Diamonds & Donuts: A Jessica James Cozy Mystery (Murder on the Equator Book 4)

by Jennifer Joy

  Mammy held out her hand. “Drill, please.”

  I’d already fished it out of my backpack. “You’re sure it won’t be too noisy?”

  She didn’t answer me. Instead, she turned to the lock and popped the tumbler open quicker than I could think to count. I was impressed.

  We looked around to make sure we hadn’t woken any of the neighbors, watching windows as we wheeled the sturdy dolly we’d use to get my mixer back to my shop. No lights. Good.

  I prayed Sal hadn’t hidden my mixer inside his house. I could easily justify breaking into his yard. I mean, after all, it was just an extension of the outdoors, right?

  Silently, we squeezed between his red Mazda pickup and the concrete wall separating his property from his neighbor’s, hoping to find what we’d come for so we could leave before we were noticed. No harm done. Only a broken lock, which was way nicer than what he’d done to my shop.

  Sal wouldn’t be able to say anything without admitting he’d broken into my place to steal my mixer, and I’d have the satisfaction of opening on Saturday despite his attempts to stop me. Win-win.

  Past the carport, his backyard opened up to reveal a padlocked shed tucked away in the shadows. Bingo!

  We tiptoed across his lawn in unison.

  Abuelita pulled a paper clip out of her pocket. “I know how open lock too,” she said, then went to work.

  I heard the lock click, and Abuelita whispered, “We in.”

  MacGyver would have been proud.

  Abuelita pushed the door open as I shined the flashlight through the doorway. Something bulged under a tarp in the far corner. I’d bet one hundred doughnuts it was my mixer. It was the right size and height.

  “There it is,” I said.

  Abuelita took a step inside, and I leaned forward to follow her when I heard a faint metal click that froze both of us mid-step.

  Air horns pierced through the quiet night at the same time I saw the tripwire Abuelita had stepped on. We’d set off a booby trap.

  I dropped my flashlight in my haste to cover my ears, and just as quickly bent over to pick it up. Determined, I headed inside the shed to rescue my kidnapped mixer. I was too close to give up now. A couple more steps.

  Something tugged on me from behind, pulling me back when all I wanted to do was uncover my mixer.

  It was Mammy. She shouted something, but I couldn’t hear anything over the shrill blares of the air horns. I couldn’t imagine ever being able to hear anything again, the noise was so loud.

  But while I couldn’t hear to understand what she said, I understood her when she waved for me to follow her and tugged on my shirt again.

  I looked longingly at my mixer, waiting for me to rescue it from under the tarp in the corner. It was so close!

  But common sense and the panic on Mammy’s face told me we were busted, and I didn’t want to get caught. There was no way I could have loaded the mixer onto the dolly my own or rolled it out of Sal’s backyard unseen.

  It was hard, but I turned away from the shed.

  Abuelita was already by the back of Sal’s pickup when we finally collected ourselves enough to follow. There were lights on in the windows now. We ducked into the shadows.

  Mercifully, the air horns quit blaring, but our relief was only brief. Over the echo of the sirens still ringing in my ears, I heard an explosive bang that made me reach for whoever was closest, shoving them to the ground as I dropped and covered my head.

  “My glasses!” shouted Tia Rosa, wriggling out of my hold. She blinked and blindly patted the grass around her.

  Mammy shouted, “What? Why are you whispering?”

  I looked up to see white powder floating around us, covering our black duds so that we looked like as subtle as marquee signs at a theater. Tonight’s showing for your entertainment pleasure: Four Fumbling Filchers.

  “I no see!” Tia Rosa exclaimed louder than before.

  Sal’s neighbor’s lights turned on. Great.

  I tried to shush them, but none of us could hear worth beans. I couldn’t even hear my own shush.

  “Bertha, help us find her glasses so we can get out of here!” Mammy yelled.

  “You get us caught, Rosa! We go! Why you always ruin the escape?” Despite her complaint, Abuelita dropped to the ground in search of her sister’s glasses.

