A Nosey Parker Cozy Mystery. Fiona Leitch

not superstitious, but I do have a few rituals, which is more to do with avoiding bad karma or Murphy’s Law. Lots of coppers do. Stuff like, when you go out to a café or restaurant, always sit facing the door, so you can see everyone who’s coming in and going out (which makes life difficult when you’re out for a meal with another police officer, because if you can’t get the right table and neither of you gives way, you end up sitting next to each other). Or not polishing your shoes before a Friday or Saturday night shift because if you do you’re bound to run into a drunken hen party trying to stab each other with their stilettos outside a nightclub at 3am, one of whom will definitely unload seven Bacardi Breezers and one doner kebab all over your shiny black footwear as you get her in the van. That kind of thing.

      The other ritual I have is always leaving a good-luck card for the new occupants whenever I move house. I’ve moved house a lot. There was the skanky bedsit I lived in when I first relocated to London. I loved it because it was the first place which was mine (even though it was rented) and I had become a grown-up and my life was just getting started and it was all so exciting. I was away from my parents and following in my dad’s footsteps without being in his shadow for once. All this despite the bedsit having hot and cold running mould and a wicked draught from the one solitary window, and a landlord who refused to get anything repaired until I told him I was a copper. And then he still didn’t repair anything; he just put the rent up by another hundred quid a week until I moved out. There were the shared houses – often with other police officers from the same nick – which kind of made sense until we all ended up doing different shifts, so it didn’t matter what time of day it was, there was always someone trying to sleep and someone else waking them up as they came home and someone getting ready to go out. That had been particularly stressful. There was the nice flat I finally found myself in, just before I met Richard; it was small but perfectly formed, and quiet. I bought a cheap poster print of a famous painting of the coast near my home town in Cornwall and I would sit there, in the peace and quiet of my lovely flat, staring at the picture and thinking about the way the light reflected off the sea back home, and I would cry because I was so flipping lonely and homesick when I wasn’t actually at work, but I wasn’t about to give in and go back and admit I’d been wrong to leave.

      And then there was this place. This was the first house I’d ever actually owned – we’d owned, me and Richard – and although it wasn’t perfect, it was full of memories. Memories of Richard carrying me over the threshold after we got married, banging my head on the door frame as he did so. That was bad karma and should have made me wary of what was to follow. Of bringing our daughter Daisy back from the hospital after a long-drawn-out labour that put me off having any more children, at least for a year or so, and by then Richard had gone off the idea anyway. It was a few more years before I found out why.

      The good-luck card lay on the kitchen counter, which had been cluttered with cookbooks and gadgets the day before but was now empty. They were inside a box, inside the removal van, which had already left. The picture on the front was of a lovely country cottage made of stone with climbing roses around the door. It was ironic because it looked nothing like this house but wasn’t too dissimilar from where we were moving to. I picked up the pen and composed in my head what to write.

       Good luck in your new home. I hope you are as happy here as I was.

       …Or as happy as I was before I found out that my stupid useless can’t-keep-it-in-his-pants husband was cheating on me.

       I hope you are as happy here as I was once I got him out of this house and our lives, before he moved in with his new girlfriend ten minutes away, but STILL constantly let his daughter down by turning up late when he’d promised to take her out (if he turned up at all). If we’re living miles away he can’t let her down anymore, as she won’t expect anything from him (she already knows better than to do that, but she’s only twelve so she can’t help hoping).

       I hope you are as happy here as I was when I could still afford to pay the mortgage, before he started kicking up a fuss about paying child support and before I left the job that I absolutely loved but which (after a particularly nasty incident) my daughter didn’t. I could see her point. If anything happened to me she’d have to go and live with her dad, who, as I think we’ve already established, is a total waste of space, oxygen, and the Earth’s natural resources. So I left and retrained and now we’re both ready to start again somewhere else.

       I hope you are happy here spending an absolute fortune on this cramped house with its tiny garden, noisy neighbours, and busy road outside while I’ll be paying considerably less for somewhere bigger with a lovely view of the sea and neighbours who are more likely to wake me up at 6am with their loud baaing than at 3am with their drunken return from a club.

      Hmm. Maybe I was overthinking it. I opened the card and wrote inside it.

       Good luck.

      It was definitely time to go home.

      Chapter One

      Funny how things turn out. I only went in to buy a sofa.

      Penhaligon’s was one of those old-fashioned family-run department stores – the type that once upon a time every town had but which were now disappearing (and with good reason, to be honest; most of the stock looked like it had been procured in the 1950s and came at such an exorbitant price you were forced to step outside and double-check you hadn’t inadvertently wandered into Harrods by mistake). But Penhaligon’s had persisted, remaining open through world wars, recessions, and the rise of internet shopping. The zombie apocalypse could hit Cornwall (I know, I know, would anyone even notice?) and Penhaligon’s would still be there, clinging stubbornly to its prime spot on Fore Street, serving the needs of both locals and the undead brain-hungry horde (or ‘holidaymakers’, as they were otherwise known).

      I wouldn’t normally have bothered with Penhaligon’s, but we’d been at our new house for four days now and Daisy and I were sick of sitting on my mum’s old garden chairs – they were literally a pain in the backside – so as I was passing I ventured inside.

      It hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been there. It had barely changed since the first time I’d been there forty years ago. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had given the furniture department a bit of a makeover and there were a few lounge suites that looked like they’d actually been designed sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall (as opposed to before the building of it).

      I sank gratefully into a big, squashy sofa, stroking the fabric appreciatively and reaching for the price tag. The figures made me suck in my breath in mild horror (along with an unfortunate fly who was just passing), but the words ‘Next day delivery!’ had an immediate soothing effect.

      I stood up to get a better look at it and jumped as a voice boomed across the shop floor at me.

      ‘Oh my God, Nosey Parker! Is that really you?’

      I turned round, already knowing who it was. Tony Penhaligon, great-grandson of the original Mr Penhaligon, old classmate and sometime boyfriend (we went out for two weeks in 1994, held hands a bit, kissed but didn’t – ewww – use tongues), stood in front of me, a big smile on his face. Like his family’s shop, he also hadn’t changed all that much over the last forty years and every time I looked at him I could still see a hint of the annoying little boy with the runny nose who had sat next to me on my first day in Mrs Hobson’s primary class. But he had a good heart and it was nice to see a friendly face.

      I did a double-take as I took him in properly. Hang on a minute; he actually had changed. The last time I’d seen him, on one of my trips back to see my mum, he’d been sporting a dad bod, a paunch brought on by too many pasties and pints. But that was gone and he was looking rather trim. Also gone was the unflattering store uniform of white polo shirt and black chinos, replaced by a sharp, well-tailored, and expensive-looking suit. A little voice in the back of my mind went, I’d blooming well let him use tongues now, before I shut it up with a contemptuous