Gardners, Ditchers, and Gravemakers (A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crimes Book 4) by Oliver Davies (best black authors txt) 📗

“Let’s hope our killer doesn’t go four round two,” Thatcher grumbled in agreement. “Else I’ll bloody well kill them myself.”

Thatcher was the least morning person I had ever met in my life. But to his credit, he had made me a coffee when I picked him up, so I wasn’t doing any complaining. Not out loud anyway, or to his face, I wasn’t an idiot.

The more often I did this drive, the easier it became. I stopped easing around the bends like an old granny and managed to navigate the random potholes and muddy slopes with relative ease. I still rattled us around like a pinball machine, managing to coax the odd curse word and blasphemous yelp from Thatcher, but we reached the Petrilli’s house with little damage done. As we climbed out of the car, boots crunching the gravel path, the front door opened, and Mrs Petrilli stood in the doorway, smiling and throwing us a little wave of the hand.

“I’ll talk to them about Jordan Picard,” Thatcher told me under his breath as we walked towards her. “You see about this hard drive.”

I nodded, just as we stepped to the door, and then we both fixed our troubled expressions and smiled at Sonia’s mother. She looked tired, naturally, and rather like she had been crying a lot. But she ushered inside, into that gloriously warm kitchen where she pressed large mugs of tea into our hands. I’d never seen Thatcher look so grateful for tea in all the time I’d known him, his large frame huddled into the small wooden kitchen chair.

“Thank you for letting us intrude, Mrs Petrilli,” he said to her.

“Oh, not at all. Anything that will help. I’m sorry my husband’s not here. He’s handling some things with the funeral directors.” Her voice rasped and fell at the end of her sentence, and Thatcher leant over to pat her arm comfortingly. “Now,” she wiped her eyes and looked at me, “you mentioned wanting to have a look at some of her work things?”

“If that’s okay,” I quickly threw out.

“Of course. She worked outside,” Mrs Petrilli stood up and walked to a large bureau and opened a small drawer, pulling out a key. “It used to be my home office, but when I retired, I let Sonia use it.” She handed me the key and opened the back door for me. “It’s just there, at the end of the garden.”

“Thank you,” I said earnestly, taking myself and my mug of tea out of the house, down through the neat rows of flowers, bees humming in the air, butterflies flitting around. I’d taken the antihistamine today, thank goodness, a short while out here, and I’d be sneezing all over the place.

The home office was a small wooden cabin, painted red, that would have made a good granny flat at some point. There were two windows on either side of the door, curtains drawn so that I couldn’t see inside. I unlocked the door, gently pushing it open and walked in, flicking the lights on.

The first thing I thought was that it was a nice room. A day bed sat against the far wall, covered in a quilt and blankets, a desk at the other end overloaded with books and papers. A small table with a kettle and cups, little jars of tea. It was eerily similar to Abbie Whelan’s garage. Only it was a complete wreck. The desk drawers had been opened, rifled through, with stuff thrown over the floor, hanging from the top. The books on the shelf were pushed aside, some fallen off the shelves completely.

Someone had been in, I thought as I stepped into the room. Someone was looking for something. I highly doubted that it was Sonia’s mother popping in to find a specific gardening book.

I stepped carefully over everything on the floor, wondering whether or not it should be called in. But the lock on the door was fine, the windows too, once I pulled the curtains back. There was no sign of a break-in, and despite the mess, everything looked to be carefully placed. Nothing had been broken. Nothing had been ripped or smashed or torn apart. An image darted through my head of Sonia herself, hurriedly looking for something she had put away somewhere safe. I wondered if she’d found it, wondered if she’d died for it.

I stepped back, taking a few pictures of the room to show to Thatcher later, and then took a large sip of tea, put the mug down and pulled a pair of gloves on, ready to begin my own search.

I started with the desk, searching through the drawers before sliding them back into place. Half searching, half tidying, I supposed. There was nothing in there to catch my eye, no hard drive, no studies. The bookshelf came next, where Sonia had some of their research projects lined up in leather folders rather like Abbie had done. I pulled one of the shelves, flipping it open, and blinked in confusion. Their names had switched. Sonia’s then Abbie’s, rather than the other way around. I took a picture of that too and then put the folder back on the shelf. Nothing from eight years ago.

Over by the day bed was a large wooden chest that looked pretty untouched compared to the rest of the room. I headed over to it, dropping to my knees and pulling it over, lifting the lid.

Bingo. A chest full of memories. Pictures of Sonia as a child, winning awards and at science fairs; old university work that she hadn’t gotten rid of, and old research. Most of it when I picked it up was just theories, ideas she must have had that nothing happened with. I rooted through the box, through little trophies and medals and certificates until I found another folder, thinner, plastic, with big letters running across it reading, “Project Terminated”. I whooped