The Semi-Sweet Hereafter

by Colette London

  “Jeremy liked you. He wanted to help you.” I raised my voice to be heard amid the pub’s noise. “How did you repay him?”

  We both knew. I saw the guilt in Hugh’s rawboned face.

  “You know what?” Hugh inhaled. His cheeks were mottled, his hair askew, as though he’d spent the night yanking his hand through it with worry. Now, he slapped both big hands on the table. He gave me a killing look, then swore. “You don’t know a bloody thing about anything. If you did, you’d be down at the police station, ’stead of slummin’ it around here. So get out.”

  He pointed two fingers at me, then added a heap of additional swearing. I’ll leave out the details, but I flinched.

  Danny started looking unhappy. That wasn’t good. That meant he was on the cusp of interfering but was controlling himself for my sake. I appreciated his ferocity, but I had to be braver.

  “I was down at the police station,” I informed Hugh. I wasn’t proud that my voice shook as I did so, but it was a dangerous crowd and a treacherous situation. “They know what I know. Now, so do you.” I slid out of the booth, then stood. “They’ll be moving in soon. Don’t make this any worse than it already is,” I advised Hugh. “You want to be smart? Save yourself—as much as you can—while you still can. Tonight.”

  Whatever cooperation Hugh offered, it wouldn’t be enough to absolve him of guilt, I knew. But it would help bring about some justice for a man who really had been kind to him—Jeremy. It would strengthen the police’s case when they made their arrest.

  I was shaking when Danny took my arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Hang on. I have one more thing to say.” I wheeled around with Danny at my back. Hugh lounged at the pub table with fear in his eyes and a wobbly smirk on his face. I tried to remember the time when I hadn’t known what I did now. I succeeded well enough to soften my voice. “You could have made it,” I told Hugh, thinking of our work together. “You really had talent.”

  Then I nodded at Danny and we made our getaway.

  With a little luck, Hugh wouldn’t be doing the same thing tonight, via one of the Venezuelan or Costa Rican flights that Travis had told me about. I didn’t want Hugh to get away.

  I only wanted him not to suffer too much for this.

  “‘Someplace we have to be,’ huh?” Danny mimicked as we reached the sidewalk outside. He shook his head. “You’re still a softy, Hayden. No matter how much you want to deny it.”

  “Hey, I successfully suspected everyone, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. Even when you shouldn’t have.”

  I knew he was thinking of Gemma Rose. “You’re only saying that because you have a big, fat crush on Jeremy’s competition.”

  Danny obviously didn’t want to discuss that. Instead, he hooked his thumb toward the pub as we strode away from it.

  “That was a gutsy move back there. Dumb, but gutsy.” His dark-eyed, sideways glance wasn’t exactly schmaltzy, but his sardonic grin warmed me, anyway. “What’s next on the agenda? Taunting an MMA fighter? Jumping into a shark tank? Skydiving?”

  “Running with the bulls in Pamplona. There’s nothing like a good encierro, right?” He knew I was kidding. It was the adrenaline talking. I want the toros bravos to be left alone. I shivered as we strode along. I watched as a car approached.

  A police car. I froze. Was that DC Mishra behind the wheel?

  Danny saw. “Just keep moving.” He grabbed my hand and pulled. “There are probably patrols around here all the time.”

  We veered around a corner and cut between two buildings. Within moments, I already felt lost. But my bodyguard was on it.

  “That looked like DC Mishra,” I protested. “Do you think she’s following me?” I craned my neck, half expecting to see her in pursuit with her antagonistic expression and department-issued baton at the ready. “Maybe she’s the one who should have been suspended in the police misconduct enquiry, not George.”

  If Satya Mishra were corrupt, I figured, it would explain her suspicion of me.

  “You’re only saying that because she doesn’t like you,” Danny said in a reasonable tone, this time offering me an unsolicited reality check. “It happens. Get over it.”

  I examined his profile as we reached our parked car. We’d borrowed Liam’s, after offering up a plausible excuse. Jeremy’s former trainer had seemed deeply interested in the imminent arrest of Jeremy’s killer. I thought I knew the reason for that.

  In the meantime, I’d decided, we’d needed a car. Liam had been the only person I knew of in London who had one available.

