StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (23 page)

I opened all the windows and doors and locked myself in the bathroom with Norma Jean while I waited for some of them to fly away. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it for a while. Then I dialed Reception, and said bluntly, “There’s a cooler full of wasps in the middle of the lake outside my villa. Please, can you get someone to get rid of it?”

There was a sort of stunned silence on the other end. “A cooler full of
what
?”

“Wasps. I don’t think they’re big enough to be hornets.”

“A cooler full of wasps,” the woman repeated, as if I’d just told her—well, what’s more improbable than a cooler full of wasps in the middle of a lake?

“Someone sent it to me. A practical joke. So I threw it in there. But I don’t want anyone to open it and get hurt.”

“I’ll get someone on it,” she said faintly. She took my villa details and told me I might want to think about calling the police, then I hung up and attended to my hands. Some of the stingers were still in the skin: wasn’t that a bee thing? I pulled them out with tweezers, the wounds oozing blood, and lathered my hands with the witch hazel I take everywhere (not that I’m clumsy, but…well, okay, I’m clumsy). I was still shaking. Someone really had it in for me.

After a long while, when Norma started to look bored, I ventured out. Not so much frantic buzzing. In fact, most of the wasps were congregated around the open windows and doors—only a few had exited, but I helped the rest on their way with a lot of flapping and yelling.

Then I checked inside my coat, hat, scarf, everywhere, shaking them all out before I got dressed to leave the villa. Gloves I couldn’t bear yet. I walked out towards the lodge, the cold air numbing my stinging hands.

I was early, so I sat down and got out a notebook and tried to think about Molly Stanton. Then I put the notebook away as useless, because my hands hurt too much to hold a pen.

So far I’d got next to nothing. Jonathan had hinted that the rest of group hadn’t liked her much, and he’d said she’d been having a rough time lately. Eleanor hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all, and we’d not even seen Michael Varley.

Bloody Luke, distracting me. See, this is why I can’t get involved with him. He has to go off to Saudi, and then maybe I can try and have a normal life.

Like that’s ever going to happen.

I had a lot of hopes pinned on Laura Jones and Gavin Beasley. I hoped Rachel would come through for me.

She and Harvey arrived a couple of minutes early, and I went down to the lodge to explain to the security men who they were.

“My niece,” I hugged Rachel, who did her best not to look revolted. “Hey, big brother,” I said to Harvey.

“Thanks for doing this,” he said. “She’s always wanted to come here, haven’t you, honey?”

Rachel gave him a dead look, then turned a full-beam smile on the security guy, who stepped back in awe.

“I sure have,” she simpered. “Auntie Sophie, can we go?”

I hugged Harvey, muttering thanks in his ear, and said I’d see him later. Then Rachel and I walked up towards the village centre.

“Oh.” She opened her rucksack (Buffy the Vampire Slayer this time, I noticed with approval) and handed me a little bag full of wires and small electronic things. I took it gingerly. “Dad said to give you this.”

I frowned, then grinned in delight when I realised it was a bugging device, no doubt liberated from the SO17 office.

“He said there’s a recording thing on it you can use,” Rachel went on, rummaging and coming up with a slim machine. “It’s all remote; it should work over a couple miles.”

Sometimes, I really wish I’d picked Harvey.

“So what is it I’m supposed to be doing?”

I tried to focus. “Right. Your target is Gavin Beasley, a childcare assistant—”

“Gay.”

“Whose girlfriend was found dead in a cave last week,” I finished.

“Bi, then.”

How did she even know those words?

“She was hanging by the neck, but the autopsy said she drowned.”

“Eww.”

“Yep. She and Gavin were on holiday with four other people who work here. Me and Luke—” amazing, I’d thought it would hurt more to say that “—have been working on them, but we haven’t found a way to get close to Gavin yet.”

“Until me.”

“Until you. I want to know—well, whatever you can get from him. I’m pretty sure I heard someone arguing with Molly the night before she died—it could have been him. I want to know what they argued about. I want to know why one of Gav’s friends thought Molly was having a rough time before she went on holiday with them. I want to know if any of them had grudges against her.”

“Whoa,” Rachel held up her hands. “I get it. Why are you doing this, anyway? Dad said you lost your spy job.”

