StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (31 page)

I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think it was Jon.”

“Oh, ‘Jon’ is he, now?”

“No need to get jealous.”

“Of him? He’s a skinny whelp.”

“And you’re so big and muscular,” I pinched his waist. Luke was not skinny by any means, but neither was he burly. The word I liked was lean. Long, supple muscles. Mmm.

I put my head in the hollow of his shoulder and closed my eyes.

“Tired?” Luke asked, stroking my hair.

I nodded wordlessly, and he pulled the covers over me. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” I said, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, and fell asleep cradled in his arms.

I dreamed, so vividly I thought it was real. I dreamed that Luke asked me why we ever broke up. I dreamed that he told me he’d never leave for Saudi if I didn’t want him to.

I dreamed he said he loved me, and that if I didn’t realise this I was twice as stupid as he’d ever imagined.

“I am stupid,” I told him.

He smiled and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I love you anyway.”

I woke, confused and shocked, because those were words I’d never expected to hear from Luke. He’s never been what you might call comfortable with expressing emotions. He does okay with anger, and amusement, and he’s pretty good at expressing lust, but when it comes to personal relationships…he doesn’t even know how to admit things to himself.

I looked over at him, asleep beside me, his arm over my waist, and stroked the little blond hairs on his skin. He was so beautiful. In a way I was glad it had only been a dream. I’m not sure I could cope with being loved by Luke. I just don't think I’d ever be able to reconcile myself to believing it. I don’t deserve it and I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

I can barely get my head around being allowed to sleep with him. But you know the one about gift horses and mouths.

I kissed his shoulder and went back to sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

When I awoke, I was alone. The soft babble of the TV penetrated my mind. Football.

Football? Surely it wasn’t late enough in the day for football?

I couldn’t see my watch, and I was too lazy to reach over for my phone and besides, I wanted to know where my lover was.

My lover. I had a lover. No, a
boyfriend
.

Go me!

“Luke?”

He stood up and I could see him through the railings. “You’re awake, then.”

“What time is it?”

“Three.”

I blinked. “Three in the afternoon? It is Boxing Day, right? I didn’t sleep through until February?”

Luke came up the stairs, smiling. “No, it’s Boxing Day.”

“How long have you been up?”

He shrugged. “A while.” He touched my face. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

I sat up—or rather, I moved my shoulders a little in preparation for sitting up (who knew it takes so many muscles?)—and gasped, “Ow!”

“What?”

I flopped back on the pillow. “Everything,” I wailed. “My back and my chest and—”

“Your chest hurts?”

I pointed to the gauze covering the cuts. “Yes, it hurts.”

“Oh.” Luke relaxed a little. “Hurts as in skin, not as in heart attack.”

“No,” I said, ruffled, “hurts as in two deep gashes. And my hands hurt. And my head hurts—did I have a lot of champagne yesterday?”

Luke nodded, smiling. “Will a shower make you feel better?”

I considered it. “Will I have to get up?”

“Unless you want a sponge bath.” His eyes widened. “Please want a sponge bath.”

“I need to wash my hair.”

He made a face. “Can I come in the shower with you?”

What a prospect. “So long as you let me get clean before you try anything.”

“I’ll wash you myself.”

Excellent.

Having run out of proper food, we drank coffee for breakfast (well, lunch, I guess) and took Norma Jean for a walk to the Village Centre for some food. Luke held my hand and I told myself the dream had been bollocks. Instead, I tried to focus on what had happened yesterday. So Caro had tried to kill me, but someone else had killed Eleanor. Briefly, I entertained the thought of pinning it all on Caro, but Luke had talked to the police while we were at the hospital, and while Eleanor was being killed, Caro was taking chunks out of me.

I guess you could say that’s some kind of good luck for her.

“Who found Eleanor?” I asked Luke.

“Couple of guests. Who have probably gone home by now. Why?”

“I don’t know. Luke, are we totally barking up the wrong tree here? Do you think it’s one of the six who killed the girls? Or even the same person?”

Luke shrugged. “Think about motives. Gav could have killed Molly because she found out he was sleeping with someone else.”

“Another man, no less. And then killed Eleanor because she found out too.”

