Vangie Vale and the Murdered Macaron (The Matchbaker Mysteries Book 1)

by R. L. Syme

  Leo was oblivious, bless his heart. He was grinning as we all walked out into the lobby. His mother was fussing about waiting for their daughter, and I saw it as an opportunity to slip away. But I found myself wondering if they might know something about Nikki.

  No pain, no gain, right?

  Besides, if I told them a partial truth about why I was there, they’d stop thinking whatever they were thinking about me and Leo.

  I swallowed my pride and smiled at Jenna Van Andel. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  Her brows went up, like she wasn’t entirely convinced she should answer. “I suppose not,” she finally said.

  “Leo mentioned that Nikki used to date Malcolm Dean, and she had a fight with him tonight before she left with Austin.” The words came tumbling out, thankfully fast. Jenna’s brows inched up a bit more, though this time I fully understood the awkwardness. It had been an awkward question.

  “I wouldn’t call it a fight.” Jenna crossed her arms. “He came in looking for her. She was sitting with us, and after they talked, she was a little agitated. But it wasn’t a fight.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Nikki doesn’t fight with anyone.”

  “I thought she and Malcolm were exes.”

  “Yeah, but they ended on amicable terms.” She waved a hand at her son. “You can’t trust Leo. He was sitting over with Austin in the student section until the Krantzs left. He didn’t see what happened.”

  “I think he gave her some bad news,” I said, lowering my tone to a confidential space while Leo’s dad took him to the coat rack to recover their outerwear.

  Jenna’s hand went to her throat. “What happened?”

  “Her sister passed away. She was found this afternoon, and from what I understand, it was an unpleasant scene.” There was no time to reconsider whether I should share what I knew. I just had to keep talking and hope that Jenna didn’t spend too much time wondering how I knew these things. It helped that I was a pastor. A lot of people gave me the benefit of the doubt by virtue of my title alone.

  “Claire?” She elongated the word, bringing it up hard at the end. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I heard the news from Peter Mayhew about two hours ago.”

  Leo handed a purple coat to his mother and slid on his own black jacket. “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “Did Austin tell you anything about his aunt dying?”

  The young man’s thick eyebrows knitted together. “Something happened to Miss Kay?”

  Jenna shook her head, hard and fast. “No. Not Willa. His mom’s sister.”

  “His mom has a sister?” Leo said.

  “Did he say anything before he left?” she asked, a note of exasperation in her tone. When her son shook his head, she turned to her husband. “Oh, Mike. We need to stop by Nikki’s.”

  Leo’s dad seemed unmoved. “What happened?”

  “Nikki’s sister is dead.”

  That got a response from him. Wrinkled forehead, intake of breath, tightened fists. He seemed more the stoic type, so his reaction surprised me.

  “Nikki doesn’t have a sister,” Leo insisted, zipping up his jacket.

  “Let’s stop by, all three of us,” Jenna said, packing her tone with some kind of warning that only her husband apparently understood, because I was as oblivious as their son at the moment.

  “I have Advanced Chem,” Leo said with a hint of a childish whine.

  “Then we won’t stay long.”

  “We have a test tomorrow, Mom. I have to study, since I didn’t—” He glanced at his parents, each in turn, like there was something he wasn’t saying. “Besides, if you take off, somebody has to wait for Janie.”

  His mother pressed her lips into a line. I inched away slightly, feeling like I should leave to avoid being privy to any kind of family drama that might ensue. I should have encouraged Leo to do his homework earlier. Jenna sighed, turning to me.

  “Would you like to come with us, Vangie?”

  I could have swallowed my tongue, I was so surprised, but instead, I closed my mouth and nodded. “I’d like to make sure Nikki is all right.”

  “Someone needs to sit with Austin.” Jenna shot a look at Leo. “I think Mike and I should talk to Nikki, and I don’t want Austin overhearing what we’ve got to say.”

