The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  Holly nodded and thanked the doctor, wondering what clues Matthewson had uncovered from the interview. Did he know that Susan gouged her tenants or that Zach was in a permanent rage at the way she’d boxed him in?

  It didn’t matter if he did or not, tonight wasn’t the right time to tell him. Holly’s own eyelids wanted to stay closed each time she blinked and decided she’d better be on her way.

  The cold air outside revived her for long enough to get her car and drive it the short distance home. There wasn’t any point in putting on the heat for just her, so Holly curled up in bed with the electric blanket on, dozing into a range of different scenarios where a poisoner turned out to be Susan, Zach, or even Samuel.

  Aidan leaned forward to kiss Holly goodbye. “Are you sure you don’t want to come? It’ll be a lovely day in Christchurch—we could go to the Botanic Gardens and have a picnic.”

  “I’m sure,” Holly said, waving to Elvira who was waiting impatiently in the back seat. “I hope Tilly is okay.”

  Aidan brightened at the words. “I talked with the doctors yesterday and this morning and they say that she’s definitely on the mend.”

  “Come on, Aidan,” Elvira said, kicking at the back of his chair. “We need to get to the hospital by nine, otherwise we’ll miss the start of visiting hours.”

  “I’m sure we’ll get there in plenty of time,” he said, leaning over to peck Holly on the cheek again. She turned to get his lips but also caught a glance as Elvira poked her tongue out in a fake retching motion, so quickly pulled away.

  “Have a good visit,” Holly said, waving them away. “Come by when you get back into town, and I’ll cook you up something nice.”

  Aidan reversed out of her driveway onto the road, then pulled up near Holly again. “Or I could take us out to dinner.”

  She laughed and agreed. Her cooking skills weren’t the best. Baking, however…

  The early Saturday crowd came and went, leaving Holly a nice gap of time to cross to the surgery center to visit her sister. This time, Crystal was sitting up in bed and managed to stay awake the entire time that Holly visited.

  “Oh,” Holly said just as she was leaving. “I forgot to tell you, I’ve had Elvira helping out in the bakery.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Pretty good. She’s got a much steadier hand than me, so she puts my decorations to shame.”

  Crystal nodded. “We won’t be able to afford her if we move across to the new location.”

  “Yeah, well, when you’re better we can talk about that again, but I think I’ve come around to your view on things.”

  No need to tell Crystal all the frightening business practices that Richard had clued her into. Not until she was safe and well at home, anyway.

  “What are you doing here?” Susan called out from down the hallway. “Who told you it was okay to visit?”

  Holly turned at the sharp note in Susan’s voice to see Samuel Wrightson standing in the doorway to her room. She frowned.

  “I’ve already spoken to the police and so has Will. If you wanted to put pressure on us to change our stories, it’s too late!”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” Samuel said, almost spitting the words out in his quiet fury. “I’ve already told you what I came here to say. If this is all that you can answer with, then I don’t want to even know you.”

  He turned and strode toward the waiting room, accidentally bumping into Holly’s shoulder in the confines of the narrow corridor but not stopping. She followed his progress as he stalked outside, then ran the few yards down to Susan and Bethany’s room to check the two women were okay.

  Bethany was lying down, sleepily blinking and appearing oblivious that anything contentious had happened at all. Susan, however, was in a state of high distress.

  No matter what she’d done to Zach and his business, she didn’t deserve to be in such a fit of terror.

  “What is it?” Holly asked, rushing to the woman’s side. “What did Samuel say to you?”

  Susan shook her head, fighting to sit up further, her arms wavering with the effort. “Has he gone? Please check that he’s actually left. I don’t want to stay here if he’s going to be hanging around outside or coming in and disturbing me.”

  The shrill note in her voice was close to full-blown panic. Holly wrapped her arm around Susan’s shoulders, feeling the tension and the twitch of her muscles shaking.

