Strawberry Cream Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 1

by Susan Gillard

  Curled up on the welcome mat, Dave snorted in his sleep and flailed his paws at something he dreamed of chasing. Another dog? A squirrel? A rabbit?

  That’s what it felt like she was doing—chasing rabbits. So much information leading so many different directions, but none of it leading toward an answer.

  She took a sip of her lemonade and let the cool liquid wash down her throat. Wondered if the cyanide had slipped down Christa’s throat as smoothly. And sat straight up in the chair.

  Maybe that was the next direction to go: finding out how the cyanide had been administered. All three suspects had had motive and opportunity. If she couldn’t figure out who had done it, maybe she could start by figuring out how it had been done.

  Because if it hadn’t come from the donut Christa was eating, it had to have come from somewhere else. Something else she ate. Something maybe the pathologist had overlooked in the stomach contents.

  And just what do you think you can figure out that a trained professional couldn’t? she asked herself.

  The answer came back startlingly clear. Maybe nothing. But at least I can try.

  “Come on, Dave,” she said, standing up and snatching up her glass of lemonade. “We’re going to go do a little research.”

  Dave raised his head an inch off the mat and opened one sleepy eye.

  “I know you’re tired, but this is important,” she said. “Really important. Come on.”

  Dave stretched, lumbered to his feet, and shook himself. Heather held the door open for him, and he trotted inside. She detoured slightly into the kitchen and set the glass in the sink. Then she hurried down the hall to her home office, with Dave following.

  As she sat down in her desk chair and woke up the monitor, Dave hopped up onto an armchair, turned in circles a few times, and curled back up to resume his nap. “You go ahead and sleep,” she said. “I have to Google ‘cyanide poisoning.’”

  Chapter 8

  Forty minutes later, Heather sat back and frowned at the computer screen. She tapped her fingers in sequence on the arm of her chair, over and over, as she thought.

  Cyanide powder, in its purest form, was illegal to buy almost anywhere and was very strictly controlled. In fact, you couldn’t really get it unless you knew exactly where to find it, or unless you had connections.

  Could Joey have gotten some? she wondered. Maybe. But it’s not like cyanide was a recreational drug.

  No, cyanide was for one purpose only: poisoning something. Or someone.

  So if that’s what you were planning on doing, and you were just an average person, you would have to make your own cyanide. The pits or seeds of certain fruits—apples, cherries, almonds—could be crushed in order to release cyanide. Then, all you would have to do was get your victim to ingest that much bitter-tasting powder without realizing it.

  In the back of her mind, she heard a voice saying, I don’t like too much sugar. I want to taste the ingredients that are in the cream, not just the sugar alone.

  That’s it! she thought. The filling in a strawberry cream donut would be the perfect way to disguise the bitter taste. You could just put in as much extra sugar as you needed. After all, people expected the cream to be sweet.

  She pounded her fists on her chair arms in frustration. But the cyanide hadn’t been in the donut.

  The chimes of a grandfather clock sounded through the house as someone rang the doorbell. But she wasn’t expecting anybody.

  She went to the front of the house and pushed the curtain at the front window aside just a little. It was Michelle, holding a paper bag with the words Donut Delights and the shop’s logo printed on it.

  Heather swung the door open. “Hey, Michelle. Come on in.”

  Michelle stepped inside. As Heather closed the door behind her, she held up the bag. “I brought a couple of those Southern Pecan Pie donuts we had left over.”

  “Mmm, I love those,” Heather said.

  “Yeah, me too. They don’t help my waistline—” she patted her slightly plump midsection, “but they’re sooooo good.”

  “Come on back,” Heather said. “I was just looking up some information on the computer.”

  “About what?” Michelle asked.

  “Cyanide poisoning,” she answered, starting down the hallway. “You know how I told you Detective Shepherd said Christa was killed by ingesting cyanide? But that it wasn’t in the donut? Well, I thought I’d look up other ways that cyanide could be administered to somebody.”

  “Did you find any leads?” Michelle asked.

  Heather sat down at her desk and pulled another chair close for Michelle. “Not really. Actually, no. Apparently, you can’t just go out and buy cyanide. It’s really strictly controlled. So if you were going to give somebody cyanide, you’d have to make it yourself.”

  “How would you do that?” Michelle asked, her eyebrows rising.

  “You could crush up a bunch of seeds. Apples, cherries, even almonds. But then you’d still have to get the person to eat the powder.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely,” Michelle said.

  “Yeah, exactly.” Heather reached for the bag of donuts that Michelle had set on the desk. “I think I need some comfort food. Or ‘thinking food.’ Whatever.”

  “Here.” Michelle opened the bag, reached in, and handed a donut to Heather. She took the other one out for herself. “Want me to get some napkins?”

