The Semi-Sweet Hereafter

by Colette London

  If so, why? I turned to Danny. “Hey, if you got rich tomorrow, would you hire someone to clean house for you?”

  “Depends.” He examined a paper. “How big is the house?”

  I glanced at the town house’s ornate ceiling medallion, estimating. I was no realtor, but . . . “A few thousand square feet.”

  “Nah. I wouldn’t want a stranger going through my stuff.”

  Bingo. “I’d be willing to bet Jeremy wouldn’t have, either.” He and Danny had come from similar hardscrabble backgrounds. They might have comparable attitudes about things. “That means this would be an excellent place to hide something.”

  “No kidding, Sherlock. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Of course, you’d have to know someone might guess that.”

  Danny went back to searching in earnest. “Here we go.”

  “Which means you purposely wouldn’t hide anything in here.” I looked around, giving Jeremy’s office close scrutiny anyway.

  “Right. Except?”

  “Except anyone with a reason to search would probably know that, which means you might be safe hiding something in here.”

  Danny straightened with his hands on his hips. “I hate to bust up all your illusions, but most people don’t think much beyond the first step, if that. Let’s just stick to the plan.”

  We did. I searched Jeremy’s laptop for clues. The device conveniently recognized that it was in proximity to Jeremy’s cell phone (in my bag) and unlocked itself without a password, but my search through his e-mails and files turned up nothing.

  Danny and I ascended the baroque carved-oak staircase to the first floor (meaning “second floor” to us Yanks). As I stepped onto the upper landing, the floorboard creaked. I froze.

  Behind me, Danny did too. We both strained to hear.

  Which was silly. What were we listening for, exactly? No one was around. There was no reason to be on the lookout.

  Except that’s when we heard it. Very faintly.

  The sound of pop music filtered from the master suite. It sounded muted, but it was definitely there. Was someone home?

  I shook my head, trying to hear anything more. Nada.

  “Phoebe must have left a radio on, that’s all,” I muttered to Danny. “She can’t be home, and no one else lives here.”

  “We don’t live here, either, but we’re here.”

  “It’ll be fine,” I assured us both, then kept going.

  Alarmed nonetheless, we searched through the other upstairs bedrooms swiftly. I turned up a risqué book, but nothing more.

  “Shouldn’t there at least be a safe?” I asked Danny.

  But he was peering down the hallway toward the master suite, clearly concerned. “We should leave. I heard something.”

  “Yeah, the radio, remember?” I marched straight toward the suite, fueled by the likelihood of finding something useful in the town house’s most private spaces. “Just don’t turn off the radio when we get in the bedroom, or we’ll give ourselves away.” I tossed him a grin. “No matter how much you hate pop music.”

  So far, our investigation wouldn’t have survived a good police detective’s scrutiny, much less one of those forensics evidence-gathering teams. We’d left fingerprints all over the place. But I couldn’t see why that would matter. DC Mishra and her colleagues at the London Metropolitan Police Service had already done all the double-checking they planned to do here.

  “Remember the other, smaller bedroom?” I reminded Danny as I strode down the long, artwork-decorated hallway. “It definitely looked as though someone had been sleeping in there.”

  “My money’s on guests. It’s a guest room.”

  “I think it was Jeremy. If he and Phoebe were having marital troubles, it’s not a stretch to think that they’d use separate bedrooms.” It was still possible there was a third party in their marriage—someone Jeremy had been sleeping with. He did have a sexy reputation. To bolster my argument, I added, “The bed linens were all rumpled, as though that room was off-limits to housekeeping. That’s exactly the way Jeremy would have wanted it if he’d been using that room as a crash pad.”

  I’d been looking over my shoulder at Danny as I said it, which probably explained why I didn’t see what Danny saw.

  Specifically, what made him put on his “tough guy” face. He only used that expression when confronting problems. That meant there were problems, I saw as I swiveled to look—specifically (and funnily enough) problems of the housekeeping nature.

  Phoebe’s young Polish housekeeper, Amelja, stood in the doorway to the master suite. She’d been wearing earbuds. Music still blasted from them, which explained what we’d faintly heard earlier. Now they hung around her neck—right below, I couldn’t help noticing, her quizzical and irked-looking face.

