Glazed Murder

by Jessica Beck

  I grabbed my keys off the counter, and she asked, “Where do you think you are going, young lady?”

  “I’m taking a walk in the park,” I snapped. That was one of the nicest things about our house. It was close enough to downtown—and my shop—so I could walk to work on pretty mornings if I wanted, and take a stroll across the street in the city park on my way home, though I normally limited those forays to when it was at least a little warmer, and a whole lot lighter out.

  Momma said, “Suzanne, it’s dark and it’s cold outside. Have you lost your mind completely?”

  “Apparently. I moved back in with my mother in my thirties. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as going over the bend in most circles.”

  I stormed out, not even sure why I was so angry with her. Was it because she was calling her former beau, something I knew she hated doing, or was it because she was right? Sometimes I find myself getting angriest when people call me on my behavior. Did I have any business tracking down a killer on my own?

  Honestly, no matter what my mother thought, I didn’t have much choice. Sure, I would have preferred that whoever dumped Patrick Blaine’s body had done it on the other side of town, but they hadn’t. Whether the choice had been planned or random, I was drawn into it, whether I liked it or not. The fact that Patrick had been a customer of mine, and someone I’d liked, just made things worse.

  What I wasn’t going to do was be a victim and wait for a blow that might or might not ever come. I couldn’t spend the rest of the day looking over my shoulder, let alone the rest of my life.

  As expected, the park was deserted. I was freezing, and I was getting a massive headache to add to the mix. I needed to go home, patch things up with my mother, and see if I could come up with a plan for tomorrow. If not, it would be time to make the donuts again soon enough, and if I didn’t get at least six hours of sleep, I’d be worthless the next day.

  My phone was ringing when I got back to my room, a personal line I’d had installed the day I’d moved in. Cell phones were nice, but I needed a land-line for my computer, and I wasn’t about to tie up Momma’s phone while I was online. When I wasn’t using the Internet, it served as a way for my friends to get in touch with me, since—likely as not—my cell phone battery would be in dire need of recharging, and they could always leave me a message on my machine.

  I should have let the machine pick it up.

  At least then I would have had a record of the threat.

  After I said hello, a voice said, “Stop digging into the murder, or you are going to be next. This has nothing to do with you. Make sure it stays that way.”

  The caller, having whispered his warning, hung up.

  Evidently, whoever had killed Patrick Blaine was aware of what I’d been up to after work today. The warning was clear enough, and from the hissed words, I didn’t doubt they were sincere. Anybody with a lick of common sense would stop now—I fully realized that—but how could I be sure the caller would leave me alone, even if I did as I was told? It might just be a way to get me to back off until he could finish me off without arousing suspicion. Then again, I knew that life would be better if I could just drop it.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Having known Patrick, and seeing his body hit the street, was enough to keep me digging, and the telephone threat just meant that I’d touched a nerve somewhere.

  If only I knew where.

  My alarm clock stays on the other side of my bedroom, a measure I had to take after destroying two others by slamming them on the floor to get them to shut up. One-fifteen in the morning is too early for anyone with any sense to be getting out of bed. I’d grown somewhat accustomed to the hours, but it was nothing I’d ever relish.

  Pulling on jeans and a polo shirt, I grabbed a quick bowl of cereal, then I set off for the shop. It was freezing, but what did I expect? We were in the throes of March, which in our part of North Carolina meant cold weather. We’d even had a snow flurry a few days before, though it hadn’t amounted to much. I thought about walking to the shop anyway, as a way to wake up more than anything else, but there were too many shadows out there for my taste. I got into my Jeep and drove to Donut Hearts. I usually parked in back of the old depot building to leave space up front for my customers, but today I was going to break that rule. Leaving my headlights on as the Jeep was pointed toward the front door, I unlocked it, disengaged the alarm, and turned on every light in the place. After that, I cut the lights on the Jeep and raced back into the store, not really breathing again until I was safely inside. There was a lot of glass up front, and I knew it wouldn’t slow down anybody determined to get me, but I still felt a level of comfort knowing that at least they couldn’t sneak up on me.

  I hit the start button as I walked past the coffeepot, then turned the deep fryer on in the kitchen and set the temperature to 300 degrees. It was Wednesday, and I make old-fashioned donuts on Wednesdays and Fridays. As the oil heated, I checked the answering machine on my desk for any last-minute orders. It’s amazing how many people think they can get four or five dozen donuts for parties, fund-raisers, or office breakfasts without warning me ahead of time. Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme might be able to do it, but I run a small operation, and I need some kind of warning, or it can throw my whole day off.

  Sure enough, a woman’s voice was on the machine, and through the constant background noise of kids yelling and screaming, she ordered six dozen glazed donuts with sprinkles and confectionary worms. I had the sprinkles, though I didn’t think I’d ever put them on glazed donuts before, but she was on her own for the worms. There are some things even I won’t do to a donut.

  I was taking down the particulars when I heard someone banging on the front door. My hand automatically reached for my largest rolling pin—a ten-pound maple monster—as I peeked around the corner. It was time to stop running.

