Troubled Treats

by Jessica Beck

  “In what way is she threatening, exactly?” Jake asked, clearly concerned by my assessment.

  “She can kill a reputation like that,” I said as I snapped my fingers.

  “Is that all?” Jake asked, relieved by my response.

  “Trust me, it’s not nothing,” I said.

  “Suzanne, how exactly is Gabby going to be able to help us? Was she sleeping with Sully or something?”

  The mere thought of it shocked me, though I wouldn’t put it past the woman. “I don’t think so, but you never know.”

  “Then why should we approach her first?” Jake asked. “If you ask me, we should go straight to the source. Let’s start with Sully’s employees.”

  “You’re still thinking too much like a cop,” I said. “Chief Grant has already spoken with them both, unless I miss my guess. We’ll tackle them tomorrow after we’re certain that he’s finished with them, but we have to stay out on the edges, remember?”

  “And Gabby is the best source in town that you have?” Jake asked me, still not believing it.

  “Believe me, she knows every bit of dirt in town. If there’s something we can learn about Sully, she’s the one to approach.”

  “And she’s just going to give you this information freely?” Jake asked me.

  “Well, it might take a little finesse, but remember, I’ve dealt with her before, and that means that I have to do it solo. Do you honestly mind if I approach her by myself?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” Jake said, even though it was clear from his tone of voice that he minded very much indeed.

  “Don’t worry. It’s all going to work out fine. I won’t be long,” I said as I kissed him, and then I grabbed my coat. I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. I knew that the longer I stayed, the harder Jake would try to talk me out of approaching Gabby without him. It wasn’t that he considered her a danger; he just hated being out of the loop, and I could hardly blame him.

  There were just some things that I had to do on my own, and this was definitely one of them.

  Chapter 4

  “I was wondering when I’d see you,” Gabby Williams said as I walked into her gently used clothes shop, ReNEWed. It was just down the road from Donut Hearts, a fact that brought us into contact every now and then, but not as often as some folks might think. Gabby had her circle of friends, and I had mine, and they barely overlapped at all. However, we had a tenuous relationship that I planned to exploit.

  “Am I that predictable?” I asked as I took off my jacket. Jumping right into my motivation for being there wasn’t a great idea. I knew from experience that the longer it took me to bring up my questions, the fewer hoops I would have to jump through to get my answers. As I let my hand linger on a nearby blouse, I asked, “Anything new in?”

  “Suzanne, the entire point of my shop is that none of it is new,” she said disdainfully, studying me as she spoke. Gabby was a trim woman in her fifties, always dressed stylishly in only the best apparel her shop received. Her eyes were red, and I had to wonder if her allergies were bothering her. It was certainly the right time of the year for them.

  “You know what I mean,” I said as I searched the closest racks of clothing.

  “Sorry, but we don’t have anything in your size or your taste,” she said a little harshly. I might have taken offense at the crack from some folks, but I knew that Gabby was just being Gabby. “Besides, I didn’t think you’d be coming around for clothing, not given what just happened.”

  “What’s that?” I asked her, pretending to be uninterested.

  “Suzanne Hart, you stumbled upon a man’s body not two hours ago, and then you try to come waltzing in here as though nothing happened.”

  “You’re talking about Sully Jackson, aren’t you?” I asked. Not surprisingly, the news had evidently traveled fast in our small town.

  Gabby raised an eyebrow in my direction critically. “That depends. Did you happen to find any other dead bodies since you found his?”

  “No, just the one,” I said as nonchalantly as I could manage. “It’s tragic, but it’s not any concern of mine. The police are handling it.”

  Gabby scoffed. “You aren’t talking about young Officer Grant, are you? He’s barely capable of handing out a parking ticket, let alone solving a murder.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stephen Grant is turning out to be a very competent chief of police, and we’re lucky to have him,” I said. It was all I could do to hide my interest in the topic, but if I gave Gabby the upper hand, I’d be there all afternoon before she agreed to help.

  “The jury’s still out on him, if you ask me. I’ve been curious about something. Why didn’t your husband want the job? Goodness knows that he’s more than qualified enough for it.”

  “He’s retired, Gabby. Do you have something like this in red?”

  “I don’t, but even if I did, it wouldn’t work with your skin tones,” she said dismissively. “Are you telling me that you and Grace aren’t even going to investigate what happened to Sully?” Gabby seemed clearly disappointed by my reaction to the murder, which was curious.

  “Grace has officially retired as my investigative partner,” I explained, amazed that it stung a little to admit it so openly.

  Gabby took that in for a moment before she spoke again. “That’s a shame, but it’s perfectly understandable. After all, how many times can you put yourself directly in the line of danger and not have it impact your life?”

  “Apparently more times than I’ve experienced yet,” I said.

  “So, you are investigating,” Gabby said triumphantly, as though she’d won a point in a debate, which was really all that every conversation with her ever was.

  It was time to give her a little nudge. “I don’t know. The truth is that I wouldn’t know where to start. Sully was such a private person.”

