by Fiona Grace
She wondered where Buck and Daisy had been staying while in Wilfordshire. Then she remembered Tom cleaning Buck’s spat out chocolate on the floor of his patisserie and remembered what he’d told her: Carol’s B’n’B. It made sense as well. The frontage was cotton-candy pink. It would have proven too much of a lure for Daisy to pass up.
Lacey added, ‘staff at Carol’s B’n’B?’ onto her list, certain more than a few of them had had unpleasant encounters with Buck, similar to Brenda. She quickly added, ‘other harassed women?’
“May as well open up my suspect list to fifty percent of the population,” Lacey said wryly. “Who else?”
She chewed her pen, ponderously. Then she wrote ‘every disgruntled shop owner in Wilfordshire?’
She let out a frustrated sigh and threw the pen down.
Every single store owner on the high street had a reason to hate Buck. He and Daisy made enemies out of everyone! Everyone had a motive.
“Heck, even Tom could be on the list,” Lacey said.
Then she paused. Tom fit into the first circle like everyone else, but he was actually connected to both the murder and the sextant. He had reason to hate Buck, and reason to return the antique to her store. That meant he fitted in the middle section, along with Daisy.
Lacey added his name and stared at it.
In her heart, she knew it couldn’t be him. But he would certainly be on Superintendent Turner and DCI Lewis’s list of suspects along with her. Possibly even higher than her, since he was more of a physical match for Buck.
“He shouldn’t have been so flippant earlier,” she said, exhaling. “Because Tom might very well become embroiled in all this as well.”
There was no time to waste. If Lacey wanted to make any headway, she’d have to track Buck and Daisy’s whole experience in the town and find out who they upset on the way. And she knew just the place to start: Carol’s cotton-candy-pink B’n’B.
“Come on, Chester,” Lacey said to her loyal pooch. “It’s sleuthing time.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lacey hadn’t set foot inside the B’n’B since her very first day in Wilfordshire, when she’d assumed she’d easily be able to find a room. It felt strange being inside again. As she glanced around at the lurid pink walls and plastic flamingo decorations, she couldn’t help but wonder about how her life would have turned out completely differently if there had been a spare room for her here. She’d never have bumped into Ivan who rented her Crag Cottage, which meant she would never have met Gina.
Gina who showed me the island that I later discovered a dead body on, she thought, getting caught up in one of those butterfly effect moments.
She shook her head. You could drive yourself crazy with thoughts like those!
“Can I help you?” a female voice said, seemingly from nowhere.
Lacey startled. She hadn’t noticed the person sitting at the reception desk, since they were obscured behind a fan of leaves from an overgrown fern plant that took up half the desk.
Lacey tipped her head to the side to look around the fern leaves, and a young woman appeared in her line of sight. She was very pretty, dark haired and olive skinned, with a huge red flower in her hair. In the chintzy surroundings, Lacey was half expecting her to leap up and start flamenco dancing, but instead she just sat there, staring at her expectantly. Lacey read the name on the bronze lettered broach attached to her fussy, frilly, red silk uniform: Carla.
“Hi, Carla,” Lacey began, taking a step forward. “I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.”
Chester, ever her shadow, followed her step, and Carla suddenly leaped up from her seat.
“You can’t bring your dog in here,” she began. But then recognition flashed in her eyes. “Hey, you’re the dog from the antiques shop, aren’t you? What are you doing in here? Are you being a good boy?”
Her tone for Chester was significantly more polite than it had been when she’d been addressing Lacey. And since she appeared to be directing the conversation toward the dog, Lacey was put in that awkward position of having to communicate through him.
“Yes, this is Chester,” she said. “My antique stores protector.”
“Is that right?” Carla said, still speaking directly to Chester, using the same baby voice as before. “Are you a special guard doggy? Are you? Do you keep the antiques store safe?”
Lacey suddenly hit on an idea. Chester could be her in!
