Sweet Suspects (The Donut Mysteries)

by Beck, Jessica

  “I like a blend of murder weapons, myself,” Hazel said.

  “Other than that, how did you like the book?” Jennifer asked.

  “She can write a great cozy. I’ll give her that much,” I said.

  Elizabeth took that as a triumph. “That’s all that I’m saying.”

  I took another bite of my fritter and smiled, not from the delightful treat, but from being in the presence of these nice, smart women who had adopted me into their group. That book club was something that I looked forward to every month, and the time always passed by far too quickly for my taste, even when I was in the middle of a real-life murder investigation of my own.

  After the ladies in my group were gone, I took the front back over from Emma. Before she went to the back to finish the dishes, she asked, “You really love that club, don’t you?”

  “They’re wonderful,” I said. “Thanks for subbing for me again at the last second.”

  “I’m always happy to do it, Suzanne. Well, if you don’t need me anymore, the dirty dishes are calling my name.”

  “That’s disturbing on way too many levels,” I said with a smile as I took back the front.

  The rest of the morning was pretty calm, which was a welcome thing at that point. Several folks discussed Zane’s murder in whispered tones, and one woman even pointed across the street to show another woman where the body had been found. For some reason, I kept expecting Tom to burst in with a handgun to take me hostage, no matter how irrational that might have seemed. I was jumpy, there was no doubt about it, which was probably a good thing, given the fact that we weren’t much closer to catching the killer than we had been when I’d seen Zane’s body pinned against the bench with that spear earlier.

  After I eased my last few customers out the door at eleven sharp, I started working on our daily report and deposit while Emma took care of a lot of last-minute things like sweeping the front, cleaning the tables, and generally prepping us for shutting down for the day. When the reports all balanced out, I usually helped her, but on those dark days where we had discrepancies, I was useless to her.

  Today everything worked out, though.

  “How close are you to being finished?” I asked her as I wrote the last number on the day’s deposit slip.

  “I’m done,” she said.

  “Then you can go on home,” I said as I tucked everything in the bank’s deposit bag.

  She lingered behind, though.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know. It feels as though I’m missing something, you know?”

  I grinned at her. “Could it be the three hours of doing our dishes before we opened for the day? Is there any chance that could be it?”

  “You’re probably right,” Emma answered with a smile of her own. “I take it back. I don’t think I could get used to working shorter hours. The day’s just about perfect as it is now.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” I said as I turned off the last light and led her out the door. After I locked up behind us, I said, “Have a good day.”

  “You, too,” she said.

  When I got to my Jeep, someone was waiting for me there, but this time, it was welcome.

  “Hey, Grace,” I said. “Did you finish your work early?”

  “I did indeed.”

  “Where’s your car?” I asked as I looked around.

  “I decided to leave it at the library on the back lot and walk over,” she said. “There’s no use advertising that we’re together, is there?”

  “You’re getting trickier every day,” I said as I let her in.

  “I’ve got to admit that your warning about Tom has me spooked. Every time the library door opened, I nearly jumped out of my chair. I wish I had your nerve sometimes.”

  I laughed. “I’ve been jumpy all day myself. In fact, before Jake called me this morning, I was seeing bad guys lurking in every shadow.”

  “How’s your state trooper doing?” Grace asked.

  “Tired and frustrated at the moment, but he’ll get his killer.”

  “You have a lot of faith in him, don’t you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I asked. “He’s done it before, and there’s no reason for me to believe that he won’t do it again.”

  “Suzanne, why aren’t you starting the Jeep?” Grace asked me as we just sat there.

  “Where exactly should we go?” I asked her. “We’ve hounded our suspects repeatedly, and we’ve tracked down all the clues that we’re probably going to find. What’s left for us to do?”

  “I say we go back to Union Square and talk to Janet and Billy again,” she suggested. “Nobody knows where Tom is at the moment, and Candy’s not going anywhere.”

  “Why not?” I asked her as I started the Jeep and drove toward Union Square.

  “She has a business to run,” Grace said. “She has to be there most of the time.”

  “No, I meant why not do as you just suggested and go back to Union Square?”

  “Wow, that was easy.”

  “What can I say? It makes sense.”

  “I just hope that they are both still there,” Grace said.

  “They can’t leave yet,” I said. “There’s an active police investigation going on.”

  “How long do you think they’re going to hang around? I doubt that Chief Martin can make them stay.”

  “Why wouldn’t Janet want to be here when her husband’s killer is arrested?”

