Hide and Seek

By Julie McCarron-Benson

'Aren't wedding coordinators supposed to prevent that sort of thing?' queried Carol.
this is the question that greeted wedding coordinator Belle Saint James when she was waylaid by a group of women at the conclusion of a talk about her business at the local Ladies Auxiliary.
Belle has been haunted by what happened at Janelle and Scott's wedding. Between the wedding ceremony and the reception, the bridegroom disappeared. He was there one minute, and gone the next!
She was as surprised as everyone else. Was there anything she could have done to prevent it!
Had she done the right thing when she involved her lover; Vietnam veteran, ex-policeman, now Private Investigator, Marcel Smith in locating the missing bridegroom?
Just how encompassing are the responsibilities of a wedding coordinator anyhow?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie McCarron-Benson
• Release date: Nov 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370636860

Julie McCarron-Benson

Julie McCarron-Benson grew up in Canowindra, a small town in the central west of NSW, Australia. She attended Canowindra Public School and Cowra High School, moved to Canberra as a school leaver to work in the Commonwealth Public Service, went nursing, got married, had three kids and went to the Australian National University. She has worked amongst other positions as a shop assistant, a movie usher, a security guard and a professional carer. She worked for several NGOs. She opened a café, set up a business manufacturing gourmet foods, and established an event management business specialising in wedding coordination. She has held art exhibitions. Julie would prefer to read, loves gardening and attending the opera. Her many friends ensure that her alcohol tolerance level remains comparatively high.

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Hide and Seek

Julie McCarron-Benson grew up in Canowindra, a small town in the central west of NSW, Australia. She attended Canowindra Public School and Cowra High School, moved to Canberra as a school leaver to work in the Commonwealth Public Service, went nursing, got married, had three kids and went to the Australian National University. She has worked amongst other positions as a shop assistant, a movie usher, a security guard and a professional carer. She worked for several NGOs. She opened a café, set up a business manufacturing gourmet foods, and established an event management business specialising in wedding coordination. She has held art exhibitions. Julie would prefer to read, loves gardening and attending the opera. Her many friends ensure that her alcohol tolerance level remains comparatively high.

Hide and Seek

Julie McCarron-Benson

Copyright© 2016 Julie McCarron-Benson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: McCarron-Benson, Julie, author.

Title: Hide and Seek / Julie McCarron-Benson.

ISBN 9780994625816

Subjects: Disappeared persons--Fiction.

Private Investigators--Fiction.

Suspense fiction.

Dewey Number: A823.3

Smashwords Edition. Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends.

This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favourite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you.

Dedicated to all the teachers who have taught and teach in country NSW Government schools, especially at Canowindra Public and Cowra High. Thank you.

Other books by the Author

Snatch and Grab

Table of Contents

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 1

I should have gone straight home. I should not have stopped to chat. The thing was I didn’t want to go home. I was very tired, a bit cranky, and I wanted to delay leaving as long as I could.

On the Sunday a couple of days ago, my daughter Jasmine had arrived on my doorstep with her two little girls. She had driven up from her home in Sydney. I had been seriously affronted when Jasmine had turned up out of the blue. She had with her a multitude of suitcases; and a belligerent attitude. Furthermore, she knows I am always stuffed on Sundays!

I’m a wedding coordinator, and most weddings still take place on Saturdays. Usually, by Sunday night I would have sorted through whatever drama remained from the previous day and spent most of the day tidying up after the previous day’s wedding; such things as returning lost items, collating bits and pieces for the bridal couple to use as a memento, often attending a post-wedding get-together. Jasmine knew all of that, and yet, she still arrived and dumped all her dramas on me. Also, I tend to have Mondays off, to rest up, but that went by the way, and I didn’t get into the office on the Tuesday to do my bills, set up interviews and send out invoices and other stuff. I was lucky to get away in the afternoon at all!

‘I’ve left him,’ she declared. ‘Do you understand Mum? I’ve left Kal-el.’ (Kal-el! Can you imagine calling your kid after a comic book hero? At first, I thought his parents might have done that cute American thing and called him initials, you know K.L. I called him Koala Lumper when I was talking in code. OK! So I’m not always nice!) ‘You were right. He is too shallow. I need more. I can’t stay with him anymore. So I’ve come home.’

Jasmine had married the husband in Fiji where they’d met up while they were both on one of those youth adventure holidays. They had known each other just a few days and decided under the influence of the sun, the moon and lust; and goodness only knows what else was added to that combination, to get married. On a beach! With the other members of the holiday group - all strangers! Very romantic! The first I knew was when I got home after an extremely stressing disaster of a wedding to find the photos on email. I could see the attraction. He was a very handsome man. But, I was upset for her. She was far too young! What did she know about this man? She had only known him a few days! And, let’s face it I was upset for me, her mother, to not have been included. When she finally came home, giggling, dragging him behind her through the front door and introduced him as her husband, all I could feel were emanations of the train wreck already coming.