  “I saw him leave,” Holly reassured her. “I promise. Now, why don’t you lie back down? You don’t want to tire yourself out and end up having to stay in here for longer.”

  Slow footsteps sounded behind Holly, and she turned, expecting to see the nurse or doctor. Instead, Crystal stood in the doorway, holding onto the frame for support.

  “Crystal, you get back to bed, as well. Neither of you should be putting your recovery in jeopardy this way.”

  “I want to see that he’s gone.” Susan again tried to sit up, this time swinging her legs out of bed as well. Holly felt like she was trying to stuff toothpaste back into the tube. Fighting her was ridiculous. If Susan was upset enough to get out of bed, then perhaps seeing that Samuel hadn’t stayed around would be better for her than forcing her to stay in bed.

  “Fine.” Holly turned her body so that she was more accessible. “You can lean on my shoulder then, and I’ll hold you around your waist to keep you steady, okay?”

  Susan eagerly agreed while Bethany gazed on in mild bafflement. “Where’s everybody going to? Does the hospital want us to leave?”

  ‘No, it doesn’t.” Dr. Allende appeared in the doorway next to Crystal. “What we want is for all patients to get back into the rooms they’ve been allocated and try to get some rest.”

  “I need to see that the man has gone!” Susan insisted. “He’s been stalking me at work for weeks.”

  “What man?” Dr. Allende turned her attention to Holly, who was still squatting next to the bed. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “There’s a man who has been watching Susan for a few weeks, at least that’s the impression I’ve gotten.” Holly slowly stood up, her knees cracking at the change in position. “I don’t know how long he’d been in here, but Samuel Wrightson is his name, and he was standing in the doorway having a fight with Susan when I saw him. I really think it’s better that she has the opportunity to check he’s gone. As you can see, he’s caused her a great deal of distress.”

  “Just a moment,” the doctor said, turning on her heel, white coat flapping. She walked around the corner, presumably where Zach was being housed and returned a minute later with a wheelchair.

  “I’ll take you out there,” Dr. Allende stressed. “But I want you to be rugged up first, and I’m going to push you, so when I say you’re done outside, then you’re done. Okay?”

  Susan nodded so eagerly she appeared like a marionette operated by an over-caffeinated puppeteer.

  Holly hung back while the two women wheeled through, then turned as yet another set of footsteps heralded a patient’s arrival in the corridor. It was the German woman, Kendra, and she did indeed look well enough to have been discharged.

  “Do you speak any English?” Holly asked, thinking that she and her husband must speak some to have been able to talk with Sergeant Matthewson.

  Kendra held up her hand flat, then rocked it from side to side. “A little.”

  “I’m so sorry that this happened while you were on holiday. I hope it hasn’t put you off our entire country.”

  “I already don’t like this country and it’s put me off that man,” Kendra said, pointing farther down the corridor. “There’s something wrong with his brain. He tried to kill us all, I think.”

  “Zach?” Holly asked, wondering if that was what they’d told Matthewson, why the man was still in the same medical facility as the other patients. Surely, even if a weakened state, he should still be considered a threat?

  “I don’t know his name. The cook-man. He’s very bad, I think.”

>   “Do you believe he’s responsible?”

  “Either him or that lady—” Kendra pointed at Crystal, whose expression immediately turned to one of hurt “—perhaps she try to poison us!”

  “My sister didn’t try to poison you,” Holly said, saying the words slowly and loudly, exactly how she’d been taught to speak to people who spoke English as a second language. “The sergeant got results back from the laboratory that says there was nothing bad in the cupcakes.”

  “Hm.” Kendra tipped her chin up. “Well, one of those two. If not her, then him.”

  “But didn’t you eat a whole bowl of soup, too?” Holly asked, confused. That was what the sergeant had told her. She thought he’d even said something about a witness.

  “No. I was sick to my stomach from the night before.” Kendra put her hand on her belly and rubbed in a small circle. “I eat very little.”

  “That’s right,” Crystal said. “My memory of the events is still a bit hazy, but I do remembering wondering if you were ill.”

