“It could be anything, really. Anything at all.” I gave him a bolstering pat on the arm. “How did you and Jeremy meet? What was he like on his final day? You were there, weren’t you?”
“I’d, erm, rather not talk about that day.” Andrew tugged on his collar. His face shone with perspiration. His glasses were slightly fogged. “It wasn’t our finest hour together, you see.”
“Oh no? That’s too bad. What happened?”
He tossed me an uncertain look. I tucked my elbow beneath his arm, then led us both more deeply into the shade, where we wouldn’t be disturbed. We passed clip-boarded sign-up sheets for intramural soccer, for tutoring sessions, and (for the older kids) for culinary apprenticeships at Jeremy’s restaurants.
I wondered, with Jeremy gone, if there would be any more Hughs, Poppys, or Myras getting a toehold in the work world. If Jeremy had truly been responsible for the direction of his foundation—and he seemed to have been—things would change now.
“You can tell me,” I promised Andrew reassuringly. “Go on.”
He seemed transfixed by my hand on his arm. Maybe I’d overplayed my instincts. I wasn’t exactly on Gemma Rose’s level of flirtatiousness, but I do have a knack for making friends.
With a man as awkward as Andrew, too much friendly touching could be easily misinterpreted. Gently, I disentangled myself.
He blinked and blushed, fussing with his sleeve as though its expensive wrinkly fabric had unfortunately repelled me. Oddly enough, that overtly overcompensating gesture made me like him a little more.
Who hasn’t felt socially awkward? Nobody, that’s who.
“I apologize for surprising you this way,” I told Andrew as I flipped past my notebook’s list-lined pages to a clean sheet. “Ordinarily, I’d have been better prepared”—for my imaginary job—“but my predecessor left me quite a lot to deal with.”
“Nicola. Mmm. Yes.” He gave a sage nod. “I remember her.”
He meant I fancied her. (In U.S. speak, he had a crush on her, in case you’re not familiar.) I detected all the signs.
I’d been expecting yes, mousy Nicola, though. I regrouped.
“Nicola always took special time to speak with me.”
I figured that was because she’d been pumping him for information to include in her book. I didn’t want to say so.
A short distance away, the soccer game continued. Liam whooped, obviously enjoying himself. He couldn’t be a killer.
“She told me how nice you always were,” I improvised. In truth, she’d suggested Andrew Davies had been browbeaten by Jeremy, but he didn’t need to know that. Ever. “That’s why I made it a point to seek you out today. I knew you’d be able to help me with Jeremy’s memorial. You know, ahead of the funeral.”
A little time pressure couldn’t possibly hurt, I reasoned.
“Ah, yes. Well, I’ll see what I can do, shan’t I?” Andrew seemed distinctly pleased that Nicola had spoken well of him. He gave me a wobbly smile. “You see, Jeremy was very important to me. To the whole Hambleton & Hart family, honestly. Ours is a very old and esteemed company. Recently, we’d encountered a few . . . problems, as any firm does. But we were counting on Jeremy to boost our flagging sales and skyrocket us back to success!”
He said the last in a chipper tone, with a goofily awkward fist-pump gesture to go along with it. I felt positive Andrew had practiced both in a mirror at home for quite some time.
Inevitably, I liked him even more because of it. What can I say? Travis and Danny aren’t completely wrong about me. I do have a soft spot for the underdogs of the world. Despite Andrew Davies’s position of affluence and authority, he seemed hapless.
“I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a pickle now, though.” He leaned nearer to me with a confidential air. “With Jeremy gone, that is. He wasn’t always the easiest man to get along with. He had a bit of a temper. I’m afraid, regrettably, so do I.” Andrew gave me a sheepish look. “But he was also brilliant and funny and terribly, terribly talented. Just terrific at making food seem irresistible. I’d staked my reputation with my shareholders on Jeremy’s cooperation—that’s how highly I thought of him.”
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out. What will you do now?”
I felt genuinely concerned about him. Shareholders could be sharks. Andrew Davies didn’t seem up to battling them for long.
