Goodbye Cruller World

by Ginger Bolton

  “Right. But Vanessa said that on Saturday night, she had cravings for chocolate. What does Passenmath think of their alibi?”

  “I don’t think she feels the need to confirm the alibi that the two women provided for each other. It supports her theory that the bride murdered the groom.”

  I groaned. “I still don’t think she—or any bride—would go to such lengths to kill her bridegroom in a public place. Women poison their husbands, but not at resorts.”

  “It can happen anywhere.”

  “I suppose. And I suppose I’m not helping Jenn’s case by confirming Vanessa’s and April’s alibi. Well, Vanessa’s. I didn’t confirm April’s. I located the store where Vanessa bought the chocolate bars, and I also found two women who remember Vanessa buying them. They ID’d her by her photo, and they also remembered the wording on the tote bag she was carrying.”

  “What are you doing—oh, never mind, you’ll tell me later.”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “It is.” But his voice was kind, and he wasn’t scaring me. He became more serious. “Where are these women who remember Ms. Legghaupt buying the chocolate bars?”

  “In a convenience store north on the state highway. There’s a gas station with it. And a motel.”

  “What’s the name of the motel?”

  I wriggled around in my seat to read the sign. “Believe it or not, it’s the Teddy Beddy-Bye-Bye Motel.”

  “I know it.” I reminded myself that he knew the somewhat seedy-looking motel as a detective, not necessarily as a patron. “We haven’t yet collected surveillance video files that far north. I’m off duty, but I’ll be right up to question the two women and check for videos. You said the women are in the convenience store?”

  “And they look like mother and daughter. One’s about in her fifties, the other about in her thirties, both with square faces and purplish red hair. I can wait for you, or go ask them to wait for you.”

  “I’d rather you left the police work to the police.” I knew that was an understatement. “Besides, Dep’s still howling for you to come home.”

  We disconnected and I started the engine. “Thanks, Dep,” I grumbled as I pulled into the southbound lane of the highway. “But wouldn’t it be simpler for Brent if I just stayed here? What if those two women finish their shift and another square-faced mother-daughter pair replace them? Brent’s questions will mystify them.”

  Talking to my cat in her presence was one thing. Talking to her when she was miles away was probably another.

  I turned on the radio and sang along.

  I was almost halfway back to Fallingbrook when I realized that I hadn’t given Brent a chance to explain why he’d dropped by my house at almost eight thirty at night or why he’d gone to the door after noticing that my car wasn’t parked in its usual spot.

  A sleek dark car zoomed north past me. Brent in an unmarked police cruiser? I hoped that he and Passenmath would soon figure out—correctly—who had murdered Roger and arrest the culprit. I was pretty sure, if Vanessa’s and April’s alibi held up, that the culprit was Gerald Stone. He and Roger had known each other fifteen years ago, and from the sound of the stories that Roger had told Jenn and that Gerald had told Suzanne, the relationship between the two men had been at best uneasy and at worst murderous.

  At home, Dep studiously ignored me until after I crawled under the covers and turned off the light. She was totally silent, but a warm, slight weight landed on my shins, and then the purring began.

  * * *

  On Monday morning, I didn’t know if Brent had confirmed Vanessa’s and April’s chocolate-bingeing alibi, but whatever he had discovered at the gas station and convenience store at Teddy Beddy-Bye-Bye Motel, it apparently hadn’t been enough to narrow in on Gerald Stone and arrest him. The former pharmacist came into Deputy Donut at eight thirty, about half an hour before the weekday morning group of retired men usually arrived

  He sat at their table. Again, he wanted the day’s featured coffee, a medium roast from Timor. When I told him about its full body and slightly spicy overtones, I couldn’t help remembering Chad, the aftershave he’d worn on Saturday night, and the way he seemed to radiate kindness, along with the flirting.

  I still couldn’t see Chad as someone who would murder to get his old girlfriend back. As Suzanne had said, Chad could have simply asked Jenn to return to him.

  Gerald Stone, with his alleged history of selling prescription drugs illegally and attempting to poison Roger, seemed like a more probable killer.

