Fatal Festive Donuts

by Cindy Bell

  “And how is it that a good detective, an experienced one like Detective Crackle, didn’t figure out that Jerry was living under a secret identity?” She pursed her lips.

  “Are you implying that maybe Detective Crackle knew that Jerry had a secret identity?”

  “I’m implying that either he is a very bad detective, or he knows a lot more about Jerry than he is saying. Which is why I think you should talk to him.”

  “Okay, I think I will. But what makes you think he’ll talk to me?” Joyce shook her head. “I wasn’t exactly friendly to him just now.”

  “I’ve seen the way that he looks at you. Whether you believe me or not, he will talk to you.” Brenda stood up from the couch and began to pace. When she glanced back at Joyce, she noticed the woman’s hard stare. “I’m serious, Joyce. He respects you, at the very least. He’s certainly not going to talk to me.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I’ll give it a try. I’ll see if I can schedule an appointment with him.” She pulled out her phone. Her thoughts were on Detective Crackle, and what his investigation might lead to. If Brenda was right, and he did know more about Jerry than he was revealing, what did that mean? Was he protecting Jerry from something? Was he a crooked cop and covering up for someone’s crime? It made her feel terrible to think that and she didn’t really believe it. In all the years that she was a cop’s wife, there was one thing that her husband hated above all else, and that was a crooked cop. He said they made it hard for people to know who to trust, and did more damage to the criminal justice system than any criminal ever could. That opinion had stuck with her over the years, and now the thought of being face to face with one made her even more uncomfortable. When she heard his voice, her muscles tensed.

  “Hello Detective, this is Joyce.”

  “I know it’s you, Joyce. How can I help you?”

  “Can I make an appointment to see you sometime today, please?”

  “Sure, would you like me to come out to the house?”

  She tried to detect his reaction to the request in his voice, but his tone was indifferent.

  “No, actually. Would you be available to meet me for lunch?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She grimaced. Had she pushed too far? The idea of having him out of his element was very appealing to her. But what if he thought her invitation was a little too suspicious?

  “I just thought it might be nice for us to have lunch and a conversation. We need to clear the air, and I’m sure that you haven’t been eating well while working this case.” She put as much sweetness as she could summon into her voice.

  “How could you know that?” He chuckled. “I’ve been on a diet of coffee and junk food.”

  “I remember when my husband would get involved in a case. He wouldn’t eat anything proper for days. I would just show up wherever he was with some home cooked meals. They were prepared by him and then frozen, I have to admit, but it’s the thought that counts. Even though he took some ribbing from his partner, he would quiet down when he saw there was enough for two.”

  “Ah, I see. Yes, a good meal sounds like a great idea. So we’ll meet at about one?”

  “Yes. There’s a little café not far from here. Blue’s Place, do you know it?”

  “Yes, I’ve been there a few times. I’ll see you soon.”

  After he hung up the phone, she stared at it for a moment.

  “Did he bite?” Brenda looked into her eyes.

  “I hope he doesn’t.” Joyce winced.

  Chapter 13

  Joyce parked outside the café and scanned the other cars in the parking lot. Was he already there? She looked for his beat-up old car. As she scanned the parking lot she grew nervous. What would she say when she went inside? How would he react to the questions she would ask? How would she phrase the questions? She spotted his car as she gripped the steering wheel and realized that she wouldn’t have much time to decide as she spotted him. He stood near the front door of the café in his suit with his hat pulled down low on his head.

  For a split-second she considered pulling back out of the parking space. Although she agreed with Brenda’s suspicions, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to draw any more of Detective Crackle’s attention to herself. She could just cut her losses and head home. But that wouldn’t get the crime any closer to being solved. If she really wanted to see justice served then she would have to put in the effort, even if that meant taking a big risk.

  As she approached the door, the detective offered her a small smile.

  “You took an awful long time to get out of the car.”

  “You spotted me, huh?” She paused at the bottom of the steps.

  “Only after you spotted me.” He pulled his hat off and reached for the door of the café. “So you decided to stay?”

  “Yes.” She smiled as she stepped through the door. When they reached an empty table, he sat down across from her.

  “Why are we here, Joyce?”

  “Can’t we order first?” She raised an eyebrow and picked up the menu.

  “I suppose.” He picked up his menu and perused it as well. “But putting off the reason for this meeting isn’t going to make it any easier to explain after the food arrives.”

  “I asked you to lunch, you accepted.” She peeked over the top of the menu at him.

  “That doesn’t explain why we are here.” He set his menu down.

  “What can I get you two?” The waitress smiled at them both as she tapped her pencil against a notepad. “Something sweet?”

  “I’ll just have the soup of the day.” Joyce handed the waitress her menu.

  “The same.” He handed over his menu as well.

  “He’ll have a sandwich as well. Turkey, I think. Turkey, Detective Crackle?” She looked across the table at him.

  “Yes, fine.” He frowned as he studied her. “I am more hungry than I thought. I can’t say that I’ve had anyone order my lunch for me, ever.”

  “It’s important that you keep up your strength.”

  “I suppose it is.” He cleared his throat.

