Joker in the Pack

by Elise Noble

  CHAPTER 37

  DESPITE A BURNING curiosity about my new surroundings, and even more interest in the contents of the safe deposit box, I was almost grateful the next day was Sunday because I needed a rest. By the time morning rolled around, I could barely walk.

  Nye had no such problems. “You up for another round?” he asked as the early afternoon sun glinted through the gap in the curtains.

  I couldn’t move, and I mumbled as much into the pillow.

  “How about I just roll you over and make you happy?”

  That did it. I was in love with this man.

  As he started work, I went beyond happy, further even than delirious. Nye had invested in gold-standard equipment and was clearly familiar with the operating manual. He certainly knew how to push my buttons.

  “Hungry, babe?” he asked as I collapsed back onto the mattress.

  I slid my jaw from side to side, testing it. “Muscles I didn’t know I had are aching.”

  He laughed. “I meant for food.”

  “Oh. Yes, some food would be lovely.”

  Except there was a slight flaw in that plan, because when we staggered through to Nye’s kitchen, he didn’t have any.

  “I’ve got Kit Kats, Rice Krispies, and a microwaveable cheese toastie,” he called out, rummaging through his cupboards. “Actually, the Rice Krispies aren’t so crispy anymore.”

  “What about proper food?”

  With that many preservatives in his system, an archaeologist could dig Nye up in a few hundred years’ time and find a perfectly lifelike corpse.

  I opened the fridge and found five cans of beer, a bottle of ketchup, and a jar of pickles that had expired two years previously. A foil container lurked in one corner, and I didn’t even want to think about what horrors it might harbour. It went straight into the bin.

  “What do you eat?” I asked.

  He wandered over to me and shrugged. “Mostly takeaways. Or I eat out. Or I get something at work.”

  “Can we buy some proper food?”

  “You’ll cook?” He grinned like a kid on Christmas Day.

  His kitchen was a chef’s dream. Stainless steel and granite with every appliance you could imagine. Everything except the microwave was spotless. Had the rest of the kitchen ever been used?

  “I’d love to. Why did you buy such a fancy kitchen if you don’t like cooking?”

  “I hired a decorator, and she told me all of this stuff was essential, but I think she got carried away.”

  “Then I’ll christen it for you.”

  He nuzzled my neck. “Fancy christening the rug in the lounge later too?”

  I turned and kissed him.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked when we broke apart.

  “That’s a yes.”

  He looked towards the lounge, then sighed. “We’d better go to the supermarket first.”

  “There might be a small problem with that. I don’t have any clothes left. You shredded my last outfit.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry. Actually, I’m not.” He loosened the belt on the bathrobe I’d borrowed and slid his arms around my naked waist. “I’ll get you more clothes.”

  It turned out Janelle did more than just Nye’s paperwork. She turned up an hour later with her hands full of expensive-looking paper carrier bags and held them out to me.

  “Nice one, girl. I had this week in the pool.”

  “Sorry, the what?”

  “The betting pool for when you and Nye did the deed. Luther nearly always wins these things, but he went for next month.”

  “Excuse me? You were gambling on my love life?”

  “Not gambling, honey. Nye was a sure thing. I saw the way he looked at you.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  Nye walked into the hallway, shirtless, and I put my hands on my hips.

  “Your colleagues have been wagering on us,” I told him.

  “Did you win?” he asked Janelle.

  “Thirty quid.”

  He held his hand up for a high five. “Donuts tomorrow?”

  “Krispy Kreme. Don’t worry, Olivia. Nye’ll save you one.”

  Oh, that was all right, then.

  Once Janelle had departed, Nye took my hand as we walked to Waitrose. Going shopping together seemed like such a normal thing to do, though my life was anything but. How many other people on that London street had narrowly escaped death the night before?

  I tried not to shudder as I pressed closer to Nye, and he dropped my hand to wrap an arm around my shoulders instead.

  “You okay?”

  “Things are just getting to me, that’s all.”

