by Jessica Beck
“Imagine that,” I said. “They weren’t happy about you trying to break into one of their rooms. Did they call the police?”
“Yeah, I spoke with them, too. All in all, I didn’t get back home until after midnight.”
“They just let you go?”
“What could they do? I broke my cards, but I never got in, so they couldn’t prove anything. That didn’t keep them from trying to sweat a confession out of me, though. I kept my mouth shut, and they eventually decided to let me go.”
“Without doing anything at all to you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not allowed back in the Bentley, but that’s no big sacrifice. Anyway, I told you before, and I’m telling you again. I didn’t kill that guy.”
“So why did you lie to us yesterday?”
“I was embarrassed,” he admitted.
“And you’d rather we think you might be a murderer than admit that you’d done something stupid?”
“I tried to break into a hotel room. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“You know what? I believe you,” I said.
“You can call the police and check…Hang on. Did you just say that you believed me?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s not like your story can’t be verified, and I understand not wanting to admit what really happened.”
“Good. Then that’s over with.” He looked at the donuts behind me and added, “I feel a lot better now. Why don’t you make me up a dozen donuts to go?”
“I didn’t think you were a fan,” I answered.
“They’re okay, but the guys I work with really like them.”
I wasn’t going to stand there and try to talk him out of a sale, so I did as he asked.
Once he was gone, Emma came back out. “Wow. That was intense.”
“You’re telling me. Thanks for coming to my rescue.”
“Of course. After all, it’s what any good lapdog would do,” she said with a frown.
“I don’t know if you heard my response, but I told him that you weren’t just an employee; you were also a good friend of mine.”
“I heard,” she said with a slight smile. “Thanks for saying that.”
“Why wouldn’t I? After all, it’s the truth. Today is going to be an odd one. I can feel it in my bones.”
“I don’t doubt it for one second. Hey, I just glanced at the calendar. Don’t forget, you have a book club meeting today at ten.”
“Thanks, I’d already forgotten all about it. Maybe I should cancel it.”
“Are you kidding?” Emma asked me. “The ladies are going to love it. For once, they’re involved in a real live murder.”
“It’s not nearly as glamorous as all that,” I answered.
“That’s because it’s getting to be old hat for you.”
“I hope that’s never the case,” I said.
Over the course of the next ninety minutes, I answered more questions than sold donuts, but I’d expected the trend to continue until a murderer was named. Folks wanted to feel as though they were in the know, and evidently I was the best source of information in town, though I was pretty reticent in my answers. Still, I managed to move some product, so the morning wasn’t going to be a total waste.
Then, to my surprise, three people I never expected to see in my donut shop walked in together. Brad Winslow, Simon Grant, and Bev Worthington had all decided to pay me a visit at Donut Hearts.
Chapter 17
“Suzanne, we need to talk,” Brad Winslow said, speaking for the group.
“If one of you is ready to confess to committing the murder, you might want to talk to the police instead of me,” I said. That got the attention of a few of my customers, but when I looked in their direction, they quickly found other things to distract them, or so it seemed, though I knew that they were hanging on every word being spoken.
“We’re not here to confess,” he insisted. “We’re going to solve the crime.”
“I’m not sure that you can,” I said, “and besides, why involve me?”
“We need you to get us into the bookstore,” Simon said. “Paige won’t let us in.”
“Not with him with us, anyway,” Bev said, looking at Brad.
“We had a huge blowout, okay?” the suspense writer said. “Paige is being petulant, but the three of us figured you might be able to talk some sense into her.”
“We could always go in without you, Brad,” Simon suggested.
“What good is that going to do you? I’m the one with the master plotting skills. If anyone’s going to figure this out, it’s going to be me.”
“You don’t have to be a decent outliner to write a good mystery,” Simon protested. “I never know who did it until I get to the end.”
“And it shows in your prose,” Winslow said. “I’ve heard your speech half a dozen times, remember? If you bring up that quote that if you don’t know who did it, the reader never will, I’m going to throw up. At least your girlfriend here tries to outline her mysteries before she goes off half-cocked.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Bev said.
Brad looked surprised to hear the news. “Really? What happened?”
“We’ve decided to see other people, not that it’s any of your business,” Simon said.
“So, she dumped you,” Brad said smugly.
“Watch it, hotshot,” Simon replied. “There may be snow on the roof, but there’s still a fire in the hearth.”
Great. I was going to witness another brawl inside my donut shop. “Maybe you all should take your argument outside,” I suggested.
“Not without you,” Brad insisted. “Paige will listen to you. Ask her to let us in. It’s to her advantage, and yours, too.”