  Once the waitress walked away, Joyce felt the pressure of his gaze on her. He wasn’t going to let her slide. She had to give him some kind of explanation. The only problem was, she wasn’t sure what.

  “I’ve been looking into Jerry’s life a bit.”

  “Oh?” He pushed his hat closer to the edge of the table in anticipation of the food being delivered. “Why would you do something like that?”

  “Well, for one, he died on my truck and I’d like to know more about him. And for two, I want to make sure that whoever did this to him is punished for it.” She watched him intently as he nodded.

  “And, what did you find?”

  “Not much so far. It seems that Jerry was a real mystery.” She folded her hands, one on top of the other, and studied him. “At least to most people around here.”

  “Is that so?” He glanced in the direction of the waitress, then back at her. “Sorry your search didn’t turn up much.”

  “It turned up one interesting thing.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “Jerry, wasn’t actually Jerry.”

  “What do you mean by that?” He stared hard into her eyes. Then he held up one finger as the waitress returned with the food. Once she walked away, he looked back at her. “Well? What did you mean?”

  “I think you know.” She swirled her spoon in her soup. “Maybe we should both drop the act, and just be honest with each other.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you were acting.” He narrowed his eyes and smiled slightly. “You’re good.”

  “I know that Jerry was living under a false identity, and I suspect that you knew this, too.”

  “Huh.” He didn’t touch his soup, or his sandwich, but only continued to stare at her. “You know an awful lot, don’t you?”

  “Too much?” She held his gaze.

  “Perhaps.” He sighed and pushed his plate and bowl away from him. “Look, this isn’t the place to have this
conversation.”

  “You have to eat, Detective.” She pushed his plate and bowl back towards him.

  “Arthur.” He picked up his spoon and sank it into his soup.

  “Arthur?” She blinked.

  “My name is Arthur.” He took a sip of his soup.

  “Oh.” She tipped her head towards him. “Nice to meet you, Arthur.”

  “Thank you.” He picked up his sandwich.

  “If we can’t talk about Jerry’s secret identity, then can we at least talk about your friendship? How is it that a man who was so disliked by everyone he knew, became your friend?”

  “Jerry wasn’t the greatest guy, that’s for sure. But he did some good things in his life. Although, that didn’t make him a good person, it still went a long way in my book.”

  “Like what? What good things did he do?”

  “We’ll discuss that after lunch. Now, I think it’s my turn to ask some questions.” He met her eyes.

  “You haven’t actually answered any of mine.” She shook her head, then took another spoonful of her soup.

  “You hid Brenda from me, didn’t you? When I came to the house to talk to her?” He had a bite of his sandwich. “She was there, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she was.” She put her spoon down. “And yes, I hid her from you. Because you were coming at her like a shark, and she doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment. She was terrified.”

  “So you’d like to tell me exactly how I should do my job?” His tone sharpened.

  “I’d like to tell you to stop wasting your time breathing down her neck when we both know there is something much larger at play here.”

  “What I know.” He took the last bite of his sandwich, then leaned across the table towards her. “Is that donuts purchased from your truck, made by Brenda, were laced with poison. Every one of them from what we took from the bakery. It is only out of pure luck that only Jerry ate one and died from it.”

  Her heart lurched. Hearing the words from his lips made things even more vivid. If anyone else had eaten a donut, there could have been more bodies.

  “Maybe we should step outside and talk about what we can’t talk about here.”

  “You haven’t finished your soup.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “I don’t blame you.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  She reached for her purse to pay for the meal, but he had already placed a few bills on the table.

  “I’ve got this.”

  “But I invited you.” Joyce frowned.

  “Sorry, I’m old fashioned, if a lady shares a meal with me, I pay the tab.” He stood up and looked towards the front door. “Ready?”

  Brenda couldn’t just stay at the house. Her mind was spinning a million miles a minute. Instead, she grabbed her keys and headed for the bakery. She wasn’t going to just let the handcuffs clasp around her wrists. She had every reason to believe that Orville was the murderer. He had access to the bakery, he stood to gain the most from Jerry’s death by inheriting the bakery, and he had motive due to the way Jerry treated him. Even if he was not the killer, she was certain he knew more about Jerry’s life than he was letting on.

  When she arrived at the bakery she found the door open, but the sign turned to closed.

  “Hello?” She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Orville stepped out from behind a stack of boxes.

  “Great. What is it?”

  “I just wanted to speak with you for a few minutes, if that’s okay?” Brenda smiled.

  “If it’s not one, it’s the other, huh? Why are you here asking me questions?” He looked at her with irritation as he rested his hands on the stack of boxes. “Still trying to clear your name?”

  “I had nothing to do with Jerry’s death, I think you know that.” She frowned as she studied his expression. He seemed to be hiding something. “Out of everyone in this town, I’m certain that you knew Jerry best. Did you know that his name wasn’t Jerry? That he had a secret identity?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He shook his head and moved another box onto the stack.

  “I think you do. He trusted you, why else would he have left the bakery to you?” Brenda stepped in front of the boxes to block his path to the stack. “This is important, Orville. Someone murdered Jerry, and I’m not the only one that is a suspect.”

