The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  Even though she didn’t know what had tripped her funny bone, either, Holly still had a smile on her face as she joined the pair in the kitchen. Watching her sister fetch Alec a glass, Holly thought that they’d make a cute couple. It was a pity that Alec never showed up on her sister’s dating app.

  What do you think they did before dating apps, dingbat?

  Of course. Holly rolled her eyes at her stupidity. She quickly checked Alec’s hand for a wedding ring, and when she couldn’t see one, she asked, “Do you live with your mother, Alec?”

  He choked on the mouthful of water he was drinking, looking at Holly out of very wide eyes. “Um, no.” He paused for a moment before taking another sip. “I live in my own place just up the road a bit.” He grinned widely all of a sudden. “I haven’t lived with my mom since I was a teenager. I don’t think she’d appreciate having me back.”

  Crystal shot a puzzled glance at Holly, but she carried on, “And I know you work at the garage. Is that a full-time job?”

  “Well, it’s actually mine,” Alec admitted. “I own the whole shebang. Means I get to set my own hours.” He frowned. “Though unless I get an apprentice along soon, that’ll be far too many for my liking.”

  “So, business is going well?”

  Alec nodded, still seeming a bit hesitant but more comfortable now that the questions had turned out easy to answer.

  “What are you up to?” Crystal asked. “Are you auditioning him for something? Since you already got your car fixed through Alec, I think it’s a bit late.”

  “My sister Crystal is single,” Holly said with a wide smile. “In fact, just a little earlier in the week, she was explaining that every eligible bachelor in town either lived with his mom, didn’t have a job, or both.”

  “Holly!”

  Crystal stared at her sister with an expression caught between horror and fury. “How dare you?”

  “Alec is a perfectly nice man, and I found him rather easily. Just don’t be complaining that you don’t have any options if you can’t even be bothered to search.”

  As a deflection from her own disastrous relationship, this was rather a lot of fun, Holly decided. She could do with a lot more of this in her life, rather than having fights in the tavern. “You’re single, aren’t you, Alec?”

  He put his glass down carefully on the bench, while Crystal buried her flaming cheeks in her hands. “I feel like I shouldn’t answer that on the grounds that it might oblige me to do something about it.” He edged toward the door.

  “I’m so sorry,” Crystal said, leaping down the corridor to show him out. “I don’t know what’s gotten into my sister. She’s usually not such an embarrassment.”

  Alec started to step out the reopened front door, then stopped and turned to look at Crystal. “It’s not that I don’t find you attractive,” he muttered under his breath. For a moment, he turned the same shade of crimson as she already was. “If I ever found the spare time outside of work, it’d be grand to take you out.”

  “See?” Holly called out from behind the two of them. “I’m not embarrassing, I’m just forthright.”

  “Lovely to meet you, Alec.” Crystal closed the door slowly to usher him out. “I’m sure I’ll see you around the town sometime.”

  “Make sure you hire that apprentice,” Holly called out through the closing sliver of the door. She turned to Crystal with a smile still in place.

  “You’re impossible.” Crystal stared at Holly for a minute, her mouth working as though trying to find another phrase to adequately sum up her feelings. She failed. Her mouth snapped closed, and Crystal shook her head and walked into her bedroom. As she firmly closed the door to the hallway shut, Holly could hear her gently repeating, “You’re impossible.”

  Yes. Holly was impossible and embarrassing, but at least she’d just got out of admitting her own shameful secret.

  “I’m not talking to you,” Crystal said firmly when Holly tried to wish her a good morning. In case she didn’t understand the point, Crystal held her hand up for good measure.

  “What if I want to discuss my new business plan?” Holly asked, ignoring all the warning signs.

  “Then you should have thought of that before you became the most embarrassing sister on the planet last night.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” Meggie asked later that morning as Crystal poked her tongue out at her sister while she passed the open door to the shop.

  “I tried to do something nice for my sister, and apparently, it backfired,” Holly said in a reasonable tone. “There was a lovely man who called around to the house last night. I just ascertained that he wasn’t married, didn’t live with his mom, and had a good job in case Crystal was interested.”

  “You embarrassed Alec, you embarrassed me, and you embarrassed yourself,” Crystal shouted out from the bakery room, apparently having a different take on the conversation. “If I were you—” she pointed to Meggie “—I wouldn’t have anything to do with Holly, either. She’s gone bananas.”

  “Well, maybe your sister just wants to start going on double-dates,” Meggie suggested with a laugh. “I remember reading all about that kind of thing back when I was a teenager, but it never happened.”

  “Don’t encourage her,” Crystal yelled out, before responding to an oven timer’s ping. “If she does it again, I’m disowning her.”

  As Meggie sat down with raised eyebrows, Holly shrugged. “I was in a funny mood last night. It seemed like an innocent bit of fun. How do people get together, nowadays?”

  “Well, you’re together,” Meggie pointed out. “However you did it, I guess.”

  Holly swallowed hard and stared down at the floor. “I’m not together with anyone,” she whispered. “I haven’t told Crystal yet.”

