by Fiona Grace
Her heartbeat began to race. She hurried toward the French doors, and was still a few meters away when she noticed that one wasn’t closed, but standing an inch or two open. A shiver ran down her spine.
But the moment Lacey reached the door, she immediately realized what had happened. It wasn’t another break-in at all. The keys were dangling in the lock (as they would be if someone had locked it) and the bolt was sticking out (as it would if it had been turned into the locking position). And even the dead bolt had been slid across the door, though it had not entered the catch.
Gina! Lacey thought.
Her neighbor had taken it upon herself to see to the store’s garden, claiming she could cultivate a green thumb in anyone, even a New Yorker like Lacey. She must’ve come to the store at night to do some watering in the moonlight (according to Gina, it’s the perfect time for it; plants love the combination of cool air and soft white light). But the infamously scatty woman had evidently gone through all the required steps to secure the back door again after her apart from the first and most obvious one—shutting the damn thing!
Lacey couldn’t help feeling furious. The store was her pride and joy and anything could’ve happened with the place left unsecured like that! Though Wilfordshire was generally safe, it would only take one opportunistic lowlife to notice the door standing open from the footpath behind the garden to decide to strike.
Thinking of all the things she’d say to scold Gina over this, Lacey shut the door and locked it properly.
But before she had a chance to make the cup of tea she so desperately needed, she heard the front doorbell jingle. She diverted to the main store to see who had entered.
It was an innocent-looking duo—mom and young daughter—and they smiled at Lacey. She was so rattled, she had to force herself to smile in response. But in a split second, Lacey was able to put her problems aside and put her game face on.
“How are you guys today? Can I help you with anything in particular?”
She maneuvered from behind the counter to approach them. At the same moment, the door swung open again and in waltzed Taryn.
Great, Lacey thought. That’s just what I need.
Her nemesis was obviously here to taunt her about being at a murder scene once again, only this time it would be in front of customers too!
“I need to talk to you about the footpath round the back of the gardens,” Taryn said, launching into a monologue. “The hedges are overgrown and now the local kids are wedging old cans of energy drink into it.”
“Can it wait?” Lacey asked her with an imploring tone. She nodded her head toward the pair standing patiently next to the shelf of frosted crystal figurines. “I have customers.”
Taryn, who was always so single-minded, turned her head and flinched at the sudden presence of two people whom she’d evidently failed to even notice were there.
“When is convenient…?” she began to say, but her voice trailed off. Then her mouth dropped open as an expression of genuine disbelief appeared on her face.
Confused by what had elicited the reaction, Lacey snapped her head toward the woman and child. In an instant, she realized what Taryn had seen.
There, on the shelf behind the mother’s head, nestled amongst the figurines, was the missing antique sextant.
“Did you put that there?” Lacey asked the woman.
“I’m sorry, what?” the woman said, looking perplexed.
“That!” Lacey exclaimed, stepping closer to the pair and pointing at the sextant.
The woman glanced at it fretfully. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“That’s not what I asked. Did you bring it in with you and put it on the shelf?”
There was a slightly manic tone to her voice, Lacey was aware, but if there’d ever been a time where madness was justifiable, it was now! Because an item belonging to a murdered man was now in her possession. She being the very same person that had called in the body, and it being the very same item that Buck very well may have been murdered for! If she’d been on the jury during her trial, she’d have no doubt over her guilt at all!
“Maybe we should come back another time,” the woman said suddenly, sounding disconcerted. “You seem to be busy.”
She started to shoo her child toward the exit.
“But I want a ballerina!” the girl wailed.
“Wait,” Lacey said to the woman. “This is important. I really need to know. Was this here when you came in?”
“Yes, of course it was,” the woman said, her tone now brusque with fear. “Now leave me alone.”
She shoved her daughter, and the little girl began crying. The mother didn’t stop. She whisked the child away, leaving Lacey standing there reeling.
She stared at the sextant, unable to believe it.
“Well,” came Taryn’s haughty voice. “Isn’t this a turn up for the books?”
Lacey’s gaze darted back to her. “Was it you? Did you put that there?”
“Me?” Taryn exclaimed. “You literally just saw me walk in!”
“Sure, I saw you walk in through the front. But what about the back? You have easy access to my back door via the gardens. You were saying so yourself just a moment earlier.”
Taryn looked unmoved by her insinuation. “Out of the two of us, you’re by far the more likely person to have put it there.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Lacey.
Lacey balked. “I… I…” she stammered, unable to get the words out. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Then how did it get there?” Taryn demanded, her voice warbling with malevolent glee. “What is it doing here?”
But there were no words. Lacey had no idea how the missing sextant had reappeared in her store, nor what it was doing sitting innocently on the shelves amongst the frosted crystal figurines.
“The back door was open,” she said. “They must’ve come through there.”
They. Who did she mean by they? Buck’s murderer? The man who’d suffocated him on the beach? Or just a burglar? Whoever it was, they were a criminal, and they’d found their way into her store!
“Well, there’s one thing we know for certain now,” Taryn said. “Whoever stole the sextant off of Buck has a personal connection to you.”
