Chapter 4 #4
“We’re following several inquiries,” Hayes says. “At this stage, we’re open to all possibilities. This morning, we pulled your and your husband’s financial records. We wondered if you might be able to explain a few things.”
Cold panic settles in my stomach. “I’ll do my best, but Warrick managed all our money. He’s good at that stuff.”
Hayes strides across the shop and opens his file on the counter. Rafe jumps up and bats the corner of the pages. Wilson stays by the doorway, her gaze wandering over every surface of the shop.
“Someone’s helping you with the painting,” she says. It’s not a question. I guess it’s her job to notice things, like two walls being worked on at the same time. “Where did they go?”
“My friend…uh, Mina. She just stepped out—”
“Mina from Nevermore Bookshop? Mina, who’s blind—” Wilson eyes the careful cutting in around the window.
“Oh, well, she…um…one of her husbands is helping, too,” I remember. “I can’t remember his name.”
“With that kind of attention to detail, it must have been Moriarty,” Hayes muses as he wrestles Rafe’s paw from his pocket.
“You beware of Mina Wilde, Mrs Abernathy. She and her husbands are nothing but trouble. They like to get involved in police business. They may have solved a few petty crimes around the village, but that’s no reason to get them to stick their nose into your husband’s case—”
Noooo, unhand me, copper. Let me at the Crunchy Meat Pillow.
“Don’t worry, Inspector. I have no intention of letting anything mess up the case, not when you and Sergeant Wilson are doing everything to find Warrick.
” I lean my elbows on the counter, squinting at the papers Hayes spreads out in front of me.
Rafe glares at Hayes as he tears off the corner of one and swallows it.
“That’s evidence, little guy.” Hayes pats his head.
Who are you calling little? And I’d be less inclined to eat these if you’d share the Savoury Caterpillar in your pocket.
“I think he’s just hungry,” I say.
“Here’s your joint account.” Hayes places a document in front of me.
I see tiny lines of text and columns of numbers, but they jumble together.
I don’t understand what I’m looking at. I squint at the page, hoping he can’t tell that I’m struggling.
“Now, you both have signing rights to this account, but in the last six months of records we pulled, you never made a single transaction. Not one. Except yesterday, where you took out ￡2000 in cash, and then here, ￡118 at Harold’s Hardware. ”
“I brought paintbrushes and rollers.” I fish around in my pocket. “I have the receipt somewhere. It’s the first time I’ve used a card in a long time. Danny helped me with tap! The cash was to pay for the first three months’ shop rental.”
“Is it the done thing to pay rent in cash?” he asks. Behind him, Wilson moves into the backroom, where I’ve stacked the rest of Widow Hardcastle’s junk on top of her old cot. I want to tell her to stop snooping, but after the Mina lie, that seems like a bad idea.
“I like to pay for things with cash,” I say instead.
Cash is coloured. It’s easy for me to count it, to tell that I have the right notes.
I don’t mix up numbers on the screen like I do when I try to put in a PIN, and if I didn’t bring cash, Angela would have wanted me to fill in an extra form, and the rental agreement was hard enough. “I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.”
“That’s perfectly reasonable. But why don’t you ever use this account?” Hayes asks. “All the transactions are from Warrick, yet as far as we can tell, this is your only bank account. How do you pay for things?”
“I don’t,” I shrug. “Warrick pays the bills. He gives me money in cash each week for groceries. He knows I prefer cash.”
“Okay, but did you know that not all of these transactions are for household bills?” Hayes points to some lines.
“Here, and here, and here, thousands of pounds have been swapped into a different account, one that only your husband could access. We were able to pull that account, too, and do you know what we found?”
My ears ring. “What?”
Hayes flips over another page. “Hotel rooms. Lots of hotel rooms. In London, mostly, but also in Exeter and Liverpool.”
“That’s not right. My husband travels to those cities for his work, but he doesn’t need hotel rooms. He never stays the night.”
Rafe winds around my arms, his tail rubbing across my face. “Mrrrrp.”
Hayes and Wilson exchange a look I can’t read. When Hayes turns back to me, his shoulders slump. “These are the kind of hotels that have a day rate. And there are other charges here for fancy restaurants and expensive boutiques.”
“My husband is always entertaining people. He has to try to sell his products into big stores.”
When Wilson speaks again, her voice is a little softer than before. “Has your husband brought you any lingerie recently?”
