Death and a Dog Read online

  “You do not have to say anything,” Superintendent Turner continued. “But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Lacey’s mind swirled. She couldn’t believe what was happening. She stared, dumbfounded, as Xavier was cuffed.

  But then she saw that DCI Lewis was heading right for her, and her disbelief magnified tenfold.

  “Miss Doyle, I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you too,” the female detective said.

  “What?” Lacey cried, leaping up. “Why? I haven’t done anything!”

  At her sudden movement, Chester began barking.

  Brooke suddenly yelped. She caught Lacey’s eyes and deep regret flashed in her expression as she realized calling in her suspicions to the police had landed her innocent friend in trouble.

  “Someone get that dog under control,” Superintendent Turner commanded.

  Brooke scurried to the dog and took him by the collar.

  “I’m so sorry, Lacey,” she said. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  With Chester under control, DCI Lewis took Lacey by her right arm.

  “Lacey Doyle, I’m arresting you on suspicion of aiding and abetting, perverting the course of justice, and withholding information from police.”

  Lacey was too stunned to do anything, and allowed the detective to guide her left hand toward her right, and cuff them together at the wrist.

  “You do not have to say anything,” DCI Lewis continued, “But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Her words faded in Lacey’s ears. The whole world seemed to lag as she was led toward the automatic doors. She turned back to a horrified-looking Brooke, her hand still clutching Chester’s collar as the dog barked frantically.

  “I’m sorry, Lacey!” Brooke cried. “I’ll put this right. I’m sorry!”

  Lacey’s mind swirled as DCI Lewis guided her to the second of two police cruisers parked on the promenade. She passed Xavier, who was being helped him into the back of his car by Superintendent Turner, with one hand on his head, just like in the movies. She’d seen this scene before on the big screen but never in real life.

  And then it was her turn. The detective opened the back door and gestured for her to enter into the darkness.

  She did, thudding into the backseat, her mind spinning with confusion. It smelled too clean in the car, like chemicals. It all added to Lacey’s disorientation, which was furthered by the drizzle covered windows. She peered out at the streets, feeling as if she was seeing them from an entirely new perspective. Her whole town felt suddenly unfamiliar.

  From the car ahead, Superintendent Turner began to pull away from the curb. Detective Lewis started the engine of her car, following him out.

  Lacey stared behind her at the tearoom.

  Just then, the automatic doors swished open. She was expecting to see Brooke, but instead, it was Chester who appeared. He came flying out and onto the sidewalk.

  “My dog!” Lacey cried, putting her cuffed hands up to the windows. “You have to pull over. My dog’s got loose.”

  She quickly looked at DCI Lewis in the driver’s seat. The woman pulled her lips into a thin line, and shook her head, clearly unmoved by Lacey’s plight.

  Lacey swirled back to the rear window.

  Brooke had appeared, coming out of the tearoom and chasing after Chester. But she was no match for the dog. Lacey had never seen Chester run so fast. He was going faster than he even had when he’d bolted across the sandbar.

  As the cruiser gained speed, Chester shrank smaller and smaller, until he was nothing but a dot on the horizon.

  Lacey turned back around and let her tears fall.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lacey had never seen the inside of the police station before. Even after everything that had happened before with Iris’ murder and her being the police’s prime suspect, it had never gotten so far as for her to be taken into one of their interrogation rooms.

  It was small in here. There were no windows, just horrible fluorescent strip lights that buzzed and gave her a headache. The only furniture was the chair she was sitting upon, another (currently vacant) chair for the police officer, and a small table, all squished in in a way to deliberately make her uncomfortable. The red light of a CCTV camera blinked in the corner of the room, reminding her that she was being watched. Her hands shook on her lap, where they were still clasped together with the strange plastic cuffs, the sight of which reminded her she was in a foreign jail far away from home. Somehow, that made it even worse.

