Jessica Beck - Donut Shop 18 - Dangerous Dough

by Jessica Beck

  “That’s got nothing to do with it. It’s because Manfred is an incredible idiot. You two are quite capable of investigating murder.”

  Grace looked at me and grinned. “My, those are heady words of praise, aren’t they? I’m not at all sure that I’ve ever been called capable before.”

  “It makes your head swim a little, doesn’t it?” I asked with a smile of my own.

  “You two know what I mean,” Jake said as he studied what we had left. “Should we get more rice?”

  “No,” Grace and I said in unison.

  “Okay, I get it. Calm down, there’s no need to shout,” Jake answered. “Listen, I’m sorry we ran into a brick wall. Sometimes it happens, though. I’m not happy admitting it, but some cases never get a resolution.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said. “I can’t stand the idea that someone is going to get away with murder.”

  “It happens more often than you might think,” Jake said.

  “Does it ever get any easier to swallow?” Grace asked him.

  “I’ll let you know if I ever manage to get past it,” Jake replied as he pushed his plate away. “That was a good call on the rice. I’m stuffed.”

  “Me, too,” I said as I pushed my plate away. “Grace?”

  “I’m throwing in the towel,” she said as her napkin landed on top of her plate. “Let me get this one, you two.”

  “We can pay our own way,” Jake said as he reached for his wallet.

  “Maybe so, but I’d like to treat my two dear friends to a meal out in celebration of their recent nuptials. You’re not going to spoil it by getting all macho on me, are you?”

  Jake took a deep breath and smiled, and then he put his wallet away. “Thank you for a lovely meal.”

  Grace smiled broadly at him. “You know, you could teach Stephen a few lessons on graciously accepting the inevitable.”

  “He’s still young. Give him time,” Jake said, and then his cellphone rang. “Speak of the devil and he appears.” As Jake answered his phone, he said, “We were just talking about you. Sure. Okay. Give me forty minutes. I’m in Granite Meadows. Thirty is the best I can do. See you there.” After he put the phone away, he said, “I hate to eat and run, but the chief needs some advice on a case.”

  “What’s going on?” Grace asked him.

  Jake just shrugged.

  “I know there’s some kind of code you all follow, so I won’t push too hard,” Grace said. “All I want to know is if Stephen is all right.”

  “He’s as good as gold,” Jake said as he stood, and then he leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “See you tonight back at the ranch.”

  “It’s a cottage, remember?” I asked him with a smile, and then I turned to Grace. “At his age, he gets forgetful sometimes.”

  “I’m not that much older than the two of you,” he said, “so that’s what you’ve got to look forward to in your near futures. Be careful going back. It’s probably getting slick out there, and you’re driving on one bad tire, remember?”

  After he was gone and Grace settled up with the check, I said, “I can’t believe we did all of that work for nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing,” she said as she pocketed her change after leaving a hefty tip. “We managed to figure out quite a few things about this case.”

  “Just not the identity of the killer,” I said. “No big deal.”

  “Suzanne, even we can’t win them all.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s really frustrating, isn’t it?”

  “It can be. Now we need to get back to April Springs,” Grace said.

  “Why? Do you have a date or something?”

  “I did, but evidently my boyfriend and your husband are going to be off somewhere together fighting crime, so my evening is suddenly free.”

  “You could always just hang out with me,” I said.

  “I must say, I’ve had more enthusiastic offers in my life,” Grace remarked.

  “I’m not going to beg. It’s beneath me,” I said with a soft smile.

  “Since when?” she asked, grinning herself.

  “You got me. I’d love to hang out with you, if you can make the time for me.”

  “For you? Always,” she said.

  We started to head back to April Springs, but long before we got there, something happened along the way that changed everything.

  Evidently what we’d been doing hadn’t gone unnoticed by everyone.

  Chapter 26

  I wasn’t even out of the Granite Meadows city limits when I saw a flashing blue light behind me just as I heard the siren.

  “What did I do?” I asked as I found a place to pull over. Jake had been right. It was getting slippery, and my bad tire wasn’t helping matters any.

  “Who knows? You surely weren’t speeding; at least not in this mess.”

  Through the flakes, I saw the officer behind us get out and put on his hat. I knew immediately that it wasn’t the police chief, since this policeman was in full uniform.

  When I saw who it was, I almost wished that it was the ill-tempered police chief.

  Instead, it was Officer Durant, one of my many former suspects.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him as he approached my Jeep. I’d had to unzip the window to do it, even though it was going to be a pain to zip up again. I’d been having trouble with it lately. To be fair, the whole Jeep had been giving me fits, and Jake had even had the nerve to keep suggesting that I replace it. It was rich coming from him, driving that beat-up old truck he owned.

  “License and registration please,” Officer Durant said solemnly.

  As I dug into my wallet, Grace said, “You know full well who she is. This is harassment, plain and simple, and we’re not going to stand for it.”

  Durant barely glanced at her as he took the offered documents and made his way back to his car.

  Once he was out of earshot, Grace said, “He’s just mad that we thought he was a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Imagine holding a grudge over something like that,” I said to her.

