by Jessica Beck
“Not to eat on the spot, no,” I admitted.
“Then we shall be the first,” the third one declared, taking out his wallet and sliding a credit card across the counter to me. “One of each, please, plus three cups of coffee, and three glasses of water as well.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said as I rang up the order. I had quite a selection of donuts, but there weren’t as many as some folks might have realized. After all, the glazed yeast donuts were a good half of my offerings alone, though there were several on the menu that sported different toppings.
It took four trays, and that was with some stacking. I started delivering them to my largest table, and the men dove into my donuts with such gusto that I was afraid to get between any one of them and their next bite. To my amazement, in record time, all of the donuts were gone, their coffee cups had been emptied more than once, and the three looked as though they could go again.
“That was, without exception, the best meal of my life,” the one who’d paid said. As they stood and started to leave, he stuffed a hundred-dollar bill into the tip jar.
“That’s way too much,” I protested. “Your donuts didn’t even cost that much.”
“Nonsense. It was worth every dime.”
“Let him do it,” one of the other men said. “We’re out celebrating. He just sold his business for eighteen million dollars. He can afford that kind of tip all day long.”
“Not if you three keep eating like you are,” I said with a smile.
He wouldn’t take the tip back, and I shrugged as they left. After all, it was his money to do with as he chose. Who was I to discourage his generosity?
Sharon came up and cleaned the table but not before asking, “Did they really eat it all?”
“See for yourself,” I said. I dug into the jar and pulled out the large bill. “Here you go. This is for you.”
“What is this? I can’t accept this,” she said, clearly flustered by the size of the gratuity.
“Well, I’m not going to take it. I don’t do tips, since I own the place. If it makes you feel better, split it with Emma when you get home.”
She clearly liked that suggestion. “I can do better than that. I’m going to give it all to her.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “I just don’t want to leave it in the jar.”
“Are you worried about someone stealing it?” Sharon asked.
“No, I just don’t want to give the change and the ones already in there an inferiority complex,” I said with a smile.
Chapter 7
“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” I said when George Morris walked in a little after eight a.m. “Getting a late start today?” The mayor was usually an early riser, so coming in much after I opened was uncharacteristic for him.
“I was up all night talking,” he said with a groan.
“Woman problems?” I asked him sweetly. “Is your attorney giving you fits?” George had been dating an attorney from Newton named Cassandra Lane recently, though I’d never met her. In fact, she’d been a secret until not that long ago.
“You might say that,” George said glumly.
My heart suddenly went out to the mayor. “I was just teasing you. What happened? Did she break up with you?”
George looked startled. “No, of course not. Why would you think such a thing?”
“I don’t know. You look pretty upset,” I said.
“It’s the opposite, actually. She thinks we should get married. She just accepted a partnership in a law firm in Charlotte, and she wants to make a fresh start there with me.” He said it as though he were pronouncing his own death sentence.
“What in the world is a high-powered attorney going to do in April Springs? Surely she’s not going to commute all the way to Charlotte every day. That would be brutal.”
“Suzanne, she wants me to resign and move down there!”
I was shocked to hear the news. George Morris was a fixture in our little town, and in not a small way part of what held us all together. “You’re not actually thinking about doing it, are you?”
“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve served this town for years. Don’t I deserve a life of my own?” He was angry now, but I had a feeling it wasn’t really aimed toward me.
“Of course you do,” I said calmly, trying to bring his decibel level down, at least a little. “I just thought you were happy here. Could you live in a place as big as Charlotte?”
“If I had the right reason, I could live just about anywhere,” he admitted. “No offense. I’m not saying I wouldn’t miss you and Jake if I left.”
“None taken. We’d miss you, too, but in the end, you’re right. You have to do what’s best for you. What are you going to do?”
“I honestly don’t have a clue,” he said. “Do you have any advice for me?”
Wow, it was truly dire if he was asking me for my opinion! “Just don’t make any snap decisions,” I said. “I’d hate for you to resign, spend a week in Charlotte, and then want to come back.” That triggered a thought in my mind. “Do you really want my advice, or were you just being polite?”
“You know me better than that. I don’t do things out of politeness.”
“Maybe not in the past, but you’ve softened up some since you’ve become mayor, and don’t try to deny it.”
George took a moment before he responded, another sure sign that he’d grown into his job. “Okay, but not with my friends, and you’re just about the best friend I’ve got around here. Let’s hear your advice.”
“You have some accumulated vacation time coming to you, don’t you?” I knew that the mayor rarely used his time off, so it was a safe question to ask.
“Sure. Why? Did you want to take a trip with me?” he asked, grinning for the first time since he’d come into Donut Hearts that morning.
