I feel as though they have completely forgotten I’m here. Boy talk. Well, kind of. Thank goodness it’s regular boy talk and not the agency equivalent (involving guns, outmanoeuvring criminals and maintaining extreme fitness levels) because that might worry Adrienne, the woman from the station’s make-up department who worked her magic earlier on Bernie before she went on the TV Rise & Shine set. Adrienne is now sitting close by chatting earnestly with Deborah from lighting. Hmm. Wonder what they’re discussing. Probably the latest celebrity gossip. Placing both hands on the table, I bang them down lightly as if it was a drum to get the guys’ attention.
“Aw, look,” Jake laughs. “Abi’s feeling left out. Come on, Abs, I did invite you to Cornwall with me, didn’t I?”
Yes. He did.
Unfortunately.
I adore surfing but the thought of a weekend spent in very close quarters in Jake’s VW campervan had freaked me out. Criminals, guns and cracking cases I can handle, but Jake’s a trickier proposition.
Dan and Jake exchange knowing looks and both say the exact same thing at the exact same moment. “It was too soon.” Then they annoyingly high-five each other again.
Grrh!
That’s a less desirable trait they both share – how annoying they can be sometimes.
“I’m going to leave you two to your boring surf talk,” I huff, getting to my feet.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it at my secret beach,” Jake teases.
“I’m going to go and do some actual work and talk to Yannick, the show’s cameraman,” I inform them in hushed tones so we’re not overheard. “I’ll text you when I’m done with an update,” I add to Jake.
He mock salutes me. “Yes, boss.”
I walk away, shaking my head. Honestly, these guys.
I find Yannick still on the set of TV Rise and Shine. Slipping back into my dogsbody role I stride over to him. “Can I get you a coffee or anything?”
He pauses from his tech stuff and looks me up and down. “I could go for the anything,” he replies with a wink. “I know somewhere quiet we can go.”
Honestly, does everyone in TV fancy themselves to be irresistible? Seems like it to me.
“I’m not that kind of girl,” I reply with a smile in an effort to keep the guy on side. “How about we just go with coffee and a chat for now?”
Yannick scowls. “Too busy.”
Hmm... Interesting. Looks like Yannick can be a bit grumpy when he doesn’t get his own way. A volatile character perhaps?
“Don’t you like to get to know your work colleagues a little better?”
“You’re not a proper colleague. You’re just the runner,” he mumbles in reply, his face hidden by a part of the camera (I have no idea what part it is) that he’s fiddling about with.
Charming.
“So, what do you think of Bernie?” I press on. “She comes across as falling into the highly strung category to me.”
Yannick looks across at me and I instantly recognise the look of a man who is wrestling with some dilemma.
“Bernie’s high maintenance for sure, but she’s also hot. We had a bit of a thing going on,” he grins.
Ah! I knew it. His internal dilemma was about whether or not to make himself look good in front of me by spilling the beans on his fling with the show’s star.
I’m disliking this guy more and more with every passing minute.
I arrange my face into an interested expression. “Really? Wow!”
“Bernie wanted to talk about getting the right camera angles to flatter her profile and before you know it we were on the couch in her dressing room getting to know each other pretty well.”
Yuck.
Not surprising though. The CCIA case information we were given before we arrived here suggested Bernie was the kind of woman who had slept her way to the top.
“So, when did it all end?” I ask. After all, he’d said they ‘had’ a thing going on. Could she have ended it and Yannick had got stroppy, and he was the one blackmailing her with compromising photos? No, it couldn’t be that simple, could it? I thought back to the blackmailer’s message and recalled it had said something about knowing what she did each Tuesday. For some reason, that didn’t seem to quite fit with Yannick being the one behind the notes.
Any further delving is instantly put on hold when my phone beeps with a text from Jake.
Bernie’s dressing room. NOW!
“Well, I’ll see you around then,” I say, slipping my phone back into my jeans and heading for the door.
