Kill Joy (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #0.5) — Chapter no 5

“Bullshit. Let me see that.” Ant snatched the will out of Pip’s outstretched hand. He ran his eyes down the page. “That fucker,” he said, “he really left me nothing? I’m his oldest son. Even the staff get something.”

“We found it in the fireplace,” Pip explained to the others.

“Someone tried to destroy it. It was ripped to shreds.”

“Are you implying that that was me?” Ant said defensively, dropping the page onto his empty plate.

“Doesn’t look great for you,” said Zach.

“Why?” Ant replied.

The Remy brothers glared at each other, though Pip could see they were both close to smiling and breaking character, the situation not helped by Ant’s crooked mustache.

“Because,” Pip said, “your father wrote up a new will last week, removing you from it. And today someone broke into the safe in your father’s study and tried to destroy that document so that his old will would stand. Oh, and then your father was murdered. Desperate for some cash, are you?”

“It wasn’t me,” Ant said. “I didn’t break into that safe and I didn’t destroy that will.”

“Mm-hmm,” Cara added. “Sounds exactly like what a murderer would say.”

“And didn’t you say you had a ‘fraught conversation’ this morning?” Pip said, reading back through her scribbled notes. “Was it fraught because he told you he’d written you out of his will?”

“No.” Ant fiddled with his collar. “We just always had fraught conversations.”

“Well, this is all very interesting,” Jamie said, glancing down at his master booklet. “And on the topic of fraught conversations, I wonder if anyone else has overheard anything this weekend?

Anything that now, in light of the murder, seems suspicious or out of place. Please turn to page two in your booklets but no farther.”

Pip bounded back to her chair, disentangling herself from her feather boa, and flipped to the next page.

In this round: Ralph Remy will tell a story about hearing a woman on the telephone last night saying some very strange things indeed. It was you he heard, and you must admit to it. However, you should tell the group that you were simply discussing your employment contract and your upcoming working dates with the family that employs you as a governess. Make them believe it.

To counter, you must tell the group about a damning conversation you overheard between Ralph and his father on your way to said phone call. Walking past the study, you heard them talking in there, raising their voices.

Some particular phrases you overheard Ralph say are: “I

refuse to do that, Father,” “This scheme of yours is ridiculous and will never work,” and “won’t get away with this.”

Page 2

Pip finished reading and looked up. From the corner of her eye she could see that Cara was watching her closely, a small smile creeping across her face. Pip clutched her open booklet against her dress so Cara couldn’t see it, holding her secrets close to her chest.

What did Cara know? Or was Pip just being paranoid, reading too much into it?

Make them believe it. That must mean it wasn’t true. Why was Celia lying? What did she have to hide? Now Pip would have to lie and hide it too.

“Well”—Ant cleared his throat—“I did overhear a conversation between my father and the butler yesterday.” Connor straightened in his chair. “Oh, nothing too bad.” Ant smiled. “I just remember my father remarking to you that he was dreading his birthday. Of course, we all know why that is, considering what happened on this day last

year.”

The table was silent.

“I don’t know what happened last year,” Jamie said. “Someone care to enlighten me?”

“Well, Inspector…” Ant turned to him. “There was a tragic accident.”

A sudden movement drew Pip’s eyes away from Ant. Zach had just flinched in his chair, brushing one hand up his arm. Must have

been a fly or something.

“The family were all staying at Remy Manor for my father’s birthday,” Ant continued. “In the afternoon, I took a walk of the grounds with my mother, Rose Remy. It was just a normal pleasant walk, a sunny day, perhaps a little windy. I don’t really know how it happened—just a terrible, terrible accident.”

Zach winced again, inadvertently kicking a table leg.

Pip narrowed her eyes and studied him across the table. Twice within thirty seconds, that was weird. She replayed Ant’s words in her head. Wait, there was a pattern here. Both times Zach had flinched right after Ant said the word accident. Was he doing it intentionally or was she just too hyperaware, reading something out of nothing?

“I must have been walking ahead of her, because I didn’t see it happen,” Ant said. “But I heard her scream and turned back just as she fell off the cliff. We were so high up; the doctors said she died instantly on impact.” He looked down and sighed. “I don’t know if she stumbled or tripped or something. Just a terrible freak accident.”

Pip was ready for it this time—her eyes peeled and fixed on Zach. He flinched, running his fingers awkwardly up his neck, catching her eye for less than a second. Yes, he was doing it on purpose; it had happened too many times now to be a coincidence. It must have been something his booklet told him to do, to physically react whenever his brother said the word accident. And what did that mean? Well, clearly, Ralph Remy didn’t believe that his mother’s death was an accident at all. Maybe he secretly thought Bobby had pushed her, that he had murdered her.

Pip grabbed her notebook, scribbling this all down in hasty bullet points.

“Father was never the same after her death,” Ant said quietly.

“No.” Zach patted him on the back. “The whole thing was so strange; she used to walk those cliffs every single day. She was always so careful, would never go near the edge.”

“Indeed,” Ant agreed, though Pip was sure now that Zach’s words meant something very, very different. He thought his own brother had killed her. And now his father had been murdered too.