  “Do you honestly think that he’s going to give you a ticket just out of spite?”

  “I doubt that he’ll go that far. I have a feeling this is just to tweak us both.”

  “Well then, he should consider it a success, because I’m fully tweaked now.”

  I put a hand on hers. “Grace, the worst thing we can do right now is to smart off to him. Let’s just let him have his little victory, and then we’ll get out of here once and for all, okay?”

  “I’m not sure that I can promise you that,” she said.

  “But you’ll try, won’t you?”

  “For you, I will,” she said.

  When Durant finally came back, I had to follow my own advice and not lose my temper with him. I was certain this was simply retaliation for us suspecting him of killing his partner, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of seeing me lose my temper. “Is everything okay, Officer?”

  “I’m sorry to say that tire doesn’t pass inspection,” he said as he pointed to my spare.

  “I just had it put on this morning,” I explained. “Someone slashed the original.”

  He shook his head without comment as he started to write something in his ticket book, and then, miraculously, he stopped. “Tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll let you off with a warning this time, but get that thing fixed pronto.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, hoping against hope that Grace would remain quiet.

  The cop made no move to leave, though, even though the snow was starting to come down quite hard. “I heard you had a run-in with my boss at Shannon Tyler’s place this afternoon.”

  “Wow, word travels fast in a small town,” I said as noncommittally as possible.

  “You bet it does. You’ve got to be scraping the barrel looking for suspects if you went after the police chief.”

  “As a matter of fact, his new mistress was our main source of interest,” I said. Where was this leading?
I had no idea, but I was willing to play this game as long as he was.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect in the way of a reaction, but his smile still surprised me. “That’s no great surprise. Everybody knows that the chief has been interested in Shannon for a long time.”

  “Even before Alex was murdered?” I asked.

  “Long before that, if you ask me. Did you and your crack team happen to look at Tyler’s crazy stalker, Maisie, like I suggested?”

  “We spoke with her, but she had a solid alibi,” I said.

  To my surprise, the man actually looked impressed. “You two have really done your homework, haven’t you?”

  “We try,” I said, “and once we get our teeth into a case, we never let go.” It was false bravado on my part, but I wasn’t about to admit that we’d hit a dead end.

  “Do you have any other active suspects you’re looking at?” he asked. “Maybe I can help. Or are you just giving up?”

  “That’s never going to happen,” Grace said as she leaned over to stare at him, picking the absolute worst time to interject one of her comments. “As a matter of fact, we were just on our way to find Jake to share our latest bit of important information with him about the case. We expect to name the killer very soon.”

  Why was she lying to him? Was it a show of hubris, or did she just not like the way we were being toyed with? Either way, she needed to stop immediately.

  “Listen, we don’t have a lot of time. Are we finished here? We need to go,” I said.

  “What’s your hurry? There’s something you should both remember. No matter what else may have happened between us, Alex Tyler was my partner for six years,” Officer Durant said. “That means something to me, whether you believe it or not.”

  “I have no trouble believing it,” I said, doing my best to mollify him. “It was awfully convenient having an alibi, though, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t recall ever being asked for one,” Durant said with a scowl. “What’s going on?” He looked hard at each of us in turn, and then he asked, “Why did you need an alibi for me?”

  “We weren’t exactly looking for it. It just fell into our laps,” I said, skirting the truth a little. “Deke Marsh told me that the two of you were together in Granite Meadows at the exact moment that Alex was being poisoned.”

  “He said that, did he? Well, it’s true enough. I’m just sorry that I’m the one providing him with an alibi,” Officer Durant said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind seeing him go away for it.”

  “Even if you know for a fact that he didn’t kill your former partner?” Grace asked.

  “Hey, he might not have done this particular crime, but I’m willing to bet that he’s done a few things just as bad in his lifetime. After all, life’s one big merry-go-round, and we all have to get off sooner or later.” He tipped his hat to us, and then he said, “Be careful driving back to April Springs. We wouldn’t want anything happening to you two on the way.”

  “Thanks. We will,” I said.

  I didn’t even wait until he was back in his squad car to take off. I wanted nothing more at the moment than to put as much distance as possible between me and the townsfolk of Granite Meadows, including their law enforcement officers.

  “Suzanne, what’s going on?”

  “He did it,” I said as I sped away as fast as I could go. As I drove, I pulled out my cellphone.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “I have to tell Jake. You can listen to me when I tell him.”

  “We’re in a dead zone, remember?” Grace reminded me.

  “Maybe we’ll get through anyway.” I heard his phone ringing on the other end and prayed that he’d pick up.

  Unfortunately, it went straight to voicemail.

  “Jake, this is Suzanne. Grace and I are in trouble just beyond the Granite Meadows city limits sign on the way back to April Springs. Craig Durant did it. He killed Alex Tyler. If he gets us, too, you need to prove it. I love you.”

  “Suzanne, what are you talking about?” Grace asked as she looked wildly backward.

  “I may not be able to prove it, but I know it’s true just the same. Craig Durant killed his former partner, probably to shut him up about his corruption.”

