Cupcakes and Conspiracies Read online

  Cupcakes & Conspiracies

  (A Sweet Baked Mystery)

  KATHERINE HAYTON

  Copyright © 2017 Katherine Hayton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About the Author - Katherine

  Chapter One

  As Holly Waterston drove into the center of Hanmer Springs, she obeyed the posted signs and lowered her speed down to thirty miles per hour. The car crawled at snail’s pace after so many hours spent on the open road.

  The vehicle moved into the shade of the giant oak trees that formed an avenue down the side of the hot pools. With the change in light, Holly pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, using them to anchor her coffee colored curls back from her face.

  “Ah!” Holly slammed her foot on the brake just in time to stop a potential collision with a couple of tourists. They laughed and waved while crossing the street, still showing more interest in each other than the road.

  Well, that supported the lower speed limit.

  The sign for her father’s bakery caught her eye. It was nestled in an alcove with seating in front for a variety of different outlets. Alongside the bakery were a café, a bar, and two restaurants. So far, the proportions of eateries to people seemed two to one.

  Pulling the car to the side of the road, Holly sat behind the wheel for a moment with the engine idling. The bakery looked splendid, the sign announcing, “Sweet Baked Treats” was bold enough to catch the eye without being pushy.

  As she eased the car back into the lane, Holly gave a sigh. The township was both the same and completely different from how she remembered it. It was as though someone had taken treasured images from her memories and popped them through a crazy Instagram filter.

  The drive from Christchurch had been similar. Holly had been delighted to reach Frog Rock and disappointed that the squatting outcropping had been mostly blasted away. If it hadn’t been for the shed announcing the landmark, Holly wouldn’t have been sure that it was the right place.

  Another highlight of the journey, the steep drop in the road that as a child left her stomach pressed up against the top of her throat, barely caused a jolt in her midsection as an adult. Even now, turning onto the back road where the old house was located, Holly didn’t know whether it was a fault in her recall or if actual changes had occurred.

  “Home Sweet Home” read the painted sign hanging over the gate through the thick bushes at the front of the house. Beside it, a narrow gravel driveway ran along the property until it reached a rickety old shed. Holly would prefer to let her BMW face the elements than to risk the stability of the wooden structure. Even as a child, she’d been told off by her father for hanging from the beams inside.

  “They’re not safe,” he’d said, pointing to the pile of sawdust from where termites had burrowed and the damp patch in the corner where permanent rot had set in. “If you put your weight on these old things, you take your life into your hands. Until you’re old enough to judge those things properly for yourself, you mind me, girl.”

  Girl. That might as well have been Holly’s nickname as a child. Crystal was always Crystal, or maybe ‘my youngest’ when out in company but Holly was ‘girl.’ Mind me, girl. Do this, girl. Get away from that, girl.

  Soon after she’d married, Holly had joked with her new husband that she didn’t think her father remembered her name. There’d been a smile on her face when she said it, but there’d also been a gaping hole in her heart.

  “Too late now, Holly,” she told herself sternly, getting out of the car. When she closed the door, the soft thunk made a satisfied smile rise on her lips. Even now, at close to eighteen months old, the expensive car was her pride and joy.

  “Crystal?” Holly called out her sister’s name as she walked up the back steps onto the porch. “Are you home?”

  When she didn’t receive an answer, Holly knocked on the back door. It swung inwards, though that didn’t mean a lot. This wasn’t the city where you locked and bolted everything before going outside to hang up the washing.

  This was Hanmer Springs, which still lived in a different time. A time when neighbors knew each other and chatted over the back fence, and you didn’t bother to lock your door unless you were heading off for two weeks’ holiday.

  “Are you in, Crystal?” Holly asked again in a loud voice as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her. It felt odd to stand in the laundry, everything familiar, everything changed. After so many years, she felt like an imposter. Someone who shouldn’t be walking blithely into the house. It made no difference that her name had been transferred to the lease after her father’s death a few weeks ago.

  The news had surprised Holly as much as anyone. Although she’d tried hard to rush back to Hanmer when she heard her dad was ill, Holly hadn’t spoken to him for the two years before that. When Crystal phoned halfway through the journey to tell her not to bother—it was too late—Holly had turned around and gone back to the city.

  Queen of denial, she’d headed into work the next day as though nothing had happened. That her clients desperately needed her was the perfect excuse. With court cases and operable businesses hanging in the balance, it was also one that people seldom challenged.

  The back bathroom was as empty as the laundry had been, the living room and the kitchen the same. As Holly wandered through the dining room and out into the front conservatory, still bathed in sunlight even in the late afternoon, she called out again. Her voice was softer this time, no longer holding out much hope.

  “Just a moment!”

  Holly whirled around, just in time to see Crystal run past the door. She followed her back into the house and saw the flash as her sister turned from the hall into her bedroom. Naked as the day she was born.