Talk about a dysfunctional family. Maybe it was good they’d never welcomed her in.

“Tragic.” Jamie nodded solemnly. “Tragedy striking twice on Reginald’s birthday. Did anyone else hear anything strange or suspicious this weekend?”

Zach raised his hand. Here it came; he was about to turn on her.

Game face on, Pip.

“Yes, I did,” he said tentatively, reading from his booklet. “Last night—it was quite late—I heard a voice downstairs in the hall on the way to my bedroom. It was a woman’s voice, and I think she was talking on the telephone. I listened for a little while. She was saying a whole stream of numbers, like five, thirty-one, twelve, seven, on and on in some nonsensical stream. Very bizarre.” He paused. “And then she was talking low, whispering, and I couldn’t really pick anything up, other than hearing her repeat the word terminate.” He glanced nervously at Pip. “It wasn’t Lizzie’s voice, and I doubt it was the cook….”

“If you’re going to accuse me of something, you might as well say it with some conviction,” Pip said with her sweetest, sharpest smile.

“OK, it was you, Celia,” he said. “What were you doing? Who were you on the phone with?”

“You’re going to feel very foolish,” Pip said. “There was nothing suspicious going on at all. I was simply talking to my employer.

You’ve never shown much interest, cousin, but as I stated earlier, I work as a governess, teaching the children of a well-to-do family. As is evident, I had to take some time off to be here for my uncle’s birthday. So I was on the phone going through my employment contract and telling him when he could expect me back, you know, as I don’t want him to terminate my contract. And as for those

numbers, he simply wanted to know the upcoming dates for his eldest child’s mathematics tests.”

“Quite late to be having a phone call with your boss,” Lauren commented, coming to her husband’s aid.

“Well, being a governess is a twenty-four seven job, Lizzie,” Pip said. “Not that you’d understand, living on cozy handouts from the family you married into.”

“Oooooh, burn,” Cara laughed, offering up a high five.

“But I’m glad you brought up the topic of suspicious conversation, Ralph,” Pip said, resting her elbows on the table, her chin in the bed of her knuckles. “Because I actually overheard one of yours on my way to making said phone call.”

“Aha, the plot thickens,” Connor said, clumsily picking up his pen, though he didn’t actually start writing.

“You were with your father in his study—the scene of his murder —having a very heated discussion.”

“Is that right?” Zach said, crossing his arms.

“Oh yes. And I picked up a few specific phrases from the harsh words you were exchanging with your father.” She glanced down at her booklet for accuracy. “At one time you told him, ‘I refuse to do that, Father.’ Then you said, ‘This scheme of yours is ridiculous and will never work.’ And then the last thing I heard you say before I walked away was: ‘won’t get away with this.’ Care to elaborate on your argument with a man who was murdered less than twenty-four hours later?”

“Yes, I do care to elaborate,” Zach said, attempting the sneer Ralph might have worn, but it kept turning up at the corners into a smile. “We were talking business, OK? We still worked closely together on matters relating to his hotel and casino empire, making decisions. The truth is that the business hasn’t been doing so well of late, and we are under pressure from our main competitors in the luxury hotel and casino business, the Garza family.”

Cara sniffed to Pip’s left, distracting her. Or maybe it was another sound she’d heard. Like a thud or a muffled bang coming from outside. It was probably nothing, and Zach was speaking again….

“As you know, the Garza family have long been our rivals, and it has gotten a lot less friendly and a lot more ugly since dear Mother died.” Zach turned to the inspector to offer an explanation. “Our mother used to be friends—well, at least friendly—with the wife of Mr. Garza. But of late the Garzas have been very much stepping on our turf, so to speak, because we bring in more money than them… just. Father and I were having a disagreement about a business strategy to ensure people were still coming to our casino, not the Garzas’. That’s all. We often had disagreements about the business, but it always worked out.”

“And the ‘won’t get away with this’?” Pip asked.

“Well, that was a slightly different conversation,” Zach admitted.

“Father told me that he’d had someone check out the books, and it looked as though someone was skimming money from the London casino, one of the employees.”

The non-Remy side of the table stared down the Remy side.

“Hey, don’t look at ol’ Bobby,” Ant said. “Daddy fired me years ago. Can’t be me.”

“Someone stealing? At my casino?” Lauren asked.

“You mean the one you manage, Lizzie,” said Pip.

Zach nodded. “So I just said we’d look into it and the thief won’t get away with it or something. Nothing suspicious here either.” He held up his hands.

That was when Pip heard it again. Or thought she heard it, something outside. She turned to the window. It was dark now, well

on its way to pitch-black.

“What?” Cara asked her.

“I think I heard something outside,” she said.

“What?” said Lauren, losing the haughty edge of Lizzie Remy.

“I’m not sure.”

They listened, but the up-tempo jazz was too loud, the

saxophone drowning everything else out.

“Alexa, pause music!” Connor called.

The music cut off and Pip listened. It was a loud kind of quiet; the breath of the others, the sound of her own tongue moving around her

mouth, the whistling of the wind.

And then it happened again.

A crash outside in the darkening garden.