The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  Sheila pulled a chair close to her, the legs squealing in protest over the hard-wood floor. She slumped down, sucking at the lip of the bottle for another helping of wine. “You ruined my wedding, and now you’ve ruined my marriage.”

  As Wendy dissolved into hysterical tears, Holly pulled her into a hug. The woman’s sobs were so intense that her entire body shook with them. Holly cast a desperate glance behind her, hoping to catch Crystal’s eye. She caught Emma’s instead.

  The woman came over, not hurrying but not dragging her feet, either. Emma placed a hand on Wendy’s shoulder, giving her a quick pat of reassurance.

  Holly jerked her head at Sheila and then experienced a flutter of doubt. Should she really expect Emma to put aside her resentment long enough to help? It would be a tough call for anybody in the room to step forward, but for Emma, it must be far worse.

  Too late. Emma sat down next to Sheila and pulled gently at the bottle. “Why don’t you at least let me fetch you a glass?”

  Sheila jerked her arm back, spilling another slop of wine out of the bottle. “I don’t need a glass. Knowing you, you’d just put something horrible in there. Don’t think I don’t know that you were out back spitting in my food.”

  The accusation was ridiculous. Not only since it was the antithesis of Emma’s personality, but also because she’d been sitting in plain view of Sheila while the dinner was served.

  But common sense appeared to have deserted the bride. A position that Holly would sympathize with—given the circumstances—if only it hadn’t been directed toward a friend.

  “I know you! You’re the one who could barely wait for me to finish with William before you got your claws into him.” Sheila staggered to her feet, leaning forward in an aggressive stance as Emma sat glued to her chair. “My poor Willy should have ended up with someone nice and beautiful and deserving of his affection. Instead, he ended up with you.”

  Wendy disengaged from her hug with Holly. She cast an apologetic glance toward Emma before advancing upon her daughter again.

  “Come on, love. You’ve had a shock. Everybody knows it. Let’s just go upstairs and rest until we hear some news.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Sheila twisted toward her mother, nearly falling as her weight shifted too far to one side. She recovered herself with the luck of the drunk, staying upright.

  “If you pull me into a room alone, then who knows which one of these savages will come for me.” Sheila pointed the bottle toward random guests, all staring on with either open horror or fascinated delight.

  “If I’m in the bridal suite, I’ll never see one of these sneaky people coming. They’ll be in and stabbing or shooting me before I know it. Or making me eat one of their toxic cakes.”

  Minister Woodfield stepped forward, gently moving Wendy aside. “Sheila, you’re making a fool of yourself. Nobody can blame you for having a bad reaction to what’s happened today, but you need to rein it in now. None of this is your mother’s fault, and I think it’s a good suggestion that you rest for a while.”

  When Sheila didn’t respond, the minister continued, “It can’t be easy having to deal with all this excitement on what should have been a lovely day of celebration. Go off upstairs to your suite and have a nice nap. We’ll take care of business down here and rest assured—no one will be sneaking around anywhere attacking anyone. You have my word on it!”

  “Your word,” Sheila scoffed. She swung around once more, losing her footing and falling to one knee. “Everybody here hates me and hates my mother. They only turned up at this wedding to stare and gloat.”

  “That’s not true,” Holly said, squatting down beside Sheila. “Surely, you know that everybody here wished nothing but the best for you?”

  “No, they didn’t.” Sheila sat and stared at the floor, her energy draining away until her limbs were soft and limp. “I don’t think there’s anybody in this room who genuinely cares for me.”

  Wendy knelt down and pulled her daughter into a hug. “Don’t be silly,” she whispered. “You know I love you. Everybody here was just as excited to celebrate your wedding as you were.”

  “Mommy?” Sheila hid her face, pressing the side of her head against Wendy’s chest. “Nobody here ever gave a tuppence about either of us.”

  Wendy cast a pleading glance over her shoulder. Holly, Crystal, Emma, and the minister formed a line, shielding her and Sheila against prying eyes.

