Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2)

Just a quick heads-up on the whole spelling and grammar
thing. I’m a British author and this book is set in England. Sometimes, British
English looks unfamiliar to readers of other variants of English. It’s not just
spelling (colour and realise and so on) and not just the vocabulary (pavement
for sidewalk, mobile for cell phone) but there are differences even in the way
we express ourselves. (In the US, it is more common to say something like “did
you see Joanne?” whereas in the UK we would say “have you seen Joanne?” and so
on.) Also, my characters do not speak grammatically correct sentences - who
does? Not me. Rest assured this book has been copyedited and proofread (errors,
alas, are my own and I won’t shoot my editor if you find any.)

And another thing - locations. Lincolnshire is real. It’s a
massive rural county in the east of England, with a sparse population. It’s
mostly agricultural. Upper Glenfield, the town in this tale, is fictional.
Lincoln, the main city nearest to Glenfield, does exist and it’s worth a visit.
The only thing I’ve fictionalised in Lincoln is the layout and situation of the
police station.

You can find out more about Lincolnshire and the characters
in Glenfield at my website,
http://www.issybrooke.com

Why not sign up to my mailing list? You get advance notice
of new releases at a special price - but no spam. No one wants spam. Check it
out here:
http://issybrooke.com/newsletter/

“They want to do a naked calendar with the dogs!”

Penny choked on her lemonade. She lowered the can from her
mouth and stared at Lucy, the manager of the shop attached to the dogs’ home
near the small Lincolnshire town of Upper Glenfield. Lucy was a dear woman but
not the quickest on the uptake. Penny had been volunteering some of her free
time at the weekends for just over a month, and had soon realised that Lucy’s
reality was not
exactly
everyone else’s reality.

Lucy was a woman who warmly embraced the idea of fairies, earth
lines, the power of pyramids and how horses knew when it was going to rain. She
considered herself a true sceptic, however, and proved it by stubbornly
refusing to believe in electricity, certain aspects of modern medicine or any
information that came from the government on a glossy leaflet.

None of that would matter to Penny – she was a tolerant
sort of person – except that Lucy tended to mix up her theories and ideas, so that
in Lucy’s world, ancient Celtic tribes probably worshipped wicker baskets full
of kittens in Ancient Peru.

So when Lucy declared that Upper Glenfield Camera Club
wanted to do a naked calendar involving the dogs, Penny naturally assumed it
was actually nothing of the sort. “Think of the hygiene issues,” Penny said
mildly, smiling at Lucy.

“Our dogs have all had their jabs,” Lucy argued. “They
won’t catch anything from the photographers or their models.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Penny leaned against the cash
register and put her can of lemonade on the counter. She picked up a leaflet about
the dangers of Colorado beetles, and fanned herself with it. “Goodness. How hot
will it get around here?”

“Oh, this is just the start of summer,” Lucy told her. In
her cream linen sun dress, with her strawberry blonde curls falling around her
face, she looked like a sunshine dream. Penny was feeling hot, sticky, cranky
and entirely fed up of Lincolnshire already. And she’d only lived there three
months.

“This is madness,” she muttered. “I put some washing on the
line yesterday and when I came to bring it in, it was crawling with horrible
little black flies.”

“Oh, thunderflies, yes. They like the rapeseed.”

“The what?”

“The yellow stuff in the fields,” Lucy said. “It’s for
oil.”

“Drew said that was mustard.”

“Yes, the
other
yellow stuff is mustard. It’s a
slightly different yellow.”

Penny sighed. Her friend Drew was running some increasingly
successful field-craft courses, based at the local hotel and conference centre,
and she had somehow ended up as his guinea pig, trailing around the countryside
with him, and her dog Kali, while he waxed lyrical about the particularly
informative shade of green of some moss, or why nettles grew on sites linked to
human habitation. He filled her head so full of new information she felt she
was in danger of the old stuff getting pushed out.

The door jingled. It was busy at the dogs’ home at the
weekend, and Penny’s feet ached. They were swollen from the heat. But she
plastered on a bright smile and sang out a greeting.

“Hello!”

Lucy joined in with the typical Lincolnshire way of saying
hello: “Now then, bor!”

It had taken Penny two months to learn that “bor” was short
for “neighbour” and not a bizarre way of calling everyone “boy.”

The customer was a young woman, slender, with a dark bob
and a pale face untouched by the summer sun. She smiled nervously but Lucy
recognised her.

“Nina, my duck! How are you bearing up?”

Oh, maybe she’s been ill, Penny thought. That would explain
her wan pallor.

Nina smiled tightly, her eyes remaining large and sad. “I’m
well, thank you,” she said in the most obvious lie that Penny had seen since
the breakfast news interview that morning with a politician. “I’m here to talk
about the calendar.”

“Is this the naked one?” Penny asked, looking sideways at
Lucy. Could she possibly have been correct?

Luckily, no. Nina’s neat eyebrows shot up, and she
shuddered. “No. I don’t know about any naked one. My dad sent me from the
Camera Club to talk about the dog one we want to do for you. You know, to sell
at Christmas to raise funds for you all.”

“Ahh,” Penny said in relief. “Everyone keeps their clothes
on, then?”

Nina stared from Penny to Lucy and back to Penny again.
“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Well, I don’t know what they do where
you’re
from,
Penny,” Lucy said. “We don’t go in for the naked stuff around here.”

“Hang on a minute! It was you who … oh never mind.” Penny
turned to Nina with a smile. “I’m from London,” she said, as if that explained
everything.

Nina’s reaction was one of even greater surprise. “But you
came here? Why? Sorry,” she blustered, going pink and looking down. “How rude
of me.”

