Mint Chip Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 6

by Susan Gillard

  She grabbed two serving spoons from the silverware drawer and stuck one in the corner of the lasagna pan and the other in the dish of green beans. No, wait. A spatula. She whirled back toward the drawer just beneath the silverware drawer, yanked it open, and snatched out a spatula. Exchanging it for the lasagna spoon, she tossed the spoon toward the sink and heard it clatter as she hurried toward the front door.

  Ryan stood on her wide, wraparound front porch, holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in green florist’s paper. Yellow and orange blooms peeked from the top of the spray, surrounded by oak leaves in hues of green, orange, and dark red. As he stepped inside, he handed her the bouquet.

  “Thank you,” she said, surprised. “To what do I owe this royal treatment?”

  “To the fact that I didn’t start treating you royally soon enough,” Ryan said.

  “Well, thank you,” she repeated, her tongue suddenly feeling thick and awkward. “Let me just put these in some water.”

  She headed for the kitchen with Ryan following, then busied herself locating a vase beneath the sink, running water in it, and plunking the flowers in. “This looks delicious,” Ryan said from behind her.

  She turned and found him eyeing the lasagna. “Everything will be ready in a few minutes,” she said. “We’re just waiting on the garlic bread.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said. “Need help with anything?”

  “No thanks,” she said, setting the vase of flowers on the ledge that divided her kitchen from her living room. “Getting the garlic bread out of the oven is a one-person job. Have a seat.”

  Ryan pulled out a chair and sat down. “You expect me to sit here without eating this?” he teased, pointing to the lasagna.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “Patience, sir, patience.” She flipped on the oven light and glanced inside at the foil-wrapped loaf of French bread she’d prepared earlier with liberal amounts of garlic and butter.

  “I’ve been patient all day,” Ryan groaned. “I wanted to see you.”

  “Well, now you see me,” she said, spreading out her hands, palms up. “Here you are, and here I am. Now what?”

  The next thing she knew, she was caught up in Ryan’s embrace, his lips finding hers. She returned his kiss for a moment, then stepped back. “Three minutes,” she said.

  Ryan looked bewildered. “What?”

  “Three more minutes on the garlic bread. We don’t want it to burn.”

  “I don’t care if it burns,” Ryan said, drawing her back toward him and attempting to cover her lips with his own. “I don’t care if the fire department has to come put it out. I—”

  “Well, I do,” she said, smiling, teasingly pushing him away. “I love garlic bread. Not that I need any more carbs after all the carbs I ate at lunch.”

  Ryan flopped back into his seat. “You had lunch with Amy?”

  “Yep. Dos Chicos.”

  “I missed lunch today.”

  “Working on the murder at Shear Beauty?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Ryan paused, then shook his head.

  “What happened?”

  “There’s not much I can tell you on this one,” Ryan said. “Only what you’re going to read in the paper or what you probably already heard on the news.”

  “I didn’t watch the news. What would I hear? Or read in the paper?” She glanced at the oven timer and saw it counting down the seconds in the last minute. Heather put on one of her oven mitts, opened the oven door, and pulled the tray of garlic bread out. She set it on the stovetop, took off the oven mitt, and began gingerly picking apart the aluminum foil along the seam she’d made when she wrapped it.

  “Kelly Carlson was bludgeoned to death in her shop,” Ryan said. “Her assistant found her this morning when she got to work.”

  “When was she killed?” Heather asked, placing several slices of garlic bread in a silver bread basket.

  “Probably last night.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “We’re checking out a possibility,” he said.

  “Which you can’t tell me about?” Heather asked, sitting down across from him.

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Just tell me whenever you can.”

  “I will,” he said. “Thanks for understanding.”

  She smiled at him in response. “Want some lasagna?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he sighed. He held his plate for her as she cut and served him a large piece with the spatula, then used her clean fork to cut the strings of cheese that led from his plate to the baking dish and pile them on his lasagna.

  As Ryan served himself green beans and garlic bread, Heather filled her plate as well, taking a small piece of the lasagna as a concession to lunch’s caloric excess. “Mmm, these beans are delicious,” Ryan said around a mouthful.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Just a little olive oil and garlic, a little parmesan cheese, and voila.”

  “This is better than Giovanni’s,” he said, referring to the restaurant they most frequently patronized. “Better than my lasagna, too.”

  “You cook? Why did I think you didn’t like to cook much?”

  “Because I don’t,” he said. “But that’s not because I can’t cook. I’m actually a great cook. It’s just that I don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. And somehow, it doesn’t seem worth it to go to a lot of trouble for just one person.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said.

  “Our next date,” he said, punctuating his words with jabs of the fork toward her, “I’ll cook for you.”

  “You’re on,” she said. “What’s your specialty?”

