In Sickness and in Death

by Alana Ling

  With murder back in my thoughts, I crossed the street and passed the entry gate to the park, where I let Alfie off his lead and he ran up the hill to wee on the largest tree he could find.

  ‘Jo!’ I heard my name again and for a moment I thought Daniel was back to ask me more questions, but I turned around to see Preston approaching, wearing the long black jacket I’d got him from Milan for his thirtieth birthday.

  He also wore a grey flat cap that hid his rich dark hair. He caught up with me and stood in such an awkward proximity to my face that I wasn’t sure if he was going in for a kiss or not. I took a step back to be on the safe side and gave him my blank face in retaliation.

  ‘Are you following me, Preston?’

  He chuckled. My mouth watered as the taste of bad wine penetrated my buds and I was suddenly in desperate need of water and silence. ‘You’ve become quite the feisty one, Jo, haven’t you? What’s wrong with saying “I’m good, honey, how are you?”.’

  I bit my lip and located Alfie, who was running towards me as if he could sense my upset and was coming to my rescue. ‘Because I have nothing to say to you, Preston. I’m done with you. I wasted eight years of my life with you and I’ve got no more time for you. I’ve got a life to live,’ I told him, my voice failing me and making me sound unlike the strong woman I wanted to come across as, but like wounded bird in need of attention.

  ‘Wow! So much hate. What did I ever do to you?’ he said, completely unaffected by the sniffing dog at his feet.

  I grimaced. ‘Do you mean other than never talking to me, taking any choice away from me, making me feel useless and shrill, taking me all around the globe only to abandon me in every single place for something better? Seriously, Preston, you need some counselling if you don’t understand why I don’t want to see you anymore,’ I explained, this time managing to restrain my annoyance and covering it up with real concern for him.

  ‘What are you doing talking to Daniel, anyway? Are you trying to get it on with my brother? Your brother-in-law?’ he said, making a swift change of subject.

  I huffed. ‘I cannot believe you.’ I walked away from him and Alfie started to follow me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said and I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘I know I messed it up.’

  I turned around to look at him.

  ‘Can-can you turn around again? It’s easier to say these things when I don’t have to look you in the eyes.’

  I was struck by his honesty and for a moment I didn’t hear him. He motioned me around with his finger and I obeyed. I slowly looked away from him and waited.

  ‘I-I miss you, okay? It’s been…lonely without you. I’ve been seeing a therapist. She’s helping me see what’s wrong with me. And how I wronged you.’

  I looked up at the sky and its bright blue shade washed me with the flavour of coconut macaroons.

  ‘I’d like another chance,’ he said.

  ‘Preston, it’s not as simple as that. You can’t change in a matter of days. This kind of thing takes years and…I’ve moved on. I’m not in love with you anymore,’ I said and I waited for the impact of my words.

  ‘Is it because you’re dating Daniel?’

  I rolled my eyes and turned to look at him. ‘Send me the address of that therapist. She’s doing some excellent work,’ I said and started to move away.

  ‘What the—’ I heard him spit and from the corner of my eye I saw Alfie taking a wee on his shoe before trotting along behind me, oblivious to the punch he had delivered.

  I laughed and put Alfie’s lead back on, giving him a little pat on the head.

  ‘That stupid dog!’ he shouted. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Seriously, Preston. Fantastic work.’ I left him on his own trying to wipe his Boss shoes on the grass.

  Back at home, I fed Alfie and made a fresh batch of lemon cupcakes with vanilla icing for Bean Therapy, while Alfie thoroughly watched out for any spillages to clean with his eager tongue.

  It only took a couple of minutes to get in the zone and forget all about Preston’s fake forgiveness. But going in the zone brought my conversation with his brother back into my mind. He had found out about Lloyd and had not made any arrests. Was it for lack of evidence, or was it because it was pointing to someone else?

