Death and a Dog Read online

  “That’s really kind of you,” Lacey said to her, genuinely touched. Her hopes that Brooke may become an ally in this town grew stronger.

  From over Brooke’s shoulder, Lacey saw Buck and Daisy come in. Her stomach dropped to her feet and she failed to hold back her grimace.

  “What is it?” Brooke asked, sounding concerned. She’d obviously seen the sudden change in Lacey’s expression.

  “Just some unwelcome visitors.”

  Brooke looked over her shoulder, then quickly back to Lacey, her eyes now wide. “What the heck are they doing here?”

  Lacey sighed. “Daisy saw the sextant through the window and made up her mind she wanted it. But since it’s the main auction item, I refused to sell it to her and said if she really wanted it, she’d have to come back today and bid on it like everyone else.”

  “You called her bluff,” Brooke said, in a tone that suggested she thought that had been a very unwise move on Lacey’s part.

  “I guess I did. And it looks like it’s backfired on me.”

  She watched Buck pace up to the refreshments stand and help himself to croissants as if he were at an all you can eat buffet. Daisy, on the other hand, looked genuinely excited to be here, and was pacing around taking in the decorations. Maybe, like the man with the ballerina figurine, she had a personal connection to the sextant? A family member in the navy, for example.

  “I can’t imagine Buck responded well to being told no,” Brooke continued. “They came to the tearoom again yesterday evening, drunk, and I tried to refuse them service. Well, you can imagine how well that went. In the end, it was easier just to give in rather than stand up to him. Luckily, Buck’s a sleepy drunk rather than an aggressive one. I was prepared to use a cactus on him, though, if I had to.”

  Lacey couldn’t help but smile. But it quickly faded at the daunting reality of conducting an auction—her second, nonetheless—in front of the brute of a man.

  Brooke reached out and patted Lacey’s arm. “You’ve got this,” she said, reassuringly. “Don’t let two stubborn Texans spoil this for you.” She looked back at Daisy tottering around on her heels, before returning her focus to Lacey. “I mean, look at that woman. Want does she actually want with an antique sextant? I bet she can’t even spell antique. Or sextant!”

  But Lacey no longer wanted to join in with the gossip. People had judged her when she’d been the town’s outsider, after all. In fact, people were judging Brooke, right now—embellishing that whole thing about her being a high school wrestler into something more than it was, gawping at her like she was some kind of circus freak just because she’d managed to exercise away her bingo wings. Lacey wasn’t going to stoop to those levels.

  “You never know,” she said, looking over at where Daisy was now towering over the snack table on her six inch stilettos, sniffing the croissants with a disgusted look on her face. “People can surprise you.”

  Brooke seemed to catch her drift immediately. “You’re right.” She followed Lacey’s gaze. But when she turned back, she was biting her bottom lip to stop from laughing. “Who knows. Maybe she wrote a thesis on nautical sextants?” She immediately held her hands up in truce position. “Sorry! Sorry! That was the last one, I promise. I just couldn’t help it!”

  Lacey smirked, and Brooke went off to take her seat. Just as she left, Lacey noticed the European stranger she’d been speaking to earlier slip into the auction room quietly and take the closest seat to the door. He sat with his arms resting on his knees, very much like he was ready to spring up and disappear at any second. His posture definitely made him seem like he was in a hurry.

  She was about to approach and say hi when her attention was diverted by Tom coming in. He waved, his relaxed body language making the tenseness of the Spanish man even more evident.

  Lacey waved back, then noticed the clock had struck one and it was time to begin the auction.

  She went up to the pulpit, her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. A hushed silence fell in the room and Lacey cleared her throat.

  “Welcome, everyone. It’s great to see you all here today. There’s some familiar faces in the crowd, and some new ones. I hope everyone finds something they’re looking for today in this treasure trove of nautical themed delights. Speaking of treasure, let me introduce to you the first piece in today’s repertoire. A naval lapel pin. This is genuine 1910, First World War memorabilia. I’d like to start the bidding at forty.”

