Goodbye Cruller World

by Ginger Bolton

  I defended myself. “I wondered if someone had arrived while Jenn and I were outside, that’s all.”

  Suzanne informed me in frosty tones, “The only other people would be customers, and if there were any, they’d have come in the front, and you two would have seen them and sold them something.”

  Unless she was lying, and Chad or Gerald had left or one of them was hiding somewhere in the back hallway or the basement, Suzanne was the only person who could have put the obviously doctored cruller at my usual place. What was the extra white powder on it? And had she been hoping that I would eat it?

  But I’d sat in Jenn’s usual seat, and Suzanne had immediately switched to the chair I’d occupied other evenings, and she’d been in such a hurry that she’d nearly tipped over her own chair. And her face had developed those red splotches that seemed to show that she was angry or upset.

  The only Deputy Donut treat that I’d ever seen her eat, besides coffee with Gerald Stone, was that one tiny donut at Vanessa’s studio. Other than that, she had never touched one, not even to remove it from a box and put it on a plate, at our afternoon tea parties.

  So, either she wanted that sugary-looking cruller for herself, or she was afraid that Jenn might sit in my usual place, and she didn’t want Jenn to eat that particular cruller.

  My own face seemed to flame, and I could hardly breathe. I tried not to stare at Suzanne.

  Had Suzanne, not Gerald, coated crullers for Roger in extra white powder?

  The alibi that Suzanne had provided for Jenn would have been Suzanne’s alibi, also, if Jenn hadn’t told the police a different story when they questioned her in the hospital.

  I barely noticed Jenn and Suzanne discussing ideas for changing the displays in the store’s front windows. I was pondering the supposed alibi that Suzanne had given the police.

  Maybe Suzanne had left the ladies’ room shortly after Jenn did. Before Jenn returned to the ladies’ room, Suzanne would have had plenty of time to poison the crullers the way I’d described to Yvonne Passenmath and then sneak back to the ladies’ room. Suzanne might not have known that Jenn would return. She would only have needed someone else to notice her in the ladies’ room, and if she had to later, she could claim she’d been in that cubicle from midnight until whatever time she needed for a believable alibi. Maybe she’d hoped that Roger would die after he left the lodge, the saucer of arsenic would be discarded when the banquet hall was being cleaned up, and no one would realize that Roger had ingested poison at the lodge.

  But why would Suzanne have wanted to kill Roger?

  The day before the wedding, Jenn had told me that Suzanne had hated Roger and had been adamant that Jenn should cancel the wedding.

  Also, it had seemed to me that Suzanne’s description of buying a bigger store and adding footwear to the inventory had been enthusiastic, especially for Suzanne. Had she figured out a way of eliminating Roger and benefiting from his wealth?

  And had Suzanne’s “information gathering” really been an attempt to discover whatever she could about other suspects—Gerald Stone, Vanessa, April, and me—that could divert attention from her and point to one of us as a murderer? Had her fainting after she ate one of Tom’s and my tiny donuts been faked, another ploy to make me, and possibly Tom, look guilty?

  If she truly believed that Gerald Stone was a killer, would she have gone out alone with him? Wouldn’t joining him for coffee in Deputy Donut with Tom and me plus a room full of coffee- and donut-mongers, many of them police officers, have been enough? Her lack of caution around Gerald Stone could mean that she knew he had not murdered Roger. One surefire way for her to be positive about that would be if she herself were the sole killer.

  I was definitely not going to eat or drink anything in Dressed to Kill.

  Suzanne was arguing that the antique sleds and skis in the front windows should be painted red and green, not white, for the Christmas display.

  She didn’t touch the extra-white cruller on the plate in front of where I usually sat, and I didn’t touch the one at Jenn’s place, although it looked fine. The tea was still hot. I cradled my cup in both hands as if trying to warm them. Conjectures and plans collided in my brain.

  Jenn asked, “Emily, aren’t red and green together sometimes a little much? They almost clash.”

  “Just red then, or just green,” Suzanne snapped. “The white could be blinding.”

  “You might try the palest of blues,” I suggested, “like snow at dusk.”

