Chocolate, Lies, and Murder (Amber Fox Mysteries Book #4)

by Sibel Hodge

  ‘Well, everyone knows the “V” sign, ma’am.’

  At that moment, Sergeant Napier, who I’d worked with before, opened the door behind me, breaking into my thoughts about me wanting to use the ‘V’ sign on a certain police officer.

  ‘Hi, Amber,’ Sergeant Napier said solemnly. ‘I hear you want to see Brad.’

  My throat squeezed closed with emotion, and the words stuck in my throat, so I just nodded.

  ‘Come on, then. I’ll give you ten minutes.’

  I followed him down the hall to the cells. Felicia’s name was marked on a board outside the cell next to Brad’s. She would probably be up in court this morning for the threatening letters.

  Sergeant Napier opened a little hatch on the door of Brad’s cell and looked in. ‘Visitor for you,’ he said to Brad before unlocking the heavy steel door.

  I walked in. Brad sat on a thin metal bed at one end of the small cell, wearing a police issue jumpsuit. Sergeant Napier shut the door with a loud clang and locked it behind him, leaving the hatch open.

  Brad stood up, and I dumped the carry case on the bed and fell into his arms. Resting my head against his shoulder, I felt myself melt into his warm body. I breathed in his rugged, musky scent, the traces of his aftershave still lingering on him. I slid one hand up the taut muscles along his back and one hand around his neck, pulling him to me in an urgent kiss. What if I never felt his lips on mine again, or any other part of my body, for that matter? What if we didn’t get to grow old together like we were supposed to?

  ‘How are you?’ I leaned back, studying his face, as if trying to commit it to memory in case I hardly ever got to see him again.

  ‘I’ve been captured by terrorists and had tortured interrogations. This is a piece of cake.’ The edges of his lips curved into a slight grin, but even if it was true, I knew he was only saying it for my benefit. My heart swelled with love. Here he was, stuck in a crappy cell, accused of murder, and he was trying to put me at ease and stop me going out of mind with worry.

  ‘God, I’ve missed you.’ He pulled me in for another full lip-lock, which would’ve got my nipples springing to attention if we weren’t in a police cell. Not very conducive to arousal, let me tell you.

  I pressed my flat palm to his chest and pushed him to sit on the bed. Sitting next to him and holding his hand, I told him what I’d found out so far, which was bugger all.

  ‘So it looks like the only possible suspects we have left are Jessie and Steve,’ I said.

  ‘Or someone we don’t know about yet.’

  ‘That’s also possible, which could narrow it down to thousands, with the amount of people she’s pissed off over the years.’

  ‘But it had to be someone at the set of Real Women,’ Brad said. ‘Someone with access to Aleesha’s keys who also had access to Nathan’s tea and knew his tea-drinking habits. Since he only has one cup in the afternoon and one before bedtime, they would’ve had to make sure they drugged the tea after he’d had his afternoon cuppa on set for their plan to work.’ Brad tucked a crazy curl away from my face. He was trying to be calm about it, but a muscle in his jaw throbbed with tension. ‘The wedding’s not looking good, Foxy.’

  Tears pricked at my eyes. It was no use; I couldn’t contain them any longer.

  ‘Hey, don’t cry.’ He wiped away a tear snaking down my cheek, and I leaned into his hand. He slid his other arm around me, pulling me tight.

  ‘What time are you up in front of the magistrate this morning?’ I rested my head on his shoulder, wishing I could stay there forever.

  ‘Ten a.m. It looks like they’ll keep me in custody with no bail until the trial.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’ I lifted my head up and stared into his steely eyes, eyes that held a hint of despair and worry. ‘I’ll find out who did this, even if it kills me.’

  Sergeant Napier appeared and shouted through the hatch, ‘Your time’s up, I’m afraid.’

  As he unlocked the door, I gave Brad one last kiss on the lips and left him with a determined smile. I was so going to prove Romeo wrong.

  Exiting the police station, I saw Dr Spork heading my way with a pink-wrapped package in his hand.

  Great. Just what I need.

  I stopped on the steps, hands on hip, glaring at him as he came towards me. I was definitely not in the mood for any erotomania today. Dr Spork stopped a few steps in front of me. His gaze darted round, not wanting to meet mine.

