Chapter 2
The duchess inched a phone out of her evening bag. “I’ll call her. She’s my best friend.”
The duke rolled his eyes and tapped the screen of his phone.
The king glared at the duke.
Neither the duchess nor the duke got an answer.
Tucking her phone away, the duchess turned to me. “You should go find her and bring her back. She works at Freeze.”
Freeze was my favorite ice cream shop. It was a little surprising that no one there had told me that a fellow employee had been elected this year’s queen. Even stranger, Jocelyn had worked at Freeze until we hired her only a week before the Fourth, and even though Jocelyn must have heard me mention that the king and queen were riding in my car, she hadn’t said that the queen was one of her ex-coworkers.
The duke scowled at the duchess. “She’s only fifteen minutes late.”
The duchess squinched her mouth to about the size of a raisin. “Just trying to be helpful. And it’s more like twenty minutes.”
The girl with the megaphone turned a pair of puppy-like and hopeful liquid brown eyes on me. “Would you, please? I . . . don’t have my license yet.” She blushed. She couldn’t have been much over sixteen, if that.
“Sure.” I gave her my phone number. “Call if she shows up?”
I pulled out of line. Waving, I zoomed past the fire truck and the police cruiser. I drove as quickly as was safe all the way to downtown Fallingbrook and I parked beside Freeze. Inside, the shop smelled like especially good chocolate and vanilla.
Kelsey, a clerk I recognized from my frequent visits, was behind the counter. She was younger than I was, and quite pretty with her hazel eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. A strand of auburn hair escaped from underneath her frilled pink paper cap. She was barely taller than I was. With a welcoming smile, she asked what I’d like to buy.
“Everything, but I can’t right now. I’m looking for . . . you, maybe? Are you today’s queen of the Fabulous Fourth Festivities?”
“That’s Taylor Wishbard, but she won’t be in today. She has the day off. She’s going to be in the parade this morning. Maybe you can catch her when the parade arrives at the village square. She gets to sit in the reviewing stand.”
“She was supposed to be at the parade-marshaling grounds at nine thirty and ride in my car, but she wasn’t there.”
Kelsey glanced toward the closed kitchen door, and then looked back at me. “I thought that if she would ever be on time for anything, it would be this Fourth of July stuff. It’s a big deal.”
The middle-aged woman who owned Freeze and told everyone to call her Mama Freeze backed into the swinging door from the kitchen. She turned to face us. Like Kelsey, she wore a cute apron, pink and white striped with ruffles around the edges. She was carrying a cardboard barrel of ice cream. “What’s a big deal?”
Kelsey gave her a bright smile. “Taylor being queen today.”
Mama Freeze set the cardboard barrel on the counter. “Brrr! Yes, Taylor deserves this honor. She’s gorgeous, for one thing, and she works so hard here. We’re very proud of her, aren’t we, Kelsey?”
“We sure are!”
My phone rang. “The queen’s here,” a girl said over the phone. “Can you come right back?”
I promised to be there as soon as I could, told Kelsey and Mama Freeze that Taylor had been located, and tore out of Freeze.
Concerned about further delaying the parade’s start, I exceeded a few speed limits on my way back to the falls. I parked in the spot I’d left, behind the fire truck and in front of a long, low maroon and silver 1970s sedan. I got out of my car.
The girl with the clipboard and megaphone escorted a tall young woman in a curve-hugging white gown toward me. Queen Taylor could barely wobble in her very high white satin heels. Waves of blond hair cascaded over her bare shoulders. Dramatically, she placed a bling-studded gold crown on her head. Her crown, along with the shoes, made her almost as tall as the king. With a coy smile, she placed a hand lightly on his arm.
His handsome face remained impassive, and he didn’t turn his head toward her. He still wasn’t wearing his crown.
I again opened the door to the seat behind mine. I rolled down the window in that door and pushed the cute little side vent window open.
Looking panicked, the girl escorting Taylor lifted her megaphone to her lips. “Everyone, get into place!”
