Free Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2) by Issy Brooke

indeed the bitey end. But I do like ornamental
ironwork. I’ve got a job on at the moment, out of the blue, and it’s fun.”
    “Really? What are you doing?”
    “Well, the situation itself isn’t fun,” Drew said. “There’s
an old chap in a house on the far side of Upper Glenfield, and he’s being
harassed, so I’ve been putting up a decorative pole that he can have CCTV at
the top of. He has a lovely garden and didn’t want to wreck it with some
horrible, functional security system.”
    “Oh … Cath told me about someone who was being subjected to
harassment. This must be the same man. Ron? Rod?”
    “Reg. Reg Bailey. He’s a military-sounding old stick, very
formal and proper and severe, but he’s nice. You know exactly where you stand
with Reg.”
    Penny gave up on the photography, and stood up again. “What
sort of harassment is it?” she asked.
    Drew sighed with disgust. “It’s really minor but irritating
vandalism. You know I said his garden was lovely? So they dug holes in it. They
egged his garage door. Cut down his bulbs just as they flowered in spring and
arranged the stems on his front lawn to spell out a rude word. Which wasn’t
even spelled correctly.”
    Penny was appalled. “How long has it been going on?”
    “Apparently, years, but it has been escalating lately. He
was too ashamed to tell anyone for a long time.”
    “That’s sick.”
    “I know,” Drew agreed. “Because although no threats have
been made, there’s always that worry, isn’t there? How far will the perpetrator
go? And why? He confessed to me that he was beginning to feel vulnerable, and
that’s not like Reg. It takes a lot to make a man like that even admit to
feeling that way.”
    Penny shivered. She remembered the other case that Cath had
mentioned, about the young girl in Lincoln who was also being watched. Maybe it
was just some crush from a classmate.
    But what if it wasn’t?
    What if it was linked?
    “I wonder how much stalking actually goes on,” she said.
    “Lots, I’d imagine. I just don’t think it gets reported,”
said Drew. “Although I bet most of it is online.”
    She turned away. She’d had three messages to her online
dating profile already, but she hadn’t replied to any of them.
    After all, she’d only made the profile so she, herself,
could stalk someone.
    Stalking a dead man. Her flesh rose in goose-bumps. “Shall
we move on?” she said.
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
    Penny was in a light-hearted and hopeful mood for the rest
of Thursday. Drew went off to plan some “edible wild plant” sessions, and Penny
went home to walk Kali. Then, after her evening meal, she settled down with her
laptop on the sofa next to her, and her dog at her feet. The room was slowly
darkening and she had one lamp lit in a corner, casting a soft glow.
    She felt at home, a feeling that had been growing slowly
since she had left London, and it was nice.
    She logged in to her email and deleted all the spam. There
was a brief message from her parents; they had landed back in the UK for a few
weeks, but were planning on visiting Estonia at some point. She smiled.
    There was also a returned email.
    Francine.
    Penny chewed her lip. Her old London friend had been the
only one to stay in touch when she left the capital, and she’d even visited
Penny just after she’d moved from London. Though they’d not been close when
working together, since Penny retired, she’d valued their friendship more. Yet
for the past few weeks, Penny had been unable to contact Francine. At first
she’d assumed that Francine was busy – perhaps working away on location. But
the email had bounced back as “undeliverable” and that was concerning.
    She’d have to call her, but she’d leave it until the
weekend in case Francine was simply out of the country and had let her email
inbox somehow fill up.
    She hovered over a notification from the dating website;
apparently, Shaun71 wanted to send her a message. Did she want to go