by Sibel Hodge
‘Me,’ he said.
‘What does that mean? Is that half a meow, in which case it means yes and the other half would mean no?’
Marmalade burped. I didn’t even want to contemplate what that meant. Usually, he was really accurate. I put him on the floor and threw the covers back. Right, there was only one thing to do. This called for my Wonder Woman knickers.
I grabbed a pair of red, blue, and gold cheeky knickers with white stars on the back and ‘Wonder Woman’ written on the front. If Aleesha was trying to entice my man, I’d put up a serious fight. I shimmied into some skinny jeans, UGG boots, and a tight black long-sleeve top. I thought about shoving some tissue paper down my bra to increase the C cups but decided against it. The shift in gravity might make me fall over. I tipped my head upside down and ran fingers through my curly waves to calm down the bed head.
Ooh, bad idea. My head throbbed so hard it felt like it had a herd of stampeding wildebeest in there. I swiped on loads of mascara and pink lippy and looked in the mirror.
There. I was as pretty as Aleesha any day. And it was all real. Plus, I didn’t have to show the whole world everything, either! I gave the mirror an attitude head bob and headed downstairs to make coffee. Today, I was going to confront Felicia, and that would be the end of that. She’d stop sending the letters and maybe get some psychiatric help (not Suzy’s), and Brad would be back with me. Here. Where he belonged.
Marmalade stared up at me with longing as I turned the kettle on to boil. I grabbed a tin of tuna from the cupboard and popped the lid open. When he smelled the equivalent of feline heaven instead of his pongy cat biscuits, he went nutso. He meowed and rubbed his head against my leg.
‘OK, I need to get a straight answer out of you before you get the tuna.’ I wasn’t above a spot of bribery to get info out of my cat.
He sat down and gave me a bug-eyed look.
‘Did Brad sleep with Aleesha last night? You know the drill, meow once for “yes” and twice for “no”.’
‘Me Meow.’
‘Urgh!’ I groaned. ‘What was that? Two meows or one and a half? What does one and a half even mean? And why aren’t you talking sense today?’ I scraped the tuna into his bowl, and he wolfed it down as I made coffee. My appetite had vamoosed again through worrying about Brad and Aleesha. Good job I’d packed in lots of Death by Chocolate yesterday to make up for it.
As I sipped away, my mobile rang. It was Brad. The coffee started gurgling away in my stomach. What was he going to say? Sorry, I missed your call last night, I was shagging Aleesha or Sorry, I had my phone on mute and I didn’t hear it?
‘Hello, Brad,’ I said tersely. ‘What were you doing in the early hours of this morning that made you miss my call?’
‘Aleesha’s dead.’ Tension oozed from his voice.
Chapter 11
‘What do you mean, dead? How could she be dead? You’re her bodyguard?’ I gripped the phone and rested on a stool at the breakfast bar.
‘Yes, but I wasn’t sleeping in the same room as her.’
My heart breathed a sigh of relief about that. ‘So, what happened, then?’
‘I was drugged. So was Nathan. The only thing I can think of is there was something in the nettle tea, which both Nathan and I drank last night. I remember Nathan making the tea, and he took his up to bed with him. I made sure the house was secured and alarmed and then drank mine sitting at the kitchen table. The next thing I know, it’s morning. I’m still asleep at the table, and Nathan’s waking me up looking like a zombie and telling me to come quick, because Aleesha’s dead.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Strangled. With a pair of chocolate knickers.’
Uh-oh. Death by chocolate. My thoughts drifted back to Tia’s spell with the Death by Chocolate cake.
Fuckity fuck. Had I caused this by accident because I was imagining Aleesha out of our lives? Nah. Not possible.
But was it? When the daughter of a famous voodoo high priestess had gone missing recently, I’d investigated the case and been slap bang in the middle of some dodgy black magic voodoo spell. What if I was responsible for her death?
‘Oops,’ I said, a huge guilt cloud settling on my shoulders.
‘“Oops” wasn’t the kind of response I was expecting.’
‘I think it was me. It was the Death by Chocolate and the desert island that did it.’
‘Foxy, you’re not making any sense.’
‘Well, that happens a lot.’
‘Why “oops”?’
I told him about the spell.