  “He did want it that way,” Amelja informed me tartly.

  Oh no. What were we supposed to do now? We’d been caught red-handed. As far as I’d been able to tell, Amelja was loyal to the Wrights. She would almost certainly tell her boss (aka Phoebe) that we’d been there, snooping all over the town house.

  Apprehensively, I glanced at Danny. He gave me the equivalent of a facial shrug, indicating that this one was on me. I understood why. This excursion had been my idea. Plus, Danny wasn’t the kind of man to take down a twentysomething working woman with violence just because she was inconvenient.

  Maybe Danny really had gone straight, as he’d said.

  On the other hand, it occurred to me, at least now we had firm verification from Amelja that Jeremy and Phoebe had used separate bedrooms. That didn’t signal marital bliss, did it?

  Wishing we could have at least searched the master suite before being found out, I glanced behind Amelja. There were ball gowns and shoes scattering the floor of Phoebe’s bedroom. Under one particularly gauzy purple number, I spotted a cardboard box.

  There was no way Phoebe routinely decorated with cardboard.

  I dragged my gaze back toward my own position. That’s when I got a closer look at Phoebe’s housekeeper . . . and her feet.

  “Jeremy was a little unconventional,” I said. “But Phoebe isn’t. Does she encourage you to wear her shoes while cleaning?”

  Amelja started. Shamefacedly, she looked down at the (probably) thousand-pound slingbacks on her feet. “Erm . . .”

  But I didn’t have time for that particularly British version of “um.” I had to get out of this predicament.

  “I won’t tell Phoebe that I saw all of . . . this,” I volunteered with a wave toward the gowns and shoes, “if you don’t tell her that I was late picking up the donations she’s making.”

  I held my breath, hoping my hunches—that those cardboard boxes contained things Phoebe was discarding, and that Amelja had been indulging in a major (forbidden) gown-and-shoe try-on session—were correct. It was possible that Phoebe had simply had trouble deciding which designer ball gown to wear to Jeremy’s funeral today and had flung all those things about in a frenzy before leaving. It was possible that Phoebe was notoriously slobby, prone to strewing her bedroom with clothes and shoes on a daily basis. It was possible that Amelja hadn’t taken advantage of her boss’s absence—for the entire day—to indulge in a little Cinderella time. And, I theorized further, possible that she didn’t have the cell phone selfie pics to prove it.

  “I’ll bet your Facebook account was hilarious today.”

  Behind me, Danny cleared his throat. I turned—and Amelja glanced up toward him—to see him holding up his own phone.

  On its screen was Facebook’s unmistakable signature blue layout, loaded with multiple photos of Amelja. She was wearing that filmy purple gown and a tiara, holding a feather duster.

  I raised my brows at Danny in surprise. He shrugged.

  “Just because I have muscles, I’m some kind of meathead?”

  I knew he wasn’t. But I was still taken aback by his preparedness. It looked as though I wasn’t the only one who’d wanted to step up my game. He must have
researched everyone who had a connection to Jeremy, both virtually and physically.

  “If you’ll excuse me . . .” I gestured to move past Amelja. She stepped aside quite readily, her gaze fixed on Danny’s phone.

  “I was only having a bit of fun,” the housekeeper said.

  She was young enough to be defiant and old enough to be scared. I didn’t doubt Phoebe would have sacked her for this.

  “That’s fine. Your secret’s safe with me.” I hefted that cardboard box, then took a sneaky look around. Aside from the dresses and shoes spilling from Phoebe’s (astonishingly well-appointed) closet, everything appeared to be in order. There was a small sitting area with an antique desk I was dying to search, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to do that. “Thanks, Amelja.”

  I edged past her with the cardboard box in my arms, the tinny sounds of earbud-based pop music serenading my steps. That explained why Amelja hadn’t heard Danny and me rummaging around. She’d had the volume cranked so high, a British Airways jet could have landed outside in the garden without her noticing.

  Danny had put away his phone. Chivalrously, he took the box from me. He shot me a puzzled glance as he discerned its relatively light weight for its size. I hadn’t been similarly confused. I’d seen—and Danny hadn’t—the other side of Phoebe’s immense closet. Everything that had belonged to Jeremy was gone.

