The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  “I’m not saying what happened, Sergeant,” Holly interrupted. “I’ll leave the conjecture up to you. The last time I tried to jump to conclusions, I landed squarely in the wrong place.”

  The shameful memory of accusing poor Wendy of murder when she wasn’t the perpetrator still haunted Holly’s memory. Even if their friendship had survived the strange events of that day, it would never be counted amongst her proudest moments.

  “Okay. I’ll conjecture on my own time, then. Tell me what else you know.”

  When Holly got to the end, Matthewson sighed. “I don’t know what you think I’m to do with this,” he said, shaking the notes he’d taken. Even though the room was equipped with recording devices, Holly had observed that he always liked a manual backup.

  “I can’t tell you what to do with them,” she said. “But there’s something fishy going on with Amber, and I don’t think that anyone should accuse Sophie too strongly until that mess is sorted out.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Matthewson said wryly, cocking an eyebrow at her. “I do so love to be lectured on law and justice by a baker.”

  “I have a law degree, as well, remember,” Holly said. “I may not have used it much for the criminal law, but that doesn’t mean it all fell out the moment I graduated.”

  “Point taken,” Matthewson said. “I suppose I’d better go interview the rest.”

  Holly got the pleasure of waiting beside Meggie while Samuel took his turn through the ringer. Although she’d told Matthewson she wouldn’t offer conjecture, nobody had extracted the same promise from Meggie.

  “I understand why she swapped the papers around, but do you really believe now that someone stabbed her out of the blue?” Meggie addressed the empty room in general when Holly at first refused to be drawn. “Or do you think she faked the stabbing to throw attention off herself?”

  Holly couldn’t stop her face from screwing into a doubtful expression. “I know,” Meggie continued, “It’s a lot of trouble to go to if you’re just trying to get an inheritance. Imagine if she’d botched it up!”

  “Nobody is saying that—”

  “Or if she’d gone straight through a kidney or something and spent the rest of her life on dialysis?”

  “Sophie is still the likeliest suspect!” Holly insisted, giving in. Meggie immediately led her down a garden path of possibilities, each more ridiculous than the last.

  By the time Matthewson had finished up talking with everybody, Holly and Meggie had agreed that Amber was stabbed by a pixie in the garden with a pitchfork and everybody else was innocent. It was a hard job to hide their grins as Samuel and Crystal joined their group appearing obviously distressed.

  “Can I go and visit my sister now?” Samuel said. “She’s about to be discharged from the surgery center, and I was going to drive her back to Christchurch.”

  “I wouldn’t mind asking her a few questions before that,” Matthewson said. “How about I got in first, and then if everything’s on the up and up, you can take her into your care.”

  They filed out of the station, Meggie scurrying back to her hairdressers after remembering an appointment. Crystal also took her leave, going back to open the bakery. The determination that had driven her out the door at a run had utterly disappeared.

  “You should go on a date with Alec,” Holly teased. “That would cheer you right up.”

  Crystal aimed a swat at her sister’s head that fortunately didn’t make contact. Although another teasing statement was ready on Holly’s lips, after seeing the glint in her sister’s eye, she decided to leave it for another day.

  “Do you mind if I go along to the surgery?” she asked Crystal. “I’d quite like to say goodbye to Amber, as well before she goes.”

  “I suppose you should,” Crystal said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all that she’s the one who ended up possibly being in our family. Do you remember when Mom would get in a temper?”

  “Wrong side of the family,” Holly reminded her with a sad smile. With so much of their family lost, it might be nice to gain a new member, even under such bizarre circumstances.

  She shuffled into the surgery behind Matthewson and waited by the reception counter, too restless to sit, while Samuel sprawled on a couch in the waiting area. “I hope that the inheritance is all my sister’s lying about,” he said, rubbing his closed eyes. “If Amber has been playing other tricks while our father was being murdered, I’m not going to be happy.”

