Chapter 59
Rosie does feel a bit guilty, leaving Amy and Lee to deal with the police, but who better than those two, when you really think about it. They all speak the same language. Bodyguards, police, lifeboatmen, all that lot.
She left them looking very cosy together. If you can look cosy together sitting next to a dead hitman. If anyone can, Amy can.
Steve’s whereabouts are unknown, but he won’t be wasting time, Rosie knows that. Her nose tells her, however, that The Hunter’s Rest is the place to be. That’s where Ernesto is headed, and Rosie is sure she will catch him up.
She won’t catch him up simply because she drives like a maniac.
She will catch him up, and she has to be brutally honest with herself here, because Tony Taylor once showed her a B-road that ‘I swear to you now, Rosie, will knock seven minutes off your drive to Axley, maybe even eight’.
Rosie has to admit that while We Solve Murders is, strictly speaking, just her, Amy and Steve, they do have a very useful group of friends.
Tony has proved his worth here, thinks Rosie, as she touches 90 mph on this empty road.
And Felicity never puts a foot wrong, although Rosie worries she doesn’t pay her enough and makes a mental note to give her a proper raise.
Even Carlos Moss had reported for duty again, and although all he’d produced was the same photograph that Ernesto had, you couldn’t fault him for trying.
Rosie joins the main road again just outside Axley, and is delighted to see Ernesto in her rear-view mirror.
She sees the sign for The Hunter’s Rest up ahead and throws her car into an absolutely unnecessary skid to access the car park.
Behind her, Ernesto does the exact same thing, but with less skill, and his left rear wheel demolishes an AXLEY WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS sign.
They park, very badly, next to each other. Ernesto gives her a smile.
‘How you get here first?’ he says. ‘I didn’t even see you overtake me?’
‘I’m just a better driver than you,’ says Rosie.
‘No one is a better driver than me,’ says Ernesto.
‘And yet here we are,’ says Rosie, taking his arm. ‘Come on. What’s the plan?’
‘We find the hitman’s room,’ says Ernesto. ‘Then you let me search it.’
‘It’s my case,’ says Rosie. ‘If anyone’s searching the room, it’s me.’
‘Is not your case any more,’ says Ernesto. ‘Is my case.’
‘Well, we may have to agree to disagree,’ says Rosie, as they make their way into the reception of The Hunter’s Rest. Lee was right, a lot of paintings of horses.
‘If it is your case,’ says Ernesto, with a small bow, ‘get your client on the phone for me, please. I will speak to him.’
Ah, Ernesto has a point there. Makes Rosie hope, with Vern dead, that Felicity has already had their invoice paid. Not that they’ve actually solved any murders yet. They will though, Rosie is sure, that’s probably what Steve and Amy are doing right now.