  And with that, Lacey was away, working through the items one by one. A collection of bronze telescopes went for just over two hundred pounds. The anchor of a decommissioned naval vessel fetched almost a thousand. But the big money maker was still to come. The sextant.

  Any hope that Buck and Daisy would get bored and leave disappeared as she went. They sat there, the whole time, letting each item pass them by. They really were that stubborn.

  Lacey couldn’t help but notice that the Spanish man was doing the same thing. He was obviously uninterested in anything else she was selling. He sat through the whole auction, waiting for just one thing.

  “Now, this is a very special item coming up next,” Lacey announced. “And all the proceeds from its sale will be given to the charity shop I found it in. This is a real, genuine antique Robert Brettell Bate sextant, in perfect condition. This is the highly sought after double-framed design, with a genuine ivory handle, and original mahogany wood case. I’ll start the bidding at one thousand pounds.”

  Buck jumped up. “Here!” he bellowed.

  His voice was so loud, everyone in the seats around him flinched. Lacey noticed people glancing back over their shoulders warily.

  “One thousand pounds to the gentleman in the cowboy hat,” Lacey said. “Can I get one thousand one hundred?”

  With calm determination, the Spanish stranger stretched up his hand.

  Lacey accepted his bid and raised the asking price by another hundred. Buck was up and out of his seat in a flash, waving his fist in the air.

  Lacey felt her heart rate spike with every hundred that went back and forth between the two men. Not out of excitement for the huge sum of money the sextant was drawing in for charity, but because Buck’s face was getting increasingly more red each time he was outbid. He looked like he was about to explode.

  But the Spanish man wasn’t backing down yet. In complete contrast to Buck, he remained entirely expressionless.

  As the price continued rising up and up and up, beads of sweat started to roll down Buck’s forehead. But he obviously wasn’t about to be outbid, especially not with Daisy in the seat beside him egging him on.

  But the stranger also appeared to have bottomless pockets. Unlike Buck, whose face was going quite red with every thousand pounds added to the price, the stranger looked serene.

  “Two thousand five hundred?” Lacey said, turning to Buck.

  He paused. It was obvious to Lacey that he wanted to stop.

  He was tomato-red now, and tugging at the collar of his shirt as if to get more air. Then Daisy prodded him, and just like that, his hand went right up into the air.

  Far from the man who’d bossed his wife around before, Buck now seemed completely under her command.

  “Two thousand six hundred,” Lacey said, looking toward the stranger.

  To her surprise, he shook his head.

  Momentarily taken aback that a man who had apparently flown to England from Spain specifically for this auction had seemingly given up, Lacey almost forgot what she was doing. But she snapped back to the moment, and banged the gavel.

  Sold. After all that, the antique sextant was going to Buck and Daisy.

  Buck leapt up and punched the air, like he’d just heard he’d won a bet on the boxing. Daisy squealed and clapped her hands with excitement. The whole display was very uncouth, and Lacey could see pretty much every single person in the audience bristle in irritation. Those amongst the audience who owned stores in Wilfordshire—who, presumably, had had their own run-ins with the infuriating pair—could
n’t stop themselves from glaring darkly at the two of them and their hooping, hollering, distasteful display of triumph. Lacey had to remind herself that the money was going to charity, even if the rare item was going home with them.

  “That’s it, folks. Thank you so much for attending today. If all winners would like to come with me to sort out payments.”

  She hopped down from the pulpit and looked over at the exit, noticing that the Spanish man had already gone. He must have slipped out immediately after losing out on the bidding, off to catch his flight home. She wondered why he’d given up on the item that had lured him from overseas. She doubted it was money related; there were usually signs on people’s faces when they were reaching their limit, or pushing too far, like Buck’s sweating face and shirt-tugging. But the Spanish man had looked calm the whole way through until he’d unexpectedly bowed out. It was all rather curious.