  “I suppose that we just wait and—”

  Amber burst into the reception area, arm out, her clenched fist brandishing a scalpel. Samuel scrambled to his feet while Holly tried to duck in behind the side of the desk, out of harm’s way.

  Unfortunately, she was closest.

  Amber grabbed her with an arm that closed around Holly’s throat like a pincer made of thick steel. Swept off her feet, Amber dragged her back toward the door, holding the scalpel in front of her face.

  “If you come any closer to me, I’ll kill her!” Amber shouted as Matthewson sped around the corner. He skidded to a step, a helpless expression on his face as Amber dragged Holly outside, the sharp edge of the scalpel blade now pressed up against her neck.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As Holly was drawn back through the door, she watched as Matthewson reached for his radio to contact the station. Police should have meant help or safety, but the press of the blade against Holly’s throat made everything they did too little, too late.

  The feel of the fresh breeze against her skin offset the sheen of sweat that sprang up on Holly’s brow. She didn’t know whether to call out or beg for her life. Every option that sprang to her mind seemed useless or dangerous.

  Please, please, please, ran through Holly’s mind. A chant that repeated over and over. Please!

  Amber stumbled over the uneven ground, and for a second, the press of the blade turned into a slice as the tip slid into Holly’s flesh. She squealed—the sound out of her mouth before she could even think of stopping it.

  “Shut up!” Amber yelled, pulling her arm tighter around Holly’s throat. If she kept going, soon Holly wouldn’t be able to breathe at all. The thought tipped Holly’s mind into the gulping maw of horror.

  “Watch the road!” As they stumbled backward over the curb, Holly reemerged into clear thought as though she’d been drenched in ice-cold water. “Please don’t walk out into traffic.”

  Amber started, for a second the arm squeezing Holly’s throat even tighter, then relaxed. She stepped back up onto the sidewalk, pushing Holly in front of her.

  “I need to go inside,” Amber shouted in Holly’s ear. “Where do I go?”

  The odd mix of demanding and pleading added to the threat of the blade at Holly’s throat. With a shake of her head,

  Holly answered, “Just give up. Let me go and answer Sergeant Matthewson’s questions.”

  “No.” Amber became so agitated at the suggestion that for a moment Holly thought her life was at an end. Then the woman hauled her back along the street, turning and pushing her in front as they came to the main road intersection. Holly looked straight ahead as the people sauntering to and from the hot pools suddenly realized there was a dramatic incident happening in front of their eyes.

  “Your bakery,” Amber panted in Holly’s ear. “Is it locked?”

  Holly nodded her head a moment before she understood that the admission had just sealed her fate. Amber pushed her along at an even higher pace until, together, they fell in through the door.

  “Let me go,” Holly sobbed as Amber continued to drag her backward, away from the cluster of people out shopping or eating, far from the possibility of a stranger offering her help.

  “No,” Amber retorted, pulling Holly down into a crouch behind the counter. The woman gasped for breath, shaking with exhaustion as the burst of violent energy ran out of her.

  Holly understood that she had a chance now. With Amber tired, perhaps reopening her wound, then Holly could move to save herself.
But her mind turned blank. No matter what physical maneuver she thought of, the movie playing in her mind showed her the same end. Throat cut. Dead or dying.

  “What do you hope to gain by this?” she asked instead.

  “Don’t ask me questions!” Amber shouted. “I’m sick of people asking me questions.”

  Holly shook her head, not understanding.

  “Just give me a moment to think!”

  Tucked in behind the counter, there was no way that a passer-by could glance in and see them. Holly hoped that the sergeant had pursued them closely enough to work out where Amber had taken her. If he had, then he should know that the back of the store was unlocked, the same at the front of the bakery. She should make some noise. Anything to cover the possible sound of the police coming through to offer rescue.

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Holly said, not even trying to stop the pleading from entering her voice. Let Amber hear how scared she was, how terrified she’d become. “Why didn’t you just talk with the sergeant? He just wanted to find out about the paternity test.”

