Custard Crime: Donut Mystery #14 (The Donut Mysteries)

by Jessica Beck

  Instead of answering, Jake just smiled at me, and then he saluted us both before he walked to his squad car.

  After he was gone, Grace said, “Well, that certainly worked out better than either one of us had any right to expect.”

  “What makes you think that part of it is over?” I asked her just as my cellphone rang.

  No surprise, it was my mother, and I was certain she wasn’t calling to inquire about my general health.

  “Hello, Momma,” I said when I answered the phone.

  “Suzanne, you need to accept this marriage between Phillip and me, do you understand? I thought we were already past this juvenile behavior, but now I’ve learned that’s not the case at all.”

  “He started it,” I said in childish protest, probably a little ill-advised at the moment.

  “Suzanne, this is not the time for your questionable sense of humor.”

  “Momma, I’m sorry that I ratted your husband out to Jake, but I thought that there might be a real chance that he was hiding something. In my defense, when Jake asked him if he’d found anything, the chief denied it to his face, even though I knew better. What choice did I have?”

  “Phillip told you the rationale for his behavior,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, but when he withheld the truth, all bets were off as far as I was concerned. Besides, he told Jake about it after I confronted him, so where’s the harm?”

  “The harm is that you may have done irreparable damage to your relationship with your stepfather.”

  That kind of burned me up, and the filter that told me to keep my mouth shut was clearly not working at the moment. “Just because he’s your husband doesn’t make him my stepfather.” I regretted the words the moment they escaped my lips, but there was no getting them back now. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound so harsh, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true.”

  “Nevertheless, the sentiment clearly expressed how you truly feel. We’ll talk later,” she said.

  “Hang on. Don’t hang up.” But it was too late.

  Momma had already broken the connection, and I knew better than to call her back, at least not until I gave us both time to collect ourselves. Could I bring myself to apologize? What I’d said was true enough. The chief was her husband, and I was fine with that, but I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to embrace him as my stepfather. It wasn’t like I was eleven years old. I was a grown woman, divorced myself, for goodness sake. So why did I feel so awful for how I’d just behaved, no matter how justified I felt?

  “Wow, that was really ugly,” Grace said as she stroked my arm lightly. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better,” I said. “I’m going to have to find a way to make things right, but now is not the time. We have a case to investigate.”

  “Are you sure that you shouldn’t go to your mother’s right now and try to resolve this between you? Isn’t sooner better than later?”

  “Not in this case. Come on. Let’s forget about my mother and her husband and focus on Evelyn’s murder. Who should we tackle first, Conrad or Violet?”

  “I say we talk to good old Connie,” Grace said.

  “Any reason in particular?” I asked her as we headed back to where we’d parked the Jeep.

  “Just call it a hunch,” Grace said.

  “That’s good enough for me,” I said.

  As we drove to Union Square, it was time to bring Grace up to date about what I’d found in Evelyn’s house during our search before we’d been interrupted by the police chief’s unexpected visit.

  I handed her my cellphone.

  “Do you want me to call someone for you?” Grace asked, looking a little confused.

  “No. Look at the most recent photos I took,” I suggested.

  “Suzanne, I don’t want to see pictures of donuts you’d made again.”

  “That was one time,” I protested, “and I was trying to get your opinion on an icing color. I’m talking about some shots I took inside Evelyn’s that you might be interested in.”

  “Now you’re talking,” she said as she pulled up my most recent shots. After studying the entries in Evelyn’s appointment book, Grace asked, “What’s this supposed to be?”

  I glanced at it, but I didn’t feel all that comfortable about taking my eyes off the road. “Let me pull over and check,” I said. I found a spot where it was safe, pulled over, and then I took the phone from Grace. “Okay, if we turn it this way and I tap the screen once, it might be a little clearer.” The note from Violet showed up legibly when I did that, so I handed the phone back to Grace.

  “Wow, is it just me, or is Violet a little bat-crap crazy?”

  “It’s not just you,” I said as I moved to another picture. “This one is from Conrad,” I said as I showed her the shot of the necklace and card.

  “It’s not all that nice a necklace, is it?” Grace asked as she studied the image displayed.

  “How can you tell just by looking at a picture of it on a cellphone?”

  “Hey, I’ve trained myself in distinguishing the finer things,” she said. “Where did you find this?”

  “In one of her jacket pockets,” I said.

  “So, it clearly didn’t mean much to Evelyn, either.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It never even made it into her jewelry box,” Grace said. “What else do you have?”

  “How about this?” I asked as I reached over and flipped to the final relevant photo, the one of the torn birthday card from her cousin, Julie.

  Grace glanced at it. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the trashcan,” I said.

  “And was it in one piece when you discovered it there?”

  “Actually, it was ripped in half,” I said.

  “So, Julie was out of favor with Evelyn when she was murdered.”

  “I think that it’s safe to assume that. What does it mean, though?”

  “That we have more digging to do, but at least we have some ammo now. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t find anything during my part of our search.”

