Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2) (29 page)

‘We will,’ Bishop said, cutting into the bacon and toast. ‘For anything and everything we can. But Tabitha, I have to ask. Is this … mystery solving thing going to be habitual with you? It’s bloody hard on my nerves. Am I going to be picking up the pieces of your investigations on a regular basis? It’s more interesting than attending car crashes and minor burglaries, but I need some warning if I have to face elaborate plots and diabolical masterminds more than once or twice in a lifetime.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, leaning my chin on my hands. ‘It’s always an accident.’

Bishop nodded solemnly. ‘That’s what scares me.’

I paused before saying the thing that had been bothering me most. ‘Do you think Alice might be a victim in this after all? I mean, I could be completely wrong. Maybe Drake did abuse her, that kind of thing can mess people up for life — she could be a compulsive liar and still not have actually killed Annabeth.’

‘You could be wrong,’ said Bishop, filling his mouth with mushrooms. ‘But I don’t think you are. When it comes to people, Tish, I trust your instincts above mine. Above just about anybody’s.’

‘Really?’ I stared at him. ‘But sometimes I get it completely and utterly wrong.’

‘You have a better hit rate than most.’

‘I do?’ This was news to me.

‘Comes from listening to people’s problems all the time, I guess. You’ve been paying attention to other humans your whole life.’

‘You make it sound like a superpower. Mostly I anticipate what kind of coffee my customers want. Or what kind of ice cream might cheer them up.’

Ooh, that reminded me. ‘Okay, pick up your plate. You have to come join the party. There’s something you won’t want to miss.’

By the time I dragged Bishop into my brunch, Darrow had produced several bottles of champagne. That’s what friends are for.

Xanthippe and Ceege were deep in a conversation about com- mitting perfect crimes, and how they would do it if they wanted to bump someone off without getting themselves arrested.

If Bishop was going to be scared by something, it should be his sister’s imagination.

‘See, being online should be the perfect alibi, but it’s not,’ said Ceege. ‘I mean, my Guild would know if someone logged on to
World of Warcraft
pretending to be me. It wouldn’t be me. Like, if Tabs tried to do it, she’d screw up royally in the first five minutes.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, accepting my glass of champagne.

‘Well, you would, babe. It’s a whole different language. Catchphrases. Greetings. We have a code. You wouldn’t pass the first conversation with Dweeb the Destroyer, or Darkest Helena.’

‘No alibi is perfect,’ said Bishop thoughtfully.

‘But someone like Dark Dweeb or Helen the Destroyer could pretend to be you,’ Xanthippe said, pointing a long manicured finger at Ceege. ‘To set up the perfect alibi.’

‘Nah, the ISPs would be wrong.’ Ceege looked at Bishop. ‘You have cops who understand about ISPs, right?’

Bishop looked alarmed. ‘Yes, yes we do,’ he said, not sounding overly convincing. We all took pity on him by not asking if he knew what an ISP was.

‘Anyway,’ Ceege went on. ‘They’re all living in California and Bulgaria. The rest of my Guild.’

‘They say they are,’ said Xanthippe. ‘In reality they could all be twelve-year-olds who live down the road from you. And they could be plotting your death as we speak.’

I left them to their plans, and went to fetch my
pièce de résistance
. As I pulled the carton out of the freezer, the door swung open and Stewart followed me in. ‘Dessert? Brunch comes with dessert? Yer breaking all the food rules left, right and centre, as ever.’

‘Ice cream laughs in the face of rules.’

‘Aye, whatever helps ye sleep at night.’

Stewart went for the right cupboard without asking, and loaded up a tray with sundae glasses. ‘So Bishop is here. As a…’

‘Friend,’ I admitted, though my voice went up at the end of the word and hovered.

Stewart raised his eyebrows. ‘No’ going with a different noun these days?’

‘Tried at Christmas. It didn’t quite stick.’

Not having a formally defined boyfriend was of course not the same thing as being available. Because … the thing with Bishop was still a thing. At least, I was pretty sure it had been, up until last night when he saw the
Flynn By Night
kiss up on the screens.

It had occurred to me way too late that while Bishop had known about the kiss and its existence, he might not have actually known who it was I had been kissing. And that might make a difference.

Stewart was smiling, a certain kind of smile that made me want to smack him just a little bit. ‘Redefining a relationship is not the same thing as breaking up,’ I said firmly. ‘And none of it was because of you.’