  “To some folks,” Gabby said almost wistfully. I glanced over at her and saw that she was frowning slightly. Apparently my instincts to come there first had been dead on the money.

  “Are you implying that you knew him better than I did?” I asked her.

  “I know lots of folks in April Springs,” she said, suddenly deflecting my attention.

  I wasn’t going to let her, though. “I get it, Gabby, you’re in the loop. Don’t forget, I know a lot of folks around town, too.” Waving my hand in the air dismissively, I said, “Thanks for your time. I’ll try again in a few weeks. Maybe you’ll get something in that works for me by then.”

  I was two steps away from the door and beginning to regret my bluff of leaving when Gabby said, “Things are kind of slow at the moment. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

  “Why not?” I asked, doing my best not to reveal how eager I was to get her opinion about who might have wanted to murder Sully Jackson.

  Gabby surprised me by walking toward the front door and flipping her sign to show that she was closed.

  “I don’t want you to lose any business on my account,” I said.

  “Nonsense. Turning them away every now and then just makes them want what I have more. You could take a lesson there yourself. Now that you’re married, how long are you going to continue to keep your shop open seven days a week?”

  “It’s taxing at times, but what day should I close? It can’t be on the weekend; I have too many standing orders then. What day of the workweek could I shut the shop down? Each day brings its own unique set of customers.”

  “So, let them change their routines. I have an idea. Why don’t you close on Wednesdays? Remember the old days when everything closed on Wednesday afternoon around here? You could take the entire day off and spend it with your new husband.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “But I’ve already shaved a few hours off each workday, and you wouldn’t believe how some folks are still howling about that.”

  “Let them complain,” she said with a shrug. “It’s good for them. Now, let’s see about that tea.”

  W
e walked to the back of the store together and into Gabby’s office. The space was quite a bit nicer than the former cubbyhole of a closet I’d converted into my office at the donut shop, but then again, Gabby had a great deal more square footage than I had to work with. After all, I was reminded daily that Donut Hearts had been converted from a tiny old train depot, and it didn’t leave me a great deal of space to work with.

  As the teapot started to whistle, Gabby said, “I’m really going to miss Sully.”

  The tenderness of her admission surprised me. “Were you two really that close?” I asked her.

  “As a matter of fact, I was quite fond of him,” she said, avoiding giving me a direct answer. “Though I might have been in the minority of the people around him.”

  That news was interesting. “I’ve heard so many people describe Sully as the last genuinely honest man left on the planet that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone wishing him harm.”

  “Don’t you see that’s what threw some folks off?” Gabby asked as she prepared the tea. “In fact, I’m willing to bet that’s why he was murdered. Sully took his integrity to the limits, and some folks considered it a handicap more than a virtue.”

  “Who thought that?” I asked her.

  “Well, right off the bat, I can think of a few folks. His two employees come to mind.”

  “Who worked for him in his electrical contracting business?” I asked.

  “Bob Greene and Jim Burr. Sully often said that if he didn’t keep an eye on the two of them, they’d walk out with his kitchen sink.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If he didn’t trust them, why did he hire them in the first place?” I asked as Gabby delivered an elegant china coffee cup to me, brimming with freshly brewed tea.

  “What choice did he have? If he waited for someone with the level of honesty he had, he said that he’d have to work alone for the rest of his life, and he was beginning to feel the aches and pains he’d earned from a lifetime of physical labor.”

  I made a mental note to talk to Bob Greene and Jim Burr at my earliest opportunity, but there had to be more than two names on Gabby’s mind. Unfortunately, the only way I was going to get any more information out of her was by threatening to walk away. I took a sip of tea, nodded, and then returned my cup to its saucer as I stood. “Thanks for the tea and the information,” I said as I headed back toward the front of the shop.

  “Sit back down, Suzanne. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface yet,” Gabby ordered.

  It was a command that I had no problem obeying. “Do you mean there’s more?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t have considered Carl Descent.”

  The name surprised me, but I tried not to show it. “Why would Carl want to kill Sully?”

  “He tried to buy the building when it came up for sale, but your mother scooped it up with a last-second offer.”

  “I still don’t understand what that had to do with Sully.”

  “Evidently Descent wanted to take the building down to the ground, brick by brick, and it offended Sully to think that a piece of our history was going to be destroyed. He put in a good word for her with the former owner, and that was one of the main reasons the man chose to sell the place to your mother instead of the developer. Weren’t you aware of any of that?”

  “I’m the first to admit that I don’t know much about my mother’s business,” I conceded. “You’re not implying that she did anything wrong, are you?”

  “Heavens, no,” Gabby said quickly. She knew that even she couldn’t get away with saying anything disparaging about my mother in front of me. Momma and I had our fair share of squabbles, but no one was allowed to say one bad word about her as far as I was concerned, and I knew that she felt the same way about me. “It was all perfectly legal and aboveboard. Besides Sully’s recommendation, the owner wanted a parcel of land your mother owned, so she included it in her offer. Even though it seemed as though her bid wasn’t the highest, it was the one the seller took. That aggravated Carl to no end, and he vowed to stop the project, no matter what it took.”

