A Date With Death: Cozy Private Investigator Series (Flora Lively Mysteries Book 2) (20 page)

Jack tipped his head, his expression approving. ‘Well done, Miss Detective. Very well done. We have his phone in evidence already, it will be easy enough to check that.’

‘So do you think Nick might be involved?’ she said, keeping her voice low. They left the library and stopped in the main hall.

‘He might be. Don’t tell anyone about this, okay? But keep your distance from him, just in case.’

‘Don’t worry, I will,’ Flora said. ‘There’s something about him that gives me the creeps.’

She walked out onto the lawn with Jack. He was heading back to the clearing, but Flora couldn’t face going that way, even though to get to the Nook she’d either have to walk past it, or take a detour right around the grounds. Right now she’d take the detour, no problem.

‘If you see Marshall will you ask him to come to the house?’ she said. Jack nodded, but his face seemed to crumple just a little at the mention of Marshall’s name. As he walked away, Flora called after him. ‘Will you let Eduardo go now? Celeste is bound to ask me.’

‘Not yet,’ Jack said, ‘but probably soon. Tell her not to stress it. And tomorrow we’ll be back with a warrant for the whole house. Just tidying up loose ends, nothing to worry about.’ He strode away. Flora watched his tall frame cross the lawn, then turned to go back into the house. Celeste was standing just behind her.

‘Flora,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a problem.’

***

‘Pass it up to me, then. Come on. Before anyone comes out.’

‘I can’t reach. I’m not as tall as you. Hold on a minute.’

Flora swore under her breath and fumbled for the controls to lower the platform at the back of the van. She’d never operated it at night before, and she hoped it wouldn’t be too noisy, wouldn’t draw attention from the house. Celeste was inside already – jumping up had been no problem for her – and she was hopping from foot to foot, calling down impatiently to Flora.

‘For goodness sake, will you just get on with it. I’m freezing my arse off out here.’

Flora glared up at her friend. She loaded four of the boxes onto the platform and reached for the button to raise it.

‘Might I just remind you,’ she hissed, ‘that I’m doing this as a favour to you. If Marshall finds out we loaded these in the middle of the night he’ll be really angry.’

‘Whatever.’ Celeste’s face appeared over the edge of the van. ‘I am grateful. But can we save the lecture for later and just get this done?’

She slid the boxes off one by one, then Flora lowered the platform again.

‘What have you got in these, anyway?’ she said. She jumped up with the second load, which was thankfully also the last. At the top she stood back and let Celeste do the lifting. It didn’t bother her conscience one bit.

‘It’s just stuff,’ Celeste said, huffing. ‘My things, you know. I haven’t got a home right now, haven’t got a base. So I had to pack everything up and bring it over with me.’

‘But you couldn’t have flown with this lot,’ Flora said, leaning against the inside of the van with her arms folded. ‘How did you get it over here?

‘Most of it was already here, stored at a friend’s. Do you think you could help, instead of just standing there?’

‘Not really, no.’ Flora grinned into the darkness. She was taking a perverse pleasure in seeing her friend do some proper work for a change. And for a tall woman, Celeste was surprisingly weak. Why, Flora could have shifted those boxes in half the time. ‘Not there,’ she said, pointing. ‘You’ve got them stacked all wrong. They need to be at the rear of the van.’

Celeste straightened up. The moon gave off just enough light for Flora to see her furious expression. ‘You waited until I had them all stacked at the side to tell me that?’

‘Sorry,’ Flora said, hiding her smile behind her hand. ‘It’s dark. I kinda thought it would be obvious.’

‘Kinda thought,’ mimicked Celeste. ‘You sound more and more like your American friend every day.’

‘I’m so lucky to have so many friends,’ Flora said, irritation rising up through her body. ‘But none of you can seem to remember each other’s names. “Your friend” this and “your friend” that. You and Marshall and even Jack are at it all the time. It’s pathetic.’

‘Huh. Lucky you. Marshall and Jack fighting over you must be lots of fun.’

‘No, actually. It isn’t. And they aren’t fighting over me anyway.’ Flora gave up and walked to the moonlit opening at the back of the van. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. Marshall will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

Celeste finished stacking and jumped down, brushing off her clothes while Flora locked up.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘so Marshall’s going to set off first thing, right? And you’ve told him not to look in the boxes?’

