November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 Read online

  “Lock the door, and leave the keys in the lock so no one can get in but we can get out quickly should we need to,” I whispered into the darkness.

  Wendy did as I asked without question.

  There was a small window built into the side of the shed. Crouched side by side, Kale and I peered out into the garden. We had a perfect view of the side of the house and the lawn.

  “Now all we have to do is wait,” Kale whispered.

  “What for?” Wendy asked.

  “For the man to come and fetch his dead dog,” I whispered back.

  “What about Ethan?” she said. “Will he be safe?”

  “That is why we are here,” I told her.

  We waited in the cold and dark without making a sound. The wind whispered around the eaves of the shed, and the branches of nearby trees creaked in the wind. Kale was so quiet I thought he had fallen asleep. I nudged him in the ribs.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “So you are awake then? You were so still and quiet I thought you’d nodded off,” I teased him.

  “What do you expect me to do, cartwheels? There’s not enough room in here to swing a dead dog,” he said.

  “That’s not funny,” Wendy whispered.

  “Sorry,” Kale said, and even though it was dark, I knew he was smiling. “I was just trying to lighten the…”

  “Shhh!” I said, placing my hand over Kale’s mouth. “I can hear someone coming.”

  Keeping low, Kale and I peered out of the window. My eyes narrowed at the sight of the man with the lump on his back as he shuffled from around the side of Wendy’s house and into the garden. Just as Wendy described him, the man was huge. He wore a large brimmed hat, dark glasses, had a flowing beard, and a long dark coat. We spied on him from the shed as he made his way onto the lawn. He looked back at the house, as if making sure he wasn’t being watched. Content that he was alone, the strange man hobbled about the lawn, stopping every few feet to stomp on the grass with his muddy boots. Then, looking back at the house just once more, he crouched down and brushed his hands over the grass like he was searching for something that was hidden there. He stood and looked over at the shed. With my heart racing, I dropped down out of view, fearing that perhaps he might have seen me. Kale bent low, pressing close against me. Wendy cowered in the opposite corner, crouched between a lawnmower and a bike.

  With the side of my head pressed flat against the shed wall, I heard the stomp of the man’s boots as he shuffled forward. The door suddenly rattled in the frame and my heartbeat quickened. Had he seen us? Then, drawing a deep breath, I heard the sound of the wheelbarrow being pushed away. The squeak of the front wheel was unmistakable. Biting my lower lip, I peered out of the window again, Kale beside me, cheek to cheek so we could both watch the man.

  He stopped the wheelbarrow by the patch of grass that he had inspected. Then, taking the spade, he started to dig away at the ground. I glanced at Kale, both of us thinking the same thing. We looked back at the man as he continued to dig what looked like a grave in the middle of Wendy’s garden.

  “What’s happening?” Wendy whispered behind me.

  “Shhh,” I hushed gently. “Kale, get ready to open the shed door.”

  “You’re not really going out there, are you?” Wendy murmured.

  “What was the point in coming if we don’t?” Kale whispered, crouching by the door.

  “Ready, Kale?” I whispered, watching the man drop the spade and peer down into the hole he had dug.

  “Ready,” he whispered back.

  With my heart pumping so much adrenaline around my body that my hands began to shake, I watched the man reach down into the hole. “Go!” I roared.

  On my say so, Kale threw open the shed door and burst out into the garden. I raced after him. Startled, the man looked back, then jumped up. Before the stranger had had a chance to fight back or escape, Kale had lunged at him. I threw myself at the man, as both Kale and I wrestled him to the ground. The man was strong and he fought back.

  “Cuffs!” I roared.

  “I’m trying!” Kale bellowed back as he struggled to free them from his belt. The man rolled onto his front beneath us, and I drove my fist hard down between his shoulder blades. The lump that protruded from his back felt soft. The man made a growling noise as I struck him. I heard a ratcheted type sound, and glanced sideways to see Kale had his handcuffs free and had snapped one end in place around the wrist of the man.

  “Stop struggling,” I breathed into his ear, twisting his free arm up his back.

  Leaning over the man, Kale snapped the last cuff in place. Once we had him restrained, together we pulled him up into a standing position. Wendy stepped out of the shed and came toward us across the garden. Even though her tormenter was in handcuffs, she still looked haunted by him.

