The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Read online

  I gave her the bottle of wine I’d brought. She led the way into the living room. The walls were painted a pale duck egg blue, reaching up to a high ceiling with plaster moldings. Two white sofas faced each other across a glass coffee table laden with glossy magazines and a vase of white roses.

  “Wow!” I said.

  Rebecca blushed. “Thanks. It’s nice isn’t it? I love it here. Come and see the kitchen.”

  I focused on the Poggenpohl cabinets and tried to ignore the air that hovered over her head. It seemed to be moving faster than when I’d seen her the previous afternoon.

  “You can put your bag and jacket on the bed in my room if you like,” said Rebecca, pointing along the hall. “I’m going to finish cooking.”

  A grey cat sat in the doorway, watching me until I got closer. It ran and hid under the bed.

  The bedroom looked like something in a five star hotel, with Wedgwood blue walls, luxurious silky linens and matching drapes at the windows. A photo in a silver frame caught my attention. It was a snap of Rebecca standing next to a tall man with wide shoulders, very blue eyes and curly dark hair. His arm was draped around Rebecca and they both smiled at the camera.

  I limped to the bathroom and, while washing my hands, noticed that the door of the cabinet over the sink was partially open. I couldn’t resist a peek. On one shelf was a messy array of cosmetics and hair products. The shelf above held several tubes of shaving cream and an embossed flacon of Amouage aftershave. There’d been a big promotion for it at Harrod’s recently and I knew it was expensive. I lifted it out, unscrewed the lid, and sniffed. It had a distinctive musky and slightly smoky scent. Rebecca must have a boyfriend with good taste.

  “Kate? Are you ready?” Rebecca called down the hallway. I put the bottle back in the cabinet and left the door the way it had been. I’d never thought of myself as the prying kind, but I couldn’t help being curious about Rebecca’s situation. Her flat was luxurious and in one of the most expensive areas of London. Admittedly, she had a good job with a successful company, but it was hard to imagine she was making the kind of money that this apartment would cost.

  Back in the kitchen, I sipped a glass of Cabernet while Rebecca tossed a salad. Not a sensible idea to drink on top of the painkillers I was taking, but the wine felt warm in my throat.

  “Did you meet Caspian?” she asked.

  “That would be the grey cat? Yes, sort of, but he ran under the bed.”

  “He’s shy. But I love him to bits. I talk to him all the time. Here, sit down and I’ll bring the plates over.”

  We sat at a table near the kitchen window. Night had fallen. The fenced garden was now nothing more than a black hole absorbing light from the windows on the other side of the square. While we ate steaks with pepper sauce and green beans, we talked about our jobs and what we’d been doing since college. After a while, and another few sips of wine, I was able to ignore the moving air that rippled over her head.

  Rebecca told me she loved working at Montgomery Group, where she’d recently been promoted to the position of Financial Director. Her eyes shone as she praised the company’s accomplishments and track record. “The people are so nice to work with. I can’t wait to get into the office in the mornings. How about you? Do you like Bradley Cohen?”

  I didn’t even contemplate telling the truth. “Fantastic,” I said. “The bosses are wonderful, nurturing and encouraging, and the team works together really well. I’m very lucky.”

  “And you’re doing something so creative,” she said, carrying the empty plates to the sink. “I think I would have liked to be an architect, but I have no graphics skills at all. Still, I love money!” She laughed. “Well, I mean I love working with money. Although I rather like having it too.”

  While she measured coffee grounds into a complicated-looking espresso maker, she seemed preoccupied, perhaps contemplating what she’d just said. To break the silence, I asked her if she had a boyfriend. When she didn’t answer immediately, I wondered if I’d missed something. In college, she’d been surrounded by guys. Her social life and mine hadn’t been vaguely comparable. She’d had her pick of dates and parties while I hung around the Student Union drinking cheap wine with my friends and their nerdy boyfriends.

  “Yes, I do,” she said finally. “But he travels a lot. How about you? Do you have anyone special?”

