Fatally Frosted

by Jessica Beck

  “Why did you agree to have Grace and me help you, if you were looking for Peg’s hidden money?”

  “I wanted you to be the one to find the ledger, and it took you long enough,” Heather said. “I nearly had to help you myself.”

  “But why did you need me?”

  “I figured it would look better for me if someone else found it. Fat lot of good it did me.”

  “But you’re not coming away empty, are you? Where’d you find that cash, in the cookie jar?”

  She frowned at me. “My aunt was a lot craftier than that. It took me forever to find it, but I finally did. One baseboard came off at my touch, and I realized she’d used magnets to secure the trim in place instead of nails. That’s where I found the money.”

  “Are you sure you found it all?” I asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I was stalling—that was pretty clear—but I hoped her greed would supersede her caution. “I just discovered this morning that your aunt skimmed over three hundred thousand dollars in the past two years. The chief of police came by my shop an hour ago and told me the audit was complete. Did you find that much?”

  It was all a lie, but I knew Heather couldn’t exactly call Chief Martin and ask him. “No,” she said a little warily. “Nowhere near that, but after all, she had expenses.”

  “That much? Peg didn’t live in luxury, that’s pretty obvious. My first thought is, what did she do with the rest of it?”

  Heather scowled. “After I’ve taken care of you, I’ll keep looking.”

  So much for that tactic. For all I knew, there might still be money hidden in the house, but it appeared that I wasn’t going to live long enough to see it.

  If I was going to make it out of there alive, I needed to do something, and do it fast. I looked for anything nearby that I could use as a weapon, but the only thing within reach was a stack of old books. Not much of an arsenal, but it was all I had.

  Before Heather could stop me, I lunged for the book on top, an old mystery.

  At least it was a hardcover.

  My movement was all the incentive Heather needed to strike. She made a hard backhanded swing in the air at me with the blade, nicking my hand as the knife flew past. I felt a brief sting, but I couldn’t let that stop me. I swung the book at her head, trying my best to break her nose with it.

  She was too quick for me, though.

  With a sudden jerk, Heather ducked enough for the book to glance off the top of her head instead of making a solid impact with her face.

  Even worse, the book slipped out of my hands and fell when it failed to find its target.

  Heather looked at me with a new level of rage.

  I could rush her and take my chances, but that meant facing the blade in her hand with no weapon of my own, and the way she was looking at me, she was ready to kill me.

  I really had only one option.

  I had to run.

  I started for the other room, and as I did, I heard her just behind me.

  Heather lunged again, and if she hadn’t stepped on the book that I’d just dropped, I knew I would have been dead. Fortunately for me, she pulled up at the last second as she lost her balance, but her stabbing attempt was still close enough to tug at the back of my shirt. My adrenaline was pumping so hard at that moment that I had no idea whether I’d been cut again or not.

  I looked wildly around for something else to defend myself with, and I saw that I was close enough to my coffee to grab it, but how could I possibly use it to go against a crazed woman with a knife?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the front porch. It was George!

  I had to stop him from coming inside. I wasn’t about to let her kill my friend.

  As the front door started to open, I shouted out a warning to him.

  Heather pulled the knife off me and started swinging it toward George.

  I knew I had to act fast.

  I reached over and grabbed my hot coffee and threw it on her hand. She jerked it back, and the knife clattered to the floor. The coffee hadn’t been scalding, but it was hot enough to catch her by surprise.

  We both fell to the floor as we scrambled for the blade. Heather and I were still fighting for it when George said, “Drop the knife or I’ll shoot you. I swear I will.”

  Heather immediately loosened her grip on the knife, and I picked it up and pointed it at her.

  George said, “Sorry I was a step behind you.”

  “Better late to the party than never,” I said. “How did you know to come here?”

  “It finally made sense, once I realized what was going on.”

  “Did the wrappers clue you in, too?”

  “No,” he said, looking more than a little confused. “I suddenly realized that Heather hadn’t known that ledger was a fake. She might not kill her aunt for the little bit she got out of her inheritance, but what if she thought it was worth a million dollars to see the woman dead?”

  “I’m glad you made it,” I said.

  George looked down at Heather and said, “Would you mind calling the police for me? I don’t want to take my eyes off her.”

  “I’m happy to. What should I tell them?”

  “Let the chief know that we found Peg Masterson’s killer,” he said.

  After Heather was in custody, I was still at the house, waiting to talk to Chief Martin once he’d dispatched his prisoner to another patrol car. It was his request, not mine. All I wanted to do was go home, take a long, hot bath, and go to bed for a week. I still couldn’t believe how close I’d come to getting stabbed worse than I had been, and my nerves were more than a little shaky.

  Finally, the chief had time for me.

  The first thing he did was gesture toward my hand, which was now wrapped in gauze. “You okay?”

  “I got lucky. She barely scratched me.” The blade had barely nicked me on the first pass, and it had missed my back completely, thanks to Heather slipping on the book I’d tried to clobber her with.

