Fiona Grace

Debut author Fiona Grace is author of the LACEY DOYLE COZY MYSTERY series which includes MURDER IN THE MANOR (Book #1), DEATH AND A DOG (Book #2), CRIME IN THE CAFE (Book #3), VEXED ON A VISIT (Book #4), and KILLED WITH A KISS (Book #5). Fiona is also the author of the TUSCAN VINEYARD COZY MYSTERY series.

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Copyright © 2020 by Fiona Grace. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright canadastock, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

BOOKS BY FIONA GRACE

LACEY DOYLE COZY MYSTERY

MURDER IN THE MANOR (Book#1)

DEATH AND A DOG (Book #2)

CRIME IN THE CAFE (Book #3)

VEXED ON A VISIT (Book #4)

KILLED WITH A KISS (Book #5)

TUSCAN VINEYARD COZY MYSTERY

AGED FOR MURDER (Book#1)

AGED FOR DEATH (Book#2)

AGED FOR MAYHEM (Book#3)

CHAPTER ONE

“Hey, Lacey!” came Gina’s voice from the back room of the antiques store. “Come here a minute.”

Lacey gently placed the antique brass candelabra she’d been polishing onto the counter. The soft thud it emitted caused Chester, her English Shepherd, to quirk his head up.

He’d been sleeping in his usual spot, stretched across the floorboards beside the counter, bathed in a beam of June sunshine. He tipped his dark brown eyes up to Lacey, and his tufty eyebrows twitched with evident curiosity.

“Gina needs me,” Lacey told him, his perceptive expression always making her feel as if he could understand every word she said. “You keep an eye on the store and bark if any customers come in. Got it?”

Chester whinnied his acknowledgment and sank his head back onto his paws.

Lacey headed through the archway that separated the main shop floor from the large, recently converted auction room. It was the shape of a train carriage—long and narrow—but the ceiling stretched high like that of a church.

Lacey loved this room. But then again, she loved everything about her store, from the retro furniture section she’d used her past knowledge as a New York City interior designer’s assistant to curate, to the vegetable garden out back. The store was her pride and joy, even if at times she felt it brought her more trouble than it was worth.

She entered through the arch, and a warm breeze came in through the open back door, bringing with it fragrant smells from the flower garden Gina had been cultivating. But the woman herself was nowhere to be seen.

Lacey scanned the auction room, then deduced Gina must have been calling to her from the garden, and headed in the direction of the open French doors. But as she went, she heard a shuffling noise coming from the left-hand corridor.

The corridor housed the more unsightly parts of her store—the cramped office filled with filing cabinets and steel safes; the kitchen area where her faithful kettle and variety of caffeinated beverages lived; the bathroom (or “loo” as everyone in Wilfordshire referred to it), and the boxy storage room.

“Gina?” Lacey called into the darkness. “Where are you?”

“Cooey!” came her friend’s voice, muffled as if she had her head in something. Knowing Gina, she probably did. “I’m in the storeroom!”

Lacey frowned. There was no reason for Gina to be in the storeroom. A condition of Lacey employing her was that she wouldn’t overexert herself with any heavy lifting. But then again, when did Gina ever listen to anything Lacey said?

With a sigh, Lacey went down the corridor and into the storeroom. She found Gina crouching in front of the shelving unit, her frazzled gray hair piled on top of her head in a bun fixed with a purple velvet scrunchie.

“What are you doing back here?” Lacey asked her friend.

Gina swiveled her head to look up at her. She’d recently invested in a pair of red-framed glasses, claiming they were “all the rage in Shoreditch” (though why a sixty-plus-year-old pensioner would take her fashion cues from the trendy youths of London was beyond Lacey) and they slid down her nose. She used an index finger to push them back into place, then pointed at an oblong cardboard box on the shelf in front of her.

“There’s an unopened box here,” Gina announced. Then, with a knowingly conspiratorial tone, she added, “And the postmark says it’s from Spain.”

Lacey immediately felt her cheeks warm. The parcel was from Xavier Santino, the handsome Spanish antiques collector who’d attended her nautical-themed auction the previous month, in an attempt to reunite his family’s collection of lost heirlooms. Along with Lacey, he’d ended up becoming a suspect in the murder of an American tourist. They’d become friendly during the ordeal, their bond cemented further by Xavier’s coincidental connection to her missing father.

“It’s just something Xavier sent me,” Lacey said, trying to brush it off. “You know he’s helping me piece together information about my father’s disappearance.”

Gina rose from her crouch, knees cricking, and peered at Lacey with a suspicious gaze. “I know very well what he’s supposed to be doing,” she said, her hands going to her hips. “What I don’t understand is why he’s sending you gifts. That’s the third this month.”

“Gifts?” Lacey retorted defensively, picking up on Gina’s insinuation. “An envelope filled with receipts from my father’s store during Xavier’s trip to New York hardly constitutes a gift in my eyes.”

Gina’s expression remained nonplussed. She tapped her foot. “What about the painting?”

In her mind’s eye, Lacey pictured the oil painting of a boat at sea that Xavier had mailed her just last week. She’d hung it above the fireplace in her living room at Crag Cottage.

“It’s the type of boat his great-great-grandfather captained,” she told Gina, defensively. “Xavier found it in a flea market and thought I might like it.” She gave a nonchalant shrug, trying to downplay it.

“Huh,” Gina grunted, her lips pressed into a straight line. “Saw this and thought of you. You know how that looks to an outsider…”

Lacey huffed. She’d reached the end of her patience. “Whatever you’re hinting at, why don’t you just come out and say it?”

“Fine,” her friend replied boldly. “I think there’s more to Xavier’s gift-giving than you’re willing to accept. I think he likes you.”