  It seemed a little premature for Phoebe to have cleaned out Jeremy’s things—or, more likely, have asked Amelja to do so—but it wasn’t up to me to judge how a wife grieved for her husband. Maybe Phoebe simply wanted to keep busy, to avoid getting lost in her sadness. Maybe someone had approached her from a worthy charity that needed menswear, and she hadn’t had the heart to refuse. Maybe she merely wanted more closet space for herself.

  “That’s the last box,” Amelja informed us as we prepared to get the heck out of there before something else went wrong. She nodded toward the staircase. “I already took the rest downstairs earlier, before I got”— carried away trying on Phoebe’s clothes—“busy with other things. You’ll take care of all of them?”

  I tried to seem as though I’d expected that. “No worries.”

  Phoebe’s housekeeper looked relived. “That saves me a trip, then. It’s not my job to carry boxes around, but the church wouldn’t send anyone to pick them up on such short notice.”

  Aha. Now I knew where everything was supposed to go.

  “I’ll make sure it all gets to its proper destination,” I promised, meaning it. First, I’d have a look for any clues, then I’d transport Jeremy’s things to the church. “I’m on it.”

  I might as well make the most of my excuse for being there, I figured, no matter how fabricated it might have been.

  With her hands already raised to replace her earbuds, Amelja shook her head at me. “You’re different from Jeremy’s other assistants,” she said. “Too bad he didn’t find you first.”

  I was getting fed up with being mistaken for Jeremy’s personal assistant. Not that there’s anything wrong with that job, but Amelja had seen me tutoring Phoebe in baking. Did she think I was just that multitalented? Or did she think I was just that friendly with Phoebe? Also, exactly how many assistants did Jeremy regularly churn through, anyway? Had he been that bad?

  But all I said was, “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “Because you weren’t likely to get in trouble sleeping with him, were you?” Amelja’s eyes sparkled as she pointed her thumb at Danny. “Not with a hunk o’ man like him waiting at home.”

  She gave my security expert a cheeky wink, then went back to “cleaning”—aka trying on all of Phoebe’s fanciest clothes.

  Me? And Danny? I might have blushed. I know I felt a little flustered as I turned toward the stairs. Just because I’ve known Danny a long time doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes. I can see that he’s good-looking. I can feel that he’s special—brave, strong, sometimes funny and often brilliant, always willing to help . . .

  “Remember, Amelja,” he said behind me, using his most Travis-like throaty tone, “we won’t tell if you won’t.”

  The housekeeper giggled, reminding me how young she was. She was attractive, too. She might have tempted Jeremy to be indiscreet . . . to have a reason to sleep in the guest bedroom. Maybe that was why Amelja was interested in Jeremy’s love life?

  It was impossible to know why the housekeeper had speculated about Jeremy’s relationships with his assistants. I didn’t think he’d slept with Nicola, but . . . who knew? A woman scorned might have had good reason to write a tell-all bio.

  Either way, we hustled downstairs and got out of there. I was pretty sure, if we didn’t, that I might have a heart attack.

  * * *

  Safely back in the guesthouse, we stared at the box.

  I sort of felt like giggling, Amelja style, myself. I couldn’t help it. Sometimes that’s how stress affects me. Big blubbery tears or helpless hysterical laughter—that’s how your favorite chocolate whisperer tends to react to nerve-wracking situations. I swigged some water—non-fancy, non “vitality” style water, you should note—then picked up my plate, which held a slice of white-chocolate raspberry tart. I forked up a mouthful, frowning at that cardboard box. We probably shouldn’t have filched it.

  We probably should have taken it straight to the church.

  But this was just a temporary delay, I reminded myself. It was for a good cause, too—finding Jeremy’s murderer. It couldn’t be for anything else. It wasn’t as though Danny would want to pinch any of Jeremy’s cast-off clothes. All the other boxes, which we’d rapidly sorted through, had contained items that had definitely belonged to Jeremy Wright. All of them were too loud, too short, and too tight in the shoulders to fit my bodyguard.

  “This isn’t cool, picking through a dead man’s clothes,” Danny complained, glowering at the box. “I feel dirty.”