  “Okay. You want leave? You leave! You selfish,” Tia Rosa replied because bickering when we should have been running away was the perfect solution to our current predicament.

  Abuelita fired back, “You no want to be only one catched. Who selfish now?”

  Had I not been frantically searching for Tia Rosa’s glasses in the vain hope we could manage to make it back through the carport before being seen, I might have laughed. Here we were trying to be stealth retrievers of stolen goods, avengers of justice against an evil doughnut-hater, and we were covered in white powder, shouting at each other over our ringing ears while we crawled around the yard to find the flashiest pair of rhinestone bejeweled glasses ever to disappear. Seriously, they should have sparkled or something!

  Just when I was thinking it was a miracle Sal hadn’t shown up yet, I heard the metallic slide and click of someone racking a handgun.

  I squinted up into the blink-inducing porch light to see the dangerous end of a firearm pointed at me. Sal’s triumphant voice said, “The police are on their way. You and your friends are in a heap of trouble, Señorita James.”

  Abuelita tried to make a run for it, but she didn’t get far. After a mighty leap to her feet from her squatting position in the grass, she hobbled and groaned. “I too old for this,” she mumbled, rubbing her cramped legs.

  Sal shouted after her, “There’s no sense running, Abuelita. This has been a long time coming, and I’m delighted I get to be the one to send you to jail.”

  I seriously considered running back to the shed. If I was going to jail, I at least wanted the satisfaction of seeing my mixer.

  That realization weighed my feet down like a ton of lead. Oh my goodness, we were going to jail.

  My plan, which had seemed so innocent and foolproof minutes ago, now sounded like so many levels of stupid.

  Red and blue lights flashed. Gus and Officer “Rigid” walked through the gaping gate, their flashlights trained on us.

  I raised my hands palms out in surrender. Maybe cooperation would encourage leniency. Plus, there was nowhere to go. I’d checked. We were trapped.

  Gus crossed his arms and shook his head. “I’m going to have to take you ladies to the station.”

  His eye caught something on the ground near the back tire of Sal’s Mazda. He reached down, picked it up, and held it out to Tia Rosa. “I believe these are yours,” Gus said.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Tia Rosa shoved her glasses on, glaring at Abuelita. “You stand by them and you no see the glasses? How you no see?”

  “If you no lose the glasses, we escape,” Abuelita retorted.

  “I no step on the booby trap. Who do that, eh, Bertha?”

  “Do you hear that, Officer Rivera? It sounds premeditated to me. Aren’t you going to handcuff them?” Sal asked, clearly enjoying his moment.

  Gus leveled his gaze at Sal. “Put that thing away before you hurt someone. You’d better have a permit.”

  “I’m not the one breaking the law here,” Sal called out after us as Gus waited for us to walk in a single file down the carport and into the backseat of his police car.

  “Guess you won’t be opening on Saturday after all!” were the last words I heard before the car door closed behind me.

  Sal had won.

  Chapter 18

  It was the longest night of my life.

  Gus, like the sensible man he was, locked us up and went home to go back to sleep. After overcoming my initial shock that not all police stations were open twenty-four hours a day, every day — especially in a serene place like Baños — I leaned against the wall and sank to the floor to contemplate what I’d done. This
was the worst timeout ever.

  I’d always been the good kid. Now? I wasn’t so sure what I was. Good kids didn’t spend the night in jail. They didn’t trespass onto other people’s property either — no matter how justifiable their motive.

  All four of us crammed into the single jail cell in town. It was a sad concrete square surrounded by thick bars and feeling all the smaller for its having two other occupants in it.

  One look at the narrow spaces between the bars, and I gave up all thoughts of escape. Not even Abuelita could squeeze through (and, believe me, she tried).

  Our cell mates — a couple of guys that reeked of stale beer (among other things that made me hold my breath) — woke up when the door slammed shut behind us.

  The blinking fluorescent light overhead lit Abuelita’s face up in an eerie greenish glow.

  The drunks cowered in their corner, professing her to be some malevolent god out to claim their souls for their wrongs.