  I stoppered all my questions, hoping that if I was quiet and acquiescent enough, they might deign to share whatever was too shocking for an eighteen-year-old to hear.

  The Krantzs lived a few blocks from the school, and it didn’t take us long to get to their narrow, brown-brick, mid-century modern home with panels of clear glass inset at intervals across the front. It looked like something out of a fifties sitcom. Spiky plants. Round bushes. Orange door.

  I let Jenna and Mike approach first, and stood behind them as they rang the doorbell. Nikki Krantz answered the door in black yoga pants and a baggy pink shirt, her dark hair stick-straight, her eyes red.

  She collapsed onto Jenna’s shoulder and then widened her eyes in shock when she saw me. “Oh! Pastor Vale. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”

  “Please, call me Vangie.” I extended my hand and gripped hers when she offered it. I’d found that people preferred stability in grief, and I didn’t back off. She motioned for us to follow her inside.

  “Malcolm told you?” she asked as Jenna took her arm, leading her through the dark-wood-paneled hallway and into a bright, high-ceilinged kitchen.

  “Actually, Miss Vee told us,” Mike said, taking a seat at the high-topped table in the breakfast nook. There was a half-full glass of wine on it, I noticed.

  The three of them looked right at me and I felt the heat of their scrutiny. I still hadn’t quite decided whether or not I would tell Nikki that Malcolm had been to the bakery, and this seemed an odd time to say, Your sister died with my cookies in her hands. In front of all these people.

  There was no need, really. There would be a swarm on this news inside of the hour. If there wasn’t already. Between scanners, social media, and the senior center, Saint Agnes was like a zombie apocalypse where everyone consumed other people’s secrets instead of living flesh.

  “Peter Mayhew told me. I think Loretta heard it from the dispatch.”

  “Malcolm wanted me to go down to the morgue to…” Nikki’s voice wavered and she gripped the countertop. “But I told him to find Derek.”

  “What happened, Nik?” Jenna reached out to stroke her friend’s hand.

  “All I know is what Mal told me.” The elegant woman collapsed into the chair next to Mike, picking up the long-stemmed wine glass and taking a long sip.

  “I’ll go check on Austin,” I said, thumbing toward the door. We’d passed a hallway on our way to the kitchen, and I assumed it led to the bedrooms. But Nikki reached for me.

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “Nik!” Jenna exclaimed, exchanging a look with her husband. “He’s gonna find out from someone. It should be you.”

  “He’s got to meet with the football coach from Annapolis again this weekend, and I don’t want him going into that meeting all ripped up over family that we never even see.”

  “The kids are going to ask him at school tomorrow, Nikki. For crying out loud,” Mike said.

  Her face crumpled, like she hadn’t considered that option. “Maybe I’ll keep him home from school.”

  “He’s a resilient kid,” Mike said. “You should tell him now. He’ll be fine, so long as you don’t tell him anything he doesn’t need to know.”

  “I can break the news if you’d like, “ I offered. “I didn’t know her at all, and it sounds like there’s some reason Austin didn’t know her. I can’t explain any of that to him, but I can warn him that people are going to be asking questions.”

  Plus, I wanted to get far enough out of the kitchen that they’d start talking about whatever they thought Austin shouldn’t hear. It didn’t take a Sherlock to deduce they were all trying not to say something important—
their silent stares practically screamed it.

  “She’s a pastor, Nik. She’ll be better at this than any of us.” Jenna practically pleaded with her friend and Austin’s mother finally gave in, pointing me down the hallway to his room.

  “It’s the last one on the left.”

  When I knocked on Austin’s door, he didn’t answer at first, and I found myself listening back toward the kitchen. I took one step away, straining my ears, but they still hadn’t begun to talk.

  After a few more seconds, the door opened and Austin answered, thick headphones pulled down around his neck. His brows winged up when he saw me. “Miss Vee?”

  “Hey,” I said with an awkward wave. “Is it okay if I come in for a few minutes?”