Though Lacey had guessed her friend was implying as much, she still felt affronted hearing it spoken so plainly.

“I’m perfectly happy with Tom,” she argued, her mind’s eye conjuring up an image of the gorgeous, broad-smiled baker she was lucky enough to call her lover. “Xavier’s only trying to help. He promised he would when I gave him his great-grandfather’s sextant. You’re just inventing drama where there is none.”

“If there was no drama,” Gina replied calmly, “then why are you hiding Xavier’s parcel on the bottom shelf of the storage cupboard?”

Lacey faltered momentarily. Gina’s accusations had taken her off guard and left her flustered. For a moment, she forgot the reason why she’d stowed the parcel away after signing for the delivery, instead of opening it right away. Then she remembered; the paperwork was delayed. Xavier had said she’d need to sign an accompanying certificate, so she’d decided to stow it away for the time being in case she accidentally violated any finickity British law she’d yet to learn. With the amount of time the police had ended up sniffing around her store, she couldn’t really be too careful!

“I’m not hiding it,” Lacey said. “I’m waiting for the certification to arrive.”

“You don’t know what’s inside?” Gina asked. “Xavier didn’t tell you what it was?”

Lacey shook her head.

“And you didn’t ask?” her friend prompted.

Again, Lacey shook her head.

She noticed then that the look of accusation in Gina’s eyes was starting to fade. Instead, it was being overtaken with curiosity.

“Do you think it could be something…” Gina lowered her voice. “…illegal?”

Despite being confident Xavier had not shipped her some banned item, Lacey was more than happy to divert the topic away from his gift, so she ran with it.

“Could be,” she said.

Gina’s eyes widened further. “What kind of things?” she asked, sounding like an awed child.

“Ivory, for one,” Lacey told her, recalling knowledge from her studies of items that were illegal to sell in the UK, antiques or otherwise. “Anything made from the fur of an endangered species. Upholstery made with fabric that’s not fire-retardant. Obviously weapons…”

All hints of suspicion now entirely vacated Gina’s expression; the “drama” over Xavier was forgotten in the blink of an eye with the far more exciting possibility of there being a weapon inside the box.

“A weapon?” Gina repeated, a little squeak in her voice. “Can’t we open it and see?”

She looked as excited as a child beside the tree on Christmas Eve.

Lacey hesitated. She’d been excited to look inside the parcel ever since it had arrived by special courier. It must have cost Xavier an arm and a leg to send it all the way from Spain, and the packaging was elaborate as well; the thick cardboard was as sturdy as wood, and the whole thing was fixed with industrial-sized staples and tied with zip ties. Whatever was inside was obviously very precious.

“Okay,” Lacey said, feeling rebellious. “What harm can a peek do?”

She tucked an unruly strand from her dark bangs behind her ear and fetched the box cutter. She used it to slice the zip ties and prize out the staples. Then she opened up the box and sifted through the Styrofoam packaging.

“It’s a case,” she said, tugging on the leather handle and heaving out a heavy wooden case. Styrofoam bits fluttered everywhere.

“Looks like a spy’s briefcase,” Gina said. “Oh, you don’t think your father was a spy, do you? Maybe a Russian one!”

Lacey rolled her eyes as she placed the heavy case onto the floor. “I may have entertained a lot of outlandish theories about what happened to my father over the years,” she said, clicking open the catches of the case one after the next. “But Russian spy has never been one of them.”

She pushed up the lid and looked into the case. She gasped at the sight of what it contained. A beautiful antique flintlock hunting rifle.

Gina started cough-choking. “You can’t have that thing in here! Goodness, you probably can’t have it in England, full stop! What on earth was Xavier thinking sending this to you?”

But Lacey wasn’t listening to her friend’s outburst. Her attention was fixated on the rifle. It was in excellent shape, despite the fact it had to be well over a hundred years old.

Carefully, Lacey removed it from the case, feeling the weight of it in her hands. There was something familiar about it. But she’d never held a rifle, much less fired one, and despite the odd sense of déjà vu that had rippled through her, she had no concrete memories to attach to it.

Gina started flapping her hands. “Lacey, put it back! Put it back! I’m sorry I made you take it out. I didn’t really think it would be a weapon.”

“Gina, calm down,” Lacey told her.

But her friend was on a roll. “You need a license! You might even be committing an offense having it in this country at all! Things are very different over here than they are in the USA!”

Gina’s squeaking reached a fever pitch but Lacey just left her to it. She’d learned there was no talking Gina down from her panicky outbursts. They always ran their course eventually. Either that, or Gina would tire herself out.

Besides, Lacey’s attention was too absorbed by the beautiful rifle to pay her any heed. She was mesmerized by the strange feeling of familiarity it had stirred within her.

She peered down the barrel. Felt the weight of it. The shape of it in her hands. Even the smell of it. There was just something wonderful about the rifle, like it was always meant to belong to her.

Just then, Lacey became aware of silence. Gina had finally stopped ranting. Lacey glanced up at her.

“Are you finished?” she asked, calmly.

Gina was still staring at the rifle like it was a circus tiger escaped from its cage, but she nodded slowly.

“Good,” Lacey said. “What I was trying to tell you is that I’ve not only done my homework on the UK’s laws on possession and use of firearms, but I actually have a certificate to legally trade antique ones.”

Gina paused, a small, perplexed frown appearing in the space between her brows. “You do?”

“Yes,” Lacey assured her. “Back when I was valuing the contents of Penrose Manor, the estate had a whole collection of shooting rifles. I had to apply for a license immediately in order to hold the auction. Percy Johnson helped me organize it all.”

Gina pursed her lips. She was wearing her surrogate mother expression. “Why didn’t I know about this?”