The Easter Egg Hunt – II

Since Ben and Joss Beckett took over The Fair Maid and Falcon, they have had to deal with ghosts, gangsters and well dodgy goings-on. Despite that they have their own family of twin daughters and dogs, and a fabulous ‘found family’ of friends. Life seems to be going well when…

We were rather late showing our faces in the pub, which caused the usual merriment among the staff. Time was when I’d have been embarrassed but I’ve become accustomed to Ben’s rampant disregard for any ideas of prudishly concealing our predilection for afternoon affection. I did find it in me to punch him smartly on the biceps for his smug grin, though, before I let him have the pleasure of fetching our twin daughters from the fleshpots of a local burger joint.
The business seemed to be ambling along without my input, so I sat at the bar and ordered myself a large gin and tonic. I’d barely taken a restorative sip when one of the regulars came and bellied up to the bar beside me. He passed me his phone and I found myself watching a video in which the silly woman who caused a lunchtime fracas made a lot of blatantly false allegations.
“Stupid as well as unpleasant,” he muttered.
“Indeed. Thanks for showing me.”
Taking my drink with me, I went out to the kitchen. Our chef Neil, and his wife, Stella, were on duty, but as it was a relatively quiet evening, they were drinking coffee and waiting for pudding orders. I grinned at them.
“Can I borrow one of your daughters?”
“Don’t you have enough of your own?”
“I do, but they aren’t any more social media savvy than me. So I wondered. Is Ellen about?”
“Yes. She’s helping Sian with a project for school, but I’m sure…” Neil was genial.
“That nasty bitch from lunchtime acting the fool on antisocial media?” Stella asked.
“She is. And I’m after a bit of help putting together a rebuttal.”
“You need Sian as well then, she’s the TikTok expert. You go and sit in the office. I’ll round them up.” Stella bustled off to the flat above the function room where the family lives happily.
There are plenty of lady victualers who would love to warn me against making friends of my staff. If they were brave enough to risk my wrath, and if they didn’t see how well the Fair Maid and Falcon operates when staffed by our extended ‘family’.
Neil winked at me. “Star’s a bit put out by what that little madam did to Morgan’s face.”
“Me too, buddy, me too.”
I went and sat in the office, where I was quickly joined by Ellen and Sian.
Sian perched on the edge of my desk. “It’s a pity we don’t have footage of that cow bitch-slapping Morg.”
I decided to overlook the language, and was just about to agree when our bar manager, Ed, popped his face round the corner.
“I might just have what you want. One of the lunchtime tapas eaters was annoyed enough by madam’s shenanigans to film her with his phone. He cleaned it up and just now sent it to me.”
He waved his phone.
“Gimme,” Sian held out a hand and he put his phone in it.
“Don’t break my phone, brat.”
Sian snorted and he went back to work. She connected his phone to her tablet whistling through her teeth.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.”
My own phone burbled, announcing that Ben was calling.
“Hi love. What gives?”
“I’m sending you a picture. Want to know if you recognise the person.”
The file came swiftly and I opened it to see the face of the ‘influencer’ who had decided it would be okay to stiff us for her lunch and attack Morgan into the bargain. I called Ben back and put the call on speaker.
“That’s our not friend from lunchtime. Why do you have a picture of her?”
He laughed although there were all sorts of sharp edges to his laughter.
“She’s just getting arrested.”
“What did she do?”
“Tried to stiff the burger joint and they have a zero tolerance policy.”
“Oh dear, what a pity, never mind. And how stupid is she?”
“Very. And very sure she’ll get away with anything she wants to do. Anyway, fatherhood calls..”
“Benny,” Sian interjected, “you couldn’t get a shot of her being loaded into a police car. From behind so it doesn’t show her face?”
“I couldn’t, as they just drove away, but there are quite a few youngsters filming and laughing. I’ll see if anyone has anything.”
“That’s a good idea. And. Benny, it would be quite clever to mention that she cut Morgan’s face. I’m sure a few of them will be uploading videos and they’d love to mention that little fact.”
Ben chuckled. “Consider it done.”
Sian downloaded the video from Ed’s phone and while Ellen returned it she stood fiddling with her own phone.
“Joss,” she spoke quietly but something in her tone made me think what she had to say was important, “that woman is bad news. Once I had her face I found her and she makes a living out of stiffing food outlets and then dissing them to her followers so they wind up paying her to go away.”
“Oh what a sweetheart. Are you suggesting we pay her off?”
“Nope. But I think we might need Mark’s help. He should have some acquaintances who would be willing to make our video go viral. And also put the frighteners on this ‘influencer’.”
“I’m sure he’d be only too willing to step on the person who hurt his daughter, and crush the offender like the bug she undoubtedly is. But why do you think it’s necessary?”
“Because there’s some people in a few groups I belong to who have been warned that she has a couple of nasty friends who think nothing of messing up anyone who goes after her.”
“Messing up?”
“Somebody’s brakes mysteriously failed, and another was pushed from behind when she was waiting at a tube station. Nobody really badly hurt, and nothing provable, but..”
For a few seconds I felt a sense of pressure against my chest, and my instinct was to tell Sian to step back from possible danger. She looked at me.
“I’m going to do this, Joss, Morgan is my friend.”
Recognising determination when I heard it, I lifted a shoulder.
“Okay. I’ll call Mark.”
“Right. I’ll make a video.”

There will be more from Joss, Ben and their friends, courtesy of Jane Jago, next week, or you can catch up with their earlier adventures in Who Put Her In and Who Pulled Her Out.