A fatal feast at bramsfo.., p.7
A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor, page 7
“That’s largely it, aside from two ticketed moving violations during your teen years in Scotland.”
“Fair enough,” Bunny said. “Will you allow me to tell you something else?”
Apparently amused by this, DCI Standish nodded.
“When I was five, I wanted a pet rabbit.” She watched as his ruddy eyebrows shot up his forehead at this. Bunny pressed on. “My brothers, I have two, teased me about this because we lived on a farm. There was no shortage of wild rabbits on our farm. I don’t think my parents were too keen on it either, but I got my pet rabbit eventually. My grandma, Ella MacBride, bought him for me, a cute, wee baby white rabbit. I named him Hopper, because, well, you know . . . he hopped.”
“Very nice, Ms. MacBride, but how is this relevant to the murder?”
“Bear with me, sir,” she cautioned, and continued. “When I was eight and Hopper had grown into a beautiful, fluffy white buck, he was still my favorite animal on the farm. I loved him. I was obsessed with him. That’s how I got the nickname, Bunny.” Noting that this little aside hadn’t even elicited so much as a grin, she continued. “Anyhow, one cold winter morning when I was going out to feed Hopper, my father stopped me. He told me that I didn’t need to feed him that day. I thought, how kind. He had fed Hopper for me. But he hadn’t. That’s when he told me the terrible news. Something had torn the rabbit hutch apart in the middle of the night and killed my rabbit. I learned later that it was a neighbor’s two German shepherd dogs who were responsible for the murder. Those dogs were getting out at night and terrorizing the local farms. Hopper wasn’t the only innocent animal to die. I was eight years old, Detective, and that was the first trauma I had suffered.”
“Sorry for your loss, but is this just an attempt to waste my time, Ms. MacBride? Because I am not here to waste time. I’m here to get answers!” His cold, implacable stare irked her.
Bunny wasn’t about to answer him. Instead, she raised her voice as she continued with her story. “When I was eighteen my brother Braiden and I were in a regatta on Loch Lomond. It was a chilly October morn, and we were racing a sixteen-foot dinghy that day. We grew up sailing on Loch Fyne, and he had talked me into joining a sailing club on Loch Lomond. The course took us around one of the wee islands to the south of the loch. That wasn’t unusual. We were having a great sail that day and were well in the lead. However, we never expected a motorboat to come flying around the other side of the island. A drunk man was driving the boat and he hit us bow-on. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to process what was happening. In fact, I don’t remember much about it at all.” Bunny paused, because the simple act of recalling the incident was still very painful. After a deep breath she looked at DCI Standish once again. “I think I was supposed to die that day. In fact, I thought I had died. Yet it was only by the grace of God and my brother’s hand, I believe, that I didn’t. All I remember was awakening on the beach of the island with a violent cough. My lungs had been filled with water, and a man was flushing it out of me with great pressure on my chest, so that I could breathe again. There was much commotion. It was when I started breathing on my own that I turned my head and saw the beach I was lying on. That’s when I saw Hopper, my white rabbit again.”
DCI Standish sat up higher. “Your dead rabbit? I don’t understand.” He looked confused. She didn’t blame him.
“Well, you and I both know that it couldn’t be Hopper. He was murdered years ago by dogs. That’s why I was so confused. Also, the fact that a white rabbit was sitting on the rocky beach on an island in the middle of Loch Lomond was very strange indeed. Unsettling, it was. Yet the moment I saw him I knew what it meant. I somehow knew that my brother was dead, my twin brother, before ever being told. To be a twin is a very special thing, Detective Standish. Sure, we were siblings, lifelong best friends too, but we were more than that. Connected in ways that are hard to explain. The only thing we ever really disagreed on was Hopper. My brother didn’t like rabbits. I had even caught Braiden and Angus, our older brother, out hunting rabbits once. So, seeing the white rabbit was very odd indeed. I did have the inkling that it was all in my head. Rabbits are gentle, sweet creatures and pose no threat to anyone. Perhaps the rabbit was conjured in my imagination out of kindness, to soften the blow of having nearly drowned. I don’t think the others could see him. Only I could see him. It wasn’t until three days later that the divers pulled Braiden’s body from the loch. It was the second and greatest tragedy of my life so far. My family’s too.”