  After I took the cupcakes out of the oven and placed them on the cooling rack, I put the kettle on and made myself an Earl Grey, grabbed a notebook and a Sharpie, and wrote Poppy’s name in the middle. Now the suspects so far were Lloyd who’d had a relationship with Poppy, before he or she had broken it off, and she’d got engaged to his brother. I scribbled Lloyd’s name around Poppy’s and connected it to hers. I then wrote Rory’s name and connected it to the other two names. But Rory didn’t strike me for a murderer and those couldn’t be the only suspects in this case.

  I brought my laptop from the living room and logged on the internet. For some reason, seeing Tom and Robert the night before was rubbing me the wrong way.

  I looked through my diary and found Tom’s full name: Tom Tinley. Blueberry muffin. My tummy grumbled and I suddenly had an appetite for them. Not that Mum would complain if a fresh batch landed on her doorstep all of a sudden.

  I typed his name on Friendzone, the largest social media network, and found his profile. He had limited activity on his account, mainly posting about rugby games and financial updates. Typical lad’s profile. I looked through his friend list, but Poppy didn’t show up in it. Robert did and so did Rory and Lloyd. Gemima and Amanda were also there. Amanda even had a shared celebratory message with Rory commemorating their long virtual friendship, which according to Rory wasn’t even close to the real number of years they had known each other.

  But Poppy wasn’t there. Tom wasn’t friends with the bride but he was with the bridesmaids. Something tasted off in this ordeal and I was determined to find out why.

  Eleven

  I knocked on the door and I heard a ‘come in’ from behind it. I opened it and found Tom Tinley sitting in a big office, looking rather small, covered by large works of art hanging off the walls and a tiger shaped carpet in the middle of the room that assumed more authority than the man himself.

  ‘Hello, Tom—Mr Tinley,’ I greeted him as I approached, a box of muffins in hand.

  His blueberry muffin flavour hit my palate as the smell of my own batch hit my nose.

  ‘Miss Christie, isn’t it?’ A sign of a true businessman, he remembered my name even when he’d barely met me the other day. I was impressed.

  I nodded.

  ‘What brings you here, Miss Christie?’

  ‘Call me Joanna, please. Miss makes me feel old for some reason,’ I said and gave him a warm smile.

  Tom stood up and shook my hand. ‘Well, in that case, just call me Tom, too.’ He pointed to the seat and I took it.

  ‘I’m sorry to come in on such short notice.’ I placed my box of muffins on the desk and opened it. ‘I wanted to see how you are holding up after the horrid events of last week?’

  He forced a smile, but his eyes didn’t steer from mine, not even to look at the contents of my offerings.

  ‘I am okay. Rory is devastated, naturally, but it was his future wife that was murdered, so you can’t blame him.’

  ‘Were you close to Poppy yourself? I saw you at the pub the other day and you looked devastated.’

  Tom’s head twitched. ‘Well, it is hardly a time to be joyous, isn’t it? A woman was murdered. My best friend’s fiancé. Do you expect me to be excited?’

  I shook my head and apologised. ‘That’s not what I meant, by no means. I-I just know that everyone focuses on the closest relatives, but hardly checks on the friends on these occasions,’ I said. ‘I brought muffins. I know they can’t bring Poppy back, but hopefully put a little sweet taste in your mouth after everything that’s happened.’

  Tom eyed the box for the first time and swallowed them whole with his eyes. I pushed the box closer to him and he unpeeled one, giving the edge a bite. He hummed with pleasure
and smiled, taking another bite.

  ‘I wasn’t close to her, not at all, you know. Rory was engaged to her for a little under four months and I’d only met her once or twice,’ he admitted.

  I nodded. ‘What did you think of her?’

  Tom finished the muffin and disposed of the liner somewhere behind his desk.

  ‘She was a ghastly woman, if I’m being honest. Spoiled rotten, a daddy’s girl through and through.’ He paused and looked at me again. ‘Of course, Rory loved her, so that was enough for me. It didn’t mean I had to spend time with her and thankfully Rory never asked me to.’

  ‘I understand. She wasn’t an easy woman. I just saw how you were the other day and thought perhaps you had feelings for her.’

  He laughed. ‘Me? In love with Poppy? That’s a joke if I ever heard one.’

