Goodbye Cruller World

by Ginger Bolton

  Passenmath’s face reddened again. “I didn’t say that. And your shop was thoroughly cleaned before the investigators could have gotten here. I’ll let you detect your own conclusions from that. Meanwhile, I suppose you two will find out all you want from some loose-lipped detective on the Fallingbrook force.”

  Tom turned on his police-chief stare and aimed it at her.

  I wanted to laugh. Brent, also known as Mr. Mmp, loose-lipped? To be fair, Brent probably did tell me more than he would have told a random person wandering around the streets of Fallingbrook. Brent had thanked me for some of the information I’d given him. But, I thought uncharitably, Yvonne Passenmath would probably rather have a murder go unsolved than let a civilian, especially one she disliked, help solve it.

  Maybe I was being a smidge unfair. Besides, as far as I could tell, Yvonne disliked nearly everyone.

  She wasn’t done with me yet. “I understand that you took donuts to an event last night, Ms. Westhill. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What were the ingredients?” she asked.

  Tom could probably tell from the look on my face that I was struggling not to make sarcastic remarks about poisons. He quickly listed the ingredients.

  Passenmath asked me, “Did anyone eat a lot of them?”

  “Most women ate only one or two. Some might have had as many as half a dozen, while others didn’t get any.”

  Jenn had been right in her description of Passenmath. The surly detective really did have beady eyes, and they were getting beadier by the second. “One woman, who had not eaten dinner while there, collapsed after eating your donuts, is that right?”

  “Jenn Zeeland’s half-sister.”

  Passenmath corrected me. “Jennifer Zeeland’s last name is now Banchen.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, Detective Passenmath.” I didn’t think it came out as sarcasm, but Passenmath glowered as if I’d insulted her. I ignored the glower. “Suzanne ate a donut, only one, as far as I could tell, and she collapsed, but I doubt that the donut had anything to do with her fainting. The room was stuffy, and she might not have had anything to eat or drink for hours.”

  Passenmath demanded, “Do you have any of those donuts left?”

  “No,” Tom answered, “but I could whip up a batch for you.”

  Passenmath placed her palms on the table, her fingers pointing at each other, her arms out from her shoulders, and her elbows bent as if she were trying to make herself look bigger and more powerful than Tom. And if that weren’t menacing enough, she leaned forward. “That would be completely useless. I want to test the donuts that were at the event, not a new batch. And unfortunately, the victim did not present herself at the hospital after she became ill, or save part of her donut for us to test.”

  It seemed to me that saving a piece of food in case one became ill from it later would be a little strange, but I only said that Officer Houlihan had taken the bakery boxes that had contained the donuts as evidence. I asked, “Did any crumbs in those boxes contain anything that might make someone faint?”

  Passenmath snapped, “I’m not answering that.”

  Tom was braver than I was. He had a quick comeback. “In other words, the boxes that Emily took from here to the event tested negative for toxic substances.”

  Passenmath stood up. “I have work to do.” In her heavy shoes, she stomped out without doing what I’d feared she’d come to do, especially after she’d said that some of the gloves I’d handled had arsenic on them. She didn’t arrest me.

  Tom locked the door behind her. Passenmath struggled into the driver’s seat of an unmarked cruiser. Shaking his head and muttering words, some of which sounded like “big” and “britches,” Tom returned to the kitchen.

  We finished tidying and then joined Dep in the office. Dep brought Tom a bedraggled catnip mouse to admire. The three of us, minus the soggy toy, put in an order for flour and sugar, and then Tom left, promising to say hello to Cindy for me.

  Suzanne had said that she and Jenn and I should get together after the previous evening’s presentation to discuss anything we might learn in Vanessa Legghaupt’s studio, but then Suzanne had fainted and gone home to rest and Jenn had canceled the meeting. Although we’d texted each other after my presentation, Jenn and I hadn’t planned another tea party in the office of Dressed to Kill.

  However, I saw no reason not to present myself, with a box of donuts, at the shop’s back door.