‘Celeste,’ Flora said, her voice weary, ‘Marshall is not interested in snooping through your personal belongings. He’ll leave after breakfast, and he has the address in Calais. It’s all sorted. Although I’m still not sure I understand why we had to get the stuff out of the house tonight.’

‘I told you, it’s because of Jack’s warrant.’ Celeste’s tone was instantly defensive. ‘He’ll be here in the morning, getting into everything. And he’s been weird with me lately, don’t you think? I just wanted to get this stuff out of the way, that’s all. It’s got nothing to do with Alberto and Gabriella.’

Flora couldn’t be bothered to point out that if it had nothing to do with Alberto and Gabriella, Jack wouldn’t be remotely interested in it.

‘What do you mean, he’s been weird with you?’ she said. She felt rather than saw Celeste’s shrug.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I guess he’s got a lot on his mind. I’m only guessing this, but he might be under pressure to step down from the investigation.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he knows us, dummy. Don’t you think his professional distance might be compromised?’

‘But Jack is doing a great job. And he’s solved it now, hasn’t he? His bosses have got to be impressed with that.’

‘Ha.’ Celeste gave her trademark laugh. ‘He hasn’t got the tiara back. Or caught Gabriella’s killer.’ She looked at Flora sideways. ‘Besides, he wasn’t doing such a great job when he arrested your friend, was he?’

Flora flashed her a look, and Celeste clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean Marshall. He wasn’t doing such a great job when he arrested Marshall.’

They reached the house and said goodbye, Flora refusing Celeste’s offer of going up to her room for a drink. It had been an exhausting evening, topping off the oddest day, and Flora wasn’t sorry that this would be her last night. They’d forgone their special dinner in light of Gabriella’s murder, and Nick hadn’t even showed up at the house. Raquel and Vincenzo had been unusually subdued, while Celeste and Eduardo had bickered all the way though the meal. Only Sidney seemed upbeat, and Flora assumed this was because he’d be seeing the back of the lot of them tomorrow.

She walked the long way round to the yurt, and found Marshall sitting up in his bed, waiting for her.

‘Where have you been?’ he said.

‘Oh, just chatting with Celeste.’ She hated lying to him, it felt so wrong. Her cheeks began to burn and she couldn’t meet his gaze. She busied herself with her holdall, stuffing unworn clothes into it, pulling out worn ones ready to go in a bin bag for washing.

‘Flora?’

She looked around. Marshall’s expression was not what she expected. He was looking at her with something like pity.

‘What?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘What is?’

‘
It
is. It’s okay.’ He smiled and scooted across the bed. He lowered his voice and put a hand up to his mouth as though sharing a secret. ‘I know what you did tonight.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You don’t have to apologise. Celeste is a piece of work, but she sure knows how to wrap you around her little finger.’ He winked at her, then reached over to turn out the light. ‘I’m gonna have to start getting some tips off her.’

Chapter 12

Flora woke up with a dry mouth and a sore head. She’d hardly slept at all, had lain awake most of the night listening to her thoughts. She couldn’t bear that Marshall had been watching them load up the van, and that he knew she’d tried to hide it from him. That he was being so nice about the Calais trip just made it worse. Images of Gabriella had been playing a loop on the screen of her overactive mind, as well. She could hear the Spanish girl’s voice –
en la honda
– and hear Jack telling her its translation again and again. In the deep. What the hell did that even mean? Finally, as the sun began its inevitable rise over the far side of Hanley Manor, Flora had fallen into a fitful sleep. And dreamed of Gabriella, the girl with the wild black hair and the big suspicious eyes, hiding behind every corner, whispering ‘
En la honda’
to Flora every time they met.

‘You’re not really a morning person, are you?’ Marshall said as they dressed on opposite sides of the curtain. He’d been trying to engage her in conversation for the past fifteen minutes, and Flora knew she sounded like a real grouch.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Got a lot on my mind.’

They left the Nook just before eight. ‘I’ll be sad to see the back of it,’ Flora said. She’d already packed her bag. She hoped the scent of the yurt would stay in her unworn clothes for a long time. Despite everything that had happened, sharing that space with Marshall had been special. Well, maybe interesting was a better way of putting it.

‘I’ll be
glad
to see the back of it,’ Marshall said. ‘Not sad.’

‘Really?’ Flora was surprised. ‘Don’t you think it’s been …’ She couldn’t finish her sentence. She really didn’t know where to begin.

