Vangie Vale and the Murdered Macaron (The Matchbaker Mysteries Book 1)

by R. L. Syme

  His head cocked to one side, like he was about to tell me to get off his property again, but then something released, just enough that his whole body seemed to unlock from whatever had been keeping it tight. “Okay, then. If you’re so interested in helping me out, tell me what Henry told you when you were in the office yesterday.”

  I instinctively backed away. “You won’t be able to use it in court. It’s heresay.”

  “Do you want justice? Or do you want to protect your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  Malcolm scoffed, digging a toe into the grass next to the sidewalk. “That’s not the way he tells it.”

  “I literally met him yesterday. He’s not my boyfriend. I promise you. I’m just trying to get justice for someone I think is innocent.”

  “Let’s say, in a hypothetical situation here, that I have both motive and opportunity, but I’m still trying to prove the means of the crime. I’m pretty sure he told you something that will help me find the murder weapon.”

  My mouth dropped open and my jaw flapped for a second as I tried to remember my conversation with Henry. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I think he told you where he was talking to Claire.”

  “I thought you were listening in on that conversation.”

  “We don’t have that capability. Our precinct is too small.”

  “But you told me you couldn’t guarantee it would be private, and then you came in and got him.”

  “Your five minutes were up.”

  I threw my hands in the air and turned around, pacing a little ways across the sidewalk. Did I know anything useful? What, exactly, had Henry said?

  Malcolm’s hand seemed to come out of nowhere, grabbing me hard. “You said you wanted justice, Evangeline,” he said, but there was genuine fear on his features.

  I had been walking toward my house. Did he think I was going to go without telling him what he needed to know? Crap on a cracker, he needed to settle down.

  “I was just thinking, Malcolm,” I said, shaking his hand off. “You don’t have to manhandle me. I’m on your side.”

  “You’re on Henry’s side,” he corrected, pointing his finger at me. “That’s not my side.”

  “I told you, I’m on the side of justice.” I let out a long sigh, feathering the bangs of my pixie cut.

  “Then tell me where the murder weapon is.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “You know where he was standing when he talked to Claire. Evidence on the scene suggests she wasn’t killed where we found her, but we haven’t been able to find the original scene of the crime and I think somebody cleaned it up. I’ve had guys combing that parking lot, and they’re not finding anything.”

  My memory flashed back to the pictures of the crime scene. Despite all those nasty wounds, there was no blood on the ground. Why hadn’t I noticed that at the time?

  “Tell me something, first.” I took in a breath, trying not to think about how much this was a betrayal of Henry. When it came down to it, Malcolm was right, I had to be on his side. On the side of justice. I just wanted the right people to be punished for this. “I know he had opportunity—I’m assuming that’s what Scarlet told you in her interrogation that made you come out and arrest Henry. But I still don’t understand why you think he would kill her. They were getting a restraining order against her. The problem was going to go away.”

  Malcolm gave a short, mirthless laugh and shook his head. “Evangeline, you have no idea, do you?”

  “Apparently not. But you’re going to tell me, or I won’t tell you what Henry told me in the interrogation room.”

  He bent his head down, all seriousness. A flash of concern darkened his features and he grabbed my shoulders. “Claire was claiming assault. In fact, she was going to tell the world about it. Scarlet said he was livid when he found out.”

  The world went sideways for half a second, and stopped breath burned in my throat. Malcolm kept me upright, but my knees eventually recovered. Everything else still felt like jelly.

  Like a robot, I repeated word for word what Henry had told me. Then I pulled my arms around my body and started walking down the sidewalk toward the street. Malcolm was calling after me, but I couldn’t register anything.

  I felt numb and vacant when I climbed into the Tank, like I was outside my own body. Malcolm kept coming down the sidewalk, but I started the car, put on my seatbelt, and pulled away from his house. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I needed to get away from him.

  He’d proven me wrong. This was the piece I had been missing—the why. The real why. Now that I knew the why, I knew Malcolm was right. Henry had been about to tell me earlier, in the jail. After all, his lies were about to come out into the open, and Malcolm would be able to prove he had killed Claire.

  I had picked the wrong man. Again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I kept driving, steering down the winding roads to Madison Falls. It was fully dark by the time I got there. I wasn’t sure what would be open, but I needed to get somewhere in public so I would stop going crazy. And I needed to not be in Saint Agnes.

  There was a little coffee shop in a strip mall just as I got into town, and I went inside, dragging the messenger bag full of sermons with me. I only had a few of Norman’s to finish before I was done with this batch.

  The place was nearly deserted, all red-brown wood and trendy carpeting. The cashier was a little too bubbly for me, but I realized I was still wearing my clergy collar. It typically ensured friendly treatment.

  I sat down with my Glacier Chai Latte—which was probably dangerously caffeinated given the hour but I still needed to drive back to Saint Agnes that night, so maybe the caffeine wasn’t such a bad thing. My computer was in the messenger bag, and this place had free wi-fi, according to the little tented placard on the table, so I hooked in and opened an email to my sister.

  Priscilla wasn’t much of an email person, but it was way too late to call her. I started off by thanking her for going to the denominational offices and then proceeded to tell her as much of the story as I could. It felt good to tell her everything about Henry, and some of the tension released from my body.