Taylor let go of the king, grabbed the girl’s megaphone, and shouted into it, “Sorry I’m late, everyone! The hairdresser that my bestie, the duchess, recommended was an absolute disaster!” She separated the word into three separate syllables with pauses between them. “I had to go to a different salon!” One arm outstretched, she waved toward the crowd, the road, the woods across the road, and the waiting vehicles and floats. “Don’t ever get your hair done at Felicia’s,” she blasted at full volume. “She was so jealous of my hair that she tried to make it as ugly as hers.”
Felicia? When my parents were in the area, staying in the campground beyond the trees across the road from where I’d parked my car, Felicia was my mother’s hairdresser.
Taylor shoved the megaphone toward the girl, who nearly dropped it.
Other teens with clipboards shooed the duke and duchess toward the 1970s sedan.
The girl with the megaphone pointed Taylor and her king toward my car.
Taylor balked. “I’m not riding in that thing.”
That thing? Our beautiful 1950 Ford? I felt my eyes open wide.
Blushing, the teenager with the megaphone whispered, “It’s all planned.” The poor girl probably wasn’t used to standing up to a queen.
Taylor grabbed the megaphone again and announced, “I’m not riding in a clown car with a ridiculous donut on top.”
I felt my eyes open even wider, but I didn’t mind taking some of the pressure off the flustered teen. I smiled and said quietly, “It’s a police car.”
Taylor spoke into the megaphone again. “This lady says it’s a police car. I’m not riding in any police car. People will think I’ve been arrested.”
The girl whose megaphone had again been co-opted didn’t look any happier. My smile became a little strange, going from grin to grimace to grumpy.
And that was just marvelous—the photographer who had been in Deputy Donut earlier that morning had wedged himself between a couple of the teens in safety vests, and he was aiming his camera in my direction. His long lens was the kind that could pick out every single wrinkle deepening between my eyebrows.
My slighted donut car was about seventy years beyond being capable of serving as a police car, and I had it on good authority that it had never been one. I opened my mouth. And closed it.
“Besides,” Taylor shouted into the megaphone, “I’d get sick in the back of an old car like that!”
I tried another smile, undoubtedly not a very believable one. “Would you like to ride in front with me?” The king could squeeze between us on the wide front seat.
Taylor stomped one of her white satin heels. “No, I would not.”
The duke stepped forward. “Would you like to ride in the vintage car we were assigned?”
Taylor cast a disdainful look at the maroon and silver 1970s sedan. “Old cars stink. Just looking at it makes me queasy. Besides, it’s not a convertible.” She pointed toward the parking lot. “I was forced to leave my convertible way over there. Why don’t you drive my convertible, Nicholas?” She simpered up at the duke and then tilted the side of her head toward the king. “And he and I will ride in it?” She flapped a hand toward her bestie, the duchess. “She can ride in the clown police car.”
Queen Taylor was so over-the-top that I almost laughed. What are friends for?
Luckily, some of us did have kind and helpful friends. Misty had been quietly watching the drama. She went to the girl who was attempting to retrieve her megaphone from Taylor and asked, “How about if I drive this lady’s convertible, and she and the kin
g can ride in it?” She waved a hand toward the front of the line. “My partner will drive our cruiser.” Misty was as tall as Taylor but, with her genuine smile, much more beautiful, even though she was about a decade older than the members of the royal court and was wearing a police uniform and no crown. Beneath her police hat, her long blond hair was tied in a neat ponytail.
Queen Taylor muttered ungraciously, “I suppose.” She let go of the megaphone. This time, the teenager caught it, slung its strap over her shoulder, and quickly stepped back, out of Queen Taylor’s reach.
The duchess clapped her hands. “Goody! Nicholas and I can ride in the darling old-fashioned police car.” She tugged at the duke’s arm. “Come on!” She climbed into the back of my car, scooted across the wide bench seat, and sat behind the front passenger seat. She opened her window and called out, “It doesn’t stink in here!”
Thank you for the faint praise, I thought, grinning.
Giving one of the clipboard-carrying boys her car keys, Taylor didn’t react.
I slid behind the steering wheel. Duke Nicholas sat behind me.
The teenager with Taylor’s keys raced to the parking lot, returned in a minuscule robin’s-egg blue convertible, and tenderly parked it beside my car.
