Strawberries and Suffering Page 6

  She walked the distraught teenager out of the room, Elvira’s sobs lessening as the reality that everything was okay hit home.

  “She’s the kid with the sick mother, right?” Emma asked, cocking an eyebrow at Aidan.

  The man’s face colored and he dropped his eyes to the floor, shamefaced. “Yeah. Her mother has multiple sclerosis. She’s had a flare-up lately, it’s gotten pretty bad.”

  “Nice timing, then.” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

  Holly managed to draw in a breath. After his playact, her chest had tightened up so dramatically that her lungs refused to do her bidding. As oxygen once again flowed through her body, Holly’s muscles also began to unclench.

  “How about you don’t do anything like that again?” she said. “If you’re going to act up, I think you need to work out how to pick your moments.”

  A chastened Aidan followed the two women back into the cupcake room, with Emma still shaking her head.

  “You know, your cousin had a point, though.” When Aidan started to open his mouth, she flapped a hand at him as though irritated. “Not the water, I don’t believe that for a minute. But the glass could have had something on it. Didn’t he wipe it down before he took a drink?”

  Holly started to slowly nod, seeing the memory roll, frame by frame, in her mind’s eye. “Yeah. I’d just grabbed it out of the same box you took one from in the kitchen because the rest of them all had strawberries in them. He wiped it. I thought it must be a lipstick stain or something.”

  Emma walked toward the door, checking back over her shoulder as Holly and Aidan stared at her, confused. “Well, the glass should still be sitting on the floor out there. About time we roped that patch of the floor off as a crime scene, just in case.”

  Holly followed Emma through into the main hall, keeping her eyes closed to a squint until she verified that Arnold’s body had been moved. When they got to the place by the grand staircase where he’d collapsed, Holly got a shock.

  “Where is the glass?” she asked, moving her toe across the spilled crumbs and shards from the dropped cupcake and saucer. “Even if it smashed, there should be pieces here.”

  Aidan stepped around the edge, careful not to put a foot into the middle of what might be evidence. He shook his head. “Nothing. Did somebody take the glass back into the kitchen? You were headed there when Arnold collapsed, weren’t you?”

  Holly slowly nodded, looking at the floor as though the glass might appear at any moment. She sighed. Even the worst of a ‘man-look’ would have shown it up by now.

  “I had it in my hand,” she said, her fingers curling in unconscious imitation of the gesture. “I turned to go back to the kitchen, and then I got twisted around and lifted forward when the staff surged to Arnold’s aid. I don’t remember what happened to it after that.”

  “You must have put it down.” Emma put her hands on her hips. “But either way, it’s not here, is it? Maybe somebody else picked it up and tidied it away.”

  Aidan nodded. “We should check in the kitchen. Perhaps they tidied it back into its box.”

  The three of them walked through to the kitchen, Holly’s face dropping when she saw the bench was clear.

  Emma tipped the box up, showing six flutes still inside and a gap where the one Aidan had taken and Arnold’s one had been resting. “Well, that’s a no-go. I wonder if it’s worth checking in the room they took Arnold to.”

  Holly withdrew a step, her hands wringing together. “I don’t think I can,” she said apologetically, a tremble starting in her shoulders. “I’m just not built for this kind of thing.”

  “I’ll check,” Aidan said. “It’s the least I can do after traumatizing everyone. Give me a minute.”

  As he left, the front door opened again, protesting the movement with a squeal. It must have swelled with the rain, the wood now rubbing against the jamb as it moved.

  Holly and Emma walked through to the hall to see who it was. To Holly’s surprise, she saw the minister standing on the doorstep.

  “Why on earth have you come here?” she asked, then blushed at her forwardness. “Sorry, I mean, I thought you would be drier and safer in the church.”

  The minister nodded. “Much drier, I’m afraid.” He shook his head, and drops of water flew out to either side, much like a dog shaking itself dry. Except, when he stopped, the minister looked just as damp.

