Perjury Proof

by Jessica Beck

  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 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Recipes

  Other Books by Jessica Beck

  JESSICA BECK

  THE DONUT MYSTERIES, BOOK 38

  PERJURY PROOF

  Donut Mystery #38 Perjury Proof

  Copyright © 2018 by Jessica Beck All rights reserved.

  First Edition: July 2018

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Recipes included in this book are to be recreated at the reader’s own risk. The author is not responsible for any damage, medical or otherwise, created as a result of reproducing these recipes. It is the responsibility of the reader to ensure that none of the ingredients are detrimental to their health, and the author will not be held liable in any way for any problems that might arise from following the included recipes.

  Disclaimer:

  For the purposes of this book, the poison vanalaxis macromium is entirely fictional. The last thing this author wants to do is write a How-To manual on murder, so be advised that this fictional household cleaner is merely part of a larger piece of fiction created solely for your enjoyment.

  The First Time Ever Published!

  The 38th Donut Mystery.

  Jessica Beck is the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Donut Mysteries, the Classic Diner Mysteries, the Ghost Cat Cozy Mysteries, and the Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries.

  This one’s for Auriel,

  A true princess in all of the very best ways.

  You may be gone,

  but you will live on in the hearts of those of us who loved you forever.

  A pie shop is opening up in April Springs, but the owner is as sour as her pies are sweet! When she’s murdered a few days before the grand opening, too many folks in April Springs had reasons to want to see the woman gone. Suzanne and Grace dive into the case, hopefully in time to save the next victim on the killer’s to-do list!

  Chapter 1

  I’ve been a sucker for freshly baked pies since I was a little girl, so when I heard that Sky High Pie was going to open in our little town of April Springs, North Carolina, I was the first to celebrate the news.

  But then I met the new owner, Maggie Moore—as bitter as a sour cherry and as puny in spirit as a crabapple—so I wasn’t exactly shocked by what happened next, though I had no idea at the time how much pain and suffering my investigation of her murder would cause me.

  “Do you have a problem with me, young lady?” the stranger demanded fiercely as she stormed into my donut shop one bright autumn day and confronted me without so much as a how-do-you-do. Fall was my favorite season of year—well, at least one of the top four—and I’d been in a good mood up until a few seconds ago.

  “No. Why, should I?”

  “I’m sorry. You’ll have to speak up. I’m a little hard of hearing.” The woman’s face seemed to have a permanent scowl imprinted on it. Somewhere in her late fifties, my bad-mannered visitor was pudgy, but not in a cute way. Her hair, dappled with gray, looked tired, and her clothes were loose and flowing, as though she was trying to hide her bulk under yards and yards of pretty unimpressive fabric.

  “Why would I have a problem with you? I don’t even know you,” I said, raising my voice well above my normal comfort level. It managed to get the attention of some of my customers, who looked at me oddly for a moment before going back to their meals. Did they actually think that I was shouting at this woman on purpose?

  “Well, you don’t have to scream,” she said, chastising me. “Lower your voice a bit.”

  “Sorry,” I said as I searched for a volume she could hear, but not loud enough to drive off my regular customers. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Maggie Moore,” she said. “Gabby Williams is my cousin.”

  That explained some of her behavior if the two women were cut from the same cloth. Gabby and I had an odd relationship that could best be described as a confrontational friendship, if that made any sense at all.

  “And Gabby told you that I had a problem with you?” I asked her, feeling a little surreal even having this conversation with a total stranger.

  “She said you didn’t like competition,” Maggie replied fiercely.

  “Do you make donuts, too?” I asked, not having a clue as to exactly where this conversation was going.

  “What? You’ll have to speak up. I already told you that.”

  “Are you a donut maker?” I asked her a little louder than I’d intended.

  “Pies,” she said, dropping her lower lip, as though the idea of making donuts for a living was clearly beneath her. “We make pies.”

  “You’re the new pie shop owner?” I asked. I’d been meaning to visit her shop before she held her grand opening in a few days, but I’d had my hands full running Donut Hearts solo. Emma had been gone for a few weeks on a trip with her mother, Sharon, and I’d been running the shop alone. Those Blake women loved to travel, though Ray, Emma’s father and Sharon’s husband, was a real homebody, so he rarely joined them on their excursions.

  “I am. So, is it true? Do you have an issue with me opening a shop of my own in April Springs?” This woman was downright belligerent. I didn’t care if she made the best pies known to man, if she didn’t figure out a way to deal with her customers, as well as her fellow small business owners, she’d go broke in six months. After all, I knew better than most that there was more to running a shop than offering delightful goods.

