by Fiona Grace
The cops weren’t listening. They headed back around the counter and headed for the door.
“Ma’am, let us do our jobs our way,” the man said.
“Well, how long will you take?” Lacey said, hands on hips.
“This is extremely low priority,” the female replied. “We have real criminals to be dealing with.”
“We’ll be in touch,” the man added.
And with that, they left.
Lacey stood there fuming. “What a waste of time they are!” she cried.
She marched for the back room.
“What are you doing?” Gina asked, as she and Finnbar hurried after her.
Lacey stopped at the safe and unlocked it, then removed the crate containing the scepter. “If I can’t trust the cops to do their jobs, then I’m not leaving this behind. It’s too risky.”
She straightened up.
“Are you going somewhere?” Gina asked.
“Yes,” Lacey said, holding her head high. “If the cops won’t do anything, then I’m taking matters into my own hands.” She whistled for Chester. “Come on, boy. It’s time to pay a visit to a treasure hunter.”
*
Lacey marched up to the front desk of the Lodge. Lucia was on duty, and she eyed her warily.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
Lacey was riled, and it was clearly showing on her face.
“Your family went back to their rooms a few minutes ago,” Lucia continued. “Do you want me to call them down?”
Lacey shook her head. “I’m here to see Greg Ford,” she said. “Is he still in the dining room?”
Lucia looked even more bemused. “Um, no. No one is. The lunch shift is over. There’s no one in the dining room anymore. Lacey, is everything okay?”
“Do you know where he went?” Lacey asked. “Did he check out?”
Lucia shrugged. “I didn’t see him leave, so I assume he’s on the grounds somewhere.”
Lacey paused, mulling it over.
Perhaps her outburst earlier had scared him? Even though he’d seemed totally unfazed by it, perhaps she’d actually managed to rattle him. She’d accused him of being a thief to his face, after all, and that accusation had now been corroborated with evidence. And even if the cops weren’t going to act particularly quickly, he didn’t know that. Perhaps he’d realized that now she was on to him, it wouldn’t be long before she gathered the necessary evidence against him. If she’d been in his position, she would’ve fled as soon as she could too.
Only, Lucia hadn’t seen him leave. He hadn’t checked out. That meant he was still here, somewhere on the grounds. Had he taken to hiding out in the Lodge?
Lacey glanced over to the dining room, and to the big double glass doors at the end that led to the lawn. If Lucia hadn’t seen him, could it be because he went out that way? If he’d gone to his room, he would have passed her. If he’d snuck into the kitchen, the only way out from there was to go through the delivery area and the staff parking area, both of which were off limits to guests. He would be very quickly stopped if he went that way. So the only chance he’d have had to escape unnoticed was to go out the dining room doors and through the lawns…
She hurried in that direction, Chester trotting along with her.
“Lacey?” Lucia called as she went. “What’s going on?”
Lacey didn’t stop. There was no time for talk. If Greg was on the lam, then time was of the essence.
She rushed into the dining room. The tables were covered in detritus from the shift, and the many servers were busily working to tidy up. Lacey cast a quick glance at the table where her uncomfortable family meeting had taken place. The bread roll she’d discarded was still there. She grimaced at the unpleasant memory, then quickly put it all out of her mind and hurried through the patio doors and out into the lawns.
Immediately, a blast of cold wind gushed at her. Lacey shivered, and Chester began to growl. Lacey looked down at him, suddenly getting the feeling that something was off. It wasn’t like Chester to growl at the weather.
“What is it, boy?” she asked him.
He barked, his face turned from her and out toward the downward sloping lawn. Lacey got a strange, creeping sensation of goosebumps on her arms, and knew it wasn’t just from the chill in the air. Chester had sensed something, and now she, too, could feel it. Something was wrong.
She began to head down the incline, taking slow, careful steps. Each step made the sense of disquiet grow stronger, and now the hairs on Chester’s back were standing on end. He let out a long, low grumble, and bared his teeth.
“The bandstand,” Lacey said, following the direction of his focus to the hexagonal wooden structure at the midpoint of the lawns. It was raised several feet off the ground and set in thick concrete at the base. Thanks to the position of the sun at this time of day, its shadow stretched over a large portion of the rest of the garden. Lacey got the sudden, horrible instinctive feeling that something was in that darkness. Or someone. Greg Ford, perhaps, was hiding behind the bandstand, watching her. Was that what Chester had sensed?
Holding her breath, Lacey crept ever closer to the bandstand. Chester creeped along beside her. They inched around the edges, moving silently and slowly into the dark shadow.
That’s when Lacey saw it. Something lying in the grass. Not something… someone!
Lacey gasped as her eyes roved from a pair of leather shoes up to beige pants, and a checkered shirt, before landing on the dark brown hair. The person was lying face down in the grass and they weren’t moving.
Heart thudding, Lacey raced to the body and grabbed it by the shoulders. It was a dead weight.
She spun them over to face her, and screamed. Looking up at her, dead and unseeing, was Greg Ford.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The sound of Chester’s barks echoed around the lawns of the Lodge. Lacey scrambled back in the dirt, recoiling from the dead man, and managed to heave herself to her shaking legs. With trembling hands she fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone and tugged it out. She could barely see what she was doing as she punched in the number of the local police station.
