Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  “Well, I told you, I don’t know who she is. Question answered.”

  “Do you know how she got her hands on a box from this bakery if you haven’t seen her before?”

  “No.”

  “And how often do you make the cookies in this box?”

  “I made a batch this morning. I won’t make them again until this weekend. But I’ve never made them before, here in Saint Agnes.”

  He scratched something in his notebook. “Does anyone else ever wait on your customers?”

  I opened my mouth to deny him again, but this time I let it hang open. I’d left Leo in charge just this afternoon. I snapped my lips shut.

  “Who would wait on them besides you?” He kept pressing, like he’d seen the hesitation in my face.

  “What’s going on back here?” Leo stalked into the kitchen, eyes blazing, shoulders back, like he planned on a fight.

  “It’s okay, Leo.” I tried to wave him off. “The sheriff is asking me questions about a customer.”

  “Which customer?” He came around the steel-topped table and stood between me and the sheriff.

  Malcolm pulled out his phone again and went through the same series of pictures. Leo didn’t flinch until I put my hand on his arm and pulled him back. He gave me a frustrated I’m handling it glare, the cute kid.

  “I don’t recognize her,” he said.

  “Do you know how she could have gotten that box?” The sheriff stuffed the device back into his pocket with an angry puff of air. “I find it strange that neither of you seem to know who she is, when she’s clearly been in here.”

  “You don’t know that she’s been in here.” Leo stepped forward, tensing against my hand. “Anyone could have given her that box.”

  “How many of these boxes do you give out a day?” Malcolm asked, retreating just enough that some of the tension in the room seemed to ease.

  “Not many, these days,” I said. “We get a steady stream of people on and off, but most of them eat in-house. On a typical weekday, I’d say we give out maybe ten of them.”

  “Are there any other staff besides the two of you?”

  “I hire a cleaning crew out of Madison Falls once a month, and when I’m in a pinch, Emma Brent from the agate store next door comes over to help me out.”

  Malcolm’s brow went up. “Does she have a key to the place?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have one, too.” Leo finally un-tensed, allowing me to pull him back like a leashed pit bull.

  “Does anyone else have a key?” said the sheriff.

  “I have some spares in a locked box in the office. But no one else has access to them.” I looked up at the clock. It read 5:04. I pushed on Leo’s back. “Can you go shoo those girls out of here? Let’s lock the doors.”

  “You want me to get rid of Austin, too?” Leo asked, going around the table to avoid the sheriff.

  “No, his mom will probably be by soon to pick him up. I just saw her at the bank and she’s off at five.”

  He followed my directions, glaring at the sheriff the whole way. But that left me alone again with Malcolm Dean, hulking and sulking, taking up all the air.

  “I’d like to go through your transaction records for the day, Evangeline.” The sheriff slid his wide-brimmed hat back onto his head. “It seemed like there were some other cookies in that box at one time. I couldn’t tell exactly what they were, but there were crumbs in the paper that weren’t from the pink cookie you saw in the first picture.”

  My throat thickened and I squeezed out, “What color crumbs?”

  The sheriff had his little notebook out and was flipping through the pages. “It looked like there were some bright green, some white, and then another, darker color, maybe brown. I couldn’t be sure, because we didn’t want to move the evidence until it had been fully documented. I’ll have more information in a day or two.”

  Sorting through all of today’s customers, I was positive I’d only sold one box of multi-colored macarons. Unless Leo had sold a box right after my departure—and the buyer had immediately given the box to the murdered girl, and she had immediately been killed—it was unlikely this was a different box of cookies.

  I hadn’t entered the price of the macarons into the till, because Henry hadn’t wanted change for his hundred dollar bill. Even if Malcolm were to check the register, he wouldn’t see the sale of macarons at eleven-thirty. The only way he would know was if I told him.

  Something made me not want to tell him about the cookie purchase. Spite, maybe. But I didn’t know Henry, and it wasn’t my job to protect him, let alone go to jail for him. Besides, keeping evidence from the police was a crime.

  Vangie Vale was a lot of things, but not a criminal.

  “I did sell one box like that today. I think the transaction happened around eleven-thirty.”

  “Do you have a credit card receipt for that sale?”

  “No. He paid in cash.”

  Malcolm raised his dark eyes to mine, holding them hard. “Do you know who the customer was?”

  “Henry Savage.” Once the words were out of my mouth, I felt a rush of relief, and the rest came tumbling after. “He bought a box of four different macarons. Apparently, he’s some movie star who used to go to high school around here.”

  “And he was in here alone?” Malcolm flipped to a new page and continued scratching notes.

  “No. His agent was with him.” My mind went right to Miss Georgia and her pinched-up face. “Scarlet. Her first name is Scarlet. I don’t think I ever heard her last name.”

  “And they were on their way…?”

  A hot ball of shame bounced in my chest, thudding along with my heartbeat. They were on their way to the bank, until I derailed them. But I was too ashamed to admit what I’d done. “They had an appointment at Rocky Mountain Bank at noon.”

  That was the truth, after all. They had a noon appointment.

  “Do you know what for?”

  “No.”

  “And did you see them again after that?”

