by R. L. Syme
“It’s not something I talk about,” he said, his voice low, like he was afraid of being overheard. “Dara was just one mistake in a long line of mistakes that I stupidly thought I could fix by getting married. A word to the wise, Vic, never try to fix a problem by getting married.”
“I could’ve told you that,” I said, returning the smile. “Maybe don’t get married for any reason, but I’m still holding out hope to be proven wrong on that one.”
“Ouch,” he said with a wince. “That smacks of bitterness.”
“Well, if you’d had the kind of luck I’ve had the last several years, you might agree with me on that one.”
A phone buzzed in the corner of the room and Irma’s voice clicked through. “Your five minutes are up, Vangie,” she hiss-whispered.
I grabbed the keys and my phone, but Henry grasped my hand as I turned to leave. He placed a kiss on the top, and the press of his lips sent a jolt of warmth through my body.
“I can’t thank you enough, Vic,” he said, his eyes practically watering. “I don’t have many people in my corner.”
An uncomfortable feeling swirled in my gut, clutched at my throat. I wanted to pull my hand away, but I couldn’t. He needed the comfort. I was leaving him all alone to be interrogated again.
By the time I got back out to Irma’s desk, she was pacing and wringing her hands, and when she saw me, she reached for her keys. “Oh, Vangie, I don’t like deceiving the sheriff like that.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, Irma. But Henry is innocent and Malcolm just won’t see it. When I told him about Claire in the restaurant, he was in genuine shock. The kind you can’t fake.”
Irma scrunched her lips together, not buying it. She crossed her arms. “And I suppose no one told you he’s a Hollywood actor.”
“Oh, I know what he is,” I said. In more ways than one. “But he’s innocent until proven guilty. Isn’t that the lynchpin of our justice system?”
“Well, that other woman is a handful, let me tell you. The one we brought in with your actor boy.” Irma glanced around, like someone might hear us gossiping. “She’s a bossy little thing for being a prisoner.”
I stifled a laugh. I’d only met Scarlet twice, but it didn’t surprise me that she was everyone’s headache. Yet Henry had asked about her; he, at least, was concerned about her.
My instinct was to trust Henry over Scarlet, and I was rarely wrong about people. It was why my sister, who had always been enamored of my natural ability to read people, had convinced me to give the Matchbaker concept a try. In truth, I was much happier putting it to use by doing things like this. Helping people.
“Did either of them ask for a lawyer?”
“The woman did,” Irma said, and something inside me clenched at the fact that Henry would answer questions without someone in there to look after his legal interests.
“Someone local?”
“No, there’s someone headed up here from LA as we speak. They’re trying to keep it all hush-hush on account of him being so famous. Offered me money to keep my mouth shut, even.” She turned her head, like she’d heard something, and a second later, the sheriff’s door opened.
Derek Hobson walked out into the open room, eyes red, cheeks swollen. Before Malcolm could appear, I ducked around the desk and sat in a chair. If I’d thought it would help, I would’ve crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap, but Malcolm knew me well enough to recognize that as an act.
We’d had enough conflict in the last two days over that corner of our property. I hadn’t been the kindest Christian person to him, and I knew it. Part of that was because he was such a stickler for the rules, no matter what the circumstances—an attitude I hated.
Malcolm followed Derek to the door in silence. Then he leveled me a withering look and let out the most frustrated sigh I’d ever heard from him. “Evangeline. What are you still doing here?”
“I was just talking to Irma,” I said, as innocently as could be, not addressing what I’d been doing before that. “But I’m happy to leave if you’d like me to.”
“Yes, I would.” Malcolm looked around, his muscles taut like fishing line with a catch at one end. “I need to send Irma home, and I can’t do that if you’re out here bothering her.”
“Oh, she wasn’t a bother, Sheriff,” Irma said, her voice trying for bubbly, but I could tell she still felt guilty.
