A Taste To Die For - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries)

by Goodhind, Jean G

  Stella’s scarlet lips curled back from her ultra-white porcelain. It wasn’t a smile, more of a snarl. Bling Broadbent had seen and heard everything that had gone on at the competition, and she was going to make sure that the police did, too.

  ‘Anyway, I told you who did it. Speak to her chef,’ she spat, one polished talon pointing at some place between Honey’s eyes. ‘He threatened to kill Oliver earlier today. Ask her! She knows it’s true!’

  ‘He didn’t mean it like that,’ Honey said to Steve. ‘He was upset because Oliver had stolen his breasts.’

  Doherty’s eyebrows jerked upwards.

  Honey explained. ‘Chicken breasts. Smudger said Oliver had swapped them. Ours were best quality and theirs were …’

  Stella sprang from a deflated crouch into a feline attack. ‘How dare you! What would we want, stealing from a second-rate establishment and a second-rate chef!’

  Now it was Honey who sprang. Steve got in between them.

  ‘Now, ladies!’

  With a bit of help from the other officers, the two women were prevented from clawing each other’s eyes out.

  ‘Take her through there,’ said Steve nodding towards the hotel reception. ‘I’ll take this one outside.’

  ‘No fornicating with floozies on my premises!’ shouted Stella as she was propelled politely but firmly out of the room.

  Steve wrapped his arms around Honey, lifted her off her feet and took her outside.

  ‘Put me down.’

  He let her go. She landed with a scattering of gravel.

  ‘Cow,’ she muttered to herself. ‘She ought to strangle herself with that bloody gold chain. Or put it through her nose, like they do with cows!’

  ‘That’s bulls,’ said Doherty. ‘They put rings through the noses of bulls, not cows.’

  ‘Well, that one’s a cow,’ said Honey, thrusting her arm in the direction of the hotel entrance. A light went on in a ground floor room. She could see right into the bar through the hugely elegant oriole window. Stella was perched on a bar stool, accompanied by a bottle of something and a large glass. She poured, drank, and poured again.

  ‘And a lush,’ she added.

  Steve was uninterested. She felt his eyes on her and knew they were full of questions. She knew he’d taken on board everything Stella had said. Too many witnesses had heard Smudger threaten Oliver Stafford. But surely Smudger couldn’t have been the only one. Chefs were competitive by nature. They made enemies easily. She imagined Steve’s questions. How many people had wanted to see Oliver Stafford dead? Is it true that your chef threatened to kill him only a few hours ago?

  Drat! She hadn’t spoken to Smudger yet. Could she hold Steve off long enough to speak to Smudger first?

  ‘I haven’t congratulated you on your promotion,’ she said suddenly, smiling and throwing her arms around him. ‘How would you like to celebrate?’

  She kissed him long and deep. Although looking taken aback, he kissed her back, the tip of his tongue tickling the back of her throat.

  She retreated coughing and gagging.

  He eyed her accusingly. ‘That’s for trying to change the subject.’

  ‘No need to choke me.’ She told herself not to look up into his eyes. If you do, you’re lost.

  She did and she was. His eyes were like deep pools you wanted to dive into. Better still to just dive into bed with the attached body and study the eyes at leisure.

  But she couldn’t give in that easily. ‘Smudger didn’t mean it. He wouldn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘I’ll need a statement from him.’

  She sighed. ‘I knew you’d say that.’

  Chapter Four

  Smudger had an alibi – so he said. Honey caught up with him after having a quick word with Clint. Clint always seemed to know the darkest dives that people might frequent. She found Smudger exiting a nightclub, looking slightly the worse for wear.

  Honey grabbed his arm. ‘A word in your shell-like. Have you been in there all night?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head, his breath covering her in an alcoholic mist. ‘I went to Sam Wellers first.’

  Sam Wellers was a homely pub named after the character from Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.

  ‘Are there witnesses that can verify that?’

  He stopped in his tracks, looked at her and frowned. ‘Why?’

  Taking a tight grip on his arm, she guided him firmly in the direction of Manvers Street police station. ‘Oliver Stafford’s been murdered.’

