Wedding Bells and Death Knells (We're Not Dead Yet Club Book 2)

by Constance Barker

  Ida May allowed her gaze to move towards where Hayley was sat.

  “Hayley?” she spluttered. “You think Hayley and Ryan…?”

  “And Ryan told Jeremy that last night. That’s what the argument was about. I reckon Hayley was going to leave Jeremy at the altar. Why do you think she’s so upset now?”

  “I don’t believe it…”

  “Probably because it isn’t true,” Hector chipped in, stepping forward to join the conversation. “There is no way in hell that Hayley was having an affair. She never saw Ryan in that way.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” Hector replied. “But if you want to know the truth, why don’t you just ask Hayley yourself?”

  “Exactly,” Ida May replied, triumphantly clapping Hector on the shoulder. “Good show, my man.” She turned back to me. “Now – as for Cecil – I’m sure you agree the champagne was poisoned, correct?”

  “Yes,” I replied a little reluctantly.

  “Well, Cecil collected the champagne and gave it to Ryan, right? There was more than enough time for him to spike the bottle…”

  “But, if Cecil did it, why didn’t Jeremy die as well?”

  “Well maybe he only poisoned one glass…”

  “It’s a hell of a risk,” I replied, suddenly aware of a load of commotion near to the barn door. “Who was he targeting then? What was his motive? And how could he be sure he’d get the right man?”

  “Well, I don’t know…”

  I turned swiftly to Hazel. Strangely enough, she was not listening to our conversation, but seemed to also be distracted by a large surge of movement from the party guests towards the door. I had to call her name two or three times before she finally responded.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Did you get anything from Cecil during your interrogation?”

  “How did it go?” clarified Ida May.

  “Fine,” she replied. “But I don’t think Cecil did it.”

  “See?” I muttered to Ida May before turning back towards Hazel. “I didn’t think he had, but we have to be on the safe side.”

  “Yup,” Hazel nodded confidently. “He’s as innocent as they come.”

  “Good,” Ida May replied, before muttering under her breath: “So, now we’re taking Hazel’s word over mine, are we?” She cleared her throat and turned back to Hazel “So, you asked him about the champagne glasses?”

  “Oh…” Hazel thought for a moment. “Yes, I did. Nothing out of the ordinary there.” She seemed lost in thought for a second before she suddenly glanced at Hector and then announced:

  “It seems to me, Clara, Ida May, that we need to first be sure that Ryan was in fact poisoned…”

  “What do you mean, was in fact poisoned?” Ida May asked, her eyes narrowing.

  “It’s obvious, don’t you think?” I chipped in.

  “Perhaps,” Hazel replied. “But I think it’s best to be sure, don’t you?”

  She turned to Hector and smiled sweetly at him.

  “Hector, you’re a chemist, aren’t you? Could you determine if there is any poison in the champagne or the glasses?”

  For a moment, Hector looked absolutely terrified at the thought. He glanced between the three of us, took a step or two back and stroked at his waistcoat. When he answered, his voice seemed to be a weak shell of what it had been before:

  “Well, I don’t have the right equipment with me. I don’t make a habit of working when I’m at a wedding…”

  “But I’m sure you know a few tricks, don’t you?” Hazel asked, stepping forward and gently stroking Hector’s jacket. “Little shortcuts? Just so we can work out what exactly was poisoned?”

  Ida May seemed to have cottoned on to what Hazel was thinking. Her face turned into a large smile and she moved forward to embrace her friend.

  “Hazel, you’re a genius,” she said, before giving her a kiss on the cheek. She turned to Hector and smiled up at him. “Yes, Hector. All we need to know is if the poison was in the bottle or just one glass. Can you find that out for us?”

  Hector shrugged. “I guess… If I had all three…”

  “I have them…”

  In a swift movement, I produced the champagne bottle and the two glasses and handed them over to Hector. He stared down at them with mild disbelief before taking another couple of steps away, nodding as he went.