  “You know that’s not true. Who wouldn’t love my bright, beautiful girl?” Wendy rocked her daughter back and forth, stroking her hair until she seemed to calm down.

  “Why don’t we head upstairs?” she suggested again. “Now that the power’s on again, I can run you a nice bath and you can get out of that damp dress. By the time you’re back out, I’m sure the hospital will have some news for us about Derek. Good news.”

  Sheila seemed to acquiesce. She let her mother pull her to her feet, leaving the bottle standing on the floor. The ruin of her face was so devastating to look at that Holly turned to one side, giving a small, helpless smile when she met Aidan’s eye.

  “Come on, love. Only a few more minutes and you can be in a nice, hot bath.”

  Wendy led her daughter toward the door as the human shield followed along, keeping pace.

  They’d reached the double doors leading out to the entrance hall when Sheila suddenly started, pushed back, and broke away.

  Tottering on her own again, she stood back, staring around her with wild eyes. When they fixed on Emma, she pointed an accusing finger once again.

  “You,” she whispered, an expression of dawning horror sweeping up her face. “It was you.”

  Sheila slapped herself on the forehead, once, twice, thrice. The smack of skin against skin was loud as a hushed silence spread across the room.

  “I saw you. This morning,” Sheila whispered. She threw her head back, staring up at the ceiling as though the answers to life would be glowing back down on her. “I’ve been so stupid. It was you all along!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Emma’s eyes turned to slits, and she took a purposeful step forward. Holly was next to her in line and snaked an arm around her waist to pull her back. As the last recipient of Sheila’s false accusation frenzy, Holly could understand what Emma would be feeling. Best she wasn’t left to demonstrate that emotion.

  Not with witnesses.

  “That’s silly,” Holly said. She tipped her chin up as she stared at Sheila. The effect of the wine made itself more fully known—Sheila’s gaze was now weaving all over the room.

  “It’s not silly. This woman,” Sheila spat the word out as though it were an insult, “never bothers to crawl out of bed before noon most days. Even with work, she’s the last in first out the door.”

  “Hardly a crime, even if that’s true.” Emma folded her arms across her chest and Holly breathed a sigh of relief. At least that would give a split second of pause before fists started to fly.

  “So why were you up at the crack of dawn this morning, then?”

  Sheila stamped her foot as punctuation, though Holly couldn’t work out the point of the observation.

  “People are allowed to get up early, Sheila.” Holly tried her best to keep her voice even, but she could hear the lecturing tones of her father creep into every word. “Whether Emma got up on time or not hardly makes a difference to what’s happened here today.”

  “But it does!” Sheila held her finger up as though ticking off a score. “Who here has ever seen Emma before eight in the morning?”

  The raised voice drew some startled looks, but those who did stare just shook their heads. Either nothing to do with them or they had never seen Emma early. Holly didn’t really care which.

  “As I’ve already said—”

  “Number two. What business did Emma have arriving at Inglewood Manor bright and early this morning? She could have slept in and caught the bus here like everybody else, but no. What reason did she have to arrive here at the crack of dawn
instead?” As Holly shook her head, Sheila grinned in triumph. “None, that’s what. Unless she was putting something horrible in poor Derek’s food.”

  “A few minutes ago. you were accusing me of putting something in Derek’s food,” Holly said gently. Her patience was wearing thin but yelling at a woman already bearing so much trauma didn’t sit right with her. “Are you now saying that you don’t think I killed Arnold with a cupcake?”

  Sheila flapped her hand as though the thought was the most stupid thing she’d ever heard.

  “You didn’t need to,” she answered slowly. “Miss Whelps had already taken care of all of that.”

  “No, ‘Miss Whelps’ hadn’t,” Emma said through gritted teeth. “Yes, I got out of bed early this morning, but that’s nothing to do with you or Derek.”

  Holly looked down at Wendy’s footwear. The shoes that had been kindly donated to her by Emma when she’d soaked through her own pair. The same beautiful shade of periwinkle blue that she’d caught at Minister Woodfield’s private quarters early that morning.