  He stopped in his tracks. His face broke into a grin. ‘Couldn’ta happened to a worse bloke! Give the guilty bloke a medal. Where did it happen?’

  ‘He was found with his neck partially severed and half-stuffed in his own gas oven.’

  Smudger looked more pleased than it was healthy to be. ‘So someone finally cooked his goose!’ He laughed at his own joke.

  ‘It’s not funny, Smudger. You were heard threatening to kill him. The police want a statement – now!’

  ‘I’ve got an alibi.’

  ‘You’d better have.’

  He looked totally unfazed. ‘After I left you, I bumped into Reggie Banks, an old mate of mine. He can vouch for me. We were playing pool.’

  ‘You’d better be telling the truth.’

  ‘Stay cool! Stay cool!’

  Honey seethed, grabbed him forcibly so they were face to face, and almost shoved her finger up his nose.

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me to stay cool! I am cool – more or less.’

  He shrugged. ‘What’s the worry? I couldn’t stand Oliver Stafford, but I wasn’t the only one. I didn’t kill him. Why would I?’

  Honey eyed him sidelong. ‘Professional jealousy? He beat you in the competition.’

  Smudger made an indignant snorting noise. ‘I didn’t need to kill him for that. I’ve got nothing to prove. I know I’m better than him!’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Perhaps it was someone who didn’t like his cooking.’

  ‘That’s poisonous.’

  ‘So was he.’

  She shook her head in desperation. Smudger was a good chef and, like most good chefs, incorrigibly cocky.

  A WPC with glasses and terrible acne took Smudger’s statement and another officer took his fingerprints.

  Steve Doherty came in just as they were leaving. He glanced briefly at the fingerprint sample.

  ‘No,’ he said, his eyes and experience keen enough to make a swift judgement. ‘We’ll have to run them through the system.’

  ‘Of course, Inspector Doherty.’

  Honey watched the as the policewoman’s cheeks turned pink.

  ‘One of your groupies?’ she asked Steve once the woman was out of earshot.

  He grinned, rubbing his stubbly chin. ‘They can’t resist.’

  It was too early in the morning for Honey to bring him down to earth with a sharp comment. ‘We can go now?’

  ‘You can.’ He offered up an apology as to why he couldn’t give them a lift back to the hotel. ‘Too busy following up leads,’ he said, throwing a warning glance at Smudger, who was looking far too complacent for someone who’d been the prime suspect only minutes before.

  She told him it was OK. They’d walk. ‘We both need to clear our heads.’

  Not too good an idea as it turned out. It was four in the morning and pouring down. The rhythm of the rain accompanied the sloshing of their footsteps. Her shoes were killing her and her hair was plastered to her head.

  By the time they reached the Green River Hotel, they were both wet through.

  Smudger had his own flat down on Walcot Street, a Bohemian kind of place where antique shops and interesting delis rubbed shoulders with small cafés and craft shops. It was too late for him to go home now, though.

  Circumstances, such as functions that didn’t finish until after midnight, sometimes necessitated him using a room in the hotel. Sometimes he had a few drinks to unwind before going to bed. Sometimes so did Honey.

  ‘We’re having a n
ight cap,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not night. It’s morning.’

  It was hardly a protest.

  ‘Who cares!’

  She unlocked the door to the bar and pushed it open. The muted smell of rich liqueurs and varied malts came out to meet her.

  ‘Drink.’

  She handed Smudger the Jack Daniel’s and took a sip of the vodka and tonic she’d poured for herself.

  After sinking into the springy comfort of a leather chesterfield, she set her empty glass down on the table in a businesslike manner.

  ‘So! Who did it?’

  For the briefest of moments she sensed hesitation.

  Smudger’s ultra-light lashes brushed his cheeks before he looked up at her.

  ‘Do you want a list?’

  ‘Possibly. Casper will be on the phone first thing in the morning wanting to know details and to hear what I’m doing about it. The Hotels Association is very touchy about murder. It affects bed occupancy. And bank accounts.’

