Relief Valve: The Plumber's Mate, Book 2 (34 page)

I winced. Maybe, just maybe, if I drank the rest of the wine, I’d be able to blot out the memory of my straitlaced big sister saying the words “Phil’s penis” and then cackling like a witch.

I wasn’t holding my breath, mind.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Saturday morning, I’d just finished getting dressed when my phone rang. I didn’t recognise the number, but then again, I’d been handing my number out pretty freely over the last couple of days. Maybe it was Dave, borrowing someone else’s phone to tell us they’d caught the poisoner and we could all sleep easy in our beds from here on in.

It wasn’t.

“It’s Hannah. From the Literati. I’ve got a bit of a plumbing emergency. I hope you don’t mind me calling you—but you
did
give me your card…”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. So what’s the problem?”

“It’s…it’s one of the pipes in the bathroom. I’m really scared the ceiling’s going to fall in.” Her voice was breathless enough I could easily believe she was as worried as she said.

“I’ll be right out. What’s the address?”

Now, I’m not daft. Despite what some people seem to think. And it
did
cross my mind to be a bit wary of Hannah, seeing as she was a member of the same lot who’d apparently sent Cherry a poisoned pressie. Then again, just because it was signed “from the Literati” that didn’t mean it really
was
from one of them. Plus, it’d be a first-class opportunity to ask her some questions and maybe even have a snoop around her house. I’d just have to remember to say no if she offered me a cup of tea, that was all.

Should I ring Phil first? Probably, if I knew what was good for me. Overprotective so-and-so. I dialled his number, but there was no answer and it went to voice mail. I left a brief message, then went to knock on the door of the spare room, where I’d left Cherry with a large mug of tea, some dry toast and a couple of headache pills.

She hadn’t made a lot of headway on the toast, but she’d got out of bed and pulled on some clothes, so she couldn’t be feeling
that
bad. Then again, she’d been drinking wine, not Slivovitz.

“Sorry, Sis, I’ve got to go out for a bit. Your mate Hannah from the Literati—she’s got water coming through her ceiling.”

Cherry looked up, her face tired. “Poor her. Fine. I need to sort out my emails anyway. I can’t believe how it’s all mounted up in just a few days.”

She didn’t seem in any hurry to get on with it, though. I hesitated—but Hannah’s problem had seemed a bit urgent, and anyway, Cherry had the cats to look after her. “Shouldn’t take long. She’s only up in Sandridge. I’ll see you in a bit,” I said and left.

Hannah was in a right state when she let me in her house, despite the fact I got there only around ten or fifteen minutes after she’d called. Her round face was shiny and her hands all twitchy. “It’s upstairs. I’ve put towels down to catch the water—I’ve no idea where it’s coming from.”

She wasn’t joking. The whole, sizeable bathroom was carpeted in a thick layer of sodden towels. “Don’t worry, love. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding leaks.”

Hannah gave me a jerky nod. “Good. I’ll leave you to it—I just need to pop out to the shop in the village. I’ll be back soon.”

She might have offered to put the kettle on first. “See you later, then,” I called out to the sound of the front door closing behind her.

I set to work.

Ten minutes later, I was starting to get a bad feeling about this. I wasn’t just boasting when I said I was good at finding leaks. It’s what I do—why I became a plumber. That’s what the spidey-senses are good for. Finding hidden things. And water.

But I was getting
nothing
from Hannah’s pipes. Not a dicky-bird. I was getting a strong sense of déjà vu instead, going back to a job a few months previously when a lady thought she had a leak, but it turned out to be her little tot playing a bit too vigorously with water. Now, judging by the lack of toys cluttering the floor and childish scribbles stuck up on the fridge, Hannah didn’t have a daughter—but what if she’d been doing a bit of playing with water herself?

Unease fluttered in my stomach like the ghost of a late-night curry. I grabbed all the soggy towels off the bathroom floor and threw them out of the room just in case they were messing up the readings, then listened as hard as I could.

