by Laura Durham
“Have you seen Reese?” I called out to Richard.
He rushed over to me, his face smudged with what looked like traces of flour and possibly soot. “She was telling the truth. I don’t know if she got every single hors d’oeuvre and dish, but she tampered with enough to make the entire wedding dinner unsalvageable.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Richard indicated the waiters standing to one side looking slightly green and a few I hadn’t noticed earlier lying on their stomachs in the nearby grass. “I had my staff taste test it.”
I clasped his arm. “You poisoned your own staff on purpose?” I noticed Hermes lounging on a patch of grass near the recovering waiters. “You didn’t give any to Hermes, did you?”
He gave me a scandalized look. “The idea! You know Hermes only eats organic.”
“And the waiters?” I crossed my arms and drummed my fingers across them.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Richard said, pulling away from me. “You sound like Mike. Anyway, I’m paying the ones who volunteered to be taste testers time and a half.”
“Mike?” I wasn’t used to Richard calling him by his actual name. “He was here? Do you know where he went?”
“Did you hear me, Annabelle?” Richard put both hands on his hips. “No. Food.”
“I heard you, but that’s not as big of a problem as No. Bride.” I checked my phone again, but Reese hadn’t replied. Where was he? If I was right, I didn’t want to wait another minute to go after Kate. “Actually, Fern and I are going to find Kate. Are you in?”
“You know where she is?” he asked.
“She has a theory,” Fern said.
I looked back toward the recovering waiters and saw a golf cart parked near the grass. “Can anyone drive one of those things?”
Fern hurried over to the black-and-white cart and hopped in the driver’s seat, setting the champagne bottle next to him. “I watched Kate do it in Bali. How hard can it be?”
Richard and I exchanged a glance. Kate had forced another cart off the road and almost crashed when she’d driven a golf cart. I hoped Fern wasn’t planning to replicate the experience.
I got in next to Fern, and Richard took the wide back seat. Hermes ran up and jumped in his lap, his pink tongue sticking out as he panted eagerly.
“Does this thing have seat belts?” Richard asked as we lurched forward and he nearly pitched off the back, catching Hermes with one hand. “Or helmets?”
I directed Fern to a gravel path.
“We aren’t leaving the property?” he asked as we bumped down the narrow lane and the tires kicked up pebbles behind us.
“I don’t think Kate and Veronica were really and truly kidnapped,” I said, holding onto the bar over my head to keep from falling out. “I think they were lured away from the house and taken there.” I pointed to the barn in the distance. “Sidney Allen says he saw some of his performers riding around in a golf cart, and he thinks they were in white. Then we find a bit of white feather in front of the house where we found Kate’s phone. And Sidney Allen’s doge costumes disappear, and he finds them stuffed into the back of a golf cart.”
Fern took his eyes off the path and we veered onto the grass. “Are you telling me the kidnappers work for Sidney Allen?”
I pointed his face straight ahead. “No. I think the kidnapper somehow dressed up Kate and Veronica and drove them to the barn in a golf cart. With the number of costumed performers and the amount of chaos during setup, it wouldn’t stand out too much.”
“Unless you’re Sidney Allen,” Richard said.
“For once, I’m glad Sidney Allen is so uptight,” I said. “If he wasn’t so obsessive, I might never have made the connection. If I’m right, terrorists had nothing to do with all of this; the nerve gas was never picked up from the ransom drop; and both women have been right here the entire time.”
“Are you telling me the barn was never checked?” Richard asked, bouncing up and down in the back seat with Hermes tucked under his arm.
“It seems like a pretty major fail on the part of the dad’s crackerjack security team, but we all assumed they’d been whisked away by an international terrorist organization, when really this whole thing stems from family problems.”
“Since when do people solve family drama by kidnapping each other?” Fern asked. “I’ve known some crazy rich people, but this is a whole other level.”
