Aunt Bessie Finds (An Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Book 6) (31 page)

“Oh, goodness, I wasn’t expecting anyone to be on the lift,” Bessie
said, apologetically.

Howard laughed.
 
“I
wasn’t expecting anyone to be waiting for it, either,” he said.
 
“And I’m rather very tired, so I not
really paying attention to what I’m doing.”

“Bahey and I have been very worried about you,” Bessie said.
 
“We nearly rang the police to report you
missing.”

“But I left Bahey a note,” Howard protested.
 
“I stuck it on her door before I went.”

“Well, she never received it,” Bessie told him.
 
“Maybe the building prankster took it.”

Howard shook his head.
 
“I didn’t even think about that as a possibility,” he said.
 
“I’ve never really taken the whole prankster
matter seriously.
 
Bahey must be
terribly upset with me.”

“I think she’s more worried than upset,” Bessie said.
 
“But where were you?”

Howard smiled.
 
“My
daughter went into early
labour
,” he explained.
 
“They thought the baby was coming and I
dropped everything to be there.
 
Turns out it was just a false alarm, and the doctor reckons she’s got
another month or more to go.
 
I’m
only just back for a few days, though, and then I’m going to head back
across.
 
I want to be close in case
she needs me.”

Bessie nodded.
 
“I can’t
imagine how exciting a grandchild would be.”

“It’s amazing,” he said.
 
“I wish Harriet was able to share the experience with us all.”

“I’m sorry,” Bessie said.

“She’s been gone for quite some time now,” he said.
 
“I’ve grown pretty used to be on my own,
and, of course, now I have Bahey.”
 
He hesitated.
 
“Do you think,
that is, what do think Bahey would say if I asked her to come across with me
for a while?
 
I’d like her to get to
know my daughter and I’m sure she’d be a big help with the baby once he or she
gets here.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Bessie said.
 
“Ask her and see what she says.”

Howard nodded and looked at his shoes.
 
“I really care about Bahey.
 
She’s nothing like Harriet, but that’s
part of why I like her so much.
 
I,
well, I guess I’ll have to ask her and see.”

Bessie boarded the lift feeling relieved that Howard had turned up
unharmed and happy that Bahey had found such a nice man.
 
She walked slowly along the promenade,
not really paying attention to her surroundings, her thoughts
focussed
instead on the strange happenings at Seaside
Terrace.

Chapter Fifteen

When she got back to the building, Nigel was cleaning the glass
panels in the front doors.

“Good morning, Miss
Cubbon
,” he said
cheerfully.
 
“How are you this
morning?”

“Oh, I’m fine, how are you?” Bessie replied absently, her mind
still mulling over Howard’s missing note.

“Just great,” Nigel replied.
 
He looked past Bessie and frowned.
 
“Or I was, anyway,” he muttered.

Bessie turned around and smiled at Inspector Corkill, who was
walking towards them.

“Good morning,” she said.
 
“How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine,” he said.
 
“I’m just here to have a word with Mr. Green.”

“With Nigel?” Bessie blurted out without thinking.
 
“Oh, well, I’ll just get out of your
way, then.”
 
She took a couple of
steps into the building and then turned back.
 
“By the way, Howard’s back,” she told
the inspector.
 
“He was just
visiting his daughter.”

Corkill nodded.
 
“That’s
good news.”

Nigel looked like a rat caught in a trap as the inspector took his
arm.
 
Bessie was dying to stay and
see what transpired, but she was clearly unwelcome.
 
She headed back up to her flat and
immediately rang Doona.

“I know you’re going to say you can’t tell me anything,” she said
to her friend, “but I had to ring anyway.
 
What’s Inspector Corkill doing here this morning?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Doona told her.
 
“John’s back this morning, but he’s
snowed under.
 
I’ll try to have a word
with him when he takes a coffee break and see if I can find out anything from
him that’s not confidential.”

“Thanks,” Bessie said.
 
“And tell John I’m glad he’s back.”

“We’re all glad he’s back,” Doona said with a laugh.

Bessie tried to settle in with a book, but she couldn’t
concentrate.
 
It could be anything,
she told herself.
 
