All Things Undying (19 page)

The news reader went on and on, but didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, so I switched the television off.

I was still sitting on the arm of an overstuffed chair, feeling that I ought to be doing something, but not knowing exactly what, when I felt Paul's hand on my shoulder. ‘What we need, Hannah, is another medium.'

I managed to dredge up a smile. My husband, in his own backhanded way, was trying to be helpful. ‘Good idea, Paul, but from what I understand, Susan wasn't on speaking terms with most of them in life, so I doubt she'd be dying to talk to them now.' I caught my breath. I'd not intended to be punny.

Susan had been joking when she said that, right? And yet, I found myself wondering where Greg Parker had been on Friday morning. Back home in California, presumably. Los Angeles, City of Angels. According to the CNN reporters hanging out at Heathrow Airport, Greg Parker would be stepping off a BA flight from Los Angeles – flying first class on Susan's dime, no doubt – at any moment.

‘If Susan chooses to talk through a medium,' Paul was saying when I tuned back in, ‘there's no shortage of them about.'

Janet kept a pile of daily newspapers on a side table in the dining room. Paul had liberated a copy of the
Daily Mirror
– the only tabloid Janet would allow in the house – from under
The Times
and now he handed it to me. ‘Check this out.'

I scanned the headlines. Susan was already communicating with other mediums, it appeared:

‘Well, they're both fakes, we can be sure of that.'

Paul squeezed my shoulder. ‘Basingstoke,' he whispered.

‘Exactly. When one of those charlatans comes up with the word Basingstoke, she'll have my undivided attention.'

The following morning, I visited the police station and, once again, found it locked. I seriously swore, using the big F-word. To be fair, solving Susan's hit-and-run was probably the highest priority on their blotter, so maybe they
were
all out hunting for Susan's killer.

I followed the
Dartmouth Chronicle
, the local weekly. High crimes that week had included the theft of twenty pounds' worth of groceries from an elderly lady while she was returning her trolley to its bay, and a woman who was evicted from her home for chronic ‘anti-social behavior'. Playing loud music day and night was a crime that paled in comparison with what had happened to my friend Susan, so I'm sure the police had their hands full.

There's a newsagent on the corner near the boat float. On my way back to the B&B, I popped in and bought a copy of each of the tabloids – the
Sun
, the
Mirror
, the
Mail
, the
Express
, the
Star
. I do this at home on occasion, too, but for other reasons. Roll 'em up and tie 'em with a bow. Give them as gifts at office Christmas parties, or to patients in the hospital.
Hours
of entertaining fiction.

Back at our B&B, I went up to our room and spread the papers out on the bed.

As usual, sleaze was the story of the day. I learned who had been kicked out of the Big Brother house, what ailing actor hated his wife so much that he was divorcing her on his deathbed, and that Britney Spears was heading for rehab. Again.

‘What is this endless fascination with Tom, Katie and Suri Cruise?' I muttered to Paul as I flipped through the pages of the
Mirror
. His lanky frame was sprawled on a chaise in the bay window, where he was editing the page proofs of his geometry textbook,
Geometric Proof: From Abstract Thought to CGI.

‘Dunno.' Clearly, he wasn't paying attention.

If what I read in the
Sun
was true, competition for Susan's ITV time slot was already heating up. Two episodes of
Dead Reckoning
, including the one we'd attended in Paignton, were already in the can, but after that, it'd be reruns from America, starting with
Everybody Loves Raymond
, temporarily filling Susan's hour-long time slot. I thought that episodes of
Medium
, starring Patricia Arquette, might be more appropriate, but network executives weren't beating down the door in the effort to consult me.

Perhaps they didn't take counsel from mediums, either, so candidates were auditioning for the job in the press.

‘Look at this one, Paul!' I folded my copy of the
Mirror
and held it up. ‘Natasha Madrid. If that isn't a made-up name, I'll eat my hat. And check out her getup!'

The last time I'd seen an outfit like that – white peasant blouse, flowered skirt, oversize gold hoop earrings, and heavy-handed eye make-up that would have made Tammy Faye Baker step back and say
whoa!
– it was being worn by a volunteer in the fortune-telling tent at the Stoke Fleming village fête. ‘You weel ween big prize,' she had intoned. She was right about that, too. Hannah Ives, first place in the vegetable art competition for a herd of sheep assembled from cauliflower and black olives. But it didn't take a fortune teller to suss that fortune out, just a visit to the competition tent.

The
Mail
,
Express
and
Star
had zeroed in on Greg, who was a fairly attractive guy, if surfer-boys or Nazi youth turn you on. Caught by the camera as he emerged from airport security, he was hatless, his sun-bleached hair cut in a retro buzz. Greg was shaped like a triangle, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and for his debut on the world stage he had selected dark pants and a pale yellow polo shirt that displayed his biceps and pecs to advantage. I flipped from one tabloid to the other, thinking that the photos were so similar that the paparazzi must have snapped their shutters at precisely the same moment. Or maybe the papers were owned by the same company.

‘Greg Parker told the
Sun
that plans are in the works for a memorial service for his wife at Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis, sometime at the end of August,' I read aloud.

From the chaise, Paul spoke up. ‘You think the WTL Guardians will approve of that?'

‘Who gives a flying fig what they think?' I muttered.

Wait a minute. Back up, Hannah
.
Greg said ‘wife'.

The story in the
Star
also mentioned the memorial service, but in that article, Susan Parker was described as Greg's ‘estranged wife'. Had their divorce not been final?

I got my answer by turning to the
Express
. ‘My wife and I were separated,' Parker told a reporter. ‘Susan had filed for divorce, but I never stopped loving her, and had hoped for a reconciliation.' Greg, pictured standing in front of a white stretch limo, was wearing a little-boy-lost expression that could melt ice at the polar caps. Women were probably already queuing up to comfort the poor, grieving widower.

