Walking with Ghosts - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

managed to bare his teeth in a fair imitation of one when he poked his head around the living-room door.
    His mother was sitting in an armchair pulled to within four or five feet of the television screen. To either side of her were placed two small tables with piecrust tops and tripod legs. They were originally meant to take a gentleman’s – or woman’s – wine or spirit glass. In his mother’s case, a box of Maltesers chocolates sat on one, and a tumbler of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey sat on the other. Nutshells and sweet wrappers filled a porcelain dish. The dish was quite valuable, a pretty little Dresden thing. His mother wouldn’t know that. Wouldn’t know how much he’d bid for it on eBay.
    He picked up the dish and took it into the kitchen to empty it. After swilling it beneath running water and wiping it carefully, he brought it back in.
    ‘Did everything go according to plan?’ she asked, without her eyes ever leaving the screen.
    ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’m going online now. See you in the morning. Goodnight, Mother.’
    ‘Goodnight.’
    He paused, mesmerized by the effect of the light shining on her face and through her thinning hair. He could distinguish the shape of her skull and the freckles on her scalp. Seemingly unaware she was doing it her fingers were tapping the chair arm. Her nerves were bad and getting worse. All those chocolates. All that booze. It was only to be expected.
    He closed the door silently behind him and made his way up the stairs. His bedroom door locked against the world and his mother, Simon smiled at the screen saver as it soared from corner to corner. At present it was a Tudor rose, an amalgamation of the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster, a great favourite of his.
    He tapped into his business site. This extra-curricular working life was a secret he kept from his mother. This was the work he enjoyed the most. It also made him quite a bit of money.
    Rich shades of blue and burgundy flashed on to the screen; a coloured-in brass rubbing of a knight in full armour; a lady in flowing gown and pointed hat.

    The Noble Present.
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Chapter Seven
    The phone rang early.
    ‘Hannah. It’s me. What are you doing?’
    Only her mother ever called her Hannah. Honey closed her eyes and began the count to ten. She got to fifteen.
    ‘I’m on my way to the kitchen.’
    ‘Never mind that. I need to speak to you. It’s important.’
    Honey looked up at the ceiling. ‘Mother, I’ve a hotel to run. The kitchen is the powerhouse of the Green River. There’s work to be done there.’
    ‘You’ve got a chef!’
    ‘It’s his day off.’
    It was not his day off. Smudger Smith, Head Chef Extraordinaire and one-time all-in wrestler, had met some old friends the night before. Lindsey had rung from reception this morning to inform her mother that their chef was sitting on the cold store floor, with a bag of peas on his head and another on his groin. Honey had taken as read the reason for the peas being on his head. She made a mental note to check how much he’d drank and what. Their stocks would be depleted. There was no way she was going to enquire the reason for the other bag. Men did pretty strange things when they were drunk … 
    ‘Hannah, I’m very worried.’
    Honey held her breath. Her mother was a born survivor. Anyone who’d had as many husbands as she’d had, had to be.
    ‘Is it to do with a man?’
    ‘Of course not. Why would I be worried about a man?’
    ‘I thought you might  … Never mind.’ Her mother considered it her duty to find her daughter a new man. The trouble was that she had different tastes to her daughter. Besides, Honey felt she was mature enough to find her own. ‘What’s the problem?’
    ‘It’s about the shop. Second-hand Sheila. We have a problem I need to run past