  Looking somewhere beyond my head, Jenn smiled.

  “No,” Suzanne stated firmly. “I don’t like that.”

  My phone rang. I set the teacup down and checked the display.

  Brent.

  “Sorry, I’ll have to take this,” I told Jenn and Suzanne.

  Jenn nodded.

  Suzanne simply watched me. Were her eyes always that cold?

  I considered telling the two sisters that reception was bad and I had to take the call outside, but if that one cruller was as dangerous as I suspected, I wasn’t about to leave it behind for Jenn or Suzanne to eat, and I wasn’t about to touch it or take it anywhere with me, either. “Hi, Brent,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. In front of Suzanne, I couldn’t tell him that I was afraid she was trying to poison me, so I merely stammered, “I found out more about Gerald Stone. I’m with Suzanne and Jenn at Dressed to Kill. Suzanne talked to Gerald Stone, and what she found out makes us suspect that someone had been blackmailing him.”

  Brent spoke more quietly than usual. “You and I already discussed that possibility. Does she have hard evidence?”

  I couldn’t send him the visual signal—brush my hair off my forehead and then tug on my earlobe—that he knew for “rescue me.” I said, “You’re right. I’m conking myself on the forehead. Next thing you know, I’ll be tugging on my—”

  “Em!” His whispered interruption was urgent. “Do you need help?”

  “Good thinking!” I was still trying to sound upbeat, even though my involuntary trembling was undoubtedly affecting my voice. “Talk to you later.”

  “See you soon,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ll call for backup on my way. Stay on the phone.”

  I wasn’t sure I could, considering that I had a more pressing need for my phone. Not wanting Brent to worry, I chirped, “You’re breaking up.”

  I put my phone, its camera face up, on my lap and set it to record a video. Nothing would be visible in the video besides the underside of Jenn and Suzanne’s cute table, but anything we said might be audible. With luck, when Brent attempted to return to our call we’d still be connected and he’d hear what was going on in the office of Dressed to Kill, but I feared that when I started the video, my phone had switched to camera mode. However, staying on the line with Brent wasn’t crucial. He would worry if I disconnected, but he was on his way. All I had to do while I waited for him was pretend to enjoy a companionable tea party.

  Jenn reached for the extra-white cruller on the plate in front of Suzanne.

  Suzanne snatched the plate away with the cruller still on it. “If you need two at once, get your own from the box,” she ordered, every inch the bossy big sister from TV and films.

  “I want the sugary one. Trade you!” Jenn spoke in a singsong like a sassy little sister.

  Suzanne plunked the too-white cruller onto my plate along with the one that I hadn’t touched. “Emily brought it. She should have it.” She stood, picked up her plate, and walked with a self-conscious and slightly jerky motion to the sink. She set the plate in the sink, washed her hands, and turned off the water. “When will you learn to let our guests have the best, Jenn? Why do you always have to grab the biggest, the juiciest, the sweetest of everything?”

  Her openmouthed gape matching the expression that I suspected was on my face, Jenn got up and came around the table toward me and my plate. “Since you spoiled me, Suzanne.” It was said in a singsong again, but I thought I saw the beginnings of panic on Jenn’s face.

&n
bsp; I was ready to move the plate out of Jenn’s reach or push her hand away if she came too close to the whitest cruller, but Suzanne swooped to the table, grabbed my plate, and threw the two crullers into the trash, pretty glass plate and all.

  Jenn accused, “You threw out Great-Grandma Zeeland’s plate!”

  “Oh, sorry.” Suzanne’s scowl had more to do with anger than apology. “I forgot those ugly plates once belonged to your father’s grandmother. I’ll get it later.” She leaned back, resting her hips against the counter.

  But Jenn burst out crying. “You poisoned Roger and now you’re trying to poison Emily. Roger was my husband and Emily is my friend.”

  Suzanne taunted, “There you go again with your crybaby act. I was just testing Emily with a donut covered in extra sugar to see if she suspected us of poisoning Roger. She avoided sitting at the place where I put it, so obviously, she does suspect us.”

  Jenn asked through her tears, “Why would you think you need to test Emily’s suspicions unless you’re guilty yourself?”

