Here is the last 1000 words of the opening chapter of Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery #29. Hope you enjoy
It’s a week to Christmas. not Joe Murray’s favourite time of year. He’s left The Lazy Luncheonette early to bank the week’s takings and arrived at the bank only to find himself at the back of a long queue, with only three tellers on duty. Then the person next to him speaks.
Now read on.
***
‘Salting your money away again, Murray? Run out of room in your oxo tin, have you?’
Had he not been so mired his own surliness he might have realised that the man next to him in the queue was none other than Les Tanner, head of payroll at Sanford town hall, a senior member of the Sanford 3rd Age Club, and one of Joe’s frequent antagonists.
A former captain in the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve (TAVR) he and Joe had been friends ever since the school yard, half a century ago. The antipathy between them was largely superficial, and amounted to Tanner’s routine condemnation of Joe’s haphazard administration, particularly where it concerned the 3rd Age Club. Never one to back away from a dispute, Joe retaliated by declaring Tanner a nitpicking pen pusher who had never done a day’s proper work in his life.
Aside from this trivial, almost childish, mutual disenchantment, they were good friends, something ably demonstrated back in February when Brenda had been kidnapped. Along with Sheila, Tanner had assisted Joe and the police in tracking down the abductor and of course, the captive Brenda.
Joe disregarded Tanner’s habit of addressing him by his surname. It was, he reasoned, something to do with the man’s quasi-military background. But he would not allow Tanner to get away with the slight on Joe’s non-spendthrift approach.
‘What are you doing here, Les? Surely you should still be at work? Sneaking out of the office, are you? Skiving on the taxpayer’s money?’
‘I had to get to the bank before it shuts.’
With a glance at the long queue, Joe sympathised. ‘Yeah, me too. And just to correct you, half the money I’m banking belongs to our Lee, Sheila, and Brenda.’ As they moved forward one place, Joe changed the subject. ‘How’s Sylvia?’
Sylvia Goodson was Les’s partner. ‘She’s fine, thank you for asking. Looking forward to the traditional 3rd Age Club dinner at Churchills on the twenty-seventh.’ Tanner looked down at Joe. ‘You have booked it, haven’t you?’
Joe shook his head. ‘Not my department. Sheila and Brenda tend to deal with it. Stop worrying, man. It’s all in hand, or if it isn’t, it will be by the time we get to the end of next week.’
They shuffled forward again.
‘What do you think about this business over Squire’s Lodge?’ Tanner asked.
Joe frowned. ‘What business over Squire’s Lodge?’
Tanner clucked like a mother hen. ‘Good lord, man, don’t you read the newspapers?’
‘I do the crossword in the Express every morning, as you ruddy well know. Do I read the Sanford Gazette? Not very often. I prefer my news to have an element of truth about it.’
‘A scurrilous accusation, Joe. Lofthouse at the Gazette was instrumental in assisting us during Brenda’s abduction, if you remember. Anyway, putting that aside, a team of ghost hunters have asked permission to investigate the lodge for supposed hauntings.’
Joe actually laughed. ‘Bananas.’
‘My feelings too. Apparently, they approached the Chief Executive’s office asking for access. You do know the place has fallen into disuse since that string of murders there.’
Seeing and opportunity, Joe smiled. ‘The town hall’s fallen into disuse? I never knew it had any serious use anyway, other than relieving honest businessmen like me of large amounts of money.’
‘Don’t be so flippant. I mean Squire’s Lodge has fallen into disuse.’
Joe scored himself a point anyway. Payback for Tanner’s remark about oxo tins ‘And these clowns are gonna hold a séance there?’
‘They claim to be professionals,’ Tanner said. ‘Led by a chap named, Kirk O’Gorman and a young woman named, let me get this right, Erin Tilworth or something.’
‘Never heard of ’em.’
‘Well, you will, I’m sure,’ Tanner declared as they moved forward again. ‘Your name was mentioned as the one who solved those murders.’
‘Not fair, Les. I was still on the run in Tenerife at the time, and Sheila and Brenda did most of the legwork before I got back. You do remember that Sheila’s sister-in-law died there?’
‘I rem—’
Les was cut off by first, a scream from near the exit, and then a shouted command.
‘Freeze all of you. Anyone makes a move and your dead meat.’
All eyes turned to the door where two masked individuals had barged in. Both tall, both dressed from head to toe in black, both masked up, both brandished automatic pistols, the deadly snouts waving around the people at the tills and those queueing.
‘All of you, hand over your cash, watches, jewellery, wallets, purses. And you lot…’ the leader aimed his words and pistol at the three tellers ‘…empty the cash drawers into bags. Move it.’
Fear. It shuddered through the crowded bank. People, some trembling, one or two weeping, obeyed the gun toting order, handing over their personal goods and cash. The tellers began to bag up the money they had in the drawers. The second robber kept a close watch at the door, eyes checking the outside, returning to the inside, checking the outside, returning to the inside.
‘Get a move on,’ the second thief urged, and as Joe hid his bag of money behind his back, he registered the voice as that of a woman.
The leader collected the bags from behind the windows, and came round the waiting queue. People acquiesced once more and when he got to Tanner, Les handed over his wristwatch, smartphone, and wallet.
Then it was Joe’s turn.
He handed over his phone, wallet and watch. ‘You’ll be lucky to get two quid for that watch.’
The robber was not fooled. Looking down from a height of about six feet, he snatched the hidden arm and brought forward The Lazy Luncheonette takings.
There was a brief tug of war before the pistol came to Joe’s forehead.
Joe’s nerves were on the edge of total collapse but he brazened it out. ‘How do I know that thing’s not a toy?’
The thief drew back the hammer. ‘Wanna find out?’
Reluctant to release his takings, Joe tried another tack. ‘It’s not my money to give away.’
‘But it is your head I’ll blow off if you don’t hand it over.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Joe,’ Tanner urged in a soft, persuasive voice. ‘You’ll get it back from your insurers.’
Joe released the bag. ‘I won’t forget you, pal.’
‘Good luck with drumming up an identikit picture… pal.’ The thief, now loaded with his ill-gotten gains, turned and hurried to his partner, urging, ‘Go, go, go.’
***
Joe robbed? Is he going to leave it like that? You’ll have to read the rest of the book (when it’s finished) to find out.
