Annabelle Archer BoxSet, page 106
part #1 of Annabelle Archer Series
“I’m with you,” I said. “You-know-who called me again this morning.”
“Nutso Natalie?” Kate asked. “Please tell me it wasn’t at four a.m.”
“It wasn’t,” I said. “It was at five.”
Kate shook her head. “You’re going to have to block her number.”
“At least her wedding is only a month away,” I said.
“And at least she gave up the idea of carrying her cat down the aisle in a basket.” Kate scanned the chalkboard coffee sign. “I don’t know if we have enough Bactine in our emergency kit for that.”
I’d gotten used to having dogs at weddings, but drew the line at cats, ferrets, and any other pet that didn’t readily follow commands. Not that all of our dog ring bearers had been angels, I thought, remembering chasing a pair of Jack Russell terriers (and the platinum wedding rings they wore around their necks) through two parks before catching them.
“Why are we the first ones down here?” Kate asked after we’d both placed our orders.
“I might have told you an earlier start time,” I said, not meeting her eyes, “to make sure you were ready on time.”
She took the to-go coffee cup from the barista and glared at me over the top as she took a sip. “Have I mentioned how evil you are?”
“A few times.” I cupped my hands around the cardboard sleeve on my vanilla latte and let the warmth seep into my fingers. Even though Bali had no shortage of heat, the warmth of the coffee felt soothing.
Richard eyed my coffee when we rejoined them. “Don’t forget that we have a long car ride ahead of us.”
“How long does it take to reach Ubud?” Kate asked.
Richard pulled his guidebook out of the black crossbody bag he wore slung across his chest. Usually his little Yorkie, Hermes, rode in the bag, and I missed seeing the black-and-brown furry head poking out. I had not missed the experience of a long-haul flight with an energetic dog, so I was grateful Richard had left Hermes with my nutty neighbor, Leatrice. “I can’t tell from the map, but at least an hour.”
Kate took a swallow of coffee. “Are Buster and Mack joining us?”
“Don’t you remember?” I asked. “They told us last night that they would be going ahead of us to set up the decor for the lunch.”
“That must have been after a few of those Indonesian beers,” Kate said, rubbing her forehead. “Do you think I’ll be able to nap on the drive up?”
“I wonder if we’ll have the same type of vans we took to the waterfall and temple,” Fern said. “Those vans were set up for napping.”
“Wonder no longer,” I said as I heard the low rumble of multiple cars approaching the portico off the open lobby.
Fern clapped his hands as a row of cars appeared. “This is much better than vans.”
Vividly colored vintage Jeep buggies with convertible tops pulled up and idled in front of us, each one decorated with a cluster of matching balloons tied to the front bumper.
Kate’s mouth fell open. “I guess we’re not going incognito, and I guess I’m not getting my nap.”
“Are those cars for us?” Alan asked as he joined our group, linking his muscular arm through mine. “Ripper!”
Richard gave him a dismissive glance. “Where were you yesterday?”
“I heard about all the commotion on the beach.” Alan grimaced. “I stayed in my room to get some work done on my lappy. I have a big event coming up in Sydney.” He patted my hand. “Was it awful?”
I shrugged, trying not to dwell on the moment I pulled Dina’s sunglasses off her face and stared into her lifeless eyes. “It was disturbing.”
Alan shook his head. “Hard to believe another person carked it.”
Between Alan’s Aussie speak and Kate’s routine mangling of expressions, I was fast on my way to needing a personal translator.
“You know a couple of Australians died here in Bali when bartenders watered down drinks with antifreeze?” Alan rubbed his arms as if trying to warm up. “Horrid way to go.”
“What happened to watering drinks down with water the good, old-fashioned way?” Kate asked.
Richard sniffed. “I don’t think this is a case of bad bartending.”
“Let’s hope not.” Fern put a hand to his throat. “I’d hate to have to cut back on cocktails.”
“Don’t worry,” Richard said. “If the bartenders here were serving antifreeze in every drink, you’d be dead already.”