  Of course. When your partner was in love with another woman, where else did you turn? To your parents? No. To your friends? They were good for a night of drowning sorrows. If you wanted sage advice from someone who had literally heard everything there was to hear, you approached your minister.

  It would be a cold day in hell before Sheila dragged that information out of Holly. Still, the connection gave her a more confident tone when she spoke again.

  “Emma had nothing to do with these terrible incidents. You’ve had too much to drink and your mind is playing tricks on you. Go with your mom, have a warm bath, and go to sleep. When you wake up, I’m sure that there’ll be better news waiting for you.”

  It was with a sigh of relief that Holly watched Wendy escort her daughter out of the room. Emma turned to her with an eyebrow raised, a mask of nonchalance hiding her obvious upset.

  “Thanks for that. My mother would be off her head thinking that the first time I bothered to get out of bed with the alarm, I got taken to task for it.” Emma managed a small grin, this time the expression looked a bit more genuine. “I won’t be making that mistake again.”

  Holly laughed and shook her head. “I’m sure once Sheila’s sobered up some, she’ll see sense.”

  “I’m not.” Emma shook her head. “She’s always been slightly bonkers. Even when we were at school.”

  “She was accusing people of murder when you were at school?” Holly mimed shock, raising her hand to cover her mouth.

  Emma snorted. “That’d be a far more interesting bit of gossip.” She shook her head. “Nothing like today but always just a bit off-kilter. We wondered for a while if she was autistic or something, but we gradually worked out there was just a giant chip on her shoulder.”

  “About what?” Holly frowned as she thought of Sheila. The girl may have a screw loose and be impatient, but she was beautiful. From Holly’s admittedly distant memories of high school, the way you looked counted for a lot.

  Emma looked uncomfortable at the question. “Have you known Wendy very long?”

  “No. Apart from Crystal I haven’t known anyone in town very long. Or,” she added after a second, “if I have, there’s been a break of a few decades since I saw them last.”

  “Well, Wendy’s family doesn’t have the cleanest reputation around town.”

  Holly’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You mean they’re criminals?”

  “What? No!” Emma gave a laugh and pressed her hand flat against her chest. “Not that sort of bad reputation. More along the lines of loose morals and poverty. They all marry young and mostly because they need to, if you get my drift.”

  “Wendy said her family all married young because they didn’t see the sense in waiting when they already knew it was the right thing to do.” Holly turned to see that she hadn’t returned. Gossiping behind the woman’s back was bad, being caught would be far worse.

  “I did comment when I heard how young Derek and Sheila were, but she just said that when you knew, you knew, and marriage was wasted on the old. I actually got her point. I didn’t marry as young as Sheila or Wendy, but I didn’t hang around like people do now, either.”

  “How’d that work out for you?”

  Holly’s eyes widened, and she gave an indignant laugh that soon became genuine. “Pretty badly, I must admit. Perhaps if we’d had children, it would have been different.”

  “Yeah, then you could have dragged them through a messy divorce, as well.”

  Holly shook her head. “My divorce isn’t messy. It’s neat and clinical, just like my marriage.”

  At that comment, Emma burst into such a roll of laughter that it came close to hysterics. “Stop it,” she said, barely able to breathe. “You’re killing me.”

  “I thought you were the one killing people,” Holly replied with a wry grin. “Besides, you’re the one who started it. Asking impertinent questions about the marriages of your elders and betters.”

  “Well, elder certainly.”

  Holly’s mood had lifted so much in the brief exchange that she could have kissed Emma for the reprieve. Aidan joined them a few moments later, and Holly gave him an enormous smile.

  “That’s the spirit,” he said. “Smile and make everyone wonder what you’ve been up to.”

  “What have you been up to, in any case?” Holly asked.

  “Well, I went around the entire room pumping people mercilessly for information. All I ended up with was a list of compliments for the chef and concern that they might soon drop dead.”

