Killed With a Kiss

by Fiona Grace

  Just then, Chester came trotting in through the open greenhouse door, wagging his tail in a happy greeting. But far from greeting him in return, Gina rushed over and took him by the collar.

  “These are poisonous!” she exclaimed. “That’s why I had the door closed. We need to keep the pooches on the other side.”

  She started to tug him toward the door. Chester, clearly perturbed not to have been given as warm a greeting as he expected, put up a bit of resistance, digging his paws in. Which ultimately forced Gina into a game of tug-of-war, which Lacey couldn’t help but chuckle over.

  You can’t outsmart Chester, she thought.

  While Gina was busy half-dragging Chester out of the greenhouse, Lacey took a closer look at the flowers. They were very pretty, with a dark center, and delicate, papery petals in a gorgeous, deep shade of pink.

  She checked the label to see what they were called.

  “Kiss-Me-Quick,” she said, with a chuckle.

  But the laughter died almost as soon as it had started as the word kiss began to go round and round in her head. A sudden fear seized Lacey.

  The flowers were poisonous. Hugh was poisoned. They were called Kiss-Me-Quick. Hugh had drawn a kiss on the window.

  “Silly name, isn’t it?” came Gina’s voice from behind.

  Now it was Lacey’s turn to jump. She let go of the tag and swirled on the spot, blinking at Gina as she slid the greenhouse door back into place with a loud click. Through the condensation-streaked windows, Lacey could see Chester pacing back and forth on the other side with agitated movements.

  Gina turned to face her and folded her arms. She had an odd look in her eyes, Lacey noted, that she couldn’t quite place. A sort of flightiness.

  Despite the humidity, a shiver peeled through Lacey. What had Gina done?

  “Excuse me, I’d better get back to the store,” she mumbled, averting her gaze and charging, head bowed, for the sliding door.

  She half expected Gina to stop her from leaving, but her friend just watched her pass with that same look of mournful disappointment.

  Chester hurried up to Lacey as she marched along the paving slabs back toward the store, her hand gripped over her mouth to stop herself from crying out as her terrible fear took hold.

  She hurried into her small back office. Her mind was racing. She was shaking all over, so flustered she could hardly see straight.

  Chester barked at her.

  “I know. I know. I’m freaking out. I’m sorry.”

  She took a long, slow breath in and sighed it out. Then she did it again, and again, until the black stars disappeared from her eyes.

  Glancing back over her shoulder anxiously, she logged on to her computer and searched for Kiss-Me-Quick plants.

  “Kiss-Me-Quicks contain brunfelsamidine,” she murmured under her breath, reading the page she’d found, “a naturally occurring chemical that is highly toxic if ingested by dogs, cats, horses, and even people. If left untreated, clinical symptoms include cough and fever, tremors, diarrhea and vomiting, lethargy and weakness, lack of coordination, seizures, and, in extreme cases, death.”

  She sank back into her seat, overwhelmed by her thoughts. Was that why Gina had spent so much time out in the greenhouses recently? Had she been growing her own personal supply of poison?

  No. It just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t like Gina to do such a thing. Lacey just couldn’t picture it. If Gina had done anything, anything at all, it was surely unintentional. Perhaps she’d just been trying to get her own back on Hugh after he’d threatened them both and attempted to ruin the business? Lacey could quite easily imagine Gina slipping him some diarrhea-inducing substance; it was just the sort of prank she loved and she had an abundance of the stuff on hand so it wouldn’t have been hard. Had she just wanted to teach him a lesson? And because he was already sick his body hadn’t been able to cope with the poison?

  Was that why she’d dismissed Lacey’s theory that the X on the window stood for a kiss, and called it far-fetched? Because Lacey had actually gotten way too close to the truth?

  Lacey listened to the sound of Gina in the greenhouse. As loath as Lacey was to admit it, her friend was still in the running. She didn’t care for the statue. But she did care about the rude man who’d shouted at her and threatened to ruin the business. The real question was, did she care enough to want revenge?

