Powdered Peril

by Jessica Beck

  * * *

  Grace must have found a way to make it through the night, because I didn’t hear from her after she left my place. When I woke up the next morning, too early as usual, I quickly got dressed and headed to Donut Hearts to start working on that day’s donuts with a little lighter touch to my step. After all, it was a big day for me. Emma’s replacement, Nan Winters, was starting her first day of work. Sure, she’d trained with us for a few days before Emma left, but then she’d had to go visit an old friend while she had the chance before she started helping me make donuts six days out of every seven. With only one day off a week, she knew she wouldn’t be getting any more time off for a while, so she’d taken advantage of it. I just hoped Nan remembered what Emma and I had taught her, but I had my doubts. Then again, maybe a fresh start would be better for all of us. I had resisted the impulse to pick up the phone and call Emma a hundred times since she’d been gone. In a way, I felt as though my own daughter were going off to school, and not just an employee. Honestly, she was much more to me than that, and everyone knew it. But I’d promised to give her a month of finding her way at her new school letting her get settled in and used to her new life before I started pestering her, and I was going to respect that. Emma had signed up for spring classes with the college’s unusual schedule, and while I hated losing her too early, she had every right to go out into the world and find her own way.

  I drove to Donut Hearts in the darkness, and as I went past the front of my shop, my headlights picked up something odd about the front of the building. My business was housed in an old railroad depot, and once upon a time the tracks had been right beside it. One of the reasons I’d bought the business was for the old weathered bricks up front. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I could have sworn the bricks looked different somehow in the light from my high beams. I stopped and backed my Jeep up onto the grass of the nearby park, not really worrying about getting in anyone’s way on Springs Drive, since most folks with any sense at all were home in bed instead of out on the road in the middle of the night.

  When my headlights hit the building again, I saw that it hadn’t been my imagination.

  Someone had splattered bright yellow paint on the front of my building, obscuring not only the brick, but the new front window I’d just had repainted with our logo. My heart sank as I saw the mess. I was pretty sure the paint would come right off the window without too much of a fuss, but the bricks might be another thing entirely. I moved my Jeep into one of the parking spaces on Springs Drive, grabbed my flashlight, and then walked back toward Donut Hearts to see if things were as bad as I feared.

  When I saw the paint-spattered bucket lying empty beside the front door, I figured it might be time to call the police. If the vandals could be identified by their fingerprints, I wanted to make sure they were caught and got what they deserved. If they were arrested and convicted, and the judge felt like giving them community service, I would want to see if I could get the perpetrator assigned to me. By the time I got done with them, they’d think twice about vandalizing another business.

  To my surprise, I got one of my friends on the line as I dialed the police night desk. I figured there was no reason to tie up 911, since this was clearly not an emergency. Whoever had defaced my building was long gone.

  When Officer Stephen Grant answered the phone, I idly put a finger on the brick, testing to see if it might still be damp.

  No such luck. It was pretty clear that it wasn’t going to come off without a great deal of work.

  “Officer Grant, I’ve got a problem,” I said when he picked up and identified himself.

  “Suzanne, is that you?” he asked. He should know my voice by now. The man had been in my donut shop, on official business as well as during his free time, often over the years. Even though he was a slim young man, he had a surprising appetite for donuts, and we were slowly building a friendship during his frequent visits to my shop. “You didn’t lock yourself out of the donut shop, did you?” he asked hopefully. “Please tell me that I’ve got an excuse to leave the duty desk and come out there.”

  “As a matter of fact, you do, but it’s nothing as trivial as that.” That’s when I realized that he shouldn’t be working the night shift at all. There was only one explanation for that. “What did you do to get on the chief’s bad side?”

  After a brief hesitation, he said, “I made a crack about his disappearing waistline he didn’t care for,” Officer Grant admitted. Ever since Chief Martin had been dating my mother, he’d been on a constant diet, and so far, he’d lost two pants sizes, with no end in sight.

