Perjury Proof

by Jessica Beck

  “No, the ladies are taking a two-week vacation to Italy. In fact, they are probably in the air even as we speak.”

  “Good for them. We could use another vacation ourselves, and now we have enough money to do it right. What do you say?”

  I wanted to tell him about Maggie’s murder and my investigation with Grace, but I couldn’t bring myself to bring down our happy conversation. “We can talk about it when you get back. I can’t wait to see you, Jake.”

  “Not half as much as I want to see you,” he said. “If I haven’t told you enough lately, I love you, Suzanne, and I’m awfully glad you came into my life.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, feeling the warm glow of his love even through the phone. “Now get some sleep, young man. You have a lot to do in the next fifteen hours.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said.

  After Jake was off the line, I began to feel guilty about not telling him about Maggie’s murder. He deserved to know, but it wasn’t as though I was purposely keeping anything from him. There had just never been a good time to bring it up. When he got back into town, after we had our sweet reunion, there would be plenty of time to catch him up to speed on what had been happening in his absence.

  In the meantime, I still had donuts to make, and now I was behind in a very tight schedule, but it had been worth every second I’d stolen from my day.

  Jake was coming home to me, and that was really all that mattered!

  Chapter 18

  I almost had to skip my break entirely because the phone call with Jake had cut into my tight schedule, but I knew that if I didn’t spend at least a few minutes outside, the day would seem unbearably long. For the second time in a very short day, I went outside to find someone waiting for me, but it wasn’t Darby, or even the police chief this time.

  Leanne Haller was sitting on a chair at my outdoor table, and from the look of it, she’d been crying for quite some time.

  I took the seat across from her and reached out and touched her hand. “Leanne, are you okay?”

  “Suzanne, I just don’t know what to do. I need some advice.” She dabbed at her cheeks and wiped away a few of the tears, but from the tone in her voice, I knew more were surely to follow.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with career choices, but Mrs. Preston is probably pretty good at it,” I replied as I slid my coffee cup across the table to her. “I haven’t had any yet, so you’re welcome to this.”

  “Thanks, but if I drink that, I’ll never get to sleep. Jane is fine and all, and so is Gabby, but you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to put your heart and soul into something you make with your very own hands. How can I give that up?”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “You said yourself that a lot of folks have offered to help you. For that matter, I’d be glad to do whatever I can to make opening the pie shop a reality.”

  “But in the end, it all falls on my shoulders. How do you manage to do it year after year?”

  I could tell this young woman an idealized version of my real life, but I felt as though I owed her the stark realities of running a small business alone. “I won’t lie to you. It’s not easy,” I said. “You have to want it from the bottom of your heart, and then you have to make it your single purpose in life, especially at first. I once heard someone say that people who work for themselves would rather put in eighty hours a week than work for someone else for forty, and I’ve found that to be true, especially when you’re just starting out.”

  She looked suitably depressed. “Are you sorry that you did it?”

  “Me? No, it’s not only what I do, it’s become who I am,” I said. “It also brought my husband into my life in a roundabout way, so I’d be grateful for that if nothing else. But I don’t want to lie to you. It’s hard, even without the handicap you’re going to be starting out with. Until Maggie’s murder is solved, it will be hanging over your head like a grand piano, just waiting to fall.”

  “You and Grace are still working on the case, though, aren’t you?” she asked me, tentatively reaching out to take the offered coffee.

  “As a matter of fact, things are coming quickly to a head. We’ve got it narrowed down to two of our top suspects, and I’m pretty sure I knew who it was that killed her. It was pretty clever actually, rigging that door up the way they did.”

  The truth was, I thought Beatrice had found a way to get inside the pie shop when no one else was there, and she’d rigged the door to get in and out easily. After all, she’d had a set of plans in her bag at the diner. Maybe she’d found a way to get her hands on the blueprints of the shop. How else would she know about the door? If only I’d had the nerve and the brains to snatch them out of her purse when I’d first seen them.

  “So then, you know,” she said softly.

  “I think so,” I said. “I need to check a few things out this afternoon, but it might all be over in twelve hours.”

  Leanne nodded, clearly taken aback by my statement. “You don’t have any donuts in there, do you? I’ll even take something stale if you’ve got it.”

  “I have some freshly made cake donuts,” I told her. “How does that sound?”

  “Like perfection,” she said.

  “Then let’s get you something to eat.”

  Once we were safely locked inside, I led Leanne back into the kitchen. “There’s fresh coffee out front if you need to refresh yours, and I think I’ll join you. What looks good to you?” I asked her as I surveyed the donuts I’d just finished.

  “I think this will do nicely,” Leanne said as she reached over and picked up the heavy batter dropper I used to make my cake donuts. Though I’d rinsed it in the sink, there were still remnants of the last batter I’d dropped into the hot oil clinging to the sides of it.