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Lacey sat in her car, mulling it all over. There were no customers to tend to, and hanging around with Gina while she was still a suspect in her mind felt uncomfortable. Instead, Lacey decided to put all her effort into looking at other leads. In fact, she desperately wanted any other avenue to follow so she could strike Gina off her list ASAP.

  Gabe had sent her the information about every single person who’d bid on the Isidore Bonheur, and Lacey perused it while Chester napped in the passenger seat beside her.

  Mr. Oolong. Sabine Jardin. Dustin Powell. Ciara Oliviera. They’d all dropped out fairly early on, and had secured other wins they’d paid for without quibbling. It seemed like a stretch that they’d be honest on one hand, and a lying, stealing murdering thief on the other.

  Then she spotted a French name amongst the list. Jean Bernard Petite. That must be the man she’d nicknamed Monsieur Cheval. He’d left in an angry huff, she recalled, throwing down his bidder’s paddle. He’d also been one of the last few in the race for the Isidore Bonheur.

  She pondered him. If his wife had thrown a fit over a plate, perhaps she’d done the same when he’d failed to win the statue. Could he have been driven to steal it to shut her up? It was a stretch, but having seen their petty behavior firsthand, Lacey wouldn’t put it past them.

  She cross-checked Gina’s bidders list against her own auctioneer’s notes and saw that Jean Bernard Petite had the Exeter Airport Hotel listed as his address. So the couple weren’t staying in Wilfordshire, but at least an hour’s drive away.

  Lacey wondered how they were negotiating the festival situation. They must be driving in each day and spending the whole time in Wilfordshire, attending the various races and events, before heading back in the evening. Since the statue had been stolen during the evening or early hours of the morning, Jean Bernard would had to have been hanging around the Lodge for quite a while to get the chance. Maybe someone there saw him.

  It wasn’t a huge amount to go on, but it was certainly better than nothing.

  She started the car engine, Chester sleepily raising his head at the noise, then headed to the Lodge. She parked around back, beside the bright pink mini, then went straight to the drawing room and up to the bar. If Jean Bernard had been killing time at the Lodge, then he was probably killing it there.

  “It’s Tony, right?” Lacey said to the mustachioed mixologist behind the drawing room bar.

  “Toby,” he said, rolling his eyes at the fact she’d gotten his name wrong, like always. “Can I help you, Lacey?”

  “I’m looking for someone. Jean Bernard Petite.”

  “The French guy?” Toby said. “Yeah, he’s in here every night with his wife. Weird couple. He seems perpetually stressed, and she cries a lot. They drink whiskey until a taxi picks them up at ten.”

  “Did you happen to see them the night the statue was stolen?”

  Toby twiddled the ends of his moustache thoughtfully. “Yeah. They were laughing at that Ukrainian woman. She came in blind drunk.”

  Lacey nodded. This was definitely the night of the theft, the one she wanted to know about. “Did they stay long?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Their taxi picked them up at ten, like normal.”

  Lacey considered it. Oxana got back before the couple left, so there was still a brief window of time for one of them to steal the statue.

  “Was there any point where you noticed either of them sitting alone?” she asked.

  “Nope. They were together the whole time. Totally co-dependent.”

  “And when they left, did you notice them holding any
thing?”

  Again, he shook his head. “Something statue-sized? Nah. As far as I remember, they left empty-handed like they do every night. I know it’s busy at the moment, but I’m pretty sure I’d notice someone walking off with a statue stuffed under their sweater.”

  Lacey nodded. This didn’t seem to be getting her anywhere. And the mustachioed mixologist might well be confident in his memories of not having seen anyone leave the Lodge with the statue, but the reality was someone had.

  *

  Lacey headed down the steps of the Lodge, feeling just as baffled as ever. Chester trotted beside her, and the two headed across the parking lot for the Volvo.

  On the way, Lacey spotted someone she recognized. Short, plump, and bald, it was Dustin Powell, lucky bidder number one from the auction. Also one of the auction-goers who had cancelled his purchase. She hazarded a wave.

  The man spotted her and waved back. “Hello there,” he said genially.

