A Brush with Death: A Penny Brannigan Mystery - By Elizabeth J. Duncan Page 0,73
soon reached the town square. Alwynne was planning to drop off her painting gear at the town museum where she worked and meet her husband in the pub. The two women stopped for a moment to say good-bye, and then Penny continued the last leg of the journey home on her own.
As she turned off to walk the last few hundred metres down the lane that led to the cottage, she heard a vehicle coming up behind her. The sound grew louder, and as she turned her head, an SUV approached. As it came nearer, she realized that it was not slowing down and she moved quickly to the side of the road. She was almost on the grass verge when the speeding car brushed by her. Just as she dropped her painting case and dove into the rowan bushes that lined the narrow lane, she caught a fleeting glimpse of two lads in the car, laughing and shouting over loud rap music. And mixed in with the music was the sound of a barking dog. The meet was over in a moment and the vehicle disappeared.
Penny landed on her side and instantly felt a sharp stab of pain shoot through her right shoulder. Holding her arm, she struggled to sit up and then shakily raised herself until she was standing. She stumbled out of the undergrowth and back onto the lane.
“Oh, no,” she groaned. The wooden painting case that she had taken everywhere with her since her student days lay in splinters all over the roadway, smashed tubes of paint leaking Winsor & Newton colours everywhere. She picked up what she could carry and then, because her cottage was only a few more metres farther, decided to go home, phone Gareth, and return to the scene with a bag to pick up the tubes of paint before it got dark.
“No, I’m okay,” she said when she reached him on the phone. “My shoulder hurts a little where I landed on it, but I’ll be fine. No, I don’t want to go to casualty. I’m going back to get the paints and what’s left of the case, and then I’m going to have a bath.”
Gareth suggested that she should not be alone and that he could be there in about an hour, and she gratefully agreed and rang off.
After grabbing a plastic bag from a drawer in the kitchen, she returned to the lane, and as the sun started to slip behind the tall trees that ranged in the distance, she hurried toward the remains of her painting case. Making sure the roadway was clear, she bent down in the middle of the lane and scooped up the pieces of the case and its contents. She returned to the cottage and, after locking the door behind her, went upstairs for a bath.
The pain in her shoulder had become constant and throbbing, and she hoped the warmth of the bath would soothe it. Soaking seemed to help, and half an hour later, wearing clean jeans and a chunky sweater, she came downstairs, closed the drapes, turned on the lights, and then looked around in the fridge to see if there was anything she could offer Gareth for dinner. Scrambled eggs, maybe, if he wasn’t too fussy.
A few minutes later he knocked on the front door, and, smiling, she let him in. He put his arms gently around her and held her.
“You poor thing! I’m glad you’re okay,” he said as he released her, “but you’re bound to be a little shaken up. Come and tell me all about it. I’m afraid I’m going to be in policeman mode. Did you get a good look at them? What about a license plate number?”
They sat on the sofa, facing each other. Penny tucked one leg under her.
“It all happened so fast,” she said. “All I saw were two lads, but I doubt I could describe them. It was a silver-coloured SUV. Land Rover, I think. Couldn’t see the license plate number, but I heard very loud rap music. Oh, and they had a dog with them. It was barking really loudly. Almost frantically, now that I think about it.”
Gareth leaned toward her.
“A barking dog, eh? We’ve just had a report from a farmer out Pen-y-Pass way saying his prize Border collie’s gone missing. Well, this helps. At least we know what kind of car we could be looking for. Excuse me, I’ll just phone that in.”