Communications (8

Short Story

I-Spy

“Maggie, wake up!” Suzette nudged her friend urgently. “Look out the window at that woman over there!”

“Are we there yet?” Maggie grunted drowsily, rubbing her eyes.

“Of course we’re not!” Suzette snapped. “We’re miles away.”

After several choruses from the back row of ‘The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round’ the wheels had suddenly ceased turning.

“Emergency roadworks,” the coach driver had announced dryly. “Looks like we’re all just going to have to be patient before we can play with our buckets and spades.”

Maggie had promised her a fun day trip to the seaside. Just a short coach ride, she’d said, where they could amuse themselves with travel games and chat. Then Maggie had promptly nodded off the moment the coach left the station and all Suzette had seen so far was grass verge, petrol stations and road signs. Right now they were bumper-to-bumper through a nondescript village, no glimpse of the sea in sight.

“Just look at her over there.” Suzette prodded her finger at the window. “Isn’t she the spitting image of that woman?” “What woman?” Maggie adjusted her glasses and followed her gaze. “You mean that woman over there trimming her hedge?”

“Yes, her,” Suzette insisted. “Wait until she turns round, then you’ll see what I mean.”

The woman continued to trim the hedge, oblivious to her captive audience.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Suzette said excitedly. “That woman, oh you know, she used to be the treasurer for the dramatics society, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“Oh,” Maggie nodded, “you mean Mrs Newton-Dainty? Yes, she had a coat like that.” She yawned. “But didn’t she pass away five years ago?”

“That’s what we were told, but you know what, Maggie,” Suzette frowned, “I always thought there was something suspicious about it, didn’t you?”

“Not really, she was very frail,” Maggie shrugged. “I thought she had a good innings to be honest.” “But it was sudden, wasn’t it?” Suzette remembered now. “And I’d just given her my deposit for the Christmas meal. I never did get that back.”

“Good grief,” Maggie snorted. “Trust you to think of something like that!”

“But here she is now,” Suzette raised her eyebrows, “trimming her hedge, bold as brass!”

“Suzette, are you seriously suggesting she faked her own death?” Maggie helped herself to a mint. “For the sake of ten quid?”

“She might be one of those con artists,” Suzette’s eyes widened. “Manoeuvres herself into a position of trust and then, poof, vanishes with her ill-gotten gains.”

“But we went to her funeral,” Maggie protested. “I thought it was very moving.”

“Empty coffin,” Suzette nodded sagely. “Easy to pull off, with a backhander to the right person.”

“She’s got a double garage,” Maggie observed. “Must be a lot of Christmas meal deposits paid for that.”

She tapped sharply on the window as the coach crawled forward.

“What are you doing?” Suzette gasped in horror. “Trying to get her attention,” Maggie said. “Then we can wave at her.”

“Don’t!” Suzette slunk low in her seat. “She’ll know we’re on to her.”

“And then what?” Maggie laughed. “Set her underworld connections onto us?”

“I don’t know!” Suzette shrugged, exasperated. “Pull your hat down anyway.”

The woman put down her hedge trimmers and turned round, revealing herself to be not a woman at all but a teenage boy.

“Oh, it isn’t her,” Suzette said flatly.

“I have to say,” Maggie waved gaily at the boy as they drove past, “that was the most exciting game of I-Spy I’ve ever played.”