Joker in the Pack

by Elise Noble

  It felt wrong hearing a man of the cloth talking so casually about his criminal activities. It just went to show—never judge a person by what’s on the outside.

  “All the jewellery I found looked cheap. I didn’t see any engraving,” I said, although my chest seized. Had I accidentally sold someone’s prized possessions for a fiver?

  Nye squeezed my hand under the table. “Where in the cottage might Eleanor have hidden her stash?”

  The vicar shook his head again, more emphatically this time, hands spread in a helpless gesture. “That place was a mess. I avoided it if at all possible. But it might not have been jewellery. Last time I saw Ronnie, he asked me to give an envelope to his mother. Said it was her retirement plan, so whatever it was, it had to be worth something.”

  “Did he elaborate on the contents?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask questions. I just assumed it was documents. It was only one of those small padded envelopes, so he couldn’t have fitted much inside.”

  An envelope? I’d sorted through Aunt Ellie’s piles of old mail, and most of it had gone in the rubbish. What if I’d thrown something important out?

  “Any other insights?” Nye asked.

  The vicar walked over to one of the cupboards and found a bottle of Scotch. His hands shook as he poured himself a generous measure and slugged back half.

  “You know about the incident with Henry?”

  Nye nodded.

  “Well, a few weeks before that, Ronnie had one too many beers and let slip that he’d hit the jackpot. Easy money, he said, but he was nervous. Very nervous. He even cried off a couple of jobs, which wasn’t like him at all.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “No, but Ronnie used to do work on the side as well as with me. I figured he’d had a close call. Look, are we done here yet? I’m not the same man I used to be. Now it’s my mission in life to stop young boys from going down the same path I did.”

  “Very admirable.” The hint of sarcasm in Nye’s voice went unnoticed by the vicar. “Here’s my card. Do me a favour and call if you think of anything else?”

  “Sure, I most certainly will.”

  He wouldn’t. He couldn’t show us out fast enough.

  Back in the car, I tried to process what had just happened. A burglar turned vicar. I’d seen it all now.

  “So, what did you think?” Nye asked as he slid behind the wheel and started the journey home.

  “I can’t believe it—the man’s an ex-burglar, and now he’s holding a position of such responsibility. Surely he should be in jail?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Well, it would be a punishment for his crimes.”

  “Prison’s supposed to help people see the error of their ways and stop them from reoffending. It seems to me like he’s already done that.”

  “I suppose. I’ve never thought of it that way.”

  “And not only that, he’s helping to keep kids out of jail too.”

  “I guess that makes sense. Do you always see the good in people? Spike? The vicar?”

  “I’ve learned a lot working at Blackwood. If I hadn’t had their support, I’d have ended up alongside Ronnie.”

  I half gasped, and then swallowed it into a cough. “You were a thief?”

  “No, but I’d have landed in an early grave. I wasn’t a good guy as a teenager, Liv.”

  “I don’t believe that.” Nye might have had a tough exterior, but that hid a heart of gold.

  “It’s true. I hated living at home, and I used to act out. But I met one of Blackwood’s founders in a bar when I was eighteen, and he helped me to see the world differently. He gave me the chance to be myself.”

  I reached over and squeezed his hand, an automatic gesture. “I’m glad you got that chance. I like the man you’ve become.”

  Nye pulled the car over into a lay-by and killed the engine.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Kissing you.”

  And then he did.

  CHAPTER 30

  A FEW MINUTES later, Nye started the engine again. “When I asked what you thought, I meant about Ronnie and Eleanor rather than the rights and wrongs of the prison system.”

  “What? Ronnie?” I couldn’t think straight. Nye had magic lips.

  “Babe, you’re so sweet when you get like that.”

  Nye thought ditzy was cute? That was good news. If he kept kissing me with all that heat and darkness and knee-trembling wizardry, ditzy promised to be a permanent state of affairs.

  He squeezed my hand. “Ronnie and Eleanor?” he prompted.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Eleanor wasn’t a very nice lady, was she? I’m not surprised my mother stopped talking to her.”

  “You said she was playing poker online when she died. How do you know that?”

  “Someone told me. In the pub, I think.” I snapped my fingers. “Yes! It was Graham, and he’d been drinking. It was soon after I arrived in Upper Foxford, and I’d just heard Eleanor had died on the couch. That’s why I threw it out.”

  “He said that in the pub? In front of everyone?”

  “Yes, on curry night, so the place was packed.”

  “And right after that, the trouble started?”

  I saw where Nye was going with this. “You don’t think the two are connected, do you?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. Something set this dude off, and poker can be a dirty game. I need you to give me a list of everyone you can remember being there that night.”

  “I can try, but there were so many people. Floyd in the grocery store might be able to help. He was the person who introduced me to Graham in the first place.”

  “I’ll get somebody to speak to him, although I bet he’ll be even less help than last time if he was pissed.”

  “He did seem a little tipsy.”

  “So it’ll probably be a waste of time. If Eleanor was playing online poker, what happened to her computer? Did it get stolen?”

  “No, both of them are at my friend’s house. I couldn’t guess the passwords, and she knows a computer guy.”

