However, people began leaving before the show was over. Some were carrying small children up the hill toward the cars. Others probably wanted to drive out of the parking lot before the inevitable traffic jam began. Maybe some folks were leaving because they were cold. I was. I’d left my sweater in the donut car. I shrugged my backpack on. That didn’t help.
I was really, really cold.
I whispered to Scott that I’d be right back, and then I ran up the hill and across the parking lot to the donut car. The sweater warmed me immediately. I put my backpack on over it and started toward my friends and their blanket. Between dodging pedestrians walking in the opposite direction and vehicles leaving the parking lot, I could catch only glimpses of the fireworks above me. It didn’t help that headlights glared into my eyes and smoke from spent fireworks hung just above the pavement.
Looking like he hated fireworks, King Ian strode toward the rear of the lot. Duchess Gabrielle was close behind him, throwing admiring looks at his back. If he knew she was there, he wasn’t acknowledging it. I almost didn’t recognize Kelsey. At Freeze, her hair was always pinned up underneath her frilly cap. I hadn’t guessed it was longer than shoulder-length. Several Deputy Donut customers greeted me. Jocelyn didn’t notice me, probably because she was holding hands with a broad-shouldered boy who looked about her age. Closer to Scott’s fire truck, I caught a glimpse of Felicia, my mother’s hairdresser, the woman Queen Taylor had complained about over the megaphone. Mama Freeze was beside her, but I couldn’t tell if the two middle-aged women were together or just happened to be walking next to each other.
I plunked myself down on the blanket next to Scott, grabbed the empty donut bag I’d left behind, and stared upward. Multicolored chrysanthemum-shaped starbursts filled the sky. People cheered.
The crowd plodding uphill beside me thinned for a moment.
Beyond a scraggly shrub just down the hill, something glittered. Sparks were shooting from the top of a strangely bulging cylinder.
I dropped the empty paper bag, leaped to my feet, and ran to the side of the shrub.
Jamming my hand over my mouth, I froze.
The lumpy cylinder looked like the stack of donuts that Jocelyn and I had given to the five-year-old boy for his skyrocket cake, but the partially melted birthday candle that I’d stuck into the top donut could not have been spewing flames like this one was.
It wasn’t a birthday candle resembling a fuse. It was an actual fuse.
The bulging cylinder had to be a firework.
It was only about a foot behind a tall blonde sitting on a blanket. Worse, the firework was leaning downward and aimed directly at the woman’s back. A platinum-haired man had wrapped his arm around the woman, from her shoulder to her hip.
I shouted at the couple, “Run!”
Chapter 5
The endangered couple in front of me must not have heard my shouted warning. They didn’t move.
With a loud bang, the oddly bulky firework right behind the woman’s back exploded. I couldn’t help closing my eyes.
Small, hard particles peppered my face. People near me yelped.
My eyes flew open. The thick liquid oozing down my stinging cheek couldn’t be blood. It was no warmer than the night air.
Dense smoke surrounded me, along with the acrid odors of gunpowder and scorched wool. Some of the people who had been near the firework ran up the hill toward the cars. Others backed away. Farther from us, most of the crowd continued watching the sky. They probably didn’t realize that one of the explosions had come from up the hill near the parking lot.
The smoke thinned slightly, and I recognized the man who had been closest to the leaning firework. He was Nicholas, the duke of this year’s festivities. The slim blonde who had been sitting next to him had folded forward like a limp doll, with her head downhill and her right arm and leg flung outward. Nicholas was on his knees, leaning over her. With his right hand, he awkwardly draped the edge of their blanket over her, but he was holding his left hand close to his chest. His face contorted in a scream I couldn’t hear.
“Samantha!” I yelled. “Scott! Misty! Hooligan!” My four friends were already heading toward the stricken couple.
Samantha’s EMT partner, who must have been in the ambulance behind us, ran down the hill. He and Samantha knelt beside the woman while Misty and Hooligan talked to Nicholas. Scott stomped through the grass as if searching for embers.
