by Fiona Grace
“Oh, you are there,” David said, sounding surprised. “I was about to leave a voicemail.”
“Ta-da,” Lacey replied unenthusiastically. “How can I help you, David?”
“I wanted to know if you’d gotten the papers through yet.”
“Papers?” Lacey asked.
“The forms. To change your name.”
Lacey was at a loss. “I did that when I moved to the UK.” She distinctly remembered the process with the deed poll.
“No, I mean for all the leftover accounts and things. Remember? You said there were still some accounts you hadn’t changed yet because they all needed different forms, and I said I’d find them for you.”
“I thought you were joking,” Lacey said.
“Why would I be joking?”
It was a good point. David wasn’t exactly known for his sense of humor.
“Are you telling me you researched every old account I’ve not changed to my maiden name?” Lacey asked, feeling incredulous. It seemed extremely petty. “Why?”
“Because I’m engaged to be married,” David stated.
“You are? I thought you split up.”
“That was ages ago,” David replied, emitting a weary sigh. “We’re back together now.”
“Sorry,” Lacey returned wryly. “I guess I don’t commit the comings and goings of your life to my memory anymore.”
David huffed. “Stop making this difficult. The point is, she doesn’t want you using my name anymore. At all. On anything. I know you changed it legally, but there are still things registered in your old name.”
Lacey felt herself tense. “What does it matter? Who cares if my old library card, gym membership, and blood donation card have your name on them? What does she think I’m going to do? Steal her identity?”
David paused for a beat. “Lacey. This is her first marriage. It’s important to her that I enter it with a clean slate.”
“In that case, are you going to stop having brunch with my mother?” Lacey asked. “I can’t imagine the ex-mother-in-law fits into the clean bill she’s hoping for.”
“Lacey!” David barked. “This is ridiculous. You don’t want my name as much as she doesn’t want you using it! So just sign the goddamn paperwork!”
“David, the second your paperwork arrives through my letterbox, I’m throwing it on the bonfire!”
The line went dead. Lacey chucked her phone onto the table. It landed with a thud.
She sunk her head into her hands. She was being petulant, she knew that. But right now, this was the last thing she needed. Some petty administrative work she didn’t have the time for, nor the mental space to devote to.
The sound of knocking made her start. Lacey stood and walked the length of the corridor. She opened the door to DCI Beth Lewis.
“Detective?” Lacey asked, surprised. Her throat went dry. Was she here to arrest her?
“Please,” the woman replied. “We’ve known each other a while now. We should be on first-name terms.”
That was a good sign, Lacey thought. No one would start a conversation with, “We’re on first-name terms. Oh by the way, you’re under arrest.”
“Why are you here?” Lacey asked, reticently.
“I have some news for you.”
“The toxicology report?” Lacey asked, her chest lifting with hope. If the report didn’t identify brunfelsamidine as the toxic agent, then that meant Gina was off the hook. She desperately wanted it to be the case.
Beth gave her a look. “I know I overstep the boundaries with you sometimes,” she said. “But I’m not about to share the results of a toxicology report of a current murder investigation with a civilian, am I?” She gave her head a rueful shake. “I came here to tell you the Isidore Bonheur has been located.”
Lacey was stunned. The theft had been solved?
“You did?” she stammered. “Where was it?”
“That’s the thing,” Beth said. “It was in Hugh Buckingham’s house after all. It was very well hidden so didn’t turn up in our initial search. But my team was in there today for a final check and found it.”
Lacey couldn’t believe it. Oxana had been right all along? Hugh was the thief?
But how? How on earth had that sickly man even managed to sneak into the B&B and steal the statue from right under her nose? And not be noticed by anyone?
“Wait,” Lacey said, suddenly. “The thief and killer aren’t the same person.”
“It looks that way,” Beth said. Then she shifted awkwardly from one foot to the next. “I should go. I just thought you’d like to now.”
“Thank you,” Lacey murmured, shutting the door after her.
She turned, resting her back against the door.
Hugh was the thief. Then did that mean Oxana was the killer? Surely it made the most sense. He took the statue off her, so she went in to steal it back. Maybe she’d poisoned him just to render him unconscious, but in his already unwell state the dose killed him. Maybe she’d failed to steal back the statue because it was so well hidden. It had taken the police two searches to find it, after all.
But there was one problem with the Oxana-as-the-perp theory. Lacey had refused to give her his address. So how had Oxana even known where he lived to steal the statue off him in the first place?
Chester nudged his nose against her hand. She petted his silky ears.
“We need to go to the mansion,” she said.
Chester looked up at her expectantly.
Maybe she was being arrogant in thinking she’d find something the police had missed, or maybe the fact it had taken them two searches of Hugh’s mansion to find the Isidore Bonheur sculpture lent more credibility to the idea that there was something else they’d missed.
She hurried over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of medical gloves. Then she looked back at Chester.
“Let’s get snooping!”
*
Hugh’s mansion looked foreboding in the moonlight. The crime scene police tape was gone, just as Lacey had anticipated following her call with Beth earlier that day, meaning it was no longer under guard. She slid her gloves on anyway; even if the police had finished searching the property, that didn’t mean she should just leave her fingerprints all over the place.