Due to the troubled look on his face, Bunny could see that her story had touched him. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss, but I still don’t see . . .”
“—I saw the white rabbit again, sir,” she added heatedly. “Whether you believe me or not, Detective, I saw the white rabbit tonight sitting in the doorway of the dining room. I don’t like it any better than you do, but it appears to me sometimes, and I felt compelled to follow it. That’s why I went to the mistletoe chest. The white rabbit led me to it. I saw the blood pooled on the floor and opened the lid. There’s the truth for you. It wasn’t so much a hunch as it was the specter of my dead white rabbit! Neither, I’ll wager, will hold up in a court of law.”
DCI Standish sat very still as he stared pensively at her. At last, coming to some conclusion, he said, “You are either a very skilled liar, Ms. MacBride, or we’re both in a heap of trouble here. For my part, I hope you’re merely a liar, because I don’t even know what to make of this. Until we can sort this mess out, you are still our prime suspect. Unfortunately, that means you’ll be spending the night in jail.”
Bunny wasn’t happy to hear that, but she had expected as much. Challenging his intense gaze, she said, “I’d like to make my one phone call now, if you please.”
Chapter 11
Brett Bloom was not in a good mood. In fact, the moment the police left, he had stormed out of the grand dining room and headed straight to his hotel room in a cloud of anger and self-pity. It was late. He was exhausted. And yet he was too anxious to sleep. How could this be happening to him again? he bemoaned, pacing the length of his room like a caged tiger. Food & Spirits was his baby, his idea, and he had put everything on the line for it, including his reputation. The thought made him ill, nearly as ill as he’d felt when he had looked upon the very dead body of Marcus Bean. He had always considered himself to be a man who didn’t shy away from the more macabre side of life, but that gruesome scene in the long gallery had been fire-stamped onto his memory, which he didn’t appreciate one bit.
The truth was, he had spent the better part of the day with Marcus. By all accounts, Marcus Bean was an impressive man. Bean was the last person one would expect to turn up dead in the very chest he was attempting to validate. Even he had to acknowledge the irony there, but he couldn’t quite turn his mind to that yet. He was that angry. He kept pacing.
Finding that dead body in the middle of an investigation was an uncomfortably familiar feeling. Something similar had happened to them in a small Michigan town called Beacon Harbor last year. That spectacular debacle had resulted in his very successful ghost-hunting show being canceled. And now it was happening again. What were the odds? Also, and quite possibly the clincher of the evening, was learning that sweet, charming Bridget MacBride had lost her knife, and that knife had done the deed. Brett found that little detail next-level disturbing.
And what was it about her anyhow? She clearly wasn’t happy with the nature of their show, having some sort of issue with ghosts, old buildings, and spooky things in general. That was understandable enough. Brett knew that not everyone was into his particular brand of adrenaline-inducing adventure. He couldn’t help it that he was fascinated with the paranormal—with those strange occurrences that had no rational explanation. It wasn’t for everyone, and Bunny had made that perfectly clear from the start. He respected that. He thought he had made it quite clear that she wasn’t expected to dive into their post-dinner ghost hunt. He had, however, explained to her that it was necessary for her to join them during the Spirit Supper. To him it had seemed that she had no issues with that request. Why then had she stood up in the middle of it, only to walk out of the dining room and lead them directly to the body of Marcus Bean, who’d been stabbed through the heart with her kitchen knife? He never would have expected that in a million years. He sensed that she was a complicated woman—that she had issues . . . but a killer? He could forgive a lot of things, but not an unthinkable betrayal like that. As his mind spiraled further and further out of control, a sound pulled him back to his senses. It came again, this time accompanied by a voice.
“Knock-knock!” Giff said, opening Brett’s door a crack. He peered inside and held up two bottles of Guinness. “Mind if I come in? I couldn’t sleep and knew for a fact that you couldn’t either. The pacing gave you away.”
Brett crossed the room to formally open the door. “Come in,” he said, and took the proffered beer.
