A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery (10 page)

“No, of course you wouldn’t. But you know for sure that he’s stealing?” asked Penny.

Eirlys shook her head. “No, but I can’t think of any other way he could be getting those things. He’s got a brand-new smartphone. Where would he get the money for something like that? And how can he afford the monthly payments? I know my parents aren’t paying for his phone plan.”

“Has he picked up a part-time job after school?”

“Not that I know of. He hasn’t said.”

“Well, there’s probably a simple explanation. We just don’t know what it is yet.” She smiled at her young assistant. “I hope he knows how lucky he is to have a big sister like you who cares so much about him.”

Eirlys turned away and adjusted a few bottles of nail polish that were just fine where they were.

*   *   *

With Gareth due back from Birmingham that night, Penny decided to call in at the off-licence on her way home to pick up some beer and wine. As she rounded the corner into the cobblestone square, she noticed a small white dog tied up outside the supermarket, sitting on the pavement waiting for his owner. As she came a few steps closer, a hooded figure emerged from the street on the right side of the square, looked quickly around, then untied the dog and led him quickly away.

Thinking that something wasn’t right, she hurried past the supermarket and looked down the street where the man had gone. She couldn’t see him, so she continued on to the off-licence.

Twenty

DCI Gareth Davies took a long, appreciative drink of beer and then set the glass down. “I needed that.” He smiled, taking Penny’s hand. “How have you been? All right?”

“I haven’t been sleeping very well,” she said. “I start off all right, and then wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get off again.”

“Something bothering you?”

“Not really. Nothing more than usual.” Penny shrugged. “You know how it is. Life. Usual stuff.” She debated telling him about Dilys and then decided she would. “But I was given some valerian root and that seems to help.”

“Valerian? Who gave you that?”

Penny told him how she’d been to talk to Dilys and her brother at Ty Brith Hall and how Dilys had given her an aromatic pillow and a small packet of dried herb with instructions on how to take it.

“Her brother used to be the head gardener at the Hall. He’s got dementia now, Alzheimer’s maybe, and she looks after him.”

Davies closed his eyes and said nothing.

“How did you get on in Birmingham?” Penny asked. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“We talked to the girl’s friends and got nowhere. It’s a very odd crime because we can’t find a motive, but obviously someone must have had one.”

“The baby’s father?”

“We don’t know who that was yet.”

“Her mother told me she didn’t have any boyfriends.”

Davies raised an eyebrow.

“That’s what I thought,” said Penny. “There must have been someone in her life.”

“We also looked into the mother’s past. She was married before, to the children’s father, a Vietnamese man from Lewisham, but it ended a few years ago and then she married the English fellow, Derek. He’s known to the West Midlands police for minor things, and he does have a gambling problem.”

“Mrs. Lloyd and I were wondering about the Hall. Why would people like that buy a big rural estate when they don’t seem to have any interest in farming or running it? They don’t seem suited to Ty Brith Hall, somehow. We had rather hoped that someone with a keen interest in organic gardening would take it on. It has so much potential.”

Davies gave her a sharp look. “You might be on to something there.” He shifted in his seat. “We’ll be paying them another visit, anyway, so we’ll try to take a look around.”

He glanced at his watch. “What would you like to do about dinner?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought. I’ve got a few things in now that I’m better organized. How about some soup and a Welsh rarebit?”

“Sounds perfect. What can I do to help?”

“You could set the table. You know where the plates and cutlery are.”

*   *   *

Settled at the dining room table, Gareth poured Penny a glass of wine. He had switched to water.

“One thing I did want to mention to you. We’re seeing an increase in the number of reported dog thefts.” Penny glanced over at Trixxi, asleep in front of the fire in the sitting room. “So don’t leave her tied up outside a shop, even for a minute. ‘I just popped in to get some milk,’ the owner tells us, and when they come out, the dog’s gone.” He shook his head. “It’s a terrible thing. They just can’t believe their dog is gone.” He took a sip of water. “And it’s hell for the owner, wondering what might become of their pet.” Penny put her spoon down and pushed her plate to one side.

“What are you saying, exactly?”

