturday, I
can’t even tell you,” Simon enthused.
 
“Aren’t we, Tammy?”

The girl grinned.
 
“We are, actually,” she agreed.
 
“We’ve never been invited to a
Thanksgiving dinner before and it sounds quite delightful.”

“I’m glad you’re looking forward to it,”
Bessie said.
 
“I must say
,
a few of your neighbours seem less enthusiastic.
 
I’ve actually not heard from some of
them.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Simon said with
a shrug.
 
“Tammy and I are the only
fun ones around here.
 
Except for
Bahey and Howard, of course.
 
You
may have to go door-to-door to find out who’s planning to attend.”

“I might just do that,” Bessie said.
 
“But not until after lunch with Bahey.”

Simon laughed.
 
“I like a woman who has her priorities
in order,” he told her.
 
After
giving her a hug, he and Tammara swept past Bessie on their way out.
 
Bessie boarded the lift that was now
waiting and pressed the button for the first floor.

When the lift doors opened, Bahey was
standing in the upstairs corridor.
 
“My goodness, that lift took ages,” she said as Bessie hugged her.

“I ran into Simon and Tammara,” Bessie
explained.

“Ah, that explains it,” Bahey said with a
laugh.
 
“Anyway, come in.”

Bessie followed her friend into Bahey’s
small but comfortable flat.
 
Joney
was settled on a chair in the small sitting area, but she got up when Bessie
entered.

“Bessie, it’s been too long since we did
this,” she said.

Bessie hugged her tightly.
 
“We must make more of an effort,” she
said.

“Of course, we’ll see you again at
Thanksgiving,” Bahey said.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Howard, as
well,” Bessie said.

“You might not have to wait until
Thanksgiving for that,” Bahey replied.
 
“I’ve sent him away while we have lunch, but he’ll probably be back
before too long.”

“You two are like teenagers,” Joney
said.
 
“You can’t bear to be apart
for more than an hour or two.”

“Yep,” Bahey said happily.
 
“It’s both weird and wonderful.”

Bessie laughed at the change in her
friend.
 
“I always like to see
Howard,” she said.

Bahey served homemade steak and kidney pie
with treacle sponge for pudding.
 
While they ate, Joney brought Bessie up to date on her life in
Foxdale.
 
As she spooned up her last
bite of treacle, Bessie decided to bring the conversation around to Jacob
Conover.

“So, when you rang, you said you recognised
Jacob’s watch,” Bessie reminded Bahey.
 
“What do you remember about him?”

“He was bad news,” Joney said harshly.
 

“In what way?” Bessie asked.

“He nearly got our Karen into trouble,”
Bahey said.

“What sort of trouble?” Bessie wondered.

“Not that sort,” Joney told her.
 
“She wasn’t, that is, she was a good
girl.
 
But she was only seventeen
and very innocent.
 
When he told her
he loved her, she believed him.”

“I didn’t realise he stayed with anyone long
enough to start telling them he loved them,” Bessie said.

“Oh, he and Karen were together for about
two months,” Bahey said.
 
“He went
out with a lot of other women at the same time, but he told her they were just
window dressing, like, to hide the fact that he’d fallen in love with her.”

“But why would he need window dressing?”
Bessie asked.

Bahey shrugged.
 
“Maybe so Karen’s family wouldn’t
worry?” she suggested.
 
“But we did,
and when we heard that he’d asked her leave the island with him, I took her
away.”

“He asked her to leave with him?” Bessie
asked in surprise.

Bahey nodded.
 
“I rang Karen last night and had her
tell me the story again,” she told Bessie.
 
“They went out for a while and then he said he going back across and
asked her to come with him.
 
She
actually considered it, but then she told her mum and her mum rang me and I
arranged to take her with me back to my work.”

“I never heard any of this at the time,”
Bessie said thoughtfully.

“Well, we didn’t tell anyone,” Bahey
said.
 
“We didn’t want anyone to
think that Karen was the type to run off with a man like that, did we?”

“And she never heard from him again?” Bessie
checked.

“Oh, he wrote once or twice, but I destroyed
the letters before she saw them,” Bahey said.

“But if he wrote to her later, it can’t be
his body we’ve found,” Bessie said in confusion.

“I took her with me in July,” Bahey told
Bessie.
 
“He wrote to her in August,
but he was still on the island until September, right?”

Bessie nodded.
 
“So he was thinking of leaving in July,
but didn’t actually go until September.
 
That’s interesting, but I’m not sure why.”

Joney and Bahey both laughed, and after a
moment Bessie joined in.
 
“I don’t
think we’ve solved anything,” Bessie said after a bit.