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

  “Ready to do something intense,” Aunt Etta added.

  “Are you planning to help Nathan with the case?” Flora said.

  “Can I join?” Ivy asked.

  I lied through my teeth and told them that I was going to the hotel to work. They stared at each other and at me; they knew I was lying. They waited until I took the car out and waved at me from my own garden. They were expecting a more plausible explanation, but I wasn’t going to give it.

  There was no way for them to know where I was going, and I wasn’t going to tell them.

  I needed to face Vincent, and contacting his family was the first step to find him. This was my mission, not anyone else’s. Besides, if they learned anything about my personal quest, they’d end up telling the whole town.

  Chapter 47

  When I’d gone to Vincent’s parents’ home, I’d expected to get information about him. I hadn’t expected him to open the door and greet me as if nothing had happened. His car was outside the home and had a couple of suitcases in it. Was he running away again?

  “Has something happened to Brittany?” Vincent stepped back from the door, paced around his parents’ living room, and dropped onto a couch. He leaned his face on both hands and looked very affected. If he was faking it, he was a perfect actor.

  “How could you disappear?” I asked.

  Nathan had texted me a couple of times during the trip, but I couldn’t tell him where I was going. Now that I was facing Vincent, I would’ve liked to have someone’s support.

  Vincent said that he wasn’t going to apologize for everything he’d done. It was done, and there was no point in trying to go back. He swore that he hadn’t tried to kill Parrish, and that he loved Brittany too much to hurt her. Even if she’d left him, he would’ve still tried to help her in any possible way. He’d fooled me, but he was really worried about her.

  I told him that she was still in hospital, but that she’d recover. He calmed down, kissed my cheek to thank me, and headed straight to the car.

  Was he running away from me without even apologizing? He’d used me and he’d planned to rob me. Shouldn’t he say something to make me feel better? Or lie to me to hide his treacherous attitude? Didn’t he even plan to lie to himself?

  I chased after him and stopped him from closing the door.

  “That’s it?” I said. “Do you plan to leave without apologizing? I know that you took me for a fool, that you’ve used me. How could you treat me like that? I wouldn’t wish this to happen to my worst enemy!” My right eye was watery, but I kept the tears in. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of making me cry.

  He gave me one of his half-smiles, but this one had a hint of sadness. “I sort of liked you too,” he said, “but you wouldn’t be able to pay for my expensive tastes.”

  He closed the door and I didn’t stop him.

  “You can’t leave like this,” I said.

  “I owe you an explanation,” he said. “I’m not guilty, but I can’t stop and chat right now.” He nodded and blew a kiss towards me.

  I was stupid enough to take his word for it.

  My phone buzzed and I took it out. He used the distraction to leave.

  “Wait!” I ran after him, but then noticed the message.

  He’d sent me a long e-mail that explained everything he’d done, what he’d planned to do, and why he was leaving. He’d spent a lot of money, so he’d borrowed money from his company. The sum was quite large, and he couldn’t return it yet.

  He’d planned to quit his job and work for Parrish, and his bosses weren’t supposed to realize that he’d taken anything until much later. He’d planned to borrow the same amount from me to return it to them, but claimed that I wouldn’t have lost all my money.

  His bosses had learned of his theft when he’d stayed at the Sand & Sea, and he’d had to run away to avoid jail. He’d spent a few days at his parents’ home, but they’d soon return and he didn’t want them to learn about his activities.

  I was dumb to let him leave, but what was I supposed to do?

  I was back to the starting point regarding the crime.

  Chapter 48

  I don’t know how long I spent by Vincent’s house. I’d sat down by the door and wondered if everything had been a lie, or if this story was true.

  The sound of Nathan’s car brought me back to reality. A couple more cars arrived seconds later, but Nathan had jumped out of his and darted towards me.

