Annabelle Archer BoxSet, page 115
part #1 of Annabelle Archer Series
“Do you see her?” Fern peeped over my head at the sea of guests dressed in white as they fanned out across the hotel’s lawn that abutted the beach.
At one end of the green lawn, a low stage held an ornately carved gold backdrop and a pair of high-backed wooden ceremonial chairs. A collection of neutral-hued sofas and chairs topped with batik-print cushions faced the stage and guests had already begun staking out the best seats. Waiters in white jackets circulated through the crowd with trays of tropical drinks served in hollowed-out pineapples and adorned with colorful paper umbrellas as Balinese music filled the air. The late afternoon light was soft as the sun dipped below the tree line and cast gold over the surface of the ocean.
“She has to be here,” I said, inhaling the scent of freshly mowed grass that overpowered the usual scent of salty ocean water that clung to the air. “Topher said she, Kelly, and Dahlia weren’t able to rebook their flights home.”
Fern gave a low whistle. “Two things I can’t believe. One—there aren’t any available flights off the island for a week. Two—you actually curled your hair.”
I put a hand to the bouncy curls that fell around my shoulders. “You like?”
Fern winked at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d even say you used a styling product.”
A woman from the hotel staff walked up to us and swiftly wrapped us in sarongs and lemon-yellow sashes, topping Fern’s head with a traditional Balinese hat that strongly resembled a white napkin tied in a fancy fold.
I glanced around and noticed the other guests also getting outfitted. “This must be part of the ceremony.”
“I like yours.” Fern nodded to my pink sarong, adjusting his forest green one and frowning. “Do you think mine is too subdued?”
“You look great,” I assured him, weaving my way across the flat expanse of grass and taking a cocktail from a waiter along the way. “The hat makes up for the dark color.”
Fern touched a hand to the hat that perched high above the ponytail at the nape of his neck. “I do love a good hat.”
“You’re here,” Kate said as she teetered up to us in high cork-heeled shoes. “Alan and I were having a hard time chasing people away from our couch.”
I saw Alan a few feet away in a burgundy sarong, stretched across the better part of a beige sofa. He waved us over, sitting up as we joined him. “People are frothing for these prime seats.”
“So much for keeping track of Carol Ann,” I said, resting my pineapple drink on a dark rattan side table.
“Are you kidding?” Kate swept an arm wide. “This is a prime location to watch for her. We’re close to the stage and in the center of the lawn.”
Fern sank into the sofa. “It’s like a very comfortable stakeout. Much better than that one we did in Leatrice’s car.” He wrinkled his nose. “Do you remember? The nearest public restroom was three blocks away.”
I remembered very well and felt grateful that I didn’t have to deal with Leatrice and her obsession with amateur surveillance on top of everything else. Knowing her, she’d be hiding in the bushes right now with infrared sensors.
I took a seat next to Alan. “Have you seen Carol Ann yet?”
“No,” he said, adjusting the white cloth hat on his head. “But I see Dahlia so her boss must be here as well.”
I swung my gaze to follow his, spotting the usually bubbly blond assistant standing unsmiling beside the bar, her Lucite clipboard clutched tightly in one hand. The stress of the trip, the murders, and her hysterical boss had clearly taken a toll. Kelly walked up to her, her cat-eyed glasses glinting in the setting sun, and whispered in her ear until Dahlia nodded. I looked around, knowing that Carol Ann couldn’t be far.
“Aren’t these delicious?” Grace plopped down beside me as she took a sip from her pineapple. Her dark hair was pulled back into a low bun and she’d tucked a pink orchid behind one ear.
“Be careful.” Alan wagged a finger at her. “I think they’re deadly. Blow the froth off more than one, and you’ll be falling on the floor.”
“After this trip, I’m not sure self medicating is such a bad idea.” Grace pulled out her phone and began scrolling through her pictures. “I wanted to show you something since we were talking about Marilyn yesterday. I completely forgot I’d saved these.”
