Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  When I woke again, the doctor was there, and Derek was asleep on the chair in the corner of the room. I was given a little more darkness, thankfully, when I asked for the doctor to turn the lights off. My head was the only part of me I could really feel, and it still throbbed.

  Derek woke up when they switched off the lights and I told him to go back to the Mockingbird. He declined and flipped on the television, explaining how the media had finally descended on Saint Agnes. Scarlet must have been holding back the tide more than I thought, covering for Henry.

  Sure enough, on CNN, they were running footage of Malcolm at a bank of microphones, making an announcement about a manhunt for Stefan Van Andel. The media asked about Stefan being the mastermind of this tragedy, and Malcolm Dean actually rolled his eyes on national television.

  Malcolm and I knew better, even though he declined to comment. My name never came up, for which I was incredibly grateful. But Stefan got a lot of air time.

  It was a great day, other than the being shot part.

  When Derek finally shut the TV off, he asked me what Malcolm had said during our closed-doors meeting. I told him as much as I could remember, plus everything Nikki had said in the bakery.

  I wanted to tell him that knowing what happened didn’t take the grief away. But he’d learn that his own way. We all did.

  Emma stopped by with a big plate of cookies from the bake case at the Matchbakery, and as Derek ate from the plate, I noticed my blonde friend relax around him. They seemed to have become friends—maybe while I was sleeping. I liked the thought of having another friend who’d been through this gauntlet. Despite our rocky start, he was a good guy. One of the best.

  I fell asleep listening to the two of them talk about how funny it was to be eating cookies from a crime scene.

  It snowed early Sunday morning, and after two days of hospital food, great drugs, and crappy television, I was ready to go home. The whole town looked whitewashed, like God had decided the last week had never happened. Like He was giving us all that snow as a reminder that we weren’t alone.

  I often felt like His loudest messages were the ones that used nature to preach their words. The heavens declare, and all that. It was a maxim for a reason.

  Peter Mayhew found someone else to preach for me on Sunday. When Derek drove me home from the hospital during the service hour, I realized that the church would be meeting without me for the first time since I arrived in Saint Agnes, just before Halloween. It was strange to think about, especially since I knew how close I’d come to being replaced permanently. At least there’d only be a substitute pastor this week, not forever. Peter had come by the hospital, along with other members of the parish, promising in ominous tones that he didn’t know my life had been in danger, and he wouldn’t let any of this get back to the bishop.

  My phone buzzed with a text from my sister on the way home. She’d threatened, on and off during my recovery, to come up to Montana to take care of me. But I promised her I could get around just fine, and there was no need for her to come anywhere.

  When we got to my house, I realized that my father had basically filled the entire place with flowers. Remotely purchased, of course. Probably with Emma’s help. There were bouquets on almost every surface, and by the time Derek helped me back to my bedroom, I had seen more flowers than an corsaged senior at the prom.

  I loved my dad, but he really did have a tendency to over-do it.

  “I could stay here, y’know,” Derek said. He’d helped tuck me in, and there was a bottle of water on my night stand. “If you’d rather not be in the house by yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I promised, giving him as much of a smile as I could muster. The pain was kicking in again, and I mostly just wanted to sleep.

  “You know, they still haven’t found Stefan,” he said, his features clouding with concern. “I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

  “The doors are all locked, and there’s no broken window for him to sneak through. Plus, I live next door to the sheriff. I think I’ll be okay.”

  Derek didn’t look convinced, but he flipped off the lights. “Emma is going to stop by later to check on you.”

  “Good. We need to eat the rest of those crime scene cookies.”

  He gripped the door frame and turned back. “You shouldn’t joke about that, Vangie.”

  “We were just joking about it this morning.”

  “I know, but…” He took a step back into my bedroom. “We still don’t know how Stefan was involved, and he hasn’t been caught.”