I tried. Truly I did.

And to his credit, so did he. He always seemed pleased to see me and was very comfortable being asked to fetch items and do things. He once said he liked that I didn’t expect anything from him or expect that he could do anything. A bit of a back-handed compliment but as it came from him I think it was sincerely meant, and even Jasmine said he seemed to relax when they visited me.

Kal-el could be quite pleasant company so long as the conversation remained strictly within his very limited comfort zone. Though, there were many times when I thought one could have had gotten more sense from a goldfish. Occasionally I wondered if there was even a fully functioning brain in his pretty head or if Nature had run out when She got to him and had given him an abundance of good looks to compensate. He was certainly amply compensated fertility-wise as Jasmine had the two girls quicker than you can blink.

He was a successful male model and seemed to have plenty of work. He provided well for Jasmine and the girls. They were renting a luxury apartment on Sydney Harbour. They did a lot of entertaining. Jasmine had a part-time job with a public relations firm. He traveled a lot; he was always away at some exotic location or other. His picture was often in magazines. You know the sort; naked chest, jeans low on his hips and just slightly unsecured at the top button, sultry pout. I grant you I did take a certain pride in seeing his classically handsome looks gazing at me from some magazine or other in the doctor’s waiting room as if I were the only woman in the world. And I did on a couple of occasions point him out as my son-in–law to other women waiting patiently for their turn to see the doctor. I was quite fond of him. He was very good-natured. But I had to ration my time with him strictly. Quite frankly he gave me the irrites. He, on the other hand, seemed quite understanding of my crankiness and appeared to like spending time with me. He was forever running his hand through his hair and youthfully tussling it. Or I’d find him standing in front of the mirror posing. He explained to me very seriously one day that he was checking out a new look.

‘I’m getting on, Belle,’ he said. ‘I can’t get away with the pouty young man about town for much longer. I have to come up with an older look. Later I can do the arrogant mature man look, but right now I have to find something that fits the demographics I am supposed to represent in the adverts. You know, the successful upwardly mobile executive type.’

However, he seemed to make Jasmine happy, and he loved his little girls, so ….

So, on the one hand, I was pleased that she knew she could come home, and I was grateful that she had the sense to get out of the marriage if it wasn’t working for her. But on the other hand, I had only just got rid of her sister – well six months before. That sounds a bit mean, doesn’t it! But I wasn’t doing too well with my kids at that moment. My son Penleigh had partnered up with the woman from hell. I kid you not! I don’t know how she did it, but she could get everyone’s back up, and I mean everyone, within a moment of meeting her. As soon as she heard Jasmine had come home to me with the girls, she was on the phone telling me what to do. I had taken a call from her just before I left and I was still white-knuckled from the effort of holding my temper in check. You have no idea what she was like when Katina came home! She certainly didn’t understand what was involved when the baby came and that it meant, even more, effort from everyone, not less.

My younger daughter Katina had chosen to go to another city to study. Perhaps she needed her own space away from her domineering older sister and her very scholarly brother, Penleigh. Anyhow, Katina had arrived home from university very pregnant. She would not say who the father was. I think he may have already been married. Katina had gotten through the pregnancy safely with the birth of a lovely little girl, Lucy, and I had just settled her and the child into a nice flat not too far away from my place. Katina had a job, good childcare and was coping well. Fortunately, she had managed to finish her course before leaving university. She said she didn’t mind missing the graduation ceremony. She would do that another time. I was a bit sorry about that and suspected she didn’t want to meet up with the father of the child. I’ll admit to great curiosity and that I snuck a quick look at the father’s namespace on the baby’s birth certificate and googled the name later. There was nothing to see.

I was still revelling in having my own space back, my own little house to myself. It was a bit of a shock to find myself living with Jasmine – too similar to myself to get on with I suspect – and two little kids. They were perfectly normal little kids, but I wasn’t up to it. They cried during the night and disturbed my sleep; my fridge had alien items in it, and I found I couldn’t just flop into the lounge chair, have a quiet drink and watch a bit of drivel on TV before getting on with things. Suddenly there was action the whole time. Plus, Jasmine had gone teetotal to set a good example for the kids and went out of her way to point out that I was abusing my system with addictive substances. Legal, I pointed out in return. And she wouldn’t get off my back regarding Marcel.

