“I’ve just finished.” Gracie gestured to her empty plate, her pink hair bobbling. “It was absolutely delicious. I haven’t had a lentil bake before and that was just… sumptuous.”
A lentil bake hardly sounded like my idea of fine dining, but Lauren could make anything taste good.
“That’s wonderful. Say, Gracie,” I said, tapping my chin. “I’ve been wondering… have you had much time with the kittens?”
Gracie sat straighter, her eyes lighting up. “Oh no, I haven’t had any time with them. I thought they were strictly off-limits. I mean, I have seen that cute calico kitten running around here and there once in a while, but other than that…”
“They’re normally off-limits,” I said, “but I heard that you’re checking out in a few days and I would hate for you to leave without having had some time with them. You do like kittens, don’t you?”
“Do I like kittens?” Gracie laughed, pressing frail fingers to her mouth. “Goodness, who doesn’t like kittens?”
Trinity, who was seated at the table across from Gracie’s, shot her a look of liquefied hatred. Chrissy had been spending an increasing amount of time with the cats—Marietta and the other assistant, Susan, had allowed it and, apparently, so had Jerry.
“I don’t see Kieran around,” I said, glancing at the doorway. “Is he with you?”
“Oh no, tonight is his night off. The poor man works tirelessly to look after me. He needs his breaks. I suppose I’ll have to wait until he’s back,” she said, slowly. “I was hoping to have some coffee and cupcakes in here. I don’t think I have the strength to wheel myself back to the stairs and get myself into the lift.”
“Of course,” I said. “Or I could take you through to the kitten center right now. And bring you some cupcakes and coffee while you’re there.”
Gracie clasped her hands together. “You would do that?”
“Why not? I can even tell Kieran where you are once he gets here,” I said. “I’ll be around.” Oh, I’d be around, all right. To capture and interrogate the man who had definitely murdered Leanne, possibly Bob, and might be a secret agent in disguise.
That last part wasn’t exactly a given, but still.
“Let me take you through right now. Marietta’s in there and she’ll look after you.” I took hold of the handles of Gracie’s wheelchair and pushed her out of the dining area and into the hallway.
“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me,” she said. “I love animals, I just can’t afford to keep them.”
I unlocked the door to the kitten center for her and brought her through. I caught a whiff of that strange rose perfume but kept walking. Whatever it was or where it was coming from, could wait. I had a murderer to catch.
The dining room was empty, Lauren had gone home, and I hovered by the curtains, keeping them just parted with my fingertips and watching the long driveway that led out of the main gates of the Gossip Inn.
It was just past 7:30pm, and Aunt Gracie was still with the kittens, enjoying coffee and cupcakes, and the joy of purring cats. She’d said she never wanted to leave when I’d dropped her off, and that suited our plan just fine.
“Come on,” I murmured, my eyes narrowed.
A figure appeared at the end of the driveway, wearing a hoodie, hands tucked in their pockets. His pockets. He was finally here.
I flicked the curtains closed and headed out into the hall. “Show time,” I said.
I threw the inn’s doors open and ran out onto the front steps, waving frantically at Kieran, the nurse, who strode up the driveway toward me. He stalled mid-step.
“Kieran!” I called. “Come quick. It’s Gracie!”
He lost his trepidation instantly and sprinted up to me. “What’s going on?” he asked, pulling his hood down, his eyes wild. “Where’s Gracie?”
“She’s around the back of the inn. Oh, this is terrible, I’m so glad you’re here.” I hurried off down the path that led around the side of the inn.
“What’s going on?” Kieran repeated, his steps hot on my heels.
“Georgina offered to show Gracie the Shroom Shed, and as they were going down the back steps, Gracie fell out of her wheelchair.”
“She what?!”
“She fell,” I said, and the lie didn’t bother me one bit, this time. It was interesting that he cared so much for Gracie but had been a stone-cold killer when it came to Leanne. What was that about? Had he just switched off his empathy when harming someone else, or had the murders been committed in fits of rage or passion?
I’d already figured that Kieran knew how to use a gun—he had been in the police academy after all, and a quick research this afternoon, now that I had more context, had shown he had been kicked out of it too.
“—let this happen!” Kieran growled behind me. “She’s an old woman. You’re not supposed to take her anywhere without permission.”
“She gave her permission,” I said.
“She doesn’t know what’s best for her!” Kieran thundered. “I do. I’m the nurse. People are supposed to listen to my advice otherwise more things like this will happen. This is unbelievable.”
“I’ve already called the doctor,” I said. “She says she’s fine, but I wanted to be sure.”
“Where is she?” He pushed past me and ran toward the open doors that led into the basement. “Gracie?” he called.
I stepped up next to him. The space at the bottom of the stairs was empty—the very spot where he expected to find his charge.
Kieran turned on me. “Where is she?” His nostrils flared, his lips peeled back. “Where’s my aunt?”
“Your aunt?” I asked.
Gamma emerged from the bushes at the back of the inn and crept over. She raised a pistol, the black metal dull even in the moonlight, giving me the barest of nods.
“You know what I mean! Where is—“ he cut off mid-sentence, his eyes widening.