  “Nobody followed us to London, babe. You’re safe here.”

  His words made my stomach unclench a little, and in Waitrose, Nye once again fetched a trolley and rolled it next to me.

  “How much are you planning to buy?” Surely for one day’s worth of food for two people, a basket would be sufficient?

  “Enough for a week, I guess. I hate grocery shopping. Unless you want to go every day; then I’ll join you.”

  “You will?”

  “I thought you said you liked cooking? I don’t expect you to. We can eat out otherwise, or I’ll get something delivered.”

  “It’s the ‘we’ part I’m not sure about. You’re planning for us to be together all week?”

  “You’re not?”

  “I didn’t think that far ahead. I guess I figured I’d move in with Maddie for a while.”

  “You don’t want to stay with me?”

  I’d never seen him look crestfallen like that, and I stood on tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. We may not have been together for long, but now I’d spent the night in his bed, I never wanted to leave it. Yes, he could be mercurial, but he looked after me, and more than anything, he treated me as if I mattered. To Edward and Tate, I’d just been an accessory.

  “I do want to stay. I just wasn’t sure you were ready for that kind of commitment.”

  “I want you in my life and in my home and in my bed. Clear enough?”

  “Crystal.”

  “So, a week’s worth of food?”

  “Yes, we’ll stock up.”

  I walked the aisles in a daze. In the space of twenty-four hours, I’d gone from living in a cottage I’d tried my best to like without much success to staying in my dream apartment with a man way out of my league. I pinched myself as I walked down the bakery aisle, but the loaves of bread didn’t disappear.

  “Got everything?” Nye asked as we neared the checkout.

  “Yes. I mean no.” I’d forgotten the squirty cream. “I’ll be right back.”

  Nye turned the can over in his hands before he put it on the conveyor. “Is this for both of us to play with?”

  He hadn’t kept his voice down, and the checkout lady raised an eyebrow.

  “Shh!” I leaned in closer, blushing. “I get first dibs.”

  “Not gonna say no to that, babe.”

  Back in Nye’s kitchen, I set to work. The place even had a state-of-the-art sound system built in. Nye walked in just as I was bopping around to Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” and when I turned and saw him, I went the same colour as the raspberry coulis I’d just whipped up to go with the lemon cheesecake.

  Instead of laughing, he just whirled me around the kitchen island until the song ended, then leaned in for a kiss.

  “My kind of cooking,” he said.

  “I think I could be a convert.”

  He surveyed the counters, which I hadn’t quite cleared up yet. “Did you invite the local football team for dinner and forget to mention it?”

  “No, why?”

  “You know there are only two of us? Even my appetite isn’t that big.”

  Hmm, as well as dessert, I’d made a main course, fresh bread, a small starter, and a couple of batches of cupcakes, just to test out the oven, you understand. “I might have got a bit carried away.”

  “We’ll be shopping again tomorrow, won�
��t we? Right after I go to the gym for five or six hours.” He tried to put on a stern face, but he was still laughing as he said it.

  “Maybe?”

  He smiled. “What’s for lunch?”

  “Salmon mousse followed by beef Wellington.”

  He helped me to carry it over to the table, and we both tucked in. Delicious, if I said so myself.

  “This is that thing Maddie tried to make, right?”

  “It is.”

  “If she offers to cook again, I’ll get work to fake an emergency. Have you ever thought of becoming a professional chef?”

  “I always had this dream of opening a cupcake shop. I love to bake more than anything.” Soul exposed, I kept my eyes fixed on the table. “Stupid, I know.”

  “It’s not stupid, Liv. Everyone needs a dream.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “I’m living it. I wanted to make my own way in life, doing a job I love. And I wanted to meet a girl who made me happy. I’ve just achieved the last part.”

  My fork clattered onto the plate, food forgotten. “What were you saying about that rug?”

  Nye threw me over his shoulder and carried me into the lounge, pausing to grope my ass before he lowered me onto the soft sheepskin. Dirty, and I loved it.