  “Oh, goodness. I hope not. We’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.” Holly’s smile fell away as she thought of Derek. She closed her eyes and sent up a brief prayer, hoping that someone would be there to listen.

  “I think we should probably start clearing the food,” Aidan said. He clapped his hands together, and Holly smiled. Her ex-husband Simon had also appreciated a simple task when things got complicated.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said with less enthusiasm. “I can’t imagine anyone is going to eat anything more after this.”

  They began to stack the dishes on the table nearest, scraping uneaten scraps off the individual plate onto another so they could pile them for the trip to the kitchens.

  Elvira popped up by Holly’s elbow, her two friends in tow. “Can we help out by doing the dishes?” she asked.

  Holly kept the surprise off her face as she gratefully accepted the offer of help. “That’ll be great, thank you. If you set yourselves up in the kitchen, we’ll start ferrying these through in a few minutes.”

  The girls ran off, talking excitedly to each other. Holly couldn’t imagine what about—dishes weren’t a big thing back in her teenage years. unless it was the avoidance of doing them.

  “She’s a good kid,” Aidan said, staring after Elvira long after she’d gone. “It’s a pity her mom is going through such a rough time at the moment.”

  “Is it serious, her mother’s illness?”

  “Serious and getting worse. Melinda found out a few years ago that she had multiple sclerosis, and since then, she’s weathered one or two flare-ups every year. If there was longer between them, her recovery would be better, but as it is, each time she goes a little bit more downhill.”

  “How awful,” Holly said, lifting the stack of plates. “I can’t imagine the strength it takes for both of them to face that specter every day.”

  “I suppose that’s why she’s embracing the dark side lately,” Aidan mused. “Thinking of pop stars and movies probably doesn’t sit well with everything else that’s going on.”

  On their first trip out through the double doors, Holly and Aidan were nearly sent bowling by a couple of men strolling through. When they came back for the next load, Holly showed him the secret corridor again. Even though it was a struggle to input the code while holding dishes, it was better than running into a full-grown man.

  While Esmerelda and her cohorts man
aged the washing in the oversized double sink, Holly, Emma, Aidan, and Crystal grabbed the few remaining tea towels and started to dry.

  “I’ve never understood why this place doesn’t have a row of dishwashers,” Emma grumbled after a few minutes. She was peering down at where her nail had been until a few moments before.

  Aidan flapped his arms. “We are a row of dishwashers.”

  “You know what I mean.” Emma’s good humor seemed to have broken off along with her nail.

  “It’s the china,” Holly said. “The surface of this crockery wouldn’t stand up to being repeatedly washed in a dishwasher. The water is too hot and the powder too astringent. It would weaken and crack the glaze.”

  Emma frowned at her. “How do you know that?”

  Holly shrugged. “Just something I picked up during childhood. Whenever the bakery did a load of fancy catering, guess who got the role of chief dishwashers?” She hooked a thumb back at herself, then included Crystal when her sister pouted.

  “Lucky things. You know, when I was a child I used to dream of my parents owning a restaurant and a bakery. I could eat all day and never gain any weight.”

  “Poor thing,” Crystal said, crossing her eyes.

  “I used to get teased about it something rotten at school,” Emma shot back. “It’s not just chubbos who come under fire, you know. Any little difference and you can guarantee the class will tease you half to death.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” muttered Elvira, while Winter and Midnight solemnly nodded.

  “At least you got to pick your weirdness, girls.” Emma reached for another plate. “That’s a blessing of a kind.”

  “Hey,” Winter protested. “We didn’t choose to be Goth. Gothness just grew upon us.”

  For a moment, Holly thought the teen was serious. Her face was deadpan, the dark lipstick making her skin deathly pale. Then her nose started to twitch, and the corners of her mouth drew up. A second later, the three teenagers were in stitches, soapsuds flying as they laughed with delight.

  The noise was such that Holly barely heard the gentle knock at the door. Only when it grew in volume did it register enough for her to turn her head.