  But I couldn’t fault Gerald Stone for his donut choice. Again, he was adventurous, opting for a raised donut filled with a sweet yet pungent tamarind sauce. When I brought him the order, the other men still hadn’t arrived. “Say,” Stone said, “didn’t I see you at Little Lake Lodge on a Saturday, just over a week ago? Bringing donuts to a wedding reception?”

  I restrained myself from taking a step away from him. “Yes.”

  Stone’s back was to the kitchen, so he wouldn’t have been able to see Tom watching us. Stone asked me, “Were you still there when the groom fell ill?”

  “Yes. Were you?” I knew that, shortly after Roger collapsed, Stone had been gone from his chair near the delivery door.

  Stone’s ruddy face turned redder. “Not that I know of. I left about twelve fifteen, and apparently leaving at that hour was enough to arouse suspicion in the minds of Fallingbrook’s finest. And the Division of Criminal Investigation’s finest, too.”

  “They have to consider everyone who was there,” I said.

  “Do they suspect you, too?” I thought I detected a gleam of hope in his eyes.

  “I’m afraid so.” I was wary of telling our customers that our donuts were suspected, even though the police had to be certain that only a few crullers had been poisoned and that they’d been poisoned after I delivered them to Little Lake Lodge.

  Stone asked me, “Do you have an alibi?”

  “I had joined the dancing and the party. Lots of people saw me.”

  Stone looked glum. “I was hoping maybe you’d say you’d driven away around twelve fifteen and saw me driving away, too. I could have seen you driving away, you know.” He tilted his head and glanced at me from under half-closed eyelids.

  Was Gerald Stone actually asking me to make up a story that would give us both alibis?

  “You couldn’t have,” I told him firmly. “I was there until after one thirty Sunday morning, and I didn’t drive away. I was taken away in a police cruiser.”

  He sighed. “I guess I didn’t see you, then.”

  You got that right, I thought to myself. Sorry. Except I wasn’t sorry. There was no way I would lie to give a possible killer an alibi.

  Stone shook his head. “Most folks who were there probably have an alibi, but the best I could come up with, if it wasn’t you I saw, was noticing the bride steaming up the insides of a car with someone I figured was the groom. I told the DCI detective that, but she said the bride didn’t report seeing me and it couldn’t have been the groom. Well, stands to reason the bride didn’t see me, the way she and her companion were steaming up the windows. And I told the DCI detective that the car was red, and she didn’t believe that, either. She reminded me that I’d said the parking lot was da
  “The staff parking lot?” I asked. “The one on the hill?”

  “That’s where I parked. And—get this—that DCI detective checked the phases of the moon, and it was only a thin crescent that night, and had set two hours earlier, besides. She claimed I couldn’t tell if the car was red because all dark cars look black at night. But I always carry a small flashlight when I’m working security. I didn’t shine it inside the car, but I know that car was red. Bright red.”

  I wondered if Stone had seen Chad drop Jenn off behind her store on Friday morning. Knowing that the police could be focusing on him, Stone could be concocting stories about Chad and Jenn to make one of them look guilty. Or both of them.

  However, if S
tone had seen Jenn and Chad together, maybe he could provide both of them with an alibi. He seemed to think that seeing her at twelve fifteen exonerated him, but he was the one who had been, as far as I knew, in the service corridor about the time that the murderer entered the banquet hall’s back door with a saucer and about a half cup of arsenic. “How do you know it was the bride in the car?” I asked.

  “If it wasn’t the bride, it was someone wearing a bunch of white curtains.” He shook his head. “That bride. Such a sweet little thing she was.”

  “She was?” Was he saying that she was no longer sweet? Did he believe she had run back into the lodge and poisoned her new bridegroom? Maybe he wanted me to draw that conclusion.

  That didn’t seem to be it. He explained, “I knew her a long time ago, when she was in grade school.” His eyes softened. “She was cute as a button.” He leaned closer.

  I shot a quick look toward Tom. He was still watching us.

