Raspberry Revenge

by Jessica Beck

  The donuts were selling briskly, and I was already out of my latest experiment of pumpkin apple spice treats. I might just have a winner on my hands, but one day’s sales weren’t enough to give me reason to put it in the rotation of my offerings. I’d have to have at least two more successful runs before it made the grade. I was just returning from the kitchen after dropping off the empty tray to Emma for a sound cleaning when I saw someone unexpected waiting for me at the counter out front.

  Nathaniel Bloom was paying a visit to my donut shop, something that was definitely out of the norm for him.

  “Good morning. What can I do for you, Councilman?”

  “Nathaniel will do just fine,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting in an hour, and I thought a dozen donuts might make for a nice change of pace from our usual fare.”

  “You came to the right place, then,” I said as I grabbed an empty box. “Do you want anything in particular?”

  “Let’s make it half a dozen plain glazed, and you can pick out the rest.”

  “I can do that,” I said as I chose some of my slower sellers to fill out his dozen. He shouldn’t mind, since he had made it my choice, and besides, he was one of my suspects. If he was a cold-blooded killer, I didn’t feel good about giving him the best I had to offer. It might have been petty, but I could live with myself doing it, especially since I never sold anything that I wouldn’t eat myself. “We don’t see you around here all that much,” I said as I collected his donuts.

  “I realize that, and I decided it was high time I changed that,” he said with a grin. The man was a born politician, and I wondered if his ambitions were strictly local. Had Harley known something that would have prevented Nathaniel from going after a bigger and better office sometime down the road? If he had, it wouldn’t be impossible to believe that Nathaniel might try to remove the stumbling block sooner rather than later. “How’s the investigation going?” he asked me casually.

  “You’ll have to ask my husband about that,” I said after I told him the cost of the donuts.

  As he paid me, he said, “I was talking about the unofficial one you are conducting.”

  “We’re making progress,” I said. It wasn’t a total fabrication. Grace and I had managed to accrue five suspects in less than twenty-four hours, which was quite an accomplishment, at least in my book.

  “Do you have any strong leads yet?” he asked me. “I bet you’re leaning toward Amber North, aren’t you?”

  There was no one else in Donut Hearts at the moment, so Nathaniel clearly felt free to talk.

  “She’s on our list,” I said as I made change.

  “But the mayor is probably at the top, isn’t he?”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked him without letting on that I knew more than he did about the situation.

  “Come on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Harley was murdered in George’s office with his letter opener, and the mayor is gone. How much clearer does it need to be?”

  “It so happens the mayor is back in town, and he has an airtight alibi,” I said. Why had I just told him that? For one thing, I didn’t want anyone to know that George was back in town, and for another, I had no idea if his alibi was any good or not. It was just that Nathaniel had been so smug and certain about George’s presumed guilt that I couldn’t let it pass without comment. Doing so would have felt disloyal to him somehow. It suddenly dawned on me that I was no better than Momma or Grace, and most likely, I owed each woman a heartfelt apology.

  Nathaniel was clearly surprised to hear the news. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “He came by here first thing this morning and cleared it all up with Jake,” I answered, hoping that it was indeed true.

  “Interesting,” Nathaniel said as he absently picked up the box of donuts. “I suppose that I’ll see you later, Suzanne.”

  “You can count on it,” I replied.

  Nathaniel looked at me for an instant with something a great deal less than warmth, but then it was quickly gone. With a smile that felt quite a bit less sincere than he must have meant it to, the councilman left Donut Hearts. I’d been rash telling him about George and his alibi, but it was a sin I could live with. After all, defending a friend was never a bad thing to do, at least as far as I was concerned.

  Promptly at ten, the ladies from my book club arrived. It was always a pleasure meeting with them, even if I happened to be in the midst of a murder investigation occasionally. “Emma, they’re here,” I said as I called back into the kitchen.

  She’d been warned about the impending meeting earlier, so she was ready to work the front while I spent a pleasant half hour discussing our latest book. Jennifer, an elegant redhead who was our leader, approached the counter. “Don’t forget, this one’s on me,” she said as she put her customary fifty-dollar bill on the counter. I’d given up trying to make change for her, as it had only left us both feeling less than happy about the exchange. “You’re too good to me, Jennifer.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Suzanne. Your treats are worth every penny.”

  “What would you ladies like today?” I asked the three of them as they clustered around the front. Jennifer had been joined by our other two members, Hazel and Elizabeth. Hazel was on a perpetual diet, so I knew she’d be ordering as lightly as possible, so she surprised me by saying, “I’ll have four bearclaws, please. I don’t know what the rest of you want.”

  “Hazel, what’s wrong?”

  “My husband is having an affair,” she said, and then she started softly crying.

  “I’m so sorry,” was all that I could manage to say.

  “She doesn’t know for a fact that he’s cheating on her,” Elizabeth said.

  “Why else would he work late every night with that cute young secretary he just hired?” Hazel asked.

  “Maybe we should cancel the meeting today,” I suggested.

