Chapter Forty-Two Holly
Chapter Forty-Two
HOLLY
In the dark of the lava tunnel, Fitzwilliam reaches in to grab the birthday invitation.
‘Wait.’ I shine my light around carefully. ‘Don’t disturb evidence until you’ve examined the situation, right?’
I pull it out, inch by inch.
‘Trinity,’ muses Fitzwilliam. ‘Why would that be on an invitation to Adrianna’s twenty-first birthday party?’
‘I’ve seen this invitation before,’ I tell him. ‘Simone brought it back from a meeting with Leopold. Evidence that Adrianna’s stalker began threatening her before the birthday party.’
‘It wasn’t on the police file.’
‘I don’t think the Kensingtons go to the police,’ I tell him, eyeing the invitation.
The turquoise card is thick, but the color has faded from a vibrant blue to something more muted and patchy.
I think for a moment. ‘There’s something stagey about this, right?
The trail of violet light. Then this old invitation.
Like something Simon might set up to shoot for Wrongly Accused. ’
‘I don’t watch the show.’
‘We use real cases,’ I explain. ‘But Simone sets up evidence in an engaging way. This birthday invitation is exactly the kind of thing Simone would have the crew film her unearthing. Assuming it relates to the kidnapping case. Forensics,’ I say.
‘Wrongly Accused always uses forensics. It was Simone’s specialty.
’ I hold the invitation up. ‘I think we need to take a look at this in more detail. I have a full forensic kit in my luggage.’
The rumble of an engine resounds through the cave.
‘We need to go,’ says Fitzwilliam.
‘OK.’ With a gloved finger, I begin bagging the invitation, avoiding unnecessary contact. The gold catches the light.
‘Fancy,’ I murmur. ‘I guess Adrianna was more bling back then.’ I’m thinking of the more muted, but decidedly expensive wedding invitation.
Fitzwilliam grabs it. ‘We need to go now.’ He slides the invitation into the evidence bag, nods and puts it in the pack still on my back. It’s a surprisingly intimate gesture, and he seems to realize this just after he closes the zipper, not quite meeting my eye.
As we head back toward the hot springs, we pass the boxes and buckets of flowers, and the giant, flower-clad ‘K’. Approaching it from the opposite direction, I get a clear view of the unfinished back.
‘Silky is organizing the floral display, right?’ I say. ‘Look at the display. It’s been built out of scaffold.’ A realization is forming, deep under the sugar-starved thinking part of my brain.
‘This isn’t the time to admire the flowers, Holly.’
‘I’m not really a florals kind of girl,’ I tell him. ‘But I am interested in murder weapons.’
Fitzwilliam pulls at my arm, with a gentlemanly hesitation that I suspect masks his underlying panic.
‘The room Simone died in,’ I say, ‘do you think it was floristry scaffold?’ I’m absorbing the structure of the giant, flower-decorated K.
The scaffold is a honeycomb. Interlocking poles all fitted expertly together.
‘Why would the scaffold be deconstructed on the morning of the wedding demo?’ I’m voicing my thoughts, trying to piece together a fact that won’t sit in alignment.
‘Something to discuss later,’ says Fitzwilliam, leading me with gentle firmness back to the reception area. He stops dead in his tracks and I follow his gaze to the hot pools outside. Two burly men in uniforms, with guns slung easily over their bodies, are patrolling the base.
I catch a glimpse of the brutal-looking face of one of the guards and the way he is flicking the safety catch on his gun makes me instinctively duck back out of sight.
‘Think they’d risk shooting a wedding guest?’ I ask.
‘Let’s not stick around to find out,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘They haven’t spotted the quad bike,’ he adds, pointing. ‘If we slip down the back way, they won’t see us.’
Silently, we creep down the side of the volcano, and back to the parked-up bike.
‘Let’s go. Fast as you like,’ breathes Fitzwilliam, climbing on behind.
At the roar of the engine we hear shouts from back toward the hot pools, but we’re long gone on the sandy trail before the guards see us.
We speed back to the other side of the volcano with the setting sun behind us, all kinds of strange thoughts looping through my head.
As we roll up the last of the sandy track, the invitation, and what Simone might be trying to tell us, are jostling for position. The clutch of old prison cells, hidden in the back of Elysium’s luxury spa. The floristry scaffold. The birthday invitation, addressed to Trinity.
It all points to a dark secret, hidden out here on Elysium.