A Slice of Murder, page 1
A Slice of Murder
A Shilpa Solanki Mystery
Marissa De Luna
Copyright © 2022 Marissa De Luna
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The right of Marissa De Luna to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Bloodhound Books.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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www.bloodhoundbooks.com
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Print ISBN 978-1-914614-88-0
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Acknowledgements
A note from the publisher
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For Jan and Bruce
Chapter One
Shilpa Solanki dropped the bloodstained knife. She couldn’t just leave it there, so she threw it in the sink. There were several caterers around. One of them would wash it.
Her heart was beating like an Indian drum in a Bollywood wedding scene. Her mother made her watch those movies, hoping it would put her in touch with her culture, her roots. A little icing mishap should not have made her this jittery. But this was her first big commission, and she wanted to get it right.
‘Shilpa, Shilpa darrrling,’ the host called.
Shilpa spun around, wiping the perspiration from her upper lip and pushing her dark hair back behind her ears.
Mrs Drew, a woman of large stature who spoke with a plum in her mouth, was heading towards her, hands flapping, her billowing cream-and-pink dress fluttering around her. Shilpa clasped her shaking hands behind her back.
‘You have everything you need?’ Mrs Drew asked.
‘You’ve changed, Marg!’ a guest commented as they passed the kitchen.
Mrs Drew blushed, turning to her guest. ‘I was a little too hot in that other thing.’ She looked at Shilpa. ‘So, dear?’
‘I…’ Shilpa hesitated. She cleared her throat. ‘I was looking for a spatula.’
‘Hmm, must be one around here. It is a kitchen. Have you looked in the drawers?’
Shilpa had looked everywhere, and there were several places to look. The Drews’ house in South Devon was palatial, and their stunning kitchen with white marble worktops was bigger than Shilpa’s combined living space. Failing to find a spatula she had contemplated using the back of a knife. It was how she had stumbled across the dirty implement.
Mrs Drew nodded politely to dismiss the guest who had commented on her attire. She turned back to Shilpa. ‘I know where there’s one. I borrowed it from Cook to open the drawer on the bureau. It always sticks in the heat. It must be in the study. Wait there; I’ll only be a second.’ She darted out of the kitchen, adjusting her pink hat as she went. She returned less than a minute later waving around a navy-and-metal spatula which matched perfectly with the kitchen units.
‘Thank you,’ Shilpa muttered, stepping towards the naked lemon cake. It was naked, but it still required frosting, which you had to apply and then scrape off to give it that exposed look. She had recently learnt the simple but effective technique. You had to put a lot of effort into making something look effortless, a lesson she had learned in her previous life.
The frosting on one of the tiers had smudged. Shilpa needed to correct it before she took it out into the heat of the marquee. Her hands shook, but she managed to do what was needed. The cake was perfect. It was ready to go. She was ready to go. As soon as the cake was placed on the centrepiece, she would leave quietly through the garden gate behind the Portaloos.
Mrs Drew watched, looking quite exhausted.
‘Is everything okay?’ Shilpa asked. Her host didn’t seem her usual composed self, although Shilpa had only met her once. It had been Margery Drew who had called on her services, describing in detail what cake she required right down to the lemon curd filling and mint leaf and blueberry topping with yellow pansies. ‘It’s their colour,’ she had said.
‘Not quite, dear.’ Mrs Drew was standing uncomfortably, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. ‘Harriet took an absolute age to get ready. I’ve barely seen her at her own engagement party, and now it’s Mason, my daughter’s fiancé,’ Mrs Drew said, wringing her hands together. ‘I’ve looked everywhere for him. The thing is…’
‘Go on,’ Shilpa said.
‘The thing is… Mason, well… he’s missing.’
Chapter Two
Shilpa woke with a start and looked at her alarm clock. The luminous green digits flashed 5.59. One minute before her alarm sounded. It was Saturday. Market day.
Swinging her legs out of bed, she lifted herself up, allowing the duvet to fall to the floor. She heard her mother’s voice telling her to make the bed, but she paid no attention to the commentary in her head. Instead, she turned her alarm off and padded over to the bathroom, the garish orange wallpaper startling her even though she had seen it countless times; another item on the list of things that needed fixing. She washed her face and pulled her long black hair into a knot above her head. That would do. She had just a couple of hours to make a batch of carrot-and-cardamom cupcakes.
