Cremas, Christmas Cookies, and Crooks

by Harper Lin

  That took longer because I hadn’t known about her to look at her social media accounts before, but it provided a wealth of interesting, though not obviously useful, information. For starters, Kristin worked as—of all things—a labor and delivery nurse. There were all kinds of public pictures of tired-looking people smiling with their new babies and Kristin, praising how wonderful of a nurse she was, how kind and patient, and what good care she took of them. I looked at the pictures that had Kristin smiling beside the parents and wondered who on earth this woman was.

  Her friends list, full as it was with new parents, was prohibitively long to scroll through, but on the spur of the moment, and taking inspiration from Becky and her equally endless friend list, I clicked the button to send a friend request to Kristin. She’d probably say no, but on the off chance that she didn’t, maybe I’d be able to find some more useful information.

  I couldn’t find any articles about Kristin being involved in organized crime, gambling rings, or anything else useful, seedy, or unseemly, so I switched over to searching for Gwen Blarney. I didn’t really expect to find anything about her being involved in anything dangerous, and I wasn’t surprised. I switched over to her social media profiles. We had a couple of friends in common, so I was able to see more on her page than I’d been able to on Kristin’s, but there was still nothing that jumped out and announced that she had killed Veronica.

  I clicked over to her friends list. It was less intimidatingly long, and there was a good chance that I knew some of the people since we both lived in Cape Bay, so I scrolled through the list. Aside from the people we already had in common, as I scrolled, I found a few people I’d known growing up who I hadn’t quite reconnected with. In the spirit of being online friends with more people, I clicked the little plus sign next to their names too. I wasn’t coming close to competing with Becky’s friend count, but if all these people accepted me, I’d be working my way up to a more respectable number of friends.

  Toward the end of the alphabetical-by-last-name list, I found a name that didn’t quite surprise me but did interest me. Marcus Varros.

  I clicked through to his page. He wisely had it pretty locked down—maybe there was a course for principals in how to keep your students out of your private business, although if there was, there probably should have been one for teachers too, especially in light of what I’d been able to see on Veronica’s page. Of course, from what I knew about Veronica, she probably would have done whatever she wanted even if she had been to a course on online privacy.

  Varros’s friend list was visible, though, so I clicked over to it and started scrolling. Gwen Blarney was toward the top in light of her last name being at the beginning of the alphabet, and I knew Veronica would be toward the end since her last name was Underwood. I was briefly surprised that he wasn’t friends with Ann Crowsdale, but then again, that seemed as if it could be easily explained by her being arrested for murdering one of his other teachers. It probably wouldn’t have looked good for him to still be friends with her, even if it was just online.

  As I scrolled, I found a few more people whose plus signs I clicked. I wondered if I should start going through people’s pages more often to see whom I knew that I’d overlooked.

  By the time I got toward the middle of the longer-than-I-expected list, my eyes started to glaze over. I scrolled faster and paid less attention to the names. And then I thought I saw something that made me stop and scroll back up. My mouth fell open just a little as I saw the name. It wasn’t a common name, but maybe it was common enough that there were two of them. I clicked on it and found out that, no, it was the same Kristin Mansmith.

  I stared for a few seconds, wondering how they knew each other. Through Veronica? Something about that didn’t seem right. Varros hadn’t given any indication that he knew Kristin when he told me about her visit. And Kristin—I thought back to our conversation. There was something about it. And then I knew. When I told her about Varros’s theory about her slashing the tires, she’d known his name without me telling her. And she sounded as if she was familiar with him.

  Curious about something, I clicked back to his page and flipped over to the About section where it listed things like where he’d lived, where he’d gone to school, and who he was related to. Sure enough, it said he was from Providence. So maybe that was how he knew Kristin. I’d assumed he knew Veronica through the school, but maybe I was wrong about that. Mrs. Bayless and Mrs. Crawford had said that Veronica was hired very suddenly. Maybe Varros knew her from back in Providence and that was why he hired her. But it didn’t explain why she was hired so suddenly.

  I looked back at Varros’s page. He conveniently had his previous places of employment listed along with the dates he’d worked there. Until he’d been hired as the principal at Cape Bay High, he’d worked in the Providence public schools.

  Before I could think any more about that, my cell phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket and saw that the call was from a number I didn’t recognize. I nearly rejected the call, thinking it was probably a telemarketer or a scam artist trying to tell me I either owed the IRS a million dollars or had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a million dollars by helping a Nigerian prince sneak his money out of the country. For some reason, though, I hit the little green icon instead.

  “Hello?” I asked cautiously.

  “Hey, Fran!”

  “Hi.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but he apparently recognized mine.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, and you?”

  “Great! Hey, it was good to see you today!”

  The voice was male, so I tried to think of the men I’d seen that day. Varros? No, it wasn’t him. Ed from the Surfside? No, not him either. Ryan? Definitely not. “Brett?”

  He laughed. “You didn’t know it was me, did you?”

  “No,” I said slowly. I was confused, partly because he sounded so cheery and partly because, well, why on earth would Brett be calling me? How did he even get my number?

