Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 1
Eva and Leila were two peas in a pod. They linked their arms and smiled at Heather from the other side of the counter in Donut Delights.
"You look like you're plotting something, ladies," Heather said and dropped the rag she'd used to polish up the glass. Donuts glistened beneath the downlights, showing off their sticky, smooth or crunchy glazes in every flavor imaginable.
A Kiwi Lime Surprise here, a Strawberry Cream there and never forgetting the newest addition to the store's donut repertoire.
"We're plotting a donut heist," Leila said.
"Yes, but we can't decide which donuts to steal. They all look so delicious." Eva licked her lips.
"May I suggest our newest addition?" Heather nodded to the cream-colored donuts on the tray closest to the front of the display. Each one had a trail of pink shavings which wandered from the center hole to the outside edge.
"What is it?" Leila mimicked Eva. Now, they looked less like evil geniuses and more like two donut-loving Daves in human form. Heather's doggy dearest still couldn't get enough, but a strict diet had kept him trim.
The same couldn't be said for most of the customers in Donut Delights. Heather had packed on a few pounds lately, too.
"This," Heather said and crushed her thoughts of cardio and diets, "is the Vanilla Cream Donut. We've been doing a lot of vanilla bases of late and I wanted to take full advantage of that. You know, really make the vanilla flavor pop." She slid open the glass door, then retrieved two plates from a shelf beneath her antique cash register. "They're a vanilla dough base, fried until crispy, then filled with a fluffy vanilla cream in secret pockets along the sides."
"A cream." Leila hummed it.
"Think Twinkies cream," Heather said. "That kind of consistency. After that, we slathered these beauties in a light vanilla glaze and topped them with my secret recipe rhubarb frosted shavings."
"Wow."
"You know, just for an added tang. I think you'll like them. Two?"
"And two cups of coffee please, dear," Eva said. "I'll take mine black as the night and Leila -”
"Can order for herself." Leila assailed the other woman with a look of feigned haughtiness.
They both erupted into giggles. Fountains of mirth which lightened Heather's mood and the air in the store. It was still pretty early, and the buzz of the morning rush hadn't started yet.
"I'll take a cappuccino, please. With cream on the top, not foam. Oh, and can you put an extra sprinkle of cocoa on that too?" Leila asked.
"Anything for my new regular." Heather worked on their orders. She used to tongs to shift their donuts onto two plates, then punched the glossy buttons - worn by years of use - on the Donut Delights coffee machine. She placed two cups on the grate, a large and a regular.
Leila rested her elbow on the counter top and studied the selection of treats. "Where's Amy this morning?"
"She's on kitchen duty. She's been a bit snappy this morning. Something about no sleep and a lot of noise outside her house. Cats yowling, I think, were her exact words."
"Heavens," Eva said. "I'd be grumpy too."
"I think she's getting tired of her old apartment. She's been there for years, now, and it’s not getting any prettier." Heather would've asked her best friend to move in but with a pre-teen and a detective husband, there wasn't all that much space.
"She'll find a new place," Leila said. "And when she does, she'll fit right in." Of course, Leila had just relocated from Hillside Manor to Eva's home. Nothing could dampen her mood. The woman had been positively ebullient all last week.
Heather handed their order over, entered it into the computer with a few taps of the touchscreen, then clinked the register drawer open. Eva and Leila scrabbled their cash across the counter and Heather handed them their change a second later. "Enjoy."
"Oh don't you worry, we will."
Heather shut the register and lifted the rag from the bottom shelf, whistling under her breath.
"What did I tell you, Rodney, darling? It's gorgeous. I wish the inside of my store looked like this," a woman said.
Heather frowned. Rodney?
"Yeah, but you seen what normal beverage warehouses looks like, right?" The man's voice struck every nostalgia chord in Heather's body. It twanged like an old guitar. Or no, that wasn't right. Twanging guitars weren't anything she associated with Key West.
Heather snapped upright. "Roadkill Rodney?"
The man on the other side of the counter was out of his overalls and in a pair of jeans the color of a summer morning sky. He tugged on the peak of his cap. "Good to see you again, lady."
"Heather," she said. "I'm Heather. What on earth are you doing in Hillside?" The last she'd seen him, he'd wielded a shovel coated in unspeakable things and had been in love with his job - scoopin' dead critters off the highway in Key West.
But the love had clearly transferred over to someone else. Rodney held hands with a ruddy-cheeked woman - a buxom redhead who was taller than him. She commanded attention but her smile warmed the room.
"I came down to meet Norma," Rodney said. "We're in love. In love and met online, if you can believe it."
"Actually, I can. I hear social media relationships are all the rage, nowadays."