  “Oh, honey.” Meggie must have been able to read the distress on Holly’s face, and she didn’t start in with an inquisition, instead folding her into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s stupid to be so upset,” Holly said, wiping away a tear. “We’d only gone out a couple of times. It wasn’t anything serious.”

  “It seemed to me that you felt serious about him.” Meggie stretched out a hand and patted Holly on the shoulder, almost making her tear up again. “I thought he was serious about you too.”

  “Yeah, well. I guess you don’t get to our age without getting set in your own ways.”

  At that, Meggie laughed and nodded. “Ain’t that the truth!”

  After a few minutes spent in companionable silence, Holly asked, “I don’t suppose you have any interesting news to take my mind off things? How’s the shop doing?”

  Meggie immediately began to regale Holly with tales from the set and curl crowd who frequented her hairdressing boutique.

  “Oh,” she said after a minute, putting her coffee down while her eyes widened. “There is something else. I don’t know if you’re already aware, but Sophie Allington has been moved to Christchurch for trial. They’re going to have the preliminary hearing tomorrow.” Meggie checked her watch. “Oops. No, it’s today.”

  “I suppose that had to happen,” Holly said, though she felt a bit sad thinking about it. “Hopefully, she’ll get bail and be able to visit her son while she’s awaiting trial.”

  “You’d think so.” Meggie chewed her lip, frowning. “They said that she’d replaced her husband Steven’s medication with something completely different.”

  “Really?” Holly pursed her lips as she drew a circle on the tabletop. “I wouldn’t have thought her capable of something so devious.” After a second, she gave a short laugh and shook her head. “On the other hand, I only met her a handful of times in very stressful circumstances. I don’t suppose I can extrapolate an entire personality from that.”

  Meggie nodded in agreement. “Even though we do try!”

  “Wouldn’t that be awful?” Holly said. “Taking medication each day designed to make you better and instead it makes you worse.”

  “And the health nurse that he had
working for him never spotted anything. I know she was just a temp, but you’d think that was the kind of thing she’d be useful for.”

  Holly shook her head. “I didn’t know he was that poorly.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, we all succumb to the same weaknesses in the end.”

  “He didn’t have all that much money,” Holly mused. Too late, she realized the information probably wasn’t mean to be common knowledge. By that time, though, Meggie’s eyes were glinting with curiosity. “When his lawyer was talking about the will, he said that Mr. Willoughby had gifted away the bulk of his estate to help start up new businesses. Oh, dear.” Holly shook her head.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve just remembered. When I talked to Amber the other day, she was complaining that her father was happy to finance her brother through university but balked at gifting her a loan to start her small business. She heard about all his charitable donations at the funeral as well. That must have come as a real blow.”

  “Mm,” Meggie said, shaking her head. “Not a good look from any angle.”

  “Still, she seems to be doing okay now.”

  Meggie went very still, and Holly sensed that she was privy to even more information. Although she didn’t usually like to gossip, Holly felt so entangled in the Willoughbys of late that she hungered to know.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “I heard that her business wasn’t doing as well as you might think.”

  Holly snorted. “That’s as clear as mud.” After a second, she shook her head and sighed. “That just makes it even more awful that Mr. Willoughby wouldn’t support her. We know all too well what it feels like to run a business and struggle to keep it afloat.”

  “Poor woman. Well, I suppose she gets to keep the remaining estate now. Hopefully, that’s enough to put her back on her feet.”

  “I hope so.” Holly gazed thoughtfully out of the bakery window just in time to see Samuel strolling past. “There’s the brother.”

  “Hm,” Meggie said in a musing voice.

  “What now?” Holly asked, turning with a burst of amused laughter. “What other dirty secrets are you hiding?”

  When she saw the distraught expression on Meggie’s face, Holly reached across the table. “I’m sorry. What is it? Have I said something wrong?”

  “No. The dirty secret that I know about Samuel is yours.”

  Holly shook her head and raised her eyebrows at her friend. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know where it came from, but everybody in the hairdressers lately has been gossiping about Trevor Waterston’s long-lost son.” Meggie looked positively miserable. “I don’t suppose there’s any truth to that.”

  Holly desperately wanted to be able to say, “No. Of course, there isn’t.” However, she stared down at the table and slowly nodded instead. The action felt like a betrayal of her father, but as far as she knew, it was the truth.

  “He’s your half-brother?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but if the recording that Mr. Willoughby made for the funeral is to be believed, then it’s true.”

  “How many people have you heard it from?” Crystal asked from the internal doorway, making Meggie jump.

  “A few. Maybe half a dozen.”

  “I don’t like the thought of the town gossiping about Dad. It’s not right. Not when we don’t even know for sure.”

  “Oh, Crystal. If we knew for sure then it wouldn’t be gossip, would it? It would just be the plain truth.”

  Crystal wandered over to the window, tracing Samuel as he walked out of sight. She pressed her hands against the glass, even though it meant they’d have to wipe down the windows to wash off the fingerprints later.

  “We should find out for sure,” Crystal said with a determined note in her voice. She pulled the door open and ran out onto the street before Holly or Meggie had a chance to ask her what she was doing.