  “Sure.” He opened his door and backed into his room. It was exactly what I would have expected from a football player on his way to college. Lots of shiny posters of athletes in various poses of action, complemented by motivational posters with eagles and mountain vistas. The walls were nearly papered with them, which made sense, because the wallpaper behind it was…hideous. Pukey was the word.

  “Your mom sent me in here to talk to you about your aunt.” I sat on the edge of his neatly-made bed and he took a seat back at his desk, in front of what looked like math homework. Lots of equations.

  “You mean Miss Kay?” he asked.

  “No. Is that your aunt Willa?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She teaches at the high school.” He waved his hand over his math homework as if calculus explained everything. In this case, maybe it did.

  “Your dad’s sister?”

  “Yeah.” Austin reached across his desk and pulled a picture frame from behind his computer monitor, handing it to me. “That’s her with my dad.”

  The photo was older. Weathered. It showed a family of four—dad with a blue cap that said Navy in big block letters, mom with a matching sweatshirt, son and daughter in gray Navy T-shirts. All dark haired and beautiful and smiling. Idyllic. Happy.

  He pointed to the girl. “That’s her. I call her Miss Kay so much, though, I forget to call her Aunt Willa.”

  “Do you have any pictures of your mom’s family?” When I handed the frame back to him, he set it in the same spot, right where he’d be able to see it when he looked at his computer screen. My heart ached for the kid, to have a reminder of his late father in front of him all the time.

  “Yeah.” He reached for the other side of the computer. This photo was just of his mom and an older woman who could have been her aged twin. The background was sandy, with familiar-looking stone structures behind them that had to be the Egyptian pyramids. In the upper corner, tucked in between the glass and the frame, was a small, cutout school picture. His mother looked fresh-faced and young in the smaller picture, and she was smiling widely—unlike in the sandy photo, where she looked almost vacant.

  “That’s my grandma,” he said, pointing to the other woman in the picture. “I never met my grandpa, or my mom’s sister.” He took the frame back and set it beside his math book. “Mom doesn’t even know I know about her.”

  I let the sentence sit there, begging for some response, but I didn’t say a word. I clammed up in the hopes that he would keep talking.

  “Grandma Barnett still has pictures of her in a scrapbook she keeps hidden, although when I asked about them one time, she lied to me about who she was.” He took a breath, like he was worried he wouldn’t be able to stop talking once he started. “Told me she was a cousin, but I found out that was a lie.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers and looping them around each other. The breath he took was massive, and he needed a few seconds to blow all the air out of his lungs. “Because I met her. Yesterday.”

  Chapter Eight

  Nikki had sent me back to break the news to Austin, assuming it wouldn’t affect him. Did it change things that he’d met her? Should I go back in and ask her?

  Austin kept staring at his hands. “I don’t like being lied to, Miss Vee.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I stammered out. “No one does.”

  “I’ve assumed my mom was an only child my whole life.”

  “I’m sure she had a good reason for not talking about her sister.”

  He shook his head, almost violently. “I’ve always wanted more family. Aunt Willa doesn’t have any kids. My mom never had any more kids. My dad’s parents spend most of the year in Arizona, since I was ten. I don’t even have any cousins, y’know.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you how you met Claire?” I ventured, treading out into the deep water without any life raft. But he clearly wanted to unburden himself, and I wasn’t about to stop him.

  “She was sitting on the bench outside the bank.” He swung around in the chair and stood, walking to the other side of his bedroom. “When I went there yesterday at lunch to meet my mom and pick up her car, Claire recognized me and introduced herself.”

  “And what did you talk about?”

  “Not much. She had just talked to my mom, and she was pretty emotional. I guess they don’t get along, which isn’t that surprising since Claire was basically kicked out of the family.”

  According to her, no doubt. I wanted more than anything to go back in the kitchen and start asking Nikki questions. Get the whole story from her point of view.

  “She wanted to see me again today.” Austin was facing the closet, his hands on his hips. “I told her to come by the bakery, because I knew I’d be there with Leo.”