“Why should I care whether you get in or not?” I asked them, doing my best to feign innocence.
“You’re trying to solve the crime too, dear, so there’s no use trying to deny it,” Bev said.
“We know why you came by the Bentley and started asking questions,” Brad added. “We’re not fools, Suzanne.”
“It didn’t take us long to find out that you’ve done this before,” Simon supplied. “So, what do you say? Will you help us? It’s probably a lost cause getting Paige to let all of us in, but we figured if anyone could do it, you could.”
They were right. I was curious to get four of my main suspects back to the murder scene. I was keeping Paige on my list, since she had everything but motive, at least that I knew of. I didn’t know what it might be, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have one. That made me wonder where the final writer might be and why she wasn’t with the group. “Why isn’t Alexa with you?”
“She refused. She claimed that she wasn’t interested in playing detective,” Brad said derisively. “In my mind, that’s suspicious behavior in and of itself.”
“Or it could mean that she has reasons of her own not to want to revisit such an unpleasant place,” Bev said.
“I agree with Bev,” Simon chimed in.
“Stop sucking up to her, man. Have a little pride. She’s not taking you back,” Brad chided.
Simon’s face reddened. “I really do agree with her.”
“What do you say, Suzanne? Will you help us?” Bev asked.
“I’ll try,” I said. “Wait for me out front. I need a minute.”
“You can have thirty seconds, and then we’re going to try again without you,” Brad said.
Once they were gone, I opened the kitchen door and found Emma hard at work cleaning up. “Would you mind watching the front for ten minutes or so?”
“I’d be happy to,” she said. “What’s up?”
“I’m going to try to get into the bookstore with three of the writers from last night.”
“And they need
you to get them in?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Fine, but don’t forget your book club meeting.”
“I should be back in plenty of time for that,” I said. I took off my apron and joined the writers, who had, to my surprise, obeyed my request and waited for me, despite going over the promised minute after all.
As we crossed the street together, I said, “Let me do the talking, okay?”
“I’m the spokesman for the group,” Brad protested.
“That’s funny. I don’t remember taking a vote,” Bev said.
“Besides, you couldn’t get us in the first time. What makes you think you’ll have any luck now?” Simon asked. “Let Suzanne have a crack at it.”
“Fine,” Brad said sullenly.
I knocked on the door, but Paige wouldn’t open it, though I could see her through the glass sidelights. “We’re closed. Sorry. You’ll have to come back later.”
“Paige, it’s Suzanne. Can we talk?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Are you alone?” she asked.
“You know I’m not. Give me a chance to talk, okay?”
I wasn’t sure she was going to open the door, but finally, it split open a crack. “Why should I let them in, Suzanne? They’ve all been nothing but trouble since they came to town.”
“I know you have a history with Brad, but don’t forget, they all solve mysteries for a living. Wouldn’t you like to know what really happened to John Rumsfield?” I asked her. “Maybe they can help.”
“They write mysteries, they don’t solve them,” she corrected me. “I’d be okay with Bev and Simon, but Brad’s not coming in.”
He started to protest when Bev put an elbow into his ribs. Good for her!
“We need him, too. Please?” I asked.
Paige took a full thirty seconds to decide, but finally, the door opened the rest of the way. “You have ten minutes, and that’s just because you and Grace brought Ramona here last night.”
“Thanks,” I said, and then I turned back to the writers. “Come on. Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”
They walked into the bookstore single file, and I noticed that when Brad got close to Paige, she shot him a look that was full of death and daggers. The two really had gone through a falling out. At the signing, she’d found a way to even be pleasant to the man, but something had clearly changed since then. I didn’t have time to figure out what it might be, though.
I had a crime scene to explore with three mystery writers.
I couldn’t wait to see what they had to say and to see if maybe one of them would be a little too clever and give themselves away.
I wasn’t at all surprised when they headed straight for the break room where I’d found John Rumsfield’s body the day before. Had it really been that recent? A part of the experience felt like a distant memory, but being back there again brought it all to the forefront, despite the cleansing ceremony I’d participated in the night before.
“Now, the way I see it, there are one of three possibilities,” Brad said, surveying the room.
“What are our options in your mind?” Simon asked him.
“The murder was either planned, it was committed on the spur of the moment, or it was made to look that way.”
“It could have been a case of mistaken identity,” Bev offered.
“Why do you say that?” Simon asked her.
“Brad and John had the same basic build. If it was dark in here, someone could have mistaken him for our publisher and conked him in the head by accident.” She looked intently at Paige as she said it.
“He was struck from the front, remember?” Brad asked. “Are you this sloppy in your books?”
“Her novels happen to be great,” Simon said.
