Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (24 page)

“Maybe you need to hire an assistant and
make sure he or she goes to any appointments with you,” Bessie suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Natasha said.
 
“Richard suggested that we meet in
London in January, which worries me.
 
I think he’s more likely to cheat on his wife when he’s in London.”

“I’d have to agree with that.
 
I’ve never heard any
rumours
about him cheating on Carolyn, but if he was doing so when he was off the
island, I probably wouldn’t hear.”

Natasha nodded.
 
“He seems smart enough to keep his extramarital
affairs away from such a small island where everyone knows everyone else’s
business.”

The pair sipped their drinks and talked
about the weather and Natasha’s plans for Christmas.

“I was going to go home, but Mary invited me
to stay at
Thie
yn
Traie
and keep working.
 
It was too good of an offer to pass
up.
 
I’m hoping to get ahead on my
plans there so I can start work on my next job as soon as possible.”

“What’s next?”

“I have a small office redesign to do for a
company in Birmingham that just moved to a new building.
 
It isn’t going to win any awards or
garner any excitement, but it’s the sort of little job that keeps me going
between the big assignments that I love.”

“It isn’t a career I ever considered, but it
seems like it would be really enjoyable,” Bessie told her.

“It’s cutthroat at the top,” Natasha
said.
 
“You have to be single-minded
and
focussed
if you want to get to the sort of
position that Christopher Hart held.”

“And are you hoping to get there?”

“Oh, yes.
 
I’m planning on it.
 
I want to be doing television in the
next twenty-four months and securing really big,
high-profile
clients in between.
 
I’m hoping this
job in Birmingham is my last little job ever.”

“Well, good luck to you,” Bessie told
her.
 
“You did wonderful things at ‘Christmas
at the Castle,’ and your plans for
Thie
yn
Traie
are lovely.
 
If I could afford it, I’d have you make
over my cottage before you get too famous.”

Natasha laughed and looked around the snug
kitchen.
 
“It could do with a total
makeover, of course, but it really does suit you just the way it is.”

When the girl had gone and Bessie was
rolling out sugar cookies, she wondered what Natasha had really wanted.
 
Bessie couldn’t imagine why the girl
would have come to her for advice on dealing with Richard
Teare
.
 
The information she’d shared was interesting,
and Bessie thought she ought to pass it along to John, but she wasn’t sure she
trusted that any of it was true.
 
She frowned as she slid star and Christmas tree cutouts into the
oven.
 
After setting the timer, she
grabbed her telephone.

“John, it’s Bessie.
 
I had a strange conversation today that
I think I should share with you,” she said when her call was connected.

“I’ll stop by after work,” John
offered.
 
“I have a few things I
want to talk with you about as well.”

“I’ll have Christmas cookies for you,” she
replied.

“I’ll bring Chinese food, then, shall I?”

“That sounds good,” Bessie agreed.

Bessie mixed up and baked chocolate chip
cookies and then made some icing for the sugar cookies.
 
She couldn’t remember now what she’d
even bought the small bottles of food
colouring
for,
but she was glad that she had them.
 
A thin layer of green icing covered her trees and she used yellow for
the stars. She debated spending a bit more time on them, maybe doing something
more elaborate on the trees, but then thought she might try one first.
 
As she wiped away the crumbs from around
her mouth, Bessie decided that the cookies were perfect just the way they were.
 

She was still tidying the kitchen when John
knocked on her door a short time later.

“It smells like butter and vanilla in here,”
John remarked as he set the box of food down on the counter.

“Or it did,” Bessie laughed.
 
“Now it shall smell like sweet and sour
chicken instead.”

“You must tell me about Christmas cookies,” John
said as they sat down with full plates and fizzy drinks.
 
“Is it an American tradition?”

“Yes, indeed.
 
I’m sure it originally comes from some
European tradition or another, but the Americans have really taken it to
heart.
 
When I was a child, my mother
would bake both cookies and mince pies and Christmas cake, but my sister
stopped doing anything other than cookies when her children were small.”

“Cookie is just the American word for
biscuit, isn’t it?”

“Yes, although American cookies tend to be
sweeter and more indulgent than a typical biscuit,” Bessie replied.
 
“You don’t usually get chocolate chip
biscuits or iced sugar biscuits, do you?”

John shook his head.
 
“Chocolate-covered digestives are nice.”

“But the digestive itself isn’t very sweet,”
Bessie said.
 
“American cookies are
meant to be a real treat.”

“I must make sure I don’t eat too much dinner,
then,” John said.
 
“I want to save
room for a few cookies.”

After the meal was cleared away, Bessie
piled cookies on a plate and put it in the
centre
of
the table.
 
She handed John a small
plate and then sat down with one of her own.
 

“This is delicious,” John said after his
first bite of a star.
 

Bessie managed to eat a Christmas tree of
her own before the kettle boiled.
 
While she fixed the tea, John seemed to be eating steadily.
 
She passed him his drink and sat down
with her own, smiling when she noticed that the large plate was now over half
empty.

“You must take these away,” John said,
pushing the plate towards Bessie.
 
“They are really good and I mustn’t eat any more.”