Brett sat on the edge of the bed while Giff relaxed in the wingback chair. It was obvious that both men were too troubled to sleep. “You know what this is?” Brett asked before taking another sip of the dark beer.
Giff shrugged, urging his friend to continue.
“I’ll tell you what this is, Gifford. This is the final, spectacular, slow-motion train wreck of my career. This show will be canceled before it airs. I’ll be out of a job, which means I’ll have to get a real job.” He looked at Giff with the fear he felt blazing in his bright eyes. “I’m going to have to go back to Wisconsin and work on the family cherry orchard, for cripes sake!”
Giff offered his friend a placid look, although inwardly he was rolling his eyes at this. He was the one hired to bring the drama to the show and here was stoic Brett Bloom—a man who could stare down a malevolent specter without so much as a flinch—having a mental breakdown at the thought of picking cherries.
“Now-now, picking cherries is an honest trade, brother,” he said, trying not to crack a smile. “Nothing wrong with that. However, I think you’re overreacting a bit. This is just a bump in the road. We weren’t broadcasting live. We can just do it again . . . once we spring Bunny from jail.”
“What?” Brett’s reaction had been so quick and violent that a dribble of Guinness spurted from his lips and rolled down his chin. He wiped it on the sleeve of his sweater as he stared at Gifford McGrady.
“I said, we can just do it again.” Giff offered a practical smile.
“No. The part about Bunny.”
“Oh, that. I say we spring her from jail. We both know she’s innocent.”
“Do we?” This shocked Brett. Because, to his way of thinking, he was nearly certain that she wasn’t. He tilted his golden head, and asked, “What makes you so sure? She led us right to that chest in the middle of dinner. Her kitchen knife was sticking out of the man!” Brett stared at the other man as he talked, hoping to catch a small flinch or a twist of the lips indicating that he’d been joking. Giff was a joker. He was always saying ridiculous things for a laugh. However, the trim, impeccably dressed man sitting across from him remained serious, prompting him to add, “She told DCI Standish that she had a hunch. A HUNCH! It was like she was trying to confess but couldn’t fully commit to the deed.”
Giff leaned forward. “Are you kidding me right now? You think that adorable woman with the face of an angel and the soul of an Iron Chef could possibly be involved in murdering Marcus Bean? Have you lost your mind?”
Brooding, while staring through narrowed eyes, Brett grunted. “It’s obvious. She’s trying to ruin the show.”
Giff’s eyes flew wide. “Whoa! Put a check on your ego there a minute, buddy. Let’s back up and pretend this isn’t about you or the show. Also, and most importantly, did you taste that meal? That prime rib melted in my mouth. I have never tasted a Yorkshire pudding so crisp, yet buttery. And those veggies were roasted to perfection. That dining table was as much a feast for the eyes as it was for the senses. In a nutshell, brother, our dear Bunny wasn’t mailing it in with that dinner. She brought her A-game. Although she clearly has issues with ghosts, she did all that because she wanted to give you the best odds for conjuring that ghostly bride. In short, Bridget Bunny MacBride is our friend and not a murderer!”
Brett had the decency to think about this for a moment, realizing that Giff just might have a point. But he didn’t have all the answers. Therefore, he challenged, “How do you explain the fact that she stood up in the middle of the Spirit Supper and walked right out of the room?”
After a swig of beer, Giff shrugged. “I think she saw something . . . something that troubled her. She mentioned a white rabbit, remember? Although I have no idea what that was all about. Look, I was in the middle of my act when she walked out. I questioned her about it. I saw the look on her face. Also, need I remind you that we heard her scream? If she knew the body was going to be in that ghastly chest, why would she scream? Also, she nearly fainted from the shock of it.”
For the first time all night, Brett took a deep, relaxing breath. The tension in his shoulders began to ease, and his red-brained thoughts began to subside. He drank the last of the beer and set the empty bottle on the night table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense now that you mention it. You and I spent the better part of the day with Marcus while Bunny was in the kitchen. She filmed a short segment with him earlier in the day, but that was it. She wasn’t scheduled to see him again until dinner.”
