Goodbye Cruller World

by Ginger Bolton

  Above the sputtering of a chair mover’s vocal version of something resembling artillery fire, a man called, “What can I do ya for?” The sound effects stopped mid-sputter.

  I turned toward the room’s main entrance. A man in low-slung jeans and a gray turtleneck ambled toward Tom and me. The man was wearing a dark wool billed hat that I’d once heard described as a Greek fisherman’s cap. When he was close, I realized he was actually in his sixties or seventies. His hair was gray, and his neck was crepey and wattled. From a distance, his rangy figure and the slouchy way he walked had made him appear younger.

  I waved my hand in the general direction of our disassembled donut wall. “We’re from Deputy Donut. We were told we could pick up our cart and donut wall.”

  The man moved a toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Better late than never.” His light blue eyes were bloodshot. He had hardly any eyelashes.

  I tried a smile. “Are you the one who removed the wall from the table for us? Thanks. You saved us some time.”

  “I didn’t touch any of it. Those CSI guys wouldn’t let me in here until this afternoon. My own hotel.”

  “We’ll get the things out of your way,” Tom promised. “Mind if we take them out through the delivery entrance, or should I move my vehicle around to the front?”

  The man pointed at the room’s back door. “Go through that way. The delivery door is never locked from the inside, but you’ll have to prop the door open or you’ll lock yourself out. We’ve always been able to keep it unlocked from the outside until now. Over a hundred years, this lodge has been in the family, and never a speck of trouble, not until that woman decided she had to rent this room, gussy it up in all sorts of outlandish ways, and then off her groom.”

  Tom turned around and strolled toward the table holding the prone donut wall.

  “The bride did it?” I asked, my voice squeaking with amazement. Doubt, too, maybe.

  “Stands to reason. Marries the guy, he’s rich, then bam! She inherits. Besides, don’t they say poison is a woman’s weapon?”

  “He’s rich?” I asked. How many people believed that, and where had they gotten the idea? Brent had said that Roger had inherited from his parents when he was sixteen and had been able to finish his schooling. Jenn had told me that Roger had inherited from a distant relative. Maybe Jenn had told that to other people. Maybe the two inheritances had made Roger wealthy.

  “Had to be rich. I figured that out, easy-peasy. The bride was the one who ordered all the frou-fra-las, but the groom was the one who signed the checks, every single one of them. And there were a lot of ’em. Usually the bride and her family pitch in. Some pay for it all.”

  Tom had returned and was standing beside me. “Did you personally witness the bride harming anyone or did you see her acting suspiciously on the video files from your surveillance cameras from Saturday night?”

  The man stared at Tom for a few seconds as if wondering if Tom was an undercover cop and, if so, how he should word his answers. But he didn’t seem able to resist talking about his lodge. He raised his chin a notch. “I wasn’t here Saturday night. And video files? Are you kidding? Surveillance cameras? Over a hundred years we’ve run this lodge, and never a problem. People come here for the feel of a luxury lodge from a century ago. This place is the real deal. You start installing spy cameras and the like, and bam! You lose that authentic feel. You lose paying guests. No.” He shoved his hands into his front pockets and hitched his jeans up to a less precarious position. “None of that modern stuff belongs at Little Lake Lodge.”

  I nodded. “Besides, you have a security guard posted at the delivery entrance.”

  The man in the Greek fisherman’s cap was shaking his head before I got the word “guard” out. “No, we don’t. We’ve never needed a security guard. I patrol this place day and night. Nothing gets by me. Except Saturday night. As I already told you, I wasn’t here.” He dislodged the toothpick again. “And I proved it to those nosy CSI guys. People, I should say, since some of them were gals. The daughter had a baby up in Minneapolis. The wife and I have pictures of ourselves in the hospital with the baby late Saturday evening and early Sunday morning, time-stamped pictures, and plenty of witnesses—nurses and even the doctor who delivered the baby. We were in Minneapolis all weekend. That woman detective checked and double-checked.”

