The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 by David Carter (best finance books of all time .txt) 📕

THE PUBLIC PARK WAS at its best. There was a team of council workmen there, brandishing old green watering cans. Red pelargoniums, multi coloured dahlias, yellow pompom marigolds, blue allysum, all jostling for space and sunshine in the crowded beds, pretty colours and aromas to attract the bees, not that Luke Flowers would have known any of that. He simply thought of it as a peaceful and pleasant place from where he could run his business and make his calls.

Two young women were sitting gossiping on the first bench, one rocking a tiny pram to and fro. They both looked well under twenty and they both smiled at Luke as he wandered by in his tight pants. Luke smiled back and the girls giggled loudly. On another day he’d join them and try his luck and attempt to lure them back to his flat for an afternoon threesome. It had worked before, but not right there because he had more important things on his mind.

He found an empty bench and rang Melanie. She had taken the day off to get ready. Her bag was packed, her passport was waiting on her dressing table, she’d bathed and made-up, and brushed and combed her long blonde hair, and now all she had to do was wait.

Luke often kept her waiting. He seemed to get off on it. That was cool, in small doses. She could handle the wait, and his mind games. Luke Flowers was worth waiting for. She went downstairs and sat on the sofa and explained to Pugsley that she would be away for two whole weeks and that he had better behave himself, or she wouldn’t take him walkies when she came home.

The Springer spaniel coughed, he’d been eating something he shouldn’t have, and that was nothing new. He had a solid track record of eating non-food items. Mr Kirton’s slippers, the plastic tiles on the utility room floor, the lavatory cleaner container in the upstairs bathroom, a sleeping hedgehog at the bottom of the garden, spines and all, the next door kid’s football, not to mention Mrs Kirton’s prize winning water lilies, all had succumbed to Pugsley’s unusual diet.

She picked up her mobile and willed it to ring, and lo and behold, it did.

‘You ready?’ he said.

She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was in a good mood, and he was a very moody man, but that was another reason why she liked him so much. She could always tell when he was grinning. He was grinning now.

‘I might be,’ she said.

‘You’d better be.’

‘Or what?’

‘I can feel a spanking coming on.’

‘Mister Flowers, don’t be so horrible.’

‘I’ll pick you up at four.’

‘I’ll be ready.’

‘You’d better be. You’re parents won’t be there, will they?’

‘Course not. You know they don’t get home till gone six.’

‘Good! I don’t want to meet them. Your dad’s a right miserable git.’

‘No he isn’t, not all the time.’

‘Yes he is!’

‘Where are you now?’

‘In the park.’

‘What are you doing there?’

‘Admiring the blooms.’

The two unmarried mothers came strolling by, glanced down and smiled at Luke, he was talking on the phone, to his girlfriend probably, they guessed, judging by the expectant look on his face, tight jeans on the pair of them, tight butts, and once past, the darker one glanced back over her shoulder, pouted her lips and blew him a Hollywood kiss, and the pair of them burst into fits of laughter and continued on toward the gates.

‘Don’t you think you should come and admire this bloom?’

‘Sure babe, I’m just on my way home, quick shower and a change, and I’ll be at yours for four.’

‘Don’t be late,’ she said.

‘Don’t be cheeky.’

‘Or what?’

‘Torrid time for you, squeaker.’

‘Don’t call me that, you know I don’t like it.’

‘You shouldn’t squeak so much then, should you?’

Melanie flushed.

She couldn’t help it if she squeaked, when he aroused her.

Didn’t all women squeak?

‘Be ready!’ he said, and then he cut off and rang his mother.

She was at work, sitting at the bench, the sewing machines firing staccato thread into the blue denim. They weren’t supposed to take calls at work, but the supervisor probably wouldn’t hear above the din. She pressed the phone to one ear and her palm across the other.

‘Luke?’ she said. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yeah, mum, just to let you know that I am going on holiday for two weeks. I’ll send you a card.’

‘Thanks, son.’

‘And I’ve paid a grand into your bank account.’

‘Oh, thanks, son! You didn’t have to do that.’

‘I know, but I did.’

‘You’re such a good boy.’

‘Yeah mum, I am.’

‘Have a nice time.’

‘I intend to. Have to go,’ and he rang off, just as the supervisor came back into the machine shop. His mother dropped the mobile into her lap and resumed firing.

One more call for Luke and then home.

He rang his little friend, Sahira; he couldn’t forget her, must keep her sweet, promised to see her again soon.

She was pleased to hear from him too, had a little whinge it had taken him so long to call, and then he was on his way back to the flat to wash and change.

Ten 

Langley Wells resembled a hyena. Short and stocky with powerful cuffing forearms, and a weird head that started wide and narrowed down to a snout, a proboscis through which he regularly sniffed. His father had been short and stocky too, and his father before that; and all the male Wells inherited the same tapering face. His mother was little and dumpy too, so as Langley grew, his final adult shape surprised no one.

He possessed a temper like a hyena, was fiercely territorial, and quick to hatred, and didn’t ever forgive, but he was also loyal to his friends and family, and surprisingly generous with his cash when the situation merited it, albeit very selectively.

His father was a baker, up at 2am every morning, sometimes waking the entire household as he banged clumsily around their council house looking for his boots.

As a boy,