Giff stood up from his chair and placed his empty bottle on the table beside Brett’s. He then turned to his friend. “Marcus Bean knew more about Bramsford Manor, I’ll wager, than any living person, including Sir Charles and his lovely sister. Bean told us that Sir Charles had hired him to dig into the family pedigree, to pore over facts about the manor, and, most importantly, to validate the manor’s most famous haunting, the Mistletoe Bride. My understanding is that Bramsford isn’t the only stately home in Britain to claim this haunting. Others claim it too. What if Bean found some bit of information that proved otherwise?”
“Like that it didn’t happen here?”
Giff was happy to see that Brett was now thinking about the murder a bit more logically. “Precisely. The mistletoe chest is the shining jewel in this drab old manor. It sets Bramsford apart from other drab old manors in the kingdom. If it was proven that the mistletoe chest was a fake and the legend was just a far-flung story, I bet hotel reservations would drop off a cliff—as in there wouldn’t be many. Let’s face it, seventeenth-century shabby has its charms, but most travelers today want modern luxuries like toilets that flush on the first try, and hot water.”
“Good point. I never considered that,” Brett admitted with a deeply furrowed brow.
Giff waved his hand nonchalantly in the air. “Understandable. You’re phantom-focused. I, on the other hand,” he began, holding a hand over his heart, “might have been a little too focused on the lord of the manor. Handsome, wealthy, and utterly snobbish in the best of ways, who could blame me? However, Sir Charles did, after all, hire the historian. He also seemed more troubled by the fact that his chest had been used as a crime scene rather than the murder in question. I found that odd. I also found it odd that he’d been so quick to point the finger at Bunny.”
“We were all pretty quick to place the blame on Bunny,” Brett confessed and crossed his arms. “You think Sir Charles killed Marcus and is blaming it on her?”
“I think it’s a possibility. It makes more sense than blaming Bunny for the dirty deed. Remember, Bunny said that her knife had gone missing from the kitchen that morning. Sir Charles, as the owner, has the run of the manor. He could have easily snuck in there last night, pinched the knife, and used it to murder Bean. Bunny would be a convenient scapegoat. This is all speculation, mind you, but Sir Charles might have a motive, whereas Bunny, as far as we can tell, doesn’t.”
“My God,” Brett said, covering his face with his hands. “I feel like such an idiot.” He looked up at Giff. “We have to get her out of there.”
“Of course, we do. On Food and Spirits, our motto is, leave no man behind . . . even if that man is a pretty lady with obvious ghost issues.”
“Actually, our motto is, be careful who you invite to dinner,” Brett corrected with a slight grin. “In this case, I’d say it holds up. After all, Marcus Bean was invited to dinner, and look what happened to him.”
“Ghastly. Thanks for pointing that out, Bloom. However, I’m glad we’re finally on the same page. We’ll get Bunny out of jail one way or the other.”
“They can’t keep her too long without any real evidence,” Brett offered with a look that was more hopeful than confident. Then another thought struck him. “Cody was with her most of the day, filming her cooking segment. I’m no cook, but even I know that the dinner she made took a heck of a lot of time. With Cody and his camera there, and Bunny up to her elbows in food prep, I’ll venture to say that she wouldn’t have had the time to sneak away and kill Bean, even if she wanted to.”
“See?” Giff leaned forward and pointed a finger at his friend. “You’re coming to my way of thinking, brother. Bunny was too busy cooking. A good deal of her time in the kitchen was undoubtedly filmed. The rest can be verified by the kitchen staff and that Plum woman. We’re going to spring her out of that jail tomorrow morning, and then the three of us are going to put our heads together and get to the bottom of what is really going on at Bramsford Manor.”
Brett nodded. “I agree. Because something very, very wrong is going on here.”
Chapter 12
Bunny thought it remarkable that Grandma MacBride had picked up the phone on the first ring at such a late hour. Then again, it was just this quality in Ella MacBride that had prompted Bunny to make her one coveted jail-cell phone call to her gran in the first place, and not a lawyer. Undoubtedly the lawyer would have known how to untangle this legal mess, yet only her grandmother had the ability to untangle the swirl of emotional, mental, and very likely paranormal issues that were plaguing her from the moment she had set foot in Bramsford Manor. Thank heavens for Granny Mac.