As soon as I’m out of sight, I break into a sprint until I reach the aforementioned dressing room. The door is shut. I knock. “Jake?”
The door opens and Jake appears, checks I’m alone, and then ushers me inside.
Bernie is sprawled on the floor.
A pair of stockings tied around her neck.
OK... so now it’s a murder investigation.
Chapter Two
“How did you find out?” I ask Jake as I kneel down to inspect the murder scene.
“I was still chatting with Dan when I saw Bernie leave the cafe after she’d been talking to that journalist guy. I thought I’d go and see if she was okay as she looked pretty upset when she left. I got to her dressing room and knocked but there was no answer. I shouted but no reply. The door was locked when I tried it, so I picked the lock and found her dead.”
I frown. “The door was locked and yet she was dead inside. That’s weird. Have you looked around to see if her key is in here anywhere? Could she have locked the door and committed suicide? You said she was upset after talking to that journalist. Did he say something that made her think she was better off ending her life?” I shudder at the thought. In my line of work, death is an unfortunate regular occurrence but it still affects me, despite having to put on a brave face. The thought that anybody’s life could be so bad that they would commit suicide is beyond dreadful. Getting to my feet, I hastily avert my eyes from our victim.
We both start to search the room. It takes a matter of seconds to locate her set of keys on the dressing table under a silk scarf.
“So, either she locked the door and then killed herself, making sure to remove the keys first so that someone could get into the room to find her...” I begin.
“Or the person who killed her had access to a set of keys themselves and locked the door to delay anyone finding her,” Jake finishes.
A knock at the door heralds the arrival of the CCIA’s specialist medical and crime scene team. Wow, they move fast! We let them in to do the necessary checks and procedures.
Jake and I wait outside the room, knowing that the CCIA guys and girls will be going over the space thoroughly, dusting for fingerprints, searching everywhere and gathering as much data as they can to feed back to agency HQ and shortly after that, through to Jake and myself.
“Fancy another coffee?” Jake asks.
I nod. I could use some fresh air so suggest we head to the coffee shop down the road from the TV studios.
It’s almost Christmas. As if you could possibly forget around here. Actually, I am reliably informed by TV, magazines, newspapers, radio stations and shops galore, that I have only eight days to purchase all of my Christmas gifts.
Eight days.
It’s not just eight days until Christmas; it’s also eight days until the anniversary of the day I hate and dread in equal measure.
Stifling a shudder, I push my way through the throngs of less-than-happy shoppers and into Coffee Station. Surprise, surprise, festive carols are belting out at full volume. If I could escape somewhere and avoid the holiday season, then I would. But I have a job, so I can’t. Anyway, where on earth could I possibly go that would enable me to avoid any essence of Christmas for a month or so?
The queue for cappuccinos, lattes and (would you believe it?) special edition candy cane coffee, stretches the length of the store. Wonderful.
Jake decides he doesn’t want to queue, so we push to the front declaring
to everyone that utters a protest that we are on official police business and need to be served immediately.
Excellent.
“I’ll have the candy cane coffee and...” Jake turns to me and raises one eyebrow in question.
“Black coffee,” I reply.
I’ve only had to endure one verse of O Come All Ye Faithful on the coffee shop’s speaker system by the time we’re back out on the pavement.
A frazzled looking guy pushes past us muttering to himself. Jake shakes his head. “Christmas. Don’t you just love it?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Sorry,” he says, a pained expression on his face. “I kind of forgot for a minute about...”
I hold up a hand to silence him. “No need to apologize.”
Jake slips an arm around my shoulders and briefly hugs me to him to offer a moment of comfort. He smells of cedarwood and spice and lemon. It’s an enticing aroma of aftershave, shower gel and... Jake.
I gently ease away from him. “It’s crazy out here with this merry throng of festive shoppers so shall we head back to the studio and harass the CCIA crew for murder data?”