I sat forward as she held up the screen. I recognized Dina, Veronica, and Jeremy in the photo but not the thin woman with them. “Is that Marilyn, the woman who died?”
Grace nodded. “I guess I’d remembered incorrectly. Jeremy must have still been friends with them when everything went down because this was taken at that Inspire conference.”
I took the phone from her to get a better look at the one person in the photo I’d never met. She was pretty, with sandy blond hair that fell to her shoulders, but her smile looked forced. And vaguely familiar. “I feel like I’ve seen her before. Do you know if she ever did an event in DC?”
Grace thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Her business was starting to take off when everything imploded around her. I know her husband had political contacts, so she may have planned something for one of their congressmen in Washington.”
Alan looked over my shoulder at the photo and shuddered. “Everyone in that picture is dead now.”
I stared at the image and felt a chill pass through me. It felt unsettling to look at a photo of smiling people who had all died unnatural deaths. I studied Marilyn’s face more closely.
“She doesn’t look happy in this photo.” I passed the device back to Grace.
Grace glanced at the image. “She was always a bit manic. Most of the time she was up, but she did have downturns.”
“I didn’t think you knew her well.”
“I knew about her more than I knew her, but we’d spoken a few times.” Grace explained. “You know how it is in the wedding industry. People’s reputations precede them.”
That was true. Thanks to Fern’s love of gossip, I knew things about wedding vendors in DC I’d never even worked with.
“It sounds like Marilyn wasn’t the most stable person,” I said. “Why would her friends push her into something if they knew she might not be able to handle it?”
Grace took a long sip on her straw, emptying the pineapple and sucking up air. “They may not have understood. Marilyn seemed happy most of the time.”
I’d known people with manic tendencies before, and they could be very good at hiding their pain. I felt a twinge of sadness for this woman I’d never known. It sounded to me like she’d been taken advantage of by a group of thoughtless people. Of course, all those thoughtless people were now dead, and unless I was very mistaken, someone was getting revenge for Marilyn.
“Are you sure there aren’t any of her other friends on this trip?” I asked.
Grace hiccupped and put her fingers to her lips. “Not that I know of.”
“Carol Ann wasn’t friendly with her?”
“If they were, they didn’t pal around at Inspire.”
I sat back against the couch cushions. Would Carol Ann kill three people to take revenge for a woman she wasn’t close with? It seemed like a stretch. A thought occurred to me.
“Was she a member of the Editor’s Circle?” I asked.
“Carol Ann?” Grace looked at me funny. “Of course.”
I waved my hands. “Not Carol Ann. Marilyn.”
Grace pressed her lips together while she thought. “Come to think of it, she was. Not for long if I remember correctly, though.”
Before I could ask her how well Cliff and Ted knew Marilyn, the music intensified and a murmur passed through the crowd. I twisted to see a procession approaching from the beach. Balinese men in white Nehru jackets carried two wooden litters—one held a beautiful woman in an elaborate gold headdress and matching collar over her colorful dress, and the other held a man wearing a burgundy-and-gold hat and an outfit as brightly patterned as his counterpart’s.
“This must be the Balinese wedding ceremony,” Alan said, sitting up to get a better look.
Grace had risen from the couch, her phone held up to record the dramatic entrance, and she took a few steps closer to the action. So much for getting more information from her now.
“Can I talk to you?” The voice barely reached my ears over the loud music.
I turned to see Carol Ann standing behind the sofa holding a drink, her eyes darting around the lawn. Kate and Fern had run up close to the processional and Alan was standing and clapping along to the music, so no one noticed as I got up and walked around to join Carol Ann.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d come,” I said, bending close to her ear so she could hear me.
“I needed to talk to you,” she said. “I’m not sure what I should do.”
“About what?”
“I know you think I had something to do with the murders.” She shifted from one foot to the other. “Because I arranged to get all the victims on the guest list, right?”
