“I don’t like it,” was the last thing Reese heard Ember du Lissin say.
Reese and Finn kept going with the banisters as Reese thought over what had happened. He couldn’t work out why Ember’s youngest child should be making decisions or why Ember, who was supposedly so formidable, having created and built up an international company, was allowing someone to tell her what to do. He added to his mental list of mysteries surrounding the family the fact that Ember was worried about something the family was doing and that Norla was taking charge of something.
Finn came to a halt and Reese noticed that they’d reached the top floor of the castle. “That’s it all finished,” Finn announced.
Reese glanced out of a nearby stained glass window. “That’s an impressive view.”
Finn followed his gaze and froze. “They’re arriving early. We have to let Beja know.”
Reese saw the robicles in the distance carrying the guests towards the castle. Even from up here, looking down on the rest of the town, the transports were enormous, like colossal moving statues. He hurried after Finn, jogging downwards until they were back on the ground floor.
Beja was laying out place settings in the larger dining room, her broad tail resting on the floor behind her.
“They’re arriving now,” Finn told her breathlessly, Reese behind him.
“The guests? Already?” She paused, her furry face scrunching up in a frown, then looked back at them. “Grab everyone you see and get them out of sight and then go to the kitchen and polish the silver trays. Reese, you can go back to your work outside. I’ll send the valets to inform the family and finish up here before taking the guests’ coats during the greetings.”
They left her and Reese headed away, taking the back exit back out into the garden just in time to hear the robicles’ heavy steps coming to a halt on the other side of the castle. He was on the verge of creeping round to get a look at them and try to hear what they did or didn’t know about the murder when a hand landed on his arm.
He jumped and looked round, finding Ariel behind him. Any eavesdropping would have to wait.
* * *
Reese had been stuck out in the gardens all day, unable to find out what was being talked about by the guests. He had asked the staff about it when he had his lunch break but no one would answer his questions and he got the impression that this was another of those situations where they might lose their jobs if they said something they shouldn’t. There seemed to be a lot they weren’t allowed to say and Reese wondered if there could be more to the situation than a murder, although he had no idea what.
It was nearly the end of his working day and he was using a machine in the front driveway to silently suck up the water from the melting snow when the front door opened. He glanced up and his pulse raced at the sight of the guests emerging. He kept using the equipment, careful to make it look as if he was concentrating solely on his work as he drifted closer to the castle.
“... Grave insult to us.”
“I promise that that’s the last thing we intended.” Reese glanced up through his eyelashes and saw that the speaker was the Norla du Lissin, Ember’s curly-haired younger daughter.
“We came here to speak to the head of the family, not to be fobbed off on some underling.”
“My mother is ill. If you had given us more notice, we would have arranged a better day.”
“So it’s our fault that Madame du Lissin showed such discourtesy?”
“That’s not what I said.”
Ember du Lissin had refused to see the guests, Reese realised. She certainly hadn’t looked ill this morning so she had stayed away on purpose. It made sense now why Norla had said earlier that she would handle everything. They must have done this to guard their secret. One of their secrets.
“You will tell Madame du Lissin about my offer?” another guest said.
“Of course, Mr Samba. We’ll certainly consider it.”
What offer? Reese stared fixedly at the dark driveway, straining his ears to hear more. The guests were heading to their robicles now.
“Have a safe journey to your homes,” Norla called out, although she didn’t manage to inject any friendliness into her voice.
Peering up again, Reese saw the man who had felt insulted – he guessed that this was Mung Li Mung – shoot Norla a sour look, while the woman with him waved and the other man – who must be Mr Samba – smiled in a pleased way. Seats descended from the body section of the robicles and the guests made themselves comfortable before being lifted upwards. Seconds later, the transports began to clomp away, the ground shaking beneath their steps.
Norla was still standing in the doorway and Reese saw that her older sister, Mer, was with her. The women of the family all looked a little alike, with brown hair, elegant clothes and slender builds, but Mer’s hair was short and she was plainer than her sister. “They are too powerful to annoy like this,” Mer said, rubbing her arms and shivering as a gust of wind hit her.
“What choice do we have? We need to get to the bottom of the murder ourselves and get everything straight.”
“Then we shouldn’t have sent away that investigator.” Mer turned on her heels and headed back inside, Norla following.
Reese switched off the water-absorbing machine he was holding. So the family didn’t actually know who killed Kass du Lissin or, if someone did, they weren’t admitting it to the others. Mer had also said that Nick had been sent away, which was either a euphemism or she didn’t know about the slavers sent to catch him.
And what was that about an offer from the Samba family? What was everyone up to?
Footsteps sounded and he tried to find the switch to turn the machine back on as Ariel came into sight from round the side of the building. She stopped opposite him and glanced round. “You’re only halfway through the work. What’s taking so long?”
He stared at her. “I, er...”
“Oh, all right. You can go inside and get a hot drink before finishing here.”
He grinned at the grudging tone that masked the kindness. “Thanks, Ariel.”