  ‘Where do I start? I know, I’ll start with saying that he was a right arrogant bas–ʼ

  ‘That description covers every chef I’ve ever known.’

  His blue eyes opened wide with surprise. ‘Am I arrogant?’

  ‘Are you a chef? A good chef?’

  Smudger made a ‘humph’ sound of acknowledgment before emptying his glass.

  Honey rested her chin on her hand, elbow on chair arm. Her eyelids were heavy but she was curious. Bed could wait. Smudger looked thoughtful, no doubt giving his image a mental makeover.

  Honey began to focus more on bed.

  ‘So? Come on. We don’t have all night.’

  Smudger flicked a finger at his bottom lip as he thought it through. ‘He was a bully in the kitchen. Now you can’t say the same about me, can you!’

  It was a statement, not a question. A truthful statement as it turned out. The kitchen staff thought Smudger was fun. Only the suppliers felt bullied by his fastidious inspection of catering supplies – especially the butchers.

  ‘Did he have family?’

  ‘Married.’

  ‘Poor soul.’

  ‘I told you, he was a right …’

  ‘I meant his wife. What a shock.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Hardly a word, but there was something about his tone that grabbed her attention.

  ‘What does “hmmˮ mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just rumours.’

  Honey took a guess. ‘He was an out-and-out womaniser.’

  Smudger looked surprised. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Call it womanly intuition. A woman can tell.’ She knew all right. She’d been married to one. Carl Driver had hired an all-female crew to help sail his fifty-foot yacht. Sailing can get boring mid-ocean, after all …

  ‘Really?’

  ‘By the tone of your voice. Anyway, gossip travels fast in Bath.’

  She’d heard nothing but someone was sure to know. Smudger was being cagey. She would have quizzed him about it, but her eyelids were getting heavier and her head wanted to assume the horizontal position.

  Honey yawned. Never mind. Her weariness began to get the better of her. She lay back barely aware that her head was sinking lower onto her hand and that her elbow was slowly sliding along the back of the settee.

  She didn’t hear Smudger shuffle off to bed. She didn’t even hear the early shift coming in to prepare breakfast or the guests descending the stairs, lured by the smell of grilled bacon and Cumberland sausages. She heard nothing until the trilling of a ringtone permeated her right ear.

  At the same time as blinking herself awake, she tried to work out where she’d left her phone. It took a few more seconds of blinking before she realised that she’d been using her handbag as a pillow and her phone was inside it.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was no answer at first – a matter instantly rectified once she’d turned it the right way up.

  ‘Where are you?’

  She recognised her daughter’s voice.

  ‘I’m in the bar.’

  ‘I thought you’d stayed out last night.’

  ‘No. Here I am.’

  ‘Right.’

  The line went dead.

  The door to the bar wasn’t usually opened until mid-morning. Lindsey, bless her, didn’t enquire as to why her mother was lying semi-comatose on a couch in the bar at the same time as the bacon and eggs were cooking. Her worried face appeared around the door.

  ‘Mum. I need to talk to you.’

  Honey blinked some more. A couple of matchsticks would have helped keep her eyes open, but she didn’t smoke so none were close at hand. She imagined her eyelids were stapled open, and they obeyed.

  It might have been her imagination, but Lindsey looked a little drawn, a little too white even for breakfast time.

  Honey pretended to study her reflection in a gilt-edged mirror. She looked as though she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, her hair lank and lifeless and her mascara smeared across her cheekbones.

  ‘I look as though I’ve died overnight. Do you think I look forty-something or fifty-something? Better still thirty-something, though I suppose that’s a bit much to hope for.’

  Her eyes slid sidelong to the edge of the mirror, the frame and the girl pacing the carpet.

  Lindsey was fiddling with her hair, eyes darting all over the place.

  Something was wrong. A mother knows when it is. Over the years Honey had learned not to rush things. She wouldn’t pry. She wouldn’t hound her daughter into telling her everything. The aim was not to end up like, or sound like, her own mother. The softly, softly approach was best. Give her time, she’ll tell you all about it.

