Free Classic Mistake by Amy Myers Page B

right. Carlos would keep well away from us. And I’ve been lucky. Clive and I make a good team here. We’re doing OK.’
    ‘What about the rest of the band?’ I wondered what Clive would have gone on to say.
    Jonathan looked amused. ‘If you’re thinking of Matt Wright, don’t bother. He can’t plan his own breakfast, let alone a murder. And as for Josie, she’s well established now and wouldn’t give Carlos the time of day if he contacted her. Not that he would dare. All of us are anxious to leave things be, not stir them up.’
    ‘So if he didn’t contact any of you direct, what was the grapevine through which you heard the news?’
    A pause, then Jonathan spoke. ‘I didn’t tell you, Clive. I thought the news Carlos was back might upset you. He did ring Josie to tell her he was coming down to promote business.’
    I noted that Jonathan was no George Washington when it came to parting with information. If Carlos had used the word promote, however, did that imply he was simply trying to arrange more gigs rather than raise cash, I wondered. Somehow I didn’t think so.
    Clive took the information badly. ‘Upset, Jon? Too bloody right I would have been
upset.
Bad enough knowing that creep was back, let alone having Josie put through the mincer again.’
    ‘It’s past history, Clive,’ Jonathan murmured, then turned to me. ‘Now, Jack, do think about it. Is it at all likely that after all this time any of us would get to the point of ruining our lives for a
second
time with an attack on Carlos?’
    ‘Unlikely,’ I agreed, just to please him, though I wondered just how upset Clive would have to be to go into action. Spur of the moment rage could surely not be ruled out.
    ‘Carlos Mendez was a coward through and through. Right, Clive?’ Jonathan said.
    ‘Yes,’ Clive snarled.
    ‘It’s worked out brilliantly my working with Clive here,’ Jonathan continued. ‘We have our own homes and our own partners, and Clive has two kids to whom I’m godfather. As I said, we’re OK. And, what’s more, we were there at our respective homes the night Carlos was killed, as we told the police when they came on the same errand as you.’ His pleasant voice glossed over the underlying ‘so get lost’ message.
    I decided I would put one last oar into these apparently untroubled waters. ‘And Neil Watson?’
    Jonathan seemed prepared for that and to have considered his matter-of-fact reply: ‘Neil and I were lovers. When he killed himself I thought my world had ended. But it hadn’t. And because of that I and the other Charros choose to honour him with a lunch each year. Does that make sense?’
    It did – in a way.
    I drove home to Frogs Hill contemplating what, if anything, I had achieved and where to go next. I now had a basis at least on which to work: a clear statement that all the Charros members stuck together. To which I needed to add Matt Wright – and Josie Gibson, the singer who no longer sang and whom Carlos had rung to say he’d be back. When I reached the Pits, contemplation was over. Len was upset and Zoe in a foul temper.
    ‘Blame Miss Angel Face,’ she said savagely. ‘We’re not going to get the Alvis finished today.’
    So nothing new there, but how did Daisy come into it? ‘Is Daisy still here?’ I asked warily.
    ‘No, but she was mooning around here all morning. She’d taken a day off work to so-called “help” you find that car of hers. She pestered Len for every bit of info he ever knew on Morris Minors.’
    ‘Did she want anything in particular?’
    ‘She didn’t say, but the subtext was that she wanted results from you, Jack.
You.
’
    Melody was back on the agenda for further action, if I could think of any. I had indeed gone to Bluebell Hill to see if by any chance a pinky-grey Morris Minor had by coincidence chosen the same time to share a major road with me. It had not, and I had put Melody aside with the crisis over Eva. Although I had not been able to take up Daisy’s