‘Aye right.’ He was still smiling. Possibly there was now smirking.

‘It was a necessary step on my personal journey, and that whole … thing about kissing you was a symptom, not a cause.’ If I said it firmly enough, I might believe it.

Stewart shrugged. ‘Eh, I’ve been called worse.’

I set the tub on the table with a thump along with my candy pink retro ice cream spoon. ‘I’m serious.’

He leaned down and kissed me. I wasn’t prepared for it at all, but Stewart kept kissing me until I caught up. I was surprised and flustered and he tasted of blueberry pancakes and coffee (always coffee, with Stewart). By the time he let me think again, I had my arms around his neck, and was completely failing to play hard to get.

‘Damn,’ I said breathlessly.

Stewart reached out, and picked up the ice cream spoon. ‘Just so ye know, tha’ had nothing to do wi’
ye
. It’s all about my own personal journey.’

‘I hate you right now.’

‘Could as easily hae been Xanthippe, or Ceege. Ye happened tae be there.’

I took the ice cream spoon off him, and hit him on the nose with it. ‘I missed you when you went away,’ I said grumpily. ‘Don’t let it go to your head. And don’t do it again.’

‘Oh, I’m sticking around,’ he said lightly. ‘Marshmallows?’

‘This is death by vanilla, and it is not to be served with marshmallows.’

‘What if my personal journey requires marshmallows?’

I stepped on his foot, accidentally on purpose. ‘I think you’ll survive.’

Later that day, once my crowd of decadent brunch eaters had rolled off to their own homes to spend the afternoon napping or working (Stewart claimed he had three chapters to catch up on, and I was only allowed to come bother him when he was up to date with his word count, honestly, writers) I drove my own little car out in the direction of Flynn.

It was a stinker of a hot day, and after a morning in the kitchen it was rather lovely to be out in the country where the green overhanging trees provided shade from the glare.

I parked near the precipice where I had found Jason Avery, and sent a text message. Twenty minutes or so later, his Holden pulled up behind me, and he came over to sit in my passenger seat. ‘Don’t do it, Tabs. You have so much to live for.’ He had been spending way too much time with Ceege lately.

‘Funny,’ I said, grabbing a bag of leftover pastries from the backseat, and throwing them at him. Gotta feed the teenagers. They’ve got growing to do.

‘Huh, these are good,’ he said, eyeing one of the chocolate ones and then demolishing it in two bites.

‘I could teach you how to make them,’ I said. I’d made a flask of coffee, and poured a cup for each of us. I do good picnic.

Jason gave me a suspicious look. ‘Oh yeah?’

‘My waitresses are very unreliable. Especially in summer when the surf is up and holiday romances are calling. I could do with another pair of hands around the café. If you like it, you could look at catering college next year, once you know what your plans are.’

He laughed. ‘Dad would kill me. I can’t leave Flynn.’

‘You wanted to get out of this town because of what people thought of you before. Won’t things be worse now? You could be waiting up to a year before the trial. Besides, anything you can do to show that you’re making a go of your life will help your case.’

‘What if I have to go to jail?’

‘You won’t,’ I said firmly.

‘Know that for sure, do you?’ Jason shook his head. ‘Look, Tabs, you’re a top chick and I appreciate it. Believe me, I do. But I have to stick with my family right now. With Dad paying my lawyer’s bills I can’t afford to go against him.’

‘Jason,’ I said softly. ‘You have to get out of this town. We’re only an hour up the highway, but it could make all the difference to you.’

‘Yeah, well. Maybe someday.’ He did another one of those boy shrugs I was getting so used to. ‘Sorry about the firework, by the way. Since you gave me pastries.’

That was one detail I had forgotten about. I gaped. ‘That was you? You blew up my kitchen?’

He winced. ‘Burgers McCall showed me and Shay how to make sparkler bombs, back in grade seven. He always had this theory about what would happen if you put one in a microwave, but never tested it. I really didn’t think it would make that much mess,’ he added, all in a rush. ‘I didn’t think about it much at all, actually. Alice kind of — she was good at that. She’d say stuff, and it made sense. I wanted to help her.’

ASIO should be recruiting Burgers McCall for their espionage equipment department. As for Alice — that woman was good. Or bad, more to the point. Her ability to manipulate people was pathological. ‘She wasn’t even using sex,’ I said in awe, shaking my head. ‘Just niceness.’

