Pastry Penalties

by Jessica Beck

  “I have no idea. I started drinking last night after what I thought I saw, and I didn’t wake up until this afternoon. I didn’t even know Dusty was dead until the mayor here told me,” he said dejectedly.

  “I don’t suppose anyone got drunk with you, did they?” Jake asked him.

  “No. I was alone.” In a voice that softened immediately, he asked, “How’s Emily doing?”

  “How would you think she was doing? After all, she’s a suspect, too,” the mayor said. “Plus, I’m sure she’s wondering why her fiancé decided to desert her when she needed him the most.”

  “She didn’t kill him, either!” Max shouted as he shot off the chair where he’d been sitting. “I can’t believe the cops would ever suspect her! She’s innocent!”

  “And you can prove that how, exactly?” Jake asked him calmly, ignoring my ex-husband’s vehement reaction.

  Max stormed toward the door. “I can’t, but I’m not going to let that stop me from helping her. Is she actually under arrest?”

  “Not the last we heard,” I said. “Max, I can appreciate your impulse to go storming off in her defense, but we’re not finished here yet.”

  “You might not be, but I am,” Max said as he pulled the cabin door open.

  I heard the shot almost immediately as Max fell down like a discarded rag doll onto the floor.

  Chapter 14

  “Max!” I screamed as both Jake and George sprang into action the split second they heard the bullet hit something against the far wall with a resounding ring. Both men pulled out their weapons with practiced ease. A moment later, Jake slammed the heavy wooden door shut with his foot as George turned out the single inside light that had been on. As the mayor was getting the porch light as well, I rushed to Max’s side.

  “How bad is it?” I asked him as I knelt close to his face.

  “I’ve been better,” he said. “I hit my head pretty hard when I fell,” he complained as he sat up and rubbed the back of his head.

  “But you weren’t shot?” I asked.

  “No, they missed me,” he said with a grimace as he started to stand. “Was it my imagination just then, or were you disappointed by the news?”

  “Don’t stand up,” I said as I turned to my husband. “What do we do, Jake?”

  “I just tried calling the chief, but I couldn’t get a cell phone signal.”

  “It’s hit or miss out here,” George apologized. “What’s our plan?”

  “Our plan?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from hysteria. “There’s no plan! We stay right where we are.”

  “First of all, that’s a plan itself,” George said.

  “Do you really want to quibble with me about my word choice right now?” I asked him.

  “Suzanne, if we stay here, we’re sitting ducks,” the mayor said, “and what’s more, your husband knows it, too. We can’t just wait for something to happen.”

  I knew he had a point, but I didn’t have to like it. “How about shooting into the air to let whoever just shot at us know that we’re armed, too?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Jake said. Enough moonlight peeked in through the window that I could see him shake his head. “I’m not taking the chance of hurting someone who has nothing to do with this. George, you stay here and I’ll go do some recon.”

  “That’s not happening, my friend,” the mayor said. “We go together, or neither one of us goes.”

  “I don’t mind staying behind. You know, just in case they try to break in,” Max said lamely.

  Both men ignored him.

  “Okay then,” Max said as he leaned back against a chair, rubbing his head. “How about if I let you two lawmen decide what happens next, and I’ll just sit here nursing my throbbing skull?”

  “Max, would you kindly shut up?” I asked without even glancing in his direction. “Jake, George is right. You shouldn’t go out there alone.”

  “You haven’t thought this through, Suzanne. What if whoever is out there is waiting for exactly that? If George and I leave you two here unarmed, you’ll be vulnerable.”

  “I’m sitting right here, you know,” Max said dryly.

  Jake gave him a withering glance. “What are you going to do if someone comes rushing in with guns blazing? Threaten them? Sorry, but it’s not happening.”

  Max finally decided to take my advice and keep his mouth shut after all.

  “Why don’t we all just take a breath?” I suggested. “There’s no real immediate need to rush out into the darkness and confront whoever is out there, is there?”

  “We aren’t rushing anywhere, at least not yet,” Jake said.

  “Can we at least turn one of the little table lamps on? The dark is just making things creepier than they have to be. I can barely see with just the moonlight,” Max protested. So much for heeding my advice to stay quiet and keep out of it.

  “We can’t do that,” Jake explained. “We need to let our vision get accustomed to the low level of light. There’s enough moonlight to see where we’re going, so at least that’s something.”

  “Listen to that,” I said suddenly as I heard a car start up the hill from the cabin. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Probably,” Jake said as he moved toward the door. “I’ll go check it out. Alone,” he added as he looked at George. “You’re going to stay here, right?”

  “Right,” George said, though he was clearly unhappy about it.

  Jake kissed me before he left, and then he whispered softly in my ear, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in a second.”

  “Make sure of it,” I said.