  “I’ll get them,” Heather said. In a few moments she returned and placed a pile of napkins in front of Michelle and a pile at her own place. “I brought plenty, because I can never seem to eat these things without making a mess.”

  “Me either,” Michelle said around a bite of donut.

  Heather sat down, took a bite of her donut, and wiped her fingers on a napkin. “Mmmm. Thanks for bringing these. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Michelle smiled and nodded. Heather finished her bite of donut and took another. “Okay. So…” She chewed, swallowed, and started over. “So how would the murderer have gotten Christa to swallow all that powder if it wasn’t in the donut?”

  “No idea.” Michelle shrugged. “Maybe they—” She shrugged again. “I just don’t know.”

  “Let’s start again,” Heather said. “If Christa ate something with cyanide in it—and if the donut was the only thing in her stomach—then the cyanide had to be in the donut. Only it wasn’t.” She rubbed her stomach and grimaced.

  “Are you okay?” Michelle asked.

  “I think I’m getting a stomach ache,” she said. “My stomach’s starting to hurt.”

  “Do you need me to get you anything?” Michelle asked. “A glass of water, maybe?”

  “No, I’m fine.” Heather tried to ignore the mild burning sensation. “It’s probably just indigestion.”

  “So what were you saying about the donut?” Michelle asked, her gaze fixed on Heather.

  “Just that the cyanide had to be in the donut, but it wasn’t. Or maybe—” Heather paused as an idea stirred in her brain. “The cyanide had to be in a donut,” she said slowly. “Just—not that one. Not the one that was found next to Christa’s body!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have to call Detective Shepherd,” Heather said, her heart pounding in her chest. She grabbed her phone from where it lay next to the computer monitor on the desk and punched in Shepherd’s number. Waited for the phone to ring. Groaned as his voice mail picked up.

  “Detective Shepherd, this is Heather Janke,” she said breathlessly, and wondered why she seemed to be having trouble breathing. “Please call me back as soon as you can. I’m at home, so call on my cell, not at the shop. Thanks. Bye.”

  She ended the call and placed the phone back on the desk. As she did, her eyes fell on Michelle’s napkin, where Michelle had carefully placed half of her donut. And suddenly, with the speed of a tower of blocks crashing down, all the pieces came together.

  The killer must not only have saved half a perfectly good donut and planted it beside
Christa’s body, he—or she—would have had to have made a strawberry cream donut and mixed the cyanide in with the cream. Otherwise, it would have been obvious the donut was tampered with. That was what had to have happened. And there was only one person who could have done it.

  “It was you!” she gasped. “It was—”

  But as she looked up at Michelle and saw the gun pointing squarely at her chest, the words died before they could be spoken.

  “You should have finished your donut,” Michelle said calmly. “Then I wouldn’t have had to shoot you.”

  Chapter 9

  Heather forced the words out from between numb lips. “Shoot me? Why?”

  “You just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” Michelle said. “I never planned to kill you. I don’t want to kill you. But you just couldn’t accept that Christa was out of your way and leave it alone. You had to start your own investigation. You couldn’t leave it to the police.”

  “But I—” Heather tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t.

  A small smile played at the corners of Michelle’s mouth. “You should be feeling the effects now,” she said. “Just like Christa. Only she had taken a lot more cyanide than you. She ate her whole donut. Just like you should have eaten yours.”

  Heather glanced at the mostly uneaten donut that sat on her napkin. Thank God she’d only taken two bites!

  “But since you wouldn’t eat the whole thing, I’m going to have to shoot you,” Michelle said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I have to make it look like an accident. No, not like an accident. Like a robbery gone wrong. Stand up.”

  “Where are you—”

  “Just stand up!” Michelle commanded, her eyes suddenly hard and glittering.

  Heather stood. Michelle waved the gun in the direction of the door. “In the kitchen,” she said. “It’ll look like somebody tried to break in, you surprised them, and they shot you.”

  As she walked slowly down the hallway ahead of Michelle, Heather tried to think. But it was getting harder to breathe, and her stomach felt like it was on fire. Got to think! she commanded herself.

  Heather stopped next to the kitchen table, leaning on it with one hand. “Good,” Michelle said. “Right there.”

  “Why did you kill Christa?” Heather gasped, desperate to keep Michelle talking until she could think of something, anything, that would save herself.

  “You really never knew, did you?” Michelle asked in a high, childish voice. “Never knew that I was helping Christa steal your recipes. She didn’t have the brains to do it herself. I helped.”

  “But why did you kill her?”

  “She was supposed to make me a partner in her shop,” Michelle said. “I get the recipes for her, she puts up all the capital and makes me a partner. As much money as she had, that wasn’t too much for me to ask for. But then she got greedy.” Michelle’s lips pulled back in a sneer. “At the last minute, she cut me out. Just like she cut Billy out of the will. Said she didn’t need me anymore. Didn’t need a partner. But oh, yes, she did. She needed me more than she realized.”