  “Alright,” he muttered. “I’ll look into it right away.”

  “Excellent,” Ida May declared, smiling at Hector’s retreating back. She slowly turned to me and gave me a small wink. “Then we’ll know who really killed Ryan: Jeremy or Cecil.”

  “Yes,” I replied quietly. “I suppose we will…”

  I’m sure Ida May was convinced of Jeremy’s innocence – who wouldn’t be under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help feeling a pang of regret for what I was sure was about to happen. In my mind, there was no way that Cecil could ever kill anyone and Hector’s test - whatever it was - was about to prove it. I just hoped that Ida May wouldn’t take it too badly…

  “Clara!”

  A voice boomed out over the crowd, silencing it in an instant. The crowd that had been gathered around the door parted ways to reveal Jasper, looking out of breath and very sweaty, standing in the doorway. He glared across the room at us as he walked slowly towards us. I knew what he was going to say before he ever said it. He’d left strict instructions that we leave the case well alone and now, I’m sure, he had just been inflicted with a barrage of stories about how we had managed to publicly accuse not one, but three suspects in as little as an hour. Whatever he was going to say, I knew our investigation was all but finished.

  He was little more than a few feet away now. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I don’t know why I did it – it was one of those silly moments when panic set in and it seemed like a good idea at the time. I could have turned to Ida May for help, or better yet I could have relied on my own wit and skill to get us out of this mess. But no – I turned to Hazel instead…

  “Do something, Hazel!”

  I really don’t know what I was expecting from her. But I really should have known better.

  Hazel turned towards Jasper, her eyes set and her expression as solemn as she could possibly muster. She raised an arm towards him and stretched out a single finger to point directly at his heart. And then, with the loudest, most shrill voice she could manage, she cried out:

  “That’s our killer! It was Jasper!”

  The whole room fell into silence save for Ida May, who planted her head in her hands and muttered:

  “Well, if you’re going to fail, do it spectacularly…”

  Chapter Twelve – The Lowest Point

  The three of us were quickly ushered into a back room. As we stepped inside, we were greeted with the sight of Cecil who, upon seeing the three of us shepherded in by his son, leaped rapidly to his feet and began protesting his innocence.

  “Calm down, Dad,” Jasper said, directing his father towards the door. “We’ll sort all of this out in a few moments, I promise…”

  “You can’t do that,” Ida May called out, her eyes pinning on Cecil. “He’s our primary suspect…”

  “One of our primary suspects,” I finished weakly. “Jeremy is in the other room.”

  Jasper looked hard at us, his eyes scanning over each of us in turn before he turned back to his father. He muttered something quietly into his ear, to which Cecil nodded and made his way quickly out of the room. Once he was gone, Jasper slowly pushed the door closed and turned back to face us. It was hard to tell whether he was enraged or just curious – but the moment he spoke, it became quite apparent.

  “What part of don’t touch anything and don’t talk to anyone did you ladies not understand?”

  “We were just trying to help,” Ida May replied.

  “Be quiet,” Jasper fired back. “Don’t you understand this day is hard enough for me without you ladies poking your noses in?”
r />   He was silent for a moment, his eyes drifting down to focus at a point somewhere near his shoes. There was something odd in his expression. I wouldn’t quite say it was anger, although I’m sure that is exactly what he was feeling in that moment. No, it seemed more like disappointment – the kind of sensation one experiences when you are let down by a child or someone you trust. We had let Jasper down. We knew it, and he knew it…

  I cleared my voice slightly. Jasper’s eyes panned up to me as I slowly took a step forward, hanging my head slightly and putting on my best impersonation of a wounded soul…

  “Did you get a signal in the end?”

  Jasper considered me for a moment and gently nodded his head.

  “They’ll be here within the hour.”

  “An hour?” Ida May fired back. “Seems a little long, doesn’t it? A man is dead…”

  “Yeah, well some idiot told them that the situation was well in hand, so they’re not seeing the need to rush…”

  All three of us felt the same rush of shame as he looked between us all. Jasper let his words hang in the air for a few minutes before turning his back and pulling open the door.