“Best not. They get a bit annoyed if we bother them while they’re trying to do thorough investigations of a crime scene.”
True. Unfortunately. I’m eager to get some answers and tick the box on another successfully completed investigation.
Correctly reading my body language, Jake says, “Don’t be so impatient.”
“It’s a murder investigation now,” I huff in response.
“I know. We still need to give the experts all the time they need to gather the info that will enable us to solve the case,” he says softly. “Come on, let’s go and finish these drinks and compare case notes in my car. I parked at the back of the studio.”
“I thought you needed a special pass to be able to park there,” I frown.
“You do.”
“Agency HQ told me there wasn’t any available so how did you manage to get hold of one?”
Jake taps the side of his nose conspiratorially and winks.
Ten minutes later, just as the light flakes of snow which were drifting prettily on the breeze decide they mean business and become a blizzard, we dive into Jake’s car.
I sip my black coffee as Jake investigates his candy cane festive offering.
“And?” I ask as he takes a sip.
“Minty,” he replies, pulling a face. Putting the lid back on the cup, he adds, “And horrible.”
I stifle a guffaw.
Turning to me he asks, “Can I share your boring coffee?”
“Nope.”
“You are so mean.”
“Serves you right for going all festive with your drink choices,” I bat back.
He sighs. “OK. Fine. So, did you find out anything useful from Yannick the camera guy earlier?”
“He thinks he’s God’s gift to all women.”
“He’s in television, that’s a given. Anything else?”
I nod. “He claims to have been having a fling with Bernie. Also, he seemed pretty uppity.”
“And that makes you wonder if Bernie ended things with him and he decided to retaliate by blackmailing her.”
“Bingo.” Jake and I are so on the same wavelength. That’s why I love working with him. OK, I confess that’s not the only reason...
“But now we’ve got murder in the mix as well as blackmail. Still think he’s a suspect?”
“Not sure it all adds up. I suppose we keep him on the suspect list for now. What about Kitty? Could she covet the anchor woman role on TV Rise & Shine enough to murder Bernie?”
“It would certainly give her a good motive. She’s around the studios a lot, knows Bernie’s schedules and routines so she would have opportunity too.”
“Ditto for the cameraman Yannick, motive and opportunity.” Something Kitty said earlier pops back into my head. “Hey, didn’t Kitty say something about going off to a craft show to do a segment on it for TV Rise & Shine? She also said that she just loved scrapbooking.”
Jake grins. “Scrapbooking is a verb?”
I bash him on the arm. “Didn’t you think it was weird how the blackmail letters Bernie had been receiving were done with words and individual letters cut and pasted from magazines onto a piece of paper? I mean, that’s so old school.”
“But somebody who just loved cutting and pasting and crafting might opt to deliver their blackmail messages in old school style,” Jake finishes.
“Exactly. Kitty is at the top of that list.”
“Hadn’t she already left the studio building to go to that GMEX craft show thing though when Bernie was murdered?” Jake counters.
“I’ll check with reception.”
“So, who else do we know that was a feature of Bernie’s life and that could join Kitty and Yannick on the list of suspects?”
I check my phone for the intel we each received at the start of the case. “She was having a fling with some guy called Thomas whose wife’s family owns the TV station.”
Jake taps the postcode of the guy’s address into his satnav and turns the ignition of his sporty SUV. “Let’s go and pay him a visit then. His place is only ten minutes’ drive from here.”
We arrive outside the fancy townhouse address just over thirty minutes later thanks to the crazy festive shopping traffic.
Unsurprisingly, there’s no place to park so Jake pops his ‘on official police business’ CCIA card on the dashboard and double parks. The door of the townhouse is opened by a woman I take to be the housekeeper. That or the lady of the house likes to dress in a blue uniform with a white apron. We’re escorted into a posh reception room with sky-high alabaster ceilings and what looks like a chandelier made from real gold. The housekeeper has returned with a tray of tea and scones and we are tucking into an impromptu afternoon snack when the door opens again and Thomas Merry finally puts in an appearance. He flops onto a sofa and rubs his forehead, not even glancing in our direction.
