A man jogged past Holly and Aidan on the forest track, forcing them off the side when he didn’t give way.
“Where are all these people coming from?” Holly picked up a stick to wipe the mud off her shoes from walking off the path, then gave a yell as a large beetle tried to crawl onto her hand.
“Just leave them,” Aidan said, a note of annoyance in his voice. “They’ll only get muddier when we get to the center part of the track.
Holly shrugged. What he said was true, but she still tried to stamp the mud off, not liking the feel of it caking beneath her soles. In the center of the long trail, the trees grew so close together that the sun couldn’t pierce through the dense canopy.
In the height of summer, that part of the track would be as dry as a bone, just like the rest of it. In spring, chances were they’d be slipping and sliding in the mud. If it weren’t for the copious pine needles everywhere, the track would be far more dangerous to traverse than it was.
“How about we duck under here?” Aidan suggested, lifting up a piece of yellow tape hanging across one route for the trail.
“That’s there for a reason.” Holly pointed to the warning sign.
“Yes, they’ve been baiting for possums.” Aidan looked at her, twiddling his eyebrows like a Marx brother. “I’m not a possum, are you?”
It would be nice to get off the main trail. So far, they’d had twenty people coming past them where they’d usually count themselves unlucky to strike another person at all. Either they’d hit peak tourist season early, or the family reunion in town for the week had all decided to explore the area at the same time.
“Okay.” Holly limboed under the tape. Aidan followed along behind her, not even cracking a smile. Back when they first started dating, he would have laughed. Back then, he laughed and joked all the time.
You broke him.
Holly shook her head and took Aidan’s arm, now they had room to walk side-by-side. “How’s Tilly doing at the moment?”
Tilly was Aidan’s cousin and her daughter Elvira sometimes worked in Holly’s bakery. She enjoyed the teenage girl who insisted on dressing as a goth, though she smiled far too much for Holly to take her style of clothing too seriously. Tilly was battling through a flare-up of her multiple sclerosis at the moment, and things were rough on everyone in the family.
“She had a couple of better days this past week, so we have our fingers crossed that the worst of the current patch might be over. Elvira’s also caught up with all her schoolwork, so that’s a weight off her mind.”
A weight off Aidan’s mind, more like. He’d become so concerned about Elvira’s schooling that it had prompted their first argument.
You should have walked away right then and there, the devil living in her head this morning insisted.
A dog exploded out of nowhere, running past Holly to explore further up the track. A moment later, footsteps pounded toward them. Lucy was running along the path full-tilt, a look of horror crossing her face when she saw the couple.
“Did you see Petey?”
Holly pointed up the track and Aidan took off after the dog, easily outpacing Lucy. Rather than be left behind, Holly jogged along as well, immediately regretting every cupcake she’d eaten ‘for testing purposes’ as she huffed and puffed.
“Stay back!”
Holly rounded a corner of the track to see Aidan standing with the dog’s lead in his hand, holding his hand palm out to stop them approaching. Lucy was standing stock-still on the path.
What is going on?
Rather than obeying, Holly crept forward until she was just behind Lucy. From there, she saw why he’d issued the warning and stopped. Aidan stood near a clump of trees. At his feet, a bare leg stretched out onto the edge of the path.
Aidan turned around, tugging Petey to stop him from investigating any closer, a sick expression on his face. “I think she’s dead.”
“Nonsense.” Lucy strode toward him, grabbing Petey’s lead out of his hand.
Holly edged a few steps closer, too, her eyes fixed on the lifeless limb on the track. The skin on the top was pale while underneath had darkened to purple. She closed her eyes and took a step back. Aidan was right. She didn’t want to see this.
Lucy breathed heavily, the sound so rough it was close to choking. Holly looked up at the hillside just beside them, easily tracking the broken ferns and branches where the woman must have fallen.
A bottle was lying near the trees, Texas Man Bourbon on the label, and Holly could smell it from where she stood. The poor woman must have been drinking when she fell.
“Come on,” Holly said, speaking to the tableau frozen in front of her. “We need to get back to the campsite and call the police. Our phones won’t work this far into the forest.”
She headed back up the track, Aidan and Lucy following along behind her while Petey barked with excitement the whole way.
Chapter Three
As Aidan made the phone call, concerned family members crowded around. The group had been setting up for a picnic but now dropped what they were doing to comfort the weeping Lucy.
“What’s happened?” one of the old ladies from the salon the day before asked Holly.
She fidgeted, wishing that she’d been the one with a phone plastered to her ear. “There’s a body on the track. It looks like someone fell down the hillside.”
The woman gasped and stepped back, a hand clutched to her chest. “Is it Marcia?” she asked, turning white. “I haven’t see her all morning. Is it her?”
“I’m right here, Mom,” an exasperated girl called out. “I’ve been helping you with the potato salad today, remember?” The young woman rolled her eyes as she escorted her mother away, then Lucy popped up to take her place.
“I-isn’t it a-awful?” she howled, throwing an arm around Holly’s neck. “I just keep seeing her leg lying out on the track, completely still. Do you think we should have tried CPR?”
