Aunt Bessie's Holiday (23 page)

“So, you’re Charles’s wife,” she said sneeringly.
 
“He used to tell me such cute little
things about you.
 
You were so in
love with him.”

“Charles could be incredibly charming,”
Doona replied steadily.
 
“Fortunately it didn’t take me long to see through his superficiality. I
only wasted a couple of months on him.”

Jessica flushed and then shook her
head.
 
“But you were getting back
together,” she said.
 
“He told me
that you were coming here to give him a second chance.
 
That’s why we split up, at least
temporarily.”

“You were misinformed,” Doona said dryly.

“Charles never lied to me,” Jessica replied
angrily.

“Then you must have misunderstood him,”
Doona said with a shrug.
 
“It has
nothing to do with me.”

“Except when you saw him again, you killed
him,” Jessica shouted.

“If we were getting back together, why would
I kill him?” Doona asked.
 
Bessie
could tell that her friend was working very hard to keep her voice calm.

“I imagine Charles must have changed his
mind,” Jessica said.
 
“Yeah, that’s
probably it.
 
You came here to get
back with him and then he said he wasn’t interested after all and you killed
him.”

“That’s an interesting theory,” Doona
replied.
 
“But it’s wrong on every
possible account.”

“I seem to recall you threatening to kill
him if you saw him,” Bessie interjected.
 
“Were you that upset that he’d finished with you?”

Jessica glared at Bessie and then tossed her
head.
 
“I don’t have to answer your
questions, you old cow,” she hissed.
 
“Charles and I had something very special that you’ll never understand.”

“And your husband threatened to kill him as
well, didn’t he?” Bessie added.
 
“I’m not sure what his motive was, though.”

“Herbert wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Jessica said,
glancing over at her husband, who was studying the wine list with fierce
intensity.
 
“He and I had an
understanding about Charles.”

Mai appeared then, carrying Bessie and
Doona’s starters.
 
As she set them
on the table, Lawrence arrived, a huge, fake-looking smile plastered on his
face.

“My dear Jessica, you look lovely tonight,”
he said smoothly.
 
“But if you leave
poor Herbert alone too long he’ll get quite lonely.”

“He’s fine,” Jessica snapped.
 
“I was just offering my condolences to
the devastated widow.”
 
She gave
Doona a contemptuous look and then turned and strode back to her own
table.
 

“You mustn’t mind Jessica,” Lawrence
murmured as he sat down across from Doona.
 
“In a weird way she really cared for Charles.”

“And how did you feel about the man?” Bessie
asked.

Lawrence looked at her and then chuckled
softly.
 
“We were business partners
in a number of schemes,” he replied.
 
“We weren’t necessarily friends.”

“So you weren’t surprised that he’d never
introduced you to Doona,” Bessie suggested.

“Actually, I was very surprised,” he
said.
 
“I never thought he’d get
married.
 
He didn’t like the idea of
commitment.”

Doona laughed bitterly.
 
“No kidding,” she muttered.

“But he did care about you,” Lawrence
said.
 
“He really did invite you up
here to try to win you back.”

“I don’t believe it,” Doona said
flatly.
 
“I don’t know what he was
up to, but I’ll never believe that he suddenly realised he still had feelings
for me.
 
We hadn’t spoken in two
years.”

“He spent a lot of that time travelling on
the continent,” Lawrence told her.
 
“He wanted to get away from a lot of things.”
 
He glanced over at Jessica as he spoke.

“I bet she visited him, wherever he went,”
Doona said.

“It’s difficult,” Lawrence replied.
 
“Herbert is another investor in many of
the projects that Charles was involved with or managed.
 
That’s how Charles met Jessica,
actually.”

“So Herbert didn’t mind that she was
sleeping with another man?” Doona asked incredulously.

Lawrence shrugged.
 
“As Jessica said, they had some sort of
agreement.
 
Herbert likes having a
trophy wife, from what I hear.”

“I’ll never understand some people,” Doona
said, shaking her head.

“If they had an agreement, what was Herbert
so upset with Charles about?” Bessie asked, remembering the man’s threats the
first time she’d seen him.

“I believe the issue was business rather
than personal,” Lawrence replied.
 
“Charles was doing a number of things here that were upsetting
investors.
 
That’s one of the
reasons I came up.”

“What sorts of things?” Bessie asked.

“Nothing I’m prepared to discuss right now,”
the man replied with an insincere smile.
 
“Everything has been taken care of now and Harold is doing an excellent
job keeping things running while we work out what to do next.”

He looked over at Doona who was nibbling at
her food without interest.
 
“That’s
where you come in, of course,” he said.
 
Doona’s left hand was on the table and Lawrence picked it up and squeezed
it.
 

“There’s a very good chance that you’re
Charles’s heir,” he told her.
 
“I’d
like to talk to you about buying out your shares in the management
company.
 
I’m prepared to offer you
fair market value plus ten per cent.”

“I think we need to wait and see what the
will says,” Doona replied, pulling her hand away.
 
“And then, if I have inherited anything,
you’ll have to deal with my advocate.”

Lawrence frowned.
 
“I’d much rather deal with you
personally,” he said.
 
“You were
important to Charles and he was my friend.”

“I’d be touched by that if you hadn’t said
earlier that you were business partners but not friends,” Doona retorted.
 