  Lacey had no idea how long she’d been sitting here waiting. She’d seen enough true crime shows to know it was a police tactic. The longer you were left waiting, the longer you had to stew, and more rattled you’d be when they did finally get around to speaking to you.

  It was a pretty effective tactic, Lacey learned. It didn’t take long for her to begin ruminating on all the ills of the day, from Tom not having time for her to Brooke stupidly calling the police on Xavier.

  No, it wasn’t stupid, Lacey scolded herself.

  Brooke had obviously panicked. She must have genuinely thought Xavier was a murderer and decided to call time on him casually sitting in her tearoom drinking coffee. She may well have thought they were in danger. But she was naive to have thought the police would only arrest Xavier. And after Lacey had told her she was a suspect!

  She sighed heavily and her shoulders slumped forward.

  And then there was Chester…

  Yes, Lacey knew that the dog had been frantic, that he’d been straining against Brooke’s hold. But couldn’t she have put him in the back room? Instead she must have lost hold of the poor creature. Lacey could only hope that Chester was okay, that Brooke had caught up to him and called Gina to pick him up, or had taken him to the patisserie to be with Tom. But what if she hadn’t? What if Chester was lost?

  The thought was too horrible to entertain. It made Lacey’s stomach ache.

  Just then, the door opened with a loud creak, making Lacey start. Superintendent Turner came in.

  Lacey tensed. She’d been hoping for Beth. She always seemed the more reasonable to the pair.

  “Miss Doyle,” Karl Turner said, in his lazy seen-it-all-before voice. He sank into the seat opposite her and dropped a thick pile of papers onto the desk, where they landed with a thwop.

  “Hello, Detective,” she replied coldly.

  If it weren't for the fact that she'd been arrested, Lacey might have found some humor in the situation. She’d had so many run-ins with the detective now, he felt like something of an acquaintance. Seeing him in interrogator mode was a little comical. It was as if he’d slipped on a badly fitting mask.

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees, closing the gap between them. It was the closest he’d come to her since that incident last month when he’d lost his cool and pointed his finger right in her face. She hadn’t noticed then—perhaps because of how terrifying and out of the blue his blow-up had been—that he had the grayest irises she’d ever seen.

  “Lacey Doyle,” he said, shaking his head as if her name alone was a source of irritation. “Wilfordshire’s very own Sherlock Holmes. This must be rather exciting for you, getting a behind the scenes look.”

  Lacey pressed her back into the chair rest, trying to get as much space between her and the detective as possible.

  Don’t let him get under your skin, she told herself.

  But that was easier said than done.

  “I can assure you it’s far from exciting,” she said, calmly. “Being led in handcuffs to a police vehicle while my dog runs loose isn’t my idea of fun.”

  He smirked. Clearly he couldn’t care less about the dog’s well-being.

  “When do I get my phone call?” Lacey said. “I need to know if Chester’s okay.”

&nbs
p; This time, Superintendent Turner’s smirk turned into a condescending sneer. “You’d waste your phone call checking up on the dog? Rather than, I don’t know, calling a lawyer?”

  He had such a patriarchal tone in his voice, Lacey felt herself bristle. She clenched her teeth tightly together. Any thoughts she’d had about this being humorous disappeared.

  “So,” Karl said, picking up his notes and leafing through them. “I’m wondering what theory you’ve come up with. You’re always so full of ideas.”

  “Are you asking me to do your job for you, Superintendent?” Lacey replied without missing a beat.

  Karl’s face remained unmoved. “Okay. How about I start? Here’s what I think happened.” He placed a pen on the desk. “This is Mrs. Stringer. We know that on the evening of Mr. Stringer’s murder she was here, in Taryn’s boutique.” He moved the pen to the farthest end of the table. “And Mr. Stringer…” He put a bulldog clip on the table. “He was all the way over here.” He slid it toward Lacey, before tapping it on the surface of the table a few times directly beneath her. “On the island. Dead.” He put an eraser on the desk next, a grubby little rectangle that had once been white but was now gray with age. “Now we have Mr. Santino. Here. On the beach.” Finally, he put an empty plastic cup—the type that came from a watercooler—next to the eraser. “And who do you think this represents?”