  “I’m not surprised. After all, you got the toughest area.”

  “At least we’ve got these,” she said.

  As I pulled back out onto the road, Grace and I started chatting about the best ways to approach our suspects, but we still hadn’t been able to come up with anything spectacular by the time we pulled into Union Square. As usual, it appeared that we’d be playing this one by ear.

  It was probably for the best. Grace and I were never all that great at outlining our plans. We usually believed that operating by the seats of our pants was the best way to investigate. Normally, all that a preset idea did was lock us into a particular course of action, whether it was the best way to move forward or not. When we ad-libbed things, we were much more capable of going wherever the investigation led us instead of clinging to any preconceived notions we might be going in with.

  At the moment, our plan was to have no plan at all, an oxymoron if ever there was one.

  Chapter 15

  “You must be Connie Swoop,” I said as I extended a hand to the man we were looking for when Grace and I walked onto a car lot in Union Square. He matched the description I’d been given to a tee, down to the carefully styled but unnaturally tinted brown hair, the slick business suit, and a pair of dress shoes sporting an impossible shine.

  It was clear that he wasn’t all that thrilled with the nickname, but he was too good a salesman to get too upset about it. “Actually, it’s Conrad,” he said through a set of overly brightened teeth. “And you two lovely ladies are?”

  I decided to ignore his question and follow up with one of my own. I’d seen politicians do it often enough, so how hard could it be? “Really? You don’t like that? Funny, I could have sworn that I heard it was Connie. At least that’s how Evelyn Martin always referred to you.”

  His features hardened for a split second before he recovered his aplomb. “Were you friends with Evelyn?
It was tragic, the accident that happened to her.”

  “It was no accident,” Grace said, “or hadn’t you heard?”

  Conrad pretended to falter, but I didn’t believe it. He stuttered out, “Are you saying that someone pushed her on purpose?”

  “That’s the prevailing theory,” I said. “When’s the last time that you saw her, Conrad?” I made sure to emphasize the name as I said it.

  The salesman frowned for a moment before answering. “It had to be three days ago. We were going to go out to dinner, but I’m sorry to say that we were interrupted before we could really get started.”

  “What happened?” Grace asked.

  “A woman that I see occasionally somehow got the wrong impression about our relationship, and she confronted me at my home while Evelyn was visiting.”

  “What was her name?” Grace asked.

  “I don’t believe that’s any of your business,” he answered.

  “I’m guessing it was Violet Frasier. Am I right?” I asked.

  “Bingo.” Wow, he gave that up pretty quickly. The real question was, was he being helpful, or was he trying to get us distracted before we could focus too hard on him?

  “We plan to talk to her as well,” I said, “but since we’re here speaking with you, we’d like to know where you were yesterday morning. If you were working here, I’m sure that someone can alibi you.”

  “Yesterday was my day off,” he said. “I spent it driving in the mountains.”

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, clearly getting irritated with our line of questions. “Who exactly are you?”

  It was time to tell him. “I’m Suzanne Hart,” I said, “and this is my best friend, Grace Gauge.”

  “I didn’t think that you two were with law enforcement,” Conrad said a little disdainfully. “What business is it of yours where I was?”

  “We had close ties with Evelyn,” I said. It was stretching the truth, but Conrad didn’t know that.

  “Funny, she never mentioned either one of you to me.”

  “Maybe she just forgot, like you forgot to tell Violet and Evelyn about each other. Neither one of them knew that you were dating the other one, did they? You said that Violet was upset, but I’m pretty sure that Evelyn wasn’t all that pleased about it when she found out, either.”

  “She understood, once I explained the situation to her.”

  “Is that why you bought her that cheap gold necklace?” I asked, playing a hunch. “Were you trying to make it up to her?”

  Conrad looked sharply at me. “How did you know about that?”

  “I told you that we were close, remember?”

  “That necklace was given out of love and affection, nothing more.”

  “Did you happen to give a duplicate one to Violet?” Grace asked. It was a question that wouldn’t have even occurred to me to ask, but I was glad that she’d thought of it. One look at Conrad’s face told me that she’d scored a direct hit.

  “That’s nobody’s business,” he said brusquely. “Now, unless one of you is here looking for a new vehicle, I’d appreciate it if you’d move on.”

  “Who knows?” I asked. “I might replace my Jeep soon.” To anyone who knew me, it was clearly a lie. I was as devoted to that vehicle as I was to my friends and family. Well, not quite that much, but it was still pretty close.

  “What were you looking to spend?” he asked. “We’ve got a lovely little Subaru with low miles on it that you might like. Why don’t we take it for a spin?”

  There was no way I was getting into a car with this guy, with or without Grace, and I had a hunch he wouldn’t let me take it out on my own, even if I had been serious about buying it.

  “Sorry, but I need to trust the man I’ll be working with first,” I said. “Are you trustworthy, Conrad?”

  “Ask just about anybody,” he said. “I’m a man of principle, and my word is my bond.”

  “If that’s true, then why didn’t you pay Evelyn back the money that she loaned you?” Grace asked him sweetly.

