Fruit Cake and Fear

by Agatha Frost

  “No!” she heard Jessie cry out.

  Julia opened her eyes, but everything happened too fast for her to stop it. Jessie rocked on her chair, thrusting herself in front of the blade. It struck her shoulder, leaving Alessandra’s grip as Jessie fell to the ground. The chair shattered into pieces, freeing her as she lay on her back, the knife sticking straight up from her prone body.

  “Jessie!” Julia cried out, her voice hoarse. “What did you do?”

  There was one final thud before a trap door inches from Jessie’s head burst open. Light flooded the attic, followed by glowing white hair. Julia squinted, wondering if Astrid really had come from the other side to save them.

  “Grace?” Aiden cried as he climbed into the attic. “What is –”

  “Call an ambulance!” Julia cried as Aiden’s eyes landed on the knife jutting out of Jessie’s motionless body. “Please, Aiden. Just like Mark is your child, Jessie is mine.”

  “Who did this?” he asked, his face disappearing into his blond hair.

  “She did!” Alessandra cried, pointing at her daughter. “She’s gone mad! She’s always been mad! She kidnapped this girl and stabbed her!”

  Grace continued rocking and mumbling to herself, not acknowledging her mother.

  “Alessandra stabbed her,” Julia cried. “Ambulance, Aiden!”

  Aiden and Alessandra stared at each other for a moment before she attempted to run for the opening in the floor. Aiden jumped in the way and rugby tackled the nimble woman to the ground. Julia tugged her hands, but the bandages were knotted impossibly tight. A mass of black hair popped up through the trap door, a phone to his ear.

  “Ambulance, please,” Mark said. “And police. That missing girl, Jessie, is here, and she’s been stabbed. Hurry.”

  Julia smiled her gratefulness at the boy, who the more she looked at, the more she saw Evelyn. She looked over at Alessandra and Aiden as they struggled against each other on the ground. Julia considered asking Grace to untie her, but she did not want to risk disturbing her. Closing her eyes, Julia rocked back and smashed the chair against the floorboards. To her relief, the chair shattered, enabling her to wriggle free from her restraints.

  “I’m here,” Julia whispered, clutching Jessie’s hand. “You’re going to be okay. Just try and stay awake.”

  Jessie’s eyes fluttered, connecting with Julia’s momentarily. She opened her mouth to try and speak, but Julia shushed her, not wanting her to waste her energy.

  “Mum,” Jessie croaked, before slipping into unconsciousness.

  16

  Julia had never seen such a well-attended funeral in all of her years in Peridale. Hundreds of people crowded outside St. Peter’s Church as Evelyn led the parade towards the church. Behind her, Astrid’s coffin floated on the shoulders of half a dozen men, two of them being Aiden and Mark. Barker wrapped his fingers around Julia’s and squeezed.

  Instead of flowers, the shiny black coffin was topped with hundreds of multi-coloured crystals, each of them shining delicately in the bright sun, which was poking through the milky clouds. It had been raining continuously in the week since Grace, Alessandra, and Alistair’s arrests, but today was the first day Julia had seen the sun.

  Evelyn caught Julia’s eyes, and the two women shared a look only they understood. Julia nodded, and Evelyn nodded right back.

  The service was a lengthy one, but it did not feel dragged out. Evelyn opened the eulogies with a heart-felt speech about her daughter’s life, which followed by a speech from Aiden, which was noticeably absent of references to his wife. Julia shed her fair share of tears. Some of them were for Astrid’s stolen life, others were for the time lost between Mark and Evelyn, and the rest were from sheer relief that everything was over.

  After the service, the village flooded out of the church, all milling around the edge of the village green. Evelyn made her way through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea, her rainbow kaftan fluttering delicately in the wind.

  “You have given me the best gift I could have ever asked for,” Evelyn beamed, taking Julia’s hands in hers. “Not only have you given me closure and allowed my daughter to finally rest, you’ve given me a piece of her back.”