  Tom had already gone back to the donut wall. I persisted. “I saw a security guard at the delivery entrance on Saturday night.”

  “We don’t stop people who rent the meeting rooms and banquet hall from hiring their own security. If it makes them feel safer, so be it. Wedding couples usually do, you know, because of the wedding gifts. Well, carry on.”

  He turned and shouted at his staff, “Hey! Don’t drag tables across the dance floor. Pick them up and carry them.”

  I joined Tom. He pulled a package of sterile wipes out of his jacket pocket. Together, we thoroughly cleaned the table, the donut wall, and the cart. We balanced the donut wall on the cart and wheeled the cart down the corridor. The chair that the security guard had used was gone. We went back for the table, each took a side, and carried it out. We slid the table into the back of the SUV, wrapped it in blankets, wrapped the donut wall also, and packed it beside the table. The cart went, upside down, into the back seat.

  Driving away from Little Lake Lodge, Tom said, “Pity.”

  “That they have to start locking doors?”

  “That they didn’t start long ago, and install cameras. Makes the investigation that much more difficult. Not to mention that if there’d been locked doors and cameras, no one might have died.”

  “There really was a security guard here around ten. I don’t know about after that, and he was gone by about twelve thirty.”

  “I believe you. Too bad no one got his picture.”

  “And too bad no one got photos or videos of the two women who’ve been coming into Deputy Donut. It would be nice to know what they were doing that night besides hanging around watching who all came and went.” I told Tom everything I’d seen and heard Saturday night and everything the two women had told me since. Outside the passenger window, the forest seemed to stream past us, as if we were standing still and it was moving. But when I looked straight ahead, it was obvious that we were the ones racing along the pavement. “Brent interviewed both of those women today,” I said.

  “He’s a good detective, that Brent Fyne. A Fyne man.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “And then they had to go and bring in that Yvonne Passenmath again.” Reciting a string of choice words, he pulled into the lot behind Deputy Donut and parked beside our loading dock.

  We wheeled the cart into its usual spot in the combination pantry and storage room. We stowed the donut wall and its table in the basement, which we kept mostly empty. The tables, chairs, and umbrellas from our patios were already down there, some of them upside down and sprouting appendages like the arms and legs of ghostly cast aluminum skeletons. Every month or so, the Jolly Cops Cleaning Crew gave the basement a good cleaning.

  Tom ran up the stairs. Unwilling to let the older person put me to shame, I ran, too. Neither of us ended up out of breath. Telling Tom to say hello to Cindy, I left for home.

  Dep was a little indignant about being left during what she thought of as our dinner hour, but after a few minutes of cuddles in the wing chair, she hopped off my lap and asked to be let out into the backyard. She didn’t stay long.

  Under her watchful eye, I ate leftover lasagna at the kitchen island.

  “What do you think, Dep, should I call Brent?”

  “Mmp.”

  “He probably knew from the beginning of the investigation that Little Lake Lodge doesn’t have surveillance cameras.”

  “Mmp.” Helpful cat.

  “And he probably knows by now that the lodge doesn’t have its own security guards, and that the one I’d seen had probably been hired by Jenn or the Happy Hopers Conference.”

  Dep gave
me a cross-eyed look. “Mmp.”

  “Yes, there was another meeting room, but I don’t know whether it was used that evening.” When I’d peeked into it after twelve thirty, it had been neat and tidy. “Besides, Tom might have called Brent while I was eating dinner.”

  Dep galloped toward the living room. I followed her. She stood beside the front door. “Meow.”

  “Dep, are you telling me that Brent would be bothered less by hearing information that he already knows than by missing out on it entirely?”

  “Meow.”

  “You’re right. We don’t want Yvonne to learn something before Brent does. Thanks for your input, Dep.”

  “Meow.”

  I plunked down on the couch and called Brent’s personal number.

  “Hi, Em,” he answered.