  “And he punished you for that? I figure he’d be pleased that you noticed.”

  “Not so much. At least not the way he overheard me talking to another cop. Don’t sweat it. It’ll all blow over soon enough, but until it does, I’m riding a desk. Now, you didn’t call here to listen to my problems. What can I do for you, if it’s worse than a set of lost keys?”

  “Somebody decided to redecorate Donut Hearts for me without even asking.” Just talking to him on the telephone made me feel better somehow. I would have called Jake first if he’d been in town, but he was in Spruce Pine, and I knew that the cell phone reception in the mountain town was spotty at best.

  “They didn’t break your front window again, did they?”

  “No,” I said as I looked at the intact glass. At least there was that. “They did chuck a half-full bucket of paint on it, though, and the brick exterior, too.”

  That got his attention. “Is the bucket still there? We might be able to get some fingerprints off of it.”

  I looked toward the bucket again, and that’s when I noticed something else. “I can do better than that,” I said. “There’s a set of footprints in the paint where whoever did it ran off. I just found them.”

  “Don’t do anything crazy, Suzanne. I’ll be right there.”

  “Can I at least go inside the shop and wait for you there?” I asked.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “Why don’t you go sit in your Jeep until I get there so I can have a look around?”

  I laughed. “We both know those flimsy windows I’ve got wouldn’t stop a determined chipmunk, let alone a killer. I’ll be all right where I am until you get here.”

  “Just stay out of sight, okay? It would be crazy to take any chances. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ve got nowhere else I need to be right now except inside making donuts,” I said, and then realized that I had dead air on the other end of the line.

  The police station was just down the road, so I figured that it wouldn’t take Officer Grant long to get there. I decided to compromise somewhat, and moved away from the shop a few yards. Okay, I admit that my path of retreat led me beside the footprints I’d first seen in the spilled paint, and my flashlight tended to follow them with eerie precision, but I was careful not to step in the paint, so I didn’t think he’d have anything to complain about if he found me doing a little snooping on my own. It was a warm early morning, and though it had cooled somewhat after hitting near eighty in the heat of the day, I still preferred autumn, winter, and spring. Folks still ate donuts yearround, but certainly not as many as they did when the weather turned cooler. Besides, I liked a nip in the air, which was one of the many reasons I’d refused to move to L.A. with my ex-husband, Max, the Great Impersonator, when we’d been together. Give me the changing of the seasons, and I was a happy gal.

  I surely wasn’t a fan of this warm early morning air.

  As I searched to see where the footsteps led, the impromptu path got harder and harder to see in the tall grass, and unfortunately, soon enough the paint trail ended half a dozen steps toward the park. By the time Officer Grant showed up, I’d lost them completely.

  He had his squad car lights all blazing, but at least he hadn’t used his siren on his way here. I’d had more than enough of that kind of attention in the past, and I didn’t need any more of it ever again.

  I
met him at the patrol car, shielding my eyes from the bright light. It was quite a change from my flashlight, with its dying beam barely able to light my way back to my vehicle. I’d have to remember to get new batteries for it. With only a few seconds of feeble light left, I shut it off and threw it onto the passenger seat of the Jeep.

  “Where did you just go?” Officer Grant asked as he scanned the donut shop and the land around it with the monstrous flashlight-weapon combination in his hand. Honest to goodness, it was big enough to bring down a bear. He might have to do just that someday, since there had been a few bear sightings around the area over the past few months. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone, as far as I was concerned. It just made sense to me. After all, we were developing more and more of the woodland creatures’ natural habitat, so why was everyone so shocked when they started invading our turf?

  “I followed the yellow brick road,” I admitted as I pointed to the tracks. “Well, it’s not a road exactly, it’s more like a path, but it’s yellow; there’s no denying it.”