  “The test? That’s everything.” Amber laughed, the sound rattling in her chest. Either the stabbing or the enforced bed rest had weakened her—Holly listened to her panting for a full minute before she could continue. “If I don’t get that inheritance, then it’s all been for nothing!”

  “But there’s barely any inheritance to get,” Holly said. As well as the impetus to keep making noise, she didn’t understand.

  Hadn’t that been one of the points that had enraged Amber on the day of her father’s funeral? The small tidings left in the estate.

  “I thought Marshall said there was only seven hundred thousand left,” Holly continued. “I mean, that’s a fortune to me, but it’s hardly worth threatening people over.”

  “Killing them, you mean.”

  As the words sank into Holly’s brain, she felt a shock of pure terror sap her energy. It took a moment of blankness before she realized that Amber wasn’t talking about killing her.

  “That fool Sophie hired a nurse through my company, did you know that? Such a sweet thought to toss a bone my way.” Amber laughed, the sound hollow and empty of humor. “If only she’d hired a hundred or so more, then I might have crawled out from under my debt.”

  Amber sucked in a breath full of tears. Even without turning, Holly knew that she was crying copiously, her body shook with the woman’s sobs.

  “Do you know what it’s like to build a company up from scratch and then watch it die? Every day that passed, good money flowed after bad. The credit crunch hit me, then the ninety day trial period ate up the remaining profits. Who wants to hire a temp when you can hire permanent and just sack them later without reason?”

  “I know it’s hard to be a business owner,” Holly ventured. “I’ve found—”

  “This!” Amber laughed and pressed the blade tighter against Holly’s throat. “You call this a business. I’m talking about a company that hires dozens of staff on a full-time basis just to keep things running. I have thousands of people on the books, all depending on me to find them a job.”

  Amber sucked in another gulp of air, sobbing it out in gusts that puffed up against the back of Holly’s neck.

  “My company turned from a triumph into a yoke around my neck. It dragged me down a little more every day, but I couldn’t just abandon it, any more than a mother could kick their child out of the house just because she didn’t like the kid’s personality. I grew it up, and I needed to make it succeed. There was so much responsibility, so much weight resting on my shoulders. So many people depend on me—I can’t afford to fail!”

  “But your father’s estate—”

  “It’s worth a lot more than Marshall told me. He left out the bequest that Sophie was getting, to keep her and that weirdo son of hers in style. Ten million. That’s what he gave them. I went to him for money when my company first started having trouble, and you know what he told me?”

  “You said that he never gave you finance,” Holly said quietly. “So, I guess he said no.”

  “He didn’t just say it,” Amber spat out. “He yelled it in my face with delight. Don’t believe what that recording said at the funeral—my father wasn’t a man who could keep a secret like that and not open it. He knew for sure that I wasn’t his daughter. He’d known for years. I went to him for help, and he turned me away. My father never gave me anything. In the end, he wasn’t even going to let me keep his name!”

  The blade disappeared from Holly’s throat as Amber wiped the flood of tears from her eyes. After a minute, she shoved Holly in the center of her back, pushing her away.

  “Go on,” she yelled when Holly crouched beside her, afraid to move. “Get out of here.”

  Amber still clutched the scalpel in her fist, and Holly wondered what she would do with it. Keep her talking. Engage her until the police arrive.

  “Did the nurse feed him the poison?” she asked, putting together the thread of the earlier conversation. “The one that Sophie hired from your agency?”

  “Her!” Amber shook her head in disgust. “No. She was just a girl doing her job. I wouldn’t have been able to ask her to do something like that. Either she wouldn’t have the smarts to do it properly, or she’d refuse to do it at all.”

  It was hard for Holly to crouch by the sobbing woman and listen to such an awful confession pour from her mouth. When she stretched forward, hoping to snag the weapon out of Amber’s grasp, the woman snatched her hand back out of reach. She may be emotional, but she wasn’t losing focus. Holly rocked back on her heels and kept going.

  “Did Sophie kill him, then?”

