“I am telling you, Alyson. She was mad that day that I had run away and left Charlie, practically at the altar.” Lilly shrugged. “I can’t know for sure what happened, but my guess is that she tried to make a move on Charlie and he rejected her.” She paused to see if I was buying that story. Then she added another one just for good measure. “And she really did not want to miss that signing, for whatever reason… She never wanted my wedding to Charlie to go ahead.”
I knew what she was doing. She was trying to deflect all of the guilt onto Lorraine. All of the motives.
But it was Lilly who had all the motives. And I mean all of them.
“What about you?” I asked. I was going to have to bluff a bit. Take a confident guess. But if Claire was right and it was Lilly in that painting, then I was on the right track. “And your reputation?”
“What— What are you asking?” Lilly looked confused. But she also looked a little scared, intimidated, by the tone in my voice.
“Are you Little Miss Perfect yourself?” I asked her. “Rumor has it that you weren’t quite so faithful yourself. Maybe there was another artist you were more interested in being painted by.”
“I don’t know what you are accusing me of, but you’d better be careful,” Lilly said as she leaned back and shivered a little. That gray cloud I’d had my eye on had gotten a little closer.
“Were you having an affair with a man called Drew Alice?”
She knew there was no way I could just have plucked that name out of thin air. There was no sense in her denying it. She hadn’t been ready for the question and was thrown. Caught out.
But she did the best she could to straighten her face. “Drew is just a friend of mine.”
Yeah, right. I totally believed her. Not.
So Princess was right. Lilly and Drew were together.
Claire was in serious danger.
And she was on the other side of the planet.
19
Claire
“Don’t worry, I will be safe,” I said and hung up the phone. Alyson had half-wanted me to come back to Eden Bay immediately after a conversation she’d had with Lilly. But I knew there was a part of her that wanted me to stay, needed to see how this all played out…and we both knew the risks.
I would be careful.
Coming up with yet another excuse to visit the art gallery was going to be difficult without completely pushing plausibility. Especially with that awkward departure I’d made the other day. By now, Drew Alice must know that I was on to him. Or suspecting it at the very least.
So I came up with a new plan. I was going to go in with the intention of buying one of Charlie Lewis’s works. The one that was now priced at $2500.
Death was one heck of a price inflation.
It was a lot of money, but I might need to do it. And I had a backup plan anyway. I’d had to bring a very large bag with me to fit the painting I had bought the other day. The red hair was poking out of the top of it as I stepped through the doors, ready to be flexible, ready to use whatever story would buy me just a little more time with Drew Alice.
But Drew wasn’t in that day. Instead, there was a large woman with jet-black hair pulled back in a scrunchie, bright red lips, and parrot earrings who greeted me. And she looked like she was the only one in the gallery.
At least she was friendly. She shot me a wide grin and asked if she could help me with anything. Her name was Sheila.
“Do you know where Drew Alice is?” I asked, still looking around, half-hoping he was there and half-hoping he wasn’t.
She looked me up and down and her grin faded a little. Maybe I had offended her in some way. Or maybe it was the desperation that was seeping out of my voice that was so off putting. “Not another one of his artist groupies, are you?”
I could feel my cheeks going a little red. No, definitely not, and it was quite rude of her to ask that.
“Not at all,” I said. “It’s just that I purchased some artwork of his the other day and I want to return it.” I started to pull it out of my bag, relieved that this was the story I was going to use. Phew. Hey, I’d even get my seventy bucks back—bonus. But Sheila told me that she couldn’t actually do the refund without Drew there himself.
“When will he be back?”
She sighed and looked at something on her computer. A calendar, apparently, that told her all the comings and goings of the staff and volunteers. She frowned. “Apparently, he was booked to go on a holiday to New Zealand.” She shrugged. “I haven’t really spoken to him since, but he’d already blanked out his name as not available.”
That ticket that Alyson had found. Oh, my gosh. So that was it then. Drew was having an affair with Lilly…and they’d intended to run away together. She had never ever intended to marry Charlie Lewis.
So that meant that it most likely wasn’t only Lilly who was guilty. It was likely that they had been in on it together all along. Drew, being the stronger of the two, would have been the one to land the fatal blow.
Maybe I was in danger after all.
“I don’t think he got on that flight,” I said to Shelia. As far as I knew, Lilly was still in Eden Bay. Would he have gone on his own?
“Well, how would you know that?” Sheila was growing less and less impressed with me by the second.
“Just have a feeling, that’s all.” I figured that Drew must still be in Newcastle somewhere, but maybe he just didn’t want to be found. Maybe this was all part of his plan. I shivered.
“Sheila, can I ask you one thing before I go?” I said, just as I was about to head out the door.
She acted like she was being very put out. Well, I supposed she was a volunteer, wasn’t she? So they didn’t exactly pay her to put up with people like me, did they?
“Was Drew here last Friday?”
She flipped back through her tabs on the screen, sighing heavily the entire time at the great imposition I was placing on her.
