Maple Frosted Murder (Donut Hole 2)

by Susan Gillard

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  The call ended, and she shrugged. Sounded like a madhouse. Oh, well, she supposed cops had to cut up too, sometimes. Relieve the tension or something.

  Taking a right turn onto Henderson, she suddenly swerved toward the curb and into a luckily available parking space. She needed to pick up her dry cleaning, including the dress she’d worn to the Christmas party last night, as well as some other of her favorite garments.

  As she got out of the car and stood scanning the street so she could cross, she saw a familiar figure exit an office building and stride off down the street. Darting through traffic, and getting honked at by a guy in a black pickup, she reached the other side of the street just as the person she had seen was turning the corner.

  “Mrs. Dombrowski?” she called, trying not to sound too out of breath from her mad dash.

  Sheila Dombrowski stopped and turned to face Heather. Dressed in a tailored blue business suit beneath a leather coat with a fur collar, her still-blond hair swept into an elegant French twist, she gazed at Heather impatiently. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Dombrowski, I’m Heather Janke.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “You—you do?”

  “You own Donut Delights. You were helping put my husband out of business.”

  “I wasn’t trying to put anyone out of business.”

  Sheila’s mouth twisted into what was probably supposed to pass for a smile. “Oh, don’t worry about professing your innocence to me. I bear you no ill will. In fact, I thank you. That place was a money pit, thanks to Stan’s inept management of it.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Heather stammered, not sure what else to say.

  “Don’t be. I’m not. I never wanted that donut shop in the first place.”

  “I meant that I’m sorry for the loss of your husband.”

  “Oh. Well. Thank you,” she said, edging backward as if to turn away.

  “Do you plan to continue the franchise in Stan’s absence?”

  “Ha! Are you kidding? The sooner I can get out from under it, the better. In fact, I just came from my attorney’s office to sign papers relating to returning the franchise to the parent company. Due to the untimely death of the franchisee.”

  “That’s too bad,” Heather said.

  “No, it really isn’t. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time. Only dear, departed Stan insisted on hanging onto the franchise. He didn’t seem to care that he was running it into the ground. If he even noticed.”

  “Oh, he noticed,” Heather said before she could help herself.

  “Only he blamed it on you, not himself,” Sheila said. “Typical.”

  “What do you mean?” Heather wrapped her arms around herself, shivering against the chill wind.

  “He always blamed everything on everyone but himself. If he was asked to leave the Chamber of Commerce board, it was because of Gary Larkin, not his own behavior. If his business was failing, it was because of you, not him. If his marriage was failing, it was because I was having an affair, not because he was—well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”

  That’s the second time I’ve heard that phrase in as many days, Heather thought. Aloud, she said, “Were you having an affair?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I wasn’t,” Sheila said, her lips tightening into a straight line. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have funeral preparations to make.” With an upward tilt of her regal head, she turned and disappeared around the corner.

  Was there anybody Stan didn’t falsely accuse? Heather wondered as she dashed back across the street to the cleaner’s. He accused his wife of having an affair. He accused his accountant of embezzling money, accused me of trying to ruing his business, accused a loyal employee of incompetence, accused the president of the Chamber of Commerce of kicking him off the board for no good reason.

  The warm air enveloped Heather as she slipped inside the cleaner’s and shut the door behind her. What a sad way for him to live, she thought as she stepped forward to give her name.

  Chapter 6

  “We could just buy filling,” Heather said, “but making our own makes the donuts taste so much better. Besides, that’s what customers come here for: the homemade-ness, the originality, the quality.”

  Maricela nodded. “And that’s why they keep coming back.”

  “Precisely,” Heather said to Maricela, Angelica, and Jung. In a lull between customers, she was teaching them how to make Wild Blueberry Pie donuts, including even making the filling from scratch. “So we don’t buy filling. We make it. Jung, hand me the blueberries, would you please?”

  Jung passed a large, flat silver container down the prep counter to her. Inside were thousands of blueberries, all of which had been sprinkled with sugar so that the sugar could draw the juice out of the berries, then mix with it, thus producing a delicious, semi-natural syrup.

  “Now we need to stir these,” Heather said, “to make sure they’re all evenly coated and mixed.” She picked up a large, metal slotted spoon and began to stir slowly and gently so that the berries wouldn’t become bruised or damaged.

  The bell above the door of the shop rang as a customer entered. Heather glanced up, but Maricela was already heading for the serving counter. “She’s made these before,” Heather said, “and they turned out great. Okay, so we made sure all the berries were coated in this syrup. Hmm, looks like we need to thicken it up a little. You guys remember how to do that?”