I filled Fern and Richard in on the secret daughter Mrs. Hamilton had kept from her husband and how bitter her sister seemed at the mention of her brother-in-law.
“Let me get this straight.” Fern turned his attention to me, and the golf cart veered off the path and onto the grass again. “Veronica’s cousin is actually her half sister? But neither of them know?”
I put one hand on the wheel to steer the cart back on track. “According to Mrs. Hamilton. She’s been paying her sister off for years to keep it under wraps.”
Fern shook his head. “Imagine being pregnant with your first child, and your husband gets your own sister knocked up. If it wasn’t her daughter that had been taken, I’d say Mrs. Hamilton was behind this.”
“Don’t forget the person also had to have knocked out Sherry, but not kill her, and keep her sedated,” I said. “That fits with Aunt Connie being a nurse. I don’t think she wanted to kill anyone, but she might have known Sherry knew too much of the family gossip and was bound to spill something important. So she bopped her on the head enough to stun her, then shot her up with something to keep her out of it and unable to talk to us.”
“And she did all this to ruin her niece’s wedding?” Richard asked.
“I think she wanted to ruin Mr. Hamilton. Having him steal some of his company’s own highly classified nerve agent would not have gone unnoticed. I’m sure she knew about the DOD contract from her sister. It doesn’t take an expert in government contracting to know that giving your top-secret product to potential terrorists would not turn out well for him. Homeland Security agents arrived at the house not fifteen minutes ago.”
“Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.” Fern pressed his foot down on the accelerator as we approached the barn. “Didn’t all the money that supported her daughter come from the man she just took down?”
I shrugged. “The daughter is grown up. Maybe she doesn’t need or want the payoffs anymore. Maybe revenge is more important.”
I looked at the gleaming oak barn as we approached it. Traditional in shape, the building had black doors and a matching roof with a soaring window in the front that extended from the barn doors to the peaked roof. A square cupola protruded from the roof and was topped with a weather vane. Orange daylilies sprang up from a flower bed across the front of the barn, and the soil around the blooms was dark and loose. As we got closer, I could smell the horses and the hay and even the sharp scent of manure.
“Don’t drive all the way up,” I said, noticing the second golf cart parked behind the barn, out of sight from the main house. “I don’t want anyone to hear us coming. Aunt Connie must be down here.”
Fern pulled the cart to a stop about two hundred feet from the entrance, and we all jumped off. The large sliding barn doors were closed, so I motioned for Richard and Fern to follow me as I crept around the side and peered into the windows. Richard signaled to his dog to be quiet and, surprisingly, Hermes seemed to understand as he scampered along beside us.
“I don’t see them,” Fern whispered to me.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “They might be in one of the stalls. We need to look in all the windows. Why did you bring the champagne?”
He held the bottle up by the neck. “Potential weapon.”
Not a bad idea. I actually had no clue if Aunt Connie was packing or not. A real weapon wouldn’t have been a bad idea. A better idea would have been Reese. I pulled out my phone and shot off another text telling him where we were and why. I assumed the police had arrived at the house and were preoccupying him, but I hoped he checked h
is phone.
“There,” Richard said when he’d tiptoed ahead to the next window. “I see them. Aunt Connie looks really good for a woman who has a grown daughter.”
I joined him at the window, peeking my head up high enough to glimpse inside. My mouth went dry. “That’s not Aunt Connie.”
Chapter 30
“That’s Cara.” I ducked back down so the woman with the dark bun wouldn’t see me. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does,” Fern said, “if you assume kids always know more than parents think they do. Clearly, this kid figured out who her father was. Maybe recently, maybe a long time ago.”
“Imagine how rejected she must have felt knowing her uncle was really her father but never being acknowledged by him.” I bit the edge of my thumbnail. “Especially when her cousins lived such a lavish lifestyle.”
“I would be bitter,” Richard said. “Potentially homicidal.”
