Page 91 of The Bridesmaid
She shakes her head. ‘You have five minutes until they get here,’ she says. ‘If you really can unmask Adrianna’s kidnapper, I won’t hand you over to them.’
I swallow. Because I still don’t know who kidnapped Adrianna, but maybe I can buy us time with what I have just figured out.
‘Silky didn’t do it,’ I tell Georgia. ‘At least, not in the way it looks. Simone wasn’t beaten to death with a scaffold pole.’
Georgia blinks at me.
‘What?’ her face twists hopefully.
‘The scaffold,’ I explain, ‘for the flowers. That’s why the AC was set so cold in the storage room. It wasn’t to throw out the body temperature, it was to keep the flower display cold. Silky must have set up the structure that night.’
The gun in Georgia’s hand lowers fractionally as she takes this in.
‘And?’ She glares.
‘The floristry scaffold tower on the wedding plans isn’t closed off at the top,’ I explain. ‘Just a couple of gangplanks. I think Silky set it up that night, and had climbed to the top. Simone came up to join her. Maybe they had things to talk about.’
This is a guess, and I see Georgia’s brows lower at the idea.
‘If Simone and Silky had gotten in a disagreement, and someone took a wrong step,’ I continue, ‘Simone could have fallen right into the insides of the tower. Which was a honeycomb of hard metal.’
Beside me, Fitzwilliam is nodding thoughtfully.
‘If it was high enough, and Simone fell right through the center …’ I conclude.
‘You knock every bar on the way to the bottom,’ fills in Fitzwilliam, who seems to have momentarily forgotten Georgia is pointing a gun at him.
‘Right,’ I say, still unable to meet his eye since seeing the picture of him kissing Adrianna. ‘And each blow would be made with the same amount of force. The same amount of impact. Criss-crossing her body and head in a kind of pattern. You see something similar with fatalities who fall down flights of stairs: the head strikes the hard surface, then whiplashes. Only in this case, the whiplash motion forced the head repeatedly forward and back as it struck successive scaffold uprights.’
‘Which would explain why such a large force could be exerted repeatedly,’ fills in Fitzwilliam.
‘Silky could have been telling the truth,’ I conclude. ‘Itwasan accident. At least, so far as she knew.’
‘If Simone’s death was an accident,’ says Georgia, ‘then who put her body in Adrianna’s dress?’
I don’t have an answer to that, but I’m interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside. Security, I’m guessing. Fitzwilliam looks atme, with a searching expression. Intuiting his question, I give the smallest shake of my head. I don’t know who kidnapped Adrianna.
Fitzwilliam nods gravely, then lunges suddenly at Georgia, grabbing for the gun. She holds tight, eyes wide, issuing a cry of shock as they grapple.
Security guards crash though the door, shouting. They pelt toward Fitzwilliam, raining blows on his body, and pulling him from Georgia’s gun. He folds over in pain.
‘Holly!’ he gasps, ‘run!’
I hesitate for the smallest moment, then run for the door.
Chapter Seventy-four
PETRA
Adrianna’s bachelorette party starts with cocktails at Daybreak, her detox bar, with the schedule set for photoshoots at various key locations around the island. I’ve set up to get pictures.
Under the palm leaf shelter, lap-dancing poles have been erected, and I’m taking pictures of the bridesmaids posing provocatively in skimpy outfits. Ophelia is taking turns to point the camera at me. Holly is nowhere to be seen, but Georgia dismisses my questions.
Adrianna is whirling around the pole with professional grace, her lithe frame strapped into a liquid metal string bikini. It would be just like her to have taken pole-dancing lessons and then arrange a bachelorette so the rest of us flounder. Luckily for me, I learned to use a pole for a modeling shoot, years ago.
I angle the camera to catch Adrianna’s slim physique spin with the appearance of weightlessness, the mane of chestnut hair fanning out as she turns.
I need to get to Sepulcrum before midnight, and time is running out. Max saw through the fake images of Fitzwilliam kissing Adrianna, and demanded I give him something by midnight.