The call connected. “Yes ma’am?” a weary voice said.
Lacey drew in a ragged breath, about to request DCI Lewis and Superintendent Turner’s assistance, but faltered. Ma’am? How had they known she was a ma’am before she’d even spoken?
“I’m calling about a—” she began.
“—robbery?” the operator interrupted. “Yes, yes. We have the report and there are officers assigned, it’s just a very busy day today.”
Lacey frowned. Did they have her cell phone number stored in caller ID? “This is nothing to do with a robbery.”
“No?” the woman asked, sounding very uninterested. “What’s happened now? Someone’s graffitied your shed? Stolen your potted plants out of the greenhouse?”
Lacey’s mouth dropped open with astonishment. This was absolutely deplorable! Clearly, the local station had decided she was a time waster and flagged her cell phone number. Of course, she did phone them very regularly, but not because she was some local busybody hassling them over insignificant problems! She only ever called them for perfectly legitimate reasons, ones where she’d always been proven right in the end.
Chester’s barking became more and more shrill.
“I need Beth Lewis and Karl Turner at the Lodge ASAP,” Lacey said, pressing a finger in her other ear to block out the noise.
“Why?” the operator asked, sounding surprised, presumably because she was firstly asking for the murder detectives, and secondly that she knew them on a first-name basis.
“There’s been a murder!” Lacey exclaimed.
By now, Chester’s frantic barks had alerted the guests and staff of the Lodge to the unfolding situation. People started appearing at the windows, peeping through curtains, craning their heads to see what was happening. The servers who’d been tidying the dining room minutes earlier began to gather on the back
steps, huddling and talking urgently to each other. Then Lacey spotted Lucia and Suzy come flying through the patio doors and push their way through the cluster of servers. They started racing down the sloped lawn toward her.
“What makes you so certain there’s been a murder?” she heard the operator in her ear. Her nasally voice and suspicious mannerisms made Lacey bristle.
“The dead body lying at my feet,” Lacey replied. “It’s a bit of a giveaway.”
Her sassy comment wasn’t going to do her any favors, but Lacey couldn’t help it. She was sick of being treated so dismissively by law enforcement. First the cops at her store, now the operator at the station. Not to mention Superintendent Turner, who’d always seemed to have it out for her.
Suzy and Lucia reached her. They saw the dead body and gasped.
Suzy immediately sprang into action, grabbing her phone and dialing the cops. “There’s been a murder!” she cried, before looking at Lucia. “Lock the hotel down. Make sure none of the guests can see this.”
A shocked-looking Lucia nodded and scurried back away.
Still clutching the phone to her ear, Suzy looked at Lacey next. “The cops are on their way.”
Lacey couldn’t help but be a little annoyed that Suzy’s operator had leapt into action while hers had treated her like the boy who cried wolf.
She spoke into her own cell phone. “Don’t worry. There are already cops on the way,” she told the mean operator. She promptly hung up before she heard another sarcastic reply.
Suzy crouched down next to Greg Ford’s lifeless body. “Did you see what happened?”
Lacey shook her head. “No.”
The sound of sirens came from the distance.
Suzy peered up at Lacey. “What are you still doing here? I thought you were coming for lunch.”
“I did. Then I left. Then I came back just now.”
Suzy narrowed her eyes. Lacey couldn’t blame her. Her movements that day certainly seemed convoluted. Back and forth and back again.
“Why did you come back?” Suzy asked.
Lacey pointed at the dead man. “To see him, actually.”
Suzy looked aghast. “You know him? He’s a friend of yours?”
“Friend?” Lacey scoffed. “Absolutely not. He tried to break into my safe, and I came here to confront him with the evidence.”
Suzy looked perplexed. It was a lot to take in. Lacey was trying to get her head around it all as well.
But there was no time to explain further because the sound of sirens came screaming right up to the Lodge, blue lights illuminating everything. A moment later, the cops came trooping through the open dining room doors, a terrified-looking Lucia pointing them in the right direction. They raced down the sloped lawns toward Lacey, Suzy, Chester, and the dead body of Greg Ford. DCI Lewis and Superintendent Turner, the murder detectives, brought up the rear. Superintendent Turner was in his usual beige trench coat, his shock of white hair poking out over his turned up collar. Beth’s honey blond hair was styled in her usual ballerina bun, and she was dressed down in black loafers, slacks, and a long khaki jacket.
Superintendent Turner went straight to the body, crouched down, and began examining it from all angles. He clicked his fingers at the uniformed officers beside him. “Secure the scene.”
As the dreaded blue crime scene tape went up around the bandstand and beyond, DCI Lewis came over to Lacey and Suzy.
“What’s going on?” she asked, removing her notebook and pen from her breast pocket. She clicked the lid.
“He’s a guest,” Suzy explained, gesturing to the dead man. “Greg Ford.”
“So not a local?” Beth confirmed. “Any idea why he’s staying in Wilfordshire?”