  “Yeah, okay. Good enough,” I agreed. In the end, it didn’t matter who liked me or not. I was fine. “After tomorrow, DC Mishra and I will never have to see one another again, anyway.”

  I hoped.Danny opened the car doors. He got behind the wheel and started the engine while I slid inside.

  “Buckle up,” I urged. “Let’s lose her.”

  “You lose her.” Danny sounded amused at my zeal for movie-style car capers. “Right after you learn to drive on the left.”

  Point noted. Maybe I was a little overwrought after our adventure with Hugh. On the other hand . . . “When did you learn to drive on the left, anyway? You’re from L.A., not Leicester.”

  As far as I knew, this was a new item on his résumé. Either that, or he was planning to expand his security business and start protecting British film and television stars.

  He put the car in motion. “Anyplace else you want to go?”

  I guessed he didn’t want to discuss his expanding skill set.

  “No, that’s it.” I shook my head. “Back to the guesthouse.”

  Danny shot me an ambiguous look. “Are you sure about that?”

  No. Of course I wasn’t. Hanging around in our posh accommodations with nothing to do but wait? That was a recipe for trouble. “Let’s just go,” I pushed, hoping for the best.

  He heard the no in my voice, but there was no help for it. Until tomorrow, we were joined at the hip. All night long.

  Eighteen

  Danny and I made it through the night. Just barely.

  Fortunately, we had all those chocolate chip cookies I’d baked for a distraction. Neither of us could resist by the time we got back from seeing Hugh. We each took a couple and then went our separate ways, me to the guesthouse’s bedroom and Danny to his spot on the sofa. I heard him firing up Antiques Roadshow on his laptop; he probably heard me typing my Primrose chocolate report on my own laptop into the wee hours of the morning.

  I’d found the cure to my chronic procrastination, I’d realized at around two AM. All I needed was something even more critical to avoid—other than report writing—and voilà!

  Job done. No more procrastination troubles. No app needed.

  After completing the last pages, I finally fell asleep. But my idyll didn’t last. The next thing I knew, Danny was there.

  Looking unreasonably alert—given the circumstances and the fraught night we’d just spent—he waved a cup of coffee in front of my nose. Mmm. Yum. He set it down on the nightstand and then stared at me with his hands on his jeans-clad hips.

  “What if you’re wrong about trusting Hugh?” Danny asked.

  I had the impression he’d waited hours to ask me that question. I doubted he’d slept well, either. Groggily, I lifted my gaze to his chest. He was wearing a Union Jack T-shirt.

  Ha. I guessed that was my security expert’s send-off to the U.K. After today’s . . . events . . . were completed, we were both leaving—him, back to the states, and me, to France to see my parents at their castle archaeological site. With only a Eurostar ride between us, it would have been criminal not to make the trip.

  Speaking of criminal . . . “I’m not wrong about trusting Hugh.”

  “You can’t know that. You worked with him for a month.”

  “I’m good at reading people.” I sat up and grabbed the cup of coffee. Mindful of the four-poster’s fancy bedding, I brought that lifesaving elixir to my nose. I inhaled. Dou
ble mmm.

  I’m an expert at chocolate, but coffee is a close runner-up. I enjoyed a careful (but very fortifying) sip.

  “If you were that good at reading people, you would have realized who done it on day one,” Danny argued. “You didn’t.”

  “Be reasonable. I needed proof.” I swallowed more coffee, then studied my longtime pal. “What’s up with you, anyway?”

  He paced across the bedroom, full of coiled-up energy. He glanced out the window at the Wrights’ flowery garden beyond, frowned, then went on striding across the rug. He sighed.

  “I had a . . . tip last night,” Danny told me.

  “A ‘tip’?” I raised my brows. “From whom?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “From Gemma, then.”

  He cast me a beleaguered look. “It doesn’t matter who.”

  “Definitely from Gemma, then. What did she say?”

  Danny scowled at me. “You’re going to be biased.”

  “You’re already biased. Can’t you hear yourself?” I relaxed my tone, then tried again. “Has it occurred to you that Gemma might be misleading you on purpose to protect Phoebe? They were pretty chummy yesterday, remember? They go way back, those two.”

  That’s right. To protect Phoebe. That’s what I said.