I pictured him rolling his eyes at me. He didn’t believe in that mumbo jumbo, and I had to admit I didn’t really. Sort of. Well, maybeish. I mean, how did you explain the voodoo thing that nearly resulted in death? ‘Are you rolling your eyes at me? That’s my job.’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with a spell. Someone—a person, not a spell—murdered her in her bedroom after drugging Nathan and me.’
‘Right.’ But I wasn’t convinced.
‘And it’s my fault.’ His voice hardened with regret. ‘I was supposed to be her bodyguard, and I failed.’
‘Yes, but how could you guard her when she was asleep? You have to sleep, too. And you couldn’t sleep with her.’ Part of me felt really bad then. I was pleased that he hadn’t been sleeping in the same room as her, but at the same time, she was dead because of it. Now I felt doubly guilty.
‘I know, but maybe I should’ve had Hacker or one of my other ex-SAS team here doing a split shift with me, so there would always be one person on duty.’
I pictured him running his hand over his hair with worry.
‘To be honest,’ he carried on, ‘I didn’t take the threats as seriously as I should have. I really believed she was doing it to herself, and when I got your text last night and you thought the same thing, I kind of relaxed my vigil. I made a bad judgement call, and now she’s dead.’
‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill her.’
‘No, but I didn’t protect her, either.’ Guilt and anger and something else I couldn’t quite work out filtered through his voice.
‘How did the killer get in?’
‘The alarm system was off when Nathan woke me up, and I know I’d turned it on before I had the tea last night. I got Hacker to do a check, and he said the system hadn’t been hacked into. It was disabled at the source here in the house. There’s no sign of forced entry anywhere, so either someone was an expert at breaking and entering, or someone had a key and knowledge of the alarm code.’
‘Have you called the police?’
‘Yes. Romeo’s on his way. I don’t think he was too happy to hear from me.’
Great. Even though it had been a while since Romeo and I had split up, I’d still broken his heart. I still felt guilty about it, and I wasn’t really looking forward to rubbing his nose in the fact that I was now getting married to Brad. Wow, the guilt was just stacking up today.
‘Well, I found the person sending the knickers and threatening letters.’ I told him about Felicia, but something niggled at my brain. ‘If it was Felicia who killed Aleesha, why send her a letter the day before she’s going to do it? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘It sounds like she’s severely unbalanced, so anything’s possible. Maybe it was a spur of the moment thing. Maybe she decided to kill her in the middle of the night after she’d sent the letter.’
I had my doubts about that. Grabbing my car keys, I said, ‘I’m on my way over. I’ll be there soon.’
‘OK.’
I rang Dad and Tia to give them an update, telling them not to bother with their stakeout duties anymore, and drove to Aleesha’s turquoise beast.
The Scenes of Crime Officers were already there when I arrived, going through the house armed with fingerprint powder, cameras, and evidence bags. Romeo was in the kitchen, leaning against the kitchen worktop with his arms folded, looking very pissed off. Brad sat at the kitchen table we’d sat at before, looking tired. I
f you didn’t know him, you’d think he was calm and collected as usual, but I could see the haunted look of guilt and anger in his eyes. Nathan sat next to Brad, who was the same shade as a clammy piece of cod. His eyes were red, and his eyeliner was smudged halfway down his cheeks. He held a balled up soggy tissue.
‘Hi,’ I said to everyone.
‘Amber.’ Romeo’s face softened and he gave me a gorgeous smile, his hazel eyes lighting up like he’d missed me.
There it was again; the guilt doing a flip-flop in my belly. He looked well. I hoped he was moving on with his life. I hoped he’d found someone who loved him like he deserved.
‘I can’t believe she’s been killed!’ Nathan’s hands flew to his spiky hair, and he wailed dramatically. He forgot he was holding the tissue, and blobs of it fell off into his hair. ‘What am I going to do without her? She’s all the family I’ve got left!’
Brad’s gaze cut from Nathan to me.
‘Are you OK?’ I put my arms round Brad’s shoulders, kissing him on the lips. I felt bad about doing it in front of Romeo, but I couldn’t hold back.
Brad kissed me back. Hard. God, I’d missed him.
‘I’m OK,’ Brad said. ‘I don’t know what the drug was in that tea, but the SOCOs have taken blood samples from Nathan and me. It was something pretty strong, although it seems to have worn off now.’