Apparently, he didn’t find any. Positioning himself between the injured pair and me, he placed his hands lightly on my shoulders. The brass buttons on his dress uniform jacket glimmered in the dim evening. “Sit down, Emily. You’re bleeding.”
Misty must have heard him. She glanced at me, stood, and ran—three whole strides for her—to us.
I licked my lips. “I’m not bleeding. I think it’s blueberry jelly.”
Scott looked really concerned, probably because I wasn’t making a lot of sense.
Misty shined a flashlight at the side of my face. “I think it is, too.” She reached forward, fingered my curls, and pulled. “What’s this?” Her light showed a small dark blue object pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
At the risk of sounding even less coherent than I had a few seconds before, I answered, “It’s a . . . a sprinkle. A sugar star.”
Scott tilted his head and raised one eyebrow in a skeptical way.
I added, “It came from a blueberry jelly–filled donut.” The statement didn’t seem to help my case, but that wasn’t important. I demanded, “Did you two see what happened?” Panic and shock squeezed my chest.
Scott tightened his hands on my shoulders. “No. Did something misfire?”
I asked, “Misty, did you see?”
“I didn’t see any big chunks of fire falling from the sky.”
I gazed up into the concerned eyes of these two friends. “It didn’t fall. I saw it before it exploded. A firework was on the ground directly behind the woman’s back.” I asked Misty, “Is she Taylor? The queen whose car you drove in the parade this morning?”
Misty’s face was solemn and her answer curt. “Yes.”
My words tripped over each other. “Someone must have planted that firework there, in the grass behind her.”
Scott let go of my shoulders. “Stay here, Emily.” He sprinted to his fire truck, switched on a powerful floodlight, and aimed it at the group surrounding the injured pair.
As the senior police officer present, Misty was in charge. I led her around the puny bush to a blackened and partially split tube sticking out of a torn jelly-filled donut. The donut still had vestiges of red stripes on a background of white icing. “See how that tube is leaning downhill?”
Misty nodded.
I explained, “I didn’t get a good look at any of it.” I described the five-year-old’s birthday cake made of donuts. “But just now, I wasn’t seeing a birthday candle. The flames were too big. It had to be a fuse. And then the thing exploded.” I brushed a straying curl, weighed down by blueberry jelly, no doubt, away from my eye. “Someone must have inserted a firework into a stack of jelly-filled donuts, crept behind this bush, aimed the thing at Taylor, and lit it.”
Frowning, Misty made a call on her radio.
I asked loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear, “Did anyone see someone behind this bush or notice the firework before it went off?”
Nicholas rasped out an abrupt “No.”
Samantha and Hooligan said they’d been looking up.
Samantha’s EMT partner pressed a stethoscope against Taylor’s neck. “I was sleeping.” The blanket that Nicholas had managed to partially pull over Taylor looked singed.
Misty asked police dispatch for backup officers, including the night’s on-duty detective. She signed off and told me that she had been looking at the sky and not at the people around us. She shined her flashlight down at the remains of the firework behind Nicholas and Taylor.
I picked up a morsel of donut. It was harder and dryer than the d
onuts I’d brought to the fireworks that evening, the ones that my friends and I had devoured. Toeing at the grass, I uncovered a cigarette lighter, a transparent dark red one that I’d almost missed seeing despite Scott’s gigantic floodlight. The shrub’s small twigs were casting surprisingly large shadows. Knowing I shouldn’t touch the lighter, I pointed it out to Misty.
Nicholas was still hunched protectively over his left arm. He could easily hear us, so I didn’t point out that the lighter was very close to where I’d seen his hand when I realized that the bulky cylinder was concealing a lit firework.
Leaving the lighter in place, Misty wrote in her notebook. I could tell from the way her pen moved that she was drawing a diagram.
Samantha fastened a sling around Nicholas’s left arm.
Misty beckoned me farther up the hill, away from the shrub that had mostly shielded the firework from view. “The man will be okay, but Taylor is seriously injured.” Her face became hard with suppressed anger. “Judging by her condition, that skyrocket was homemade. It must have contained strong explosives, and I found a marble that might have shot from it. Stick around, okay, Emily, to give us a complete statement?”
