“Higginbottom’s,” Amanda said.
“That’s right. Higginbottom’s. It’s on the other end of town. But he had units all over England. Started in Bicester but expanded. Or maybe started up north and relocated. I can’t remember. He’s told me more than once, but I confess he’s a hard man to listen to when he drones on and on.”
Scarlett turned to Tim. “We need to talk to her.”
“Agreed,” Tim said.
Ronnie pushed back in his chair. “I should probably go, too. She doesn’t know who you are. Better if it’s a friendly face.”
“I’m going with you,” Amanda told Ronnie.
Scarlett mused that the two of them were becoming more and more inseparable.
Ronnie fished his phone out from his pocket. “I’d better call her first.” He dialed and waited, the phone to his ear. “Make sure she’s there and everything.”
Scarlett thought about stopping him from warning her, and glanced at Tim. Tim didn’t react or try to stop the call, so she relaxed and listened.
“Alexis, it’s me. Ronnie,” he said. “Just wanted to check in… I know what you mean… Out of nowhere… Who can, really? There’s no good explanation for it… Oh, I’m doing okay, considering… Yes, it’s been rough on all of us, I know… You most of all, I think… And Frank, of course… Listen, there was something I wanted to talk with you about, but not over the phone. Would it be all right if I stopped by…? Oh, no. I’m heading out there anyway, it’s no problem… I’ll come to you… Well, it’s about the funeral… That’s only natural, but we have to think about it… Frank is completely destroyed, of course, but he asked me to help him organize it… Well, that’s just it, you see. I was thinking that it would be really great, appropriate, even, if you would say a few words at her funeral… I think she would want that, don’t you…? I totally agree… Yes, I think we should talk it through a little… Might help both of us… Ten minutes. I’m at Costa right now, just finishing a tea… Perfect, I’ll see you then.”
He hung up and pushed his chair back again and stood up.
“Okay. Let’s go,” he said.
“Hang on!” Tim stopped him with a hand up. “I’m not okay with this.”
Ronnie frowned and cocked his head.
“You just lied to her…” he added. “That’s not how we do things.”
Ronnie exhaled an exaggerated sigh. “Let me get this straight – you don’t think I should be lying to the person who killed Jade?”
Tim hesitated a moment. “I’m not happy about it, but we do need to talk to her,” he confessed, moving to get up. “Just… no more doing this thing you do Ronnie.”
Ronnie waited until Tim wasn’t looking at him and allowed himself a brief moment to raise his eyes to ceiling before getting up to follow.
Scarlett watched quietly. Tim had a point. But then so did Ronnie. This killer needed to be stopped.
Chapter Seventeen
Higginbottom Residence, Bicester, England
Must be nice, Scarlett thought when the Higginbottom estate first came into view. They’d all driven up together in Ronnie’s car.
Judging from their house, the Higginbottoms were quite well off. It was one of those old three-story houses that must have dated back to the eighteenth century. Though it still had its original sash windows, Scarlett could tell that it had been renovated.
After they had been let through the front gate, Ronnie drove them onto the estate over the cobblestone driveway. He parked next to a white Mercedes.
“Wait here,” Ronnie said to Scarlett and Tim. “Amanda and I will go in first since she knows us. I’ll get her to invite you in as well.”
“What are you going to tell her?” asked Tim.
“That you’re helping me with the funeral arrangements. We were planning things out at the coffee shop and I’m driving you home after.”
“If you think you can sell it,” Scarlett said.
Ronnie flashed her a brilliant smile. “Darling, I can sell anything.”
Ronnie proved good to his word. After ringing the doorbell and exchanging quick hugs with Alexis, he spoke a few words and nodded toward the car. Alexis must have agreed, because not a moment later Ronnie gestured to them, beckoning them inside.
The blonde woman in the doorway met Scarlett’s eyes and forced a smile. Her eyes were red and glistening. She looked like she’d been crying, but had pulled herself together for the benefit of her visitors.
“Hi, I’m Scarlett.”
