Goodbye Cruller World

by Ginger Bolton

  “I did, at first,” the brunette admitted. “He talked the talk.”

  The blonde went on as if her friend hadn’t spoken. “But after a few months, he hadn’t brought in any new clients. And then one day, he didn’t come into the office he and I shared. He just disappeared. It turned out that he’d set himself up as a life coach, taking my client list, and most of the people on it, with him.”

  The brunette tsked. “Not only that. He told us that she”—the brunette pointed her spoon at the blonde—“had been imprisoned in Utah for cheating her clients, and that she was a fraud and we shouldn’t trust her.”

  Although she hadn’t added anything to her tea, the blonde stirred it. “That wasn’t true. He totally made that up.” Her hand shook a little. “I’ve never even been to Utah.”

  The brunette added, “I shouldn’t have believed him, but I went ahead and met with him to let him coach me. Twice. And then I decided never again. When he was the only one coaching, his personality totally changed. How can someone call himself a life coach when all he can do is snarl and sneer at his clients? Not helpful at all. Plus, he was charging twice as much as she’d been. I quit him. Fortunately, she . . .” The brunette pointed her spoon again. Wasn’t either of them ever going to divulge the other’s name? “She called and asked why I’d missed two appointments, and that’s when I found out that Roger had lied about her and stolen her clients. So, I went back to her right away, and now we’re dear friends.”

  “Trust is crucial to good coaching.” The blonde’s words came out like a well-practiced lecture.

  The brunette sent her a triumphant smile. “And I convinced quite a few of her clients that Roger was a fraud and they should return to her.”

  The blonde became solemn. “But some of my clients didn’t come back to me. They believed Roger’s lies.”

  The corners of the brunette’s mouth drooped. “One of the things Roger said he would do probably wasn’t a lie. He threatened me, and I bet he threatened them, too, so they were too terrified to switch back to you from him.”

  I’d been listening, my focus ping-ponging between the two women, but I had to break my silence. “Threatened you?” I repeated. “Terrified his clients?”

  The brunette gazed toward the donut display. “The threats weren’t specific, which was probably scarier than if they were. He said he didn’t get mad—he got even.”

  My phone was in my apron pocket, but I couldn’t pull it out to record the conversation without being totally obvious, and fumbling my fingers inside that large front pocket would have come across as, at the very least, peculiar. Maybe Tom and I needed to install spy cameras in our hats, with the lenses and microphones hidden in the holes of the furry donuts.

  And maybe, just maybe, my imagination was spinning out of control.

  I glanced toward the privacy of the office. Dep was still glaring at the Happy Hopers.

  I needed to call Brent and tell him that the two mystery women were in Deputy Donut and that they’d known and disliked Roger. However, other customers kept me busy, and when there was finally a lull, the Happy Hopers were going outside. The blonde still had her tote. They started up the alley between Dressed to Kill and Deputy Donut.

  They’d left cash on the table, giving me no chance to learn their names from a credit card.

  Quickly, I shut myself into the office with Dep. I wasn’t tall, but the office windows were big, and the sills, padded for Dep’s comfort, were low. I sat on the couch where I could look out with only my hat and the top of my face, from about the nose up, showing.

  Fortunately, the women didn’t turn their heads in my direction. They got into a small white car and started down the alley. The blonde was driving.

  I jumped to my feet. Dep decided that the pad of paper on my desk was a perfect, although rather small, bed. I pushed a cute little tortoiseshell paw aside and jotted down the license number.

  I tapped my phone’s screen. So did Dep. Despite her attempts to call nearly everyone else on my contact list, I managed to ring Brent’s personal cell phone.

  Usually Brent answered my calls with a friendly, “Hi, Em.” This time, he merely barked, “Fyne.”

  “You’re in a meeting,” I said.

  “Yes.” Still formal.

  “I’ll be quick. The two women who were hanging around the delivery entrance at the lodge on Saturday night just left Deputy Donut. I need to tell you what they said. Also, I got the license number of the car they were driving.”

  “What was it?”

  I told him.

  “Can you give me a statement later? I should be done here about seven.”

  “Sure. Want me to come to your office?”

  “No.” Decisive.

  “My house, then. For dinner.”

  “Good.” He disconnected.

  I wondered who was chairing the meeting Brent was in. It could have been Brent or the chief of police or perhaps a DCI agent the chief had brought in to take over Roger’s murder case.

  Across the driveway, a woman was looking out a window near the back of Dressed to Kill. She turned her head toward the front of the store, though, as if someone had called her, and then she went away from the window. Because of the reflections on the glass, I hadn’t been certain who she was. Not Jenn, unless she’d dyed her hair brown since early Sunday morning. Jenn had told me that Suzanne did the books at Dressed to Kill late at night, long after Deputy Donut closed. The woman I saw must have been Suzanne, working during the day.

  Where was Jenn, and how was she coping with her grief? I’d been widowed after four years of marriage. Although four more years had passed, I knew I would never completely get over the pain. Jenn had been married about seven hours, but from what I’d seen of her marriage, she hadn’t enjoyed all of those seven hours.