Chapter Seventeen
THE DU LISSIN family hadn’t managed to bury the police report on the murder so Nick and Poppy visited Seaspray’s crime unit to find out a few more facts while Reese was undercover at the house. The unit apparently had a total of one cop – or crime expert, as he called himself – who handled all criminal-related matters in the district and his name was Fwis. He was one of the green-fur aliens who Nick had belatedly discovered were called ratalls. Fwis checked their permits and had a long conversation with several members of the planet’s government before he agreed to tell them anything.
“Kass du Lissin was shot,” he told them, sitting in an office – the crime unit consisted of just one room – filled with sea plants and shells, “and her body was found in a room at the Castle Road offices.”
“That’s the seaweed business, not the company she owned,” Nick said to Poppy, recognising the street from when he had been snooping about yesterday. “She must have had a meeting with someone there, which again points at the family.”
“I would never expect one of du Lissin family,” Fwis said.
Nick guessed that he meant suspect and the translators were getting confused again. The machines sometimes rivalled even the captain for stupidity.
“Why not?” Poppy asked.
“They are part of the founding families of Ocean.”
So they were too important to accuse of anything. Great. “Is there anyone you do suspect?”
“Not at this time.”
“Yet you’ve been working on this case for how many weeks?” Poppy asked.
It was a fair criticism but there was no point in antagonising Fwis before he’d told them what he had found out. “When was she found?” he asked.
Fwis pulled on his long whiskers in a nervous way. “Her body wasn’t reported as missing to me until the end of the day, although I estimate she died at around the hour of sib. I helped t
he family search at the companies and found the corpse just after the hour of vo in an office that was seldom used.”
Poppy muttered a question to her computer and the virtual representation of a young woman appeared to say, “The hour of sib is just after eleven in the morning, in standard time, and the hour of vo would be seventeen minutes past twenty-one hundred hours.”
The virtual image vanished again and Fwis – who hadn’t reacted to the appearance of the avatar, clearly used to such tech – went on with his tale. “There was no forensic unknown word at the scene, not even old DNA, so my guess stroke belief is that the murderer cleaned the room before leave.”
“If no one heard the shot fired, was a silencer used on the gun?” he asked.
“Yes. That is my guess stroke belief.”
“So it wasn’t just premeditated but carefully planned out,” Poppy said.
Someone had wanted Kass du Lissin dead and had set out to cold-bloodedly work out every detail of the crime so as to avoid being caught.
* * *
“How does your ankle feel?” Nick looked down at his sister’s leg, which was still bandaged from the injury that had prevented her from coming with him to the planet. A week had gone by since then for him but, because of the time difference, it had only been a day for her.
“It’s fine.”
She would say that, no matter how she felt, but she had been moving about all day and wasn’t limping, so he took her at her word. He glanced around, wondering if Reese had finished at the castle and returned to the ship. Nick had missed him. He knew he shouldn’t let himself care too much about Reese but the other man’s presence always brightened his life. He wouldn’t read anything more than friendship into Reese’s behaviour from now on but Reese had said that this mattered to him, which had reassured him.
“Looking for someone?” Poppy asked as they walked through the ship’s silver corridors.
“No, of course not. I’m just juiced to be back and find the ship in one piece.” He had bought some vegetables and bread rolls on his way back and his sister followed him into kitchen area, where he put them down on a counter.
“I can’t believe that scumass Prince left you stuck there.” She leaned against a cupboard. “And Keith must have realised I didn’t know about the time difference. Flaky lapdog.”
Keith had never had any time for Nick, so he probably hadn’t cared that Nick was stuck on the planet for longer than intended, which didn’t endear the cultural adviser to him. On the other hand, Keith would probably be looking for somewhere new to sleep now that Reese had the captain’s attention, so he had his own problems and Nick saw no point in holding a grudge. Prince, on the other hand, he hated more than ever, although his relationship with Reese might have something to do with that. It wasn’t particularly fair to blame the captain, when the decision had been just as much Reese’s, but that was how Nick felt: every time he thought of the two of them together he wanted to strangle Prince. “We all know that the captain doesn’t give any of us a second thought, so that’s nothing new. I’m back safely so forget about it. Reese helped me a lot.”
“And now he’s helping himself.”
Nick forced himself not to wince at this stark assessment. “He just wants to escape from Ocean. If you’d been stuck there, like we were, you’d understand. We coulda both died, not just because of the slavers but from the icy weather conditions too. Ocean’s a real hellhole.”
“It makes you wonder why any of the du Lissins want to stay there.”
They were back to the topic of the investigation, so he could relax and stop excusing Reese’s actions which, after all, weren’t anyone else’s business. If Nick had begun to develop feelings for him then that wasn’t Reese’s fault and no one was hurt. Being friends was enough.
He got a knife out of the drawers in front of him and a chopping board from a cupboard, Poppy moving to let him get to it. He sprayed the vegetables with edible disinfectant and began chopping them up. “They want to stay because of the seaweed.” Odd, but true.
“Kass didn’t.”