He’s a private investigator. He had been a cop and was a Vietnam veteran. We were both a bit surprised to have found each other. My lovely Marcel. Suddenly our time together was curtailed. We had been extremely circumspect while Katina had been living with me. Her move to her flat had given me a liberty I hadn’t realised I needed. And now Jasmine had come along, and I was back in the closed environment. I wasn’t comfortable with the thought that Marcel might stay over while Jasmine was there, just embarrassed I suppose, and he wasn’t at all keen either. It was one thing for two mature aged people to enjoy themselves as we did in privacy, but it was a totally different thing with others in the house. Fortunately, as I said earlier, he was away for a few days on a case.

Jasmine had seen some of Marcel’s things in my bedroom, and she didn’t let up.

‘Why don’t you just live together? You’ve been together for years. Why don’t you just make it easier on yourselves, all this moving between his house and yours must be exhausting for the both of you? Everyone knows Mum; it’s not like it’s a secret!’

Well what it was, was that it was none of her business!

I had tried to have a conversation with her to find out what she intended to do, but she kept bursting into tears and telling me I wouldn’t understand.

Anyhow, things were a bit on the testy side, which was why I hadn’t wanted to go straight home.

So if you add it all up, if I had been able to go home I wouldn’t have been there, and I wouldn’t have been waylaid.

I think I knew.

Looking back, I suspect I may have set it up myself. Maybe subconsciously I felt it was time to get it all out in the open. And also perhaps subconsciously, the arrival of Jasmine had brought the whole incident to the fore. Jasmine’s news about her marriage had come in the midst of this upheaval.

I still thought I should have seen what was happening and done something, although what I could do was impossible to say. Even though really, there was nothing I could do, I still felt responsible for my ignorance. I am a professional wedding coordinator after all and I should have seen the signs.

I also knew way back in the recesses of my mind that several of the members of my potential audience had been involved in some way. Even when I realised how deeply involved some of them had been, I had chosen to stay on afterwards for a gossip. Perhaps I needed to put the record straight, explain what had happened and get their absolution.

Chapter 2

I had been invited to speak to the Ladies Auxiliary about my business as a wedding coordinator. The chairwoman had been quite excited at the turn-out. She said they didn't usually get this many, isn't it a compliment? There were well over one hundred women in the room. I knew several of them quite well.

The Ladies Auxiliary as the central organising body, by fundraising, lobbying, and government grants had managed to build a set of offices and meeting rooms for women's organisations. Most of the offices were filled by the secretariats of women's organisations from across the broad continuum of women's interests. They all had one thing in common. The bottom line for all of them was movement towards improvements in women's rights, be it access to health care, political representation, sports, anything that led to equity in participation and reward. The groups shared resources and knowledge.

The room we were in was part of the central conference facilities. It could be opened out and hold as many as 400 people.

My talk, during which I had presented my audience with plenty of handouts and humorous stories, was extraordinarily successful if I must say so myself especially given the turmoil at home and the quiet preparation time I had missed out on! When I had finished, I had collected my notes and wandered over to join the queue of women waiting to get their cups of tea or coffee. Several women clustered about me to ask the usual questions 'my daughter/son/niece/nephew is getting married could you recommend a band/ venues/ caterers/ florist?' I answered their queries and collected a cup of tea and plate of goodies. I looked around for somewhere to sit.

There was a group of women, most of whom I knew sitting around a table, one of two or three tables and sets of chairs set out next to the canteen area at the back of the meeting room. The kitchen and counters were set up for self-catering or professional catering if required. I went over.

'May I join you?' I asked.

'Certainly, Belle. I loved your talk. I haven't laughed like that for years. Do you know everyone?'

Yes, I nodded to everyone around the table. I knew most of them.

'We were just talking about...,' one of the women said to me and filled me in on some very unpleasant details of a nasty crime that had happened recently. I shuddered along with them all and enjoyed my tea.

'Belle?' Ms Sinclair leant towards me across the table. 'Belle there's something I've wanted to ask you for ages. This may not be the best time, and I will accept it if you prefer not to tell me.' She hesitated, watching me closely for my reaction. I nodded for her to go on.

'Can you tell me what happened at Janelle and Scott's wedding?'

The young couple had been on my mind as I prepared for today’s talk. I think in retrospect that it may have been because Jasmine had been inadvertently caught up in the upheaval surrounding this wedding, and her unexpected arrival home had stirred up memories.

‘Yes,’ piped up a voice from the group. ‘I’ve always been curious. Aren’t wedding coordinators supposed to prevent that sort of thing?’ queried a small rounded woman I had seen many times in the past always seemingly surrounded by small grandchildren.

‘Really, Carol!’ admonished Ms Sinclair.

Carol Jones was almost bouncing in her seat with excitement. I understood that her husband had died tragically a couple of years earlier. Apparently, she had worshiped the ground he walked on and was a bit lost without him.

I looked at Ms Sinclair and the other women sitting at the