Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2)

by Livia Day

  I let go of Alice’s arm. Let Xanthippe support her, if that was what she needed. Stewart was looking after Shay. I crossed the driveway toward Jason, knelt down on the gravel and hugged him, because no one else was doing it. He grabbed on to me like I was a lifeline, and I hugged him harder.

  Maybe it wasn’t just for his benefit.

  There was a long wait, for Bishop’s backup officers and cars to arrive. He wasn’t keen to let us all inside, though the evidence had already been well and truly disturbed.

  Instead, we all sat out on the sunken patio at the back, which was in rather better condition than the house itself. Jason sat on the steps, Pippa sitting deliberately close to him on one side, and me on the other. Tellingly, his father kept his distance, pacing back and forth.

  Alice and Xanthippe sat on the steps opposite Jason. Alice looked utterly broken, her hands constantly squeezing together in her lap. Ceege had chosen a step near Xanthippe, but I suspect that was more about symmetry than actual allegiance.

  Stewart stuck with Shay like I was sticking with Jason. They sat up on the shady wooden deck, looking down at the rest of us. For a long time, no one spoke.

  ‘You said you had a theory, Tish,’ Xanthippe said, speaking across the patio as if she and I were the only ones here. ‘About the bloke in the lake? Malcolm Drake.’

  I resisted the urge to point out that Drake rhymed with lake, because no one wanted jokes right now. ‘You remember that?’

  ‘I pay attention to the things you say. Never know when it’s going to turn out to be interesting.’

  ‘Please don’t discuss the case,’ Bishop said flatly. ‘The cars will be here soon, and we can get this sorted out at the station.’

  Xanthippe gave him a withering look. ‘Just killing time, Leo. Don’t mind us. Pretend we’re not here.’

  ‘Okay, my theory,’ I said, because I would rather talk to Xanthippe right now than endure another minute of the police-appointed awkward silence. ‘He can’t have been Anna’s rich boyfriend, because she didn’t have one. She told Shay — and Alice — there was a rich boyfriend because it was her cover story for where the money came from. But I was thinking, there’s one other bloke in the story that we didn’t have a name for. Someone from the mainland.’

  Stewart made a small noise of recognition, then smiled and shook his head. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Like Zee said,’ I told him. ‘You never know something’s going to be interesting. So it’s worth paying attention to details.’

  Stewart nodded, and despite the crowd it felt like it really was just the three of us. ‘Alice was tryin’ tae get away from something bad at the start of it all. I thought there had tae be more there.’

  ‘There was,’ I agreed. ‘Alice, why don’t you tell it?’

  ‘Tabitha,’ Bishop warned in a low growl.

  I felt more myself than I had in months, and I wasn’t going to stop now. ‘Don’t pretend like you’re not as keen to know as the rest of us. Alice? Was Malcolm Drake your boyfriend?’

  Alice hesitated and then nodded. More tears blobbed down her nose. ‘I was scared of him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I was … I ran away from him. I kept running. I became Annabeth to get away from him completely, as completely as I could.’

  ‘And then you went intae a house full of webcams?’ Stewart said dubiously.

  Alice looked surprised. ‘Of course. I had to be Annabeth, not Alice. Alice would never do something like that. Malcolm would never look for Alice in a place like that. I didn’t just dye my hair blonde and start wearing cardigans. I turned myself into a completely different person. It worked, too. It wasn’t The Gingerbread House that led him to me. He had no idea.’

  ‘Then how did he find you?’ Xanthippe asked.

  ‘Annabeth,’ Alice said quietly. ‘I didn’t realise — it never occurred to me that she would use my name, when she went to drama school. She used her own name for all the formal stuff, applications etc. But she chose Alice Conway as her stage name. She didn’t even tell me, or I would have warned her.’

  ‘What would you have warned her about?’ I pressed, ignoring the look Bishop shot me. He wasn’t in control here. Hell, no one was in control. Until the cars arrived (and Heather had already enlisted Ceege to clear the driveway of the evil little caltraps, so hopefully these mythical police cars would get here unscathed) we were all stuck here together. Might as well find out something about the events that had led us to this particular place and time.