  “Both?”

  “A laptop and a MacBook. I did wonder why Aunt Ellie had two.”

  “Money laundering. Did she have two internet connections as well?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Do you know anything about money laundering?”

  “I assume you don’t mean accidentally putting a ten-pound note through the washing machine?”

  He laughed. “It’s the process of taking the proceeds of criminal activity and making it appear as if it was earned legitimately.”

  “I don’t really get it.”

  “There are three stages. First comes the placement, when the dirty money’s introduced into the financial system. Then layering, when it’s moved around to disguise the origins. Lastly is integration, where the money’s reintroduced to the economy, and it appears to be clean.”

  “But how can poker do that? And what was the vicar saying about bookies? What if she lost her bets? Wouldn’t she just lose all the money?”

  “It’s easy enough to cycle money through the betting system and lose very little of it. At a betting shop, you can play on the game machines, and over time, the bookie’s always going to keep a couple of percent, no more. It’s written into their own rules. So if you keep the stakes small and just keep feeding the money in, you’ll get most of it back. And better than that, you’ll get a receipt saying you won that big wedge of cash in your pocket in a game of chance. It looks legitimate, and it’s even tax-free.”

  “Wow. I’d never even have thought of that.”

  “Or you can back all the possible outcomes in, say, a football match. Win, lose or draw, one at each bookie. By calculating the amount you bet on each option, you’ll only lose a tiny amount, no matter what happens in the game.”

  “That all sounds very complicated. What about the poker?”

  “Easy. She’ll have set up an online poker game wh
ere she was both of the players. One on each computer, using the two connections so it wasn’t obvious. I bet she had variable IP addresses as well. Then she just lost the money from one player to the other and withdrew it to an eWallet.”

  It was hard to reconcile business-savvy Aunt Ellie with the woman obsessed with buying musical Christmas ornaments. Like the vicar said—nobody ever suspected.

  But there was one part of the puzzle missing. “How did the money get into the poker account in the first place? The dirty money, I mean.”

  “That, babe, is the fifty-thousand-dollar question. We need to get hold of those computers.”

  Which meant we needed to go back to London. “Let me call Maddie.”

  It took two tries to get through to her, and when she answered, the piercing din of the smoke alarm nearly deafened me.

  “Hang on,” she shouted. “The bloody alarm’s malfunctioned again.”

  I held the phone away from my ear until the noise subsided.

  “Liv! How are things going with the cottage? Any more problems?”

  “A few. You know that guy Sophie was talking about? The investigator?”

  “Huh?”

  “At the party? Fruit punch, burglary, investigator?”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember. Sherlock. He turned up? Did he bring his magnifying glass?”

  “He came all right.” Well, not yet, but I hoped to rectify that as soon as possible. “But no magnifying glass.”

  And I certainly wouldn’t be needing one judging by the bulge in his trousers.

  “Is he any good?”

  Hell, yes. “Er, he seems to know what he’s doing. Anyway, we need to swing by and pick up those laptops. There might be something useful on them.”

  “Perfect timing—I’m just making dinner, and I miscalculated the portions a tiny bit. There’s plenty enough for four.”

  Those words struck fear into my heart. Maddie had many strong suits, but cooking wasn’t one of them.

  “We’re a bit short on time.”

  “Nonsense. It’s almost ready, and you’ve got to eat. I’ll keep it hot until you get here.”

  I hung up with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, soon to be replaced by indigestion or food poisoning, no doubt.

  “Seems to know what he’s doing? Seems?” Nye asked. “I know exactly what I’m doing, babe.”

  He ran a finger up the inside of my thigh, stopping just short of ringing the bell. “I’ll prove it to you very soon.”

  Please say the dampness in my knickers wouldn’t soak through to the seat, because he’d be needing a valet if it did.

  “Maddie’s making us dinner,” I blurted.

  “That’s good, right? I’m hungry.”

  “No, it’s not good. If you don’t have any weird food allergies, I suggest you invent some now. Just say you can’t eat solids or something.”

  “That bad?”

  I nodded, already feeling a little nauseated. “Usually I insist on doing the cooking, but she’s already prepared it.”

  I clutched Nye’s hand on the way up to Maddie’s flat. The smells drifting along the hallway were horrific enough to make even the most dedicated foodie turn to anorexia.

  “We could get a takeaway on the way back,” Nye suggested.

  “I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

  “Too sweet,” he muttered as he knocked on the door.

  Maddie yanked it open almost immediately and wafted smoke out with a tea towel just as the alarm blared again. Nye rushed past and dismantled it to save our eardrums from further damage.

  “Who are you?” Dave asked Nye, walking into the kitchen.

  I rushed to do the introductions. “Maddie, Dave, this is Nye. He’s been helping me get to the bottom of the break-ins.”

  “Tell me that’s not the only thing he’s been helping you get to the bottom of?” Maddie whispered as Nye shook hands with Dave.

  “Maddie, stop it.”

  At least she turned as pink as I did when Nye bent to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Want a beer?” Dave asked as Maddie waved us over to sit at the table.

