Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  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 another 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.”

  “I’m not a serial killer,” he said, spreading his arms out, like that would convince me. Didn’t he know how much Criminal Minds I’d seen in my lifetime?

  “Which is exactly what you would say if you were a serial killer,” I said, slipping my phone back into my coat pocket. “Either way, if you do anything to me, my sister will know I was with you.”

  “Did you take a JIC picture of Henry?” He lifted a brow, like he knew everything about me.

  The tension in my chest about misjudging Henry hadn’t really left me, even after driving all the way here and busying myself with work and Facebook stalking for a couple of hours. Derek was right. I had trusted Henry. I shouldn’t have, but I had.

  “Just get in,” I said, unlocking the Tank with my key fob.

  If there was one good thing about that beast of a car—apart from the fact that I would be all set in case of zombie apocalypse—it was the interior setup. Someone had converted it from what had no doubt been military equipment into a pretty amazing home-away-from-home setup. The console between the two front seats was as wide as an entire seat. It had a flat, corrugated surface that would hold almost anything still, including my laptop, on occasion, when I had to travel and sleep in the vehicle. The massive
cup holders easily accommodated a Nalgene bottle. There were three of them spread across the front of the car, and they were all in easy reach. There was even the equivalent of a dinner tray just behind my seat that would have nicely held a picnic basket.

  The whole console kept me almost three feet from Derek, giving us the privacy he wanted with at least a measure of the safety I wanted. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that everything inside me felt as tight as an over-tuned guitar string.

  “Okay,” I said, turning in my seat to face him. “Spill the beans.”

  He pursed his lips and I felt a buzz in my coat pocket while he formulated his words. That would be Priscilla texting me back an OK that she’d gotten the JIC, and probably a little scolding that I’d woken her. But it could wait.

  “I need you to promise me, this stuff won’t go any further than this vehicle,” he said, placing his big hands on the dashboard like he was tempted to use it as a launching pad to jump through the windshield. “We’ve worked hard to keep this stuff out of the papers, and I want to make sure it’s not going to get leaked.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said.

  With a heavy breath, he settled back into the seat. “Henry was supposed to set up a fund for Claire, but he and the agent missed their bank appointment. The fund…it was something he and Claire had talked about once before, on one of her trips to see her kid.”

  “Claire had a kid?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve never met him.” He looked down at his hands. “She would never let me.”

  “How long had this been going on?”

  “A couple of years.” He sniffed. “She cleaned up, Claire did. For a long time, she was a junkie. We would split up for a year or two at a time because of it. Me hoping she’d get sober. A few years back, she got clean and took off for California. When she came back, she told me about her son, and how she was trying to get in touch with the kid’s dad. I didn’t learn until yesterday that it was Henry Savage.” Derek said the words without a trace of anger.

  There was no way he knew about the assault, which made me wonder how recent it had been. Had it happened before the Hobsons’ move to Rolo? If so, it meant Henry had been back here more recently than he’d indicated.

  Oh, Lord.

  Had he assaulted her yesterday?

  Every single inch of my skin tried to crawl off my body. Henry had touched me since then, more than once. Bile rose up in the back of my throat and I had to struggle to hold it down.

  “Vangie.” Derek reached across the console, taking my arm and putting his other hand on my back. “Are you all right?”

  I tried to nod, but I was afraid to lose my latte. “I’m fine,” I choked out. “I just…I think I had some bad shrimp.” I couldn’t tell him about the assault, not when I knew so little about it. Not when we were sitting in an enclosed space together.

  He kept patting my back until I managed to calm the nausea.

  “So,” I started, hoping I could finish my sentence intact, “when you saw Scarlet yesterday, was it the first time you’d seen her?”

  “Sort of. Claire had given me her phone number, and I arranged to meet her to talk about all of this, but she was gone by the time I got up there.” Derek’s hand remained on my back, stroking me like I was a sick child. “The number…it was in a letter Claire left me yesterday morning. It said her son lived in Saint Agnes, not California. Henry was the father, and she was going to get money from him. She said it was super important not to let anyone else know. No one. That was in the letter several times. She said Henry was going to open a bank account for the kid and put our names on it so we could take care of him. One of the bank higher-ups who was about ready to retire and move to wherever, Snowbird City, was going to set it up without anyone at the bank knowing about it. The guy wouldn’t be around to tell anyone anything.”

  I swallowed, hard. The story about his mother’s estate had been a lie, and Claire hadn’t been stalking him at all—she’d been trying to get him to take responsibility for their child. Was there any end to the lies that Henry had told me? Was anything he’d said true?

  “The only stipulation Henry had, I guess, was that we couldn’t ever tell anyone. No newspapers or reporters, no town gossips. No one.” He gestured around the interior of my vehicle. “That’s why I needed secrecy. I couldn’t chance someone else hearing this stuff. But you, you’re a minister. You’re used to keeping secrets.”

  With a half-hearted smile, I nodded. He was right—people felt compelled to tell me their secrets, and I usually felt compelled to keep them.