  Abuelita took full advantage of the situation. “You no drink so much no more or I get you. I no be so nice the next time.” She shook her finger at them as she scolded.

  I stayed on the cold, hard floor feeling defeated because it would take a miracle to get out of this mess in time for my opening tomorrow. Tomorrow.

  The immediacy of the day and my failure before I’d even begun made my stomach hurt. Or maybe I was just hungry.

  What I wanted more than anything was a hot cup of strong, black coffee and a fresh cake doughnut with creamy frosting and sprinkles on top. Sprinkles made everything better.

  If only I could’ve peeked inside the shed before the cacophony had begun.

  Mammy sat on the bench lining one side of the cell, sitting back so far her feet dangled off the end. She swung them like a kid on a swing, like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  She grinned at me when I lifted my forehead from my knees. “You sure know how to show a gal a good time, Sugar. Reminds me of my younger days.”

  I was almost in tears and feeling worse at her attempt to make me feel better. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered through the lump squeezing my throat.

  Mammy reached down and pinched my chin between her fingers, lifting my face up. “I hardly think this is the first time Bertha and Rosa have seen the inside of a prison. Is it, girls?”

  Tia Rosa chuckled softly but said nothing.

  Abuelita shrugged her bony shoulders and scuffed at a spot only she could see on the floor. “One time, two time, three time. Is no important.”

  Wow, so it was true. I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Tia Rosa and Abuelita were two of my best friends. I had befriended felons.

  Tia Rosa said in a hushed tone, “We guerrilleras for little time. Is how we get the guns in Bertha’s secret room.”

  “Guerrilleras? Like guerrillas?” I asked, knowing I shouldn’t be as shocked as I was. Guerrillas trumped felons.

  Abuelita shushed her with a frown. “You crazy? We no talk about that. We stupid girls make bad decision.”

  Tia Rosa huffed. “It was 60s. The whole world in the revolution.”

  “Shush!” hissed Abuelita.

  “Some day we tell you the story,” Tia Rosa said, sticking her tongue out at Abuelita.

  My curiosity was piqued. I’d seen Abuelita’s secret room, and while her extracurricular activities explained the mini arsenal inside her house, I suspected her questionable decision-making had begun much earlier than in the 1960s.

  “Where did you get that ancient gun that’s mounted like a canon and looks like it’s wound up with a crank shaft?” I asked.

  Tia Rosa answered in a respectful hush, “Is call rotary cannon machine gun. That from our mother.”

  Abuelita placed her hand over her heart. “She amazing woman.”

  I could only imagine.

  Mammy pinched my chin tighter. “The point is, Jess, that life is a gift meant to be lived fully. When you get to be our age, I want you to have stories to tell like we do. You’ll make mistakes and bad choices. That’s part of living. But wouldn’t you rather get knocked down a few times than look back on the years and regret not giving it your all?”

  Tia Rosa and Abuelita nodded in agreement.

  The drunk men in the corner started wailing. They had regrets, they were certain of it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t remember them.

  Abuelita lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers as if she were casting a spell on them. With her glowing green face, she looked the Wicked Witch of the West from the land of Oz. “Is enough cry,” she ordered.

  We didn’t hear another peep from the occupants of the far end of the cell for the rest of the night.

  As the next few hours passed, and I watched Mammy, Tia Rosa, and Abuelita chat and laugh about their past adventures and the irony of them being caught in a booby trap, my desperation faded. Don’t get me wrong, it was still there. But it didn’t have the same choke-hold on me as it had before.

  It wouldn’t happen today, but someday, I’d look back on the night’s episode and chuckle about it just like they did. Already, I imagined how I’d draw Jungle Jane’s latest adventure (complete with an escape and a happy ending). I wondered what Eduardo would think of it. I had wanted to have an adventure — not this one, of course. But when I got to thinking about the air horns, the explosion of powder, us fumbling around on our hands and knees, yelling at each other while trying to find Tia Rosa’s glasses, I found myself smiling. It was going to be a fun drawing.