  As both Jung and Angelica nodded, Heather realized that Maricela was standing at her elbow. “The customer asked for you specifically,” Maricela said.

  “Okay,” Heather said, then glanced toward Angelica and Jung. “They’re thickening the syrup.”

  Maricela nodded and traded places with Heather, who was then free to approach the front counter. “I’m Heather,” she said. “How may I help you?”

  “My name is Jackie Fielder,” the woman said. “I’m—”

  “—a reporter for the Hillside Herald,” Heather finished for her. “I know who you are. So what can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions,” Jackie said.

  “About?”

  “About Stan Dombrowski.”

  “How is whatever I say going to be used?” Heather asked. “Is it going to wind up in print?”

  “Maybe.” Jackie smiled pleasantly. “It could mean good publicity for your store.”

  “What do you want to know?” Heather asked dubiously.

  “Rumor has it that you and Stan didn’t get along.”

  “No comment.”

  “Really? No comment?”

  “Really.”

  “Rumor also has it that the police consider you a suspect in his death.”

  “Who told you that?” Heather demanded.

  “A source. Don’t you want to at least listen to my questions? Maybe answer a few?”

  “No, actually, I don’t want to answer any of your questions. No comment.”

  “Don’t you want to show the public you have nothing to hide?”

  “I think it’s time for you to go,” Heather said. “Unless you’re a customer, you have no further business here.”

  Jackie stepped back from the counter. “Actually, I used to patronize Stan’s donut shop,” she said. She offered Heather a shark-like smile. “Have a nice day.”

  Heather watched the reporter leave the shop, and only then did she realize her mouth was hanging open. She closed it and forced herself to draw a slow, deep breath in through her nose and then to breathe out the same way.

  “What was that all about?” Jung asked, stepping up beside her.

  “Looking for a story where there isn’t one,” Heather said. “Now let’s get back to making those donuts.”

  ***

  Two hours later, she was leaning back in a leather recliner, soaking her feet in a basin of warm water. In the recliner next to her sat Amy,
who eased her feet into her own tub and let out a contented sigh.

  “Water good?” the diminutive Asian woman asked.

  “Water very good,” Amy said.

  “I let you soak,” the pedicurist said. “I come back when you done.”

  When the woman had walked away and Amy and Heather were alone, Amy turned her head toward her friend. “So have you figured out whodunit yet?”

  “Not even,” Heather answered. “Everywhere I turn, new suspects are popping up. Like today, when I stopped to pick up my dry cleaning? I ran into Sheila Dombrowski.”

  “She was picking up cleaning too?”

  “Well, no, actually, she was just coming from her lawyer’s office across the street.”

  “And you just happened to accidentally cross the street and run into her?”

  “Something like that. Anyway, apparently Stan had accused her of cheating on him.”

  “Was she cheating?”

  “She said she wasn’t,” Heather said.

  Amy snorted. “That’s what they all say.”

  “She also mentioned that Stan had accused Gary Larkin of kicking him off the Chamber of Commerce board just because he was power hungry.”

  “As if Stan could be a threat to him.”

  “I know. But still, Gary could have gotten angry.”

  “You think he killed Stan because he was angry that Stan accused him of being power hungry?”

  “Shh!” Heather warned. “No, probably not. I’m just saying that everywhere I turn, somebody else is cropping up as a suspect.”

  “So who do you think did it?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I know how angry people can get over false accusations. I was pretty angry myself. But angry enough to kill him? No. But somebody was.”

  The pedicurist returned with a towel over her arm and another pedicurist in tow. Each woman spread a towel in front of her customer at foot level. “You put your feet here,” she said.

  Heather and Amy obeyed, and each had her feet gently blotted dry. “Ahh, this is the life,” Amy sighed. “I could get used to this.”

  They fell silent as the pedicurists began work on their feet. “Ha! That tickles!” Amy cried out a moment later, trying to stifle a giggle.

  Her pedicurist smiled. “Lots of people say that.”

  Amy relaxed back into the chair. “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “Going with me where?”

  “To the funeral.”

  “Who said I was going to the funeral?”

  “You didn’t have to say it. I know you. You’ll want to be there to see who else is there. Especially your suspects.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” Heather agreed. “You do know me too well. Yes, I’m going. I’ll pick you up at 9:30 tomorrow morning.”

  ***

  That evening, with her dog, Dave, snoring contentedly on the rug at her newly pedicured feet, Heather laid a pad of paper and a pencil on the coffee table in front of her. Maybe if she could get her thoughts in order, she’d be able to make heads or tails of Stan’s murder.

