Smoke & Cracked Mirrors (The York Ladies' Detective Agency Mysteries Book 1) by Karen Charlton

Author:Karen Charlton [Charlton, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jemma spent the next few hours sitting in her car, watching the home of Neil Watts and wishing she’d had her car heater fixed.

Gordon Terrace consisted of two rows of houses, facing each other across the street. It was behind a parade of shops on the main arterial route that cut through Roundhay and wasn’t far from Helen Urwin’s former home. But the two houses couldn’t have been more different. The paintwork on the door and window frames of number fourteen was peeling with age. Dirty, ripped net curtains hung at the windows and the small front garden was overgrown with weeds and full of junk, including a dented metal dustbin, a broken mangle and a rotting wooden washboard. A crumbling low wall separated the garden from the street and the gate hung off its hinges.

Jemma glanced at the other houses, which were neat and well maintained, and wondered how popular the Watts family were with the neighbours.

Not that she saw many neighbours. A couple of housewives came back with their shopping and a young mother took her child out in a perambulator. The street was quiet – and exposed. There was nowhere to hide or loiter for any length of time without attracting attention, even in her car. She wondered how many pairs of eyes were already watching her.

She ate her sandwiches, poured a cup of tea from her flask and sighed with boredom. O’Sullivan had been right about the tedium of shadowing.

At one point, a mysterious hand opened the door of the Watts’ house to let out a small Jack Russell terrier. Jemma left her car and ambled along the other side of the road, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rest of the person, but there was no one there. The owner had simply opened the door and left the dog to its own devices. Disdainful of its own cluttered front garden, it came out into the street, entered next door’s garden and did its business on their small patch of well-tended lawn.

An hour later, several groups of schoolchildren appeared, drifting home. Two young girls of about ten and twelve, accompanied by an older boy, headed for the Watts’ house. All of them were freckled and had the same vivid red hair as Neil Watts. The scowling lad picked up a stone and hurled it at a passing car.

She checked her watch and decided to go back to York. Neil Watts was probably out at work and she didn’t have the time or the patience to sit and wait for him to return today. She’d come back first thing in the morning and follow him to work.

Then she remembered her appointment with Captain Newton at ten o’clock and frowned. She’d have to come back the day after instead. Running this agency single-handed wasn’t easy.

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