Dead Woman's Shoes: 1 (Lexy Lomax Mysteries) (3 page)

“Does she still look the same?” she asked. “You know, hair, that sort of thing?”

“Her hair never changes,” said the man, almost defensively.

“Oh,” said Lexy, rubbing her spiky crop ruefully. “Not like mine then – halfway down my back and champagne blonde yesterday morning.”

“Good heavens,” he replied, politely.

Lexy bit her lip. He didn’t need to know that. This wasn’t about her, and anyway, she was meant to be on the run, in disguise, lying low.

“So – you’d like me to follow her?” she said. It wasn’t like the woman was going to be difficult to spot – she was the size of a prize heifer.

“That’s right.” He seemed relieved to be getting to the nitty-gritty. “She goes out every Friday night, sometimes on Wednesdays, too – tells me it’s to do with the amateur dramatics committee, but I’ve found out that they only meet monthly.” He leaned forward, gazing at Lexy intently. “I need to know where she’s going the rest of the time. She might be getting into something she can’t control. In fact, I’m very worried she’s going to get into… trouble.”

Lexy tried to hide her astonishment. What was he trying to tell her? That his wife was prone to unrestrained bouts of illicit passion and might end up pregnant as a result? She tried not to snort out loud. Avril Todd was fifty-five if she was a day.

Aware of her silence, and of Mr Todd still gazing at her, Lexy tried to think of some appropriate questions to ask.

“She done this sort of thing before?” Straight away she realised the question was impertinent. But Roderick Todd answered readily enough.

“Yes – in fact that’s why we had to move from London.”

Lexy blinked. Avril was obviously a regular little raver.

“And why it’s so important that I nip it in the bud now,” continued the cuckolded husband. “I don’t want to have to move again.”

Lexy nodded. “Yup – I can understand that.” Actually, she couldn’t understand it at all. But she wasn’t here to do psychoanalysis on this oddball.

“Er… does she always go out at the same time when she goes off on these… meetings?” The word on her tongue was ‘jaunts’.

“Oh, yes – eight o’clock on the dot,” he replied, promptly. “Takes her car. It’s a blue Volvo saloon. I’ve written the details down for you.” He indicated the sheet of printed notes.

“And does she always return at the same time?”

He shrugged. “Usually between ten and eleven. It’s in the notes.”

Lexy regarded him uncertainly, trying to get his measure. Your average red-blooded male would be positively frothing at the mouth if he suspected his other half was playing away from home.

“Any idea who she’s meeting?” Perhaps that would get him going.

“It’s… more about what she’s doing,” he said, hesitantly.

Lexy’s mouth formed a circle, suddenly comprehending. He knew who she was meeting, but he didn’t know how far things had got. Strolling hand in hand along the beach? Canoodling over a candlelit meal? Or was it directly to a hotel room, without passing Go?

“So basically, you just want me to tail her and…”

“Get some photographic evidence,” Mr Todd supplied, earnestly.

“No problem.” Lexy glanced at the kitchen where her elderly camera sat just out of sight.

“You can send the photos mobile to mobile, if you like.” Mr Todd held up a slim silver lozenge. “My number’s there in the notes. Or email them to me.”

Lexy gave him a sickly smile.

Her companion stood up, obviously relieved to conclude business.

“Right, I should be on my way. I expect you’re busy?”

“Well…” Lexy made a balancing motion with her hands.

“Make a good living from it?”

Lexy looked around. “Keeps me in small china policemen.”

He gave a quick smile that faded almost as soon as it appeared. “You’re not exactly a stereotypical private detective are you?”

“You mean a chain-smoking, alcoholic, divorced, overweight middle-aged bloke?” She shook her head. “But I’m working on divorced.”

“As long as you aren’t working on middle-aged bloke. I… er… don’t recommend it.”

He reached into his jacket pocket. “Here’s the deposit. One hundred pounds. And I need you to follow her tomorrow night. Friday, you see.”

Tomorrow?

He had caught her involuntary look of alarm. She was so not prepared for this.

“That will be all right, won’t it?” he said, urgently. “It’s just that I think things are coming to a head.”

It wasn’t the best way to put it, Lexy thought, considering the circumstances.

She eyed the roll of notes.

Although Roderick Todd looked like an ordinary businessman, there was something about him that made her feel… Her shoulders gave an uncontrolled twitch.