  Because she’d killed Jeremy. I knew it. I could prove it.

  Now all that remained was seeing her arrested for it. That eventuality was what had kept me pinned to the guesthouse all night. I hadn’t wanted to alert the Honourable that I was on to her. If anyone had the means to flee the country, it was Phoebe.

  “Gemma was only pretending to like Phoebe yesterday,” Danny informed me. “She was being polite. She’s a nice person.”

  “Or she’s a liar.” I shrugged. “It happens.”

  Danny looked away. “Gemma says that Hugh and Phoebe were—”

  “Lovers. I know,” I interrupted. “Those Y-fronts, that thong—those were both Hugh’s.” I still wished I’d never found those intimate items, much less touched them. Ugh. “Phoebe thought she could get rid of them by mixing them with Jeremy’s things. But that underwear wasn’t Jeremy’s style or”—more importantly—“his size. Those things were definitely Hugh’s.”

  Danny’s crack about his “frank and beans” had made me realize that. Now, though, my security expert gave me a dour look. Under the best of circumstances, he was hard to convince.

  I had the fix for that. “It all fits, Danny. Phoebe has a ‘type.’” Just like I do. My conversation with Liam while working out at The Green Park—about my three (nearly identical) ex-fiancés—had reminded me of that . . . and made me expand my theory. “Jeremy was Phoebe’s type, especially when they met. But Hugh is like a younger, hotter, edgier—and more malleable—Jeremy.” I angled my head at Danny. “Don’t tell me you can’t see it.”

  “Yeah.” He squinted at the ceiling. Nodded. “I guess so.”

  I knew so. “Phoebe did the same thing men have done for millennia. She traded up for a younger, sexier model of the husband she already had. She did it because she could.”

  She’d done it, I’d understood further, as part of her revitalization and publicity plan for Primrose. She’d glimpsed Hugh at one of Jeremy’s Jump Start Foundation events, been smitten with him, then restaffed the chocolaterie-pâtisserie with novice bakers as an excuse to be around him more often.

  It all made sense. Even Hugh’s cooperation with the plan did. Phoebe was attractive. Attentive. Able to give a hard-luck bloke like Hugh the life he’d only dreamed of—the life she’d once given Jeremy . . . until he’d become too demanding and too plagued by his own insecurities to put up with anymore.

  Jeremy truly had been vain, I’d realized. But Phoebe had been worse. She’d needed validation from every corner—proof of her authority, her success, her desirability . . . everything. She’d gotten some of that validation from Hugh and the rest from Primrose. Phoebe had meant it when she’d said she was her shop.

  Its gradual decline had mirrored her feelings about her own life. Coupled with the rift that must have been growing between her and Jeremy, it had all been too much.

  It seemed absurd that someone as privileged as Phoebe could have felt so insecure. But she had. I’d seen it every day, when I’d tutored her in baking—when I’d tried to prepare her for TV. Phoebe had been touchy about the least little correction.

  Hugh had been the balm for Phoebe’s battered ego. But when Jeremy had stumbled upon Phoebe and Hugh together—intimately together—and had suddenly had grounds for an acrimonious divorce, the situation must have gotten ugly. Jeremy must have threatened, I’d reasoned, to expose Phoebe’s infidelity. News of that perfidy—especially with someone as low-brow as Hugh—would have cost the Honourable years’ worth of public goodwill.

  She’d wanted a harmless fling. Instead, she’d taken on a starring role as Jeremy’s tragic widow.

  The only thing that saved me before was Jeremy! Phoebe had told me yesterday. The love everyone felt for him transferred to me, too. It grounded me, and Primrose. All of us basked in his glow, didn’t we? She’d broken off and started to weep.

  But not because she’d missed Jeremy, I’d realized. Because she’d feared missing out on the adoration that the British public—and people around the world—had felt for her husband. She’d never wanted to lose that overwhelming admiration.

  Reminders of it had been there every day, in the tabloid reporters and in the legitimate journalists who’d waited outside the town house’s door. In the sad fans who’d swarmed Jeremy’s funeral. In the friends—like Gemma—who’d seen Phoebe as a heartbroken widow and had wanted to console her.

