The Ellsworth Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 5) (3 page)

“You think she’s some sort of criminal?”
Janet asked in surprise.

Joan sighed.
 
“Not really,” she admitted.
 
“But a lot of strange things have been
going on around here since we arrived.
 
I guess I’m suspicious of everyone now.”

Janet thought back over the last few months
and then nodded.
 
“Things have
definitely been different from our teaching days, haven’t they?”

Joan nodded.
 
“In both good and bad ways.”

The pair walked around to their front
door.
 
Robert Parsons was sitting on
one of the cushioned chairs they had recently added to the small front
porch.
 
His brown hair needed a cut
and his brown eyes looked worried.
 
He was only in his mid-twenties and he was responsible for policing both
Doveby
Dale and Little Burton.
 
Janet often thought it was a heavy
burden for such a young man, although she also thought he did an excellent job
of it.
 
He quickly rose to his feet.
 
Janet was always surprised that he
wasn’t taller, but she guessed he was at least a few inches shorter than six
feet tall.
 
For some reason, he
seemed taller to her, at least when he was sitting down.

“Ah, ladies, I was hoping you’d be home
soon,” he told them.
 
“I took
advantage of your absence to enjoy your lovely view and your very comfortable
chairs.”

“You’re always welcome,” Joan assured
him.
 
“I do hope nothing is wrong.”

“I’d like a moment of your time,” he
said.
 
“And if you can spare it, a
cup of tea would be a real treat.”

“Of course,” Janet replied as Joan unlocked
the house and the trio entered.
 
They made their way to the kitchen.
 
Robert sat at the small kitchen table while Janet put the kettle
on.
 
Joan quickly filled a plate
with biscuits.

“We have guests, so I have a nice
selection,” she told Robert as she put the plate on the table.

“You seem to have guests quite regularly
now,” he commented.

“We have been rather busy,” Joan
agreed.
 
“The couple that is here
now is leaving in the morning, but we have two other couples arriving tomorrow
afternoon.”

“I hope you’re taking some time off over
Christmas,” Robert replied.

“We don’t have any guests booked after the
fifteenth,” Joan told him.
 
“And I
haven’t even started looking at room requests for the
new
year
.”

When the kettle boiled, Janet fixed the tea,
and then the sisters joined the man at the table.

“You never just stop by for a chat,” Janet
said, keeping her tone light.
 
“Whatever is the matter this time?”

Robert took a sip of tea and the set his cup
down.
 
“I don’t want you two to
worry unnecessarily, but I thought I ought to bring something to your
attention,” he said.
 

“What something?” Joan asked.

“It appears that someone in the area is
passing around counterfeit currency,” Robert replied.

Chapter Three

“Counterfeit currency?” Janet echoed.
 
“Notes or coins?” she asked, thinking
immediately of their small cache of coins.

“Notes,” Robert replied.
 
“Specifically twenty-pound notes.
 
I wanted you to be aware, in case any of
your guests wanted to pay in cash.”

“How can we tell the counterfeits?” Joan
asked.

Robert pulled an envelope out of the small
folder he was carrying.
 
Inside were
two twenty-pound notes.
 
He set them
on the table in front of him.
 
“Care
to guess which is the fake?” he asked the women.

Joan picked up the notes and studied them
intently, passing them each to Janet as she finished.

“I can’t really see a difference,” Janet
admitted after she’d looked over them both.

“This one seems wrong to me,” Joan
said.
 
“I’m not sure why,
though.
 
Something just doesn’t seem
right about it.”

Robert nodded.
 
“That is the counterfeit, but you’re
right that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what’s wrong about it.
 
The only thing I can tell you for sure
is to watch the serial numbers.
 
All
of the counterfeit notes have the same serial number.”
 
He pointed to the number on the note.

“I’ll just write that down,” Janet said,
getting to her feet.
 
She quickly
found a pen and a sheet of paper and jotted down the number.

“Our guests often pay in cash, especially if
they only stay one or two nights,” Joan said thoughtfully.

“Perhaps you can find ways to discourage
them from doing so,” Robert suggested.

“We’ve set up with the bank to accept credit
card payments,” Janet said.
 
“But we
haven’t actually encouraged people to use them.
 
I must say I was quite concerned about
people trying to use stolen credit cards.
 
It never occurred to me to worry about them using counterfeit money.”

“Twenty-pound notes are the most copied of
any notes in circulation,” Robert told them.
 
