Chapter 8 #3
An hour later, after marking my paper in front of me and making me feel even more like a misbehaving child, Councillor Douglas approves my personal license. I skip out of the council office and show Rafe the certificate.
“I can’t believe I did it. Now all we have to do is pass the inspection, and we can really open the meadery.”
“It’s all because of my help,” Rafe puffs out his chest. “I am a genius. This calls for a celebration.”
“I don’t know if I should be celebrating anything when Warrick—”
Rafe’s eyes narrow on mine, and for the second time today, I’m treated to his serious face. “I don’t want you to think about that man for another moment. Yesterday, you were terrified of that test and you aced it. What do you want to do to celebrate?”
“Eat something delicious!”
“Then it’s handy that we know a purveyor of delicious things.” Rafe knits his fingers in mine and drags me across the green to Glazed and Confused. When he shows Celeste my certificate, she squeals with delight and offers me whatever I want, on the house.
We sit down at the table under the window.
Rafe nurses a mug of hot chocolate. He bends over and laps at it with his tongue before noticing that I’m hiding a smirk, and switches to lifting it to his lips.
He still dips his tongue into the milk. He’s been a cat so long that he struggles to remember human things.
I think of the spellbooks still hidden under the counter in the shop, and my idea of where we can look next for how to break his curse. We’ve been so distracted with the test that I haven’t been able to try my next idea. I’m determined to remedy that today.
“—we’ve only got one coat of paint to go, and then the next job on your list is to refinish the floor and to buy some furniture,” Rafe says.
“I’ve found some instructions online for building a medieval-style bar, and I think that maybe with a couple of visits to the hardware store, we might be able to cobble together something fun. ”
“That’s very sweet, but today we should look into your curse. I think we can—”
“Ssssh.” He leans forward, pressing his finger to my lips.
A hum reverberates from the spot right down through my body to between my thighs.
Rafe’s eyes dart towards the shop door, behind me.
“Don’t look behind you, but there is a very upset-looking woman coming our way, and we probably shouldn’t be talking about curses when she gets here. ”
I whirl around, and sure enough, stalking across the green, her stiletto pumps sinking into the grass, is Veronika Chaplin, Warrick’s executive assistant.
I’ve only met her once before, when Warrick took me to London for the opening of a new toy store that stocked the hoverboards, and we’ve spoken on the phone occasionally to arrange Warrick’s schedule.
Seeing her here, in her London corporate clothes with a vicious scowl on her face, is so wrong.
“I said don’t look!” Rafe’s finger slides under my chin, jerking me back toward him. “She made that face when you turned around. I think she recognises you. She’s moving with all the determination of a ginger cat after something to knock over.”
Oh, this can’t be good.
“She’s Warrick’s EA, but I don’t understand why she’s here in the village—”
The shop bell tinkles as the storm cloud enters.
“Veronika, hi!” I wave at her as I frantically try to hide my triple-chocolate salted caramel cheesecake behind the salt shaker. Women worried about their husbands should not be ordering triple-chocolate salted caramel anything. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” she shrieks, looming over me, her usually perfectly blown-out hair a mess around her head.
“I’ve driven down from London because I’m worried about Warrick.
I came so I can make sure that the police are doing everything they can to find him.
And what do I see when I get here but his wife, the woman who’s supposed to be loyal to a fault, the one he could never wait to get home to, is eating cake with another man. ”
“This is my friend, Rafe. It’s been a difficult few days, and he’s been a great support—”
“You’re not having a difficult few days. You’re laughing. You never laugh with Warrick. How can you be sitting here with this overquaffed poodle when your husband is missing? And is he wearing Warrick’s shirt?”
I shrink beneath the ferocity of her vitriol. She’s right. Warrick is out there, possibly injured at the bottom of a ditch somewhere, possibly killed by some homicidal maniac. And then I make the mistake of looking across the table at Rafe.
He stares at me intently. It’s the same look he gave me when Inspector Hayes pointed out those strange charges to our joint account.
And, just like that, I know.
“Why do you care so much?” I ask her. “And how do you know that’s Warrick’s shirt? It’s just a plain blue shirt – only someone with intimate knowledge of Warrick’s preferred brands would recognise it.”