Fern gave a sigh of relief, then the smile slipped off his face, and he made a face at Richard. “Hilarious.”
Alan looked at us. “You all seem to be handling it well.”
Kate winked at Alan. “It’s not our first rodeo.”
“Should we pick our cars?” I asked before Alan could question what Kate meant. Other planners were starting to gather behind us, and I did not want to get stuck in long conversations about Dina and how we’d found her body.
Carol Ann strode through the group with Dahlia running behind her, the Plexiglas clipboard clutched tightly in hand.
“Good morning, everyone.” Carol Ann’s voice was artificially cheery and her smile almost disturbingly bright. “These fun buggies will take you up to Ubud for the day. Each vehicle holds three people, but I’d like you to split yourselves up so you’re not riding with people you traveled here with.” When there was a quiet groan throughout the group, Carol Ann raised her voice. “The point of this trip is to make friends and meet new people. It’s no fun if you stay with the same people all the time. Mingle, people. Mingle.”
Richard huffed. “I have all the friends I need, thank you very much.”
I patted him on the arm. “This won’t kill you. And you might meet someone fun.”
“If I get stuck with Jeremy, I’m throwing myself out of the car,” Richard said as he stalked off toward the Jeeps.
“I second that,” Kate spotted Kristina who’d just walked up. “See you on the other side.”
I watched the trip’s cutest couple, Jacob and Katherine, reluctantly part ways and head to separate buggies, and, for a moment, I wished Reese was with me. I shook the thought from my head and grabbed Alan’s hand as I made a beeline for a Creamsicle-orange buggy. “Come on. We didn’t travel here together. It counts as mingling.”
I opened the door to the backseat and slid in while Alan hopped in the front, next to the driver. I saw Brett walking down the lobby steps to the row of cars, but before I could call out to him to join us, the door to the other side of the buggy opened and Sasha sat down next to me, accompanied by a cloud of Shalimar perfume.
She appraised me and then Alan. “I suppose this is as good as any, although why we aren’t riding in air-conditioned coaches is beyond me.”
I tried to hide my disappointment at the prospect of an hour trapped in a small car with the brassy planner. “Don’t you think these vintage Jeeps are fun?”
She flipped her bright-red hair behind her and a few strands caught me in the face. “I expected limousines, not buggies.”
“Have a go. It’s an adventure.” Alan gave her his sweetest smile before turning to face forward.
Our Balinese driver got in the car and the processional of Jeeps began to move in front of us. We pulled out of the portico behind a neon-green buggy and snaked our way up the curved drive, passing through the massive entrance walls covered in dark-brown rosettes. We turned out of the resort and drove through the area of Nusa Dua until we merged onto a highway that looked brand new and was virtually free from traffic.
The hum of the vintage motor made it hard for me to talk to Alan, so I turned to Sasha. “Are you enjoying the trip so far?” That seemed like an innocuous question.
She gave a derisive laugh. “I’d hardly call this a successful FAM trip. Haven’t you noticed all the wedding planners dropping dead?”
I fought the urge to give her a snarky response. “Yes, but I thought you wouldn’t mind at least one of them being dead.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What does that mean?”
I decided to go for broke since we were zipping along the highway, and there was no way she could escape my questioning. “Oh, nothing. I did hear that you and Veronica once fought over the same man.”
Alan swiveled his neck around, his blue eyes wide.
“The gossip mill’s still working well, I see.” Sasha dug in her oversized Louis Vuitton purse and produced her cigarette holder and electric cigarette. “It’s no secret she took my sloppy seconds, but it’s not something I’d kill over.”
“I heard that you were upset enough to stop attending Inspire.”
Sasha took a drag from the end of the long white holder. “I’ll admit that I may have wanted to get even with her when it happened, but that was years ago. I’m not the kind of woman who waits five years to take my revenge.”
Alan mouthed the word ‘wow’ to me when Sasha turned her head to the window to blow out imaginary smoke. I nodded at him and mouthed ‘I know.’