“Fair enough,” Bunny said. “Will you allow me to tell you something else?”
Apparently amused by this, DCI Standish nodded.
“When I was five, I wanted a pet rabbit.” She watched as his ruddy eyebrows shot up his forehead at this. Bunny pressed on. “My brothers, I have two, teased me about this because we lived on a farm. There was no shortage of wild rabbits on our farm. I don’t think my parents were too keen on it either, but I got my pet rabbit eventually. My grandma, Ella MacBride, bought him for me, a cute, wee baby white rabbit. I named him Hopper, because, well, you know . . . he hopped.”
“Very nice, Ms. MacBride, but how is this relevant to the murder?”
“Bear with me, sir,” she cautioned, and continued. “When I was eight and Hopper had grown into a beautiful, fluffy white buck, he was still my favorite animal on the farm. I loved him. I was obsessed with him. That’s how I got the nickname, Bunny.” Noting that this little aside hadn’t even elicited so much as a grin, she continued. “Anyhow, one cold winter morning when I was going out to feed Hopper, my father stopped me. He told me that I didn’t need to feed him that day. I thought, how kind. He had fed Hopper for me. But he hadn’t. That’s when he told me the terrible news. Something had torn the rabbit hutch apart in the middle of the night and killed my rabbit. I learned later that it was a neighbor’s two German shepherd dogs who were responsible for the murder. Those dogs were getting out at night and terrorizing the local farms. Hopper wasn’t the only innocent animal to die. I was eight years old, Detective, and that was the first trauma I had suffered.”
“Sorry for your loss, but is this just an attempt to waste my time, Ms. MacBride? Because I am not here to waste time. I’m here to get answers!” His cold, implacable stare irked her.
Bunny wasn’t about to answer him. Instead, she raised her voice as she continued with her story. “When I was eighteen my brother Braiden and I were in a regatta on Loch Lomond. It was a chilly October morn, and we were racing a sixteen-foot dinghy that day. We grew up sailing on Loch Fyne, and he had talked me into joining a sailing club on Loch Lomond. The course took us around one of the wee islands to the south of the loch. That wasn’t unusual. We were having a great sail that day and were well in the lead. However, we never expected a motorboat to come flying around the other side of the island. A drunk man was driving the boat and he hit us bow-on. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to process what was happening. In fact, I don’t remember much about it at all.” Bunny paused, because the simple act of recalling the incident was still very painful. After a deep breath she looked at DCI Standish once again. “I think I was supposed to die that day. In fact, I thought I had died. Yet it was only by the grace of God and my brother’s hand, I believe, that I didn’t. All I remember was awakening on the beach of the island with a violent cough. My lungs had been filled with water, and a man was flushing it out of me with great pressure on my chest, so that I could breathe again. There was much commotion. It was when I started breathing on my own that I turned my head and saw the beach I was lying on. That’s when I saw Hopper, my white rabbit again.”
DCI Standish sat up higher. “Your dead rabbit? I don’t understand.” He looked confused. She didn’t blame him.
“Well, you and I both know that it couldn’t be Hopper. He was murdered years ago by dogs. That’s why I was so confused. Also, the fact that a white rabbit was sitting on the rocky beach on an island in the middle of Loch Lomond was very strange indeed. Unsettling, it was. Yet the moment I saw him I knew what it meant. I somehow knew that my brother was dead, my twin brother, before ever being told. To be a twin is a very special thing, Detective Standish. Sure, we were siblings, lifelong best friends too, but we were more than that. Connected in ways that are hard to explain. The only thing we ever really disagreed on was Hopper. My brother didn’t like rabbits. I had even caught Braiden and Angus, our older brother, out hunting rabbits once. So, seeing the white rabbit was very odd indeed. I did have the inkling that it was all in my head. Rabbits are gentle, sweet creatures and pose no threat to anyone. Perhaps the rabbit was conjured in my imagination out of kindness, to soften the blow of having nearly drowned. I don’t think the others could see him. Only I could see him. It wasn’t until three days later that the divers pulled Braiden’s body from the loch. It was the second and greatest tragedy of my life so far. My family’s too.”