Jason looked amused — and possibly relieved that I wasn’t angry about it. Of course if he did come to work in my kitchen, I’d have to dye his hair before Nin set eyes on him again, maybe provide some kind of costume that covered his entire face…

‘Nah, she wasn’t,’ he admitted with a grin. Then looked at me, troubled. ‘How’d you know she didn’t use sex?’

I hesitated then, because I hadn’t been sure I would raise this last part. ‘Xanthippe found the card from Alice’s phone a while back. Including some texts that showed — that you definitely weren’t romantically involved with her.’

Jason’s eyes flicked to me, and then he hunched over, avoiding my gaze. ‘Is that going to go public, do you reckon?’

‘Xanthippe gave the memory card to the police,’ I admitted. ‘But she deleted quite a lot of the messages first.’

Jason nodded, though there was a definite ‘freaked out’ look about the eyes. ‘That’s good, I suppose.’

I could tell he was trying to figure out which messages Alice might have kept, and which might be the worst for anyone to read. ‘I don’t think it’s anyone’s business what you talked about with her. But I’d lay off the line about having a romantic thing going with Alice. It’s not going to help.’

Xanthippe had never actually told me what was in the messages she deleted, but I’d figured it out for myself. She’s not someone who gets squeamish about violating privacy most of the time, so I was assuming a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of situation.

Damn it, what had that small town done to him that he thought he had anything to be ashamed of?

Jason shook his head, almost laughing, though there was nothing funny about the expression on his face. ‘You know, you’re the one who assumed that me and Alice had a thing. I let you cos it was easier.’

‘You have to stop lying, Jason. You’re in enough trouble.’ I paused. ‘Of course, a few deleted messages aren’t going to change the fact that you told Alice all your secrets. I don’t know that you can trust her to keep confidences at this point.’

Jason groaned faintly. ‘Yeah. I’d figured that already. Is this why you made me that offer? The kitchen thing?’

‘One of the reasons. It’s easier to stop pretending you’re something you’re not when you leave home.’

‘Yeah,’ Jason said, not sounding convinced. ‘Hobart isn’t the big smoke, Tabitha.’

‘It’s a start. Or, you know. You could tell him.’

‘Tell my dad I fancy blokes now? Yeah. That will really perk up his week.’

I gave him a withering look. People had been giving me enough of them lately. About time I gave back to the community. ‘Tell your best friend you’re in love with him.’

‘Bloody hell.’ Jason slumped lower in the car seat. ‘You are such a
girl
, Tabitha.’

‘Get over yourself, Jason. I live with an engineering student who wears frocks on the weekend. You’re not that weird.’

He ground his teeth. ‘I don’t feel like seeing Shay’s face at the exact moment he starts to hate me.’

‘He didn’t hate you when everyone was saying you killed his sister. Which is way worse, right?’

Jason shrugged, defeated. ‘He’s not going to be okay with this. I know you live in a shiny little world where — everyone wears glitter and goes to awesome parties and uses words like
genderqueer
. But I live in the real world. I’m going to stay in Flynn and keep my fucking chin up and do everything my dad tells me to, and pretend to fancy girls until — I don’t know. Forever, maybe. That’s my life.’

It didn’t sound like much of a life to me. ‘Shay might…’

‘Don’t,’ Jason said, eyes blazing fiercely. ‘Don’t patronise me. They don’t come any straighter than him.’

‘You’re the one who had a steady girlfriend,’ I pointed out. ‘He might think the same about you.’ And then, being the person I was, I decided to strike the really low blow. ‘Shay still thinks his dead sister was cheating on you. Don’t you think it would be fair to let him know you weren’t that bothered?’

Jason took another pastry out of the bag, and bit savagely into it, sending broken bits of white chocolate and blueberry juice everywhere. ‘Do you try to win every conversation?’

‘I’m always right when I’m talking about choux pastry. The rest of the time — I’m only mostly right. Think about the job offer, yeah?’

‘Oh yeah,’ he said, staring out at the criminally beautiful view before us — trees and valley and the illusion of tranquility. ‘I’ll be thinking about it.’

It was the best I could do.

I should have gone home after that, curled up in bed and just let my body recover from the emotional drama of the last … well. Not the last few days. The month. The year. My life.