  “You’re not in a meeting.”

  “I’m at home.”

  I told him about the lack of surveillance cameras at Little Lake Lodge and that the lodge’s owner hadn’t hired a security guard Saturday night. I added, “The owner says he can prove he wasn’t at his lodge on Saturday night.”

  “Yvonne checked. Both the owner and his wife were visiting the maternity ward at a hospital in Minneapolis. Did the lodge owner tell you who hired the guard you saw?”

  “No. He said that wedding couples often hire them during receptions, because of the gifts. Or the conference organizers might have hired him, to protect the cheap gewgaws, no doubt.”

  “Mmp.”

  “Did you ask Jenn if she hired the guard?”

  “Yes, and she regretted that she hadn’t thought of hiring one. Or a bodyguard for Roger.”

  “Why would she have thought that Roger needed a bodyguard?”

  “I asked the same thing. She said, ‘Because of the way things turned out.’ ”

  I could tell from his tone that he didn’t quite understand Jenn’s reasoning. I didn’t, either. “So Jenn didn’t go on her honeymoon by herself?”

  “She said the idea didn’t appeal.”

  “Or you told her not to leave town.”

  “After everything that went on, she would have missed her plane, anyway.”

  “Is she a suspect?”

  “Everyone who went near that lodge Saturday night before midnight is.”

  “And spouses always get close scrutiny.”

  He quoted in a very dry voice, “ ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ ”

  I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. “I should let you go. You’re suffering from sleep deprivation.”

  “Thanks for calling, Em. Don’t be afraid to call, even if you think we already know what you’re going to tell us. And let me know if you think of anything else or remember anything else, especially about that security guard.”

  “Have you located him yet?”

  “Mmp.” I interpreted that as a no.

  I prodded, “No one admits to hiring him?”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” It wasn’t an answer, exactly, but I understood, as I was sure he meant me to, that he hadn’t figured out who had hired that security guard and he still didn’t know the guard’s identity. “Give Dep a hug for me,” he said.

  I realized that my cat had been loudly meowing on the couch beside me during the entire conversation. Brent and I said our good nights and disconnected.

  Dep got the hug she’d obviously been demanding all along, and then she levitated onto my shoulders and draped herself around my neck like a warm and rumbling scarf.

  I didn’t think I’d have much more to tell Brent about that security guard. I’d already given Brent the best description I could.

  The next morning, the security guard showed up at Deputy Donut.

  Chapter 17

  What was it, a conspiracy? Three people had hung around the delivery entrance at Little Lake Lodge on Saturday night. And here it was, only Wednesday. The two women had visited Deputy Donut twice, and the security guard had just walked in.

  He wasn’t in his uniform, but as far as I could tell, his shoes were the ones he’d worn on Saturday night, complete with the broken and knotted-up shoelace. The industrial-strength shoes didn’t quite go with his white socks, faded jeans, plaid shirt, and gray hoody. His ruddy face was heavy around the jowls.

  He sat by himself near a table where a bunch of retired men met nearly every weekday morning for coffee, donuts, and a lot of laughing. The security guard had his back to them, and he appeared to be reading our Deputy Donut brochure, but a slight smile tugged at his lips when the men behind him burst into guffaws.

  I went to his table and asked what he’d like. He didn’t appear to recognize me, possibly because I was wearing my Deputy Donut hat. When I’d worn it near him at Little Lake Lodge, he’d been dozing.

  I told him we were brewing a fresh pot of the day’s featured coffee, a full-bodied dark roast blend from several African countries. His voice as raw as it had been Saturday night, he ordered a mug of the coffee along with an unraised dark chocolate donut with hints of ancho chilis.

  I went into the kitchen and told Tom that I had to call Brent and why.

  Tom glanced into the dining area and immediately turned his head away. “Tell Brent that the man is Gerald Stone. He can look him up in the police files if the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Would you like to be the one to call Brent?”

  “No. I want to keep an eye on Stone.”