“No, but if I were you, I’d take a week or two off and go down to Charlotte. Get the feel of what it would be like living there. If you need a place to stay, I’ve got a friend I could call.” It was as polite a way as I could think of to ask him if Cassandra would mind having him stay with her.
“Thanks, but I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Should I ask Cassandra to take the week off, too?”
I shook my head. “That would ruin the purpose of the exercise. She’s not planning to retire anytime soon, is she?”
“No, that never came up,” George said with a frown.
“So let her continue going to work. Make this test as real a taste of what your life will be like as you can, and that means she goes off to work every day and you fend for yourself while she’s gone. What do you think?”
“I think it makes too much sense to have come from a donut maker,” George said with a real smile.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said.
“You should, because that’s how I meant it. Tell you what. Give me two old-fashioned cake donuts, a blueberry glazed, and a cherry-filled donut, too.”
“Are you going to eat them all here, or should I bag them up for you?” I asked him with a smile of my own.
“I’ll take them to go. Thanks.”
He handed me his money, and I made change for him, which he dropped into the tip jar. It was quite a bit less than the tip we’d gotten earlier, but it was still a nice amount. “That’s some good advice you gave me, Suzanne.”
“Are you going to take it though? That’s the real question.”
He pulled out his cell phone and grinned at me. “Sorry, but I don’t have time to talk. I’m calling my girlfriend to see if she’d like my company next week.”
“Good for you, and good luck. You know I just want what’s best for you,” I said.
“I know that, and I greatly appreciate it,” he replied.
“Is the coast clear?” Barton Gleason aske
d as he popped his head through the shop door moments after the mayor left.
“I thought you were with Emma,” I said, evidently a little too loudly for his taste.
“Quiet! I don’t want Sharon to know that I’m here,” he said. “Emma fell asleep on the couch, so I came down here to help if I can. Thanks for digging into what happened to Simon, Suzanne. You’re a good friend.”
“We can’t make any promises, but Grace and I are going to do the best we can. Barton, were you in plain sight during the thirty minutes before I found the body?”
“No,” he said almost angrily. “There was a five-minute span where I had to slip away to clear my head. I’ve wanted this for so long that it got kind of overwhelming. I hid on the other side of ReNEWed and tried to calm myself down. Unfortunately, it happened right in the middle of the time the police are asking about.”
“Did you tell the chief where you were?” I asked him.
“Yes, and needless to say, it didn’t go over very well. He kept asking me if anyone saw me. How would I know that?”
“Take it easy,” I said, not wanting him to get overly excited. “Tell me about Simon.”
Barton looked uncomfortable talking about the murder victim, but after a moment, he asked, “What do you want to know?”
“Were you two friends?” I asked.
“No, not really. We were rivals, competitors, and antagonists, but I don’t think I would have called us friends,” he admitted.
“Then why on earth was he here last night?”
“It’s a fair question,” Barton said. “He owed me big time, and I decided to cash in the debt. It was no secret that he wasn’t happy being here, and the fact that he made a pass at Emma just made it that much worse. I was so angry I could have killed him.”
I didn’t think Barton even realized what he was saying, but talk like that would end him up in some very hot water indeed if the wrong people heard him saying it. “Never say that to anyone else ever again. Do you understand me?”
The chef nodded, looking shaken by my determination. Good. Maybe I was getting through to him. “Okay then. We’re going on the assumption that you didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“Should I thank you for that?” Barton asked, half kidding.
“Probably, since it’s more than the police are going to do,” I said sternly. “We’re also not going to focus our investigation on Emma, her mother, or her father. We know about Sherry West, Clint Harpold, and Shalimar Davis. Is there anything you can tell us about them?”
“Sherry has a nasty streak in her, and I always thought Simon was nuts for going out with her in the first place. Clint can be a good guy when he wants to be, but he’s got a dark sense of humor, and there have been times that I’ve wondered if he might not legitimately be unbalanced, not that it’s anything that would keep him from being a decent chef.”
“What about Shalimar Davis?”
He looked uncomfortable when he heard the question. “What about her?”
“Barton, just exactly what kind of relationship do you have with her?”
“Now? There’s no relationship at all. She owed me a favor. That’s it,” he said.
“How about before, though?” It suddenly dawned on me. “You didn’t date her, did you?”
“We went out a few times,” he admitted reluctantly. “Don’t tell Emma, would you? I don’t want her thinking badly of me.”
“Listen, you’ve got a lot more problems than Emma right now,” I said. “How did things end between you and Shalimar?”
“Badly,” he said. “You’ve got to realize that this happened long before I met Emma.”
“Exactly how long?” I asked, hoping for years.
“I broke it off with her a few weeks before I met Emma,” he said.
It wasn’t long enough, as far as I was concerned, but no one had murdered her, so we were safe, at least for now. “Okay. Is there anyone else we should speak with?”