“We have odd ones turning up all the
time, but this time the exact same fakes have been appearing all around the Derbyshire
area.”

“So it isn’t just a
Doveby
Dale problem?” Janet asked.

“We’ve actually only seen one of the notes
in
Doveby
Dale,” Robert said.
 
“And it was used quite innocently by a
woman who’d received it with her change at the big grocery store up the road.
 
Of course, they do so much custom that
they weren’t sure who’d used the note to pay for their groceries.
 
They went through every other note in
the store, though, and they were all fine.
 
I suspect the problem is in Derby and we’ll just see a few that trickle
through.”

“Well, we appreciate the warning,” Joan
said.
 
“Though I’m not sure what
we’ll do if a guest hands us a pile of them.”

“Take them politely and then ring me,”
Robert replied.
 
“Don’t say anything
to the guests.
 
They could be
innocent victims or they could be quite dangerous.”

Joan nodded.
 
“We’ll do that,” she said.
 
“Now, do let me pack up a few biscuits
for you for the afternoon.”

Robert put up a token protest, but Joan
insisted on wrapping up a considerable number of biscuits for him.
 
The sisters walked him to the door.

“Thank you again for the information,” Joan
said at the door.

“You’re very welcome.
 
I’ll stop back in a few days with an
update, assuming I learn anything further,” he said.

“Stop back either way,” Janet suggested.
 
“We have more guests coming, so Joan
will still be baking too much.
 
You
can help eat up even more biscuits.”

Robert looked delighted with the idea.
 
The sisters watched him walk back to his
car and drive away.

“Well, I guess the first thing we should do
is check any notes we already have,” Joan said as she swung the door shut.

“We probably should have done that while
Robert was here,” Janet said.
 
“Why
didn’t we think of it?”

“It all just seems so unlikely,” Joan
replied.
 
“I can’t imagine spending
money that I knew was counterfeit.
 
I’d be too nervous.”

“I would as well,” Janet agreed.
 
“I wouldn’t make a very good criminal, I
don’t think.
 
I’d feel too guilty
and end up turning myself in or something.”

The sisters both picked up their handbags
and found their money.
 

“I only have two notes anyway,” Janet
said.
 
“I really should have taken
some out of my account when we were at the bank.”

“I have more than you, but, luckily, none of
them have the wrong serial number,” Joan told her.
 
“I’ll just go and check the money in the
safe.”

There was a small wall safe built into the
wall in the library, hidden by an inconspicuous picture.
 
Thus far the sisters had been unable to
figure out the combination to open it, and the man who claimed to know it had
seemingly given them the wrong numbers.
 
As they welcomed more and more guests, Joan and Janet had decided that
they needed a safe for valuables that they would rather their guests couldn’t
access.
 
Robert had provided some
advice and they’d eventually bought a small, freestanding safe that they’d
hidden in the wardrobe in Joan’s bedroom.
 
They didn’t keep much in it, but Joan had insisted that a small amount
of emergency money be secured there.

Janet took her handbag up to her bedroom on
the first floor.
 
As she set it on
the dresser, she glanced at the calendar, mentally counting down the days until
the next full moon.
 
As they’d just
had one a few days earlier, she didn’t have to worry again about her resident
ghost until the
new year
.
 
Maybe next time she’d manage to sleep
through the screams that woke her around two in the morning with every full
moon.

“Maybe I should try to find out why there’s
a ghost in my room,” she said out loud.
 
“Why are you here?” she asked the air.
 
Then she shook her head.
 
Talking to the walls was a waste of
time, but perhaps she ought to try doing some research into the house’s
history.
 
Aside from the ghost, who
was a minor inconvenience, she loved her spacious room with its own en-suite.
 
It was much nicer than the small bedroom
she’d had in the cottage where they used to live, and Janet smiled as she
looked around the space.
 
In spite
of her ambivalent feelings about running the bed and breakfast, she did love
Doveby
House.

The rest of the day was uneventful.
 
Sunday morning saw their guests checking
out, which meant lots of work for both sisters.
 
All of the bedding had to be removed,
washed, and put back and the room had to be thoroughly cleaned.
 
When they finally finished, it was
nearly time for lunch, after which their next set of guests would be arriving.

“Sometimes this does seem like rather a lot
of work,” Janet said over cold sandwiches and tea.
 