I turned my attention to the scenery as we exited the highway and began driving through villages. Houses sat close to the two-lane road and were interspersed with open-air shops, some with roll-down metal doors. I spotted a few homes with their own temples tucked behind wrought iron gates. The front of the homes and businesses were strewn with the remains of morning offerings: the vivid flower blossoms, bits of food, and bamboo baskets placed outside every doorway to appease the Hindu gods. I leaned my head out of the car window and could smell the lingering scent of incense that had burned in the offerings.
“It’s not like I’ve missed much at Inspire,” Sasha continued. “It’s the same people, the same cliques.”
“But you haven’t been in five years,” I said, turning my face to her and breathing in fruity vapor from the fake cigarette combined with the heavy perfume I assumed she bathed in. At least it was better than a lung full of smoke.
“Jeremy updated me on everything, and, according to him, I didn’t miss anything.” She tapped her holder on the open car window and I half expected ash to fall to the ground.
“Since Jeremy went, he must have known both of the victims pretty well,” I said. “Was he in their clique?”
“Not anymore.” Sasha leaned back against the seat. “He had a falling out with Veronica and Dina a couple of years ago. Cathy, too.”
It wasn’t hard for me to imagine other planners disliking Jeremy since I despised him so much. What was hard to believe was the fact that he’d been friends with any of them. Usually you had to be a likable person to make friends, and Jeremy was in no way likable.
“Do you know why they fell out?” I asked.
Sasha studied me for a second. “They dropped him. He never told me why, but I do know that they cut him out of their group text chain and got him blacklisted from FAM trips they were invited to.”
“Did it have to do with the scandal Veronica and Dina were involved with at Inspire a few years back?”
“If it did, he never told me. Then again, Jeremy isn’t one to trash people behind their backs.”
It took all my restraint not to laugh out loud. Trashing people behind their backs seemed to be one of Jeremy’s specialties. If he had been involved and had incriminating evidence on the two women, I wondered why he hadn’t told Sasha or used it against Veronica and Dina. Of course I knew the answer to that question.
He’d been biding his time so he could kill them instead. Knowing Jeremy the way I did, I did not put murder past him.
14
“Did you hear all that?” I asked Alan as we got out of our Jeep in front of the Ubud monkey forest. Sasha had walked away to find Jeremy, leaving behind a trail of Shalimar and sickly sweet vapor from her fake cigarette.
“Only bits and pieces,” Alan admitted, raising his tan muscular arms over his head to stretch. “I was distracted when our driver chucked a U-ey in the middle of the road.”
I nodded, assuming he meant the U-turn our procession of cars had made. “Well, she all but admitted to me that her buddy Jeremy knew both victims well and had a good reason to want them dead.” I scanned the row of orange, green, and red vintage buggies behind ours as other guests disembarked and began walking toward the park entrance. “I need to tell my crew.”
Alan came around to my side of the car. “I’m getting the sense that you and your mates have a history with this guy Jeremy.”
“We had the misfortune of working with him on a wedding once,” I admitted, waving my arms wildly as I spotted Kate and Fern standing next to the stone sign at the entrance to the overgrown jungle. I pulled Alan with me as I hurried to join them.
“I hope you had a better ride up than I did,” Kate said once we’d reached her.
“Don’t bet on it,” I said. “We were with Sasha. Who were you with?”
Kate put a finger to her ear and shook it. “Let me just say that Chatty Cathy comes by her nickname honestly.”
“Well, I had a lovely ride up with Cliff and Ted,” Fern said, straightening his Balinese hat. “They really are Renaissance men, you know.”
“The owners of Insider Weddings?” I said, jealous that I’d missed a chance to get to know the two men better. I scanned the people walking past us into the forest. “Where’s Richard?”
“I think I saw him walk ahead with Carol Ann and her assistants,” Kate said.
Alan glanced down at his bare arm as if he wore a watch. “Should we get going? We only have thirty minutes inside before we’re supposed to be back at the cars.”
