Criminal Crumbs

by Jessica Beck

  “I’ve learned never to say never, but as of right now, I’m retired, now and forever,” I said.

  “Okay. I thought I’d ask, just in case.”

  “Is there something specific you had in mind, Grace?”

  I stared at her without saying another word, and I watched as she grew more and more uncomfortable with the attention, until she finally found a shoulder off the side of the road and pulled over. “Suzanne, there’s something I haven’t told you yet. You should know up front that I want your company, first and foremost, this weekend, and if you don’t want to get involved, that’s fine by me, but I’ve committed to it, so I’m going to do what I can, with or without your help.”

  “Grace, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “Then pull back onto the road and start driving. We have a thirty-minute drive up the mountain. Can you tell it to me in that amount of time?”

  “I should be able to,” she said.

  “Then if you can talk and drive at the same time, tell me what’s going on.”

  “Somebody’s trying to kill my new boss,” she said flatly.

  I was glad that I wasn’t the one driving.

  I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to keep my car on the road.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Never more in my life,” Grace said grimly.

  “What makes her think someone wants her dead?” I couldn’t help myself. Though I’d sworn off amateur detective work, this was different. In the first place, no one had been murdered, at least not yet. In the second, I was as far removed from the victim as I could possibly be. We hadn’t even met! But third, and most important of all, Grace needed my help. How could I say no to her, given what we meant to each other?

  “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I’m not letting you do this alone. If I can help, you can count on me.”

  She reached over for a moment and patted my arm. “Thanks, Suzanne. I’ll admit that I wasn’t crazy about doing this without you.”

  “Start from the beginning, okay?” I asked her.

  “I’ll tell you what I know. If there’s anything else, we’ll have to get it from Nicole. That’s her name, by the way, Nicole Thurman. She came up through the ranks with me, and when our old boss got promoted, the district manager thought it would be fun to have a competition to see who got the job.”

  “What did you do, arm wrestle for it?” I asked.

  “That might have been simpler. No, he set impossible goals, made it ridiculously easy to cheat, and then he stood back and watched the bloodbath.”

  “Why didn’t I hear anything about this from you?” I asked her. Normally Grace shared quite a bit with me, and while I knew that I’d been spending an inordinate amount of time with my husband lately, there had still been opportunities for the two of us to talk about what was going on in Grace’s life. Or had there been as many as I thought?

  “The truth is, I didn’t want to bother you with it,” she said, averting her gaze.

  “Listen to me carefully, Grace Gauge. I’m not a delicate flower. You don’t have to tiptoe around me.”

  “Any more, you mean?” she asked me with the hint of a smile.

  “Was I really that bad?” I asked her.

  “Suzanne, you were in pain. We all made an effort not to bring your spirits down any lower than they already were. Besides, it wasn’t as though the job was important to me. I’ve given up promotions in the past so I could stay in April Springs, remember? I’ve found my perfect spot in the world. Why would I want to give that up? For more money? I’ve got everything I need and more, thank you very much. The prestige of being higher up on the corporate ladder? No, I don’t think so. I was happy for Nicole when she got the job, especially because she earned it.”

  “I thought you said the system was set up for cheating. Are you certain that she came by it fair and square?”

  Grace glanced over at me, and I could see a grin forming. “That’s where the district manager was really devious. I said it was easy to cheat, but it was also fairly simple to discover who had played by the rules and who tried to lie their way into the position. Two of our other reps were caught trying to game the system. Not only were they disqualified from the promotion, but they were both put on probation. Of the remaining contenders, Nicole was the obvious winner.”

  “How did the two cheaters get caught?” I asked her.

  “Nicole came up with a way to verify that their reports were completely fabricated, and she took it to the district manager,” Grace said uncomfortably. “I probably would have done the same thing if I’d wanted that job for myself. Word got out, though, and the resentment is still pretty obvious.”

  “Would someone actually kill their boss over a promotion?” I asked her. In my donut world, I was already at the top. Emma, my young assistant, was my only other employee, and I couldn’t imagine the circumstances that would make her do something to me to try to take over Donut Hearts.

  “You’ve lived a sheltered life, Suzanne. This was a very big deal, a career builder or breaker. Nicole likes expensive things, from designer dresses to elegant jewelry. Getting that promotion allowed her to feed what must be a pretty expensive habit by now.”

  “Hang on a second,” I said. “Before you tell me more about your list of suspects, what makes Nicole believe that someone is trying to kill her?”

  “I asked her the same thing when she started telling me about this a few days ago,” Grace said. “At first she thought she was just being paranoid, but as events started to escalate, she decided to come to me with her concerns. You and I have a bit of a reputation, did you know that? It appears that our efforts at catching killers in the past haven’t gone unnoticed. But you asked me about specific incidents. The first one happened while she was out jogging one morning before work. It was dark out, and she was listening to an audiobook on her headphones, so she didn’t hear the car coming. In fact, if she hadn’t looked up at precisely the right moment, she said that she would have been run over. Nicole managed to jump into the bushes nearby, but she didn’t catch sight of who did it.”