‘Well, damn!' I tossed the paper on the carpet. ‘It's an epidemic.
Everybody's
shading the truth!' First Alison, and now Susan.

‘Chill, Hannah.'

I made a face. ‘I've never even met the guy, but I already dislike him.'

The
Mail
reported that Greg had been playing golf in Palm Springs when news of the accident reached him. As much as I wanted to pin Susan's hit-and-run on the opportunistic so-in-so staring out at me from the front page of the
Mirror
, unless he could manage a round trip from Los Angeles to London and back at the speed of light, he had a rock-solid alibi. Or an accomplice.

Had one of Susan's readings hit too close to home? In that case, suspects were legion. All they needed was a car. A dark car, I reminded myself. Either blue or gray. Maybe black. A Ford, or a Vauxhall, or a Fiat. Everybody in England seemed to drive a Ford, Vauxhall or Fiat. How do you spell ‘needle in a haystack'?

SIXTEEN

Ken Small,
The Forgotten Dead
, Bloomsbury, 1988, pp.46–47

T
he rest of the day, I couldn't shake the feeling that Susan's murder was related to a reading, and that kept bringing me back to the mysterious disappearance of Jon's first wife, Beth. What if Jon had murdered Beth? What if he believed Susan Parker was getting messages from Beth, his victim, from the great beyond, and what if he thought Susan was going to rat him out?

There were a lot of ifs in that statement.

Even though Jon was married to my best friend, and as much as I liked him, Jon had – for the moment, at least – shot straight to the top of my suspect list. The only difficulty with this theory was my husband. Paul was Jon's alibi.

Lying next to Paul in bed that night, I said, ‘Tell me about your sailing trip.'

Paul tugged on the duvet and tucked it under his chin. ‘Well, the first race was Saturday . . .'

‘Start before the race, when you left home.'

Paul turned his head on the pillow and studied me quizzically. ‘We sailed to Cowes . . .'

‘No, before that.'

‘OK. Wednesday morning I got up, staggered to the loo, showered, shaved, brushed my teeth . . .'

‘Not
that
early, silly.'

Paul propped himself up on one elbow. ‘What's going on, Hannah?'

‘I was just wondering, is all. After you sailed out of the Dart Marina, was Jon with you the whole time?'

‘Of course he was! He was at the helm.'

‘Thursday and Friday, too?'

‘Where else would he be? We were stripping the boat of non-essentials, getting her ready to race.'

‘Jon didn't slip away, even for a few hours?'

Paul's eyes widened, comprehension dawning. ‘If you're asking me whether Jon had time to get himself from Cowes to Dartmouth and back again . . .'

‘That's exactly what I'm wondering.'

‘What are you smoking, Hannah? Jon didn't have a car, for one thing. And even if he'd rented a car, Cowes is on the Isle of Wight. It's an island, remember? Water all around? There'd be a ferry involved.' He pressed to my lips a finger that smelled like lavender soap. ‘And before you go off on another wild tangent, we kipped aboard
Biding Thyme
, so there was no sneaking out of the hotel room at night, either.'

I sighed, stretched out my arm and began playing with a lock of his hair, twisting it around my finger.

Paul closed his eyes. ‘May I go to sleep now?'

‘Certainly.' I kissed the tip of his nose goodnight, lay down and stared at the concentric circles of light my bedside lamp was casting on the ceiling.

‘Maybe Alison would have been more secure in her relationship with Jon if they'd been able to have a child together,' I mused, speaking more to the ceiling than to my husband.

Next to me, Paul stirred. ‘Well, that would never happen, would it?'

‘Didn't, but could have.'

‘Not possible, Hannah. Jon had a vasectomy.'

I shot straight up into a sitting position, leaned over my husband. ‘What did you say?'

Without opening his eyes, Paul repeated. ‘Jon had a vasectomy.'

‘That's what I thought you said.' I plopped back on to my pillow, my brain reeling. ‘Are you sure?'

Paul nodded.

‘One hundred per cent positive?'

‘What's it going to take, Hannah? A signed affidavit from his surgeon?'

‘When?' I asked.

‘A year or so after Kitty was born.'

I sat bolt upright, stunned by the news. ‘Jeeze, Paul! Jon told you that?'

‘One night at the Cherub, when we were here on the exchange, in fact.' He turned on his side to look at me. ‘Jon was feeling no pain at the time, and he let it slip. Frankly, I'd forgotten all about it until now.'

‘From talking to Alison, I don't think she knows.'

‘That would surprise me very much. Jon and Alison seem very close.'

‘Maybe so, but take it from me, Alison's clueless.' I folded my pillow in half and propped it behind my back. ‘OK, you're a guy. You tell me. Why would Jon keep his vasectomy a secret from Alison?'

‘Perhaps he was afraid she would leave him if she found out he couldn't father her children?'

‘Could be,' I agreed. ‘But aren't vasectomies reversible?'

‘Sometimes. But the surgery would have to be private, not on the NHS's dime. Maybe money was an issue.'

With Paul to alibi him, I was willing to scratch Jon off my list of suspects in Susan Parker's murder, but something still didn't compute. Why would a happily married man with only one child decide to have a vasectomy? Clearly, he didn't want to have any more children with Beth. So, maybe he wasn't as happily married as everybody thought.

Next to me, Paul began to saw logs.

I elbowed him awake. ‘We have to ask him, Paul.'

‘Ask who what?' he snuffled.

‘Jon. Invite him to meet you at the pub. Ask him
why
he got that vasectomy.'

‘You're not going to let me get any sleep until I agree, right?'