“Well, people wonder if their dog has been sold for medical research, for example.” Sensing her distress, he did not elaborate on the far worse fates that befall some stolen pets. “But usually the dogs are just sold so someone can make a bit of fast money. They pretend they own the dog, say they can’t look after it anymore, and sell it to an unsuspecting buyer. Mostly it’s small dogs we’ve been hearing about. West Highland terriers, Maltese, that kind of dog.

“Still, we want to get the word out, so you should tell any of your clients who own dogs to be careful. We’ll also be issuing a press release so the media can run the story.”

He smiled at her. “It may be that the women with small dogs who come to your Spa carry them about in their handbags.”

Penny made a little strangling noise, set down her fork, and looked at her hands.

“I’ve got an awful feeling I saw a dog being taken today. There was a small white dog, tied up outside the supermarket, and then a man came and led it away.”

“Did you get a look at him? Can you describe him?”

Penny shook her head. “He was wearing a dark-coloured hoodie and moved fast, so I think he was young. If it was a he, of course.”

Davies reached for his phone. “I’ll call Bethan to see if it was reported. And we’ll get the CCTV tapes.”

A minute later he ended the call.

“A Maltese?”

“Could have been. Something like that. White and fluffy.”

“We did have one reported missing today from outside the supermarket, I’m sorry to say.”

“Something about it didn’t seem right at the time, and I’ve just realized what it was. It wasn’t so much that the man didn’t come directly out of the shop to get the dog but came along the street. It was that the dog didn’t wag his tail. Whenever I leave Trixxi for a few minutes, she wags her tail when she sees me.”

Penny brushed her hair back from her forehead.

“Something at the time didn’t feel right. I tried to follow him and looked down the street that leads off the square where they’d gone, but they’d disappeared.” She gave him a defeated look. “I feel terrible.”

“Never mind, love, you weren’t to know. And you did try to follow them, even though you didn’t know what was really going on. That’s more than most folk would have done.”

*   *   *

They finished their meal and settled in to watch a new game show. Penny liked to call out the answers, while Gareth made uncomplimentary remarks about the contestants’ mental abilities. “That’s the beauty of watching a game show on telly,” he said. “It’s always your turn and you are always so much smarter than the contestants. And there’s never any pressure.” But tonight their hearts just weren’t in it, and a gloomy, tired pall hung over them as they sat close on the sofa, her head resting on his shoulder and his arm around her.

*   *   *

As a full moon rose over Llanelen, Pawl Hughes stirred in his sleep. In the close darkness, in the small room where he had slept every night of his adult life, he found familiarity and peace that comforted him after the confused turmoil of a day spent struggling to understand and remember. In his dreams he was once again young and fit, and as a spectator, he watched himself from afar doing the ordinary things he used to do. Oh, look, that’s me planting out the beans in the kitchen garden, and there I am cutting the pale pink roses that Emyr’s mother, the lady of the house, loves so much. He heard the faint sound of dogs barking, reminding him of the beautiful girl who worked in the kennels, looking after the black Labs that were born and bred on the estate. He heard her laughing, but as his eyes opened in the dove-grey light before dawn, he told himself it was a dream. Just a dream. He closed his eyes and sank back into oblivion, the dream already forgotten as moon-washed shadows crept over his bed, carrying him toward morning.

Twenty-one

Penny stirred and came awake. She didn’t need to look at her bedside clock to know dawn was approaching. She lay back, knowing she’d get up in a few minutes because she would not be able to get back to sleep. She’d used up the sample of valerian Dilys Hughes had given her, and although lurking at the back of her mind was a fear that she might be becoming dependent on it, she wanted more. I’ll go and see her first thing, she thought, as she threw back the covers and groped about on the floor with her feet, looking for her slippers.

*   *   *

In the sunny kitchen of the rectory Bronwyn Evans frowned at the screen on her laptop. The church bulletin for Sunday’s service had to be done by noon on Friday, and while she normally managed to get most of it written on Thursday, she was determined that this week she’d have it all done, or most of it, anyway, early so she and Thomas could enjoy a day out with Robbie on Friday.