“Okay.”
Misty rejoined the group around Taylor and Nicholas. Samantha’s partner dashed up the hill toward the ambulance.
I stayed where I was. Crossing my arms in an attempt to warm myself, I thought about who might have deliberately harmed Taylor, and why. Earlier that day, Taylor had insulted both Felicia and her supposed best friend, Duchess Gabrielle. And in the minutes before the donut skyrocket exploded, I’d seen both Felicia and Gabrielle leaving the area, along with throngs of other people, including Taylor’s former boyfriend, Ian.
Samantha’s partner ran down the hill carrying a rigid stretcher that I knew from my days at 911 was called a Stokes basket. Protecting Taylor’s neck with a collar, he and Samantha carefully transferred her from the grassy hill to the stretcher.
Misty told Hooligan to keep people away from what was now a crime scene.
Scott, Samantha, her partner, and I grabbed handles on the sides of the Stokes basket. Samantha directed our lifting. Although Taylor was tall, she was slim, and with four of us sharing her weight, she didn’t seem heavy. Misty put one arm around Nicholas’s waist. Nicholas leaned on her, and the two of them walked slowly beside us.
We loaded Taylor, still in the Stokes basket, into the ambulance. Scott and Misty helped Nicholas into a seat near Taylor. Samantha’s partner climbed in back with them.
An opening between the front seats of the ambulance would allow the EMT to leave his patients to confer with Samantha after she got in and started driving.
That lighter, so close to where I’d seen Nicholas’s hand . . . Could Nicholas have deliberately lit the firework to harm Taylor? He could have decided that they should sit in front of a bush that would partially hide them. Could he have believed he could aim a homemade firework at the woman beside him without being hurt after he lit it?
Chapter 6
I grabbed Samantha’s wrist and murmured, “Don’t let the injured man be alone with the injured woman, not even for a second.”
Samantha’s eyes opened wide. “My partner will keep close track of both of them.” Samantha mouthed something to her partner. He met my gaze and nodded. Samantha shut the ambulance’s back doors and then swung herself into the driver’s seat. The ambulance roared off, its siren wailing and its lights flashing.
Scott frowned down at me. “Are you okay, Emily?”
I summoned up a strong and confident voice. “I’m fine. Nothing hit me besides flying donut pieces.”
“I can take you to the hospital.”
“In the fire truck?”
“Sure.” His grin was a little strained. “Or in your vintage cruiser, which, by the way, I’ve never driven.” He was a darling for trying to distract me.
I tried an answering grin, which was probably as strained as his. “I’ll let you, someday, even though I know you’ll never let me drive your fire truck.”
“Become a firefighter and that’s one of the things you’ll learn to do.”
“Thanks, but I prefer a life of boiling things in oil.”
His deep sigh was patently phony. “Do me a favor and keep the temperature of your oil below the flash point. Meanwhile, do you want a ride to the hospital in the fire truck?”
“It’s tempting, but there’s no need. I’ll be fine after I wash my face.” Even though my sweater had no hood, I knew I shouldn’t feel as cold as I did.
“You’re shivering,” he said. “Wait here.” He strode to the plaid blanket we’d been sitting on and grabbed it and the empty donut bag. He peered into the bag, shrugged, and handed it to me. Then he shook the blanket and wrapped it around me, backpack and all.
Even though I’d been hit by a hail of donut bits and my cheek still stung, I was physically fine. Emotionally, I didn’t know. Taylor had been annoying, but no one should have to suffer like that.
Still frowning, Misty came down the hill with a roll of yellow crime scene tape. She gave it to Hooligan and then joined Scott and me. She grabbed my wrist. I managed to hang on to both the blanket and the paper bag.
Up the hill to my right, a light flashed.
Another explosion?
Flinching, I started turning my head toward where the flash had been.