  ‘That he was dangerous,’ Alice said quietly. ‘That he wouldn’t stop looking for me. That performing under my name was a way to make herself vulnerable. It wasn’t much, maybe a review or two online of a couple of plays. Enough to come up in a Google search.’ She shook her head. ‘She was the only one who knew where I was, and he must have got the information out of her somehow. I don’t know if he threatened her, or just tricked her. But that day, the power went out at The Gingerbread House, and I went to check the fuse box, and he was there.’

  One mystery cleared up, at least. ‘What did he do?’ I asked in a low voice, my eyes on her. I was a step or two above Jason, and couldn’t see the look on his face. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But I reached out, and patted his shoulder so he’d know there was someone there.

  Alice swallowed, looking miserable. ‘He grabbed for me, and I ran. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. I made it to the garden shed, grabbed the first thing I found, and when he came for me again, I hit him with it. And I kept hitting. I wanted him to leave me alone, I wanted him…’ She swallowed again, darting a look at Bishop, who had a blank expression on his face.

  ‘I thought I’d killed him,’ she said finally. ‘I wish I had. Then no one else would have ever got involved.’

  ‘So wha’ happened next?’ It was Stewart who prompted her that time. I couldn’t get a read on whether he believed her or not. Maybe neither. Maybe he was just unbiased and non-judgemental, like a journalist was supposed to be.

  ‘He was so … still, on the concrete,’ Alice said, speaking slowly as if the words physically pained her. ‘Lying there. I didn’t know what to do. It was the middle of the day, it was sunny. I waited for someone to find me, to come and find out what the noise was. But no one did. His car was in the driveway. I dragged him over, and it was difficult, he was heavy. I got him into the boot instead, covered him with a blanket, and I just started driving.’

  Alice shook her head. ‘I was so angry at Annabeth. She’d given the person who hated me most in the world my address, and she hadn’t even let me know or checked whether it was a good idea. I called her — I knew she was back in Flynn for the summer, we had agreed that would work if she stayed away from Hobart — and I yelled at her, crying, scared. She said I should come to meet her, we’d figure something out. She didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, but she was sure it wasn’t all that bad.’

  Alice took a deep breath, looking around and her eye falling on Jason. ‘She was like that, yeah? I mean, she was always trying to find the upbeat answer to anything. No worries, she’ll be right.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jason said with a hollow laugh. ‘She’ll be right. Whatever.’

  ‘I drove all the way to Flynn,’ Alice said finally. ‘Only I hadn’t been there before, and I got turned around at Huonville, and then I was low on petrol and…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t get to Flynn until after dark. Waited by the lake, up by the trees, where no one could see the car. Called Annabeth, and she came to find me. I was a wreck.’ Tears dribbled down her face again. ‘She was so kind. So encouraging. When I told her — what I had done, she was completely calm. Said it was self-defence, and no one would blame me, though the driving around all day with him in the car thing wouldn’t go down too well, but we could totally come up with a good story to explain that.’

  ‘Not that we’re not enjoying the narrative,’ Xanthippe said dryly. ‘But at what point did the body in the boot manage to get himself shot?’

  �
�What, you can spend two hours a day practising taekwondo or whatever the hell it is you do in those white pyjamas, and you can’t wait ten minutes so the girl can tell her story in the proper order?’ said Ceege. ‘Suck it up.’

  ‘Blow me,’ she advised him.

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘Children, please?’ I interjected. Alice looked like she was about to clam up for good, and we were on a deadline. Once Bishop’s buddies turned up, the police would shut down the situation completely, and we might never hear the whole story.

  ‘I don’t understand how you got involved, Jason,’ Pippa said quietly.

  ‘Alice called me — ’ and his words got caught in his throat. ‘Just listen, okay?’

  ‘He wasn’t dead,’ said Alice, picking at one end of her cardigan. The stray thread of yarn had come loose, and she was well on her way to unravelling her sleeve. ‘I hadn’t killed him at all.’ That was an important detail, surely. ‘When we went to look in the boot for him, he was gone. We both panicked, and then he leaped out at us from the trees, tried to grab us. We ran…’

  She was shaking now, and Xanthippe got up without a word and went off to her car. When she came back, she had a soft throw rug with her, to put around Alice’s shoulders. Okay, when Xanthippe felt sorry about you, it meant you were in pretty bad shape.