“I don’t like you being here this late at night,” Malcolm said, softening just a touch and looking at his receptionist. “If we hadn’t had all this noise, I would have sent you home hours ago.”
“There was work to be done, and I wasn’t about to leave you to handle it by yourself.”
“Well, at least let me walk you out to your car.”
“Oh, nonsense.” Irma buzzed around her desk, gathering her things. She shouldered her purse and handed the white box to Malcolm. “Here. You haven’t eaten all day, at least have one of these cookies.”
He took the familiar item from her hands and turned it over. “Where did you get this?”
“I brought it by this afternoon,” I said, standing up defiantly. “I drop them off at some of the businesses around town occasionally, to get peoples’ thoughts on new flavors I’ve been trying out.”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes on me, all the lines on his face going tight. “I told you I found one of these at the scene of a homicide—” he hefted up the box, “—and you decided to deliver them all over town? What? Are you trying to throw suspicion off your married boyfriend?” The last words were ground out so hard, it sounded like truck tires on a rocky road.
“First of all, stop calling him my boyfriend, and second of all, the box you found must be in evidence. It’s not like I snuck back there and switched it out or something. I was just bringing cookies to friends.”
He pressed the box toward me and put a hand on my back, guiding me to the door. “Well, don’t do that anymore, at least not until this is all settled. I’m still not convinced you had nothing to do with this, Evangeline, so you’d better watch yourself.”
My undignified grunt of annoyance matched Irma’s, and my friend called out on her way out the back door, “Reverend Vale wouldn’t hurt a fly, Sheriff. I promise you that.”
A muscle tightened in Malcolm’s jaw as he pushed me out the door, but he didn’t say another word. I stood in the empty lobby, stunned into silence. He’d been frustrated with me plenty in the past, but he’d never physically removed me from his space before. Not even when I was at my most belligerent.
Did he really think I had something to do with all this?
That was not good. Not good at all.
Chapter Ten
The Tank took up its customary space and a half at the courthouse, where the parking always seemed to be narrower than I remembered. I threw the box on the passenger seat and looked out the window into the dark lot. A motorcycle was parked beside my vehicle, its back wheel against the curb.
Derek Hobson sat on the low, long bike, his head hanging over the handlebars. No helmet. I walked around the back of the Tank and he looked up when I came into his line of sight. His eyes were redder than they had been inside the sheriff’s office, and the pungent tang of marijuana caught my nostrils. In one hand, he held a smoking joint.
But those red-rimmed eyes weren’t from drugs.
I held out my hand and introduced myself. “Vangie Vale. I was just inside. I’m so sorry to hear about your wife.”
He shifted the joint to his left hand and shook mine, giving me what could only be described as the side eye. I didn’t have my collar on, so it couldn’t be the pastor thing. Besides, years of urban ministry had kept me from developing the pastoral air possessed by my Seminary colleagues. Maybe he was worried I’d head back to the sheriff’s office and tell Malcolm about the joint.
“Derek Hobson. Nice to meet you, Vangie Vale.” His voice was raspy and deep, like a radio DJ. He set the joint on top of his bike’s headlight and pulled his fingers through his long hair. The
movement was slow, almost sensual. He gathered the mass and pulled it back with a black band.
The Brock-O-Hurn-moment was ruined when he picked up the joint and put it in his mouth. The smoke stung my nose and I backed away, trying not to wave my hand in front of my face.
“I know your sister-in-law,” I ventured, unsure of my footing.
“Nikki?” He scoffed and smoke puffed out in front of him. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get along?”
“I barely know her.”
“You’re not from around here, then?”
“Used to be,” he said, taking another long drag. Waiting for him to smoke was putting a serious damper on the back-and-forth flow of our conversation. “I went to high school here for a while, but when Claire—”
That name stopped him fast, made his eyes round, made him go silent.
