by Lee Hollis
Nobody moved at first.
Everyone was still in shock.
But as Penelope took the lead and marched back up the trail to the main house, they all slowly, like herded cattle, followed her back inside.
Penelope led the guests into the main dining room, where the kitchen staff had laid out a beautiful buffet of breakfast options including scrambled eggs, sausage, roasted potatoes, a vat of oatmeal, toast, an array of yummy baked goods, and several different kinds of coffees and teas as well as fruit juices. There were also four bottles of pricey champagne to make mimosas.
Everyone quietly and obediently picked up a plate and formed a line. Hayley noticed Carol hang back, still shaken over her grisly discovery just a couple of hours earlier. When Penelope passed by, Carol reached out and touched her arm.
Penelope, who seemed far more relaxed and calm and had no lingering signs of wet tears now that she was no longer under the watchful eye of Chief Alvares, stopped and smiled. “Yes, Carol?”
“I think it would be a good idea if, after we’ve all had breakfast, we go to our rooms and collect our things and call the airlines to rebook our flights so you can have some privacy.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at all,” Penelope said, shaking her head. “I don’t need any privacy.”
Carol was taken aback by Penelope’s matter-of-fact demeanor, which was so unlike the emotionally distraught breakdown she had apparently suffered outside, falling into the arms of the police chief, overcome with grief.
It was as if none of that had even happened.
“But surely given the circumstances . . .” Carol said, taking Penelope’s hands into her own. “What you must be going through right now . . .”
Penelope slipped her hands out of Carol’s grasp and turned to her other guests, who were standing around the buffet table, pretending not to listen.
“May I have your attention, everyone, please, I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but Carol here thinks we should cut the weekend short. She thinks I’m being insensitive for wanting you all to stay . . .”
“I never said that,” Carol murmured.
Gerard stepped forward. “We would totally understand . . .”
“A lot of money and planning have gone into this weekend, and I have every intention of seeing this through. Conrad was a big part of my show, and I know he wouldn’t want us to abandon our special holiday episode just because he died.”
The room stood in stunned silence.
Hayley couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I know he would have wanted us to keep a stiff upper lip, power through, and get the job done. Now who’s with me? Let’s see a show of hands!”
Gerard and Tristan both shot their hands up in the air in an instant.
Carol hesitated, but then shakily raised her hand, not wanting to be odd woman out.
Penelope’s loyal producers and crew also enthusiastically gave her a thumbs-up. They were being paid to agree with whatever their star wanted.
Hayley was the last one wavering, and she suddenly noticed all eyes in the room were fixed on her, especially Penelope, whose face seemed to be daring her to defy her wishes.
Although she really wanted to just go home at this point, the pressure to stay was overwhelming.
After a few more tense moments of will-she-or-won’t-she drama, Hayley found herself raising her hand, joining the others.
“It’s unanimous! The show must go on, as they say!”
There was an awkward moment as everyone stood there, waiting to take their cue from Penelope, who breezed over and picked up a shiny white plate off the pile and stood behind Hayley to wait her turn.
“I’m certainly not going to cut to the front of the line just because I own the place. Come on, people. Move it. I’m starving!”
There were some titters and smiles as everyone resumed filling their plates with breakfast food and taking their places at the large dining room table.
Hayley sat next to Carol, who kept her head down, eating silently, still obviously disturbed by the image of Conrad’s broken, twisted body on the rocks.
Hayley took a swig of her mimosa and then began cutting into her sausage. Carol turned her head slightly in Hayley’s direction and muttered, “Look at her. You’d never know in a million years that she just saw her husband’s shattered corpse.”
Hayley glanced over at Penelope, who was holding Gerard’s hand flirtatiously as he entertained her with some story about a disastrous restaurant opening in France.
Carol was right.
Penelope had never looked more relaxed and happy.
“Their marriage was a sham, you know,” Carol whispered, keeping one eye on Penelope to make sure she didn’t see them gossiping about her.
“I was starting to get that impression,” Hayley whispered, smiling at Penelope’s producer, who was watching her suspiciously.
“She despised him,” Carol said between bites of fresh grilled tomatoes. “I heard the only reason she decided to co-author that casserole cookbook was to bribe him. It was a payout. A way for her to help him get his own brand as a chef established so he would be out of her hair and finally leave her alone.”
Carol made perfect sense.
Judging from their “George and Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?” antics only hours before he died, there was certainly not a lot of love left in their tenuous marriage.
Perhaps Penelope knew about Conrad’s affair with Lena and didn’t really care? Maybe she just pretended she did. But now that he was dead, Penelope would no longer have to endure working with him so closely on a cookbook.
She was free of him.
Hayley wondered if that might have been motive enough to give him a violent shove off that cliff. Penelope was undoubtedly aware that he went there every evening to smoke his pipe and clear his head.
She could easily have snuck up behind him and surprised him.
Sergio believed it was an accident. A drunken fall.
But Hayley wasn’t so sure.
In a way, she was grateful that Penelope was so insistent on carrying on with the holiday weekend shoot for her TV show.
It would give her more time to figure out just what was going on behind the gates at this palace of intrigue.