“He does,” she said, cringing a little at the sound of her own voice adopting Carla’s baby-speak voice. “He’s a very special guard doggy. He’s looking for the person who killed Buck, aren’t you, Chester? You want to catch the killer so everyone in Wilfordshire can be safe again.”
At the mention of Buck’s name, Carla’s face darted back up to meet Lacey’s. She looked suddenly very animated. Lacey pegged her for a gossiper. You could always tell by the way their eyes bulged at the smallest whiff of drama.
“Buck? The guy who got murdered? You know he was staying here, right? Him and his wife. The police are putting her up in special accommodations at the moment but she hasn’t packed any of their stuff up yet, and we’re not allowed to touch their room in case there’s evidence.”
Just as Lacey suspected, Carla’s tongue had become suddenly loose. She didn't want to judge the girl; she was young, after all, and this was probably the most exciting thing that had happened to her, living in a small and uneventful British seaside town, but her excitement came across as a little crass to Lacey.
“What was he like?” Lacey asked. “Was he a good guest?”
“No, he was a nightmare,” the girl said dramatically, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. “He demanded we upgrade him to the honeymoon suite for free because we’d advertised sea views and his room didn’t have one. Then he pretended he was allergic to nuts and said he’d sue if we didn’t let him have free dinners. Then he claimed he saw a rat in his room and said he’d call the health inspectors if he didn’t get a discount. I mean, poor Carol. He was already costing her more than she was earning, and now he’s dead, she’ll probably never see a penny.”
“She didn’t take his card details on check-in?” Lacey asked, thinking of the various hotels she’d stayed in during business trips, back when she worked for Saskia. It was standard practice to take card details in case the guest left without paying for their extras—using the minibar, the hot tub, or, as was probably likely in Buck’s case, the adult channels. Lacey shuddered at the thought.
“He flat out refused,” Carla told her. “Went on some huge rant about how his money was as good as the next person’s. He even waved this stack of notes under her nose until she backed down!”
Lacey recalled the moment he’d done the exact same thing to her, waving his money around, refusing to put his 10% down payment for the sextant on card, demanding he be allowed to circumvent the usual protocols and get special treatment. Clearly, it was a trick he’d used all around town.
“This is a bit of a sensitive question,” Lacey said, lowering her voice now. “But did any of the staff complain about him being suggestive, or making advances? I’m sorry to ask, it’s just that other people said he was a bit handsy with them and I’m wondering… I mean Chester is wondering… if that might have been related to the killer’s motive.”
Carla shook her head of glossy dark hair. “Luckily, I was never alone with him. But some of the chambermaids complained to Carol. I’m not sure if anything happened in the end, but Stanislav, the chef here, demanded in a staff meeting that Carol call the police, because if she didn’t, he’d poison Buck’s breakfast!”
She laughed like it was obviously a joke, but Lacey didn’t see the funny side. It was never okay to threaten harm to another person any way, but for that person to later turn up dead, well, then it seemed like karma trying to teach an important lesson. Especially since his comment was going to earn Stanislav a spot on her suspects chart.
“So they ate breakfast here?” Lacey continued, trying to
get as much information out of Carla before she twigged that was spilling confidential information. “What about evening meals?”
“Not usually,” Carla replied. “They would usually be out at night and come home in the early hours of the morning. Some of the other guests complained about how noisy they were when they came in.”
“Do you know where they ate?” Lacey asked.
For the first time since her questioning had begun, Carla looked at Lacey suspiciously. “Why do you want to know that?” she asked.
“Just curious,” Lacey replied. “It’s a mystery, and as far as we know, there’s a murderer on the loose in Wilfordshire.”
“Sure…” Carla said, but her drawn out tone was filled with skepticism.
