Nye made it sound so simple.

"Just like that? We look for it?"

"You have a better idea?" he asked.

"Well, no, but..."

"Why don't we get started, then?"

While I'd managed to duct-tape my subconscious, which still wanted to scream every time I set eyes on the piles of peril, the mess was still there. And now Nye wanted to dig through everything and make it worse? The thought alone made me want to move into a convent. Nuns didn't have possessions, right?

A simple, uncluttered life. That was my new dream. Forget opening a bakery, just the ability to open a door all the way without it jamming against a mound of junk would do.

But Nye was serious, and he was also waiting. I procrastinated for five minutes longer by making coffee. I was tempted to add a slug of brandy to mine, but I didn't want Nye to think I was a lush.

"Which room do you want to start with?" I asked, desperately hoping he'd change his mind and suggest a nice ride on his motorcycle instead.

No such luck.

"Statistically, women tend to hide most things in the kitchen. So I vote we search in here first."

Over the next six hours, we pulled the room apart. Every cupboard got emptied, and we checked the bottoms and backs for hidden compartments. I inspected every can and bottle left from the days of Aunt Ellie in case it contained something other than food, and Nye even sifted the old bags of sugar. Apart from a brand-new hand mixer stuffed at the back of one cupboard, which I got tragically excited about, and a rather disgusting desiccated mouse, we found nothing.

"Lunch break?" I suggested, even though I still felt slightly queasy from the dead rodent. Perhaps I could suggest we head out for a bite to eat in, say, Scotland?

Nye nodded and sat back in a chair. "This is harder than I thought. How could one woman own so much shit?"

"I don't know. I'll admit, the untidiness offends me."

He laughed. "Babe, you sounded so prim when you said that."

"What's the problem with liking things neat?"

"There isn't a problem. You're adorable when you get all indignant."

I tried to look peeved, but it proved impossible when Nye leaned forward and captured my lips with his. He wound his hand around my ponytail and tilted my head back to give himself better access, and for a few blissful minutes, the worries of my life disappeared. Kissing Nye consumed me.

I longed to stay there for the rest of the day, but storm clouds hovered on the fringes of my mind, threatening to burst if we didn't get on with the task at hand.

Nye groaned as I pulled back. "Do we have to keep looking through this crap?"

"I don't want to either."

"I could take you upstairs and make you forget it existed."

My nether regions heated at the mere thought. If only I could give in to temptation. "We have to carry on searching. And isn't Spike still outside?"

"Yeah. Fuck it, you're right. Let's get this mystery solved. Then I can lock you in my bedroom for a week."

"Are you serious?"

He waggled his eyebrows and glanced at his lap. "Don't worry—I'll feed you."

"Stop it, or we'll never get this done." One of us had to act like the grown-up. "Which room's next?"

"Your bedroom. It's Eleanor's old room, right?"

I nodded.

"I had more ideas while we were looking this morning, and I want to bring in help tomorrow when we tackle the other rooms."

"What kind of help?"

"Extra manpower and a truck to put some of the crap in. Otherwise, it'll be like one of those plastic puzzles where you've got one free space and you have to keep slotting other pieces into the gap."

He wasn't wrong. Even in the kitchen, which was arguably the tidiest room in the house, we'd struggled for places to put things while we emptied out the cupboards. I had visions of getting stuck in the middle of a pile of junk with no escape if we tried the same tactic in the other rooms.

Although if Nye was with me, I could see the advantages.

"What other ideas did you have?" I asked.

"I want to look into any burglaries that were reported just before the payments started, and I'm also going to give Carol a call. Even if nothing went on record with the police, she might remember if there were rumours."

He tried the office first and soon had a colleague hunting through crime reports. Then he dialled Carol and put his phone on speaker.

"Mr. Holmes! How wonderful to hear from you."

She mooned over him for ages before he managed to get a word in and ask whether she recalled anything that fitted in with our timescale.

"Five years ago, you say? Well, that would be around the time Moira Fleming's niece got married. Quite the scandal, it was, because her ex turned up at the church and objected on the grounds that she'd been in his bed the night before. The wedding went ahead, but the divorce six months later got a bit nasty."

I could only imagine.

"Then young Tate Palmer went off to university. Oxford or Cambridge, one of the two. He was only seventeen, and his father crowed to everyone about it for weeks. All the girls in the village were heartbroken. He had quite the little fan club." There was a long pause. "Goodness me, I got mixed up. That was the year before. Five years ago, Tate's mother ran off with the gardener. Fenton didn't have quite so much to say about that."

Really? Poor Tate. What a terrible thing to happen to anybody. Perhaps I should have tried harder to be understanding with him over our relationship, or rather, our lack of one.

"Then there was Megan Shaughnessy. She decided she wanted to be an actress and moved to Hollywood. Following her dreams, she told everyone."

"Did she make it?" I asked. I loved a fairy-tale ending.

"She starred in a number of movies, but they weren't quite what her parents had envisaged. Not so many clothes involved, if you know what I mean. Mr. and Mrs. Shaughnessy couldn't hold their heads up at the horticultural society any longer, so they moved to Benidorm."

"And Megan?"

"Nobody's seen her since. Oh, and around that time, Maggie Bottomly had her nervous breakdown. A truck driver found her wandering along the road at midnight in her pyjamas, and—"

Nye rolled his eyes and interrupted. "I was thinking more about unexplained thefts than anything else, Carol."

