“Hallo?”
Thank. God. I have never been so grateful to hear her voice in my life. “Ma, are you still in my room?”
“Iya, of course. I cut mangoes and make more tea, your aunties all eating—”
Mangoes? Where did she get—never mind. I shake my head. “Ma, listen, you guys need to get rid of the body now. Maureen’s going to tell them to search my room for the tea ceremony gifts. I’ll come back—” My phone beeps with an incoming call. It’s Jacqueline. Shit. Maureen’s even faster than I thought. “I can’t come back. I’m being called by the bride, probably to go to her room.”
“Okay, no worry, we will get rid of body, no problem. You go to bride’s room, you settle everything, we settle body, no worry.”
“Okay . . .” She’s sounding very confident for someone who’s just been told at the last minute to hide a whole human corpse. “Um, where are you going to take him?”
“Aiya, you don’t worry, we got plan. Okay bye-bye, we going to hide Ah Guan now, okay, bye, love you, bye.”
The call cuts off and I accept Jacqueline’s incoming call.
“Hello? Meddelin?” Her voice is frantic, the edges all shrill and brittle, ready to break. “Could you—um, could you come to my room now? Please?”
“Hey, yeah, sure.” I swallow and say, “Everything okay?”
“Uh-huh!” she says, even shriller than before. “Just come to my room now, okay?”
I close my eyes, my stomach plummeting. So Maureen’s really gone through with it. Jacqueline is probably being falsely cheerful to make sure I don’t get scared away. “I’ll be right there.”
“Great!”
Deep breath. Even though I’ve gotten rid of the stolen goods, as I sneak out of Maureen’s room and walk down the hallway toward the bridal suite, I can’t help feeling like I’m walking straight into a trap. Outside the bridal suite, I pause to gather myself. My breath keeps catching, and then I have to focus to keep inhaling and exhaling. Remember, you don’t actually know that there’s anything wrong. Right. For all I know, I’m here to do the family portrait or whatever. Cool. I grasp my camera protectively and nearly drop it, my palms are so sweaty. I wipe them on my pants and knock at the door.
The bridal suite is filled with people, except this time the people aren’t wispy bridesmaids dressed in pastels but stern-looking men in security uniforms. One of these stern-looking men opens the door, and glares down at me as I walk in, making me feel once again like a hamster, this time crawling into a hawk’s nest.
I smile up at him and say, “Hi, I’m here for the family portraits.” I wave my camera up at him.
His upper lip curls up in contempt, and he takes my arm. I look at his meaty hand on my upper arm. I look back at him.
“Could you not do that?” I try to pull my arm away, but he only tightens his grip.
“Don’t think you can sneak away, thief—”
“Rob!” Nathan strides out of the bedroom and hurries toward us. “Stop that. Let her go.”
“But, sir, she’s the—”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Nathan says. His voice turns low and dangerous, his eyes narrowing at the security guard. “Let go of her arm.”
With one last scowl at me, Rob releases my arm. I rub at it gingerly. I swear my entire head is on fire. I’ve never been manhandled like that before. It happened so fast.
“Meddy, glad you’re here,” Nathan says. “I’m sorry about Rob.”
“What’s going on?” I follow him to one side, away from the crowd of security guards stomping all over the beautiful living room. “Where are all the bridesmaids?”
“They’ve been asked to go back to their rooms. The bride didn’t want them finding out.”
“Finding out about what?”
Nathan exhales. “The tea ceremony gifts—all those watches and jewelry and cash—have gone missing.”
I manage a small gasp. Let my mouth drop open, my eyes widen, my brows rise. Do I look genuinely surprised?
Nathan takes my hand, seems to remember where we are, and drops it. With another sigh, he says, “And the maid of honor claims you were the one who took them.”
“What?” Am I hitting the right mix of shock and anger? Should I even be angry? Or just shocked? God, I am so bad at this. I need to stop second-guessing myself. Yes, I should definitely be mad. “Why would she think that?”