I smiled, grateful that there seemed to be no long-lasting effects. Brad was like an ox. It would take a lot to put him out of action permanently, but it could’ve been worse. What if the person who drugged them had used something lethal instead?
‘I was just telling Romeo about what you’d found out so far, and how Felicia was the one sending the threats,’ Brad said as I sat down next to him.
Nathan jumped up from the table, pointing his finger accusingly at Romeo. ‘What are you hanging around here for? Arrest this Felicia woman now! She’s the one who killed Aleesha.’ Tears streamed down his face.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ Romeo said. ‘I’m just trying to find out what happened here. Let’s go over it again, starting with the events yesterday, so I can get this clear in my mind.’
Nathan wiped his eyes.
‘I took Aleesha and Nathan to Elstree Studios to film Real Women at midday,’ Brad said. ‘We were there for two hours, then we all left to go to a photo shoot for Playboy in the afternoon. They took photos of Aleesha covered from head to toe in silver glitter paint for about three and half hours, and we all got back here about six-thirty.’
‘I went out to the supermarket after we got back,’ Nathan squeaked in a high-pitched voice, wiping his eyes. ‘Then when I came back, I made dinner, and we watched some DVDs and stuff. Before we went to bed, I made some herbal tea for Brad and me. I took mine to bed with me, but I must’ve fallen asleep before I even finished the whole lot. Brad drank his here, at the kitchen table, and that’s where I found him this morning, still passed out. When I woke up about eight, the first thing I did was go into…’ Nathan’s lower lip trembled, and he pressed a hand to his chest. ‘Oh, my God, this is so terrible.’ He fanned his face. ‘I went into Aleesha’s room to wake her up, she’s dreadful for oversleeping, and I…f…f…found her! The herbal tea must’ve been drugged. How else can you explain us both being knocked out?’ Nathan leaned his elbows on the table, tugging at his short blonde spikes.
‘What sort of herbal tea?’ Suspicion laced Romeo’s voice.
‘Not herbal as in drugs! It was nettle tea.’ Nathan pointed to a canister of loose tealeaves on the kitchen worktop. ‘You can inspect them if you want to prove it.’
‘We’ll need to take it away and get it analyzed for whatever drugs were allegedly in it, anyway. What else happened?’
‘While Nathan was making dinner last night, Aleesha had a shower to try and get the glitter body paint off, but some of the stuff was so thick and sticky it wouldn’t all come off,’ Brad said. ‘At around midnight, when Nathan was making the tea, she said she was going for a bath and then heading for bed.’
Nathan took a huge sniff and wiped his nose with the tissue before reaching for another one from a box on the table. ‘She was lying on the bed with the knickers wrapped round her throat when I found her. Her eyes were open, staring lifelessly back at me. It was horrible! I screamed as I ran down the stairs. ’ He threw his arms on the table and crumpled forward onto them, sobbing hard.
‘Did either of you touch the body?’ Romeo asked.
Nathan look up, horrified, his mouth flapping open. ‘No. I couldn’t touch a dead body!’
‘I went upstairs after Nathan woke me up this morning and looked from the doorway of her bedroom,’ Brad said. ‘As Nathan told you, her eyes were wide open. Her skin was also waxy and pale, and rigor mortis was setting in. I’ve seen enough dead bodies in my time to know it was obvious there was nothing we could do for her, so I didn’t need to touch her.’
‘I don’t think it was Felicia who did this,’ I said.
‘Of course it must be,’ Nathan said. ‘She was the one threatening Aleesha with death. You said she sent the letters. Who else could it be?’
I told Romeo about the letter Hacker and I had got from the post box. ‘Your guys can fingerprint it.’ I reached into my rucksack, grabbed the plastic bag I’d put it in, and handed the letter over.
‘Wait a minute. You stole Royal Mail?’ Romeo asked incredulously.
‘Well, technically, no, because I’m handing it to you, so I didn’t really “steal” it,’ I said. ‘I just borrowed it.’
‘But you broke into a post box! I should be arresting you, too!’
‘Well, what was I supposed to do? The police weren’t doing anything about the threats. And I bet if you confront Felicia, she’ll admit the whole thing now so I’ve done your job for you. In fact, you should be thanking me.’