“Yep. Worked here all day. Thursday and Friday as well.”
* * *
Something just wasn’t adding up. I grabbed my phone to call Alyson when I saw I had an incoming one from a different person and two missed calls from that very same number.
Matt. He didn’t know the full story so I stuck to the story that I had driven up to look at venues as a surprise but oh gosh, he’d sprung me so it wasn’t going to be too much of a surprise, now was it?
But there was a heavy tone to his voice.
“I got a call from the state library today…”
Oh gosh. I didn’t know what to say. Time seemed to hang there in front of the gallery as I clutched my large bag in one arm and tried to think of a good reason I could give Matt for why I had gone behind his back.
“Claire. Are we doing the right thing?”
The question seemed to hang in the air and then drop like a lead balloon.
20
Alyson
In spite of the weather, the triathlon had not been called off, and I’d put on three kilos during my week of cheat ‘days.’ I hopped out of bed at 5am determined to put all of the past behind me and start over. I still wanted to compete. And I still could. It wasn’t all over yet. Not all hope was lost.
I sprinted along the sand as fast as I could to try and break a sweat. It was tough on the legs and calves, but that was what I needed—a bit of toughening up.
I braced myself for the pain and ran again.
The ocean was to the side of me. I avoided looking at it. For the first time in my life, I saw it as a foe, not a friend… How could it have stolen so much from me? I had to remind myself of all the things it had given me as well. The tide comes in, and goes back out.
I’d spoken to Claire on the phone. She’d seemed distracted by something completely unrelated to the case, if you asked me. But now we knew where Lilly had been during her missing days… I ran again to try and clear my head, not just strengthen my core. To try and make some sense out of all of it. Because right then, none of it made any sense
to me.
Troy was waiting for me when I was finished. A stitch hit my side and I doubled over. “Thirsty,” I gasped through the pain. He grabbed me a bottle of water from the vending machine on the beach. I always hated being ‘looked after’ like this, or admitting that I needed it, but I did need it. I was out of shape. And it was all my own stupid fault. I’d let myself get defeated.
“Maybe I’m just getting too old to compete,” I said, struggling to regain my breath.
“I don’t think that’s it. You’ve just strained yourself. You need to go a bit easier on yourself, Alyson. You don’t need to punish yourself so harshly for one week off.”
I was actually speechless at how well he had read the situation. I felt called out. Slightly embarrassed. I stared back at him. Why did he always have this uncanny way of knowing exactly what I was thinking and feeling? What I was needing?
I don’t know what overtook me. But I dropped my bottle of water in the sand and walked over to him, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him like there was no one else there on the beach watching.
Eventually, we pulled away from each other and Troy stared down at me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, Alyson.” He nodded toward the beach. “About what it will all hold for us.”
I gulped.
Were we really going to have this conversation?
“Maybe the function room isn’t so bad,” I said, stepping away from the sand and back toward town. It was all getting a bit too intense. I was worried he was thirty seconds from getting down on one knee.
Troy followed me back to dry land. He shook his head. “Still haven’t had so much as a nibble on it… Not one person even inquiring about a booking. It’s almost as though I’ve been blacklisted or something. Which I know is insane. I mean. Who would do that?”
I shrugged and shook my head. No one that I knew.
Then I saw a familiar icy blonde head walking toward me. With a cool—yet smug—little grin on her face.
“Oh, my gosh!” I yelped, jumping up and down. She didn’t tell me she was coming back!
I left a bemused Troy there on the sand as I raced to meet my best friend.
“I was worried,” I admitted once we had finished hugging.
Claire nodded. “So was I for a while. But it really looks like I had nothing to be worried about whatsoever. It was a wild goose chase.” She sighed and told me all about Drew’s alibi. He couldn’t have been the one to do it. She’d gone all the way to Newcastle for nothing.
I nodded. It did feel as though we were back at square one, but at least we were back together. And there were milkshakes to be had.
21
Claire
I loved the smell of fresh paint. The function room was gorgeous. Perfect. Amazing view of the beach without any of the sand to annoy you. We’d gotten takeout milkshakes at Captain Eightball’s and now Alyson was showing me around her new ‘studio.’
Wow. It sounded like Troy had really stepped up to the plate. “So things must be getting serious…”
“What?” Alyson asked defensively. “It’s not like I’m going to marry the guy.”
That was not what I was going to say at all. In fact, I didn’t even want to THINK about weddings then. Or maybe not even ever again.
I sipped my milkshake. Maybe this whole thing had been a warning. A sign to show me just what could go wrong with marriage and weddings. Or was I just looking for signs where there weren’t any?
Alyson was staring out of the window, looking for her own signs.
“Isn’t it strange to see it so blue now, after all the chaos it caused the other day?” She got a call on her phone before she could finish her musing, and I saw the color drain from her face as she listened in on the other end.
“Byron had a fall. She’s in the hospital.”
