Beachside Murder (A Team Gossip Cozy Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Ivy didn’t like Aunt Etta’ opinion about Nathan and me, and she wasn’t going to keep quiet about it. “If your nephew’s interested, he should make it clear. Until she’s taken, she can look at every handsome body she likes.” She looked at my solitary coffee cup and sighed in disappointment. “Have you ordered any cookies?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What do you mean, she’s fair game?” Aunt Agnes said. “She isn’t fair anything, she’s my niece and she has high standards.”

  “You’re too overprotective,” Ivy said. “She’s old enough to decide if she wants to allow someone’s advances, you know? The more men who approach her, the better. She’ll have more choices. The world has evolved, Agnes. You can’t expect your niece to hide indoors until the perfect man arrives.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Aunt Agnes said. “She can’t date and flirt with a thousand men; she should wait for the―”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted them. “I’m here.”

  “Didn’t you get the last memo?” Ivy ignored me and continued talking to Aunt Agnes. “Perfect men are out of stock. She’ll have to choose between remaining single and tolerating imperfection.”

  “My nephew is quite close to perfection, don’t you agree?” Aunt Etta talked slowly and thoughtfully as if two of her friends weren’t arguing.

  “He’s fine,” Aunt Agnes said. “But he had an awful taste in women when he was younger.”

  Why did Team Gossip always end up analyzing everyone and telling them what to do and how to do it? I didn’t mind if they talked about me behind my back – in fact, I preferred it –, but they couldn’t do this. I was having a relaxed morning, and they were stressing me out.

  “Thanks for your opinions on how to live my life,” I said sarcastically. “Would you mind excluding me from your quest to fix everyone’s lives?”

  “You’re too outspoken for your age, Meghan,” Aunt Agnes said in her classic petulant voice. “How do you plan to catch a good husband if you judge everyone around you?”

  “She just has to fake it for a few months,” Ivy said. “If she’s caught someone richer than her and she hasn’t signed a prenup, she’s good to go.”

  “She can’t hide her nature on purpose to catch a man,” Aunt Agnes said.

  “Why not?” Ivy said. “Flora did it with quite a few, didn’t she? It could’ve worked out well, but she was after a better fortune.”

  Aunt Agnes had told me many details about Flora’s past, enough to make anyone gasp in surprise. She’d dated several wealthy gentlemen from the area, but she and her sister had been very picky about getting married. They hadn’t wanted to let any man manage their fortune, and getting married forced them to renounce their freedom to travel, waste money, and live their lives in whatever way they wished. Their inheritance had allowed them to remain single without ever needing to work, but Ivy’s aspirations had sometimes pushed her to look for wealthier boyfriends for her and her sister.

  “Oi!” Flora said. “Don’t include me in your megalomaniac plans. You kept pairing me with rich men, and then you scared them away whenever you didn’t consider them good enough.”

  “That’s because you wouldn’t have kicked them out on your own.”

  “Because they were nice!” Flora said.

  “But poor,” Ivy said.

  “Girls, girls,” Aunt Agnes said. “This is about Meghan and Nathaniel, not about our past love lives.”

  They tried to talk about Nathan and me. I didn’t join in or show annoyance, so they got bored of the topic and moved to their investigation. They’d broken into the police station again, but Nathan and the captain had been ready for a second attempt. They’d asked them to leave and hadn’t even let them get any useful information. Team Gossip considered themselves better prepared to find the culprit than the police.

  “And Joshua was the rudest person on Earth,” Ivy said. “He kicked us out without offering us something to drink. He didn’t even talk to us.”

  “He did talk to us, but he didn’t want to talk about his father,” Flora told me.

  “I’m worried,” Aunt Agnes said. “He keeps denying his name. Why is he so ashamed of being a Poole?”

  “He wasn’t rude,” Aunt Etta said cheerfully. “He even asked several of his men to accompany us outside.”

  “They were escorting us,” Ivy said. “He wanted to make sure that we didn’t go back in. And now he’s placed two gorillas guarding the door. There’s no way in. I’m telling his father Raymond Poole as soon as I see him again.”

  Team Gossip knew that the captain was called Shaw rather than Poole and that they didn’t know his father, but they’d taken the habit of confusing him with Joshua. They would’ve forgotten about the joke quickly, but he always got angry and made it more fun for them. The best strategy to dodge the terrifying ladies was to ignore them.

  “We don’t need to get in to learn whatever we want.” Ivy gestured at a waiter and ordered four coffees and something to eat without even saying a word. Most waiters and waitresses in town knew them. “We have our means.”

  Lord James barked in agreement and nodded at me. He was one of those dogs who weren’t aware of their canine condition.

  “Yes, Lord James,” Flora told him. “You know everything we discover.”

  “We should get him a hearing aid for dogs,” Ivy said. “It’s unfair if he can’t hear what we hear.”

  “He’s just a dog,” Aunt Agnes said. “What difference will a hearing aid make?”

  Lord James growled at her, but Flora quickly scratched his ear and he accepted her caresses in exchange for some of his dignity. He only acted like a dog when he wanted someone to bribe him, but he was actually the mastermind in charge of Team Gossip.

