Lane is dead. Rose is working with this crazy actor named Cullen Skink. Apparently she has been this whole time.” Neil prepared for a crashing punch or at least a devastating glare from Jones.
Jones just closed his fingers into a tight fist, released them, and repeated the motion over and over. “Well, I’d like to say I’m surprised.” He stood up and stormed away through the front doors of the hotel.
Neil, Larry, and Isabella were left standing in the lobby.
“This is insane,” Isabella said, clearly furious. “Insane!”
“I’m sorry, Isabella; I know she was a friend of yours. But I’ve been going over what Skink told me, and it does make sense. The Queen’s call right after Rose got kidnapped, telling me not to go to the police. That was Rose.”
“No.” Isabella shook her head.
“The cops were actually after her, not the Crayfish. She staged her own kidnapping.”
“No,” Isabella said again.
“She was using us to help her figure out the code. Once we’d discovered it had to do with food, she needed to keep us around. Now she and Skink are going to piece the final clues together, and we’ve lost.”
“I said no! Impossible.”
“Jones seems to think it’s possible,” Larry said.
Isabella let out a long sigh. “That is because Jones wants to believe the worst about Rose, always. After her brother died, she did some awful things. Illegal things. She was a very wild person when she was younger.”
“How I wish I’d known her then!” Larry said, which got him a step on the foot from Isabella.
“This Skink was lying to you,” Isabella said firmly.
“Skink told me this as he got ready to kill me. It was information he thought I’d take to my grave! If it hadn’t been for Larry, he’d have been right.”
“Hmph! And Jones said he wished he were surprised. That is not the same thing as saying he believes it.”
“I didn’t know Jones was so grammatically precise,” Larry said, getting another jab on the foot from Isabella. “Luckily, I bought these great steel-toed Docs when we got Neil his new pants!”
She gave him a swift jab in the ribs with her finger. “Next time get the steel-toed shirt as well.”
“Well, I’d better get some sleep,” Neil said. “I’m exhausted.”
Isabella yawned. “It has been a very rough few days.” Neil hadn’t mentioned the crying to Isabella, but she gave him a softer kiss than usual on the cheek. He was a bit taken aback by her tenderness, and how warm it made him feel. He kissed her cheek, then stepped back to gaze into her eyes.
She was so beautiful.
“Okay, any more of that and I’ll be puking on my pants!” Larry said. “C’mon, chef boy. Time for some shut-eye.”
* * *
Neil awoke the next morning feeling unexpectedly refreshed. The jet lag had finally gone away, or maybe it was the lingering effects of the chloroform, but he’d slept straight through, untroubled. Maybe it had been the kiss from Isabella. It had certainly been his last thought before falling asleep.
“Time for breakfast!” Larry said, jumping out of bed and practically leaping into his rumpled clothes. He ended with a blue baseball cap and a loud “tada!”
“If there were a medal for quick dressing, you’d win the gold,” Neil said.
“A chef complimenting my dressing!” Larry said, bowing.
Neil took a little longer to shower, and then finally got dressed.
They made their way down the stairs to the smell of a traditional English breakfast of blood sausage and eggs, with rashers of bacon and good strong tea to wash it down.
Neil sniffed the air and felt an immediate declension in his spirits. “Frozen sausage? Canned milk? Sliced bread? They lied on the check-in form. This was supposed to be a foodie hotel. And the coffee isn’t that fresh either.”
“Coffee?” Larry yelled, and was off like a shot. Neil’s mood worsened with each step. It wasn’t just the greasy food that awaited him at the bottom of the steps. He ran back the conversation with Skink in his head and the mounting evidence that Rose had played him like a stooge.
Breakfast was as lackluster as he’d expected, but at least it was served outside in a little courtyard, and the rain had stopped. The tea was warm, and Neil used it to soften the bricklike biscuits he’d decided he could safely consume.
Isabella soon joined them. She looked worried. “I haven’t seen Jones all night. Usually he checks in to make sure everything is okay. All I got was one text.”
She held up her phone.
Walking. Thinking. Go sleep.
Larry chuckled. “Wow! Four words! That’s practically a novel coming from Jones. Maybe it’s the land of Shakespeare that’s got him being so eloquent.”
Isabella sat down, frowning. “Why are you always joking?” She took some tea and added a little milk, eating a biscuit before throwing it away to a waiting sparrow.
Larry smiled and gave a small shrug. ”With you two usually walking advertisements for stress and woe, I figure one of us has to look on the goofy side.”
“Even when we were on top of that tower in Paris, you were joking,” Neil said, remembering one of their most recent brushes with death.
“And even your funeral was funny,” Isabella said, smiling despite herself.
Neil gazed at her smile. Maybe Larry had a point about being in a good mood even when things looked bleak.
Larry gulped his coffee and signaled the waiter for a refill. “Look, it doesn’t mean I’m not worried. But getting in a low, dark place is, in my humble experience, the worst way to deal with a problem. Your mood becomes just one more problem you have to overcome.”
They sipped their drinks in silence for a few moments. Neil could see that he and Isabella were still on the low side of things rather than the goofy.
“Much Ado About Pudding,” Larry said suddenly, for no apparent reason.
“What?” Neil and Isabella said together.
“Oh, it was just something that went through my brain. I play word games when things get a little quiet. It keeps the old noggin working.” Larry tapped his forehead. “So since food and Shakespeare are the themes of the day right now, I wondered what Shakespeare would call his plays if he were also a chef!” Larry held out his hands as if to suggest this should have been obvious.
Neil turned his attention back to the bird Isabella had given the biscuit to. It was busily nibbling away. Neil thought of the cats that loitered outside his restaurant and felt homesick. He should call Angel. At the very least he should ask about the photographer. He reached for his phone, then remembered it had been destroyed by Skink.
“Julius Caesar Salad,” Larry said, chuckling to himself.
Neil looked at Larry for a few seconds and then said, “Macbroth?”
“You’re supposed to say ‘the Scottish plate’!” Larry almost doubled over laughing. “Way to go, Neil! Give us another one!”
Neil racked his brain. “Um. Sadly, that about uses up my knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays.”
“Really? Nothing else has snuck into your brain during this whole trip?”
Isabella put down her tea. “Green Eggs and Hamlet,” she said, laughing.
Larry and Isabella started a pitched pun battle, rattling off titles, laughing, and pointing at each other for particularly good and horrible puns.
“Measuring Spoon for Measuring Spoon!”
“The Taming of the Stew!”
“Romeo and Omelet!”
“Twelfth Bite!”
“A Midsummer’s Light Cream!”
“The Merchant of Venison!”
Neil watched, amazed at how much lighter they all felt. Larry might be a goofball, but Neil was glad he was his goofball.
They were so distracted they didn’t hear the patio doors opening. But there was no missing the heavy footsteps that marched toward them on the stone tiles.
Neil swung his head around, ready to bolt, in case the Crayfish had found them again and were coming, with Rose and Skink, to finish him off. But it wasn’t them; it was Jones, unshaven and with bags under his eyes, coming at them like a demented tank.
“King Steer!” Larry said, spying Jones. “Hey, Julius, you look pretty rough. Did you get any sleep?”
Isabella got up and rushed over to hug him, but Jones held up his hands to stop her.
“I think that’s his way of saying he needs a shower,” Larry joked.
Jones leaned down to meet Neil face-to-face. He frowned, or at least frowned more than he usually did when he looked at Neil.
He slowly shook his head and said, in almost a whisper, “No.”
Then he stood up straight and looked at Isabella. “Sorry.” Isabella hugged him, shower or not, and smiled.
Jones looked at his watch. “Two minutes,” he said, and marched off.