November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 (9 page)

So with
Sergeant Black’s warning ringing in my ears, I went downstairs and
opened the front door to Kale. A blast of cold air blew into the
hallway as I opened the door. I wrapped my arms about me and
shivered. “Hey, Kale, what are you doing here? I thought you were
going away for the week to see your parents.”

“
They’ve gone out of town for the week,” he said, brushing past
me and into the hall. He shook rain from his coat. “I don’t want to
spend the week rattling around that old farmhouse on my own – I’d
be bored out of my brains. Besides, I’ve got something to tell you
I think you might be interested in hearing.”

He
started to make his way up the staircase to my
apartment.

“
What are you talking about?” I called after him.

“
I’ve got another mystery for us to solve.” He grinned back
over his shoulder at me.

“
A mystery?” I sighed, my heart sinking. I followed him up the
stairs. “Sergeant Black warned us not to…”

“
Whoa!” Kale suddenly breathed, stepping into my
room.

I walked
in behind him and closed the door. He was standing in the middle of
the living room and staring at the piles of newspapers covering the
floor. Although Kale and I had become friends at training school,
this was the first time he had been to my rented room.

“
What’s with all the newspapers?” he whispered, taking a step
forward and inspecting some of them. It only took him a moment to
realise they all told the stories of a police officer who had been
murdered. He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “This has
something to do with your father, doesn’t it?”

Not
wanting to discuss my mountainous collection of newspapers with
him, I placed my hands on my hips and said, “What are you doing
here, Kale?”

“
Fancy solving another mystery?” he grinned, dropping down into
the chair by the window and propping his feet up on the coffee
table.

“
Fancy getting yourself thrown out of police training school?”
I said, slapping his feet from off the table. “And that’s my chair,
get out.”

I loved that particular chair. It was as worn and threadbare
as the two others in my room, but it was positioned by the window.
I liked to sit in the silence and stare out of the window and down
onto the street. I liked watching the people that happened to walk
past. I liked to
see
them. With a roguish grin on his handsome face, Kale sprang
out of the chair and dropped into another. He looked at me, his
skewwhiff hair looking as if he had just climbed out of
bed.

“
What?” he grinned up at me as I stood glaring down at
him.

“
I just don’t believe you, Kale,” I scowled. “Have you
forgotten what Sergeant Black said to us yesterday?”

“
Yeah,” he said, stretching out in the chair and crossing his
feet at the ankles. “We’re meant to be keeping ourselves out of
trouble.”

“
He also said we’re to leave any crime solving until we’ve
passed out of training school.”

“
This isn’t a crime,” Kale said, looking at me. “Or at least I
don’t think it is.”

“
You said it’s some kind of mystery,” I reminded
him.

“
Okay, so I exaggerated a bit,” he shrugged.

“
So if it’s not a mystery, what is it then?” I
asked.

“
See, you just can’t help yourself,” he chuckled. “And that’s
what I love about you, November Lake. However much you try and
pretend you’re not interested, the mention of the word mystery and
you’re buzzing with excitement.”

“
That’s not true,” I said, although I knew it was. Part of me
wanted to tell Kale I wasn’t interested, but another part of me was
desperate to know what had brought him to my door so early on a
Saturday morning.

“
Go on, admit it, you do want to know,” he teased with a
smile.

Throwing
myself down into my chair by the window, and feeling angry with
myself for what I was about to say, I said, “Go on, then, tell
me.”

“
It has something to do with a missing dog,” he said, sitting
forward in his chair, blue eyes sparkling.

“
You’re kidding me, right?” I sighed.

“
No, listen, you don’t understand,” he said, unable to contain
the evident excitement brimming inside him. “I met this woman last
night and…”

“
Are you sure you want to be telling me this?” I cut
in.

“
It’s not what you think,” he said with a shake of his head.
“After training school finished yesterday, and just wanting to
flake out on the sofa in front of the TV for the night, I went to
McDonald’s for my tea to save myself the hassle of cooking. Anyway,
I was sitting there working my way through my second cheeseburger
when I looked up and noticed this woman. She could’ve only been in
her mid-twenties and real pretty. But it wasn’t her prettiness that
caught my eye.”

“
What then?” I asked, already intrigued.

“
She was sitting all on her own, hands clasping a cup of tea
and crying,” Kale said. “I had never seen anyone look so sad. But
as I sat and watched her, I realised that it was more than just
sadness I could see on her face; it was fear. This lady was scared.
So finishing off the cheeseburger, I took my coffee and went over
to her table. I asked if she was okay. She looked so startled by my
sudden presence that I flashed her my badge and explained I was a
police officer. I asked if there was anything I could do to
help.

“‘
The dog,’ she sobbed, bringing one hand up to her eyes as if
to mask her tears.

“‘
What dog?’ I asked her.

“‘
Gone,’ she whispered.

“
I guessed she meant that she had lost her dog and that’s why
she was so upset,” Kale said. “But there was more to it than that.
Like I said, she seemed really scared.”

“
What else did she say?” I asked Kale.

“
Not much, she continued to sit and cry. Again I explained that
I was a police officer and could help her. I took one of my I.D.
cards out with my number on it and handed it to her. She took it.
Before I’d had the chance to explain that if she changed her mind
and wanted to call me to report her missing dog, she jumped and
fled into the night.”

“
And is that it?” I asked, fearing that there was very little
of a mystery to solve without more information.

“
Not quite,” Kale said. “As I lay watching TV last night, I got
a text message from her.”

“
What did it say?” I said, almost springing out of my
chair.