"Oh. Let me have a think. As it happens, there were a few burglaries. A couple of months, that spate lasted, in all three of the Foxfords and half a dozen more villages besides. The culprit seemed to like the expensive things. Jewellery, mainly, but some art went missing as well."

"Did they ever catch anyone?"

"No, dear. Except for Mr. Benson. It turned out he'd faked his own burglary to claim the insurance money. He'd been drinking away his fortune, you see, and he ended up owing money to some loan shark."

"What happened to him?"

"Do you know, I've got no idea? I must be slipping. I'll try to find out for you."

"Thanks, Carol."

After he'd hung up, Nye sat back with the faraway look of someone deep in thought. "The fake insurance claim is an interesting angle. What if someone else tried the same trick and didn't get caught?"

I saw where he was going with that thought. "And Ronnie could have guessed, because he knew he didn't do the burglary."

This detective thing was getting exciting!

"Exactly. When we get the list of crime reports, we'll go through it for high-value thefts and see which of those had big insurance payouts."

"How would that fit with something being hidden in the house?"

"I'm not sure," Nye admitted. "The vicar thought the envelope he gave Eleanor had papers in it. Maybe Ronnie managed to get copies of the insurance documents?"

"So we have to keep searching?"

"Afraid so."

I started with the wardrobe while Nye took Aunt Ellie's dressing table. I'd only cleared out a tiny corner for my things, seeing as I didn't have much left, and most of the space was still taken up by her clothes. Shapeless old dresses and worn cardigans.

Her shopping habits clearly hadn't extended to her own attire, or she'd have been outfitted in colourful kaftans and sparkly tops you could wear in three different ways. I hunted through all the pockets to no avail, then emptied everything onto the bed.

"Nothing?" Nye asked.

"Not yet. I'll start checking the wardrobe itself."

I tapped the panels and checked the joints, but there was no Narnia-like realm hidden away at the back, or even space for Ronnie's envelope. I was about to ask Nye to double-check when I heard a low whistle from behind.

"Tell me these aren't Eleanor's."

I looked around and saw him holding up a pair of the lacy knickers I'd bought in a vain attempt to keep Edward happy. A barely there pale-pink thong with tiny bows at the top.

I gasped, conflicted over whether to grab them off him or die of embarrassment as a blush rose up my cheeks.

"I wish you'd warned me," he said, dropping the offending item back into a drawer. "How can I concentrate on the job now?"

"Maybe you could take a break?"

And stop rooting through my flipping underwear drawer.

"Good plan."

He shoved Aunt Ellie's clothes off the bed, and before I realised what was happening, I was lying on top of it. Nye knelt astride me, giving me an eye-level view of the bulge in his jeans. Not quite what I had in mind, but that didn't matter anymore.

"Liv, you're so fucking sweet. A proper English rose."

Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous was always calling me sweet, but he could be quite sugary himself.

I was just about to have a taste when my phone rang. Why now? Why couldn't I have a teensy bit of fun in my life?

"Ignore it," Nye said.

"I can't. I hardly ever get calls. It might be important."

It was.

A whispered voice sent shivers through me. "I know what you're doing. Call off the search, or you'll regret it."

"Who is this?" My voice came out as a squeak.

"You know who this is—your worst nightmare."

Nye snatched the phone from me. "Leave her alone, or you'll fucking regret it." He threw the phone down in disgust. "Asshole hung up."

"You heard what he said?"

Nye nodded as he pulled out his own phone and began muttering into it about monitoring and traces. Now this was getting more personal, and I couldn't stop shaking as I stared through the window at the drizzle outside. Would this game ever end? Every move we made, the mystery man seemed to be a step ahead.

"Are you okay?" Nye asked, dropping his phone onto the bed.

No, but I didn't want to look weak, so I shrugged. "At least he didn't come into the house this time."

It seemed I wasn't the only one affected by Nye's presence.

"We'll find him, Liv. I won't let anything happen to you."

"How did he even get my number?"

"It's on your website."

Oh. Yeah. "What do we do now? Should we stop searching?"

"No, we bloody shouldn't. We've hit a nerve, and that means we're getting closer."

"But isn't that dangerous? I mean, he must have been near the cottage to know we're pulling the place apart."

Nye shook his head. "He'd need to have looked in the windows, and Spike's set up motion sensors. The control room would have called me if anyone got that close."

Or perhaps he was just psychic. I'd got to the stage I'd believe anything.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. My guess is that Carol's been asking more questions and one of them's touched a nerve."

"The insurance thing?"

"Could be. The smell of money brings out the monster in people. But I do have a small piece of good news."

Oh boy, did I need that. "What is it?"

"My team have found Larry in a homeless shelter a couple of towns away. He lost his sales job a few months back after he made inappropriate advances towards a colleague. My guess is he hasn't told Betty."

"So he'll be feeling the pinch as well?"

"Exactly. With the amount he earned, he'd have been under pressure paying Eleanor two grand a month. If a new demand came, he'd be sunk."

"But I wouldn't blackmail him!"

"He doesn't know that."

"What happens now? Do we talk to him?"

"'We' don't do anything. You're not going anywhere near that man. He's under surveillance, and when he goes out, Spike'll take a closer look at where he's living."

"Is that legal?"

Nye gave me a look.

Right, I forgot. This was the new Olivia. New Olivia lived daringly on the dark side. At least, she did as long as she could manage the "lived" part.