  “Get away from the line of fire,” he told Max in a much harsher tone of voice. “When I open this door, I don’t want anyone to be in the shooter’s line of sight, just in case they are still out there.”

  “We heard the car start up,” Max protested. “Clearly whoever shot at us circled around, headed up the hill, and drove off.”

  “It’s fine with me if you stay right where you are and hope that you are right,” Jake said. “Suzanne, would you mind going over to the kitchen area?”

  I moved without any more urging, but I didn’t even try to get Max to abandon his position. If he wanted to take a chance that the shooter was waiting for another opportunity to get him, it was going to be entirely on his head, as sore as it might be at the moment from hitting the floor when he’d dived to get out of the line of fire.

  After a moment, Max moved as well.

  George moved to one side of the door. “At least let me cover you.”

  “Thanks,” Jake said. He took a deep breath, and then he opened the door quietly with such gentle movements that if there hadn’t been a sudden crouching darkness in the opening, I might not even have known that he was leaving. Going low, Jake snuck out of the cabin while George crouched down himself, his weapon out and ready to shoot at the slightest provocation.

  There was no reason for him to fire his weapon, though.

  “Shouldn’t you close that door now that he’s gone?” Max asked in a whisper, his voice clearly on edge because of the open exposure.

  “No,” George said just as softly. It amazed me how each man could convey so much emotion in whisper form. “Jake might need to get back inside in a hurry.”

  That sent a thousand dire thoughts racing through my mind. It felt like an hour while we waited for him to return, with each second frozen in time before moving on to the next.

  Finally, even though I was sure it was imagination, I heard the voice I loved so much from the other side of the doorway. “It’s me,” Jake said loudly. The need for stealth was clearly past.

  George’s tension dispelled instantly as Jake walked in standing tall.

  “You can turn on the lights,” Jake instructed him. “Whoever took that shot is gone.”

  “If it’s all
the same to you, I’d still like to leave the lights off for a while,” Max said.

  Jake responded by turning on the nearest light, nearly blinding me in the process. When he saw me flinch, he said, “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine. I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

  “It’s all good,” he said as he moved to the back wall directly in line with the door.

  “What are you looking for?” Max asked him.

  “The bullet that sent you diving for cover,” Jake said as he studied the knotted pine paneling. “If we get lucky, we’ll get something to compare later with ballistics.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen,” George said as he held up a cast iron pan, one of many old relics decorating the wall. There was a dent in the cookware but no sign of any bullet. “I figured the bullet would either shatter the iron or punch its way straight through.”

  “It looks like it ricocheted back at the shooter instead,” Jake said. “It’s a shame it didn’t hit whoever fired it in the first place. There would have been some nice poetic justice to that.”

  The comment was a part of my husband’s darker side, one that he’d had to cultivate as a state police investigator, but I couldn’t fault his argument. After all, someone had tried to kill one of us, probably Max. I didn’t want them to die from the effort, but if they’d gotten nicked in the process by their own bullet in a ricochet, it would have served them right.

  “So what do we do now?” Max asked.

  “We get out of here and head straight for the police chief’s office,” Jake said.

  “That would kind of ruin the point for me coming out here,” Max said. “I didn’t want to run into him and have to answer a thousand questions about Dusty and about what I saw last night, or what I thought I saw.”

  “Sorry, but that’s not an option anymore.” Jake looked at me and asked, “Do you mind driving back to the police station alone?”

  “How are you going to get there?” I asked, though I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew the answer to my question before I even asked it.

  “Max here is going to give me a ride, aren’t you, Max?” Jake asked with a smile.

  My ex-husband looked as though he’d rather kiss a skunk on the lips, but he nodded anyway. “Sure, I don’t mind. You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “No, not entirely,” Jake said. He was being kind at that, and what’s more, everyone in that cabin knew it.

  “I’m guessing it’s more like not at all, but you know what? I can live with that,” Max said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  As we shut the cabin door and walked back up the hill together, I couldn’t help but notice in the beam of my flashlight that George’s limp, something he’d lived with since I’d gotten him into a dangerous situation with a killer, was noticeably better. “You’ve got a spring in your step tonight. You know that, don’t you?”

  “What can I say? Some nights it’s just good to be alive,” he said, clearly enjoying our little excursion, even with the shooting. Heck, as far as I knew, that might have been an added bonus for him.

  “I’d say that goes for all of the nights,” Max said.

  For some reason that struck us all as funny, whether it was actually amusing or we were just getting over just how badly things could have gone for us. We all started laughing, and even Max joined in.

  Once we were at the top of the hill in the parking area for George’s cabin, the two former cops took their flashlights and studied the ground carefully around them.

  George pointed to a dark patch. “Is that antifreeze, by any chance?”

  Jake touched a finger to the dirt, smelled it, and then, to my horror, he sampled it.

  “Jake, don’t taste that! It’s poison!” I shouted.

