by Jessica Beck
“The truth is that right now we’re collecting information for the special investigator in April Springs,” Grace said. That was twelve shades from the truth since Jake had told me that he couldn’t officially sanction what we were doing, and I was about to correct it when I was interrupted.
“I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about it,” Shannon said, and then she started to close the door in our faces.
“You know, it won’t look good that you aren’t cooperating,” Grace said solemnly.
“I can assure you that I don’t care how it looks,” Shannon retorted.
“So, for the record, you have opted not to cooperate; is that correct?” I asked her.
That brought a frown to her lips. “For what it’s worth, Alex was a bore while we were married, and nothing changed afterwards. If you need someone to speak with about his most recent activities, you should really talk to Maisie Fleming.”
That caught me by surprise. “Maisie? Why should we speak with her?”
Shannon scowled as she explained, “She always kept quite a pretty close eye on my former husband. As a matter of fact, she confronted me soon after our divorce, telling me that I’d never deserved him. As if she did. The woman was obsessed with Alex, and I’m sure that her ardor hadn’t receded over the months since we split.”
“It was just a harmless crush, though, wasn’t it?” I asked, trying to picture Maisie as a stalker.
“I chose the word ‘obsessed’ most carefully. Don’t be taken in by her harmless demeanor. The woman is more dangerous than she appears to be. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have plans.”
I wasn’t sure that she really did, but if something had been scheduled, I doubted that it would include us.
Once we were dismissed, I turned to Grace as we walked back to my Jeep. “Do you believe anything she said about Maisie?”
“I kind of do,” Grace said. “You saw Maisie’s place. What kind of woman around our age turns her entire apartment into a winter wonderland? It’s clear that she’s easily obsessed by things. How hard is it to make the jump to believing that she was obsessed with Alex, too?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I said. “That’s worth some consideration.”
“Save your thinking for the drive back home,” Grace said. “We have a known criminal to interview next.”
“Where do you suppose we’ll find Deke Marsh?” I asked.
“I’m guessing the closest bar might not be a bad place to start,” Grace replied.
“It’s as good a guess as any,” I answered.
We found a place on the edge of town, and Grace and I walked in together. It was dark, and music blared from the jukebox as we approached the bartender. There were maybe half a dozen men and women there, but nobody even looked up from their drinks as we approached him.
“We’re looking for Deke Marsh,” I said.
“Sorry, never heard of him,” the bartender answered curtly as he went back to polishing the counter in front of him.
“Are you sure?” Grace asked, and I saw her waving a twenty-dollar bill in the air.
“Unless you want to use that to buy yourself a drink, you can put it away. Twenty bucks isn’t going to change my answer.”
Grace was unfazed by his response. “How about a hundred?”
I saw the bartender glance quickly toward one of the booths, and then he turned back to us. “Nope, not a hundred, either.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said as I tugged on Grace’s arm.
“Suzanne, I’m not finished with him,” she protested as I pulled her back toward the door.
“You did all that you needed to do,” I whispered as we walked out together. Once we were out the door, I pulled Grace off to one side where we weren’t immediately visible from the exit.
“What are we doing now?” Grace asked me plaintively.
“We’re waiting.”
We stood there a full thirty seconds before anything happened, though it felt much longer to me. I could see that Grace was about to speak as the door opened, so I shushed her. A man stepped outside, scanned the parking lot, and then began exploring his more immediate vicinity.
Evidently we hadn’t hidden as well as I’d hoped, because he started walking toward us the instant he saw us. “That was pretty slick, ladies,” he said as he approached.
“Deke Marsh, I presume?” I asked as I took a step forward to meet him.
“That depends. Who’s asking?”
“We’re here looking into Alex Tyler’s murder,” I answered.
The man looked genuinely surprised by the statement. “Murder? I heard it was a heart attack.”
“As a matter of fact, it was poison,” I said.
The former convict shook his head in obvious disgust. “Poison is for cowards. Even Tyler deserved better than that.”
“We heard that you’d been stalking him since you got out,” I said. Grace was leaving this one up to me. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
“Somebody’s been lying to you,” he said.
“Our source is pretty credible,” I answered, though I wasn’t sure anymore if that was actually true. Shannon had seeded some doubt in my mind about Maisie’s trustworthiness, but I didn’t need to tell Deke Marsh that.
“Maybe so, but they got this one wrong.”
“Are you saying that you didn’t resent being arrested and thrown in prison?” Grace asked, finally deciding that it was time to speak up.
“First of all, it was jail, not prison.”
“What’s the difference?” Grace asked.
Deke Marsh laughed. “I’ve done time in both, and believe me, there’s a difference.”
“What’s the second point?” I asked him.
“I served a month before I got out because of the DA’s screw-up. I never claimed that I didn’t do it. Was I happy that good old Alex decided to reform and arrest me? Not so much. I admit that I had a score to settle with him, but somebody took care of him before I got my chance.”
