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  Had Sally been convicted of a crime?

  She shook her head, thinking of her friend’s cheerful demeanor and positive attitude. That hardly fitted in with a life of criminal wrongdoing.

  “And, I shouldn’t have told you that, either,” the sergeant continued, perhaps clocking Alice’s expression. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t repeat that anywhere.”

  “I won’t.” Alice leaned forward. “But since you’ve already shared information you shouldn’t have, what’s the harm in telling me the rest?”

  The sergeant mimicked her posture, settling his elbows on the table and leaning in. “Because it’s a breach of Sally’s privacy and could be harmful to the case we’re building for murder. That’s why.”

  Alice tried to wave those concerns away with a flick of her hand, but she could tell from the sergeant’s staunch posture, it hadn’t changed his mind. “Fine,” she said, figuring that giving up a little herself might place her in a better position to grill him further. “You can take my fingerprints.”

  The plan fell short of her imagined scenario when Hogarth immediately escorted her back to the front desk and deposited Alice there to wait for a forensic officer. By the time she realized he wouldn’t do the honors, it was too late for her to back out.

  Great. Now Alice would have oily fingers and no clue why Sally was being held here.

  A man reporting to the front desk looked just as upset as Alice was. When he turned around, she saw why—a reporter ID was pinned to the front of his jacket. It might have been a ticket to the front of the crowd at a public briefing, but it didn’t impress the front desk any.

  “Are you here about the Alex Dunbar case?” Alice asked him when he took a seat opposite.

  He arched his eyebrow and scanned her up and down before leaning forward. “Why? Do you know something about it?”

  “No,” Alice said with a shrug. “I hoped you would.”

  The man just expelled a breath of air in disgust and sat back, doodling on a notepad. When the officer came to take Alice down the corridor to be fingerprinted, the journalist didn’t even look up. By the time she left the station, he’d disappeared.

  If she wanted to find out anything more, the station wouldn’t be the place to do it. Alice checked her phone one more time for messages, then set off.

  First stop, the minister who’d initially introduced Alice to Sally. She’d never thought to ask any questions before, but now she needed answers he seemed like the best place to start.

  Chapter Nine

  Alice drove straight to the church and parked on the street outside. The sign in front read, “A parent’s life is a child’s guidebook” and the sentiment raised a smile. Whatever other problems the church might have, a sense of gentle encouragement wasn’t one of them.

  She pulled her phone out and rang through to the vet’s office, just in case they’d forgotten about the promise to send a message. When the receptionist answered, her voice was so cheerful that a lump rose in Alice’s throat, making it hard to speak.

  “I’m inquiring about Chester. One of the dog’s you had in surgery this morning.”

  After a short pause, the voice came back on the line, with a more solemn tone. “I think that’s one of Josh Freeman’s patients. He’ll be able to give you an update soon, but he’s just caught up in surgery at the moment.”

  Alice felt embarrassed for calling when the vet had already told her he’d message her with the news. She hated the form of communication at the best of times, always out of kilter with the speaker on the other end, so the conversation was a mix of awkward silence and talking over each other.

  She thanked the woman and rang off, checking the text messages just in case before she popped the phone back into her pocket. Now for the minister. Face-to-face communication was her second most dreaded.

  The side doorway led through to a dark corridor, devoid of sunlight except what filtered through under the doors that branched off it. Alice paused inside, waiting for a second for her eyes to adjust. Although she knew the light switch was by her right shoulder, she didn’t want to draw attention to herself until she was ready.

  Footsteps approaching across the hall took that choice away from her.

  “Goodness,” Minister Snell said, taking a step back before his curiosity propelled him forward again. “You gave me quite the startle. Alice, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Alice said, stepping forward. “It’s Alice Townsend.” She paused while the minister stood waiting. “I’m surprised that you remember me.”

  “Your parents were parishioners here for a long time. Hardly going to forget about you.” He paused again, studying her from kind eyes under heavy lids. “Why don’t you come through to my study. I can barely see anything in here.”

  Alice followed him along to the room, blinking against the sunlight when the door opened. She walked into a white bubble, scarcely able to make out the chair the minister waved her toward. Screwing her eyes up against the glare just made them water doubly when she opened them wide again.

  “Now, why’ve you come along here after such a long break?”

  The way he framed the question made Alice blush. She’d never had time for the church growing up and after her parents died, hadn’t given a second thought to whether she’d continue to attend the services. Although her parents had raved about the sense of community, the pleasure of other people’s company had been lost on their daughter.

  Her parents had died within a few weeks of each other. For her mother, Alice had known about her leukemia and the declining fight for survival for a long time. When the last bout struck, there’d been more than enough time to prepare.

  The surprise had been when her father went to the doctor during the same time to ask about his annoying cough and was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer.

  The news heralded his immediate decline. Within two weeks, his battle was over. Alice had tried to help her mother with the preparations for his funeral, but she was in a state of shock. Her abilities, already compromised when it came to social niceties, grew even shakier.