  Chapter 27

  I double-checked, and we truly didn’t have any donuts besides crullers coated in confectioners’ sugar. Hoping that I wasn’t being insensitive and that seeing crullers wouldn’t remind Jenn too strongly of Roger’s death, I tucked six of them into a bakery box. In the office, I put on one of the cardigans I’d bought from Jenn, a heathery gray fisherman’s knit. I told Dep, “I’ll be back soon.”

  Dep climbed up to the catwalk encircling the room above the windows.

  I locked her inside and went out. Chad’s car was still in the back of the parking lot.

  Through one of the back windows of Dressed to Kill, I saw Suzanne sitting at her desk and hunched over, apparently concentrating on her computer screen. I waved. Her head jerked up as if I’d startled her. Maybe she wasn’t expecting me, after all.

  I pointed at the bakery box. She nodded, stood up, and left the office.

  Seconds later, the door’s bolt scraped back with a noise that made my teeth feel furry.

  Suzanne opened the door and stood back for me to enter. She was in the blue and white floral-printed dress she’d been wearing when I first saw her, the day before Jenn’s wedding, when Suzanne was dashing out of Dressed to Kill after her argument with Jenn. This time, though, Suzanne’s stiletto-heeled boots were zipped up. I asked how she was feeling.

  “Fine.”

  “No lingering effects from fainting last night?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea what caused it?”

  She shrugged and turned around. Surely, she didn’t believe that any of the tiny vegan donuts I’d taken to Vanessa’s had been poisoned. I couldn’t figure out a way of asking her that wouldn’t sound rude or accusatory, so I silently followed her into the office. The table wasn’t set.

  I explained, “We didn’t have a chance to get together last night after we were at Vanessa’s, so I brought these in case you two had time for one of our tea party meetings tonight. If not, I’ll just leave them here.” I set the box of crullers on the bare white table. “But I need to tell you what Gerald Stone asked me today.”

  “We have time, if Jenn can pull herself away from those chattering women out front.” She went back to her desk and shut down her computer. “Did Gerald ask you out?”

  I shook my head so swiftly that my neck hurt. “Nothing like that!” Maybe my denial was too forceful to be believable, but going out with Gerald Stone, who was old enough to be my father? Ew. “Gerald Stone doesn’t have a good alibi for early Sunday morning, and he seemed to be offering to provide one for me if I’d reciprocate.”

  She stood up from her computer. “Did you agree?”

  “Of course not. But he came across as desperate for an alibi.”

  “Getting someone to lie to give you an alibi is illegal. It’s one more fact we have against him.”

  “He didn’t come right out and try to make a bargain with me, but the hint was definitely there.”

  “He did it,” Suzanne stated. “He killed Roger, and he doesn’t care if Jenn’s blamed, and he’ll kill her, too, if he can.”

  Based on the fondness I’d thought I detected in Gerald Stone’s eyes when he was talking about Jenn as a little girl, I wasn’t sure that Stone was a threat to Jenn. Maybe, in addition to killing Roger to end Roger’s blackmailing, he had killed Roger in a misguided attempt to protect Jenn. But that would still have been creepy, and again mentioning Stone’s possible stalking could increase Suzanne’s worries about her younger sister. I changed the subject. “Is Jenn driving C
had’s car to and from work?”

  Suzanne opened a drawer underneath the kitchen counter and took out turquoise place mats. “What do you mean?”

  “That red car in the back of the parking lot. I thought it was the one that Chad drove on Friday when he came to Deputy Donut.”

  She slapped three place mats onto the table. “Could be. I don’t pay attention to cars. So what if it is? That doesn’t mean that Chad harmed Roger. He didn’t have to if he wanted Jenn back. Chad’s a good guy.”

  I agreed.