“Alexis.”
They shook hands.
“Did you know her well?” Alexis asked.
“Not well enough, I’m afraid. I knew her a little. She had such a spirit.”
Alexis nodded. “She did.” She teared up again.
Tim introduced himself, and Alexis seemed a bit alarmed at his RAF uniform, but didn’t comment or object.
“Looks like the porch is getting crowded,” said Alexis graciously. “Why don’t you all come in?”
Scarlett shifted awkwardly, feeling bad about ambushing her. They needed to get to the truth though, and confronting Alexis was the only way she could see to do it. A woman was dead. That had to count for something.
Alexis led them to a large reception room, where there were enough sofas and chairs to accommodate them all. The floors were wood and stone, and the rear windows looked out onto a walled garden. Scarlett admired the high ceiling and the inglenook fireplace. The landscape paintings of Scotland that hung on the wall looked like originals, not reprints, but Scarlett didn’t know the artist.
“Jordan Palmer,” said Alexis, as if reading Scarlett’s mind. “He’s a local artist. My husband and I honeymooned in Scotland, and we bought these last year as a set. You like them?”
“Very much,” said Scarlett.
“Tea or water, anyone?”
They all declined, so Alexis pulled a chair from the dining table and placed it so that she could see all her guests over the coffee table.
Ronnie broke the ice. “I know I speak for all of us in saying how terribly sorry we are for your loss. I know you and Jade were best friends. My own sense of loss has been absolutely devastating, so I can only imagine what you’ve been going through.”
Alexis looked sad now, but didn’t cry. Perhaps, thought Scarlett, she had shed too many tears already. Or she was putting on a brave face for the guests. Not everyone was comfortable shedding tears in mixed company.
“Thank you,” Alexis said. “It’s all so confusing.”
Ronnie nodded. “I keep asking myself over and over, ‘How could this happen?’ I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“Me neither.”
“And I was there,” Ronnie continued. “One minute she’s happy and alive, and the next minute she’s gone. You know, I try not to think about these things too much, but when something like this happens, it just shocks you to the soul. Suddenly everything in life seems different. I know it’s all part of the natural course of things. No one is guaranteed a tomorrow, as they say. But it still comes as a shock. I keep thinking there must be a reason.”
“Did she say anything?” Alexis asked.
“What do you mean?”
“In the end.”
Ronnie look down at his shoes. “No, she… wasn’t able to speak.”
It seemed to Scarlett that Alexis was almost relieved to hear this.
Scarlett recalled the look on Jade’s face as she died. That desperate, pleading look, knowing what was happening to her, knowing it was the end, but not being able to stop or cry out.
A new thought struck Scarlett. Had Jade known she was poisoned?
Jade had looked directly at Scarlett, if only for a moment, but the look was not of confusion or blame. Scarlett had given her a cup of water moments before she collapsed, but Jade didn’t seem to blame her for what was happening. As much as Scarlett sometimes blamed herself for her inability to save the woman’s life, she was comforted by the thought that Jade herself did not see Scarlett as he
r killer.
Then again, maybe she had just imagined it. Everything had happened so quickly, and memories had a way of rewriting themselves.
Now studying Alexis, Scarlett began to wonder. She had asked about what Jade said before she died, but not about what she felt. Not about her pain or suffering.
Alexis had dried her tears and now seemed less emotional than when she first came to the door, so Scarlett decided it was time to press the issue. If Alexis knew something that she wasn’t telling them, Scarlett meant to find out what that was.
“Where did you last see Jade?” Scarlett asked.
“At lunch,” Alexis said.
“Where was that?”
“At the Farmshop, we liked to go there sometimes. One of our regular spots,” Alexis said. She looked at Scarlett quizzically. “Is that important?”
“It might be,” Scarlett said.
“I don’t see how,” Alexis objected. “I thought you all came to talk about the funeral arrangements, not my eating habits. I don’t see why that’s important.”
Alexis seemed overly defensive, so Scarlett pushed further hoping to it would lead her to the truth.