  Not this time, though.

  The ride back to Saint Agnes, once I’d divested myself of Derek, was numbing. I felt like I was driving back into the heart of some horrible darkness. As much as Derek wanted secrecy, I knew I had to talk to Malcolm Dean again. His house was dark when I got back, and I knew better than to rouse him from sleep.

  I didn’t get my sister’s text message until I was on my way to the bakery the next morning, and in cell range.

  Evangeline Susanna Vale, what are you doing on a date with a BIKER?

  No matter what happened in my life, Cilla had a way of popping in and making me smile. I texted her back, He’s not a date. Just having a conversation and wanted a JIC.

  I got the standard in a meeting, call later text, but I was itching to talk to her. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her busy days at the university, and she might be in meetings and class until the afternoon. I needed someone to debrief with me, still. If I couldn’t process all this, I was going to go nuts.

  I wanted her to tell me not to call the sheriff. Even though I knew I needed to. I hated breaking a confidence. But there was just no other option. He and I had the same goal: justice.

  Didn’t we?

  After the breakfast rush and the coffee ladies’ departure and a call to the telephone company to put in a landline at my house—just in case he asked me—I called the sheriff’s department. Irma picked up on the first ring. When I asked to speak to Malcolm, her unease was almost palpable, but she put me through. Lord’s barnacles, had he even told Irma about the trespassing stuff?

  This town was too small.

  “Hello, Evangeline.” Malcolm’s greeting was less gruff than I had expected. He sounded tired. We were all tired.

  “I wonder if I can come in this morning, I—”

  “You won’t be able to see Henry Savage.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Just let me finish.” He sighed and there was a scruffy sound, like he was passing his hand over his face. “We found Henry hanging in his cell this morning. I guess I should have taken his belt, but I never…”

  He kept talking, but I dropped the phone.

  Henry was dead. Lord have mercy. Henry was dead.

  Chapter 18

  Emma was standing in her gift shop, among the glass display cases of rocks and jewelry. I’d staggered over to her store after closing the bakery. Instead of putting up the customary back-in-30-minutes sign, I had scrawled Temporarily Closed on a piece of printer paper and taped it to the inside of the door.

  The whole world felt foggy, like I was trying to walk out of a storm that just wouldn’t pass. Emma must have known something was wrong just from looking at me, because she hurtled toward me, arms out.

  “Oh, Vangie, what’s wrong?” she asked, enfolding me into a hug.

  I couldn’t speak. There were tears in my eyes, but they wouldn’t fall. I kept blinking at them, trying to expel them. Everything inside felt numb. I barely remembered the rest of my conversation with Malcolm.

  “Henry is dead,” I whispered, clutching at her. “They found him hanging by his belt in his cell this morning.”

  Emma made all sorts of exclamations, some including God’s name, but I could understand the sentiment.

  “I saw him last night. He was so…” I stopped myself from saying the word that came to mind. It would seem disrespectful to say so now, but he had looked pathetic. Like he was ready
to throw in the towel.

  Still… Suicide?

  “You saw him before he killed himself?”

  “Yeah. I stopped at the station to see Malcolm, and Irma let me head back to the group cell to see Henry.” I sniffed, stepping back, out of the hug.

  Emma’s face was lined with concern and she looked around, drawing me toward a couple of chairs behind the sales counter. “Did he give you any indication?” she asked once we were both seated.

  I tried to remember, but the night was such a blur in my head. Things had happened so quickly and changed so much, and then…I had just gone to sleep like there would be another day tomorrow. Because there always was.

  But not for Henry.

  “I don’t know. I mean, he was definitely down. He was facing murder charges, but…” Something clicked into place in my brain. “Wait. Malcolm hadn’t even charged him yet.”

  “He hadn’t?” Emma twisted in the chair and grabbed me a tissue. I wiped at my cheeks. The tears had fallen, after all.

  “No. Malcolm was still looking for the murder weapon. He was holding Henry because he thought he’d caught the murderer, but Malcolm never actually booked him. It just doesn’t make sense. I mean…Henry seemed relieved when I told him I’d bring him a new suit from the B&B.”

  My friend, bless her heart, was concerned for me, but there was something hanging out under the surface, some nervousness that I couldn’t quite place. The tick of a finger against her leg, the teeth on her lip.

  “Do you think his death was a confession?” I asked.

  “What’s that razor thing you’re always talking about?”

  I grunted in response. “Occam’s Razor?”

  “Yeah. The don’t-make-up-a-complicated-theory-when-the-events-tell-the-right-story thing. You wouldn’t let me call the police about being burgled, because you said—” she smacked her hands together, “—Occam’s Razor, Joshua took the money. And he did! I would have wasted all this time trying to install security cameras and all that…”

  When her voice trailed off, I could see the pain twisting her pretty features. What she didn’t say to finish the sentence was, instead of assuming my husband was stealing from me. She was never ready to go there.