“I did,” I said, resolving to throttle Harvey for telling her, “but I’m still in the game.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve nothing else to do. Oh, and while you’re chatting up Gav Beasley?”

“Yeah?”

“Ask him if he tried to kill me in Cornwall. Or on Monday. Or if he likes wasps.”

Rachel gave me an odd look, but didn’t get to reply, because a shadow fell over us.

“Are you picking up random kids now?”

Luke.

I turned and shielded my face from the low sun. “She’s not a random kid,” I said. “This is Rachel Harvard.”

“Cortes-Harvard,” Rachel said sharply.

No, he’s not called Harvey Harvard. He’s called James Harvard—Harvey is just his nickname. Original, I know.

“Harvey’s kid?” Luke looked down at her in disbelief. “She looks nothing like him.”

“Her mother was Mexican,” Rachel said, clearly annoyed at not being spoken to. “They did blood tests. He’s definitely my dad.”

I didn’t really need to know that.

“So what is she doing here?”

“Working for Sophie,” Rachel said. “Who are you?”

Luke held out a hand. “Luke Sharpe.”

“You’re the one who broke Sophie’s heart.”

“He did
not
,” I said loudly. “No hearts were broken.”

“No, ’cos you have to have a heart to break it.”

His face was stony. Silence echoed between us.

“We have to go,” I said abruptly. “I have to take Rachel to the crèche—”

“Crèche?” she said in disgust. “I’m eight, not three.”

“For children up to fourteen years of age,” I told her patiently. “And then I have an appointment at eleven.”

“What for?” Luke asked.

“Laura Jones.”

“Oh.” He nodded, hands in pockets.

“So,” I said, stupidly, because I had no follow-up.

“Can we go?” Rachel asked. “This is way too tense.”

“I’ll see you later,” Luke said, not looking at me, but I guess that’s an improvement over not paying the remotest bit of attention to me.

I took Rachel inside and went into the ladies with her. “Do you know how to use one of these?” I asked, getting the bug out.

She nodded. “Dad showed me.” She clipped the microphone to her T-shirt, under her sweater, and put the transmitter in her jeans pocket. “I have a cell phone too,” she said, and gave me the number.

Damn, I love this kid.

“Now off you go,” I said, standing up, “and remember to act like a normal eight-year-old.”

“I am a normal eight-year-old.”

Sure you are.

I took her to the crèche, where thankfully I’d already booked her in. There was a collection of miserable-looking kids there already, and I wondered what kind of parent would come on holiday and dump their kids on someone else on Christmas Eve. Even I’m not that brutal.

“Now be good,” I said, and got a sarcastic look from Rachel.

“You too,” she said, and assumed a vacant expression to walk into the crèche.

“Name?” asked the guy on the door. He had a clipboard and a giant badge that read Gav. I looked him over: completely unremarkable, dressed in jeans and a sweater, brown hair, forgettable.

“My name?”

“No, your daughter’s.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that if Rachel was my daughter then someone really screwed up with social services, but I managed to say, “Rachel Cortes-Harvard,” and watch him tick her off.

“How old?”

“Eight.”

“Any allergies?”

Shit, I hoped not. But then in America you can be allergic to anything, right?

“None she’s told me about,” I said honestly, and Gav seemed to think this was funny.

“What time will you be picking her up?”

“Um…” I tried to remember what time I was booked until. “Four? Five?”

“We need an exact time.”

“Five, then.”

He wrote this down and gave me a brief nod. I was free.

I made to leave the glass-domed centre, but as I walked out realised I was being followed.

“Good job I’m not carrying,” I said as Luke made himself known.

“Good job for who?”

I ignored that and turned off towards the spa. But Luke darted round to stand in front of me.

I stood with hands on hips. “What?”

“You got an eight-year-old kid to do surveillance for us?”

“She’s hardly a normal eight-year-old,” I said, noting the “us”.

“No, well, being Harvey’s kid’d fuck anyone up.”

“She’s wearing a wire and she’s scarily clever.”

I pushed past him and carried on walking.

“Hey,” he grabbed my arm, halting me again, and I glared at him. “Where do you get off being mad at me?”

“What, so you have the franchise on being angry?”

“Damn right I do. You’re the one who slept with someone else.”

“
After
we broke up,” I said, feeling a Ross and Rachel moment coming on.

