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Even though he was British, he was living close to her hometown. Right then, she could’ve used that taste of home.
She called him back immediately. When he answered, she said, “I hope it’s an okay time to call? I forgot about the time difference.”
“Of course, love, it’s perfect timing. I just finished dinner.”
Did he just call me love?She thought, shifting in alarm.Did he mean something by that, or did he call every girl he knew that?
“Oh, good. You called me?”
“That’s right. I wanted to see how you were getting on. Before you left, you said you were on a case?”
“Yes,” she said, remembering the phone call she’d had with him while she was packing. He’d called to invite her out—dinner, this time—and she’d told him all about Franklin Tate. “It’s not going very well, to be honest. I appear to be in a little rut, at this point. But tomorrow is another day. I was just getting ready to head to bed.”
“Ah, too bad. I was hoping I’d see your smiling face around here soon. I have tickets to the theater this weekend, and I wanted to see if you would like to accompany me.”
“Oh . . .” she said. She did like the theater, not that she ever had much of an opportunity to go. “How nice. Thank you. I guess I’ll have to let you know, if I can make it back in time. Right now, it’s looking doubtful.”
“What seems to be the trouble with the case?”
She almost laughed. As if he could help her out, all the way across the pond, when she could barely make heads or tails of it herself. “It’s nothing. Just a dead end right now. I’ve gotten the medical report that confirms it’s suspicious, but I have to find a thread to pull. It’s just frustrating when I can’t get in touch with a couple of the best witnesses.”
“So the man was murdered?”
“Yeah. Turns out my client wasn’t just grasping at straws. He was poisoned. With something called Batrachotoxin, which is only found naturally in frogs in South America but causes gradual paralysis and death.”
“Ah, sounds like a pretty nasty way to go. One of the other partygoers on the plane responsible?”
“I interviewed a few of them. Everyone was pretty drunk, so it’s like patching together a quilt where none of the seams line up perfectly. Trying to reconstruct a night when no one remembers anything quite right. There were people coming on and off the plane at each stop, too. So I don’t know anything for sure. I have to head to Lyon tomorrow.”
“Lyon? And why’s that?”
“Well, I’m in Nice, now. I’m following the route that he took that night. He was on a gambling trip with his friends. But everything I uncover isn’t good. He had a lot of debts. A lot of enemies, I think. One of them even pulled a gun on me.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“Daisy. You need to get out of there. You don’t deal with a dead man’s debts. If anyone has any cause to associate you with them, you’ll be dead, too.”
“I’m fine. When I told him it was a misunderstanding, he--”
“You could’ve gotten yourself killed. I don’t know how much this lady is paying you, but it’s not enough.”
“Zachary. I’m fine. And it’s not as bad as it seems. It’s just . . .” She sighed. “If my father was here, he probably would’ve already solved it by now.”
“Don’t give him that much credit. Yes, your father was a great one, but he didn’t have all the answers. Give yourself time and a little grace, all right? Don’t go overboard. You have to stay safe, first.”
She appreciated what he was trying to do, but it didn’t help. “I wish I did have time. My father’s all right, but I can’t chance that something might happen to him while I’m gone. I need to get back there as quickly as possible, in case he has another episode. I feel like it’s a time bomb, waiting to go off.”
“If you don’t find anything in Lyon, then you’ll be coming home?”
She gritted her teeth. “I need to find the person responsible for Franklin Tate’s murder. I can’t come back empty-handed. Goldie already won’t be happy because I think she wanted the killer to be the new wife, and it isn’t. I’ll feel like I failed if I don’t find out who it really is. And . . . .”
She stopped when she heard a strange sound. It was a sigh, followed by a click.
“Zachary? Are you there?” Would he have hung up on her?
Then he said, “Yes, I’m here. Blimey. Are you listening to yourself?”
