‘I remember that,’ said Mum. ‘He used to use all sorts of daft words instead of swearing.’
‘Anyway, forget the maths test—’ Daisy started again.
‘Fudging heck!’ cried Mum. We both looked at her, alarmed. She smiled, lost in a haze of nostalgia. ‘That’s what your father used to say when he got angry.’ Daisy and I looked at each other, then carried on.
‘Anyway,’ said Daisy, patiently. ‘The maths test was fine. But I’ve spent the whole day dodging questions about the shoot. Everyone expects me to know what’s going on.’
‘Why should you?’
‘Because their parents all went to school with you, and they all reckon you’re really nosey.’ She snorted. ‘I can’t think why…’ She and Mum giggled.
‘Yeah, yeah, all right…’ I’d sworn not to tell anyone, but the news must already be getting out. Even if Debbie had kept her mouth shut (and I rather thought that my bombshell about Nathan leaving had knocked her more than the death of Jeremy Mayhew), Kimi had probably already posted about it on Instagram, and I got the feeling Faith liked a good gossip too, if she was bored. ‘Okay, but none of this leaves this house, not for the moment, okay?’
They sat open-mouthed as I told them about the dinner party, and Jeremy Mayhew’s untimely demise from tetrodotoxin. And because I was still working through the events of the day (the non-romantic ones, anyway), I told them about the suspicious cupcakes.
‘So it wasn’t Zack’s fault after all?’ asked Daisy. She had been quite upset at the idea that he’d (inadvertently) killed someone. ‘That’s a relief.’
‘Well, yes, it is for Zack, but if I’m right then it now means we’re looking for someone who deliberately spiked something else – probably the cupcakes – with a neurotoxin to make it look like accidental food poisoning, when all along it was murder.’
‘Who would want to murder Jeremy Mayhew?’ asked Mum. ‘He was a bit of a hellraiser, by all accounts, so he probably wouldn’t have lived to a ripe old age anyway. All they had to do was wait a few years.’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Faith admitted that they’d had an affair years back and that he wasn’t exactly her favourite person, but there was no reason for her to want him dead.’
‘It’s so sad,’ said Daisy. ‘I’d never heard of him before yesterday, but when we watched that scene they were filming he was sick.’
‘He was sick?’ Mum looked puzzled. ‘So maybe that’s why—’
‘That’s sick as in ‘really good’,’ I explained. ‘Zack uses that expression too…’ Daisy blushed but looked pleased.
‘So we need to find out who could have had a grudge against Jeremy,’ I said.
‘Or Zack,’ said Daisy. I looked at her sharply. ‘I mean, why else use pufferfish toxin? Can you just go and buy it in Tesco’s?’
‘No. No, you can’t…’ I said thoughtfully. Why hadn’t that occurred to me? My daughter was beautiful and clever. ‘So the murderer made a point of using it to implicate Zack… The poor bloke’s wracked with guilt. I don’t know, but it could even end his career…’ I looked at Daisy. ‘That’s very insightful, you know. I hadn’t thought of that.’
She smiled. ‘So would now be a good time to admit that the maths test was actually really rubbish?’
I laughed. ‘Who needs maths anyway? I want to phone Zack and tell him he’s off the hook, but this is all still speculation at this point. Until we get the lab results back on the fish guts, anyway. And I should probably talk to Nathan first…’
Mum looked at me. ‘Is there a reason why you don’t want to?’ There was, bless her, but she was probably thinking it was to do with Tony, and I didn’t want to tell her the real reason in front of Daisy because she might be upset and I couldn’t handle that.
I was saved from answering because my phone rang. I immediately thought, with a sick feeling in my tummy, That’ll be Nathan, but when I looked it was a number I didn’t recognise.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Jodie? What the crikey hell is going on? I leave my food truck for a few days and someone dies—’ The Italian was getting overexcited. Any minute now he’d cry mamma mia! and I would lose it.
‘Gino, Gino, calm down! The police—’
‘They contacted me, this DCI Winters—’
‘Withers. His name’s Withers.’ And it really is a TERRIBLE surname, I thought. Jodie Withers did not sound great. It didn’t have a nice ring to it. Honestly.
‘DCI Whatever, he told me that Zack had poisoned someone with his fugu sashimi and I told him, that’s impossible! But I don’t think he believed me.’
‘Why is it impossible? I think you’re right. I don’t think it was the fish, but—’
‘Of course it wasn’t the fish! You think I let him have poisonous fish?’ Gino sounded exasperated, and he was making me feel the same way.
‘Look, just calm down and tell me. Why couldn’t it have been the fish?’
‘Because it was Takifugu Oblongus – the North American pufferfish. I got it from a supplier up in Scotland, a fish farm. It’s the only type they sell to the general public.’
‘Let’s assume I don’t understand the significance of that, shall we?’ I said patiently. ‘Why couldn’t it have been this North American pufferfish?’
Gino sighed, clearly disgusted at my lack of knowledge around the genus Tetraodontidae, because of course there was a lot of call for pufferfish in Cornwall, generally speaking… ‘Because it’s not toxic.’
I recovered from my shock long enough to calm Gino down and get the name of the seafood supplier from him. I promised him that the
