Read Online The Game You Played by Anni Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

Gilroy of our uncertainty about her, and he’d done his best to check her out. But every painstaking study of the videos that day showed no trace of Bernice Wick. She was a tall woman and beefy. There was no hiding her.
    Mrs Wick had given birth to Bernice when she was forty-six—a surprise child seeing as Bernice was her first (and only, as it turned out).
    Bernice’s father had died when she was ten, of a heart attack in the yard where Mrs Wick was standing. He died five days after he retired from his job as a government clerk, the job he said he’d been waiting all his adult life to leave.
    Bernice backed away when she saw me looking her way.
    “Well, I’d better get home,” I told Mrs Wick. “I have a lot to do today.”
    “Oh yes, it never ends. I have to deadhead the roses today. They’re not looking their best.”
    Giving her a tight smile, I walked away as quickly as I could without being impolite. I wished I did have a long list of things to do today. But I had nothing with which to occupy myself. I’d sit in the too-quiet house counting the hours until Detective Gilroy called me. Or I’d pace again.
    No curtain shifted at the next house—number 29—as I stepped past it. Had I just imagined it before?
    I kept walking.
    As I reached my own house, my gaze fell squarely on the mailbox, half-expecting there to be another letter.
    I remembered then the aroma of coffee that the envelope had carried when I’d first taken it out. That smell had disappeared later in the morning.
    Coffee.
    The person who delivered the letter had been drinking coffee just beforehand. The coffee scent had come from the café at the end of my street. I’d been certain of it. I’d forgotten to tell Detective Gilroy about the coffee. I needed to go inside and call him, now. I didn’t know how much battery power I had left on my mobile phone—I knew it was low—so I’d switched it off.
    I opened the gate then stopped, reconsidering. Trent had seemed dubious that the letter even meant anything. Even though the letter was the first and only tangible thing in relation to Tommy that had come our way. I made the decision to go down to the café myself.
    I retraced my steps to the harbour end of the street. Mrs Wick seemed to have forgotten all about deadheading her roses because she was nowhere in sight. Her roses stood like rotting zombies in her garden.
    The café was busy when I arrived there. Stepping into the warm interior and over to the counter, I ordered a caramel mochaccino.
    “I’ve never had one of these,” I told the girl behind the serving counter. “But someone walked past me in the street early this morning, and it just smelled wonderful. I knew the coffee had to be from here.”
    The girl—in her late teens with a freshly scrubbed look—smiled, looking pleased I’d started a conversation with her. “They don’t get ordered as much as the others, but they’re great.”
    “Do you get regulars in here who only order the caramel?”
    “Not often. People usually have them just for a change. It’s good to try something new, and we have so many varieties that I mean, well, why wouldn’t you?”
    Her enthusiasm and company spiel made me guess that this was her first job. I hadn’t seen her here before.
    I wanted to ask every detail of every person who’d ordered a caramel mochaccino between four and five in the morning. I wanted to pull out a notepad and pencil from thin air and ask her to draw each person in intricate detail.
    Instead, I nodded as if my questions were done.
    Moving to a seat that gave me the best view of the patrons, I tasted the coffee, allowing its aroma to saturate my sinuses. It was too overly sweet for my taste buds, but it carried the same scent as from the envelope. Unmistakeable.
    People sat reading newspapers, tapping and swiping at electronic devices. Older women sipped their milky coffees and teas and looked out at the harbour from the broad window.
    Taking out my phone, I navigated