Aunt Bessie Joins (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 10) (21 page)

“But it doesn’t seem likely,” Bessie said.

John shrugged.
 
“We’re also talking to Carolyn and
Richard
Teare
, and everyone at the Alzheimer’s
Research Fund.
 
We’re looking for
motives for murder as well as any hint as to why he might have wanted to kill
himself.”

Bessie sighed.
 
“We didn’t talk about means or
opportunity for any of this.”

“It seems that just about everyone involved
with ‘Christmas at the Castle’ knew that Mr. Hart had moved to the Seaside
Hotel,” John said.
 
“No one appears
to have an unimpeachable alibi for that evening.”

“Michael told me that Mr. Hart was trying to
blackmail him,” Bessie said.
 
“Maybe
he was doing the same with others?”

“We’re looking into Mr. Hart’s finances,”
John told her.
 
“I’m not sure if
that will tell us anything or not, but it needs doing.
 
No one else has come
forward with a story like Michael’s, at least not yet.
 
We’re also considering the possibility
that someone came over just to kill the man, but that raises the question of
how they knew where to look for him.”

“Maybe he rang them when he got to the
hotel,”
Doona
suggested.

“Aside from his call to Michael, there were
no outgoing calls from his mobile or his room.
 
He might have rung someone from the
Teares
’ home before he left there, but Carolyn says he
didn’t.”

“We’re jumping all over the place and I’m
getting confused,” Bessie said.
 
She
finished her tea and poured herself more.
 
“So where are we?” she asked them all.

“For Mr. Hart’s murder, it seems that
everyone involved with ‘Christmas at the Castle’ had the means and the
opportunity to kill him,” John said.
 
“Nearly everyone also had some sort of motive, although some are much
stronger than others, of course.
 
If
you had to name a murderer from that list, who would it be?” he asked Bessie.

Bessie nibbled a biscuit while she
thought.
 
“I suppose, if I had to,
I’d go for Richard
Teare
,” she said eventually.
 
“I think he had the strongest motive,
even though I’m not really clear on what it was.
 
If not him, then Michael.
 
If Mr. Hart was trying to blackmail him,
then he had a pretty strong motive.”

“Anyone else want to throw a guess in?” John
asked.

“I’d vote for Richard
Teare
as well,”
Doona
said.
 
“I don’t want to blame poor Michael, as
he has ended up dead, too.”

“It would be neater if it was Michael,” Hugh
said.
 
“He killed Mr. Hart,
destroyed the tribute room, and then killed himself.
 
That makes perfect sense.”

“Michael’s death is complicated,” John
said.
 
“The man kept disappearing,
so it’s impossible to say who knew where he was and who didn’t.
 
His phone had several cryptic texts on
it that we can’t trace.
 
It seems
someone was in contact with him when he was missing, but we don’t know who.”

“You can’t work out where the calls came
from?” Bessie asked.

“We’re working on it,” was all that John
could tell her.

“I think we’re just going around in
circles,” Bessie said after another biscuit.
 

“I don’t think we’ve solved anything, that’s
for certain,”
Doona
said.

“Sometimes it helps to just talk things
through with a different audience,” John said.

“But not this time,” Bessie added with a
rueful smile.

John shrugged.
 
“I think it’s helped me shuffle up the
suspects a bit,” he said.
 
“I’ll be
taking a closer look at Richard and Carolyn
Teare
tomorrow.”

“If Richard did kill Mr. Hart because he was
jealous, then maybe he killed Michael for the same reason,”
Doona
said.

“It’s a possibility that needs looking
into,” John replied.

“I’m having lunch with Laura Meyers on
Wednesday,” Bessie told the others.
 
“Maybe she saw or overheard something relevant, but she doesn’t
realise
it.”

“She has been questioned rather
extensively,” John said.

“But maybe no one asked her the right
questions,” Bessie countered with a smile.
 
“I’m sure you didn’t ask her who she thought the murderer was, but she
might have her own ideas and they might be interesting.”

“You know I don’t like you spending time
with suspects,” John said.

“She isn’t a serious suspect, surely,”
Bessie countered.

“We’re still investigating her background,”
John reminded her.
 