  I shrugged. “No one right now. What’s his name? Your boyfriend? And what does he do to travel so much?”

  Rebecca hesitated before answering. “His name’s Edward, and he works in technology. Let’s take our coffee into the living room.”

  “Does he live here with you?”

  “No, not yet,” she said. “He plans to move in one day but…” Her eyes wandered towards the window and she didn’t finish the sentence.

  We settled on opposite sides of the coffee table. I kept my eyes on my cup, nervous about spilling on the pristine white upholstery. It also helped not to look at the air over Rebecca’s head. We talked about old friends from University. Rebecca said one of them had gone on to be an actor.

  “He’s in a play at the Apollo and I’d love to see it,” she said, picking up a copy of Time Out and flicking to a page of theater listings. “It opens in two weeks. Would you come with me?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “Why don’t we talk later in the week? I’ll know more about my boyfriend’s schedule and then we can decide when to go?”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why she wasn’t planning on going with Edward. Maybe he wasn’t the cultural type. Suddenly, I felt exhausted and my head began to pound. Perhaps the combination of wine and coffee hadn’t been a good idea. Putting my cup and saucer down on the glass coffee table, I leaned back against the down-filled cushions.

  “You look pale. Are you feeling all right?” Rebecca asked with real concern in her voice. My skin felt cold and goose-bumpy. I wanted to tell her about the air that moved around her, but what could I say? She’d think I was crazy and, even if she believed me, which was unlikely, I couldn’t tell her what it meant because I didn’t know.

  “I had a painful encounter with a car over the weekend,” I said, deciding to share part of the story. “I was visiting my Dad in Tuscany. It’s not bad, but my knees hurt and I hit my head too.”

  “Oh goodness,” she said. Putting her cup down, she came around the table to sit next to me. She took my hands in hers and rubbed them. “You’re freezing. You should have said something before. I wouldn’t have dragged you all the way over here if I’d known you weren’t feeling well. Did you go to the hospital?”

  “No, really, it’s not serious. My dad’s friend is a doctor and he checked me out and put dressings on my legs. I’ll be fine in a day or two.”

  Recalling the events of Saturday afternoon made my heart bang around my chest like a bird trying to escape from a cage.

  “I’ve never been to Florence,” said Rebecca.

  I wanted to change the subject from my injuries. “We should go together some time,” I said. I meant it. There was something comforting about being with Rebecca, an old friend from a simpler time, when classes and social events were all we had to think about. I’d enjoyed every day at college, reveled in the work and late-night studying. Sometimes, I thought of going back for another degree, but I knew I was fortunate to have the job at Bradley Cohen.

  “My dad would love to meet you,” I said. “Think how much fun we’ll have. We could meet a couple of Italian gigolos and drive around in their Ferraris. Or, knowing my luck, their Fiats.”

  She laughed. “Yes, please. I never go anywhere interesting nowadays. Let’s plan it soon, can we?”

  “You tell me when you have a weekend free, and we’ll go,” I said. “If we fly out of City airport we can be at Dad’s house in less than three hours, with plenty of time for a late Friday night dinner.”

  Rebecca clapped her hands together. “Perfect. I can’t wait.”

  “Now I really should go home,” I said. “Work tomorrow, br
ight and early.”

  Half an hour later, I stood on the doorstep of the Victorian house in Islington where I lived. Fumbling with my keys, which were cold and slippery in the rain, I finally managed to open the front door. The maroon carpet in the hall was worn in places and the walls were covered in a brown and orange geometric wallpaper that would have been popular in the ’seventies. I clambered up the stairs, holding on to the banisters for support, hearing the beat of music from the first floor and the faint sound of a television on the second.

  I reached the top floor, let myself in and flipped on the light switch. Several table lamps came on, revealing a cozy living room nestled under the eaves of the old house. The walls were painted in my favorite color, a green-gray that reminded me of olive leaves. The room was furnished with a cream Ikea sofa and a colorful Persian rug that had been a present from my parents. At one end, a granite counter separated the living room from a small kitchen lined with painted cabinets and rather old but functional appliances. I loved my apartment, and looked around with affection, thinking that I wouldn’t be as comfortable in the stark whiteness of Rebecca’s living room.

