Blended Bribes

by Jessica Beck

  As we ate, the fire at ReNEWed and Gabby’s condition didn’t come up in the conversation. Instead, it was just a nice meal with two of the people I loved most in the world. As evenings went, it would be a tough one to top.

  Angelica brought us the bill, which Jake and Grace fought over before my husband arose victorious, and she asked, “Have you heard about the robberies in town?”

  “Have there been any more lately?” Jake asked her.

  “There was one this morning as Melanie Anspic was opening her shop for the day. He wore a mask and had a gun, and he completely cleaned her out.”

  “What’s the name of her business?” I asked.

  “Melanie’s Notions. He only got a few hundred dollars, but the poor woman is talking about shutting down altogether, she’s so afraid he’ll come back. I’m concerned that our new police chief is in over his head.”

  She glanced up as a man in uniform approached us. He was younger than Stephen Grant, and while our police chief had an air of confidence and competence about him, this young man appeared to be uncomfortable, in both his chief’s uniform and his new role.

  “What do you know? My mother used to say it all of the time: ‘Speak of the devil, and he appears.’ It’s a ghastly quote, isn’t it?” She turned to the chief. “Hello, Chief Erskine. Have you caught our robber yet?”

  “We’re following up on some promising leads,” the man said as he motioned to Jake. “Inspector, could I have a minute of your time?”

  Jake stayed put. “Sorry, but I haven’t been an inspector in some time.”

  “Please?” the chief asked.

  “Go on, Jake,” I urged him.

  He nodded as he put two twenties on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

  As Angelica took the money to make change, Grace asked, “What was that all about?”

  “The chief wants Jake to consult with him on these robberies. As a matter of fact, it was Stephen’s idea in the first place.”

  Grace frowned. “He promised me that he wasn’t going to try to get them together. I’m really sorry, Suzanne.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I think it might do Jake some good, and Chief Erskine clearly needs all of the help he can get. He looks a bit like a scared young colt, doesn’t he?”

  “Can you blame him? He’s had the job less than three weeks, and there have already been four robberies in Union Square. Stephen tried to help him out, but he’s got his hands full just dealing with April Springs. What do you think?”

  “I think he needs to catch whoever is doing this before he loses his job,” I said.

  “I mean about Jake helping out,” Grace persisted.

  “Personally, I think it’s a great idea,” I said.

  “Seriously? You wouldn’t mind?” She seemed surprised by my statement, and it pleased me that I wasn’t completely predictable, even to my best friend.

  “It’s what Jake was born to do, catching bad guys,” I said. “I know he has some doubts about doing it on a permanent basis again, but I think this would be perfect. He can consult with police forces around here when they need him and still do things like helping the mayor with his remodeling project. It’s the best of both worlds, if you ask me.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t suggested it to him,” Grace said.

  “I have, but tonight we’re going to have a much more serious conversation about it. Do me a favor.”

  “Anything,” Grace said. “All you have to do is ask.”

  “When Jake gets back, don’t say anything about it. I want to hit him at home when he’s least expecting it.”

  “You’re a devious woman and a conniving wife, Suzanne Hart,” Grace said with a smile. “Someday I want to grow up to be just like you.”

  I had to laugh. Maybe I was being a little sneaky, but it was for my husband’s own good, and after all, his happiness was paramount to me.

  When he returned to the table, Angelica had already made change. “I took care of the tip,” I said.

  “You didn’t have to,” Jake protested.

  “I didn’t. It was out of your change. By the way, you were feeling very generous tonight.”

  He laughed. “You know me. I’m just that kind of guy. Are you ladies ready to get out of here?”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Once we were outside, I told my husband, “I could ride home with you if Grace drives my Jeep.”

  “Okay,” Grace said hesitantly. I knew she didn’t really like driving it, but if I rode back to April Springs with Jake, it would give us a chance to talk about him consulting with Chief Erskine, and I wouldn’t have to wait until we got home.

  “Don’t be crazy,” Jake said, vetoing the idea instantly. “You two go on. I’ve got to swing by Hartman Building Supply while I’m in town anyway. They’re open till nine, and George wanted me to check out a new oscillating saw they just got in. I’ll give him credit. That man’s not afraid to spend money on new tools.”

  “So, he’s a guy after your own heart,” I said with a smile.

  “Hey, I don’t buy anything I don’t need,” Jake protested.

  “Of course not,” I agreed quickly. “Why would you?”

  He looked a little uneasy about winning so effortlessly, but I was just setting him up for the conversation we were going to have later at home. “Drive safe.”

  “You, too,” he said.

  After I collected a quick kiss, he went off to the hardware store, and Grace and I got into my Jeep. “Where to?” I asked her.

  “Well, we’ve just about exhausted our suspects here in town,” Grace said. “Should we head back to April Springs and see how Gabby’s doing?”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” I said as I started the Jeep and we took off. It had been an hour since I’d thought about my friend’s condition, and I felt bad about it. After all, while she was fighting for her life, I’d been enjoying a night out with my best friend and my husband.