  Her big sister told her, “Don’t be silly.”

  I suggested as evenly as I could with my teeth clenched together, “You can prove you weren’t trying to poison me by retrieving those crullers and eating them yourself.”

  Suzanne lifted one bony shoulder. “I don’t eat garbage, which, by the way, your donuts are even before they’re thrown out.”

  Jenn scolded, “Suzanne!”

  “I’m only speaking the truth.”

  Jenn retorted, “You’re being rude.”

  Suzanne folded her arms. “How do you know that Emily didn’t poison the crullers that Roger ate, the donut I ate last night, and the crullers she brought over just now, when she wasn’t even invited?”

  “Because she wouldn’t.”

  “You’re standing up for a stranger while accusing me, your own sister.”

  Jenn wiped the sleeve of the pretty navy and turquoise sweater across her eyes. “I can always tell when you’re lying, Suzanne. There’s a reason you wouldn’t let me have the sugariest donut, and that’s because you put something on it that’s not sugar.” She headed for the wastebasket underneath the sink. “I’ll eat it.”

  Suzanne stopped her with both hands and held the cabinet door shut with a knee. “I never thought I’d have to tell you all these years later, when you are supposedly no longer a willful child, not to eat food out of the garbage.”

  Jenn backed away from her, toward their desks and the room’s rear windows. “You did it. You planned it ahead of time. You took arsenic to the reception, put it on some crullers, and fed them to Roger.”

  Suzanne stayed where she was, blocking the cabinet door in front of the wastebasket. “I did not feed them to Roger.”

  Jenn demanded, “What did you do, leave them somewhere for him to find? How could you be certain that no one else would come along and eat them?”

  “That wouldn’t have mattered. You weren’t anywhere near, and if someone else got sick, we’d have found a way to blame Roger. He would have gone to prison, and I’d have saved you from him by one method or another.”

  Jenn sobbed out, “You were going to let someone die, and then blame Roger? Like you’ve been blaming everyone else for Roger’s death?”

  “I told you to cancel the wedding, but you refused. I had to protect you.”

  Jenn shook her head. “No, you didn’t. And you didn’t have to try to hurt Emily. That makes no sense.”

  Suzanne pointed a long, bony forefinger at me. “She was figuring out too much, and she was going to tell her father-in-law or one of her cop customers, and I’d be charged with murder. Is that what you want, Jenn? Your big sister in jail?”

  “Of course not! But I also didn’t want my bridegroom to die and I don’t want Emily to be hurt. She’s been trying to help us, and you pay her back by trying to kill her?”

  “She’s a danger to us,” Suzanne said, almost offhandedly, as if I were an object, not a human. She strode past the back of my chair. Not wanting her to see my phone and possibly guess that I was recording the conversation, I leaned forward to hide my lap.

  Suzanne grabbed my left arm above the elbow and wrenched it up and back. Pain screamed through my shoulder, making it impossible for me to do anything besides gasp.

  She lifted me out of my chair. My phone slithered off my lap and landed on the tile floor. I hoped it had recorded the conversation so far. My chair wobbled and crashed down.

  Brent was on his way, I reminded myself.

  But Suzanne could do a lot of damage before he got there unless I stopped her.

  She was much taller than I was, but very thin and probably not as muscular or fit. Both hands grasping my upper arm, she pulled me toward the hall outside the office. I tried to hold back, but the soles of my shoes slid along the shiny tile floor. At the doorway, I grabbed at the jamb with my right hand. Suzanne stomped on my left instep with one of those stiletto heels and brought the heel of her left hand down hard on my right wrist, knocking my hand away from the jamb.

  Jenn shouted, “Suzanne, stop it!”

  “Too late.” Suzanne continued tugging me toward a closed door that I guessed led to the basement.

  Jenn dashed to me and yanked at my right forearm. “Let go, Suzanne. Think! What are you doing?”

  Now I was certain that rage, and not embarrassment, was causing the blotches on Suzanne’s face. “I am thinking. I always am, as you should know. I’m going to lock her in the basement. Gerald’s due any minute. He’s going down there with her, and you and I will tell the police that Gerald confessed to killing Roger and when Emily tried to stop him from hurting all three of us, they both fell down the basement stairs, and he set a fire down there, and they couldn’t get out.”