Chapter 12
On the official schedule of events for the weekend that Hayley had received prior to her arrival at the estate was a late Saturday afternoon excursion on Penelope and Conrad’s luxury sailboat christened with the name The Foodie, a pricey forty-four-foot midsize cruiser that would comfortably accommodate six guests along with a two-man crew including a captain and one deckhand.
Hayley had been excited about the sailing trip, but assumed it had been cancelled given the somber mood that hung over the estate after the devastating and troubling death of Penelope’s husband Conrad.
Penelope, however, had no intention of shying away from any of her meticulously laid-out plans, especially a boat ride on her posh yacht that would look so good on camera for her TV show as it sailed majestically in the harbor. She sent a personal note to each of her guests requesting that, in honor of Conrad’s memory, they continue enjoying the weekend’s festivities since the weather was so beautiful, and it would be such a shame to waste the clear skies and balmy temperatures.
Oh, and “it would have been what Conrad wanted” was scribbled at the end, almost as an afterthought.
Hayley was taken aback by the callousness of the note. Penelope seemed to be skipping over the “grieving widow” part of the program that under normal circumstances she was expected to play, and steaming right ahead to the “moving on with her life” phase.
Conrad’s body had barely been recovered and shipped off to the morgue.
If Penelope actually did give her cheating husband a brutal shove off that cliff, then she was doing a terrible job of feigning innocence. Or more likely, she was indeed innocent, and just didn’t care to mourn the fresh corpse of a husband she so
obviously despised.
Either way, Hayley did what she was told, and rummaged through her luggage for a passable sailing outfit. She managed to scrounge up a nautically inspired blue striped shirt, white capri pants, a pink windbreaker, Sperry Top-Siders, and in a daring move, a cute, decorative, floppy crochet lace sun hat she had borrowed from Liddy’s closet. She probably looked utterly ridiculous wearing it, but she decided to go for it anyway.
* * *
Hayley arrived at the dock, which was located about half a mile from the estate, a short walk from the main house. She found Gerard, Tristan, Carol, and Penelope already there. A grizzled white-bearded captain right out of a Herman Melville novel, smoking a pipe just like Conrad’s, gave The Foodie a quick inspection while a muscled deckhand in his early twenties, who introduced himself as Tommy, stood by to assist the VIP passengers aboard the vessel.
“It’s such a beautiful day for a sail,” Penelope exclaimed, shading her eyes from the sun with a hand as she took in the crystal-blue harbor stretching out to sea before them.
There was an unspoken tension as the others struggled with how to deal with this odd and awkward situation. They filed up the plank and aboard the boat, with a welcoming smile from Tommy, to find champagne, orange juice, baskets of muffins and croissants, and a plate stacked with strawberries, blueberries, melon, and pineapple awaiting them, along with a piping hot pot of fresh coffee.
After a quick safety rundown from the captain, who kept winking at Carol while he demonstrated how to secure a life vest around your chest and torso in the unlikely event that the boat sank, The Foodie chugged slowly out of the harbor and farther out into the deep blue sea as the passengers began picking over the muffins and fruit plate.
Penelope chatted amiably with Gerard and Tristan while Hayley hovered by the food table with Carol.
“The muffins look delicious,” Hayley said to Carol, trying desperately to make conversation and pretend everything was normal.
Carol shook her head and scowled. “Probably five hundred calories a pop, but go ahead and knock yourself out!”
Carol opened up a large wicker picnic basket she had brought aboard with her, and pulled out wrapped containers of fresh veggies including carrots, celery, and sliced cucumbers, her signature homemade gluten-free dips, which she sold at her online store, a small bottle of honey mustard, and a garlic herb hummus.
Hayley kept a watchful eye on Penelope as they sailed along the coast. At one point, they spotted a whale thrashing along just a few hundred yards out at sea. Penelope remained poised and bouncy and in remarkable high spirits.
Hayley also noticed that Lena Hendricks had not been seen nor heard from since Conrad’s body had been discovered. Either she was sequestered in her room crying, or she had been ordered to vacate the premises immediately.
At this point, it was anyone’s guess.
Hayley glanced over to see Tristan wandering off toward the far end of the boat by himself as Penelope, Gerard, and Carol gossiped about a network executive at the Lifestyle Network who had green-lit Carol’s show and was currently cheating on his wife with a major Food Network on-camera talent.
Uninterested in that conversation, Hayley picked up her half-full champagne glass and tiptoed away, smiling at the handsome young deckhand Tommy, who nodded as she passed while he practiced tying a bowline knot with a thick piece of rope. He was obviously still in training.
The captain was parked behind the wheel, relighting his pipe, as he gazed upon the horizon, his already deeply red pockmarked face that wasn’t hidden by his bushy white beard getting more burnt by the harsh rays of the sun as each minute passed.
Hayley casually joined Tristan in the stern of the boat.
He glanced at her next to him, and gave her a half smile, not appearing to be annoyed that she was crowding his personal space. It wasn’t a very big boat to begin with so there weren’t many places to go for privacy.
“What a strange day,” Hayley said, leaning against the back railing and staring out at sea.
