Death in the English Countryside

Book 1: Murder on Location

by Sara Rosett

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths; Amateur Sleuth; International Crime & Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Crime & Mystery

Synopsis

Location scout and Jane Austen aficionado, Kate Sharp, is thrilled when the company she works for lands the job of finding locations for a new film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but then her boss, Kevin, fails to return from a scouting trip to England. Kate travels to England to salvage Kevin's and the company's reputation before word gets out that he is missing.

Things go from bad to worse when Kate arrives in Nether Woodsmoor, a quaint village of golden stone cottages and rolling green hills, only to find no trace of Kevin except his abandoned luggage. Even the rumpled, easygoing local scout they consulted, Alex, doesn't know where Kevin might be.

Increasingly worried about Kevin and with an antsy director waiting for updates about the preproduction details, Kate embarks on a search that includes a pub-crawl and cozy cottages as well as stately country manors. But Kevin remains missing, and she begins to suspect that the picturesque village and beautiful countryside may not be as idyllic as they seem.

Release date: September 11, 2014

Publisher: Sara Rosett

Print pages: 242

Sample

CHAPTER 1

 

 

LOS ANGELES

 

EVERYONE KNOWS MR. Darcy doesn’t exist—he’s a fictional character, after all—but that doesn’t stop women from dreaming of their own personal wet shirt and/or “dearest Elizabeth” moment, something I’d forgotten as I pushed in through the door to Premier Locations. I was focused on the screen of my camera, flicking through the photos I’d taken that morning, gorgeous shots of hot air balloons suspended over the rolling hills of Temecula’s wine country, and didn’t look up as I navigated the three steps forward and one to the right, which brought me to my desk.

 

At Premier Locations our website motto was “Hollywood’s leading location company,” which was more wishful thinking than reality. We didn’t have a lobby with plush chairs and a starlet-in-waiting functioning as a receptionist. No, we were as stripped down as an office could be. Three desks without cubi‐ cles were wedged into the “outer office” area. Two walled offices at the back of the space, one for our office manager Marci and the other for the owner Kevin, boasted actual doors that closed, but still lacked privacy due to the flimsy pressboard construction. The lights were on in Marci’s office, but her desk was empty. Next door, Kevin’s office was dark. He was currently scouting locations in England with the director of our newest project, a feature film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

 

“Finally, you’re in.” Lori, our intern, spun her office chair toward me, which sent her auburn hair spinning out like she was in a shampoo commercial. “So was he your Mr. Darcy?”

 

I transferred the straps of my tote bag from my shoulder to the back of my chair. “What?”

 

Lori popped the rings closed on a production notebook and rolled her eyes. “Jake, your date last night. Do you think he’s your Mr. Darcy?”

 

Since Premier Locations had landed a project to find loca‐ tions for a new P & P movie, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen, and Mr. Darcy had become frequent topics at the office.

 

I snorted. “Definitely not Darcy.”

 

My mother had asked me to meet her for dinner last night after work. I thought it was a spur-of-the-minute meeting.

 

I shouldn’t have been so naïve. It’s never just dinner with my mother.

 

I continued to skip through the photos, already mentally sorting them into categories for the website catalogue of potential locations.

 

She always has an agenda, which usually involves me in white tulle and the Wedding March. I suppose I should be glad she’d regained her equilibrium after my father announced he wanted a divorce because he was quitting his management job at the bank and moving to Kansas City to buy out an independent bookstore owner.

 

My father’s departure had forced my mom to join the workforce, albeit reluctantly. She worked part-time at my uncle’s event planning company, mostly coordinating weddings, which left plenty of time for her favorite hobby, ambush matchmaking—with me as the sole focus of her sideline interest.

 

Thus, the dinner invitation last night, in which she’d given me an air kiss, introduced the young man she’d somehow manipulated into being there, and fled. Lori had accompanied me to the Thai restaurant to pick up her to-go dinner order and had witnessed the whole awkward event.

 

I removed the memory card from my Canon and uploaded the images.

 

“Are you sure?” Lori asked. “He looked dreamy enough to be Mr. Darcy.”

 

“Only if Mr. Darcy is twenty-eight, lives in an apartment above his mother’s garage, and plays video games all day.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah. Oh.”

 

“Well, I’m sure he’s out there for you. Your Darcy, I mean.”

 

“I hope so, but I’m seriously beginning to wonder.” A few years ago, I would have agreed without a second thought. An Austen aficionado from the moment I cracked open Pride and Prejudice at fourteen years old, I was enthralled with her world and the characters she’d created, especially witty Elizabeth and prickly Mr. Darcy. When I first read Darcy’s line stating how much he ardently admired and loved Elizabeth, I was sunk, pulled into the idea of a man who loves so completely that he goes against all barriers to be with her.