  Tears streamed down Jenn’s cheeks. “No, Suzanne, no. You’ll just make everything worse for yourself. You can’t hurt Emily and Gerald Stone. You can’t burn up everything that you and I worked for.”

  “Watch me. It’s not like we don’t have fire insurance. You’ll be covered.”

  Strands of Jenn’s hair stuck in the tears streaking down her face, probably making seeing difficult. With her free hand, she brushed the hair back. “But all those beautiful garments that I worked so hard to design and create. It’s like burning up my babies.”

  “Hardly.” Suzanne was panting, but her voice came out like ice.

  I was short of breath, too. I managed to ask Suzanne, “Did Gerald Stone have anything to do with poisoning Roger?”

  “Gerald harmed Roger years ago by tempting him with all that cash. He’s the one who turned Roger into a blackmailer, and into someone who thought that money was more important than everything else, including his fiancée.”

  I argued, “That isn’t what I asked.”

  But Suzanne ignored me and glared at her little sister. “You’d have been miserable with Roger.”

  Jenn let go of me and stood straighter, facing Suzanne. “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

  With only me struggling against her, Suzanne hauled me the rest of the short distance to the basement door. Holding my left wrist and twisting my arm high on my back, she reached up and undid the substantial bolt near the top of the frame. The door swung back against the wall and revealed a wonky wooden stairway leading down to a dark and gloomy basement.

  Chapter 30

  As if suddenly shaken out of her shock, Jenn shouted at her sister, “If you throw Emily down there, I’m going, too!”

  Suzanne’s grasp on my left arm faltered.

  She was closer to those stairs than I was.

  I hooked my left foot around her ankle and pulled it toward me while shoving hard at her shoulder with my right hand.

  Jenn rushed us.

  To my surprise, Jenn seized my arm again, pulling me away from the top of the steep stairway, and she also pushed Suzanne’s shoulder. I pivoted away from Suzanne, whose grip on my left arm had been the only thing keeping her balanced on the edge of the top step. She
stumbled backward down one step. Another . . .

  Her arms flailed. She grabbed the handrail.

  Her mouth grim and her eyes blazing, she started upward.

  I slammed the door and held it shut, but I was too short to reach the bolt. Shaking with sobs, Jenn worked it into place.

  Suzanne pounded on the door and rattled the knob. “Let me out!” She must have planned that I would tumble all the way down the steep stairs and end up unconscious or with too many broken bones to be able to find a way out. And then she was going to incapacitate Gerald Stone down there with me and start a fire.

  Suzanne was definitely not unconscious, and I didn’t know how long the door would resist her assault on it.

  I clutched Jenn’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  Fresh tears cascaded down Jenn’s cheeks. “No,” she whispered. “I have to stay with her.”

  Dashing into Dressed to Kill’s office, I shouted, “You need to leave! You’re not safe here!”

  Jenn refused to budge.

  My phone was still on the floor underneath the table. I picked it up. Despite having landed on the hard tile floor, it had continued recording a video. I ran to Dressed to Kill’s back door and opened it. Chad’s car was still the only one in the parking lot. I wanted to sprint across the driveway and lock myself into Deputy Donut with Dep, but I couldn’t leave Jenn alone with her sister’s fury. Suzanne was hammering on the basement door with her fists, and I didn’t know how well the bolt would hold. Or the hinges.

  “Open the door!” Suzanne shrieked.

  As I’d feared it would, my phone had dropped the call with Brent when it went into camera mode. My hands trembling, I speed-dialed him.

  He answered immediately. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Jenn’s half-sister Suzanne admitted to poisoning Roger. She tried to poison me and then she tried to push me down the basement stairs, but Jenn and I shut her into the stairway instead. But Suzanne might be able to break down the door.”

  “Is Suzanne armed?”

  “I don’t think so, but she’s wearing stiletto-heeled boots, and I don’t know if she has more of the white powder she put on a cruller she planned for me to eat.”