Paint the Town Red (Fox & Oakby Murder Mysteries Book II)

Love Rats

Imogen decided that both the question of her rudely manhandled art and of Oakby Snr's mysterious displeasure with Dr. Nenadovic and the dig could wait just one evening. A headache was setting in; and after finishing that day's to-do list she hopped on her bike and pedalled away from the Town Hall.

After the tea and washing up, the children were watching some squeaking and squealing cartoons on Imogen's old laptop, while she stretched on her sofa and closed her eyes, pretending that any moment now she'd open them and read the book she'd settled on her chest.

Her mobile bleeped; and she squeezed her eyes tighter. Surely, whatever it was it wouldn't be anything nice. It could be Rosie, her dear sister, yet again trying to bargain the conditions of Imogen formally adopting Rosie's children, who were currently happily crunching crisps. It could be something from work, which Imogen had had quite enough of, thank you very much. It could be Andrew, her well-wishing childhood friend. Neither sounded like something Imogen would like to acknowledge.

There was another beep; and then something suddenly thumped Imogen to her forehead. Her eyes flew open, and she stared at Brian standing over her with her mobile in his hand.

"It made a noise," he grumbled, placed it on top of Imogen's head, and went back to the nest Imogen had built for the children out of pillows and cushions on the floor.

Imogen groaned, and slid her thumb across the screen to unlock it.

I came back from the meeting, and you'd already gone. J. said the first text from the Mayor. If Imogen intended to answer it - which she didn't - she'd say 'Indeed.' Nothing else came to mind.

She scrolled up and saw the second text. We should have dinner together. Could you find a sitter for the children? J.

Imogen scrunched her nose and made a low humming noise. Her brain, painfully throbbing, and muddled with a generous serving of Panadol, was decoding. When it came to work, she'd grown quite proficient at translating from Oakby to English. These texts remained a mystery.

She had indeed gone home before the Mayor returned from his meeting with the Preservation Committee; but that was a normal proceeding. All the papers needed for the next day had been organised on his desk; and she'd even ordered his dinner from Willy's. His first text was as observational and accurate - but unclear. The second one made a tempting proposition, but sadly, a complicated one. Of course Imogen would love to have a dinner with the Mayor; but what sort of a dinner? A romantic date in a public place? That was still an uncomfortable idea for Imogen. An intimate one at his place? Less uncomfortable, but still probably destined to become public knowledge, a yet another skeleton to jump and bite Imogen's posterior.

Imogen stuffed the mobile under a cushion near her hip and huffed. As it seemed now, unlike her, the Mayor wasn't fully satisfied with the time they shared in their non-professional capacity, namely the lunch hour they tended to spend upstairs in his flat, with the addition of occasional less-than-an-hour's here and there. Imogen wondered if it was something out of male biology that required that 'dinner' he was proposing. And how late was that dinner supposed to go on, Imogen asked the ceiling of her drawing room. She couldn't either afford, or find enjoyable leaving the little'uns with someone else for a whole night. When they lived with their Mother, they had had a fair amount of nights when they'd been abandoned and left to their own devices. Imogen wasn't prepared to put them through it again.

Imogen grumbled and squirmed a bit on the old sofa. Why couldn't she and the Mayor just continue as they were now?

***

The next morning she was pedalling to work, mildy agonising over the fact that the previous night she had decided on deciding nothing - and hadn't answered to the Mayor's messages.