Cremas, Christmas Cookies, and Crooks

by Harper Lin

  “Hmm.”

  I wasn’t sure if Matt was thinking or just completely engrossed in eating. “Have the police talked to him? Since you said he got in a shouting match with her?”

  “That’s the thing—they have. And they still arrested Ann Crowsdale. So maybe I’m wrong? But they arrested her so quickly. You know, Mike came into the café today—”

  “You must have been shocked,” Matt interrupted. Mike’s coffee habit was a well-known fact.

  “Oh, I was,” I deadpanned back before giving him the highlights of my talk with Mike, including how sure he seemed of his arrest despite the public’s shock.

  “You know,” he said when I was done, “I feel kind of bad for the guy. He takes a few days to solve a murder—”

  I cleared my throat.

  “With some help from his friendly local coffee dealer. But the town’s all over him to hurry it up and get it solved. He makes a quick arrest, and the town’s all over him for getting the wrong person. The poor guy catches hell no matter what he does.”

  I thought about it. It was true. No matter what Mike did, people were on his case about it. It was the trouble with a small town. Everybody knew everything about everybody and had an opinion about them. And that opinion could very well change from minute to minute depending on which way the wind was blowing.

  “What time is it?” Matt asked all of a sudden.

  I shrugged.

  He turned around and looked at the clock on the stove. “The game’s about to start! Do you mind if we finish dinner in the living room?”

  He was already standing up with his plate before I could even start to open my mouth to give an answer. But it was fine. I needed some time to think, anyway, and “watching” the football game would give me that opportunity. I sure wasn’t going to be following the plays.

  Matt disappeared into the living room, and I got up to follow.

  “Hey, you forgot to put your jersey back on,” I said, noticing it still draped over the chair where he’d left it. I picked it up and carried it into the living room with me.

  Matt was frozen with the remote in his hand, and I saw him look from the jersey in my hand to the bowl of spaghetti in his and back again. I could practically see his mental anguish as he weighed the dangers of getting Bolognese sauce on his jersey against the bad luck of not wearing it while his beloved Patriots played.

  “How about we put it on the couch behind you so you’re still touching it, but you won’t have to worry about getting sauce on it?” I suggested.

  He hesitated. Apparently touching it didn’t equate to having it actually on his body.

  I decided to have mercy on him. “If you get sauce on it, I can probably get the stain out.”

  A smile spread across his face. “Really?”

  “I can try. Or, you know, we could always put a bib on you,” I joked.

  “Good idea!” He put his spaghetti down on the coffee table and literally ran into his bedroom as I stared after him in shock. He came back out a moment later with an old, paint-spattered shirt in his hand. He took his jersey from me, put it on, and then tucked the T-shirt all around his neckline. He looked incredibly silly, but he clearly didn’t mind. He plopped down on the couch, turned on the game, picked up his spaghetti, and dug back into it.

  I just shook my head and sat down next to him with my legs tucked under me. As though he could sense that I was now in a position that allowed for cuddling, Latte appeared, chewy in mouth, from Matt’s room, where he liked to lie on the bed, and jumped on the couch next to me, resting his head on my knee.

  I ate my spaghetti and thought about the case while Matt cheered on his team. I really didn’t know if there even was a case. And I felt bad for Mike. He couldn’t win no matter what he did. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. I wondered what the repercussions would be for him if I found enough evidence to show that Ann Crowsdale hadn’t been the one to kill Veronica Underwood—that it had been Brett Wallace or maybe someone else I hadn’t thought of yet. Not that the repercussions for Mike mattered more than preventing an innocent woman from going to jail.

  On the other hand, I might find evidence to bolster his case or to help the public see that he was right. As much as I’d liked Ann when I met her, she deserved to go to jail if she was guilty. And that could shore up Mike’s reputation. But Sammy and Becky would be devastated. I imagined I felt a little bit like Mike must feel.

  I decided to talk to Rhonda the next day. Her boys went to Cape Bay High. She was involved with the school. Maybe she’d have some insight into the case.

  I took another bite of spaghetti, finding myself a little frustrated that there wasn’t really anything else I could do about the case until the next day.

  “Do you need more spaghetti?” Matt asked, standing up.

  I looked up at him, confused. He never got up while the game was on. And then I realized it had gone to commercial. And that commercial was for the social network that Becky had shown me Brett’s profile on earlier. And all of a sudden, I realized there was something I could do on the case that night. I could find Veronica Underwood’s profile and see what she’d been up to online.

  Chapter 12

  I BORROWED Matt’s laptop and settled in with a fresh glass of wine to spend the rest of the game digging around online for information about Veronica Underwood. She was on all the usual social networks, the ones I knew how to use, anyway—I skipped the one that only people under twenty-five seem to use. I scanned through her profile on the professional social network first. I didn’t expect to find anything useful there, but I thought it might give me a little insight into her.

  It didn’t. The profile was sparsely populated, with only three connections, no college listed, and what I assumed had to be her previous job the only one listed.