  “Henry came back, just after the boys showed up. They have their last period free, so this was before school got out.”

  Malcolm’s lips pulled together in surprise. He glanced down at his notes. “He came back? Was he after more cookies?”

  “No.”

  “Why was he here, then?”

  “They ended up missing their appointment.” I reached my hands backward and grabbed the cold, steel countertop. “He came back to let me know they’d taken a room at the Mockingbird B&B.”

  And to flirt with me…is that what you want to know, Malcolm? Hmm?

  I had to clap my mouth shut to keep from uttering those words. When he kept writing, I tried to ignore the pounding of my heart. Was it possible Henry really had been involved in this murder? Or Scarlet? Otherwise, how had the box ended up on a dead woman’s body?

  “Down by the high school?” Malcolm finished his scrawling and folded the cover over, sticking it in the opposite pocket from his phone.

  “That’s the one.” I let my voice lift slightly at the end, in a we’re finished here way, but I had a feeling I would be seeing more of Malcolm Dean before the night was through, and I didn’t like that one bit.

  Chapter 4

  By the time Leo cleared out the remaining customers, Austin’s mother had swooped in to pick him up. They were all heading to the girls’ basketball game at the high school. I said my goodbyes to all three of them, loaded the boxes of macarons into the Tank, and locked up the bakery. I hadn’t quite gotten in to the local sports teams yet. I knew more about Navy football than anyone should—because Austin would be a plebe in the fall—but I still couldn’t name the Saint Agnes school mascot.

  In an effort to earn some goodwill in the community, I had taken to driving boxes of baked goods to local businesses, either owned or operated by members of my parish who had agreed to be taste testers. So when I pulled up to Murphy’s Feed Store, the owner was expecting me. The only all-purpose
warehouse-like business in town, Murphy’s was a big box of a building with the customary Saint Agnes alpine touches—high and narrow roofing, white textured siding, dark accents…it was unique, to say the least.

  I smiled up at Danny Murphy, stocky and barrel-chested, who had the genuine smile of a man without artifice. I rolled my window down and Danny’s round laugh immediately filtered into the car.

  “Well, Pastor Vangie. I can’t deny I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” He patted the little, protruding belly encased in his button-up plaid shirt. “Although Carolyn says I’ve got to stop taste testing for you pretty soon, or it’ll put me in an early grave.”

  Normally, I would’ve laughed at Danny’s joke, but my sense of humor was on holiday when it came to all things death or murder. I laid my hand on top of one of the boxes. “Would you rather I pass you up this time?”

  “What kind of cookies y’got there, today?” called out a thin, wheezy voice from behind Danny. An old farmer in a tan shirt clapped the feed store owner on the shoulder. “We sure do appreciate you bringing them by.”

  “Happy to oblige,” I said, passing a box through the window. “Macarons today.”

  “Mack-a-what?” the farmer said with a laugh, flipping the lid on the cookies. “Never heard of it.”

  “They’re French.” Danny’s eyes twinkled, like he was proud of the world for having invented such a rare treat. Danny was a hoot.

  Another plaid-shirted, suspendered farmer showed up, shoving his hands into the white box and thanking me, so I decided to leave them a second box and skip the sheriff’s department. Even though I had no doubt that Irma would miss the delivery, I wasn’t in the mood to face Malcolm Dean again. That man just did not like me.

  Plus, y’know, it might be a little weird after the whole cookies-at-a-crime-scene thing.

  The men were still commenting on the various flavors when I left, but Danny promised to collect all the feedback. His convivial attitude had almost cheered me up. Almost.

  The bank was closed by the time I drove by, and John’s Bar wasn’t quite open yet, so I dropped a box at Morty’s gas station and headed straight for the church.

  There were a few churches in Saint Agnes, hidden in the various shady recesses of town, and then one church on the main street. That one was mine. The Saint Agnes Community Church was a conglomeration of different denominations. At its height, during the copper rush, Saint Agnes had been almost ten times its current size, and it had boasted every flavor of denomination under the sun. But the steadily declining population had left a lot of places feeling empty, and the town had been left with no choice but to adapt. Like the co-op high school, several of the smaller churches had combined together into the community church.

  I liked the idea of a united church, anyway.

  The building itself was about a century old, covered in white clapboard, facing the main thoroughfare with one of those old changeable letter signs nailed to the front. A green sedan was parked along the street, just in front of the side door, and I pulled the Tank in behind it.

  I brought a white box to the near door of the parked car and slipped it into the backseat. Peter never locked his car. He’d take the cookies home to his wife, Loretta, who would distribute them at the senior center and collect feedback.

  By the time April rolled around, I wanted to have my menu settled. From what I’d been told, the high tourist traffic started in April, and given our proximity to the national park, I wanted to have tasty, unique treats for all the international tourists who would come through Saint Agnes from April to October.

  The side door was open, and I pushed through, carrying my big, heavy messenger bag filled with stacks of old sermons. The last two pastors had been paper men, and in order for me to get through all their old files, I either had to sit in my dark office for hours on end, or take things home in chunks. I preferred the chunks.