  Lacey went behind her desk and began the arduous task of dealing with all the administrative work—signing certificates of ownership, taking down payments, and scheduling shipments. It was all going smoothly enough, until Buck muscled his way to the front of the queue.

  “Don’t worry about any of that unnecessary paperwork,” he said. “I’ll take my prize now.”

  Prize, Lacey thought with distaste, As if the auction was a competition he’d won.

  He reminded Lacey of Benjamin Archer, who’d demanded he take the grandfather clock with him the moment it had sold.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t quite work like that,” Lacey explained. “We take a ten percent card payment now and then on successful delivery of the item, the rest of the money is collected from the card.”

  “Are you really still telling me my money isn’t good enough for you?” Buck snapped. “You think I can’t pay you?”

  “Not at all,” Lacey explained. “It’s to protect everyone involved, you and I both. What if the item isn’t to your liking once it’s delivered to you?”

  “I don’t need it delivered to me. I can put it in my bag and take it away right now.”

  “Now come on, chap,” Roger from the English Antiques Society said, jumping to her defense. “It needs to be packaged properly and delivered. It is standard practice.”

  “You shut it, old man,” Buck said. He looked back at Lacey, glaring darkly. “When Buckland Stringer says he’s going to do something, then he’s going to do it! And some stupid little girl isn’t going to stop me!”

  His six-foot frame seemed suddenly to grow to eight foot, as he thumped his fists on the desk and loomed over Lacey.

  “Hey!” Brooke exclaimed, marching over to Lacey’s side. “Back the hell off!”

  Lacey raised her hands. She wanted this altercation over with right now.

  “Sir, you can take the item today but I’ll need to take the payment in full and have you sign a waiver.”

  Buck looked superior. “See. That wasn’t so hard, was it? A bit of compromise. I’ll wire you the money. It’ll take a couple of days.”

  “That’s not what she said!” Brooke snapped, squaring up again.

  Lacey leapt in. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Just take it.”

  She was reluctant, but the last thing she wanted was for a fight to break out in a store filled with delicate antiques. With his huge frame and angry demeanor Buck would, quite literally, be a bull in a china shop.

  As soon as he was gone, Brooke turned to Lacey.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make anything worse there. I just can’t stand by while men bully and intimidate women, you know?” She shuddered. “My ex-hubby was like that. Always demanding his own way. Maybe that’s why I mock Daisy so much. I see something of myself in her, scurrying around after her fella while he ruins everyone’s day, relieved that for the time being, he’s taking it out on someone else and not you.”

  Lacey could see the sorrow in Brooke’s eyes as she reminisced about her painful past. It seemed so strange to her. She couldn’t quite picture this woman, who seemed so bubbly and confident, being cowed by a bully of a husband. Perhaps she’d learned to act that way as a defense strategy, as a way to ward off bad memories.

  Lacey sighed. It really wasn’t how she’d wanted the day to end, and with Brooke’s glumness thrown into the mix as well, she was feeling thoroughly bummed out.

  But then her phone pinged with a message. Ivan had sent her a text. She checked it.

  Still meeting tonight?

  At the thought of owning Crag Cottage, Lacey’s mood instantly lifted.

  You bet, she texted back.

  Then she smiled and reminded herself that the Bucks of the world were there to make the good moments even sweeter.

  *

  The fight with Buck was still fresh in Lacey’s mind as she twisted her Rapunzel key in the lock of Crag Cottage. It had been a difficult day, filled with ups and downs, and she was a bit bitter it had ended on such a sour note. Buck had been very aggressive, and she didn’t even know if she’d ever get any money for the sextant. The fact that it was a charity who’d miss out if Mr. Nasty Loudmouth didn’t cough up made it even worse.

  She’d just had time to change out of her work clothes when she heard the familiar rat-a-tat-tat on her door of Ivan. He always knocked the same way; tentatively, as if he didn’t want to intrude, even though he was invited and most welcome!