  That reminded me that I hadn’t updated my profile on that network since I’d moved back to Cape Bay. It still listed me as working at the PR job I’d left over the summer. I took a few minutes to update it, changing my old job to actually show as my old job and adding Antonia’s in at the top. It felt strange typing in that I was the owner. I’d said it what felt like a million times over the previous six months or so, but seeing it in black and white on the screen felt wrong. It should be my grandparents’ café. Or my mother’s. But mine alone? It felt as if I was lying to the world.

  Before I could slip into nostalgia that would surely be accompanied by tears, I moved on to the next site. Nothing much useful there. Just pictures of Veronica and her food and some sunsets with inspirational quotes. I started to scan through the people she followed, but quickly gave up. There were too many of them, and without real names, I couldn’t even begin to make sense of whether they were useful suspects.

  The next site was more of the same—some quotes, a lot of sharing of other people’s posts, some conversations between her and some other people that I could barely follow. Nothing that blared “My murderer is Brett Wallace!” or “My murderer is Ann Crowsdale!” I gave the list of people she was following a cursory glance but found it no more useful than I had the previous social site.

  I finally made my way to the site Becky had used earlier to show me Brett’s picture. Veronica’s profile was easy to find. I scrolled through the posts on her page. It appeared to be all of them. Somebody hadn’t been up to date on her privacy settings. Something seemed strange about them beyond the fact that they appeared to all be visible, but I couldn’t quite place what it was. They all seemed normal and innocuous, if a little abrasive. She did seem to get annoyed with lots of businesses and strangers she ran into on the street and didn’t seem to hesitate to share that with the world. Still, it was nothing that seemed worth killing her over and nothing to indicate who her murderer was.

  I flipped over to the list of her friends. I wasn’t sure if it was strange that we had none in common. In a small town like Cape Bay, everyone pretty much knew everyone else, but between her being new in town and me only recently having returned
to town, I decided it probably wasn’t significant. What was significant were some of the names that showed up on her list, especially compared to the names that weren’t there. No Becky, as I expected, or Amanda, my other part-time high schooler. No Ann Crowsdale. In fact, I didn’t see any other employees of the school, except for Marcus Varros, the principal. And while there were a few people who looked like teenagers, the only one I found who lived in Cape Bay was a blond-haired boy with a sneer. Brett Wallace.

  I clicked over to his page. It was much more locked down. All I could see were his old profile pictures, which were all variations on a theme. Boy making tough-guy face in different settings, sometimes with friends. It almost reminded me of Monet’s water lilies paintings—same subject, different lighting and locations—except much less poetic. It occurred to me that maybe I’d had too much wine.

  Deciding that there wasn’t much more to glean from Brett’s profile, I closed the laptop and cuddled up to Matt to think about the case until the game was over. The TV screen claimed there were only twelve minutes left, but I knew that meant there were at least thirty. The Patriots were winning comfortably, but Matt wouldn’t get up until the game was completely over. My eyes felt heavy from the combination of wine and good food and a busy day at the café.

  “Franny, come on, let’s go to bed.”

  “What?” I tried to open my eyes, but they didn’t want to. That was fine. I was comfortable where I was.

  “Franny.” Matt rubbed my leg vigorously as he singsonged my name.

  “Mmmm.” I nestled deeper into his shoulder.

  “All right, Franny.”

  I slid down onto the couch as Matt moved out from under me. That was fine too. The couch was comfortable.

  Matt grunted as he pushed his hands under me and tried to lift me. That was not comfortable.

  I sat up. “Okay, okay, I’ll get up.”

  “Good, because I don’t think my back could take it.”

  “Hey!” I swatted at him as I got myself to my feet. He just laughed. Halfway to the bedroom, I stopped. “I know what it is!”

  “What? You know who killed that teacher?”

  “No!” I turned around and laid my hands on his chest, momentarily distracting myself with the feel of his muscles under his shirt. He’d been going to the gym, and it was paying off.

  “Then what?” He slid his arms around my waist and pulled me closer to him.

  “What was weird about her profile page!”

  Matt raised an eyebrow but tipped his head down to kiss me. If I’d been more awake, I probably would have thought that he wasn’t as interested in what I had figured out as he was about other things.

  “Have you ever had a friend die?”

  “What?” He pulled away from me, looking at me as if I was crazy.

  “Online! Have you ever seen what happens to someone’s profile page when they die?”

  “No?”

  “Or when your dad died! What did people post on your page?”

  “Condolences?”

  “Yes! Exactly! Condolences! When people die, their pages get flooded with condolences! Everyone shares memories, talks about what a tragedy it is, says they can’t believe they’re gone.”

  “Okay. And? What does that have to do with that teacher?”

  “There was none of that on her page! No one posted about how upset they were! It was like no one cared at all!”

  Matt’s face flickered in something like confusion. “You’re excited about that?”

  I realized how awful I sounded. “Well, no, I’m not excited. I’m not happy about someone being so universally disliked that no one seems to care that she died. But it may mean that there are more people who actually did dislike her enough that they wanted her dead.”

  “It’s a long way from disliking someone to wanting them dead. Especially wanting them dead enough to kill them.”