“That’s not an appropriate question!”
“He’s spent a lot of money at Honey Birdette.” Hayes flips through pages and pages of lines of numbers. My heart flips. “I think you can see the picture we’re building here. You didn’t know about this?”
I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to speak.
They’re saying that Warrick was cheating on me. That he had a mistress and he was spending wild sums of money – of our money – on wining and dining her and on hotels in the middle of the day. But that’s impossible.
Warrick wasn’t perfect. He was far, far, far from perfect.
But he would never cheat. He had a strict moral code.
He’d had a horrible family life growing up, and it’s made him long for the kind of picture-perfect British sitcom family you see in TV shows.
He came home to me every night, even when he had to drive for hours in the dark.
That’s devotion. He was devoted. He wouldn’t cheat.
That rotten bastard. I knew it. I knew he’d be a cheater.
Any man who treats a woman like Autumn as if she’s a collectable Star Trek model that must be kept under lock and key so no one else can enjoy her is going to be a cheater.
He’s lucky that he’s missing because when I find him, I’m going to scratch his eyes out and use his favourite slippers as a litter box.
Rafe’s cat thoughts land in my head, layering over top of my denial.
I know that witches and their familiars have a telepathic connection, but Rafe technically isn’t my familiar.
I don’t think? I need to look up familiars in the family grimoire.
And Rafe and I are going to have a serious conversation about invading my personal cerebral bubble.
But not now.
Rafe settles into my arms, butting his head under my chin. He purrs loudly, his thoughts rumbling through my head. How can the police just spring this on her? They’re heartless, and they clearly think she’s a suspect. Can’t they see that she’s devastated?
Do I look devastated?
Am I devastated?
I’ve been numb for so long, I don’t know what devastation feels like.
“We don’t know anything for certain yet, Mrs Abernathy.
And these charges could have nothing to do with your husband’s disappearance.
” Hayes flips back through the pages. “Now, I’m interested in these two deposits.
Two weeks before your husband disappeared, someone transferred ￡20,000 to him from an untraceable Swiss bank account.
This has gone into his personal account, not his business. Do you know anything about that?”
My pulse thunders in my ears, like the roar of the ocean on that Majorca holiday we could never afford again.
￡20,000? We’ve never had ￡20,000.
I’m staring down at Rafe, who has burrowed into my arms. I stand, holding him against my chest, dimly aware that he might consider this stealing his agency, but he’s the only thing that feels safe to hold onto as my world rolls out from beneath me.
That utter, utter bastard, Rafe growls over and over inside my head. Don’t let go, honey witch. You can snuggle me all you like.
I feel Hayes and Wilson’s eyes on me, but I can’t lift my head from Rafe’s fur to meet their gaze. Everything I thought I knew about my husband is a lie.
I guess he might say the same about me if he were here.
But he’s not.
“Mrs Abernathy?” Hayes prods. “Do you know something about a payment two weeks ago?”
I think back two weeks. That was after he told me that his friend didn’t want to license my mead recipe.
I’d gone to him with the idea of bottling my mead myself.
He said that we didn’t have the money, that it would take too much capital to start up.
And all the while, he had ￡20,000 in the bank and was buying lingerie for someone.
“He was in London a lot that week,” I say.
“He and his personal assistant, Veronkia, were wining and dining some clients from a big food and beverage company. He said the meetings went well. He even came home with a box of chocolates for me. But I don’t know anything about the money. ”
“A second payment of twenty thousand pounds came in the day he disappeared. So you can see why we might be interested in these deposits?”
I nod. And nod, and nod. I think my head might topple off my shoulders.
Rafe clambers onto my shoulder, purring in my ear.
“Thank you, Mrs Abernathy. That’s all our questions at this time.
If there’s anything you remember about your husband’s behaviour recently that strikes you as different, out of the ordinary, or anything else that has struck you as odd, please tell us.
It might not seem important, but we don’t know until we investigate. ”
You mean apart from my husband cheating on me and receiving huge amounts of money without telling me?
“Nothing comes to mind,” I say. “If anything, Warrick’s been more supportive than usual. He’s enthusiastic about my mead. Oh, but have you spoken to my neighbour, Harry? He and Warrick had a screaming barny over the fence the day before he disappeared.”
“They did?” Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “This wasn’t in your statement.”