  “I got your number from the school sign-in sheet when Mrs. B wasn’t looking.”

  Had I asked that out loud? No, I was pretty sure I hadn’t. And I didn’t think Brett was a mind reader, but it was probably obvious that I was going to ask that next, so it hadn’t been hard for him to guess.

  “Anyway, I wanted to see if you could meet up tonight. I have my violin lesson at seven, so we could meet after it’s over. Like at nine?”

  I was so confused. Was Brett asking me out? It sounded like the inept way a teenage boy would ask someone out.

  “I’m not asking you out or anything,” he said, convincing me that he could actually hear my thoughts. “I just got a hold of some information I thought you might like to take a look at.”

  My curiosity was piqued. “Some information? What kind of information?”

  “About Veronica’s murder. What else would it be? I don’t know what other kind of freaky stuff you’re into.”

  Well, despite his new cheeriness, Brett was still Brett.

  “So you want to meet up or not?”

  I hesitated. Common sense told me I should say no, I would not meet up with this teenage boy whom I’d already been accused of harassing and warned to stay away from, but listening to common sense wouldn’t have gotten me very far in this case or any other. “Sure. Where do you want to meet?”

  “I dunno. How about your place?”

  “My house?”

  “Yeah. You don’t have a house or something?”

  “I do. I’m just not sure it’s the best idea.” To meet with any teenage boy in my house at nine o’clock at night, let alone this one.

  “Then I could meet you here.”

  “Here? What do you mean, ‘here’?”

  “Hold on just a second.” His voice got quieter, as if he was holding his phone away from his head, but I could still hear what he was saying. And he was distinctly ordering a latte and sugar cookies. “Sorry about that,” he said at normal volume again.


  I nearly got up and walked out into the café, but this time I listened to the little voice screaming at me that Mike would have my head if he found out I was talking to Brett. And in the café, there were plenty of people who could potentially tell him. “Are you in the café?”

  “Yeah, it’s how I remembered to call you. So you wanna just meet here?”

  If the café during the day was a bad idea, it would be just as bad at night when anyone would be able to look in through the wall of windows and see us inside. Unless we were in the back room… but that had the same deeply inappropriate vibe as meeting him at my house. “That’s probably not a good idea either. Someone could see us and—”

  He laughed. “Oh yeah, I heard my mom called and screamed at the police chief about that. What can I say? I’m her precious little angel.” I heard him take a bite of something, and the next thing he said sounded as though his mouth was full—probably of one of my sugar cookies. “How about the park? It’s dark. Probably no one there to see us, and if they do, whatever, people walk in parks and see other people all the time.”

  I thought about it. The park was still sketchy, but I was starting to accept the fact that there was no non-sketchy place to meet him. At least the park was public. And I could always bring Latte. And Matt. But Brett might not talk if Matt was around. So maybe Matt could hide… I shut my brain off. I was overthinking it and making a bad idea worse. “Sure, let’s meet at the park.”

  “Awesome. Park, nine. Down by the pond, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said and then realized he’d already disconnected the call. For a second, I just sat there and stared at my phone, wondering just what I was getting myself into.

  Chapter 21

  “WHAT ARE you getting yourself into, Franny?” Matt asked later that afternoon when I told him about my meeting with Brett. “You’re planning to meet with a teenage boy—who is at best unpredictable and at worst dangerous—in the park after dark, supposedly to get information about a murder investigation that the police have already solved. What about that sounds like a good idea?”

  “Getting information about a murder investigation,” I said.

  “None of it, Franny. The right answer is none of it.” He shook his head and tapped his coffee cup on the table in the back room of the café. “You know I’m going with you, right?”

  “I don’t think Brett will talk if you’re with me.”

  “You don’t think Brett will…” he muttered and shook his head again. “You realize how ridiculous that sounds, don’t you?”

  “Brett trusts me.”

  “He trusts you? How do you know that? And why would he? You’ve met him once!”

  “Three times, if you count the times in the principal’s office.”

  “Franny…” He shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. From his tone, I couldn’t tell if he was really mad at me for planning to meet up with Brett or just mystified as to why I thought it was a good idea. “I’m going with you,” he said again.

  “Only if you don’t let Brett see you.” Even to my ears, it sounded genuinely crazy.

  “Only if I don’t—Franny, if I’m hidden away somewhere and he tries to hurt you, I’m not going to be able to help you. If he has a gun, he could shoot you before I even see it.”

  “I have no reason to think he’s going to try to shoot me. He sounded perfectly pleasant when I talked to him earlier.”

  Matt looked me dead in the eye. “And has he ever sounded perfectly pleasant when you’ve talked to him before?”

  “Well, no.”

  “So what makes you think this is a good idea? What makes you think he doesn’t have some ulterior motive to want to get you alone? You really believe that he, of all people, has some inside information that you haven’t been able to get anywhere else?”

  “Actually, that I believe. You haven’t met Brett. If anyone was going to have inside information, it would be him.”

  Matt looked at me skeptically.

  “The kid’s a literal genius. Off the charts IQ.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Trust me, if you met him, you’d understand.”