“Reform? What is that supposed to mean?” I asked him. The cop I’d known had been by the book, to the letter, and though I hadn’t liked him, I couldn’t imagine him doing anything corrupt.
“When he was here, he took payoffs just like some of his other pals on the force, and then all of a sudden he started turning them down and getting all righteous about it. That made a lot of folks upset with him, on both sides of the law.”
“You’re trying to get us to believe that the police force in Granite Meadows all take bribes?”
“Not all of them, just a few,” he said with a shrug. “A bought cop should stay bought, if you ask me.”
“Why should we believe you?” Grace asked him.
“Ladies, I don’t give a flip what you believe. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things that need to be taken care of. Good night.”
After he drove away in a late-model sedan, I asked Grace, “Did you notice that he didn’t ask us who we were or why we were asking him questions about Alex?”
“I noticed,” Grace said. “Do you believe anything he just told us?”
“What, about the cops here being dirty? I don’t know. I’ll tell you one thing: I can’t imagine it ever happening in April Springs.”
“This isn’t April Springs, though, is it?” Grace asked me.
“We need to talk to Jake about this before we do anything else,” I said. “He’ll know how we should handle it.”
“Do we really need to do that before we talk to Alex’s ex-partner on the force?”
“We do,” I said. “We’re heading back to April Springs right now. Is that okay with you?”
“I’m fine with it. It will give me a chance to knock out some paperwork when we get back. I may be on vacation, but some of that work has to be done regardless.”
“Then we’ll take this back up tomorrow after I close the donut shop for the day and have a chance to talk to Jake about what we’ve discovered so far.”
&nbs
p; “I’ll be ready,” Grace said. “Are you absolutely sure that you want to go back to the donut shop so soon after your honeymoon? I’ll bet Emma and Sharon wouldn’t mind staying on a few more days.”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to get back to work. I’ve really missed getting my hands in the batter and the dough.”
“You’ve really found your perfect niche, haven’t you?”
“I have,” I admitted. “Face it; you love what you do, too.”
“Sure, but look at how much I make. Add the fact that I can pretty much name my own hours most days, and what’s not to love?”
“I feel the same way about running Donut Hearts,” I said.
“Then we’re both exactly where we belong.”
After dropping Grace off at her place, I headed the last few dozen feet down the road to the cottage that I was now sharing with Jake. I knew that the odds weren’t good that he’d be there now. After all, he was running his own investigation.
I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else there, though.
Chapter 7
“Emma, Sharon, what are you two doing here?” I asked as I approached my assistant and her mother, who were standing on my front porch. “Were we supposed to meet up this evening?”
“No, but we took a chance that you’d be here,” Emma said. “When we saw that you weren’t, we were going to leave you a note,” she said as she offered me a folded sheet of paper.
“Can’t you just tell me what it says, or do I really need to read it?” I asked with a grin.
“Sorry,” Emma said as she tucked the note into the front pocket of her jeans. “It’s about what happened while you were gone.”
“Why don’t you both come on in and we can talk about it,” I said as I unlocked the front door and opened it. It was chilly in the cottage, but I knew how to fix that. “Let me light a fire and make us some coffee.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on our account. We won’t be here that long,” Sharon said.
“Well, I’m cold, so I think I’ll do it anyway,” I said as I lit the fire I’d laid in the grate before Jake and I had left for our honeymoon. It was amazing to me just how much had changed in such a short period of time.
As the kindling took to the flame, I headed for the kitchen and flipped on the coffeepot. “That’s going to take a few minutes. Now, tell me all about what happened. I heard Alex Tyler asked you out on a date. You usually don’t argue with the men you turn down, Emma.”
“I knew it wouldn’t take long before everybody in town found out,” my assistant said, clearly on the verge of tears.
“Take a deep breath, sweetie,” Sharon said in that soothing, calm voice that all mothers seemed to acquire naturally. “Would you like me to tell it?”
“No, thanks. I can handle it.” After expelling a deep breath, Emma continued. “Alex came by and started flirting with me. The shop was empty, so I guess he thought that was his opportunity. Boy, was he ever wrong. I didn’t lead him on, though; I swear it.”
“I believe you,” I said as I reached out and patted her hand. “Go on.”
“Well, he clearly wasn’t used to being rejected. The more I refused his advances, the more belligerent he became.”
“And that’s when I came out front,” Sharon added. “I heard Emma raising her voice, so I knew that something was going on. When I got there, Alex was trying to get behind the counter to get closer to her.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, I thought about hitting him with a tray of donuts,” Sharon said with a wry grin, “but I ended up scolding him instead, and that seemed to work well enough. Emma told him again that she wasn’t interested in him, so he finally left.”
“I’m curious about something. How did everyone in town find out about what happened if the shop was empty at the time?”
“Evidently Gabby Williams was standing just outside the front door when it happened,” Emma said grimly. “She must have heard it all, and after that, it was too late to stop her.”