  Gus returned when the sun had been up for at least an hour.

  Abuelita’s face had turned back to its normal tan, and the borrachos tried to convince Gus that she turned into an ogre at night.

  We were allowed out of the cell. They were told they needed more time to sleep it off.

  I was certain Gus would lead us into one of those gray rooms with a metal table and two chairs the police always used for questioning criminals on TV shows. I wondered which role Gus would take. Good cop or bad cop. So, I was almost disappointed when he led us out to the reception area and said, “Okay, you’re free to go.”

  “What?” I blurted.

  Gus raised his eyebrows. “You don’t want to go?”

  “Of course, I do, but … are you certain we can just leave?” It was stupid to argue with a cop when he was trying to let you go, but I was on a roll apparently. I clamped my lips shut before I said something else I’d regret.

  Abuelita rolled her eyes at me. “You crazy? Why you argue?” She grabbed Tia Rosa, and in a blink they were gone, hotfooting it across the park toward Sylvia’s restaurant.

  “Sal didn’t press charges,” Gus said, adding, “So long as you’ll replace his padlock and the bags of corn flour, he’s willing to let it go.”

  “Corn flour?” I asked.

  Gus reached up to his forehead, massaging his temples. “From his homemade booby traps. The explosion of white powder was corn flour.”

  “Is that legal?”

  He glared at me. “Like anything you did last night was legal. You should be grateful Sal was so understanding.”

  I crossed my arms. How dare Sal play the Good Citizen when he’d stolen my mixer.

  Gus must have read my mind. “He swears up and down that he didn’t steal your mixer.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Like Sal would admit anything to a policeman.

  “I can see you don’t believe me. Well, I didn’t believe him either,” Gus said.

  My scowl faded. Gus was all right after all. Wait, he said “didn’t” — past tense. My skepticism returned.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m going to in the hope that you’ll leave him alone,” he continued.

  Ooh, insider information! I was on pins and needles, but I tried not to look too excited about it when he needed to know how much I disapproved at him siding with Sal.

  “I took the liberty of looking in his shed.”

  “And?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t there.”

  “There wa
s a tarp—” I began.

  “With an old desk and lamp under it,” he finished.

  Mammy said what I was thinking. “He must have moved the mixer.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You know how bulky and awkward that mixer is. Do you really think Sal is strong enough to move it on his own and as quickly as you claim he’d have to?”

  I was too stubborn to admit he might have a point. “Can’t you get a search warrant?”

  “Just promise me you won’t pull another stunt like the one you did last night again? Angry doesn’t even begin to describe what Adi was at me this morning for locking you up. She threatened to tell Jake and Agent Washo,” Gus shivered.

  Come to think of it, Washo and Jake were a scary combination. Washo must know at least a thousand ways to torture a guy, and Jake would know dozens of hiding places nobody would think to look. “Is that why you haven’t asked Adi out yet?” I asked without thinking to explain the thought process leading me to that conclusion.

  The front door swung open, and Angry Art Man barged in. “Have you found the paintings yet?” he asked, wiping the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief.

  When he saw me, he snarled. I wondered where he’d been lately, and if he had any handkerchiefs embroidered with black cats.

  Gus sighed. Either he was sick of Angel Flores or he was relieved to dodge my question. “Sorry ladies. I have bigger problems to deal with than you. Eight paintings have been stolen now. Every one but Angel Flores’ and yours — which is safe and being analyzed by our team of experts in Ambato,” he emphasized with a weary look at the man.

  How interesting that his painting had been spared. I eyed Angel suspiciously until Gus added, “That, and the jewel thief struck again.”

  I really looked at Gus then. I saw the dark circles around his eyes. “You didn’t get any rest at all last night, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  Some friend I was for all the extra trouble I’d caused him. It was pointless to ask, but I did anyway. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  He didn’t break out in laughter as I’d expected. I braced myself for a sarcastic retort along the lines of, “Haven’t you helped enough already?” or something.