We hadn’t planned any more visits on Saturday—for a start, I was working all morning, sorting out a cesspit out in the wilds of Redbourn. Don’t ask, and don’t take any deep breaths, either. I ended up having a late lunch, mostly because there was no way I was eating anything I’d touched before having a shower.
First job on the list for the afternoon was disinfecting the van—I’d done my best with a dust sheet over the driver’s seat, but I’d have needed a whole different set of psychic powers to drive home without touching the controls. I’d just about finished that when Phil popped his head around the van door. “Fancy a trip up to Pluck’s End?”
“What for?”
“I want another word with Axel. Half-term’s over, so he’ll be back at school next week.”
“What about tomorrow? We’re not due anywhere for Sunday lunch, are we?” My big brother, Richard, and his wife, Agatha, had been threatening to invite us, but fortunately hadn’t got round to it yet. I was kind of hoping they never would.
Phil gave a brief headshake. “Axel’s going out with his aunt, remember?”
“Uh, no.” Actually it did ring a faint bell.
“Lilah mentioned it Thursday,” he reminded me. “So it’s now or never.”
“Do they know we’re coming?”
Phil looked shifty. “I rang Lilah, told her I wanted to have another go through Jonathan’s things. She said not to come on Saturday as she’d be working.”
“So you’re planning to catch Axel home alone? Sneaky. Unless he goes out, of course.”
He huffed. “Did he strike you as the sort who’s keen on fresh air? Anyway, if he’s not in, we can drop in on Leanne.”
“At the salon? Sorry to disappoint you, but if I ever decide to go for some professional manscaping, it’s not going to be by my future sister-in-law.”
“Nothing like that.” He looked even shiftier. “We were spotted on Thursday. Mum reckons Leanne’s got the hump because we were in Pluck’s End and didn’t walk in the shop and say hello.”
“Oh. Right. We can do that, then. Maybe we could take her out for dinner?” I felt a bit guilty. So she wasn’t my favourite person in the whole world—I hadn’t forgiven her for embarrassing Phil by casually dropping a very personal piece of information about his first marriage into the conversation when we’d gone round to his mum’s for Sunday lunch a while back—but she meant well. Mostly. “She’s not still on the diet, is she?”
“She’s always on a flippin’ diet. No. We’ll go in and say hello. That’s it.”
I nodded. “Going there first, so we’ve got an excuse to dash off?”
Phil paused, clearly tempted, then shook his head. “No. Let’s do Axel first. It’s late enough already, and who knows when Lilah’s going to come home.”
As I locked the front door behind us, Phil pulled out his car keys. It was getting to be a habit, taking his car.
“How about we take the Fiesta?” I suggested. “It could do with a good run.”
He shrugged. “Fine.”
When I turned the keys in the ignition, the Fiesta sputtered into life like it’d been having a snooze and wasn’t too chuffed to be woken.
Phil huffed. “When was the last time you drove your car?”
“Uh . . . I refuse to answer on the grounds it may cause you to make a suggestion that’ll hurt her feelings.”
“Her?”
“Well, yeah. All cars are female, aren’t they? Like ships.”
“I think Lightning McQueen would have something to say about that.”
“Who?”
“Disney character. In the Cars film. Male, in case you were wondering.”
“I’m mostly wondering how come you know the names of Disney characters.” Was this the kids thing coming up again?
He gave me a look. I could feel it burning into the side of my face. “Remember shopping for a present for your mate Dave’s kid? You dragged me into the Disney store and we didn’t get out for half an hour.”
Oh. That. Time to change the subject. “Right. Uh, there was something that came up when I was in the pub with Gary. Pun not intended. Our honeymoon. About time we booked that, innit?” I braced myself for another argument—sorry, spirited discussion—on the topic of idyllic Caribbean beaches and why they were no substitute for holiday destinations involving activities that were more, well, active both physically and, god forbid, intellectually.
Phil shrugged, staring straight ahead through the car windscreen. “Plenty of time for that.”
I frowned. “You sure? It’s the second week of July, remember. Isn’t that around when the school holidays start? If we leave it too late, everywhere’ll be booked up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Phil said, and then we got stuck behind some idiot blatantly talking on his mobile and driving like he was on the M25—all variable speed limits. So I didn’t.
It was getting on for four o’clock by the time we finally got to Lilah’s house. We knocked and waited. Too late, I realised the flaw in the plan. “Hang on, if Axel’s up in his room with his headphones on, he’s not gonna hear the door, is he?”
Phil cursed—just as the door opened after all.
The man who stood there giving us an unimpressed once-over had clearly heard the phrase go large at an impressionable age and had decided then and there to adopt it as a personal mantra. I don’t mean he was obese, although he had a definite look of prosperity around the middle. He was easily as tall—and as broad shouldered—as Phil, and had for some unknown reason decided to add a few unnecessary inches with heeled cowboy boots and an honest-to-God bowler hat. He was wearing a waistcoat too, but there any resemblance to your stereotypical English civil servant ended. A splash of colour of the eye-watering variety was added by an exuberant purple paisley cravat.
Some blokes would’ve come across as camp in that little lot. This guy somehow managed to give the whole ensemble a rakish, macho air. I wasn’t surprised when he tipped the hat to us, then folded his arms to stand there, feet hip-width apart, with a smug, self-satisfied smile. As if to say My balls are so big my legs won’t close.
Even if I’d been inclined to trust him as far as I could throw him, which I hadn’t been, that stance would’ve done it for me.
“Gentlemen?” He stroked his neatly trimmed goatee with one powerful hand. “What can I do you for?”
“We’re working for Mrs. Parrot,” Phil said with more than a hint of a challenge as he squared up to fix the bloke in the eye. I don’t think he could help himself. Testosterone breeding testosterone, and all that. “Is she in?”
“Nope. Girl’s got a business to run, ain’t she? What’re you here about, then?”
“Her husband.” Phil’s voice was getting curter and curter. He’d be down to words of one syllable and incoherent grunting soon.
“You’re not police,” the bloke guarding the door said with a lot more certainty than he could legitimately have felt, although to be fair he had his eye on me at the time.
Then I started wondering what it was about me that screamed, Not a copper, and if it was something I should worry about. “Sorry, mate,” I butted in cheerily. “Didn’t get your name.”
“Tarbox. Brian. Lilah’s other husband. The one what lived. And you are?”
“Private investigators, looking into Jonathan Parrot’s death. I’m Phil Morrison.” He said it grudgingly and didn’t mention my name, which meant he was either playing his cards close to his chest or getting annoyingly overprotective. I knew which one my money was on.
Tarbox grunted. “Might have known. No other bugger cares that useless tosser’s dead.”