She stepped up onto the porch. The first thing she noted was how lax Hugh’s security had been. No security cameras. No gate. For a rich man, Hugh Buckingham had taken little to no precautions to protect himself from intruders. It was something she’d noticed about England in general, the laissez-faire approach to home security, which was lagging a couple of years behind the U.S. Or a century behind, in Hugh’s case.
She tried the door handle, but found it locked. There was a lock box by the door for a spare key, but it was hanging open and the spare had been removed. Removed, or fallen?
Lacey crouched down, parting the leaves of the shrub beneath. There was the key. Strike one against Beth’s team; if they’d failed to properly put a key back in a lockbox, what else had they failed at?
Lacey unlocked the door and gave it a push, instantly flashing back to the heavy weight of Hugh slumped against it the last time she was here. She shook the memory off and headed inside.
It was eerily quiet in Hugh’s vast hallway. Somewhere in the distance, a clock ticked, but other than that, all was silent. There wasn’t even the background hum of electricity. The main supply to the mansion must have already been cut off.
Lacey switched on her flashlight. Chester’s eyes glowed in the beam.
“You know the drill, boy,” she told him.
He scampered off into the darkness, sniffing for clues.
Lacey shined her light at the window behind the succulent, to see if there was any sign of the X marks. But they were long gone. She briefly wondered if they’d ever been there in the first place.
She headed down the corridor, directing her beam at the various pieces of furniture and decorations as she went. Hugh was clearly a very wealthy man. She spotted an Ar
t Nouveau long-necked vase with a squat baluster.
She went into what appeared to be a study and started poking around, going through drawers and stacks of papers, looking for anything that might be a clue.
Chester had his nose to the floorboards, whimpering. Lacey paced over.
“What is it? What have you found?”
She crouched down. Just poking through the gap in the boards was the corner of what looked like an envelope. Lacey took it between her fingertips and pulled. Sure enough, an envelope came out through the gap.
She didn’t know whether it had been hidden there, or if it had just fallen between the gaps. It was lightly perfumed with a flowery scent and had pink lipstick on the flap, two indicators that it was a love note. Lacey began to read.
Hugh
My love. You know how much you mean to me. How much I adore you. How I have told you a thousand times over that I will marry you. But I simply cannot and will not sign that blasted prenup. Don’t you trust me? It breaks my heart to think you think I’m some gold digger who’s only after your money. I am in love with you! What must I do to prove it? How long must I wait before you trust me? Remember how you said I was too young to make such an important commitment? Well, I say you’re too old not to! My darling, love knows no boundaries, has no age limits. I wish more than anything in the world that we didn’t have to keep our love a secret.
A sudden noise broke Lacey’s concentration. She looked up from the letter and glanced over at Chester. He gave her a head quirk to the side. He’d heard it too.
Lacey discarded the letter on the desktop. There were more immediate and pressing issues to deal with now. She strained to listen. The noise came again, and this time Lacey’s breath caught in her lungs. It was coming from downstairs. It sounded distinctly like the sound of the front door being quietly opened.
Someone else was there.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Lacey crept to the landing and peered through the banister into the moonlit hallway of Hugh Buckingham’s mansion. The door was standing an inch ajar. It swayed slightly back and forth with the gentle breeze. For a brief second, Lacey wondered if maybe she’d just left it open, and the noise she’d heard was the breeze stirring it. But no. She distinctly recalled having closed it carefully behind her, after she’d noticed that the security system was lax. Someone had definitely opened it. But there was no sign of whoever had entered.
Lacey glanced behind her shoulder at Chester, sitting patiently beside the wall. Having him with her always made her feel more calm. She just wished he was able to communicate with her and tell her that everything was okay. Perhaps he could suggest to her that the noise was the cleaner. The house was spotless after all. But even the most loyal of cleaners wouldn’t come to a dead man’s house in the middle of the night. No. There was an intruder. Lacey was sure of it.
She began to creep down the stairs.
Moonlight streaking through the banisters made shadows dance across her body as she moved. Chester, behind, followed in slow synchronization, somehow immediately able to understand he needed to be quiet. Lacey may well have laughed at the sight of him slowly creeping down the steps with his flank against the wall had it not been for the terror pumping through her.
A sudden noise made her freeze. It was coming from the living room she’d passed on her way up the stairs. It sounded like someone was opening a drawer. Shuffling through the papers inside. Now the drawer was being closed, and another opened.
Whoever was in Hugh’s house was looking for something.
She should run. She knew that. She should just bolt for the door and race away. Chester would bite anyone who tried to harm her. But Lacey was too curious to flee. She needed to know who was rummaging around in the murdered man’s belongings. Because whoever it was might just solve the whole damn case.
Lacey took the final step off the staircase, planting her feet firmly on the marble floor of the hallway. She kept her back to the wall and started inching closer and closer to the open doorway of the living room. She reached the wooden door surround, took a breath, then turned her head to steal a quick glance inside the room. She was braced to see a shadowy figure over by the dresser. She was not expecting to see a face just an inch from her own.