  “No, please don’t,” Hazel said. “Right now, you three are all I’ve got.”

  Jennifer frowned a bit, and then she said, “Hazel, we’re not going to stand by and watch you destroy all of your hard work dieting and exercising. You may have one treat, just like the rest of us.”

  I wasn’t at all certain how Hazel would react to the edict, but she stopped crying, dabbed at her eyes, and then nodded in agreement. “You’re right. He’s not worth it.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Elizabeth said. “Now that you mention it, a bearclaw sounds great to me, too.”

  “Elizabeth,” Jennifer chastised her.

  “What? It does. Besides, I’m only getting one.”

  I put three bearclaws on individual plates.

  “I just asked for one,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’m having one, too,” I said. It was time for me to indulge a little myself.

  “You might as well make it four,” Jennifer said with a sigh. After I plated the last one, she carried the tray to our favorite couch and chairs, since she was the official hostess for the meeting, while I grabbed our coffees. Once we were settled in and we’d enjoyed our treats, Hazel asked, “Shall we get started?”

  “If you’re sure that you’re up to it?” I asked her.

  “That’s why we’re here, is it not? Let’s talk about Killing the Publisher.”

  “I’m getting awfully tired of these mysteries where the main character is a writer. Don’t these people have any imagination at all?” Jennifer asked.

  “It’s how they spend their lives, sitting in rooms by themselves making things up. What else would you have them do?” Hazel asked.

  “Not the ones who have co-authors,” Elizabeth said.

  “They probably still don’t get out much,” I said. “Besides, there have been plenty of mystery writers on TV for quite a while.”

  “I love Castle,” Hazel said. “He’s so cute.”

  “I’m an Ellery Queen fan myself,�
� I said. “I never miss a Jim Hutton marathon.”

  “Maybe I spoke a little hastily,” Jennifer said. “I still watch Murder She Wrote every time I catch a rerun. At least this book was cleverly plotted; I’ll give Gwendolyn Fry that much. She’s really good, isn’t she? I thought her publisher was a really nasty fellow.”

  I looked over and saw that Elizabeth was grinning. “What’s so funny?”

  “You should hear the story of how the book came to be,” Elizabeth said smugly. She prided herself on being able to find the most private email addresses of our authors and often had correspondences with them.

  “Tell us,” Hazel said eagerly. It was good to see her excited about something, anything.

  “Well, it seems she wanted to get out of her contract, but her publisher wouldn’t let her. She owed them one more book, and even though she offered to return her advance, he refused. So what did she do?”

  “She killed him in the book,” I said with a grin of my own. It sounded like something that I might do, if I had a fingernail of the combined talent, determination, and luck that most authors had.

  “That’s exactly what she did,” Elizabeth said, crowing about it. “I looked up the man online and saw that she had portrayed his physical attributes perfectly, though of course she changed the man’s name. I have a hunch that a great many folks still recognized him, though.”

  “That explains why she spent so much time describing his death so graphically. I thought she crossed the line for a cozy mystery.”

  “The line is getting blurrier every day,” Hazel said, caught up in our discussion and forgetting about her own woes for a moment. “I’ve seen some themes lately that made me downright queasy.”

  “If you think mysteries are bad, then stay out of the young adult section,” Jennifer said. “I’m a grown woman, and some of those topics make me blush.”

  “The irony is that the book was so successful, the publisher had no choice but to ask for more.”

  “I hope she said no,” Hazel said.

  “As a matter of fact, she got double her last advance. She told me in secret that she’s killing a former agent of a friend of hers next. Evidently the woman collected some of her foreign rights royalties and neglected to pass them on. I wouldn’t want to be her enemy.”

  “I would think that a mystery writer would make a bad adversary,” Jennifer said.

  “Why is that?” I asked her.

  “Think about it. They sit around all day trying to come up with new ways to kill people,” she said. “Is that someone you’d want out to get you?”

  “No, not when you put it that way.”

  Hazel’s cellphone rang, and I knew that she must have forgotten to turn off the ringer, since it was one of our club’s hard-and-fast rules. “Sorry,” she said as she glanced at who was calling her. “It’s him,” she said with distaste.

  “Ignore it,” Elizabeth said.

  “What could it hurt to see what he wants?” I asked. I hated the thought that Hazel’s world was turning upside down, and the last thing I wanted to happen was for her to give up without a fight.

  “I might as well.” After answering it, she said, “Yes? I’m with my book club. What? When? Now? Okay. Yes.”

  Her face had transformed during the conversation, going from cloudy to nothing but sun by the end of it. “I’ve been such a fool,” she said when she turned back to us.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  “My dear husband has been working late so he can make the time to take me on a romantic getaway. It was all in my imagination.”

  “What about his cute new secretary?” Jennifer asked her.

  “She and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for a year, and it finally happened, so she’s trying to get in extra hours before the baby comes. Do you mind if I duck out early?”

  “No, we completely understand,” Jennifer said.

  “Elizabeth, I hate to ask, but you’re my ride.”

  “It’s fine with me. Let’s go.”