“How do we know that?” Lacey demanded.
“Because they returned the sextant to you.”
Lacey paused. As much as she hated to admit it, Taryn was right. Whoever burglarized Buck’s hotel room hadn’t done it for personal gain. They’d done it for her.
“Don’t touch anything,” Lacey said. “There might be evidence. Footprints. Fingerprints.”
But Taryn’s expression had taken a sadistic turn, and Lacey noticed she was taking small steps backward toward the exit.
“Sure…” Taryn said, making it obvious just how much she was loving seeing Lacey flounder like this.
Lacey knew full well what Taryn was planning. Her nemesis was going to call the police on her.
“Taryn, wait…”
But it was too late. Taryn bolted, running out the front door, her hand already reaching into her pocket, presumably for her cell phone.
Lacey ran, too; not after Taryn, but toward her counter where the telephone was.
She grabbed the received and jabbed the hash key followed by the number 4. After everything that had happened with Iris Archer’s murder, she’d programmed the local Wilfordshire police into her speed dial settings. At the time, she’d lamented the fact they were her fourth most dialed number (after Naomi, Tom and her mother) but now she was glad for it. The quicker she spoke to Superintendent Turner, the quicker she’d be able to mitigate against Taryn’s accusations.
Through the speaker, she heard the call begin ringing. Then the call connected and Lacey heard the sound of the far-too-familiar greeting.
“Good morning, Wilfordshire police, how can I help you?”
“I need to speak with Superintendent Turner,” Lacey said.
“He’s not in the office yet.
Can I take a message? What’s it about?”
“Can you transfer me to his cell?”
The woman on the other end paused. “No, I’m sorry that isn’t possible.”
“I know it is,” Lacey said, recalling the numerous times she’d seen him take work calls on his personal cell with her very own eyes. She knew she was starting to sound desperate now. “Please. I know Karl personally. He’ll want to take my call.”
“Can you give me your name please?”
“Lacey Doyle.”
The woman repeated her name aloud, but Lacey was still speaking, and her desperate pleas drowned out her words.
“Please, it’s important, I need to—”
“—Lacey?” The voice of Superintendent Turner came through the speaker.
Lacey paused. “Wait. What? You’re there?”
“I just walked into the station and overheard your name. What’s going on?”
Lacey tightened her grip on the phone, wondering if she was about to make a terrible mistake, but knowing full well that she had no other option.
She swallowed, hard.
“I have some very important information related to the murder of Buckland Stringer.”
CHAPTER TEN
Superintendent Turner’s shadow stretched over Lacey. She’d slumped into one of the fashionable armchairs in the Nordic corner of her store while she’d been waiting for the detectives to arrive, and he was now standing directly in front of a stylish bronze 1970s Art Deco overreach floor lamp. Its beams were casting a bright halo of light all around him and turning him into a big, black looming silhouette.
“Please. Sit down,” Lacey repeated, squinting against the glare.
The detective took a cursory glance at the bright orange velour couch, then his gaze flicked back to meet hers. He flipped open his notebook.
“Tell me again what happened,” he began. “And by ‘what happened,’ I mean what you know to have happened, not what you guess could have happened, or assume might have happened, or figured was probably most likely to have happened.”
Lacey felt herself cringe internally; not because of the tone the detective was taking with her, of a displeased schoolmaster, but because he was so on the nose in his assessment of her. She did have a habit of assuming and supposing and guessing and figuring. It was half the reason she always landed herself in hot water.
Just then, DCI Beth Lewis turned to look over her shoulder from where she was standing beside the shelves. She’d been gazing intently at the sextant this whole time, her hands deep in the pockets of her camel-colored trench coat. As she removed her hands from her pockets, taking her notebook out of one and a pen out of the other, the fabric made a pleasing swishing noise.
“So you noticed the sextant was there when you opened up the store this morning,” she said, with a ponderous tone and a slightly furrowed brow. “Is that correct?”
Lacey looked from one detective to the next. The pair of them looked like ghoulish apparitions.
“Yes,” she said. Then she backtracked. “No, not quite. I mean, not right away.”
She rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. She’d already been through everything with Superintendent Turner. Repeating it all over again was frustrating, especially because Lacey knew it was a police tactic to try to find inconsistencies in her statements. She’d have to be very careful about how she relayed the story for a second time.
“I came in through the front of the store,” she said with precision, visualizing the moment again. “I headed straight through this room into the auction room and toward the kitchenette to make a cup of tea. I felt a breeze as I entered and noticed the back door was open. My friend Gina is doing up the garden. She likes to water under moonlight. She must’ve left it open last night. She’s quite scatty. She always forgets to lock her gate and then her sheep come and graze on my lawn.”
She trailed off. DCI Lewis’s eyebrows were slowly rising, and Lacey knew that one of the surest signs of a liar was someone who gave way too much useless information. The extra detail about Gina might be easily construed that way, but it was the truth, and it did explain why the door had been left open. Lacey decided it was relevant information, albeit convoluted, so she continued with her explanation.