  “Well, that’s good, because I’ll be meeting him tonight.”

  “Matty, please.” I actually folded my hands in front of my chest but fell short of falling to my knees to beg him. “You can come with me, but please don’t let Brett see you. Please.”

  “You could get hurt, Franny.”

  “I know.”

  “This could be a setup to get you alone.”

  “I know.”

  “He could have murdered that teacher, and you’re the closest to catching him, so he’s going to get you alone and kill you too.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Well, no, but—Matty, I’m running out of leads. If Brett has information that could expose the real murderer, it’s my civic duty to go get it.”

  “I think it would be your civic duty to tell the police about it and get him to give it to them.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Matt raised his eyebrows.

  “Just indirectly. I’m going to get him to give it to me, and then, if it’s any good, I’ll give it to them.”

  “You’re hopeless, Franny.”

  “I know. But you love me.”

  “I do.” He opened his arms, and I stepped into them to let him hold me.

  “Oops! Don’t mind me!” Sammy said, coming into the room.

  Matt dropped his arms, and I turned to her. “Headed out?” I asked.

  “Yup. We’re running a little low on the snowflake sugar cookies if you can make some more of them tonight.”

  I grimaced—inwardly, I hoped. I’d have to start them immediately if I was going to have them cooked and ready to be iced before I went to meet Brett, and even then it would be cutting it close. Really close.

  “If you can just have the sheets ready, I can just pop them in the oven in the morning. People love the smell of freshly baked cookies.”

  “Good idea. I’ll have the sheets ready and waiting in the refrigerator.”

  “Perfect!” She slipped her coat on, flipped her long blond ponytail out from inside it, and put her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow then!”

  “Oh, hey!”

  She stopped and turned around.

  “Did that Cheryl girl show up today? The creepy one?”

  “Ryan’s ex-girlfriend? You can say it, Fran. We’ve both dated other people before.”

  “Okay, yes, Ryan’s ex-girlfriend. Did she show up today?”

  “Nope. I think you scared her off.”

  “Great! Well, have a good night.”

  “You too.”

  “What’s this about you scaring people off?” Matt asked when Sammy was gone.

  I hadn’t told him about Cheryl? The murder investigation had been taking up more of my brain than I realized. “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Involving Ryan’s creepy ex-girlfriend?”

  “Yup,” I said as I started piling my baking supplies in my arms for the sugar cookies.

  “And why is she coming here?”

  “That’s the long story. I’ll tell you about it later. Could you grab the butter for me? And my mixing bowls?”

  Matt sighed but got up to help me with my supplies. Then he helped me mix the cookie dough. It was cute and domestic, and he only ended up with a light dusting of flour covering virtually his entire body.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” I said as I stood back and appraised his flour-covered body.

  “How are you so clean?” he asked.

  “Practice.” I tapped the particularly heavy concentration of flour on his nose in lieu of ruffling his newly white hair—I didn’t want to get hair in the cookies. “You should go home and get a shower.”

  “Are you coming with me?” he grinned.

  “Ooh, maybe.” I moved closer to him, but not too close, b
ecause I didn’t want to get flour all over myself. My eye caught the clock on the wall, and I realized that it was almost time to go. “Actually, no.”

  “No?” He looked disappointed.

  I pointed at the big wrought iron clock. “We need to clean up so I can be on time to meet Brett.”

  “Haven’t given that up yet, huh?”

  “And I’m not going to. He has important information. I can feel it.”

  “If you say so,” Matt said and started helping me get the trays of uncooked snowflake-shaped sugar cookies into the refrigerator.

  We finished getting everything cleaned up. I would have just enough time to get home, get Latte, and get to the park. With flour-covered Matt in tow, of course.

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Latte and I were nearing the pond in the park. It wasn’t that late, but at that time of year, darkness came early. I knew the path wasn’t well lit, so I’d brought a flashlight along. I figured it would also prove useful if Brett had some documents to show me. The moon was full and bright enough that I hadn’t turned it on, though. Despite that, and even with Matt trailing behind me, it still felt sort of spooky walking through the park in the dark.

  As I reached the pond, I saw a figure standing on the opposite side. In the dark, I couldn’t see its features, but I knew it could only be one person. Brett. Still, on the off chance it wasn’t, I didn’t call out to him. I just turned off the main path and started along the part that looped around the pond. Matt and I had agreed that he’d hide behind a tree near the intersection of the two paths and watch my meeting from there. Well, I agreed that he’d hide behind a tree. All he agreed to was to stay at the intersection, and even that I wasn’t terribly confident about him actually doing. But as long as he stayed out of sight and didn’t ruin my rendezvous, I didn’t care. I did wonder if it was a bad idea to call meeting up with a teenager a rendezvous, though.

  I watched the figure as I circled the pond, hoping that he’d turn and the light would hit his face so that I could be sure it was Brett. It was eerie approaching him without being sure. The figure stayed mostly in one place but walked in little circles. He—I was almost certain it was a he—seemed to be following my approach, which was either a really good sign or a really bad sign.