Relief Valve: The Plumber's Mate, Book 2 (23 page)

“But she’s still demanding sex at all hours?” Judging by the dark circles under Dave’s eyes, that wasn’t an exaggeration.

“Yeah, says we’ve got to take all the chances we can, at our age. Women, eh?” Dave took a long swig of his pint. “Times like this I start wondering if your lot have got the right idea.”

“We’ll have you marching in the Pride parade yet,” I said, toasting him with my pint.

We talked about football for a bit, as you do, and I polished off Dave’s chips. I could always have a salad tomorrow or something. I was just wondering how I could turn the conversation round to my sister without being about as unsubtle as Dave’s wife with her hormones in a tizzy, when he saved me the trouble by bringing her up himself. Cherry, I mean, not his wife and her hormones. Again. “How’s your sister doing?”

“She’s good. Out of hospital and staying with Mum and Dad, so if she’s got any sense she’ll be back on her feet in no time. Reckon you’re any nearer catching the bastard who poisoned her?”

“In a word: chance’d be a fine thing. The Church of England’s worse than the bloody freemasons for closing ranks under pressure.”

“So you’ve been working the Greg angle?” That prickle in my chest was back. Maybe it was just indigestion from eating too many of Dave’s chips.

“We’ve been working all of ’em.” He shrugged at my sharp look. “Some bright spark came up with a jealousy theory—after all, up-and-coming young canon, he’s got to be a bit of a catch in clergy terms, right? So we started checking out if he had any ex-girlfriends. Turns out—at least as far as we can find out—your reverend chum had less action than the Pope before your sister came along.” Dave took another long swig of his pint. “You sure he’s not one of your lot?”

“Pretty sure. I could ask my mate Gary, if you like. He always knows.”

“He bloody would.”

“What about clients? Cherry’s, I mean.” I thought I might as well save Phil the bother of looking into it if Dave had already been there, done that.

“She says not.”

“What, none who’d want to murder her, or none of them at the party?”

“Both. Come on, Tom, she’s not daft. She’d have noticed any old clients with a grudge turning up at her private do.”

“S’pose. Although that Slivovitz she was drinking was pretty strong stuff.”

“Yeah.” Dave looked at me significantly.

I huffed. “What?”

“Drinks a lot, does she, your sister?”

“
No
.” Then I thought about it. “Don’t know, to be honest. You know I haven’t seen that much of her lately. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything, anyhow.”

“Look, I’m not saying this is what happened, but it’s not unknown for people to do themselves harm—” I slammed down my pint and braced my arms on the table, about to get up. “Just listen, all right?”

I subsided.

Dave gave a quick nod. “See, sometimes if they’re a bit, well, emotionally unstable, people do stuff they wouldn’t dream of, normally. Like a cry for attention.”

“You’re saying my sister’s unstable?”

“I’m not saying anything. Just talking generally, all right?” Generally, my arse. “But she’s at a difficult age, right? About to turn forty, not married, no kids. Take it from me, mate, that’s a dangerous time for a woman.”

“Yeah, but she was engaged.
Is
engaged. And she could still have kids, easy. My mum was forty-six when I was born.”

“It’s like they say—ninety percent of accidents happen in the home.”

“There’ll be an
accident
happening in this pub if you don’t watch out. And you can cross the self-harming theory off your list, all right? Cherry would never do anything like that. What about the Literati? Seem like a right suspicious bunch if you ask me.” I crossed my fingers he wouldn’t have heard about my little visit to them last night.

“What, that bunch of old has-beens, wannabes and windbags? Think they’ve spent so long cooking up plots for their books it’s sent them barmy and they’ve tried to act one out for real?”

“Don’t think they go for mysteries, actually.”

“Got all that from your little natter with the chairman at the party, did you?”

“Er, well…”

“Or could it be down to the fact that the Literati’s latest member is one Thomas Paretski? Funny how that name keeps cropping up, innit?” Dave shook his head. “Wish I’d never called you in on that Melanie Porter case. Might’ve known it’d come back to bite me on the arse. What am I, a dating agency for nosey bloody parkers?”