  Officer Grant fought back a grin, but I could still see it. This was serious police business; at least that was the way that he was treating it. I kept my other quips to myself as I asked, “May I go start on the donuts now while you search out here? I’m kind of tight on time because of the delay.” I’d cut the shop’s hours, working on donuts from three to six in the kitchen, selling them from six until eleven, and then cleaning up after everyone else went home. It made the day more reasonable, and I almost felt as though I could actually have a life of my own outside the donut shop, as much as I loved being there.

  He considered it for a moment or two, and then nodded. “I can’t see why not. Go on in. Lock up when you get inside, and I’ll knock when I’m finished here.”

  I smiled my thanks and moved inside after unlocking the front door and carefully avoiding the spilled paint as I walked, though I knew it was dry. I noticed that the door handle had a splatter of yellow paint on it as well, and I was glad that the vandal hadn’t had any red paint at his disposal. I wasn’t sure I’d be as flip as I was being now if it had looked as though the front of my shop had been covered in blood.

  Once I was inside, I put on the coffeepot and turned on the fryer, checked the messages on the machine, and then got started on the batter for the cake donuts. Nan wasn’t due to report for another half hour, so I still had some time to myself.

  I was so focused on making donuts that I barely heard Officer Grant as he pounded on the front door fifteen minutes later.

  I opened the door and let him in, noting that he, too, had stepped over the dried paint. “Find anybody out there?” I asked as I relocked the door behind him.

  “No, and the tracks died before I could trace them any farther into the park. They stopped before I even got to Trish’s Boxcar Grill, so unless we find a pair of yellow-stained shoes somewhere, we’re out of luck.”

  “What about fingerprints on the bucket?” I asked. “Do you think you’ll be able to find any there?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve already bagged it, but I wouldn’t count on us having much luck. Unless the vandal is in our system, it will be impossible to track him down.”

  “Do you think it was a man, too?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” He smiled at me as he asked, “Why do you think so?”

  “Well, the shoe size, for one thing,” I admitted. “Unless it was a really big woman I don’t want to mess with, it had to be a guy.”

  He grinned at me. “Dead on, Suzanne. Keep that up, and you’ll earn your Junior Detective badge yet.” His smile faded quickly as he pointed outside. “I’m afraid it’s a real mess out there. I don’t have a clue how you’re going to be able to clean it all up.”

  “Hey, as long as no one got hurt, I’m counting my blessings,” I said. “Would you like some coffee before you go?”

  He stifled a yawn, and then nodded. “I probably should say no, but honestly, that would be great.”

  I fixed him up with a cup to go, and then let him out the front door.

  I’d be able to better assess things once it was daylight, but in the meantime, I had donuts to make. There was nothing I could do about what had happened, but I could do my job, and people around here depended on me. Letting them down wasn’t going to happen.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Good morning, Nan,” I said to my new assistant as she walked into the kitchen of my donut shop ten minutes later. To my surprise, she’d pounded on the back door that led to the alley to summon me, an entrance and exit I rarely used myself. Had she even seen the mess up front?

  “We just use this door for deliveries. Remind me to get you a key for the front door,” I said as I let her in and bolted it behind her.

  “That would be lovely,” Nan said as she put her apron on. I’m a morning person by nature myself, but this woman was just a little too perky for me. Emma was unbearable until she had her first cup of coffee, but it appeared that Nan woke up every day with a smile.

  It was funny; Emma had only been gone a short while, but I already missed her more than I ever could have imagined. She’d been my right hand since I’d opened Donut Hearts, and having her gone felt exactly the same as missing my two front teeth. No matter how hard I tried not to think about her absence, I continually saw her shadow everywhere I looked. Emma was off to college, though, something she’d dreamed about since she’d first come to Donut Hearts, and now I had bright and cheerful Nan.

  I didn’t really want to bring up what had happened in front of the donut shop, but Nan was an employee now, and she deserved to know about it.

  “Did you see the mess up front?” I asked.

  “No, what happened?”