  “That doesn’t mean Phoebe bludgeoned Jeremy to death so she could be with Hugh,” Danny said. “I’m not sure she could do it.”

  “Physically?” Realizing that we’d likely be at this a while, I slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans beneath the T-shirt I’d slept in. Tactfully, my old pal glanced away. “You have a point. Jeremy was strong, and Phoebe is much too slight to take him on face-to-face. But he was struck from behind.”

  That much had been evident to the police from the gruesome murder scene I’d stumbled upon in the guesthouse’s kitchen. I simply hadn’t wanted to dwell on that—just the way I hadn’t wanted to dwell on the significance of Jeremy’s flawless hair.

  Even in death, his hair had been perfectly arranged. But that hadn’t been a fluke, I’d realized. After Phoebe had killed Jeremy, she must have looked at him. She must have known he’d be discovered. She must have knelt beside his lifeless body and then done the same thing she always did—the same thing I’d seen her do in countless photos in Jeremy’s cookbooks. She must have arranged his hair to help cover his burgeoning bald spot.

  I doubted she’d even thought about that habitual gesture of hers—or about the teensy bit of caring that must have prompted it. I hadn’t dwelled on it, either—until I’d glimpsed Phoebe making the same gesture with Hugh, at Primrose, on the day he’d left for good, when I’d thought Phoebe had fired him.

  Actually, I suspected now, Hugh had quit. His reaction at Phoebe’s tender gesture had been telling. He’d been disgusted, I thought now. By Phoebe, by himself, by what they’d done together. By what he’d known about Jeremy’s death. That’s why Hugh had been so uncharacteristically short-tempered. That’s why he’d refused to reminisce about Jeremy along with everyone else.

  “Jeremy was probably drunk when Phoebe attacked him.” I busied myself with getting dressed. “We know he spent a lot of time down at his local.” I glanced at the old-fashioned dimpled pub glass that the publican had given us to return “to his missus,” which I’d left on a side table. I’d hesitated giving it to Phoebe, as I’d promised. At first, I’d thought my reticence had to do with not wanting to see Phoebe refuse to fit Jeremy’s personalized pub glass into her décor. But then I realized I simply hadn’t wanted Phoebe to have it—in case it really had meant something to her husband. “And
rew Davies told me everyone went down to the pub to try to mend fences after their advert shoot on the day Jeremy died. Jeremy must have come here after.”

  “And found Phoebe here with Hugh?” Danny guessed.

  I nodded. “I suspect so. I think Phoebe and Hugh were meeting regularly, probably whenever Hugh delivered new ‘party supplies.’” Those parties really had happened, but they’d taken place at Phoebe’s instigation, not Jeremy’s, as a cover for her liaisons with Hugh. “Jeremy must have surprised them together.”

  “That’s still no reason to beat him to death.” Danny swore, shaking his head. “To have planned something like that—”

  “I don’t think it was planned,” I disagreed, downing more coffee. “I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. A real crime of passion. It probably happened during an argument. Maybe Jeremy insulted Phoebe. Maybe Jeremy punched Hugh. Maybe Jeremy begged Phoebe to come back to him. Maybe he threatened them both. Who knows? But once Phoebe delivered that first blow from behind, knocking Jeremy to the floor, the rest would have been easy.” I shuddered. “You know, if you were a killer.”

  “And Hugh just stood by watching?”

  I didn’t know. “I don’t think so. I hope not. Either way, even if Hugh didn’t help Phoebe beat Jeremy to death, he definitely knew she did it. That’s what ultimately ended their fling. He just couldn’t handle knowing who Phoebe really was. That’s why I thought we had a chance last night, trying to get Hugh to confess. If he does it before Phoebe is arrested, it might help his case,” I pointed out. “Otherwise, it looks as though Hugh conspired with Phoebe to kill her husband.”

  Danny made a face. “Gemma thinks Hugh will warn Phoebe.”

  “You told her about our plan?” I cried. “Danny!”

  “I trust her,” he said stubbornly. “She knows Phoebe.”

  “And does she ‘know’ Phoebe is capable of murder?”

  “She thinks it’s possible, yeah.” My security expert caught my exasperated, concerned look and frowned at me. “I called her last night. I had to do something besides . . . well, you know.”