A Bitter Feast(23)
“No. We’ll be there in a quarter hour. A good thing, too. Gemma’s helping, but Mum will need us as well, even with the local volunteers.”
“You invited me so you could make me work?”
Melody gave him a sideways grin. “Of course. Why else?”
“What about Andy? You do know he’s back?”
This earned him a glare. “Of course I do.”
“You didn’t invite him?”
“No,” Melody snapped.
Doug studied her. “You still haven’t told your parents about him, have you?” Melody and rock guitarist Andy Monahan had been seeing each other since the previous winter, but Melody had made every effort to keep it low profile, especially after what had happened at St. Pancras.
“None of your business,” she said now.
As Melody pulled up to a junction, Doug unfolded the newspaper he’d been reading on the train. “Look. I thought you should see this.” He wasn’t sure if he was being kind or cruel.
Doug watched as Melody glanced down at the photo. In it was Andy, coming out of arrivals at Heathrow. He had his arm round his girl-singer bandmate, Poppy Jones, who was standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. They were laughing.
“That’s photo-op bollocks,” said Melody, putting the car into gear, but her lips were set in a tight line for the rest of the journey.
“Did you know him?” Kincaid asked Booth, surprised by his reaction to the news of the passenger’s identity.
“Well, no, not personally,” said Booth. “But I met him. My wife is a bit of a foodie. More than a bit, actually. When O’Reilly’s—his London restaurant—was the big buzz on the food scene, I took her to London for the day and I surprised her with dinner reservations at O’Reilly’s.” Booth fidgeted with a pen on his desk. “I proposed to her there. Fergus O’Reilly himself came out from the kitchen to congratulate us.” Shaking his head, he added, “My wife will be gutted. She was that upset when we heard the restaurant had gone under.”
“I’d heard of the place,” said Shelton, who still stood in the office doorway. “What happened to it?”
Booth shrugged. “I don’t know.
“Can you take a look at the body and confirm the ID?” Shelton asked.
“It’s been more than ten years, but, yeah, I can probably do that. He was a pretty distinctive-looking bloke. My wife went on and on about his damned dimples.” Booth grimaced. “I’m not looking forward to telling Jess. We’re coming up on our anniversary, so she’ll really take it hard.”
Ivan came into the office behind Shelton and the cramped space suddenly felt much smaller.
“It seems DI Booth knew the deceased,” Shelton told him. “What the hell was a well-known London chef doing in a car in Lower Slaughter?”
“According to my wife, our local chef, Vivian Holland, had some connection with him. And he was in her pub last night, so that explains at least part of it.”
“But not what he was doing in Nell Greene’s car,” put in Kincaid. “Or why he was dead when they crashed.”
“Well, I can see I’m not going to make my son’s football match.” Booth’s sigh was belied by the gleam of interest in his eyes. “I’ll have a look at Mr. O’Reilly, and have a word with the pathologist, see if she has any idea yet what killed him. Then, I’d better have a chat with your lady chef.”
Ivan looked horrified. “DI Booth, I hope that can wait until this afternoon. Viv Holland is catering a charity luncheon for fifty people at our house today. If anything disrupts that, my wife is likely to kill me.”
Chapter Seven
A shower and a change into her work clothes had given Bea Abbott a chance to cool down after her row with Viv. She pulled her curly hair into a tight twist—she’d no patience to fool with it today—and swiped at her mouth with a lipstick.
On her way out the door, she gave her usual grimace at the state of the garden. She’d had visions, when she’d bought the semidetached house behind the mill in Lower Slaughter, of turning the overgrown small front garden into a colorful riot of cottage borders. But somehow, between work at the pub and helping to look after Grace, the dream never seemed to materialize.
Nor had her vision included a lodger in the person of Ibby, the sous-chef. But there were no rental accommodations in the village, so Bea had agreed to house him. Frowning, she nudged a cigarette end on the gravel drive with the toe of her court shoe. Ibby had promised not to smoke round the cottage, just as he’d promised not to park his old RAV4 in the drive, where it now sat.
But she had bigger problems to solve today than her errant lodger. Leaving her own car garaged, she walked down Malthouse Lane and then along the river towards the pub. It was a sunny autumn Saturday, crisp as an apple, perfect as a watercolor. The village was already filling with walkers and Lycra-clad bicyclists—they would need all hands on deck in the Lamb today and she hoped Ibby was up to the job.
When she reached the pub, the car park had begun to fill. It was eleven o’clock and morning coffee would just be ticking over into lunch service. Entering through the car park entrance, she popped her bag into her tiny cubbyhole of an office. Her heart sank when she saw that Fergus O’Reilly’s coat was still there. Damn the man. Just how much more trouble was he going to cause?