  Ivy gave Lord James a dog treat and scratched behind his ears too. “Who’s going to spy on Brittany tonight, eh, Lord James?” She turned to me. “Phones these days have perfect cameras and microphones, and nobody’s going to suspect him, will they? We can send him as an advanced spy, and he’ll hear everything that Brittany and Phillip say.”

  Brittany and Phillip?

  Team Gossip laughed mischievously and told me that they’d seen them together. They shared a mutual understanding, maybe even an illicit relationship. Hadn’t Brittany had enough with Vincent and Parrish?

  Chapter 31

  “No!” Antoine shook both hands broadly in the air and tried to get rid of everyone in the kitchens. “Leave! You are coercing my creativity. I can’t create if I have a dozen people pushing past.”

  Tina and some of the other waiters and waitresses hurried towards the door. Tina was particularly annoyed, and she’d even mentioned that he was contaminating the work environment. Now that Antoine was always grumpy, nobody wanted to get anywhere close to him.

  April didn’t move. “Look,” she said. “You can’t treat us like rubbish, you know?” She walked towards him, and the other employees used her as a shield against the angry chef. “You won’t create better or worse dishes if we’re around. We aren’t talking, we aren’t getting close to your food. If you can’t concentrate, tough luck. We work here, and we need to use the kitchen as much as you do.”

  I would’ve said something, but April had said everything I needed to say.

  Derek squeezed between the waiters and moved beside her, nodding energetically. “Your salads are already perfect, Chef. Even Mr. Truman says so. If I die, I want to die with one of your creations in my stomach.”

  April glanced at him, confused. Derek rarely said anything relevant to the conversation topic, but he’d nailed it. After a few seconds, she nodded; she couldn’t disagree with him. She wasn’t going to be nice to him for a change, so her expression quickly returned to her ironic style. “Parrish must’ve died happily, then.”

  “Parrish? Parrish?” Antoine roared and turned his back to them. His hands fetched a carrot and he started chopping it into small pieces. “That buffoon knew nothing about food. He died eating my creations,
and he shouldn’t have been allowed to taste them. He had the audacity to call my dishes plain and unappealing! Plain! What kind of uncultivated dimwit says that anything I’ve ever cooked is plain?”

  “Yeah,” April agreed with him with some scorn. “He was an idiot and didn’t deserve to live. Someone should’ve ended his life so that he stopped neutralizing geniuses. The best thing he’s ever done is dying.”

  Antoine’s hands froze. He looked down at his chopped carrot and his kitchen knife. He raised his head and slowly zeroed in on April. “Out!” he barked. “Out of my kitchens, everyone. And don’t come back.”

  “Antoine,” I said, trying to calm him down. “You might be overreacting. She’s simply made an unfunny comment. Everyone else needs to be here and help you clean up and get everything ready for dinner.”

  He walked towards me, took off his chef’s hat and shoved it into my hands. “Want me to leave? Because if you want me to leave, I can leave right now. I don’t need this job; I’m talented enough to get a new job within days. I’m not going to stand anyone who blocks my creative streaks.”

  Okay, this was it. He’d been a diva for too long, and he’d become insufferable because nobody had stopped his attitude on time. If Pops wasn’t going to make things clear, I was going to. I was the manager, it was my family’s business, and I wasn’t going to let anyone step over us. I didn’t care if Antoine was the best chef we’d ever had; his attitude was causing too many troubles for what he was worth.

  I slowly left his chef’s hat on a counter to my right and didn’t break eye contact. “Fine,” I said. “Want to run away from the Sand & Sea because you’re afraid that you won’t create enough high-quality dishes? I won’t stop you. Now, if you’re after a challenge, someone has died here. Nobody wants to eat at a restaurant where someone was killed unless there’s something special to eat. Are you up to this?”

  Wow. I wasn’t used to confrontation, but I sounded pretty convincing. I almost believed the role of manager myself! If he didn’t stay as the chef with my speech, I didn’t know what would convince him not to jump ship.

  Antoine maintained eye contact with me, bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head slowly. “I’ll stay. For now.” He took his chef’s hat and returned to work.

  It was good enough for me. For now.

  We’d need a new chef sooner or later, but the Sand & Sea wouldn’t recover unless we had a culinary genius like Antoine. If his attitude hadn’t been so difficult to tolerate, he’d have become one of the greatest chefs in the world.

  Chapter 32

  “These cookies are perfect.” At home, I stopped gobbling the chocolate chip cookies to speak with Nathan and to catch my breath. “They’re larger than Antoine’s, but they taste homemade. Have you learned to cook?”

  Nathan chuckled and shook his head. “No, I don’t have the time. You won’t believe who’s brought them to the police station to bribe their way into the captain’s office.” He tried to sound annoyed and resentful, but he was laughing deep inside.

  He didn’t need to tell me: it had Team Gossip’s signature. Instead of using their hearing aids to listen from outside the windows, they’d used their cooking skills. Nobody could say no to homemade food, not even the captain.

