Killed With a Kiss

by Fiona Grace

  “Oxana was there,” Lacey said, clicking her fingers. “She was standing in the doorway watching the whole thing. She marched in and took the statue, then blew him a kiss.”

  “She blew him a kiss?” Beth repeated. “That’s a bit odd, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I thought so too.”

  Suddenly, Lacey was hit with a memory. The two X’s she’d seen on the window. She’d gone through hundreds of different ideas for what they may have actually been. But she’d not considered one very significant thing an X signified. Kisses!

  Had Hugh been trying to communicate that the woman who blew him a kiss had been the one to kill him?

  “Lacey?” Beth Lewis’s voice sounded in her ear. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” Lacey said breathlessly, gripping the phone tighter. “I was thinking of something. Back when I was at Hugh’s house, I saw something on the window. It looked like someone had drawn an X. Two X’s, actually. I thought it might’ve just been a smudge or something accidental before, but now I’m wondering if they were kisses, and they were put there on purpose.”

  “Interesting,” DCI Lewis said. “I don’t recall anything in the report about X’s.”

  “That’s the thing,” Lacey added. “They were drawn in the condensation. It looked like they disappeared by the time the officers got there. I did mention it in my statement. I guess Turner didn’t think it was relevant.”

  Beth was silent on the other end of the line, but Lacey could imagine her nostrils flaring with irritation. “Lacey, I’m doing everything I can to sort this out and clear you. But if there’s anything else, no matter how irrelevant it might seem, can you let me know? Anything at all?”

  Lacey thought of Colin. He’d witnessed the altercation, but he wouldn’t count as independent in Superintendent Turner’s eyes. What was the point of bringing it up and embarrassing herself? She’d just be making herself look bad for no reason.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Okay. Because Karl’s determined to get someone in custody before the full toxicology report comes back.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “A few days.”

  Lacey’s chest sunk. That didn’t give her much time to clear her name. The stop-clock on her freedom was ticking.

  “He can’t arrest me on a hunch though, can he?” Lacey queried. “He needs at least some substantive evidence. What does he even have on me, beyond me being the one to find the body?”

  “I’m sorry, Lacey. But I really shouldn’t be discussing this with you.”

  “Now you want to stop talking to me about it?” Lacey challenged. “Come on, Beth. At least tell me what I’m up against here.”

  Beth exhaled. “Fine. Turner saw multiple phone calls on your records from the Lodge. The same location the statue was stolen from. He thinks someone there tipped you off about the statue, and that the theft and the murder are connected.”

  So Turner had incorrectly correlated Suzy’s repeated calls with the stolen valuable antique. He’d put two and two together and come up with five.

  Lacey slumped back in her chair, only half aware of Beth’s voice as she bade farewell and hung up. She couldn’t believe this was happening. The police were on her case again.

  “Lacey?” came Gina’s voice from the door.

  Lacey swirled in her office chair. Gina had her shoulder up against the door frame.

  “That was DCI Lewis,” Lacey told her. “I’m a suspect.”

  “Oh.” Gina’s shoulders slumped. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to clear my name,” Lacey said, determinedly. She grabbed a piece of paper from her desk, and a pen. “It’s diagram time.”

  “Maybe I should buy you some red string and a chalkboard for your birthday,” Gina joked, as Lacey began covering her paper with notes and arrows and circles, all connecting from one to the other.

  Lacey shot her narrowed eyes. “This isn’t a joking matter,” she said.

  Gina held her hands up in a truce. She was obviously just trying to lighten the mood, but Lacey wasn’t up for it.

  She looked back down at her notes. All arrows led back to one name. Oxana.

  “Oxana won the statue,” Gina said. “Why would she kill Hugh after winning?”

  “Maybe he threatened her with legal action? He seemed to think that he’d won the item, after all, and he didn’t seem like the most rational of humans either.”

  “Doesn’t seem like enough to me,” Gina said. “Are you sure you’re not just targeting her because you don’t like her?”