“Hangover?” Jake surmises.
Thomas nods.
“Cup of tea?” I ask, just because I already have the teapot in my hand pouring my own drink.
Thomas shakes his head.
Clearly a man of few words so Jake ploughs right in. “We’re from the Celebrity Crimes Investigation Agency and are here working on a case involving Bernie Fairweather.”
“You mean the blackmail thing?” he says with a sigh.
“You knew about it?” I place my no-doubt-expensive china cup back on its saucer.
“She told me.” He plumps up a cushion behind him and leans back, crossing his tailored trouser clad legs. “I told her it was all stuff and nonsense. Probably some stupid fan getting out of control.”
“And now she’s dead,” Jake chips in.
Thomas sits bolt upright, his face even paler than when he walked into the drawing room. “Dead? But I only spoke to her a couple of hours ago. We were planning to...” He looks at me and then at Jake, leaving the sentence unfinished.
“Planning a little secret rendezvous, were you?” Jake asks. “Look, we know the two of you were having a fling but I’m assuming your wife doesn’t know.”
Thomas shifts uncomfortably on the sofa and then stares at his shoes. “She just found out.”
“Just? When, exactly, did she find out?” I check.
“A week ago,” Thomas supplies, rubbing at the stubble on his aristocratic chin. “She went ballistic.”
Interesting. I think we can add Mrs. Merry to our list of suspects then. The wronged wife out to teach the mistress a lesson she’ll never forget. Had Mrs. Merry hired a private investigator to get photos of Bernie and Thomas in a compromising position and then used them to traumatise Bernie via blackmail? It didn’t quite add up though. Why the request for twenty thousand pounds to keep said photos under wraps? Judging by the look of this house she wasn’t short of money. Twenty thousand pounds would be small change to her. Agency HQ information had already told us that T
homas had married into the wealthy Merry family who owned a couple of TV production companies, the studios and some radio stations. Mrs. Merry had insisted she wanted to keep the family name and had made him change his surname to Merry. So, revenge on the mistress might have been motive, but why ask for money?
“How did she find out?” Jake asks as he helps himself to half of a scone piled high with jam and cream.
“A friend of the family saw me and Bernie leaving a hotel together.”
Classy. Not.
“And how did you react when your wife confronted you?” I check, scribbling in my CCIA notebook.
“There was no point denying it. She had photos of the two of us kissing just before Bernie got into a waiting taxi.” He shrugs. “Our marriage has been a sham for a long time. It isn’t as though Alexandra hasn’t had a fling or two of her own. That was something I was supposed to turn a blind eye to. Things changed though when she got serious about her latest beau. She was looking for a way to get out of this marriage and still keep her name, her money and her reputation intact. I think she might have even had a PI following me around to try to pin the reason for divorce on me.”
“How long had you and Bernie been seeing each other?” Jake says once he’s devoured the scone.
“Not long but it was true love.” Thomas sniffs back some tears and his obvious emotion at the news of her death along with what he’s told us about his loveless marriage and manipulating wife makes me have some degree of sympathy for him. Whether or not it’s misplaced remains to be seen.
“Please define ‘not long’ for the record.” I have my pen poised over my notebook.
Thomas runs a hand through his grey hair. According to our information he’s in his mid-fifties but right now, stress etching his forehead, he looks much older.
“Three months.”
I nod. “Thank you.”
He chews on his bottom lip and then looks me right in the eye. “How did it happen?”
Ah. He means how did Bernie die. I take a deep breath. I hate this part of the job. “Strangled.”
His face crumples and he starts sobbing.
Was he expecting natural causes not murder? His shocked reaction seems to suggest it.
Candy Canes & Corpses Page 42