  “Suzanne, you’re assuming that she didn’t do it herself.”

  “I’m not assuming that at all. I’m just saying that’s how the police might perceive her absence before the case is solved.”

  “She might not care how it looks,” Grace said. “After all, she wasn’t shy about calling her insurance agent about Zane’s policy.”

  “No, but we’re not supposed to know that, remember? We only know because we broke into her hotel room.”

  “Nobody knows that we did that, though. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Janet is just another grieving widow.”

  “Trust me, I’m sure she’s just as high on Chief Martin’s list of suspects as she is on ours.”

  “And we can’t forget Billy,” Grace said. “Did you see the way he looked at Janet yesterday at breakfast? That man clearly still has a crush on her.”

  “Maybe, but was it enough to make him kill his rival for her affections?” I asked.

  “Nobody can really answer that but Billy.”

  “What about Tom?” I asked. “He wasn’t high on my list until today, but I’ve got to tell you, he scared me in the park. I saw a side of him that I’d never seen before. Plus, he admitted taking the spear from the gym in the first place.”

  “Yes, but he claims that he dumped it outside,” Grace said.

  “That’s not a bad cover story if he realized too late that he forgot to wipe his fingerprints off the murder weapon he used to kill Zane.”

  “Honestly, who would be that stupid?”

  “Maybe drunk, not necessarily stupid, could explain it.”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said after a moment’s hesitation. “I just can’t see him as a killer.”

  I weighed my next words carefully. “Is that because of the facts, or from the history the two of you shared back in school?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and for a minute, I thought she was going to ignore the question completely. Finally, Grace said, “I truly don’t know how to answer that.”

  I reached over and patted her arm. “It’s hard to separate our personal feelings from our suspicions, isn’t it?”

  “It can be,” she said. “That just leaves Candy. I wonder just how bad those pictures of her are? Would they be something she feels she needs to suppress, no matter what the cost?”

  “She’s not exactly shy about her clothing,” I said. “If those pictures are enough to embarrass her, I’m guessing that they must be pretty bad.”

  “So her motive might be just as strong
as anyone else’s,” Grace said. “We’ve got four viable suspects left, and no way to tell who really did it.”

  “That’s why we keep pressing forward,” I said as we came upon the Welcome to Union Square sign on the highway. “I don’t want to announce our presence at the hotel, so let’s park in the back lot and walk from there. How does that sound?”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Grace said, and soon we pulled into the lot and parked with the employees of the hotel. My Jeep fit right in with the other vehicles parked there, and we set off for the main building on foot.

  We never got there, though.

  Two familiar voices were arguing in the garden that buffered the parking areas from the hotel, and if we were lucky, we just might be able to overhear what they were fighting about.

  Chapter 16

  “I don’t care how you manage it! Just make it stop,” Janet told Billy angrily in the garden. Grace and I hid behind an arbor covered with thick vines. It was dense enough to hide us both from view, but open enough to allow us to hear what they were saying.

  “Janet, you’re being unreasonable,” Billy said calmly. “What makes you think that I have any control over what Suzanne and Grace do?”

  “Figure it out, Billy. I can’t afford to have anyone interfere with that insurance payment.”

  “Trust me; you’ve got more problems than that,” Billy said. “You’re more of a murder suspect than I am.”

  Grace must have shifted her weight at that point, because a stick snapped under her foot. In the quiet of the garden, the sound was loud and clear.

  I quickly looked at Grace, who mouthed, “I’m sorry,” but it was too late.

  They’d heard us.

  “What was that?” Janet said as she looked in our direction. “Hello. Is someone there?” she called out.

  “Of course somebody’s there,” Billy said. “Can’t you see them through the leaves? I’m taking off, Janet.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she snapped.

  “You don’t think so? Just watch me,” Billy said as he hurried toward the hotel.

  We weren’t that lucky with Janet.

  Instead of fleeing as well, she started walking straight toward us, and there was no way that we weren’t about to be caught this time.

  Chapter 17

  “Are you two spying on me?” Janet said with indignation as she rounded the arbor and found us standing there.

  “Of course not,” Grace said.

  “We were coming to see you, though,” I added.

  “So why didn’t you announce yourselves when you first got here?” Janet asked us.

  “We wanted to eavesdrop on you two a little first,” Grace said brazenly.

  Janet stared at us both for a full six seconds before she spoke again. “Well, I sincerely hope that you got what you wanted, because I’m finished talking to the both of you.”