‘Thanking you?’ He shook his head with disbelief.
‘Yes. But I still don’t see why she’d send a letter the night before she was going to kill her,’ I said, hoping to distract Romeo off the whole technical break-in subject.
‘Maybe she didn’t think about doing it until later that night, after she’d sent it,’ Brad said.
Romeo shook his head. ‘Seems unlikely to me.’
And I had my doubts about that, too. I suspected Felicia had led a sheltered, strict life, what with her Dad being a vicar. Was she really capable of murder? Was she an expert in picking locks and cracking alarm codes? I doubted it. Then again, she’d sent letters threatening to kill someone. That wasn’t exactly Christian-like and innocent, was it?
‘She’s obviously crazy!’ Nathan squealed. ‘And crazy people don’t do rational things, do they?’
‘I agree, but I still can’t see Felicia doing this,’ I said.
‘If she sent death threats, she could be capable of killing her,’ Romeo said. ‘Although, I’m with Amber on this. Why send a letter the night before she’s going to kill her? That doesn’t sit right with me.’
And if it wasn’t Felicia, who was it?
‘Did you change the locks after the incident with Tracy White?’ I asked Nathan. ‘She would’ve had access to the house as a cleaner.’
Nathan pressed his hands to his forehead, thinking.
Could it have been Tracy? She had reason to, but somehow she didn’t strike me as desperate enough to kill Aleesha in revenge for how she’d been treated. I remembered Curtis wanting to strangle Aleesha. Now, him I could see doing it. And since Dad stopped his stakeout after we found the letter from Felicia, he could’ve popped out in the middle of the night and done it. He’d been in the house before. He could’ve noticed the alarm code while he was here or swiped Aleesha’s key to take a copy.
Nathan gave a huge sniff and wiped his eyes with the tissue. More blobs disintegrated and stuck to his day-old mascara. He looked like he’d been stuck in a snow globe for a week. ‘Yes, we did change the locks after that. But Aleesha was always leaving her bag on set with her keys in it when she went to the stud
io or photo shoots. I’ve lost count of the times she lost her bag on set and accused people of stealing it, only for it to turn up in the dressing room or in the kitchen later on.’ He tilted his head.
‘Actually, it’s possible anyone could’ve stolen her keys from her bag. She never really used them, because most of the time I was here to let her in, or I was with her and used my keys to get into the house.’
‘Check to see if her keys are still in her bag,’ Romeo said to Nathan.
Nathan leaped to his feet. ‘Now, where did she put her bag?’ He glanced around the kitchen, his face red and puffy from crying.
‘Is it a turquoise Dolce & Gabbana one?’ I spied it on the floor and pointed.
Nathan picked up the bag and dumped the contents out on the kitchen table. He rummaged through lipsticks, a mobile phone, a diary, a packet of tissues, receipts, mascara, a bottle of perfume, and some super-sized Tampax.
Nathan glanced up at us as he picked up a key ring with a bunch of keys on it. ‘They’re still here.’
‘So, either someone took her keys from her bag without her noticing, copied them, and put them back later, or they picked the locks to get in,’ Brad said. ‘But what about the alarm code? I set it before I drank the tea. Whoever got in would have to know that, too.’
Nathan wiped his eyes. ‘I don’t know. We always changed the code whenever Aleesha dumped the man in her life, just in case any of the exes were bitter with her for ending their relationship.’
‘When was the last time the alarm code was changed?’ Romeo asked.
‘Er…’ Nathan rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘About two weeks ago. After she split up with Stig. Then she was seeing Steve for a while, and after that Alfonso, but neither of the relationships lasted long, and they never came to the house, so it wasn’t changed again.’
Romeo jotted that down in his notebook. ‘OK, we’ll run the tests on the tea to see if any drugs were used to knock you out. But it’s very strange that the killer knew you’d both drink the tea and be out of action all night.’
My thoughts exactly. Was Nathan as innocent as he was making out? Maybe he wasn’t as distraught as he seemed. He could just be a very good actor. He knew exactly what the alarm code was. Maybe he’d told someone. Or perhaps he staged it so he could bump Aleesha off and inherit from her. This whole thing screamed of an inside job.