  “You’ll have to wait and find out,” he said, as a whine sounded from right next to the table. They both glanced toward the floor to see Dave, Heather’s fluffy, white mixed-breed dog, looking up at Ryan with pleading eyes. “No way, Dave,” Ryan said. “This is mine. Dogs don’t eat lasagna, anyway.”

  “Um, actually,” Heather said, giving him her best guilty look, “they do, sometimes.”

  “Dave eats lasagna?”

  “And Chinese food. Except he doesn’t like vegetables. Just the meat.”

  “A dog after my own heart,” Ryan said. “But he’s still not getting my lasagna.”

  “Don’t you ever let Bella eat anything besides cat food?” Heather asked.

  Now it was Ryan’s turn to look guilty. “We’re talking about Dave,” he said with mock seriousness. “You leave Bella out of this.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Heather said smugly, and dug into her meal.

  ***

  That night, after Heather had let Dave out into the backyard, waited for him to do his business, and let him back in, she walked into the living room and picked up the remote. “It’s okay, Dave,” she said to her dog, who was looking at her with his head cocked to one side, the way he always did when he didn’t understand some departure from their normal routine. “I just want to watch part of the news. Probably just the first part.”

  Heather took up her favorite position on the couch, slouching low against the cushions with her feet up on the coffee table in front of her, and pushed the button to turn the TV on. She had to wait through the opening graphics and intro before the scene changed to show the two news anchors sitting at their desk and looking seriously into the camera.

  “At the top of the news tonight,” Jane Duvall said, each blond hair perfectly in place and makeup highlighting her flawless features, looking every bit the beauty queen she had once been, “is the story of the murder of a Hillside businesswoman.”

  As she continued, the camera cut to an exterior shot of Shear Beauty, showing the yellow crime scene tape and an officer standing guard. “Kelly Carlson was the owner of Shear Beauty, a popular hair salon on Lakeridge Road. This morning, she was found bludgeoned to death in her shop when her assistant arrived for work. Police do not yet have a suspect, but they are following up on potential leads. And they—and the victim’s family—are asking
for the public’s help in solving this crime.”

  Then, suddenly, Ryan’s face filled the screen above the words Detective Ryan Shepherd, Hillside PD. Someone off-camera was holding a microphone for him. “We can’t release very many details at this time,” Ryan said. “We’re still very early in the investigation. However, we were able to notify Ms. Carlson’s family this morning, and they have asked us to release her name and to ask anyone who has any information regarding this crime to please contact the Hillside Police Department.”

  Heather snatched up her phone and tapped out a text—you’re on television!—and pressed send.

  “We will keep you updated as this story unfolds,” Jane Duvall said, wrapping up. “Brad?” She turned to her co-anchor, who now held a sheaf of papers in front of him as he launched into the next story.

  Heather’s phone pinged with an incoming message. She read it and smiled.

  I hate being on television.

  “Okay, Dave, that’s it,” Heather said, pointing the remote toward the TV and turning it off. “That’s all I needed.” Dave stood up from his doggie bed in the corner, waited for her to check to make sure the front door was locked and then turn off the lights, and followed her down the hall toward her bedroom.

  As she changed into flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt, Dave jumped up onto her bed and curled up into a sleepy ball. “So it’s my bed tonight, is it?” Heather asked. “Okay, stay there.”

  She headed into the tiny bathroom off her room, turned on the water, and waited for it to get warm so she could wash her face. Even though she rarely wore makeup, she still made it a point to go through the ritual of cleansing her face every night. It was good for her skin, and besides, the warm water was a nice, relaxing touch as she readied herself for bed.

  When she had hung her washcloth back up, she squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush and began to brush her teeth, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Something was niggling at the back of her mind. What was it?

  Bludgeoned inside the shop. That was it. Kelly Carlson had been bludgeoned inside her shop. That meant she had probably known her killer—or at least let him or her in.

  Or maybe the killer just walked through the front door, Heather told herself, playing devil’s advocate. Maybe the killer was a customer.

  Heather spit her mouthful of toothpaste foam into the sink. The police were probably checking out all of Kelly’s customers from yesterday, she realized, or at least the evening customers, to see if one of them might have killed her.

  But somehow, she had a feeling the police wouldn’t find any useful information by pursuing that possibility. It seemed more likely that the killer wouldn’t be on Kelly’s appointment book. Which led Heather back to the probability that Kelly had known her killer and let the person in. Because whether the killer had been present in the shop and had stayed after the last customer left, or whether Kelly had let him or her in later, the fact remained that she probably wouldn’t have done either of those two things without knowing the person.

  Heather sighed as she turned off the bedroom light and slipped between the covers of her bed. Sometimes, she really didn’t envy Ryan having to figure things out.