“Before I had a chance to do anything about the back door, the bell in here rang.” She pointed at it—as if it was evidence that proved she wasn’t a blathering madwoman—but neither of the detectives looked, and she continued to squirm under their scrutiny. “So I came back in to see to my customer, a woman and her daughter. My neighbor Taryn, from the boutique next door, she came in to talk about the footpath behind our gardens, and then we both sort of spotted the sextant at the same time. The customer swore she didn’t bring it in with her, but I didn’t see her enter so there’s a chance she might have.”
She noticed Superintendent Turner’s frown deepen, and realized she’d slipped in a might.
“Sorry,” she said, her voice trailing away. “That’s just an assumption.”
“Was that recording?” DCI Lewis asked, pointing her pen at the security camera in the corner of the store. “We could check to see if the woman brought it in with her.”
Lacey shook her head. “I hadn’t even booted up the system yet.”
Superintendent Turner rolled his eyes. “I’ll never understand store owners scrimping on their security systems. You know Taryn next door has a top of the line one, state of the art. HD quality. I bet you couldn’t find a better system in Downing Street. It’s been a godsend for establishing alibis.”
Lacey folded her arms. “Taryn’s business is a little more established than mine, Karl.”
She used his Christian name, as she often did when he was annoying her and she felt like he’d lost his privilege of respect. Then she paused. Something Superintendent Turner had said had flagged in her mind. “What do you mean it’s been a godsend for establishing alibis? Alibis for who? Taryn?”
She couldn’t quite believe she was uttering that aloud. Her neighbor was a meanie, it was true, but a murderer? Surely not.
DCI Lewis turned her head sharply to her partner and glared at him, as if she could communicate her disapproval of him accidentally leaking classified information to a civilian telepathically. Maybe she could. Superintendent Turner coughed into his fist awkwardly.
“Does Gina have keys to the store then?” DCI Lewis asked, flipping open her notebook and clicking the top of her pen.
“Yes,” Lacey confirmed.
“Does anyone else?”
“My landlord, Stephen,” Lacey said. She stopped, recalling how she’d bumped into him in the streets just moments before discovering the sextant in her store. Could he have put it there? He had access, after all. But Stephen? Her unassuming landlord?
The two detectives were now glaring down at her with the most suspicious looks, and Lacey realized she’d trailed off and was staring into the distance as her paranoid brain found suspicion in everyone.
“Lacey?” Superintendent Turner asked. “Did you think of something relevant?”
Lacey shook her head. “No. It’s nothing.”
The last thing she wanted to do was point the finger at anyone, or draw the detectives suspicions toward them.
“Is there anyone else you can think of who might be able to access your store?” DCI Lewis asked, steering the conversation back on track.
“No,” Lacey said. “Actually, the tenants who leased the store before me might. They left in a hurry, without giving notice. Didn’t pay their bills, left a valuable, antique lamp shade behind, so I can imagine them going off with the keys as well. Oh, except they’re both deceased so I guess it’s not likely to be them.”
Superintendent Turner ground his teeth.
“Sorry,” Lacey muttered, realizing she’d done it again.
DCI Lewis sank into the gaudy orange couch. “Say someone did come in through your back door,” she began.
Superintendent Turner let out a frustrated sigh and p
aced away, taking his turn to peer at the sextant.
The female detective rolled her eyes in a don’t mind him kind of way. “What do you think would be their reason for returning the sextant?”
Lacey shifted uncomfortably. She knew it was unwise to ruminate on this with the police—how many criminals had been caught out by the old, “if you had done it, what would you have done?” method, after all?—but it was too tempting for Lacey to resist.
“To frame me,” she blurted.
Beth Lewis nodded as if she’d thought the same thing. “Why do you think someone would want to frame you? Have you made any enemies?”
Lacey just about managed to hold her tongue and not blurt out Taryn’s name. Instead, she calmly replied, “I don’t think that’s why. It’s not someone trying to frame me because I’m they’re enemy, they’re framing me because I’m the obvious suspect. I found the body. I sold the sextant. I have more connections to Buck than anyone else in Wilfordshire, and the clearest motive. If there’s anyone to set up, it would be me.”
DCI Lewis nodded slowly. Lacey tried to read her eyes but it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. At least there was a chance with DCI Lewis that she’d consider Lacey’s differing opinion. Superintendent Turner was certainly incapable of it.
Just then the front door swung violently open, making the bell above it clang rather than tinkle, and a flash of bright pink swirled into the store.
Lacey sat straight up, surprised to see Daisy was staggering in on her pink high heels. Her eyes were wet with tears. Mascara ran down her cheeks.
“There you are!” she bellowed, pointing a shaking finger at Superintendent Turner. She was filled with rage. “I shouldn’t have to ask the local barmaid if she knows where I can find the detectives on the case of my husband’s murder!” Her voice grew shriller with each word.
Lacey felt the need to avert her eyes. Daisy’s grief was indisputable, but it looked far closer to fury than sadness, and the whole thing left Lacey feeling uncomfortable.