  He was right, and I knew it. But it was easier to joke about what had happened than to think about the horrific sadness of it all. Derek had lost his wife because Nikki Krantz was so terrified of losing her image—and her ill-gotten money—that she was willing to kill for it. And keep killing for it.

  People’s crazy motives didn’t need to make sense to me. Only to them. And Nikki’s crazy had made just enough sense to her that she’d been willing to kill me and Derek and anyone else who might have gotten in her way.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Vangie, if Stefan helped them, then he’s got two homicides on his hands. None of us are safe.”

  “Then none of us are safe.” I propped my head to one side, giving him a glare. “Do you need me to find some security blankets for you?”

  A dark look passed over his face. “I should go,” Derek said, turning back toward the living room. I wanted to stop him, to apologize for the sarcasm that popped out of my mouth all the time, but I couldn’t.

  I wasn’t afraid of Stefan Van Andel. I was pretty sure Nikki had killed him already, and Malcolm just hadn’t found the body. Mike and Jenna Van Andel had already been questioned and released. Apparently, everything I’d heard at Nikki’s house was about them trying to figure out how to clean up after Claire’s mess. Henry hadn’t been the only man she’d blackmailed. He hadn’t been the only one told he was Austin’s father. Who knew how big Claire’s blackmail net had been.

  It was the one thing I hadn’t yet talked about with Derek. Claire’s blackmail.

  I was pretty sure he didn’t know anything about it, and he still needed to grieve for his wife. It wasn’t worth bringing up. He had suffered enough.

  Neither of Leo’s parents had come to see me in the hospital, and truth be told, I wouldn’t have welcomed them. It still felt to me like a lot of this was their fault. Protecting Nikki, at the very least, and collaborating with her, at the very worst. I wished I could adopt Leo to get him away from his toxic family.

  Sighing, I tried to sit up in bed. I didn’t have a television in my bedroom, but I wasn’t as tired now as I had been earlier. Part of me wished I’d taken Derek up on his offer to stay.

  I read more of Norman’s sermons until Emma showed up with a plate of cookies. I would never read his sermons in the same way again. He’d helped me to catch a murderer. I’d never met the man, but I loved him just the same.

  Emma sat with me, catching me up on the work that was being done at the bakery, which she’d promised to oversee. While it was still technically a crime scene, the window, at least, was getting fixed.

  She took me out into the living room, and we watched an old episode of Sherlock, one of my favorites, before she left me to my own devices. I could move without too much pain, right after the drugs settled in, and I tried my best to fix a sandwich in the kitchen. Peanut butter and chokecherry jam. That was about all I could manage with only one good arm.

  I sat down to watch another episode of Sherlock and looked out my window to see it was dark outside. The shades had been pulled closed on Malcolm’s guest bedroom, so I couldn’t tell if he was home or not. His driveway was on the other side of the house. Sometimes, I could see the end of his Bronco sticking out, but not tonight.

  A little breeze startled me, and my heart motored. “Derek?” I called out, waiting for a response. “Emma?” I asked. No answer.

  I swallowed hard, glaring at the dark k
itchen. Creepy flute music floated out of my TV, like a soundtrack to my murder. Gathering all of my courage, I stood up and walked toward the kitchen.

  A woman’s voice came out of the television, talking about tea, and I just about jumped when I saw something move in the corner of my eye. But it wasn’t in the kitchen. It was outside. I went to the window, and there was a truck parked out on the street. Someone was walking toward it.

  On the table, just where I’d left it the morning of the bakery break-in, was Scarlet’s brown leather journal.

  Chapter 31

  I burst through the front door, out into the night, and hurried around the house. I recognized the big, broad back of Mike Van Andel. He swiveled to look at me when I called his name, but then he kept right on walking, hurrying his pace.

  “Did you just break into my house?” I yelled after him, following him off my lawn and onto the street. He finally stopped, leaning on the vehicle and panting.

