Local Gone Missing(75)
“I heard—I’m sorry about that.” And she smiled in sympathy. “How are you doing now?”
Doll leaned her bosom on the bar and winced in commiseration as they passed ten minutes discussing women they knew who’d had breast cancer, implants, bra fittings, and other hilarious moments in changing cubicles.
“When are you back at work?” Doll asked, idly sweeping crisp crumbs off the bar.
“I went back this week,” Elise said. “Hard to sit at home when there’s been a death on my own patch.”
“Ah, Charlie,” Doll said quietly. “To be honest, I thought the booze would kill him. Brandies at lunchtime! Madness. Dave had to ban him when he started to get nasty.”
“Goodness! He was always so lovely when I spoke to him.”
“That’s what we all thought but we saw a very different side of him. He turned on Dave. Effing and blinding like a laborer. And he was very rude about me.”
“No!”
“Said I was a ball-breaker because I wouldn’t let Dave invest his pension in some scheme. Well, it was a bloody stupid idea. I put my foot down straightaway. ‘That’s our old age,’ I told Dave. We’re planning to buy a house in Spain when the time comes, put up a couple of deck chairs, and pickle ourselves in G and Ts. That’s the plan, anyway.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“It is. I think we had a lucky escape. I bet others haven’t.”
Bingo!
“I bet. Look, we’d better get off,” Elise said, sliding off the stool. “It’s been lovely to chat.”
“Same.” Doll smiled. “Come back anytime.”
* * *
—
“Up to his old tricks! Wonder if that was Charlie’s first try in Ebbing,” Elise said when they got outside. “God, Mrs. Dave really hates you!”
“Ha! She’ll hate me even more when I rearrest her son,” Caro said. “But Dave didn’t give Charlie his money, did he? Who else in Ebbing has got money to be conned out of?”
“Pete Diamond? And the local business owners? What about the Lobster Shack man? Toby something? His website’s quite flash. We can go and see him after we’ve been to the Eastwoods’.”
“It’ll have to be quick. Baz will kill me if I’m not home for feeding time at the zoo. I said I’d be gone for only a couple of hours.”
They were climbing into Caro’s car when Ronnie suddenly shot out of her door and flagged them down.
“Elise, have you heard? The police were at the weekender’s cottage next door to yours earlier. Suspected drowning. It’s the husband. Val’s heard that the coast guard got a call early this morning about a swimmer who’d disappeared from sight, and a pile of clothes was found.”
“Seriously?” Caro said, scrolling through her phone. “Yep. At seven this morning. Who goes swimming at that hour? Is this him?”
She showed Elise and Ronnie a photo on her phone of a good-looking man in ridiculous swimming trunks.
“Yes. That’s Kevin Scott-Pennington,” Elise said. “He and his family come down most weekends.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know about the riptide,” Ronnie said.
Fifty-seven
SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2019
Dee
Elise and DS Brennan have come to see Liam. I can see it’s a bit awkward for Elise but I do it every day—acting as though I don’t know people when I see them in different circumstances.
“Mr. Eastwood,” she says. She talks different when she’s being a police officer. Her voice goes deeper. “We’d like to talk to you about sightings of your van.”
“Look, I thought all this had already been cleared up,” Liam says. “I told you I took Charlie home in it. On the first night of the festival.”
“Yes, you did. But we want to talk about where you were on that Sunday.”
“Er . . . I told you I was at Cal’s football training.”
“Yes, we’ve checked with the other parents and they’ve confirmed your presence. But later?” Elise says to Liam, and I try not to hold my breath. “You told me you were at the Old Vicarage fire until the early hours of Monday morning.”
“I was!”
“But your van was captured on CCTV going past the Shell garage on Sunday night, just before midnight.”
Liam stares at her. I hate it when he does that gormless face.
“Midnight?” he says. “That can’t be. I walked up to the Vicarage—I’d had a couple of beers, so I didn’t want to drive—and got home about one thirty. I woke you up, didn’t I, Dee?”
“Can you confirm that, Mrs. Eastwood?” Elise says, and looks right at me.
The “Mrs. Eastwood” wrong-foots me. It feels like she’s talking to my mother-in-law.
“Er, yes,” I say.
“I think you must have made some mistake,” Liam says. “My van was outside the house when I left and when I got back.”
After Elise leaves “to make further inquiries,” I turn to him and grip his arm. “Why did you ask me to confirm where you were? I didn’t wake up when you got home. You had to tell me about it in the morning.”