“Make sure you
meet somewhere public.”

“We’re having lunch at that little Italian
place on the promenade.
 
It’s very
public,” Bessie told him.

“Very good.
 
Are you meeting with anyone else in the
next few days?” John asked.

“I’ve nothing else planned, but it is a very
small island,” Bessie retorted.

“Please let me know if you hear anything
that might be relevant,” he instructed her.
 
“Mr. Hart’s killer was smart, and if
Michael was murdered it was very cleverly done.”

“Did Michael leave a note?” Bessie asked.

John shook his head.
 
“I can’t answer that,” he said.
 
“But I will tell you that we’re actively
looking for handwriting samples from the man.
 
I wish the autopsy results would hurry
up, though.”

“It’s getting late,”
Doona
said.
 
“I have to work at eight and I know John will want to be in his office
by eight at the latest.”

“I’m not working until the afternoon
tomorrow,” Hugh said.
 
“But I
promised Grace that I’d take her to breakfast before she has to go to work.”

“Did she find a teaching position, then?”
Bessie asked.

“She’s still working as a supply teacher, but
she’s covering someone’s maternity leave at the moment, so she’s going to be
working for the rest of the school year,” Hugh replied.

“How nice for her,” Bessie said.

“She’s teaching Reception, and she loves the
little ones,” Hugh said.
 
“Most of them
still listen pretty well.
 
The big
problem is keeping their attention for more than five minutes.”

“Now you all must take some of these treats
home with you,” Bessie said as the party began to break up.
 
“I can’t possibly eat all of these on my
own.”

Bessie packed biscuits and tarts into small
bags and handed them around.
 
She
took a few things for herself and then gave the bulk of the leftovers to
Hugh.
 
“I know you’ll manage to eat
them all,” she said with a laugh.

She locked up the door behind them all and
then checked that both doors were locked up tight.
 
Switching off lights as she went, Bessie
headed for bed, her book in her hand.
 
Once she was ready for bed, though, she decided it was too late to
read.
 
She slid under the covers and
sighed deeply.
 
Usually, after a
session with John and the others, she felt as if they’d moved the investigation
forward.
 
Often she ended up with
ideas for things she could do to help John learn what he needed to know.
 
Tonight she felt as if they’d simply
wasted their time.
 
At least Hugh
had brought biscuits and fairy cakes.
 
The evening wasn’t a total loss.

Chapter Eleven

Bessie was in the shower on Monday morning
when she started thinking about Christmas shopping.

“Christmas is Friday,” she told her mirror
image as she stepped out of the shower.

She stuck her tongue out at herself and then
dressed quickly.
 
She’d been so busy
at Castle
Rushen
that she’d let the whole month of
December slip away from her.
 
While
she preferred to do her shopping early in the month, before the shops became
too crowded, she had no choice now but to head into Ramsey immediately.

Or almost immediately.
 
She rang and asked for a taxi to Ramsey at half eight.
 
Most of the shops wouldn’t open much
before nine, even if it
was
the week of
Christmas.
 
With some time on her
hands, Bessie headed out for her morning walk.
 
It was chilly and raining lightly, but
she took deep breaths of sea air and didn’t mind the weather one bit.
 
The idea of Christmas shopping made her
feel like a small child again and she found herself humming a Christmas carol
as she walked.
 
Shaking her head at
her foolishness, Bessie returned home and fixed herself a mug of hot chocolate
as a special treat.

When Dave, her
favourite
driver, arrived right on time, Bessie felt even more cheerful.

“Good morning, Dave,” she called as she
locked up her cottage.
 
“And Happy
Christmas.”

“A very Happy Christmas to you too, Aunt
Bessie,” he replied.
 
“But don’t be
so quick to lock your door.
 
I have
a little something for you.”

He opened his boot and pulled out a small
wrapped box.
 
As Bessie reopened her
door, he crossed to her.

“You shouldn’t have,” she exclaimed.

“It’s just a little something,” he
said.
 
“I told the wife that I’ve
been driving you around for such a long time that it feels like I should give
you a present, and she found this and thought you might like it.
 
If you don’t like, please pretend you do
the next time you see her.”

Bessie laughed.
 
