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

by R. L. Syme

  Derek and I walked his bike down the lane until we were almost to the street. He helped me onto the back and started it, easing down the street. I looked back at Nikki’s house, but it was dark. The pickup truck was gone, the white car was gone, and it looked like Nikki had either left herself or left with one of them. The only light on was in Austin’s bedroom along the side of the house.

  We rode back to my vehicle, and Derek followed me to the bed and breakfast. I was pretty certain that Stefan would stay away from the B&B after his conversation with Nikki, and I wanted to see what Scarlet needed. And sit somewhere warm for a change.

  Scarlet let us inside and took us into the dining room, where there was an electric tea kettle that I immediately turned on. We sat in the semi-darkness around the creaky old table, and she folded her hands in front of her.

  “They’re re-opening Claire’s case.” Scarlet delivered the line like an actress, and I tried to show an appropriate amount of shock to be a pleasing audience, but truth be told, I had assumed they would.

  “Malcolm called her,” Derek said in a low voice. “Just before Van Andel came over. Told her not to leave town.”

  “Right.” Scarlet nodded. “It appears that a witness came forward saying they saw Henry driving away from the gas station—actually, that would have been me driving away—while Claire ran after him.”

  I gave a little shake of my head and dropped my jaw for effect. Henry would have been so proud. Oscar.

  “So they know Henry didn’t kill Claire?” I said, appropriate awe in my tone.

  “Right.”

  “But we al—” Derek started, but I kicked his shin softly under the table. Scarlet was too busy soaking up all the drama. Safe drama, anyway. It was best to let her have her moment.

  “So, you have to stay here?” I asked. “Or are you leaving?”

  “Oh, now that they reopened the case and I’m not a suspect, I booked myself on the first morning flight back to LA. I leave here at four in the morning.” She reached inside the folds of her white sweater. “I want you to have this.” Her elegant fingers emerged with a little brown notebook.

  “Thanks,” I said, holding my hand out, but she hadn’t given it over just yet. Each movement was excruciatingly slow.

  “It’s everything I could remember about the last three days.” She finally set it into my open palm. “And an account of the conversations I had with Henry about the child and everything.”

  “What should I do with it?” I asked.

  “Keep it. On the off chance that their investigation goes South again, I’d like to know that someone was here watching out for Henry.”

  Derek’s lips tightened, and the tension in the room was suddenly tactile. Henry had clearly been one of Scarlet’s favorite people in the world, but he had assaulted Derek’s wife, and never seen punishment for it. It was understandable that he would be mad about someone attempting to protect Henry. He’d certainly been mad at me on and off for a few days.

  I just wanted justice to be done. For everyone.

  “When I get back to Los Angeles, they’re going to start dividing up Henry’s estate according to his will,” Scarlet said, rising from her seat. “If I come across anything that’s relevant, the sheriff asked me to share it, but right now, he doesn’t know about Henry’s child, and I’d rather it stayed that way.”

  “You don’t want to know who it is?” I asked, a little dumbfounded.

  “The lawyers will figure all that out.”

  “So, did Henry have a will?” Derek ventured, his features still tight.

  “He did, and his lawyers will know how to divide his estate. His mother has passed, but I know he updated it after that. So I’m not sure where everything will go.” She tightened her arms around her body, the white sweater coat folding around her like fur. “But I’d like to keep Henry’s name out of the press as much as possible. And, of course, whatever we can do to protect the child.”

  The child.

  Those words echoed in my ears. It still felt, sometimes, like Scarlet thought of Henry’s son as a baby, somewhere, being cared for by some nameless, faceless person in a nursery. But he wasn’t nameless or faceless to me. And I wanted more than anything to protect him. He was, after all, the real innocent here.

  “Wait,” Scarlet said, turning on me like she’d just realized something. “You asked if I wanted to know who the child was. Does that mean you know who it is?”