 

But now…well, I was beginning to wonder if that kind of love existed in the twenty-first century. “I’ve discovered that candidates with even a smidgeon of Mr. Darcy like potential are extremely thin on the ground in modern Los Angeles.”

 

“But there really is someone for everyone—my trig teacher who had halitosis and hardly ever wore matching socks was married. If that doesn’t prove that there’s someone for every‐ one, I don’t know what does. You just haven’t found your true love yet. You know, you’re always dating those corporate types with their briefcases and smartphones, who barely have time for you. Maybe you should mix it up—go for someone a little less buttoned-down, more scruffy.”

 

I thought of last week, sitting at the linen-covered table in La Pomodoro, waiting for Terrance and the text he’d finally sent: Can’t get away. Reschedule?

 

“I don’t always date corporate guys. I went out with Jeff for a while, remember? The medical intern.”

 

“Wasn’t he the one who fell asleep while you were in Starbucks?”

 

“Yes.” I sighed. I’d been in the middle of recounting a story about how I got lost in a scary part of downtown L.A. when I looked up and saw his chin was propped on his hand, and he was asleep—eyelid-fluttering REM sleep.

 

“And then there was that real estate guy, what was his name?” Lori tilted her head to the side. “Why can’t I remember it? His face is on billboards all over Santa Barbara.”

 

“Tommy.” I made a vow to never talk about my dating life again at the office. “He never fell asleep on me.” But we were never actually able to complete a conversation because he was constantly on the phone. Open houses, escrow accounts, inspection dates—it was always an important call that he had to answer.

 

“See what I mean,” Lori said, “They’re all,” she shifted her shoulders as she searched for the word she wanted, “so white collarish. You know, the first A.D. on that shoot a few weeks ago, Finn, he was interested in you, I could tell. I think you should reconsider that rule you have about never dating someone in the industry. Especially in Finn’s case.”

 

“You know how crazy our kind of work is. Can you imagine trying to fit in a date with someone else whose work is just as insane as ours?” Eighteen-hour days were the rule, not the exception for us, and the only fixed thing about our work schedules were that they were constantly changing. “No, it’s better to keep things on a purely professional level with colleagues. And I’m not going to apologize for having stan‐ dards. I mean, is it too much to ask that the guy I date have a job—a good job?”

 

“Finn has a good job.”

 

“But he works in the industry, too. It would be better if I found someone who worked somewhere else. And before you say anything, it’s not just about where he works. I want a guy who is smart and funny and responsible and—”

 

“You’re too picky,” Lori said. “Love is messy and complicated. You can’t shove it in a spreadsheet.”

 

“Says the woman without a boyfriend.” I smiled to take any sting out of my words, and Lori laughed.

 

“Okay. That’s true. But only temporarily. There’s this hot guy at the gym. He’s always on the treadmill at six-thirty.” Lori grabbed another production notebook and flipped through the pages. “All I’m saying is that you should never rule out love.”

 

The door opened, and Marci whipped into the office, her delicate filigreed chandelier earrings contrasting sharply with her tight T-shirt, low-cut jeans, and combat boots. “Oh good. You’re back, Kate,” she said as she passed my desk. “We need to talk in my office.” Marci was a whirlwind, a four-foot-eleven tornado of energy. I grabbed my Moleskine notebook and jumped up to follow her. Marci had never been anything but nice to me, but I’d never given her any reason not to be.

 

The first week I went to work for Kevin as his assistant, I’d heard Marci on the phone chewing out a vendor who bailed on a shoot, and I’d decided I didn’t want to ever be in her black books. Rumor around the office was that she had three tattoos, but no one had been brave enough to ask her about them; even normally fearless Zara, the other location scout in our office, had passed on that one. We did know Marci was divorced because she mentioned her ex once, saying that the world was better off without him, which Lori took to mean that Marci killed him. I thought that was ridiculous—well, most of the time I thought it was ridiculous.

 

Marci dropped a pile of three-ring binders on her desk, straightened her neon green, rectangular glasses, and closed the door behind me.

 

I raised my eyebrows. In the whole three years I’d worked for Premier Locations I’d never seen either her or Kevin’s office door closed.

 

“Yes, it’s bad.” She sank into her chair and ran her fingers through her spiky brown hair that was sprinkled with white. Her hair needed a trim and she looked rather like an aging porcupine. “I haven’t heard from Kevin in three days.”