  Honestly, I did, too. But I couldn’t quit. “This is the last one,” I inveigled, having swallowed my bite of tart. I’d offered a slice to Danny. He, being him, had passed. “After this, we’ll tape them all back up and take them to the church.”

  “You don’t think that will look suspicious?”

  “Phoebe isn’t going to check with the rector to find out who delivered all the boxes. She has people to take care of things like that for her.” In this case, Amelja. “Plus, you might have noticed Phoebe’s a little preoccupied lately. She’ll be glad to have this off her hands.” Privately, I knew she was freaking out about her upcoming TV appearance, too. The addition of Nicola to the lineup had lent a distressing new edge to her already fearful anticipation. “Let’s just finish this.”

  I put down my plate and dug into the box. We hadn’t found anything notable in the others—just a bunch of Oxford-cloth button-up shirts, some trousers and jeans, argyle sweaters, belts and men’s socks, a disturbingly large number of trainers (“sneakers,” to those who don’t live abroad), and T-shirts.

  I opened the final box, expecting more of the same. Instead, I found toiletries. Men’s toiletries. Shaving soap, razors, a popular brand of sensitive toothpaste, expensive department-store wrinkle reducer and antioxidant creams, and hair products.

  I examined them all. “These must have set him back a few quid,” I said, recognizing the brands. Jeremy had been vain—or at least unquestionably interested in keeping his sexy image intact. I couldn’t really blame him for that. I pawed further. “Aha. Here are the rest of the clothes.” I pulled out crisp-looking athletic socks and running shorts, a pair of unworn Y-fronts (you might know them as tighty-whities, or traditional men’s underwear) and a pair of . . . “Ugh!” Recognizing it, I dropped it. “A thong?”

  Yep. That was taking “sexy” several miles too far.

  Danny grabbed that stretchy, barely there garment. “Jeremy really was itty-bitty. I could hardly fit my bait and tackle in these.” He tested the elastic, then tossed it onto the pile. “Nope. Definitely not enough room for the old frank and beans.”

  “Dan
ny!” I made a face. “Show a little respect.”

  But he was kidding, and I was laughing, and a second later, we’d lost it completely. I had a go at shouting “frank and beans!” Danny encouraged me by making funny faces. Maybe you had to be there, but it was hilarious—and just what I needed.

  See what I mean? Danny always has my back . . . in more ways than one. For as long as I’ve known him, Danny has made me laugh.

  Officially, of course, we were both going straight to hell for mocking the clothing choices of a dead man. But in the meantime, I felt better about what we were doing.

  “Maybe the thong was a gift,” Danny suggested, packing up.

  “From someone who hated him,” I agreed, helping him return things to the box. I grabbed the briefs, then paused. “You know, all the rest of the underwear were boxers. Or boxer briefs.”

  “He probably bought those by mistake.” Danny’s nod prompted me to deposit those tighty-whities into the box where they belonged. “Sometimes you grab a three-pack off the shelf, it turns out to be the wrong kind . . . who’s going to return underwear?”

  “Sure.” Except I doubted millionaire Jeremy Wright bought his “pants” by the three-pack wrapped in plastic. I didn’t want to make Danny feel self-conscious about his purchasing habits, though. He sometimes has an ax to grind about wealth. “Maybe.”

  Danny stopped packing and studied me. For a second, I thought he’d detected my difference of opinion about Jeremy’s underwear-buying habits. I didn’t want that. But that wasn’t it.

  “Hey, keep your chin up,” my security expert told me with a reassuring nudge to my shoulder. He grinned. “If this were easy, everyone would be finding murderers in their spare time.”

  “Yeah. Woohoo! Yay, me!” Joking, I waved my arm like Andrew Davies.

  My go-get-’em gesture had exactly as much believability as the Hambleton & Hart CEO’s had (meaning, none), but Danny seemed to buy it anyway. That made it all worthwhile. I didn’t want my pal to know I was struggling. I wanted to sleuth effortlessly, like a modern-day Miss Marple, no matter what the reality was.

  Maybe Mr. Barclay was right, it occurred to me. Maybe we American’s always were “whooping over this, that, and the other.” Even when we had no real reason for such enthusiasm.