  “Couldn’t that have been an unrelated accident?”

  “She was certain that the intent was there. Why else would someone drive in the dark with no headlights on and then swerve to hit her at exactly the right moment? Nicole tried to put it out of her mind, and then her house almost blew up.”

  Chapter 3

  “What!”

  “She had a reception at her home for all of us, including her family, to celebrate her promotion. After everyone left, she went to bed, but something made her uneasy. She checked her place from top to bottom, and she discovered that someone had blown out her pilot light in her hot water heater. She would have either been asphyxiated or blown up if there’d been a spark to set it off. She even had one of those all-purpose detectors in the utility room, but the batteries in it had been reversed, making it useless as anything but a paperweight.”

  “Why didn’t she call the police when it happened?”

  “She thought about it, but then she realized how it would appear to someone from the outside. Unfortunately, cars hit pedestrians much too often, especially when it’s dark, and pilot lights blow out on occasion. As for the detector, it could be explained as an unfortunate accident that she’d replaced the batteries incorrectly. Nicole knows that someone’s out to get her, though, and she asked me to help her find out who’s after her.”

  “Okay, she’s got reason enough to be concerned,” I said. “Who makes up her list of suspects?”

  “The two women we work with who are now on probation because of her, Janelle Best and Georgia Collier, to start with. If you ask me, either woman might be capable of trying to kill Nicole for her job. Janelle is a single mom, not that she sees her kids all that much.
She’s constantly trying to claw her way to the top. Oh, and she’s a petty thief, too.”

  “What does she steal, cosmetics?” I asked.

  “As far as I’ve been able to tell, there’s only one criterion—it has to be of little enough value for the owner not to be too upset by its absence. I’m talking about things like office supplies, little things like that.”

  “What does that have to do with the attempts on Nicole’s life?” Yes, I’d already come to the conclusion independently that someone was indeed trying to kill Grace’s boss. One accident is possible, but two, so close together? No, I wasn’t buying it, especially with the dismantled detector as additional evidence.

  “Nothing that I know of. I just thought it was interesting.”

  “What about Georgia?”

  “She’s a real piece of work,” Grace said as she suddenly yanked the steering wheel to the right, nearly sending us off the road into the woods far below. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to the drop-off on my side before then, but seeing it up close had made me stomp on imaginary brakes on my side of the car. “Sorry,” she apologized as she corrected her steering back to the road. “I thought I saw a groundhog.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” I said.

  “It was there, Suzanne. Maybe that’s why they call this area the Shadow Mountains. It’s really hard to see the road clearly with all of these trees looming over it.”

  It was time to get back on point. We were running out of time, and I could feel my ears popping from the change in air pressure. It was getting a bit chillier as well, and I started to wonder if I’d packed enough heavy clothes to get me through the long weekend. “Tell me about Georgia.”

  “She’d climb over your dead body if she wanted what was on the other side, no questions asked, and no looking back. I could see her trying to run Nicole over without a problem, but I’m not sure she’s devious enough to think of the pilot light.”

  “So then, we have two obvious suspects. That should make it easier than most of our cases have been in the past.”

  Grace shook her head. “Sorry, but there’s more.”

  “Why wouldn’t there be? Who else belongs on the list?”

  “There are two other people in Nicole’s life who might want to see her dead as well: her sister, Celia, and her intermittent fiancé, Hank Lancaster. Oh, I forgot to mention something. Hank is the district manager who arranged that little competition for the job Nicole now has.”

  This was getting messier by the second.

  I sighed heavily, and Grace didn’t miss it. “I know. It’s a real mess, isn’t it?”

  “Let’s take these one at a time. Why would her own sister want her dead?”

  “When Nicole’s parents died, they left Nicole in charge of everything, and I mean completely. Celia had a long history of burning through her money at an alarming rate, and now Nicole metes it out in small sums, and Celia isn’t shy about letting everyone know that she resents it.”

  “And if something happens to Nicole?”

  “Then Celia gets everything the moment she’s pronounced dead,” Grace said.

  “Wow, it sounds as though she has reason enough if the estate is of any size at all.”

  “From what I’ve heard, it’s well over a million dollars,” she told me.

  “Okay, that’s a motive. How about Hank? Why would he want to kill her?”

  “After Nicole got the promotion, she broke up with him, once and for all. She knows that he can’t fire her because of it, and she’s gotten it on the company record, just in case he tries. She’s bulletproof from one kind of termination, but not the more final one.”

  Wow. Just wow. I would not want to be in this woman’s shoes for love or money. “Okay, it appears that we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  “I’m sorry I got you into this jam. The good news is that all of our suspects will be gathered together for the entire three-day weekend.”

  “Even Celia?”

  “She’s Nicole’s plus one,” Grace said. “We thought it would be easier that way.”

