Lottie shot Abner an anxious glance as she went through the door and he lifted up one of the doll’s delicate arms and made it wave at her. Lottie rolled her eyes.
We’re going to die, she said to herself. We’re never leaving this place alive!
Heart sinking, she followed Charlie down a dimly lit corridor with black padded leather walls and a wine red carpet underfoot. Charlie came to a halt in front of a pair of black double doors with golden handles and knocked gently.
“Enter,” a man’s voice said from the other side of the doors.
Charlie opened the doors and entered. “Here they are boss.”
Pulse racing, Lottie stepped into a large office furnished with dark wood wainscoting and a dark red carpet. Black wallpaper covered the walls worked through with gold Damask patterning.
A huge glass cabinet lit from behind filled one side of the office, inside which were a huge collection of porcelain dolls of various shapes and sizes and glad in luxurious gowns and headwear.
They stared at Lottie with cold glass eyes and a chill went through her. She shot a look at Abner, who was also transfixed by the collection. By the look on his face he was as unnerved as she was.
Turning away from the ocean of staring eyes she focused on the huge mahogany desk sat at the back of the office. There was a man sat in a colossal leather chair behind it watching her intently. He leant forward and gave Lottie a sickly smile.
“Good afternoon, Miss. Foxglove, Mr. Kelley. I believe you are keen to talk to me. I am Argus Loome.”
For several moments, Lottie couldn’t think of anything to say, all she could do was stare at the man smiling so unpleasantly at her.
He was a large, bulky man dressed in a completely black three-piece suit with a white tie and matching handkerchief jutting from the jacket pocket. He had smooth, pale skin with a bald almost conical shaped head, crooked nose and heavy jowls.
A pair of round, dark green sunglasses hid his eyes and his teeth were jagged and a deep yellow colour. He reminded her of the white face on the front door of the bar and an intense feeling of repulsion surged through her.
“How do you know our names?” she demanded when she had gotten over her initial shock.
Argus Loome gestured to the two hard black chairs set out in front of the desk. “Why don’t you sit down and we can discuss things at leisure.”
Cautiously, Lottie and Abner sat down, Abner mindful of keeping the doll firmly in his grip. Charlie went to stand in front of the doll cabinet, his eyes fixed on Abner and a cold look on his face. It was at this point that Orlando scurried forward.
“Argus, I’m so sorry, they just stole it before I could stop them,” he babbled. “This isn’t my fault!”
“Sit down on the couch and shut up,” Argus snapped, the smile vanishing from his face. “I want to talk to my new friends.”
Orlando hurried over to the black leather couch opposite the doll cabinet and sat down. Lottie had never known him to be so meek and subservient. Argus’s greasy smile returned and he eased his bulk back into the folds of the chair.
“I’m sorry if my associates caused you both distress,” he said. “I would have intervened earlier but I was engrossed by your conversation. I understand you are heavily caught up in the sad business that happened on Orlando’s wedding day.”
“You heard us?” Abner said, his eyebrows rising. “You mean this place is bugged?”
“And monitored by security cameras,” added Argus. “In my domain, I see and hear everything. It is a vital necessity in my line of work.”
“Just precisely is your line of work, Mr. Loome?” Lottie asked, keeping her voice cool and detached, despite the panic raging inside her. How Abner could stay so calm was beyond her. “And how did you know our surnames without us saying them out loud?”
“Knowledge is my business, Miss. Foxglove, or may I call you Lottie?” said Argus.
Lottie nodded. “That doesn’t answer my other question.”
“But I think it does. I make it my business to know about the residents of our quaint little neighbour, Lincolne Bay. Here in the city of Scottfield, we lack the old world gentility of your home and Lincolne Bay has always held a certain fascination, as do you, Lottie.”
He leered at her again and she sat further back in her chair, not liking where this was going. “What’s so fascinating about me? I’m actually pretty boring.”
“I can attest to that,” said Abner.