  ‘I don’t want any knickers.’ I’d seen enough of the stupid things to last me a lifetime by now. ‘The Sporkites aren’t telling you that I love you. And we’re not supposed to be together. OK? Got that?’

  He still wouldn’t look at me as he fiddled with the pink package. ‘Er…these aren’t for you.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Who are they for, then?’

  ‘Felicia Seabright.’ He stared at the ground. ‘I heard what she did, and I think the Sporkites are telling me that she’s the one for me. We’ve got so much in common, you see.’ He finally met my gaze. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. I know you wanted to marry me and be my Sporkite bride, but…I’m afraid I’m going to have to dump you. I’m in love with Felica.’

  I did a mental fist pump in the air. Yes!

  ‘Well, I think you totally deserve each other, and I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.’

  ‘So…you’re not mad at me?’

  ‘Moi?’ I pointed a finger at myself. It was the only spot of good news I’d had all day. ‘Not at all.’ I jerked my head back towards the police station. ‘You’d better visit her before she goes to court.’

  He nodded, and his ponytail fell out of its scrunchie. ‘Yes. OK, no hard feelings, then?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I walked down the rest of the steps, thinking that Suzy seriously needed to go back to med school and retake psychiatry. Whatever she was doing wasn’t working.

  Chapter 16

  By nine-fifteen, Dad was staking out Steve’s house. Real Women aired live at lunchtime, so Steve would be going to the studio soon. Dad could get in there and have a good rummage around while he was out. Mum had been out early that morning and bought a James Bond boxed set of DVDs to watch and get tips from. I seriously hoped I never had to use her or Tia on another case.

  I’d been so sure before that Steve or Jessie had nothing to do with this, but my judgement had been seriously flawed lately. After all, I’d thought Brad might’ve been having a fling with Aleesha and could’ve killed her, and there’s no way he would’ve done either of those things. He loved me. I knew that, and I was an idiot to doubt it even for a second. I’d got everything so wrong by suspecting Aleesha of sending the letters for publicity that I’d overlooked a killer. And Brad now had to live with the fact that he hadn’t protected her properly, and she’d paid a deadly price.

  I was parked up a little way down the road from Jessie Hinds’s house, drinking a mochaccino and eating one of the healthy birdseed bars Hacker and Brad usually ate. I was off chocolate for life, and since my clothes were already getting loose after I’d lost my appetite, I needed some body fuel. My wedding dress would look crap if it was all hangy and rumply and didn’t fit my body. And I was determined that I was bloody well wearing that dress. In Vegas. With Brad. In four days. Actually, the bar wasn’t that bad. It was kind of nice and…crunchy. Who knew health food could taste OK? Not that it would cure me of my junk food addiction. It was just temporary. As soon as Brad was out of custody, I’d be overdosing on burgers, chips, and sugary cinnamon doughnuts. It would be my reward for capturing the real killer. So would lots of sex with Brad, minus the death by chocolate fantasy, though.

  I changed position in my seat and yawned, glancing at the dashboard clock. Ten a.m. Brad would be at court. I chewed on a fingernail, wondering what was happening. I wanted to be there to give him some moral support, but clearing his name was more important.

  By eleven-thirty I was edgy and busting for a wee. I pressed my thighs together.

 
Oops, bad idea! It made my bladder want to burst. I eyed the empty Starbucks coffee cup. Would anyone notice if I…

  All thoughts of my bladder disappeared as Jessie backed out of her driveway in her Audi convertible. I ducked down until she drove past.

  Was she the killer? Hopefully, I’d soon find out.

  I glanced up and down the street. No one was around. Good. I grabbed the stun gun from my rucksack and stuffed it in the side pocket of my combats. Then I took my handcuffs and shoved them in my back pocket. I made my way up her drive calmly, trying to look innocent, like I wasn’t just about to break and enter for what felt like the thousandth time this week. I was getting good at this. If I ever felt like giving up insurance investigating, I could become a cat burglar.