  “Dustin. How are you?” Lacey asked.

  “Happy to be alive,” he joked, patting his round tummy. “I’ve heard not everyone who attended your auction was quite so lucky.”

  Lacey tensed. It was a weird comment for him to make, and she wasn’t sure whether it was just gallows humor.

  “Are you staying at the Lodge?” she asked conversationally, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of the grand building.

  “I was,” he replied. “But I decided to check out early. I don’t want to get burglarized. Or… you know…” He mimed slicing a finger across his neck, then chuckled again, too loudly and far too jovially for Lacey’s taste.

  Her frown deepened. This felt like more than just black humor. It felt like nerves.

  Suddenly, Lacey felt suspicious of the portly man. He’d been in the running for the Isidore Bonheur after all, even if he had dropped out early in the race. And Lacey had only really struck him off her suspect list because he’d won other items at the auction and paid for them, and it seemed odd for someone to be honest on the one hand and a crook on the other. But maybe that was exactly what he wanted her to think.

  Lacey’s mind began racing at a mile a second. Chester whined, looking perturbed as he often did when she frowned too deeply.

  “So how come you’re back here then?” she asked. “If you checked out early?”

  “The menu,” he said, tapping his stomach again. “I had to come back for this evening’s grouse. No one else in town serves grouse fresh from the field, served a different way every evening!”

  Lacey nodded. The shooting club wasn’t back to full operation, as far as she was aware, but clearly they were partaking in some activities again.

  Dustin licked his lips. “It’s roast grouse with bread sauce on Mondays. Roast grouse with braised cabbage, celeriac purée, and sauce Albert on Tuesdays. Mousseline of grouse with pearl barley, savoy cabbage, pancetta, and red wine on Wednesdays.” He began counting on his fingers. “Thursday is roast grouse with blackberries and port wine. Friday is pine-scented grouse with cobnuts, haggis, and neeps ’n’ tatties. Then Saturday is roast grouse with creamed root vegetables, stuffed cabbage, and elderberries, and Sunday is a spin on the traditional roast—Yorkshire grouse with black pudding and greengages.”

  Lacey raised her eyebrows. “You’ve memorized the menu? Are you a food critic or something?”

  “A blogger,” he said.

  “Ah. A food blogger.”

  “No, no,” he corrected. “A grouse blogger.”

  Lacey paused. That was an unusual hobby to say the least.

  “I’d love to read it,” Lacey said, as an idea started formulating in her head.

  “You would?” Dustin replied. He looked thrilled. Presumably, not many people shared his interest in grouse. “You can find it at fat man eats dot com.”

  “Thanks,” Lacey said. “I will.”

  She bade farewell to Dustin and headed back to the car with Chester. Once inside, she retrieved her cell phone and connected to the internet. She typed in the address of Dustin’s blog and began to read.

  Sure enough, he’d written very long, very detailed, almost blow by blow accounts of every single mouthful of grouse he’d eaten. He’d included the dates and the times—right down to the minute. There was an entry for every single day that week, including the evening that Hugh was murdered. So unless Dustin had a stomach of steel, the likelihood of him lugging his grouse-filled body all the way to Tolleton Green to commit murder—before going home and casually writing up another entry into his blogging odyssey—was rather remote.

  Dustin Powell was another dead end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Evening fell, bringing little respite from the heat of the day. It was the sort of oppressive mugginess that suggested a thunderstorm was coming.

  Lacey sat on the picnic bench at the end of her garden, a glass of red wine in one hand, her notes laid out in front of her. She’d gone through her entire list of auction attendees and rewatched the footage that Gabe had sent over. She’d ended up with not a single new clue. Amongst the tourists who’d attended, none of them stood out as particularly dodgy. Of course, when you’re dealing with lots of Cayman Island tax haven types, it’s not always possible to work out exactly how they made their money, but on the surface it didn’t seem as if she’d been harboring any mafiosos.

  She stared at her notes. She must have missed something.

  She glanced over the hedge at Gina’s house. It was in darkness.