  If whoever was after me was looking for a fight, they’d just found one.

  “Emma, why didn’t you use your keys?” I asked my assistant as I let her in through the front door. She was petite, with fine red hair, freckles that sparkled when she blushed, and pale blue eyes. Emma was saving money for college by working at my donut shop, and I didn’t know what I was going to do without her when she finally made enough to head off to school. I’d have to hire someone else. One day a week making donuts by myself was plenty of experience to tell me that I couldn’t sustain it on a regular basis or I’d kill myself from overwork.

  “I left my key ring on my dresser at home,” Emma said sheepishly.

  “Then how did you get here?” I looked outside, but couldn’t see her car anywhere.

  “Don’t bother looking; it’s in the shop again. Dad dropped me off.”

  “I bet he just loved getting up in the middle of the night to do that,” I said. Emma’s father, Ray, was the editor of the April Springs Sentinel, a small paper known more for its advertisements than its in-depth reporting.

  “Let’s just say that he was less than pleased, and leave it at that. He’s working on some ultra hush-hush story about local police corruption, and he’s driving us all crazy with it.”

  “Is that true?” The thought of corruption in our tiny little North Carolina town made me nervous.

  “I’d be totally shocked if it was. Dad’s always going off on one wild-goose chase or another looking for a Pulitzer Prize-winning story that he’s never going to find.”

  Emma hung her coat on the rack, then said, “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you yesterday, but I was out of town, and my dear old dad didn’t think it was newsworthy enough to tell me what happened until he dropped me off just now.”

  “How did he find out about the telephone threat? I haven’t even told anyone about that yet.” Was there some kind of tap on my telephone, or did he know who had made the call?

  Emma looked shocked by the news. “You were threatened, too? I was talking about finding Patrick Blaine’s body in front of the shop. I think Dad intentionally didn’t tell me because he th
ought it would worry me. You know what? He was right. So, tell me about this call.” Emma’s voice went into a whole other octave when she was excited, and she was clearly agitated now.

  Reluctantly, I admitted, “Someone called my house and tried to intimidate me last night.”

  Emma frowned. “What’s happening to this town? First you see one of our customers dumped in front of the shop, and then some random idiot calls you and threatens you. Dad makes me carry pepper spray, and I’ve been giving him a hard time about being over-protective, but now I’m starting to think that he was right.”

  “It wasn’t random at all,” I said softly. “He told me that if I didn’t butt out, I’d be sorry.”

  “Butt out of what?” she asked me.

  I didn’t want go into what had been happening, but we’d be working together all morning, and I couldn’t see keeping any of it from her. Besides, by being near me, she was in danger herself, and Emma had a right to know what she was going up against.

  “I’m trying to find out who killed Patrick Blaine myself,” I said.

  Emma smiled.

  “What’s so funny about that?” I asked.

  “Dad said that’s exactly what you would do, but I told him you were too levelheaded for that. So, what have you done so far?”

  I looked outside, feeling exposed in the darkness. “Come on. We’ve got donuts to make,” I said.

  Emma wasn’t about to give up that easily, though. “We can talk while we work. We do it every morning, don’t we?”

  I reluctantly agreed. “You clean the glaze left in the reservoir, and I’ll make more to top it off.” We don’t make new glaze every morning, since it would be too wasteful to throw the old out and start fresh. Instead, we skim the top layer of collected grease—along with some of the water that has separated from the glaze overnight—dispose of that, then add new glaze to the mix when the reservoir gets too low. I added thirty-four pounds of powdered sugar to the big floor mixer, put in a gallon of water and some flavoring, tossed in some thickening agent, and then started the mixer. It wasn’t a delicate operation, so I didn’t have to set one of the four timers we had in the kitchen. I could turn it on and forget about it until I was ready to add it to the old glaze.

  Emma had just finished stirring the remaining glaze together using a large loaf pan, which is how we apply the glaze to the donuts once they are fried. There’s nothing sophisticated or even automated about our operation, but it is quick, and very effective. The poured glaze runs over the donuts, drops through the rack, and slides down a stainless steel incline back into the waiting pool.

  “So, talk to me,” Emma said.

  “Let me measure out some ingredients first,” I said.

  I set up individual stations for our cake donut mixes and measured out the dry ingredients, water, and flavorings into neat little grids.

  “Come on, give,” Emma asked.

  I was at a point where my total concentration wasn’t required anymore. “After I found Patrick’s body, I realized that the police weren’t taking my protection too seriously, so I decided to dig into this myself.”

  “You should ask George for help,” Emma said.

  “I don’t want to put him at risk any more than I have to,” I said, “but he’s checking on things at police headquarters, so he can keep me informed if Chief Martin actually stumbles over a clue, even if it’s just by accident.”

  “What does he think about all of this?”

  “He’s worried about me, but should that really surprise anybody? You know how overprotective he is,” I said as I combined the ingredients in each individual mixing bowl by hand.

  “But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you,” Emma said.

  “I am,” I admitted. “Let me make these old-fashioned donuts first, and then we’ll talk more about it.”