“Oh, well, erm, we’ll think of something, won’t we?” Andrew gave me a jolly laugh that wasn’t the least bit convincing. The breeze lifted his wispy, sandy hair, revealing a burgeoning bald spot at his crown. “You don’t maintain a company for more than a hundred and fifty years without having a few tricks up your sleeve, do you?”
“No, I guess not.” I almost volunteered to consult with Hambleton & Hart for him. They had chocolate . . . - ish products. Maybe I could help. But that would blow my cover. “You’ll manage!”
Now we were both doing it. The faux-jolly routine.
For a moment, we watched the activity around us. More of the older children—teenagers and young adults—had arrived now. They were chatting with volunteers, practicing knife skills at a portable chef’s kitchen setup, trying on much-needed new shoes.
Andrew turned to me. “How is Phoebe holding up?”
I hesitated, wondering how Jeremy’s wife was supposed to fit into my fake personal assistant shtick. I frowned, fumbling.
“I’d assume she’s been directing your efforts in Jeremy’s absence?” Andrew’s voice broke on his former spokesperson’s name. Gruffly, he cleared his throat. “She’s faring well?”
“Well enough,” I hedged. “Do you know one another?”
A vague wave. “We run in the same circles, don’t we?”
“Of course.” I should have anticipated that. “It’s been very difficult for Phoebe, naturally. She so loved Jeremy.”
As I said it, I watched Andrew’s face, hoping to glimpse what he thought of their marriage. Nicola was biased. Liam was too fond of his own “expertise” in reading people to be reliable.
“Ah, that’s where you’ve gone a bit wrong,” Andrew said.
This was it. Jeremy’s and Phoebe’s plans to divorce were about to be confirmed—and by an unbiased third party, too.
“Jeremy so loved her,” Andrew corrected me, eyes twinkling.
Hmm. I couldn’t guess why he looked so pleased. Maybe he was simply a nice guy who was happy to see someone else happy.
Whatever the explanation was, I’d learned all I was likely to from Hambleton & Hart’s CEO. I wrote a few scribbles in my notebook to bolster my spur-of-the-moment cover story, then prepared to volunteer my genuine help with the foundation.
Wanting to make a graceful exit (and, okay, feeling guilty for having taken advantage of Andrew Davies’s kindly nature), I nodded to the soccer match. “Are you going to join the game?”
For a moment, he appeared to ponder it. With unambiguous satisfaction, he watched the Jump Start kids chase the ball, then clump up to kick it. An instant later, Liam hove into view, shouting coach-like encouragement. “Go on, my son!” he yelled.
Liam’s typically British shout of encouragement (roughly, “Attaboy!” to you and me) seemed to break Andrew’s spell.
“No,” he mused, “I’m more of a cricket man, myself.”
I didn’t wonder, what with Liam waiting there to crush him—all for the innocent “crime” of handing out “junky” health food.
But I didn’t want to let on that I suspected Andrew was (reasonably) afraid of Liam. “Oh, sure.” I nodded. “Remind me, is cricket the one with the ball and the scrum, or the bats?”
Andrew treated me to the same indulgent look that Danny sometimes did when I tried to talk about sports with him. I like football—I’m passionate about football—but everything else to do with balls, courts, nets, and scoring leaves me cold.
“Rugby is the former,” he told me. “Cricket is the latter.”
Maybe, I thought, I should broaden my horizons. If I were to con
tinue sleuthing—however unwillingly—I might need to know such things. There were a lot of sports fans in the world. Talking about games was an easy way to bond with people.
Andrew glanced at me. I must not have appeared suitably impressed, because he added, “I’m one hell of a batsman.”
Taken aback by his very crisp swearing, I remained mum. What was the correct response to that? Congratulations! felt wrong. Wow! was probably overstating things. Way to go?
“That’s the hitter,” he informed me, crossing his arms as he watched Liam and the kids play. “I can knock it straight down the lines, right past the bowler, and clear out of the park.”
“Good for you!” I said, having settled on that a moment ago. But I doubted I sounded convincing. Because I’d just recognized Andrew Davies from the cell phone photo that Ashley, the intern-turned-journalist we’d met at the pub, had been showing around. She must have heard he was a suspect in Jeremy’s murder and had been trying to gather information about him.
