A Bitter Feast(91)

A few cars were parked on one side of the tiny triangle of a green. Among them was Melody’s blue Clio, but Booth carried on a bit farther until they spotted the name of the cottage. The silver Mercedes SUV Melody had described was parked in front.

As Booth pulled up, Melody and Doug emerged from behind a parked van. “Is she still inside?” Kincaid asked quietly as he climbed from the car.

“As far as we can tell without announcing ourselves.” Melody still sounded out of sorts.

Booth was examining the gleaming paintwork on the SUV. “You could eat off this thing.” He bent over to scrutinize the front bumper. “No visible damage here.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Roz Dunning stood in the open door to her cottage. In jeans and a flax-colored baggy jumper that fell off one shoulder, she looked nothing like the polished and efficient personal assistant Kincaid remembered from Saturday. Her hair was loose and unbrushed and her mouth was tight with anger.

Kincaid sensed Melody take a breath, but before she could speak, Booth stepped in front of her and held out his warrant card. “Mrs. Dunning, we’d like a word.”



Roz had admitted them with ill grace and an uneasy glance at Melody.

The cottage, which had been gutted and renovated as open plan, was a study in expensive neutrals unbroken by color—rather, Kincaid thought, like its owner. She didn’t invite them to sit, but stood with her back to the kitchen island, so that she seemed to be presiding from in front of the bench.

“Yes, I knew Fergus,” she said in response to Booth’s question. “I met him when he came to the house trying to cadge a ticket for the luncheon. But I didn’t see that it was anyone else’s business. There was no official inquiry.”

“He came to the house and you slept with him in my parents’ bed,” Melody blurted out, as if she couldn’t restrain herself.

“And what little bird told you that?” Roz gave her a sly glance. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. “Joe? He was jealous, you know, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he says. And even if it was true, it’s not a crime.”

Melody gaped at her, turning pink, and Kincaid stepped in. “This was three weeks ago, that O’Reilly first came to the house?”

“Something like that,” Roz admitted with a nonchalant shrug.

“Did he see anyone else on that visit?”

Roz appeared to give the question consideration. “I think he meant to talk to Viv. But he must have changed his mind, because he asked me not to tell anyone that he’d been here.”

“Not that you would have mentioned it, under the circumstances,” said Melody, and Kincaid shot her a quelling look.

“I’d merely have told Addie that the quite delicious chef turned up, hoping his celebrity would get him a ticket to the sold-out luncheon. Anything else that passed between us was, as I said, no one else’s business. We were both single and certainly consenting adults.”

Kincaid was trying to fill in a time line. “That Monday, O’Reilly checked into the manor house and then came to Beck House.”

“And what if he did?” Roz said in the same dismissive tone.

“And the next day?”

“He said he had to see to some things. Late in the afternoon, he came here and I ran him to the station in Moreton.”

“He didn’t tell you what he’d been doing?”

“No. But he was, I don’t know, preoccupied. Less charming.” She shrugged again, but she might, Kincaid thought, have been a little offended. “I didn’t think I’d see him again until he rang me the night before he died. I said I’d meet him in the hotel bar for a drink, but he was still being secretive.”

“So he met you in the manor gardens instead?” Kincaid hadn’t thought of her as a blonde when he’d seen her on Saturday, but now, with her hair loose, he could see how she might give that impression if caught in a certain light.

Roz looked surprised, but nodded. “I gave him a lift up here. But he was a bit disappointing, if you must know,” she added, with a look that intimated she was assessing the three men in the room as potential replacements.

This was a woman to be avoided like the plague, but there was a certain rawness to the unfettered side of her that appealed to baser instincts. “And then?” Kincaid asked.

Roz shifted restlessly and the loose top slid a little farther down her shoulder. “Then, nothing. He left after a coffee the next morning. I never saw him again. I was as shocked as anyone when the police came on Saturday and said he was dead.”

“He didn’t tell you what else he meant to do that day?”

“No.” Absently, Roz pulled her hair back into a knot. “But . . . he got a text, early. And I’d say that after that, he had an . . . agenda.”

Booth asked if she could account for her movements on Friday.

“I was with Addie all day at Beck House. I only came home just before the Talbots’ guests arrived.”

“And you didn’t see O’Reilly after that?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t see him again after that morning.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about Nell Greene?” Kincaid put in.

“No. As I said, he only mentioned knowing Viv, because they’d worked together. That was his whole thing, supposedly, with the luncheon ticket, to surprise his old friend.” Roz straightened. “Now, really, are we quite fin —”