“He’s a treasure hunter,” Lacey offered. “He came because I have an antique he wants. He pretended to be an archaeological scholar to get close to it, but when that failed, he attempted to steal it from my safe. I confronted him about it but didn’t have the evidence to back it up. By the time I got the evidence and came back here… he was dead.”
As she’d been speaking, Beth’s eyes had started to narrow as if in doubt. Now her expression was full-on disbelief.
“Go through that one more time,” she said. “Slower.”
This time, Superintendent Turner decided to join them, clearly interested in what Lacey had to say on the matter. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his long trench coat, towering over Lacey with his huge six-foot-three frame.
Lacey felt her nerves spike. She took a deep breath and recounted the events once more. On her second iteration she realized just how bad she sounded. Accusing a man of theft? Tarnishing his reputation? Confronting him?
…And then being the first to discover his lifeless body…
She gulped. This didn’t look good for her. It didn’t look good at all.
A horrible sense of déjà vu came over her. She had been through this now so many times, and couldn’t help but wonder when it would all end. The feeling of anxiety and doom was too familiar now, washing over her like an old, unwanted emotion.
“Lacey,” Superintendent Turner said stiffly when she was done. “Are you saying this is related to the attempted theft you reported this morning?”
“Yes,” she said. “This is the perpetrator.”
“And he’s the same man you were seen arguing with in the dining room at lunch today?” Superintendent Turner pressed.
Lacey squirmed. How did he know about that? The only way he knew about that was if the cops investigating the burglary had discovered it while questioning witnesses and passed it on. The fight would make her look even worse!
“That’s right,” she said.
“The same man you demanded my team arrest. Even though you had no evidence.”
She bit her lip. “Uh-huh.”
Superintendent Turner let out a long, slow exhalation and swiped a hand through his slicked back gray hair.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” Lacey blurted. “But I have nothing to do with this! I didn’t do anything!”
“I know that,” Superintendent Turner snapped. “You have a pretty good track record of not being a murderer.”
Lacey paused. She frowned with confusion. Superintendent Turner wasn’t accusing her? That wasn’t like him at all! He usually leapt to an immediate conclusion.
“You… you know it wasn’t me?” she echoed, uncertain and not wanting to jinx it.
“Yes,” he barked again.
“Then what’s the problem?” Lacey asked.
“The problem,” he replied, testily, “is that you’re always getting in the way of my investigations!”
“By solving them,” Lacey said.
“Yes. But that’s beside the point. You’ve made a hell of a lot of paperwork for me throughout my career. I can’t say I’m going to miss it.”
Lacey paused. It sunk in what he was saying. “You’re retiring?”
He nodded stiffly. He appeared to be on the verge of getting emotional but managed to reel it back in and set his face firmly.
“Last case,” he said, rocking on his heels. “Fitting it would be another one of yours and Fido’s.” He nodded to Chester. Then he looked back at Lacey. “Look. Can you just do me this one favor? Keep your nose out of this case. Let me solve it on my own, my own way, without you interfering and getting me in hot water with the higher-ups.”
The sleuth in Lacey wanted to rebuff. But she also had to accept looking into the case was more than she could handle right now. Wedding. Family. Possible pregnancy. The scepter. She had more than enough to handle without adding a murder investigation into the mix.
“Okay,” she said. “You can consider it my retirement gift.”
Superintendent Turner smiled—actually smiled—for the first time Lacey could recall.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now, you know the drill. You’re our star witness, which means you can’t leave town until this investigation is over.”
Lacey was about t
o say “no problem,” but stopped. Because it suddenly dawned on her that her wedding was outside of Wilfordshire, taking place in the forest. Her stomach plummeted. She shook her head. “I have to be able to leave town. My wedding is in two days! It’s outside of Wilfordshire!”
Superintendent Turner took another deep, weary sigh. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lacey. I can’t help you with that. You’re the prime witness. We’ll need to question you in the coming days. Several times. It sounds like our victim has a complicated history of deceit and petty crime. I suspect he’s made many enemies through his lifetime. Your information will be vital.”
“But…” Lacey stammered. “But that means if it’s not solved in the next forty-eight hours, I won’t be able to go to my own wedding!” She looked at Beth. The female detective was invited. Maybe she’d be able to talk some sense into the superintendent. “Beth? Tell him.”
But Beth looked awkward. Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Sorry, Lacey. Rules are rules.”
Lacey’s stomach fell to her toes. Was she going to have to cancel her wedding?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Lacey!” a voice called across the lawn.
Lacey swirled on the spot to see her mom and Naomi charging toward her. It was dark now, and Lacey had been standing in the grounds of the Lodge for hours while the police worked.
Poor Lucia was still attempting to guard the patio doors, and she looked flustered that Shirley and Naomi had simply barged right past her.
“Stop!” the cops at the perimeter of the blue cordon shouted. “This is a crime scene!”
Lacey hurried up to them. “They’re my family.”
“What’s going on?” Shirley cried.
“There’s a dead man,” Lacey said. “Murdered.”
Naomi gasped. “And you found him?”
Lacey nodded.
“Oh no,” Shirley said, before adding, leadingly, “I guess that means we’ll have to cancel dinner.”