"Except we're not just a social media relationship," Norma said and squeezed Rodney's doubtlessly clammy palm - he'd already cultivated a lot of upper lip sweat. "We're together forever. Rodney's moving to Hillside to be with me."
"That's my surprise, darlin'." Rodney made eyes at her. "I've already moved. Got myself an apartment down Church Street and I can come see you anytime."
"Oh, Rodney!" Norma threw her arms around his neck and engulfed him in a hug. The man disappeared from sight.
"I'm happy f
or you," Heather said, while the pair canoodled. "In fact, how about a couple Vanilla Cream Donuts on the house? A lover's couple." She entered their order, tinged open the register again.
Norma and Rodney sprang apart with a suction cup noise. Mr. Roadkill's cheek held an imprint of Norma's heart locket. "I love that register, Mrs. Shepherd," she said. "I wish I could get one in my store."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I run Norma's Beverages. We've got everything from wine to water, pop, powdered milk and everything in between," she said.
"I thought I recognized you from somewhere." Heather shut the drawer without putting any bills inside. "
"Norma's a regular businesswoman." Rodney beamed with pride, the heart locket imprint crinkling.
"You know, you can order these types of registers online," Heather said. "Or check out Pawn Shop Paulo's store. You might find something there."
"Thank you. You're too kind."
"A friend of Rodney's is a friend of mine."
The two reattached in another hug of epic proportions and Heather busied herself with the donuts. February was long past but love was still in the air, all right. Everyone deserved that feeling. Heather couldn't have been happier for the pair of them.
Chapter 2
Heather grunted in her sleep and rolled onto her side. She drifted through a dream about panda bears, chewing bamboo shoots to the soundtrack of David Attenborough's iconic cadence. The pandas were too cute to handle. They munched on and the shoots transformed into donuts, cream dripping from their mouths.
"Not good," Heather muttered. "Get fat."
One of the pandas lifted a paw and rapped on her forehead. Knock, knock, knock, rattle.
Heather's eyes sprang open. The living room light was off, but the credits of the documentary she'd watched before she'd dropped off trickled up the screen. Something had woken her.
She sat up and stretched, then checked the time on her filigree watch. Almost 12 am. Ryan hadn't arrived home, yet. He'd told her he'd be late - he had a lot of paperwork to catch up on after the recent spate of murders.
The front door rattled. Three knocks banged through the entrance hall and Dave barked upstairs.
"Mom?" Lilly called.
Heather tottered off the sofa. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and rushed through to the hall. Lilly stood at the top of the stairs. She pointed at the front door. "Someone's out there," she whispered.
"Don't worry, honey, the alarm is on. Go get yourself a glass of milk. I'll handle this."
Lilly yawned and trudged back to her bedroom, Dave clicking at her heels.
The knock came again. "Heather? Mrs. Shepherd? You in there? Darn it, I got the wrong address."
"Rodney?"
"Roadkill," he corrected, muffled through the wood. "Please open, lady, I've got a big problem. Real big. I need your help."
It took Heather two seconds to enter the code of the alarm pad and another five to unlatch the bolts on her front door. She left the chain in place, then pulled the door inward - it didn't pay to be careless with folks like Lyle Clarke in Hillside.
Rodney pressed his nose through the crack. "Mrs. Shepherd," he hissed. "I got a big problem. I never been this upset in my life."
"What's happened?"
"It's Norma. She was 'sposed to come over to my apartment tonight. She texted me that she couldn't make it cos she had to work late. So, I got a little worried, y'know? I've just moved and I thought Norma would be crazy happy to see my new place." He huffed out a breath through his nostrils. "I went over to Norma's Beverages just to check she was okay and - oh man, oh gosh. Oh man."
"What did you find?" Heather asked. Not again. Oh heavens, not again and not to poor Rodney. He deserved better than this.
"She's in there, all right," he said.
Heather’s relief struck home before she could stop it.
"But she's not movin'. She's in the back room and I can only see her feet and she's not movin'. I don't know what to do, lady. I don't know what -"
"Back up a step," Heather said. He did it and she slapped the door shut, drew back the chain, then let him in.
Rodney twisted his cap as if he could wring water out of it.
"We need to call 911," Heather said, and reached for her handbag on the entrance hall table. She caught a glimpse of her haggard reflection in the mirror and dismissed it. Not the time to fixate on her need for a new cut, color, and a couple jogs around the block.
She dug out her cell, then held it out to Rodney. "You make the call. You witnessed exactly what's going on over there."
Rodney shoved his peak cap on top of his sweat-flattened hair and took the cell. He fumbled with the touchscreen.
"You got it?" Heather asked.
"I got it."
Footsteps thumped on the porch. Ryan stopped on the threshold, an eyebrow raised. "It's never good when a husband comes home to find his wife with another man."