No one seemed to care. After a moment, Brad asked, “Suzanne, where exactly did you find the body?”
I pointed to the floor where I’d found him.
“I’m having a difficult time visualizing it. Would you mind lying down in the exact spot?” Brad asked.
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not going to do that,” I said firmly.
“Simon, you do it,” Brad ordered.
“I’m not keen on doing it, either. Besides, I didn’t see where he was lying any more than you did. Unless you were the one who killed him.”
“That’s garbage, and you know it. Let’s try to picture it, then. Suzanne, could you describe it to us?”
I suddenly realized that I could do better than that. I’d taken a few photos with my phone when I’d found the body, but the stress and trauma of it all had made me forget momentarily that I’d even done it. At least I’d remembered to show Grace, and the police surely had their own set of photos, but I hadn’t referred to them since I’d shown my partner in crime. Some investigator I was turning out to be.
“I can do better than that,” I said as I pulled out my phone. After bringing up the three pictures I’d taken, I showed them to the group, one after another. They were of the man himself, the bloodied bookend, and the marked book, in that order. Brad grabbed my phone when I made my way back to the image of John Rumsfield. “How do you explode this image?”
“You do this,” I said, grabbing it back and using my finger and thumb to increase the image size on the small screen. “What do you want to see?”
“I want to go back to that book,” Simon said. “What’s the title?”
“Seven Deadly Mushrooms,” Paige said with some satisfaction from the doorway. “Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say, Brad?”
“Why? I didn’t write it!”
“Maybe not,” Simon said, “but it does use the word deadly, doesn’t it? That’s a favorite of yours, isn’t it, Brad?” It was clear he enjoyed zinging his fellow author.
“It was probably just the closest book to the body,” he said. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“But it wasn’t,” I said. “I found the other two copies on hand, but they were both in the storage room across the hallway, along with the rest of the extra nonfiction.”
“It still doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a coincidence,” Brad protested.
Simon turned to Bev. “How many times have we heard him on this book tour say that there was no such thing as a coincidence?”
“In a book, you moron, not in real life,” Brad shouted. “Hang on. Let me see the image of John again.”
I held it up to him, but I didn’t relinquish possession of my phone.
“Zoom in on his hands. Find the one with the blood on it,” he ordered.
I would have refused, but I wanted to see where he was going with it myself.
“There. That proves someone was trying to frame me!” Brad crowed.
“Why do you say that?” Simon asked as he and Bev craned to see the image. I noticed that Paige herself was trying to get a glimpse of it, and she somehow managed to bury her distaste for her former beau long enough to get closer to the small screen.
“The blood is on his right hand,” Brad said triumphantly.
“So?” Simon asked.
“He was left-handed, you simpleton, or didn’t you ever notice?”
Simon shook his head. “I didn’t, but that doesn’t make me stupid.”
“I didn’t know that, either,” Bev said, surprising them both by backing Simon up.
I suddenly remembered that the publisher had poked Brad in the chest with his left index finger, indicating his dominant hand, and not his right. The author was on the money, and somehow I’d missed it completely.
“Why does that even matter?” Paige asked.
“If he were lying there dying, would he reach out with his weak hand to leave a clue? I can’t imagine, e
specially since it would have been easier for him to reach out with his left hand. Someone wanted to make it look as though I killed him.”
“That’s one theory,” Paige said. “Then again, maybe you did it, and he did his best to leave a dying clue.”
“I’m telling you, it’s an attempt to frame me!” Brad insisted.
“Brad, you might not be the most pleasant man in the world, but who would want to frame you for murder?” I asked.
“I can think of one person,” he said as he turned to glare at Paige.
The bookstore owner looked startled by the accusation. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Brad asked. “After our fight, you could have done it just to get back at me for rejecting you again.”
Her face brightened as she blushed. “That was just too much wine talking,” she protested. “Besides, I saw him last when you did. We were at my place most of the night, or have you already forgotten about that?”
What? This was indeed news. “Exactly what time were you together?” I asked.
“I’m not exactly sure that’s any of your business, Suzanne,” Paige said.
“I’m not asking out of some sense of prurient interest,” I said. “This is important. I’m trying to see if you two have alibis.”
“We started talking a little before nine,” Brad said.
“And he didn’t leave my place until well after one a.m.,” Paige replied. “He was ready to reconcile at ten, but by eleven, he said he’d changed his mind. We argued for two hours, and then he stormed out. That’s what he’s best at, you know.”
“I don’t need to know any more than that,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t choose to share any more details with us than they already had. “Whether you realize it or not, you both have alibis for the time of the murder.”
“Unless they did it together,” Simon said.