“The burglary?” I grimaced. “It was pretty open and shut, Liene. One of my more boring stories, that’s for sure.” Sally had nearly dropped off actually when I told her about it over coffee yesterday, the lazy cow.
“Tell me another then,” Liene requested. “A good one. Lots of twists and turns.”
“I’m not an audiobook subscription,” I protested gently.
Liene rolled her eyes. “Please. I know you’ve got some stories in that handsome head of yours, Max. Take my mind off it, come on.” She patted my arm and pulled away from me, pulling her feet up underneath her on the chair. She fixed her eyes on me, excited, and I shook my head with a laugh. I supposed that stories were as much a part of her job as they were mine. We both dealt with things that were usually found in odd circumstances and, give or take several hundred years, dead people and their belongings.
“Fine,” I said. “Only because you said you might vomit, and I do not do vomit.” I shuddered slightly at the thought. It was up there on the list of why, unlike Mills, I did not spend much time with children. At least he could handle vomit. That had come in handy more than once before.
“Nobody does,” she pointed out quickly.
“Parents do,” I retorted. She waved a hand in the air.
“Parents don’t count. They’re superhumans.”
“You babysit for Mara all the time!” I recalled, leaning back in my chair with a grin.
“Mara’s son is eight,” she reminded me. “We do Lego until his mum comes home. Sometimes she joins in.” She laughed, and I laughed back, trying and failing to imagine my Chief Superintendent sat on the floor, building a Lego rocket.
“Please,” Liene dropped her voice, looking pleadingly at me. “Just one story.”
“If it means you stop twitching like a rabbit,” I added with a smug grin, ‘then very well, Dr Dorland.”
She didn’t argue with that, just continued to look at me, her face pale and her feet still jumping.
“Alright,” I sighed. “This one happened not long after we met. Remember the homicide I was working on when you were away at that archaeology thing?”
She nodded. “Vaguely.” We had only been on two dates, not quite yet the point in a relationship where I started unveiling all the unsavoury things I’d seen at work. “You said it wasn’t pretty,” she added softly.
It wasn’t. In fact, it had taken a lot out of me, and I’d even gone to spend a few days with Elsie after the whole thing. But it was the only one that came to mind, the only one with details clear enough right now that I could actually make a story out of.
“It was the start of the summer,” I began. “Schools were out for the holiday, and Mills and I were called out to some gardens just outside the city.”
One
“Grace, shoes!” Abbie Whelan called up the stairs, balancing a half-empty mug of tea in her hands as the four-year-old upstairs came sliding down, socked feet sticking in the air. Abbie handed her the wellies, and Grace stuck her feet inside, clambering up and holding her arms out for her mother to slide her coat on.
“Where are you going?” Grace asked, playing with the tie on Abbie’s dress as her mother fixed the hood stuck down by her neck.
“I have to go to work for a few hours, poppet, so you’re going to arts and crafts.” Abbie drained her mug and got down on her knees to do up her daughter’s zip. “Holly will get you after and bring you to me, okay?”
“Okay,” Grace nodded, looking up at Abbie’s face, the same pair of bright brown eyes shining up at her.
“What are you going to do at art club?” Abbie asked her, brushing Grace’s hair back from her face.
“Paint!”
“Paint? How exciting, I wish I could come and paint.”
“A picture,” Grace went on, “for you.”
“For me? Why, thank you, Gracie. You remember to bring it home so I can see it, then?” Abbie stood up and pulled her own coat on as Grace nodded, bouncy curls of hair flopping all over the place.
Abbie grinned and glanced outside, debating whether or not to run upstairs and throw some tights on, but the clock in the hall chimed, and she groaned, time running too short for her to care. She shoved Grace’s things in her bag and placed her empty mug in the kitchen, quickly threw everything back where it belonged, made sure that the cat was still inside and raced outside to the car, locking the door behind her. Abbie opened the car door and helped Grace up into her seat, buckling her in and fixing the hair clip that was fighting her curls.
“Ready to go?” She slid into the driver’s seat and turned around to her daughter.
“Ready!” Grace clapped, and Abbie smiled, turning around and switching the engine on. As she drove away from the house, she felt guilty for dropping Grace off at school during the holidays, but she had to check on the new plants before she didn’t go back to work for a few weeks. And anyway, she’d have plenty of time to build pillow forts and watch too many Disney films before wanting school to start up again. And it would be school, she thought, sparing a glance in the mirror. Proper school with uniforms and shiny shoes, homework and everything. They’d earned a few mindless weeks of doing nothing together. Maybe they’d go to the beach and drag Auntie Paige along too.
She turned the radio on, listening to Grace half-singing along with some of the songs, the smile on her face growing. They reached the school where the art club had been opened in the reception classroom, and Abbie helped Grace from the car, walking into the school and leaving her with the kind art teacher who had paint down her dungarees and flowers on
