Presuming he meant the murder at The Beauty Spot – as yet unsolved – she gave that wise nod of the head again.
‘Ah yes. The murder.’
She hadn’t heard anything from Steve Doherty. He’d told her that he had to find his daughter, make sure she was OK, and then report back to her mother.
Perhaps it was the ‘report back to her mother’ bit that had irritated her and inspired her to ask John to escort her to the gala evening. Whatever, she hadn’t heard anything from him.
‘I mean this latest murder.’
Honey took in the chiselled features, the sharp hooked nose, and the firm structure of the chin. Casper looked as though he’d been sculpted from stone – marble of course. Casper had impeccable taste – that’s why his hotel, La Reine Rouge, kept winning the Small Independent Hotel of the Year award.
He obviously wasn’t talking about the mudpack murder.
‘I haven’t heard from Doherty with the details yet.’
There was no way she was going to appear ignorant of events. She presumed a knifing event or something of that nature outside a nightclub in the wee hours of the morning, a skirmish that had gone wrong. Steve Doherty wouldn’t contact her about something like that. He’d only get in touch if it was anything affecting the Hotels Association before Casper got on to him.
The chairman of Bath Hotels Association still had his beady eyes on her, looking hard and questioning, as though she’d just said something to slight his intelligence.
‘You’re not going to have one of your silly moments, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
On catching a hint of movement, a door opening and closing again, her eyes returned to the door. John was on his way back.
She was aware of Casper leaning closer.
‘I meant you’re not going to leave me and this fair city in the lurch are you? You’re not going to throw in the towel as our bastion between Bath and the barbarian hordes that would bring us low?’ Casper spoke in a very eloquent, olde-worlde fashion at times, as though Noël Coward was still as fashionable as silk-lined smoking jackets and garters with little bells on.
He meant that he did not wish her to relinquish her position as Bath Hotels Association Crime Liaison Officer, a position she had accepted under duress. Do it and her room occupancy would benefit, not do it and she could answer to the name Bleak House.
‘A young woman. On a building site, I believe. A beauty therapist.’
A bell jangled in Honey’s brain. She instinctively knew that Doherty had been in touch with Casper. But he hadn’t phoned her. It hurt. She didn’t like it.
‘Have I missed anything?’ John asked.
‘Nothing of note,’ Casper responded. His look was glancing. He didn’t know John Rees very well, although he did know he kept an independent bookshop in a small alley in the centre of Bath.
Impatient to receive his prize, his eyes went to his watch. ‘Twenty more minutes,’ he muttered. ‘Excuse me.’
‘Was it something I said?’ asked John.
He smiled as he said it.
Honey shook her head. ‘No. That’s the way Casper is. He’s here for one reason and one alone. To win that award – yet again.’
‘Nothing’s cut and dried, is it?’
His hand covered hers as he said it. For a moment she considered there was a double meaning to his question. He might be asking her whether their friendship was likely to go further. She decided to take it that he was referring to Casper.
‘Let me explain. La Reine Rouge is eclectic and perfectly presented. Chocolates wrapped in silk lie on your pillow at night. The sheets are washed in a rose-scented liquid. The tea of your choice is provided in your room. Slippers, dressing gown, you name it, La Reine Rouge has got it.’
‘So it’s not exactly warm and cosy family run.’
The smile persisted.
‘Are you making fun?’
He shook his head. ‘I would never do that.’
John was older than her. He’d come over from Kansas some years ago and never gone back. She’d never quite been sure why. In his far distant youth he’d served in Vietnam on a destroyer delivering arms to the Mekong Delta. He still had the physique of a fighting man, though the eyes of a peacemaker. His voice too. When he talked to her – mostly about pretty general things – she listened, to the exclusion of everything else.
She hardly noticed that Casper had come back and that the dessert crockery had been taken away and coffee had arrived.
The awards ceremony had started. She saw Casper tense, his eyes unblinking and staring at the compere as though he were willing him to get on with it and award the prize for the best small independent hotel.
Honey wasn’t concentrating on what was being said. She was thinking about John Rees and his lovely voice but she was also thinking of Steve Doherty. There had been another murder. Doherty had informed Casper but had failed to inform her. The murder had occurred on a building site.
‘The Beauty Spot,’ she whispered, and got immediately to her feet.
John Rees looked up at her.
‘John. I have to go,’ she whispered.
He nodded affably.
It occurred to her that he thought she was off to the bathroom. There was no time to explain and although she badly wanted to plant a kiss on his upturned face, she resisted. Doherty had kept his distance and the truth was that she didn’t want him to keep his distance.
Outside in the foyer she got out her phone and punched in his number. Nothing happened. She was about to repeat her action when she noted the ‘batteries low’ sign blinking blue at her.
The sound of loud applause came from the audience on the other side of the door. She guessed the prize had been announced. Casper would be striding up to the stage preparing himself to give a victory speech. If she were ever so lucky as to win something like that she’d just about be able to murmur ‘Thanks to everyone for voting for me’. In Casper’s case he’d have a prepared speech to hand which would go on for at least fifteen minutes.