“You were the last person to eat with her, not an hour before she died.”
Something flashed in Alexis’s expression. A moment of anger or indignation, quickly suppressed.
Alexis took on an innocent tone. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened. You knew her better than we did. You saw her shortly before she died. How was she feeling? What did she talk about?”
Alexis seemed to relax a bit. “She was feeling fine, as far as I could tell. Physically, I mean. But the truth is, we hadn’t actually seen each other for a while, so we were mostly just catching up.”
“I thought you saw her several times a week?” asked Amanda.
“Oh, I did, usually. We had always been close, until recently,” Alexis said, pulling at the cuffs of her sleeves. “We were sort of on a break, I guess. I hadn’t seen her for a while. To be honest, I was a bit worried for her, so I was glad we had a chance to see each other again.”
“What happened?” Scarlett asked. “Why had you stopped seeing her?”
“It wasn’t up to me, really. It was her idea. She said were seeing each other too much, and Frank didn’t like it.”
“Her husband,” said Tim chiming in.
Alexis nodded.
“Why would he care?” Scarlett asked.
“I don’t know.”
She’s lying, Scarlett thought. Alexis was covering something up, something about her lunches with Jade, or about their relationship.
“But you think Jade stopped seeing you because of Frank?” Scarlett said.
“It’s not just what I think, it’s what she said.”
“What did she say?” asked Amanda.
“She said she wanted to concentrate on her marriage.”
“Was there a problem in her marriage?” Scarlett asked.
“Isn’t there always?” Alexis tried to make a joke of it, but no one laughed.
“What did you think of Frank?” said Tim.
“I didn’t think of him,” Alexis replied, folding her arms. “Not if I could help it.”
“You didn’t like him,” said Tim.
“It wasn’t that,” Alexis said. “He’s okay, I suppose, but he was all wrong for Jade. I tried to tell her that, but she couldn’t see it.”
Scarlett was beginning to get a sense of the true nature of her relationship with Jade.
“You tried to break up their marriage?” she asked.
Alexis looked startled. “What?”
“You were jealous.”
“What? No. Jealous of who?”
Still covering up, Scarlett observed to herself.
Alexis looked around the room, seemingly looking for allies. None came to her aid.
“I wasn’t jealous,” Alexis insisted, sounding indignant. “It’s ridiculous. You can’t be serious. Me in love with Frank?”
Alexis laughed at the apparent ridiculousness of it.
“Not with Frank,” said Scarlett. “With Jade.”
For a long moment Alexis said nothing. She seemed to have forgotten how to speak.
I was right, thought Scarlett. That’s it. That has to be it.
Scarlett had knocked Alexis off her game, and decided it was time to move in for the final blow.
“You were in love with Jade, weren’t you?”
Alexis struggled to compose herself. Tears began streaming down her face.
“She was my friend,” she said softly. “My best friend…”
“And your lover,” said Scarlett.
Alexis shook her head violently. “I’m married. She’s married.”
“And that’s why you couldn’t be together,” Scarlett concluded.
Alexis tried to speak again but her words remained caught in her throat. Her lips quivered, and she covered her mouth with her hand. Closing her eyes, she nodded her assent.
Scarlett filled the silence. “Jade stopped seeing you to save her marriage, because she was afraid of what would happen to her if her husband found out.”
Alexis sobbed and nodded.
“She hurt you, didn’t she?” asked Scarlett.
Alexis bent forward in her chair and buried her head in her arms, as if shielding herself from the blows of an attacker.
“That’s why you did it.”
Alexis whimpered like a whipped dog.
“That’s why you poisoned her.”
“Yes,” Alexis said, speaking so softly that Scarlett couldn’t be sure she’d heard the word.
“That’s why you killed the woman you loved.”
Alexis nodded and wept.
For a long time no one spoke, then Tim rose from the sofa and excused himself.
He opened the front door and went outside, leaving the door slightly ajar. Scarlett watched him pull his phone from his pocket and dial before he walked out of view.
