by R. L. Syme
“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 Four
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 Beati
tudes.” 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 corner 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.
“Oh, Pastor,” she wheezed, clutching at me. “I’ve only just heard.” She pulled me through the hall, toward the front door, and my anxiety rose a little with each step. “That poor girl. I mean, can you imagine?”
I shook my head, looking past Loretta, through the flung-open door. Her husband was closing the trunk of his car. When he found out, he was going to blow a good-old-fashioned gasket. As much as I wanted the killer to pay for what he’d done, I preferred for Peter not to know about my involvement.
“And to think she’s one of our own.” Loretta put one wrinkled hand over her mouth, fluttering her fingers. “Was one of our own. Oh, Vangie.” She collapsed against me again, and that brought Peter’s attention to us.
“What’s the matter now?” he called across the gray, snow-patched grass, and his wife turned her head, giving a melodramatic sob. I righted the woman, shepherded her out the door, and shut and locked it behind us.
“Someone’s been killed,” Loretta spat out. “That’s all.”
Peter’s bug eyes went buggier and he hurried down the sidewalk, looking around like they were about to get caught doing something naughty. “Who died?”
“Claire Hobson, according to Irma at the sheriff’s office.” The old woman wiped at her nose and pulled away from my shoulder. “She’s Nikki Krantz’s little sister.”
Those words struck me straight in the center of my chest. Nikki, from the bank. Nikki, Austin’s mother. I saw them practically every day. Her in-laws were regular members of my congregation.
“Auggie’s widow?” Peter stroked at his chin. “Poor woman. She can’t be more than forty herself. Her sister must have been young. What happened?”
“Irma didn’t say.” The old woman wiped at her eyes, shaking her head. “All I heard for sure was that there was going to be an investigation. It’s only just happened.”
“I’m surprised Malcolm didn’t mention it when I talked to him earlier,” Peter said. He looked up at me. “You know Nikki Krantz, don’t you?”
“I do,” I stammered, as the woman’s kind face surfaced in my memory. “I just saw her, maybe fifteen minutes ago, when she picked Austin up from the bakery.”
“Oh, that poor boy,” Loretta said, fluttering her fingers against her lips again. “To lose his aunt like that…”
“I didn’t even know Nikki had a sister.” I looked up as a car honked, and someone waved at me through the open window of their pickup truck. It looked like Danny Murphy.
I waved back, holding my hand in the air, and marveling over the strangeness of life, No matter how much evil took place in the world, time continued its relentless plod. People waved from cars, people ate cookies, people complained about property lines, and the world just kept turning.
Meanwhile, Nikki Krantz would never see her sister alive again.
I shook myself out of the moment and put a hand on Loretta’s shoulder. “I should get home.”
“You should go and visit Mrs. Krantz,” the old woman said, her brows arched high.
“Nikki doesn’t attend SACC, though.”
“But Auggie’s parents have been long-time members of our parish, even if they haven’t attended much lately, and Nikki’s not going to church right now. Who else will visit her?”
“Her mother’s a Lutheran,” Peter offered. “Best to get over there before Tom does.”
I paused with my mouth open to answer, but the words stuck in my throat. The thing was, it wouldn’t look good for me to go to Nikki’s, not when a box of my macarons had been found at the crime scene.
“She’s at the high school,” I remembered aloud. “There’s a basketball game tonight, and Leo told me she was going with Austin.”
“You don’t think she’d go to a basketball game after finding out her sister’s been killed, do you?” Peter asked.
“I don’t think she knows yet.” There hadn’t been any darkness to Nikki’s features. No ominous pronouncements to Austin. Just a quick wave in my direction, followed by a direct path toward the high school. “She was at work until five, and then she came to the bakery to pick up her son. It didn’t seem like anything was wrong.”
“Maybe the sheriff hadn’t had a chance to notify her yet.”
I concentrated on the memory of Malcolm Dean in my kitchen. He hadn’t used the woman’s name, and he’d asked me more than once to identify her. Had he recognized her? Of course, I’d learned how much cops liked to withhold information to test your responses, so it was possible he’d known the whole time and hadn’t said anything as a test of my honesty.
I wouldn’t put anything past Malcolm Dean.
“I’ll tell Irma about Nikki being at the basketball game so she can let the sheriff know.” Loretta grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him toward their car. “We’ll go by on our way to the senior center.”
“I don’t want t
o stick our noses somewhere they don’t belong,” Peter said, reluctantly allowing himself to be dragged away.
I couldn’t help wondering if that was really true. If I’d told Peter about the sheriff stopping by the bakery to ask me a few questions about a murdered woman, would he have taken such a highbrow posture?
I waved at the Mayhews as they drove off, but they were too engrossed in conversation with each other to notice. I got into the Tank, ignoring the other box of macarons that sat, undelivered, in my front seat. The drive across town seemed longer than normal, and I avoided the high school and the B&B, taking the long way.
When I turned a corner and saw the lanky, well-dressed form of Henry Savage walking along the side of the road, I couldn’t help the lump that formed in my throat. Part of me had known, when Malcolm came to the bakery, that I should cancel this meeting with Henry. No matter what he needed to say. But I hadn’t called. And now, I couldn’t drive past him without him knowing it was me. It was impossible to go incognito while driving the Tank.
My kingdom for a Subaru.
I pulled up behind him, and he turned, his face lighting up when he saw me. He had ear buds in, the long white strings hanging around his neck, but he pulled them out and shoved them in his pocket.
“Well, Vic. Fancy meeting you here.” He walked toward me, coming around the side of the Tank and resting his hand on the frame.
I felt myself leaning back into the seat, like he was coming too far into my personal space. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“I was just out for a walk. Scarlet was being a pill, and I wasn’t in the mood to get yelled at.”
“You don’t have separate rooms?” I pulled my brows together. “Isn’t there any escape?”
“They put us in a suite,” he said. “Adjoining rooms…with no locks. Let me tell you how much that thrills me to death.”
“Well, you could have worn a coat, all the same.”