Misty, the queen, and the king tucked themselves into the tiny convertible. The teens unfurled banners with magnets attached to the corners. They stuck banners identifying the king and queen on both sides of the cute convertible and banners identifying the duke and duchess on both sides of my car. Our Deputy Donut logo would be hidden, but everyone in and around Fallingbrook had to know that the vintage Ford with the donut on top belonged to the donut shop a few blocks south of the village square.
Queen Taylor and the king perched on the top back of the convertible’s rear seat. Because my car window was down and the convertible was beside me, I heard Misty’s refusal to take her foot off the brake until the royal pair got down and buckled themselves in.
“We’re too tall,” Taylor complained.
Misty didn’t budge.
Grumbling, Taylor eased down to the seat. She and her king had to sit nearly back-to-back with their knees squashed against where the rear doors would have been if there were any.
Misty relented. “At first, we’ll be going too fast for you to ride safely up there. I’ll stop before the actual beginning of the parade and let you climb up again and ride there while we creep along.” It must have pained my police officer friend to make that suggestion. However, if anyone could drive carefully, fast or slow, it was Misty.
The girl with the megaphone waved at Misty’s partner to start driving the real police cruiser toward town. The fire truck followed. Misty pulled Queen Taylor’s convertible into line behind the fire truck. I put my car into first gear, let out the clutch, pressed the gas pedal, and stayed close behind the little convertible.
We were almost an hour behind schedule.
In the far corner of my car, the duchess let out a laugh with a cruel edge to it. “Taylor’s such a diva!”
Nicholas snarled, “Shut up!”
The duchess crowed, “Look how much room we have in this car!”
I stared straight ahead and shifted into second.
Through my open window, I heard whirrs and clicks.
That photographer was loping along next to my car, aiming his camera toward the driver’s side.
Chapter 3
The duchess leaned past Nicholas and waved at the photographer. Settling back into her seat, she nudged Nicholas. “Aw, c’mon, Nicholas. Taylor and I have been besties since kindergarten. We can say anything to each other.”
He demanded, “And behind her back, too?”
“I’ve said it to her face. Calling each other divas is a term of endearment.”
Nicholas snorted.
The duchess claimed, “We’ve been in a friendly rivalry all of our lives.”
Nicholas objected. “‘Friendly’ wasn’t the word I heard.”
“You heard wrong,” the duchess insisted. “By competing with each other, both of us got better grades all through school, and everything. You know, awards and stuff. She probably won being queen by one vote. Or we tied and she got it because she’s taller.”
Nicholas made a noise that might have been clearing his throat.
Apparently, the duchess didn’t notice that he seemed less than impressed. She went on, “Taylor won’t always be an ice cream store clerk, and I won’t always be waiting tables at Frisky Pomegranate.”
Thinking that it was about time for someone in the car to be positive, I said, “I’ve heard it’s good.” It was a new pub across the street from the north side of the village square. “I’ll have to try it someday.” I shifted to third, the Ford’s highest gear.
The duchess leaned forward. “You should! Like, come tomorrow afternoon. We have Happy Hour Fridays. We get raves. For the food and the service. I’m service. I’m good. Like Taylor. She and I are going places.”
“Yeah,” Nicholas agreed, “like back to the middle of Fallingbrook.” Speaking to the back of my head, he added, “This is a really cool car, ma’am.”
I thanked him. Ma’am? Maybe to a twenty-year-old, a thirty-and-a-half-year-old was as antique as the car she was driving.
Misty’s policeman partner set a fast pace in the lead car. He and the driver of the fire truck behind him turned on their strobes. Not to be outdone, I caused the “sprinkles” in the donut on top of my cruiser to flash and dance.
Actually, I was being outdone. The sprinkles would barely show up in the bright sunshine.
A small black car sped past us, heading toward town, also. I caught a glimpse of the driver. The photographer?
Behind me, the duchess asked Nicholas, “How long have you been dating Taylor, anyway?”
“How come you don’t know? I thought you were best friends.”