  She went to the office doorway. Standing on one foot with the other knee bent at a right angle and held out behind her as if for balance, she clutched the doorjamb and peered around it toward the front of the store. Jenn and other women were talking and laughing out there. Hanging on to the jamb with both hands, Suzanne put her foot down and turned halfway back toward me. “I warned Jenn to stay away from Chad until they incarcerate Roger’s killer. I also told her, long ago, that Roger was bad news. But I have to give her some credit. She is sensible, most of the time. Roger obviously had some good points or she would not have married him.” She came back into the office. “That beady-eyed detective was here again today, and I think she went to your shop right afterward.”

  “Yvonne Passenmath was talking to Tom and me a few minutes ago. That’s why I’m late to our usual meeting.”

  “Did you tell her that Gerald wanted you and him to give each other alibis?”

  “I told her that he’d made that hint.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t think she took it seriously.” My face probably showed my frustration.

  Suzanne seemed to be listening to the women in the shop, but she must have given up on making out their words. She spoke again, in a low voice. “That female detective is still convinced that spouses are the most likely killers. In her mind, that means that no one besides a spouse would kill, so she doesn’t have to take any other suspects seriously.”

  “She does seem to have a one-track mind, but maybe what I said about Gerald will start her thinking more about the evidence against him.”

  “Maybe.” Suzanne’s face went blotchy. Was she embarrassed? Or was she angry? “Did you tell her about Jenn driving—allegedly driving—Chad’s car?”

  “I’m sure the police have already figured out a lot about everyone who was at the reception. Have they given Jenn’s car back?”

  “No.”

  “So they won’t be surprised if they find out that Jenn’s borrowing a friend’s car. Do they still have your car, too?”

  Suzanne came back into the kitchenette portion of their office and peeked into the bakery box. “Yes, and I don’t know why they’re keeping them so long. That beady-eyed detective said they haven’t found anything in our cars. Keeping them this long is just another way that female detective is harassing Jenn.” Suzanne opened a cabinet above the counter, took out clear glass plates with scallops around the edges, and put them on the place mats. “Did they test your car and home?”

  “They tested the car I was driving that night and our shop, but not my home.” Ignoring Suzanne’s frown of disapproval, I asked, “Did investigators test your home, and Jenn’s?”

  “Yes. Of course they didn’t find anything.” Suzanne turned the three glass plates so that their scalloped edges lined up on the place mats the same way, the division between two scallops on the plates neatly centered with the middle of the backs of the chairs. “I noticed that the beady-eyed detective kindly waited to go to your shop after you closed,” she said, “but she came into ours and insisted on questioning Jenn here, in the office, while we were still open. For some reason, she thought that would be okay, and that I could cope with customers by myself while she interrogated Jenn. We probably lost at least one sale, since I’m not as good as Jenn is at manipulating people into buying things they don’t need.”

  “I’m sure you did fine.” I was sounding as encouraging as Vanessa Legghaupt usually did. Was I becoming a phony?

  Suzanne shivered. “That female detective is cherry-picking things to make Jenn look guilty, and ignoring every fact that points to anyone else.”

  “I think she also suspects Gerald Stone, but not maybe as much as she suspects Tom and me, especially me.”

  “You’d never know it by the things she asks us and says to us. For instance, on Saturday night, Jenn and I were under a lot of stress. Roger was drinking too much, and maybe Jenn had too much to drink, also, and I’m not used to even those few sips of champagne I had during the toasts. Plus, we were tired from weeks of working hard to make certain that everything about the wedding, reception, and honeymoon would be perfect, and Jenn was stressed about the packing she still had to do before their trip. Jenn and I left the reception around midnight. That DCI detective seemed to think that meant we were up to no good. We only went to the ladies’ room. We were in cubicles, and people were coming and going, and I didn’t feel well, and I stayed there for a long time. Maybe I even fell asleep for a few minutes. When that male detective asked me where I was during that time, I told him, but I also said that Jenn was with me the entire time. I thought she was. We were talking to each other when we first got to the ladies’ room and also about the time I started feeling well enough to leave.”

  I’d never heard so many words in a row pour out of Suzanne’s mouth.