  “You do realize you left the house unlocked,” Holly said. “It’s one thing not to care about thieves, but if you’re running around buck naked, it would be nice if you didn’t invite people in.”

  Crystal turned, her expression caught in the halfway house between exasperation and laughter. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Besides, there isn’t anyone in town who would enter if they knocked and didn’t get a response.”

  “So, I’m the only rude one?”

  Crystal dissolved into laughter, shaking her head. “You’re the impossible one, is what you are.”

  She quickly stepped into a sundress and picked up some knickers from the floor. As she wriggled them up over her backside, Crystal gave her sister a broad, welcoming smile.

  “It’s good to see you, even if you were perving at me unexpectedly.”

  Holly hesitated, uncertain of what to do until Crystal stepped over and enveloped her in a big hug.

  “I can’t believe you’re here at last. Dad would have been so happy to see you home.” />
  Holly clung to her sister for a full minute, as though she was a lifejacket in the middle of an empty ocean.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said finally, stepping away. Holly’s voice was rough with emotion, and she turned to look out of the window so Crystal wouldn’t see the gleam of tears in her eyes.

  “He always talked about inviting you,” Crystal said, turning and picking up some of her clothes off the floor. Holly smiled as she recognized her sister's favorite style of housekeeping. If you threw it down when you took it off, it was easier to find.

  “He never did, though.”

  “He shouldn’t have needed to.”

  Crystal’s voice was quiet, but the words hit harder than Holly would have thought possible.

  “Oh, hell,” Crystal said as Holly burst into tears. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Come here.”

  She pulled Holly into another hug, but this time, she wriggled free a lot faster.

  “I’m the one meant to be strong and supportive,” Holly complained. “That’s part of being the eldest.”

  “I’ve had the support of the community to get me through,” Crystal pointed out with a kind tone. “You’ve been stuck in your office miles away with no one to talk to but patent lawyers and accountants.”

  “They’ve been very helpful, too,” Holly said. For some reason, anytime someone touched on her profession she immediately leaped into defensive mode. Given the recent circumstances, she was even more than usually sensitive.

  Crystal just brushed the comment off with a snicker. “I’m sure.” She threw the clothes she’d picked up off the floor, onto a chair already creaking under strain. Unable to help herself, Holly crossed the room and opened Crystal’s wardrobe. Empty. Apart from a formal pantsuit in the corner, tucked away like a bad memory.

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Hey,” Crystal warned. “As well as being impossible, I’m also a grown woman. If you’re going to start nitpicking at me, you can stay at the hotel in town.”

  “Which one do you recommend? They seem to have multiplied like flies since the last time I visited.”

  “That’s because you stayed away too long.”

  When she saw the jibe land, Crystal’s face crumpled into distress. “I’m sorry,” she said, wringing her hands. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I either hate or love everybody right now. It feels like my head is being split in two.”

  Holly moved over to rub her sisters back in comfort. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “We already know that we love each other, it doesn’t matter if we fight.”

  Poor Crystal had always been as caught up in her emotions as Holly was in her intellect. She puzzled out the world by reading the intersecting feelings of everyone involved in it. To Holly, life was a game where you had to doubt and poke and interrogate to establish the rules.

  “I drove past the bakery on the way here,” Holly said. “It looked terrific.”

  “It’s a struggle trying to keep it going with just me working there,” Crystal said, accepting the compliment with a smile. “But I really think it’s starting to function well.”

  Holly gave a small frown, then cleared it off her forehead before her sister could read volumes into it. The accounts for the business told quite a different tale than what Crystal would be hoping for.

  Since her dad’s probate lawyer had first passed the heaping document boxes along to her, Holly had been sickened to see the truth. At night, long after work was finished for the day, she’d poured through statement after statement, hoping to find an error that would explain away her initial findings.

  It hadn’t happened.

  A rough conversation was heading toward her and Crystal like a runaway freight train but tonight wasn’t the time. Tonight, she needed to rediscover the joy of having a little sister. Tomorrow, she could turn into the hard-headed accountant who needed the business shut and the house sold to pay off the outstanding bills.

  “Is Simon coming down later, as well?” Crystal asked later. They were sitting out on the back porch, watching the midges play a group came of tag in the fading sunlight.

  Simon was Holly’s husband. Or had been, anyway. Another conversation that she’d prefer to put off until tomorrow, or longer if she could manage.

  Holly looked down at the drink she was holding. It was a lime and soda that she would desperately have loved to pour a shot of gin or vodka into—okay, maybe a couple of shots. But given Crystal's history, avoiding alcohol while in her company was automatic. Holly usually didn’t mind, she wasn’t a big drinker. Or, hadn’t been until the last few years, anyway.

  When the silence had stretched out too long to be comfortable, Holly answered, “No. Not this time.”

  Although Crystal gave her a curious look through lowered lashes, she respected Holly’s answer and let the matter drop.