Tristan nodded. “I still can’t believe it. Conrad sure had his faults, but overall he was a pretty decent guy. Nobody deserves to go like that. I can’t imagine what went through his mind in those last few seconds after he fell.”
“So you agree with the police that he fell and it was a just a horrible accident?”
Tristan stared at Hayley, stupefied. “Of course. Why? You don’t?”
“No, it sure appears that way. I mean, it all makes sense. It rained for a short time last night and the rocks were slippery, and we all saw how drunk Conrad was earlier in the evening . . ”
“Exactly,” Tristan said. “The facts speak for themselves. And there is no point in trying to make more of something when there’s nothing there.”
He glanced sideways at her pointedly.
Hayley nodded and sipped her champagne.
“Are you still trying to sell that wild story you told everybody about Conrad and Penelope’s secretary secretly plotting to do away with her?”
“I wasn’t trying to sell anybody a story. I know what I heard,” Hayley said defensively before adding, “but I admit I was very sick and disoriented at the time . . .”
“You want my advice? There’s enough drama going on this weekend, and you’re only going to make things worse by fanning the flames.”
“So you believe I made the whole thing up?”
“No, it has nothing to do with me. I just met Conrad and Penelope. They’re my father’s friends, not mine. I have no investment in any of this.”
“What about Lena?”
“I don’t know her either.”
“Funny, I saw the two of you talking yesterday.”
Tristan scrunched up his face, putting on a big show of trying to remember. “Are you sure it was me?”
Hayley gave him a sideways glance. “Yes, and I was fully recovered from the food poisoning and can say with full confidence I was not hallucinating anything at the time.”
“Oh, right, yeah, we did have a very brief exchange,” Tristan said, suddenly remembering. “We ran into each other out in the garden and chatted for a few minutes. Mostly about the potluck contest and what I was going to make. I didn’t even remember her name at the time. I think I called her Laura by accident and she had to correct me.”
“Interesting,” Hayley said flatly.
“What do you mean? Why do you say that? There was nothing to it.”
“You just seemed to be more familiar with each other, that’s all. I saw the two of you holding hands at one point.”
Tristan’s face froze for a moment, but then he quickly recovered and forced a smile. “She’s a very beautiful woman. Any man would have trouble keeping his hands to myself. But trust me. There’s no secret affair going on between us.”
“I see Miss Marple has been peppering you with her nosy questions, son,” Gerard Roquefort blared, loud enough for everyone on the boat to hear.
“We were just talking,” Hayley said softly.
“Why must you insist on stirring up trouble, especially on this day, when Penelope is going through such heartbreak?”
Hayley glanced at Penelope, who had been happily drinking her champagne at that moment, but then on Gerard’s cue, like a trained actress, she slapped on a feeble look of despair.
“She thinks I’m sleeping with Penelope’s secretary, and I’m guessing her theory is that Conrad was too, and so I killed him in order to get him out of the way so I could be with my one true love, the exquisite and voluptuous and seductive Lena Hendricks,” Tristan joked.
But it didn’t sound like a joke.
It sounded like a perfectly plausible theory.
Out of the mouth of a very plausible suspect.
And it was also suspicious that just moments before Tristan claimed he couldn’t even remember Lena’s first name, and now not only did he get it right, but he also easily rattled off her last name as well.
“I think it would be wise if you would st
op all this nonsense, Hayley,” Gerard bellowed, making as big a scene as he could to embarrass her. “Before you get poor Penelope even more despondent than she already is!”
Hayley was mortified and shaking and just wanted to shrink away as all eyes on the boat were laser focused on her, awaiting her reaction to Gerard’s tirade, including the venerable old captain and his cute, shaggy-haired deckhand Tommy.
“Can you do us that one favor, Hayley?” Gerard spit out.
Hayley stared at him, speechless.
“Well, can you?” Gerard shouted.
Hayley nodded and turned away from everyone, downing the rest of her champagne, turning her back to all of those judging eyes, and gazing out at the island in the distance behind them, wishing she was back on dry land, away from these miserable, odious people she had once idolized—one of whom, she was convinced, was a cold-blooded killer.
Chapter 13
Hayley let out a huge sigh of relief when the captain steered the boat around and finally headed back to shore. After her dressing-down from Gerard Roquefort, she had managed to keep her distance from the others, mostly staying put near the stern of the boat while the other passengers socialized and finished off the champagne and breakfast items up in the bow of The Foodie.
None of Penelope’s other guests made any attempt to engage Hayley in any further conversation. It was as if she were contagious with some social disease, and nobody was willing to get too close to her.
Finally, as Tommy the deckhand lowered the sails, and the captain stood steadfastly at the wheel, guiding the boat in the direction of the harbor’s dock, the engine chugging, Penelope herself walked from the bow to the stern along the starboard side and joined Hayley.
“I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy our little outing today, Hayley,” Penelope said, pursing her lips in a fake pout.
“I didn’t mean to cause a scene, Penelope,” Hayley said.
“You didn’t cause a scene. Gerard did. He can be very protective of me. We go back a long time,” Penelope said.
“I’m just very troubled by what has happened.”