  “The door was open.” He didn’t look at me as he said it.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Well, I’ll have to ask Emma not to leave my doors open anymore,” I said, reaching him. I stayed a few feet back, just in case, but walked around so he would have to look at me. “Was it you who broke in on Friday morning?”

  Mike sighed and finally glanced up. He looked horrible. I did not feel sorry for him.

  “It was Stefan.”

  My stomach tightened. “You saw Stefan?”

  “The last time I saw him was Friday morning. He came over with Scarlet’s journal.” Mike held out a hand, like he was offering a truce. “I didn’t have anything to do with all that stuff with Nikki. I promise.”

  “Then why did you want the journal?”

  Mike looked away, sagging against his truck. “I assumed you knew. Malcolm didn’t tell you?”

  I looked up at the sheriff’s house. The living room light was on, and the television seemed to be on, too, but I didn’t see the sheriff himself.

  “He didn’t tell me anything about you, other than that he’d questioned you and believed you weren’t hiding Stefan.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Nikki’s crazy murder stuff, and I’m not hiding my brother,” Mike said, suddenly angry. He moved his body forward, like he might come at me, but he lacked either the stones or the motivation.

  “I don’t believe that,” I said.

  “I really didn’t.” He shook his head. “I just needed to see the journal. I needed to know what Henry had told her.”

  “About what?”

  Mike’s gaze flipped down, and he chewed on his lip. “About Austin. About the party.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He shook his head. “It’s really none of your business. I don’t owe you anything.”

  I cleared my throat and pointed at my shoulder, then at my head, where they’d had to shave away part of my hair so they could put stitches in my skull. All tokens of my near-death brush with Nikki.

  “That’s not my fault,” he said.

  “Why do I have a feeling that if you’d just told someone whatever it is you’re hiding, none of this would have happened?” I grunted out a laugh. “No, let me take a crack at it, okay, Mike? I’ve had plenty of time to think this through.”

  “Don’t,” he warned.

  “C’mon, let me take a wild guess.” I crossed my good arm over my bad one. A little twinge caught me off-guard, but I gritted my teeth and kept right on talking. I deserved answers, and I was going to get them. “Rewind eighteen years. You and a bunch of buddies took advantage of a drunk girl at a party. You’re really not as original as you think you are, unfortunately, as far as douchebaggery goes…”

  “That’s not what happened.” He shook his head, but I was on a roll.

  “Oh, no, I bet it’s exactly what happened.”

  He launched at me, stopping just short of hitting me. My breath was heaving and my hands were balled into tight fists, but I’d held my ground. If he did anything to me on the street in front of Malcolm’s house, Mike Van Andel would go to jail for his entire life.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “We were all so drunk. After Henry had been with her, he passed out, and then, Claire was so… she was on everyone. And I wasn’t the only one who had sex with her that night. It was…” He punched his truck, and I took a tiny step back. “One night. We had one bad night, and Claire has made us all pay for it for eighteen years.”

  My nostrils flared as emotion misted my eyes. I’d been more right than I had thought. Up until now, I had just been a guess that had slowly taken on more shape as I thought through Claire’s bribery, and why Mike was so deeply involved in the whole situation. If Mike had been involved, given how much older he’d been than everyone else…

  I did some quick math in my head. Not only had he been older, but…

  “Good Lord in heaven,” I whispered. “You were married.” I stepped backward. The dynamic of the conversation had just shifted. I looked back at Malcolm’s house, my heart suddenly beating quite fast.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, a sad note in his voice. “My life was ruined as soon as Claire was murdered. Everything was bound to come out after that.”

  “Does Malcolm know about all of this?”

  Mike nodded, leaning back against his truck. “Now he does. Nikki told him in her confession. Statute of limitations is up, for both Stefan and I, but—”

  “So, your brother was with you.” I took another step toward Malcolm’s house.

  The two brothers, Henry, and maybe others had all been partying with Claire on the same night. Who knew how many people were involved with this. How many maybe fathers Austin really had.