I pushed myself up to get a second look. Kate and Veronica were tied up back-to-back in one of the stalls, while Cara paced in the main aisle dividing the two rows of stalls. It looked like she was talking on her phone, and I wondered if she had an accomplice.
Kate faced our window while Veronica faced Cara. I tapped lightly on the glass, hoping Cara wouldn’t hear over her own phone call. Kate raised her head, and her face broke into a smile when she saw me. She used her eyes to indicate Cara behind her and shook her head. I could see Veronica trying to twist around; it looked like she was telling Kate to stop moving her head. Typical bride.
I slid back down. “Kate saw me. She and Veronica look okay. It doesn’t seem like they’ve been hurt.”
“So what do you think the cousin/sister’s endgame is?” Fern asked. “They’ve clearly seen her, so it’s not like she can get away with it. Do you think she plans on getting rid of them, or is a helicopter going to touch down in the field and take her away?”
“This isn’t Mission: Impossible,” Richard said.
“I don’t know how she can get away without being stopped,” I said, putting a hand up to shield my eyes from the rays of the sun as they slanted through the trees. “At this point, both Homeland Security and the police are probably on-site.”
Fern put a hand to his mouth. “Do you think she’s going to eliminate the witnesses?”
“No,” I said, although I wasn’t completely sure. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to leave them there.”
“There are three of us and only one of her, not counting Hermes.” Richard said, extending his neck to get another look. “I spoke too soon. Here comes someone else.”
We all flattened ourselves against the building as we heard a motor approaching from the path and pebbles grinding under the tires that were clearly heavier than the ones on the golf cart. Even Hermes became motionless as his tail ceased wagging and he lifted his little black nose into the air and sniffed.
Had Reese gotten my texts and commandeered a car to come join us? I heard the car brake loudly and my heart sank. Reese would never announce himself like this if he was trying to be stealthy.
I locked eyes with Richard and Fern and held a finger to my mouth as I scooted to the end of the barn, edging my head around to get a look. A shiny black Range Rover—the bride’s car if I remembered correctly—had pulled up until its hood almost touched the gray double doors. I could see a figure through the tinted windows, but couldn’t quite make out who it was. The driver’s door opened, and a foot in shiny black dress shoes crunched down on the gravel.
I cursed to myself when I realized we’d left the golf cart sitting out in the open. So much for keeping a low profile.
“Let me see.” Fern pulled me back and looked out. He turned back to us with a smile on his face. “Help has arrived.”
“Really?” I wondered if Fern’s idea of the cavalry was the same as mine.
Fern stepped out before I could grab him and waved his arms in the air. “Over here,” he said in a stage whisper.
“What are you doing here?” It was a man’s voice I knew but couldn’t place.
“We’re on a rescue mission,” Fern said, walking forward and disappearing out of my line of sight. I cursed again and reminded myself I was going to have to review spy protocol with him after all this was over.
“Same,” the man said, his voice only slightly lower than a normal speaking level. “Is Veronica inside?”
Fern must have nodded because I heard only silence.
“So who else is with you? You said ‘we’re on a rescue mission.’”
I motioned for Richard to stay behind, even as he shook his head in protest, and stepped out to join Fern. “Just me.”
“Oh, hey Annabelle.” The groom looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He wore his tuxedo pants and pleated-front shirt without the studs. He didn’t have on his jacket or vest, and the shirt was worn without a tie, the collar spread wide.
“Hi, Tad.” The moment I saw his eyes shifting toward the barn, I knew he was not here for the same reason we were. Fern must have gotten the same vibe, because he looked at me without blinking.
“We’ll let you lead the way,” I said. “I know you’re probably eager to see your bride.”
He ran a hand though his shaggy, blond hair as he approached the narrow opening in the sliding door. “Did she call you as well?”
“Did who call us?” I asked. “Cara?”
He stopped in front of the doors. “Cara? Why would Cara call me? I meant did Veronica call you?”
