by Quinn, Lucy
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.
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.”
“I’m not. I’m trying to go to work, and you need to get back inside and get some shoes on.”
“Stop. Will you, just stop.” He reached out his hands like he wanted to grab me by the shoulders and shake me. I thought he showed admirable restraint by staying on the sidewalk.
“I told you. I didn’t see who it was.” Frustration rose inside me, and my hands balled at my sides. “This is supposed to be your job. Figuring out who the bad guys are. You go do your job. I need to go do mine.”
The words appeared to land on him a little harder than I’d intended, and his features crinkled up. His jaw worked at something he was holding back, and I felt a little of that killer instinct crop back up. I wanted to say something to just crucify him—something that would get him to back off and leave me alone. Instead, I took a long breath. Did I really want to hurt Malcolm?
No. I wanted him to figure this all out. Who had been in my yard. Who had killed Claire and Henry.
“I’m sorry, Malcolm. I didn’t mean to insinuate you weren’t doing your job. I’m just…it’s been a hard week.”
He shifted from side to side, the first sign that his feet were getting cold. “I’m going to find out who killed her, Evangeline. You have to let me do my job.”
“I will.”
“And no more hanging out with Derek Hobson,” he added, with a touch of bitterness in his voice. “That man is a criminal.”
“How do you…” I started to ask, but thought bett
er of it. Getting into a conversation about Derek at this point might lead to revelations about what we had been doing while we were hanging out, and I didn’t want to get him—or me—in trouble.
“Stefan is pretty convinced that he had something to do with Claire’s death, and I want you to back off and let us investigate.”
“Well, that must make it true, then,” I said with a sarcastic edge to my words. “If Stefan is pretty convinced.”
Malcolm’s brows came together and he took a step toward me. “I trust Stefan Van Andel with my life. He has some of the best instincts in my department.”
“That’s a pretty low bar, Sheriff. So far, everyone you’ve brought in for Claire’s murder has been innoce—”
“Watch it, Evangeline.” He pointed a finger at me, stopping my words. “We do the best with the evidence we have.” But I could tell he was shaken. His features had gone tight as soon as I brought up the topic of him being taken in by the planted evidence.
Although… Malcolm hadn’t detained Henry until Scarlet confirmed his suspicions about Henry covering up the assault. That evidence hadn’t been planted.
There was still something that didn’t sit right with me about all of this, and Malcolm seemed to scratch the itch, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong.
Malcolm walked away after warning me to be on the lookout, and jogged around the hedge and back to his front door. The light went on in the little bedroom with the open window, and Malcolm stared at me as he pulled the curtains closed. The invitation to spy on his life was rescinded. The light went off, and I closed my door and headed back into the kitchen. I picked up my purse and walked through the kitchen, trying to make sure I had cleaned up sufficiently before heading out for the day.
It felt like I was missing something. Still cold from standing in the open door, I put on my jacket. I was ready to go, but the feeling that I was forgetting something still niggled at me. I walked one last circle around the kitchen. Looked at the empty table one last time.
What was I forgetting?
I walked through the mud room and found the source of the chill. The back door was open—the one that led to the other side of the house, where the Tank was parked.
Suddenly, I realized what I was forgetting, and my whole body went cold from more than the winter air.
My heartbeat rocketed up to practically marathon pace.
The journal. Scarlet’s journal was gone. Someone had broken in and stolen it while I was talking to the sheriff. And besides Scarlet and me, there was only one person who knew about it.
I got into my vehicle and drove to Derek Hobson’s house.
It took almost a full minute of me pounding on his door for him to answer. His long hair was mussed from sleep, his eyes bleary. He was pulling on a shirt and yawning, but I didn’t buy it.
“What were you doing in my house?” I yelled, pushing him back into his dark living room. Tears pressed at my eyes. “You could have just asked me for the journal, Derek.”
He backed up so quickly he nearly tripped over his feet. “What? What are you talking about?”
“The journal, Scarlet’s journal. It’s gone.”
“What?” He held me at arm’s length, blowing out a breath that had a sour smell. But it wasn’t only his breath that smelled bad. The whole house had a new kind of reek to it. It stung my nose.
Had he really been sleeping?
When I recoiled, he released me and I backed up onto one of the couches, sitting down almost as a reflex. Tears pressed a little harder, and one slipped onto my cheek. Derek sat down beside me, keeping a respectful distance. His hair was a curtain, blocking my vision of the rest of the room, but something stuck in my head. Bags. There were three black duffel bags, stacked across the other side of the room.
I pushed him away, pointing to the bags. “Were you leaving? Is that why you wanted to take Scarlet’s journal? So you could skip town and no one would ever know that you tried to get money out of her?”
He grabbed my hand. “Vangie. Stop. You’re not making any sense.”
But I wrestled out of his grip and pushed myself off the couch, crossing the room. “What are these?”