Just from the brief glance Holly had taken, she knew the body was well past that stage. “No,” she said firmly. “By the time we arrived, it was too late to do anything. The best thing you could do in the circumstances is exactly what you did. Come back here and call someone in to deal with it.”
“Police are on their way,” Aidan said, walking up behind Holly. “Matthewson said he’d be here as soon as he can. Maybe five or ten minutes.”
Holly nodded, relief flooding through her. She didn’t want to stand out here any longer. If the dead woman was a member of this large family reunion, then grief would soon be on display everywhere. After the shock of finding the body, that would be too much for her to handle.
“Where’s Clarence?” Lucy asked suddenly, turning around to look at her assembled family. “I need to talk to Clarence.”
“He’ll be in his trailer getting drunk,” one middle-aged man replied, her mouth pulling down in disgust. “It’s past ten in the morning, after all.”
Lucy pulled away from the group, stumbling as she moved toward Clarence’s trailer. She knocked on the door, yelling loudly. “Clarence? Let me in!”
“Why does she want to talk to him?” an elderly man nearby asked. His hair was disheveled, as though he’d just got out of bed, and Holly could smell the booze from last night coming off him in waves. “Is it Jessica?”
The man turned and repeated his question, his face ashen. “Has something happened to Jessica?”
“Nice of you to wait on the street for me, so I knew where to come!”
Holly was so relieved to be spared the encounter with the older man, that she overlooked Matthewson’s grumpy demeanor. The man’s mood had been heading straight downhill for a number of months. So long, in fact, that it was hard to remember when he’d been a nice, calming influence.
“Sorry about that,” Holly said, walking closer to him. “I didn’t think.”
“You didn’t need to think,” Matthewson replied, casting a glare at Aidan. “I specifically told your boyfriend what to do. Nice to see that you c
an obey simple instructions.”
Aidan opened his mouth to apologize, but Matthewson just flapped his hand at him with impatience. “Just show me where this body is,” he said before turning around and skewering Holly with a look. “What a surprise to find Miss Waterston tripping over a dead body. Such a change.”
“Steady on,” Aidan said in a whisper, “there’s a boatload of family members who are about to find out they’re grieving by the looks of it. It would be nice if you acted civilly in front of them.”
The sergeant turned, his face mottling with fury, then shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “Sorry. I had to stay up late last night working a case and I’ve not had much sleep. Lead the way. The sooner we get this bit done, the better.”
Although only one of them needed to lead the sergeant to the body, Holly followed along behind Aidan, grabbing the excuse to leave the family group behind.
“From the sounds of it,” she said, “the woman we found might be named Jessica. Her dad and boyfriend are in the group back there.”
The sergeant turned around, giving Holly such a strange stare that she stopped short, eyebrows raised in worry. “What?”
Matthewson cleared his throat until Aidan turned around, then appeared to search his face for something. After a minute, he grunted and gestured for Aidan to continue leading them.
“If that’s Jessica Chilvers, then she was a resident here for a few years. Not long enough to be a local, but long enough for a lot of people to know who she was.”
Holly concentrated on the ground, a sense of unease rising up to chill her midriff. She folded her arms across her chest and shivered.
“It’s just up here,” Aidan warned, turning back to address the sergeant.
Matthewson pushed past him while Holly backed up a step, not wanting to see anything more than she had already.
“Are you okay?” Aidan asked. He put an arm around her shoulder, but Holly shook it off. She felt some inexplicable annoyance rising within her. It felt like Matthewson knew something he should be telling her but wasn’t. A situation that probably existed only in her imagination, which made it even worse.
“I’m fine,” she said after a long pause, “but I think I’ll head back now. You don’t need me for anything do you, Sergeant?”
“No, you go on,” he muttered, not turning. “Stay in the park, in case I need to ask you some questions and try not to stumble over any dead bodies on your way out, okay?”
“No promises.” Holly expected Aidan to follow her, but when she got to the corner of the path and looked back, he was deep in conversation with the sergeant. Matthewson turned and caught her eye, immediately jerking his gaze away.
If Holly didn’t know any better, she’d think that Aidan was somehow tied up in this mess.
The campsite was buzzing when Holly came back down the path. All of the family members stood in tight groups of two or three, talking excitedly. Given that the information so far was scant, Holly guessed that half of what they had to say to each other was just conjecture. She tried to slip into a park bench seat unnoticed, but a second after sitting down, Lucy came to sit beside her, drawing everyone’s attention.
“What do the police think?”
Holly shrugged. “I don’t know. I just showed the sergeant to the body—” at that word, she winced “—and then came back here. I imagine the sergeant will be along soon to talk to the family.”
Lucy looked over her shoulder at the clumps of family. “I think it’s Jessica. I tried to tell that to Clarence, but he kicked me out of his trailer before I got a chance to explain.”
“Is that Jessica’s boyfriend?”
Lucy nodded. “Although, I don’t know how much longer that will last. The two of them were fighting last night, just before I headed out for the movie. They’d stopped by the time I got back, and it was just as well—it would’ve been hard to sleep with that racket going on.”
Holly frowned and nodded. She thought of Crystal and Alec, spending half the night laughing loudly as they enjoyed each other’s company. “It’s definitely hard to sleep when other people are making a lot of noise.”