“She had just gone through a difficult divorce,” said a voice from the doorway and Nick turned to grin at Reese, who held his hands up. “Have I annoyed you?”
Nick glanced down in confusion, before realising what Reese meant. He lowered the knife. “I’m only generally violent with fruit and vegetables.”
“Good to know.”
“Did you discover anything new at the castle today?”
“Yes, although not much of it made sense.”
Nick turned back to his task. He had brought enough food so that Reese could join them. “Then let’s sit down and eat while we figure out what we can about the case.”
Chapter Eighteen
“SO THE du Lissin family wants the murder solved but they didn’t want me involved,” Nick said after Reese finished talking about the visitors to the castle. “And most of the family probably didn’t know about the slavers being sent to arrest me.”
“Also, Mr Samba made the family some kind of offer and seemed very happy when they said they would consider it.”
“I think I might know what that was about. Our hotel manager mentioned this a couple of days ago but then the ship showed up and I didn’t get round to telling you. Mr Samba was said to be in negotiations with Kass du Lissin just before she died to buy her transport company, although there were rumours that she might leave the company in the hands of another member of her family instead.”
Reese swallowed his bite of roll before speaking. “If she decided not to sell to him after all, that would give Mr Samba a reason to kill her, although it would give her family less reason to harm her.”
“Someone in the du Lissin family might also have killed her to stop her company getting into the hands of a rival.”
“And Ember du Lissin is avoiding the other families, presumably so as to stop them learning whatever secret the family is trying to protect; possibly that Kass was murdered or the reason for it. I also saw Mer meeting a valet secretly behind the house, although I was too far away too hear what that was about.”
Poppy put down her fork to join in with the conversation. “You’re putting a lot of effort into this, Reese. Don’t you have other matters on board to keep busy with?”
Nick winced at her tone and what she was implying but Reese didn’t look offended. “I’ve accepted the captain’s offer to stay aboard as a new investigator.”
“Permanently?” Nick asked, brightening, although he couldn’t help but think that the captain had claimed not to be making enough money to keep Dee onboard yet he could find a place for a man he was interested in.
“Yes. I’m officially a new member of the crew.” Reese smiled at him.
“What do you know about looking into crimes?” Poppy asked.
“Reese used to work for the police in Britain,” Nick said, hoping his sister would relax. He had no idea why she had taken such a dislike to Reese.
“I’m the lead investigator so you’ll answer to me,” she said.
“Of course,” Reese agreed, looking amused rather than annoyed at her curt manner. “So what did the two of you learn today?”
Nick told him about the crime clearly being a premeditated one. “It’s difficult to imagine someone killing a member of their family in such a callous way but the evidence still points to them, even more now that we know Kass was murdered at the seaweed place where Ember and her children work.”
“We know Pos, Arwyl’s husband, owns a different company but I wonder if Keat, Mer’s husband, works for the seaweed business. He’d have a financial motive too.”
“That’s true,” Nick agreed. “We should be able to find that out.”
“If we’re saying the murderer probably works there, what suspects do we have?” Poppy asked.
“Ember du Lissin, who was Kass’s sister, and Ember’s two daughters, Mer and Norla,” Nick said, thinking of the pictures of them they had collected. “We’ll check about Ke
at. We already know Kass’s daughter, Arwyl, works for her export business – I saw her there myself – but we should check about Bop too. He might work for his aunt rather than his mother.”
“We should do some surveillance on the seaweed place tomorrow,” Poppy said to Nick. “We might even be able to get inside, or I might, since the family would recognise you.”
“No way. If there’s a killer there they already know we were called to investigate the matter, even if they don’t know your face. If they guessed you were digging about they might kill you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take a gun. I can promise you that no one’s going to murder me.”
“As a first step in solving the murder, we should try to find out what exactly the family is hiding,” Reese suggested. “When we’re able to confront them about that, we can make the investigation official and force them to guarantee that the slavers won’t cause us any more trouble. At that point you can investigate the crime scene as much as you want and question everyone there.”
Nick felt a swell of gratitude to Reese for suggesting a different course of action, one that didn’t put his younger sister in danger.
“That’s true,” Poppy agreed, looking slightly impressed by this reasoning. “I guess you’re in the best position to find out family secrets from the staff.”
Reese made a face. “They’re pretty close-mouthed but I’ll do what I can. If you have any surveillance bugs I should be able to place them inside the house, downstairs at least, so we can listen in to what members of the family say.”
Poppy got to her feet. “I’ll get you some now.”
Nick smiled to himself as he watched them. Not only were they starting to make progress with the investigation, but Poppy already seemed to be accepting Reese as part of their team.
Chapter Nineteen
THE NEXT day Ariel sent Reese into the du Lissin mansion with fresh greenhouse flowers to fill various vases, which gave him the perfect chance to place the bugs Poppy had given him in various rooms of the house. Arms full of the fragrant blossoms, he walked through the kitchen and out into the staff section, looking for Beja.
No One Likes Humans Page 7