  He told me that team Gossip had entered my house using Aunt Agnes’s keys. They’d turned on my laptop, and they’d used their recent computer science knowledge to check my browsing history and see exactly where I was headed. They’d seen my Google maps page and the exact route I’d taken, so they’d called Nathan and told him everything he’d needed to know to find me. They’d been worried in case Vincent had been the murderer and I could be in danger.

  I showed him Vincent’s explanation, and he agreed with me: it made sense. The new findings took us back to square one.

  He quickly scanned the area. “Get in my car while we clear the house,” he said. “It’s safer.”

  Did he expect Vincent to kill them all? One: if he was a murderer, he’d always resorted to non-violent crimes. And two: he was my ex. If he’d wanted to kill me, he’d have done so. Nathan was very angry, very tense, and very annoyed. It was almost as if he cared about me.

  Did he like me so much? I smiled to myself; I was going to enjoy this.

  “Were you scared that you’d lose me?” I raised onto my tiptoes and grinned at him, inches away from his mouth.

  He hummed under his breath and tried to remain annoyed. His body irradiated warmth, but he contained himself.

  “Or were you scared that I’d return to Vincent?” I said.

  He shook his head and leaned forward, meeting my lips in a tender kiss. His hand went to the back of my waist and he brought me a couple of inches closer to him.

  Nathan’s colleagues started looking at us. We were in public! Blood rose to my face and my cheeks burned. But we hadn’t had the chance to deal with our mutual attraction, and now wasn’t a good time to stop.

  What could I do? I stared at his eyes and forgot about everything.

  He brought his mouth closer to my ear and whispered in a low, seductive voice, “Do you want me to keep making a fool of myself, or are you satisfied now?”

  Oh, curses. I jumped back and tried not to think about it, but my heart beat quickly and I couldn’t raise my gaze to look at him. I shouldn’t have acted so unprofessionally while he was at work.

  He chuckled to himself and returned to work. He glanced back at me one last time. His eyes promised that we’d pick things up later that day. A smile formed on my lips as I saw Nathan walk away.

  My Nathan.

  Oh my goodness! I needed to wax!

  How can you think about waxing while you’re trying to solve a crime?

  I shook my head and tried to forget about Nathan for the time being. We had a crime to solve.

  Nathan’s colleagues had looked around the house and garden, but they hadn’t found anything. Some of them suspected that Vincent was behind the crimes and didn’t believe his story about corporate theft and debts. They asked me about his whereabouts, but I had no idea of where he’d gone. I told them about his car and they instructed the police to look for it, but they weren’t lucky.

  The police found Vincent’s car about an hour later, but the car was empty and there was no trace of him.

  Chapter 49

  On my way home, Aunt Agnes called me. She wanted to know if I was fine and if there had been any problems with Vincent. They’d probably been very scared about my safety.

  “Did everything go well?” Aunt Agnes insisted.

  Ivy laughed in the background.

  They weren’t worried about me; they were after news about Nathan and me.

  “If you need a good restaurant,” Aunt Agnes suggested, “you can go to The Lobster.” She was enjoying this to
o much.

  “Good idea,” Flora said. “It’s an excellent restaurant.”

  “And most of the locals don’t eat there,” Ivy said cheerfully. “You aren’t likely to see anyone.”

  “Aren’t we eating there tonight?” Aunt Etta asked.

  Some of them cleared their throats.

  “Oh,” Aunt Etta said. “I get it.”

  Lord James barked in the background. Woof, woof!

  “That’s right, Lord James,” Ivy said. “Meghan and Nathan need some time together.”

  They told me that Joshua, meaning Captain Douglas Shaw, had told them that Nathan didn’t need to return to work that day, so I could go to lunch with him.

  Team Gossip was impossible, but they enjoyed something more than romance: crimes. I told them everything about Vincent, his company, his debts, and his plans. They gasped and oohed, and asked for every small detail I could remember.

  And, of course, they insisted so much on sending Nathan and me to The Lobster that I yielded on the condition that they wouldn’t appear there. They complained but finally agreed to give us some privacy. After everything that had happened, Nathan and I didn’t need any witnesses with hearing aids.

