Free Love Him to Death by Tanya Landman

from me to Graham and back again. “Crikey! You do. What about Sizal? You reckon that was no accident either?”
    Graham and I just stared at him and Bill’s mind started turning things over. We could practically hear the cogs grinding. “Angelica could have put that wasp in the room, couldn’t she? She was right there with him on that sofa … and if she killed the two of them …
Josie
!
Oh my God! She’s alone!”
    With that he spun round and sprinted across the sand and up the steps. We were soon hot on his heels and the three of us raced back to the villa so fast, we could have won Olympic gold.
    It wasn’t fast enough.
    By the time we reached Bill’s room, Josie was lying dead on the bed. She’d been stabbed through the neck with one of her own killer heels. And there was Angelica, sitting beside the corpse, the blood-stained shoe in her hand, telling Josie over and over again, “I warned you. I did. I told you what would happen. Why didn’t you listen?”
    Bill let out a low, despairing moan and staggered towards the bed, barely in control of his limbs.
    Angelica looked at him. “You shouldn’t have married her,” she said. “Why did you do it? Why?” She examined the shoe as if she’d never seen it before. “No… I know why.” Then she suddenly threw herself at her ex-husband and demanded, “You’ll visit me in prison, won’t you? You’ll come every day. I know you will.” She stared at Bill with dark, dead eyes. And strangely, for a moment, she looked as though it was the very last thing she wanted.

mick
    Angelica had been caught red-handed. And yet I had a feeling it wasn’t quite as simple or straightforward as it seemed.
    Tessa swung into action the second we called her. She got Gregor Ravavich to lock the unresisting Angelica in her bedroom and stand guard by the door while she sealed off Bill and Josie’s suite so no one could disturb the crime scene before the police arrived. She then made about a zillion phone calls to various authorities before frogmarching all three of us to her office, where she made sweet tea.
    While the kettle boiled I noticed Tessa looking at Bill with desperate concern. There was no doubt that she’d fallen for him. Had she had a schoolgirl crush too? Or had this only happened since she’d been working for him? Did it matter?
    Bill broke the awful silence when Tessa handed him his tea. He looked at his cup and said in a cracked, hoarse voice, “Sorry, Tessa. I don’t fancy this. Get us a coffee, would you, babe?”
    When he called her “babe” – even though he said it absent-mindedly – Tessa flushed. To cover her confusion, she said brusquely, “What did your last slave die of?”
    Given that Bill’s wife had just been murdered, it wasn’t what you might call a well-timed remark. He flinched, glanced at me and Graham then sat, staring into space while Tessa made him a cup of instant coffee.
    “Hey, thanks,” he said huskily when she pressed it into his hands. “How would I manage without you?”
    Bill smiled gratefully at his PA, and for a second Tessa’s eyes flashed with adoration and something else. What was it? Hope? It looked suspiciously like it. Bill didn’t seem to notice but I certainly did. My stomach started churning.
    “We’d better go and tell Sally what’s happened,” I announced loudly, tugging at Graham’s arm. “Come on.”
    Tessa watched us leave with obvious relief – she didn’t seem to like kids very much. We headed off towards the kitchens, where Sally was preparing the Post-Party Pick-Me-Up for Bill’s guests – a massive fried breakfast with all the trimmings, judging by the smell of bacon wafting through the villa. The minute we were out of sight I changed direction.
    “Where are we going?” asked Graham, running to keep up.
    “Your mum’s bedroom. Her laptop will be up there, won’t it? We need to look some stuff up.”
    “What? Why?”
    “This whole thing with Angelica – her being caught in the act