* * *
Alyson was fretting as we hurried toward the edge of town on foot. We were on our way to visit Byron in the hospital. She was clutching a bouquet full of flowers, and I had the card and pen in my hand as we walked into the lobby. Apparently when she’d fallen, she’d hit her head as well as badly injured her hip and it wasn’t looking good.
“She always seemed so young,” Alyson said in a worried tone. “But I think we all forget how old she really is.”
Alyson asked for the room details at reception while I stayed out in front because I’d seen someone I recognized walking up the pathway from the other direction.
It was Matt. There for the same reasons we were.
“Oh, I didn’t know you even knew Byron,” I said
“Yeah, I know Byron well,” he said with a little laugh. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. Everyone in the town was praying for her to pull through. Eden Bay just wouldn’t be the same without her.
Matt looked down at me, so sadly, and I knew it wasn’t just Byron that had gotten him down. That phone call we’d had the other day… It felt like the end of everything. And I could see the heavy toll it had taken on him—it was all over his face. I always thought of Matt as being so young, still that teenage guy I’d first met, but right then, I saw the age on his face.
Suddenly, all I wanted was to make things right with him. Take it all back. Smooth things over. Go back in time. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say the words. “We can have the wedding at the vineyard,” I blurted out. As though that might fix everything. Hoping that it would.
Matt paused for a moment, hopeful just for a second, then it dropped away and he shook his head. “No, Claire, it’s not what you want.”
“I can make myself want it,” I said. And then I relented. Even laughed a little. “No, okay, you are right. You are always right.”
He laughed a little too and in that moment, it was like we had gone back in time—but not just days or weeks or even months. But years. It felt like we were our teenage selves. Friends.
Just friends.
But he was cringing a little bit. “Okay, I have to admit something to you,” he finally said.
“What? What have you done?”
He was really, really cringing now. “I’ve already put a deposit down.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be incredibly annoyed that he had done that behind my back, or sympathetic to the problem he now had.
“Well, it was just such a good deal that Bas was offering…forty percent off. I didn’t pay it on the day or anything, behind your back. I know you didn’t want me to. But he rang me a few days later and offered me an even greater discount. Forty-five percent. I thought it would be a surprise…”
“A surprise that I didn’t want.”
He nodded. “I know. I’m going to go there as soon as I’ve dropped in to see Byron and get the money back.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Good luck with that.”
The very best of luck. Bas was not going to part with that money easily.
* * *
Matt had already left, and I was alone in a corner of the hospital cafeteria. Byron had been sleeping when we’d gone into her ward and I didn’t want to disturb her. Alyson didn’t have the same issue so she sat with her for a while, but she had just entered the cafeteria looking weary. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee. You want one?”
I shook my head. I was anxious enough without caffeine. So I sat and waited for Matt to text me the result of his mission.
A redhead walked into the room.
Lilly.
She waltzed in, scowling at Alyson over her shoulder, and walked over to me. But I wasn’t very impressed to see her either. She’d been back for days and hadn’t so much as attempted to come by the shop to help clean up her mess. “I am so sorry, Claire. I never meant to leave you in this predicament.” She actually started to open her purse. “How much do I owe you for the damage…”
But it was then that I noticed that she had a bandage to the back of her head. I had assumed that she was there for the same reason we were. But of course, she wouldn’t have even known Byron.
I
was more interested in the damage to her own head than the damage to my shop at that present time.
“What happened?” I asked her, nodding toward the bandage.
She looked around to make sure no one was listening and gulped. “I didn’t want to tell anyone. Don’t make a fuss.”
“Lilly, it looks like you’ve been hit on the back of the head!”
Just the way that Charles had been.
“I don’t want to cause any panic. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. Tell me what happened?”
She shrugged a little bit and shook her head as she sat down across from me. “I didn’t see who it was… Just saw a large figure out the side of my eye. It could have been anyone. Probably just a random attack,” she added in a low voice.
It didn’t look random to me.
“Lilly, where did you go when you left Eden Bay?” I asked her.
She looked down at her hands. “I was with Drew. Drew Alice. In Newcastle.” She paused before she continued and dared to look at me for a moment. “There was never any fire at the previous venue.” She looked down at the bracelet she’d been given in the emergency department. “I just needed to get away from Newcastle, away from Drew, for the ceremony.”
“So, this is where you came.”
She nodded. “Seemed far enough away that we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew but not so far that the people we wanted to come couldn’t still travel.”
I had to raise my eyebrows at that one. “Did you really want Lorraine to come to your wedding?”
Lilly looked guilty. “Yes and no. Keep your enemies close, you know? I wanted her by my side so I could keep an eye on her. And I knew that scheduling it on the same day as the signing by Joey would send her over the edge.”
Wow.
“I didn’t kill Charlie. I know you think I did. But I didn’t.”
I shook my head and stared over the cafeteria to the window on the other side. It was starting to feel as though we would never find out, as though this might be the one mystery that Alyson and I just couldn’t solve. “Why did you even want the wedding at my bookshop?” I asked her, wondering how and why I had gotten dragged into all of this.
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