  But, boy, I sure knew how to pick ‘em. Or they knew how to pick me, one of the two. I knew that’s what Priscilla would say, as a joke, but it would still sting. I had misjudged Henry so completely, I should be forced to lay down my Matchbaker apron.

  My sister would have reminded me that, when I first met Edward, I had also misjudged him. He had so much in common with Henry, it was uncanny. Minus the murder.

  A kind-faced older man sat down beside me and I looked up to see that the place had gotten a little busier. It was nearing eight o’clock. My latte had barely been touched in my haste to get an email off to Priscilla, so I sipped at it.

  I probably should have gone to Emma, or to Peter, or someone in Saint Agnes. I had a few friends, but no one like Cilla. There were plenty of people I could call, friends from home who would love to hear from me, but there was something different about unburdening myself to my sister.

  Tomorrow morning, we could talk for real while I was making pastries. Then, I might feel all the way better.

  I reached for the sermons, ready to immerse myself in Norman’s musings on The Cost of Discipleship again. In front of the folders lay the rubber-banded set of feedback cards from the police station’s stash of macarons.

  Why not. It would be a distraction.

  I opened the document I kept on my Mac with all the recorded feedback from the surveys and placed the cards on the small table beside my computer. The first one was, ironically, Malcolm’s. I was impressed that Irma had gotten him to fill one out. His comments were brief but complimentary.

  It would be a long time before I stopped seeing the look on his face as he prepared to tell me that Henry had killed Claire to cover up having assaulted her. Protective. Strange.

  The next card was from Irma, and her scri
pty writing made me laugh. I’d rather be eating your cookies than sitting on a beach drinking my weight in Mai Tais. She was a bright spot in my day, and her friendly comments were a buoy to my sad little heart.

  Stefan Van Andel was the name on the next card. That had to be the deputy from earlier this evening. Stefan. Despite what I’d learned, I was still curious to know how he was related to Mike.

  I pulled up a new browsing window and searched for the name Stefan Van Andel. One of the first things that came up was his Facebook page, so I clicked it open. Most of his page was public, which I found extremely helpful. I loved public Facebook pages. So much easier to be nosy.

  The pictures he’d posted were mostly of him and his friends doing various outdoor activities. Hunting, fishing, boating, and the like. Mike and Leo were in a couple of the pictures. Lord’s barnacles, Malcolm was even in one. I clicked on the pictures individually, so the captions came up on the sidebar.

  I paused when I reached a wedding photo. Mike and Stefan and two other men, dressed in matching ties and vests, standing alongside the groom, whose vest was a different color. All had slight variations in hair color, but their facial features were uncannily similar. They were staring off into the middle distance in a field of golden grass, with a green mountain vista in the background. It was John Van Andel’s picture; he’d tagged all of them and captioned it: my four brothers stood up with me at my wedding.

  Wow. Five Van Andel boys.

  Stefan was at the end of the line, and they were obviously arrayed in order of ascending age, except for the groom. Mike was the oldest, it appeared, and they stair-stepped down, probably a year or two at a time. It was possible that Stefan was somewhere in his early thirties, with Mike, the oldest, probably around forty. Or over forty.

  I saw that Mike’s name was lit up, indicating he had a Facebook profile as well, and I clicked on it. He had the smarts to have everything locked down, but that gave me a thought. I opened up another browser page and searched for Mike Van Andel and Saint Agnes.

  There was a page from the high school about Mike’s twentieth class reunion—apparently, he was the chair of the reunion committee. The reunion had been three years ago. Several sets of new-and-old pictures lined the page. A group of men in letter jackets on the left side, and a group of older men in plaid or polo shirts on the right. A big class picture on the left side, and a smaller, more sedate group photo in the Saint Agnes gymnasium on the right.

  I did a quick search on the page for Mike’s name and three results popped up. The first was from the caption under the letter-jacket lineup. The second was a picture of a high-school-age Michael Van Andel, his arm around the shoulders of a young Jenna. It was uncanny how much Leo looked like her.

  But the third picture almost took my breath away. It seemed innocuous enough at first. A picture of several men with hammers in their hands. They looked to be building something, though whatever they were hammering was out of the shot. One of the men was obviously Michael Van Andel, and standing next to him was a man in profile, looking at something away from the camera. My breath caught when I realized why this other guy was so familiar. His profile was almost identical to the one I saw every day in the bakery. Austin Krantz.

  Was that Auggie, then? I searched my memory for the picture from Austin’s room, but couldn’t bring it up.

  The men had recreated the scene at the reunion. But there were three men missing from the original. One of them was Austin’s lookalike. I opened up another web browser and typed in the name Auggie Krantz. Something had been bothering me about him, and I couldn’t quite make sense of it. I hoped that learning more about him would ease that itch in the back of my brain.

  The first result was on Wikipedia, which surprised me. When I clicked on the name, it opened to a page with a military picture—not the one from Frances Barnett’s living room, although the man’s face seemed the same. This must have been after he graduated, because he was in formal Marine attire.