  “It’s hard enough as it is,” I said as I pointed out a massive towering oak tree over the road that looked as though it had been there forever. The tree was so large that, for a single moment, it completely blocked out the sun as we drove under it.

  “Sorry I got you into this,” Grace said. “It’s not too late to back out, you know.”

  “I’m afraid that it is,” I said as I pointed out the sign that stood tall as we broke through the last of the trees that crowded the road on both sides.

  The sign read, “Welcome to Shadow Mountain Resort, Your Final Destination.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  Chapter 4

  The resort was breathtaking; there was no doubt about that. The main lodge had been built on a hilltop, grand in a way that wouldn’t be possible to replicate today, with heavy woods situated just behind and on the right side of it. The walls were made from heavy fieldstone, and small windows were scattered along its front. Three massive chimneys stood high in the sky above the tile rooflines, and smoke wafted gently from two of them at the moment. Off to the left, built on a much smaller scale, were four cottages, each constructed from identical matching stone, and every one of them situated on the edge of what appeared to be a steep drop-off to the forest below. These cottages were accessible from a gravel footpath alone. In the other direction was a large lake, pristine in its surroundings, with nothing but a boat house, a fire pit with benches, and a gazebo spaced out along its edges. Finally, where a grand lawn most likely should have been, there was a dense copse of evergreens, and I saw a faded sign that proclaimed it to be a maze. That should be interesting. I’d had a bad experience the last time I’d been in one, but it had been made of corn stalks, not living trees.

  As we parked on the right side of the building and got out of Grace’s car, I could see that several other parties had already arrived. Pulling my light jacket closer, I had an involuntary shudder from the chill. “It’s really cold up here, isn’t it?” Grace asked me with a grin. “I’m not sure I packed enough warm clothes to get me through three days.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll have enough to get me through today,” I said. “Where do we go now?”

  “We’re supposed to go to the main lodge front entrance,” Grace said as we puzzled out the front of the building. Long and low rooflines were just off the first level, giving the place the feeling of a single long eyebrow, and it wasn’t until we walked up the stone steps that I realized that it was one massive porch, under cover from rain, and probably snow as well, given the temperatures we were experiencing at the moment. There was a scattering of tables and chairs spread out along the terrace, and I could see the entrance at last, a grand old wooden door that looked as though it hadn’t been touched since it had been put in place a century before.

  Once we were inside the building, the place was even more magnificent. Stone walls and floors gave the grand space an open feeling, and heart-pine wood covered the sweeping vaulted ceiling. An iron chandelier hung in the center of the room, and the far wall was taken up by a massive fireplace. There were comfortable couches and chairs surrounding it, and the registration desk was opposite it, ready to welcome the resort’s guests. Beside the desk were steps leading upstairs, and on the right side of the building, there was a sign indicating that the restaurant and bar were close by.

  We approached the front desk, and Grace identified herself. “We’re here with Laurel Cosmetics,” she said.

  The young man at the front desk gave us a clearly well-rehearsed smile. “Welcome to Shadow Mountain Lodge. Most of your party has already checked in.” He slid a packet across the oak desktop toward her. “Everything you need is inside. I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

  “Could we have our room keys?” Grace asked him. “We’d lik
e to drop off our things first.”

  “They’re in your packet,” he said, tapping the thick envelope.

  I was headed for the stairs when he stopped me. “Sorry, but you’re not staying in the main lodge.”

  “What?” Grace asked. “Why not?”

  “I was told that the top employees of your organization were awarded space in one of our cottages. You and your guest will be in the Hemlock Cottage.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked that idea very much, for several reasons. Those cottages were secluded from the main lodge. We’d have to trudge back and forth for meals and other activities, and that included nighttime and any foul weather we might be getting while we were there. Also, hemlock was poisonous, wasn’t it?

  Clearly Grace didn’t care for the idea very much, either.

  “Is there any way we could switch and stay here in the lodge?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid that would be impossible. You see, we’re extended beyond the end of our season, and we’re working with a short staff. Trust me, you’ll love your cottage. They’re the best we have to offer.”

  “Sweet, then Hemlock it is,” I said, trying my best to make Grace think it was a wonderful idea. “Let’s go check it out.”

  “Grace? Hello. Glad you made it. We’re all in here,” a lovely woman in her mid-thirties called out to us from the restaurant. Though we both had dark hair, mine was simply brown, while hers could best be described as chestnut, full of rich tones of deep browns and reds. Her green eyes were set off by porcelain skin, and if that’s what their line of makeup did, I was beginning to think I’d been too rash turning Grace’s offers of free cosmetics down in the past.

  Grace said softly, “That’s Nicole.”

  “Hi,” Grace told her boss as we approached. “Sorry we’re late.” I could see what she meant about her new boss’s expensive tastes. Nicole was dressed pretty elegantly, from her shoes to her dress to her jewelry, and I knew that Gabby Williams, a woman in April Springs who sold gently used designer clothing in a shop called ReNEWed, would have loved to get her hands on anything Nicole was wearing.