Thieves! (22 page)

“Why are you
really
in Gipping-on-Plym, Vicky?” said Noah. “Come on, you can tell me.”

“Work,” I said. “And speaking of which, you said you had something to tell me about Carol Pryce.”

“Carol Pryce?” Noah said. “You mean the woman in Mudge Lane?”

“I thought you knew who she was!”

“She
could
be an Irish traveler,” said Noah slowly. “What do the cops think?”

“I told you, they don’t seem to care,” I said. “But I do.”

“Why bother?” Noah edged toward me. “We true Romanies don’t like the Irish travelers, and vice versa. They’re scum.”

“I have to bother! I write the obituaries!” Really, this elderberry wine had quite a buzz to it. “I found her body!”

“You’re very cute.” Noah took my wine glass and set it down. He leaned toward me. “Can I kiss you?”

I didn’t have time to say no as our lips touched. I braced myself for the inevitable descent into dizziness, but to my disappointment, I remained perfectly aware. It was as if I were a spectator in my own love scene. I opened my eyes and met Noah’s staring right back into mine. It was so unnerving that I closed them again.

True, Noah’s kisses were pleasant enough, but they had none of Steve’s passion. I also didn’t care for his mustache. It really tickled.

Suddenly, my phone rang. The mood was ruined. I jumped like a scalded cat.

A glance at my caller ID confirmed my worst fears.
Blast!
It was Steve. “Sorry. I have to take this,” I said. “It’s work.”

I wriggled off the bed and walked to the far end of the wagon in the vague hope I would be out of earshot.

“Hello?” I gave a big yawn and hoped I sounded as if I were half-asleep.
Good grief!
Was it really half past eleven? “Who is this?”

“You know who it is, doll. It’s Steve.”

“I was almost asleep.”

There was a pause. “Where’s your car?”

A peculiar feeling came over me. “Where are you
?
”

“Outside your house. Mrs. Evans said you hadn’t come back yet.” There was a muffled anguish cry. “Oh God. You’re with Phil, aren’t you?”

“I’m at Barbara’s,” I said, very much aware that Noah had untied the ribbon from his ponytail. His hair fell to his shoulders. Now he really did look like a pirate. “You must be tired, Steve. Why don’t you go home? We can talk tomorrow.”

“I’ll come to Barbara’s place.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said quickly. “I’m already in the car on my way.”
Blast! Blast! Blast!
I ended the call and spun right into Noah’s arms.

“Problems?”

“Sorry, I have to go. It’s a work emergency.” I ducked past him and went to retrieve my shoes.

I set off at a jog to get my car from Ponsford Ridge.

Perhaps it was a blessing that Steve had called. Things had been moving quicker than I expected in the romance department.

Up the track to Ponsford Ridge I went and was so consumed with what I was going to tell Steve that I failed to see the object laying across the path in the semi-darkness. I fell to the ground, hard.

Some idiot had left a bicycle just lying in the mud. Cursing, I picked myself up and realized with a start that it was a distinctive pink bicycle, circa 1940, with a large wicker basket.

It was Barbara’s.

I stared at it for a full minute until I heard the murmur of voices coming from a small copse to my left.

Tiptoeing through the undergrowth, I paused at the edge of a grassy clearing just as the moon peeped out from behind a cloud.

There, in a passionate embrace, stood Barbara and Jimmy! They weren’t doing anything disgusting like kissing—and luckily, were fully dressed—but just stared into each other’s eyes as if they were the only two people on the planet.

Frankly, the pair of them resembled a book cover from a Harlequin romance, with Barbara’s gray hair cascading down her back to match Jimmy’s unbraided tresses.

I was repulsed but fascinated as both began to slowly dance, hands touching hands, in perfect symmetry.

It was incredibly intimate and unbelievably romantic. It was also clear that Barbara and Jimmy were no strangers to each other.

And then it came to me in a flash.

How could I have been so stupid! I thought back to Ruby’s grief that now seemed as if it had nothing to do with Belcher Pike at all. Her Dad was having an affair, and Ruby knew it.

For as long as I’d known Barbara, she’d talked about Jimmy Kitchen—the “man who got away” and the “love of her life.”

I withdrew, knowing I’d witnessed something I shouldn’t have. It had never occurred to me that Jimmy Kitchen was a
gypsy
! No wonder they couldn’t be together! What’s more, I was almost positive that this was the scandal that Whittler and most of Gipping had alluded to.

Poor Barbara. What rotten luck. Engaged to one man but in love with another. What was she going to do?

Yet Barbara’s predicament paled into insignificance when measured against mine.

Steve was waiting.

I
turned into Factory Terrace and had to drag myself away from Barbara’s predicament to focus on mine.

It was just as I feared. Steve was pacing back and forth across the road smoking a cigarette. This did not bode well. For a start, I had never even seen him smoke.

I pulled up behind his VW Jetta 2.0 TDI outside number twenty-one, switched off the engine, and cut the lights. A glow from the upstairs bedroom window revealed a crack in the curtains and Mrs. Evans’s face pressed against the glass.

God
. I hated scenes, and I wasn’t about to have one in the middle of the street for all the neighbors to hear. I leaned over and pushed the passenger door open. Steve trudged toward me and peered inside. In the gloom of the interior light, his eyes looked all red and swollen.

“You’re being really silly.”
Attack is the best form of defense!
“I told you I was going to see Barbara tonight.”