  Janet turned back toward the hotel, but she’d only taken a few steps when I said, “You should know that we’ve discovered that you had a pair of motives for killing your husband.”

  She stopped in her tracks and whirled around to face us. “What are you talking about? Did you overhear something that you probably misunderstood, Suzanne?”

  “Hardly. You wanted the money, but you also wanted Billy, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Billy Briscoe and I were over a long time ago, and I’d rather have Zane back right now than all the money in the world. What makes you think otherwise?”

  “We have sources that you don’t even know about,” Grace answered. “If all that you say is true, then why exactly did you want Billy to stop us from investigating your husband’s murder?”

  “Because I need that insurance money, and no amount of wishing is going to bring Zane back. I’m concerned that your snooping might interfere with my plan to collect what’s coming to me and get out of this state forever. My late husband promised me riches beyond belief if I’d just be a little more patient, but I’d heard all of those promises before. It’s a sad thing to admit, but in the end, he turned out to be worth more to me dead than he had ever been when he was alive.”

  “Where was he supposedly getting all of this money?” Grace asked her.

  “If you must know, he was going to blackmail people that we knew,” Janet said. “Is it any wonder that someone stabbed him with a spear? I warned him that he was playing a dangerous game, but he told me that he had it all under control. We can all see how well that worked out for him.”

  “You talk a good game, but you obviously care more about the money than you ever did for Zane. Isn’t that true?” I asked.

  “Once upon a time, back when I could trust him, I loved the man more than anything in the world. Then the lies started. Who knows? Maybe he’d been lying to me all along. I don’t know. Anyway, he took whatever love I had for him and stomped on it with his boots. I shed a few tears for him when he died, but not many.”

  “It sounds as though you won’t miss him at all.”

  “I can’t honestly say one way or the other at this point, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Why should we believe you?” I asked her pointedly.

  “I’ll ask you another question. Why should I care what you believe, one way or the other?”

  I was stumped to come up with an answer to that, but fortunately, Grace wasn’t. “Because we have contacts everywhere, including with insurance agents who are eager for an excuse to delay benefit payments next to forever,” she said.

  I knew it was a bluff, and plainly Grace knew it as well.

  The question was, did Janet?

  She tried to keep a brave face for as long as she could, but neither Grace nor I budged.

  After a full thirty seconds, Janet sighed deeply, and then she said, “I give up. What do you want to know?”

  “Who exactly was your husband blackmailing?” Grace asked her.

  “I don’t know. I have a few suspicions, but he never named names,” Janet answered.

  “Okay then, tell us who you think he might have been blackmailing,” I said.

  “For starters, he definitely had something on Candy Murphy. Tom Hancock has a secret that he’s been hiding for years, and so does Billy. That’s how I got him to help me.”

  “How did Billy help you?” I asked. I could see him killing Zane for Janet, or for the secrets that Zane held. Love for Janet was looking less and less like a factor in the murder.

  “Do you want to know the truth? He didn’t, not one single bit. The man was clearly drunk the night of the reunion, and when I had breakfast with him the next morning when you two showed up here, he was hung over like nobody’s business. Billy Briscoe has been absolutely worthless to me from the start. I’d hoped to use his feelings for me to my benefit, but that didn’t turn out to do me much good, either. He’s been a complete wash.”

  Janet was a cold woman, icier than most I’d met in my life, but that still didn’t make her a killer. “Janet, did you kill your husband, or did you have someone kill him for you?” I asked bluntly.

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “Why should we believe you?”

  “Do you mean my word isn’t good enough?” Janet asked sarcastically.

  “That’s exactly what we mean,” I said, deciding to answer her anyway.

  “I don’t know how to prove to you that I didn’t cajole or hire someone into killing my late husband. All I can do is show you that I didn’t do it.”

  “How can you possibly do that?” I asked her.

  “Because I wasn’t even here,” she said. “I got so mad at Zane for the way he behaved at the reunion that I drove straight home. I wasn’t going to come back, but halfway there, I got pulled over for speeding in Charleston. It was one forty five AM, if you’re interested. Anyway, I decided to come back after all. There was no telling what kind of trouble Zane might get himself into without me there to look out for him.”

  “Can you prove any of this?” Grace asked.


  Janet reached into her purse and pulled out a slip of yellow paper. “Here’s the ticket I got. I already showed it to Chief Martin.”

  “When did you do that?” I asked. I would have expected the chief to share something as important as that with me. I knew that I didn’t have any rights to his information, but this was a courtesy I wanted from him.