“It’s okay. Everyone asks. I retired – sort of – and wanted
a change of scene. I like it here.”

Nina couldn’t disguise the look of horror that flitted
across her face. She quickly wiped it clear. “Well. Gosh. So, this calendar. My
dad wants to know when we can organise a photoshoot.”

“Oh, how exciting!” Lucy warbled, clapping her hands
together. “As soon as possible! I think it would be fantastic. Marge and the
committee said in our last meeting that I could just go ahead and arrange it
with your club. Come this weekend!”

“I would suspect we need a little more notice than that.”
Nina was younger than the exuberant Lucy, but talked in a much more measured
and mature fashion. To Penny’s eyes she looked to be in her early twenties. “We
would like to involve as many of our members as we can. Taking action shots and
pet portraits will be quite a new challenge for some of them.”

“What do they usually do?” Penny asked, hoping for
something scandalous.

“Trains.”

“And…?”

“No. Just trains.” Nina sounded rather flat. “Sometimes,
viaducts. If there is a train on it, of course.”

“Right.”

Lucy wanted to be part of the conversation again. “We could
put the dogs on trains! That would be so cute. Are we dressing them up? Bows,
and hats, and that sort of thing? I’ve got the sweetest little dress for a
Dobermann. If we can find a Dobermann that’s, er, biddable.”

There were two Dobermanns at the home at the moment, and
though both were gentle family dogs, Penny couldn’t imagine either of them being
happy in a costume. She shook her head. “Er … Nina, is it? Nina. Did you
already have an idea in mind for the sorts of shots that you wanted?”

Nina nodded. “It’s not really me. It’s my dad. He’s
president of the club, you see. He sent me down because … he thinks I need
something to keep me occupied at the moment.” She rolled her eyes. “Families,
eh? Anyway. So he says that he wants twelve shots of different sorts of dogs.
And one group photograph for the front of the calendar. He wants them doing
different tricks, like balancing food on their noses or jumping over things or
carrying things or whatever.”

“Not all of our dogs are particularly well behaved or
trained,” Penny said cautiously. Although many of the dogs in the home had
ended up there because of their owners being ill, or moving away, or having no
time for them, there were a great many untrained hounds with plenty of excess
energy and not a lot of discipline.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lucy brightly. She flapped her
hands at Nina. “It’s fine, my duck. If we set a date for a few weeks’ time,
that gives our staff time to train the dogs!”

Penny blinked, and met Nina’s eyes. Nina, too, looked
startled. Lucy had worked in the dogs’ home for years. Yet she still believed
that training them was a matter of a loud cheerful voice and simple
self-belief.

“A few weeks’ time would be better,” Nina said. “I’ll try
for this weekend. But my dad is … there’s another man in the Camera Club who …
well, there are issues between them.”

“Oh yes!” exclaimed Lucy. Penny hadn’t realised the bonkers
shop manager could get any more excited, but yes, apparently she could. “I
forgot! How is it going between you and Warren? What’s his star sign? Would you
like me to ask my friend to do you a chart of compatibility?”

Nina froze, her dark eyes now narrowed and full of venom.
She said, very stiffly, “There is nothing. Absolutely nothing. At all. Going on
between Warren and I. In spite of what you might have heard. It is nothing but
horrible gossip. Thank you.”

Then Nina turned to Penny, and forced a clenched smile. “I
will go and talk to the club this week about some available weekends. Are there
any in particular we need to avoid?”

“I can’t think of anything we’ve got coming up in the
foreseeable, but I’ll check and let you know. And we will draw up a shortlist
of potential stars for you,” Penny promised.

“Thanks. Great. Your office has my contact details. See
you.” And with that, Nina dashed out of the shop and slammed the door behind
her.

“Well,” Penny said as soon as she was alone again with
Lucy. “Call me intuitive but I’m guessing that Warren and that poor Nina are
not
an item?”

“Are you intuitive?” Lucy said, missing the point.

“No.” Penny sighed and smiled. “Shall I pop to the office
and borrow the diary? So we can come up with some dates to offer the camera
club?”

“Oh, yes! What a good idea! I will hold the fort here.”
Lucy nodded and looked around the shop. A couple entered and began to browse
along the novelty key-rings. “What a shame about that girl,” she said, as Penny
began to leave.

Penny knew any information she got from Lucy would be
unreliable, but she couldn’t resist speaking. “I haven’t seen her around
before.” She was already used to knowing everyone’s face in the small town.
“Does she live in Upper Glenfield, or is she just here on behalf of her dad in
the camera club?”

“She has moved back from Scotland,” Lucy said. “Which is a
relief for everyone, no doubt!”

Penny charitably chose to interpret that remark in the best
possible way. Nina doesn’t look wildly happy to be back, Penny thought as she
made her way from the shop and across the courtyard to the dogs’ home office.
Although if that failed womaniser Warren has attempted to get his hooks into
her, who can blame her? Poor girl, indeed.

* * * *

Penny breezed back into the shop a few minutes later,
clutching the diary. “Warren and Nina have never dated,” she told Lucy. “That’s
what Marge told me just now. Has Warren ever dated anyone?”

Lucy pursed her lips. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Yeah. That figures.”

“Why?” Lucy asked, her face becoming coquettish. “Are you
interested in him? Ooh!”

“No!” Penny spoke rather too harshly and Lucy’s kind face
snapped closed. “I’m sorry,” Penny said hastily. “I turned him down when I
moved here.”

“Everyone does.”

It was a fact. Warren was the large and overbearing manager
of the local mini-market in the town centre, and he felt he had an entitlement
to press his advances upon any single woman in the area. When rejected – as he
invariably was – he turned to wallow in bitter resentment as each brush-off
simply confirmed in his mind the essential unfairness of women.