  “You want the fire on, babe? Or…”

  I knew what he was thinking, but his fancy hearth was a world away from Lilac Cottage. I nodded, and flames danced as we undressed each other, more slowly than last night, although Nye still got frustrated and ripped my knickers off at the last second. After the rug, we tried out the kitchen island, and I didn’t even feel a burning need to sanitise it afterwards, much to my shame. Nye had mellowed me.

  Lunch had gone cold by the time we finished, so Nye grabbed a few cupcakes and the can of cream to bring through to the bedroom with us. At this rate, I wouldn’t need to think about renewing my gym membership. Nye was giving me all the exercise I needed.

  “Hurry up!” I checked my watch for the hundredth time in the last hour.

  Nye reached for his jacket, a smart one this time. “Easy, babe. The bank’s not going anywhere.”

  “But I wanted to be there when it opened.”

  And we would have been too, except when I woke up, I couldn’t stop fidgeting and Nye had resorted to drastic measures to take my mind off things. Now, I couldn’t wipe my smile away. I’d have to get stressed more often.

  Test-tube met us outside the bank, dressed in jeans rather than a lab coat, carrying a small box I assumed contained his forensics kit. Would we need it?

  Yes. The answer was most definitely yes.

  Once the bank manager left us alone in the viewing room, Nye flipped back the lid on the slim metal box, and we all peered in. I’d half expected to see the sparkling loot from one of Ronnie’s burglaries, but the space was almost empty. Just an envelope on the bottom and…

  “Is that… Is it a knife?”

  Test-tube leaned closer, peering at the sealed plastic bag. “Indeed it is, with dried blood on the blade by the looks of it.”

  I sat down on a plastic chair with a bump. Despite the escalating nastiness, it hadn’t crossed my mind that we’d be dealing with murder, but I’d bet my last penny that kitchen knife had been used for more than preparing Sunday dinner.

  Nye held a video camera with one hand and my hand with the other as he filmed Test-tube gathering the evidence. The knife, the envelope, and he fingerprinted the box for good measure. As soon as he’d finished, he cleaned up the mess, and we slotted the box back into its rightful position.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Back to the lab,” Nye said.

  Of course, we hit Monday morning traffic, and I bit my tongue to keep from cursing all the incompetent drivers we came across.

  “I could walk faster,” I muttered.

  “Want me to distract you?” Nye asked.

  Test-tube might have been sitting up front with the driver, but even so…

  “You’re not serious?”

  Except he was. He draped his jacket over my lap, and I barely noticed as we pulled into the underground car park at Blackwood’s offices. Nye helped me from the car and half carried me to the lift in the corner.

  “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “You were a willing participant, babe.”

  Yes. Yes, I was.

  Down in the lab, Test-tube went through the envelope-opening procedure again, with this sheet of paper in much better condition. Surely this would be the end of the line? I just wanted answers.

  A small crowd had gathered by the time Test-tube projected Ronnie’s words onto a big screen, no doubt as intrigued by the mystery as I was. My heart raced as I began reading his heavy scrawl for the second time in two days.

  I, Ronald Rigby, do testify that this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  Last night, I travelled alone to the village of Middleton Foxford with the intention of committing a burglary. I’d selected my target in advance, and over the past few weeks, I’d visited the property a number of times to check it out.

  My intention was to wait until the occupants of the house were sleeping, then steal Helena Palmer’s jewellery box, which I’d heard she kept on a chest of drawers in the bedroom. I arrived at Prestwold Manor at thirty minutes past midnight and gained access through a downstairs window which I’d previously identified as having a faulty catch.

  As I walked through the dining room, I saw a light on in the lounge. Wanting to check the whereabouts of Fenton and Helena Palmer, I looked through a gap between the door and frame.

  On the far side of the room, Fenton Palmer was crouching over the body of Helena Palmer. There was a large quantity of blood visible—on Fenton, on Helena’s chest, and all over the rug she was lying on. The knife found with this statement was visible on the coffee table.