Nothing. Well, nothing of the leak variety, that was. I was getting a whole lot of background noise, though, and it wasn’t pretty. Hannah had hidden secrets, all right, and they were sending out some really nasty vibes.

My blood went cold. I couldn’t stop to follow the trail. There was only one possible reason Hannah would drag me out on a wild-goose chase—Cherry. Currently all on her tod in my house.

Shit.

I ran out of Hannah’s house, trying to simultaneously watch where I was going and dial up Cherry’s number. It went straight to voice mail. Shit. I tried Phil next. I was back in the van by the time the ringing stopped and it went to voice mail too—for Christ’s sake, what did these people think they were playing at?—so I held the phone with one hand and started the engine with the other, hoping to God I wasn’t about to have an accident or get arrested. Or both. “Phil? It’s Tom,” I said, switching hands so I could put the van in gear. “If you get this in the next ten minutes or so, get over to my place. I think Hannah’s the murderer, and she’s there alone with Cherry.” Probably. Possibly. Shit, was I just jumping to conclusions? “Also, where the bloody hell are you?” I flung the phone on the passenger seat and screeched around a corner, only to nearly rear-end a bloody milk float, trundling along so sodding slowly it was practically going backwards.

My hands clenched on the steering wheel with the effort of not honking my horn. Normally, I’m all for doorstep deliveries—after all, many an old dear’s been found collapsed in her home in the nick of time when the milkman noticed she hadn’t put out the empties—but Christ, right then I was wishing they’d just learn to use the bloody shops. I edged out to the middle of the road, hoping to overtake. Then ducked back in sharpish to avoid the oncoming bus.

Finally
we got to the wide bit at the start of the forty-mile-an-hour zone, and I floored the accelerator to zoom round Mr. Milko and tear up the hill like a proverbial out of a whatsit.

And got caught in the queue for the bloody traffic lights. I thumped the steering wheel in frustration and honked the horn by accident. The bloke in front gave me a stern glare in his rearview mirror, and his passenger looked round pointedly. Her eyes widened when she saw my face, and she tapped the driver on the shoulder. Dunno what she said to him, but when the lights changed, he didn’t hang about, and he turned off the road a minute later.

I reckon I must have aged several decades in the ten minutes or so—by the clock, at least—it took me from leaving Hannah’s to when I pulled up in front of mine with a screech of brakes. It was a wonder I wasn’t too bloody decrepit to burst into the house at Mach seven.

Hannah was there, all right. Sitting on the bloody sofa with Cherry. Stroking Merlin—the traitor—and drinking a cup of coffee.

Cherry had a mug in her hand too.

“Put the bloody coffee down!” I yelled. All right, maybe it came out as more of a shriek.

Both women—and the cat—stared at me.

Neither of them put the bloody coffee down.

“Tom?” Cherry said, her eyebrows halfway up to her hairline.

“She—she could be here to kill you, okay? Jesus, don’t drink that!”

Cherry looked at the mug she’d been about to take a sip from, clearly decided that yes, I was worked up enough to lunge over and knock it out of her hand if she carried on, and put it down on the coffee table. “It’s all right, Tom.
I
made the coffee. And seriously, you can’t really believe that Hannah—”

“She’s a Literati, isn’t she?” Or a Literatus, or whatever the bloody singular was, not that I gave a shit.

“So? We’ve absolutely no evidence one of them was involved.”

“The gift basket,” I blurted out. “It was poisoned. Dave rang.”

Cherry’s face went white. “And you didn’t
tell
me?”

“I was going to,” I protested. “But you’ve got to see—”

“That gift tag means absolutely nothing.
Anyone
could have written it. You’ve got no grounds whatsoever for accusing Hannah like that.”

“But there wasn’t a leak!”

Hannah, who’d been politely pretending to search for something in her handbag so we’d think she wasn’t listening—or maybe really searching for something; I’ve gone away for a week with smaller luggage—looked up and frowned at me. “How could you possibly know that in such a short time?”

