Aunt Bessie Finds (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 6) (3 page)

Bessie laughed.
 
“Well,
there’s no danger of that for me,” she told Bahey.
 
“Even if I love the place, I have no
intention of moving away from
Laxey
.
 
It’s been home since I was eighteen, and
it will be home until I die.”

“But you won’t tell Nigel and the estate agent that, right?” Bahey
asked.

“I won’t tell Nigel or the estate agent that,” Bessie agreed with a
chuckle.
 
“Now you’ve made me
curious about the place, I’m almost eager to have a look at it.”

“It should be almost identical to this,” Bahey told her.
 
“All of the flats in the building are
meant to be the same.
 
The building
was purpose-built, you know, and every flat is the same size with the same
layout, except the ones in the back are mirror images to the ones at the
front.
 
I gather keeping the layouts
the same made it easier for the builders; they just had to keep doing the exact
same thing, over and over again.”

“Easier, but probably quite boring,” Howard said.
 
“I can’t imagine how tedious it must
have been building and decorating twelve identical flats.”

“Of course, the end units have a few extra windows,” Bahey
said.
 
“And the flats at the front
of the building that face the sea are worth a bit more than the ones at the
back that face the car park.”

“But all of the interiors are the same?” Bessie asked.

“They were meant to be,” Bahey told her.
 
“But apparently a few of the original
owners who bought off-plan made some modifications.
 
I guess a few of the flats have better
quality materials and things like mixer taps and fully tiled walls in their
bathrooms, rather than the half-tile I have.
 
I’ve only ever been in my flat and
Howard’s, so I’m not sure how true that is, though.”

“I’ve been in a few of the others,” Howard said.
 
“And there are minor cosmetic
differences, but nothing that seemed important to me.”

“Whose flats have you been in, then?” Bahey demanded.

Howard laughed.
 
“When I
first moved in, I was invited into nearly all of them,” he told her.
 
“At least where the occupants are
female.
 
There are a lot of widowed
women living in the building.”

He addressed the last remark towards Bessie, who nodded.
 
Bahey was frowning.

“So they all invited you around for a
cuppa
?”
she asked, clearly upset.

Howard took her hand.
 
“Most of them invited me around for a
cuppa
,”
he said.
 
“You were the only one who
didn’t.
 
That’s why I’ve been
chasing after you ever since.”

Bahey blushed.
 
“I never
thought to ask you in for tea,” she muttered.

“Exactly, and that made me curious about you,” Howard told her.

Bessie grinned at the pair.
 
Bahey reminded her of a teenager, working out how relationships work for
the first time.
 
“So as far as we
know, all the flats are more or less the same, even if a few have slightly
nicer details?” Bessie checked.

“Except for Nigel’s, of course,” Bahey said.
 
“The flats are all meant to have one
bedroom, and one bathroom, but Nigel told me that he’s built up a few extra
walls in his to make a second bedroom, and added an extra bathroom as
well.
 
His mother lives with him,
you see, and he wanted to give her some privacy.”

Bessie looked around the flat.
 
It was spacious, but not enormous.
 
She wasn’t sure where someone could fit an extra bedroom and bathroom
into the floor plan.
 
“Is it okay if
I take a look around?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” Bahey said.
 
“Let me show you the rest.”

Bessie stood up and followed Bahey through the room, back towards
the entryway to the flat.
 
The
kitchen was tucked up in the corner that made a sort of L-shaped room out of
the living space.
 
One door opened
up next to the kitchen, and Bahey pushed it open to show Bessie the modern
bathroom.
 
At a ninety-degree angle
from that door was the second door that Bahey now opened.
 

“Here’s the bedroom,” she announced, standing back to let Bessie
peek inside.

Bessie didn’t want to appear too nosy, so she simply glanced
quickly into the fairly large and comfortable-looking bedroom.
 
It too was furnished with a mix of
modern and antique pieces with a large bed in the
centre
of the space.
 

“It’s bigger than I expected,” she told Bahey.
 
“But I can’t see how anyone could divide
it into two.”

“I guess he moved the kitchen to the opposite wall and then put up
a wall there for a bedroom.
 
That
bedroom has access to the bathroom that was originally in place.
 
Then he added a tiny bathroom next to
the main bedroom.
 
He had to knock a
hole in the wall for a door between the bathroom and bedroom, and take away
space from his living area, but I guess it works for them,” Bahey said.

“You seem to know a lot about our building manager’s living
arrangements,” Howard said.

“He’s forever talking to me about something,” Bahey replied.
 
“He wanted me to come in and have a
look, but I couldn’t care less about his flat.”

“Maybe he was flirting,” Howard suggested.
 
“Is he less friendly now that we’re a
couple?”

Bahey frowned.
 
“Now
that you mention it,” she said after a pause.
 
“He has been less friendly lately.
 
I didn’t make the connection, though.”

Howard shook his head.
 
“You don’t make it easy for us men,” he told her with a sigh.
 
“There he was, trying to chat you up,
and you thought he was just telling you about his flat.”

“Well, it isn’t like I wanted him to chat me up,” Bahey said,
indignantly.
 
“He’s
kinda
creepy and strange.”

