Nova spent the drive to Port Gowan kicking herself for agreeing to this. Sandy had told her to keep her head down and stay out of trouble, and yet here she was, visiting the wife of a recently deceased (possible) thief, with a wannabe Miss Marple in tow. And what would Craig say when he found out? After everything that had happened in her old job, he’d freak out when Nova told him she’d driven to the home of a (possible) murder victim. Maybe she shouldn’t mention this outing to him? Although how she’d explain the strong smell of dog in the car, Nova wasn’t sure. She wrinkled her nose and wound down her window.
“I think this is a bad idea,” she said as they reached the end of Michael’s cul-de-sac. “If Michael really was murdered, the last thing his widow’s going to want is random strangers turning up on her doorstep so soon after. Let’s come back in a few days’ time.”
“We’re not strangers, we were in a book club together,” Arthur said. “And if the tables were turned and I was the one who’d died, I’d like to think you’d all visit Esi to pay your respects.”
Nova sighed but she could hardly argue with that. She turned the car into Mountfort Close and pulled up by the pavement.
“That’s his house, over there on the left,” Phyllis said. “That red car is the one I saw yesterday. It belongs to his wife.”
“How do you know that?” Nova asked, turning to look at Phyllis in the backseat. “Please tell me you haven’t been searching car records?”
“Of course not, but it’s obvious. For one, no man in his sixties drives a red MINI Cooper. And secondly, at the book club meeting last month, Michael was wearing a golfing tie, and you’d never fit golf clubs in the boot of that car.”
Nova hated to admit it, but that logic did make sense.
“I wonder if it was his wife who killed him?” Arthur said absentmindedly as he stared at the house. “It happens all the time in Esi’s romance novels; a lovers’ tiff that turns nasty. A crime of passion, they call it.”
“Not you as well with the fictional theories,” Nova said with a sigh, and Arthur chuckled. “Right, let’s get this over and done with, shall we?”
They climbed out of the car and headed up the driveway. When they reached the front door, Phyllis pressed the doorbell.
“Remember, we’re just giving our sympathies and then leaving,” Nova whispered as they waited.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Phyllis snapped.
“I mean it, Phyllis. No interrogations about money or murder or—”
At that moment, the front door swung open to reveal a woman with salt and pepper hair pulled back from her makeup-free face. She was dressed in a black sweater and slim trousers, and had a look of confusion on her pale face as she took in the strange trio and wheezing dog standing on her doorstep.
“Can I help you?”
Nova opened her mouth to speak but Phyllis got there first.
“Hello, deary.” An unfamiliar soft, quivering voice emerged from the woman’s mouth. “I’m so sorry to trouble you when I’m sure you’re busy, but we just wanted to pay our respects.”
What on earth was Phyllis doing? She may be many things, but a sweet, timid old lady she certainly wasn’t.
“Sorry, who are you?” the woman asked.
“We’re friends of your husband’s. We were in a book club with him over at St. Tredock community center and—”
“Did you say a book club?” The woman’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry, but I think you must have made a mistake. My husband isn’t the book club sort; not unless all you read are golfing manuals.”
“Oh, have I got the wrong address?” Phyllis’s face fell. “Sorry, I’m getting ever so forgetful in my old age, maybe I remembered it incorrectly. Is this not Michael Watkins’s home?”
The woman frowned. “A book club, you say?”
“That’s right. You’re welcome to join yourself, when you feel up to it. The book choices need improving and the biscuit selection is poor, but we do have a good debate, and it’ll get you out of the house. We meet on the third Wednesday of every month.”
The woman shook her head, as if not believing what she was hearing. “The third Wednesday; as in the day before yesterday?”
“Mm-hmm, that’s right. This month’s pick wasWhere the Crawdads Sing, although I don’t think poor Michael thought much of it. How sad to think the last book he read was such a bad one. If only we’d gone with my—”
“Bloody hell, that man!”
They all startled at the rage in the woman’s voice. Nova knew better than anyone that grief brought a roller coaster of emotions with it, but she’d never heard someone swear quite so angrily at their recently deceased spouse.
“What’s that, deary?” Phyllis said, leaning forward. “Sorry, my hearing’s not what it was, you’re going to have to speak up.”