“Well, if you want a testimonial for your website…”

“Fuck off. So what’s your bloke got, then? Seeing as we’re sharing information here.”

“You know, you could ring him and ask him yourself.”

“Yeah, and he’d tell me to piss off. Come on, give.”

I sighed. “Fine. But you’re buying me a pint first.”

It took a couple more pints before I’d finished filling him in on what Phil and I had learned. Well, that, and somehow I got talking about my Auntie Lol and her weird bequest.

“Bit of a coincidence, innit?” Dave leaned back in his seat and belched. “Your auntie asks you to go poking around her ex-husband’s house, and five minutes later, people start keeling over from poison. Makes you wonder. You were holding that drink for a bit, weren’t you? Wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for some people to have thought it was yours, now would it?”

I shivered. Must be a draught in here. “God, not you and all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I took a swig of beer. “Ah, Phil had this daft idea it might have been meant for me, too. It’s bollocks, though. What would he—Mr. Morangie, I mean—what would he have been doing at Cherry’s do?”

“What, besides trying to get away with murder?”

I laughed. “Well, there’s that. Don’t you reckon me or Cherry would’ve noticed him, though?”

“Maybe he turned up in drag.”

“Yeah, right. That’s about as likely as him getting Morangie junior to do the deed.”

“Who?”

“Cherry reckoned he’s got a son. Dunno how old he’d be. The old bloke’s, what, in his sixties now? The son could be anything between twenty and forty.” I did some sums in my head. “Couldn’t be younger than mid-teens, seeing as he was already in the picture when Auntie Lol married his dad. And while I’m on the subject, what the bloody hell was all that about?”

“Just because he doesn’t float your boat doesn’t mean he didn’t sweep your auntie off her feet all those years ago.” Dave scratched his armpit. “There’s no accounting for women, I’ll tell you that straight. All the tosspots and no-hopers I see on the job, they’ve all got some female at home crying over ’em. And it’s not just your daft teenage girls who don’t know any better. It’s like they’ve got a blind spot. You can tell ’em till you’re blue in the face he’s not going to change, this bloke what’s been knocking ’em about or doing over houses since he was in short bloody trousers, and they just smile and they nod, and they tell you no one knows ’im like they do. No one believes his lies like they do, more like. What is it about the adult male that makes the other fifty percent of the population—more, with your lot—turn into a self-deluding, hormonal wreck? I tell you what, mate, if I was a woman, I’d be a bloody lesbian.”

We clinked glasses. “To lesbians.”

We sort of got a bit off-topic after that, although I might just possibly have said a few embarrassingly mushy things about Phil and how he wasn’t like all the other blokes as we shared a taxi home.

Hopefully Dave was drunk enough that he’d have forgotten them by tomorrow morning. Or would at least have the decency to pretend he had.

Chapter Seventeen

I was out on the job all day Wednesday—couple of easy pipework jobs, then a new washing machine down in Fishpool Street that turned out to be a bloody nightmare. It was one of those houses that were built way back when the mangle was considered dangerously advanced technology, and the owner, a camp old queen in his seventies or maybe even eighties, was way more fussed about
preserving the period ambiance
than he was about plumbing logistics. I swear, I was
this
close to suggesting he just use the bloody Laundromat.

By the time I’d finished, I had a painful bump on the back of my head (don’t ask), an invitation to
drop round any time—day or night
from the customer (really, really don’t ask) and I’d missed a call from Phil. I rang him back from the van. “What’s up?”

“Your literary mates ever mention the last chairman? Bloke called David Evans.”

“Nope. Why, did he leave under a cloud too, like Cherry? Morgan Everton topple him with a military coup?”

“He died. Guess how?”

“I dunno, do I? Someone bash his head in with his own gavel? No, hang on, that was Hannah’s other group. The gavel, I mean. Not the head bashing. What, then?”