Just then, Lacey noticed the stack of glossy pamphlets on the reception desk. One was a map of Wilfordshire produced by the National Trust, detailing historical places of significance and countryside walks. One was a program of events produced by the local theatre. The third listed local eateries. Anytime she was in a new area, she’d pick up one of these pamphlets to know where to eat. Perhaps Buck and Daisy did the same?
Lacey took one, under the watchful glare of Carla.
“For the coupons,” she muttered in an excuse. “Thanks for your time.”
She left, Chester following along with her.
So her hunch had been right about Buck pestering the staff.
She opened the pamphlet. Gianni’s Pizzeria was the first ad her eyes fell to. Lacey had only been to the quaint, family-run eatery once on a date with Tom, but it was as good a place to start as any.
She went along the high street to the Italian restaurant. It was a small place, with a genuine clay pizza oven and shelves filled with very expensive pasta products. It was super cozy inside.
Gianni’s son was on duty today, a nice-looking guy in his mid-thirties whom Lacey only knew by sight and not name.
“Can I help?” he asked.
Lacey felt like she’d made herself seem a bit suspicious in Carol’s, so she decided to take a more subtle approach this time. Since Gianni’s sold produce, this was the perfect place for her to also source the fresh ingredients she’d need to make homemade pizza for Tom, so her incognito plan fell quickly into place.
“I wondered if you could help me with a little challenge I’ve been given,” she said. “I have to make a pizza from scratch. Dough and all. Could you show me what to buy? Give me some tips?”
“Of course,” the man said, more than happy to help.
He came over to the shelves and stood beside her, looking up at the array of packets and jars. He took down a fancy looking bag of pizza dough flour blend with an eye-wateringly high price tag that Lacey chose to avert her eyes from.
“Horrible business about that dead man,” Lacey said, jumping in before the man had a chance to start explaining to her about the flour.
“Yes. Terrible,” he replied.
“Every store along the high street is freaked,” Lacey said. “Did you ever serve him?”
“Oh yes. Him and his wife. She had expensive taste in wine. And he seemed incapable of telling her no.”
Lacey raised an eyebrow, her curiosity piqued. She’d seen Daisy cajoling Buck into parting with his money with her own eyes at the auction, but had assumed that was a one-off because she wanted the sextant so badly. But by the sounds of things, that behavior was more of a habit. “Sounds like there’s a story there,” Lacey said.
The server nodded and grabbed a drinks menu from the counter. “Buck asked if they could have a wine that went well with seafood, and she folded her arms and pouted and demanded the expensive one.” He passed the menu to Lacey, pointing at the top right hand page where the most expensive bottles were listed. His finger had landed on a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. “She asked for ‘mont-pul-key-ano.’ She mispronounced the word, and so I asked her again what she meant, and she huffed and said, ‘I want the most expensive one.’ She did not know anything about the grape or region per se, only that it was the most expensive one on the menu. And Buck relented and ordered it.”
His story was remarkably similar to Lacey’s own experience of the couple, with Daisy goading Buck on to buy the sextant.
“Did he pay for the meal?” she asked, recalling the stories of how Buck would send meals back to the kitchen after having eaten at least half of them. “Some other business owners on the high street have said he didn’t.”
The man put a hand up to his mouth in sudden realization. “Oh. You’re right. He’d left his card in his hotel room and since my father is such a kind Italian man he said that it was alright if he paid next time he came in. But I don’t think he did, come to think of it. Oh no. We’ll be out of pocket now.”
“Darn,” Lace said.
She bought the ingredients for the pizza and left.
She tried the next eatery along from Gianni’s, a tapas bar, and got a similar story. Buck had bought a ton of expensive plates on the urging of Daisy, before claiming he’d left his card in his hotel room and promising payment once he’d retrieved it, then failing to return. It seemed the couple had played the same trick almost every night they’d been in Wilfordshire.