  I sighed. He was right. I hated when he was right. Especially when it meant that I was wrong. Not that I was really wrong about it. Just that the lack of condolences on her page really only confirmed what I already knew—that people didn’t like her. It didn’t tell me that people were happy that she was dead or that they actually wanted to kill her. More importantly, it didn’t tell me who might have wanted her dead.

  “You’re mad that I’m right, aren’t you?” Matt wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him again.

  I shrugged.

  “Can I make it up to you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How’s this?” He leaned in and kissed me, the kind of kiss that made my toes curl at the same time as it made me want to melt into him.

  “It’s a start.”

  He smiled and kissed me again.

  Later that night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t the slightest bit tired. Apparently my nap at the end of the game had made my body think I didn’t need to really go to sleep for a few more hours. I used the time to think about Veronica Underwood and Ann Crowsdale and Brett Wallace. Veronica, by all accounts, had been a miserable person, but I didn’t think Ann had killed her. She just didn’t seem capable of it. And Brett. Brett I didn’t know about. He was either capable of murder or very determined to have people think he was. It was strange. I couldn’t imagine why someone would want people to think they could be a murderer. Especially not someone so young. What would make a teenage boy want people to think he was capable of murder? Or worse, what would make a teenage boy actually be capable of murder? Or commit it?

  I wasn’t sure whether the wind from outside had found its way in through the poorly insulated areas around the windows or if it was the result of thinking about such a grim subject, but I felt a sudden chill and pulled the blankets tighter around me.

  Chapter 13

  RHONDA WAS WORKING the next morning when I got to the café. I was glad, because I had some questions I wanted to ask her. Namely, what she knew about Brett Wallace and anyone else at the school that might have had a grudge against Veronica Underwood.

  “Brett?” She laughed. “I’ve known him since he was three years old. He went to preschool with my oldest.”

  “So you know him pretty well?”

  “Not as well as some of the other kids, but yeah, I know him fairly well.”

  I took a deep breath. I was afraid to offend her with my next question. Not that Rhonda was easily offended, but I wasn’t usually asking about a teenager’s capacity for murder. “Does he seem—” I stopped to search for the right word “—odd to you?”

  “Brett?” She laughed again. “He’s not as odd as he wants people to think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back when the kids first started grade school, he was having some behavior problems, so his parents and the school had him tested for every learning disability in the book. Dyslexia, ADD, ADHD. I’m pretty sure they even screened him for autism, just in case. But everything came back negative. Eventually, they gave him an IQ test, thinking that maybe he had a very low IQ despite hitting all his milestones.” She gave me a meaningful look that I couldn’t understand the meaning of.

  “So did he?”

  “Off the charts.”

  “Ohh.” I thought back over my interaction with Brett and tried to think of whether an intellectual disability changed the meaning of anything he said.

  “The other way, Fran.”

  I looked at her for a second, trying to figure out what she meant. Then it dawned on me. “He’s a genius.”

  Rhonda nodded. “Highest IQ his evaluator had ever seen. So they had him retested, because it couldn’t possibly be that high, right? Nope. Three times, they had him tested, including by the top child psychologist up in Boston. Astronomical IQ. The kid’s a literal genius.”

  “So why is he at Cape Bay High? It’s not a bad school, but—” I thought a kid like that would probably be more challenged in one of the many highly competitive private schools in the area. Parents in California sent their kids to them, they were so g
ood.

  “He didn’t want to go somewhere else.”

  “He didn’t want to?”

  “They’ve tried to move him a bunch of times, but he fails out every time.”

  “How?”

  “He sleeps. In all his classes. Never does the work. He does that at Cape Bay High too, but his test scores make up for it.”

  “He actually takes the tests?” This kid was baffling.

  “Oh, yeah. He doesn’t want to fail out of there. My son has chemistry with him this year, and he told me Brett’s corrected the teacher’s formulas a couple of times. Head on his desk, looks like he’s sound asleep, and just pipes up and points out the errors in his formulas then goes back to sleep.”

  I’d heard of genius kids being troublemakers before, but people always chalked it up to them not being challenged enough. It sounded as if Brett didn’t want to be challenged, though. He just wanted to intimidate people. “So what’s with the tough-guy act?”

  Rhonda shrugged. “It’s been going on for a couple of years now. I think it’s a fun new game for him to see how he can manipulate people by being threatening.”

  “Do you think he would ever actually hurt someone?”

  Rhonda’s eyes narrowed. For a second, I thought she was angry, but then her face lit up a little. “Do you think he had something to do with Veronica Underwood’s murder?”

  I shrugged. “His name came up. Apparently he argued with her the day she died.”

  Rhonda crossed her arms and thought for a few seconds. “You know, I don’t really know. Part of me says he’s a nice boy who just wants to be misunderstood, but another part of me…” She trailed off, but I could tell she was still thinking. “Another part of me could see the tough-guy thing not being an act after all. Maybe he thinks it’s fun to intimidate people, and if that’s the case, I could see where he might take that too far.”