  Lacey put all thoughts of the fight from her mind and trotted down the steps.

  When she opened the door, she found that Ivan had not come alone. Standing on the doorstep was a smartly dressed woman.

  “Oh,” Lacey said, surprised. “I didn’t realize your wife was coming.”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m not Ivan’s wife. I’m a property lawyer. Michelle Braithwaite.”

  She held out her hand.

  Lacey looked at the woman, confused as to why a lawyer was present. She shook the hand being offered to her.

  “Come inside,” she said, gesturing them in. “The kitchen’s this way.”

  As they strolled along the darkened hallway toward the bright light of the kitchen at the other end, Lacey flashed a curious expression at Ivan.

  “You brought a lawyer?” she asked him out of the corner of her mouth. “Should I be worried?”

  “Not at all,” Ivan replied. All Lacey could really see of him were his teeth, which were glowing in the beam of light coming from the kitchen. He was grinning.

  They entered the kitchen and Lacey offered drinks. Ivan, for the first time ever, accepted a beer. Michelle politely declined. She had the efficient quality all lawyers seemed to possess.

  They all took a seat at the butcher’s block table, then Michelle took some papers from her bag.

  “This is all the paperwork here,” she announced.

  “The paperwork for…”

  “The house!” Ivan exclaimed, clearly too excited to hold it back anymore. “These are the deeds to transfer ownership to you.”

  Lacey was taken aback. This meeting was meant to be about working out the finer details of the deal, but it seemed as if they’d already been decided without her?

  “Ivan, I can sign deeds to the house without putting all the financial things in place.”

  “Those are included,” Michelle said, tapping the top of the stack of papers.

  “No offense,” Lacey said, “but doesn’t the bank need to be involved with those?”

  She was worried Ivan had paid some rogue lawyer to draw up a contract that would satisfy no one and leave them both vulnerable. He could easily be taken advantage of, and Lacey was concerned this was one of these occasions.

  She looked over at him. “We were supposed to discuss all this first.”

  “What’s to discuss?” he said haplessly. “This suits us both.”

  Lacey let out a deep sigh. It had been hasty of her to expect this meeting to go without a hitch. Of course it had to go wrong. Like Buck and Daisy at the auction, this rogue lawyer was intruding on another important moment in her life and ruining it.

&nbs
p; “What if I’m not happy with the arrangements?”

  “You will be,” Ivan said, confidently, tapping the paper. “Just have a read.”

  Lacey did just that. And what she saw made her jaw drop open. Not because the deal was bad, but because it was actually very, very good!

  The contract stipulated that Lacey could pay in installments, thus bypassing the need for a bank loan, saving them both bank fees and stamp duties and all the other things that would have to be paid if they’d done this through an estate agent.

  “What do you think?” Ivan asked, back to his usual uncertain self. “Is it okay?”

  It was more than okay. Lacey was over the moon. They’d save a fortune completing the sale privately, and the contract was just to protect them both in the unlikely event that something went wrong along the way!

  “Um, yes, it’s perfect,” Lacey said. “Unless you’ve hidden some small print somewhere? Do I have to give you my firstborn child, or sacrifice a goat or something?”

  Ivan laughed. Michelle didn’t.

  “I can assure you there’s no small print,” she said. “But of course, take your time reading everything through. There’s no rush. When you’re ready to sign, let me know and we can arrange to meet with witnesses.”

  She stood, and clipped her brief case closed.

  Lacey stood too, shocked the meeting was ending so abruptly.

  “I mean, I probably don’t need time, but I should at least sleep on it,” Lacey said. Her heart was pulling her in one direction, her mind telling her to slow down just a little bit.

  Michelle was already heading for the door. Lacey looked at Ivan and he shrugged. She hurried after Michelle and saw her out.

  “She was in a rush,” Lacey said as they watched her drive away.

  “She’s in high demand,” Ivan said.

  “I can see why. That’s one hell of a contract she’s devised. Are you sure you want to do it this way?”