That was pretty incriminating on its own. But combined with having just heard that same man brag about how hard he could swing a bat, only days after Jeremy had been bludgeoned to death with a very bat-like instrument?
Well, that was significant, for sure.
It looked as though it didn’t matter how many suspects I already had or how tricky it was to deal with them. Because I’d just found another one in mild-mannered Andrew Davies, all the same.
Twelve
On the day of Jeremy’s funeral, Primrose was closed. All of Jeremy’s restaurants were closed too at all of their locations throughout the United Kingdom. The services were to be held in Kent, where Jeremy was to be interred near his parents’ home.
Phoebe had hoped that the location—more distant from London—might discourage all but the most fervent of Jeremy’s fans from crowding in and disturbing his family and friends. I could see from news reports online and on television that her hopes had been dashed straightaway. Thousands swamped the small country church where Jeremy’s mourners had gathered, turning the somber proceedings into a muddle of paparazzi and helicopters.
I felt sorry for Phoebe. For everyone who’d been close to Jeremy. But that didn’t change my plans. I couldn’t let it.
I switched off the TV and turned to Danny. “Let’s go.”
He frowned. “Let’s not and say we did.”
“We’ll never get another chance like this one. Everyone is gone for the day—including most of my suspects—and I’m not expected at Primrose to work my chocolate magic or teach all the bakers the difference between beating, creaming, and stirring.”
In case you’re curious, beating something incorporates air into the mixture. Creaming continues this process long enough to dissolve granular ingredients. Stirring, on the other hand, simply combines components. For instance, you’d beat egg whites for angel-food cakes (delicious with cocoa added!), cream butter and sugar for layer cakes (chocolate, for the win!), and stir wet ingredients into dry for pancakes (chocolate chip, maybe?).
There’s a reason my consultation services are in demand, and it’s not because baking—or working with chocolate—is easy. It’s not. It requires patience, attention to detail, and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone in order to learn.
That’s exactly what I planned to do today, while everyone was gone at Jeremy’s funeral. I hadn’t attended because I hadn’t been invited. That wasn’t surprising; I hadn’t really known Jeremy—at least not while he’d been alive, I hadn’t. Now that he was gone, I was beginning to get a good sense of who he’d been.
As far as I could tell, Jeremy had been boisterous and bold, softhearted and generous. He’d been brave enough to leave his rough old neighborhood and smart enough to thrive when he had. He’d been loving and sensual, hot-tempered and faithful, and when it came to finding justice for his murder, I couldn’t let anything stop me. Not Satya Mishra. Not fear. Not propriety.
Not even Danny, who was currently giving me side-eye from his position on our guesthouse’s sofa, surrounded by tottering stacks of Jeremy’s hardbound published cookbooks. I’d been combing through them in my off-hours, looking for clues. So far, all I’d learned was that Jeremy had been sexy. For real. And that he’d included far too many people in his multiple cookery books—from publicans like the one who’d given me that personal dimpled pub glass to socialites to fishermen to teenage girls on Brighton Pier in summertime—for me to possibly narrow down any further suspects. Jeremy had left no stone unturned when it came to his culinary curiosity. Now I wanted to do the same for him.
The “no stone left unturned” part, I mean. Not the culinary curiosity part. What I’m saying is, I needed to investigate further. Impatiently, I looked out the window. “It’s go time!”
My enthusiasm left my sometime partner in crime unmoved.
“We agreed it would be a good idea to sneak into Phoebe’s town house and have a look around while she’s gone, remember?” I reminded him. “That’s where Jeremy lived—where he sometimes worked. Who knows? We might find something incriminating.”
I was hoping for a concrete link to one of my suspects—something that might hint at why someone had attacked Jeremy.
“We might find ourselves arrested.” Danny’s lazy gaze met mine. “DC Mishra has been watching you. Don’t be stupid.”