  The right side read his vital statistics. Birth name, nickname, born in ’74. Died August 7, 1998. Years of service…

  Hold on a second.

  August 7th, 1998. Auggie Krantz had died in the embassy bombing in Nairobi. One of only two military casualties. According to Austin, his father had died right before he was born, but I knew Aussie’s birthday was in late May.

  Someone had lied to him about that, though I couldn’t think why. I put my hand over my mouth and sighed. Poor Austin.

  The clock on my computer said 9:45 p.m. and I knew it was past time to get back to Saint Agnes. I normally went to bed at around nine so I could get to work early to do some fresh baking. Bakeries with a higher volume of sales usually had a three o’clock start time. No doubt, I would need to do that once tourist season started, but at the moment, I did mostly café business. Soups, sandwiches, coffee, and then the bread case sales, which were steady.

  I closed my laptop and packed my things, scanning the coffee shop. The traffic had died down significantly. As I left the building, one of the staff thanked me for coming in. I turned to say you’re welcome, but something caught my eye. Something familiar.

  Through the big glass windows, I could see chunks of the lit parking lot outside, including the silhouette of a man on a motorcycle. I exchanged a final pleasantry with the barista and scooted out the door. The Tank was to my right, but the motorcycle was to my left.

  Derek Hobson.

  I stalked toward him instead of my car. He was just pulling on his helmet, and shock was written all over his face.

  “Hey!” I called out, crossing the big sidewalk and moving toward him. “Don’t move.”

  Derek dropped the helmet in front of him, resting it on the seat, and let out a long sigh. “All right, I’ve been following you.”

  I shook my head, startled by the admission. “You’ve what?”

  “I saw you leaving town tonight, and I followed you.”

  No words came out of my open mouth. He was probably the last person I would have expected to follow me. Malcolm? Yes. I was surprised he wasn’t following me. Jenna and Mike? Yes. Even Scarlet would have made sense. But Derek?

  “Why would you follow me?” I asked.

  “Because you’re investigating Claire’s murder. I figured you were headed somewhere to look for clues. Not sit in a coffee shop for two hours.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I had work to do.”

  “And you couldn’t have done it in Saint Agnes?”

  The honesty of his question pinned me. No. I had been running away, but I didn’t want to talk to Derek Hobson about that.

  “I felt like a change of scenery,” I said, giving half the truth and hoping he wouldn’t press me for more.

  Derek leaned forward, putting both big forearms on his helmet. “Are you any closer to finding out who killed Claire?”

  Part of me wanted to out and tell him what Malcolm had said, but I was afraid he’d get violent, and while Henry was in jail, I was standing on the asphalt in front of him.

  “I don’t know anything for sure.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. “Do you think Henry did it?”

  “You were the one who said he didn’t,” he spat back.

  “Yeah, but apart from what I said, do you have any reason to think Henry didn’t kill Claire?”

  The hesitation was minuscule, but I picked up on it.

  “You do, don’t you?” I said, taking a step closer to him.

  He glanced around the darkened lot, lit only by pops of lamps in grassy medians that made circles of light around them. We were standing in the darkness between those circles, and a tiny lick of fear went up my spine like a tongue, lighting up every nerve. I took an instinctive step away from him.

  “I didn’t kill my wife,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  “Okay, fine. But tell me what you were doing meeting with Scarlet at the bed and breakfast yesterday.”

  “Who told you about that?” The little curl of his shoulders sent an
other jolt of fear through me, and I took another step back—prey preparing to run from a predator.

  I stammered for a second, then said, “The woman who runs the B&B. She mentioned that she’d seen a biker come upstairs to Scarlet’s room while Henry was out on a walk.”

  When he turned his head, I could see his jaw working in the shadows of the street lamp. A car buzzed by us, heading into the nearby drive-up window at the coffee shop. The mechanical voice of the barista cut through the still, cool air, and I pulled my coat a little tighter around me.

  Derek kept his eyes fixed on the car. A little Honda that looked to be full of high school students. Once they were finished ordering and had pulled up to the pick-up window, he relaxed a bit.

  “She shouldn’t have told you about that,” he said, finally.

  “I just want to know why you were meeting with Scarlet—who’s not even from Saint Agnes—about an hour after your wife was murdered.” It felt a little like I was taking my life into my hands. I hoped there were surveillance cameras in this parking lot. Just in case he killed me for impertinence.

  He swung his helmet around to the back of his bike, securing it somewhere out of sight, and climbed off the thing. I kept stepping backward, feeling unsafe.

  Derek pointed to the Tank. “Let’s go somewhere private. I don’t want to talk about this out in the open.”

  “No one here knows either of us.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Vangie,” his voice went soft, almost desperate. “I just want to go somewhere we can’t be overheard.”

  “Just let me do something, quick,” I said, pulling out my phone. I snapped a picture of him and the flash went off.

  Derek took a step toward me with his hand outstretched. “What are you doing?”

  I sent the picture to my sister with the text, JIC, before he could get near enough to take my phone. “It’s an old code with my sister. When we would go on a date somewhere that’s not super public, we texted each other a picture of the guy with JIC—just in case. Like a safety net in case the guy turns out to be a serial killer.”