Due to the troubled look on his face, Bunny could see that her story had touched him. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss, but I still don’t see . . .”
“—I saw the white rabbit again, sir,” she added heatedly. “Whether you believe me or not, Detective, I saw the white rabbit tonight sitting in the doorway of the dining room. I don’t like it any better than you do, but it appears to me sometimes, and I felt compelled to follow it. That’s why I went to the mistletoe chest. The white rabbit led me to it. I saw the blood pooled on the floor and opened the lid. There’s the truth for you. It wasn’t so much a hunch as it was the specter of my dead white rabbit! Neither, I’ll wager, will hold up in a court of law.”
DCI Standish sat very still as he stared pensively at her. At last, coming to some conclusion, he said, “You are either a very skilled liar, Ms. MacBride, or we’re both in a heap of trouble here. For my part, I hope you’re merely a liar, because I don’t even know what to make of this. Until we can sort this mess out, you are still our prime suspect. Unfortunately, that means you’ll be spending the night in jail.”
Bunny wasn’t happy to hear that, but she had expected as much. Challenging his intense gaze, she said, “I’d like to make my one phone call now, if you please.”
Chapter 11
Brett Bloom was not in a good mood. In fact, the moment the police left, he had stormed out of the grand dining room and headed straight to his hotel room in a cloud of anger and self-pity. It was late. He was exhausted. And yet he was too anxious to sleep. How could this be happening to him again? he bemoaned, pacing the length of his room like a caged tiger. Food & Spirits was his baby, his idea, and he had put everything on the line for it, including his reputation. The thought made him ill, nearly as ill as he’d felt when he had looked upon the very dead body of Marcus Bean. He had always considered himself to be a man who didn’t shy away from the more macabre side of life, but that gruesome scene in the long gallery had been fire-stamped onto his memory, which he didn’t appreciate one bit.
The truth was, he had spent the better part of the day with Marcus. By all accounts, Marcus Bean was an impressive man. Bean was the last person one would expect to turn up dead in the very chest he was attempting to validate. Even he had to acknowledge the irony there, but he couldn’t quite turn his mind to that yet. He was that angry. He kept pacing.
Finding that dead body in the middle of an investigation was an uncomfortably familiar feeling. Something similar had happened to them in a small Michigan town called Beacon Harbor last year. That spectacular debacle had resulted in his very successful ghost-hunting show being canceled. And now it was happening again. What were the odds? Also, and quite possibly the clincher of the evening, was learning that sweet, charming Bridget MacBride had lost her knife, and that knife had done the deed. Brett found that little detail next-level disturbing.
And what was it about her anyhow? She clearly wasn’t happy with the nature of their show, having some sort of issue with ghosts, old buildings, and spooky things in general. That was understandable enough. Brett knew that not everyone was into his particular brand of adrenaline-inducing adventure. He couldn’t help it that he was fascinated with the paranormal—with those strange occurrences that had no rational explanation. It wasn’t for everyone, and Bunny had made that perfectly clear from the start. He respected that. He thought he had made it quite clear that she wasn’t expected to dive into their post-dinner ghost hunt. He had, however, explained to her that it was necessary for her to join them during the Spirit Supper. To him it had seemed that she had no issues with that request. Why then had she stood up in the middle of it, only to walk out of the dining room and lead them directly to the body of Marcus Bean, who’d been stabbed through the heart with her kitchen knife? He never would have expected that in a million years. He sensed that she was a complicated woman—that she had issues . . . but a killer? He could forgive a lot of things, but not an unthinkable betrayal like that. As his mind spiraled further and further out of control, a sound pulled him back to his senses. It came again, this time accompanied by a voice.
“Knock-knock!” Giff said, opening Brett’s door a crack. He peered inside and held up two bottles of Guinness. “Mind if I come in? I couldn’t sleep and knew for a fact that you couldn’t either. The pacing gave you away.”
Brett crossed the room to formally open the door. “Come in,” he said, and took the proffered beer.
Brett sat on the edge of the bed while Giff relaxed in the wingback chair. It was obvious that both men were too troubled to sleep. “You know what this is?” Brett asked before taking another sip of the dark beer.