Howard laughed.
 
“I
guess I don’t have to worry about him, then,” he said.

“How old is he?” Bessie asked.
 
“I don’t mean to insult anyone, but he looked to be somewhere in his
fifties to me.”

“By which you mean too young for me,” Bahey said, laughing.

Bessie flushed.
 
“I
didn’t necessarily mean that,” she said, although that’s what she’d been
thinking.
 
“I just wondered at his
age.”

“He is in his fifties,” Bahey confirmed.
 
“And that’s probably why I just assumed
he was just being friendly.
 
I’m way
too old for him.”

“I heard he had a little romance with Linda,” Howard said.

“Really?” Bahey demanded.
 
“Why didn’t I hear about that?”

“You don’t really talk to the other residents,” Howard replied.

“They don’t talk to me, either,” Bahey snapped back.

“Yes, well, they do talk to me, sometimes,” Howard said.
 
“And one of the ladies told me that
Nigel and Linda were dating.”

“Linda seemed like such a sensible woman,” Bahey
tutted
.
 
“What
on earth did she see in him?”

“I think she was flattered by the attention,” Howard told her.
 
“She was very lonely with her children
across.
 
Her husband died quite
suddenly while they were in the middle of planning their move over here.
 
She told me more than once that she was
sorry she went ahead with the move.”

“So why did she?” Bahey demanded.

Howard shrugged.
 
“I
guess moving over here was always her husband’s dream.
 
They’d sold the family home, anyway, so
she had to go somewhere.
 
I think
things were too far along in the move for her to feel like she could change the
plans, but once she got here, she was sorry.”

Bahey shook her head.
 
“She should have just gone back,” she said.
 
“Why stay here and be unhappy?”

“I gather her children were happier with her here,” Howard said,
dryly.
 

“And once more I’m glad I never had any of the little dears,” Bahey
said with a satisfied smile.
 
“Your
daughter seems okay, from what I’ve heard, but most of them don’t seem worth
the bother.”

“My daughter is lovely and she misses me, which means she
appreciates me when I visit.
 
Once
the grandbaby gets here, I might be sorry to be a bit further away than I used
to be, but I love this island and my little flat as well,” Howard said.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Bahey said.
 
She flushed and then turned and headed
back towards the main living space.
 
“Why are we standing around talking?
 
We could be sitting comfortably,” she
muttered.

Bessie followed her friend across the space and sank down on a sofa
across from the chair Bahey had claimed.

“You don’t think that Linda’s death was suspicious, do you?” she
asked the other woman after Howard joined them.

“Oh, good heavens, no,” Bahey said.
 
“She was one of the fatalities in that
bus crash back in May.
 
The police
report reckoned it was just an unfortunate accident.”

Bessie nodded.
 
She’d
heard all about the crash, of course.
 
Tragic events received a lot of press coverage on the small island.
 
An elderly man, out walking his dog, had
rushed into the path of an oncoming Douglas bus when the dog had suddenly
slipped off its lead.
 
The driver
had slammed on his brakes and slid sideways into a
lamp post
and a row of parked cars.
 
Two bus
passengers were killed, and three others suffered serious injuries.
 
The driver was still recovering, three
months later.
 
The man and his dog
had both escaped without harm.

“So is there anything else I need to know about this place before I
take a look at the flat next door?” Bessie asked her friend.

Bahey shrugged.
 
“I
can’t think of anything,” she replied.
 
“It’s probably all just my imagination, anyway.
 
I’ll just feel better if I know there
isn’t anything weird about the flat next door.
 
There’ve only been a few showings.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I’ll ring
the estate agent first thing tomorrow and see about getting an appointment to
take a look,” she promised.
 
“We can
talk again once I’ve done that.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Howard said.

A sudden crashing noise startled them all.

“What was that?” Bessie asked.

“It sounded like it came from the flat downstairs,” Bahey
said.
 
“The empty one.”

“Let’s go check it out,” Bessie suggested.

Bahey and Howard exchanged glances as Bessie stood up.
 
“Come on,” she said.
 
“Maybe Nigel can tell us what the noise
was.”

The trio took the lift down to the ground floor.
 
When they emerged, Nigel was nowhere to
be seen.
 

“How do we get to the flats on this level?” Bessie asked, looking
around the small foyer.

“Down the corridor,” Bahey said, gesturing towards a door in the
wall behind the manager’s desk.

Bessie pulled the door open and the trio looked down the hall.
 
Bessie could see three closed doors on
either side of the hallway.

“So number five is the one under your flat?” she checked with Bahey
as she walked slowly down the hall.

“That’s right,” Bahey said.

Bessie stopped in front of the door to flat five and knocked.
 
After a moment she knocked again, more
loudly.
 
The door to the flat opened
slightly under the pressure.

“Maybe I should go first,” Howard suggested.

Bessie thought about arguing and decided against it.
 
She stepped to the side and let the man
push the door open the rest of the way.

“Hello?” Howard called, his deep voice echoing in the dark space.

“Is there a light switch near the door?” Bessie asked.

Howard nodded.
 
A moment
later Bessie heard the click of a switch and a bare bulb came on in the short
corridor inside the flat.