“Perhaps we should try to leave a day
between departures and arrivals,” Joan said.
 
“Then we could take our time getting
everything ready for the next guests.”

“Except we’d still do it in a hurry, just
like today, because neither of us could stand knowing that the room was sitting
there, needing cleaning,” Janet replied with a laugh.

Joan chuckled.
 
“You’re right, of course.
 
I couldn’t possibly sit around and relax
if I knew there were chores to do.”

Their first new arrivals appeared just
before two o’clock.
 

“Hello, hello,” the man greeted the
sisters.
 
“I’m Charles Walters and
this is Lynne.”

Charles looked to be somewhere in his sixties,
with patches of grey hair dotted around his head.
 
His eyes were a soft blue that Janet
thought would make a pretty dress.
 
He had a little round tummy and short legs, and Janet wondered what he’d
looked like when he and his wife had first met.
 
Lynne was a few years younger and seemed
to be fighting aging somewhat more successfully than her spouse.
 
She was slender and her hair was a dark
brown that was probably dyed, but had been done well enough that Janet wasn’t
completely certain.
 
She was a couple
of inches taller than Janet’s five feet, three inches, which also made her a
few inches taller than Charles.

“Welcome to
Doveby
House,” Joan told the pair.
 
Janet
held the door open while the man carried in their cases.

“I hope you had a nice drive up,” she said
politely as the man struggled in with the final suitcase.

“Oh, it wasn’t bad,” he said jovially.
 
“We’re just in Derby, you see.”

“You live in Derby?”
Janet
asked, feeling confused.

Charles chuckled.
 
“Well, on the outskirts, on the opposite
side of it from here.
 
I love to get
away, you see, but I don’t like to drive too far.”

Janet nodded.
 
“It’s always nice to get away from real
life for a while, isn’t it?”

“Charles, darling, you mustn’t bore the
woman.
 
I’m sure she couldn’t care
less where we’re from,” Lynne said.

Janet glanced at her.
 
She sounded angry for some reason.

Charles flushed.
 
“Of course, dear.”
 
He turned to Janet.
 
“You mustn’t mind me.
 
I am rather inclined to prattle on.”

“We’d like to pay for the week in advance,”
Lynne said to Joan.
 
“In cash, if
that’s okay.”

Joan and Janet exchanged glances.
 
“Of course you may do whatever you
like,” Joan replied.
 
“But if you’d
rather not part with so much cash up front, I’m happy for you to pay for a day or
two at a time or put some portion of the stay on a credit card, if you’d like.”

“No, I think cash is best,” Lynne said.
 
“And I’d rather pay now.
 
If we don’t, we might just find
ourselves out of money when it comes time to leave.
 
Charles has a bad habit of overspending
on souvenirs.”

“I believe the time we ran out of cash it
was because someone had bought themselves a rather pricey pair of earrings,”
Charles protested.
 
“I believe your
jewellery
habit is a bit more dangerous than my inability
to resist pointless trinkets.”

Lynne laughed, but it sounded forced.
 
“You could be right, my dear.
 
Do get the room paid for, won’t
you?
 
Then we can go out and do some
shopping.”

Charles pulled out a wallet and counted out
a great many twenty-pound notes.
 
After counting it all a second time, he handed the money to Joan.
 
“I do hope that’s the right amount,” he
said.

Joan nodded.
 
“That’s it exactly,” she agreed.
 
She slipped the stack of notes into a
pocket and then she and Janet showed the guests to their room.
 
As they had arrived first, Joan decided
to put them in the larger of the guest rooms.

“I hope you’ll have everything you need,”
Joan said in the room’s doorway.
 
“We don’t do evening meals, but I can recommend a number of local
restaurants to you.”

“For tonight, I think we’ll just go and
explore,” Charles replied.
 
“If we
have trouble finding places we like, we’ll take you up on that, though.”

“You have a key to the front door, so you
can come and go as you please, of course,” Joan told them.

“I suspect we’ll want to turn in fairly early.
 
Lynne’s an early riser, even when she’s
on holiday,” Charles said, earning an angry look from his companion.

“What time would you like breakfast, then?”
Joan asked.

“Oh, I think eight would be good, wouldn’t
it?” Charles replied, looking at Lynne for confirmation.

“Eight would be fine,” Lynne agreed.

“I usually do a full English breakfast for
guests,” Joan said.
 
“Would that
suit you both or would you rather have something else?”