  “Everyone else eats my portion, so I don’t have to,” Kendra said. Holly couldn’t tell from her stilted English if she was pointing fingers or just stating a fact.

  “I wonder who told the sergeant that you’d been eating the soup just fine,” Holly mused, then shrugged. It hardly mattered. With the test results back, there couldn’t be any doubt that it wasn’t Crystal’s fault, even as an accident.

  “He’s gone,” Dr. Allende said, wheeling Susan back inside, into the warmth of the waiting room. “We’ve proved it.”

  Susan seemed far happier than she had while being wheeled out. The cold had also lent some crisp red coloring to her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

  “Thanks so much for doing that, doctor. I feel much better knowing that he’s not lurking somewhere about the parking lot. Once I have a chat with the sergeant to report the matter, I hope that everybody will have their eyes out for him, so he can’t get that close again.”

  The tiredness on the doctor’s face seemed to increase with those words. Holly could sympathize. Just one more thing to worry about in an already intense schedule.

  “I’ll describe Samuel to all the relatives,” Holly offered. “Since we’ve pretty much got at least one person here visiting at all hours, it should be easy enough for us to keep a check. That way, the doctor and nurse can go about their jobs without having to worry.”

  “Thank you,” Dr. Allende said before Susan could answer. “That would be a much better arrangement. Though I imagine with the reception the young man got before, he won’t be keen to visit here again.”

  Susan retorted, “He’s the most persistent man I’ve met for a while,” just as a crash came from the back of the building. Holly took off at a run, skidding around the corner of the corridor to see Samuel lying flat on the floor, a stack of overturned boxes marking the position from which he’d fallen.

  Right under the back window.

  “Call the police,” Holly yelled out. “And I think he needs a doctor.”

  Samuel hadn’t moved a muscle when she started yelling. He appeared to be knocked out cold.

  Dr. Allende knelt down beside him and started to check his vitals. Holly stepped back and rejoined Crystal to give the woman some room. Poor thing. Another patient must be top of the things she didn’t need.

  The doctor had just finished her cursory examination and had sat back on her heels when a scream pierced the air. Susan wheeled back out of the storeroom that had been converted into a patient’s room for Kendra and Will. Her face was ashen, and her hands were shaking.

  Kendra bolted into the room, then turned and slumped against the door. “He’s killed him,” she said, teeth chattering as though she was freezing cold. Kendra pointed a wavering finger straight at the unconscious figure of Samuel on the floor. “That man killed my husband.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Susan called her husband and was packed up and ready to leave by the time he arrived, ten minutes later.

  “No,” she said when Dr. Allende tried to convince her to stay. “I’m not going to remain in this death trap.”

  Holly felt the same level of concern about Crystal, but also knew that if her sister took a turn for the worse, there wasn’t a better place for her to be. Not that it was her decision to make in any case. Now that Crystal was fully conscious, more than likely she wouldn’t listen to anybody’s opinion but her own.

  Luckily, her own opinion was that she should also stay in the medical center.

  “It may be a bit creepy here,” she admitted to Holly. “But if I go home, I’ll just try to do too much too soon and probably wind up somewhere worse for a much longer time. Better that I stay here.” She paused and pursed her lips. “If somebody ends up killing me, too, then I guess I’ll seem a right fool.”

  “Nobody is going to kill you,” Holly said. “A policeman is going to be stationed in here at all hours, so you’re safer here than anywhere else. I’ll feel a lot better about you staying put than poor Susan sitting alone at home.”

  Crystal snorted. “Hardly alone. She’s got her extended family staying with her too. I bet if the two sets of parents had been stationed in the waiting room, then none of this terrible business would’ve transpired.”

  “I still can’t believe he did this,” Holly admitted. “He seemed like such a nice man when I was talking with him last night. What on earth could have driven him to act like this?”