Giff shrugged, urging his friend to continue.
“I’ll tell you what this is, Gifford. This is the final, spectacular, slow-motion train wreck of my career. This show will be canceled before it airs. I’ll be out of a job, which means I’ll have to get a real job.” He looked at Giff with the fear he felt blazing in his bright eyes. “I’m going to have to go back to Wisconsin and work on the family cherry orchard, for cripes sake!”
Giff offered his friend a placid look, although inwardly he was rolling his eyes at this. He was the one hired to bring the drama to the show and here was stoic Brett Bloom—a man who could stare down a malevolent specter without so much as a flinch—having a mental breakdown at the thought of picking cherries.
“Now-now, picking cherries is an honest trade, brother,” he said, trying not to crack a smile. “Nothing wrong with that. However, I think you’re overreacting a bit. This is just a bump in the road. We weren’t broadcasting live. We can just do it again . . . once we spring Bunny from jail.”
“What?” Brett’s reaction had been so quick and violent that a dribble of Guinness spurted from his lips and rolled down his chin. He wiped it on the sleeve of his sweater as he stared at Gifford McGrady.
“I said, we can just do it again.” Giff offered a practical smile.
“No. The part about Bunny.”
“Oh, that. I say we spring her from jail. We both know she’s innocent.”
“Do we?” This shocked Brett. Because, to his way of thinking, he was nearly certain that she wasn’t. He tilted his golden head, and asked, “What makes you so sure? She led us right to that chest in the middle of dinner. Her kitchen knife was sticking out of the man!” Brett stared at the other man as he talked, hoping to catch a small flinch or a twist of the lips indicating that he’d been joking. Giff was a joker. He was always saying ridiculous things for a laugh. However, the trim, impeccably dressed man sitting across from him remained serious, prompting him to add, “She told DCI Standish that she had a hunch. A HUNCH! It was like she was trying to confess but couldn’t fully commit to the deed.”
Giff leaned forward. “Are you kidding me right now? You think that adorable woman with the face of an angel and the soul of an Iron Chef could possibly be involved in murdering Marcus Bean? Have you lost your mind?”
Brooding, while staring through narrowed eyes, Brett grunted. “It’s obvious. She’s trying to ruin the show.”
Giff’s eyes flew wide. “Whoa! Put a check on your ego there a minute, buddy. Let’s back up and pretend this isn’t about you or the show. Also, and most importantly, did you taste that meal? That prime rib melted in my mouth. I have never tasted a Yorkshire pudding so crisp, yet buttery. And those veggies were roasted to perfection. That dining table was as much a feast for the eyes as it was for the senses. In a nutshell, brother, our dear Bunny wasn’t mailing it in with that dinner. She brought her A-game. Although she clearly has issues with ghosts, she did all that because she wanted to give you the best odds for conjuring that ghostly bride. In short, Bridget Bunny MacBride is our friend and not a murderer!”
Brett had the decency to think about this for a moment, realizing that Giff just might have a point. But he didn’t have all the answers. Therefore, he challenged, “How do you explain the fact that she stood up in the middle of the Spirit Supper and walked right out of the room?”
After a swig of beer, Giff shrugged. “I think she saw something . . . something that troubled her. She mentioned a white rabbit, remember? Although I have no idea what that was all about. Look, I was in the middle of my act when she walked out. I questioned her about it. I saw the look on her face. Also, need I remind you that we heard her scream? If she knew the body was going to be in that ghastly chest, why would she scream? Also, she nearly fainted from the shock of it.”
For the first time all night, Brett took a deep, relaxing breath. The tension in his shoulders began to ease, and his red-brained thoughts began to subside. He drank the last of the beer and set the empty bottle on the night table. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense now that you mention it. You and I spent the better part of the day with Marcus while Bunny was in the kitchen. She filmed a short segment with him earlier in the day, but that was it. She wasn’t scheduled to see him again until dinner.”