  “I should be working out the amounts for ordering, tomorrow,” Crystal said, stretching her arms above her head. Despite her words, she stayed seated precisely where she was.

  “Do you enjoy the work?”

  Holly was intrigued that her sister had kept the bakery operating. Especially in the days following their dad’s death when she would have been distraught. When she came down to Christchurch for the funeral Holly had arranged and paid for, her eyes had hollowed out. The shadows of not enough sleep and too much crying had been written large on her skin.

  But apart from that fleeting, one-day visit, Crystal had kept the bakery running. Not bad for the sister who nobody expected a lot from.

  Now, in the gathering shadows of the end of day, Crystal shrugged. “I don’t love keeping tabs on everything and having to work out what we need and what I’m sending out each day. The baking is fun, although by the time I get the last batch in, my arms are ready to drop off from mixing.”

  She lay down on the wooden slats, holding her hands above her face, the fingers spread wide, segmenting the first stars of the night.

  “My favorite bit is when I’ve put the last of the bakes into the oven. I allow myself the time to just sit and rest in front of the door, peering in while they rise up and turn into the best-tasting food in the world.”

  Holly laughed, surprised by the enthusiasm in her sister’s voice. “Not that you’re overselling them, or anything.”

  Crystal reached up to give Holly a feeble slap on the shoulder. “Just you wait. If you come in tomorrow morning, it’ll take five minutes, and you’ll be a convert.”

  “Sold.”

  They sat in silence for a while, staring up at the heavens as the stars turned on like distant fairy lights. Holly was always amazed when she came back home at how many she could see from Hanmer Springs. In Christchurch, with the light pollution glaring its unwanted intrusion into the night, she could only ever make out a third as many.

  “I think the baking helps me,” Crystal said. “It centers me in a way that no other job has. It’s menial, it’s physically tough, and the customers are always demanding, but I love creating something with my hands that gives other people so much joy.”

  Holly raised an eyebrow as she stared at her little sister. There were a lot of things their family didn’t talk about—by choice or habit. One of those things was the addiction that had shattered Crystal down to tiny shards.

  When the drinking had caused so many problems that it couldn’t be ignored any longer, Holly had sent her sister home to Dad in desperation. In a few short weeks, as though the spirit of the old recovery center in the township—Queen Mary—was still alive and well, Crystal had sobered up. As far as Holly knew, she’d never drunk another drop.

  “Did you feel it?” Crystal asked, as though reading her sister’s thoughts. “When you drove into town?”

  “Feel what?” Holly could only remember her nostalgia, the sadness of things never quite being the same.

  Crystal spread her arms out wide on the porch. With her hair in a display above her head, she looked like a child making a snow angel.

&n
bsp; “Whenever I drive into Hanmer, it feels like someone is giving me a big hug. The whole township wraps its warmth around me and holds me tight.”

  “Must just be you,” Holly said, poking Crystal in the side where she was ticklish, and smiling when she squealed. “All I felt was sulfur crawling up my nostrils. Every time I leave, I forget how pungent the mineral springs are.”

  They were both laughing when a flash of movement exploded toward them out of the darkness.

  Chapter Two

  “Oh, my goodness,” Holly said, holding a hand to her chest. “What is that?”

  Crystal was standing behind her sister, hands resting on her shoulders. “Don’t worry. It’s just a feral cat.”

  As soon as Crystal said the words, Holly could track the shape that had come barreling at them out of the darkness. A small cat, with ginger spots shaped like a leopard’s markings. It mewed, opening its mouth wide to expose sharp teeth.

  “Isn’t it sweet?” Holly moved a step closer to it, and the cat tilted its head to one side, eyeing her warily.

  “No, it’s not.” Crystal said.

  Holly turned to her in surprise, eyebrows raised. Of the two of them, Crystal was the one more likely to have a gooey center regarding anything small and furry.

  “It’s a wild cat,” she explained. “They have them all over town. Let’s go inside. If we feed it or make it welcome, then it’ll never leave.”

  “Bye-bye, kitty,” Holly whispered. The cat mewed, seemingly in answer to her words.

  Crystal tutted as she held the back door open for her sister. Holly hung her head in pretend shame as she quickly scampered through.

  “It’s serious,” Crystal said. “They kill off the native birds and stuff. The council is always coming up with new plans to try to drive them away.”

  “That poor thing was barely more than a kitten.”

  “A kitten who could wipe out a native species, given half the chance.”

  Holly chewed her lip. “Perhaps, if you fed it, then it wouldn’t feel the need to chase down wildlife.”

  Crystal snorted. “How many times have you heard a horror story from an owner about their well-fed pet cat bringing them a present of a bird or mouse?” She shrugged. “It’s just their nature to hunt. Unfortunately, our precious wildlife isn’t savvy enough to evade them.”