  “Somebody threw a bucket of paint on the donut shop.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, clearly upset by the thought. Well, she wasn’t the only one. “May I see it?”

  “Why not?” We walked up front, and I flipped on the outside lights. “Do you need to go outside?”

  She took in the smeared window and could see the paint on the ground through the glass front door. “No, there’s no need. Suzanne, who would do such a thing?”

  “It’s hard to say.”

  That wasn’t the answer she wanted, clearly. “Do you have that many enemies?”

  “That’s not what I meant. It’s just a random act of vandalism.”

  “Oh, well, that’s better then, isn’t it?” she asked as we walked back into the kitchen together.

  “How do you figure that?” She was an odd bird, there was no doubt about that.

  “Well, if you were being targeted somehow, this would just be the beginning, wouldn’t it?”

  What an unpleasant way to think about it. “Anyway, I just thought you should know. Now, are you ready to make some donuts?”

  “I am,” she said, and I decided to do my best to forget about what had happened.

  Back in the kitchen, Nan looked at the counter at the bowls of batter I’d prepared and rubbed her hands together. “How lovely. Shall we begin?” She was a middle-aged woman with a distinctive mole on her left cheek and a nest of gray hair arranged haphazardly atop her head. From her ample and abundant figure, Nan was clearly a woman who had befriended more than her share of donuts over the years.

  “I’m ready if you are,” I said with the brightest smile I could manage.

  “Let’s do it then,” she answered.

  I looked around to see where she should begin her tasks at Donut Hearts. “If you don’t mind, could you get started on the first round of dishes?”

  “That sounds perfect to me,” she said as she started to put hot water into the sink. I had to give her credit. The woman was a dynamo.

  She just wasn’t Emma, but I couldn’t hold that against her.

  * * *

  “I’m dropping donuts now, so you need to go in the dining room for a few minutes,” I said a bit later. Nan smiled, dried her hands, and dutifully moved to the front.

  Forcing the batter d
own into the dropper required me to swing the entire contraption like a pendulum, and it had slipped out of my hands once, hitting the plaster wall hard enough to leave a mark. I hated to think what might have happened if someone had been standing in its path, so that was one of my rules. Everyone but me had to evacuate the kitchen area when it was time to drop donuts.

  After making my usual run of cake donuts, I fried up a batch of a new apple and orange cake donut recipe I’d been trying to perfect, and quickly doused them with icing the moment I pulled them out of the fryer. After taking a bite, I shook my head in disappointment. The donut was still too sweet, and not enough of the fruit flavor came through. It was back to the drawing board for this recipe.

  “You can come back in now,” I called out, and Nan reentered the kitchen.

  I was about to throw out my latest failure when Nan surprised me. “You’re not going to just chuck those, are you?”

  “I don’t have much choice. They aren’t very good,” I admitted. “Not every new recipe I try can be a winner.” I’d have to make a note in my copy of my recipe book, and tweak the ingredients and proportions yet again. I’d lost the original recipe book once to dire circumstances, and now I kept a backup on computer and an extra hard copy at the house, too. At least I had kept my computer files current when Emma had been with me. Blast it all, I was going to have to find someone else to do that for me now that she was gone.

  “Can I have a taste of one before you throw them away?” Nan asked timidly.

  I shrugged. “Be my guest. I doubt you’ll like them, though.”

  She picked a warm donut up, took a bite, and then nodded and smiled. “Wow, that is fantastic.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “It’s the best donut I’ve ever had in my life. Suzanne, you’re really good at this.”

  I couldn’t believe that we were talking about the same donut. I reached over, pinched a piece off another one, and popped it in my mouth.

  No, it was still too sweet for my taste.

  “You really like it?” I asked. “Nan, you don’t have to be nice to me. I’m not going to fire you for being honest about my donuts. In fact, I’m counting on it.” Honestly, it would take more than I was willing to admit for me to get rid of her. Where else was I going to find someone who was willing to put up with the kind of crazy hours I worked?