Lacey screamed and staggered back, tripping on Chester. She went flying across the slippery marble floor on her backside. Chester few into a frenzy, barking frantically at the suddenly looming figure. Lacey saw a flash of something metal in the moonlight. A crowbar? A candle holder? Whatever weapon the intruder had on them, they were readying themself to bring it crashing down on her head.
Lacey raised an arm up to protect herself.
“Lacey?” came a voice. A familiar voice.
Lacey froze. She opened her eyes—surprised to discover she’d squeezed them shut in anticipation of the blow—and peered through her arm.
“Oxana?” she exclaimed.
The Ukrainian businesswoman was standing there in her Louboutin stilettos with a brass fire poke held above her head. She was completely still, her mouth open with surprise.
Lacey snapped back to the moment. She scrambled up to her feet. “What are you doing with that thing? You frightened me to death!” she exclaimed.
“I frightened you?” Oxana cried. “YOU frightened ME!”
She lowered the fire poke to her side. Lacey dusted herself down. Her heart was still hammering in her chest. Her coccyx was sore from where she’d fallen on it.
“What the heck are you doing here?” she asked Oxana.
“I’m looking for clues,” the woman said brusquely. “The police think I had something to do with Hugh’s death. You?”
Lacey eyed Oxana warily. She didn’t really trust a word that came out of her mouth. But Oxana didn’t need to know that.
“Same,” Lacey finally said, with a guarded air.
Oxana folded her arms, looking put out. “So? Did you find anything?” she demanded.
Lacey wasn’t going to answer that question, not for a second. But it did remind her of the love letter she’d found up in the study. She’d never gotten a chance to see the signature. All she’d been able to glean from it was that Hugh had a young lover, one who was keen to marry him, but whom he was keeping a secret. That didn’t really tell her anything. About half of the men in England were probably in the same situation.
“Nothing yet,” Lacey told Oxana. “You?”
The woman shook her head. “Just lots of accounts. Books upon books. They never tell you that being rich can be so boring.”
She smiled wryly. It might very well have been the first time Lacey had seen Oxana smile. The only other time had been just before she kissed Hugh.
The kiss. Lacey hadn’t given up on it yet. It might still be a clue.
“Hold on,” Lacey said, a lightbulb flashing on in her mind. “How did you know where Hugh lived?”
Lacey herself had records in her auctioneering notes. But Oxana shouldn’t have been privy to such information and Lacey had refused to give it to her. For her to even be here was incriminating enough, because it proved she’d at some point gone to the effort of seeking out Hugh’s address, which was, incidentally, the location of his murder. Oxana had placed herself right in the frame.
“It wasn’t hard to find,” she replied, shrugging it off. “The internet is a marvel.”
Her mention of the internet made Lacey think again about the situation with the failed auction. She’d had a suspicion that Oxana might have done something to cut the connection to make sure she won the Isidore Bonheur. Was that a veiled confession?
“Did the police get in touch with you?” Lacey asked, her mind switching to the stolen statue.
“Not since they questioned me over Hugh’s death. Why do you ask?”
“The statue was found.”
Oxana’s eyes widened with surprise. “My statue? They found my statue? Where was it? Who stole it?”
Lacey wasn’t sure how much she should be telling Oxana. But i
f her behavior tonight was anything to go by, she was something of a blabbermouth. Lacey wouldn’t put it past her to talk herself into a confession. She just needed her ego massaged.
“It looks like you were right,” Lacey said. “They found the statue here. Hugh must’ve stolen it when you were passed out drunk.”
“I knew it!” Oxana exclaimed, stamping the pointy heel of her stiletto into the marble triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Lacey nodded, playing along. “What I don’t understand, though, is how the murder and the theft connect.”
Oxana shrugged. “Maybe they don’t. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence.”
She seemed enthused now she’d learned the police had her statue back. In fact, she was acting like she was vindicated. That now the police knew she’d been right about Hugh stealing her statue, they’d drop their suspicion. But Lacey knew better. She knew how Superintendent Turner ticked. They’d just find a new explanation to fit the scenario. They’d claim Oxana had killed Hugh out of spite, and had left the statue for them to find, knowing it would be returned to her. Come to think of it, that may very well be what had happened. Prickles ran up Lacey’s spine at the thought.
“Now what?” Lacey asked, realizing she was standing in a murdered man’s hallway with the woman who might very well have killed him.
Oxana slapped her hands as if brushing off the dirt. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to the Lodge for a glass of champagne and a bubble bath. If the police found my statue, and know I was right about Hugh being the thief, then my work here is done.”
She barged past Lacey, heading for the doorway. But before she got there, she halted. “Uh-oh.”
Lacey looked up. Lights were flashing through the glass panels either side of the door, illuminating Oxana’s face in alternating whites and blues.
The police had arrived.
A moment later Superintendent Karl Turner stepped into the foyer.
“If it isn’t my favorite amateur sleuth,” he said as his gaze fell to Lacey. “I should’ve known I’d find you here.”