  As we headed back to town, I found myself hoping that Gabby’s tenacity would prove to be the thing that saved her. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of having a Gabby-sized hole in my life. It would be hard enough not having ReNEWed right beside me. Her shop had been a fixture in April Springs long before I’d opened Donut Hearts, and as Gabby had often liked to say, it would be there long after I was gone.

  It turned out that she had been very wrong about that indeed.

  Chapter 13

  “So, what do you think of the case so far?” I asked Grace as we drove back in the general direction of home. “Is it at all possible that the fire was an accident?”

  “Not knowing Gabby,” Grace said. “I’ve got the feeling that whoever set that fire didn’t know Gabby all that well. Did you even know that she had a toaster oven in the shop?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” I said. “Is it possible that whoever did it brought it with them?”

  “I doubt that, but I wonder what else was near it? Maybe Gabby was putting together a donation for Goodwill. Isn’t that how she discarded clothes she couldn’t sell?”

  “That’s true enough. Okay, let’s say she brought it from home to take in with her other donations, and after she was struck down from behind, whoever did it panicked and looked around for a reason to set a fire to cover their tracks. It wouldn’t be hard to fray a cord and plug it in after the fire was set. If we look at it that way, it makes sense.”

  “At least more sense than Gabby plugging it in herself,” I said. A sudden thought occurred to me, and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. “Grace, we need to call Stephen right now.”

  “And say what?” she asked as she pulled out her cell phone.

  “If we’re right and someone set that fire to cover up their assault on Gabby, they have to make sure that she never regains consciousness,” I said. “That puts her life in danger every second she can’t tell anyone what really happened.”

  “I’ll call him,” Grace said, “and I’ll put it on speaker,
too.”

  “Hey,” the chief answered on the third ring. “What’s up?”

  “Do you have anybody guarding Gabby at the hospital?” Grace asked him.

  “No, of course not. I can’t spare that kind of manpower,” the chief said. “Besides, the fire was set by accident. There’s no reason in the world to believe that Gabby’s in any danger.”

  “Chief, it’s Suzanne,” I interjected. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “I still can’t spare someone around the clock to keep an eye on her,” the chief said, “but I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  “Can’t you at least have someone swing by and check on her every now and then?” Grace asked.

  I knew that would be useless even as she asked the question. If someone really wanted to kill her, they’d just wait until the moment was right and strike when no one was watching.

  “I suppose I could do that,” he said. “The last I heard, she was still in ICU. She’d be tough to get to there. They watch them around the clock.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Then we should be all right, at least for now.”

  “Ladies, far be it from me to criticize either one of your sleuthing skills, but I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there this time.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said as I motioned to Grace with a cutting motion.

  “Gotta go. Talk to you soon,” she said, hanging up before he had a chance to ask us what we’d been up to. “Well, that turned out to be a wash,” Grace said as she put her phone away.

  “Don’t stick that phone back in your bag so fast. I want to talk to Chief Lane.”

  “What do you think the fire chief can tell us that we don’t already know?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure, but why don’t we call him, and we’ll find out,” I suggested.

  She had to look the number up, and the fire chief answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Chief, this is Suzanne Hart and Grace Gauge,” I said. “We were wondering if we could ask you something about the fire at ReNEWed.”

  He paused a long time before answering, and when he did, there was a definite weariness in his voice. “So, you think it was deliberately set, too, don’t you?”

  “We do, but why do you think so?” Grace asked him.

  “I’ve been in this line of work for a very long time. There was something about it that just wasn’t right,” he said. “It was all a little too convenient, if you know what I mean.”

  “We don’t, actually,” Grace said.

  “I keep going over it again and again, and that toaster oven should never have been plugged in where it was.”

  “Where exactly was it? Did there happen to be anything else around it?” I asked him.

  “It was in the middle of several boxes of clothes, at least I think it was. I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to study the scene, if you know what I mean. I was too busy checking on Gabby and then trying to get her out of there.”

  “Did you happen to notice if there were any other small kitchen appliances nearby?” I asked him.

  He clucked his tongue a bit. “How in the world did you know that? I stumbled over a blender and a beat-up old mixer that were on the floor, too.”

  So maybe our theory had been right after all. If Gabby had been doing some cleaning at home and was putting together a donation, the toaster oven would make sense being in the shop. “Did you tell the inspector what you saw?”

  “I tried to, but he kind of dismissed me out of hand. I got the distinct impression that he thought I was a doddering old fool too antiquated to still be on the job.” He said it with a hint of bitterness in his voice, and really, I couldn’t blame him. It was an awful thing to be discounted just because of his age. Whatever happened to valuing experience?

  “You carried her out of that fire, and I doubt the inspector could have done that,” I said. “You should be proud of what you did.”

  “Thanks, Suzanne,” he said. “I appreciate that. I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. It could be time for me to hang it up. I’m still having trouble bouncing back after what happened. My body just isn’t the same as it used to be.”