  Ever since Lacey’s discovery of the Kiss-Me-Quicks, coupled with Gina’s strange, shifty behavior, Lacey had flitted back and forth on her worry about Gina being the culprit. On one hand, she could see the plausibility of an attempt to get back at a nasty person backfiring on her. But on the other hand, she couldn’t imagine Gina staying quiet about it either. If she had “poisoned” Hugh by accident, then Lacey would surely be the first person she turned to, because Gina had no one else, and she had no ability to keep a secret, nor much of a filter. Gina wouldn’t lie to her.

  But she was hiding something…

  Lacey put it out of her mind. She’d drive herself crazy thinking about it. What she really needed was a second pair of eyes.

  She retrieved her cell phone from her pocket and scrolled through her contacts. Naomi would be useless. She couldn’t sleuth her way out of a paper bag. Her mom would just panic that Lacey had gotten herself into yet another sticky situation. Suzy was too young and inexperienced to offer much support. That left Tom.

  Lacey had been avoiding calling him. Ever since she’d met Emmanuel in the patisserie, she’d felt a strange sense of betrayal. It was silly, she knew that much, especially considering how she’d kept Colin a secret from him. But she just couldn’t understand why Tom wouldn’t tell her something so important, and would just leave her to find out for herself.

  Still, they’d have to speak eventually. Why not now?

  She hit dial. The phone rang several times. Then it crackled as it was answered on the other side.

  As it connected, Lacey could tell immediately from the background noise that Tom was still at the patisserie. He was working himself into an early grave.

  “Tom’s phone,” came the warm Kenyan accent of Emmanuel.

  Lacey was thrown. She removed the phone from her ear and checked the caller ID. She’d definitely called Tom’s personal number. “Emmanuel? What are you doing answering Tom’s cell?”

  “I’m Mr. Forrester’s assistant now,” he replied jovially.

  Lacey was so shocked she almost knocked over her wine. How had the charming boy she’d met on the counter earlier gone from till operator to assistant in one working day? And how had Tom, once again, failed to tell her anything about it?

  “This is Lacey. Tom’s partner. We met earlier.”

  “I remember,” Emmanuel said. Then in a loud, bright voice, he added, “How can I help you, Lacey?”

  It was quite obvious he was attempting to get Tom’s attention and drop a le
ss than subtle hint.

  “I wanted to speak to Tom,” Lacey said.

  “Let me see if he can talk,” Emmanuel said. “He has a last-minute wedding cake testing tomorrow morning, so he’s just preparing all the batches.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lacey interjected. She’d seen the amount of work Tom undertook to prepare all the wedding cake samples for testing and already knew he’d be too busy to focus on her even if he did have the courtesy to try. “I’ll catch up with him some other time.”

  She ended the call before Emmanuel had a chance to say any more, and sat back with a sigh of disappointment.

  What was going on with Tom? She felt like she hadn’t seen him in a million years. He was busy with work, she knew that, so then why was he still accepting more? It wasn’t written in law that he had to take on every bride-to-be that called him to make their wedding cake! And she couldn’t help but feel that if he cared for her as much as he said he did, he’d turn down the extra work and prioritize spending time with her. At this stage, it was starting to feel like he was deliberately keeping himself busy. Had Tom gotten cold feet?

  Just then, her cell started ringing on the tale, emitting vibrations on the wood. From the other side of the kitchen, Chester barked.

  “I’ve got it,” she told him, scooping up her phone. Only then did she see the name flashing at her. David. “Great,” she muttered. “What does he want?”

  Her ex always had a knack for calling her at the most inopportune moment. Right now, when she was questioning her relationship, was knee deep in a murder investigation, and had potentially wasted thousands of pounds on a load of stock she couldn’t sell, was of course the perfect time. It was like he had a sixth sense, and could sense from all the way across the ocean that she’d hit her lowest point.

  Chester barked again at the continued ringing. She hadn’t answered the call yet. Nothing David ever said was good, and she wasn’t sure she could handle yet another blow. Then she took the plunge and hit the green button.