“Oh, he’s got this
thing
.” Cherry made a dismissive gesture. Then she frowned at me as well. “Are you sure it was working properly this time? Maybe you should go back and check.”

“My
thing
is working fine, thanks so much, Sis. And I’m not leaving you here with her.” I sat down on the arm of the chair opposite them and folded my arms.

“Tom, you’re being incredibly rude. Hannah’s done absolutely nothing wrong. She just popped round to cheer me up.”

“So why did she tell me she was just going to the village shop?”

“I
did
go to the village shop,” Hannah piped up, sounding annoyingly reasonable. “Then I suddenly thought about Cherry, left here all on her own while you were fixing my bathroom. So I thought I’d surprise her.”

“See?” Cherry said. “You’re just being ridiculous.” She picked up her mug again.

“Oi. You’re not drinking that.”

Hannah heaved an obviously fake sigh. “Why don’t you pass me your mug, Cherry?” She took it, held it up to her lips, then swallowed. It didn’t
look
like she was faking it. “Happy now?” she asked me. “I can’t believe you actually thought I’d come here to poison poor Cherry. Why on earth did you think I’d want to do that?”

I threw up my hands. “Well, somebody bloody does! Sod it. I’m going to make some coffee. Proper stuff.” Not the instant Cherry had made for Hannah, which was possibly a subtle hint she hadn’t been all that welcome, but more likely just a sign Cherry couldn’t be arsed with the cafetière.

God, I’d have felt a right muppet if Phil had turned up, guns blazing. I wondered if there was any way I could somehow delete that last voice mail before he heard it. At least I’d be able to offer him a coffee, I thought as I spooned it out, breathing in the rich, dark fumes and feeling the tension unravel.

I’d calmed down a bit by the time I got back in the living room. “It’s brewing,” I said shortly.

Hannah got up. I hoped she was leaving, but no such luck. “Can I use your loo?”

“Yeah. Down the hall, first on the left.”

She swept out in a cloud of floaty drab layers, the charms hanging off her overstuffed brown handbag jangling as she walked.

Neither of us said anything for a minute.

“Why
do
women always take their bags to the loo with them?” I asked, mainly to break the awkward silence. “I mean, it’s not like they’re generally going to pass the shops on the way.”

Cherry glared at me. “Maybe she was worried you’d rifle through it if she left it behind.”

“Maybe…” I’d just had a nasty thought. What if Hannah had turned right, not left? “Just going to check on that coffee.”

I made it to the kitchen first just in time to see Hannah, bizarrely clad in the “glamour” washing up gloves Gary bought me last Christmas, tipping something from a plastic mineral water bottle into the cafetière.

I was betting it wasn’t full of vulcanicity.

“Oi,” I started and took a step forwards.

Hannah turned—and with a shriek of “You
cunt
!” that shocked me rigid coming from her, threw the contents of the bottle at my face.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I threw up an arm just in time to shield my eyes, thank God, and scrunched them tight shut, but the stuff went in my hair and was dripping down over my face.
Shit.
I didn’t dare open my eyes, but what the hell was she doing now? Creeping up to finish the job with one of the kitchen knives?

“Cherry! Don’t come in the kitchen!” I yelled—all right, squawked.

I was hyperconscious of the wetness on my skin and soaking through my sleeve and shirt front. Christ, just how bloody quickly did this stuff work?

I was just imagining the burning, right?

Right?

There was a barrage of loud banging that I realised had to be coming from the front door. Had Cherry called the police already? No, it couldn’t be them. Not this soon.

“Oh my God!” Cherry’s voice was high-pitched, panicked—and right by my bloody ear. “Tom, are you all right?”

“Jesus, I told you not to come in here! What’s that—Hannah doing now? Don’t go near her, she’s fucking mental. Throwing stuff. I can’t open my eyes. And you’ve got to get the door. For fuck’s sake, just get out of here.” The knocking was getting louder.

“But I can’t leave you!” Oh God, she’d completely lost the plot.

There was a humongous
crash
followed by the sound of glass breaking. “Tom?”

Thank God. It was Phil.