“I’d talk to Clint. Nobody knows… knew Simon better than he did.”
“Not even Sherry?”
“No. Take my advice. You can only trust half of what Sherry tells you, and with Shalimar, it’s not even that much. Clint is probably somewhere around sixty-five, seventy percent.”
“Fine, we’ll keep that in mind. I don’t need to tell you to keep a low profile, do I?”
Barton shrugged. “That’s not going to be a problem. The hospital has asked me nicely to take a week’s vacation until this blows over a bit. When I explained to them that I didn’t have a week off to take, they told me it was their treat. How do you like that? It would be like someone telling you that you can’t make donuts.”
“I get it, but you really do need to stay out of trouble.”
“Believe it or not, this is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me.”
“I wish I could say the same thing,” I said.
The kitchen door started to open, and before I could say another word, Barton took off like a shot.
“I thought I heard voices out here,” Sharon said.
“I was talking to myself,” I said. “That must have been what you heard.”
She seemed to accept that explanation, which disturbed me a little, but at least I’d covered for Barton.
For now, anyway.
As the next few hours wore on, I fielded a dozen questions about the murder, but when my customers realized that I had no inside information and that I wasn’t about to recount finding the body for them, they stopped asking fairly quickly.
It was a few minutes until ten when three very familiar faces showed up.
Had I honestly forgotten about another book club meeting? At least I’d read the book this time, though I’d detested it, so I was ready to discuss it with three of my favorite women in the world.
Jennifer, the leader of our little group, was a striking redhead, and she always dressed elegantly. She hugged me as she came in. “We just heard what happened last night. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, happy these women had stumbled into my life one day looking for a place to hold their meeting and embracing me as one of their own.
Hazel, a woman constantly on a diet but with a heart as big as could be, said, “Don’t hog her, Jennifer. We want to hug her, too.”
After she gave me a heartfelt embrace, Elizabeth said, “Now I feel peer pressure to hug you, too, whether I want to or not.”
“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” I said with a smile.
“I’m kidding,” she said as she hugged me as well. Elizabeth loved to think of herself as a friend to authors everywhere. She was pen pals with several of the folks we’d read during our group discussions, and it was a matter of pride to her that there weren’t many authors’ addresses she couldn’t track down one way or another. “Nobody gets my sense of humor.”
“Not even your husband?” I asked her.
“Especially not him,” Elizabeth said with a frown.
Oh, no. Had I just stepped into something inadvertently? “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” she said, though clearly it wasn’t.
It was just as obvious that she didn’t want to talk about it, so I did my best to smile as I said, “This is my month to provide the treats, so help yourselves. It’s on the house.”
“Does that go for everybody?” Cal Jeffries asked. “If it is, I’ll take a dozen bear claws to go, please.”
“Cal, you have to be able to read to be in a book club,” I said with a grin.
“Hey, I can read,” he protested.
“I mean more than lottery numbers and stop signs,” I replied. Cal loved to be kidded, and I did my best to tease him whenever I could.
The ladies didn’t know that,
though.
“Suzanne, is that any way to treat one of your customers?” Jennifer asked me.
Before I could explain, Cal did it for me. “Ma’am, I wouldn’t come in here if Suzanne didn’t zing me every now and then. It’s more fun than the donuts.”
“If you say so,” she said, and then she quickly dismissed the conversation. “Let’s see. I’ll have a triple chocolate donut and a chocolate milk.”
“That sounds good to me,” Hazel added.
“I suppose you might as well make it three,” Elizabeth chimed in, though it was clear her heart wasn’t in it.
“That’s a lot of chocolate, ladies,” I said as I started gathering their orders.
Hazel looked at the tray I was making up. “Why are there four chocolate donuts and just as many glasses of chocolate milk, then?”
“Hey, I’m doing it, too. Besides, can you ever really have too much chocolate?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Hazel replied.
Once we were settled into our favorite area of the donut shop, Elizabeth pulled out the paperback in question that we’d been reading for this month’s selection. She’d chosen it, so she got to lead the group discussion. “I know this book was a little dark, but I thought it was interesting. What did you all think about it?”
Hazel looked uncomfortable as she answered, “It was a little bit too graphic for me. The way Stella killed Angelo was… quite specific, wasn’t it?”
We normally read cozy mysteries, so it had taken me some time to get into the book, however well written it might have been. That didn’t mean I’d ever read the author again. Different tastes for different folks, but I liked my mysteries on the light side, and I wouldn’t apologize for it to anyone. “I have to admit that I skipped that scene once she got out the electric carving knife.” I shuddered again just thinking about it.
Jennifer did her best to put it in its best light. “I thought the descriptive nature of the narrative was extremely well done. I felt as though I was right there along with Stella as she hid from the police dogs. Wasn’t that terrifying?”