  This was long before her diagnosis. Back in the time when instead of autism, her behavior was blamed on weirdness, being anti-social, or just being plain naughty. When her mother’s long-expected death followed, Alice had been left to deal with everything alone.

  Although neighbors and old friends had flocked around her parents, all attending the funerals to pay their respects, nobody had been close enough to Alice to stick around afterward to see how she was doing.

  Soon, the overwhelming emotions got the better of her, and she spent most of her days in bed. If it hadn’t been for the chores around the farm necessary to keep the animals alive, Alice doubted she would have bothered to get up at all.

  Minister Snell had turned up and kept showing up until Alice answered his knock at the door. Once he assessed the extent of her situation, he wouldn’t leave until she agreed to attend a community barbecue he’d organized for the following day.

  Even though she’d been faithful to her word, Alice spent most of the first hour at the event, guarding the corner of the room from harm. She had gathered a plate of food only because it would have been rude not to. After that, she’d sat down and waited for it to be time to leave.

  “Do you mind if I sit down here?” a voice had asked, entering into the fog of gloom that passed for Alice’s mind at the time. “Only, I don’t really want to be here, but if I sit by myself, the minister will no doubt send someone across to see if I’m all right.”

  The same fear had been on Alice’s mind, and she looked up in surprise, meeting the blue eyes of a cheery blonde before her gaze fell back down to her plate of food again. “Sure,” she’d mumbled. “I don’t mind.”

  “I’m Sally,” the strangely cheerful woman said. “And I don’t know why the minister insisted I come along to this shindig. He said it’d be a party, but this looks nothing like the parties where I come from!”

  “If he’d tol
d me it was a party, I would’ve run a mile.”

  Instead of giving her a strained look, as people usually did when Alice ventured into mixed company, the woman just gave a small snort of agreement. “I get that. There’s nothing worse than crowds of people when you just want to be left alone.”

  They’d talked for a while, expressing their shared indignation at being asked to attend, and to Alice’s surprise, Sally seemed genuinely interested in her conversation. She stayed so much longer than initially planned that Minister Snell had time to serve up dessert, including the honey and cider cake Alice had contributed.

  Her mother had always insisted that she never turn up empty handed to a social gathering, and the command had stuck.

  “This is delicious,” Sally commented with her mouth half full.

  Alice had given her a sidelong glance before deciding that the woman didn’t know she’d baked it. “I can give you the recipe if you like.”

  “You made this?” Sally’s eyes opened wide as Alice nodded. “It’s wonderful, and I’d love that recipe. I quite enjoy baking myself, but I’ve created nothing quite so delicious.”

  “It’s the honey,” Alice explained, her eyes lighting up as she moved onto her favorite subject. “I caretake the bees who produce it, and they’re the hardest working little creatures in the entire world. We have a range of different plants to affect the taste so I can produce honey to suit any occasion. My dad was going to help me plant out a manuka paddock next, to see if we could get the medicinal benefits as well.”

  At the thought of her father, Alice’s throat closed up, and her eyes and nose watered. Sally handed her a small pocket pack of tissues, and she fumbled one out just in time.

  “Is your dad dead?”

  The blunt question was a relief to Alice, who sometimes didn’t understand the questions people asked when they skirted around topics with too much delicacy. She nodded and ventured, “My mom is too. They both died within the past month.”

  “Ouch,” Sally said, wincing. “That’s rough. So, does that mean you no longer have the bees?”

  Alice felt a stabbing sensation in her chest. Although the property had passed to her, if she couldn’t find a way to make money soon, the bank would be on hand to reclaim it.

  “For the moment, it’s still mine.”

  “Well, then.” Sally licked the tip of her finger and pressed it against the errant crumbs of cake still littering her plate. Once it was clean, she stood up and waved for Alice to walk ahead of her. “Come on, let’s go and visit this magical land of bees.”

  Although Alice would never in a million years have shown a total stranger her home and hives, Sally already felt closer to her than any other person she knew. Once her family had been deducted, it left her with only the occasional trades person or shop assistant in her circle of acquaintances.

  “They’re magnificent,” Sally stated emphatically when she saw the hives with the worker bees just returning at the end of a long day. One bee alighted on her arm, and she carefully returned it to a daisy head bobbing in the grass at her feet.

  That one gesture alone made her a hero in Alice’s eyes.

  After an hour spent wandering the land, Sally took a teaspoon of Alice’s freshly prepared honey and offered a smile of heart-breaking enjoyment. “I can’t believe you keep this to yourself,” she muttered. “Don’t you have bees enough to produce this in bulk?”

  At that, Alice showed Sally the storage room, packed full of rows of honey, all carefully bottled and packed away each year. “I just never worked out how to market it or who to sell it too,” Alice said with a trace of sadness. “I tried to sell it online, but it’s harder than you’d think.”

  “But you could just sell this from a roadside stall, and you’d have customers flocking from all around.”

  Alice shuddered at the thought of people cramming close to her, expecting to hand her money, perhaps even touching her as they did so.