“What do you mean, why do I care? My boss, a brilliant businessman and an incredibly kind and generous person, has gone missing, and the police are looking in completely the wrong place, digging through his personal accounts like he’s the criminal, when all along his wife is—”
“How do you know the police looked at our personal account?” I ask. “Unless they’ve asked you about them. Unless you’re the person my husband was buying lingerie and hotel rooms for.”
Veronika’s lips smack together.
“Did he buy you those tits, too?” I notice her chest has grown several sizes since the last time I saw her.
“That’s a cruel, disgusting thing to say!” Veronika huffed. “You’re not the woman he thought he married, the kind of woman he needs. That’s obvious.”
“I don’t think she’s here to check on the police at all,” Rafe says to me. “I think they asked her to come because she’s a suspect. Maybe she got jealous of Warrick’s dedication to you, so she has him tied up in her secret sex dungeon. She seems like the type to have a secret sex dungeon.”
“I would never hurt Warrick,” Veronika hisses, leaning across the table and swiping her finger through the cheesecake. I stare at my plate.
“I notice you’re not denying the secret sex dungeon,” Rafe says with a conspiratorial wink at her.
Rafe, what are you doing?
This situation is out of control. I see Celeste moving through the crowded shop towards us.
People at the other tables are frozen like me, coffees and cakes halfway to their lips as they listen in on Veronika’s tirade.
I long for an eldritch entity from the city beyond the sea to open up the earth beneath me and turn me into a crazed cultist. Anything would be better than facing my husband’s mistress in a crowded teashop.
“Aww, look at you, Autumn, you’ve gone all pale.
” Veronika licks salted caramel sauce from her finger in a vaguely threatening way.
“You pretend to be the sweet, innocent housewife, but you knew. Warrick said he was telling you that morning that he was going to leave you for me. We were just waiting for payment on a new product line to come through so we could start our new life together. Only I waited for him at the airport, and he didn’t show up, because you caught him, and you killed him. And I’m here to prove it.”
She spits in my tea and storms off.
Twenty pairs of eyes pointedly don’t look at me as a tea room filled with British people frantically pretend to be doing anything but eavesdropping.
Rafe reaches across the table and prises my fingers from around my fork. I didn’t even realise I’d been jabbing it into my palm. “We’re leaving.”
Rafe pulls me through the adjoining door to our shop. The chemically paint smell itches my nostrils. He pulls me against him in a warm hug. “You’re shaking,” he says, resting his chin on my head.
“I’m a cliche.” Tears I didn’t realise I’d been holding back topple down my cheeks. “The frumpy housewife whose husband cheats on her with his busty assistant. I’m basically the opening credits for a Midsomer Murders episode.”
“Except for the fact that you didn’t murder your husband.”
I burrow my face deeper into Rafe’s chest. His heart thuds against my cheek, steady and sure. “How can I open a meadery now? Everyone heard what she said. The whole village is going to know about Warrick’s cheating. They’ll think I had something to do with his disappearance.”
“The village knows you.” Rafe strokes my hair. “They know you wouldn’t do this.”
“But that’s just the thing with British Murder Villages! It’s always the one person you don’t expect, the meek little honey witch who cracks and clonks her husband with the frying pan or drowns him in a mead vat,” I sniff. Rafe smells so good, like fresh cut grass and wisteria.
“Fine, yes, they are going to think you murdered Warrick and buried his body in your compost pile, but so what? The grand opening of the Bee-Witching Brews Meadery will be the talk of the village. You’ll be so popular, you’ll have to turn people away.”
“Why are you so nice to me?” I murmur, and then I remember – because I promised that I’d help break his curse.
All of this helping me, comforting me, it’s for his own ends.
I’m never anyone’s first choice.
I pull back, wiping my eyes. “We should get started on that final coat of paint. And we have to look at your curse—”
“That can all wait. We’re not done with our celebrating.” Rafe squeezes my hand. “I have an idea to get back at Veronika, but it will need to wait until this evening.”
“Is it devious and dastardly?”
“What kind of cat do you take me for?” He grins. “Of course it is.”