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‘Are you kidding?’
‘Swing by the station,’ she instructed. ‘And no, I’m not kidding. Nicola is still angry. She feels Sandra preyed upon him and caught him at his weakest point.’
‘Two months, bloody hell. Wonder if during the reading she told him he was going to meet someone new.’
‘Dunno, but there is something a bit distasteful there,’ Kim said.
Two months, eight weeks, approximately sixty days. Nowhere near long enough to grieve.
‘Maybe wife one sent a message through wife two that it was okay for him to move on,’ Bryant suggested.
‘As long as it was with her,’ Kim said.
‘Ooh, cynical, guv. He clearly loved her so let’s not be too judgemental, eh?’
Judgemental or not, there was still something tawdry about the whole thing, and it certainly gave her a clearer insight into Nicola’s animosity.
She said nothing more until Bryant pulled up at the station, where Stacey was waiting at the front entrance.
Kim lowered the window and handed her the laptop.
‘Pay close attention to the emails. Apparently, she did get threats and crackpots from time to time.’
‘Nothing too incriminating on the background search yet,’ Stacey offered as she took the laptop. ‘She was named in an exposé piece written by another psychic in theDaily Maila couple of years ago.’
‘Okay, keep looking,’ Kim said. ‘Can’t stop – Bryant’s buying me coffee at Luigi’s.’
Bryant’s head snapped round at this new information.
Stacey made a face. ‘Aww, have one of those to-die-for vanilla cannoli for me.’
Kim smiled as she rolled the window back up.
Luigi’s was an authentic Italian restaurant that had opened on the outskirts of town. Superior products, excellent coffee and great customer service had disproved the people who said it would never work. It had become the team’s go to place for a takeout treat given that it was just a couple of minutes away from the station.
‘Mmm…I can taste it already,’ she said as Bryant pulled up in the car park.
‘Almost four quid for a cup of coffee,’ he moaned as they got out of the car.
‘Worth every penny you’re gonna pay for it,’ Kim said. ‘Just black for me,’ she added, taking a seat outside. Luigi’s coffee didn’t need anything else.
The outside seating had a good view of the dual carriageway that ran up Mucklow Hill, but she wasn’t here for the urban scenery. She opened up Sandra’s week-to-view diary. Immediately, Kim could see that Sandra used each small daily space for just about everything: dentist appointments, doctor’s appointments, vet visits, notes on grocery items and social engagements. The pages were a blur of red and black pen. The personal entries were in red and the business entries were in black.
‘Thanks, Bryant,’ she said as he placed the tray on the table. Her eyes went to the plate nestled between the two cups of coffee.
‘Err…you didn’t have to take her literally,’ Kim said, thinking of Stacey’s instruction to have a cannoli. ‘And what’s that?’ she asked, seeing a small brown bag, folded and taped.
Bryant shrugged. ‘A sachet of coffee from Luigi to Stace. He specifically said it was for the “nice” police lady.’
‘You’re not funny,’ she said, taking the package from the tray and bringing it closer to her. ‘Right, from what I can see, Sandra’s entire life was in this book. Some of the entries are sparse on information; it’s probably best if we work backwards from the most recent engagement, which was on Thursday night.’
‘You really think she was murdered in connection with her work?’ Bryant asked, taking a generous bite of the cannoli. Flakes of fried pastry stuck to his lips.
‘Jeez, I sometimes wonder how Jenny can resist you.’
He shrugged and took another bite.
‘It’s not exactly your normal profession, is it?’ she asked. ‘We know from the outset it attracts crackpots and haters, so it seems like a good place to start.’