  I shifted in my seat, looking at Derek. He had a similar quizzical look on his face, and I had to let out a little, choked laugh. “Wait. Neither of you know who it is?”

  “No,” Derek said.

  “I don’t.” Scarlet resumed her seat. “If you can tell me, it would save the lawyers a lot of paperwork, maybe even the cost of hiring a private investigator.”

  “I thought it was obvious,” I said with a shrug. “It’s Austin Krantz.”

  Scarlet blinked at me, like she hadn’t even considered the thought, but Derek was already shaking his head. “No, it’s definitely not Austin Krantz.”

  “It is.” I reached for my purse, but I’d left it in the car. I had all the proof in my bag. The pictures of Mike and Henry, the Wikipedia page with Auggie’s date of death, the birth calculator still in a window on my phone, and the sermon notes about Auggie’s second funeral. “Auggie Krantz died before he could have possibly conceived Austin. Plus, Claire was shipped off to Minnesota right about the time Nikki came back to Saint Agnes and told everyone she was pregnant.”

  “But that’s not possible,” Derek said, wiping his hand across the dark wood of the table. “I just heard Stefan Van Andel say that he was Austin’s father.”

  The news landed on me like a cartoon piano, and for a long moment, I stopped breathing, waiting while things clicked into place. The strange, constant involvement of Mike and Jenna Van Andel, the little pow-wow at Nikki’s house, the interview at the sheriff’s office.

  Everything.

  Lined.

  Up.

  The electric tea kettle popped off, hot water ready, but I wasn’t interested in tea anymore. All I wanted to do was collapse, like I’d just solved a huge crossword puzzle.

  Stefan Van Andel was Austin’s father.

  The death of Henry in the jail could easily have been Mike and Stefan Van Andel collaborating together. Colluding. The security cameras in the holding cells didn’t work. If Stefan had managed to be on duty that night, he would have had an easy path. “You mean the deputy who was just here?” Scarlet asked, looking at Derek. “When did he say that?”

  “We followed them,” he said. “Just now.”

  “So, if Henry isn’t Austin’s father, then who is Henry’s son?” I looked between the two of them, and they just stared back. No one seemed to have an answer for that, so I shifted my gaze to Derek. “What else did they say out there?”

  “I couldn’t hear all of it. But Stefan wanted to come clean about being Austin’s father, and Nikki said Mike wouldn’t allow it. She said they’d tried too many times in the past.”

  I had been so certain that Henry was Austin’s father.

  This was too much. I had to stand up, walk around, get some air. It was like waiting for something for what seemed like forever, only for it to be a complete disappointment when it showed up.

  “Well, if this kid isn’t Henry’s son, then he’s of no consequence to me,” Scarlet said, rising again and walking toward the door. “I trust you can let yourselves out.”

  Before I could turn around, she was gone. No goodbyes, no reminiscing, no nothing. Just dead air.

  As I walked out of the bed and breakfast with Derek, I wanted to ask him all kinds of questions, but after the way we’d spied on Nikki, Stefan, and Jenna, I didn’t trust outside anymore.

  I told Derek to keep his phone charged. My next step was to read Scarlet’s diary, see if there was anything helpful in there.

  “Is there anything else I should know before I go?” I asked in a low voice. Derek’s bik
e was parked behind the Tank, but he stood so close, I could smell his leather jacket.

  “From Nikki’s house?”

  “Or anything,” I said. I felt like there was something Derek still wasn’t telling me. Maybe it was something that would make me suspicious of him, and that was why he didn’t want to tell me. Maybe it was just a half-formed idea.

  He leaned against the car, keeping his head and his voice low. “Well, I’d like to know why Jenna Van Andel cares so much about not telling Austin anything.”

  I didn’t tell him about my suspicions regarding Henry’s death. Jenna was probably protecting her husband. I didn’t care about Jenna Van Andel right now. I was too concerned with Stefan.

  “Do you think it’s possible that Stefan will sabotage the investigation?” I asked.

  “Anything is possible.”