 

She’d kept her voice low, to compensate for the flimsy walls and lack of soundproof doors, so I scooted forward on the chair, inching nearer the desk.

 

I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Is that...unusual?”

 

Kevin, Zara, and I worked independently. We were in and out of the office all the time and didn’t keep tabs on each other. “He finished with Mr. O’Leery and the rest of the group on Friday. Mr. O’Leery’s return flight was earlier than Kevin’s so he had a car pick him up and take him to the airport. Kevin was supposed to check out of the hotel Friday morning, drive the rental car back to London, and catch a late afternoon flight that would arrive here Friday night. After a trip, if he’s not going to be in the office he checks in with me and sends me any files we need to upload to the server.”

 

I nodded. We were an all digital office. Clients accessed files through our secure server. Marci handled Kevin’s uploads. The rest of us did our own for each project.

 

“When he didn’t call this morning, I figured he was busy. Typical Monday, you know.” She glanced at the clock. It was two in the afternoon. “But then I got a call from Mr. O’Leery’s office. His assistant says he’s anxious to see the new stuff that Kevin promised him and that Mr. O’Leery is ready to be impressed.” Marci shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t have anything. Apparently, Kevin promised him something amazing, but hasn’t uploaded it to the server or sent it to me. At lunch, I ran by his condo. I have a key so I can pick up his mail.” She waved her hand at her key ring. “He’s not back. His Saab isn’t in his parking space. The blinds were closed, his mail was stacked up in his box, and his suitcase and the go-bag were gone.”

 

“Oh.” I sat back. The go-bag contained everything we needed to shoot while we were traveling. If the go-bag was gone, then Kevin was still gone. “And he’s not one to be very neat. If he’d been back, you’d know it.”

 

“He’s not answering his cell.” She took off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “I called the airline and checked his confirmation number. His return ticket wasn’t used, and he’s not at the hotel. The desk clerk said he checked out on Friday morning, but left his bags in storage with them, saying he would be back. They’re still holding his things in their luggage storage room.” She raised one hand, palm up, as she shrugged a shoulder. “He’s disappeared.”

 

“That’s crazy. Why would he drop out of sight? Especially with Mr. O’Leery waiting for files?” I didn’t know the details of the finances at Premier Locations, but you didn’t have to be a genius to realize that the active project list was a lot shorter now than a few months ago. Kevin, not someone who usually showed excessive emotion, had been ecstatic when he landed the P & P project, reminding me of George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, which I took to mean that things were even more precarious for our little company than I’d realized. The P & P job was huge—preliminary scouting, like the trip he was on, as well as doing the location management. It would certainly replenish the coffers. Kevin wouldn’t throw away such a big project. “He wouldn’t just disappear.”

 

Marci gave me a long, assessing look. In that instant I knew that she was aware of the secret Kevin tried so hard to keep quiet. I’d been aware of it, but I didn’t think anyone else in the office knew about it.

 

An addiction is hard to hide from an assistant who is with you every minute of your workday. I came to work for Kevin as his assistant, gradually learning the business before he promoted me to a location scout with my own clients. Most of the time I worked with him, he was a wonderful boss, focused and on point, getting the shots we needed, cajoling people to open their homes to allow us on their property to film, sharing tips and tricks that he’d learned the hard way, or recounting stories of his ruckus-rousing, pre-digital, good old days when he worked on a weekly cop show and had to race to the 24-hour film development kiosk to get photos quickly.

 

But there had been one time when he’d slipped. One morning, he hadn’t shown up for a meeting. I’d handled it, then gone to his condo, where I found him, limp and morose, staring at reruns, a gin bottle upended in the sink. The next day, he caught me in the parking lot to tell me thanks for checking on him. He said he was in touch with his sponsor and that I didn’t have to worry—it wouldn’t happen again. And then we were off, running through the schedule as if the previous day were as fake as some of the locations we helped create. I’d never been sure if Marci was aware of Kevin’s issue, but there was no question about it now.

 

“You knew.” I matched her quiet tone.

 

“Oh, yes. Even though he is good at controlling it, I figured it out.” She glanced at the door. “Lori and Zara don’t have any idea.”

 

“You’re sure Lori doesn’t know?”

 

“She hasn’t worked with him long enough.”

 

“And Zara never worked with him one-on-one,” I said. Zara had worked freelance before moving to our office last year.

 

Marci rolled her chair closer to the desk. “So you and I are the only people who know…the possibilities. We need to keep it that way.”

 

“Okay. I’ve never breathed a word about it before. I’m not about to start now.”

 

“I know. That’s why you have to go find him.” “What? Me?”