  Chapter 50

  Nathan and I ate at The Lobster, and I would’ve wanted the evening to last forever. The food was perfect, just like Team Gossip had said. He and I talked about the past, about the Sand & Sea, and about the crime, but I preferred everything that we didn’t say. We didn’t need to talk about ourselves; I knew everything I needed only by looking into his eyes.

  We hadn’t solved the crime and we hadn’t saved my family business, but we’d solved a matter that had gone on for too long.

  Once we reached my house, he kissed my cheek and we looked into each other’s eyes.

  Hurried footsteps and giggles on the other side of my garden fence reminded us that we weren’t alone. Nathan kissed me on the cheek and told me that he’d enjoyed dinner and that we had to repeat it once our aunts and their friends traveled to another continent.

  Chapter 51

  Back at the restaurant, employee morale was as low as ever.

  “Cheer up, Derek,” Nathan told Derek. “Everything’s going to turn out fine.”

  Derek didn’t reply. He’d dragged his feet out of the kitchens and looked everywhere with a melancholic expression. He’d spent days looking awful, and nobody had been able to make him feel better. He was no longer the cheerful and helpful lad that tried to make everyone happy.

  Tina stopped him and started chatting quietly with him. Derek looked up and stared at her fixedly for the first time in a while. At least someone knew how to cheer him up.

  Nathan shrugged and stopped trying to cheer him up, then wiggled his eyebrows at me. We had more urgent matters to attend to, and we’d postponed them for too long. “So…” he said. “Do you plan to turn me into a criminal like you’ve done to your ex-boyfriend, or do you have grander plans for me?”

  I was about to tell him to shut up, but April ran out of the kitchens and quickly approached our table. “Antoine’s leaving,” she said. “He’s gone mad! He says something about a job in France at a very important restaurant.”

  “Antoine?” I asked. This couldn’t be happening; we were paying him a fortune and he’d promised to stay.

  Antoine walked out of the kitchens, carrying his knife collection under one arm and waving everywhere with the other. “Au revoir!” he said. He was as French as any of us, but he wanted to act the part anyway. He approached us and talked with a slight French accent, almost as if he really spoke French as his first language. “You haven’t fulfilled my contract, so I’m leaving. I’m going somewhere where my talents will be valued and people will eat my food. I don’t want to continue throwing my talents down the drain.” He tipped an invisible hat and walked out of the door.

  That’s it? No notice?

  April explained that he considered himself contractually free: we’d broken parts of his contract because nobody ate at the Sand & Sea anymore. He wasn’t giving us a notice, and it meant that we would have to take care of the restaurant until we found a substitute. Luckily, we had a friend who was an excellent cook and she’d be happy to lend us a hand.

  Nathan realized that Antoine’s actions were going to cause us many headaches, so he offered to postpone the date until the evening. He had to go to Aunt Etta’ home to get a couple of things and make some phone calls, and I needed time so that nobody noticed that we lacked a chef.

  Chapter 52

  I went to my office to look for a temporary chef for the restaurant. I’d spent a while there when I remembered that Derek was feeling very down. The lad always cheered up when talking to Pops, and maybe he needed to go fishing to forget about the Sand & Sea and stop worrying about Brittany. He’d had a crush on her, and now she’d almost died.

  I headed downstairs and looked for him in the kitchens. Nobody had seen him in a while, and neither had they seen Tina.

  And I’d seen them talking to each other a while earlier. They’d seemed to understand each other well. What if they both had something to do with the crime? Tina was dating Adam, who would inherit a fortune from Parrish. They might not have had the chance to get rid of him, and maybe they’d resorted to Derek to hide their motives. Derek had had a crush on Brittany, so he could’ve agreed to get rid of his competition.

  Derek was obsessed with Brittany and always roamed around her. Coherent expressions escaped him occasionally, but he always tried to smile at everyone, always hiding his thoughts and feelings. Except recently. Now, he was like a zombie.