  “I brought the girls along. Their parents decided to stay at the church, rather than crowding in here, but the youngsters wanted to check on their friend.”

  He turned, seeming surprised that the teenagers he referred to weren’t standing behind him. After a moment, the minister walked back outside and looked about, giving a wave.

  “They’re still in the car,” he said, wandering back inside. “Elvira is here, isn’t she? I couldn’t remember if she left before we heard about the roads closing, or not.”

  “She’s here,” Holly said. “Aidan brought her along when he came here. Esmerelda is also about somewhere, though I don’t think they traveled together.”

  “Goodness, no. They wouldn’t,” the minister exclaimed but didn’t add anything that would have let Holly know what he was talking about.

  With a squeal, two teenage girls pushed through the door, holding a paper above their heads for the scant protection. Considering how hard the rain still poured down, they’d come off lightly. Wet from the knees down, but both girls’ hair was dry.

  “What a miserable day,” one girl said brightly. Instead of being dressed solely in black, like Elvira and the girl standing at her side, the one speaking had purple tights and a bright red petticoat poking through. “Gosh, this is a big place,” she observed, turning in a slow circle. “Are you Aidan’s new girlfriend?”

  Holly took a step back, shaking her head and feeling a twinge of disappointment. New girlfriend? “No, I’m Holly Waterston from the cupcake bakery, and this is Emma Whelps, who’s one of the waiters here.”

  “I’m Midnight,” the girl said, giggling as she extended her hand. “And this is Winter,” she added as her friend ventured a step closer.

  “Nice to meet you both. Elvira had an upset earlier, so she’s just gone off with her granny somewhere. I’m not sure where.”

  “You mean, voluntarily?” Winter asked. When Holly nodded, the girl shook her head. “It must’ve been a mighty big upset, then. I thought she came here to escape the old witch.”

  “Girls!” the minister said, provoking another round of giggling.

  Holly wanted to walk away as she understood that none of them knew what had just happened. Man up, for goodness sake, she lectured herself.

  “There’s been a regrettable incident,” Holly said. She raised her eyebrows at Emma, seeking some help.

  “Arnold, the head butler here, has experienced a heart attack. We’re all quite shaken up, and we haven’t been able to contact anyone just yet.”

  “Is he okay?” the minister asked, looking from Emma to Holly and back again. His brow furrowed as he appeared to read from their expressions that Arnold was not. “Oh, dear.”

  “Do you have a landline at the church?” Holly asked in a sudden burst of excitement. It ebbed away as she realized it was too late to call anybody.

  The minister was nodding, though. “Yes. I’ve got a phone, but we tried it before we came here. The lines must be down.”

  Of course, they are. You already knew that. Holly felt like smacking her forehead in the universal gesture for, doh!

  “Could you show me where Arnold is laying?” the minister asked. “I don’t think he was a devout man, but I’d like to pray for him if you think that’s okay.”

  “I don’t know…” Emma trailed off and looked at Holly, biting her lip and nodding at the two teenage girls.

  “Come with me,” Holly said, not intending to show the minister the room, but needing to talk to him out of earshot. “Why don’t you take Winter and Midnight and try to find out where Esmerelda got to?
Did you hear Arnold assign them a room?” Emma nodded. “They might have gone in there.”

  As they headed upstairs, Holly pulled the minster close to the cupcake room, out of earshot of the few people still milling helplessly in the hall.

  “We’re not certain that the heart attack that Arnold suffered was from natural causes,” Holly explained. “Until we find a way to call the police and ambulance services out here, we don’t really want anybody touching anything.”

  “I understand,” the minister said, nodding. “Do you need a hand roping off some of this stuff, then?” He pointed to the smashed crockery at the base of the stairs.

  “That would be great. Do you have something we could do that with?”

  The minister turned in a semi-circle, looking at the polished wood floors and the ornate banister leading up the side of the stairs.

  “Can you show me to the kitchen? I think I know what we can use.”

  Holly showed him through, raising her eyebrows as he started to open various drawers. “What is it that you’re looking for?”