 

“Yes, it has to be you. I need you to go to England. You’re the only one I can trust. I can’t go. I have to keep the lid on things here. I can run interference with Mr. O’Leery until you find out how bad it is. I told his assistant we’re having computer issues, so that’s bought us a little time. Once we know the situation, we’ll do damage control.”

 

I fell back in the chair. Marci was right. If she left and word got out about why…I glanced again at the closed door. Lori was on the phone, and the low murmur of her voice filled the silence in Marci’s office. If it became known that Kevin had gone on a bender—while working with a client, no less—busi‐ ness for Premier Locations would dry up. Hollywood reveled in stories of celebrities brought low by their own bad behavior, which generated buzz and raised movie stars’ profiles, but movie and television making was a business. If Kevin Dunn was regarded as unreliable, Premier Locations was done.

 

“You don’t think we should call the police?” I asked.

 

“I considered it, but what would we tell them? That he’s not answering his phone and missed his flight? You know one of the first questions they’ll ask is if it has happened before. What would I say? That he has a history of…erratic behavior, to put it nicely?” Marci shook her head. “If we go that way, then it’s official with reports and questions and interviews.”

 

“And records of inquiries and possible publicity.”

 

“And you know how Mr. O’Leery feels about publicity, especially at the beginning of a film.”

 

I blew out a breath. “He detests it.”

 

“I can’t jeopardize this project. If you go over there and can’t…find him, if he’s truly missing, we’ll contact the police.”

 

“Right. Yes, of course you’re right.” I sat up straight in the chair, running through my mental schedule. “But I’ve got a meeting in Palm Springs tomorrow. I finally got in touch with the owners of that ranch house that we’re hoping to use for the sports drink ad.”

 

“I’ll take care of everything here.” Marci swiveled her computer monitor toward me. “There’s a flight out tonight. I think you should be on it.”

 

A burst of laughter from Lori sounded from the other side of the door. I chewed the inside of my lip, running through mental arguments and discarding them as quickly as they came up. The sports drink company was my baby. I’d worked with them since their first tiny print ad. Now they were doing a full-scale marketing push—print, television, and Internet. They’d never worked with anyone else at our firm, and Jo, their head marketing honcho, trusted me implicitly.

 

I wanted to suggest that Zara or Lori go, but Zara had eight-year-old Darwin to take care of. She couldn’t leave town on the spur of the moment, and as much as I loved Lori, she’d never traveled farther than San Diego. Did she even have a passport? And, discretion wasn’t exactly a watchword with her. She tweeted, texted, and Instagrammed her breakfast choices. Entrusting her with the secret would be the equivalent of sending a press release to E! News.

 

“You’re right. It has to be me.” I took my phone out of my pocket, already mentally sorting through the people I needed to contact about my unexpected travel plans. My fingers flew over the keypad, tapping out messages. Then I made a to-do list in my Moleskine notebook topped with “pack umbrella.”

 

Scouting and managing locations was all about the details. Almost everyone I knew relied on their phone to keep track of everything, but I was more old school. I kept the minutiae of my life in my Moleskine. Its battery never died, and I didn’t have to worry about it being stolen or accidentally locking myself out by messing up my passcode.

 

“Thank you, Kate. I owe you big-time,” Marci said. “I’ll take care of everything in Palm Springs; just send me the details.” Marci turned her monitor back so that it was facing her and began typing. “Manchester is closer to the little village where Kevin went, but London is the easier connection—there’s more flights. You’ll have to rent a car and drive, like Kevin did.”

 

“Just remember this when you write the bonus checks at Christmas,” I said as the printer hummed.

 

Marci shot me a smile as she handed me the still-warm pages. “Let’s not go overboard. That is Kevin’s itinerary, contact details for the local scout he worked with over there, and Kevin’s hotel details. Now, what time do you want your flight? Is eight too early?”

 

She made the reservations, printed my boarding pass, and I returned to my desk to send her the wine country photos. The door banged open again, and Zara, entered. “Mail call,” she announced. I grabbed a padded envelope that came flying through the air toward me.

 

Lori snagged a small cardboard box that went wide of her. “If this is Kevin’s new lens, you’d better be glad I was the best shortstop on my softball league.” She carefully put down the box and asked, “how was your trip? I forgot to ask this morning.”

 

Zara was marching to her desk, her thick clogs thudding along the floor, but for an instant she checked her stride and gave Lori a sharp look. “What? I didn’t go on a trip.”

 

“But I heard you on the phone last week with your friend,

 

asking if she could drop you at the airport and keep Darwin for you. Where’d you go?”