Not to mention when you’re lying in bed jealous because everything in your sister’s relationship seems so easy, while yours is so hard.
Aidan came strolling out of the path, looking a lot paler than when he’d trekked back in.
“Has Matthewson said anything useful?” Holly asked.
Aidan shook his head, sitting beside her on the bench and nodding to Lucy. “I hope you’ve got a good hold on his lead.”
Petey stood up and wagged his tail as though he knew he was being talked about. He gave a series of joyful barks, then lunged forward.
“Sorry,” Lucy said, jerking the lead to hold the dog in place. “He’s not usually this excitable but being out in the campground with people all around has got him overstimulated.”
Holly reached out to pat the Golden Retriever on the head. Petey quietened down for a minute, then started to snuffle at the ground, barking loudly when he happened upon a snail.
“I’d better go and put him in the camper,” Lucy said. “I’d hate if he got free, then ran back to the accident. Thank you for stopping him this morning, by the way.” She turned to Aidan. “I hate to think what he might have put his nose into if you hadn’t caught his lead.”
Aidan waved away the thanks, and Lucy walked along the footpath through the park, disappearing into the campsite.
“I hope Matthewson comes back out soon,” Holly said, yawning as the sun started to warm her body. “I haven’t seen you properly for so long, and now this.”
As though summoned, the sergeant walked out of the woods, heading up the path to the road. When he returned a few minutes later, a doctor and the young PC from the station was following hard on his heels. The trio trooped back into the woods, the PC fiddling with a roll of tape.
“That doesn’t look good.” Holly shifted on the bench, turning her legs so the other side of them would warm up. Now that she wasn’t walking, the chill from the cool spring air was making itself known.
“None of this looks good.” Aidan sounded inexplicably angry and Holly turned to him in surprise. Even when he was upset, Aidan usually kept a calm demeanor.
“Well, if the sergeant finishes up and gets his questions out of the way soon, I’ll shout you to lunch at the tavern.”
To her surprise, Aidan shook his head. “After this, I just feel like going home. I’m beat.”
“Well, then,” Holly said, leaning over to hook her arm through his, “we can stop for takeaways and have lunch at home.”
“I meant alone.”
Holly stared at Aidan, feeling that same pattern of unease crawling through her body. She opened her mouth to say something, not even knowing what would come out, then Lucy returned, plonking herself down on the seat next to her again.
“If you hear a dog crying, just ignore him,” she said lightly. “I’ve left Petey with half a roll of his favorite pet foot, so any whining is just for show.”
Matthewson returned out of the forest, directing the PC up the track back to the road. He walked over to the trio on the bench. “Lucy, is it?”
“That’s right. Lucy Walsham.” The girl held her hand out, then colored as the sergeant just looked at it until she put it away. “Can I help you?” she asked in a lower voice.
“It’s been suggested that you know who the body belongs to, is that right?”
Lucy looked uneasy, pulling the ends of her sweater sleeves down over her hands. “Yeah. I think it’s Jessica.” The end of her sentence went up the scale, making it sound like a question. Lucy cleared her throat, then tried again. “Jessica Chilvers. Her dad’s over there.” She pointed to a male twosome, leaning against a picnic table.
“Thanks.” The sergeant took two steps, then looked back at Lucy. “You’re not planning on going anywhere, are you? I might have a few more questions.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “Nah. I’m st
aying put.” Lucy pointed again, this time over to the camping ground. “I’m in the orange and white striped caravan, if you need me. I promise I won’t go far.”
Matthewson nodded, managed something approaching a smile, then walked over to Jessica’s dad. He spoke a few words to him and the man crumpled over, looking like a tissue that had been screwed into a ball.
“No.”
Holly turned away from the sight, her eyes tearing up. She shuddered, not from the cold this time.
“What do you mean, murder?”
At the cry from Jessica’s father, Holly turned around, startled.
The man continued to howl. “Who would murder my little girl?”
Chapter Four
After the howls had tapered off, Clarence opened up his camper door and wandered out. He was parked closest to the picnic area, so Holly had a good view as he walked over to Lucy.
“Hey,” he said, kicking at the toes of her sneakers. “What’d you want before? I was half-asleep.”
The blood drained out of Lucy’s face, changing it to porcelain white. Holly patted the young woman’s knee and said, “The police are on their way. It’s probably better that we let them explain.”
“The police?” Clarence turned and appeared to see the officers for the first time, although he’d walked straight past them to reach the bench. “What’re they doing here?”
“There’s a body—” Lucy broke off into a storm of tears. She buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
Clarence’s expression turned to alarm. “What? Whose? Lucy?”
Matthewson broke off his conversation and walked over. Whatever other issues Holly had with him lately, his timing was on point. “Excuse me, are you Clarence—” he looked down at his notepad “—Wood?”
The young man nodded, licking his lips and supporting himself on the bench’s armrest. Holly jumped to her feet. “Here, have a seat before you fall down.”
Clarence slumped into the vacated spot, holding a shaking hand up to his forehead. “Is it Jessica?”
Raspberries and Retaliation Page 2