“Oh, you are too modest Lottie,” Argus replied, interlacing his spindly white fingers over his swollen belly. As he performed this motion she realised he had no fingernails. “You were instrumental in solving the murder of your friend Tania Leigh a while ago, and this unpleasant affair with the Van Korbels shows your sleuthing prowess hasn’t diminished.
As it happens, I am something of a mystery fan myself so I am keen to find out who is behind this poisoning business as much as you are, but tell me, what brought you to my establishment?”
“Another person was poisoned,” Lottie said. “Tommy Londen, you might know him? We were told he owed you money.”
“Ah Lottie, a lot of unfortunate people are in the same predicament, look at poor Orlando there. Yes, I do recall that a student of that name has an account with us. Had something of a gambling addiction, but he actually came to me for a loan to buy an expensive diamond ring for his estranged lady friend. He was hoping to win her back, I believe.”
“Well, he knew the person who caused the food poisoning outbreak,” replied Lottie. “By the looks of it that person killed him and I’m also thinking they took a dear friend of mine too. I’m scared they’ve hurt her.”
“Yes, Doris Lefebvre, respectable proprietor of the Joseph Napoleon Hotel where you currently reside and help out with the running of, when your duties at the Sleepy Box Bakery & Coffee Shop allow, of course,” Argus purred in his thin, rubbery voice.
“Such a dear, sweet though slightly confused lady. I do hope nothing untoward has befallen her, but who knows in these troubled times? Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
“That’s right, boss,” agreed Charlie, his voice flat and emotionless.
“Stop playing games!” Lottie snapped, her patience now wearing thin. “We need answers and fast! If you’ve got something that can help us then just say it, or Abner might get a little clumsy with this doll here, and judging by your little collection I’m guessing you don’t want that to happen.”
To emphasise the point, Abner lifted the doll up and his hand squeezed round its neck. Argus kept smiling, but Lottie saw a twitch in his right cheek. “Point taken,” he said at length. “My apologies. I get carried away sometimes. Do you forgive me?”
“I don’t care. I just want to know who is behind all this. Do you know?”
Abner shook his head. “Not precisely, but as you suspected out in the bar, I think our friend Orlando here knows more than he is saying.”
All eyes turned in the direction of the sofa where Orlando was watching what was going on with a nervous look on his face. “I told you before. I have no idea who killed my grandmother and wife. I thought you believed that?”
“I was being swayed by that, but now I’m not so sure,” replied Lottie. “I believe Genevieve would have relented and given you the money you needed, but this doll is a family heirloom. Would she really part with it so readily?”
“I talked her round a day or so before the wedding,” Orlando said. “When she knew how much money I owed and that Argus was willing to halve the debt in exchange for that doll, she agreed to part with it. She knew full well what Argus would do to me if I couldn’t pay up.”
“I thought you were rich and successful?” Lottie said. “How did you end up going to a loan shark?”
“A cruel label, my dear lady,” said Argus with an air of hurt pride. “I am simply a man of business. Orlando ran up a sizable debt in one of the casinos I own in London. He took out a loan from me to cover his losses, assuring me his luck would change. When h
e struggled to make his repayments it was necessary to apply a little pressure, isn’t that right, Charlie?”
“That’s right, boss,” said Charlie flatly.
“I was nearly compelled to do something unfortunate to Orlando here to set an example to my other clients, but then he offered me the chance to own his grandmother’s heirloom, an incredibly rare Regency Lady Doll made by Lorrendal & Fairwell themselves, I couldn’t resist.
As you can see I have something of a passion for dolls. I agreed to a compromise in exchange for the doll but insisted he come back to the States to deliver it to me in person. His bride-to-be wanted a lavish wedding in Monaco but I insisted he came here to conclude our business. I believe she was not happy with the arrangement.”
“The morning of the wedding Mercedes looked like she was in a mood,” Lottie said. “It seemed you’d had a big fight.”