  “I’m all out of batter,” I said, confused by what she was doing at first, but then I got it. “Leanne, do me a favor and put that back where it was.”

  “Suzanne, I’m sorry, but I don’t see any other way out of this mess for me. Clearly you know I killed my aunt, and if there’s any chance for me to ever open that pie shop, you can’t be around to tell the police what you know.”

  It was Leanne? I had been wrong about her, but the puzzle pieces started rearranging themselves in my mind in the split second I realized that she was indeed the killer. I’d suspected her at first, but her story had been so convincing that she wasn’t resentful about the cookbook, or the partnership that was never offered her! What a fool I’d been. I’d taken her love of creating goodies in the kitchen, and I had assumed that someone who loved to bake so much couldn’t possibly be a coldblooded killer! It galled me knowing that Beatrice had been right about at least one thing the night before!

  “Leanne, it’s never too late to do the right thing. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret,” I said as I looked for something to use to fight back with. Unfortunately, the knives were either in drawers or in the sink, which was where Leanne was standing. The oil was hot, but I was closer to it than she was, so anything I threw in there would likely burn me a great deal more than it would her.

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong about that,” she said, biting her lower lip as she swung the dropper at my head, trying to decapitate me with it without any warning at all.

  I did the only thing I could do, which was to try to block her blow.

  It worked, at least partially, as I put my arm up to stop the weight from crashing down on my skull.

  It broke my arm in the process, though.

  I could feel the bone snap upon impact, and wave after wave of pain washed through me. My right arm hung lifelessly down by my side, and I hurt so badly that I could barely see through the agony. “Don’t hit me again!” I cried out as I crumpled to the floor, cradling my dead arm in my lap.

  “If you’d just stay right where you are, it will be over in a sec
ond,” Leanne said as though she were scolding a misbehaving child.

  I wasn’t about to do that, though.

  My arm might be dead, but there was nothing wrong with my feet. Lashing out with both of them from my sitting position, I brought her down with a thud.

  As I lay there trying to overcome the wash of agony I felt from any movement at all, I kept waiting for her to jump up and hit me one last, deadly time.

  She didn’t move, though.

  After a few moments trying to catch enough breath to withstand what I knew was going to be sheer torture, I managed to crawl over to Leanne.

  A pool of blood continued to spread out from the back of her head. I searched for a pulse with my good hand, but there was nothing there, not even a flutter.

  I tried my best to get my cell phone out of my pocket to call for help, but I must have passed out from the pain my attempts had brought on.

  When I came to again, I tried once more, finally managing to worm my cell phone out of my pocket and dying a little inside with each slight movement.

  I finally got it free of my pocket only to realize that the fall had damaged it beyond repair.

  I could stay right where I was until someone got suspicious and broke into the donut shop to find me, or I could somehow crawl out to the door where I could be more easily seen.

  There was no way I could stay with that slowly cooling corpse, one that I had caused myself, even if it had been done in self-defense.

  I couldn’t allow myself to think about that, though.

  I had to take care of myself first.

  Slowly, trying not to jar my arm too much but failing miserably with each push, I worked my way out of the kitchen and into the dining room, sliding on my side as I went. I’d tried to stand a few times, but there was no way I could manage it without passing out again, and if I did anything, I had to stay awake.

  The only problem was that I was still behind the counter even after I got out of the kitchen. No one could see me from the outside from where I was at the moment.

  And then I heard a tap on the front door.

  “I’m here,” I said as loudly as I could, trying to shout despite the pain that raced through my body with every breath. “Help.”

  I must not have gotten enough volume out of my voice, though, because the tap quickly went away.

  It looked as though I was going to be there for a very long time after all.

  Chapter 19

  Suddenly, it sounded as though the entire front window of my shop exploded, sending glass shards flying everywhere.

  I was glad that I had the counter for protection.

  “Suzanne? Are you all right?” Darby asked as he rushed in and knelt beside my body.

  “My arm is broken pretty badly,” I said. Almost as an afterthought, I added, “Leanne is dead. I killed her. She’s back there.” I couldn’t even risk pointing, the pain was so bad.

  And then I passed out again.

  When I woke up, I was in the hospital. My mind felt fuzzy, and there was an odd taste of cotton in my mouth. I looked down at my broken arm and realized that there was just a dull throbbing pain there now where so recently it had nearly ruined me.

  “You’re going to be okay, Suzanne,” Momma said as her face hovered into view.

  That was all that I heard as I quickly faded away again. I wasn’t sure what kind of painkillers I was on, but I knew they were the strongest things I’d ever experienced in my life.

  The next time I woke up, Jake was there. “You made it back,” I said groggily. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said as he stroked my hair, saw me wince, and then he pulled his hand back immediately. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

  “Not your fault,” I whispered. “She rigged the door herself to make it look like someone else did it, didn’t she?” I’d had nightmares envisioning Leanne setting the stage to create other suspects in her aunt’s murder, and I didn’t even need Jake’s assurance to know that I was right.