  ‘I heard Anna scream,’ said Alice after a moment of rough, panicked breathing. ‘I was hiding in the trees. We’d got separated, but even when she screamed, I didn’t dare come out of hiding. Jason was the only other person I knew in Flynn. So I called him, told him we were both in danger.’

  ‘You didn’t think of calling the police?’ asked Bishop.

  Jason made a noise of disgust and looked at him sideways, pulling his hand through his hair. It was the first sign of life we had seen from him in some time. ‘Nearest police are what — half an hour away? Forty minutes?’

  ‘He’s right,’ Alice said flatly. ‘I should have called the police. I didn’t even think of that. It was like my brain had shut down, and I was inside one of those horror movies where everyone dies.’

  ‘She didn’t make much sense on the phone,’ Jason said, staring at his feet as he took up the story. ‘But I knew about Alice’s boyfriend, the way he treated her. She said she thought he was going to kill her. And when I got there, the first thing I saw was Anna … lying in the water.’

  He clenched his fists.

  ‘Where did the gun come from?’ Constable Heather asked.

  ‘Is this an official interview, officer?’ Greg Avery snapped in return.

  Jason rolled his eyes. ‘So you have an unregistered gun, Dad. Big deal. Do you even get what kind of trouble I’m in?’

  ‘I know that you should have a lawyer before you make any admissions,’ his father hurled at him.

  ‘How’s this for an admission?’ Jason yelled back. ‘I killed Malcolm Drake. He killed Anna, and I found her lying in the fucking lake, and I shot him to stop him doing the same to Alice. Lawyer that.’

  Silence stretched from one end of the patio to the other. Alice buried her head in her hands. Pippa just closed her eyes. Greg Avery had no expression at all.

  There was the sound of cars pulling up on the gravel on the far side of the shack. The reinforcements had arrived. They weren’t so melodramatic as to have their sirens on, but we could see a flash or two of blue lights.

  Jason pushed himself up and walked over to Bishop. ‘I think this is the part where you arrest me, yeah?’

  ‘That’s usually how these things go,’ Bishop said gravely.

  The boy nodded, setting his chin. ‘I’m ready.’

  After that it was all procedure. Greg and Pippa went in one of the police cars, with Jason. Alice went in another, huddled up under the blanket. Her leg wasn’t broken, but they were going to take her to get it looked at. Before or after they arrested her, I guess? I wasn’t sure of the order of events.

  For a moment, in the middle of organising the witnesses and evidence and everything else, Bishop looked over at me, to check I was all right. I lied to him with a brave smile, because what was one more lie? He turned away, and got on with his job.

  Ceege and Xanthippe had taken over the task of keeping Shay in one piece, which was good because I had nothing left. I walked away from the shack, away from all of them, down to the line of gum trees and the view of the hills and mountains and lakes. For a moment there was nothing but calm scenery and the sound of my own breathing.

  Arms wrapped around me, a familiar scent of coffee and boy. It was Stewart, but that was okay. More than okay. He was exactly what I needed right now.

  ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll be fine,’ I said in a shaky voice. It was dumb to feel this involved. It wasn’t about me, not this time. But every time I thought about Jason Avery, I wanted to cry. There were no bad guys walking around here. Just people who had fucked up their lives. I leaned back into Stewart’s arms and breathed.

  ‘Ye know what I feel like?’ Stewart said after a long moment.

  ‘If you say ice cream, I’m going to bitchslap you,’ I warned him.

  He leaned in, his mouth tickling my ear. ‘Ice cream.’

  Then he took off, laughing, and let me catch up easily and pummel him. As friends do.