  Lindsey began to speak, though haltingly. ‘Everyone’s talking about Oliver … you know … Oliver Stafford. He was murdered last night.’

  ‘So I heard.’ And saw, thought Honey. She wasn’t likely to forget that sight in a hurry.

  Lindsey looked down at the floor. Honey guessed she was chewing at her bottom lip, just like she’d done when she was ten and had hung a school bully up on a coat peg.

  A sense of foreboding trickled down her spine. ‘What is it?’

  Without lifting her head, Lindsey’s lovely eyes looked up at her mother from beneath a jagged, tulip petal fringe. ‘I think the police will want to question me.’

  The trickling sensation became a mountain torrent. She didn’t ask why. Heart thudding in double-quick time, she waited for Lindsey to continue.

  ‘Well,’ she said, settling herself back on the chesterfield, nerves on edge but expression controlled as she waited for her daughter to continue.

  ‘I knew Oliver Stafford. Quite well as a matter of fact.’

  Honey nodded as she took it in, knowing instinctively that she was not going to like what was coming next. ‘Knew as in the Biblical sense?’ she asked, desperately trying to keep her voice even.

  Lindsey sat down in the chair opposite, legs tightly together, hands resting on knees.

  An unidentifiable emotion surged in Honey’s chest. Anger? Shame? She didn’t know.

  ‘You bloody fool!’

  At last Lindsey raised her eyes. ‘I didn’t know he was married. I chucked him when I found out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two months ago.’

  ‘When did it start?’

  ‘Six months ago.’

  Honey groaned and hid her face in her hands.

  A member of staff tapped at the door. ‘Mrs Driver. There’s an Inspector Doherty here.’

  ‘I’ll be right out.’

  ‘He wants to talk with Miss Lindsey.’

  Chapter Five

  They gathered in the small conference room at the end of the first landing.

  ‘Any lead on the fingerprints?’ Honey asked Steve.

  He shook his head. ‘That kitchen’s like a bus station. Everybody’s in and out and their fingerprints are everywhere. None on the knife either except for those belonging to the deceased
.’

  Honey asked Lindsey why she’d been attracted to a smoothie like Oliver Stafford. The effort of trying to control her emotions made her voice sound taut even to her own ears.

  ‘ He liked history,’ Lindsey answered.

  This was not quite the answer Honey had envisaged. ‘And that was it?’

  Lindsey sighed and gave her that look, the one teenagers seem to have borrowed from their grandmothers; the one that reminded Honey that they shared the same size bra cup.

  ‘Mother, adult relationships are about people having things in common; a bit like you and Steve.’

  Honey exchanged a brief glance with Steve. ‘OK, yes, we’re got crime in common …’

  ‘No, I meant you’re roughly the same age and have a collection of Abba LPs hidden away in a cupboard …’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’ said Doherty, his expression bereft of familiarity; face taut, jaw firm. ‘It’s you that’s got questions to answer.’

  Honey noted the pinkness in his cheeks and touched her own. Hot. Same colour no doubt. She tried to get back to the subject at hand.

  ‘I’m admitting nothing. Anyway, this isn’t about us. It’s about you and this Oliver Stafford.’ She turned suddenly to Doherty. ‘Should I get her a lawyer?’

  Doherty opened his mouth to answer. Too late, his response was halted by the opening of the door. ‘What’s going on here? Who wants a lawyer? What for?’

  A cloud of French perfume preceded the entrance of Honey’s mother. She was wearing an Italian linen dress cinched with a brown leather belt at her oh-so-slinky waist. Gloria Cross was a hell of a looker for a septuagenarian.

  ‘Look,’ said Doherty, a little snappy now because he hadn’t yet got round to asking a single question. ‘All I want to do is get you to answer some questions about Oliver Stafford; how you met, what he told you, and who his friends were.’

  ‘This sounds interesting. Shift up,’ said Gloria, pushing her rear into the spot between her daughter and granddaughter. ‘Has my granddaughter turned into a femme fatale?’

  ‘You don’t need to be here,’ said Doherty.