I looked at the blond and wondered if he was as dumb as his California surfer persona made him appear. “How could Veronica call either of us? She’s being held captive.”
The sliding door in front of us opened with a groan, and Cara stood in front of us, smiling and holding a small handgun. Tad backed up and bumped into Fern. Okay, so maybe I’d been wrong about him. Either that or he should become an actor pronto.
“No need for you all to stand outside and discuss me,” Cara said with a wave of her arm. “Why don’t you come in and join us?”
The three of us shuffled into the barn, and I couldn’t help gaping as I took in how beautiful it was. Gray paving stones covered the floor in a chevron pattern, and the ceiling soared above our heads with a series of wrought iron chandeliers hanging in a row down the length of the building. The walls inside were the same polished oak as the outside, and each stall door was topped with black wrought iron latticework. I heard the soft sounds of horses moving and munching hay, and I inhaled the faint scent of cedar.
I walked until I was even with the empty stall that held Kate and Veronica. The bride faced me in her floral bathrobe with her legs straight out in front of her and crossed at the ankles.
“Are you okay?” I asked, more to Kate than to her.
The bride tossed her dark waves off her shoulder, and Kate yelped as she bumped her head. “Aside from being sore from sitting on stone all day, I’m fine.”
Fern rushed over. “Well, your hair has held up beautifully. A little spray and you’ll be ready to walk down the aisle.”
Veronica made a face. “I’m not getting married after all this. Tad, honey, I hope you understand. Sitting here has made me realize what a huge mistake I was making.”
I turned to see Tad’s reaction, but he didn’t seem to have one. His eyes were fixated on the gun Cara took turns pointing at us.
“That’s why you called me and told me to come here but not tell anyone?” He finally found his voice. “So you could break it off?”
“Actually Cara called you and held the phone to my ear,” Veronica said. “You were wonderful to me during rehab, but if I’m going to be a CEO, I need to aim higher than a hot guy who’s great in bed.”
I could see Kate straining to look at Tad, and I was sure this tidbit of information had moved him to the top of her possibilities list.
Fern jutted his hip out. “So there isn’t going to be a wedding?”
Veronica gave him her best sad face and blew h
im a kiss through her bright-red lips. “Sorry, Fern. You’ll still be paid of course.”
“Annabelle?” Kate called to me, twisting her head in an attempt to meet my eyes. “A word please.”
“You’re assuming you’re getting out of here in one piece,” I said, stepping into the stall, the fresh hay crunching under my heels. “You do know your cousin has a gun, right?”
Veronica’s high laugh echoed off the rafters. “Don’t you mean my half sister?”
“Cara told you?” I asked. “That doesn’t make her any less dangerous. You do know what she’s done, right? Homeland Security is hauling off your father for taking some of his own nerve gas to pay off a fake ransom. Not to mention your mother’s assistant is nursing a pretty big bump on her head.”
Veronica pulled her hands in front of her and pushed herself to standing. “My father got what he deserved.”
“Did she just pull a Houdini?” Fern stepped closer to me and grabbed my arm.
Veronica sauntered past me and stood next to Cara, leaving Kate on the ground with her hands tied behind her back and a pile of rope where the bride’s hands had been. “Do you know how many women there have been over the years for him? Do you know what it’s like to know your father has slept with your friends’ mothers or your teachers?” She put a hand on her cousin’s shoulder. “Or to discover your uncle is your father or your cousin is your sister?”
“Ohhhhhhhhhh.” Fern looked between Veronica and Cara. “Now I get it.”
“So you did all this to punish him,” I said. “Well done. You achieved your goal. Why take my assistant?”
“That was never part of the plan,” Cara said. “She wasn’t supposed to come up to the room when she did, but she refused to leave.”
“Even when we told her we were sneaking out for a smoke break, she insisted on coming,” Veronica sighed. “Even when we pretended to want to joyride in costumes down to the barn, she refused to leave my side. You have a dedicated assistant there.”