Maybe Nigel has too
many unpaid parking tickets or ran a stop sign.
 
But that didn’t bring out the CID, a
little voice teased.
 
After pacing
around her flat for half an hour, Bessie decided to ring another source.

“Mary?
 
It’s
Bessie.
 
How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” Mary Quayle replied.
 
“Or mostly fine, anyway.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The police have been.
 
They’ve been asking questions about Nigel Green, the manager at Seaside
Terrace,” Mary told her.
 
“I was
going to ring you later, when I knew more, but it seems like he’s been doing
something illegal there.
 
George is
at the office with Grant and the Chief Inspector.”

“My goodness, it must be something serious if the Chief Inspector
is involved,” Bessie said.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Mary answered.
 
“I’ll let you know when I learn more.”

Bessie went back to her pacing.
 
If she had to guess, she’d guess that
this was something to do with the post.
 
She knew it was against the law to tamper with post in any way, and she
believed Nigel was doing just that.
 
Perhaps he was taking everyone’s post and then looking through it for
money.
 
Or maybe he was even opening
people’s post and then blackmailing them based on what he discovered in the
letters.

She shook her head.
 
It
was no use letting her imagination run away with her.
 
Forcing herself to sit down with a book,
Bessie read the same two paragraphs for another hour or more.
 
When someone knocked on her door, she
was grateful for the interruption, no matter what the source.

Bahey gave Bessie a huge smile when Bessie opened the door.
 
“I can’t stay,” she told Bessie when
Bessie invited her in.
 
“I have to
start packing.”

“Where are you off to?” Bessie asked, guessing her friend’s
conversation with Howard had gone well.

“I’m going across with Howard.
 
The baby might be coming early, and when he told his daughter about how
I do all that volunteer work at Noble’s, helping out in maternity and even in
the neonatal intensive care unit, she agreed that I might be a handy person to
have around when the baby gets here.”

Bessie gave her friend a hug.
 
“I’m so happy for you,” she told her.
 
“And for Howard and his daughter.”

“I feel bad leaving you here, though,” Bahey said.
 
“I mean you moved in here to help me and
now I’m going across for a month or more.
 
I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bessie said firmly.
 
“I have a feeling all of the odd things
that were happening here won’t be happening anymore.”

“What did I miss?” Bahey demanded.

“I’m not sure yet,” Bessie answered.
 
“But there’s definitely something going
on.”

After she shut the door behind Bahey, Bessie did some more
pointless pacing.
 
I might as well
just go for a walk, she decided after the twenty-third circuit of the small
room.
 
She grabbed her keys and
headed for the door just as someone knocked on it.

Inspector Corkill looked startled when the door swung open before
his hand had dropped.

“Inspector, this is a surprise,” Bessie said.
 
“Please come in.”

The inspector glanced up and down the corridor and then followed
Bessie into her flat.
 
“I thought
you were going to call me Pete,” he said as he dropped into a comfortable
chair.

“I keep forgetting,” Bessie said, feeling as if his position in the
police ought to accord him some respect, including being called by his title.

“There are a few things I’m going to tell you that you can’t repeat,”
he said.
 
“Although, knowing this
island, they’ll all be common knowledge in another hour anyway.”

“Word does travel fast, doesn’t it?” Bessie agreed.

“I’ve just arrested your building manager,” the inspector told her.

“Can I ask why?” Bessie asked.

“We’ve had our eye on him for some time.
 
There
were
a
few things going on that triggered the investigation.”

“Am I going to have to keep asking leading questions or are you
just going to tell me everything?” Bessie asked, giving the man a smile to take
any hostility from her words.

Corkill laughed.
 
“I’ll
tell you the whole story, but please don’t repeat it for now.
 
I understand the Chief Constable is
having a news conference at two.
 
After that, I guess nothing will be confidential.”

“Would you like a
cuppa
to go with your
story?” Bessie offered.

The man hesitated and then nodded.
 
“If you don’t mind,” he said.

Bessie made the tea and put a few biscuits on a plate as well.
 
It was nearly time for lunch, but she
was too eager to hear the story to offer to make lunch for the man.

Corkill took a sip of tea and then gave Bessie a smirk.
 