  Meowing, Dep jumped off the desk and clawed her way up the carpeted tree leading to her catwalk. I left the office before she could bombard me with toys.

  At four thirty, I set the lock on the front door so that the few customers remaining in Deputy Donut could leave, but no one could open the door from outside. I switched the sign on the door from WELCOME to OPEN AT 7:00 A.M.

  The last customers said their goodbyes. Tom and I started tidying the kitchen.

  Someone pounded on the front door.

  Tom looked up. “Look who’s here, Emily.”

  Brent?

  I turned around.

  I should have known from the dry way Tom clipped his words that it wasn’t Brent. Tom liked Brent.

  Tom did not particularly care for DCI detective Yvonne Passenmath, however.

  Wearing her usual rumpled brown pantsuit, clunky black shoes, and angry expression, Yvonne Passenmath was using a fist to thump repeatedly on the metal frame around our glass door.

  Chapter 13

  “Great,” I complained to Tom. “I’ll go let her in.”

  I unlocked the door and opened it. Detective Passenmath trudged inside. Was she sniffing the air because delicious coffee and donut aromas lingered, or was she attempting to intimidate me with her keen observation skills?

  From the kitchen, Tom said, just loudly enough, “Hey, Yvonne.”

  She nodded in his general direction. “Westhill.” She turned to me. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  I couldn’t help asking, “Without an attorney?”

  “Get one if you want. I can wait. I have the statement you gave Detective Fyne, but I have questions.”

  “Come into the office. I hope you don’t mind cats.”

  “I can take ’em or leave ’em.” She called toward the kitchen, “Don’t go anywhere, Westhill. You can witness her signature when I’m done with her, and then I want to talk to you, too!”

  I opened the office door and let Yvonne Passenmath precede me inside. Dep took one look at the frowning DCI detective and bounded up the narrow staircase to the catwalk. I hoped Dep didn’t have any soggy toys up there to drop on Passenmath’s head. Passenmath’s curly brown hair
was frizzy enough thanks to the day’s apparent humidity. Underneath my Deputy Donut hat, my own curls were undoubtedly tightening.

  Passenmath handed me several sheets of paper. “Your statement. Go over it and see if it’s what you meant to say.”

  I pointed to the couch. “Have a seat.”

  She glanced down at the cushions as if checking for excessive amounts of cat hair, but the Jolly Cops kept the office clean, and she must have decided it was okay to sit.

  I swiveled the desk chair to face Passenmath across the coffee table and then spent about five minutes reading the statement while Passenmath alternately sighed and yawned. I finished reading and told her, “It’s fine.”

  “Don’t sign it until we get Westhill in here.”

  I started to go get Tom, but she flapped her hand at me. “Stay here. You need to answer some questions.”

  Trying to keep apprehension from showing on my face, I sat again.

  Passenmath took out a small black notebook and pen. “There were names painted on the wall you hung donuts on, right?”

  Somewhere above our heads, Dep was ominously quiet.

  Without glancing up toward my mischievous cat, I answered, “Yes. The bride’s and the groom’s.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “The bride’s. She’d seen it in a wedding magazine. She wanted her favorite donuts to go on the dowels beneath her name and the groom’s favorites to go on the dowels beneath his name.”

  “And you were the one who hung the donuts beneath their names?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every single one of them?”

  “After midnight, other people might have hung up some of the donuts. I don’t know. I was dancing.”

  “Dancing.” She said it like it was an alien activity. I felt sorry for the hard-to-like detective. She demanded, “Weren’t you supposed to be working?”

  “The bride said beforehand that I should join the party after midnight. She owns the clothing store across the alley.” I pointed. “I’ve gotten to know her by shopping in her store.”

  “What kind of donuts did you hang on the dowels underneath the bride’s name?”

  “Her favorites, honey-glazed crullers.”

  “Dipped in powdered sugar?”

  “No, but we make the glaze by dissolving powdered sugar in honey.”

  “So, what did you hang on the dowels underneath the groom’s name?”

  “His favorites, raised donuts coated in confectioners’ sugar.”

  “Powdered sugar.”

  “Yes, but as far as I could tell, Roger didn’t eat his favorites. He seemed to prefer the bride’s.”

  Her eyes, which already seemed too small for her wide face, became even smaller. “What makes you think that?”

  “When I saw that powder in the saucer, the pattern in it looked like the hills and valleys in a cruller.”

  “In criminal investigations, we don’t jump to conclusions.”

  One of my eyebrows began quirking upward. I quickly lowered it and tried not to show my skepticism. The last time I’d been around Yvonne Passenmath, she’d seemed very willing to jump to conclusions, especially if her conclusions might implicate me in a murder. “I saw Roger eating one also, but that was before midnight, and the one he ate had not been coated in confectioners’ sugar.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “If a cruller dipped in honey glaze was dipped in white powder and then hung on a wall for a couple of hours, wouldn’t the white powder melt until it could barely be seen?”

  “I suppose so, especially if the glaze wasn’t thick and crusty, and ours wasn’t. But the white powder didn’t appear until after midnight, at most a half hour before Roger collapsed.”

  “How do you know when it appeared?”