  Lacey shook her head. She ringed the X in Oxana’s name in red.

  Gina narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

  “When I was at Hugh’s house,” Lacey explained, “I saw this mark on the window. Two X’s.”

  “That could mean anything,” Gina countered. “Or nothing at all.”

  “You’re right. But I have nowhere else to look, so I may as well start there. There was obvious animosity between Oxana and Hugh. Oxana’s name was spelled with an X. She blew him a kiss.”

  “Lacey, that sounds far-fetched,” Gina told her.

  “Maybe it is. But it’s where I’m going to start.” She swiped up her car keys from the counter and whistled to Chester. He leapt straight to attention, ready as ever to be the sidekick to Lacey’s sleuth. They left the store side by side.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The second Lacey emerged from her store onto the sidewalk the whispers started. A lot of the horsey folk were occupied today with a special race taking place at the tracks in the countryside out Penrose Manor way, so it was mainly locals milling around, speaking behind their hands to one another, pointing and gossiping. Lacey kept her chin up high, drawing strength from the trusty guard dog by her side.

  She must have overheard the word “dead” and “statue” at least twenty times by the time she reached the end of the high street, where the Coach House Inn stood on the corner. Its doors were open today, thanks to the hot weather. The sounds of merriment from inside ebbed out.

  Lacey glanced through the open door, noting that the place was packed to the rafters. Everyone was facing in the same direction, toward the large flat-screen TV mounted against the wall. The horse race taking place just a mile away was on the screen. Obviously the locals watched the show from the comfort of their favorite pub, rather than spend money on the extortionate ticket prices to attend in person like the tourists did.

  Lacey picked a couple of familiar faces out of the crowd—Stephan, her landlord at the store, Jake, the volunteer lifeboat captain, Sakura, the pretty Japanese woman who owned Lacey’s favorite sushi bar, and Brenda the big-mouthed barmaid with her brute of a boyfriend, Ed.

  Then Lacey stopped, recalling Gina’s words about how the horsey folk took over the Coach House during the festival, and were in there from dawn until dusk. Would she find Oxana inside?

  Taking a chance, she entered in through the open doors, with Chester at her heels.

  The Coach House Inn was stuffy inside, thanks to the weather and too many bodies packed into one place. The smell of stale beer was rather unpleasant, not to mention the slightly sticky floorboards. Chester kept close to Lacey’s legs as she squeezed her way in through the throng.

  Then suddenly, she saw her, sitting on a stool at the bar. Oxana.

  What a stroke of luck! Lacey thought, as she wove through the wall of people toward the Ukrainian tycoon.

  The woman seemed to be wobbly on her stool. By the looks of the empty champagne bottle on the bar beside her, and the red-lipstick-rimmed glass, she was well on her way to sozzle-town. It seemed pretty early to be drunk, Lacey thought.

  She popped out of the crowd, bumping into Oxana’s back as she did so. The woman turned fiercely. “Watch it,” she growled in her harsh accent. Then, on recognizing who it was who’d bumped into her, added, “Oh. It’s you.” She couldn’t have sounded less thrilled if she tried.

  “You’re not at
the races,” Lacey commented.

  “No. I prefer to watch from here,” Oxana said. “That way, when I win, I can buy everyone a round. That’s what I did yesterday after winning the statue.” She took a swig from her glass. “But that turned out to be premature, didn’t it?”

  She directed her accusation at Lacey. She clearly blamed her for the mix-up at the auction, and the subsequent theft of her statue.

  “You came here last night?” Lacey asked.

  “Didn’t I just say that?” Oxana snapped.

  She was a hostile drunk, Lacey noted. But if she was telling the truth, there’d be a whole load of witnesses. Depending on when Hugh died, Oxana may have an entire pub of alibis on her side.

  “Was that when your statue was stolen?” Lacey asked. “When you were in here?”

  “No. It was definitely there when I got back to my room. Hugh must’ve come in when I was passed out and taken it.”