  “I’m happy to have you in April Springs,” I said loudly, deciding to just ignore her foul temper and accusatory tones. “When exactly is your grand opening? I’ll shut down my shop early to be there.” I had been looking forward to the place opening ever since I heard that she’d be coming to town, and I wasn’t going to let her off-putting demeanor keep me away, at least not initially.

  “We’re having a soft opening tomorrow,” she said. “You can come and have a look around. Bring your husband with you.”

  “I’d love to, but he’s out of town at the moment,” I explained.

  “What did you just say? He’s out of his mind?”

  This woman was driving me crazy! “He’s away on business,” I said louder.

  She nodded, frowning at the same time. “Oh. Well then, good-bye.”

  “While you’re here, would you like a donut?” I offered.

  Maggie Moore looked at my display cases for a few moments, and then she frowned at me again. “How much are they?”

  “I’d love one to be my gift to you as a way of welcoming you to our community,” I said.

  “Okay. I’ll take a dozen on the house, since you’re offering,” she said with a nod. “Mix them up. Your
call.”

  Had the blasted woman purposefully misheard my offer of one donut and demanded a dozen? It was near enough to closing time, and unfortunately I had the inventory to spare, so I decided to be the bigger woman, though she was clearly the bigger woman, at least when it came to getting on the scales. It was a cheap shot, but I didn’t care. I was a little on the heavy side myself, given my line of work, but that hadn’t made me grumpy.

  “Of course,” I said as I got her a dozen of my least popular selections.

  As I handed the box to her, she asked, “Where’s my free coffee?”

  “Sorry, we’re fresh out,” I said. It was true in a way, since we were completely out of free coffee. If she wanted something to drink, she was going to have to pay for it, at least if she was getting it from me.

  The news seemed to disappoint her even further as she collected her donuts and left without even as much as thanking me.

  Wow, that woman was going to be hard to live with.

  Her pies had better be out of this world.

  “What was that all about?” Paige Hill asked as she approached my counter a few seconds later.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked the bookshop owner as I refreshed her coffee.

  “How could I not?” Paige asked, shaking her head in disbelief. She’d gotten in the habit of joining me for a quick break whenever her schedule allowed it, and I loved her company. Paige was my kind of storeowner, a real credit to the April Springs downtown business district. Well, I suppose it was a little ambitious calling us that, since our “group” was comprised of just a handful of stores and shops. “She’s as deaf as a post, isn’t she?”

  “And as mean as a snake, too,” I said. “That wasn’t just me, was it? She really wasn’t very pleasant, was she?”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t throw her out on the spot. If she comes by the bookstore looking for free samples, she’s going to find her way out the back door in a heartbeat.”

  I looked out the window and saw that Maggie was indeed heading straight for The Last Page bookshop. “Don’t look now, but I believe you’re getting a visitor.”

  “Blast it all,” Paige said as she headed straight for the door, leaving her coffee undrunk. “Bye.”

  “Don’t forget to speak up,” I said with a grin.

  Paige shook her head as she raced out, and I saw her catch Maggie on the sidewalk before she could go inside. The two of them had a conversation right out in front of the bookstore, and it appeared to go even more poorly than mine had. To make matters worse, I saw Gabby Williams approaching the two women, no doubt to show support for her cousin. I wasn’t about to let Paige get ambushed alone, so I looked over at my last two customers and said, “I’ll be right back. Help yourself to coffee refills.”

  “And more donuts, too?” Seth Lancaster asked with a grin.

  “Sure, just leave your money on the counter and take whatever you’d like,” I replied.

  Seth shrugged as I was leaving, but I knew that I could trust him. The man was a bit prickly on the outside at times, but he’d developed a soft spot for his grandchildren, and it had made the old guy somehow human, a testament to the amazing transformative power of love.

  Gabby Williams, the stylish and trim owner of ReNEWed—a gently used elegant clothing shop located right next to mine—was just joining the fray when I got onto the scene.

  “Paige Hill, are you standing out in front of everyone in town and yelling at my cousin?” Gabby asked fiercely. That would have been a neat trick in and of itself, since only the four of us were out there at the time.

  “You have to yell at her in order to be heard,” I said from behind Gabby. My presence caught her off guard as she twirled to look at me.

  “Don’t you start with me, Suzanne Hart.”

  “Gabby, I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,” Maggie said fiercely to her cousin. “I’m perfectly capable of handling the likes of these two by myself.”

  “I’m just trying to help,” Gabby said, clearly exasperated by being confronted on two fronts. Paige was looking on at the moment, clearly bemused by the situation now that we’d stepped in.

  “I can handle myself,” Maggie answered, much louder than was necessary.

  Gabby frowned at each of us in turn, and then she turned and headed back to her shop without another word. I’d have to mend that fence later, but for now, I needed Paige to know that I had her back. Once Gabby was gone, Maggie turned away as well, but as she did, I saw her let the box of my donuts “accidentally” slip from her grip, spilling the contents onto the ground.