“Or it could have been Michael in a fit of jealous rage that someone else was sleeping with the man he loved.”

“Or it could have been Jon—”

“I thought you liked Jon?” Luke looked at me sideways, and I ignored him.

“It could have been Jon, ’cos he was pissed off that Gav had brought his girlfriend when he wasn’t allowed to bring his own.”

“And he did work with Eleanor.”

“Which leaves Laura…”

“And Eleanor, of course, but even if she did kill Molly, she wouldn’t have been able to strangle herself.”

“And I still haven’t worked out how Molly was killed anyway,” I said. “She was hanging by the neck but she didn’t choke?”

“Her windpipe was bruised from the rope, but she didn’t choke,” Luke confirmed.

“How was she hanging there for so long without dying?”

“Maybe she was only strung up when the water was high. Maybe she wasn’t there that long at all.”

“Yes, but if that was the case, then why was she left to drown at all? Why not just stick her head under the water and then string her up? And also I think the tide covers that cave entrance completely.”

“…So?”

“So whoever strung her up would have had to swim out. And unless they were Lara Croft, it would never have happened. It’d be pitch dark and it’s still quite a way to swim.”

Luke shook his head. “You play too many video games.”

“I choose to think of them as interactive entertainment. Like those books where you decide which page to go to.”

“I generally go for them in numerical order.”

“Smart arse.”

We tied Norma up outside where she was sure to get a lot of attention and went in for food. And who should we see sitting outside one of the cafés but Laura and Michael and Jon. On the table was an array of hot drinks and a game with lots of small cards.

Jon waved.

“Excellent,” I said, and went over, tugging Luke with me.

“Hi,” Jon said. “Did you have a good Christmas?”

I have four stab wounds and found out that yet another person wants to kill me. “Great,” I said. “Hi. Laura, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “So is this the famous boyfriend?”

Luke raised his eyebrows at me.

“This is Luke,” I said, then, “Laura did my beauty treatments the other day.”

Luke looked between her and me. “You must be very talented,” he said, “to make Sophie even more beautiful.”

Laura preened.

“Brown noser,” I said. “How was your day? Apart from—well, you know. Stupid question.”

“Well, I got the afternoon off,” Jon said pragmatically, “so at least I got to see my girlfriend.”

Was that a likely motive for murder?

Laura had her eyes closed and her face turned away. She looked like she was trying not to cry.

Michael was looking us over. “Were you at the medieval banquet the other day?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you work there?”

“I’m the manager.”

“Oh. Well, it was really good.”

Silence. Then Luke asked, “What are you playing?”

“Mindtrap,” Jon said. “Like Trivial Pursuit but with puzzles to solve.”

“Puzzles?”

“Yeah, like, if you have two coins totalling one pound ten and one of them is not a pound coin, then what are they?”

Laura and Michael smiled. Obviously they’d just played that one.

“Legal tender?” Luke asked.

“Yep.”

I could see him doing the maths.

“You can’t—”

“One of them is not a pound,” I interrupted, and Michael nodded. “But the other one is?”

He smiled. “Well done.”

I gave a modest smile.

“She thinks sideways sometimes,” Luke said, and my smile slipped away. “So you like puzzles?”

I half expected him to ask them to explain Molly’s puzzle.

“I’m crap at them,” Laura said, “but Jon loves them.”

“The game was a present,” Jon said. “Mike bought it for me.”

“I think I might have to look out for it,” I said. “Come on, Luke, we have to, er, go bowling…”

Luke blinked at me.

“It was nice to see you,” I said. “And I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” I added to Michael, and tugged Luke away.

“What?” he asked when we were out of earshot.

“He likes puzzles? Someone who likes solving puzzles might maybe like making them?”

“Molly?”

“Possibly.”

“I thought our Jon was innocent?”

“Possibly not.”

We bought some food, and I persuaded Luke that I was too weak and injured to carry it, so I took Norma’s lead and we set of back to the villa, me free and easy, Luke laden with enough food to last us forever. On the way, I got a text from Angel.

“How do you feel about red?”

I frowned. I read it out to Luke, and he had no idea what it meant either. So I replied with
“Eh?”
and two minutes later got a reply.