  She picked up the pen, twiddled it in her fingers, and wondered if Ryan Shepherd was having any more luck figuring things out than she was. Hopefully, he was. After all, he was the professional, and she merely the amateur with an overactive tenacity gene that wouldn’t let her walk away from an unsolved mystery.

  STAN, she wrote at the top of the paper in capital letters, and underlined it twice for good measure. What did she know about Stan?

  When “Here Comes the Sun” began to play from her cell phone, she picked it up, saw Shepherd’s number, and accepted the call. “Hello?”

  “Heather? This is Ryan. Ryan Shepherd. I hope I’m not disrupting your evening.”

  “I’m sitting on the couch with my dog,” she said. “Not much to disrupt tonight.”

  “Did you get my message?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did. What was going on in the background? Sounded like Animal House or something.”

  “That was more or less it. Minus the drinking.”

  “That’s good to know,” she said. “So, yes, I got your message. And, yes, I stopped by the station earlier today. But they said you weren’t there. So I came to work, and there you were.”

  “You didn’t leave your name? At the station, I mean.”

  “No, I don’t think I did.” She paused. “So how did you know I was the one who stopped by?”

  “Oh, I figured it out,” he said, suddenly sounding evasive. What in the world?

  “So…you just wanted to know if I was the one who stopped by?”

  “Pretty much. I figure since we talked afterward, you got whatever answers you needed.”

  “You don’t give me many answers,” she said.

  “I give you what I can.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Heather crunched the phone between her chin and shoulder as she attempted to adjust the clip holding her long, curly hair up in a twist. Drat. Crooked. “I guess I’m just frustrated that I can’t figure out what’s going on. The suspects just keep piling up. Oh, and I ran into Sheila Dombrowski today.”

  She related the conversation between her and Sheila, including Sheila’s mention of Stan’s accusations against both her and Gary Larkin. Shepherd listened quietly.

  “Thanks for telling me,” he said when she finished. “Unfortunately, I don’t have much I can tell you in return.”

  “Tell me who you think did it,” she said.

  For a moment, there was silence. “You do have a suspect,” she said, curling her legs up under her on the couch. “Who is it?”

  “Can’t say,” he said. “Not until I have proof.”

  “Yeah, I guess not,” she said. “Well—and I know you’re the professional here—but is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I appreciate that,” he said, sounding like he really did. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. You do that. I want to help.”

  “I know you do.” Again, a few beats of silence passed. “Have a good night, Heather.”

  “You too, Detective Shepherd.”

  “You can call me Ryan.”

  “Okay, Ryan. Good night.”

  A stretchy, growly noise from Dave made Heather realize she was still sitting staring at the phone in her hand. She glanced down to see Dave looking at her with one eye open, head cocked, as if to say, “What was that all about?”

  “It was nothing, Dave,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

  Dave willingly obliged, and Heather forced her attention back to the pad of paper and pen. Suspects, she wrote, and underlined it only once. Then, she began to make her list.

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Heather woke up before her alarm went off. She squinted at the clock, saw that the first number was a 5, and burrowed back beneath the covers. She tossed and turned for the next ten minutes, trying to get comfortable enough to go back to sleep. But her brain had turned on, and besides, now she had to go to the bathroom.

  Sighing, Heather slid out from beneath the covers, leaving them pulled up over the bed so as to preserve some of the warmth trapped between them and the mattress. She padded across the wood floor to the bathroom in her fuzzy socks, did what she had to do, and raced back to the bed, sliding back beneath the comforter into her cocoon.

  At the foot of the bed, Dave raised his head sleepily, as if wondering what all the running around so early in the morning was all about. A couple seconds later, he flopped back down and almost immediately resumed snoring.

  Heather wasn’t so lucky. The more she tried to go to sleep, the more she began to feel wide awake and alert. After ten more minutes of tossing and turning, she gave up. Sitting up, she arranged her mound of pililows against the iron headboard and leaned back to ponder the questions that had been swirling in her subconscious all night long.

  Who had killed Stan? And why?

  As for the ‘why,’ apparently Stan didn’t get along with many people. It seemed that
he had alienated everyone he knew by making accusations against them and by his controlling, demeaning manner. Maybe that was the ‘why.’

  As for the ‘who,’ Shepherd—Ryan, she reminded herself—had said it could have been either a woman or a man. Either gender would have possessed the strength necessary to knock Stan over the head, and then, once he conveniently collapsed in a u-shape over the side of the freezer, lift up his legs and dump him in.