  Lacey could just picture Oxana lying face down on her bed at the Lodge, stilettos still on, passed out from too much champagne. But she couldn’t picture Hugh Buckingham sneaking in. Beyond the fact he was incredibly sick and lumbering, how would he have even known where to find her? He’d have to have watched her all evening until she returned to the B&B to even know where she was saying, and then how would he have gotten into her room? The Lodge was extremely secure. Suzy wasn’t the type of proprietor to let strange men wander the hallways. That said, there was the drawing room bar that was open to the public, as well as the dining room, so if he’d been extremely sneaky, there was a slim chance he may have been able to pull it off.

  But just how sneaky could a sick man really be?

  There was one way to clear it up. Lacey needed to speak to Suzy. If Hugh had been witnessed at the Lodge that evening, then there was a high chance he was indeed the one to steal the statue. And if he had stolen the statue, had Oxana killed him to get it back?

  *

  Lacey drove to the Lodge and walked into the large, marble-floored foyer with the stone fountain in the center, then out into the corridor, where the large mahogany reception desk cleaved the hallway in two, separating the staff areas from the public areas. There was a girl on the reception desk Lacey hadn’t seen before, looking bored and lost in her cell phone.

  She remembered how Suzy had told her about her neighbor’s kids staying with her and working. Maybe this was Gabe’s sister, the college dropout? There was extra staff during the busy festival period. If only Tom had a neighbor with a couple of loafing young adults to send his way…

  But then Lacey reminded herself that Tom didn’t move in the same world as Suzy. As Hugh. The world of wealth. He didn’t live in the affluent town of Tolleton Green, where the houses looked like mansions and the yards looked like parks. Tom didn’t have a huge nest egg from his parents to pay wayward young people to do a semi-decent job. Everything he achieved, he did through sweat, grit, and sheer determination. It was one of the things she loved about him.

  She walked over to the desk.

  “Is Suzy here?” she asked the distracted-looking girl.

  The receptionist looked up. She was young enough not to have any fine lines on her face, with the milky complexion of a model selling face cream. Her hair was highlighted and styled in pretty, soft waves. Her lips were rose pink. If she was Gabe’s sister, she couldn’t have been more different.

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s not,” she said, in a floating, high-pitched voice. “Do you have a booking?”

  Lacey stepped closer. “What about Lucia? Is she here?”

  While Lacey still wasn’t exactly close with Lucia after the whole debacle of the woman working with Tom, they were on friendly terms these days, and she knew she would help her if asked, and as the manager at the Lodge, she was perfectly placed to know the comings and goings.

  The receptionist just shook her head. “No, sorry. It’s just me.” She smiled sweetly. “I like your dog.”

  “Thanks,” Lacey said, looking down at the Border collie who was looking exceptionally cute as he waited patiently. She looked back at the receptionist, noting her delicate floral perfume. “Are you new here?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m just helping out. My parents sent me and my brother here for a week because they thought we needed to learn new life skills.” She rolled her eyes. “As if I need life skills.” She fluttered her long lashes at Lacey.

  So she was Gabe’s sister. And what an arrogant young woman, Lacey thought.

  That put her at somewhere between nineteen and twenty-two, unless she dropped out of a post-grad degree. But by the way she chose to present herself—all pinks and blonde and flowery—Lacey couldn’t really picture her as the academic type.

  “You’re Gabe’s sister,” Lacey said.

  The girl looked surprised. “Oh. You know my smelly little brother, do you?”

  “He did some work for me,” Lacey explained.

  She couldn’t have looked more different from him. Where Gabe was scruffy and unkempt, his sister was polished to perfection. Perfectly manicured nails. Perfectly straight, whitened teeth. Where Gabe was a supposed genius on track to get a computer science degree, his sister seemed to be aspiring only to look pretty. The one thing they had in common was poor social skills.