“I’m sure it will be perfect,” she
replied.
 
“But I’ll save it for
Christmas if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, no, that’s fine,”
Dave
told her.
 
“And please don’t feel
like you have to reciprocate.”

“But of course I have to get you something,”
Bessie protested.
 
“The giving part
of Christmas has always been my
favourite
part
anyway.”

Dave continued to protest as he drove Bessie
to Ramsey.
 
He let her out in front
of the large bookstore that was one of her
favourite
places in the world.

“Please don’t buy me a present,” he said
baldly.

Bessie just laughed.
 
“I’ll see you outside of
ShopFast
in three hours,” she replied.

Inside the bookstore, Bessie couldn’t resist
spending a little bit of time looking at books for herself.
 
She forced herself to stop after she’d
found the fifth title she wanted.
 
“Nothing like buying Christmas presents for oneself,” she muttered as
she made herself turn away from the mystery section.
 

In the self-help section she found a book on
basic home repairs that she thought would be helpful for
Doona
.
 
Next she found a gorgeous cookbook full
of quick and easy recipes that she hoped might be useful for Hugh.
 
John was trickier to shop for, and
Bessie found herself wandering around the store a second time, happily browsing
and thinking.
 
Having no idea what
the man liked to read in his free time, but knowing that that time was limited,
she finally settled on a book of the best science fiction short stories of the
past year.
 

Now she walked around again, this time
looking for the one perfect present that could be given to just about everyone
she knew.
 
Every year she bought a
simple little something that was appropriate for just about anyone and gave that
same
item out to her various friends around the
island.
 
One year it had been a
simple but elegant candle holder, another year she’d found a small enamel box
with the
Laxey
Wheel on it, and just last year she’d
given everyone a photo frame with a Celtic design along the border.
 
If she had more time, she’d have
travelled into Douglas to look at the museum shop for something just right, but
she was really hoping to get her shopping finished in this one trip.

After a while, she decided that she’d have
to give up and move on.
 
She paid
for her purchases and headed out into the busy streets of the city.
 
It only took a few minutes for Bessie to
begin to feel fed up with the crowds.
 
Everyone seemed to be pushing and shoving and trying to get ahead of
everyone else.
 
Babies were crying,
cars were honking, and Bessie thought seriously about heading for a café to sip
a drink until it was time for Dave to take her home.

Instead, she squared her shoulders and stood
as tall as she could.
 
At five feet,
three inches she wasn’t exactly intimidating, but she did her best to march
through the crowd directly to where she wanted to go.
 
The little specialty gift shop had a
huge window display of very expensive cut crystal.
 
Bessie pushed her way inside and sighed
with relief.
 
There were only a
handful of other shoppers in this particular store and several shop assistants were
bustling around.
 

“Ah, Bessie, I’m so glad you stopped in,”
one of the women called.
 
“I was
going to ring you later today.
 
We
just received a shipment of something I think you’ll quite like.”

Bessie smiled at her.
 
“Thank you for thinking of me, Carol,”
she replied, smiling at the woman who was co-owner of the shop.
 
“I’d love to see what you’re talking
about when you’ve finished there.”

Carol was just ringing up a customer, and of
course the man in question had trouble getting his credit card to work and then
changed his mind about half of his items.
 
Finally, he wanted everything gift-wrapped.
 
By the time he left, Bessie felt as if
she’d thoroughly explored the entire small shop at least twice.
 
While she found some lovely things, she
couldn’t find anything that she thought might be the special something Carol
was talking about.

“Come with me,” Carol said as she stepped
out from behind the counter.

Bessie followed the woman through the shop
and then through a door marked “Staff Only.”
 

“They were meant to be here by the first of
December,” Carol told her.
 
“But
there was a problem with the production or something.
 
Anyway, we finally received the shipment
this morning and I haven’t even put them out yet.
 
We commissioned them ourselves and we’re
hoping to do one a year.”

She opened a large box on the table in front
of them and then pulled a much smaller box from inside it.
 
Handing the small box to Bessie, she
grinned.

“Go on, open it yourself,” she suggested.

Bessie looked at the pretty red and green
box.
 
The top of it had the store’s
name printed on it in silver letters.
 