“Oh, really?” Steve took an exaggerated drag on his cigarette. “When?”

“If you want to talk about it, get in the car,” I said. “And please get rid of that cigarette.”

Steve tossed it into the gutter and lowered himself onto the front seat. He slammed the door, hard.

“Just tell me the truth, Vicky,” he said. “That’s all I’m asking. Don’t lie to me, doll. It will kill me.”

“I’m not lying. I did see Barbara.” This was absolutely true. “Why don’t you ask her if you don’t believe me?” Given Barbara’s new circumstances, I was quite sure I could count on her giving me an alibi if push came to shove.

“I will and I don’t.” Steve turned to me. His face was etched with such pain that I felt guilty. I never intended to hurt Steve and still couldn’t quite work out how I had gotten myself into this situation.

“Why didn’t you call earlier?” I said.

“I did.”

“You can’t have done. The phone didn’t ring.” This was worrying. I might have to change my service provider. I had to be accessible 24-7. “Maybe there wasn’t a signal? Did it go straight to voice mail?”

“I don’t like leaving messages.
Then
I called Phil.” Steve’s voice broke. “He didn’t answer, either.”

“Phil had told me he had a tanning session booked.”

“Yeah. Right.
Tanning
.” Steve gave a heavy sigh. “It’s no good. I’ve got to do this, doll. I’ve got to look.”

Before I could blink, Steve reached up and snapped on the interior light and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “It’s true,” he cried. “Oh God. Your face!”

“What?” I flipped down the visor. Not only was my chin covered in blotches, my lips were puffy, too.
Blast!
So I wasn’t
just
allergic to Steve. Or perhaps it was Noah’s mustache? Maybe I was allergic to every man who kissed me?

“I know you, Vicky,” Steve wailed. “You always get that flushed look after kissing.”

“I’m not
flushed
,” I snapped. “I’m allergic to your aftershave.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Steve. “Oh God. I want to die.”

This was ridiculous!
I was beginning to tire of Steve and his wretched insecurities. I thought longingly of Barbara, wild and free, being held by the love of her life in the moonlight. Steve wasn’t for me, and I was being incredibly unkind by keeping him hanging on, even if he was a good informant.

“You’re right. This isn’t working,” I said. “I think we should cut our losses and stay good friends.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I am.” I don’t know why I hadn’t ever thought of breaking up with Steve before—probably because as far as I was concerned, we weren’t having a relationship.

Steve shook his head with disbelief. His eyes welled up with tears. “After all we’ve gone through,” he whimpered. “I don’t believe it. This isn’t happening to me. It can’t be.”

Don’t cave, Vicky. Be strong
. “Sorry,” I said firmly. “But I think this is for the best.”

Slowly, Steve opened the door and got out of the car, dramatically pausing to whisper in a voice filled with pain, “You’ve broken my heart, doll.”

Steve started his car and began revving the engine, pedal flat to the floor. He made so much noise that lights popped on, up and down Factory Terrace. I was mortified.

Suddenly, Steve thrust his Jetta into gear with a crunch, slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and took off like a bullet—in the direction where the cul-de-sac ended in the high factory wall!

Good grief.
Surely he wasn’t intending to
kill
himself? There was a squeal of brakes, then—thankfully—the car headlights came back into view. Steve tore past me, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead.

I let myself in the front door feeling utterly wretched. Fortunately, Mrs. Evans wasn’t waiting up for me as I had feared, and I managed to get into my room without any interruptions.

The first thing I saw was Barbara’s shoebox, which I planned to give her tomorrow. Even though the newspaper clipping was missing, I knew it was significant and intended to steer the conversation around to Mildred Veysey—after all, she would have been Barbara’s future mother-in-law had she still been alive.

Tonight had been as traumatic as I had predicted, but something told me that tomorrow could be worse.

A
nnabel did not come home that night. I slept badly, haunted by dreams of Steve walking in on me having sex with Probes in Noah’s wagon.

The next morning, my face still bore traces of my allergy to Steve—or Noah—but even though I caught Mrs. Evans watching me closely at breakfast, she just asked how “Sexpot Steve” was taking the news.

When I remarked, “badly,” she nodded agreement but said that Steve had taken his breakup with her daughter, Sadie Evans, “far, far worse,” and that at one point they thought he could be “suicidal.”

Of course, I knew that Sadie and Steve had been an item well before I moved into Chez Evans, but if Mrs. E. had thought this news would make me feel better, it didn’t.

True, I had never aspired to be Steve’s girlfriend, but there is nothing more sobering after such a traumatic breakup than to discover you weren’t the love of someone’s life after all.

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Mrs. Evans went on. “He was only using you as a transitory object. He never really got over my Sadie.”

“Thanks, Mrs. E.,” I said, but felt her remark was more of an insult than a comfort. But having half expected Steve to be bombarding me with phone calls begging for another chance, I had to assume she was right. My phone had not rung once.

I arrived at the
Gazette
just after nine and noted that the show window had been drastically altered.

Positioned front and center, two mannequins dressed as Gipping Ranids flanked the man-sized frog mascot. Wearing Panama hats decorated with badges, each mannequin sported a green-and-white-spotted neckerchief, a white shirt, and bottle-green breeches with bell pads decorated in green and white ribbons. Crossed baldricks passing diagonally across the chest and also covered in small bells and white rosettes completed the outfit.