A Vintage View of Murder (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 27) by Mary Maxwell

Author:Mary Maxwell [Maxwell, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2019-03-29T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

“When did you last see Evie Hale?” I asked.

Vince Stafford smiled. It felt like I was watching a television commercial for a teeth whitening kit. We were sitting at a table in Java & Juice that afternoon. Vince had finally returned my call earlier in the day.

“It’s been years since I had an actual conversation with Evie,” he said. “I see her around town, of course, and I’m always polite enough to wave. But her father said and did some horrific things to me the summer that Evie was kidnapped. I made a pledge then and there to never again have anything to do with the Hale family.”

“What sort of bad things?”

“Not bad,” Vince said. “Horrific.”

“Can you give me an example?” I asked.

His eyes tightened into a cold stare. “Do you mean something specific?”

“That’s the idea.” I smiled. “Just one example.”

“Sean Hale accused me of molesting his daughter,” Vince said. “Is that specific enough for you?”

It was obvious that I’d crossed an invisible line with the handsome man dressed in tennis gear. In less than a minute, with a couple of short questions, Stafford’s demeanor had changed from affable to angry and defiant. Since I’d never heard about the dispute between Vince and Evie’s father, it felt like an ambush. And when I attempted to apologize and offer an explanation, Vince dismissed it with a croaky laugh.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m the one who should be saying I’m sorry. It’s just that all of this talk about things that happened ten years ago is bringing up some difficult memories for me.”

“And a few other people,” I said.

He offered a contemplative nod, glancing away as if he was trying to decide who I might mean.

“It was a nightmare,” he continued. “I’ve never stopped wondering about the weekend that Evie was abducted. It was the last time that I talked to her. It was also the last time that I saw Dwayne before his father sent him to boarding school. Something bad happened to that family back then. I suspect it started long before Evie was kidnapped and then released in exchange for a pile of her daddy’s money.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked. “Are we talking about an argument between Dwayne and his father?”

Vince sipped his coffee. Then he said, “How about between Dwayne and the world? That kid was under siege in those days. He was furious all the time; angry and abusive and filled with some kind of dark, ominous rage. At first, I thought it was standard teenage angst. But a week or so before Evie was abducted, I witnessed a couple of incidents that made me realize it wasn’t anything that easy to explain.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced down at the curls of steam rising from his coffee. The muscles in his jaw tightened as his fingers coiled around the bottom of the paper cup.

“Do you know that cliché about the survival of the fittest?” he said finally.

I nodded. “What some folks refer to

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