  “I have an alibi. I was with someone the whole time, from the time I left the bakery till that morning. We even went to a movie. I have the ticket stub to prove it.” He set the box he held down on the floor and faced her with narrowed eyes. “I didn’t hurt Jerry. I don’t know if you did or not. You expect me to tell you things, when you might have been the one who killed him?”

  “If I was, then why would I be here now? Why would I be trying to find his killer? It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Joyce, and I think you know that.” She searched his face for any clue he might offer. “But do you know who it was?”

  “No.” He sighed. He ran his hand back through his hair. “I don’t know what to think about all of this, all right? One day Jerry was telling me that he never wanted to see me again, and the next, I’d inherited the bakery. It doesn’t make sense to you? Well, it doesn’t make sense to me, either. You’re coming to me for answers, but I don’t have any. I can only think he left it to me because he had no one else to leave it to. All I know is that Jerry didn’t like to talk about his past. When he first moved here, he bought the bakery, and hired me. He wouldn’t hire anyone else. Just me. I couldn’t keep up, I asked him over and over again to hire someone else, but he refused. It wasn’t until a few years in that he finally hired other people. I thought he just made enough money to afford it, but maybe there were other reasons.”

  “So the only person he trusted was you?” She met his eyes.

  “Are you kidding?” He laughed as he stepped around her and headed towards the front of the bakery. “Jerry didn’t trust anyone.”

  “What about girlfriends? He must have had some.” She followed after him.

  “Not one. I never saw him so much as smile at a woman. Now, if he did things after hours, I don’t know about that. You’re not getting the point. We weren’t friends. We worked together every day, but we didn’t go out and shoot pool, or have drinks. I’ve never been inside of his house. He’s never been inside of mine. I tried to get to know him better, but each time I did he put up roadblocks, so I took the cue and left it alone. He wasn’t exactly the type of person that someone would want to get to know. He was harsh, and cold, and had a temper that would flare over the stupidest things.”

  Frustration built within her as she realized that the most likely person that might have insight into Jerry’s mind, in the entire town, was clueless about him. However, his final words lingered in her mind. If he got so angry over simple things, maybe that was a clue on its own.

  “What kind of things would he get angry about?”

  “Sometimes he would get a phone call, and it would set him off. I always assumed it was about bills, but he never said. Other times he would just fly off the handle and shut down the whole bakery for the day, sometimes a few days. He would never say why, he would just tell us all to get out. One time he even did it with customers in the bakery, he pushed them right out the door. It was ridiculous. He never gave any explanations.”

  “That’s very odd behavior.” Brenda crossed her arms. “It never struck you as strange?”

  “Of course, it did.” He rolled his eyes. “But people can be strange. It’s not my business if they are. He paid me, so I did my job.”

  “Even though he was so harsh to you? Why did you keep working with him for so long if he treated you like that?”

  “You haven’t worked minimum wage jobs much, have you?” He gathered some items from behind the counter and tossed them into a box.

  “No, not really. Why?”

  “When you work a minimum wage job, no one has to treat you nicely. You
r bosses know that they own you, because you’re completely dependent on your paycheck. Trust me, Jerry was not the worst boss I’ve ever had.” He slid around to the front of the counter and looked her straight in the eyes. “If someone killed Jerry, your safest bet is to stay out of it. Got me? Don’t you have a kid?”

  “Yes.” She was a little startled that he would know that. “A daughter.”

  “So wise up, lady, and forget about all of this. People don’t get knocked off for no reason. You’re digging yourself into the middle of something that could get you in trouble. Just leave it alone.”

  “Why would you say that? Do you think Jerry was mixed up with some dangerous people?”

  “He was poisoned, wasn’t he?” He settled his gaze on her. “Do you think kind, good upstanding citizens poison people?”

  “No.” She frowned. “But had you ever noticed anyone around him that might be capable of something like that?”

  “People don’t usually advertise that they’re murderers.” He sighed. “No, all right? I didn’t see this coming. No one did. It doesn’t matter how many questions you ask me, I’m not going to have answers for you.”

  “Well, thanks for your time, Orville. Are you packing everything up? Do you plan to close the bakery?” She started towards the door.

  “Yes. Closing it. Selling it. And getting out of this town.” He sighed as he heaved another box onto the pile. “There’s nothing here for me.”

  “Good luck to you, Orville.” As Brenda stepped out the door and onto the sidewalk frustration boiled up within her. No matter where she turned it seemed as if there was nothing to find out about Jerry. In fact, as far as she could recall, only one person had described him as a friend. She wondered how Joyce’s meeting with Detective Crackle was going.

  As she approached her car, she noticed Gray’s truck a few spaces away. Her heart skipped a beat. Aaron said Gray’s truck was one of the vehicles he noticed in the parking lot that morning. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then crept up to his truck. Inside, she saw a few documents that included the address of the farm. Curious, she boldly opened the passenger side door. It wasn’t locked, but she knew she was still breaking in, which was scary. She snapped quick pictures of the documents, then hurried off to her car. As she reached it, she saw Gray walking towards the parking lot. Her heart flipped. He waved at her, and shouted. She struggled to get her key in the lock.