  “I want you all to keep a low profile for the rest of today,” he muttered. “No questions. No investigating. If I find any of you snooping around, I’ll have no problem with arresting you, are we clear?”

  “Quite clear,” I replied.

  For the second time that day, Hazel’s hand went up into the air. She waited until Jasper acknowledged her before lowering it and speaking.

  “To be fair, Jasper, I wasn’t the one who accused anyone of murder…”

  “To be fair,” Ida May put in quietly, “It wasn’t just one person…”

  “Yes,” Jasper replied. “I heard about Jeremy and my father…”

  “And the Minister,” I replied. “We accused him too…”

  Jasper could do little else but shake his head with his mouth wide open as he looked to each of us. “Who do you people think you are?”

  And, with that, he turned his back on us and disappeared out through the open door.

  We sat in silence for a long while. We didn’t even want to look each other in the eye. There would always be hard times – moments when the three of us wouldn’t get along, but somehow this felt different. I think we all felt it in that room – an overwhelming sense that we’d allowed our arrogance and lack of objectivity get the better of us.

  In the space of a few hours, the We’re Not Dead Yet Club had devolved from being this legendary detective force to little more than a laughing stock. And it had all been down to us. There was little doubt that Jasper was never going to trust us again – not that I think he really trusted us anyway…

  I turned to look over at Hazel. I think she was the one hardest hit. She had only really done what we’d told her to do, and even then we hadn’t even bothered to find out what she’d learned. I watched as she gently tapped on the screen of her phone, swiping from side to side, tapping again and then huffing when whatever it was that she was trying to achieve didn’t work. I watched her do this several times – each time she seemed to get more and more frustrated with the pathetic looking device in her hand.

  “What’s wrong, Hazel?”

  She looked up at me and gave a weak smile. “This silly thing isn’t doing what I want it to.”

  Ida May let out a small laugh. “Our reputations are in tatters, we’ve ripped apart my nephew’s wedding and you’re worried about your stupid phone…”

  “It isn’t stupid,” Hazel replied defiantly. “We’re just not agreeing today…”

  “Why, what’s the problem?”

  She smiled at me again and showed me her screen. Displayed there was a number keypad with a blank password.

  “I just can’t seem to remember my password,” Hazel explained.

  “Holmes,” Ida May muttered.

  “Pardon me?”

  Ida May glanced over and nodded at the phone. “Holmes. As in Sherlock? You’ve used that password for everything ever since the Mystery of the Body in the Well.”

  “Well not this time, Ida May,” Hazel muttered quietly. “It’s a number code, see?”

  Ida May thought for a moment. “Then try, 465637.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  It took Hazel a moment to type this into her phone. When she’d finished, the whole device lit up – as did Hazel’s expression. She glanced up at Ida May with a great smile on her face and said:

  “Thanks Ida May.”

  “My pleasure…”

  I watched for a moment as Hazel toyed with her phone before suddenly an idea clicked in my head. It wasn’t to do with how Ida May had worked out Hazel’s code – that seemed rather simple to my mind. No, it had to do with something I’d seen earlier.

  I slowly reached down and felt the phone in my pocket. I drew it out and stared down at it for a few moments before starting it up and waiting for the unlock screen to appear. Hazel hadn’t seemed to notice, but Ida May’s eyes were wide with worry.

  “That’s evidence,” she hissed. “You should hand that over to Jasper…”

  “Says the one who stole it in the first place,” I replied, staring curiously down at the screen.

  “I didn’t steal it. I merely confiscated it…”

  “Well, it won’t be any good to anyone locked, will it?”

  “And how do you intend to unlock it, Clara? With mind control?”

  “No,” I replied, smiling up at Ida May. “But you are…”

  “Eh?”

  “You’re going to do what you just did for Hazel…”

  “Sorry?”