  I swallowed hard, pieces falling into place. That had to be how she’d come by the box of macarons. She’d bought it while I was out dropping off Henry. But that also made Austin one of the last people to have seen her alive, which was starting to unnerve me.

  This was a sticky situation, and I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Legally, if someone told me information about harming another person, I was supposed to go to the police, even if they were unburdening their souls. I was pretty sure Austin hadn’t harmed his aunt, especially when he was so eager for more family, but his story brought some interesting developments to light. Things Malcolm needed to know about. The fact that Claire had come to the bakery after school changed the whole timeline of the murder investigation. If that box of cookies was what tied Henry and Scarlet to the case, this put them in the clear. Those weren’t the same macarons.

  But I couldn't think about that quite yet. And I couldn’t leave either. Austin deserved to know the truth. I opened my mouth, hoping the right words would come out.

  “Do you know why Malcolm came to see your mom at the game today?”

  His shoulders tightened. He didn’t turn around right away, so I couldn’t see the look on his face, but his body language changed so fast, it was uncanny.

  “No.”

  “I think your mom may have wanted to be the one to tell you this, but…” I expelled a short breath and Austin turned around, eyes wide.

  “What?”

  “Your aunt passed away today.”

  His face tightened and all his features went dark. He worked his lips almost like he was spreading lip balm on them, but he didn’t speak.

  His reaction soothed any lingering concern that he might have been involved.

  “That’s why Malcolm came to find your mom. She’s the next of kin. He wanted someone in the family to know Claire had passed.” I decided to leave the murder part out. This wasn’t some nameless, faceless person to him anymore.

  Austin’s head began to nod, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes were watering. “I guess that’s the story of my life.” He glanced up at the poster with The Few, The Proud, The Marines emblazoned across it. “My dad died just before I was born, y’know.” His voice was dark, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “My grandpa died before I was old enough to really know him. And I guess my aunt died before I had a chance to know her, too.”

  I stood, reaching for him. He was a bit taller than me, but I managed to give him a comfort
ing hug without feeling too terribly small. There was no emotion in the gesture on his part, like he was too stunned to receive the comfort. But he would need it later, when it hit him what he’d lost.

  He patted my back, like it was a football huddle, and I stepped out of the hug. I watched him carefully as he picked up his clothes, throwing them in the hamper in the corner. There was very little clutter in the room—he may have been practicing for the Naval Academy—but he seemed to be on a mission to get rid of whatever was left.

  In the hand life had dealt him, there were some dud cards. He played them with as much resilience as an eighteen-year-old kid could manage. It made me proud of him. Proud and sad.

  “How did she die?” he asked, his back to me, standing near the hamper.

  “I’m not sure I should—”

  “I’ll find out at school tomorrow if you don’t tell me,” he said, using my own argument against me. Smart kid.

  I let out a long breath. “They don’t really know how she died yet, and I haven’t heard all the details. But Malcolm did open a homicide investigation.” Austin hung his head. Part of me wanted to leave, to head straight to the police station to give Malcolm this new information, to help end the investigation, but I still needed to offer some words of comfort to Austin. Bigger than his grief, he was feeling some resentment, and he needed to get that out of his heart before it ate him alive. I put my hand on the door frame and cleared my throat.

  “You need to talk to your mother about this, Aussie.” I used the nickname that Leo had given him, trying for a little levity in the midst of all his heartbreak. “She’s pretty worried about you, and I would be willing to bet she thought she was doing what was best, not telling you about Claire.”

  “She still lied to me.”

  “True. But sometimes, you tell lies to protect people from things that might hurt them, and I think that’s a different kind of lie.”

  He chuffed out a hard laugh. “I thought you were a pastor. Isn’t do not lie in the Bible or something?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say there weren’t consequences to lying, no matter why you do it,” I said, feeling an internal sting of my own. “But here’s the thing. We all do wrong things, all the time, and we can’t stop loving people just because they’ve done something wrong.”