  Evelyn looked over her shoulder as Mark and Aiden talked to a group of other men. Mark looked up and smiled at his grandmother.

  “I’m sorry you missed so much time,” Julia said.

  “Today is not a day for the word ‘sorry’!” Evelyn exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Today is to celebrate my daughter’s life and her new legacy in her son. I can feel her love surrounding him, and I suspect she’s been there with him his whole life. I’m sure she’ll connect with me now that she had been laid to rest. I must go to The Plough and put some of that Peridale Green Fingers’ prize money that I won last month behind the bar. It’s time to party!”

  Evelyn scurried across the village green, her kaftan wafting dramatically behind her, reminding Julia of the time she had watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the West End.

  “Did we miss it?” Dot cried as she scurried along the street panting for breath, Jessie right by her side with her arm in a sling. “Don’t tell me we missed it!”

  “It was beautiful,” Julia said, looping her fingers around Jessie’s free arm. “How are you feeling?”

  “All the better for having my dressing changed.” Jessie nodded at her shoulder. “Doctor said I’m going to have a pretty cool scar, but I think my driving test will have to wait for a while.”

  “Kids these days,” Dot said, rolling her eyes. “Millimetres away from severing an artery and you think a scar is cool! I wonder if Evelyn is putting on a good buffet spread at the pub.”

  Following her stomach, Dot headed in the direction of The Plough with some of the other guests. Julia pulled Jessie to the side and waited for Aiden and Mark to make their way over. When they finally did, both men shared the same sheepish smile, neither of them quite able to look at Julia or Jessie.

  “I suppose I should thank you,” Aiden said as he tucked his scruffy hair behind his ears. “You’ve given me answers to questions I’ve been plagued with for most of my life.”

  “I’ve torn your family apart,” Julia said.

  “No, she did that,” Aiden snapped. “You’ve brought my real family closer together. Mark, Evelyn, and my other two sons are my true family. I never stopped loving Astrid. There wasn’t a day – you don’t want to hear any more of this. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I don’t blame you, and that I’m sorry for what they put you both through. I always knew Alessandra was an evil witch, but seeing her throw her daughter under the bus like that only confirmed it. I hope they throw the book at her.”

  “And your uncle?”

  “He was lied to as much as anyone,” Aiden said, sucking the air through his teeth. “I’m hopeful the jury will see that. He thought he was protecting me. I just hate that he’s been thinking that about me for twenty years. It doesn’t make him any different than the rest of the village, but you don’t expect that from your own family, do you? I can’t blame him now. He’s an old man, I just hope he won’t spend the years he has left rotting in a prison cell. Mark and I are lucky we’re not being prosecuted too. We helped Alessandra get you up into the attic, and for that, we’re both truly sorry, aren’t we, Mark?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, glancing at them from under his black fringe. “It was mad.”

  “She told us you killed Astrid and she wanted to keep you there so she could call the police,” Aiden continued. “I was so confused. We both were. We didn’t understand what was happening. If I had known Jessie was up there too, I would never have gone through with it, but it was dark. I didn’t see her. She said you were dangerous. She used the words ‘mentally imbalanced’. Ironic, right? The second we realised it didn’t feel right, we beat that door through with a sledgehammer. I can’t believe how stupid I was. I should have seen right through it, not just now, but two decades ago.”

&
nbsp; “Regardless of what happened, you still had twenty years of those people in your lives,” Julia said, making sure to look both men in the eyes. “It couldn’t have been all bad.”

  “I’m sure in time, I might see it that way.” Aiden shrugged and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. “Grace’s lawyers are going for an insanity plea, and quite frankly, I think she might get it. I knew she had problems, but she never told me how bad. I just thought it was a bit of depression, and that’s why she took the pills. She always went a little funny when she drank with them, but nothing like what I saw in that attic. I always suspected she dyed her hair black to look like Astrid, but I didn’t want to think she’d do something so sick.”