  “Is that you, Vangie?” Peter’s voice rang through the long hallway, although I couldn’t see him. “Can you give me a hand here?”

  I quickened my pace, past the tiny church office and the darkened library toward my office. Peter struggled under the weight of a big, folded-closed cardboard box. I lifted one side and got it off the cart, onto the little round table that hugged one side of the office.

  “I figured you would be by, so I wanted to drop off the rest of Mark’s sermons.” Peter clapped his weathered hands together and stared up at me, his round glasses magnifying brown eyes that would have looked more in place on a fly than a human. He was a short, round man with fringes of white hair surrounding his yarmulke of a bald spot. His job as the parish council leader filled all his time—the adage of never-been-so-busy-since-I-retired was true for both the Mayhews. I saw Peter more than anyone else in town, since there always seemed to be church business to attend to.

  I unpacked the old files from my bag and placed them in a pile beside the box. “I’m working on Norman, now. I’ll start on Mark probably sometime next month at this rate.”

  The old man stepped back, his features drawn. “I don’t know why you insist on reading Norman first. Mark was your predecessor.”

  “I know.” I placed the last of the files in a pile and knelt in front of the cabinet to re-load my messenger bag. “But given that everyone on the council has been here for something like twenty years, I wanted to start with Norman first. Get a sense for your theological background. I had thirty years of sermons to read.”

  My shoulders tensed. I couldn’t cop to why I didn’t want to read Mark’s sermons, and I didn’t want Peter to start fielding guesses. He was the only one who knew the real reason why I’d come to Saint Agnes, and we still hadn’t addressed it out loud—not in the four months since I’d been given the post. But my bishop back home had promised the head of the council would be the only one to know, and for public consumption, I was working off my student loans—which had the benefit of being true. It just wasn’t the whole story.

  The denominational offices in Raleigh had been the bane of my existence for so long, I’d forgotten we weren’t adversaries in this whole mess. They’d been on my side, really. My bishop knew a bishop in Montana who had a super part-time vacancy they hadn’t been able to fill for almost two years, and that had solidified my trek to the Rocky Mountains. I could stay ordained, stay in the good graces of the denomination, and as long as I didn’t do anything wild and crazy for three years, then I could come back home.

  It had been a long four months so far. I wasn’t sure I’d make it through the whole three years. I wouldn’t have made it at all if my father hadn’t decided to invest in a business with me. The church only had fifteen hours a week for me, and I would have gone crazy without the bakery.

  Or. Crazier.

  “What are you preaching on this week?” Peter asked, his words cautious.

  “Still in the Beatitudes.” I transferred the last of the files and stood, offering my boss a little smile. “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

  “Look, Vangie,” he said, a dark look passing over his features. “Loretta took a message from Malcolm Dean…” He let the words trail off, leaving an ominous space for me to fill in.

  Something dropped inside, like I’d jumped out of an airplane. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the gossip about the Matchbakery box would get passed around our little town like a hot potato. But it did. Malcolm had only just left my place of business.

  “What’s the problem now?” I asked, leaning back against the edge of the wooden desk.

  “He says you’ve been coming onto his property.”

  Oh. That. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not.

  Peter looked over his glasses at me, pulling off his best impression of a disapproving grandfather. He wore it well. “As the chair of the parish council, it’s my duty to inform you that if you use his egress again, he’s going to officially file a complaint against the church.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “I’ve been taking calls on that cor
ner for almost four months with not-word-one from Sheriff Dean. I don’t know why, all of the sudden, he’s mad. There’s no cell service anywhere on my property. He knows that.”

  “Yes, well, he insists it’s not his problem what does and doesn’t happen on your property. He just wants to make sure you’re not on his.”

  Frustration bubbled up inside my chest, and I pressed my toes hard into the soles of my shoes to avoid showing emotion in front of my boss. The only corner of my property where I could almost get a bar of service was covered in lilac trees. However, if I crossed the hedge and hugged the corner of Malcolm Dean’s property, I could get just enough bars to make calls. I’d been doing it for months.

  “Does he want me not to use my phone?”

  “Knowing Sheriff Dean, I don’t think he cares whether you can use your phone or not. Just get a landline,” Peter said, glancing back at the box on the table. “I expect you to abide by the rule of law, Vangie. I’d hate to initiate a conversation with Raleigh.”

  I nearly shivered from the chill of those words. If he did that, it would end up in the council minutes, and people would want to talk about why I left, and I didn’t want to talk about that. Not with Peter Mayhew. Not with the archbishop. Not with anyone.

  “I’ll stay off his property. I promise. I’ll call about a landline tomorrow.”

  Peter gave me a pointed look and pushed the little dolly out into the hallway. I let out a long breath, staring at the box of old sermons he’d brought by. I didn’t ever want to read them. Mark Findlay was a hypocrite, and the last thing I wanted to do was read four years of his windy preaching. Running off with the church secretary sort of invalidated everything you’d tried to condemn up to that point. Of course, Peter didn’t want to talk about that either.

  I heard the door open, and I threw on my messenger bag, sticking my head out into the hallway to find Peter’s wife, Loretta, standing in the hall. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, and she catapulted forward and threw her arms around me.