  “Relax, Suzanne. It’s just soda. Someone emptied out their can.” He scanned the surrounding area, but he couldn’t find the can itself.

  “Oh, well. It was worth a shot,” he said. “Let’s go, folks. It’s already late, and Suzanne is up way past her bedtime.”

  I glanced at my watch and saw that I was already two hours behind my usual sleep schedule, but tonight was going to have to be an exception. I knew that I could call Emma and Sharon to sub for me, but I was only running Donut Hearts five days a week as it was, and I was very protective of those days. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  “Still, we need to get going,” Jake said. “Are you good to drive, Max, or do you want to give me the keys?”

  “I can manage just fine,” Max said.

  As they got into Max’s older vehicle, George asked me, “Suzanne, do you mind if I leave my truck here and ride into town with you?”

  “No, of course not, but how are you going to retrieve it later?” I asked, curious about why he’d want to do any such thing.

  “I can always get someone at the station to give me a ride. Right now I could use the company.”

  “That sounds great to me. Hop in,” I said, and then George and I followed Jake and Max back into town. “That was all a little too exciting for my taste,” I said.

  “Really? I haven’t felt this alive in years,” the mayor and former cop said.

  “You miss it, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being in danger,” I replied.

  “That’s not it at all, Suzanne.”

  “Funny, but that’s how it seems to me,” I said.

  After a few minutes of riding in silence, George surprised me by saying, “Maybe you’re right after all. There’s something invigorating about being in the middle of something like this. I don’t have to tell you that though, do I? It’s in your blood now too, isn’t it?”

  I took a moment myself before I answered him. “Honestly, I don’t particularly like finding dead bodies or searching for killers, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Then why do you do it?”

  I didn’t even have to think about that before I answered. “There’s enough injustice in this world in general as it is. If there’s something, anything I can do to make sure people who commit atrocities like murder are held accountable for their actions, how can I not do it? I’ve thought about stopping my investigations a time or two over the years, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “We have more in common than you might think,” George said. I didn’t even have to glance over at him to know that he was smiling.

  “I’m okay with the two of us sharing a few traits if you are,” I said.

  He laughed fully at that comment. “I consider it an honor.”

  “So do I,” I answered. As I pulled into the police station’s parking lot beside Max’s beat-up old car, I said, “Let’s go have a chat with the police chief.”

  Chapter 15

  To no one’s surprise, Stephen Grant was still at his desk, despite the late hour. The chief waved us all into his office, a cramped space that had once belonged to Jake. There was barely enough room for all of us, but we stood there as he finished up a telephone call.

  “That’s right. You can cancel it. He just walked in my door. I know. Sometimes you get lucky. Talk to you later.”

  “Which one of them were you looking for?” I asked the police chief, though I had a suspicion it was my ex-husband.

  “It’s Max,” he said as he pointed at my ex-husband.

  “Listen, I didn’t kill Dusty Baxter, and neither did Emily,” Max began to protest.

  “Did I say that either one of you did?” the chief asked him.

  “No,” Max admitted reluctantly. “I just figured that I’d get that out of the way up front.” He paused for a moment, clearly puzzled. “Let me ask you something. If you don’t think I did it, why were you looking for me?”

  “I didn’t say that I didn’t think you did it, either,” the chief said. He then turned to J
ake and George. “Thanks for bringing him in.”

  “Hey, I’m standing right here,” I told him.

  “I saw you,” the chief said with the hint of a grin.

  I had to laugh, even though I’d just been insulted, at least a little. “Fine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything I knew the moment I knew it. Am I forgiven?”

  Chief Grant nodded. “Absolutely. Anyway, as much as I appreciate you all coming in, it’s a little cramped in here. Mind if Max and I have ourselves a chat?”

  “I’m not so sure I’m okay with it,” Max said.

  The chief leaned back in his chair and studied my ex-husband for a moment. “That’s fine with me. We’ll do it your way.”

  “Seriously?” Max asked incredulously. “That’s all it’s going to take?”

  “What do you think?” the chief asked sarcastically. “If you’ve got legal representation, I’d suggest you give them a call right now. I need to get some information from you, but if you’re going to make it difficult on me, then I’m going to return the favor.”

  Max looked at me. “Is he bluffing?”

  I didn’t even have to consider the possibility. “No.”

  “Fine. I’ll talk to you, but they stay,” my ex said defiantly.

  The chief shook his head. “Max, old buddy, that’s not the way this works. You don’t get to dictate anything right now except your statement.”

  “Can Suzanne at least stay?” he asked plaintively.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about that,” Jake said.

  The chief shrugged. “Let me ask you a question. Can you sit there and stay quiet, Suzanne? I swear the second you say your first word, I’m going to throw you out, in the nicest way possible, of course.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said before he could change his mind.