  Stone spoke in a lower tone. “No one hired me to work at Little Lake Lodge that night. I went there because I sensed that the sweet little girl, even though she was now grown up, might need someone there to watch over her. Anyone could have whipped out that back entrance with wedding gifts. People sometimes give cash, you know. Completely untraceable if stolen. But when I saw the bride in that car, steaming up the windows with the man I thought was the groom, I decided that, as far as she was concerned, the reception was over and the honeymoon had begun, and all of the wedding gifts were probably in a safe place. It was after midnight, so I went home.”

  I wasn’t about to ask him to explain why, if he thought he was guarding the back entrance of the lodge, he left his post and explored the staff parking lot.

  Still, he had told me basically the same story he’d told Suzanne, but it was substantially different from the explanation he’d given Brent. And I knew that Brent hadn’t lied about what he’d heard. Apparently, Suzanne hadn’t, either. I wanted to ask Stone if he’d explained all of it to the police, but I wasn’t sure how to word the question without letting him know I had at least one friend in Fallingbrook’s law-enforcement community. Not only that, I didn’t want to help a possible murderer tailor his story to make himself look innocent.

  The other retired men came in and sat with Stone. I took their orders and then scooted to the kitchen to fill them.

  “Everything okay?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, but I don’t trust him.”

  “Good. Don’t.” He lifted a basket of golden-brown donuts from the fryer. They smelled luscious.

  Later, cleaning the Knitpickers’ table so they could knit without creating sticky sweaters, hats, and scarves, I spotted Chad’s car coming from the north on Wisconsin Street. No one was in the passenger seat, and I couldn’t see the driver. The car slowed at the driveway leading to the parking lots behind Deputy Donut and Dressed to Kill.

  I quickly took the dirty dishes to the kitchen and then went to the office. Dep stretched and meowed. I was going to need to wash my hands after handling dishes, anyway, so I obeyed Dep’s command and picked her up. Her fur was warm and soft. She started purring.

  Chad’s car was near the back of the lot behind Dressed to Kill. Jenn got out of the driver’s seat and hurried to her shop’s rear door. It was Monday, so Chad should be teaching. Apparently, Jenn’s car still hadn’t been returned to her and she was borrowing Chad’s.

  In the afternoon, Misty, Scott, and Hooligan Houlihan all showed up for their breaks and sat together at a big table with a couple of Scott’s firefighters. Hooligan blushed when I asked for his order, and I didn’t think he was blushing at the sight of me. I hoped I’d made him remember meeting Samantha, and that Samantha was the cause of his blushes.

  As always, Scott gave us all equal attention—me, Misty, Hooligan, and Scott’s firefighters. When they left, though, Scott held the door open for Misty, and then he walked up Wisconsin Street beside her, trailing Hooligan and the firefighters, who appeared to be carrying on the vehement discussion they’d started in Deputy Donut about which baseball team had the best shot at winning the World Series.

  After the last customer left for the evening, Tom and I started cleaning up. Something caught his attention near the front of the store. “Oh, murder,” he said.

  As I turned to look, the pounding began.

  Great. Yvonne Passenmath had returned, and she did not look happy.

  Chapter 26

  But then, Yvonne Passenmath never looked happy.

  “I’ll let her in,” Tom said.

  He unlocked the door and opened it.

  Passenmath marched inside. Today’s rumpled pantsuit was navy blue, and her curls hadn’t frizzed. “I need to talk to Ms. Westhill,” she announced in a grumpy voice.

  I joined the other two in the dining area and gestured at one of our glossy tree-slice tables. “Have a seat. Would you like a donut?” I didn’t tell her that all we had left at the end of the day were crullers dipped in confectioners’ sugar. I knew they were delicious and not tainted with arsenic, but I kind of hoped she would turn down the offer, anyway. Discovering that Tom and I did, sometimes, coat crullers with confectioners’ sugar might make her decide that on Saturday night we had coated crullers with a powder that resembled sugar but wasn’t. “Coffee or tea?”

  “I’m not here to eat or drink.” She looked toward the office. Dep was puffed up in the window, which apparently made Yvonne less eager to carry on the interview in Dep’s domain. Yvonne sat at the table. I sat, too, and so did Tom.