On the way over to the main house, Flora filled Marshall in on Jack’s translation of Gabriella’s final words. Jack had asked her to keep their conversation to herself, but she didn’t think this would count as classified information.

‘In the deep?’ Marshall repeated. ‘You’re right – that is a weird thing for a dying woman to say.’

They rounded the front of the house, and saw Vincenzo, helmeted and leathered-up, tearing off down the driveway.

‘Wonder where he’s going in such a hurry,’ Marshall said. ‘Jeez, we haven’t even had breakfast yet. Hope there’s some left. I’m so hungry I could eat the north end of a south-bound bear.’

Flora turned to Marshall, her eyebrows high. ‘You could what?’ But then a thought hit her. She grabbed his arm. ‘Marshall, what if Gabriella did know who I was? I mean, what if she wasn’t delirious or anything. And what if she was trying to talk to me in English?’

‘But you said she spoke in Spanish.’

‘Yes, but maybe she mixed up her words. People do that, don’t they? So she starts off with something that sounds Spanish –
en la
– but I could have heard that part wrong. And then she switches to English and says Honda.’ Flora stared at Marshall, pulling him along with her eyes. ‘You know, Honda? As in motorbike.’

Marshall looked at her, then back along the gravel driveway. ‘As in, Vinny’s motorbike?’

Flora nodded. Excitement flooded her body. ‘Yes, yes. What if Gabriella was trying to tell me that it was Vincenzo who killed her?’

Marshall walked on a way, with Flora hot on his heels. ‘I don’t know, Flora. Didn’t you say Jack had a theory about Gabriella being stabbed by the person she was trying to sell the diamonds to?’

‘Well, Jack doesn’t know everything, does he? And his theory is exactly that – a theory. What if Gabriella and Vincenzo were in it together? He does the dirty deed with Alberto, she slips in after the event and steals the tiara. I saw her, remember. I saw her outside his room that night. Vincenzo gets Raquel, and Gabriella splits the profits with him once she’s got rid of the diamonds.’ She stopped in the middle of the lawn, her mind spinning. ‘It makes perfect sense, don’t you think?’

‘I think I’m hungry,’ Marshall said, carrying on ahead of her. ‘And I think all this thinking of yours is beginning to sound like Flora Lively Investigates again. And I’m not into that. I’m not into that at all.’

But Flora couldn’t stop thinking, not even when Sidney brought out bacon and sausages and a pile of buttered toast that had Marshall’s mouth watering. She ate distractedly, barely tasting the food. There was something that didn’t add up. She wasn’t sure of her new theory, not entirely, but she felt that she was on the verge of understanding everything. Somewhere in her mind there was a nugget of information that was trying to rise up and kick her. But whatever it was kept being drowned out by all the other stuff. Celeste and her blasted boxes. Alberto blackmailing Celeste. Nick and Gabriella already knowing each other in Spain. Vincenzo and his motorbike. Raquel. Eduardo’s sword, sticking out of Alberto’s stomach. And Marshall, his baseball cap on the floor that night. The note. That bloody note.

‘I’m off,’ Marshall said when he’d finally finished stuffing his face. ‘If I leave now I can be back by tonight, and then we can get out of here for good. That okay with you, boss?’

Flora gave him a weak smile. ‘Just drive safely, okay? I can’t cope with any more problems right now.’

She walked him out to the van, waiting while he checked the load was properly strapped in.

‘What will happen to their film now?’ Marshall asked. ‘Do you think
Una
Cita con la Muerte
will ever make it to the big screen?’

‘I doubt it.’ Flora laughed, picturing herself in that ridiculous costume. ‘Shame though. It could have been the start of a brand new career for me.’

‘Another new career? I thought the investigating would be enough for you.’ He jumped down and locked up the van, then walked around to the driver’s door. ‘This place I’m going to, in Calais. What is it, exactly?’

‘It’s a friend of Celeste’s. She’s going to store the boxes for her for a few weeks. Just until Celeste and Eduardo get themselves sorted with a place.’

‘A place in Paris, you said? That’s where they’re going to next.’

Flora nodded. ‘The lifestyle of the rich and famous, eh?’

‘Ha! Nick said Rojo Productions is surviving on a shoestring.’

‘Celeste can’t be that badly off, though,’ Flora said, passing him the parcel Sidney had made up with a bacon roll and a drink for the journey. ‘All those designer shoes and handbags. Seems pretty flush to me.’