StillWaters:Book4oftheSophieGreenMysteries (17 page)

He was too cheerful. I was always suspicious of cheerful people.

“Why are you so happy?”

He shrugged. “It’s nearly Christmas.”

“I thought you hated Christmas.”

He walked into the living room. “You don’t even have a tree!”

“It’s on my to-do list. And neither do you—”

“Yes, well, that’s because I hate Christmas.” He turned and grinned at me, and such is the force of his smile that my face cracked slightly. “Sophie. Where in the world would you most like to spend Christmas?”

I blinked. In my parents’ house, was the most honest answer, but the condition was that they’d have to be here too.

“Why?” I asked suspiciously.

Luke looped his arms around my neck, still looking pleased with himself. “How about Eden?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You mean the Eden Village in Norfolk?”

He nodded.

“Like that wouldn’t cost a fortune.” I tried to duck out of his embrace but he held me closer. “Luke, let me go.”

“Not until you agree to come on holiday with me.”

I looked at Luke and decided there was a very real possibility that he was completely insane.

“Are you on strong medication?” I asked. “Do you hear voices? Are there angels talking to you?”

“There’s a very stroppy girl arguing with me,” Luke said. “Does that count? Sophie, listen. You said we needed to talk to Molly Stanton’s friends. Well, they all work at Eden. So we need to go to Eden. So… I booked us in for a week.”

“Over Christmas? Luke, that costs a fortune!”

“I can afford it.”

I could have sworn he got paid the same as me at SO17. “What, do you have a trust fund or something?”

Luke looked sheepish.

“
You have a trust fund
?”

“Only a really small one,” he said. “For emergencies.”

“And a Christmas break with your ex-girlfriend is an emergency?”

“Fine, stay here then. Eat pizza for dinner with your cat and dog for company and get drunk alone in front of Dr. No for the millionth time.”

I closed my eyes. Okay, I was being a stroppy bitch. Here was a gorgeous man offering me a fantastic Christmas holiday. For free.

Well, probably mostly free…

“What kind of villa did you book?” I asked.

“They only had the one-bedroom ones left.”

I bet.

“Double or twin?”

“Erm, I’m not sure,” Luke said, but he wasn’t looking at me.

“You do know I’m not going to sleep with you this week, right?”

He grinned suddenly, like the sun coming out. “So you’re coming? Sophie!” He hugged me close and kissed my neck.

“Hey, Luke—” I protested, but feebly, because it felt damn good. “Luke, stop that. When are we going? Tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Figure we should get an early start, book everything as soon as we get there.”

“Book—? Luke, I really can’t afford to—”

“My treat. Really. It’s okay. And we need to book stuff, right, because we need to talk to a certain five employees. Two fitness instructors, a beauty therapist, restaurant manager and childcare assistant.” He finally unlocked his arms and counted the five off on his fingers.

“Childcare? What, you’re going to book a baby-sitter?”

“We’ll think of something.”

We. Again with the “we”. Is it normal to go on two holidays with anyone in such a short space of time, I wondered. Let alone someone you used to sleep with.

But then, since when did I worry about “normal”?

Monday morning came all too fast, and I lugged my repacked suitcase (trans: exactly the same things as Cornwall but now with a swimsuit thrown in) out of the house to Ted. Luke, his car already parked in the drive, stood and shook his head at me.

“What?”

“All that for a week?”

“My winter clothes take up a lot of room.”

“You took the same amount to Fuerteventura in August.”

“I could go back in the house right now…”

“Right,” Luke said, “and I’ll just drive off with your dog, shall I?”

I had to give him bonus points for remembering to book a villa with Norma Jean in mind. I’d very tentatively called Angel with the intention of asking her to look after Tammy for me, but all I’d got were tears on the other end. So I called Evie again, gritted my teeth and told her I was unexpectedly going away with Luke, no it didn’t mean anything, we weren’t back together, it was just a friend thing—and knew she didn’t believe a single word.

I hugged Tammy and gave her some biscuits to occupy her while I tossed Norma Jean’s basket and blanket into the back of the car. Luke had half-heartedly suggested we take his, but I’d pointed out that not only was his car very boring, he didn’t want to get it coated with dog hairs. Dog smell was impossible to get out, should he ever want to sell it. Whereas with a car like Ted, if he
didn’t
smell of dog, buyers would get suspicious.