  “I needed you too,” Heather said. “If it was the money, you could have asked me for a raise.”

  “It wasn’t just the money,” Michelle said, her voice suddenly pleading. “I wanted to be a partner. Wanted to own something, not just work for somebody else. I didn’t want to have to be the one coming in at 3 a.m. I wanted to be in charge.”

  “Was that you who went through Christa’s desk drawer?”

  “No. That was Christa. She was looking for antacid tablets. Not that they would have helped. All I did was take the picture of her and her loving father off of her desk.”

  “Why? What difference did it make?”

  “I touched it,” Michelle said. “And I didn’t want my fingerprints on anything the police might examine later. You know, it was hard being careful enough not to leave fingerprints without looking suspicious.” She frowned as if thinking over—and admiring—her own cunning.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Heather said, as Dave wandered into the kitchen to see what was going on.

  Michelle must have seen her glance at Dave, who was now staring at them, head turning from Heather, to Michelle, and back again, as if he could sense that something was very wrong. “Maybe you should let your dog out,” Michelle said, glancing at Dave. “People will think you let your dog out, and somebody pushed their way in through the door. You resisted, and they shot you. That’s too bad.”

  Michelle gave her a sorrowful glance, and Heather knew she didn’t have much time. “I really don’t want to kill you,” Michelle said. “But you forced me to it.”

  With a jolt of pure fear, Heather realized that Michelle was about to do exactly as she had threatened to do. “Okay,” Heather said, holding her hands up in what she hoped was a placating gesture. “Just don’t hurt my dog, okay?”

  “I won’t hurt your dog,” Michelle said. “I like Dave.”

  Heather lowered her hands and tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs wouldn’t fill with air. She lowered her head as if trying to gather her strength. It was “do or die” time. Literally.

  Slowly she raised her head, looking directly into Michelle’s eyes. And then, suddenly, she glanced over Michelle’s right shoulder toward the back door. “Thank God you’re here!” she gasped.

  Michelle’s head turned toward the door. Her gun hand lowered. And Heather launched herself forward. She clamped her hand around Michelle’s as Michelle tried to pull away. They fell to the floor, Michelle underneath her, both women struggling for the gun with all their might as Dave barked at the top of his lungs.

  But Heather couldn’t breathe. She was weakening. And Michelle was strong. Desperately, Heather tried to force the gun out and away from their bodies, where—

  Boom!

  Heather stiffened, feeling the reverberations throughout her entire being. For an instant, the world seemed to have gone silent. But then, sound rushed back, and she heard her own gasps for breath, heard Dave’s shrill barking.

  And realized Michelle was no longer struggling. And that Michelle’s hand no longer gripped the gun.

  Heather snatched the gun and forced herself up off the floor. She backed away, still holding the weapon pointed squarely at Michelle’s chest, where a dark red stain was spreading across her pale blue shirt.

  Tears flooding her eyes and spilling down her cheeks, Heather stumbled back to the computer room, gasping for breath. Her phone still lay next to the computer. Hands shaking, she laid down the gun and picked up the phone, fumbling to dial a number she’d never dialed before.

  9-1-1.

  It seemed an eternity before someone answered, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” the voice asked.

  “I’ve been poisoned,” Heather sobbed. “Cyanide poisoning. And I’ve shot Michelle!”

  “Where are you?” the voice asked.

  Heather must have given her address, because the voice was saying, “Ma’am, I’m sending officers right now. I need you to put the gun down and meet them at the door. Can you do that?”

  No, she thought. No, I can’t. It’s too dark.

  And then the darkness swallowed her.

  Chapter 10

  Into the silent darkness pulsed sounds and movements and lights. Heather was unable to make sense of any of them. She heard unfamiliar voices, sensed movement, felt something being placed over her face, and sucked in air. Felt strong hands lifting her up and placing her on something soft instead of the hard kitchen tile.

  There was movement, then, rushing, swaying movement. Then one long sound that skirled up and down over and over and over. All of these things interspersed with moments of silent darkness and constant, cramping pain.

  She tried to think, tried to figure out what was happening. Realized that she must be in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Wondered if Michelle was in the same ambulance. Forced her eyes open and saw that she was alone,
except for the EMT leaning over her.

  “You’re okay,” he said, gently smoothing back her hair from her forehead. “You’re on the way to the hospital, and you’re going to get help.”

  Something about the low, patient tone of his voice calmed her. Maybe everything really would be all right. Heather closed her eyes and let the darkness suck her under.

  ***

  She opened her eyes to see Amy sitting in a chair next to her, smiling. “Hey, sleeping beauty,” Amy said.

  “Amy?” Heather said.