  Speaking of Ryan…

  She felt her cheeks heating up and knew that if anyone could have seen her at that moment, they would have seen her blushing as she wondered what it might be like to be married again and to share a bed with Ryan someday.

  She turned over to face the empty side of the bed. What would it be like to have someone sleeping on a pillow right next to her? She’d have to move out of the middle of the bed, of course, and only take up her half.

  Heather scooted over to the side of the bed nearest her nightstand. She lay there for a minute and decided she could live with sleeping on only one half of the mattress.

  But what about other practical considerations? She wondered. Did Ryan snore? Did he hog the covers?

  She turned back onto her other side, facing the nightstand this time as she always did, and smiled.

  One day, perhaps, she would find out the answers to those questions.

  Chapter 3

  Even before Heather picked up the morning paper in its plastic sleeve from her front porch, she could see the large-font, bolded letters of the headline. She took the paper back inside, closed the door behind her, and shook the rolled-up tube from the plastic wrapper. Unfolding it, she read, “Local Woman Found Bludgeoned to Death.”

  She carried the paper into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Holding the paper up with one hand, she gripped the handle of her coffee cup with the other and raised the mug to her lips. Taking her first sip of the brew, she began to read.

  “Yesterday morning, 28-year-old Hillside resident Kelly Carlson was found bludgeoned to death inside her hair salon, Shear Beauty. Ms. Carlson had been a resident of Hillside for 5 years. Her body was found this morning by her assistant, Rachel Goodman, when Ms. Goodman arrived for work.

  Police say Carlson was killed sometime the night before. At this time, they are not releasing any details about potential suspects. The Hillside Herald has learned, however, that arrests have been made in the vicinity of Shear Beauty the night Carlson was killed. Three juveniles were taken into custody for possession of marijuana and possession of a firearm. Their names are not being released because they are minors.”

  Hmm, she thought. Interesting. Could the three teenagers have killed Kelly? True, she hadn’t been shot, but maybe they’d pistol-whipped her and gone too far.

  But why would they have attacked her inside the shop? Why would they have been inside late at night, and what motive could they have had for the attack?

  On TV, it’s always money or love, she thought. Assuming it wasn’t love—because that just doesn’t sound right—could it have been money? Maybe they knew Kelly was closing up shop and probably had some cash on hand from the day’s proceeds?

  Maybe so. But that still left the matter of how they had gotten inside. Of course, Kelly may very well not have felt threatened by three teenagers. She may have either let them in after the door was locked, or let them stay after the last customer left.

  But wasn’t marijuana supposed to make people mellow? Wasn’t it usually people who were hopped up on crack or something that went around killing people, not people who were high on pot?

  The one time Heather had tried pot had been long ago, when she was in high school. She hadn’t felt like doing anything violent. In fact, it had seemed like a great idea to lie on her back on her friend’s sofa and contemplate the meaning of life and of the ceiling tiles. So, yeah, it wasn’t likely that the teenagers had smoked a joint, and then attempted to rob and kill Kelly. Of course, maybe they hadn’t been high at the time.

  “Aarrggh,” Heather groaned out loud in frustration. Nothing about this seemed to make sense, and Ryan had said he couldn’t tell her much this time.

  It wasn’t even really her business to try to figure things out. And she certainly wasn’t a professional. But her overactive curiosity gene wouldn’t allow her to let the mystery go. Any mystery, for that matter. And this one was more important than most, because a young woman had lost her life.

  Scratching at the back door alerted her that Dave wanted back in. She opened the door for him and contemplated, for the thousandth time, having a doggie door installed. But her friend Kathleen had had one put in, and Kathleen’s dog wouldn’t even use the door. He was afraid of it, Kathleen said.

  “Guess I’ll just keep letting you in, Dave,” Heather said, pouring some kibble into Dave’s bowl next to the refrigerator. She picked up his water bowl, dumped the water out in the sink, and filled it with fresh water. “Here you go,” she said, setting it down next to his food. Dave took a couple of perfunctory laps from it, and then went back to crunching his kibble.

  She glanced at the clock on the microwave, saw that it was 7:02, and decided she might as well get ready for work. She’d woken up early that morning—well, early for her, at least. She normall
y didn’t get up until 7. But her employees—Maricela, Angelica, Jung, and Ken—arrived at Donut Delights at 3 a.m.

  Heather shuddered just thinking about having to be up that early on a regular basis. Even doing it for just a couple days when Maricela and Angelica had to miss work for a death in the family a couple months ago had made her desperate for sleep. And even more grateful than she already was for her fantastic employees who, over the months or years they had worked for her, had become like family.

  ***

  Sure enough, when she came through the back door of her shop into the kitchen at 7:45, the four of them were hard at work making donuts and serving customers. She dropped her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk in her tiny office and turned back toward the kitchen.