  Kale gripped the man by his arm. I glanced down into the hole the stranger had dug and at the human skeleton that lay hidden in it. I looked back at the bearded man and he looked at me. Stepping forward, I pulled off his hat and dark glasses then ripped away his beard. Staring into his unmasked face, I said, “Ethan Cole, I’m arresting you for the murder of Veronica Straw. You do not have to anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

  Ethan Cole said nothing, but Wendy screamed behind us, then dropped to the ground in a dead faint.

  While Kale escorted Ethan Cole into the house, I roused Wendy. With my arm about her shoulder, I led her into the kitchen where Kale had seated Cole at the table. Trembling with shock, Wendy sat opposite him.

  “It was you Ethan…” she mumbled. “It was you the whole time? You killed the dog? You tried to scare me?”

  Cole said nothing. He simply sat and stared back across the table at her.

  Sensing she was going to get no answer from the man she loved, she looked at me. “How did you know?”

  I looked at Kale, then back at Wendy. “Sometimes it is hard to see what is staring you right in the face when you are up close to it, but if you step back, you can see things more easily. You were too close to really see what was so obvious, but I could see it more clearly,” I said, taking a seat at the table next to her.

  “See what?” Wendy said looking mystified.

  “The stranger you described was so obviously wearing a disguise,” I started to explain. “Someone would have only bothered with such an elaborate disguise if they were known to you very well. You described the stranger as wearing a wide brimmed hat that covered most of his head, the thick beard, and the dark glasses. I asked you what the weather had been like the day the stranger had first come to your door. You said it had been overcast and dreary. Why then would anyone wear such dark glasses unless they had problems with their sight? I too love wearing sunglasses, but only in the sunshine. When you said he had come in search of his dog, I considered the possibility of a blind dog, but you described the animal as being an Alsatian. Not the type of dog trained to help the blind. Then you told us how the man had thumbed through the Yellow Pages in search of a telephone number. He appeared to be able to read the small print unaided. Then there was the deep voice and speaking in a whisper. Again, all common tricks to try and mask one’s identity.”

  “But the hump on his back, the fact that the man appeared so much taller than Ethan. The rotten teeth?” Wendy said, looking baffled.

  “You told us that Ethan was a member of the local amateur dramatics society,” I reminded her. “Simple stage props.”

  Taking hold of Cole’s face in his hands, Kale forced his mouth open. He hooked one finger inside and pulled out a set of false teeth. He threw them onto the table. They had been fashioned to look old and rotten, something that an actor might wear if he were playing the part of an old tramp. Kale released his hold of Cole’s face, then bending down he yanked off one of the muddy boots. He held it upside down and shook it. A thick piece of foam fell out of the bo
ot and onto the floor. I snatched it up and showed it to Wendy.

  “Your boyfriend wore platforms in his shoes to give him extra height,” I said. “And I bet the one in the other boot is larger, to set him off balance when he walked, to help with the stoop and the hobble.”

  Wendy looked at me as if she was beginning to understand Ethan’s true deceit. “And the hump is just padding?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My suspicions were confirmed when you clarified that it was only ever you who saw this man. Why hadn’t he ever visited when Ethan was at your home? He couldn’t because he was Ethan.”

  “What about the dog?” Wendy asked. “Why kill the dog?” she glanced across the table at Ethan. Again, he said nothing. He just stared defiantly back at her.

  “I asked if you had mentioned to anyone other than Ethan about your plans to build an extension at the back of your house, and you said not,” I said. “The fact that you want to build an extension is very important to Ethan.”

  “But why?” Wendy asked.

  “Because he didn’t want you to discover the remains of the dead girl he had buried there a few years ago,” Kale said.

  “All of this has to do with murder?” Wendy gasped.