  I pulled Hacker’s lock-picking tool out of the pocket of my combats and followed a gravel path to the side gate. Pressing down the latch sounded loud in the silence. I checked around again to see if anyone was about, but big bushes obscured me from view of the road. The only other noise was my pulse pumping hard in my ears.

  I slipped through the gate and shut it behind me, making my way along the side of the building. There was a small window with privacy glass above me. Bathroom or toilet. It looked too small to crawl through, so I carried on round the corner of the house, coming to a single double-glazed door that led to a utility room.

  Lock-picking device to the rescue. After watching Brad and Hacker do it so many times, it was easy. Within a minute, I was inside the lemon-painted room. Underneath a window, there was a sink unit with a washing machine and dryer underneath. I opened the door to each and looked inside.

  Empty of washing.

  A clothes airer was folded against the back wall with nothing on it, and I found nothing of interest in the cupboards along one wall. No traces of glitter in the sink.

  The door squeaked open as I made my way through into the kitchen. My bladder shouted at me, reminding me it needed some serious attention. Jessie wouldn’t notice if I had a quick wee while I was here.

  I padded through the kitchen, past an under stairs cupboard on one side and the lounge on the other, and looked for a downstairs toilet. Surprisingly, there wasn’t one, so I ran up the stairs. Straight in front of me was the bathroom. Hurrah! I yanked down my combats, and my bladder gave a sigh of relief. I glanced around the room as I did my business. Modern sink with a chrome mixer tap and a blue liquid soap dispenser on top. A distressed wood-framed mirror above that. Under sink cupboard. The bath had a shower screen attached, and a loofah hung from the taps. Bottles of shampoo and…hang on a sec.

  My gaze cut back to the sink. Right at the bottom edge, facing the toilet, was something glittery. I shot off the loo, wiped, and pulled up my combats. I crouched down to stare at it.

  Yep, there is was. A tiny smudge of silver glitter, and if I hadn’t been sitting on the toilet, I probably never would’ve spotted it. Yay, three cheers for bladders!

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialled Romeo, wanting to get him and the crime scene team up here to analyze it before Jessie noticed the incriminating evidence and cleaned it off.

  The phone rang persistently in my ear.

  Come on. Pick up!

  It went to voicemail.

  Damn! Was he still in court with his phone turned off?

  ‘Romeo, it’s me. I’ve just found some smudges of glitter in Jessie’s bathroom. You need to get up here quick with SOCO and examine it. Jessie’s the killer, NOT Brad.’ I left a breathless message and hung up, wondering what other evidence she’d left behind.

  I’d seriously underestimated Jessie. What was it they said about a woman scorned?

  Hurrying out of the bathroom, I made my way down the hallway. There were three closed doors. I opened the first one and stuck my head in. It was a bedroom turned into a home gym. Lots of exercise equipment that looked very tortuous to me, but no sign of any other evidence. The next room was Jessie’s bedroom. I opened the door, and a gasp escaped from my lips.

  The room was painted in black and red. A red lampshade with a red-coloured bulb hung from the centre of the room. The blinds were black and so were the wardrobes. Two red sets of drawers sat either side of the bed, and a black dressing table in the corner of the room. But the colour scheme wasn’t the gaspable offence. The weird thing was the various assortments of chains, whips, and paddles hanging on wall hooks above the bed.

  I rifled through her wardrobes, looking for any glitter or chocolate stains on her clothes. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any. What I did find was lots of tight leather outfits and bondage suits, a couple of leather masks with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth, thigh high leather boots, and more assorted whips and chains.

  So, not only was Jessie a murderer, she was also a dominatrix. Wow. She’d never struck me as the type when I first met her. I thought she was too innocent to be a kinky dominatrix. Then again, I didn’t think she was a murderer, either. How wrong could I have been about her?

  I turned away from the cupboard and spied a laundry bin in the corner of the room. I was seriously sick of going through people’s dirty underwear this week. God knows what icky things I’d find in Jessie’s if the rest of the room were anything to go by. Now I knew what the officials at airport customs felt like as they rummaged around in people’s suitcases. I dreaded to think what items they were exposed to. I was so making sure I washed my dirty underwear before I came back from Vegas, just in case.

  As I took the lid off the laundry basket, my phone rang.