  What if he wasn’t as simple as everyone thought? What if he’d taken part in the murder? And what was he planning to do?

  I quickly drove to Aunt Etta’ home. Nathan needed to learn about this. Someone else could be in danger if we didn’t act quickly.

  Chapter 53

  I don’t know why I entered Aunt Etta’ house without knocking, but it seemed right at the time. Humans have a gut instinct that sometimes makes us act strange, but it might save our lives.

  I entered slowly and quietly, and found Derek talking to Nathan. They hadn’t noticed me.

  Derek offered a glass to Nathan. Nathan shook his head and moved away, and Derek pushed him onto the floor and immobilized him. Nathan had police training, but he’d been caught off-guard and Derek was possessed by madness. He tried to make him drink from the glass once more.

  My hands acted on their own. I took a chair from the kitchen, approached Derek from behind and hit him with all my strength. Derek didn’t fall unconscious, but Nathan managed to stand back up and stop him.

  We looked at each other. Neither of us had expected Derek to be behind the crimes.

  Then, everything made sense. Derek had followed Brittany everywhere, almost stalked her. He’d listened to her private conversations; he’d known that Brittany didn’t love Parrish even though she was about to marry him. He’d had the chance to kill him with barbiturates and he’d had access to his beer. And he’d also had the chance to force Brittany to take them.

  Team Gossip and the captain arrived almost simultaneously. Team Gossip had seen Derek enter Aunt Etta’ house, and they’d reached the same conclusion as I had. They’d called the police, and Captain Shaw had come almost immediately.

  When I looked at Derek, his bright and innocent expression was no longer there. Instead, he stared back at us with a sardonic smile mixed with condescension. “Of course I did it.” He no longer sounded like the Derek we all knew; his words had a depth that he’d always hidden. “I put the pentobarbital in Parrish’s drink, and then forced Brittany to drink a glass of water with it.” He gestured at Nathan with his head. “And he suspected me when he said that everything would be fine. It was just a matter of time until he told someone else.”

  He didn’t sound like Derek at all.

  He chuckled to himself. “And you still think of me as poor, retarded Derek. As if I were remotely retarded. I acted dumb to get what
ever job I liked, I could make as many mistakes as I liked, and I worked less hours for the same wage.”

  Derek had bought the barbiturates online to avoid leaving a trace. He’d broken into Brittany’s room at the hotel to scare her so that she looked for someone to protect her. Once Brittany had grown tired of him, he’d thought that she’d discovered his crime, so he’d tried to kill her too. He felt no remorse because she ignored him. He’d given her a smaller dose to make it look like suicide, and that’s why I’d found her alive. Derek had waited for Nathan at Aunt Etta’ house, and then he’d tried to make him drink the barbiturates. He’d planned to kill Nathan instantly with a larger dose. Lucky that I’d caught him on time.

  He wasn’t the simple or good-natured Derek I’d thought I knew. He was a murderer, and he had no simplicity in his character. He’d fooled us.

  The case was solved, but Derek wanted to prove his knowledge of everyone in town. Brittany would recover. She wouldn’t have any money, but she’d remain alive. She also planned to go abroad and meet Vincent, who’d hidden in a tax haven and didn’t plan to return to Greensea for many years. Derek also knew why Tina looked so worried: she was pregnant. Twins! And she’d flirted with Vincent on the night when Parrish had died because he was dating one of her friends while he dated me. Phillip, on the other hand, had agreed to talk to the mother of his illegitimate son, and that’s why several witnesses had seen him in town. The boy was seven years old, and his mother had finally agreed to let him know his father.

  Everyone opened up to Derek because they considered him good-natured and simple, and incapable of using information against them. He was much more dangerous than any of us had thought.

  The psychiatric examination later proved that Derek wasn’t retarded or slow; he was well above average and he’d used this advantage to trick us. He’d tried to go too far, and it had allowed us to catch him. He’d go to prison for many, many years.