“If it turns out your wife is doing what you think she is,” she said, “have you any idea what you’re going do about it?” She didn’t quite know why she’d asked him this.

The question caught him by surprise, too. “W… well, I’d have to put a stop to it, wouldn’t I?” One pale hand went to his mouth, and he nibbled softly at an already half-consumed nail. “Once and for all, I mean.”

Lexy’s eyes couldn’t help flicking back to the banknotes that Mr Todd was still gripping in his other hand. “C’mon!” they seemed to be shouting.

“How, exactly?” she asked.

“By getting her some help or something, I suppose. Is this relevant, Miss Lomax?”

“It’s Ms, actually.”

He acknowledged this with a conciliatory nod.

“Just like to assure myself that everything’s under control,” Lexy continued smoothly. “You’d be surprised at how some people react when faced with the evidence.” She was so busy congratulating herself on her own quick thinking that she nearly missed Mr Todd’s response.

“Oh… yes, I see. Well, it’s not as if this is the first time.” He gave a small laugh. “But I’m not contemplating violence, if that’s what you mean. So – will you do it?”

Try as she might, Lexy couldn’t think of a rational reason why not. She nodded, and he thrust the notes at her.

“Oh – I forgot to mention.” Mr Todd rubbed his smooth chin. “She might be out a bit later than usual tomorrow night. I’m… er… going to be at an old school reunion in Lincoln, you see. I’ll be heading off tomorrow afternoon, and I won’t be back until… er… lunchtime on Saturday, in fact. I’ll call you sometime Saturday morning, if that’s all right?”

“Fine,” said Lexy vaguely, wondering if she was going to have to spend the whole of Friday night sitting in her car outside a cheap hotel.

“Right, I’ll be off, then.” Roderick Todd rubbed his hands as if glad to be rid of the money and navigated back through the dust cloud to the front door. Moments later Lexy heard his car door slam and the crunch of gravel under receding tyres.

Kinky got up, shook himself, sneezed loudly and trotted through the kitchen on to the veranda.

Lexy stared into the silence.

After a while she followed Kinky outside. She needed to talk over this Avril Todd thing, even though it was almost certainly going to be a one-way conversation. “You there, pal?”

But there was no answering patter of tiny feet.

The wild, sunlit garden had an Eden-like quality about it, and she leaned on the warm veranda railing and lifted her face, eyes closed for a minute. She might have a few problems to deal with, but this was a good place to be dealing with them. No one was going to bother her here.

Nevertheless, a quiet rustling nearby made her eyes snap open again.

“That you, Kinks?”

But it wasn’t.

Lexy felt her pupils contract in surprise.

A red deer stag had stepped from the scrub. He stood at the end of the garden and eyed her calmly, branched antlers poised above his head like carved driftwood.

Lexy gazed, captivated. You didn’t get this in South Kensington.

Then all hell broke loose.

Kinky, snarling like a miniature Tasmanian devil, hurtled across the garden.

“Oh crap,” said Lexy.

The deer wheeled around, startled, and lowered its heavily armoured head.

“Oi!” Lexy leapt down from the veranda. “Leave it!” She didn’t know if she was addressing Kinky or the stag.

The chihuahua had almost reached his antlered quarry before the latter made a snap decision and leapt hugely but neatly over the picket fence and bounded away. Kinky forced his way through a gap and continued the chase.

Lexy gave a frustrated shout. Stupid little mutt. Never did know when he’d won.

She was standing with hands on hips when Kinky returned, still emitting small snarls. One of his ears sported a long, bloody gash, no doubt from the tangle of gorse and bramble he had raced headlong into. Lexy rolled her eyes, swept him up, and carried him to the kitchen sink to bathe the wound.

“This is going to need stitching,” she groaned, as a mixture of blood and water streamed down the plughole. “When are you going to learn, dunderhead?”

The chihuahua gave her a reproachful look, but Lexy wasn’t in the mood to be reproached. Last time Kinky had to get an ear stitched, the day he went for an Afghan hound in St James’s Park, it had cost her a hundred and fifty quid and a shed-load of grief from the owner.

She eyed the dog speculatively. Perhaps if she made a healing poultice of tormentil? It wasn’t called blood-root for nothing – it had mild coagulating properties.

But this was more than a surface wound. Trudging to the bedroom, Lexy shrugged off her now bloodstained t-shirt and pulled on yesterday’s again.