There was another flash, probably from a camera or a phone, but I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t get a chance to focus on whatever it was. Misty demanded, “Look at me, Emily.” Dutifully, I faced her. Misty must have been certain that the flash did not pose any danger.
Peering into my eyes and checking my pulse, she apparently convinced herself that I truly was unharmed, if a little twitchy. She went off to talk to other potential witnesses. I peered into the darkness but couldn’t see anyone near where the flashes had originated.
Standing side by side, Scott and I watched Misty talk to people while Hooligan wound yellow police tape around bushes in a large circle enclosing the area where Nicholas and Taylor had been sitting.
I was still hanging on to the empty donut bag as if I expected it to fill itself with fresh donuts. I wadded it up and crammed it into a pocket. Holding the blanket around myself with both hands, I tried not to shiver.
An unmarked police car pulled into the spot where the ambulance had been. Detective Brent Fyne got out of the cruiser. Misty started up the hill toward him.
As always, Brent looked good. He was dressed for work in nice slacks, a white shirt, a tie, and a summer blazer that probably hid a shoulder holster. He wasn’t quite as tall as Scott, who was lanky but wiry and fit. Brent was more solidly built and very obviously muscular.
Talking in low voices, Brent and Misty walked down the hill toward Scott and me.
My shoulders started to relax. Brent’s calm capability had a way of making a pain-filled crime scene less chaotic and more bearable.
He often kept his thoughts from showing. This time, his expression was grim.
“I can tell from your face, Brent,” I said. “The woman didn’t make it.”
Beside me, Scott inhaled swiftly.
Brent shook his head. “No, she didn’t.”
“I didn’t think she would,” Scott admitted to Brent, something he hadn’t said to me. I wasn’t as fragile as Scott occasionally acted. “Her back was punctured, right behind her heart.”
Misty said, “I’m guessing that the projectile was a marble. There was at least one more nearby.”
Scott turned to me and spoke softly. “She was unconscious when we reached her. She couldn’t have felt much.”
I managed to speak through tightened lips. “That’s good to hear. But her boyfriend, the guy with the injured arm, is going to miss her.” Unless he purposely harmed her. “And she must have other family and friends.”
Studying my jelly-streaked face, Brent asked if I was injured. After I assured him quite firmly that I wasn’t, he reached into his blazer’s inner poc
ket and took out his notebook. “Misty, can you take Scott’s statement while I take Emily’s?”
She nodded and touched the sleeve of Scott’s jacket.
Scott glanced at my face again as if to assure himself that I was okay, and then he and Misty moved out of earshot.
Brent wrote down my statement, including the names of everyone I’d seen when I’d gone to the donut car and returned with my sweater.
“Who is Jocelyn?” he asked.
“Tom and I hired an assistant.” Brent and I had been getting together for impromptu dinners at my place every so often for nearly two years, but we hadn’t seen each other during the past couple of weeks. I had mentioned that Tom and I wanted to hire a third person to work at the donut shop, but I hadn’t told Brent that we’d actually done it. I added, “I’m sure that Jocelyn doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.” I thought about it for a second. “Actually, I’m not sure she has any bones. She’s a gymnast.”
“Oho. The famous Jocelyn.”
“She and Taylor both worked at Freeze until we hired Jocelyn. I can’t imagine Jocelyn planting that thing, but almost anyone could have. There were thousands of people here, and crowds of them were leaving. I don’t know how fast or slow that firework’s fuse was, so I don’t know if it was lit before I went to get my sweater, while I was gone, or after I came back.”
I described everything that had happened and told him about giving the birthday boy and his family a stack of donuts with a candle in the top. “I don’t know who they were.” I explained that the only donuts that Jocelyn had decorated with blue sugar stars had been given out at the picnic. “Taylor and her best friend, the duchess, each received one.” My cheek had stopped stinging. I wiped my hand across it and ended up with more jelly on my hand. “This looked personal . That thing was only about a foot from Taylor. It was aimed directly at her back.”
“What are you saying?” he asked.
“I think she was targeted. This was deliberate, malicious, and preplanned.”
Jealousy Filled Donuts Page 4