  22

  THE MORTICIA ADDAMS SUPER SPECIAL SUMMER WAKE UP PUNCH (CAN WAKE THE DEAD, ESPECIALLY IF THE DEAD HAVE A HANGOVER)

  Ingredients:

  1 litre commercial lemonade

  8 lemons, juiced

  4 oranges, juiced

  2 limes, juiced

  500g strawberries

  500g watermelon

  500g pineapple

  1 handful of garden mint, finely chopped

  As much finely smashed ice as you can fit in the bowl.

  Puree the fruit and lemon juice until fine and frothy. Pour over bowlful of smashed ice (meat tenderisers are good for smashing purposes). Pour lemonade over entire glorious mess.

  Obviously the recipe can be much improved by the addition of a bottle of gin, a bottle of champagne, or both. But its finest application is to serve it mocktail style the morning after a big night. That way, no one ends the weekend with scurvy. It’s especially useful if the morning after doesn’t get started until after lunch…

  Life went back to normal. For me, anyway. I gave Nin an extra day off to make up for the whole building inspector thing, reopened the café once we had the all clear, and buried myself in my kitchen. I experimented with four different kinds of affogato and tested them on various willing subjects, I finally decided to retire panini in favour of tremazzini (who has the time to wait for cheese to melt?) and I juiced so many lemons for my special summer Wake Up Punch that my cuticles swelled to twice their usual size.

  It was nearly Christmas, and I wasn’t ready for it. No one seemed to be, this year. I declared Café La Femme a Christmas free zone, set a blackboard on the pavement outside that declared ‘Guaranteed No Merry Jingle Bells Music!’ and saw my numbers for coffee-between-shopping customers soar.

  It was hot in that week before Christmas, the kind of hot that makes Hobart natives stare in confusion at each other because we’re never, ever prepared for it. I stepped up the ice cream production — sometimes offering two or three flavours a day. Sure, it meant staying up later at night to get the batches going, but that worked for me.

  I hadn’t been sleeping great. Only work made me feel like that was halfway normal.

  Things between me and Bishop were … well. We’d had a talk. The talk. It went something like this:

  BISHOP: Why does this coffee have ice cream in it?

  TABITHA: It’s an affogato, which is basically what coffee was invented for.

  BISHOP: The coffee is melting the ice cream really fast. Hard to see how there’s going to be a happy ending for any of the ingredients.

  TABITHA: To be fair, I think that’s true of all food.

  BISHOP: Are you absolutely sure you meant the ice cream to be pink?
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  TABITHA: I’m trying to prove that the perfect affogato can be made without the use of vanilla. It’s chef science.

  BISHOP: For the sake of our relationship, I will pretend that everything you just said makes sense and is no way a mutual waste of our time and energy.

  (long pause)

  BISHOP: And I know that I breached some kind of clause by using the word ‘relationship’ but I think I should be allowed that one given that, you know.

  TABITHA: That I kissed someone else on the internet?

  BISHOP: Which I got to find out about thanks to a hashtag my junior colleague was reviewing for work purposes.

  TABITHA: Awkward.

  BISHOP: Yes. Though not in the top five of awkward work related circumstances in which you have somehow been involved.

  TABITHA: Wow, really?

  BISHOP: There’s a pie chart in the break room.

  TABITHA: Why do you put up with me?

  (long pause)

  BISHOP: That is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

  TABITHA: Thought it might be.

  BISHOP: Not — I didn’t mean that in a bad way. You are basically wonderful. I’m not ready to give up on figuring out how to combine — you know.

  TABITHA: Hot coffee and cherry coconut gelato?

  BISHOP: Bad example. Considering the mess in this cup right now.

  TABITHA: I was trying not to look too closely.

  BISHOP: Do we need to bury it in the back yard?

  TABITHA: Can the bad affogato please stop being a metaphor for our relationship?

  BISHOP: You used the ‘r’ word.

  TABITHA: I didn’t mean to.

  (long pause)

  TABITHA: Invite me to Christmas.

  BISHOP: What? That is so not where I thought you were going with this.

  TABITHA: Me either. Apparently the part of me that talks is not connected to the rest of my brain. I’m not saying that I want to girlfriend up or anything, just…

  (pause in which Bishop reminds me that he is also most excellent at kissing)

  TABITHA: Huh.

  I also had a talk with Stewart. It went a bit like this: