Chương 2
Owen crouched near the syringe without touching it.
“Did anyone handle this?”
“No,” Nolan said.
“Who damaged the cake?”
“I did,” Rowan said.
Owen looked up at her. His face was broad and calm, his hair cut close to the scalp. He had worked at the Ashcroft estate for eleven years, according to Diane’s morning briefing, and had once managed private security for a hotel group. He gave Rowan the same expression he had given the catering crew during inspection: patient attention with no warmth behind it.
“Step away from the table.”
“She stays with me,” Nolan said.
Owen rose. “Mr. Mercer, I need the area cleared.”
“You can clear it without taking her anywhere.”
Vivienne’s father appeared beside his daughter.
Malcolm Ashcroft had spent the reception moving through the ballroom with the measured ease of a man hosting people whose opinions mattered. He was sixty-two, silver-haired, and lean, with a face that looked severe until he chose to smile. He did not smile now.
“What happened?” he asked.
Vivienne turned toward him, and Rowan saw something in her expression that was not the ordinary relief of seeing a parent.
Fear, perhaps.
Or a request.
Malcolm studied the damaged cake, the syringe, and Rowan. He did not ask whether Nolan was hurt. He placed one hand at Vivienne’s back.
“We should move the family upstairs,” he said.
“No,” Nolan replied.
Malcolm looked at him. “There may be a dangerous substance in the room.”
“Then nobody leaves.”
The words changed the mood again.
Guests who had been edging toward the ballroom doors stopped. A few protested immediately. Nolan ignored them.
Owen’s gaze hardened. “You don’t have authority to detain anyone.”
“I’m not detaining them. I’m asking you not to create a hundred unverified stories by letting people walk out before the police arrive.”
“The police?” Vivienne said.
Nolan looked at the syringe. “Yes.”
Malcolm lowered his voice. “Let security investigate first. Discreetly.”
“A syringe was hidden in our wedding cake.”
“We don’t know that it was hidden,” Vivienne said. “She tore the cake apart. She could have had it in her hand.”
Rowan felt the accusation before she understood it.
Diane turned toward her.
Owen did too.
Nolan remained facing Vivienne.
“You watched it fall,” he said.
“I watched something fall after she put her hands inside the cake.”
Rowan’s breathing, which had begun to settle, became shallow again.
“I didn’t put it there.”
“No one said you did,” Malcolm replied.
Vivienne looked at her father.
Malcolm’s correction had come too quickly.
Nolan seemed to hear that too. He rubbed his thumb once across the side of his silver watch, a contained movement Rowan had noticed earlier when the officiant misplaced a page of the ceremony notes.
“Call the state police,” he told Owen.
Owen did not move.
“I already have,” a man near the guests said.
He held up his phone apologetically. “My wife thought someone might have been poisoned.”
That was when the room began to come apart.
Not loudly. The Ashcrofts’ guests did not panic in the ordinary sense. They moved toward their own interests. Lawyers advised clients not to speak. Two physicians asked whether anyone had eaten the cake. A banker demanded access to his driver. Someone whispered that the staff should be searched. The musicians set down their instruments without being told. A server began collecting champagne glasses until Diane snapped at him to leave everything where it was.
Rowan stood behind Nolan and tried not to shake.
She had been afraid no one would believe her.
She had not considered what would happen if they did.
The Rhode Island State Police arrived within twenty minutes, though time inside the ballroom stretched enough that Rowan would later remember it as an hour. Uniformed officers entered first. They separated guests from staff, photographed the cake, and placed barriers around the table. A woman with dark hair tied at the nape introduced herself as Detective Leah Voss and asked Rowan not to touch her face or clothing until they had spoken.
Rowan looked down at her burgundy dress.
Buttercream marked two fingers. A thread of fondant clung beneath one nail.
“Am I in trouble?” she asked.
“Right now, you’re a witness.”
The detective’s answer offered no comfort.
Nolan was taken to a sitting room with Vivienne and their immediate families. Rowan was escorted to a smaller library on the opposite side of the ballroom. Owen followed until Detective Voss stopped him at the door.
“I need to speak to her alone.”
“She’s an employee on private property,” Owen said.
“She’s a witness in an active investigation.”
Owen’s expression did not change, but he glanced at Rowan before leaving.
The library smelled of leather, dust, and the lilies arranged beneath a portrait of a dead Ashcroft. Rowan sat on the front edge of a green velvet chair while Detective Voss placed a recorder on the table between them.
“Start before you entered the ballroom,” Voss said.
Rowan folded her hands to hide their trembling.
She had begun work at ten that morning. Diane had assigned her to vendor coordination because one of the senior assistants had called out sick. Rowan was not supposed to be near the cake except to confirm delivery and keep the service passage clear.
The cake had arrived at two fifteen in a refrigerated van from Marisol Vega’s bakery in Providence. Rowan had watched four bakery employees assemble the upper tiers in a preparation room beside the ballroom. The lowest tier was real cake, reinforced internally and mounted on a heavy silver stand rented through the estate. The decorative front panel concealed part of the support system.
“How do you know that?” Voss asked.
“Marisol explained it when I asked why the panel wasn’t fixed permanently.”
“Why did you ask?”
“Because Diane told me to learn which pieces could be moved without damaging anything. We had to know in case the stand needed to be rotated.”
“Was it rotated?”
May you like
“No.”
“Did anyone else hear that conversation?”
