A Taste To Die For - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) (11 page)

The best she could come up with was, ‘What do you know about the Grande Epicure?’

Had she plucked the words from nowhere? No. Surely someone had mentioned it. Richard Carmelli? Whatever. They were enough to stop him in his tracks.

His hand had been holding the door open. Now he let it go. His face darkened.

‘Who told you?’

Her heart raced. Smudger didn’t frighten her – usually. ‘I … um … think it was …’ She shook her head. ‘Never mind. Tell me what you know.’

He looked down at the floor when he nodded as though he were remembering something and trying to get things clear in his head. ‘OK. I will. After lunch? When our pet copper arrives?’

She agreed, or at least she did for a while. The door to the kitchen swung shut and he was gone. She heard shouted orders. Once more Smudger was lord of his own domain.

Honey wandered through reception, into the lounge and out into the conservatory. She was again the model hotelier, nodding and smiling at guests. In her head she was thinking of the two dead chefs. She’d seen Smudger’s dislike of Oliver Stafford. She hadn’t asked him about Sylvester Pardoe. She turned on her heel meaning to do just that. Lindsey blocked her path.

‘I thought you were going for a lie down.’

It was daft feeling that she had to excuse herself to her daughter, but that was exactly how she felt.

‘I’m all fine now.’

She beamed brightly.

Lindsey’s smile was weak; thoughtful. ‘You look fine. And we’re both fine – aren’t we?’

Honey looked out at the garden. Invigorated by her infusion of herbal tea and Gordon’s gin, Mary Jane was practising her tai chi, her long arms moving like a willow in a breeze.

Honey smiled. Her thoughts were most definitely with Lindsey. Just a short time ago – not long after she’d taken on this crime liaison nonsense, she’d pressured Lindsey to forego chamber music concerts and go nightclubbing. ‘Be a bit footloose and fancy-free,’ she’d said. And now that her daughter had kicked over the traces, who was she to condemn? It was just that Oliver Stafford had been married. If she cared to admit it, the generation gap was showing. People rarely stayed in the same relationship all their lives nowadays. She hadn’t. Neither had her mother. They’d been the early birds breaking the trend.

She shrugged as she smiled. ‘Just one of those things.’

Lindsey’s dark eyes brightened. Her smile spread. ‘So I’m your beautiful girl again?’

Honey hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You’ll always be that.’

Doherty rang her to say he’d be late. ‘Should be closer to three.’

‘I look forward to it.’

‘I always do.’

She could imagine the cheeky grin. My, but he was tempting! Not yet, she told herself. Not just yet. There was plenty of time.

Her mother wouldn’t agree of course. Gloria Cross never tired of telling her daughter that she’d be left on the shelf.

‘You’ll end up a dried old spinster!’

Pointing out that she had already been married and produced a daughter, not to mention that spinsters were usually virgins, had cut no ice with her mother. In fact she’d been told to wash her mouth out. Deep down Gloria was a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. The pile of Mills and Boon books with titles like
The Italian’s Virgin Bride
and
Taming the Lady Angela
on her bedside table was testament to that.

Over a quiet cup of coffee and a pile of unpaid bills, she asked herself why ‘it’ hadn’t happened between her and Steve yet. Time had a lot to do with it. When he wasn’t involved in a big investigation, she was busily arranging next year’s advertising, or interviewing yet another batch of wannabe chefs, or meeting a prospective bride and groom wanting perfect arrangements for their perfect day.

And when a crime involved tourism and the hospitality trade in general, they were both strapped for time.

‘Life’s a bitch,’ she muttered to herself.

The door opened. A draught of air sent paperwork fluttering in a white wave over the desk.

‘Honey! Have you heard?’

Few people dared barge into her office unannounced and without knocking. But Casper St John Gervais, Chairman of the Hotels Association, considered that the protocol of mere mortals didn’t apply to him.

In a white suit, Panama hat, and black shirt, Casper, carrying his signature silver-topped cane, waved the offer of tea or coffee aside with a grandiose flourish of a white-gloved hand.

‘Have you heard?’

She flipped her own hand dismissively and made a face.
No comprende
!

Casper sank onto the sofa, hat and silver-capped cane gripped with both hands, knees tightly together.

‘Stella Broadbent. Speeding along the road on her way home apparently. Lost control and hit a wall.’

‘Is she hurt?’

‘Very, my dear girl. She’s dead.’

A cold chill swept over her as she put down her coffee cup.

Casper prattled on. ‘Her car was smashed flat and so was she. Cutting equipment was brought in and the car was dismantled into manageable bits. I suppose Stella was too. How dreadful!’