  I’d have to replace my top, though. It had been that close.

  The chief nodded. After a moment, he scowled at me, then ordered, “Okay, from the beginning, tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know when the beginning was,” I admitted.

  “When did you know Heather killed her aunt? Suzanne, I swear to you, if you knew when you sent me off on a wild goose chase looking for Marge and Burt this morning, I’ll lock you up out of pure spite.”

  I confessed, “I didn’t know it until I saw her purse fall open. She had a handful of the caramels and freshly dyed hair, so I knew she had to be somehow involved.”

  “Why kill her aunt, though? Was it really for the money? Peg didn’t have all that much.”

  I nodded. “We all know that now, but she talked a good game, didn’t she, and that ledger she kept made her look like a success in her niece’s eyes. I can’t imagine that she’d realize it would be the motive for her eventual murder.”

  “People do the most awful things for money,” the chief said.

  “That and love,” I replied.

  At that moment, my telephone started its laughing summons. I glanced at it and saw that it was Jake, so I asked the chief, “Are we done here?”

  “For now, but don’t wander too far off,” he said.

  “I’m just going out onto the porch. There’s better reception out there.”

  “Sure there is,” he said.

  I didn’t mention more privacy as well, but it was pretty clear he already knew that.

  Once I was outside, I said, “Hey, Jake. How’s your niece?”

  “This bug’s a little nastier, but they think they have it whipped, too. She must have picked it up while she was in the hospital. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing much,” I said. “Oh, there’s one thing. I solved Peg’s murder while you were gone.”

  “Yeah? Are you going to work on world peace next?”

  “I’m not joking,” I said. �
��I figured out who did it and caught her.” It might have been stretching things a little bit, but it was still within shouting distance of the truth.

  There was a moment or two of hesitation, then Jake said, “Suzanne, you’re not joking, are you?”

  “No, and you can talk to the chief when we’re through if you don’t believe me. Care to guess who did it?”

  He said, “I don’t have to guess. I finally figured it out myself. It was either Burt or Heather.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. “How on earth did you know that?”

  “Heather and Burt both thought Peg was rich, and they needed money. Heather is in debt up to her eyeballs with loans, and Burt’s hardware store is losing money at an alarming rate. I would have proved one of them did it, but I needed more time.”

  “Well, I just saved you the trouble,” I said.

  He said, “I’m proud of you, even if you shouldn’t have been meddling in police business. What gave it away? Did you find the poison she used? Did you track a clue down that I missed? What was it? Don’t be shy, I’d really like to know.”

  “I saw some candy in her purse, and as soon as I realized that her hair was freshly dyed in the exact same shade of her aunt’s, everything fell into place.”

  “Good work, Suzanne,” Jake said softly.

  I asked, “How long will you be staying in Raleigh?”

  “Amy’s not out of the woods yet. The thing is, you wrapped up the case, so there’s no real reason for me to come back.”

  “I can think of one or two,” I said.

  “Really? What did you have in mind?”

  “You’re the detective, you figure it out.”

  He laughed, then said, “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Now what fun would that be?”

  After we hung up, I looked in through the porch window at Peg’s possessions boxed up and ready to go, and I wondered if she had any idea what kind of legacy her life of lies would leave behind. She’d stolen more than money from some worthy charities that needed it. And she’d lied her way into her own murder.

  This time, karma’s bite was strong, swift, and deadly.

  I just wished Heather hadn’t used one of my donuts as a murder weapon.

  A thought occurred to me, something that made me smile.

  I hadn’t realized Chief Martin was standing outside with me until he asked, “What is it? If you can think of something funny, I’d love to hear it.”

  “I just decided I’m going to send Heather a care package as soon as she’s tucked safely away in jail.”

  The chief frowned. “She tried to kill you, and now you’re going to give her a treat?”

  “Who said anything about her enjoying it?” I asked.

  “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “If I brought a dozen lemon-filled donuts dusted with powdered sugar over to the jail, would you be sure she gets them?”

  He nodded seriously, but I could see a slight smile on his face. “Suzanne, you can count on it.”

  I normally hated making more than one batch of donuts in a day, but at the moment, I was willing to make an exception.

  Heather was going to get her donuts as soon as I could make them, and they’d be ready for her before she spent her first night in jail.

  With every bite she took, I hoped she thought about her aunt, and about where her own greed had led her.

  It was a taste of justice by lemon-filled donut, the best kind, in my opinion.

  Here’s a look ahead at

  SINISTER

  SPRINKLES

  the next Donut Shop mystery, coming soon from

  Jessica Beck and St. Martin’s / Minotaur Paperbacks!

  I heard the first scream just as I gave a warm apple-spice donut and change to Phyllis Higgins from the booth outside my shop, Donut Hearts, during the nineteenth annual April Springs Winter Carnival. There had been whoops of great merriment long before then coming from the crowd of folks out enjoying the displays and vendors’ offerings, but there was a quality to this particular shriek that chilled me to my toes, despite wearing two layers of thick woolen socks and my most sensible shoes. I wondered for a second if it had been some kind of aberration, but then there was another scream, and yet another.

