Death in the Sunshine (Retired Detectives Club, #1)(14)

‘What is it?’ says Moira. ‘What did you see?’

Then she hears an engine start up a little way along the street. Turning towards the noise she peers further over the hedge and sees a vehicle pull away from the kerb and accelerate fast.

Her breath catches in her throat.

It’s a silver VW Beetle: the car that had been parked on the road near Manatee Recreation Park. The one the young blond guy who’d taken her photo had been hiding behind.

Her heart beats faster.

What’s he doing on the road outside her house? He’s not a neighbour. Did the dogs barking and Wolfie being so fixated on a specific spot on the other side of the hedge mean the guy has been loitering on the pavement outside her home?

Was he watching her, again?

Moira shivers. She’s always lived alone, and has never felt bothered by the solitude. But seeing the wiry blond guy near the park and now outside her home is weird. He could be connected to the murder. Hell, he could be the actual murderer. Or he could be something, somebody, far, far worse.

He could be looking for her.

Moira feels nauseous. Suddenly she’s dizzy again.

What if her old life has found her here? She’s made a career out of being tough and staying resilient. But her toughness has crumbled over the past year. The idea of being discovered makes her feel weirdly vulnerable. And she hates the feeling.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She looks at the screen, glad of the distraction. It’s another message from Lizzie:

Please say you’ll come over. I could do with your support.

There’s a lot of ways to read the message, and meaning is always so hard to determine from a typed note, but the wording strikes Moira as odd. Why would Lizzie need her support? Surely with Philip and Rick they can manage anything that comes from the meeting of the neighbourhood patrollers? They don’t even know that she’s ex-law enforcement; as far as they’re concerned she’s just a civilian.

Leaning down, Moira tickles Pip behind his greying ears and takes some comfort as the sausage dog licks her hand. His hackles are down now, and Wolfie and Marigold have gone back to chasing around the lawn with the ball. Moving here, starting this new life was meant to be her tabula rasa. Do something different, the police doc had said. Leave this life, and what’s happened, behind and start a new chapter.

I tried, thinks Moira, but this morning there was a dead body on her tabula rasa. Her blank slate is now splattered with water and blood, and sprinkled with dollars. She needs to find a way to clean it off.

Maybe her finding the victim was a test – part of her recovery. Or maybe it’s just Sod’s law. She’s tried to distance herself from Lizzie and Philip. Worked hard to protect her secret and avoid making connections with people who could compromise that. But a young woman died. Can she really walk away when Lizzie, Philip and Rick are trying to find information to help the cops solve the murder?

She knows she needs to stop fooling herself. Maybe if she does this she’ll be able to scrub the blood from her blank slate and start again. Perhaps helping them is a way for her to atone for what happened; a way she can work towards redemption. Or maybe she’s about to learn that nowhere is far enough when you’re running from your past.

She’s not sure. But she needs to make a decision.

Waking the phone screen, she taps a message back to Lizzie and presses send before she can rethink it. It’s only one meal, after all. And she can’t hide from them forever.

Sometimes doing the right thing means you have to step into the danger zone.





8


PHILIP


Taking his phone from his trouser pocket, Philip presses the photo icon and selects the picture Moira had messaged to him. It’s a close-up of the young woman’s face cropped from one of the crime-scene pictures she had taken. The blood isn’t visible, but from the vacant, staring eyes it is obvious she’s dead.

He looks at Dorothy. ‘You ready?’

‘Just give it me already,’ she says, holding her hand out for the phone.

He passes it to her. Watches her pale beneath her tan as she looks at the image.

Dorothy shakes her head. Turning the phone over so it’s face down, she slides it back across the table to him. ‘Sorry, I don’t think I’ve seen her before. And definitely not while I’ve been on patrol.’

Philip takes the phone, then reaches out and gives Dorothy’s hand a pat. ‘Appreciate you looking.’

She gives him a sad smile. Fiddles with the clasp of her pearls. ‘No problem.’

‘Who else is going to look?’ He scans the group, but no one will meet his gaze. It reminds him how difficult dealing with the public can be – they always want a perpetrator caught fast, and get hooked on those true-crime podcasts and whatever, but faced with the real thing most still prefer to turn a blind eye. It’s not good enough. He needs the patrollers to step up.

Since the second break-in, when he and Rick had set up the community watch, they’d split the Ocean Mist district into four quadrants and deployed single-person patrols to each quadrant every night. He glances down at the picture on his phone. If this young woman was seen by anyone, chances are it’ll be one of his volunteer patrollers. But still no one’s giving him eye contact. There’s just a lot of awkward shuffling on seats and Melly whispering something he can’t hear to Rory. He needs to tell them what’s what; make them engage on this. He clears his throat again. Holds the phone towards Rory, Melly and Donald – the people sitting closest to him. ‘Who’s going to—?’