  “What we need to do is set up a cafe,” Sally announced in a firm voice, her eyes glowing with the possibilities. “We could sell your honey to the customers while they’re eating one of your delicious cakes.”

  The idea appalled Alice until Sally volunteered to be the front of house and to keep her away from any potential human interaction. “We share the proceeds fifty-fifty,” she declared. “I handle all the people, and you handle the bees.”

  So the business had grown at the same rate as their friendship, all brought about by the forced interaction with Minister Snell. In that time, it had never occurred to Alice to ask Sally about her past—only knowing what she volunteered. But if anyone were to know something different, then surely it would be the man who brought the two of them together.

  “I want to ask you about Sally Philton,” Alice said now. “She’s under arrest for murder, and the police seem to have evidence on her from other incidents.”

  Alice leaned forward in her seat and tried to force herself to meet the minister’s gaze. Her actual focus point slid away from that, resting somewhere just below his eyes. Close enough. “I want to know how you knew her, and why she was at the community barbecue that day.”

  No matter how much Alice pressed him, Minister Snell wasn’t forthcoming with his knowledge. Nevertheless, she could tell from the tightness of his face, that the news about Sally’s arrest didn’t come as a complete surprise. His expression was more one of disappointment than astonishment, as though he’d known all along that something similar might happen.

  “I can’t reveal anything about one of my parishioners,” the minister insisted as Alice queried him again. “You know that. I wouldn’t share your secrets with anybody, and Sally deserves the same respect.”

  “But she’s in trouble,” Alice insisted, slapping her hand down on the oak desk. “If I don’t know what her past is, then I can’t help her now.”

  “If Sally wanted you to know her past, then she would have told you. You’ve known and worked with each other for years now, haven’t you?” When Sally nodded, he continued, “There you have it, then. If her past was information she wanted to share, there was every opportunity to do it.”

  Alice felt the tears building up behind her eyes and fought them back. She didn’t want to become overwhelmed again. Not being able to function appropriately would take away the only chance to help her friend. Instead, she sniffed and tipped her head back, letting gravity help put the tears away.

  “How about you?” the minister asked. “How are you doing with this news? If you want to come along to a service, then there’s one tonight in about an hour.”

  Alice jumped to her feet at the news, shaking her head. “No, and I don’t want to hold you up if you need to prepare.”

  At that, Minister Snell laughed. “I’ve been doing God’s work for a lifetime. If I needed to learn to set aside time to deal with emergencies, then I wouldn’t be very good at my job.”

  “I need to go,” Alice insisted. “My dog’s at the vet’s office and I need to see how he’s doing.”

  The minister reluctantly escorted her out, on a wave of hollow promises to call in and revisit him sometime. Back in her car, Alice sat with her hands on the wheel for a minute, trying to work out what to do now.

  Her phone beeped with a message from the vet. “Chester is still unwell. The room is set up if you want to stay with him overnight.”

  Well, that sorted out her priorities. With another long sniff, Alice drove off to spend the night visiting with her dog.

  Chapter Ten

  The cot Josh had set up for Alice was narrow, and she felt trapped in one position through fear of falling. In other circumstances, she would have preferred to just head back home and escape to the comfort of her familiar bed.

  The only attraction the cot had going for it was its proximity to Chester. It was less than a foot from the table he still lay upon, and on the same level so she could reach across and lie with one arm resting on her dog’s side.

  Chester’s breathing was regular,
but that wasn’t down to him. A ventilator puffed each lungful into his mouth with clockwork precision, letting him exhale on his own before pumping another swallow of oxygen into his mouth.

  Although the rhythmic sound should have soothed Alice, she soon grew to hate the noise. If Chester roused from his overlong sleep, he would begin to fight the machines. That was the sound her ears were listening for.

  The surgery had an overnight vet on hand for their patients and any new emergency arrivals. Josh had introduced them, but the name had floated in and out of Alice’s head within the same second, and she just nodded blankly at the man.

  He was also sleeping on a cot but in a different room. One not populated with a dog. A monitor affixed to each overnighting animal would alert him if something went wrong.

  For the first few minutes after arriving, Alice hoped that Chester would respond to her voice or her touch. She’d peered intently into his velvety face, scanning for the slightest sign that the unconscious dog knew she was there. Her hope had slipped away with each puff of the ventilator, with each beep of the heart monitor strapped around his chest.

  Now, too wound up to sleep and desperate for a distraction from her maudlin thoughts, Alice pulled out her phone and clicked onto the internet. If Sally had done something wrong enough to be convicted in a court of law, there was a chance that someone online would have a record.

  After searching for a good twenty minutes, following links that led her down rabbit holes and back up again, Alice found a website that monitored all the open courtroom cases held at the Christchurch District Court. She searched through them for Sally’s name, but that produced no results.

  Confident that if it were anywhere, it would be in there, Alice then started the long process of searching through one article at a time. At least she didn’t need to worry about sorting through the plethora of reports from after her friendship with Sally had begun, but that was the only saving grace.