‘Not again,’ she muttered to herself, heading for the cloakroom to get her coat. If she couldn’t get to Doherty by phone then she’d get to him by taxi. She needed to know what was going on.
Chapter Thirty-one
The police station was a fair step away, though all downhill. Normally she might have walked there, but she was wearing killer heels and a lightweight evening dress. High heels were not meant to be walked on, only to be seen in.
It was nine o’clock and she needed a taxi. The trouble was that by the time she got to the nearest rank she’d be halfway to Manvers Street.
On top of that it began to rain. The elegant hairdo flopped like a soggy loaf of bread on top of her head. The more she blinked the more her mascara ran, trickling down her face and taking her foundation with it.
Not a single, solitary taxi went by and the rain was getting heavier.
Walking in high heels on ancient pavements and downhill threw her off balance. The rain blinding her eyes obscured elements of the uneven surface. A heel went one way and her ankle went another. The other heel wedged in a crack between two paving slabs. Her legs couldn’t cope. Down she went.
‘Aaghhh!’
Swear words stuck in her throat. One white knee poked through a shiny black stocking. Both shoes were still on her feet but the heel had parted from one, sticking up from the crack between paving slabs.
The brakes of a car squealed to a stop right opposite her. The doors closest to her sprang open and two men leapt out.
She found herself being lifted into the air, her toes not touching the ground.
‘Put me down.’
‘Give us one good reason why we should.’
‘I know karate.’ It was rubbish. She had gone to a karate class once but decided it took too much effort. It also seemed to depend too much on wearing loose white pyjamas and shouting as you attacked whoever might be attacking you.
W
arning somebody you were about to attack them seemed silly.
The thugs who had hoisted her off her feet were obviously of the same mind.
‘We’re dead scared,’ they said as they threw her into the front seat of the car.
Obviously they were not. Far from it.
‘This is no way to treat a lady,’ Honey protested.
Her skirt was clinging to her thighs, her stockings were laddered, and she felt like a sack of potatoes. Nothing seemed to be covering anything any more.
Her instinct told her that these guys meant business. One word and she could be in big trouble. But her mouth didn’t know that. Her mouth went on motoring.
‘Let me out of here. I’ll have you know I have friends in the police force.’
‘I’ll have you know that I couldn’t give a damn. Close the goddamned door!’
The same person speaking to her was giving the orders. She recognized Luigi Benici, big trouble with a capital B and T. If that door closed the car would be off to who knew where and she would be going too. And all for the sake of the latter-day punk who came in to wash her dishes. How crazy was that?
She fixed her eyes on that door and the fresh air blowing through it and up her skirt. If that door closed and they drove off, she was dead meat. Luigi Benici had lost face. She could lose a lot more than that if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to know.
Before one of the brutes he had hired grabbed for the door, she swung her legs round. Her back was resting on the seat, her legs flailing furiously and her bottom was hanging between the edge of the seat and the dashboard.
‘Get her legs in,’ Benici shouted.
The men – probably family members, the similarity between them was quite apparent – did their best.
Honey prided herself on having strong legs. She could kick like a mule if need be. That’s exactly what she was doing now. Every time one of the thugs reached for the door, she screamed and kicked and struggled so much that her remaining shoe came off. The shoe went flying, clocking a pedestrian in the back of the neck.
Last she saw, the pedestrian went down and a sympathetic crowd was gathering.
The situation had not altered by the time they made the lights at the bottom of Lansdown Hill. Her legs, up to and beyond her stocking tops, were waving from the front passenger seat, the door still wide open.
She’d prayed the lights were red and momentarily glimpsed them before the car took a violent right swerve, then a left into Lansdown Hill.
‘You’ve run a light,’ she screamed.
‘Book me!’
One of the goons in the back was trying desperately to shut the car door. The other was trying just as desperately to drag Honey back into her seat.
She kept kicking, though she felt her strength flagging. This is a hostage situation. Fighting is a definite option, but I can’t keep it up. What else can I do?
Reason with the man. That’s the ticket, she decided.
‘Look, Mr Benici. What Clint did was wrong, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad man or that your wife isn’t the woman she was before. I mean, think about this carefully. Ask yourself what you’re going to gain from pulverizing poor old Clint into mush.’
‘Satisfaction. I’m going to mix him with my garden compost and spread it on my roses. They’ll smell sweeter for all that.’
Honey gulped. It wasn’t for the want of trying, she told herself. Poor Clint. She’d done her best, but what about her? What had he got lined up for the woman who’d spirited Mrs Benici’s lover out of Mr Benici’s reach?
She gulped. The world the likes of Luigi Benici inhabited bore little resemblance to hers. OK, he was like her in that he was involved in the hospitality and catering trade, for he owned restaurants. But there the similarity ended. She’d heard rumours that Mr Benici had fingers in other pies, ones that didn’t necessarily get cooked in ovens – though there had been whispers. People who’d upset Mr Benici seemed to disappear pretty frequently. The more naïve took the view that they’d got out of town. The more pragmatic suggested that Mr Benici’s Parma ham was not all that it should be.