Shilpa found her slippers and dressing gown and made her way to the kitchen. She glanced at the pineapple muffins and caraway spiced dinner rolls in their sealed containers and turned the oven on to 180 degrees. Taking the carrots, cardamom, brown sugar and other ingredients that she needed from the small pantry, she turned the Nespresso machine on and popped a purple capsule inside. Pressing the button, she waited for her morning fix, drumming her fingernails on the work surface. As the machine whirred into action, she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it down moments later with a large sip of black coffee, wondering how she never had time to make a morning hot drink in her previous life.
In Devon, her coffee machine was getting good use. At least she could utilise one item from her past. The rest of her city possessions remained in large brown boxes littering every room of the house. She washed her hands and noticed the unease creeping up on her again. It was hard to get away from your own thoughts here. At six in the morning there was silence on the estuary. There were no sirens or drunks chattering as they made their way back to wherever they slept. Here it was just the occasional seagull squawking and a gentle breeze as the tide came in or out depending on what the moon was doing.
She looked through the large bi-fold doors and her shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t yet tired of the view of the serene water filling the estuary and the picture-perfect fields on the other side. She didn’t think she ever would.
She walked over to the sitting room and opened a window, taking a deep breath and letting the fresh salt-laced air fill her lungs. The two-bedroom house she had inherited was beautiful. Barely visible from the main road, it was built into the cliff-side, which meant there were a few steps from the front door down to the sitting room and open-plan kitchen, and then further along there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The loft stood half a storey above ground level. There was a balcony outside the sitting room’s bi-fold doors with stairs that led to the garden full of various herbs, sweet-smelling lavender, red valerian and blue agapanthus, which were in full bloom in the summer sun. Past the garden a makeshift wooden ladder led to the slipway.
She loved the old house despite the list of repairs. Her uncle’s inheritance had come at the right time and had saved her from another life.
She walked back to the kitchen, allowing her mind to drift as she beat the sugar, oil and eggs together. She h ad made these carrot cupcakes so many times she could do it in her sleep. Her father’s favourites. His only consolation for having an unmarried daughter, her mother had casually pointed out. But it wasn’t her marital status making her uncomfortable. She was used to her mother droning on about that. It was what she had seen yesterday – the knife.
Harriet and Mason’s engagement party had been her first big event. She wasn’t sure how she had managed to secure the Drews as her first clients, but she had, and it was a big deal. They knew people. They knew the whole town of Otter’s Reach; probably owned it, she had joked when she told her mother about the event. She didn’t want to screw it up. And yet somehow, she felt she had, because she had seen a bloodstained knife the same day that Mason had gone missing, and she hadn’t said anything about it.
After her naked lemon cake had been placed in the marquee, she had wanted to sneak out, but she had been caught in the commotion that had ensued as soon as Mrs Drew had expressed her concerns for her missing son-in-law-to-be.
‘Probably taking a leak,’ one of the guests had said. He had a red nose and ruddy cheeks and was swaying slightly.
Mrs Drew ignored him. ‘I’ve looked for him everywhere. And Harriet too,’ she said, perching on the end of a wooden chair, dabbing her perspiring face with a pale-pink handkerchief.
‘He wouldn’t just disappear,’ said a tall woman with dark hair, who wore an emerald-green cocktail dress and deep-red lipstick. Someone had called her Izzy. She had a polished look about her that gave her an air of celebrity. Her eyes shone; her sun-kissed skin glowed. The woman placed a comforting hand on Mrs Drew’s shoulder, but it must have felt as awkward as it looked, because she quickly removed it. ‘I’ll take another look in the barn,’ she said, and left the marquee.
‘I’ve checked the garages again,’ another man said.
Shilpa had wanted to leave. She had things to do at home, namely baking for the market stall today. At the time, she hadn’t considered that the knife she had casually thrown into the Drews’ sink had anything to do with Mason’s disappearance, assuming it had just been used to cut a piece of meat. But the more she thought about it, the more she believed the knife was significant.
She slipped the filled cupcake tins into the oven and started to beat the cream cheese with the icing sugar, silently cursing herself for not saying anything yesterday. She had joined the search party, checking the pool house and in the shrubbery. She had even peered in the photinia red robin hedge and had nearly fallen into it.