  “Even murder?” I asked incredulously. “That’s hard to believe.”

  Gabby just shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past him. The man’s unbalanced, if you ask me.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “The building is haunted, you know.”

  “I’ve heard the stories about strange lights there at night and odd noises coming from upstairs like everyone else in town has,” I admitted. “You don’t believe that there are actually ghosts inhabiting the place, do you?”

  “Don’t be so quick to scoff, Suzanne,” Gabby said. “There are more things happening in our world that defy explanation than you can imagine.”

  “So, do you think that ghosts had something to do with Sully’s murder?”

  “I’m just saying that it might not be a bad idea to keep an open mind,” Gabby said. This was getting strange, even for a conversation with Gabby, and that was saying something.

  “Let’s put a pin in that, shall we? Are there any other folks who might make your list?”

  Gabby frowned, and then she answered, “Well, Shirley Edam has to be on your list.”

  “Shirley? Why her?” I asked. Shirley was no stranger to my donut shop, and she’d always seemed nice to me in the past.

  “She’s his only competitor in town. Who are folks going to call now when they need electrical work done? Shirley’s business just doubled.”

  “It’s not enough reason to commit murder,” I said, having a hard time believing that it was possible.

  “Maybe so, if that were the extent of it, but there were other reasons as well,” Gabby said.

  “I’m listening,” I said when more facts were not forthcoming.

  “The two of them dated once upon a time,” Gabby replied, clearly finding the admission distasteful.

  “Seriously? When?”

  “It was a few months ago, but she wasn’t happy that it ended. Lately they started discussing the possibility of going into business together, and evidently Shirley thought that Sully was more interested in a personal merger, if you know what I mean.”

  It wasn’t that hard to figure it out, given her broad hinting. “So, what happened?”

  “Sully set her straight that this was strictly a business proposal, and she was furious! Granted, he didn’t handle the situation very well, but Shirley really overreacted.”

  A suspicion was gnawing at the corner of my mind, so I carefully framed my next question. “You two have been dating lately, haven’t you?”

  Gabby actually blushed, and I knew that I’d hit home. “Suzanne Hart, what in the world ever gave you that idea?”

  “You did,” I said. “Why the big secret, though? Neither one of you were married.”

  “No, but at our ages, we decided to see how things worked out quietly before we announced our intentions to the world.” Gabby appeared as though she were about to cry as she added, “We never got the chance to do that, though.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. That explained a great deal. If she were indeed in a relationship with Sully, it made sense that he’d confide in her. Without realizing it, I had indeed tapped into the best source of information in April Springs that I could have found. There was one thing left to do, and I knew that it wasn’t going to be very popular with her. “Gabby, you need to tell Chief Grant everything that you just told me.”

  She looked shocked by my suggestion. “What are you talking about, Suzanne?”

  “He needs this information if he’s going to solve Sully’s murder,” I said. “Without it, he’s working in the dark.”

  “You should tell him,” Gabby said gruffly as she turned away.

  “I would if I could, but he needs to hear this from you, and soon.”

  Gabby looked at me with a look of bewilderment. “I thought you said that you were going to investigate his murder yourself?”

  It was
time to come clean with her, but I might be able to use her ignorance to my advantage. “I will, but on one condition.”

  “That I tell Grant what I know,” she said woodenly. “If I do that, do you promise that you’ll dig into Sully’s murder?”

  “If you come clean with the police chief about everything you know, I’ll even see if I can get Jake to help me do it,” I said.

  “Sold,” she said quickly. “I’m holding you to this, Suzanne.”

  “I give you my word,” I said, doing my best not to show the slightest hint of a smile. I’d just promised her to do something that I’d already planned to do in exchange for her doing something I knew she’d never have done otherwise.

  “Then we both need to go,” Gabby said as she gathered up our cups and the teapot.

  “Where are we going?” I asked her, startled by the suddenness of her actions.

  “I’m going to find Chief Grant, and you’re going to go recruit your husband.”

  “I can do that,” I said.

  We parted ways outside, Gabby going to her car and me heading back to the cottage on foot. It was time to bring Jake up to speed on everything I’d just learned. I’d been hoping for a bit of useful information from Gabby, and instead, I’d gotten an avalanche of it.

  Now we just had to sort out our suspects and see who had the opportunity to kill Sully Jackson.

  At least we had a pretty solid grasp on when the murder had taken place. The time of death was usually not so specific, but we’d been on the site just after the fatal attack, so we had that going for us, which was something we couldn’t always count on.

  That fact, plus the information Gabby had provided about likely suspects, might mean that we’d be able to wrap this case up quickly.

  I wasn’t holding my breath, though.

  It had been my experience that nothing was ever that easy, and in the end, it turned out that I was right on the money this time as well.

  Chapter 5

  When I got back to the cottage, I was surprised to find Jake sitting out on the front porch, swinging impatiently as he stared back toward the park. “Hey. What’s up?” I asked him as I approached.