Myers - Classic Mistake

Table of Contents

CLASSIC IN THE BARN

CLASSIC CALLS THE SHOTS

CLASSIC IN THE CLOUDS

CLASSIC MISTAKE

MURDER IN THE QUEENS BOUDOIR

MURDER WITH MAJESTY

THE WICKENHAM MURDERS

MURDER IN FRIDAY STREET

MURDER IN HELLS CORNER

MURDER AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET

MURDER IN THE MIST

MURDER TAKES THE STAGE

MURDER ON THE OLD ROAD

MURDER IN ABBOTS FOLLY

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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
915 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright 2013 by Amy Myers.

The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Myers, Amy, 1938

Classic mistake. (A Jack Colby mystery ; 4)

1. Colby, Jack (Fictitious character)Fiction.

2. MurderInvestigationFiction. 3. Automobile theft

investigationFiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'14-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8265-3 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-418-8 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To Tom and Marie ODay
with gratitude

Frogs Hill farm, where Jack Colby lives and works, is set near Pluckley in Kent, and most of the villages and towns referred to in this novel are real locations. Some, however, are not, including Woodlea Hill in Eastry, for which I have expanded the distance between Eastry and Northbourne and have added my own fictitious contribution to their history. Some other locations, including Pipers Green, which is Jack Colbys nearest village (and pub), Burchett Forstal, Tickenden and Boyfield are also fictitious.

S ome days begin with a nightmare and just get worse. This time a phone call was all it took. It came at a quarter to nine in the morning, a time when Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations is normally peacefully engaged in its exciting tasks for the day such as overhauling a Jensens dynamo. Not for me, not this Tuesday.

Ja a ck. A wail that made my goose pimples leap into instant action. I knew that voice all too well, albeit I had not heard it for a blessedly long period of silence. It had been some years since my Spanish werewolf, otherwise known as my ex-wife Eva, had last tornadoed her way through my life.

Tread carefully, I warned myself. Whats wrong?

Carlos, he is wrong.

Hes left you? My sympathies were with Carlos. I could guess what he had been through.

He is dead. Shot. Murdered!

That shook me. For a moment I thought Id misunderstood, but fond of exaggeration though she was, it must be serious if she was telephoning from South America. Her husband Carlos was Mexican, and I had an immediate and no doubt stereotyped image of vengeance in seedy nightspots. That, of course, could be true of anywhere now, including Englands once green and pleasant land, but somehow Carlos and crime seemed to be a natural fit.

Im sorry, Eva, I said sincerely. Have you someone you can call on to help you?

Y o u, Jack.

Me? Extreme caution needed now. I cant do much from here. Frogs Hill is in the midst of the Kentish countryside and a long way from Carlos-land.

You come!

To Mexico? She had to be joking.

Not Mexico. You come to Maidstone. We here. Carlos killed here.

The receiver felt clammy in my hand. Some joker, somewhere, had shot a thunderbolt into my life and poisoned it for good measure. Mexico was safely across a very wide ocean. Maidstone, capital of Kent, England, was a mere fifteen miles or so from where I was standing. When, over twenty years ago and after only four years of marriage, Eva had run off with her Mexican bandleader lover, it would have been a matter for celebration if it hadnt been for the fact that she had snatched Cara, our then toddler daughter, to take with her. I returned to an empty house with no forwarding address provided. Cara reappeared in my life years later as a student and then settled in England. Thankfully, Eva had only disrupted this picture for one or two brief visits. So far

Why was Carlos shot? I asked Eva, perhaps a trifle tersely.

A pause. You detective, Jack. You find out.

Thats the polices job, I pointed out. Whatever you might have heard, Im only a car detective, not from the Serious Crime Directorate. It was true Id been involved in one or two of its cases, but that was beside the point.

Then I tell police about you, Jack. The sweetness in her voice concealed the venom that I remembered all too well from past experience. What fairy-tale was she about to concoct now? That I was still a jealous husband bent on revenge? That I was a wife-beater? That I was a child molester? She was quite capable of accusing me of any of these, especially if, it occurred to me, she had shot Carlos herself. She was handy with a pistol, and in one memorable episode in our marriage Id found myself facing it. Luckily, the ensuing shot missed.

Id no choice. I had to find out what was happening now. Where are you? Are the police there?

I go with policewoman to towpath. You come there.

Whereabouts? In the town itself? Halfway to Allington Lock? Or in the Teston direction? The River Medway runs through Maidstone down to the sea; the upriver direction heads towards Tonbridge.

Yes, she said and switched off. It was a mobile, and when I rang back it was on voicemail.

Len Vickers and Zoe Grant, my two stalwart staff, were blithely working in the Pits when I stumbled in, shaken by the shock. The Pits is the name we give the converted barn where the restoration of classic cars takes place. It cares for Alvises to Zodiacs and from tune-ups to chassis-up rebuilds, and no classic goes uncherished. Len is nominally in charge, although Zoe tends not to see it that way. Shes getting on for forty years younger than Len and has learned her skills from him so successfully that theres a tacit understanding between them as to how they work together. Who am I to probe into the mechanics of this? It works I merely pay them and admire their handiwork.

Theyve only met Eva once, but that had been enough. Eva had blessed Frogs Hill with the warmth of her presence one afternoon when I was out. I returned to the farmhouse to find a white-faced Len even more bereft of words than usual while Eva gave him instructions on how to tune a Talbots ignition, a subject about which she knows nothing. There had been no sign of Zoe. I discovered her later in the Glory Boot, the collection of automobilia stored in an extension to the farmhouse by my late father. Zoe had locked the door from the inside and was only persuaded to let me in when I promised on my word of honour that I was alone and that the gorgon had left Frogs Hill for ever.