My grandmother had pressed the cold barrel of the pistol to the back of his head. “Don’t move, Kieran,” she said, “unless we tell you to.”
The nurse, normally handsome, shrank in on himself. He grew weedy and small, his eyes flicking back and forth. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Hands in front of your body, wrists together.” I removed a cable tie from the front pocket of my apron and waited for him to comply. Once he did, I restrained him. I grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him, and escorted him down the stairs and into the basement.
We’d already set up a chair next to the Shroom Shed. I plonked him down in it while Gamma shut the basement doors behind us and plunged us into the moist dark. The scent of mushrooms was particularly strong next to the shed—Gamma’s pride and joy. Apart from the RPG in the armory.
“Let me go!” Kieran had finally found his voice again, after the initial shock.
Gamma switched on the single bulb that hung in the center of the basement’s first compartment. It cast dull, glowing light on Kieran’s twisted features.
“If you don’t let me go I’ll—”
Gamma pointed the pistol at him, calmly. “You’ll do nothing,” she said, “except what we tell you to do.”
“Shout and you’ll regret it,” I added. “Lie and you’ll regret it. Do anything we don’t like… well, you get the picture.”
“Where’s Gracie?” Kieran spat, but he’d lowered his voice. “What have you done with her?”
“Gracie’s upstairs enjoying some quality time with the kittens in the center,” I said. “And you’re down here because you murdered Bob Bolton and his fiancée Leanne.”
“That’s—”
I walked over to one of the cabinets stored down in the basement and lifted the plastic bag of rings from the top of it. The only reason we hadn’t handed them in to the police yet, or reported Kieran for that matter, was because we needed to know what he’d done with Smulder. If he’d done anything with Smulder.
“We have enough evidence to prove that you murdered them.” I brought the bag back and he
ld it in front of his nose. “Now, you’re going to answer our questions or we’re going to hand you over to the cops, right away, and you can be sure that they have more proof than we do.”
“Who are you? Who do you work for?” Kieran tried to stand and I shoved him back down into the rickety antique chair.
Gamma hissed. “That’s priceless.”
“Then why is it in the basement?”
“It’s too priceless to be sat on by guests,” Gamma said.
I didn’t bother arguing with her. I pointed at Kieran. “I will tie you to the chair if you get up again. Don’t make this more difficult than this has to be. And also… don’t ride on the chair or anything, it’s priceless.”
Gamma gave a satisfied sniff.
“Now, why did you do it?” I asked.
Kieran looked from me to the bag of rings and back again. He dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. “What, you don’t already know that too?”
“Spill it,” I snapped.
“They wanted to take her away from me.”
I blinked. “Who?”
“Gracie!” Kieran jerked in his chair, and Gamma made a noise in her throat. “They wanted to take her away from me. She’s the only family I have.”
“But she’s not family to you. You’re not related, are you?”
“No, but I’ve been working with her for years. For nearly ten years. My parents died when I was little, I don’t have any friends, I just… she doesn’t have any money left to keep me on and she can barely afford to feed herself, I thought if I could just… get the money for her from Bob then she’d be fine. We could be together.”
“Be together.” I couldn’t help pulling a face. That was quite an age difference.
“Not like that!” Kieran cried. “Nothing weird or romantic. She’s like a mother to me. She’s a friend. I wanted her to be safe. That’s all.”
“Where’s the gun, Kieran?” I already had a hunch, but I didn’t want to assume if he could readily give me the information I needed.
“In the dumpster at the Hungry Steer. It’s probably been taken away already.”
“And the rings?” I asked.
“I stole them from Trinity. I knew the police were already interested in her, so I stole them and put them on when I… you know.”
“Viciously strangled a young woman,” Gamma put in, helpfully.
Kieran nodded. “But I only did it for Gracie. I wanted her to be free of all the worry. She hasn’t got a home to go to, now. She lost it. And she can’t afford to pay me so—”
I waved a hand. “What about Brian?”
“Huh?”
“Where’s Brian?” I asked, again, but my stomach had already dipped low and wouldn’t be coming back up again any time soon. It was blatantly obvious that this man was a killer, but a spy? A person who could easily take down Smulder, hold him and question him?
Not a chance.
We’d taken him down with ease. He’d listened to me when I’d told him to hold still and hadn’t tried escaping. Shoot, he hadn’t even checked if Gamma’s pistol was real or not—it wasn’t. We couldn’t risk the cops realizing that Gamma had an armory.
I shook my head.
Gamma sighed and aimed the pistol at the spot in front of Kieran’s feet. “Are you sure you don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t know a Brian,” Kieran said. “I don’t know anything about Brian. Please, don’t shoot. I swear, I—”
Gamma squeezed the trigger and emptied a jet of water out of the end of the ‘gun.’ Kieran let out a girlish squeal then realized that there weren’t any bullets and went bright red. No wonder he’d flunked out of the academy. Any cop worth his salt would’ve noticed that the gun wasn’t real at close range. To be fair, it was dark out, and he had been approached from behind. But still.
“I’ll call the cops,” Gamma said. “Charlotte, you tell Gracie what happened.”