“Your maid of honour dress. Red?”

“Oh,” I said, stopping suddenly.

“What?” Luke said. “Are you okay?”

“She wants me to be her maid of honour.”

“How sweet. You get to dress up in red? No frills and flounces?”

“She wants me to be her maid of honour!” I repeated, stuck on that fact.

“You might want to redefine that. You don’t exactly fit into either category.”

“Hey, I have lots of honour.”

Luke muttered something about maids that I chose to ignore.

So happy was I with the texting that I walked straight into the villa, took Norma’s lead off, and started de-cloaking before I heard a smash from the living room.

“Luke? What did you drop?”

I pulled off my scarf and poked my head around the doorway. “Luke?”

And then something hit me on the head, and I went down, clutching the door frame, my gloved hands slipping. I looked up and saw Michael standing there with a vase in his hand.

“You hit me on the head,” I said, patting my bonce under my fake-fur Russian hat. “That really hurt.”

“It was supposed to knock you out,” he said, looking irritated. “It did last time.”

I blinked. God, that hurt. Was I not in enough pain as it was? “In Cornwall?”

He nodded. “Sorry about that. It lacked style. Thought someone was coming, but it was just your stupid dog.”

Norma Jean had padded to her basket by the fire and was watching us with interest, her chin on her paws.

Stupid dog.

“Why were you in the cave?” I asked cautiously.

“I wanted my rope back.”

“The rope you hanged Molly with?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Now, here’s a puzzle. How did a woman who was hanging by the neck, survive long enough to drown when the tide came in?”

“She had really strong arms,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think of. “She held onto the rope above her neck to take her weight off it.”

“Even while she was unconscious?”

“What is it with you and hitting people on the head? And what did you do with Luke?” I asked, fear pounding inside me. I couldn’t see him.

“Oh, I got him with a champagne bottle. I didn’t kill him,” he assured me, “he’s too pretty for that. But you—” he raised the vase again, “—are really not my type.”

“Why? Because I have breasts?”

More eye narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Well, duh. “One, you think Luke’s prettier than I am—which, by the way, he is so not. He’s hotter than me, but not prettier. And two, I saw you having sex with Molly’s boyfriend.”

“Pervert.”

“Says he who shags his boyfriend five minutes before he goes off to kill his own girlfriend.”

“It was more than five minutes—” Michael said, and then he winced.

You see, some people are really just not cut out to be murderers.

“Whoops,” I said from my position slumped in the doorway, my head throbbing, my back aching, my hands sore and my stitches itching. I really didn’t feel in a position to be stopping him.

“No, yours was the whoops,” he said. “‘I’m sorry about your girlfriend’? How did you know she was my girlfriend?”

Ah, bollocks.

“Plus all those endless questions. Did you think we wouldn’t notice? Talk to each other?”

“Yes,” I agreed, “girls tell each other everything.”

Michael lunged at me with the vase, trying to rip off my hat at the same time, but I kicked out with my heavy boot and he went sprawling half on top of me. I scrambled out from under him and made a run to the kitchen.

Luke was crumpled in a heap on the tiles, surrounded by broken green glass, blood on his head. I winced. For someone who had had severe head injuries a few months ago, that could not be good.

I started opening drawers, looking for a knife, but I couldn’t find any. Just little vegetable knives. When you wanted a big fuck-off steak knife, could you find one?

Michael came after me, but he was unarmed too, the vase having been broken in the fall. I noticed blood on his face and hoped it was his. If it was mine, I was going to be really pissed off.

I scrambled up onto the kitchen counter and made to drop over the other side, but he caught my foot and tried to pull me back. My other leg landed in the sink and kicked the tap away from the unit. Water started spraying everywhere.

Michael let go of me, and I fell onto the floor on the far side of the counter, momentarily winded. The water spattered on my face, cold and refreshing, and I sucked in a deep breath.

“Here’s a puzzle,” I said as he came around the corner, holding a carving knife (how had he found it? Did I have carving-knife-deficient sight?). “Take one man with a big knife and one woman with a blonde dog and lock them in a room. How is it that the woman is the one to survive?”