A Sprinkle of Sabotage by Fiona Leitch (bill gates book recommendations TXT) 📗

agreed with her, despite being slightly concerned about what she’d been eating to become that flatulent. I poured myself a cup of tea, by now feeling like an absolute peasant with a farty mongrel for a pet.

‘Anyway…’ I had to get this conversation back on track after the unexpected derailing. ‘So you were telling me about the fish…?’

‘Uh-huh. Zack gave everyone a piece and I said I’d eat it, because he’d done it especially for my birthday…’ For your sister’s birthday, you mean, I thought, but I restrained myself from saying it out loud.

‘So you did eat it?’

‘No.’ She smiled at me, one of those aren’t-I-terrible-but-everyone-still-loves-me kind of smiles. ‘I felt kinda bad about it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it.’

‘What happened to it? Did you give it to Jeremy?’

‘No, I didn’t want Zack to see me get rid of it, so I gave it to my beautiful baby.’ She picked up the dog and held her to her face, snuggling into her and making baby noises. I gaped at her in disbelief and she got defensive, obviously thinking I was judging her pet-care skills, but I really wasn’t. ‘Princess loves fish,’ she pouted. ‘The oils are totally good for her hair.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘That was why you were so annoyed at Zack, wasn’t it? When he mentioned the pufferfish, you were terrified that you’d inadvertently poisoned Princess.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I was. I was so scared, like you would not believe. I sat up with her all night, waiting for her to get ill. The guilt! How could I have lived with myself if she died, because of something I’d fed her?’

‘She looks perky enough now, though,’ I said.

‘Of course she is. She didn’t get sick,’ said Kimi. ‘So what was it that killed Jeremy?’

What indeed. Because if the pufferfish really had been contaminated enough to kill a fully grown man, whose insides must have been pickled and preserved in alcohol after years of drinking, how come it hadn’t knocked over the small dog currently sitting in her owner’s arms, sniffing delicately at the air and trying to get her tongue into a glass of the World’s Most Ridiculously Expensive Water™?

Chapter Nineteen

‘That’s interesting…’ said Nathan. I’d been worried that he might decline my call after I’d forced him to talk to his old detective superintendent, but he’d answered on the second ring.

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said. ‘Kimi said that Zack dished up the fish and gave everyone roughly the same amount, so Princess ate just as much as Jeremy. So why wasn’t she ill? How come a small dog could eat the same amount of supposedly contaminated fish and not die?’

‘How come Jeremy died at all, when everyone else was just sick?’ mused Nathan.

‘Because it wasn’t the fish,’ I said. I heard Nathan groan. ‘Don’t be like that! You were having niggles as well. I bet you, when the lab get back to you about the fish guts, it’ll be negative.’

‘That’s not why I was groaning,’ he said, and I could hear amusement in his voice. ‘I’m groaning because I have the horrible feeling you might be right. Which means…’

‘Which means it was murder.’ I felt a thrill run through me, and thought, Oh my God, am I a terrible person or what? But I couldn’t help it. I felt like Sherlock Holmes. The game is afoot!

‘Well…’ Nathan sounded a cautious note. ‘We can’t say that for sure. Maybe the toxin naturally occurred in something else?’

I rolled my eyes, which was completely pointless as he was on the other end of the phone and couldn’t see. ‘Oh come on—’

‘You’re rolling your eyes, aren’t you? I can tell, you know.’

What is this witchcraft? I thought.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘But tell me this: how would tetra-whatever-it-is – pufferfish toxin – how would that come to be in any other food? Unless someone put it there?’

Nathan was quiet for a moment and I swear I could hear him thinking. ‘Okay,’ he said eventually. ‘So what food was it in? What did Jeremy and the others who were sick eat, but Kimi didn’t?’

‘Kimi gave me a lecture on the evils of sugar,’ I said. ‘She said she hadn’t eaten it since 2017.’

‘What?’

‘I know, right? And get this. She’s not diabetic or anything; she gave it up voluntarily. She voluntarily gave up biscuits.’

‘And chocolate?’

‘And cake. I mean, are you really even alive if you don’t eat cake?’

Nathan laughed. ‘So you won’t be following her advice, then?’

‘Not any time soon, no. So anyway, I’m assuming from that that she didn’t eat any of the cupcakes.’

‘And we still don’t know where they came from?’

‘Nope. I’m still at the hotel though, so I can ask around the cast.’

‘Okay,’ said Nathan. ‘Just don’t upset anyone…’

‘Who, me? I will be the soul of discretion.’

Nathan laughed. ‘Yeah, I bet you will be…’

I grinned at the phone, but again, it was completely pointless because he couldn’t see me. But hopefully he knew what I was doing. We did seem to be very much in sync… And that thought made me feel sad, because it would be impossible to be in sync with him if he was in Liverpool while I was in Penstowan.

There was a slightly awkward silence and I knew we were both thinking about it. I cleared my throat.

‘So did you talk to your old superintendent?’ I asked. My voice sounded husky and I cleared my throat again.

‘Yes,’ said Nathan. He sounded reluctant. ‘He’s pushing me for an answer.’

‘An answer? To what?’

‘To the job offer, of course. I haven’t said I’ll take it yet.’

My heart leapt. It wasn’t a done deal. Maybe he wouldn’t go after all. Maybe I could say something to make him stay?

And if I did get him to stay, what then? What would he be expecting of me? I enjoyed his company and was hugely attracted to him, but… Was I ready for a serious relationship? My ex-husband, Richard, had cheated on his first wife with me, and