  “Clingfilm,” Minister Woodfield said, holding a roll aloft in triumph. “This will easily stick to the floors and banisters. We can rope it off as neatly as if we had a length of police tape.”

  “Nice.” Holly pulled out a second roll, unsure of how much they’d need. “I might just rely on a sign on the door they took Arnold into. I’m sure that no one would go in there unless they had to.”

  “Better to be safe than sorry,” the minister said. “If we’ve got someone here that might have done something they shouldn’t, then we’d do better if we suspect that they’ll be trying to fudge the evidence and put every roadblock possible in their path.”

  “We might be too late on that front,” Holly admitted. When Minister Woodfield raised his eyebrows in inquiry, she quickly filled him in about the glass.

  “Secure the rest of the box, at least,” he advised, sending her back into the kitchen. “Put some dishwashing gloves on before you pick it up, and we’ll put it in the bedroom with poor old Mr. Mellett before we do our best to seal it shut.”

  “Was that Arnold’s surname?” Holly asked. “Did you know him well?”

  “Not well, but when you’ve lived around this place as long as I have, you get to know everybody, pretty much.”

  “I thought that I pretty much knew everyone,” Holly admitted. “Then I turned up here and realized that I’d only been exposed to a tiny fraction from the center of the township.”

  “Yeah. There’s a lot of people who live around here, some of them for generations, and they only ever stay on the same plot of land they were born on. Going to an occasional sermon at the local church is the highlight of their social interaction.” Minister Woodfield sat back on his haunches, stretching his neck from side to side. “Until I got involved with the smaller congregations, I didn’t know more than a fraction, either. People around here keep to themselves.”

  He swept his arm out in a full circle, but Holly guessed he talked only about the land from the outskirts of Hanmer Springs. The people from inside the circle of the town certainly didn’t ‘keep to themselves.’

  To help people know that the room Arnold lay inside wasn’t to be entered, Holly stuck some flat and brightly colored cupcake papers behind the clingfilm. The message scrawled on them in black marker said, Keep out!

  If somebody went into the room after that, it was clear they wanted something. No one could accidentally wander in.

  “Now what?” Holly asked. It was nice to have someone else to turn to for answers. Each moment that passed lessened the strain on her shoulders and neck.

  “Now, I suggest that we keep everybody in the same room as much as possible.” Minister Woodfield shrugged. “It’s not a perfect plan, but it should lessen the field of suspects if any further incidents occur.”

  “I hope they don’t.” Holly swept her curls away from her forehead and put a hand on her hip as she looked around the main hall. “The best outcome for me would be that everything that has happened today was accidental and once the storm has passed, we can all go home.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” the minister agreed.

  Holly headed away from the kitchens, making the presumption that the larger rooms for entertaining would be opposite. She was right. Behind a pair of ornately carved mahogany doors lay a place prepared for the reception to breathtaking effect. Holly had been impressed with the level of decoration at the church, but it was nothing compared to the excess of design and flounce showing in the enormous dining room.

  The area must usually be used as a ballroom, judging by the expansive floor and high-hanging chandeliers. Now, it was dotted with tables, each decorated with napkins, flowers, candles, and ribbons in the signature color—pink. At a guess, Holly thought that might be chosen by the bride rather than the groom.

  “Well, this has plenty of space, doesn’t it?” Minister Woodfield stepped into the room, and headed straight to the closest table, knocking his knuckles on the top. “Lovely.”

  “I guess we should make a start in rounding everyone up,” Holly said. “It’s a pity that we can’t use it for its intended purpose.”

  “Why not?” Minister Woodfield turned to her with his eyebrows raised. While Holly’s face twisted into an expression of puzzlement, he laughed. “I mean, there’s no wedding without the groom here, but I’m sure everybody would appreciate being fed. The kitchens are still operable, I take it?”

  “As far as I know.” Holly frowned. “It feels like it would be stealing, for some reason.”