I zipped my black bag closed and tucked my long ponytail into the back of my pink T-shirt as we walked past the ornately carved stone sign announcing the entrance to the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary and warning guests not to play with the wild monkeys. We followed the paved walkway shaded by a high canopy of leafy trees as gray long-tailed monkeys scampered across the path and perched on the stone ledge lining the walk. The air was cool and smelled loamy the further we walked into the overgrown jungle. Spongy moss covered rock walls, making the man-made structures seem to glow green as the slanting sun reached them through the treetops.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, feeling the sacredness of the space.
Alan pulled me closer to him and pointed to a large monkey following us. “If you don’t mind being stalked.”
“I’m going to buy some bananas.” Kate motioned to a nearby stall with a peaked roof.
Fern strode ahead to an opening with a stone fountain where monkeys sat grooming themselves and eyeing people as they passed. “We should be getting close to one of the temples.”
I sidestepped a pair of monkeys running past me and approached a wooden post with directional arrows and a baby monkey perched on top. Luckily, the signs were in both Indonesian and English. “The holy spring temple is this way.”
Kate ran up to us, holding a small bunch of slightly bruised bananas in each hand. “Want to feed them with me?”
Alan’s eyes widened. “They just spotted your bananas, mate.”
Before Kate could pass us a banana, two monkeys climbed up her legs and snatched the bunches from her hands. One of the monkeys continued on to her shoulders where he sat and peeled his bananas while the other monkey leapt down to the ground and ran away, dragging the yellow bunch of fruit with him.
Kate’s mouth was a perfect O as she hunched her neck forward. “He’s heavier than I would have guessed.”
Alan and I both took a few steps back as the monkey settled himself on Kate and calmly devoured his snack.
“Does he look like he wants to get down?” Kate asked, her eyes swiveling to the side as she tried to look at her passenger.
“Maybe.” I didn’t want to tell Kate that her monkey friend looked like he was perfectly happy to spend the rest of the day sitting on her shoulders. Before I had to figure out how to create a distraction worthy of a monkey, the creature bounded down to the ground and ran off in pursuit of another person holding a banana.
Kate smoothed her dress, wiping off the marks from the dirty feet that had climbed over her. “Check that off my list of things never to do again.”
I led the way down a series of winding wooden steps that twisted through the forest then rose again in front of a stone bridge flanked by a pair of moss-covered dragon statues. I let my hand rest on the wet moss as I walked up the slippery steps and across the bridge, avoiding the dangling tendrils of jungle roots hanging from the tall trees above us. I looked up and saw a curtain of roots blocking the sun as it attempted to peek through the thick foliage.
Fern leaned over a stone barrier to peer into a square pool below filled with dark, still water and floating leaves. “Well, that’s not pretty.”
“Where did Richard run off to?” I asked once we’d walked around the holy spring temple and were headed back up the wooden staircase.
“Forget Richard,” Kate said. “Where’s the rest of the group? I do not want to be left to live out the rest of my days with these banana-stealing monkeys.”
Alan laughed and nudged Kate. “You spoil me.”
“Is that Australian?” I asked, hoping to get a handle on Aussie slang by the end of the trip..
He shook his head. “Just Alan speak.”
Kate grinned at him. “I like it. I may have to steal it.”
I paused when we reached the open paved area with the stone fountain. “Does that sound like Richard?”
We turned and watched openmouthed as Richard ran past us waving his arms as he swatted a baby monkey sitting on his head and clinging to his hair. A larger monkey, whom I assumed was the baby’s mother, chased after Richard, howling with her teeth bared.
“You must be out of your mind!” Richard screamed as he ran, splashing through the fountain and down the path toward the exit.
“I think we found him,” Alan said.
“Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.” Fern turned to us. “Did anyone get that on video?”
“Come on.” I broke into a jog. “We’d better help him before he runs all the way back to the resort with that baby monkey on his head.”
“That,” Kate said, trying to catch up to me, “would be amazing.”