  “How could it be?” Grace asked him. “I’ll tell you something, Chief. If I’m ever in a burning building, I hope you’re around to carry me out.”

  “Let’s hope it never comes to that, as much as I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “The inspector didn’t find any direct evidence of an accelerant, but he didn’t have his dog with him, so he could be wrong,” I said.

  “Not every arson case has to use gasoline or kerosene,” the chief said. “There was enough flammable material in that shop that whoever set it might not have needed it. That’s the problem with science some of the time. Common sense seems to go out the window.”

  “Are you going to pursue your theory?” I asked the chief.

  “I could appeal it, but until and unless Gabby comes to and tells us what really happened, it wouldn’t do much good. There’s just too much work as it is for too few people. I really hope she makes it,” he added almost wistfully.

  “So do we,” I said. “We’re heading over there right now to check on her.”

  “Let me know how she’s doing,” Chief Lane said, “and if she happens to wake up, tell her I said hello.”

  “When she wakes up, you mean,” I said, stressing the word “when,” “I’m sure you’re the first person she’ll want to talk to. She’ll want to thank you for being so heroic.”

  “I was just doing my job,” he said, but I could hear a hint of pride in his voice.

  “And doing it rather well at that,” Grace said.

  “Thanks, ladies. You do an old fire chief good.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” we said nearly in unison, and then, as we were all laughing, we ended the call.

  “What do you think?” Grace asked me.

  “I think we’d better solve this before Gabby gets out of ICU,” I said. “Once she’s in a regular room and not being monitored around the clock, I have a hunch that whoever tried to get rid of her will make another go of it.”

  “Let’s talk about our suspects again,” I said. We still had a ways to go before we got to the hospital, and we might as well use the time productively.

  “Sounds good,” Grace said. “Buster Breckinridge has to be at the top of our list.”

  “He had motive enough, and any one of our suspects would have the means, but did he have the opportunity?” I asked her.

  “Don’t forget the dinner break he and Manny took separately,” Grace reminded me.

  “I was just about to mention that,” I said. “Either one of them could have done it, and Manny had his own motive if Gabby was making things difficult for him, which we both know she was more than capable of doing.”

  “Okay, how about Tyra Hitchings?” Grace asked me.

  “She admitted herself that she had an argument with Gabby, but it’s hard to believe that she’d kill her over feeling cheated on her prices,” I said. “Then again, we both know how proud Tyra is, and she’s certainly got a temper. She could have lashed out, and not just verbally, and then tried to cover her tracks, especially if she thought Gabby was already dead.”

  “That has to go for Mindy Fulbright, too,” Grace added. “If she felt that Gabby was stealing her man, she could have lashed out in anger, or even a fit of jealousy.”

  “I know it’s hard to see Mindy in that light,” I said reluctantly, “but I have to agree with you there. After all, we’ve both seen people do worse things in the name of love than that in the past. She has to stay on our list.”

  “Wow, who knew Gabby had that many people who would want to see the end of her?” Grace asked, and then she quickly corrected herself. “Fine, I know that she’s not the most popular person in town, but burning her shop down after assaulting her goes way beyond the usual scope of things.”

  “I can’t believe it was planned,” I said. “Everything about it says that it wa
s spur of the moment. How would someone possibly know there would be something in the shop they could blame the fire on? Besides, it appears that Gabby was struck down from behind, not something that would probably be planned out ahead of time. We need to get a feel for who would act impulsively in the situation.”

  “Funny, but looking at it from that perspective, it almost feels as though Buster is the only one we should discount,” Grace said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He was in prison for what must have felt like an eternity to him,” she said. “Wouldn’t you think if he really wanted revenge for Gabby’s testimony, he could have come up with something better than bashing her in the back of the head and then setting ReNEWed on fire? If he burned the shop down, he had to know that the police would come looking for him first, especially since he has a history of arson, no matter what he might claim. A fire is the absolute worst thing he could do.”

  “Unless he was being a little too cute,” I said. “He might consider setting a blaze poetic justice.”

  We both looked at each other for a moment and then shook our heads at the same time. “No,” I said, “I don’t think he’s that clever.”

  “Still, he needs to stay on the list, just maybe not at the top of it,” Grace said.

  “Agreed.”

  As we neared the hospital, I felt myself tense up. I couldn’t imagine what Gabby’s state was at the moment. She could have recovered from the blow and the fire, or she could have succumbed to the assault.

  Until I heard otherwise though, I would keep digging into what had happened at ReNEWed with Grace.

  I owed that to my friend, at the very least.

  Chapter 14

  When we got there, Gabby wasn’t in the intensive care unit. “What’s going on, Penny?” I asked as I saw my friend at the nurses station.

  “Don’t look so panicked! She’s still alive, Suzanne,” she said quickly. “They moved her to a private room.”

  “Is she awake?” I asked her as relief flooded through me.

  “She is, and her improvement is amazing. As a matter of fact, I was just about to call you. She’s demanding to see you.”