  “Quick,” Meggie said, pushing on Holly’s shoulder. “She’s going after him.”

  With a flick of the sign from open to closed, Holly ran out of the bakery and gave chase to her sister. As she heard Meggie fall into step just behind her, she thought of an old Bennie Hill skit. There should be that theme music playing in the background, then it would be perfect. Or perfectly ridiculous.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Crystal caught up to Samuel just before he turned onto the path to the surgery center. She called out his name, then had to hold up a hand for him to wait while her lungs tried to work out what was happening. Holly reached her just as she began to speak with Meggie arriving a few seconds later.

  “It’s Samuel Willoughby, isn’t it?” Crystal asked.

  Samuel peered at the two sisters and their friend with weary bemusement, quite obviously indulging them for the moment.

  “That’s me,” he agreed. “And you’re Holly—” he nodded to her “—which I presume means you’re Crystal.”

  “That’s right.” Crystal heaved in one more breath and seemed to stabilize after her run. “I want to see the paternity test.”

  Samuel took a step back, frowning. “I’m not sure—”

  “Sorry for my sister,” Holly apologized. “It’s not the test that your father had handed around at the funeral we’re concerned about. What we would like to ask was if you’d consent to have another performed, to see if our father is…” she trailed off, unable to choose a word that seemed up to the task. After picking and discarding half a dozen, she limped across the finish line with, “… the same.”

  Samuel shook his head. Not in denial but in apparent confusion. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about. Is that why you were at the funeral? Because my father was also your father?”

  “Well, yes. That’s about it.” Holly stared at him, searching his face for the telltale signs of their shared lineage. Nothing. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there, of course, just that she couldn’t tell.

  “If you have a test then we can compare it to—”

  Samuel cut her off with a raised hand. “I’m not taking any tests.”

  “But we need to know—”

  This time he interrupted with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know any of you people. This isn’t the time or the place to be discussing this, but it really wouldn’t matter, even if it were. I’m not taking a paternity test. There’s absolutely nothing in it for me.”

  “But you get to prove who your father was!” Crystal half shouted, stamping her foot in frustration. “Surely, that’s worth something to you.”

  Samuel shook his head, back to puzzled. “I already know who my father was. Isn’t that what you’re trying to find out? That my father was your father also?”

  “Yes,” Holly and Crystal agreed.

  The three of them stood in a loose circle, all staring at each other in complete confusion. Although they all seemed to be saying the same thing, agreeing on the same premise, at the same time they were all entirely at odds.

  “Samuel,” Meggie said, edging her way past Holly to stand in front of both her and Crystal, “from what I understand, at your father’s funeral last week, you were handed the results of a paternity test. Is that right?”

  Samuel gave a curt nod, the glaze over his eye showing that he’d already lost interest in the conversation.

  “And that paternity test showed you that Steven Willoughby wasn’t your father?”

  “Eh?” Samuel took a step back, his eyes clearing as though he’d been slapped. “Who’s saying that? Of course, Steven Willoughby is my father. How dare you insinuate otherwise?”

  Now, Holly felt confusion pulling her down into a swirling stream. “But your results showed that—”

  “My results said that I was the child of Steven Willoughby,” Samuel said placing great emphasis on every word. “Unfortunately, my sister Amber didn’t have the same luck.” He stared down at the ground briefly, then shook his head. “Or she had a lot more luck than
I did. I’m not sure anyone should be proud to claim that man as their father.”

  “So, Amber is our sister?” Crystal asked, turning to Holly with a frown, then back to Samuel. “That’s what you’re saying?”

  “After you left the funeral,” Holly interjected, thinking back to the day and realizing that by the time her bombshell exploded, this man had already gone. “I opened the envelope he’d given me and found a note saying that my father was the man with whom your mother had allegedly had an affair.”

  Samuel’s eyes softened at her use of the word allegedly, and he stepped back to rejoin their loose semi-circle.

  “He really was a most unpleasant man,” Samuel said. “I’m sorry that he dragged you into this mess, too.”

  “I think he actually wanted to drag my father into it,” Holly admitted. “But he missed out on that opportunity by almost a year.”

  “I don’t think we should be making judgments about what sort of man anyone is just from a few minutes recorded at a time of extraordinarily high stress.” Meggie looked around the circle of faces, catching everyone’s eye in turn. “What I do think we all need to do is sit down and work out exactly what is what. In case you’ve forgotten, there’s not just a funeral or an inheritance to be thought about. There’s also a murder. I think it’s time that we told our story to the police.”

  “Miss Waterston,” Sergeant Matthewson said in greeting from behind the station desk. “I’d like to say what a pleasant surprise, but it’s not really a surprise to see you here.” He gazed around at the grim faces. “And it certainly appears that it’s nothing pleasant.”

  After hearing the start of their shared tale, Matthewson split them apart into separate rooms to conduct short interviews, all but Meggie who had the luck of the draw to wait on the hard, wooden chairs in the reception area instead.

  “Samuel tossed the results aside,” Sergeant Matthewson confirmed, checking Holly’s current statement against her previous testimony. “Yes. You’ve said the same thing here. So now you believe—”