“We don’t tell each other everything. It was very cute that she was elected queen and Ian was elected king back in May when they were still dating each other. So appropriate!”
The duke was Nicholas, the queen was Taylor, and now I knew that the king was Ian. I glanced into the rearview mirror and caught the duchess’s eye. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Gabrielle.” She drew out the l’s.
Nicholas imitated her.
She batted at his arm. “It’s so sexy when you say it!”
Nicholas didn’t answer.
In the convertible in front of us, Queen Taylor was using both hands to hold her crown in place.
Gabrielle laughed. “Taylor should have stuck with Felicia’s styling. Felicia uses tons of hairspray. Look at Taylor’s hair flying around. If she lets go of that crown, she’ll lose it. Too bad she didn’t win duchess instead of queen. My plastic tiara is heavier than the cardboard crowns you three have to wear. Prettier, too, and it has built-in combs that keep it in place.”
“Wonderful.” Nicholas’s tone was distinctly sarcastic.
Gabrielle was undaunted. “If she didn’t want her hair to be blown, she could have ridden in this car like she was supposed to. I bet it’s worth more than hers. I bet that big car behind us is, too, even though it’s old.”
Despite having no passengers, the driver of the 1970s sedan gamely stayed behind us.
Nicholas heaved a very loud sigh.
Gabrielle accused, “You said you liked this car, Nicholas.”
“I do, but there’s nothing wrong with Taylor wanting to ride in her own convertible.”
“So she can show off. Too bad her hair’s a mess.”
At the edge of downtown Fallingbrook, we all stopped. Misty let Queen Taylor and King Ian ride where they’d wanted to before.
Teen volunteers dragged the bunting-draped sawhorses barricading the road out of our way, and the parade began.
Queen Taylor waved and blew kisses at everyone while King Ian held one hand up, elbow bent. As if a robot had taken control of it, his hand turned slowly, toward the crowd, toward the front
of the convertible, and back toward the people lining the sidewalks.
“What a cute couple,” Gabrielle gushed. “Only, Ian needs to sit up straighter. He must be really depressed, if Taylor dumped him. Maybe he can win her back.”
“Good luck with that,” Nicholas scoffed.
Misty’s partner started the siren in the lead police car. The fire truck’s siren wailed. I turned on a siren recording and broadcast it over the loudspeaker in front of the donut on the roof.
If more flirting and bickering went on in the back seat, I didn’t hear it.
Kids lining the route flapped small flags. Adults applauded. Gabrielle leaned out of her open window and yelled, “Happy Fourth of July!”
Beside the twin patios flanking Deputy Donut’s front door, I gave the horn a soft toot. Our regular customers lifted their coffee mugs in a toast. Handing a plate of donuts to one of the knitters who met weekday mornings at Deputy Donut and called themselves the Knitpickers, Jocelyn looked up and gave us that dazzling smile.
A few blocks farther north, the village square had been transformed for the holiday. Red, white, and blue bunting was draped around trees and also around tables showcasing local delicacies and handcrafts. People wearing red, white, and blue strolled on the close-cropped and very green lawn. Everything seemed to sparkle.
The drivers ahead of me slowed and stopped. I turned off my siren, left the rooftop donut’s sprinkles dancing, and parked behind Misty and her royal passengers. We were next to the reviewing stand, an open-fronted shed perched on a platform with stairs leading to it. The shed was painted white, inside and out, and decorated with more bunting.
Safety-vested teens swooped down on Taylor’s convertible, removed the banners, and helped Taylor and Ian out. The teens guided the royal pair up the stairs and seated them in the red and gold jewel-encrusted thrones. Taylor wiggled her fingers at parade watchers and blew kisses. Ian looked stern and kingly. Certain that he was merely trying to hide the pain of being next to Taylor after their breakup, I felt sorry for him.
The teens removed the banners from my car and escorted Gabrielle and Nicholas to a pair of navy blue and silver jewel-encrusted thrones flanking Ian’s and Taylor’s thrones. The teens seated Nicholas beside Taylor and Gabrielle beside Ian. Gabrielle gave Ian’s elbow a playful jab. He ignored her.
Jealousy Filled Donuts Page 2