  Instead of eating them with the captain, he’d brought some to my house. We’d remained indoors to dodge Team Gossip. They’d caught us too often lately, and they were gaining too much confidence regarding our relationship. Nathan and I were just friends, but Team Gossip wanted to turn us into a happy, married couple.

  It turned out that Team Gossip hadn’t only gone to the police station once; they’d spent the whole week approaching the captain and softening him up with their cooking skills. They didn’t assault their computers or look through files, they simply greeted everyone and told them not to eat too much. They kept calling the captain Joshua, asked after his father, and praised everything he was doing for the town.

  Whenever they entered the police station, they started talking about the case and giving details that only some of the detectives knew. The captain had first suspected some of the younger people who worked there, or even some of the cleaners. However, he’d tracked them and he hadn’t caught anyone filtering anything.

  “And now he thinks that I’m telling everything to my aunt,” Nathan joked. “But my aunt doesn’t even ask me questions. She’s either drugging me at night to get me to speak, or she’s getting news from other sources.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at me.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “They’ve told me everything I know about the case.”

  He laughed and accused me of encouraging their behavior. They were old enough to retire, but they were never going to let anyone rest unless society forced them to act their age. He was channeling the captain’s words, but Nathan was also getting in trouble at times. The captain knew about Aunt Etta and thought that she wouldn’t be so daring if Nathan didn’t work there.

  So now the captain was paranoid and accused everyone of filtering information outside the department. He didn’t know about the ladies’ hearing aids, but he was interrogating witnesses and suspects in a small room without any windows. He did it to reduce the risks of having anyone hear him within the office, but he was also blocking the senior spies’ method.

  “Our aunts are dangerous,” Nathan said.

  I was happy that he was able to keep our aunts at bay because privacy was part of his job. On the other hand, following the investigation had become an entertaining pastime for both Team Gossip and me. Now that the Sand & Sea was going downhill, their updates were the best way to forget about all our problems.

  Nathan told me about Team Gossip’s latest findings. He didn’t mind telling me himself because he expected them to tell me anyway. Phillip’s cousins had arrived and were helping the police. They didn’t keep in touch with their uncle Parrish, but they’d all liked him.

  In a purely altruistic move, or so they’d described it, they’d warned their uncle against Brittany, because they considered her a fortune hunter. They’d been right, but had Parrish’s estate played a part in their reservations against his fiancée? If he married her, she was likely to inherit much of his fortune, which meant that none of his loving relatives would get it.

  In their pursuit to prove Brittany’s falsehood, they’d hired a private eye to follow her everywhere. The investigator had followed her and taken pictures when she’d dated young men even though she was dating Parrish simultaneously. The investigator had also talked with Brittany’s friends, who had taken him for one of her exes and had told her that she was on track to marry a very rich man.

  Parrish had learned of Brittany’s amorous adventures. Instead of breaking up with her, he had continued life as usual, but he’d changed his will so that his family kept the money. He was going to get her to sign a prenup just before the wedding – that was, if she still agreed to marry him. In the meantime, he was enjoying life with a gorgeous woman who would probably leave him as soon as she realized his plans. His ruthlessness in business also extended to his personal life.

  Parrish’s last will had split his fortune equally amongst his family, and he’d left a symbolic part to Brittany. He hadn’t even trusted her enough to leave her a lump sum of money; he’d left her the annual interest accrued by a modest investment. She wasn’t going to like it, especially now that she’d gone shopping to the most expensive shops in the region.

  Nathan was eating another cookie when he stopped talking and stared at me. “You’ve tricked me into telling you everything,” he said. “You complain about Team Gossip, but they’re amateurs compared to you. I can get in trouble for telling you.”

  “And how will you convince me to be quiet?” I sounded flirty.

  Oh my god! Was I flirting with him? With Nathan? What was I thinking?

  He stared at me and his eyes glanced down at my figure for a brief instant.

  Had my flirty attitude worked? Did I want it to work?

&nbs
p; He gulped and quickly reacted. “I can take you to the police station and let you deal with my boss instead of me,” he said. “I don’t want to hear him.”

  Awesome, Nathan. Way to spoil any kind of romanticism between us.

  At least we were still friends. Becoming anything else could spoil our relationship.

  Chapter 33

  “Don’t you have anything to tell us about Nathaniel?” Aunt Agnes entered my house followed by the other members of Team Gossip. They hadn’t even waited for 5 minutes after he’d left.

  Did they ever knock before coming in? My aunt had a copy of my keys in case I ever lost them. It served as a backup, but it sometimes meant that I received unwanted visits.

  “Don’t give us too many details.” Ivy walked in with Lord James under her arm and sat down on my couch. “I don’t want Lord James to hear everything grown-ups do in their free time.”

  The others joined her and sat in my living room without asking if they were annoying me or if I had anything to do. Their retirement gave them all the free time in the world, but they didn’t realize that some people weren’t able to retire yet.

  “They don’t do any of that!” Aunt Agnes nagged at her. “What kind of niece do you think I have?”

  “What century do you think she was born in?” Ivy nagged back.

  “I can hear wedding bells,” Aunt Etta said.

  “Why don’t we keep my personal affairs to myself?” I said.