  I went straight to bed, but sleep was elusive. My mind was too crowded with thoughts of the strange moving air. After a while, I got up, put the kettle on and set my laptop on the coffee table. Several cups of tea and a couple of hours later, I’d worked my way through a multitude of websites, searching for information about air that moved around people. Nothing seemed to correlate with what I had seen over Rebecca. The wavy lines people see over hot asphalt or hot sand in the desert, it turned out, are caused by refraction, the bending of light waves, which occurs when light passes between substances with different refractive properties, such as cold air and hot air. Interesting, I thought, but it didn’t seem relevant.

  More searches yielded pages of descriptions of high and low pressure zones and how air moves between them; information that might come in handy if I ever took up flying or sailing. The only phenomenon vaguely related to what I was seeing was described on a site for mediums and psychics. It talked about auras, which could come in a rainbow of colors, apparently, and could surround a person from head to toe. But there was no reference to the manifestation of clear air rippling around someone’s head.

  I closed the laptop, listening to the rain on the windows. It was only September and England’s much anticipated Indian summer had failed to materialize. While the rest of Europe bathed in the golden glow of autumnal sunshine and unseasonable warmth, poor London was drowning under the onslaught of torrential rain and swirling mist. It had been hot in Tuscany over the weekend, almost like summer.

  The moving air had to be connected with what had happened on that hill in Tuscany. An hallucination caused by the fall? Had I suffered brain damage? Or did I have a tumor? That would explain a few things. Fear crawled across my skin, and churned my stomach. I stood up and limped to the bathroom, where I stared into the mirror, straining to see a glimpse of moving air. I ran my hand through the space over my head but felt nothing. Saw nothing. It was time to get some help. I’d call the doctor first thing in the morning.

  3

  On my way to work, I got a doctor’s appointment for noon. The receptionist chirped on about how lucky I was that there had been a cancellation and sounded ecstatic that she could get me in so quickly. I wondered if she expected a gift or a medal. On the Tube, I noticed air swirling over a middle-aged man with red blotchy skin and a morose expression. When he saw me staring at him, he frowned at me and turned away; it was never a good idea to make eye contact with anyone on the Underground. I pulled up the hood of my raincoat and stared at my iPhone screen for the rest of the journey, anxious to avoid any more visual encounters with my fellow commuters.

  After a few hours at work, I was so immersed in my design that I was no longer aware of my aches and pains. The persistent sense of dread that I’d felt since the weekend faded away. The neat lines on the page began to form an image of what would become a fully functional building; I could imagine the open spaces and the wide stretches of glass with expansive views over London. As always, the feeling of pencil on paper calmed me.

  Josh walked in with a cup of coffee for me and looked over my shoulder at the sketches.

  “Those look really good, Kate. You draw so much better than anyone else here.” When he leaned forward to trace a line with his finger, I inhaled his scent of soap and freshly-laundered shirt.

  “Perhaps you could make that wall eighteen inches longer and it would intersect here for a more interesting angle,” he said, pointing at one of the lines I’d just drawn.

  “Good idea,” I agreed. “You’ve got a better eye for detail than I have.”

  He grinned. “We make a good team then, don’t we?”

  Alan walked past the door and beckoned to Josh.

  “Wish me luck,” Josh whispered. “See you later.”

  I twirled my pencil in my hand, feeling the smoothness of it against my skin. Any residual dysphoria had melted away under the warmth of Josh’s words and I went back to work with enthusiasm.

  An hour later my cell phone rang and I glanced around to check that Alan wasn’t in sight before answering it. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls at work. The caller ID showed that my brother was on the line.

  “Hi Leo.” I kept my voice down. I walked to the window, from where I looked down at the street, thronged with workers on their lunch hour. A pallid sun hung behind a veil of thin cloud, barely casting shadows, but at least alleviating the gloom of the previous few days.