“How long after?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

He was right.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked, thinking that if I knew Luke had slept with another woman I’d only be able to deal with it by blocking it totally from my mind. I would not want to know details.

Luke let go of my arm, saying nothing, and when I set off again, trudged moodily after me.

“Where are you going?”

“Spa.”

“All day?”

“I’m done at four but I thought I might go in the sauna later. I said I’d pick Rachel up at five.”

“Oh.” Then, “I’m going to see if I can talk to Varley today.”

“Right.”

“And maybe the aerobics girl.”

“Eleanor? Maybe she’ll like you more than me.”

We walked in silence for a bit. I didn’t want to ask Luke if this meant I was forgiven. I was tired of fighting with him.

I was about to open my mouth to say something about how cold it was (when in doubt, talk about the weather), when a voice called out my name, and I spun around. It was Jonathan Dempsey, the tennis coach who’d witnessed my elegant fall from Ivan the Terrible.

“How are you feeling? Okay after that fall?”

“I’m okay.”

“Must have a hell of a bruise.”

“Nah, well, mostly it was my ego that took the damage.”

He grinned. “Yeah, you should have seen me first time I fell. Anyway, Harrie says you’re welcome back at the stables, a couple of free lessons or something.” He rummaged in his pocket for a battered card with the stableyard name on it and handed it over. “Give her a call. She says you can have the least scary pony there.”

I took it gingerly, my hands still red and throbbing. But no one seemed to notice them. Typical.

“Oh, and are you still here on Friday?” Jon asked Luke. “The tennis tournament is still open. I reckon you could walk it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Luke said coolly.

“Great. Well, you can enter at one of the booking points. I’ll see you around.” He smiled and walked off.

“Nice bloke,” I said.

“Too nice,” Luke muttered. “He’s up to something.”

“You’re such a suspicious bastard!”

“Yes, darling, that’s my job.”

“Not any more,” I had to point out, trying not to dwell on the “darling”.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. I’m going to talk to Varley, if I can. Let me know if you get anything from the beautician.”

“She’s a beauty therapist,” I remonstrated.

“Any money she’s blonde.”

“Hey, I’m blonde.”

Luke grinned. “Most of you is.”

As it happened, he would have lost his bet. She wasn’t the Laura who’d been talking to Jon on the bridge. Laura Jones had Japanese eyes and a Scottish accent and her hair was pure glossy black, like crude oil. Sometimes I wish I had hair like that, all raven wing and shiny, but then I remember that people pay a lot of money to have blonde hair.

Even me, occasionally.

Laura Jones whisked me into the luxurious, but sadly communal, changing rooms, gave me the soft fluffy robe that was to be my attire for the day, and then escorted me through sweet, aromatherapy-scented, terracotta-tiled, leafy green corridors to a small room with a big soft chair.

“Right,” she said, “we’re starting with a massage.” She held up a towel for me to lie down under. “So if you could just lie down on your front…that’s it…”

She ran down a list of basic questions about allergies and medical problems, and I started lying halfway through because the answer to pretty much everything was “yes”. Had I suffered a major injury? Oh, honey. Pick one.

“That’s quite a list,” she smiled. “What was the injury, if you don’t mind me asking?”

I picked the easiest one and told her I’d been in a car crash, pointing to the faint marks on my shoulder as proof.

“Oh, dear. Were you driving?”

On that particular occasion?

“Erm, yeah,” I said. “You should have seen the state of my passengers.”

“Were they badly hurt, hen?”

Hen? Did I have feathers? Did I squawk? “Well, not really. I mean—well, one was in hospital for a few days, but they’re okay now.”

“And still talking to you?”

“I’m here with one of them and the other is engaged to my best friend.” Not total truths but hey, who was she to care?

“Will that be your boyfriend you’re here with?”

“Mmm,” I said, wincing as her fingers dug into a sore bit on my back.

“What’s his name, hen?”

Laura, I discovered, was the exact opposite of Eleanor, the sulky aerobics teacher. She loved to talk. She asked me all about Luke, how long we’d been together, how romantic it was that we were here for Christmas, wasn’t I going to be beautiful for him by the end of the day, what were we doing about Christmas dinner, did we have anywhere booked, was this our first holiday together?