"Hilarious," Heather said. "But we've got a bit of a situation here." She filled him in while Rodney made the call in a timorous voice which didn't suit his larger-than-life personality.
Ryan dropped his hat on the table and drew Heather into a quick hug. "Looks like my night's not over yet."
"What? You're going to leave?" She really wanted to ask whether he'd leave without her but didn't let that out.
"Sure. You know, this kind of thing is part of my job descriptions." Ryan's message alert blipped and he took his cell out of his pocket. "Yup, that's Hoskins," he said. "They've just gotten the call from a dispatcher. I've got to go."
"What about Rodney?" Heather asked.
The poor man walked back and forth, his reflection in the mirror pale.
"He'll have to come with me, I'm afraid," Ryan said. "He's got to give a statement."
Rodney finally hung up and handed Heather's phone back, slightly damp but no worse for wear. "Rodney, Ryan's going to go check it out, okay? And there will be ambulances too." They didn't know for sure Norma had died, or even that she'd been murdered. She could've passed out for a number of reasons.
"Thank you," Rodney said, softly.
"You're going to have to go with him, all right?"
"Go with him."
"Yes."
Rodney steeled himself, he puffed out his chest then let out a sigh. "I'm ready. We can go."
The two men trooped back down the front stairs and out into the darkness, Ryan with his air of police professionalism and Rodney surrounded by despair. Heather couldn't hold onto hope that Norma was alive.
She knew Hillside too well for that. The niggle at the back of her mind told her she'd have another case to investigate come morning. She couldn't do much now but head upstairs, check on Lils and the animals, then attempt to get some shut-eye herself.
A second thing for which she couldn’t hold onto hope.
Chapter 3
The back room in Norma's Beverages was part warehouse, part office. The proprietor had pushed a desk up against one wall and loaded it with documents. A computer hummed beside them, screensaver bubbles bopping against the corners of the monitor. The shelf above held files, lined up, the lever arch on the end supporting the rest of them. It looked ready to collapse.
"Was she a nice person?" Amy asked, and peered into Heather's face.
Heather didn't bother secreting her sadness, both for Rodney and his short-time girlfriend. "I didn't know her at all but she seemed very sweet. We had a quick conversation in the store. I got the feeling she was ambitious. That she wanted to get ahead in business and always admire that in people."
"Unless they're Lyle Clarke," Ryan said. He'd positioned himself beside the open door which let out onto a muddy field behind it. Norma's Beverages and the warehouse attached to it was situated on a gravel road which led off the end of Main Street. The forest stood somberly in the distance.
"Don't get me started on that guy," Heather said. "So, what do we have?" Apart from a grieving roadkill removal man who'd thrown away his job and life back in Key We
st for a love that would now be unrequited. Poor Rodney.
"We have an escape route," Ryan said and gestured to the open door. "And some tracks in the mud outside. One set of tracks. Four tires."
"A four-wheeler?" Amy asked. "I thought only kids rocked those, nowadays."
"We're getting older," Heather replied. "I think you're going to have to redefine what 'kids' means to you." She walked to the desk and ran her fingers over the rough wood. "So the assailant killed Norma and drove off afterward. Did Norma own a four wheeler?"
"Not by Rodney's accounts," Ryan said and flicked pages on his notepad, the rustle traveling through the warehouse. "Or by Ballistic Bob's."
"Bally Bob!" Amy cooed. She'd befriended that old raccoon long ago. "I forgot he sold four wheelers."
"Bikes, four wheelers, the man's a regular jack of all trades," Ryan said.
Heather tapped the spacebar on the keyboard. "Murder weapon?"
"That's the interesting part," he said. "The victim was struck with an antique cash register. Pawn Shop Paulo said he sold it to her earlier in the day and delivered it just after dark. His alibi checks out though and he was here too early to have seen anything according to our autopsy report."
"Oh heavens," Heather said. Norma had been murdered with the very item Heather had advised she buy for her store.
"And the techs pulled a partial print off the register," Ryan continued, "but they haven't gotten back to me on whether there's a match yet. No DNA."
Heather studied the computer's desktop icons. "There's a surveillance thread here." She clicked on it and through to the folder attached. "But nothing in it."
Amy pushed off from the wall and strolled over to take a look. "Shoot."
"Yeah, someone deleted all the surveillance from in here and out in the store. The keyboard and mouse were rubbed down after use so no prints recovered from there, either," Ryan said. "We're up that creek without a paddle again. I don't know how much we're going to find out here."
Heather chewed her bottom lip. They didn't have a match on the print and no idea why Norma had stayed behind after hours unless it was to admire the newest addition to the store.
Vanilla Cream Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy - Book 44 (Donut Hole Cozy Mystery) Page 1