Free Murder My Neighbour by Veronica Heley Page A

home and they’d given him the runaround, denied she was there. Anyway, when my back was turned, he made off with my engagement ring, Thomas’s Kindle, and my aunt’s little china snuffbox. Naturally I want to find him. Did you ever hear of or see a young man who might have been related to Mrs Pryce when you were working for her?’
    The huge rings in Vera’s ears caught the light as she whacked the table. ‘Would that be her great-nephew, Terry Pryce? You remember, Pet? The one who brought her the turkey, the Christmas before last it would have been. Tell a lie; three Christmases ago.’
    Pet looked bewildered.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Vera. ‘I forgot; it was before we teamed up, wasn’t it?’ She spurted into laughter. ‘He brought her a turkey and it was off. We gave it to Fritz to bury in the garden, only he didn’t. He took it home to his missus and she gave him a right rollicking. Dunno what he did with it in the end.’
    â€˜I’m enchanted,’ said Ellie, with truth. ‘Fritz is the gardener? Where could I find him?’
    â€˜Oh, him.’ Pet fiddled with her nearly empty mug of coffee. ‘Lives above the shops in the Lane at the far end, over the Co-op. Missus Pryce never minded if he took home some of the stuff he grew for her.’
    A lightning glance passed between the two girls, and Ellie caught it. She remembered that the vegetable garden was still being worked by someone. By this Fritz, presumably? The girls knew and were not going to say. Well, well. It was no concern of Ellie’s.
    â€˜You said her great-nephew Terry brought her a turkey and you think he might be the lad who stole from me?’
    Vera furrowed her brow. ‘Mrs Pryce always said she wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up in trouble. She never did think much of her husband’s side of the family.’
    Ellie looked a question, and Vera was happy to explain. ‘Mrs Pryce used to sit down along of us when we was on our break sometimes, and she’d tell us such tales of her family, had us in stitches. The turkey tale was one, but some of the excuses they came up with to get money out of her! She used to say, “If I didn’t have myself a laugh about that load of sharks, I’d cry.”’
    Pet stabbed the air with a pudgy forefinger. ‘It could well be Terry that visited you yesterday. He must be, what, mid-twenties? She used to tell us how he’d come round now and then to make sure she was still in the land of the living. And then he’d touch her for a sub. A “smarmy git”, she said.’
    â€˜What did he look like?’
    â€˜Dunno, really. Never saw him. What was it she used to say about him? I know; each time he come round he had another ring in his ear or his eyebrow, and she wondered where else he had them. She said it was a wonder he hadn’t got blood poisoning because of all the piercings. She couldn’t think how he’d got himself a job in a respectable shop.’
    â€˜Did he have a sister, by any chance?’
    Both girls shook their heads. ‘He was an only.’
    So he’d lied about that. ‘Did Mrs Pryce like Liquorice Allsorts, by any chance?’
    A grin from Vera. ‘She did, at that. We used to get her a box for Christmas and birthdays, didn’t we, Pet?’
    So maybe the Pryce boy had spoken the truth about some things.
    Vera had gone all wistful. ‘I liked Mrs Pryce. Sparky. Never let nothing get her down. No nonsense, tell us off if something weren’t done right, but no side to her in spite of all her money. Her old man was in the hardware business, see; had five shops which she sold for a mint after he dropped off the twig on account of his liver. She was nobody’s fool.’
    â€˜As she used to tell us, regular.’ Pet’s voice went fluting up. ‘“My Edgar left everything to me because he knew what his scumbag relatives were like, and