  “To be specific, it didn’t appear in the saucer underneath my hat behind the donut wall until after midnight. I don’t know where the powder was before that. But when I set my hat on that table, there was no saucer and no white powder.” Brent had included that information in the statement I’d just read. However, I didn’t blame her for asking the same question in a variety of ways as she tried to get to the truth. Or to get someone to change her story in a way that would show she was lying . . .

  “No one else has corroborated when that white powder appeared behind that donut wall.” Her squinty dark eyes gleamed.

  “Not many people ventured behind those curtains, but at least one person knows when he or she put that saucer of powder down on that table and covered it with my hat.”

  “Precisely.”

  I retorted, “Not me.”

  As if I hadn’t said anything, she asked, “What donuts did you hang on the columns of dowels between the ones marked for the groom and the ones marked for the bride?”

  “Raised and unraised, decorated to go with the colors the bride chose as her wedding’s theme colors. I varied how I hung them, arranging them to look pretty.”

  “I’m not interested in pretty.” She said the word disparagingly. “Only in donuts that could have been poisoned.”

  “A picture I took of the donut wall when I first stocked it shows what was hanging on it better than my verbal description.”

  She handed me a business card with her e-mail address on it. “E-mail it to us.”

  I hid a smile. She was going to see pretty whether she was interested in it or not.

  She paged back in her notebook. “You said that the groom’s favorite donuts were raised donuts coated with confectioners’ sugar. Did the deceased personally tell you that those were his favorites?”

  “No, Jenn did. His bride.”

  Passenmath’s eyelids nearly shut over those lizard-like eyes, and then she looked down and wrote in her notebook. “During the evening, did you get the bride’s and groom’s favorites mixed up and placed on the wrong hooks?”

  “No, but other people might have rearranged the donuts and crullers while I was dancing.” I reminded her of what I’d said in my statement about the five crullers missing from one of the two bakery boxes that had been on the table before I started dancing.

  “Are you certain that the missing objects were crullers?”

  “Tom and I didn’t mix the types of donuts in the boxes. But again, someone might have rearranged them while I was dancing.”

  “You said there were two bakery boxes on the table when you went off to dance, and when you came back, one box had crullers in it. What was in the other box?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t open it.”

  “You brought it.”

  “I didn’t keep a mental inventory of what might have been in the unopened boxes. Anyway, I’m sure investigators took that box. They can tell you.”

  “They did.” Her mouth twitched like she enjoyed demonstrating that she knew more than I did. She asked, “Did the bride spend time around that donut wall?”

  “Not at all. As I said in my statement to Detective Fyne, the bride left the banquet hall while I was dancing, and I didn’t see her again until right before her husband was wheeled out to the ambulance.”

  “I’ve seen the setup in that banquet hall,” Passenmath said. “Tell me about the lighting in the minutes leading up to when the deceased collapsed. Were the lights brighter where the dancers and reception guests were, or were they brighter behind the curtains in that narrow space next to the log walls?”

  “Where the reception guests were, but even there, the lighting was low.”

  “So, anyone who was on the more brightly lit side of those curtains, where the dancing was going on, wouldn’t have seen who was on the darker side of the curtains or what they were doing. Anyone could have been back there, poisoning donuts.”

  I agreed. “When I was between the curtains and the room’s walls, I was able to see people who were very close to the reception’s side of the curtains. And there was a spot just to the left of the donut wall where the edges of two curtains met. Those edges
could have been parted slightly if someone wanted to peek out, or pushed aside whenever anyone wanted to come and go between the reception and the space behind the curtains.” I moved my hands apart as if opening curtains. “I’d been going back and forth all evening. I think that someone planned ahead and brought arsenic to the reception. And I think he or she arrived in the space behind the curtains by coming in from the service corridor. When I left the back of the donut wall to dance, the door from the corridor to the banquet hall was closed, but after Roger collapsed, that door was unlatched. The culprit could have been alone back there, and could have dipped those five crullers in arsenic. Maybe he or she had seen Roger hanging around taking crullers. The poisoner could have reached around the edge of the curtain”—I demonstrated pinching an imaginary cruller between my thumb and forefinger and reaching around a curtain—“and placed the poisoned crullers on one of the tiered cake stands on the table in front of the donut wall, and then Roger could have stuffed them into his mouth.”

  I wondered if he had crushed them and gobbled them whole as he’d done with the one he’d eaten after he’d told Chad to leave. I also wondered if he’d filled his pockets with crullers before or after he ate the poisoned ones.

  I could have told Passenmath that I was not the one poisoning the donuts, but knowing her, she would suspect that my repeated denials were a sign that I was guilty. Maybe my guesses about how someone poisoned Roger without harming anyone else were already making her suspect me.

  She paged back in her notebook, paged forward, wrote a sentence or two, and clapped the notebook shut as if she’d just closed her case. “You can leave,” she snapped. “Get Westhill in here.”

  I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her about the Happy Hopers. If Brent had told her that I’d called him about them, she’d be expecting me to mention them.

  Her face reddened. “I said you can go now.”

  “I . . . um . . . I hope the cat doesn’t drop anything on you while I’m out.”