  Lacey ground her teeth, knowing full well that Superintendent Turner was implying she was the second person on the beach that night, that for some reason she was working alongside Xavier, and that they’d committed the crime together.

  She had to fight the urge to snarkily tell the detective that an ugly plastic water cooler cup wasn’t particularly representative of her, because she knew he’d latch on to it as evidence of her placing herself at the scene.

  “How interesting,” the detective said, with faux curiosity. “Little Miss Mouthy has nothing to say? This must be a first. Don’t worry, ’ll answer for you.” He tapped the cup. “This, Miss Doyle, is you. Standing beside Xavier Santino on the beach. He’s just told you that he’s done the job you hired him for. He’s killed Buckland Stringer. Now you can keep the sextant, hang onto it until the heat dies down, and resell it. Two paydays. You split the money and go about your lives.”

  Lacey had never heard anything so preposterous. For starters, she’d only found out Xavier’s name earlier that day, and had only just heard his surname now for the first time! Secondly, he looked so far from a hitman it was laughable. Hitmen didn’t usually wear expensive designer suits and keep their facial hair neatly trimmed. Did they?

  “You think I killed one of my customers?” Lacey said slowly, making sure her tone left no doubt just how ludicrous a suggestion it was. “So I could steal back the item I’d just sold them in order to sell it again?” She raised an eyebrow. “Now, you don’t need a degree to know that’s one heck of a terrible business model.”

  The detective narrowed his eyes. He obviously didn’t like it when people used his own tactics back at him, but it was good for him to get a taste of his own medicine.

  “I know all about how your business works,” the detective hissed, jabbing his index finger on the stack of notes. “You take a 10% down payment on the day. The rest on delivery. But not this time. This time the transaction was for the full sum. Twenty-nine sales you made at that auction. A 10% down payment for every single item.” He jabbed his finger along with the next three words, punctuating them. “Except. This. One. The sextant. The stolen sextant that reappeared in your store!”

  Lacey shook her head. It certainly looked bad from an outsider’s perspective. She knew she’d have to explain the inconsistency very carefully.

  “Buck asked to pay in full and take the item away with him. In fact, he demanded it. I tried to get him to follow the usual protocol but he was adamant. There were dozens of witnesses. You can ask any one of them what happ—”

  “Yes, we’ve spoken to most of the members of the English Antiques Society already,” the detective said, cutting her off. “They all seemed to be in agreement that Mr. Stringer was a bit of a fish out of water in that auction room. He didn’t know the usual protocols. The etiquette. He was inexperienced. Your friends at the society also all explained how there was a bidding war between Mr. Stringer and Mr. Santino, a man who, I’m sure you’d agree, was extremely familiar with the protocols, and who backed out of the race after driving the price up exponentially, to a point where all in attendance could see Mr. Stringer was sweating. Answer me this, Miss Doyle. Do your auctions usually go that way—with an expert pitted against a novice, one cool and calm, the other so stressed out by the whole thing as to be visibly sweating? Tell me, is it at all ethical to push a man to such extremes?”

  Lacey couldn’t hold it back any longer. It was one thing to throw a baseless hypothesis at her, but quite enough to insult her integrity and professionalism! Her frustration bubbled over.

  “We have been through this before, Karl. If you recall, you were barking up the wrong tree that time as well! You ended up with egg on your face, having to display an actual written apology afterwards!

  “That was Beth’s idea,” he said, shortly. “I’d never do anything so twee.”

  “Well, you’ll have no choice once you realize how unfathomably incorrect you are right now. Your theory is full of holes. I would need to be as idiotic as you’re being right now to think of hiding a stolen sextant on a shelf in plain view of everyone! Secondly, the sextant was an extremely rare item. It’s not the sort of thing that can just be sold twice without someone noticing. My auction gathered together navel enthusiasts from across the whole country. Anyone and everyone who might have an interest in buying something was in attendance. If I attempted to sell the sextant again, you’d have about fifty people calling you up to say I was selling stolen goods!” She reached over and tapped the dossier of papers. “And I thought you said you’d read up all about how my business worked.”