  Although breathing heavily, she kept talking. “It turned out that Jenn had tried to get Roger to stop drinking by going out and waiting for him in his car. I didn’t know when she left the ladies’ room, and as far as I knew, she’d done what I’d told the police, stayed to keep me company since I wasn’t feeling well. So those detectives think I was lying to give Jenn an alibi when, as far as I knew, I was telling the honest truth.”

  Brent and I had noticed that a black sports car had been fogged up, and Brent had later confirmed that the black car had belonged to Roger. Did Jenn actually go to Roger’s car right away, or did she first spend time in Chad’s car with him? Chad’s car was bright red. If Gerald Stone was to be believed, which could be a big if, a woman wearing lots of white was helping steam up the windows of a bright red car at about twelve fifteen.

  Jenn probably hadn’t wanted to admit, even to the police during a murder investigation, that she’d been with her old boyfriend in his car while her wedding reception was still going on.

  Suzanne tapped the corner of the box of crullers, nudging it closer to the center of the table. “And then there’s the money. Jenn knew that Roger had money, but she never dreamed it would be so much, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have killed the man she loved for it.”

  The evening before the wedding, Jenn had told me that Suzanne had tried to get Jenn to cancel the wedding and had called Jenn a gold digger. For very good reasons, Suzanne was probably not about to repeat the accusation that she’d made in the heat of an argument.

  Suzanne folded three paper napkins into rectangles and set them beside the plates. “Before the wedding, Jenn started looking into renting a larger retail space in a mall south of town.”

  “You’re moving away from here? I’ll miss you.” I wasn’t sure about missing Suzanne. I meant the store and Jenn and Jenn’s wonderful sweaters. “Though maybe I’ll save money if I can’t pop into Dressed to Kill and buy another sweater every few days.” It was an exaggeration. Not a huge one.

  Suzanne unfolded the napkins and refolded them in triangles. “It’s not finalized yet. Jenn was toying with the idea, and maybe she won’t do it, now that Roger’s gone, or maybe she’ll buy a building instead of renting one. I’d pitch in my half. I have savings from my days in an accounting firm.” She placed the napkins neatly beside the plates again. “We’d get a larger space than this so we could sell shoes and boots, too. I don’t know a thing about selling sweaters and jeans and cocktail dresses and down-filled jackets, but I do know about footwear. I would run that part of the business, displaying the shoes temptingly, helping people find exactly what they wanted, and I
would still have plenty of time to do the books. I feel like I’m not contributing enough, since Jenn’s the one with the creative ability.”

  And the people skills. But I didn’t say it. Maybe Suzanne took a while to warm up to people. For the first time in our short acquaintance, she was talking to me like she was a friend, not the prickly older sister of a friend. But how would she treat strangers who came into her store wanting shoes, boots, and slippers? I knew from experience that she could veer from silent to abrupt to socially awkward to visibly annoyed, hardly traits that were helpful in retail sales.

  Her stiletto heels resounding against the tile floor, Suzanne circled the table and rubbed her thumb along the napkins’ creases. “So that female detective got wind that Jenn was looking at larger retail spaces, and the detective had the gall to suggest that Jenn was shopping around because Jenn was planning to kill Roger so she could inherit his money. Jenn got hot under the collar and told that detective that Roger would have lent her money if she needed it.” Suzanne’s hands balled into fists. “But that DCI detective starts seeing things one way, and she doesn’t change her opinion, no matter what really happened. She should be going after Gerald Stone, especially after what you just told me about him, and if those two women we saw last night truly have the alibi that the life coach said they did.”

  “Maybe Detective Passenmath will spiral in on Gerald Stone yet,” I said. “This morning in Deputy Donut, after I made it clear to Stone that the police already knew where I’d been early Sunday morning and that I could not have seen Stone driving away from Little Lake Lodge, he basically told me the same thing he’d told you, that he’d gone to the reception to look after Jenn and her wedding presents.”

  “Totally a fiction. I went out with him last night after I started feeling better.”

  “Suzanne! He could be dangerous.”

  “You and Jenn keep harping on that.”

  “Does he know where you live?”

  “Not unless someone told him.” She pierced me with a look. “I didn’t.”