  “Katie, how are you doing? Dad called to tell me what happened. Do you need me to come up?”

  “I’m fine. Everything is healing quickly. Paolo came over and looked after me. It was nothing. Just a silly accident.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re not telling me everything,” he said. “Dad sounded really worried about you and said something about… well, he seemed to think you were suffering from a concussion.”

  I shifted my weight, aware again of the ache around my knees. “Can I call you when I get home?”

  Leo paused. “Why don’t you come over this weekend? The boys would love to see you, and you can bring me up to date on how Dad’s doing.”

  I thought for a minute. Rebecca and I were planning to see a movie on Sunday evening, but I had nothing else to do. The drive to Oxford would be a good distraction.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come for dinner tomorrow and stay the night.”

  “Good, great.” Leo sounded relieved. He was worried; my Dad was worried. I had to get better quickly so everyone would stop worrying about me.

  At lunchtime, I took a taxi to the doctor’s office. I was tense with anticipation, half hoping that the doctor would easily identify the cause of my visual disturbances, half dreading that the diagnosis would be unspeakably terrifying. The visit was inconclusive, however. The doctor, a portly, middle-aged woman with grey hair and bad teeth, examined my eyes and ears, pressed on various parts of my skull and wrote out an order for a CT scan. Then she offered me a prescription for antidepressants, which I refused.

  As soon as I was out of the doctor’s office, I called the radiology department of the local hospital to make an appointment for the scan. To my relief, they were able to fit me in on Monday afternoon. At least I wouldn’t have to wait too long, in suspense.

  I got back to my desk, had my coat off and was working when Alan came in with Josh and another team member, Ben, in tow.

  “Team huddle,” Alan said. “Just want to be sure you’re all working your asses off on the Montgomery project. This one is crucial. Get it right and we’ll be deluged with new contracts. Jack will be coming in for the next meeting and we all want to look good for Uncle Jack, don’t we?”

  I liked Jack Cohen. He was the other founding partner and had acted as my mentor since I joined the firm. Older than Alan, he didn’t work full time, but I gathered that
he networked, lunched with influencers and came in a couple of times a week to see how things were going. Alan referred to him as the ‘big gun’. “We only wheel him out for special occasions,” he’d say. “And for the Christmas party.”

  When Alan walked towards the door, I sighed with relief. At least he hadn’t referred to my time off again. But, just when I thought I was safe, he swung around to look at me.

  “Kate. You’re outstanding at what you do, but I’m sensing a lack of commitment. Too much time off, and a recent tendency to distraction. Step it up, young lady, and give these two guys the full benefit of your talent. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  Ben smirked, his small dark eyes glistening with amusement. Josh told him to cut it out and, as soon as Alan had gone, leaned forward across the desk towards Ben and me.

  “We need to cooperate if we’re going to get everything completed on time,” he said. “We’ll split the project into parts and we’ll each handle the details we’re strongest at. Kate, you’ll have functional design and Ben will work with…”

  I tuned out, thinking it was ironic that Alan was picking on me just as when I was starting to feel like my old self and finding enthusiasm for the project. But he was right. I’d been distracted ever since my mother died. The shock of her death had knocked me sideways. And now this thing with the moving air. It was going to be hard to get through the coming weeks of long hours and constant review, but I would get back on track. I owed it to Josh, if no one else. I wouldn’t let him down.

  4

  By mid morning on Saturday, I had cleaned up my apartment, done my laundry and packed a bag for my stay at Leo’s. I seemed to have regained my usual energy and still had a few hours to spare before picking up a Zipcar for the drive to Oxford. A run would do me good. Just a short one to see how my knees would hold up. The night before, I’d removed the bandages and examined the damage. My legs were dotted with small red scars where each piece of gravel had left its mark. One or two spots were still raw but the rest had healed well. I jogged slowly to the park a couple of blocks away. The air was heavy and humid, and ominous black clouds loomed in the distance. My knees ached, but not as much as I’d feared.