  With triumph, she sat back in her chair and folded her arms.

  Superintendent Turner looked like he’d sucked a lemon. But before he had the chance to utter a rebuttal, the door flew open so dramatically it slammed into the wall.

  A woman marched in. She looked to be in her late sixties, the creases in her forehead and sagging purple bags beneath her eyes showing the signs of a busy, stressful lifestyle. But in her smart black suit she looked elegant, and the strawberry blond hair that hung to her shoulders was sleek and healthy.

  “This interview must cease right away,” the woman said.

  “Who are you?” Superintendent Turner demanded. “You can’t come barging in here! I’ll have you arrested.”

  “I’m Miss Doyle’s lawyer,” the woman said. “And my client is being held as an accessory to murder, supposedly having worked in cahoots with a suspect who has not yet been charged with murder! You know the law as well as I do, Detective; you can only question my client as a witness. Which means your arrest was a charade, and my client is free to leave.”

  Lacey snapped her head to face Karl, stunned by what the woman was saying. But it was written all over his face. Her arrest was fake! He’d been trying to rattle her, to make her think she didn't have the right to walk right out of here when all along she did. And the cuffs! Surely cuffing a witness was illegal.

  Lacey stood, filled with fury. “Now I’m actually lost for words.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” the lawyer said. “I’ll make sure we sue him for gross misconduct.”

  She whisked Lacey out of the room, slamming the door behind her so ferociously, the noise echoed through the corridor.

  Everything had happened so fast, Lacey’s head was spinning. She felt dizzy, and put her hand on the wall to steady herself as the lawyer practically dragged her down the corridor.

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” Lacey finally asked. “I didn’t request a lawyer.”

  “Well, that’s your first mistake,” the woman said bluntly, pausing at the door that
led into the waiting room, and looking over her shoulder at Lacey. “Never speak to the police without a lawyer.”

  She heaved on the handle and ushered Lacey into the reception area.

  Lacey blinked under the glare of yet more strip lights and took in the sight of shabby linoleum flooring and horrible plastic chairs. One was occupied by a shaven-headed man holding a cloth up to a bloody gash on his cheek, bright splatters of red on his jeans. Beside him, an anxious looking woman rung her hands in her lap. And beside her, much to Lacey’s astonishment, was Tom.

  He jumped up at the sight of her and ran to her.

  Lacey was so stunned to see him she froze on the spot. He wrapped his arms around her. Then those familiar scents of pastry and ocean air overpowered the police station’s cleaning fluid smell, and Lacey finally came to her senses. She wrapped her arms around him too.

  “What are you doing here?” she squeaked with relief.

  “Brooke called. She said you’d been arrested.”

  “So it was you who contacted the lawyer.”

  “Kinda,” Tom replied in her ear. “Lacey, this is my mom, Heidi.”

  Lacey drew back and swirled to face the strawberry blond woman. “You’re Mrs. Forrester?” she exclaimed. Then she looked at Tom, aghast, and hissed under her breath. “This is how you introduce me to your mother?”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. How typical of Tom to not even consider how humiliating it would be for Lacey to meet his mother for the first time under these circumstances! It was hardly going to give off a good first impression.

  “It will make a great anecdote one day,” Heidi Forrester quipped.

  She had the same sense of humor as her son, Lacey noted. Must be where he gets it from.

  Just then, the double glass doors to the station opened and a man, clearly drunk, staggered in. He hiccupped and weaved his way past the group to the reception desk. The officer sitting on the other side of the bullet-proof screen glanced him up and down.

  “Are you here to report a crime?”

  “Yes,” the man slurred, hiccupping again. “My keys aren’t in my pocket.”