I was so accustomed to offering comfort when I saw people suffering that I took a step toward him, intending to pat him on the back, hug him, something. This man was clearly suffering. I wanted to let him know there was another human in the world who cared about what he was going through, but before I could come any closer, he shook his head and took another long drag. It was enough to stop me in my tracks.
“I really am sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah, well, she was asking for it,” he snapped.
I couldn’t form a response. I hadn’t seen that sentiment coming at all. Maybe his mellow demeanor was artificially induced, and he was hiding some kind of pent-up anger. Still, he didn’t seem like a man who was glad his wife was dead.
“I tried to tell her to stay away from Saint Agnes. Tried to fix things for her.” Derek looked off into the back of the parking lot and his eyes seemed to lose focus for a second. “She wanted to move here, a couple of months ago, but I kept holding out. Coming back here makes her…made her…edgy. I wanted to stay on the road. She was better off on the road.” He shook his head. “But she wanted to be home.”
“Home is…” I stopped myself from quoting any clichés. It didn’t sound like Claire’s heart had been in Saint Agnes anyway. “I can understand wanting to be home.”
“Funny thing is, I don’t know that this was home for her. When she started fighting with her mom, she went to Minnesota to live with her aunt. Then I got myself emancipated and moved there to be with her. We’ve been together mostly ever since.” A long, heavy pause, and his gaze dropped. “Had been together.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her.” I lifted my shoulders against the cool air. “I’m sure she was a lovely woman.”
Derek chuffed out a laugh and left the joint on the headlight again. “She was unstable, and she could be seriously unhinged. But…she was tough.”
Even though I’d assumed Nikki and her mother might have had good reason for cutting Claire out of their lives, I’d started to imagine Claire as a victim, a sad woman. The way Derek talked about her added some dimension to who she’d been.
Derek cleared his throat and picked up the joint from off the front of his bike. Licking two fingers, he snubbed out the end. He knocked off the still smoldering part, stuffed the rest into a bag he produced from his pocket, and then tucked it out of sight. I could still smell the fumes.
“She was only thirty-two years old, y’know.” He sniffed, putting his hands on the handles of his bike. “It’s not fair.”
I finally gave in to my pastoral instincts and put my hand on his shoulder. He paused, dropping his head for a second. There was no pot around this time, so I was pretty sure he was getting emotional, not doing a party hunch. I stepped a bit closer and moved my hand along his back.
“Death is never fair,” I said, trying for my best pastoral-comfort-voice. I must have missed the mark, because he laughed.
“You mean murder, don’t you, Vangie?” He shook his head and lifted it. “That’s what the sheriff said in there. That they were opening a murder investigation.”
My hand stilled. I had already known they were investigating Claire’s murder, of course—I’d just been in the interrogation room myself—but it suddenly occurred to me that Malcolm might have said any number of things to Derek.
“They’re going to have more questions for me,” he said, wiping at his face. His voice wavered and he turned a key on his bike. “Sheriff asked for my alibi and everything. What kinda BS is that? Like I would ever kill her.” His lip quivered. “She was my world.”
“I’m sure it’s just standard procedure,” I said, parroting every TV cop I’d ever seen. Always look at the spouse—apparently, even if you had a potential suspect in custody.
“Well, the sheriff told me not to leave the area, so I guess I’m stuck in this dump for who-knows-how-long.” He shook his head at me, finally making eye contact again. “I can’t stand this place.”
“I’m sorry.”
His tongue moved around in his mouth, lodging somewhere between his back molars, making his lips curl over like he was thinking. He gave me a tight smile. “Don’t say any of this to Austin, okay? I was just spouting off. He’s a good kid. It’s his mom I don’t like.”
Nikki and Claire must have had a much more complicated relationship than I’d realized, because he hadn’t been just spouting off. There was genuine anger under there somewhere. Anger at quiet, respectable Nikki. The money had to be important.