“Gastroenteritis. At least, that’s what was on the death certificate.” Phil left a significant pause. “He was in his eighties, dodgy heart, so no one was that surprised it killed him.”

“But you reckon it might have been poison? Like Cherry?” Shit.

“I reckon it’s a bit of a coincidence, two members of the same literary group having a life-threatening attack of Delhi Belly on two separate occasions. I think we need to have a little chat with the Literati. All of ’em. And Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“That includes Greg Titmus. So no more going to see him on your own, all right?”

Shit. I’d almost forgotten Greg had been a member of the Literati with Cherry—in fact, maybe he’d been the first one to join? I couldn’t remember if she’d said or not. “Hang on, we can’t stop Cherry seeing him.”

“She ought to be safe enough at your parents’. Are you done for the day?”

“Yeah. Want to get a takeaway?”

“What happened to home cooking?”

“Too bloody knackered. Last job was a total bastard.”

There was another pause. “I could probably throw together a curry.”

Phil sounded a bit uncertain, so I thought I’d better encourage him. “If it helps, I’ll definitely put out after.”

“Bit rash making promises like that. You haven’t tasted my cooking yet.”

“Long as you remember to leave out the nicotine, we’re good. So I’ll come round to yours, yeah?”

“How about I cook at yours? Unless you’ve got a thing about other people touching your pots and pans?”

“Baby, you can touch anything of mine you want.” I gave it a mock-sexy growl. “Want me to get anything on the way home?”

“No. I’ll bring everything. See you in an hour or so.”

That gave me plenty of time to get home, feed the cats, have a shower, put on a clean shirt and think about why it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to have Phil coming over to cook for me. All right, part of it was the cooking and the promise I’d made for afters, but not all of it. Did Phil like my house better than he liked his flat? Or did he just realise I felt more at ease in my own, comfortably messy house than in his sterile white flat?

“Course, it could just be you two,” I said to Arthur who was purring away on my lap. He purred harder and kneaded my leg with his paws. “Oi, no claws.”

Merlin butted up against my knee, as if to say,
See, I should be your favourite
.

The doorbell went. “Sorry, mate,” I said as I tipped Arthur off my lap. He dug in a claw to register his protest and then dropped heavily to the floor, flicking his tail at me as he stalked off.

Maybe I should give Phil a key? I’d never done that before. With a bloke, I mean. Mrs. E next door had one in case I did something daft like lock myself out or walk under a bus and leave the cats unfed. Although, knowing them, they’d be off out the cat flap and finding themselves new people to freeload off of before I was cold in my grave. It’d be a bit more significant giving a key to Phil.

Maybe he wouldn’t want me to give him a key? What if I handed it over and he ran a mile? Nah, it was way too soon. Best leave it. I opened the door. Phil was standing there, bags of groceries in both hands. There was a stiffish breeze whipping down the street, and it just ruffled his short blond hair on top. He looked solid and warm and fucking gorgeous in his blue cashmere sweater. “Do you want a key?” I blurted out.

His eyes—same colour as the sweater—widened. “What?”

Shit. “Nah, it’s daft. Forget it.”

“You’re offering me a key to your house?”

“Well, you know. Seems a bit weird you having to ring the doorbell. Number of times you’ve slept over, and all. And if we were going to meet up here, and I got held up… Just thought it’d be convenient. That’s all.”

“Okay.”

“Right. Good.” That was it? No
Are you sure?
Or
Hang on, this is a big step, we’ve only known each other five minutes?

Phil gave me a flicker of a smile. “You going to let me in, now? I’m not sure how long these carrier bags are going to hold together.”

“Right! Yeah, sorry.” Feeling like a right muppet, I stood back to let him come in the front door. “I’ll get some pans out.”

“This is pretty good,” I said half an hour later as we sat in front of the telly with our plates on our laps. I mopped up some spicy sauce with a bit of naan bread and shoved it in my gob with relish.