‘No! You get out right now. There are no dogs allowed in here! And you do not have an appointment!’ Both women were done talking and were now on their way to the office door so they could remove us.
Mindy took a step to the side, whipped an eighteen-inch-long fork looking thing from behind her back and stabbed it into the doorframe.
The door opened outwards and they were trapped inside.
‘What the heck even is that?’ I wanted to know.
Mindy pointed to the weapon now pinning the door shut. ‘This thing? It’s a sai, an ancient ninja weapon. Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fights with a pair of them.’
‘But you only have one,’ I observed.
‘Of course not,’ Mindy frowned. ‘What good would that be?’ She reached behind her back and produced a twin for the first one.
That she was my assistant made me shudder.
Inside the medical centre’s reception, the two women were going berserk. Shutting them in was much like dropping cats into a bag and shaking it. It did, however, achieve the desired result. Across the waiting room, a door opened, and a man popped his head out.
‘What the devil is going on?’ he asked. Then his nose wrinkled. ‘What is that smell?’
I flashed him a smile, ignoring his question and the caterwauling occurring two feet from me. ‘Dr Kimble?’
‘Yes?’ His eyebrows rose in question.
‘Jolly good. I need to speak with you.’
As I made my way across the surgery, Mindy shouted after me, ‘Auntie, I think they are calling the police. You might want to make this quick.’
I paused, gritting my teeth. How long would it take the police to get here? Facing the doctor, I took out the tub of corticosteroid cream. ‘I need to talk to you about the attempted murder of Derek Bleakwith.’ It wasn’t an accusation and every word of what I said was true. ‘Would you like the ladies to call the police or would you rather they didn’t?’
His face turned to thunder. It was not the reaction I had hoped for. ‘How dare you come in here and accuse me? Who are you?’
I wanted to answer him with something clever, but I had just spotted something. In his surgery there was a desk with a chair behind it for the doctor and a chair facing it for a patient. Behind the patient’s chair was a freestanding coatrack, one of the circular ones, and on it was a single piece of clothing.
I rushed forward to get a look inside his surgery.
I finally felt like I had seen a clue. He made no attempt to stop me, stepping out of my way so I could look inside.
I grabbed the scarf from the coatrack and spun around to face him. ‘Whose is this?’ I demanded.
He wasn’t there though. He was moving to the reception desk where I could already hear the woman with the sour face talking to the police dispatcher.
In my head, two things had just lined up and suddenly I had a motive and a means. It was as plain as day.
Jolted by the revelation, I started running.
‘Go, Mindy! Back to the car. I’ve just worked it all out!’
‘The police are coming!’ the woman with the sour face yelled at my back.
I had no doubt they were. If she had given them our descriptions, chances were all the police in the county were about to converge on my location. By now they must have worked out that we were in Mindy’s car and would have every set of eyes looking out for it.
We needed to get out of the area, but I couldn’t do that yet. I needed to go somewhere else first. That belief was cemented when we ran from the surgery building. Right in front of me, in one of the spots reserved for a doctor, I saw something for the second time today. I hadn’t realised what it was the first time, but now it meant everything.
‘Auntie! Let’s go!’ shouted Mindy already stuffing Buster into the car.
‘Yeah!’ barked Buster. ‘It’s adventure driving time!’
Regretfully, I had to agree with my dog. Mindy needed to floor it.
All Figured Out
The sensible thing might have been to get as far away from where we were as possible, but that was what a criminal would do. I wasn’t a criminal. I was a falsely accused victim and one who had just figured out what was going on. Still heading for the Bleakwiths’ house in Meopham, I tried to explain it to Mindy.
‘This,’ I held up the scarf I took from the doctor’s office, ‘belongs to Joanne Bleakwith.’
‘The wife of the man who fell off the balcony,’ Mindy wanted to confirm.
‘That’s right. This morning, I saw a parking permit on her car. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it was for a golf club.’
Mindy, unable to see where I was going with my explanation said, ‘Okay.’
‘Joanne can’t play golf,’ I explained.
‘Why not?’ Mindy wrinkled her brow.
Feeling clever because I’d worked this out for myself, I told her, ‘Because she has a spinal injury from when she was younger. A car accident she said. She couldn’t possibly play a round of golf, so why does she have a parking permit for the local club?’
Mindy shrugged. ‘She likes to watch?’
I grinned and shook my head, then pointed to a turning coming up on our left. ‘Go down there.’
‘Here?’ Mindy questioned.
The turning was for a dirt track that led through some woods to emerge behind houses on the next street. It was there to access farmland but unless a tractor came along, I doubted anyone would need to use it and that made it not only a great place for