  I beamed at her. “Tell me, Ida May, do you know what the name ‘Hayley’ is when dialed into a number pad?”

  Ida May thought for a moment. “429539,” she said finally. “Why? What do you…” Her eyes widened in an instant. “Oh…”

  “Yes,” I agreed, quickly typing in the code onto Ryan’s phone.

  “But then that could mean… Oh…”

  “Yes, Ida May,” I replied as the phone lit up and jumped into life. I handed it over to Ida May. “You’re more up with things like this. Have a scan through and see what you can find…”

  “Why?” Hazel replied, curiously gazing up from her own phone. “What do you think is on there?”

  I beamed back at her. “The identity of Ryan’s killer.”

  Ida May scrolled through every part of Ryan’s phone. She started with the messages but, to her utter annoyance, he had deleted most of his recent message history. She then proceeded to look at his emails – or at least those he’d received before he lost signal – his recent Internet pages and, finally, his photographs. When she got to one in particular, she looked up and handed me the phone.

  “Well,” she muttered. “That seems rather suggestive to me, don’t you think?”

  I glanced down at the picture. “Is this the only thing you found?”

  “Yup, someone’s deleted the rest…”

  I swallowed hard. Hazel moved alongside me and glanced down at the picture before letting out a little scream. “Who was it who discovered Ryan’s body?”

  “You know what,” I said. “I don’t think I ever asked. But I think I know…”

  Little else was said. I simply stared down at the photograph. It was of Ryan and Hayley – someone had superimposed a small text box in the bottom right-hand corner…

  It read: H & R 4EVA.

  “Curious,” Hazel muttered to herself. “I wonder who Eva is…”

  Chapter Thirteen – The Percy Perspective

  When we left the room, there was no sign of Jasper anywhere. There were a few stragglers left inside the barn, but everyone else had headed outside into the warm sunlight. We headed straight out through the main doors, ignoring the glares from the few guests we came across, and slowly made our way up towards the church, where we found Percy leaning calmly against a fence post.

  “Ladies,” he announce
d, giving a small nod. “I thought Jasper had locked you up, you were in there so long. If you need a lawyer, my services are always free to you three…”

  I laughed quietly. “It’s alright, Percy. I don’t think Jasper is pressing any charges…”

  Ida May gave a loud, single laugh. “If he does try it, he’ll have to explain why he left a crime scene in our hands in the first place. I don’t imagine that will go down too well with his superiors…”

  I prodded her sharply in the ribs. Even by Ida May’s standards, she was becoming a little too overconfident and boisterous.

  Up by the church, a couple of people moved out through the main door. It was Jasper followed closely by Cecil and the Minister. They paused by the entrance, shot a glance in our direction, before beginning to wander slowly up the hill.

  “The police haven’t arrived yet, then?”

  Percy shook his head. “Not yet. At the moment, Jasper is just trying to keep everyone calm. He’s not even trying to investigate until the cavalry arrive. I think he’s worried you might have scared some witnesses off…”

  “Preposterous notion,” Ida May muttered.

  “Exactly,” agreed Hazel. “Besides, we can’t have scared them off. We have all their names and addresses!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, although at what I wasn’t entirely sure. Percy looked fondly at me before taking a long drawn in breath. He bent his head back and gently released his breath to the air as though, somehow, that made him more relaxed. He lowered his head back down and shuffled himself up against the post in search of a more comfortable position.

  “So, you think the champagne was poisoned?”

  “Or the glasses,” I replied. “We’re not sure which yet. Hector was going to run a few tests to find out for us…”

  “I’m afraid he won’t,” Percy replied bluntly. “He handed them over to Jasper the moment he’d put the three of you back in your place. It’s under lock and key now.”

  “Dammit,” Ida May muttered.

  “Ida May!”

  “Well, that could’ve helped solve the case…”

  “Hmmm.” Percy bit down hard on his lip. “I can’t help but feel that I’m somehow responsible…”