  “Yeah. We need to have a serious talk about your safety when I get home. It’s no use worrying about me in the hospital, if you’re going out alone at night, chasing after strange young men.”

  Holly swallowed hard and looked down at the floor. Even though it didn’t feel like it, her logical thoughts had already pointed out the danger she’d willingly exposed herself to. Just because she didn’t want to go home to an empty house, she might have wound up dead.

  It didn’t seem real.

  But the evidence was now coated with a sheet in the side room. As soon as the murder became widely known, Holly could only imagine that the press would descend in a snarling pack on Hanmer Springs. This wasn’t just a killing—because of poor, dead Will’s nationality, this was now an international incident.

  Their lives were about to spin into an entirely new reality. Worst of all, poor Kendra was sitting stunned in the waiting room with no husband, no family, and no support.

  “I wonder if I should offer your room to Kendra.” Holly perched on the edge of her sister’s bed and glanced down at her fingernails. Even though the words had come out of her mouth, the thought of making the offer made her feel tired. When Crystal shot her an expression that told Holly she was absolutely not allowed to do that, she didn’t argue.

  “I know what happened to Will is awful, but I must admit—I feel a lot better knowing who did this terrible thing to all of us. Lying here and thinking that some stranger wanted me dead and not even having a reason was too awful.”

  “Well, we still don’t know the reason,” Holly said. “And probably won’t unless the good sergeant feels like spilling the beans.”

  Matthewson had taken it upon himself to sit next to the prisoner while he was recuperating in the converted storeroom. If Samuel had woken up or divulged anything, then he wasn’t sharing.

  “Go home,” Crystal said when Holly’s mouth split open in a large yawn. “I’ll still be here in bed when you feel like visiting.”

  The next morning, Holly checked in with the surgery center by phone before she even got out of bed. She felt foolish but also relieved when she asked to speak to her sister and Crystal came to the phone, completely unmurdered.

  “Do you want anything when I drop by later?” Holly asked.

  “If you can manage to hold off seeing me until four this afternoon, then you might be allowed to take me home.” There was a muffled call from the background and Crystal laughed and added, “But apparently that’s only if I get back to bed. It would be good if you could get dad’s recipe book from the
bakery. I’ve got a few ideas I want to jot down about a potential new recipe, but I want to check some things first.”

  Holly was smiling when she checked in with Aidan in Christchurch as well. He and Elvira had opted to lodge with some old friends of his—also registry workers—and he didn’t like to stay on their phone for long. A strange excuse, given that Holly was speaking to him on his mobile, but he sounded so distracted that she let him away with it.

  “Do you think Tilly will be well enough to travel home soon?”

  “In the next few days, the doctors think.” Aidan’s voice dropped a lot lower for a second, “For Elvira’s sake, I hope so. She’s not taking this very well at all.”

  Holly’s heart went out to the girl as she hung up the phone. Of course, she wouldn’t be taking it well. Holly remembered what it was like when her mother was in the hospital.

  She’d walked around with a physical ache lodged in her chest, longing to see her. When Holly and Crystal visited, though, she’d barely be able to force out a few polite words before becoming tongue-tied and embarrassed, waiting to leave.

  Hospitals were such a clinical environment that they didn’t encourage closeness or loving hugs, yet they were the place that most people had the need to dispense them.

  Full of maudlin thoughts, Holly showered and dressed slowly, preoccupied with the emotions that she usually kept locked away in her memories. She was so deep in her own thoughts that when a knock came on the door, it made her jump and crick her neck.

  “I thought that you might like a distraction today,” Meggie announced, leaning forward to give Holly a quick hug. “So, I’ve booked us in for a massage and kittens.”

  Holly started to nod, then her expression turned to a frown instead. “What do you mean, kittens? Do they use them like hot rocks?”

  Meggie laughed and shook her head. “No, they’ve just got them in the café section. An hour-long massage to relax and then you get to have a snack and a coffee while playing with kittens.” She tilted her head to one side, lips pursed. “I think they got the idea from Japan.”