I wondered about the trust fund as I hefted my suitcase into the car. If I had money like that, I wouldn’t squirrel it away. I’ve never been able to save more than a grand or two, and that’s usually because my mum hides my bank book. If I had money just sitting there I’d spend it on, I don’t know, maybe a car that wasn’t so boring I forgot where it was even when I was driving it.

Don’t snark about his car, Sophie. He’s paying for your holiday.

We got in, I put some batteries in the ghetto blaster that serves as Ted’s radio, checked that Luke had the directions, and took the handbrake off.

The car started to roll towards the garage.

“Uh, Sophie?” Luke said. “This is the bit where you apply the brake and put it in gear.”

“I am applying the brake,” I said, pumping my foot down. “Nothing’s happening. I am braking,” I said with increasing panic. The garage door was only a few feet away and the car was still rolling. I rammed it into reverse, the car stalled, and I yanked up the handbrake.

Then I sat there, heart thumping.

“I was braking,” I said to Luke.

“We weren’t stopping.”

“
I was braking
.”

“Okay, I believe you.” He got out of the car and went around to the back. “Brake again.”

I did.

“The lights aren’t showing,” he said.

He came back to the cab, made me get out, and poked around in the footwell with the torch from my cubby box of tricks.

“Yeah, that’d be the problem,” he said, coming back out while I tried not to look as though I’d been checking out his backside.

“Hey, Mr. Mechanic,” I teased. “What is it, my HT leads?” I have no freaking clue what HT leads are. It’s just something my mechanic always seems to be saying.

“No, actually, it’s this.” Luke held something up. My brake pedal.

Completely cut off.

“Oh,” I said, looking at it. It was a very clean break. Someone had sawn it off. That wasn’t wear and tear. “Oh.”

Luke peered at me. “You okay?”

“Someone tried to sabotage my car.”

“Um, well, yeah. Looks like it.”

I took in a deep breath, feeling faintly nauseous. It wasn’t exactly the first time that someone had done something like this to me, but I didn’t think it was the kind of thing you ever got used to.

“You know,” I said, my voice slightly shaky, “I thought I’d left that behind with SO17. All the bumps and bruises and people trying to kill me. And since I’ve lost my job it’s still kept happening.”

“You’re just a magnet for trouble,” Luke said. He looked at the pedal in his hand. “Would I be right in assuming you’re not going to bother reporting this to the police?”

“You would. Can I have a look at the file again?”

Luke got the case file out of the car and handed it to me as I leaned against the bonnet and let him put all the stuff in his car. I read over the five Eden workers’ profiles again. They all lived near the Eden village, which was about fifty miles from here. It was possible that one of them might have come down here to sabotage my car. But how had they got in? I always locked Ted.

Didn’t I?

Luke waved a hand in front of my face. “You ready to go?”

I nodded, locked Ted and the house, and ferried a confused and excited Norma Jean into the back of Luke’s car, where she made herself comfortable on the back seat, having laid a fine patina of blonde hair all over the upholstery in about thirty seconds.

Luke was driving, which meant I was navigating. Which meant that I forgot a road sign or two along the way. Ahem. I’m usually a good navigator, when I remember my lefts and rights correctly, but the close presence of Luke, looking really hot in old, faded jeans and a chunky fleece (is it bizarre that I still find him sexy even when he looks like a lumberjack?), coupled with the fact that someone had sabotaged my car with a view to trying to possibly kill me, was making me jumpy.

We arrived at Eden, and I felt calmed. Just driving up through the forest to the arrivals lodge made me feel like a little girl, a little girl who had nothing bigger to worry about than which swimsuit to wear.

I handed over the registration documents I’d been filling out in the car. They required our birth dates and it shook me again to realise that Luke was not only born in a different decade to me, but when I was a baby, he was already at Eton prep.

I was given a key to our villa and told we could drive up there and unload our things whenever we wanted.

“Is that a new policy?” I asked. “It used to be from three p.m. onwards, right?”

She smiled. “Yes, but you’ve booked a luxury villa.”

Had we, indeed?