  Yvonne glared at him, but she didn’t send him away. She took out her notebook and pen. “We checked all of the gloves in the wastebasket you left at Little Lake Lodge, Ms. Westhill.”

  I smiled. “Emily.”

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And nearly every single one of them has at least a partial of your handprint and/or fingerprints on what was originally the inside, plus your fingerprints on what was originally the outside.”

  I nodded encouragingly. “That’s not surprising. The person who brought the arsenic could have brought his or her own gloves.”

  “Could have,” she said, “but a few of the gloves that you wore had grains of arsenic on them, some on the insides and some on the outsides.” She grasped the cover of her notebook as if she was about to close it and terminate the interview. And perhaps the case.

  Tom gave me a look as if to warn me to let him take over. “That’s not surprising, either,” he said. “You told me you found a plastic bag with arsenic in it inside the wastebasket. Grains of arsenic could have spilled out of that bag when the murderer tossed it. Whose fingerprints were on the bag?”

  Yvonne flushed. “No one’s. If there were fingerprints on that bag, they were wiped.” She didn’t close the notebook.

  Tom reminded her, “You didn’t find arsenic in our shop, our car, or Emily’s clothing. Did you check anyone else’s car?”

  “All of the suspects’ cars.”

  “Gerald Stone’s?” I asked. “I saw him at the delivery entrance of Little Lake Lodge around ten that evening, and when I peeked out into that corridor at twelve thirty, he was gone. He was in here this morning.” I pointed at the table where he’d sat. “He . . .” I frowned. “He seemed to be asking me to say that I’d seen him driving back to Fallingbrook at twelve fifteen Sunday morning. I didn’t see him. I couldn’t have. I was at the lodge.”

  Tom leaned forward, elbows on the table as if he were still a police officer questioning witnesses. “You didn’t tell me about that, Emily.”

  “I was going to when I got a chance.”

  Tom seemed to be pretending that Yvonne Passenmath wasn’t there. “Let me get this straight. Was Gerald Stone actually asking you to give him an alibi?”

  “He didn’t know at first, until I told him, that I already had one, and he didn’t come right out and offer to give me an alibi if I’d give him one, but that’s the way it sounded to me.”

  “Conjecture,” Passenmath blustered.

&
nbsp; Tom nodded. “But interesting.”

  I added, “Stone hoped he had an alibi. He saw the bride and a man inside a car, steaming up the windows at twelve fifteen Sunday morning.”

  Tom broke in again. “Didn’t you just say he wanted you to say you’d seen him driving home at twelve fifteen?”

  “Approximately,” I answered. “He saw the bride and a man—he assumed it was the groom—when he was on his way to his car in the staff parking lot.” I glanced at Yvonne Passenmath. “But he said the bride denied seeing him then. Not that it would have mattered. No one could have been watching him all evening. I’d seen him just inside the delivery entrance around ten, but I didn’t look out there again until twelve thirty. He had disappeared by then. In the meantime, he could have come and gone from his car several times. He could have brought a bag of arsenic into the lodge in his briefcase or a pocket. And here’s another strange thing.” I repeated the reason Gerald Stone gave me for acting as a security guard at Little Lake Lodge during Jenn’s reception. “He said when he saw the bride steaming up a car with someone, he figured the wedding presents were safe, and he decided to go home. That doesn’t explain why he was already in the parking lot on the way to his car when he made that decision.”

  The corners of her mouth dipping downward, DCI Agent Passenmath reclaimed control of the interview. “I’m not going to make baseless guesses about people going to and from their cars, and I’m not going to tell you whose cars and homes we’ve searched. I don’t give civilians details that should remain secret.”

  Nodding in apparent approval, Tom slipped back into his role as a civilian. “We appreciate that. I’m guessing that if you found even the slightest bit of arsenic in a potential suspect’s car or home or on their clothing, you’d be looking very carefully at that person.” Well, maybe he hadn’t completely gone back to being only a civilian.

  She gave him a withering glance. “Of course we would.”

  Tom persisted, “But you haven’t found any arsenic other than at the scene and in and around the victim.”