Orlando shrugged. “We were always fighting, but Mercedes was not happy that we had the wedding at Mayleaf. I had no choice. Argus wanted the doll brought to him on the day after the wedding. She was so difficult, I couldn’t tell her the truth or that would spoil my –”
He stopped talking abruptly. Lottie frowned at him. “Spoil your what, Orlando?”
“Orlando was living off Mercedes money,” Argus supplied, seeming to relish Orlando’s discomfort.
“He’s completely broke, but he is currently engaged in a little insider trading and a dubious property deal which is going to make him rather rich. I know this because I helped arrange it.
He’s also invested a large deal of Mercedes’s money in what she thought were sound investments but will turn out to be profitable only to him.
When all these plans matured he intended to annul the marriage and take his money and start a new life under a different identity, also supplied by myself for a modest fee. Mercedes would have been left in the lurch.”
“What a Prince Charming you are,” drawled Abner. “Sounds like it would be easier to bump Mercedes off, giving you motive to slip the poisoned donuts into the wedding feast.”
“It wasn’t me!” Orlando snapped. “Why would I lie about that, now you know everything else?”
“Why indeed,” said Argus. “As you said outside Lottie, you believed his innocence and besides it would have had to have been a person with a tremendous amount of knowledge on poisons to have produced the toxin. Not Orlando, surely, but maybe somebody staying up at the house with him.”
Lottie’s eyes widened as she remembered her last real conversation with Genevieve the morning of the wedding. “Biochemistry and pharmacology,” she murmured.
Orlando frowned at her. “What?”
“Genevieve told me how academically gifted Mercedes was,” Lottie said. “Toxicology would fall under the area of expertise that Mercedes excelled in. It would be child’s play for her to concoct a poison like that, isn’t that right, Orlando?”
Her childhood crush stared at her bleakly, his expression not denying her accusation.
“That makes no sense,” grumbled Abner. “Why on Earth would Mercedes poison herself? You said yourself she was stuffing her face with the donuts.”
“Yes, but those were my snowball donuts, not the ones with the powdered sugar she’d had treated with her poison. I’m guessing she was smart enough to know the difference,” said Lottie. “Her two friends, Sonia and Terri, Detective Gable said they had also been sick, but they were faking it, weren’t they, Orlando?”
Orlando nodded. “The three of them were laughing about it during the reception and that’s when they told me. By then it was too late to say anything and I hadn’t eaten any of the donuts so it didn’t really matter to me.”
“But why would she do something like that?” asked Abner.
Orlando shrugged. “She was like that, vindictive. It was to get back at me for forcing her to have the wedding in Lincolne Bay, so she decided to spoil it for everybody.”
“She used foxglove in her poison,” Lottie said. “Was that a dig at me?”
“I told her that you had a crush on me and when she found out you were providing the cake and the other treats and she had the idea to make you look bad. She enjoyed destroying people. The three of them did.
Regan was just as bad. You know, when they were at school in Switzerland they called themselves the Devils’ Daughters. Four rich orphan girls brought together in one place.
They thought it was fate, they even made a Satanic pact, deciding to spread harm and misery to everyone they deemed inferior to them, which basically was everybody that was not them. Perhaps now you see why I planned to change my identity and disappear.”
“But how did Mercedes end up taking the poison?” Abner said. “And why would she and Genevieve end up taking more and dying? Was it some kind of accident?”
“I don’t think so,” Lottie said thoughtfully. “I think Mercedes’s nasty poison was exploited by somebody else.”
“Bravo, Lottie,” Argus said, clapping his hands. “I wondered when you’d realise that.”
Lottie looked at him sternly. “You know more than you’re telling.”
“I always know more than I tell,” Argus chuckled, “but though this affair interests me greatly, it is providing no profit and I am a business man first and foremost. So, if there is nothing more I can help you with, can I have the doll please? I have a lot to do and must press on.”
Lottie turned to Abner. “Give him the doll.”
Abner looked at him in alarm. “What? This is our only bargaining chip. They’ll kill us as soon as I give it away.”