They shot up Lansdown Hill with the door swinging and two pairs of hands still trying to contain matters.
Mr Benici was not enthralled with their efforts. A torrent of swear words poured out from his sensual mouth – some appeared to be in Italian.
My, she thought, the citizens of Bath are an education in themselves!
Swinging around in a car with a door wide open and a pair of legs sticking out was obviously not in Benici’s game plan. He was going blue in the face, shouting at his driver, shouting at the two guys who were trying to rectify the situation.
Somehow or other, she didn’t know how, she managed to wriggle right down into the well between the seat and the dash.
Fingers on big fat hands splayed out to grasp her. The time line between being grabbed and being free was fine. All it would take was a little inattention from the driver – and it happened!
The car swerved round a bollard to the right at the same time as it hit a bump in the road.
The speed stalled just long enough.
Curling into a ball – she’d at least been taught how to do that at her single karate class – Honey rolled and was out.
At school she’d taken part in amateur dramatics. Her most lauded part had been as a hedgehog in The Wind in the Willows, rolling up into a ball like frightened hedgehogs do.
That’s exactly what she did now, keeping herself in a tight ball and rolling across the pavement until she hit a signboard outside the door of The Farmhouse, a large pub on the corner of Camden Crescent.
Lansdown Hill was never that busy during the day except for traffic and it certainly wasn’t that busy this time of night. One or two pedestrians were strolling up or down; none was close enough to be of any assistance and nobody had come out of the pub.
Just as she’d feared, Benici’s car came to an abrupt halt. They weren’t going to let her off that easily.
The big bruisers that worked for him got out. She could see them looking around as they buttoned their jackets. It must have made their day to see that witnesses were thin on the ground.
Honey was trying to get up but it wasn’t easy. Although her body had stopped doing cartwheels, her head was still coming to terms with being upright.
She shook her head. ‘I feel sick.’
She couldn’t look up at them but kept her eyes fixed on their feet. They were coming to get her; those big size twelves were plodding across the pavement.
Swinging one arm to one side, she attempted to get up, but her head was still spinning.
The feet stopped half way to her.
She heard a voice.
‘OK, guys. I’ll take care of things from here.’
‘Get the hell –’
‘He’s a cop,’ somebody said.
The feet receded. The car doors shut and she was vaguely aware of it driving off.
Then there were another pair of feet and someone in jeans was bent down. Placing his fingers beneath her chin, he raised her face so she had to look at him. She couldn’t help smiling. Being a cop’s girlfriend certainly had its advantages.
His look was relieved but also reproachful.
‘How come I can’t leave you alone for five minutes and you’re off with other men?’
‘Fatal attraction,’ she said with a grin.
Steve Doherty had caught up with her.
Chapter Thirty-two
Karen Pinker was dead. Doherty filled her in on the details, not least the bit about the calls from public phone boxes.
‘Including during the time you were there.’
Honey gulped down half her drink. Steaks were sizzling and the usual blue smoke was whirling in the meagre lights piercing the darkness of the Zodiac Club.
The news about Karen was unwelcome. The smoke was otherwise, seeing as it was helping to dry out her rats’-tail hairstyle and the little black dress that was clinging in all the wro
ng places.
Doherty had offered to help her off with her ragged stockings. His face had dropped when she’d refused his offer on account of the fact that she had no shoes on her feet, so her stockings had to stay. He’d probably have to carry her home.
At least she was warm. It was now twelve midnight and the club was filling up with warm bodies jostling for space at the bar. Her bedraggled appearance wasn’t likely to be noticed. The patrons were here to eat, drink, and escape the rigours of being part of the hospitality profession. Most were hoteliers, guest house owners, and pub landlords. Twelve midnight was their time to have fun.
The drink helped soften the blow of Karen Pinker’s death. So did the touch of Doherty’s fingers brushing wet strands of hair away from her eyes.
However, she couldn’t help feeling guilty about Karen’s death and questioned whether it was her fault. She’d urged Karen to talk about The Beauty Spot and as a result of that Karen had lost her job. The question was, had she also lost her life for the same reason?
Twirling her glass like some kind of crystal ball did nothing to allay her guilt. But she had to keep focused.
‘Penny for them?’
Doherty was doing that thing with his fingers again. Normally his touch would send tingles to places no one else’s touch could reach. Tonight it was encountering blockages; enjoying things like that seemed somehow obscene when someone you knew – however briefly – had been murdered.
‘I was thinking …’
‘That Karen opening her mouth to you had contributed to her death.’
‘Spot on.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘Don’t you think so?’
He took hold of her chin. There was something powerful about him doing that. It made her feel vulnerable – which she was – and yet bathed in his protection – which she was.
‘Look. Nothing is for sure. It could have been a jealous boyfriend. I mean, what the hell was she doing on a building site?’
Somehow Honey couldn’t imagine a girl like Karen with a builder boyfriend – not in the guy’s workplace anyway. She recalled the phone ringing and Karen disappearing. Could the same thing have happened on the day Lady Macrottie was killed? Highly possible.
Murder By Mudpack: A Honey Driver Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Page 17