“Believe me, I know what that’s like,” I said. Though I’d told Grace that Gabby and I were friends, sometimes the woman had the oddest way of showing it. “I’ve got a question for you. Did he happen to buy a cup of coffee while he was here?”
“No, he didn’t. Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? He was poisoned, and they found traces of what killed him in one of our cups from Donut Hearts.”
“But that’s impossible,” Emma cried. “I never sold him a cup.”
“Then he must have gotten it from someone else,” I said with a frown. “Emma, could you make a list of everyone you sold a cup of coffee to on the day of the murder?”
My assistant frowned before she answered. “It might not be complete, but I should be able to come pretty close. Why, is it important?”
“Sweetie, she wants to know who might have bought one and poisoned it before giving it to the new police chief,” Sharon explained, and then she looked at me. “Is that right?”
“It is,” I said.
“Suzanne, do you have some paper and a pen I can borrow? I’ll make the list for you right now.”
I grabbed the pen and pad I kept by the landline phone for messages and handed them to her. “Thanks. It might help.”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” Emma said, and then she started writing down names.
“What does your husband make of all of this?” I asked Sharon as Emma compiled her list.
“You know Ray. He sees conspiracies everywhere. You wouldn’t believe some of the theories he’s been playing with since this happened.”
“Sadly, I would,” I said.
“Suzanne, I know you two don’t get along, but you should know that Ray’s heart is in the right place.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied, “but only because you married him, and he helped raise such an excellent person.”
“Hey, I can hear you,” Emma said as she looked up with a grin.
“Why would I not want you to hear what I just said?” I answered with a smile of my own.
After another full minute, Emma handed me the pad and pen. “That’s all I could remember. There were a few folks who came by that day that I didn’t recognize.”
“Could you describe any of them to me?” I asked as I took the pad from her and tore off the sheet with her list.
“Let me think about it a second,” Emma said with a frown. “Let’s see. There was a heavyset man in his fifties. I remember him because he was wearing a bowtie. You don’t see many of those these days.”
I made a mental note of her description in case he turned up later in the case. “Who else?”
“We had a plain woman in her late twenties/early thirties come by for a cup. She was memorable because of what she ordered more than because of how she looked.”
“What did she get?”
“Mom and I made some snowman donuts while you were gone. I wasn’t sure how they looked after they’d been in the fryer, but this woman seemed obsessed with them. She kept going on and on about how lovely anything dealing with snow was. It was kind of weird, actually.”
That had to be Maisie! What had she been doing in April Springs? Was she stalking Alex in his new home, or was there some other, darker reason for her visit?
“Anyone else?” I asked.
“Yes. We had the oddest couple come in. He was barely five feet tall, and she was well over six feet. He kept looking up at her with such devotion that I envied her.”
“Got it. Who else?”
“There was one woman who was rather striking. She sneered at our donuts and insisted on black coffee. She was quite elegant, but there was something about the way she acted, as though she were better than everyone else around her, you know? When I handed her the change from her drink, she visibly shuddered when my hand touched hers.”
Could that have been Shannon? It certainly sounded like her. I wished that Grace and I had taken photos of the folks we’d talked to ear
lier. They would have come in handy about now.
“Is that it?”
Grace frowned. “That’s all that I can think of. Sorry. I’m sure there were a few others, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they looked like. You know how it gets around here sometimes.”
“You did fine. If you remember anyone else later, let me know, okay? It could be important.”
“I’ll try my best,” she said. “Suzanne, would you like to take a few more days off? It’s okay with us if you do.”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that? To tell you the truth, I can’t wait to get back to work.”
“That’s perfectly fine with us,” Sharon said. “We just wanted to make the offer.”
“Sharon, I can’t thank you enough for stepping in for me on such short notice. I’ll have your pay ready tomorrow by eleven.”
“There’s no hurry,” she said.
“So, which trip are you saving for next?” Sharon and one of her old girlfriends from high school loved to travel, and her working time at the donut shop helped finance her trips. Getting Ray out of town was next to impossible, but Sharon never seemed all that upset about it. Who could blame her? If I were married to Ray Blake, I’d take every trip that I could afford, too.
“We’re thinking of touring rural Italy this time,” she said rather wistfully. “Or perhaps Scotland. We’re not sure yet.”
“Well, wherever you end up, I’m sure that it will be lovely,” I said. “Shall I get us some coffee? It’s bound to be ready by now.”
“Thank you, but I must be going,” Sharon said. “Emma, you’re free to stay behind if you’d like.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll tag along with you.” As I stood and showed them out, Emma hugged me. “I’m glad to have you back, Suzanne.”
“Even if it means that you’re back on dish duty?” I asked her with a laugh.
“You know me. I’m always ready for some solitude, some suds, and some songs,” she said, grinning.
“Then you’ll get more than your share of all three tomorrow,” I promised.
I just hoped that I could follow through on it. When I was in the midst of a murder investigation, I wasn’t always the most present owner of my donut shop, but I tried my best to be there when the doors of Donut Hearts were open.