  I said in a menacing tone, “I’m going to have a lot of questions for you later.”

  He grinned. “And I’ll have answers. Meanwhile, don’t let Stone sell you any drugs.”

  Mouthing, Oh, I backed away from him.

  I served Gerald Stone, who didn’t appear the least bit stoned, and then I had to attend to other customers before I could take a break and shut myself inside the office with Dep. Turning my back to the dining room, I admired the morning sun glinting on trees behind our parking lot while I called Brent’s personal line.

  “Hi, Em,” he answered.

  Obviously, he wasn’t in a meeting with Yvonne, but I didn’t waste time. I blurted, “That security guard is in Deputy Donut. Tom says to tell you he’s Gerald Stone, and to look him up in the police files.”

  “Thank you. Thank Tom, too. That case was before my time on the job, but I heard about it. I’ll find out where he lives, and I won’t show up at your donut shop with sirens blasting. But take care, okay?”

  “You and Tom have sooooo many questions to answer.”

  “Can I bring pizza and beer over tonight?” I heard the hint of a smile in his voice.

  “To my place? Sure!” Dep was head-butting my arm. She meowed.

  Brent must have heard her. He laughed. “See you around six thirty?”

  Leaving Dep to mutter about being shut inside the office where she could look at but not climb around on us, I went out to the dining area.

  Gerald Stone didn’t stay long. He also paid cash and left me a big tip, but no drugs, poisons, or other toxic substances that I could detect. I cleaned his table very well. But then, I always cleaned the tables very well.

  In the afternoon, Scott came in for his break and sat with police officers and other firefighters. Misty didn’t show up. I hoped Scott was as disappointed as I was.

  After we closed, Tom and I tidied the kitchen. I asked him who Gerald Stone was.

  “About fifteen years ago, when I was police chief, and you were in kindergarten—”

  “Nice try. Fifteen years ago, I was in high school.” Well, nearly.

  “Uh-huh. Stone ran a pharmacy out on Packers Road.”

  “I remember that. We always thought Stone Drugs was a funny name. But I never went there, so I never saw the guy before Saturday night.”

  “Now it’s Fallingbrook Pharmacy. Fifteen years ago, though, Stone was a successful pharmacist, maybe a little too ostentatiously successful, judging by his large house and luxury car. He spent a lot more for them and for vacations than we’d have expected from his pharmacy’s in
come, and there were rumors about how he managed to afford everything. We were certain he was selling prescription drugs illegally. We were about to nab him, but the flow of drugs stopped suddenly, and we never did find conclusive evidence. Soon after we ended our investigation, he sold Stone Drugs, his large house, and his expensive car. He moved into a small apartment and became a part-time security guard.”

  “Maybe he was in over his head, and financial institutions caught up with him, and he had to sell.”

  “Could be, but if he had mortgages and loans, we never found out who the lenders were. He’d paid off the mortgage on his store a year or so earlier, and he didn’t appear to have borrowed to buy the mansion and the car.”

  “And now he’s switched from dealing drugs to delivering poison?”

  “There’s not a whole lot of difference. Let me know if he comes in again. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “And so will the cops in here, no doubt.”

  “Most of them won’t remember him. Very few of us worked on the case, and we’ve all retired.”

  Tom left for home.

  Although Dressed to Kill was supposed to be closed, a small bright red hatchback was parked behind it.

  Dep and I walked down the driveway between Deputy Donut and Dressed to Kill and turned south on Wisconsin Street.

  The sign in the door of Dressed to Kill announcing that the store would be closed for two weeks was gone, and the door was unlocked. I poked my head inside.

  Wearing black cords and a black turtleneck, Jenn was near the front, folding sweaters. Her long blond hair was tied back in a low ponytail. “Hi, Emily.” She looked surprisingly in control of herself.

  “I won’t come in,” I said. “I have the cat with me, on her leash.”

  “That’s okay. We don’t have to worry about a food license.”