“
That she was scared of making an official report to the police
but would like my help,” Kale said. “I sent a text back explaining
that I had a friend who could help, too.”

“
Me?” I asked.

“
Yes,” Kale nodded. “I told her to come here this morning
at…”

Before
Kale had a chance to finish, my doorbell rang for the second time
that morning.

“
Sounds like your mystery woman has arrived,” I said, looking
at him.

Kale
lingered at the top of the staircase, as I headed down to the front
door. A bedraggled-looking woman stood in the street outside. She
held in her hand a small overnight case. The hood of her coat was
up and the face staring from beneath it at me was tired looking,
yet pretty as Kale had described it to be.

“
November Lake?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. I
detected a faint tremor in it. Kale had been right about the fear
in her eyes, too. “Your friend said it would be okay for me to call
by this morning. It is okay, isn’t it?”

“
Of course,” I smiled. How could I turn someone away who looked
so fearful, back out into the rain? “Please come in. My friend Kale
is waiting upstairs.”

“
Thank you,” the woman said meekly. She stepped into the hall
and I closed the front door. I led her upstairs and into my room,
where Kale was now waiting for us.

“
Hello again,” he smiled at her, holding out his
hand.

She
closed her long, slender fingers around his, and then let her hand
fall away.

“
Please take a seat,” I said, gesturing to the remaining chair.
She glanced around the piles of newspapers, then sat in the
chair.

“
Tea?” I asked her.

“
That would be nice,” she smiled, pulling back her hood to
reveal a mop of long blonde curly hair. I doubted that her apparent
sadness was the only thing that had attracted Kale’s eye the night
before.

I went
to the kitchen where I made a fresh pot of tea. Placing three cups,
a small jug of milk and a bowl of sugar onto a tray, I carried the
tea back into the living room, where Kale and the young woman sat
facing each other in silence. The china teacups clinked in their
saucers as I placed the tray down on the table. I poured the tea
and added a splash of milk to each cup and handed one to the woman.
Kale took one for himself. I went to my chair by the window and sat
down. Looking across the room, I watched the woman stir a spoonful
of sugar into her tea.

Once she
was settled and had taken a sip of the hot tea, I said, “My friend,
Kale, has explained that you need some help.”

“
Yes,” she nodded, glancing at me then at Kale.

“
You said, something last night about a dog,” Kale reminded
her.

“
Someone cut the dog’s head clean off,” she said. “I had never
seen so much blood. It was terrifying.”

Kale and
I glanced at each other, then back at the young woman.

“
Tell us what has happened from the beginning,” I said. “Then
we shall see if we can help you.”

“
My name is Wendy Creswell,” she said, placing the teacup onto
the table and folding her hands in the lap of her skirt. “I am
twenty-five years old and live in the village of Little Choke,
which is about twenty miles from here along the coast. I am an
orphan. Both of my parents died in a car crash when I was very
young. With no immediate family to look after me, I was raised in
care and foster homes. It was then, much to my surprise, I
discovered I had been left an inheritance by a distant uncle on my
mother’s side of the family. The inheritance consisted of £150,000
and a small house in Little Choke. The house is liveable, but parts
are in desperate need of repair. Wanting to put my past behind me
and wanting to fulfil my dream of becoming a writer, I moved into
the house that had been left for me. It had stood empty for many
years, but by using some of the money that had been left to me, I
paid for some work to be done and it was soon fit for me to move
into. Like I said, the house is still in need of repair, and it is
my plan to build a small extension at the back of the house which I
can use as a place to write. I envisage large windows where I can
sit on a summer’s day and look out across the garden. When I
thought my life was complete and I couldn’t be happier, a man named
Ethan Cole came into my life. He lives on the other side of the
village in a small farmhouse. We met while I was out walking in the
meadows this Easter. He is five years older than me and very
handsome. He is some kind of computer engineer. I don’t even
pretend to understand the complexities of his work. But we do have
something that binds us, and that is our love for the written word.
As much as I love to write he loves to read – plays in particular.
He is part of a small amateur dramatic society and they often put
on small plays in the village hall. Therefore, it wasn’t long
before we became more than just good friends. I would either spend
some nights at his farmhouse or he would stay at mine. I would
often tell Ethan my dreams and the plans I had to build my own very
little writing sanctuary at the rear of the house. Like I said, I
couldn’t be happier, I had a house of my own, I had started to sell
my stories on the Internet, and had fallen in love,” Wendy
explained.

“
So what happened to change all of that?” I asked
her.

Wendy
took another sip of her tea. The sound of the cup clinking in the
saucer drew attention to her trembling hands. She placed the cup
back onto the table. “It was three days ago that my happiness began
to fade. I had been writing at the kitchen table, when I heard a
knock at the door. Thinking that it might be Ethan, I jumped up and
threw open the door. To my horror, it wasn’t Ethan at all, but a
disgusting creature of a man. He was stooped forward, as if he had
a lump on his back. He wore the filthiest of clothes and they
stank. The long brown coat he wore was covered in mud and dirt. His
worn trousers and boots were just as disgusting. On his head he
wore a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes were hidden behind a thick pair
of dark glasses, and at first I wondered if he were not some kind
of blind beggar going from door to door asking for money. He had a
big, thick beard that crawled up his cheeks and down over his neck
and the front of his coat. He was the most repugnant thing I had
ever seen, and the stench wafting from him made me throw a hand to
my nose. He wore fingerless mittens on his hands and his
fingernails were black with grime and dirt. Although he wore thick,
black glasses and I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew he was staring at
me.