  “Should I tell Malcolm what we overheard tonight?”

  That was the real question I was worried about. We had information that proved Stefan’s motives, but if we told Malcolm, we’d have to admit that we’d followed Stefan instead of calling Malcolm about our suspicions.

  He wasn’t going to like that.

  “Do you think there’s a possibility that it’ll come out some other way?” Derek asked, touching my arm like he was consoling me. Were my emotions written on my face?

  “I know Nikki has a vested interest in keeping that quiet. And Jenna and Mike, if they’ve been helping her cover it up. And, of course, Stefan. He’s married. I don’t think his wife would take kindly to knowing there’s a bastard kid out there somewhere.” As I said the words aloud, it struck me what life must have been like for Henry. Always carrying the knowledge he had done something genuinely bad to someone.

  I hoped that Henry had made his peace with God before he died. That wouldn’t have been an easy task. I still hadn’t made amends for the things I’d done.

  “Claire didn’t keep a journal or anything, did she?” I asked, maybe too much hope behind my words.

  Derek shook his head. “She wasn’t the type to want to remember things.”

  Those words were so sad, and they came out of him with such a forlorn sigh, I almost couldn’t respond. Derek was going to be carrying a lot around, himself.

  I said goodbye to Derek and drove home, trying not to dwell too much on whether or not I would tell Malcolm what we’d overheard.. We would have to keep an eye on the investigation, I decided, and if it felt like the knowledge of Austin’s parentage was going to be a necessary detail for Malcolm to know, then I would tell him.

  I couldn’t let Claire’s killer go without justice.

  By the time I got home, it was bedtime, and I took a long, hot shower to get the feel of grime off my skin. But even after I crawled into bed and started reading Scarlet’s journal, I could still feel the lingering touch of Stefan Van Andel’s hand on the small of my back as he’d walked me to my car in front of the bed and breakfast. I set my alarm for 2:30 a.m. and hoped that Leo would be there when I arrived at the bakery the next day.

  I needed to make some macarons to clear my head.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I woke up with Scarlet’s journal spread across my chest, and peered over at the clock. I’d woken up before my alarm, which was unusual, but I was fully awake. I showered again and put pins in my hair so I could wear the hairnet more easily.

  On the way out of my bedroom, I picked up the journal, still open to the place where I had apparently stopped reading. She’d filled about forty lined pages with notes—some in narrative form, some in bullets—about what she remembered.

  It was a little sobering to read about our encounter from her perspective. I, of course, was cast as the villain in her version, which shouldn’t have surprised me at this point. But Henry’s conquests, as she called them, apparently bothered her quite a bit.

  Most of what she’d written was stuff I already knew—the scene at the gas station, Derek trying to contact her for money, and so on—but she’d also included a lengthy description of her meeting with Stefan Van Andel. He’d tried to convince her to lie about Henry’s whereabouts after they’d gone to the bank to reschedule their appointment, urging her to say that Henry had been gone all afternoon. Threatening her. His explanation was thin—Nikki needed closure, and they’d never be able to give it to her if it was deemed a random killing.

  It was a weak ploy. Deputy Van Andel had clearly been trying to cover up for his own mistake. The last thing he’d want was for the case to be re-opened. Especially since he would eventually be a target once people found out he was secretly Austin’s father.

  At the end of Scarlet’s account, she’d penned a similar speech to the one she’d given in the dining room at the bed and breakfast. Henry was innocent, and if it looked like the police force wasn’t going to do their duty, I was supposed to call her and she would hire a private investigator.

  Henry was not going to be blamed for this murder, she said, and I had to agree. But my concern was less for Henry’s reputation and more for the decades-long cover-up that had led to Claire and Henry’s deaths. It didn’t feel random at all, and evidence had been planted leading to not just one but two convenient suspects.