“I’m packing up Claire’s things,” he said, his voice dropping. “I do plan to leave this house, but not because I want to skip town. I just need to get out of this place, where she and I were together. It makes me…” His words broke, and raw emotion washed across his features. “There are too many memories.”
Another tear slipped down my cheek as I leaned back against the couch. I was so tightly coiled, I couldn’t think straight.
There was an open, half-finished water bottle on the table next to the bags, and one of the pillows from the couch had been dragged down onto the floor. It had a wet spot in the middle, like he had just been laying on it.
“Did you sleep here last night?” I asked, touching the pillow with my foot.
“Yeah. I was packing Claire’s things, and I just got so…” He yawned, moving his head slowly back and forth. “So tired.”
I reached down and nudged the water bottle with my knuckle. A few little white flecks were jostled up from the bottom, like a disturbed residue.
“Why did it take you so long to answer the door, if you were sleeping right here?”
He yawned again. “What are you talking about? As soon as I heard you, I jumped right up.”
But he hadn’t, and I knew it. I’d jarred him out of a pretty deep sleep. Maybe too deep. I looked around for the source of the smell. Near the kitchen, it got a whole lot worse. It smelled like…almost like rotten eggs.
Something clicked in my head. Sulfur.
Gas.
Derek reached for the light switch, but I jumped at him, wrestling him back toward the still-open front door. “Don’t touch that!” I screamed.
I pulled him outside just as I heard the heater’s pilot light kick on. The explosion was so immediate, but everything in my head seemed to have turned to slow motion. I sailed through the air from the force of the blast, landing with a hard thud on the ground.
We lay on the dry grass outside Derek’s house, watching a plume of smoke rise from the living room. He pulled me to my feet and pushed me toward my vehicle. Somehow I managed to get inside.
“Drive!” he yelled, heading for his bike. “You can’t be here when the cops get here.”
“But…I….I can’t leave you….alone…Derek,” I sputtered, my throat raw, vision blurry.
“Just trust me. I’ll find you when this is over.” His eyes wide and white, chest heaving, he looked like a big hulk of a superhero, and he pointed down the street. “Vangie. Go!”
In my rearview mirror, I saw him scrambling to get his bike across the road. The fire was in the back of the house, away from the road, where the living room had smacked up against the kitchen. Derek had his phone out and was hopefully calling 9-1-1. My ears were ringing, and I already had a headache, but I couldn’t help saying a grateful prayer that I’d come when I had. If I hadn’t opened the door just then, the gas would have kept collecting and Derek would likely be dead.
But a darker, more sinister thought had me by the throat. Someone had drugged Derek and then come back after he was asleep to open his gas line.
Someone wanted him dead.
Chapter 29
I texted Derek when I got to the bakery to let him know I’d arrived. A benign, one-line text—something I might have sent if I hadn’t just seen his house explode. But I wanted him to know where to find me. I hoped he would—and soon. I needed to know what had happened. I had so many more questions.
It was still dark, but I could hear sirens, so at least the emergency vehicles were on their way. I felt horrible for leaving him like that, but I knew why he’d told me to go. There was no non-Claire-related reason for me to be there.
Leo’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, even though it was after 3 a.m. It wasn’t like him to be late, although it was possible he wasn’t coming at all, after
his uncle had seen me with Derek Hobson. That jig might be up.
I turned on only the kitchen lights and started sifting the almond flour and sugar, feeling relaxed by every little act of control in the kitchen, every tiny measurement, every step I already knew. This was my haven. After a few minutes of listening to sirens, my nerves edging back up, I put my audiobook on my phone and stuck the earbuds deep in my ears to keep me company. I could practically make these cookies in my sleep if I could drown out the sirens.
I kept my phone on the counter, waiting for Derek to text me back. But it was 3:22, and there was still no response. Who knew when he would be through with the emergency crews, with the sheriff? I couldn’t afford to contact him again until I knew the emergency had passed.
The events of the last several days had permanently amped up my resting heart rate. I was well on my way to being jumpy. As I separated the eggs to make the meringue, I started recounting what I knew in my head, trying to puzzle through this feeling that there was still something I was missing. There were still two things bothering me.
First, the Stefan and Mike conspiracy theory worked for Henry’s death. But it did not work for Claire’s. If Stefan was really Austin’s father, then he would have no reason to want Claire dead.
Second, the replacing of the knife in Frances Barnett’s house still didn’t make sense to me. If Jenna had put Claire’s knife—supposedly the murder weapon—in a bag that she thought Derek would just pack and take out of town, then was the purpose really to frame Derek? Or to dispose of the murder weapon?
I was just about to turn on the mixer when I felt a chill creep across my neck, goose-bumping every inch of my skin. I looked out into the dark dining room, and saw the edge of the trash bag window flapping in the wind. My mouth went dry, my throat tight, and drumbeat pulses cued the soundtrack of my Criminal Minds nightmare.
My hand froze halfway to the whisk. There was someone in the bakery with me.
It wasn’t Leo.