“Thanks for talking to me, Vangie Vale.” He pushed down on the pedal to start his bike, and the noise roared in my ears. I backed up and he waved at me as he guided his bike out of the parking lot. He was a hurting man, that much was for sure.
Part of me wanted to head straight back to the Krantz house, but I wasn’t sure if the Van Andels would still be there. I didn’t want to have to talk about the situation with Derek in front of other people, however close they were to Nikki.
The door to the building clicked, and I looked up to see Malcolm exiting the office. His eyes met mine and darkened. He shut the door behind him and came out into the night.
“Evangeline. I thought I told you to go home.”
I thumbed behind me. “I was just talking to Derek Hobson.”
Malcolm’s brows came together hard, like bumper cars. “You know him?”
“No. He was parked beside me.” I dropped my hands to my sides in frustration. He was determined to think the worst of me. “He needed to vent about his wife’s death.”
“You shouldn’t be talking to him.” Malcolm crossed his arms. “Or do you just have a thing for criminals?”
“Don’t assume that he’s a criminal just because he rides a Harley.”
“He is a criminal, Evangeline.”
I hated the way he said my full name all the time. Like he was my father or something. And I hated the patronizing tone, which conveyed the message that he thought I was just some stupid girl who couldn’t handle herself.
“I’ve been around plenty of so-called criminals in my life,” I shot back, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. “And let me tell you, sometimes they’re better people than the so-called good guys.”
“Except this guy actually has a rap sheet.” His patronizing tone was back in full force. “So, by definition, he’s a bad guy.”
“Rap sheets aren’t proof that someone is a bad person.” I walked toward him, feeling my anger flare again. I hated the self-righteousness that bubbled up when people judged each other. Like they were white-washed. “People commit crimes for all kinds of reasons—usually desperation, not evil. So don’t you dare judge him.”
Instead of indignation, which I had expected, Malcolm cocked his head to one side and studied me like I was a puzzle with a missing piece. Something to solve. “You’re pretty worked up about this. You have a thing for him, too?”
“I don’t have a thing for anyone.”
“Derek doesn’t have an alibi for the time of death, and I know he was in Rolo all day because he was seen there.”
“Good, then, that makes him innocent.”
“What?” Malcolm reared ba
ck, shocked. “If we hadn’t already caught the killer, it would make him one of the primary suspects.”
“How? If she died here?”
His eyes went dark. “Claire died in Rolo.”
My mouth dropped open. I searched my memory of Malcolm’s first visit to the bakery. I was positive that he’d said the box of cookies had been found in Saint Agnes. Positive that the crime scene had been here, too.
“I thought…” I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing pulse, as the sheriff advanced on me again. I backed up against the hard edge of the Tank’s door. “I thought she was found here.”
“No.” He stopped, putting his hands on his hips, a confused look on his face. “Her body was found behind a gas station in Rolo.”
The breath that had been filling my lungs suddenly stopped, pulsing there as I held it in. A gas station in Rolo. I was afraid to ask which one, in case there was only one. In case it was the one that Henry had stopped at. I couldn’t process the information fast enough, and Malcolm took one step closer.
“So I want you to stay away from Derek Hobson. I mean it, Evangeline.” He grabbed my arm, but I wasn’t listening to him much by that point. I was still trying to process the fact that Claire had died behind a gas station in Rolo. With a box of cookies in her hands that had been purchased by Henry Savage.
And I was the one who’d sent him there.
I managed to nod my head. Somehow, I got into the Tank and started the drive home. Malcolm watched me leave the parking lot all the while, like I was in some sort of danger. Or like I was the danger.
But I still couldn’t stop thinking about the convergence of events. The box of cookies. The gas station in Rolo. The wrong left turn.
This was all my fault. Claire had died because of me.
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t sleep well that night, and by the time I woke up at three a.m., having tossed and turned for the last time, I decided I was up for good. It was pitch black outside, but it didn’t matter. I bundled up in my down coat and fur-lined boots and went outside. I needed to talk to my sister.