  He frowned again. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but I paid Evelyn back every penny I borrowed from her, with interest.”

  “When did this supposedly happen?” I asked him.

  “Last week.”

  “Can you prove that?” Grace asked him.

  “I don’t have to, not to you, and not to the police.”

  “I don’t know, Connie,” Grace said as she shook her head sadly. “It sounds as though there’s nobody to dispute your version of what happened but Evelyn, and unless we hold a séance, she’s not going to be telling her side of the story.”

  “That’s it,” Conrad said angrily. “You’re obviously not looking for a car, and what’s worse, you’re trying to pin whatever happened to Evelyn on me. Well, I’m not going to stand here and take it. You both need to leave.”

  “Or what?” I asked him.

  “Or you’ll regret it,” he answered in a tone of voice that chilled my blood.

  Either Conrad Swoop was bluffing, or he was about to commit an act of violence against my best friend and me. All I knew was that it wasn’t the right time to find out which plan he had in mind. “Come on, Grace. Let’s go.”

  “But we’re not finished with him, yet,” she said.

  “We are for now,” I answered.

  “For good,” he replied.

  “Sorry, but that’s not going to happen,” I said. “Until we discover who killed Evelyn Martin, we’re not giving up.”

  Once we were back in the Jeep, Grace asked, “Did you see that guy’s face when I started pressing him? He was seriously upset with me.”

  “With us,” I amended. “He’s got a real temper, doesn’t he?”

  “He could have done it,” Grace said matter-of-factly.

  “Maybe, but being a hothead isn’t enough proof one way or the other. I wonder if it’s gotten him into trouble in the past?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Grace said. “Put that phone of yours to good use.”

  “I’m not calling Jake, and I won’t ask Chief Martin.”

  Grace frowned, and then she said, “Well, if you won’t talk to either one of them, we still have one other cop in our arsenal.”

  “Are you talking about Stephen?” Officer Grant might be her boyfriend, but I doubted that he’d help us if it could cause trouble for him at work.

  “No, we’re not about to drag him into this. I was thinking more along the lines of George. After all, he used to be a cop, and it’s not as though he hasn’t helped us in our investigations in the past.”

  “True, but he wasn’t the mayor of April Springs then.”

  “Maybe not, but you know he’d help us if we asked him. What can it hurt?”

  “Grace, what if it comes back to haunt him later when he’s running for mayor again? Could you live with the idea that he lost because of us?”

  “Suzanne, you know as well as I do that everybody loves him in town. He’s going to win reelection again in a landslide.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But let’s put that particular inquiry on the back burner for now, okay?”

  “Fine. Does that mean that it’s time to tackle Violet Frasier? I wonder if she’s as crazy as everyone says she is?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said as I started driving in the direction of where her house stood.

  “Go away,” the middle-aged woman said as we neared her front porch. I suppose some people would call her pretty, in an odd sort of way. For one thing, her eyes were spaced too close together, and they had too intense a look about them for my taste. She’d opened her front door just wide enough to stick her head out and warn us off.

  “Violet, we just want a moment of your time,” Grace said.

  “Can’t you read the sign? It says no soliciting, and that includes any reason you think you might have for coming to my house.”

  “We’re not here to sell you anything
,” I said hastily. “We’re here to talk about Conrad Swoop and Evelyn Martin.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “What makes you think that I want to talk about either one of those dirtbags?”

  “Am I right in assuming that you aren’t dating Conrad anymore?” I asked her.

  “He was two-timing me with that Martin woman. What an idiot.”

  “Which one?” Grace asked.

  “Take your pick,” she said angrily. There was some real rage just below the surface.

  “We already know that you weren’t a fan of Evelyn’s,” I said. “We read your note threatening her.”

  Violet just laughed at the accusation. “So what? I didn’t follow through with it. I thought I might be able to scare her off, but it didn’t work.”

  “Well, someone certainly took care of her for you,” I said.

  Violet didn’t look all that distressed about her rival’s fate. “She fell through some floorboards. I’d hardly call that a conscious act of vengeance.”

  “It would be if she were pushed,” Grace said.

  That was news to her, or she was just trying to tone down the crazy in her. “Are you saying that somebody shoved her?”

  “That’s what it looks like to the police.”

  Violet shook her head, but as she did so, the ghost of a smile crossed her lips for a moment before she spoke. “Conrad told me that he’d warned her to stop coming around him, but I never thought the little weasel would ever really do anything about her.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You’re telling us that Conrad was dumping Evelyn Martin for you, is that it?”

  “Why is that so hard for you to believe?” Violet asked as she ran a hand through her hair. “I’m an attractive woman.”

  “I’m not denying it,” I said hurriedly. “It’s just that what you’re telling us doesn’t match up with what Connie told us earlier.”

  “Don’t call him that,” she reproached me automatically. “He hates when people do that.”

  “That’s how he addressed himself to Evelyn,” I said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “I can prove it,” I said as I pulled out my cellphone. “Would you care to see?”