  “Well, let’s ask the bride.” Minister Woodfield swept past Holly and out the door. “If she’s happy for the reception to go ahead, sans wedding, then I say we go for it!”

  Holly followed him out of the reception room and upstairs, careful to avoid stepping across the section they’d filmed off. Although Holly had an idea which room might belong to Sheila and Derek—she guessed from Arnold’s earlier comments that the suit he’d shown her into was earmarked for the bridal couple—she could have found them without that knowledge. Sheila’s shrieks were loud enough to alert anybody to her location.

  “I’m not wearing a skanky maid’s uniform for the rest of the day. Find me something decent, I don’t care where. This is my wedding day!”

  Minister Woodfield pulled a face at Holly. “Do you think she’s in the right frame of mind for a request?” he whispered.

  Holly shrugged. Her only acquaintance with Sheila was through her mother, Wendy. Presumably, the current bad mood was due to the appalling luck of her wedding day so far, but Holly didn’t know her enough to say for sure. Certainly, the shrill tones emanating from the suite sounded like they’d had a lot of practice.

  Derek might have had a lucky break, Holly’s mind said, before she could stop the dreadful thought from penetrating,

  The door opened, and a man spilled out into the hallway, tripping over himself in his eagerness to get away.

  As Holly turned to watch his progress down the stairs, the minister whispered, “That’s Greg. His mother is a bit of a control freak, so he’ll be used to the shouting.”

  Holly and the minister stood in the hall, too unsure to venture forward but without another plan to draw them back. A minute later, Sheila staggered out into the hallway followed by another staff member with a worried look on his face.

  “Oh, it’s the cupcake murderer,” Sheila yelled. “Come to do us in again, have you?”

  “I didn’t—”

  But Sheila wasn’t about to let Holly speak a word in her defense. Despite the hallway only containing the four people, she raised her voice to state, “You tried to kill my father-in-law, and now you’re trying to murder his son. I wouldn’t stay in her company if I were you, Minister. Aiding and abetting have their own prison term, you know.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Sheila Tahoe! How dare you talk to this kind woman like that? Take it back at once.”

  Holly was alarm
ed at the shade Minister Woodfield’s face turned but not as shocked as Sheila was. The bride-to-be took a step back, her mouth working as though aching to say something further but too scared to do so. In the end, she settled for a haughty sniff and strode past them.

  “I think we may as well feed everyone since the day is otherwise ruined,” Sheila said. “Unless the minister finds that idea offensive, as well.”

  With their aim achieved, though in quite different circumstances than she’d hoped, Holly and Minister Woodfield followed Sheila downstairs. Within a few minutes, the bride had issued orders and organized the guests into the reception hall. The feat was so amazing that Holly felt a begrudging sense of respect.

  “No. Not there,” Sheila said as Holly tried to grab a seat next to Emma. “That’s the table for extra wait-staff. You’re a caterer.”

  The respect vanished as quickly as it had shown up. Holly shook her head. “I’m sitting here, whether you mind or not.”

  Although Sheila opened her mouth, presumably to object, Aidan appeared near Holly’s elbow with the rest of his family in tow.

  “I think we should all sit where we like, don’t you?” Sheila’s face relaxed into a smile as Aidan’s easy-going charm came into full-force. “Everyone’s had such a shock today, I think that imposing seating restrictions on them might drive them around the bend. Wouldn’t you rather sit with other people than alone at the bridal party table?”

  Sheila looked back toward the long row of empty seats. With her groom and mother missing, along with the trail of bridesmaids and groomsmen who had been blocked by the weather, it would leave just Sheila sitting alone.

  “Okay. But if this descends into a free-for-all it’s on your head.” Sheila sat down at the next table over, already full of elder relatives expressing their regrets and sympathy.

  Aidan crossed his eyes at Holly as he took a seat. “Well, now I’m warned.”

  Elvira tried to slope away to another table, but Aidan reached out a hand and snagged her back. “I don’t think so, young lady. I want to be sure you’re okay, so you get the pleasure of sitting between Auntie and me.”