Page 101 of Joker in the Pack

“Relax, would you? We’re not here to cart you off to jail. You answer our questions, we’ll leave, and you’ll never hear from us again,” Nye said.

The man’s shoulders rose a notch. “Really? That’s it? Just a few questions?”

“I don’t care what you did in the past. You’re the one who has to live with yourself.”

“I understand now that my actions were wrong, but back then… Every day, I pray for the Lord’s forgiveness, but inside, the dirt still clings.” He leaned back and sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“Olivia here lives in Eleanor Rigby’s old house, and somebody’s looking for something hidden inside it. They keep breaking in and threatening her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He did sound genuinely sorry, and his sympathetic eyes confirmed it.

“We need to find out what Eleanor hid so Olivia can get some peace.”

“Eleanor died?”

“Popped her clogs in the middle of an online poker game, apparently,” I told him.

“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but…” He shook his head. “And poker? The old bag was working to the last, then. There’s dedication for you.”

“What do you mean, working? She played poker for a living?”

“Not exactly—the poker was a means to an end. Eleanor and Ronnie were every bit as dirty as each other.”

“Define dirty,” Nye said.

“We…we stole the goods, and Eleanor fenced them then laundered the proceeds. There was nobody better.”

Nye seemed to be following, but I was lost.

“She used the poker games to clean the money?” he asked.

“Always did. That and the fixed-odds betting terminals inside the bookies’. She’d catch the bus with a handbag full of dirty money, stick it through those games machines, and come back with ninety-five percent of what she started with. Spotless.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“No, that was Ronnie. Eleanor was a cantankerous old biddy. She moaned like hell about having to trek into town to do his dirty work. Said it played havoc with her bunions.”

“Did you only steal cash?”

“No, Ronnie wasn’t fussy.”

“What else did you take?”

“Anything Eleanor could flog. She auctioned it all off online, but Ronnie had a terrible job to stop her from buying as much as she sold. Still, it made a good cover. I don’t think anyone ever suspected her.”

“No, they didn’t. So, any ideas what Eleanor might have tucked away in the house?”

“Sometimes Ronnie pinched expensive jewellery, even though it could be hard to sell. He made off with an engagement ring once, two names and the date engraved inside the band.” The vicar shook his head, and a forelock of grey-brown hair flopped over one eye. “Stupid.”

It felt wrong hearing a man of the cloth talking so casually about his criminal activities. It just went to show—never judge a person by what’s on the outside.

“All the jewellery I found looked cheap. I didn’t see any engraving,” I said, although my chest seized. Had I accidentally sold someone’s prized possessions for a fiver?

Nye squeezed my hand under the table. “Where in the cottage might Eleanor have hidden her stash?”

The vicar shook his head again, more emphatically this time, hands spread in a helpless gesture. “That place was a mess. I avoided it if at all possible. But it might not have been jewellery. Last time I saw Ronnie, he asked me to give an envelope to his mother. Said it was her retirement plan, so whatever it was, it had to be worth something.”

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