It wasn’t a case of getting over the shock when she invited Casper to stay for lunch; she did it automatically, feeling a need to do something ordinary, everyday, a basic pleasure of life. Being alive and having no car park was preferable to being dead and having the best hotel car park in Bath. And an imposing hotel. And a chef (albeit recently deceased) who’d won the Taste of Bath competition.

Casper declined her offer. He explained that he was selling a few items at auction left to him by his father. ‘My father collected train sets,’ he said in an off-hand manner. ‘Not my cup of tea at all.’

‘I see,’ said Honey. She did see. It explained a lot about Casper. It explained something about Mary Jane too or at least about the ghostly Polly’s prediction. She debated whether to tell her mother or not. She decided not.

Doherty came at around three as promised. Honey hadn’t phoned him, guessing he’d tell her everything she wanted to know. She was still plodding her way through a pile of invoices when he arrived. She asked him whether he’d heard about Stella Broadbent. Steve said he had.

‘Traffic told me they had to scrape her car off the road.’

Honey shivered. She presumed they’d had to do the same for poor Stella.

She sighed and sat further back in her chair. ‘I saw her last night at the Zodiac. She was very drunk.
Very
drunk,’ she repeated, fixing him with an intensity meant to emphasise the point.

She went on to give him a blow-by-blow description of what had happened. Ordinarily she would have laughed and mentioned what Stella wore beneath her expensive designer-label clothes. But this was neither the time nor place. Her expression doubtless betrayed her feelings.

‘There’s nothing for you to feel guilty about.’

‘I didn’t know she’d driven home. I could have stopped her.’

‘Could you?’

She forced herself to nod an affirmation. Rubbish. Nothing could have stopped Stella from doing exactly as she liked. A bit like herself really. The realisation made her blood run cold.

‘Poor Stella. Squashed flat like that.’

‘Not entirely.’

When something was interesting, Steve’s tone of voice altered. She looked at him with narrowed eyes. He looked pensive, as though sifting through his thoughts.

‘Her lower body was quite badly injured, but from the waist upwards …’

There! That thoughtful tone again. And she could see something in his eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Well, it’s not confirmed on paper yet, but the pathologist isn’t happy about some marks around her neck. They look like finger marks.’

Honey pushed aside the thought that she’d once considered strangling Stella. This was for real.

‘And?’

He shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Now!’ he said, slapping his thighs as he got to his feet. ‘Where’s this bloody chef of yours?’

By three the kitchen was cleared of lunchtime debris and readied for the evening shift. Sometimes a chef who wasn’t working that evening would stay on to do the prep. Today no one had stayed on. The kitchen was empty.

Steve stood in the centre of the kitchen and spread his arms. ‘So where is he?’

‘He must have forgotten.’ She plotted murder in her mind. She’d promised Steve Smudger would be there. He’d let her down.

‘You did tell him?’

She gave him one of her hardest looks. ‘I stressed the fact.’

Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a dirty knife left hanging over the edge of the sink in the washing up area. The blade was smeared with something red. Not for the first time that day, her blood turned cold.

‘What are you doing?’ Steve asked as she swilled the knife off in running water.

‘Washing up.’

He tried to grab the knife. ‘Is that blood?’

‘No!’ She ran her finger along the blade and licked it. ‘It’s jam,’ she said with an air of light relief. ‘Just jam.’

To her great relief, it was just jam, but that didn’t explain why it had apparently been flung aside unwashed. Smudger was a stickler for cleanliness and everything being in its place, and if no one was staying late he was usually the last to leave the kitchen. Something had happened to make him rush off. She’d tick him off about it later. So would Steve, judging by the look on his face.

Chapter Fifteen

Steve Doherty finally tracked Smudger down after the evening shift and asked him what time he’d left the pub the night Oliver Stafford was killed. They were going to do a recheck because someone had mislaid the original statements. Smudger told him he couldn’t remember but the barmaid would. Steve said he would check.

‘And where were you the night Brian Brodie was killed?’

‘With a friend.’

‘A girlfriend?’

Whoever the girlfriend was seemed to check out. Honey hadn’t pressed him about her. What he did in his personal life was his own business.

‘And the Grande Epicure?’ she’d asked once Doherty had left. ‘You were going to tell me about it.’

He’d avoided her eyes. ‘It’s a competition in Paris.’

‘For chefs?’

‘Of course.’

Smudger had worked for a five-star hotel before coming to work for her. She’d sometimes asked herself why. The prestige of a five-star always outranked a four in a chef’s estimation. It looked good on the CV, just in case they got to open their own restaurant or end up with their own television programme.

He’d admitted that Oliver Stafford, Brian Brodie and Sylvester Pardoe were there too.

‘Who won?’

He’d shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’

He was lying. Honey knew it, deep in her deepest whatever, that he was lying, and she told him so. He shrugged and turned away seeming to prefer the sizzling of a hot pan to facing further questions.