  Helena Palmer did not appear to be moving, and Fenton Palmer made no effort to call for help. I hid in the hall closet while he rolled his wife’s body up in a piece of plastic sheeting he fetched from the garage.

  He carried her to his car (a Range Rover) and drove approximately four hundred yards to St. James’s church, where he parked outside. I followed on foot and got there as he carried Helena’s body into the churchyard and placed her next to a freshly dug grave.

  Over the next hour, Fenton used a shovel which was already there to deepen the hole and bury his wife at the bottom of it. He then filled the hole up to its original depth. That grave was intended for Eunice Briggs, who died earlier in the week.

  While Fenton was filling in the final shovelfuls of dirt, I made my way back to Prestwold Manor and removed the knife from the scene to stop him from disposing of this key piece of evidence.

  I hope that with my statement and the knife, Fenton Palmer can be brought to justice.

  Ronald Rigby

  I was shaking by the time I read the last sentence. Tate’s father was a murderer? He’d killed his wife, and the evidence was right there in front of us, in all its blood-streaked glory. Poor Tate. Our relationship might have fizzled out before it properly started, but I still ached for him.

  Test-tube gave a low whistle. “A bit rough and ready, but Ronnie’s got all the good stuff in here.”

  Nye nodded. “Timeline fits. The village busybody told us Fenton’s wife ran off around the same time as the blackmail payments started. Looks like she didn’t leave voluntarily.”

  “What do you want to do with this stuff?”

  “Prepare a document detailing the chain of evidence and linking everything we have. We need to pass it over to the police, and they’ll have to dig up that grave as the final piece of proof.”

  “Will do. The local police?”

  “Hell no. The village bobby couldn’t detect his asshole with both hands and a map. I’ll give Jason from the Met a call and see if he can suggest someone.”

  “This is gonna upset a few people, I bet.”

  He wasn’t wrong there.

 
; CHAPTER 38

  “OLIVIA, ONCE AGAIN, I’m sorry for being so rude,” Daisy said as she topped up my coffee. “I’ll know better than to listen to rumours in future.”

  She’d apologised at least seventeen times in the last half hour, but I pasted on another smile.

  “Daisy, it’s fine, honestly. I’m not one to bear a grudge.”

  Luckily, neither was Warren, and he’d joined Maddie, Mickey, and me for drinks and cakes in the café. Carol had tracked the origin of the gold-digger rumours down to an evening canapé party thrown by the Palmers. It seemed every guest got given a version of the story with their glass of champagne, and once they left the manor, the tales spread like wildfire.

  “This is all on the house, of course. I still can’t believe Fenton Palmer murdered his own wife. Do you know why?”

  “Nobody does yet.”

  “They used to fight,” Warren said. “She called me a couple of times, drunk, wanting me to drive her to stay with a friend in London.”

  “Do you know what the arguments were about?” I asked, my nosiness coming to the fore.

  Warren stared at the wall, thinking. “One time, it was the amount of time Fenton spent on the golf course. Another night, a disagreement about Tate’s upbringing, and then she reckoned Fenton was having an affair.” He wrinkled his nose. “She was wasted that time. Puked in the footwell, but at least she forked out for the valet.”

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  “Yeah. I got the impression she was high maintenance, but killing her?” He shook his head. “That poor woman.”

  “At least he can’t hurt anyone else.”

  Fenton had been taken to jail two days earlier. Nye made sure I was safely tucked up in front of the television when it happened, but he’d driven to Upper Foxford to make sure the locals didn’t balls things up, in his words.

  A task force from the neighbouring town had done the honours, advised by Nye’s friend from the Met, and they’d woken Fenton at dawn and arrested him in his pyjamas. The local reporter had been more switched on than Graham, because he’d hotfooted it down there with his camera and snapped Fenton being led out of Prestwold Manor in handcuffs, looking furious. The pictures were plastered all over the front of the Foxford Express the next day.