  When I heard someone in front of the courthouse shout, “Muriel Stevens has been murdered,” I knew the Winter Carnival—and Muriel—had come to a sudden and abrupt end.

  Christmas is my favorite time of year. I love the way my neighbors decorate their homes with icicles of light and erect trees overloaded with ornaments and tinsel inside. It’s no accident that my attitude is reflected in the selection of donuts at my shop, offering treats adorned with red and green icing and glistening sprinkles that overload the display cases in honor of the holidays.

  Our Winter Carnival—balanced precariously around Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas—offers the residents of my small town in the North Carolina foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains the opportunity, even the excuse, to go outside and enjoy the brisk weather. During most years of the festival, we haven’t experienced our first snow of the season yet, but at the moment, the streets of our quaint little town were covered in a glistening layer of white. It was like everything was topped with icy frosting, a place nearly everybody in the world would visit if they could.

  But now all that was ruined.

  Phyllis dropped her donut in the snow when she heard Muriel’s name.

  “Suzanne, is it true?” she asked me.

  “I was standing right here beside you when we heard the first scream,” I said. “Let me get you another donut, and then we’ll go see what’s going on.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I couldn’t bear to eat it now. Poor Muriel.” I knew Phyllis was shaken. She’d never passed up the chance at a donut in her life.

  As she waddled away toward the courthouse, I turned around and rushed into Donut Hearts. It was handy having my booth right in front of my business, and I’d asked my friend and the carnival coordinator, Trish Granger—owner of the Boxcar Grill just across the street from my donut shop—for the favor, which she’d gladly granted me. There had been some grumbling from a few of the other vendors when they learned of my coup, so to be fair, Trish decided to scrap the previous year’s plan and start completely over. Business owners in April Springs got their first choice of spots, and vendors from out of town had to make do with what was left. It made sense, especially for me. If I was going to supply my customers with fresh, hot donuts, I needed to be as close to the source as I could manage. I had my assistant, Emma Blake, inside, ready to add hot glaze to some of the extra donuts we’d made that morning as we needed fresh supplies. I would have loved to make the donuts themselves as they were needed, but the process didn’t lend itself to sudden orders, and the warm glaze still managed to give the donuts an air of instant creation.

  “What’s going on?” Emma asked as she peered outside at the people hurrying by the shop window. Barely out of her teens, Emma had a petite figure I envied, though I didn’t covet her flaming red hair. If it meant hanging onto my twenty extra pounds to keep my chestnut-colored hair, I was willing to make that trade.

  At least we could watch what was going on outside from where we stood. My donut shop was housed in an old railroad depot, and it afforded plenty of views of the abandoned tracks beside us, as well as Springs Drive through the front windows, the main road in our little town.

  “I need you to watch the booth,” I said. “Somebody just screamed that Muriel Stevens is dead, and I need to check it out.”

  Emma reached for the telephone. “Should I call 911?”

  “No, from the sound of it, it came from in front of city hall. I’m sure Chief Martin is already there.”

  Emma frowned at me as she asked, “Suzanne, you’re not investigating another murder, are you?”

  I shook my head. “No way. I’ve had my fill of that. I jus
t want to go check on poor Muriel.”

  “Fine, but come back as soon as you hear anything. Promise?”

  “I’ll get back as fast as I can,” I said as I left the shop again.

  The snow was falling again, picking up in intensity, and I wondered if that would affect the crime scene. I’d been thrown into an investigation or two in the past, and I’d been forced to learn a little about police techniques, if for no other reason than to keep myself out of jail as I dug around the edges of cases that impacted my life.

  Muriel’s murder wasn’t going to be one of them, though. She was a regular customer of mine, but nearly every other business owner in April Springs could make that claim as well. Muriel Stevens was the grandmother-figure everyone loved, and I couldn’t imagine what would drive anyone to kill her.

  As I started toward the courthouse, I felt a hand grab my shoulder from behind, and I wondered for a split-second if I was next on the killer’s list.

  Then I heard Gabby Williams speak, and almost found myself wishing it was the murderer instead. At least then I could be openly hostile, something that I could never afford to do with Gabby. She was the town wag, spreading stories and rumors at a speed that put satellite relays to shame, and worse yet, her used clothing shop was right next to mine. Getting on her bad side was a form of character suicide, and I always tried to tread on her good side, though at times it was a tough line to toe.

  “Suzanne, where are you going in such a hurry?”

  I tried to brush her hand loose, but she had the grip of a longshoreman, despite her prim and petite appearance. It would be easy to underestimate the woman, but I’d made that mistake before, and wasn’t about to make it again.

  “It’s Muriel Stevens,” I said.

  Gabby’s face went ashen. “What about her?”

  “I heard someone say she was dead. Murdered,” I added softly.