  I closed the journal and rinsed out my Duke Divinity School coffee cup, pausing before I set it on the counter and looking out the window. Everything was dark outside, but it felt like something was out there. It wasn’t the first time I’d had this sensation while sitting alone at my kitchen table, looking out into the dark, but it was the first time I’d had a reason to be worried.

  I set the mug down and flipped off the lights, moving around to make it look like I was getting ready to leave the house. Instead, I headed into the living room to get a better look at my yard. The curtains were drawn in there, unlike at the window over the sink.

  I went to the loveseat and peered out into the dark yard. I could see the outline of Malcolm’s house, and the dark, squat bushes that sat between his yard and mine. When they fleshed out in the spring, I imagined they would do a better job of shading the view from my living room, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Part of me expected to see Malcolm standing at the window of the little bedroom or office or whatever it was that faced my property, staring at me. But his house was completely dark.

  The tops of the bushes moved with a little bit of wind, and they drew my attention toward the street. Out at the little corner where I usually stood to get cell service, I saw a shadow. It moved with a distinct humanness, separate from the whipping of the branches.

  A little square of light illuminated the figure enough to prove it was human, and fear crawled up my spine with spider’s legs. I backed up, instinctively, and the curtain fluttered where my hand had dropped it.

  Someone was standing outside my house, trying to get cell service. Had they been watching me? I searched my immediate surroundings for a weapon of some kind, but I didn’t play baseball, so I didn’t have a bat handy. My best bet was to clock someone with a heavy book. Unless…

  Knives.

  I ran to my kitchen and unsheathed my big butcher knife, holding it with a shaky hand. Suddenly, a voice carried through the window—louder than I would expect, like the wind was carrying it toward me. A male voice. Almost familiar.

  A light flipped on in Malcolm’s house, and through the slit in the drapes in the little kitchen window over my sink, I watched him come into the room and look out into the yard.

  I flipped on the lights next to the sink, and his gaze went directly to me. The frustration on his face was evident, but when he made eye contact with me, a whole new set of emotions took up residence there. He flipped off the lights in the bedroom, and a minute later, I saw him running out his front door. The figure, which had frozen the moment Malcolm’s light flipped on, came up the hedge line, running toward the back of my yard. I followed him through the house, going from kitchen to living room to bedroom, trying to get a better glance at him, but I couldn’t make out any distinguishing features.

&n
bsp; By the time Malcolm got to the same spot, near the back of my house, the figure was gone, back up the path behind my house that led to the hiking trails. Malcolm stopped at the edge of the trail entrance. I flipped on the light in my bedroom and headed for the window.

  The sheriff came to stand under the little window, hands on his hips, questions in his eyes. He was wearing dark pants of some kind and a lighter shirt, an unusually casual look for him. I realized that, other than these last couple of days, I hadn’t ever really seen him in anything but his uniform. Everything else looked a little unnatural on him.

  “What’s going on, Evangeline?” he asked, but I pointed toward the front of my house.

  “Let’s talk.”

  I made my way to the front door, which opened onto a sidewalk beside the big picture window. “Come inside, Malcolm,” I said, gesturing for him to get in out of the cold.

  He looked back at his house and shook his head. “I need to get back. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It wasn’t me this time.” I held up my hands in surrender. “I was in here, reading and having coffee.”

  “At 2:30 in the morning?” He raised a brow. “Why don’t you keep normal human hours?”

  “I have to be at the bakery at three to get food ready for breakfast.” I wrapped my arms around my body to protect myself from the cold and nodded down at his bare feet. “Malcolm, aren’t you cold?”

  He waved off my question like I was a moron and pointed back to the trail entrance. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  I opened my mouth to do just that and then clapped it shut just as quickly when I remembered his admonition about interfering with the investigation. “Nope. Because I have no idea who it was.”

  “Someone just happened to be out there using that spot you always use, and you expect me to believe you don’t know what was going on?”

  “You saw me. I was in here. I don’t have internal radar for everyone who steps onto my property like you do.”

  He scoffed, shaking his head. “You’re trying to change the subject, I see.”