  After the two of them left, Jennifer said, “I don’t suppose there’s any reason to continue our discussion, is there?”

  “I’d be happy to chat with you about anything that’s on your mind,” I said as I glanced at my watch. “For another twelve minutes, at any rate.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Suzanne.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Run this shop, have a life outside of Donut Hearts, and still manage to join our little group.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. “I’m often tired but rarely bored,” I said with a grin.

  “I envy you that,” she said.

  “Is there something you’d like to talk about?” Something was clearly troubling her, and if I could help, I wanted to.

  Jennifer wanted to tell me, I could see it in her eyes, but finally she patted my hand as she said, “I’m fine. Just being a little wistful, that’s all.”

  “I’m here if you need me,” I said. “Being my friend isn’t a conditional thing.”

  “I understand that, and believe me, it’s greatly appreciated.”

  She stood, gave me a quick hug, and then she left the shop. I wished that she’d confided in me, but when the time was right, I’d be there for her if she needed me. In the meantime, I needed to give her some space. It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything else to do.

  After all, I still had a murder to solve and not a great deal of time to accomplish it in.

  Chapter 14

  “Hi, Suzanne,” Megan Gray surprised me by saying just before I was ready to close up for the day. We’d nearly sold out of donuts, and the coffee was probably fit only to clean out our drains.

  “Sorry I don’t have much of a selection,” I said as I pointed to the display case behind me.

  “That’s okay, I’m not here for donuts.”

  “Is there something that I can do for you?” I asked her, reaching for my cellphone just in case I needed to call for help in a hurry. Megan didn’t appear to pose a threat, but I’d never gone wrong overestimating one of my suspects’ capacity for violence, no matter how unlikely it seemed at the time.

  “I’ve been thinking about our conversation before,” she said. “I know you suspect that I did something to Harley, and I’m here to convince you that I didn’t kill him. How can I do that?”

  “You can give me a better alibi,” I said.

  “I was at work. I already told you that!” The mouse was roaring a little, and Emma must have heard her.

  She came out of the kitchen and looked suspiciously at my guest as she asked, “Is everything okay out here?”

  “It’s fine,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure that was the case at all. “There are just a few more trays and mugs out here, and then we’ll be finished for the day.”

  Emma gathered them up, but I noticed that she left the kitchen door ajar so she could keep tabs on me as she worked. I didn’t even mind if she eavesdropped on this conversation, since it might just save my life.

  “Megan,” I said in a calm voice, “there’s no reason to be that upset.”

  “You try being a murder suspect and see how you like it.”

  “I have been myself, so I know that it isn’t pleasant, but then again, I also knew that I was innocent at the time, so I wasn’t all that worried about it.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I was trying to push her a little to see if she’d crack. It might not have been the wisest strategy in the world, but sometimes I had to take a risk in order to make something happen. Besides, Emma was just in the next room, for all of the good that might do me. I glanced over at the kitchen door. I could see in a little, but Megan couldn’t see her at all, given the angle where she stood. Emma was there all right, but she wasn’t doing dishes. Instead, she was holding our weapon of choice when it came to self-defense, the sto
re’s aluminum softball bat. It should have been behind the counter with me, but somehow it had ended up back there with her. Maybe I should buy another bat so we’d have one for each spot, if I made it out of this alive. Regardless, it felt good having Emma there as backup, so I decided to push a little harder if the opportunity presented itself.

  My explanation seemed to mollify Megan a little. “Suzanne, you’ve seen my office. I work by myself all day long. I suppose I could slip away and no one would notice, but the truth of the matter is that I didn’t. I worked all morning, and I never left hospital grounds.”

  “Without a decent alibi, and given your rebuffed declaration of love for Harley, what else can people think?” I asked her. “You honestly can’t blame me for considering you a suspect.”

  “Suzanne, haven’t you ever had an all-consuming crush in your life, where you idolized someone who didn’t deserve it, only you were too blind and lonely at the time to see it? When Harley laughed in my face, it was as though a veil had been ripped from my eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, I could see clearly again. I know most folks think I’m this quiet, mousy woman, but I live a full and robust life in my mind. When I’m reading my novels, I come alive in them, becoming the person I’m normally too shy to share with anyone else in real life.”

  I did know how she felt, and it tugged at my heart. If Megan had been going for my sympathy, it was working. There had been a particular boy in high school, Pat McKinley, I’d been so smitten with that I could barely breathe whenever I was around him. That went on for an uncomfortably long time, until I heard him making fun of my obvious devotion with some of his friends when he didn’t know I was around. I’d undergone the exact same experience that Megan was describing, and Pat had been dead to me for the rest of school. “Megan, I sympathize, I truly do, but I’m just trying to find Harley’s killer.”

  “I suppose I understand that,” she said, clearly hoping for a different outcome. “You should know something about me. I’m going to change, Suzanne. As much as I love my books, I’m going to start living my real life on my own terms, as bravely as I do in my imagination. This shyness and insecurity I’ve been feeling my entire life ends right here and now.”