Bessie laughed and slid the plate as far
from John as the table would allow.
 
“It’s Christmas,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but that’s the excuse I use at work
when I eat mince pies and at Christmas dinner when I eat Christmas pudding.
 
I can’t keep indulging myself or I’ll
have to buy all new clothes before January.”

“You’ll be fine,” Bessie assured him.
 
“You’ve lost some weight.
 
It would be good for you put a few
pounds back on.”

“Anyway, you said you wanted to talk to me,”
John changed the subject.

“Yes,” Bessie agreed.
 
“Natasha visited me today.
 
She said she wanted some advice.”

John listened and took notes while Bessie
recounted the visit.
 
When she was
finished, he looked at her thoughtfully.
 
“What do you think she wanted?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine it was
advice on how to deal with Richard
Teare
,” Bessie
replied.
 
“I’m hardly the person to
give advice on dealing with extramarital affairs.”

“Perhaps she just needed a sounding board,”
John said.
 
“Everyone knows you’re a
good listener.”

“I suppose,” Bessie said.

“Anyway, it’s interesting that she told you
that Richard said his wife had had an affair with Michael Beach.
 
That ties in with some of the other
evidence we’ve gathered.”

“Does it?” Bessie asked, surprised.
 
“I didn’t really believe that.”

“No?
 
Who did you think was lying, Richard or Natasha?”

Bessie sighed.
 
“I can see Richard saying just about
anything if he really was trying to get Natasha to start an affair with him,”
she said.
 
“But I don’t trust
Natasha, either.”

“Maybe you can talk to Carolyn,” John
suggested.
 
“See if you can find out
if it’s true.”

Bessie frowned.
 
“I’d rather not,” she said.
 
“I hate prying into people’s private
lives, and I’m not terribly fond of Carolyn, either.”

“It would be really helpful to know,” John
said seriously.

“I can try.
 
But I won’t see her until Thursday and
we’ll be busy with the Christmas Eve auction.”

“Maybe you could ring her,” John suggested.

Bessie shook her head.
 
“I’m just about prepared to try to ask
her about her romantic life when I see her, but I can’t possibly ring her up
and ask her who she was sleeping with.
 
I simply can’t.”

John nodded.
 
“No, I suppose you’re right,” he mused.

“I’m in Douglas tomorrow for lunch,” Bessie
said.
 
“Maybe I’ll see her in
town.
 
As I understand it, she
spends a lot of time shopping in certain pricey boutiques.
 
I can try stopping in a few.”

“I’d appreciate it,” John replied.

“Can you tell me why you need to know?”
Bessie asked.

“It’s all part of building up the bigger
picture,” John said.
 
“We have two
unexplained deaths and an act of vandalism.
 
We’re trying to tie them together or
prove they aren’t connected, one or the other.”

“So who Michael was involved with at the
time of his death could be relevant,” Bessie said.

“Especially if it was the woman who was
responsible for bringing Mr. Hart to the island,” John said.

“You aren’t suggesting that Michael killed Christopher
because he thought the man was involved with Carolyn?”

“We’re looking at every possibility,” John
replied.
 
“If Carolyn was seeing
Michael, it might explain why he was so quick to argue with Mr. Hart.
 
There may have been some personal
jealousy at work there.”

“I’ll see what Carolyn has to say.
 
Did you talk to the girl at the estate agency
who was involved with Michael?”

“I did, but I can’t tell you anything she
said,” he replied.

Bessie laughed.
 
“I’ll just have to assume that they were
no longer involved at the time of Michael’s death.”

“They weren’t,” John confirmed.
 
“And she has an unbreakable alibi for
the night he died, as well.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I don’t suppose you were able to get
any fingerprints from the house where he was found,” she said.

“We only fingerprinted the items we’re
pretty sure Michael, or someone who was with him, brought into the house.
 
Only Michael’s prints were found on
everything at the scene.”

“So you think he killed himself?”

“That’s one possibility,” John said.
 
“We aren’t ruling out any others,
though.”

A knock on the door interrupted their
conversation.
 
Bessie opened the
door to
Doona
.

“I hope I’m not bothering you,” she
said.
 
“But I just baked some mince
pies and I wanted to share some with you before I ate them all myself.”

Bessie laughed and let her friend in.
 
“John and I were just talking about the
case again,” she told
Doona
.
 
“Let me make you some tea and you can
try some of my Christmas cookies.”

Doona
groaned.
 
“I can’t,” she exclaimed.
 
“I must have eaten half a dozen mince
pies already today.”

“The stars are really good,” John told her
as he pulled the plate back across the table.
 
“And so are the chocolate chip ones.”

“What’s wrong with the Christmas trees?”
Bessie teased as she poured
Doona
some tea.

“I haven’t tried one of them,” John
replied.
 
“In the interest of
fairness, I suppose I must, though.”

Bessie unwrapped the plate of mince pies
that
Doona
had brought and put them on the table next
to the cookies.
 
She quickly
refilled the cookie plate and then sat back down.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,”
Doona
said after she washed a cookie down with her
tea.
 
“I won’t stay if you need
privacy.”