“I suppose I’ve kept you in suspense
long enough,” he said.
 
“The story
starts some eight or nine months ago.
 
We got a call from Linda Smith’s daughter.
 
She was concerned about Mr. Green’s
relationship with her mother.
 
One
of our investigators did a little bit of poking around, but Mrs. Smith passed
away before he’d done much more than start.
 
What he discovered, though, was enough
to keep us digging.”

He stopped and munched his way through a biscuit, leaving Bessie on
the edge of her seat.
 
The twinkle
in his eyes told Bessie that he knew exactly what he doing, as well.

“To put it simply, the man was flirting with and dating the single
female residents in the building in an effort to get them to buy him expensive
presents and the like.
 
We found
three different women, over the last four years, who rewrote their wills in his
favour
as well.”

Bessie sat back, angry.
 
“What about the women’s families?” she asked.
 
“Surely they ought to have complained.”

“These were elderly women, living on their own without family
nearby,” Corkill told her.
 
“We’re
interviewing everyone now, but in one case at least, the woman’s only child
felt so guilty about never visiting her mum that she didn’t feel she deserved
anything anyway.
 
None of them left
vast fortunes, although that woman, at least, left more than the daughter
realised
.
 
She’s
consulting a solicitor to see if she should sue.”

“I hope she does,” Bessie said.
 
“That horrid man doesn’t deserve the
money.”

“He did provide the women with companionship,” Corkill said.
 
“It’s all a bit of a legal nightmare,
and I’m happy to leave it to the solicitors and advocates to sort out.”

“So that isn’t why you arrested him?” Bessie asked.

“No, that was distasteful, but probably not illegal,”
Corkill
replied.
 
“What is illegal is tampering with the post and fraud.”

“Nigel was tampering with the post?”

“Mostly, he was just collecting it all and taking his time going
through it.
 
From what we’ve managed
to work out, he was going into the post room as soon as the postman left each
day and collecting everything out of all the boxes.
 
At night, he’d go through it all and
then, early in the morning, he’d put back what he wasn’t interested in.”

“But sometimes he’d miss a day or two,” Bessie said.

“Yeah, he wasn’t terribly efficient at it,” Corkill replied.
 
“He’d been doing it for so long that he
got sloppy.”

“But what was he getting from the post?”

“Mostly he was intercepting letters for previous residents.
 
That’s where fraud comes in.”

“Really?”

“When someone passed away or moved out, Nigel kept his mouth
shut.
 
Some of the residents moved
here from across or even further afield and they were receiving pensions or
other payments from elsewhere.
 
If
no one bothered to notify the correct authorities about the person’s death,
those
cheques
would simply keep coming.
 
Nigel was quite happy to collect them
all and keep the money.”

“Hilary Montgomery,” Bessie exclaimed.

“She passed away more than a year ago,” Corkill said.
 
“She didn’t have any family left and
named Nigel as her heir.
 
He didn’t
bother to inform the company that was paying her pension about her death, so
he’s been collecting that money every month since.”

“I knew I didn’t like the man, but I never imagined that,” Bessie
said, shaking her head.
 

“He’s trying to blame his mother at the moment.
 
He said when she doesn’t take her
medication,
she gets up to all sorts of trouble, wandering
around the building.
 
He said she’s
been stealing the post, although he can’t explain how she managed to get all of
the stolen money into his bank account.”

Bessie sighed.
 
“That
poor woman.
 
Who’s going to look
after her now?”

“She’s been taken to Noble’s for an evaluation, then we’ll see what
care she needs.”

“But what about the missing man?” Bessie asked.
 
“Who is he?
 
Who beat him up and where has he gone?”

“We still don’t know who he was,” Corkill said.
 
“But we’ve only just started questioning
Nigel.
 
At the moment, he’s claiming
he doesn’t know who the man was or where he came from.
 
Apparently Nigel was letting his mother
use the empty flat, since the owners weren’t using it.
 
The folding bed was his.”

“And one day he found the homeless man in there and beat him up?”
Bessie guessed.

“Could be.
 
To be
honest, we have so many other things to charge Nigel with that we aren’t all
that interested in the missing man.
 
As he isn’t around to press charges, we haven’t any case anyway.”