“Something like that,” I said, not sure where this conversation was going but wishing I wasn’t the only person hearing it.
“Well, you’re wrong. I didn’t put the victims on the list.” She ran her eyes over the crowd and raised her pineapple cocktail to her lips.
I caught her wrist before she took a sip, knocking the drink to the ground. She wrenched her arm away from me and jumped back. “What are you doing?”
I pointed to the overturned fruit, its contents leaking into the grass at our feet. “The inside of the pineapple is black.”
Carol Ann’s mouth opened and closed again as my words sank in.
I knelt down and picked up the pineapple by the bumpy green skin. The yellow inside of the fruit had turned black around the edges, almost like it had been burned. “It looks like someone tried to make you the next victim.”
29
Carol Ann’s head swung wildly from side to side as she backed away from me. If this was an act to convince me that she wasn’t the killer, it was very effective.
“What were you going to tell me?” I asked over the loud music. The processional had reached the stage and the Balinese bride and groom were being lowered to the ground.
She raised a hand to her throat and gaped at the pineapple in my hands. “My drink was poisoned?”
I peered into the hollowed-out fruit, its pale-yellow flesh dark on the inside. “I don’t know for certain, but whatever was in your cocktail was toxic enough to turn the pineapple. We can have the police take it and test it to be sure.”
She didn’t seem to be listening to me as her eyes darted over the lawn. The Balinese processional made its way to the stage, the bride and groom taking their seats on the ornately carved wooden chairs in the center and the attendants in colorful costumes fanning out on either side. The music changed and the female attendants went out into the crowd, pulling guests up to dance.
Fern ran up to me. “Isn’t this spectacular? I’m not sure which outfit I love more—the bride’s or the groom’s. Which do you think would look better on me, Annabelle?” He took a breath as he noticed me holding the empty pineapple out to Carol Ann and her stricken expression. “Is everything okay?”
“Someone’s trying to kill me.” Carol Ann’s voice sounded shaky.
“I think we all feel that way, don’t we?” Fern put an arm around her shoulders. “Maybe you should sit down for a second.”
Carol Ann nodded mutely as Fern led her to the nearest beige sofa. As Fern comforted the clearly shaken woman, I set the pineapple on a nearby end table and scanned the crowd for Richard. Where was he?
I caught a glimpse of him across the lawn with a beautifully costumed Balinese dancer as she tried to teach him the exaggerated moves of the traditional dance. It wasn’t going well. Richard’s version of Balinese dance looked like a cross between “vogueing” and a seizure. I hurried across to him as quickly as I could without running. One of my hard-and-fast rules as a wedding planner? Never run. If the person in charge looked concerned, it made everyone else panic. I kept a smile on my face as I approached him, and I bowed slightly to the dancer as I tugged on Richard’s sleeve.
“I’m in the middle of something,” Richard said, “and I think I’m almost getting it.”
I pulled him away from the dancer with an apologetic look to her. “I’m sorry, but you’re not.”
He gave me a withering look and stopped swiveling his hips. “Fine. What is it?”
I looked over my shoulder to confirm Fern still had Carol Ann occupied. “The killer tried to knock off Carol Ann.”
“I thought your number one suspect for who the murderer could be was Carol Ann,” Richard said.
“I might be wrong about that.” I took his arm and tugged him a few feet away from the nearest dancing couple. “Carol Ann asked to speak to me, but then I noticed that her pineapple was black.”
“I’m sorry? Her what was what?”
I pointed to a waiter passing with a tray of cocktails in hollowed-out pineapple glasses. “She was drinking one of those, and I realized the inside of the pineapple, the part filled with the drink, was turning black.”
Richard made a face. “That’s not a good sign.”
“Carol Ann was seriously shaken up when I showed her, and I don’t think there’s any way she’s pretending about that.”
“So much for solving the case.” Richard crossed his arms across his chest. “Maybe now’s a good time to leave it to the police.”