  “You should get to the pub,” Julia said, nudging Mark’s arm. “You have a lot to learn about your grandmother. She’s a pretty cool lady. You have her eyes.”

  “They’re Astrid’s eyes too,” Aiden said, looking at his son. “I feel like a fool for not seeing it before.”

  Aiden rested his hand on his son’s shoulder, and they joined the stragglers walking towards The Plough. Jessie went to follow them, but Julia pulled her back and waited until they were standing outside the church alone. They both sat on the low stone wall and stared out at the village green as it emptied. Julia’s eyes wandered over to the front of her shiny fixed car, which was poking out from its usual spot in the alley next to her café.

  “I’ve been wanting to mention this since it happened, but I didn’t know how to bring it up,” Julia started, gripping Jessie’s hand in hers. “You might not remember, but when Alessandra stabbed you, you said something. You called me ‘Mum’.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Jessie mumbled, her cheeks blushing. “It just slipped out.”

  “I want to adopt you, Jessie,” Julia said firmly, looking her dead in the eyes. “We’ve been through a lot this year, a lot of bad, but also a lot of good. As far as I’m concerned, you are my daughter, but I want to make it official before you turn eighteen next year.”

  Jessie opened her mouth to speak, but she appeared to not know what to say. Julia wondered if she had made a terrible mistake, but she had not been able to stop thinking about it since waking up in the hospital the morning after their ordeal.

  Just when Julia thought Jessie was about to reject her offer, Jessie wrapped her single arm around Julia’s neck and squeezed harder than she had before.

  “What do I call you?” Jessie asked.

  “Mum, Julia, ‘Cake Lady’,” Julia said. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. It doesn’t change how I feel. I can’t imagine what you went through in those days in that attic, but I went through hell on Earth without you. As a wise woman once said to me, I felt like I’d had my arm chopped off and I hadn’t gone to the hospital to have it fixed.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Jessie mumbled, nodding at her shoulder.

  Julia winked and nudged Jessie. Hand in hand, they walked towards The Plough and joined the rest of the village. Barker was waiting for them at a table in the corner. He waved when he saw them. Jessie’s boyfriend, Billy, was standing by the bar with his father, Jeffrey, no doubt trying to convince him to buy him a beer. Jessie slipped away from Julia, grabbed Billy, and kissed him.

  “Looks like you asked her,” Barker said as Julia sat next to him. “And she said yes, I presume?”

  “She did,” Julia said, looping her fingers around Barker’s. “You never know. She might say yes to what you suggested to me if you asked her.”

  “It’s too soon,” Barker whispered with a half-smile. “Adoption is a long process. I don’t want to freak her out, but in those days when she was gone, I felt like I’d –”

  “Had your arm chopped off?”

  “How did you know?” Barker said, squinting at her. “You’re a witch, Julia South. We argue like cat and dog, but I love the kid like I raised her. It’s impossible not to.”

  “I love that you love her,” Julia replied, kissing Barker on the cheek. “And I love you. If you are serious about adopting her too, you’ll ask her when the time is right.”

  Jessie walked over hand-in-hand with Billy, with Jeffrey, Dot, and Sue trailing behind all carrying two drinks each.

  “Did you ask him yet?” Jessie asked, letting go of Billy’s hand and squishing between Julia and Barker.

  “I was waiting for you to get back,” Julia said, budging over to make room.

  “Ask me what?” Barker replied with an unsure smile as he looked around the group. Dot and Sue both shrugged, but Jessie gave them a knowing smile. “Spit it out!”

  “We’d like to invite you to live with us,” Jessie said, wrapping her one arm around Barker’s shoulder. “On a permanent basis, but there’s one condition!”

  “I become your servant?” Barker said, ruffling Jessie’s hair. “Fat chance!”

  “That’s a good idea, but no,” she said, dodging out of the way, and tucking her bushy hair behind her ears. “You stop leaving your underwear next to the washing basket, and you start –”

  “Putting it in the basket?” Sue jumped in. “My Neil does the same thing!”