  Nye shook his head. “I don’t drink when I’m working.”

  “You’re going to regret that.”

  I clutched my hastily poured glass of white like it could ward off salmonella as Nye squeezed my leg under the table. I did note he looked slightly nervous.

  “I’ve made liver mousse to start,” Maddie said, carrying in a plate of brown jelly.

  Liver? I closed my eyes and wished I could close my nostrils too. Yeuch. This was even worse than the salmon mousse she’d attempted last year.

  “I might have burned it a bit,” she confessed.

  At least the charring improved the flavour. I pushed my portion around the plate as Nye tried a forkful and then grimaced. Opposite us, Dave tucked in with the look of a man who just wanted to get things over and done with.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Maddie asked me.

  “I haven’t had much of an appetite lately. You know, with everything that’s been going on.”

  Maddie leaned over and patted my hand. “That’s quite understandable, sweetheart.”

  Nye didn’t have the same excuse, and he turned a delicate shade of green as he forced most of the plateful down. I caught him glancing towards the door a few times, no doubt trying to think up an excuse to dash out of it.

  As Maddie took the plates out to the kitchen, Nye downed half of my wine.

  “How did you eat that?” he asked Dave. “What’s the secret?”

  “I’ve been with her a couple of years now, mate. She’s destroyed all my taste buds.”

  But the worst was yet to come. Maddie soon bustled back out with the main course. “I used your recipe for beef Wellington,” she told me, looking thrilled.

  It wasn’t difficult to make, but somehow the meat had ended up dry while the pastry was soggy. And what was that crunchy bit? I loved Maddie dearly, but she was a terrible, terrible cook.

  “I’m turning vegan,” Nye whispered.

  “I’ll join you in that.”

  Even Maddie couldn’t mess up dessert, surely? Over the years, I’d encouraged her to buy frozen and simply defrost, but today she’d pushed the boat out.

  “I’ve made baked Alaska. My first try. What do you think?”

  Now, the idea of baked Alaska was to keep the ice cream underneath cold while the meringue top went hot and crispy. Maddie had managed to reverse that, then decorated the concoction with gummy bears.

  “It’s a good first try, but maybe you need a tiny bit more practice.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You’re right. Next time you come round, I’ll have another go.”

  Nye leaned in close enough for his lips to brush my ear. “I’m busy that day.”

  With dinner over, Dave fetched the two computers for Nye while I helped Maddie clean up in the kitchen. Once again, she’d ruined the non-stick surface on a perfectly good saucepan.

  “That man is super hot. You know that, right?” she said.

  It hadn’t escaped me. “He’s not my usual type, though.”

  “And who’s that? Edward? Edward only cared about himself.”

  “At least I knew where I stood with him. Most of the time, at least.”

  “He treated you like a doormat, and you lived with it. That wasn’t good for you, Liv.”

  “But I’m not sure Nye is either.” I couldn’t deny the chemistry, but long term? He’d already damaged my heart once. “I don’t understand him. He scares me a little.”

  “What do you mean? Has he hurt you?” Her defensive streak came out—she’d always take my side.

  “No, no, nothing like that. It’s more my feelings for him that scare me.”

  Because he could hurt me. No, more. Nye could destroy me.

  Maddie gave me a hug. “That’s how you’re supposed to feel. Any man who makes you crazy that way is worth fighting for.” She met my eyes. “You never felt that way about
Edward, did you? Or Tate?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s your answer. And Liv?”

  “Yes?”

  “I saw the way he looked at you. Like you were a chocolate fudge brownie with sticky toffee pudding on the side.”

  My stomach groaned as I climbed back into Nye’s car. Bulimia had never looked like such an attractive option.

  “Are we going back to Upper Foxford now?”

  “Not yet. I need to drop these laptops at the office, and I need to find some edible food.”

  “I’m hungry too.”

  He raised one eyebrow and looked at his crotch. “Good to hear.”

  “You’ve got a dirty mind.”

  “Would you want me any other way?”

  I wanted him any way I could get him. After my talk with Maddie, I realised I had to take a chance, even if I risked heartache.

  This time, we weren’t in the car for long before we drove into another underground car park, this one beneath a fancy office building in King’s Cross. Nye punched the button for the second floor, and our first stop was the kitchen.

  “Do you want a sandwich? Or fruit?” He rummaged deeper in the fridge. “There might be some chocolate at the back.”

  “Are you allowed to help yourself like that? What if that’s somebody’s dinner?”

  “Nah, it’s all communal. People spend a lot of time here, and the bosses like to keep us happy. That means fully stocked kitchens, a gym, and decent rest areas. If people burn out, productivity goes down. Why don’t you stay here and eat something while I shoot over to the tech team with these?” He held up the bag with the computers.

  An egg-and-mayonnaise sandwich had never looked so appealing—at least it helped to take the lingering taste of the liver mousse away. I kept to myself in one corner, and while I attracted curious glances, nobody spoke until a petite black girl took the seat opposite me.

  “Are you new?” she asked.

  “Oh, I don’t work here. I’m just visiting with Nye Holmes.”

  “Nye? He’s here?” She looked around.