  Amber’s eyes widened with astonishment, then she threw back her head and laughed. “Sophie! She wouldn’t ever have thought of it. Daddy could’ve beaten her black and blue for a decade, and murder would never cross her innocent mind.”

  Amber paused for a moment, then shook her head sadly. “I really can’t imagine why the police believed that for one moment. I mean, it was great for me—I nearly got away with it—but seriously? Who could spend more than a minute with Sophie and actually think her capable of murder?”

  Holly agreed with the sentiment wholeheartedly, though it didn’t give her the same level of amusement that Amber found in the situation.

  “I grilled the nurse when she came in one day to ask if she could change shifts.” Amber shook her head. “Usually, I wouldn’t deal with such day-to-day matters, but the nurse’s supervisor was on leave, and I couldn’t afford to pay another person to cover those weeks.”

  Amber sighed and ran her spare hand through her hair. The bags under her eyes spoke of long months of overworking. Holly thought of how ragged Crystal had been when she arrived in town. Even though she hid it well, covering a two-person job had been a drain on her exuberance.

  “I told the nurse that the household was thinking of terminating her services,” Amber said. “The poor girl came in to ask for a simple swap of hours, and I made her think she was about to lose her job. She told me all about Dad’s routine and medications. Every time she hesitated, I hinted that she’d done something wrong on the job.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me any more,” Holly said suddenly. “I doubt you know, but I used to be a lawyer. If the court compels me to testify, I’ll have to obey.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Amber shook her head, and Holly’s eyes widened with alarm.

  “Of course, it matters,” she said, reaching out a hand to touch Amber’s arm, then withdrawing it, scared of the blade.

  “I learned what medications my dad was taking and then I searched for them online. Once I knew what the different drugs should look like, I bought capsules and colored them, so they appeared the same. I filled them up with the worst chemicals I could find and then kept them in my purse. When I revisited the house for a family gathering, I switched the bottles over.”

  “Amber, I’m serious. You shouldn’t be telling this story to anyone. Not
before you talk to a criminal lawyer who knows about this stuff.”

  But Amber held a hand up. “I thought at first that I’d gotten that wrong, too. Weeks went by with no word, and I just assumed I’d mucked up somehow. After a while, I could almost convince myself the switch hadn’t happened.” Amber gave a deep sigh. “Then Marshall called, absolutely distraught.”

  It was too late for warnings. What Amber had admitted to her already was enough to convict her in any court. Holly sat still and let her tell the rest of her story.

  “When I was listening to the recording, I couldn’t believe that Dad brought up the paternity testing stuff. For a moment, I thought the jig was up then. I’d done such a horrible thing, and it was all for nothing.”

  Holly nodded. “Then Samuel stormed out and left his papers behind.”

  “Yeah.” Amber gave a wan smile. “What a good brother he turned out to be. All that outrage and then storming out. He was disappointed to find out that he was related to Daddy and I was grateful that I could use his tests as my own.”

  “They wouldn’t have stood up to scrutiny,” Holly said. “Someone would have noticed the sex markers eventually.”

  Amber shook her head, then shrugged. “Perhaps. I think it’s just as likely that Marshall was so embarrassed by the whole thing that he would’ve arranged the settlement without investigating.”

  Holly tilted her head forward, a slow nod. Perhaps.

  “But it didn’t matter since he given away most of the estate and then handed the remainder to Sophie.”

  The tinkle of Meggie’s laughter filled Holly’s ears. She’d suggested that Amber stabbed herself then dismissed it as ridiculous in the same breath. Except here it was, not as silly as it first appeared.

  “You stabbed yourself,” Holly said in a small voice, not even a question.

  “I thought they’d lock up Sophie straight away. That got me her share of the inheritance and deflected the blame for Dad’s death away from my shoulders. It seemed perfect at the time.”

  Holly tilted her head to one side, staring at the broken young woman in front of her. “But you didn’t tell the police that,” she said. “At least, not right away.”