  “Yes,” I said. “When you described to us how the man had searched your garden for his dog, you said how he would stop every few feet and stomp on the ground. You then said that not once did he call out the dog’s name. Isn’t that odd behaviour for a man who is so desperate to find his beloved animal? But he wasn’t looking for a dog at all, he was trying to find the exact spot where he had buried the body. The grave would have now been covered with grass. The elaborate disguise and the ruse about the dog were so that Ethan could get into your garden and search for the grave. He couldn’t very well do it as himself for fear of raising your suspicions. And even if he did find it, was he simply going to dig up the remains of his victim and take them away? No. That’s when I guess he came up with the idea of killing the dog. He was hoping that you would let him bury the dog in the garden in your desire just to be rid of it. But you were horrified by the suggestion and refused to let Ethan bury the animal in your yard. His plan had been to swap the remains of the dead girl for the dog. So he had to change his plan. Ethan pretended that he had a client he had to go and see, this gave him the chance to slip away and contact the council and have the grave dug in the cemetery. His plan then was to take the dead dog and the girl’s remains and bury them both in the pet cemetery. Who would ever know that the remains of a human had been buried with the dog? But again, Ethan couldn’t go digging up an old grave in your garden with you in the house. He had to get you away. Scare you away. So he came to visit you as the strange looking man. He wanted to scare you so much that you would run away. And you did – at Ethan’s suggestion. He knew you were so scared, that you would agree to his plan of booking yourself into a motel miles away so he could creep back here in disguise, dig up the skeletal remains of the dead girl, hide them in the wheelbarrow beneath the dead dog and the tarpaulin, and take them up to the cemetery where he would bury his crimes.”

  A long silence fell over the room, then to my surprise, Cole, spoke for the first time. “How did you know Veronica was buried in the garden?”

  I stared at him. “For my own personal reasons, I have a keen interest in mysteries and collecting old newspapers.”

  “Believe me, November has hundreds of them. She’s obsessed…” Kale said.

  “Thank you, Kale,” I cut over him. I looked back at Cole. “As I’ve already explained, as Wendy sat and told us her story, it was clear to me that you were looking for something in her back garden. The fact that you went to such extraordinary events to find whatever you were looking for, I guessed whatever it might be was outside of the law. The name Little Choke isn’t an easy one to forget. So as I sat and listened to Wendy, I remembered where I had seen the name of that village before. It was staring right back at me from the pile of newspapers in my apartment. As a lover of unsolved crimes and mysteries, how could I ever forget the story of a young woman who had gone missing a few years ago? Her sudden disappearance had never been explained. There had been a police investigation at the time and all her friends and family had been interviewed by the police. One of those people had been her boyfriend, who was called…”

  “Ethan Cole,” Wendy whispered as she finished my sentence for me.

  “You were hoping that after all of this time your crime truly did lay dead and buried somewhere in the grounds of this derelict house,” Kale said. “But Wendy moved in. This rattled you, unnerved you. So you made a point of becoming friends with her. She fell in love with you and it was then she told you her plans to build an extension. But you couldn’t risk that happening with the remains of your crime buried somewhere in the garden. What if Veronica Straw’s skeleton should be discovered, the investigation into her disappearance would be reopened? But this time around, the police wouldn’t be investigating a missing person enquiry, it would be murder and one they would never close until the killer was caught… until you were caught.”

  “And if it hadn’t have been for my obsession…” I glanced at Kale, then back at Cole, “…for collecting old newspapers, then you might have gotten away with your crime.”

  A thick silence fell over the room again. I looked at Wendy and a lone tear rolled down the length of her pretty but ashen face. “Did you ever love me, or were your feelings part of your disguise too?”

  “Does it matter?” Cole looked at her.

  “To me it does,” she said, wiping away that tear and sitting straight backed in the chair.

  “No, I never loved you,” he said with a smirk.

  Wendy sprang from her chair, hand raised, as if to slap his face. I snatched hold of her wrist, and slowly brought her arm down. I pulled her close as she sobbed against me. “You’re better than that, Wendy. You’re better than him,” I whispered in her ear.

  “Thank you,” she whispered back. “Thank you for helping me.”

  In the distance I could hear the faint sound of approaching police sirens.

  “Sounds like Sergeant Black got your voice message after all,” Kale said.

  The sirens grew louder and louder. And as several police cars screeched to a halt outside, I heard Cole say, “Who are you anyway?”

  Looking over Wendy’s shoulder at Cole sitting handcuffed in the chair, I smiled and said, “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is November Lake.”

  November Lake: Teenage Detective

  Book 2

  Now Available!

  About the author:

  Jamie Drew is the author of the ‘November Lake: Teenage Detective Series’. Just like, November Lake, Jamie Drew has been a real police officer and has solved many crimes and mysteries in real life.

  Jamie Drew now writes full time and is currently working on further ‘November Lake’ mysteries.

  You can contact Jamie Drew by emailing: [email protected]