  “We’ll talk about it later, honey,” he said.

  “Is she dead? Don’t answer that. She is. I know it.”

  Jake knew better than to lie to me. “Suzanne, it was either her or you. I’m perfectly happy with the choice you made.”

  “Me, too,” I said, and then I fell asleep again.

  Chapter 20

  Chief Grant was with Jake the next time I woke up. “If you’re up to it, Jake thought you’d like to know what we’ve found out,” he said.

  “I want to know,” I said as I struggled to sit up. It caused another wave of deadening pain, and I suspected my medication had worn off.

  “I’ll go get your doctor,” Jake said as he started for the door.

  “No!” I said as loudly as I could manage. “Whatever they are giving me is making my brain fuzzy. I need to hear this. Please.”

  He agreed, but I could see that doing so caused him some very real pain as well.

  “We found evidence of the poison hidden in her apartment,” the chief said. “She threw away the pan she used, but it was still in the trash can. Kind of a rookie mistake, that.”

  “I still can’t figure out why she poisoned only half the pills. Why not one, or even all of them?”

  “Who knows? It may have been all of the concentrated solution she had, and she didn’t want any of it to go to waste.”

  I suppose that made sense in a skewed kind of way. “What about the side door?” I asked.

  “It was all in her journal, if you can imagine that. Who writes these things down?”

  “Teenage girls,” I said, and then I coughed a bit, sending another wave of pain through my body, but particularly into my arm. “Some women never lose the habit,” I added after my coughing fit subsided. “What else did it say?”

  “She found the door by accident, and she’d already decided to kill Maggie. It wasn’t over the pie shop, though. She went into great detail about how Maggie had found her notes on a book she was going to publish herself and then she stole them from her. When Leanne confronted her about it, Maggie laughed it off and told her to grow up, this was the real world. That’s when she decided to kill her. We searched her Internet browsing history, and Leanne had indeed looked up the easiest way to poison someone.”

  “She admitted doing that last night out of a sense of morbid curiosity about the poisoning,” I said, remembering her confession of sorts.

  “Sure, but we were able to determine that she did it before the murder, not after,” the chief said. “What else is there? Oh, yes. The scratches on her arms were from the bushes, not the oven like she told you and Grace. Am I missing anything?”

  “Beatrice had something in her purse when I saw her at the diner. It looked like blueprints or something. Were they of the pie shop?”

  “Oh, she mentioned that when I interviewed her about the case,” the chief said. “She’s thinking about putting in a gazebo in her backyard, and she even showed me the plans she’d found for one online. She said if she was planning to kill someone, would she be building a gazebo? Whatever that was supposed to mean.”

  So, I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about that altogether. This case wasn’t my brightest moment as an amateur sleuth, and I was beginning to wonder if this might not be the perfect time to quit. After all, it had nearly cost me my life. If I hadn’t managed to block that blow, I would be dead now, and nothing else would really matter.

  “Suzanne? May I please call the doctor now?” Jake asked, imploring me to let him summon help.

  “Yes, please,” I said meekly.

  “Anyway, I just thought you ought to know,” the chief said. “Take care.”

  “How are you and Grace doing?” I managed to ask as they gave me more medication.

  “We’re going to be just fine, thanks to you. She and your mother are in the cafe
teria rounding up some coffee,” he said. “I’d hug you, but it might hurt.”

  “Love sometimes does that,” I said, and then I was out again.

  Chapter 21

  “How’s your arm?” Jake asked me two weeks later as we drove toward the mountains, and away from April Springs.

  “It’s better, but it still hurts quite a bit,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, it will heal, given time.” It was the voice of experience, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “At least Emma and Sharon are taking over Donut Hearts until further notice,” I said. We’d quickly come to an agreement, and the two of them had been more than happy to step in.

  “For the time being, but you’ll be back at it before you know it,” Jake said as he reached over and patted my leg. “In the meantime, the only thing you need to do is get better. Your mother got us this cabin for the next two months, and you don’t have to worry about a thing until then.”

  “I might not go back ever again,” I said, voicing something that had been running through my thoughts ever since the confrontation with Leanne.

  “You feel that way now, but you’ll change your mind,” Jake said, risking a glance at me as he drove up the steady curving road.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I said. I could still see Leanne’s lifeless body lying in my kitchen, the blood slowly spreading out from under her head onto the floor. How could I ever bring myself to go back there? Everyone had urged me to visit it at least once before we left, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it.

  Maybe with time I’d be able to watch that memory fade into the background, but I couldn’t be sure.

  All I knew with any certainty at the moment was that I needed to stay as far away from April Springs, and Donut Hearts, as I could.