  “We all thought Claire’s kid was ours, although she never produced him, through years of blackmail, but we never knew it was Austin. We all thought that Austin was Auggie’s. For a long time, I didn’t even know Claire had been in contact with Stefan, or Henry. None of us wanted to talk about it. We all thought Henry had killed Claire, and we understood why. She had tortured and extorted us for years.”

  I couldn’t listen anymore. I turned around and walked back toward my house. It didn’t surprise me to hear Mike’s footsteps running after me, but I was genuinely shocked when he put his hand on my good arm to stop me.

  He hadn’t learned his lesson.

  What I wouldn’t have given for some Febreeze in my hand. Instead, I stood there shaking, determined not to let him win. I wasn’t going to feel even an ounce of compassion for him. His only regret was that he’d gotten caught. At least Henry had been sorry.

  “I promise, I don’t know where my brother is, but he didn’t have anything to do with what happened to you.”

  “Except that you never took your punishment, and now everyone else is paying for your evil.” I spat the words out. So many people had paid the price—Henry, Claire, Austin, Derek, Nikki, and me. But Mike Van Andel hadn’t paid even a little drop of sweat for his sins.

  And neither had Stefan, as far as I knew, or anyone else at that party.

  “You get your hands off her,” Malcolm’s voice called out. I could hear his boots on the ground, and I saw him approach from the direction of his house. Mike braced for a tackle, but it didn’t come. Malcolm stepped between the two of us, shoulders heaving, and pushed Mike back.

  “I didn’t touch her,” Mike said.

  “The hell you didn’t.” Malcolm kept walking him farther away from me. “I saw you from my living room.”

  “It’s okay, Malcolm.” I reached for him, but he was too far away.

  “I told you to stay away.” Malcolm threw Mike Van Andel against his truck, chest first, pinning his arms behind him. “Didn’t I say I would arrest you if you came within a hundred feet of her?”

  I swallowed against the emotion that crawled up my throat. I couldn’t decide if I was mad at Malcolm for butting in, or grateful that he was making Mike go away.
But the gruff, cowboy thing was turning out to be more helpful, now that he was protecting me.

  “Do you want me to arrest him?” Malcolm asked, still pinning Mike against the side of the truck. “Just say the word, Vangie. I’ll arrest him.”

  I gave him a small, tired smile, and shook my head. It wouldn’t do any good to throw him in jail for forty-eight hours, when it was much too late for him to get arrested for what he had actually done. I considered asking Malcolm to arrest him for breaking and entering, but I had such a log in my own eye when it came to B&E, I didn’t even want to hear the words out loud.

  Malcolm piled Mike into his truck and warned him never to come back to my house again. I had no doubt that Sheriff Dean would make good on his threat. After the truck had turned around the corner and out of sight, Malcolm finally turned back to me, his face lined with concern.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, jogging over to me and taking me by my good arm.

  “No. He just…”

  “He told you, I assume.” Malcolm shook his head back and forth in disappointment. “Now that he knows he can’t get in trouble for it, I suppose he’s all about unburdening himself.”

  “Is the statute of limitations really up?”

  “Ten years,” Malcolm said through tight lips. “Believe me, if I could put him away, I would. Nikki told me about Henry, at the basketball game. But I didn’t find out about Mike and Stefan until—” He stopped. I could feel another apology coming on, and I put my hand on his arm.

  “It’s all behind us now, Malcolm.”

  He helped me up the stairs to my back door, which was still hanging open. My whole left side throbbed, and I sat down on my couch, wishing I could have more painkillers. But my pain would be temporary.

  “What’s going to happen to Austin?” I asked as Malcolm got me a glass of water from the kitchen.

  “His aunt is a teacher at the high school. She’s offered to let him live with her while he finishes his senior year.” Malcolm handed me the full glass. “But I doubt he’ll be at school tomorrow. Both he and Leo missed on Friday, too.”