  His blueberry muffin flavour went stale in my mouth for a beat. When he composed himself he realised I’d been glaring at him. ‘Rob was.’

  I winced. ‘Rob? Do you mean Robert? The other best man?’

  Tom pursed his lips and I got the message.

  ‘Oh,’ was all I managed to say.

  ‘Yeah, but he was pissed off with her about one thing or the other, I’m not sure. We’re not that close.’

  They were certainly close enough to go out together, but what did I know?

  Tom looked at his watch and looked ready to stand up.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to take any more of your time, thank you so much for seeing me. I’m glad you’re all right,’ I told him and stood up before he did.

  ‘And thank you for the muffin,’ he said as he mimicked me and shook my hand again, pushing the box back to me with his other hand.

  ‘Oh, please, help yourself. I brought them for you,’ I told him.

  He thanked me and I walked out of his office, feeling like I was back to square one. Although he had practically said he hated Poppy. Which meant, if he was telling the truth, that there was nothing going on between those two. Why did he look so miserable the other day? Was I reading too much into things? Maybe he didn’t like Robert, or maybe he had been starving and couldn’t wait for his dinner. And why, again if going with Tom being truthful, was Robert so openly flirtatious and happy only days after his crush had died?

  My heart was pumping fast and I knew I was onto something. Now I had to find out what that something was.

  Sam met me later that morning in Bean Therapy, arriving with a dossier overflowing with paper, a smile glowing on her face. She greeted Devi and me and sprawled over the couch opposite me.

  ‘I found, like, the best antique shop in Brighton. I even got the owner to agree to a special deal for the furniture rental that we need for the party.’ She exhaled.

  I smiled. I had made the right decision in hiring her after all. She was already helping me more than I’d thought she would in her first month. She went through a list of items she had managed to retrieve, along with pictures of what they looked like, and we started putting together a map of the party and where everything was going to go on a large gridded paper.

  After the second pot of Bali coffee was served, I decided to take a break from the extravagant birthday party and sip my coffee with an accompanying cheddar and onion sandwich. As Sam munched on her own I updated her on my visit to Tom’s office and everything he had revealed.

  Her eyes opened wide and she put her sandwich down. ‘There’s so much drama in that family.’ I stared blankly at her. ‘I like it!’

  I laughed and pulled my notebook out and showed it to her.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘The victim and the suspects.’

  Sam shook her head. ‘No, no, no. You’re doing it all wrong.’

  Before I could ask what she meant, she grabbed my laptop, went on Friendzone and printed a bunch of pictures through her portable mini-printer. Then, ignoring my protestations, she laid a new gridded paper on top of the table and put Poppy’s image in the middle. Then she attached all the pictures around her.

  ‘That’s better. More visual.’ I raised my brow at her and she ignored it. ‘Now, if we’re going to solve this mystery, we need to find out everyone’s MMO.’

  ‘MMO?’ I asked.

  Sam put her fingers up and counted. ‘Means, Motive and Opportunity. The three basic elements of murder.’

  I raised my eyebrow again. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about these things. Should I be worried?’

  ‘I’m actually a fugitive.’ I choked on my coffee and Sam got up to pat my back. ‘I’m only joking, silly. I read a lot of crime fiction is all.’

  While I composed myself and wiped coffee off the table and my files, Sam got a Sharpie and wrote the initials on each of the suspects.

  ‘Okay, so we’ve got Lloyd Blakely. What are his means? A bouquet of flowers. Not my first choice for a murder weapon, but if the shoe fits. His motive? He split up with her, but she made it look like her choice. Or at least that’s what he says. But maybe he was still in love with her. Or he was mad that she took all the credit. You know men and their relationship to pride. Now his opportunity? Poppy died within an hour of the rehearsal. Most of the guests were out in the garden. Quite frankly I don’t remember seeing him, but back then I wasn’t looking for a murderer, so I could have missed him. Maybe we can ask the guests?’