3

Minutes later Lexy closed the front door behind her, an unrepentant Kinky tucked under one arm. She considered taking the car, then rejected the idea in case the parking was a nightmare in Clopwolde-on-Sea. Anyway, Kinky wasn’t about to bleed to death. In fact, he was looking rather pleased with himself. So instead Lexy strode down the steep gravel lane, through open heath, towards the pastel-coloured seaside village spread out below her on a sparkling bay.

As she drew closer, her stride faltered. She had been expecting something rather more down to earth: one of those ubiquitous British scruffy-but-cheerful seaside resorts, perhaps with an amusement arcade or two, and a bunch of cafés on the seafront selling pie and mash. Somewhere she wouldn’t look out of place wearing ripped jeans and sporting a tattoo.

Clopwolde, however, appeared to have been designed specifically with chocolate box lids in mind. Each rose-entwined cottage vied playfully with the next for preposterous prettiness. The names said it all. Buttercup Cottage, Coot Cottage, Mudpuppy Cottage, Pumpkin Cottage…

The meandering high street confirmed her apprehension. It had a rash of cutesy gift boutiques, bijou art galleries, an olde worlde inn bedecked with hanging baskets, a 1930s memorabilia shop called Gentler Times, a generous sprinkling of tea rooms and, somewhat incongruously, an Internet café.

Above it all a large white windmill smirked on a grassy knoll.

Lexy groaned. Passers-by were throwing her sideways looks. Glancing down, she noticed blood leaking through the dishcloth serving as a bandage for Kinky’s ear. She stopped outside a dinky stone edifice called Periwinkle Cottage. A woman in crisp green linen was just turning out of the gate, accompanied by a beribboned Yorkshire terrier, which Kinky eyeballed beadily.

“Scuse me,” said Lexy. “Is there a vet in Clopwolde?”

The woman’s stony eyes swept over Kinky, and met Lexy’s with an almost audible clack.

“That dog should be in a basket,” she stated.

For a moment Lexy thought she meant a shopping basket. Sod that. She was about to tell the woman that in that case, gay little Fido there ought to be in a handbag.

“It might run off and do further damage to itself,” continued the woman. “You people have no idea.”

“You people?” Lexy spluttered.

“Go straight along the high street and the surgery is about halfway down on the left, in a little alley,” continued the woman, in her loud brittle voice. “That is your dog, I suppose?”

Several passing holidaymakers slowed down, faces agog.

“Yes, thank you,” snorted Lexy, hurrying off before she got herself lynched. The supercilious bat had obviously decided that Lexy was some sort of low-life who had just nicked an old dear’s pet chihuahua. Anyone would think she’d asked her where the nearest fur glove-maker was.

Lexy rapidly negotiated the drifts of tourists that were starting to fill the high street. She had to dodge out into the road at one point to get past a clot of grey-tops clucking over a billboard in the shape of a palm tree.

It proclaimed, in foot-high letters, a forthcoming production of
South Pacific
, by the Clopwolde-on-Sea Players. Lexy shook her head despairingly. This was so not her kind of place.

Within a minute she was turning from the end of the high street into a side alley which bore a sign announcing that G Ellenger, Veterinary Surgeon, resided in the unexpectedly shabby end building.

As soon as she stepped into the reception area, Lexy became aware of an atmosphere that didn’t have anything to do with disinfectant or dogs.

A large woman with a pile of rust-coloured hair stood at the counter holding an indignantly mewing wicker basket in one hand and a small white plastic tub in the other.

Lexy melted into a corner behind a stand of magazines about worms and tetanus.

The woman was reading out loud from the label on the tub. “… and apply frequently to the affected area, blah blah.” She had a flat, penetrating, confrontational voice. “So that’s what I did. And what happened? The rash got worse.”

Lexy glimpsed the receptionist behind the desk, to whom this tirade was being addressed. She was about thirty, hollow-cheeked with quietly furious eyes.

“I’m sure the aloe vera cream wouldn’t have made Horace’s rash worse, Avril.” Her voice shook under the distinctive Suffolk lilt.

Avril.
It was Avril Todd. Lexy thought she’d recognised those granite features from the photographs.

“So now I have to pay for antibiotics,” Avril continued, ignoring the receptionist. “This quack remedy was a waste of time and money.”

Lexy frowned. No need for that.

“Perhaps the rash had reached the stage where it needed something stronger,” said the receptionist. “But if you carry on using the cream alongside the medication, it will soothe the inflammation, and make him more comfortable.”