  I checked the grease temperature, and it was right at 300 degrees, which was exactly what I needed it to be. It was time to load up the dropper, a device that looked like a cross between a large steel teacup and a funnel. There was a spring-operated disk inside that dropped a perfect ring of batter into the oil every time, and cake donuts would be impossible for me to make without the nifty little device. I added the batter, then swung the dropper from side to side like a pendulum to force the batter to one end. I’d never dropped the tool yet, but if I did, it could do some serious damage to anyone unlucky enough to be standing nearby. There might be other ways to get the air bubbles out of the batter and force it to the bottom, but I hadn’t found anything else that worked for me. I dropped ten or twelve rounds into the oil, where they quickly settled on the bottom rack. After a few seconds they floated up to the top, and I took my flipping sticks and nudged them over once I thought they were ready. There’s more of an art than a science to doing it, and I didn’t use timers for this stage. Once the donuts were the perfect color on both sides, I used the handles and lifted the donuts from the hot oil and emptied the rack onto the glazing station. Scooping up glaze in the loaf pan, I poured a cascade of white sweetness over them, put a new rack in the bottom of the fryer, then started over.

  “Swinging,” I said, and Emma ducked out of the line of fire.

  “Clear,” I added as I finished, then dropped new rings into the oil while Emma transferred the donuts from the rack to one of our trays. It was a many-tiered stainless steel rack on wheels, and it would hold twenty trays on each side, allowing us to store forty dozen donuts until we added them to the case out front. After the old-fashioned donuts were finished, I made each batch of cake donut we were offering today, then I turned up the fryer in preparation for the yeast donuts. Those we cooked at 365 degrees, and I’d learned early on that it was much easier to start at the lower temperatures and work my way up, instead of the other way.

  As Emma washed the things we’d used so far in the industrial sink, I mixed the yeast dough. After I was finished, I pulled a wad of dough out of the mixer and covered it so it could rise. We had forty minutes now, but there was still a lot to do before we were ready to make more donuts.

  First, though, it was time for our break. Emma and I normally sit outside for twenty minutes every morning—rain or shine, snow or sleet—just to get some fresh air and escape from the kitchen for a little while.

  She started toward the front door when I said, “Maybe we should have our coffee inside tonight.”

  “Are you sure? We never have before.” She looked into my eyes, then added, “Hey, you really are spooked.”

  “Let’s just say I don’t want to take any chances that I don’t have to,” I said.

  “Inside is fine with me, then.”

  I got us each a mug of coffee, and we moved to one of the best couches in the place, one that also offered a great view of the front parking lot. At least no one would be able to sneak up on us.

  Emma tucked her legs under her, something I hadn’t been able or even willing to try in years, and said, “Now that we have a few minutes, tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  I reluctantly brought her up to speed on my visit to the bank, the so-called investment house, and the construction company. She listened with rapt interest, interrupting now and then with a question or two.

  After I was finished, she said, “You should really talk to Dad.”

  “I’m not ready to talk to the press about this yet,” I said.

  “He won’t print what you talk about if you ask him to keep it off the record,” Emma said, “but he may know some things you don’t. I know the paper’s a joke around town, but Dad’s got sources everywhere, and he’ll help you. I know he will.”

  “How can you be so sure it won’t end up in his paper?”

  “Believe me, if I get him to promise, you’ll be all right, and I won’t let you talk to him until he gives us both his word. For Dad, that’s more binding than any contract that’s ever been written.”

  I thought about it, then I said, “I need to have something more concrete before I even think about talking to s
omeone else about it.”

  “I understand that. Don’t dismiss him out of hand, though. He just might have something that helps you. Have you thought about what your next step is going to be?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I guess I’ll keep digging and see what I can turn up.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find out who killed Patrick.”

  I put my coffee cup down on the table. “Hang on one second. I’m not going to let you get involved in this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too dangerous. Besides, this isn’t your fight, it’s mine.” The last thing I wanted was Emma’s life in jeopardy because of me.

  She frowned as she asked me, “Did you say the same thing to George?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “This is different,” I said.

  “Why, just because he’s older than I am? I don’t just work here, Suzanne. I thought we were friends.”

  “We are,” I said. “That’s why I don’t want to put you at risk.”

  “That’s the wrong way to think of it. I’m involved because I want to be. I knew Patrick Blaine, too, and I liked him. Besides, I’m over eighteen, and I’ve been making my own decisions for a lot longer than that.” She grinned at me and added, “If you don’t believe that, just ask my dad.”

  “Fine, you can help, but I’m not going to let you take any chances, do you understand?”

  “I won’t take any you wouldn’t yourself,” she said.

  I was about to reply when the timer went off.

  Emma bounced off the couch. “I’d love to sit and chat all morning, but those donuts aren’t going to make themselves.”

  She was entirely too happy to be involved in my unofficial investigation. The real reason I was reluctant to use her was because I was afraid Emma thought of this as a game instead of real life, with its matching levels of danger. If anything happened to her because of me, I’d never be able to forgive myself. It meant that I’d have to keep a closer eye on her, and that was a distraction I really couldn’t afford at the moment.