  ‘We are not the police. How are we going to do that?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘We’ll find an excuse. Now, Tom—’

  ‘Tom claims he never liked Poppy, and I’m prone to believe him, although his behaviour the other night was peculiar if he wasn’t mourning Poppy’s death. I was pretty convinced he was in love with her. But he hated her. So, actually, he could have done it either way.’

  ‘Did he have the opportunity?’ Sam chewed the end of the Sharpie, contemplating.

  ‘I saw him with Rory at the end of the garden. I think they were smoking. But I don’t know where they were before that.’

  Sam wrote it down. She looked at the current suspect map and chuckled. ‘Maybe he’s in love with Rory and killed her out of jealousy.’

  I stared at her and thought about it. I couldn’t downright ask him that. We had to find another way to get the answers we needed.

  ‘What about Robert? Tom claims he was in love with Poppy. That gives him a motive. And I can’t remember seeing him anywhere on the day.’

  Sam bit her tongue pensively and wrote it down. ‘And Rory? Did he have a motive?’

  I shrugged. ‘On paper they were in love with each other. Then Lloyd mentioned Poppy had a plan and they wanted to get married as quick as possible, which isn’t Poppy. She was a neat freak. And then Poppy’s mother mentioned they shouldn’t have done business with the Blakelys.’

  ‘So we potentially have a marriage of interest, but no one is willing to admit it. Is it because it had something to do with her death?’

  ‘We need to speak to more people. We need to find out if what Tom says about Robert is true.

  ‘Let’s do that,’ Sam agreed.

  Twelve

  Half an hour later, we were sitting in Robert’s office at his estate agent’s with his secretary, a young blonde girl with a very revealing work dress and an intoxicating vodka flavour, eyeing us from top to bottom over her fake reading glasses. It wasn’t surprising to see her employed there, considering his behaviour at the pub the other night, which was a bit short-sighted on my side, but my suspicions were confirmed when Robert appeared behind his desk, practically undressing Sam with his stare, a view which didn’t seem to please his secretary, who vanished back to her desk in the front room.

  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ he asked, oozing with self-loaded charm. He was a man who liked himself, quite obviously, as much as he liked his women. A characteristic which I found in complete opposition to his gammon and eggs flavour, a rather old-fashioned dish that was starting to die out in Haven, which had been overtaken by all the latest foodie trends.

  ‘We visited Tom to see how he’s holding up
earlier, and he mentioned you were devastated by Poppy’s death, so we came to see how you are doing?’ I lied.

  Sam shook her head excitedly, staring back at Robert. She had assumed her part without my prompting. She crossed her legs, putting her thigh in full view of the man opposite her.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing. Poor Rory. I can’t believe this happened a week before the wedding.’

  ‘I saw him the other day. He looked all right for someone whose fiancé has just passed,’ I said. Another lie. In my profession it was a skillset you had to master from the get-go if you were to get what you wanted.

  Robert grimaced, but composed himself instantaneously as he leaned forward on his desk, to answer my comment, and surely to get a better view of Sam’s assets.

  ‘Rory is a good soul, but he doesn’t always express his feelings that easily. Trust me; he’s shattered with these affairs. I’m really busy, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to work.’

  I sat up, not ready to give up. ‘Can I use the loos before we go?’

  He nodded behind me and I exited his office, leaving his door a crack open. I stretched my back against the wall and listened in. Sam was asking him about his business and he was happy to oblige with small talk.

  ‘I’m slowly taking over from my father who wants to retire in the next couple of years. It’s practically my own business now,’ he said with a hint of cheer in his voice. I wish I could see what Sam was doing to get him to talk that way.

  ‘Fascinating. I’ve always had an interest in estates,’ she said in a low and slow voice.

  ‘Well, if it doesn’t work out with her, I can always show you the ropes, if you’d like.’

  The cheek of the man! Offering my assistant a job while I was still in the building. My guess, though, was he wanted her for a different kind of job more than anything.

  ‘I might take you up on that offer. Are you sure your secretary won’t mind?’

  Well played, Sam.

  ‘Tania? She’s young and stupid, but she answers the phone and that’s enough for now,’ he said.