Norma Jean looked very excited to be allowed out of the car—as if she’d been there for hours instead of about fifty minutes. She yapped impatiently and galloped up to the front door of the villa, which sat there looking smug and new. Leaving Luke with the car and the luggage, I ran after her, ten years old again, unlocked the door and rushed around the luxurious little place, jumping up and down when I saw the spa bath in the en suite upstairs.

“You shouldn’t be jumping without a sports bra,” Luke observed from the doorway, and I jumped again, because I hadn’t heard him come in.

“And you shouldn’t be looking.”

“Maybe if you’d helped me unload some stuff—”

I tuned out and brushed past him, back into the bedroom. Here was a large double bed made up with a soft duvet, patterned with the Eden apple logo. Sofa, I thought firmly. There’s a sofa downstairs. One of us will be sleeping on that.

No doubt Luke would be pulling the six-foot-one card on me and getting the bed for himself. No fair.

The villa, unlike the ones I usually stayed in with my family, was on two levels. Downstairs was an open-plan living and dining room and comprehensively equipped kitchen, then steps swirled up to a galleried bedroom and bathroom. I leaned over the wooden railing and looked down into the double height space below. Then I pulled back. I’m not good with heights.

In the corner of the living room, stretching right up to the high ceiling, was a Christmas tree tastefully decorated with gold ribbons, and there was a vase of exotic flowers and a box of Belgian chocolates on the table.

There was a balcony outside the bedroom, and I went out to look. Like most of the villas, it overlooked a lake and lots of trees. Squirrels rustled around in front of me and a couple of ducks flew down to the water. I remembered the obsessive seagull in Port Trevan and smiled.

Downstairs, Luke finished bringing stuff in and I gave him a cup of coffee as reward. He took it, sipped it, and made a face.

“And what is this?”

I sipped a bit too. Yuck.

“The stuff they gave us on arrival,” I said. “Let’s hope the chocolates are better.”

We took Norma Jean out for a walk and it was hard to tell who was more excited, me or her. I knew this place and loved it. It seemed impossible that I was here to work. That somewhere in this haven there might be the person who had killed Molly Stanton and nearly killed me.

That sobered me a little.

Dogs were not allowed in the glass-domed village centre, so we tied her up outside. “You never know,” I joked, “someone might adopt her.”

“Reckon we could make some money on that dog,” Luke said, looking at Norma’s classic Nobody Loves Me pose—nose on paws, sighing, eyelashes fluttering.

“You’re such a hussy,” I said, but I said it fondly. You can’t stay mad at anything as pretty as Norma Jean. Look at Luke, I let him get away with anything.

First off we did some shopping at the little supermarket—which was an ordeal, because Luke was vastly amused by all the veggie stuff I picked up. “Ham-style flavouring? What is ham-
style
flavouring?”

I ignored him and put the packet in the trolley. “Do you want a log?”

“A log? What for?”

To hit you over the head with. “The fire. They’re safety logs. It being a forest and all.”

“What’s safe about them?”

“I don’t know. Do you want one or not?”

Luke put one in the trolley and I kicked myself. Double bed, Jacuzzi bath, log fire, and Luke. I wondered if the supermarket sold chastity belts?

Chapter Ten

I showed Luke around the village centre, which I could have navigated blindfolded. I guess I need a new holiday destination, huh? I asked which restaurant was managed by our suspect, and it turned out to be the venue that hosted family evenings, fondue parties, dancing, the sort of events I wouldn’t go near unless someone was paying me.

“I’ll pay you,” Luke said, stroking my neck, and I gave him a drop-dead glance. “Ouch, that hurt. Okay, all right, where next? Where’s the sports hall?”

That was at the other side of the village, so we took our shopping back to the villa, locked Norma Jean in with a chew stick bribe, and made the mistake of walking past the bike hire centre.

“No,” I said.

“Yeah, come on. Best thing for getting around the village. You’re always saying how you should do more exercise…”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but I don’t actually mean it.”

Thankfully, we were saved from the debate by my phone ringing. It was Angel, and I braced myself for more sobbing.

“How’d it go?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry I cried at you yesterday.”

Ah, lovely sweet Angel. “It’s okay,” I said. “You had cause.”