  “You must be Suzy’s friend,” the receptionist continued. “From the antiques store? I’m Emma.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Lacey said. “I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something. Did you hear that one of the guests here reported a theft from their bedroom?”

  “Yeah…” Emma said, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the change in direction the conversation had taken. “Suzy put me on the graveyard shift, and I was still there in the morning. I was the one who took the complaint.”

  Lacey tried to imagine this untrained young woman being barked at by the formidable Oxana. If her parents had sent her here for life experience, that was certainly a quick way of getting it!

  “Were you on the desk when the complainant came in that evening?” Lacey asked.

  “Yeah. She was steaming drunk. It wasn’t even that late. Like seven or something like that.”

  “Was she alone?”

  Emma nodded stiffly.

  “Did you notice anyone hanging around who wasn’t a guest? Specifically, a man in his fifties who looked unwell?”

  Emma frowned and shrugged. “I don’t even know all the staff, let alone the guests.”

  Interesting, Lacey thought. Had Emma unwittingly allowed Hugh Buckingham into the guests-only area of the Lodge, not realizing he shouldn’t be there?

  Lacey got out her phone and searched Hugh Buckingham’s name. Men like him didn’t get that rich without leaving a footprint. The first hit brought up a picture of the man, at least ten years younger but still recognizable enough. She turned the screen and showed it to Emma.

  “This is the man.”

  The girl shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Lacey pressed. “He’s a bit older than in that picture. He wasn’t dining here? Or drinking in the drawing room?”

  Emma shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

  She looked a bit distressed, and Lacey didn’t want to put pressure on the poor girl. She put her phone away, satisfied that her suspicion had been confirmed: Hugh Buckingham wasn’t the thief. Someone else had stolen the Isidore Bonheur sculpture from Oxana’s room.

  Just then, Emma’s voice broke through Lacey’s thoughts.

  “There was this one guy, now I think of it,” she said.

  “Oh?” Lacey asked, her curiosity immediately piqued.

  “He was in the drawing room for most of the evening. Just sitting there, looking a bit lost.” She paused. “ He seemed sad. I figured he’d been stood up, because it was just him and his dog.”

  “Dog?” Lacey asked.

  Emma nodded. “Yes, it was a Border collie, just like yours.”

  Lacey felt
the blood drain from her face. Colin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lacey paced back and forth outside the Lodge, her mind flitting frantically through thoughts. Could Colin be the thief?

  On the one hand, it made sense. He wanted the Isidore Bonheur. He’d missed out on it twice, so perhaps he’d grown frustrated and just taken it. He didn’t seem like the stealing sort, but then again, Lacey didn’t exactly know him well. He was able-bodied enough to commit the theft, and he’d been hanging around on the fringes this whole time. Though he’d come across as an honest guy when she’d spent time with him at Sawyer’s—indeed, he’d let her win twice—did that really mean anything? If he’d stolen the statue, would he tell her? Lacey was sure the two events were connected somehow, and if Colin was the key to solving the theft, maybe that would help her solve the murder too.

  Unless he himself was the murderer? She shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss him as a suspect. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been fooled. And he had tried to kiss her. Maybe Hugh had witnessed it, and that was what his X’s at the crime scene meant.

  There was only one way to know for sure. She’d have to speak to Colin.

  She swallowed hard and took out her cell phone. Colin had given her his number during their high tea in Weymouth, and she’d innocently programmed it into her phone. But that was before Gina told her off and accused her of “willful flirting,” and before Colin had cornered her in her office and attempted to kiss her. Now it didn’t look so innocent sitting in her phone, and dialing it was about as far from Lacey’s wish of things to do than could be since she knew how it would look to him. But there was no other option. Emma had planted the seed of doubt in her mind, and now Lacey wouldn’t be able to rest unless she cleared it up and investigated for herself.

  “Wish me luck,” she said to Chester as she hit the green dial button.

  He whined in sympathy.

  Lacey felt her heart begin to race as she listened to the dial tone on the other end of the line, then the sound of the call connecting.