It was certainly a very interesting piece of the puzzle that helped build up a bigger picture. But it also meant Lacey’s suspect pool was becoming ever wider with every store she entered. Aside from Gianni, there wasn’t a single business proprietor on the high street who’d not been offended by Buck and Daisy during their short stay. And it seemed like most of them only tolerated their BS because of the amount of money they thought they were spending.
By the time Lacey made it to the end of the high street—Chester beside her the whole way—a spring shower had started, and she was quickly coated in a thin layer of drizzle, something her naturally curly hair was particularly opposed to. Luckily, there was only one more place left on the high street for Lacey to go to, and it was also the place she least wanted to. The Coach House Inn. The pub was such a hotbed for gossip, Lacey would much prefer to turn around and march the other way. But Brenda’s boyfriend Ed was one of her top suspects, and there’d be people inside who witnessed the altercation between him and Buck. She was bound to learn something relevant if she plucked up the courage to go inside. She’d most certainly get stared at, but clearing her name depended on it, and so she headed toward the stained glass doors.
But before she reached the doors, someone pulled them open from inside the pub. Out they came, striding quickly, head bowed against the drizzle, almost bumping right into her.
“Lo siento,” he said, raising his gaze to meet Lacey’s.
She gasped. She was staring into cocoa-colored eyes of the mysterious Spanish man.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lacey was completely lost for words. All she could do was stare at the man. Seeing him in Wilfordshire when she’d expected to never see him again had taken her completely by surprise.
“It is you,” the man said, breaking the silence. “Do you remember me? Xavier, from the auction.”
Finally, Lacey came back to her senses.
“What are you doing back in Wilfordshire?” she managed to stammer.
“I never left,” he replied. “I missed my flight home.”
“You’ve been in Wilfordshire since the auction?” Lacey asked, shocked. “Then that means you’ve been here the whole time.”
Her voice died in her throat. By the whole time, Lacey really meant the whole time since Buck’s murder, and a sense of disquiet overcame her as she visualized her Venn diagram. She’d only crossed the mysterious Spanish man off her list of suspects because she thought he’d left for the airport immediately following the sale of the sextant, and well before Buck was discovered dead. But if he’d been in town the whole time, then he was back on the list. He’d put himself right back in the frame as Buck’s possible killer.
“By the whole time, you mean during this whole police business, do you not?” Xavier said, glancing furtively behind hi
m, over one shoulder then the next. “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking I had something to do with the American man’s death, just like everyone else.”
Lacey could see the look of anguish in his chocolate brown eyes. She wanted desperately to believe that the emotion in them was genuine, but she was no fool. She couldn’t trust him.
“You took me by surprise, that’s all,” she told him, trying to keep her tone steady so as not to betray her discomfort. “I haven’t seen you around and it’s a pretty small town, I would’ve expected to bump into you at some point. Where are you staying?”
He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the Coach House Inn standing behind him.
“There?” Lacey asked, getting her second shock of the evening that no one had gossiped about him being there.
“I have been holed up,” Xavier continued hurriedly, his voice hushed. “I knew straight away me still being here would look highly suspicious, considering what happened. But I can assure you I had nothing to do with that man’s death.”
His use of distancing language wasn’t lost on Lacey. First, he’d referred to Buck as the American man, then an even more vague version: that man. He’d referred to the murder as police business, a death, and something that had happened. From a linguistical analysis perspective, it didn’t look good for Xavier. But at the same time, there was a sense of urgency in his tone, and a look of desperation in his eyes. All his non-verbal communication was screaming that he was an innocent man caught up in something far beyond him. Maybe his distancing word choices were due to the language difference and the fact that English wasn’t his mother tongue? That could explain the incongruency. But if couldn’t explain the fact that he was here, in Wilfordshire, when flights from London to Spain were a dime a dozen.
Lacey decided to stay firmly on the fence about Xavier, and keep her mind as open as possible. She had a lot more digging to do.
“I don’t mean to sound rude,” Lacey said, “but why are you still here? If you missed your first flight, wasn’t there a later one you could book onto?”