  “Whoops,” she said with clear delight—the first time I’d seen her actually smile—and then she left us without making the least effort to clean up the mess she’d just made of my delightful treats.

  I knelt down to pick up the remnants of the donuts and jam them back into the box, with Paige pitching in as well.

  “I’m so sorry, Suzanne. This is awful.”

  “No worries. I was going to have to pitch them out soon anyway,” I said as I got most of a blueberry-stuffed donut back into the box. My hand was going to be stained with all kinds of different fillings, and the whole thing just made me sad. It was like some kind of gruesome donut homicidal rampage.

  “It’s just not right,” she said, grabbing a Boston cream donut and trying to get most of it back into the box as well. At least that filling wouldn’t stain her hands. “That woman is impossible.”

  “She can’t even get along with her own cousin,” I said, feeling a little better having Paige commiserate with me. “What hope did we have?”

  “Well, I for one am going to boycott her pie shop when she opens it tomorrow,” Paige said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should give her one more chance,” I replied.

  Paige looked at me for a moment before breaking out into a grin. “I suppose it’s the neighborly thing to do, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe there will be free samples,” I said, laughing outright now.

  “There had better be,” Paige answered as we finished cleaning up the sidewalk in front of her shop as best as we could. “Don’t worry about the rest of it. I’ll rinse the walkway with a few buckets of water, and no one will ever know what happened.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I doubt that I’ll be able to forget,” I said.

  As I was leaving, Paige called out, “By the way, thanks for coming to my rescue earlier.”

  “I wasn’t about to let the two of them gang up on you,” I replied. “You would have done the same thing for me.”

  “You’d better believe I would have,” she answered.

  Seth was waiting for me by the front door, and he held it open for me as I got back to Donut Hearts. “That woman should be shot for slaughtering your donuts like that,” he said.

  “Did you see what happened?” I asked him. I hadn’t even realized that anyone else had been watching.

  “I did, and I’m not the only one, either. Do you want me to go talk to her, Suzanne?”

  This was new. Since when did Seth Lancaster stick up for me? “No, I’m good, but thanks for the offer.”

  “You bet,” he said, and then he left my shop, clearly still fuming about what had happened outside.

  I wasn’t all that pleased myself.

  If Maggie Moore was looking to start something with me, I was bound and determined to finish it, and I had a hunch that I wasn’t alone in my animosity for the pie maker. What a shame. Someone who should have been my natural ally was very possibly going to be one of my biggest foes.

  Chapter 2

  After closing up Donut Hearts for the day, I couldn’t seem to get Maggie Moore off of my mind. I suppose I’m like most folks. I want everyone to like me when it comes down to it, and Maggie’s off-putting behavior had been bothering me since I’d met her. I finished cleaning up the sho
p and balancing out my register, and then, after dropping my meager earnings off at the bank, I decided to take the last eleven donuts I’d had in unsold inventory to Maggie. Maybe I’d just caught her having a bad moment. After all, I knew the stress involved in opening a food shop in April Springs more than just about anyone else around.

  I drove over to the location of Maggie’s shop, just off Viewmont Avenue between the town clock and the Episcopal Church. She was across the road from the town hall and the police station, near the building I had inherited from my father as well, and I had a hunch she’d have no shortage of customers if her pies were any good at all.

  The front door of the building was locked, which didn’t surprise me. I knocked a few times anyway, but no one answered. For a second I thought about just leaving the donuts with a note, but I knew in my heart that was taking the coward’s way out. I needed to see the woman face to face to see if we could at least come to some kind of mutual respect. After all, that’s what I’d done with Gabby Williams, and now, much to my astonishment, we’d actually become friends, in a loose definition of the word. Maybe her cousin wouldn’t be all that different if I just made a bit of an effort.

  As I knocked on the back door, it opened almost immediately upon my touch. Had it not even been closed completely? “Hello?” I called out as I started to edge through the door when someone suddenly appeared, blocking my way as well as my view.

  It wasn’t Maggie, though.

  “May I help you?” a young woman in her late teens or early twenties asked, clearly frazzled by something. She absently fussed with her hair, mostly pulled back but with strands of wispy blonde coming through, and she pushed a little of the mop back off her forehead, adding another smudge of flour to the one already there.

  “I’m Suzanne Hart,” I said. “I’d love to speak with Maggie.”

  “Sorry, she’s not here at the moment. At least I don’t think so. She’s been coming in and out all day, and I’ve been too busy to notice. After all, these pies aren’t going to make themselves,” the young woman said after a quick glance back into the shop. Was she lying to me? I had to wonder if Maggie had sent her out to deal with me so she wouldn’t have to.