  ‘Hey, Amber, I got your message,’ Romeo said. ‘Do I even want to know what you’re doing inside Jessie’s house?’

  ‘Look, it’s not my fault I had to do a spot of breaking and entering. You were so determined to pin this on Brad, I had to look for evidence myself,’ I said defensively.

  I heard a sigh down the phone. ‘Have you found anything else, apart from the smudges of glitter?’

  ‘Lots of kinky sex stuff, but I’m still looking for more evidence of the murder.’

  The silence down the line sounded really loud to my ears before he said, ‘How do I know you haven’t planted evidence at Jessie’s house to get Brad off the hook?’

  Anger simmered in the pit of my stomach, threatening to explode tsunami style. ‘Because you know me, Romeo. How long did we work together? How long did we have a relationship together? You know I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Not even to save Brad? Don’t forget it was you who investigated the David Leonard murder and conveniently didn’t find any evidence that Brad killed him.’

  ‘That’s because there was no evidence!’ I shrieked.

  ‘Yes, but you knew it was him.’

  Maybe I did, but it wouldn’t do Brad any good at all if I admitted that little snippet. Plus, David Leonard was a serial killer, and the world was better off without him. ‘You know as well as I do that if Brad killed Aleesha, he wouldn’t have left any trace.’

  ‘Like when he killed David Leonard, you mean?’

  I sighed. ‘Anyway, if you remember, I didn’t go into Aleesha’s bedroom, and I never touched her body before it was taken away by the coroner, so how could I get any of the glitter or chocolate from her skin and suddenly plant it here?’ My temperature shot up with fury, but my blood ran cold. What if he didn’t believe me? What if Jessie got away with it and Brad got sent to prison for life? ‘Am I talking Spork language here? What part of “evidence” don’t you understand?’

  He mulled that over for a moment.

  ‘Look, this is getting us nowhere. We can argue the finer points of David’s murder another day,’ I said. ‘But right now you need to get over here and get this evidence.’ I rummaged through Jessie’s laundry basket as I was talking, to try to distract me from exploding with annoyance. Dresses, knickers, bras, more leather outfits, and a burgundy long-sleeved top with…

  ‘Are you still there?’ Romeo asked.

  I picked up the top and examined the cuffs. ‘Romeo, I’ve just found one of Jessie�
�s tops in her laundry basket with more glitter and brown stains on it. Just get over here, will you?’ My voice shot up a few decibels.

  ‘OK.’

  I stared up at the ceiling, exhaling a sigh of relief. Finally!

  ‘Get out of the house and meet me outside,’ he said. ‘I’ll grab SOCO and see you there soon.’

  ‘OK.’ I hung up and put the top back where I’d found it in the laundry basket. Giving the room one quick final glance, something on top of the bedside drawer caught my eye.

  A gold bracelet with gold charms of the Eiffel Tower and a camera on it.

  I crossed the room in three quick strides and stared at the bracelet. The last time I’d seen it, it had been hanging off Aleesha’s wrist. The charms were unusual and probably had personal meaning to the owner. What were the chances of two people having exactly the same bracelet as this? Even if Jessie could somehow explain the glitter and chocolate stains, which seemed very unlikely, how could she possibly explain getting this bracelet from a dead woman?

  I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t hear anyone creeping up behind me.

  One minute I was thinking about the bracelet, and the next, pain seared through the back of my head. I stumbled forwards into the bedside drawers, and my head cracked on the corner of it. Then the room submerged into blackness.

  Chapter 17

  When I came round, I had two thoughts. One, my head was so painful it felt like it was being squished in a vice. And two, I was lying on the floor between the bed and the overturned bedside drawers with something squeezing my throat and a heavy weight on my back.

  My eyelids flew open. I brought my hands up to my throat, desperately clutching at the thing round my neck and trying to pull it away before I strangled to death. My head arched back with the pressure as someone pulled tighter and tighter. I saw black and white stars behind my eyeballs.

  My life flashed before me. I thought about all the stupid things I’d wasted time worrying about over the years. If I ever got out of this alive, I was going to ditch the neurotic and insecure side and be happy with what I had.