The guests looking for the missing fiancé assumed he had either got cold feet and had run off, or that he was drunk in a ditch. Shilpa had listened to all the theorising and had agreed with one lady that he probably had an urgent errand to run.
Shilpa put the mixing bowl down and found the marzipan carrots she had made previously. Yesterday evening, after hours of searching, she had finally managed to slip out of the party only to bump into Mr Drew as she was getting into her car. He was pulling into the drive as she was about to leave, and he was going to block her in. She had no choice but to approach him and ask him to move his vehicle.
‘Ah, the cake lady,’ he said after he had blocked in someone else’s car. ‘Do pop by another time – with cakes, of course,’ he added. ‘By tomorrow we may have located that blasted man.’ There was no love lost there then. But fathers could be protective of their daughters. Her own father certainly was when her mother let him. And she had heard two of the cooks saying that Mr Drew didn’t approve of Harriet’s choice of husband, something about him being an under-achiever. A typical dad comment.
Shilpa felt weary. In less than an hour, she would have to drag herself and her baked goods to the square to set up her stall. She had looked forward to the last couple of market days, but today she just didn’t feel like it. She walked back to the sitting room and picked up the remote. She turned on the television, averting her eyes from the summer rain that had started to fall. Her eyes glazed over as images flashed on the screen, but then something caught her eye and her heart skipped a beat. Her cup of coffee fell to the floor as she raised her hands to her mouth.
A body had been found at the Drew house, and there was no doubt in Shilpa’s mind that it was Mason Connolly.
Chapter Three
Alison Bishop turned off the television. Her hands trembled as she placed the remote down, lining it up with the edge of the coffee table.
They would soon come for her. Standing up, she paced around her living room, then she stopped and peered out of the window. The lady across the road was tending to her hanging baskets again. The woman was obsessed, although she couldn’t talk.
Mason. It had started with a crush, turned into a relationship of sorts, became an obsession and ended… ended like this. It couldn’t be, and yet it had. It was over. A part of her felt relieved, like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders; but somewhere at the back of her mind there was a gnawing foreboding that her actions over the last twelve months were going to catch up with her.
She opened her laptop and went to the local news page. There was a bird’s-eye-view photograph of the Drew house. She could clearly see their drive and the apartment over the garage where she had, only yesterday, stood outside and screamed at Mason one last time. And if she looked really closely, she could see the tyre marks on the road outside. How long would it take the police to put it all together? To match those skid marks with her little white Nissan Micra. She should never have gone to the Drews’. It was Mason’s day – his day with Harriet – and yet she couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t received an invite to their engagement party. Izzy had.
When she was sunk down in the driver’s seat, discreetly taking photos, waiting to see Mason, Izzy had arrived. She had sashayed into the house as if she owned it. Urgh, the thought of that woman made her feel sick. Izzy had stopped by the entrance of the house and had turned, looking towards Alison’s white car, her dark eyes and red lips full of life. Alison had quickly taken a photo before Izzy looked away.
Alison had felt pathetic in her pale-blue summer dress with little yellow birds on it. She was bland and nondescript, like her car. She didn’t even buy the happy couple a gift. Izzy would have gone over the top. There had probably been something magnificent in the large gift bag she had been carrying. Izzy thought Alison was pitiable. She never said it out loud, but she didn’t have to. It was clear from the look she gave her every time she saw her. Alison hated the way Izzy made her feel. She should have died as well.
A shiver ran down her spine. The dress was heaped on a sheet of plastic by her washing machine. She had considered washing it. A hot wash and a scoop of Vanish might have got the stains out, but she didn’t think it was worth it. She would never be able to wear that dress again.
Izzy was right. She was pathetic. No wonder Mason had left her.
‘This isn’t working,’ he had said, just over eighteen months ago on 15 November. She knew the date well. It had been a thundery day, and rain had mixed with her tears as she walked home from their last date in the café. Alison had written down in her diary every date that they had, every place they had been to together; how she felt in the morning and before bed. Her therapist had advised her to keep a diary, telling her it would help her organise her thoughts. But all it did was fuel her desire to relive the moments that she had spent with Mason.