“You have my word no harm will befall you,” Argus said. “I appreciate your need to find the truth to stand in your way.”
For some reason, Lottie believed him. “Give him the doll,” she said to Abner again.
Scowling, Abner placed the doll on his desk. “Don’t blame me when we end up at the bottom of the river wearing concrete overcoats,” he muttered.
Lottie got to her feet. “Come on,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”
She shot Orlando a contemptuous glance and headed for the door, with Abner close behind. Charlie did not move to stop them.
“I hope we meet again, Lottie,” Argus called after her. “You are quite an exquisite little thing, rather like one of my dolls.”
Lottie felt his unseen eyes raking over her body and her skin began to crawl. She forced herself to look back at him. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Loome,” she said crisply.
“Thank you, Lottie,” Argus said. “Before you go, I’ll give you one more clue as I’m feeling quite generous today. It might be wise to look into the sad tale of Polly Schmidt. I think you’ll find it quite illuminating in relation to this business.”
Chapter 8: The Poisoner’s Tale
“Abner, what you did there was absolutely stupid,” Lottie said coldly as they walked back to the SUV.
“You ever do that again and I’ll never forgive you.” She stopped and looked at him and then suddenly hugged him fiercely. “You were also amazing. Thank you so much!”
“Please, you’re crushing my ribcage,” Abner gasped.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Lottie said fiercely. “I don’t ever want to lose you!”
“Don’t worry, I’m not in the habit of standing up to gangsters,” Abner replied as they parted. “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.”
Lottie looked at him in surprise. “It didn’t look like it to me.”
“Looks can be deceptive. Let’s get into the car before I break down and start crying like a little girly.”
As they headed out of the city, Abner took out his smartphone and started surfing the web. “I can’t find anything about this Polly Schmidt that freak mentioned,” he said irritably. “I think he was just playing with us.”
“I don’t think so,” Lottie replied, trying to put the creepy Argus Loome out of her mind. “He knows too much about this and wants us to work it out.”
“He wants you to work it out,”
Abner said. “He has the hots for you.”
“No he doesn’t,” Lottie retorted. “He’s just playing games.”
“Please, he had his tongue out drooling over you,” Abner teased. “The sad thing is he isn’t the worse guy that’s fallen for you.”
“Will you forget about him and just focus on the task at hand,” Lottie said briskly. “Search for Polly Schmidt and private girls’ school, Switzerland.”
“Just a minute,” said Abner, doing a search on the phone. “No, nothing, oh wait a second, yes I’ve got it.”
“Got what?” Lottie asked eagerly splitting her attention between the road and him.
“Smouldering sex appeal,” Abner chuckled, shooting her a wink.
“Abner!”
“Okay, okay. Listen to this. Shock hits private girls’ school when pupil’s body is found in lake.”
“A body? Is it Polly?”
“Yes, listen to this. The Jarrod Private School for Girls has been rocked by the discovery of one of their pupils being dredged from Lake Geneva after being reported missing three weeks earlier.
Polly Schmidt, fifteen, the only daughter of prominent German industrialist, Karl Schmidt, was found dead when police divers conducted a search of the lake which the prodigious school overlooks.
“The teenager had been severely beaten, with multiple fractures and a broken nose. A heavy blow to her head is believed to have killed her. Police have no clues as to the identity of Polly’s killers or any leads for a possible motive.
Polly Schmidt was an academically bright girl and very popular with her school mates and the school have expressed their deepest sympathies to the family. The investigation continues.”
“When did that happen?” asked Lottie.
Abner scrutinised the phone. “This is dated ten years ago.”
“So Polly was fifteen,” Lottie murmured. “Can you find out if Mercedes and her friends attended the same school?”
“Hang on, I’ll just look at the school website,” Abner replied. “Yes, she did as did Sonia, Terri and Regan and they attended at the same time as Polly did.
Donuts And Dead (Sleepy Fox Cafe Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 9