“The police are dealing with the crowds at Jeremy’s funeral,” I argued. “This is Satya’s perfect opportunity to watch all her suspects. She has access I don’t have. Isn’t that what happens on those TV crime shows? They always case the funeral.”
He gave me an engaging grin. “Look who’s an expert now.”
I wasn’t sure if he was flattering me or teasing me. With Danny, you never knew. You just had to give as good as you got.
“Fine.” I held out my hand. “Give me your . . . you know, lock-picking stuff, and I’ll do this myself. You can stay here.”
That moved him. With unfair muscular grace, my security expert rose from the sofa. He stretched, flashing an expanse of perfectly taut midsection as his shirt rode up. I followed the view down to the waistband of his low-slung jeans—where things started to get interesting—then deliberately looked away.
I didn’t need trouble. I had enough to deal with already.
“I don’t carry that stuff anymore,” Danny told me. “Bump keys and torsion wrenches aren’t popular with customs agents.”
“Pshaw. You’re not scared of those guys.”
“Besides, I’ve gone legit, remember?” His eyes dared me to challenge him on that familiar claim. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have done anything remotely shady for years now.”
I wanted to be indignant, but I couldn’t. Danny had come to my aid lately, under some legally shaky circumstances. I’d needed him. He’d delivered. But that didn’t mean he was unscrupulous. Far from it. My sometime bodyguard was merely loyal. To me.
I didn’t want to take advantage of that, but . . . “How else am I supposed to get in there?” I gestured toward the Wrights’ town house, across the grass and up the walk from us. “I’m up to my eyeballs in suspects, but I don’t have any real evidence.”
“What makes you think you’ll find any in there?”
“Intuition. Optimism.” I pinwheeled my arm. “Desperation?”
He looked away, predictably unconvinced. Danny deals in facts, not feelings. That’s why he doesn’t like gambling. He knows the odds are against him, so he’d rather not get involved.
Or maybe he just doesn’t want to feel that momentary burst of hopefulness as the cards are dealt or the wheels spin. I do, on the other hand. I love feeling that I’ve risked something and won. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind the risks involved in trying to find Jeremy’s killer. In the end, it would all be worthwhile.
So, I hoped, would sneaking into the Wrights’ town house.
“You’re not going to give up, are you?” Danny asked.
I grinned. “Did you just meet me?”
“Point made.” He looked through the window at the garden. As expected, everything looked calm. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
Getting inside the town house was the easy part. Finding anything useful once we’d sneaked in was another story.
Until Danny and I entered via the back-terrace door that day, I hadn’t seen much more than the kitchen. Thanks to Phoebe’s ongoing baking tutorials, I’d seen a lot of that. Not surprisingly, the rest of the place was just as well-appointed, full of expensive-looking (but sedate) furniture, tasteful fabric-covered walls, acres of painted moldings and trim, plentiful antiques, and framed original artwork. I might have guessed that Phoebe would have traditional taste in furnishings.
In short, it looked exactly the way you’d expect an old Georgian town house in Chelsea to look, right down to the wall sconces, gleaming hardwood floors, and hand-tufted rugs.
We made short work of examining the place, starting with the salon (“living room,” to you and me) and continuing down the corridor to the formal dining room, butler’s pantry, and what must have been Jeremy’s office. Its oak-paneled walls were full of Jeremy’s framed cookbook covers, photos of him and Phoebe with other celebrities, and a variety of awards and honors. Jeremy’s laptop computer was on the desk where he’d left it, right next to a reproduction Rodin sculpture. A plastic bottle of Hambleton & Hart “vitality water” stood nearby, half full, as though Jeremy might wander in at any moment and finish it.
Unexpectedly moved by those remnants of Jeremy’s life, I paused. Behind me, Danny flipped through an old-fashioned filing cabinet, methodically searching for anything that seemed out of place. He knew how to look without anyone detecting. I mostly scanned the rooms we were in, trying to spot incongruities.
That bottle of specialty water was one. I knew Phoebe had had Amelja in for her routine cleaning sessions since Jeremy’s death. Maybe the housekeeper was supposed to overlook this room?
The Semi-Sweet Hereafter Page 17