“The box is pretty,” she remarked as she lifted the lid.
 
She gasped with pleasure and surprise as
she looked at the contents.

“It’s pewter,” Carol told her.
 
“We commissioned a local artist to draw
Castle
Rushen
in pencil and then had the drawing made
into pewter ornaments.”

Bessie pulled the round disc from its
box.
 
It was heavier than she’d
expected it to be.
 
It was the
dull-silver
colour
of polished pewter, with Castle
Rushen
depicted on the front.
 
The back of the disc had the name
of both
the store and the artist as well as the year.

“How much are they?” Bessie asked, holding
her breath.

When Carol named a price that Bessie felt
was more than reasonable, she smiled.
 
“I’ll take, oh, lots of them,” she told the other woman.
 

Carol laughed.
 
“You might need to be a bit more
specific than that,” she said.
 
“Or
you can just buy the whole box and be done with it.”

As there were a hundred ornaments in the
box, Bessie decided not to buy them all.
 
She quickly counted up how many she needed for friends, adding in all of
the “Christmas at the Castle” committee members and charity volunteers to the
list.
 
When she was finished, she
wasn’t all that far off of buying at least half of the box.

“I’m going to give you a discount for buying
so many,” Carol told her at the till.
 
“Come back and visit us in the
new year
.
 
I’d love your thoughts on what other
landmarks you’d like to see in future years.”

“I will,” Bessie promised.
 
The charge on her credit card was large,
but Bessie didn’t mind.
 
She loved
the gorgeous ornaments and couldn’t wait to start giving them out to her
friends.

“Oh, can you wrap just one of them?” she
asked before she left the shop.
 
She
enjoyed wrapping gifts herself, but she wanted to give Dave his present when he
took her home, in case she didn’t see him again before Christmas.

Feeling as if she’d accomplished a great
deal, Bessie headed towards
ShopFast
.
 
Along the way, she passed a store that
did custom gift baskets and found she couldn’t resist stopping in.

“I need a basket for a friend who is in her
early forties and needs to be spoiled,” she told the woman behind the
counter.
 
It only took a few minutes
for them put together a basket of treats for
Doona
.
 

“Anything else today?” the woman asked.

While Bessie was very tempted to make up a
basket for herself, the bag of books she’d bought herself weighed heavily on
her arm and her conscience.
 
“Not
today,” she said eventually.
 

“It will take me a few hours to make up the
basket,” the woman said once Bessie had paid for everything.
 
“Do you want to stop back or should we
deliver it somewhere?”

As Bessie’s large shopping bag was full of
books and Christmas ornaments and she still had grocery shopping to do, she
opted to have the basket delivered.
 
“Deliver it to me,” she told the woman.
 
“I’d like to give it to my friend
myself.”

ShopFast
was nearly out of shopping trolleys because
of the crowds.
 
Bessie put her
shopping bag into her trolley and shook her head.
 
It took up far too much of the space she
needed to put groceries in.
 

“Bessie, why don’t I put that bag in my boot
for you?” a voice at Bessie’s elbow asked.

“Dave, what are you doing here?” Bessie
asked, surprised to see her taxi driver standing beside her.

“I came in to get some things for my lunch,”
he explained.
 
“I have about half an
hour now before I’m meant to pick you up, so I thought it would be a good time
to eat.”

Bessie insisted on carrying the bag out to
the taxi herself, even while Dave
tutted
at her.
 

“I’ll see you in half an hour,” she told
him.
 
“If I can get through the
crowds by then.”

“There’s no rush,” he assured her.
 
“I don’t mind a long lunch break.”

Bessie rushed around the store as much as
she could, trying to focus on what she needed for meals for the rest of the
week, excluding Christmas.
 
She’d do
another shop on Thursday morning for Christmas itself, she decided.
 
For some reason the shops were usually nearly
deserted on Christmas Eve, at least the ones that bothered to open, and the
turkeys would be discounted as well.
 
It was closer to a full hour when she finally paid for her shopping and
headed out to find Dave.

“It’s the time of year,” he said over her
apologies.
 
“I sometimes think the
island population doubles or something.
 
Where are all these people the rest of the year?”