“Maybe.” I stared at Carol Ann as she sat on the couch, Fern next to her touching up her hair. “She did mention that she didn’t add the victims’ names to the list. But we already know that the guys from Insider Weddings didn’t add them, either.”
“At least that’s what they claim,” Richard reminded me.
I thought back to how insistent Cliff and Ted had been about not adding Sasha. They had seemed almost affronted by the thought that they would have included her. “I think they’re telling the truth, too.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, darling,” Richard said. “But you can’t make both of them right. They were the only ones who made up the guest list, correct?”
I bit the edge of my lower lip. “Yes. From what I understand, Cliff and Ted added some members of the Editor’s Circle who weren’t on Carol Ann’s list, but that was it.”
“So either one of the guys from Insider Weddings lied and he did add Veronica’s and Sasha’s names to the list, or Carol Ann is lying and added their names and also tried to poison herself.” Richard leaned forward. “I’ll bet one of Carol Ann’s assistants could sort this out for us in two seconds.”
“You’re right. Dahlia and Kelly know every detail about this trip.” I paused as what I’d said aloud sunk in. “They could just as easily have added names to the list and told their boss that the guys at Insider Weddings wanted them on. Carol Ann wouldn’t have given it a second thought.”
Richard’s eyebrows shot up. “You think those two girls are killers? They’re barely out of braces and OxiClean.”
“They aren’t that young,” I said to him. “Early twenties.”
“Why would they want to murder a bunch of people they’ve never met?” Richard asked. “At least Carol Ann knew the victims or some of them. Dahlia and Kelly are completely new to the wedding world. Didn’t Carol Ann say Dahlia’s only been with her a year and Kelly is an intern? I have a hard time seeing the motive even if I could picture them as serial killers.”
I threw my hands into the air. “So explain who snuck the victims onto the guest list. The person who made sure the victims were on the list has to be the killer. Why else go to so much trouble? Someone wanted those people to be here on the island so they could poison them. Everyone else on the list was either a member of the Editor’s Circle or someone Carol Ann wanted to include. All except Veronica, Dina, Sasha, and Jeremy.”
“I still say we ask Kelly and Dahlia,” Richard said.
I shook my head. “And tip our hand?”
Richard stared at me unblinking. “What hand?”
“If either one of them is involved with the murders, we don’t want them to know that we know.” I looked across the lawn for the two blond assistants.
“Don’t worry. I don’t think you really know what you know, so there isn’t much danger of them finding out,”
I stifled the urge to stick my tongue out at him. Sometimes Richard’s habit of poking holes in my theories made me want to kick him. Especially when he made sense.
“What was it that Carol Ann wanted to talk to you about before you discovered her drink had been poisoned?” Richard asked. “You never told me her confession.”
I put my fingers to my temples. “She didn’t tell me. We both freaked out a bit after we realized her drink had been poisoned. Fern took charge of calming her down while I came to tell you.”
“Where is she now?” Richard looked over my head at the pairs of dancers spread across the lawn.
I followed his gaze until I spotted Carol Ann’s curly brown hair. “It looks like she and Fern are taking a seat for the purification ritual.”
At the far end of the lawn closest to the sand, rows of white, wooden folding chairs were set up beneath a stage upon which sat a Balinese woman wearing all white with lots of dark hair piled on top of her head. Despite her hair adding a few inches, the woman with coils of gold snaking around her arms was small and thin.
“That must be the high priestess who’s here to do the cleansing ritual.”
“Didn’t we miss the boat on purification for this trip?” Richard looked suspiciously at the woman now kneeling at the edge of the stage, surrounded by attendants holding golden bowls. “I think the fox is already in the hen house.”
I grabbed his sleeve, pulling him with me as I crossed to the chairs. “Come on. I want to try to sit next to Carol Ann so I can ask her what she wanted to tell me.”
We dodged several people as we wound our way toward the small stage, finally reaching Carol Ann and Fern on the front row. I sat down next to Carol Ann and gave her a quick smile.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