Giff stood up from his chair and placed his empty bottle on the table beside Brett’s. He then turned to his friend. “Marcus Bean knew more about Bramsford Manor, I’ll wager, than any living person, including Sir Charles and his lovely sister. Bean told us that Sir Charles had hired him to dig into the family pedigree, to pore over facts about the manor, and, most importantly, to validate the manor’s most famous haunting, the Mistletoe Bride. My understanding is that Bramsford isn’t the only stately home in Britain to claim this haunting. Others claim it too. What if Bean found some bit of information that proved otherwise?”
“Like that it didn’t happen here?”
Giff was happy to see that Brett was now thinking about the murder a bit more logically. “Precisely. The mistletoe chest is the shining jewel in this drab old manor. It sets Bramsford apart from other drab old manors in the kingdom. If it was proven that the mistletoe chest was a fake and the legend was just a far-flung story, I bet hotel reservations would drop off a cliff—as in there wouldn’t be many. Let’s face it, seventeenth-century shabby has its charms, but most travelers today want modern luxuries like toilets that flush on the first try, and hot water.”
“Good point. I never considered that,” Brett admitted with a deeply furrowed brow.
Giff waved his hand nonchalantly in the air. “Understandable. You’re phantom-focused. I, on the other hand,” he began, holding a hand over his heart, “might have been a little too focused on the lord of the manor. Handsome, wealthy, and utterly snobbish in the best of ways, who could blame me? However, Sir Charles did, after all, hire the historian. He also seemed more troubled by the fact that his chest had been used as a crime scene rather than the murder in question. I found that odd. I also found it odd that he’d been so quick to point the finger at Bunny.”
“We were all pretty quick to place the blame on Bunny,” Brett confessed and crossed his arms. “You think Sir Charles killed Marcus and is blaming it on her?”
“I think it’s a possibility. It makes more sense than blaming Bunny for the dirty deed. Remember, Bunny said that her knife had gone missing from the kitchen that morning. Sir Charles, as the owner, has the run of the manor. He could have easily snuck in there last night, pinched the knife, and used it to murder Bean. Bunny would be a convenient scapegoat. This is all speculation, mind you, but Sir Charles might have a motive, whereas Bunny, as far as we can tell, doesn’t.”
“My God,” Brett said, covering his face with his hands. “I feel like such an idiot.” He looked up at Giff. “We have to get her out of there.”
“Of course, we do. On Food and Spirits, our motto is, leave no man behind . . . even if that man is a pretty lady with obvious ghost issues.”
“Actually, our motto is, be careful who you invite to dinner,” Brett corrected with a slight grin. “In this case, I’d say it holds up. After all, Marcus Bean was invited to dinner, and look what happened to him.”
“Ghastly. Thanks for pointing that out, Bloom. However, I’m glad we’re finally on the same page. We’ll get Bunny out of jail one way or the other.”
“They can’t keep her too long without any real evidence,” Brett offered with a look that was more hopeful than confident. Then another thought struck him. “Cody was with her most of the day, filming her cooking segment. I’m no cook, but even I know that the dinner she made took a heck of a lot of time. With Cody and his camera there, and Bunny up to her elbows in food prep, I’ll venture to say that she wouldn’t have had the time to sneak away and kill Bean, even if she wanted to.”
“See?” Giff leaned forward and pointed a finger at his friend. “You’re coming to my way of thinking, brother. Bunny was too busy cooking. A good deal of her time in the kitchen was undoubtedly filmed. The rest can be verified by the kitchen staff and that Plum woman. We’re going to spring her out of that jail tomorrow morning, and then the three of us are going to put our heads together and get to the bottom of what is really going on at Bramsford Manor.”
Brett nodded. “I agree. Because something very, very wrong is going on here.”
Chapter 12
Bunny thought it remarkable that Grandma MacBride had picked up the phone on the first ring at such a late hour. Then again, it was just this quality in Ella MacBride that had prompted Bunny to make her one coveted jail-cell phone call to her gran in the first place, and not a lawyer. Undoubtedly the lawyer would have known how to untangle this legal mess, yet only her grandmother had the ability to untangle the swirl of emotional, mental, and very likely paranormal issues that were plaguing her from the moment she had set foot in Bramsford Manor. Thank heavens for Granny Mac.