  “But he has an alibi,” Grace countered.

  “Sure, from a known felon who has a pretty big reason of his own to lie. That’s what’s been bothering me since I first heard it. We’re taking a crook’s word at face value that Durant wasn’t in April Springs when Alex Tyler was murdered.”

  “And we don’t have any proof that he was,” she said.

  “Not yet, but I’m willing to bet that we can turn something up now that we know where to look. Grace, how else could he have known about my bad tire?”

  “He could have spotted it when he pulled up behind us.”

  “From that far away, with the snow coming down in thick sheets like it is? I don’t think so. I’ve got a hunch that the only way he knew was because he’s the one who slashed the first one, him or Deke Marsh doing it at his behest, anyway. That’s not all, though.”

  “What else do you have?”

  “Do you honestly think that the chief would go around bragging about his affair with a former officer’s wife? He told us not to say a word about it, remember? I’m guessing Durant has been following us around Granite Meadows all day. He saw the chief leave Shannon’s place, and then he saw us talking with Maisie. Why else would he follow us unless he wanted to see who else we suspected?”

  “It’s still not enough to convict him of killing his former partner.”

  “Did you take a picture of Durant with your cellphone?” I asked her as I struggled to keep the Jeep on the road.

  “I got a few shots,” I said.

  “How much do you want to bet if we show it to Emma, she’ll be able to identify him as a visitor to the donut shop that day?”

  “She would have remembered someone in uniform, don’t you think? Hey, be careful!”

  “I’m trying,” I said. “What if he was in street clothes? I’m willing to wager that he bought that coffee for himself while staking Alex’s new town out, and then he decided to poison his former partner.”

  “No offense, but it’s all kind of based on some pretty sketchy reasoning.”

  “I’ll grant you that, but we have some loose threads now, so if we start picking at them, something’s going to unravel sooner or later. How long do you think his alibi is going to hold up if we start pressing Deke Marsh about it? How about if Jake does it?”

  “If he’s lying, couldn’t Deke have committed the murder himself?” Grace asked as I continued to speed.

  “He got out in a matter of days, remember? Deke might not have been happy about Alex arresting him, but it wasn’t as though he paid much of a price for it. If Durant were on the take, though, the exposure would have ruined him, plain and simple.”

  Behind me, the patrol car was now following again, its lights and sirens going full blast.

  “You’re not going to pull over, are you?” Grace asked loudly as the Jeep’s engine started to whine in protest from being pushed so hard.

  “There is no way that’s happening. I’ll take my chances in court if I’m wrong, but I have a hunch that Officer Durant isn’t trying to catch up with us to give me a speeding ticket.”

  “Suzanne, you’d better do something fast. He’s gaining on us,” Grace said as she looked back again. “We don’t have a prayer in this Jeep.”

  “We just have to hang on long enough until we can attract someone else’s attention,” I said, doing my best to control my vehicle in the steadily worsening conditions. Where was everyone else? Most likely, they were safe at home riding out the storm.

  I needed a witness, though, someone to keep Officer Durant from doing something to Grace and me.

  If only one would appear.

  It became a moot point a few seconds later. Going into a curve too fast for my Jeep’s worn spare to hold, I felt myself losing con
trol as I spun out and inadvertently headed into the woods. My vehicle had been built for off-road travel, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t what they’d had in mind.

  I had to do something, though, and it had to be fast.

  If Grace and I were still sitting there like wounded ducks when Officer Durant arrived, neither one of us would make it out alive.

  Chapter 27

  “Suzanne, what are we going to do?” Grace asked, the fear thick in her voice. I’d never heard her as panicked as she was at that moment.

  “We’re going to be all right,” I said as I tried to get the Jeep started again. The engine had died when we’d spun out, and I couldn’t get it started again. “Grace, we need to go, and I mean right now.”

  “Start the Jeep and drive!” she shouted at me. “I’m not stopping you!”

  “It won’t start! Something’s wrong with it!” I snapped back at her. “We need to go on foot.”

  “I can’t! It won’t open!” Grace started sobbing as she fought to open her door. I looked over and saw that I’d managed to wedge her side of the Jeep against a tall oak.

  “Climb out my side!” I yelled. I threw my door open, but when I started to run, I quickly realized that Grace was still inside. On the road twenty feet away, I saw the patrol car skid to a stop. I was hoping at that moment against all hope that Durant would keep on sliding and wind up in a ditch himself, but his car was clearly better suited for the snow than mine had been. We didn’t have much time to get away now.

  “Grace,” I hissed when I got back to the Jeep. “Let’s go!”

  “I can’t,” she said through her tears. “I’m stuck!”

  I looked to see what was trapping her when I noticed that her seat belt was still buckled. Ordering her to free herself was clearly not going to work, so I leaned in and unsnapped it myself. Even once she was free, I still had to pull her out.

  The siren suddenly died, and I turned back to see that the lights had been extinguished as well.

  It became clear in an instant that he was coming after us, and he didn’t want anyone else to follow him into the woods.

  That could only mean bad things for us.