She glanced at the time in the corner of her computer screen. Just another half hour, three quarters at most, she thought, should do it. Her cairn terrier, Robbie, which she had found shivering and near death in the cemetery last year and then adopted, wagged his tail and went to the back door.

“Just a minute, Robbie, and then I’ll take you out,” Bronwyn said. He barked again and this time she understood the urgency.

“Oh, all right.” She got up and opened the kitchen door. She’d let him out into the rectory garden on his own many times before, and he’d bark when he was ready to come back in.

She returned to her laptop and began work on the announcements for the week. Prayers for dear Mary Williams, who lived alone in her lovely old seventeenth-century cottage and who was feeling poorly but getting better; the mother’s meeting is canceled; a reminder that gently used clothing and household goods were needed for the spring jumble sale. She called up the Internet to search for a photo that would suit the jumble sale item and spent a few minutes, longer than she meant to, on that task. The Internet is such a black hole, she thought. But since I’m here anyway, I might as well renew my library books and see if they’ve got in anything new I might like.

As her mind drifted away to what her husband, Thomas, might like for lunch, she reached out for a scrap of paper and wrote a short shopping list: carrots, balsamic vinegar, milk. There was something else, but she couldn’t think what it was. She went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and surveyed the contents. Moving a few items around, she peered to the back. She opened a drawer and pulled out a few wilted leaves of lettuce. That’s it. She returned to her desk and added lettuce to her shopping list, and after a moment’s thought, she added tomatoes.

She glanced again at the clock on her computer screen. That’s odd, she thought, Robbie should have been barking to be let in by now. Maybe he’s got into something he shouldn’t have in the cemetery.

She slipped on her coat and opened the door that led to the rectory garden. Situated alongside the River Conwy, the garden was open to all and people had to pass by it on their way to the church and cemetery.

Calling Robbie’s name, Bronwyn walked down the path that led to the church. She checked behind the tombstones in the cemetery as an increasing sense of panic began to swell within her.

“Robbie!” she called. “Robbie, come!” She prayed that her fears were unfounded and in a moment he’d come bounding out from behind a weathered tombstone, tail wagging furiously, and run up to her and put his muddy paws on her leg.

But he didn’t. After she’d retraced her steps all over the cemetery and garden, a dreadful twist of fear settled in her stomach.

She ran back to the rectory and, throwing open the door, called out, “Thomas, Thomas, it’s our Robbie. I can’t find him. I think he’s gone.”

*   *   *

Penny gulped in some cleansing breaths of cold air as she climbed the last stretch before entering the small clearing that backed onto the row of workmen’s cottages at the far end of the Ty Brith estate. The sweet sound of birdsong filled the air.

The ground was beginning to thaw and felt slightly spongy under the soles of her hiking boots. Trixxi trotted beside her, occasionally wandering off to explore something that caught her attention and then returning to Penny’s side. As she neared the cottage, she clipped the lead to Trixxi’s collar, and a moment later she knocked on the door.

As before, Dilys opened it.

“I knew you’d be back,” she said. “Folks get to like and depend on my medicinals. You’d better come in, then. The dog’s all right.”

Penny stepped in, keeping a tight hold on Trixxi’s lead. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw Pawl sitting in his chair at the back of the overheated room. He leaned forward and then let out a loud, joyful cry. He gestured at Trixxi and called, “Nelly. Nelly.” Dilys looked up from her workbench, where she had started weighing out dried leaves on a small kitchen scale. “Take no notice of him. He thinks your dog is another dog he used to know. They used to call all the pups in the same Ty Brith litters names that started with the same letter, so Nelly was from the
N
litter. What’s your dog called?”

“Trixxi.”

Dilys leaned over and looked at her. “Mind you, all black dogs look pretty much the same to me and I’m no judge of dog flesh, but by any chance is she a Ty Brith dog? Was she born and bred on the estate, do you know?”

“As a matter of fact, she was, so I guess she would have been from the
T
litter. She used to belong to Emyr Gruffyd himself. It’s a long story how she came to be with me, but Emyr is away a lot just now and he couldn’t have her with him.” Penny leaned over and gave Trixxi a pat. “Your brother seems to like her. Would he like to pat her, do you think?”