“Oh no. No, please,” Kieran whined. “She can never know. It will break her heart.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you murdered two innocent people, dear.” Gamma was always ready to provide sage advice, even if it was to a killer.
A killer who hadn’t abducted my agent friend. Where on earth was Smulder?
29
“This can’t be happening.” Gracie had been wheeled into the dining area and watched from the front window as Detective Crowley fed her long-term nurse into the back of his police car. “This can’t be happening. He couldn’t have… he wouldn’t do that, not to a family member.”
It was quite the change of heart for a woman who’d been happy to see Bob go.
“And that poor woman, Leanne,” Gracie said, looking up at me and then at Gamma, tears clinging to her eyelashes. “I know I said such horrible things about her, but I didn’t mean them. Oh heavens, you don’t think he did this because of what I said?”
“We can’t say why he did this.” I tried not to be stiff. It wasn’t Gracie’s fault that her nurse had lost it and killed two people. And it also wasn’t her fault that Smulder was missing. Unless, of course, she was in an incredibly convincing disguised. The insane urge to tug on her hair to check it wasn’t a wig nearly overwhelmed me.
“Gracie,” Gamma said, circling to face the elderly woman, “this isn’t your fault. Kieran acted on his own and I don’t think there’s anything you could have said to change his mind.”
“Oh, but I said such horrible things about Bob and Leanne. What if he thought that was what I wanted? He’s told me many times he’d do anything to protect me. I should have known.” The tears spilled over onto her cheeks.
“It’s OK, Gracie.” My grandmother bent and slung an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Everything will be all right, dear.”
“But how can it be? I’ve run out of money and I have nowhere to go, and now, I have no one to help me get around.”
I fetched a box of tissues from the foyer and brought them to Gracie. She accepted one gratefully and blew her nose.
“I have a question,” I said. “Do you struggle getting around without help if you don’t have to go upstairs? How much help do you need?”
“I’m mostly OK, but I do need help in the bathroom and so on,” Gracie said, primly.
I’d seen Gracie with the kittens earlier and she’d been a natural. Gamma had noticed too, when we’d gone out to fetch Gracie once the police had arrived. “Maybe you could stay here and help with the kittens for a while. We could get help from a nurse in town while you make arrangements for your future.”
“Oh yes,” Gamma said. “There are a few charities in town that work on cases like yours. I might be able to put you in contact with them.”
“You would do that for me?” Gracie asked, tears spilling over again. “Really? I wouldn’t be a burden.”
“Of course not.” Gamma patted her on the shoulder. “Of course not.”
I separated from them and walked out into the foyer again, my stomach hurting from tension and worry. We still didn’t have Smulder back and catching Kieran hadn’t gotten us any closer to finding him. I itched to do something, but what?
I had no idea who had taken him.
A hand pressed down on my shoulder, and I stiffened. It was only Gamma, but I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t even heard her coming.
“We need to talk,” she said. “With your grandpa.”
“I agree.”
I’d sent out a coded message from my new phone—another burner—and received the response with a time for a call. Gamma and I were in my bedroom upstairs this time with the door locked, and the clock on my bedside table told me it was just past 8 pm now.
The arrest of the murderer had taken just twenty minutes. Gracie was already set up in a room downstairs, still sad, but feeling better about her future, at least. But nothing had changed with Smulder. We had no leads.
“It has to be someone we know,” I said.
“Not necessarily. They might’ve kept a low profile.”
I shook my head. My gut told me something entirely different. That whoever had done this was close by. Call it intuition or call it wishful thinking. “What about Nicole?” I asked. “She was the last one to see him alive. We should speak to her again.”
“Let’s hear what your grandfather has to say first.” Gamma was always committed to the codenames we’d been given.
I sat silently, waiting for the call to come through, my mind whirring away.
There were only two possibilities left, in my opinion. That it was someone familiar, who had been hanging around the inn or that it was someone who had kept themselves completely concealed.
Trinity? Nicole? Someone else?
Frustration rose inside me, but the buzz of my phone cut it off.
I answered, pressing the plastic to my ear.
“Hello, grandpa, how are you?”
“We have information on the spy who might be working with NESPOLITYKA,” Grant said, immediately. “No need to talk, just listen, and share the information with Miss Franklin once we’re done. You may need to move on the lead immediately.”
I focused on my grandmother. She didn’t ask what Grant was saying, but waited, patiently, seating herself on my dressing table’s stool, her hands folded in her lap.
“The spy you’re looking for is called the Black Rose,” Grant said. “She’s highly efficient. A photograph and information package will be forwarded to your agency email address. You’re going to absorb that information and delete it afterward. If you can’t track her down within the next day, we’re going to mobilize, firstly to pull you out of there and, secondly, to find Marble.” Marble was Brian’s cover name. “Confirm.”
“Yes, grandpa, I totally understand. It’s a pity we can’t speak for longer. I would love to hear that story about the wolf again.”
“There’s been no sign of the wolf.” The wolf was a codename for Kyle. “And we don’t believe he’s involved in this. Do good work on this, Smith. Your cover and your life depends on it.” He hung up.
It wasn’t just my life in the balance. It was Brian’s too.
Cocoa Conviction (A Mission Inn-possible Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 12