  Barker narrowed his eyes as he looked down at Jessie, and she did the same to him in only the way she could. Barker held out a hand and cracked a smile.

  “Deal,” Barker said, slapping his hand into Jessie’s. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “There will be a rent increase, and maybe we can talk some more about the servant stuff, since you brought it up,” Jessie said, winking at Julia.

  “Don’t push your luck!” Barker said as he reached out for his pint. “But maybe while your arm heals.”

  “Look at you!” Dot exclaimed, clapping her hands together as a grin spread from ear to ear. “You’re like a happy family! A strangely cobbled together dysfunctional happy family!”

  “I’ll take that,” Julia said, reaching over Jessie’s shoulders to grab Barker’s outstretched hand. “I wouldn’t change us for the world.”

  The End

  COMING SOON!

  The next and 9th book in the series, Birthday Cake and Bodies, is coming October 17th 2017. Click Here to PREORDER your copy!

  NEW COZY MYSTERY SERIES!

  Agatha Frost has teamed up with Evelyn Amber to create a BRAND NEW cozy mystery series. The Scarlet Cove Seaside Cozy Mystery series kicks off on September 12th with the first book, DEAD IN THE WATER! If you LOVE Peridale, you’ll LOVE Scarlet Cove! Click Here to PREORDER your copy!

  Turn the page for an EXCLUSIVE sneak peek at the prologue of DEAD IN THE WATER!

  THANK YOU FOR READING!

  I had a great time taking you all back to Peridale, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! If you did enjoy the book, please consider writing a review. I appreciate any feedback, no matter how long or short. It’s a great way of letting other cozy mystery fans know what you thought about the book. Being an independent author means this is my livelihood, and every review really does make a huge difference. Reviews are the best way to support me so I can continue doing what I love, which is bringing you, the readers, more fun adventures in Peridale! Thank you for spending time in Peridale, and I hope to see you again soon!

  COMING SOON!

  The next and 9th book in the series, Birthday Cake and Bodies, is coming October 17th 2017. Click Here to PREORDER your copy!

  Get a SNEAK PEEK at the cover after the DEAD IN THE WATER preview!

  Dead in The Water - Prologue

  PREORDER NOW! Coming September 12th

  Liz peered through the window into the interview room. She wondered how early she could leave the party without it coming across as rude.

  “There you are!” Miles, Liz’s friend, and fellow detective, said as he walked down the pale blue corridor towards her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “I just wanted to take everything in,” she said, inhaling deeply, a content smile spreading across her lips. “See the place one last time.”

  “Had a change
of heart?” he asked hopefully as he played with his curly hair in the way he always did. “You’re going to be missed around here. We need you.”

  “You don’t need me. You’ll get on just fine.”

  “I’ll miss you.” His cheeks blushed as he stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at the ground as he drew a circle with the point of his brogues. “You’re as good as a detective gets. Don’t you think forty-two is a little young to retire?”

  “I think it’s the perfect time,” she said, glancing through the window again as Karen, the desk sergeant, made a pass at Mitchell, a married community support officer. “Considering everything that has happened, this is well over due.”

  Miles nodded. He did not argue, and she knew he would not have done. He knew better than anyone else at the station how difficult the last two years had been. She had tried to hide her grief from her colleagues for the sake of her job, but Miles had been the exception. He always knew which wine to bring around for dinner to get her to open up.

  “I got you something,” he said, holding his finger up. “Wait here.”

  Miles slipped back into the interview room, the music from the radio leaking out. Liz almost followed him back into her leaving party, but she stopped herself; it would only make it harder to leave.

  He returned with a small orange bag, which had a ridiculously large orange bow wrapped around the handles.

  “For my firecracker,” he said, glancing at her red, frizzy hair. “I was stuck on what to get you until I saw this. It sums you up perfectly. Low maintenance, a little prickly, but gooey and full of the good stuff on the inside.”

  Liz unravelled the bow and looked down into the bag, laughing at the prickly green thing.