When Alexis raised her head again, her nose was sniffling, and what was left of her makeup was ruined. She pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table and tried to fix her face, with mixed results.
Ronnie cleared his throat. “You and Jade were… involved?”
Alexis went through four more tissues before she answered him.
“Yes,” said Alexis. Suddenly, it seemed she’d found her voice again. “We had been. But she changed. Maybe we both did. We started seeing less and less of each other. I wasn’t sure why, and I started to get worried, and maybe a little, I don’t know, desperate. Or just lonely. She was pulling away. I could feel her losing interest. That’s always been a big fear. Abandonment. My mother gave me up for adoption, and people are always leaving me, and it just hurts so much. The rejection. The loss of control. I thought I could fix it this time, you know. I thought I could make it different. Like maybe if I loved her enough, or changed myself, she’d come back to me. I even told her I’d get a divorce so we could be together, and she freaked out. I shouldn’t have mentioned divorce. I think it triggered her, and she didn’t return my calls for a week. It was hard, so hard. I wanted to reach out to her but every time I tried she pushed me away.”
Alexis wiped her eyes with a clean tissue, then tossed it to the floor with the others. She stared at Scarlett with a question in her eyes.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Scarlett sighed, and tried to piece it together in a way the others would understand. “You had lunch with Jade before she died, but you hadn’t seen her for a while before that. Jade was getting sick before, then she’d started to feel better, and then she died. I was sure that someone had been trying to poison her slowly over time, but it didn’t make sense for her husband to stop poisoning her and then start up again randomly. I was looking for some pattern. Just from talking to you I could sense Jade meant more to you than you wanted us to know. You were hiding something. You loved and hated her. It was more than fri
endship.”
“Yes,” Alexis said. “It really was. So much more.”
Ronnie shook his head. “I almost can’t believe it. How could I have been so stupid, so blind? Jade tried to tell me. She wanted someone to talk to about what was going on with her, but I was just too busy. I should have listened. I thought she was angry and wanted to quit. I thought it was about me, but it had nothing to do with me. I should have listened.”
Amanda held him and tried to console him. “It’s not your fault.”
Then, they sat quietly until Tim returned.
“I called the police,” Tim said. “They’re on their way now. We’ll have to wait here until they arrive. They’re going to want to talk to us.”
Scarlett was relieved that Alexis did not put up a fight. The woman seemed resigned to her fate now, having confessed not only to Scarlett but to the others in the room. She seemed almost relieved to have the truth out in the open, as if confession were a kind of therapy and her worst demons had been exorcised from her soul.
After Tim had revealed his conversation with the police, they all waited in the great room of the Higginbottoms’ estate.
Once again, Alexis offered them refreshments, and Ronnie admitted he could use something to drink. Scarlett thought it was Ronnie who took the news the hardest. Not only was Jade dead, but now that he understood what had happened, and who Jade really was, he seemed to blame himself for turning a blind eye.
Alexis grew quiet as she served them tea. Amanda had initially refused, but eventually accepted a cup, if only in sympathy with Ronnie. While Ronnie gulped his tea like a man who had just crossed the Sahara, Amanda let hers cool without so much as a sip. Instead, she held Ronnie’s hand in her lap and occasionally rubbed his leg. From time to time she’d whisper to him, “It’s going to be okay.”
Scarlett could see for the first time the soothing effect Amanda had on him. Amanda didn’t know that Ronnie was a werewolf, but she certainly knew about his volatile emotions. His animal nature had to be tamed. Like the heroine of Beauty and the Beast, Amanda had civilized him. Scarlett understood now that Ronnie needed Amanda as much as she needed him. Perhaps more.
While waiting for the police to arrive, Tim spent his time wandering through the great room, admiring the décor and the art. Scarlett hadn’t seen this side of him, this interest in art and history and things well made. He asked Alexis about each item, a vase or a statue or a painting, and while Alexis gave short answers, they seemed to satisfy him.
A Very British Witch Boxed Set Page 40