“Once the will is read, I’ll give you
contact details for my advocate, if that’s appropriate.”

The man looked as if he was going to argue,
but Mai reappeared with their entrees.
 
“I’ll leave you to your meal, then,” he said as he stood up.
 
“Enjoy.”

He turned and walked away.
 
Doona stuck out her tongue at his back,
making Bessie laugh.

“He is rather disagreeable,” she said.

“If I do inherit anything, I don’t want him
to get it,” Doona replied.
 
“Just
because he’s horrible.”

They ate for several minutes in
silence.
 
“This is good,” Bessie
said eventually.

“Not as good as the first night, but much
better than lunch the other day,” Doona agreed.

“I do hope you’re enjoying your meal,”
Harold’s voice interrupted.
 

Bessie smiled up at the man, who returned
the look with a matching smile.
 
“It’s very good,” she replied.

“Excellent,” he said.
 
“I know this hasn’t exactly been the
holiday you were hoping for, but I do hope you’re managing to enjoy your stay
in spite of the tragedy.
 
You must
let me know if I can do anything to make your visit better.”

“Thank you,” Bessie said.

“Mrs. Adams,” he said, addressing Doona,
“I’ve heard a number of rumours about Charles’s will.
 
It isn’t my place to ask, but, well, I
was wondering which ones are true.”

“First of all, I’m Mrs. Moore, or rather Ms.
Moore,” Doona replied.
 
“I never
took Charles’s surname and I’m not about to start using it now.
 
Secondly, I have no idea what’s in
Charles’s will.
 
I hadn’t spoken to
the man in two years and didn’t even know where he was.
 
I understand his solicitor is hoping
that the police will complete their investigation before he has to read the
will to the interested parties.”

“Well, if you do inherit some shares in this
place, I’d love to buy them from you,” Harold said in a very low voice.
 
“I have a better chance of keeping my
job if I actually own a piece of the park, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know anything about how the park is
run,” Doona said.
 
“Or about
Charles’s will.
 
If I do inherit
anything, I’ll give you the contact details for my advocate and you can talk to
him.”

“How is everything?” Mai asked brightly as
she joined them.

“Oh, it’s good,”
Bessie
replied.

“Excellent,” Mai said.
 
“Harold, Nathan would like a word with
you in the kitchen when you’re done out here.”

She was gone before Harold could reply.
 
He rolled his eyes and then
laughed.
 
“Someone always wants
something,” he grumbled jokingly.
 
“I’m not quite sure why I ever went into management.
 
You’ll have to excuse me, ladies.”

He stood up, stared hard at Doona for a
moment and then strolled away, smiling and chatting with the other guests
scattered around the room as he went.

“If you have inherited something from
Charles, it sounds as if there’s going to be a battle for it,” Bessie remarked.

“I don’t want anything from Charles,” Doona
said bitterly.
 
“It isn’t like we
were married for any length of time.
 
I don’t even feel as if I deserve to inherit from him.”

“Let’s not worry about it for tonight,”
Bessie suggested.
 
“Let’s try to
enjoy dinner.”

Mai cleared their empty plates and brought a
second round of drinks for them.
 
They were just considering having pudding when Nathan wandered out of
the kitchen.
 
Bessie watched as he
looked around the room.
 
When he
spotted them, he headed towards them.

“Ah, good evening, ladies.
 
I’m so pleased that you allowed me
another chance to feed you after that dismal lunch the other day.”

“It was a strange day in many ways,” Bessie
said.

“Yes, well, I hope you enjoyed your meal
more tonight?”

“It was very good,” Bessie assured him.

“And you, Mrs. Moore?” Nathan asked.

“Oh, it was good, thanks,”
Doona
answered.

“I understand you may soon own shares in our
little park,” he said to Doona.
 
“I
do hope you’ll be as supportive of my work as Charles was.”

“How’s Monique?” Bessie asked, trying to
spare Doona from having to come up with a suitable response.

“Monique?
 
She’s fine,” he replied.
 
“She gets homesick sometimes and then
she doesn’t feel like working.
 
Charles was always very understanding about it.”

“Seems a bit hard on Mai, though,” Bessie
suggested.
 
“Since she’s the one who
has to cover for her.”

Nathan shrugged.
 
“Mai always seems to enjoy helping out
here,” he said.
 
“She’s a really
sweet girl.”

“But she’s the manager of guest services and
teaches classes as well,” Bessie replied.
 
“Having to work in the evenings after working all day seems like too
much.”

“Charles got rid of a lot of the staff,” Nathan
replied.
 
“We used to have enough
waitresses to cover when one was off.
 
Charles more or less halved the number of wait staff in every
restaurant.”

“I’d heard he was doing a lot of cost
cutting,” Bessie replied.

“Anyway, I’d better get back to the kitchen,”
Nathan said.
 
Bessie saw that Mai
was beckoning for him in the kitchen doorway.
 
“I’ll send out something special for you
both.”

He was gone before the women could
argue.
 
Bessie watched as he and Mai
had a whispered conversation in the doorway before Nathan walked through
it.
 
Mai looked upset for a moment
but she had a smile back on her face as she walked around the room, talking to
various guests.
 
A few minutes
later, she brought plates with huge slices of chocolate gateau on them to
Bessie and Doona.