In the two years since he’d worked for her she’d never known him lie. But he was lying now. She was sure of it.

The following morning she kept her promise to Steve regarding the fancy-dress outfitters. The shop in Batheaston was her first stop; she hoped it would prove fruitful.

Rumour had it that the woman who ran Fancy Pants and Fantasies had once been a stunt woman in Hollywood. Whether it was true or not was the last thing on Honey’s mind. She was still concerned about the change in Smudger’s behaviour. He’d given no real clue as to why he’d rushed out without keeping his appointment. His explanation was plausible enough – that he’d had a headache. But Honey couldn’t recall Smudger ever having a headache – even after his usual night’s fare of more than a few pints of extra strong ale.

Batheaston seemed an odd place to have a fancy-dress shop. It was situated three miles to the east of Bath, where a steep hill swept down towards Bathford and the old route to Bradford-on-Avon. Narrow pavements divided old stone buildings from the road. Although the road wasn’t so busy since the opening of the new bypass, it was still difficult to park.

To the left, steep lanes sloped up into the village of Northend. Honey shot up the second one and found a parking space, not too much of a problem at the time of day when most folk were at work.

It was a fair walk back from there to the main road. The road was fairly empty of cars, and the pavements of people.

A man stamping his feet at the bus stop was the only person in sight. He nodded a brief good morning. ‘Bloody buses. None at all or three all at once.’

‘That’s the way it is,’ she replied. She glanced up at the gold and green sign saying Fancy Pants and Fantasies.

‘That used to be a pub,’ said the man at the bus stop. He shook his head glumly. ‘Nothing’s the same as it used to be.’

He sounded like Marvin the paranoid android from
The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. Feeling bad about Stella, the last thing Honey wanted was some old misery bending her ear and making her feel worse. She pretended she didn’t hear him and pushed her shoulder against the shop door. There was a rush of air past the rubber surround as it sucked itself open.

The proprietor was sitting behind a green plastic counter. Rumour had it that Andrea Andover had doubled for the likes of Carrie Fisher and Demi Moore in some of their trickiest stunts. The only thing she’d doubled since then was her size.

For Andrea Andover wobbled. She had three chins, and her breasts were big enough to use as a bookshelf. They came into sight around corners long before she did.

Andrea appeared to be rummaging up the rear of a bright yellow chicken costume. She looked up on hearing the door open.

‘Can I help you?’

Honey eyed the chicken. ‘Are you stuffing that?’

Judging by her current expression, Andrea had never been asked to stand in for a famous comedian.

‘I’m sewing its tail back on,’ she replied in a voice that matched her expression. ‘People do strange things when they’re in costume. I blame television myself.’

Honey cocked a surprised eyebrow. Coming from someone who had worked in Hollywood was a bit rich, but she wasn’t here to debate the fact.

As she sewed and stuffed, Andrea’s flinty gaze stayed fixed on Honey’s face. Disconcerting was an understatement; Honey found herself searching her memory, just in case she’d hired and broken a chicken costume without being fully aware of it.

Reason overcame her.

‘I’m looking for a man who might have hired an African costume from you. A Masai costume in fact, you know, animal skin, red wool and brightly coloured beads.’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s about six feet six, of African descent and well-spoken. He told me his name was Obadiah.’

The chicken outfit ceased heaving as Andrea Andover stopped what she was doing, closed one eye, and fixed Honey with the other one.

‘I told the daft sod not to do it. It was too serious pretending to be someone’s husband they married when they were drunk. Different if it was a party or something. Everyone knows it’s just a giggle. But what he took on was not meant that way. I told him, “Francis, that man that’s paying you is up to no good.” It was a wicked hoax. The woman had a problem and the guy who paid Francis all that money did it out of malice, not fun.’

So Obadiah’s real name was Francis. And someone had paid him to dress up in that stupid costume. The question sprung to mind of how much of a role had that embarrassment played in Stella’s last booze-up and speeding car to infinity?

‘How much was he paid?’

‘Five hundred pounds plus expenses. I only charged him seventy-five for the costume – it ain’t much of a costume anyway – just a bit of animal skin, necklaces, bracelets and what have you.’ She cocked her head to one side, one eye closed again, the other looking thoughtful and all alone.

‘It was a laugh and it wasn’t a laugh; that was the way it was meant to be. Something was funny, but something was sad.’ She shrugged and picked up the costume again. ‘That’s the way I saw it.’

‘Francis. Do you know where he lives?’

Andrea nodded. ‘Sure I do. I’ve got his card.’ Shoving the chicken outfit aside, she tugged out a small cardex box with podgy hands and handed over a plain card with simple block writing on it. FRANCIS TRENT. ACTOR. IMPERSONATOR. KISSOGRAMS A SPECIALITY
.