by Beck,Jessica
“You know how fast news spreads in this town. I understand he has no memory of the last twelve hours.”
“It’s more like fifteen or sixteen,” Jake said. “The chief told me that the last thing Ray remembers is his phone conversation with the mayor around six yesterday, so at least that jibes with what the man told you. I’d love to know what Ray was up to between then and when they found him wandering around the highway a little bit ago. A passing truck driver nearly ran him down. Anyway, I’m on my way to the hospital right now.”
“Are you working on the case in an official capacity?” I asked my husband. While he’d turned over the police department to the younger chief, I knew that Stephen Grant still consulted with Jake occasionally, and my husband never did anything to discourage that behavior.
“No, not officially.”
“But you’re digging into it nonetheless? Shouldn’t you leave it up to the police?” I knew it was ironic even as I spoke the words, since I was a world-class meddler in police business myself.
“Hello, pot,” Jake said with a laugh.
“You don’t have to point out my inconsistencies to me,” I said with a laugh. “I just don’t want you to hurt your friendship with Stephen Grant. After all, if you two are on the outs, it’s going to cause tension between Grace and me, and I’d like to avoid that if at all possible.” Grace was not only my best friend, but she’d been dating the new police chief for some time, and the four of us often did things together in our spare time. They were our “go to” couple, and when they weren’t available and we were in the mood to socialize, the next couple we tapped were my mother and her husband, the former police chief of April Springs. It seemed that a great many people I associated with were, or were involved with, folks with a history in law enforcement, a set of coincidences that wasn’t lost on me. My ex-husband, Max, had offered to do something with us socially along with his steady girlfriend, Emily Hargraves, but while I’d gone a long way toward forgiving Max for cheating on me and being a lousy husband in general, that didn’t mean that I was ready to go out to dinner with him and his new girlfriend. I prided myself on being an evolved human being, but I felt as though that was asking way too much of me.
“No worries,” Jake said. “It’s the oddest thing, but Ray’s been asking for me by name since they found him. Evidently he’s insisting on my presence at his bedside, even though we’ve butted heads more than once in the past. I was going to refuse to go, but Emma herself called me and begged me to do it, and we both know that I can’t seem to say no to that girl.”
“She can be pretty persuasive,” I admitted. “Would you like me to close the shop early and go with you?”
“Thanks, but I can handle the newspaperman by myself. Besides, you two aren’t exactly best friends either, are you?”
“No, but I’d still do it for you.” And Emma and Sharon as well, but I didn’t see any reason to add that, since Jake alone was reason enough.
“I’ll manage. How’s business?”
I was about to tell him that I was experiencing a lull at the moment when I saw half a dozen folks nearing the door. From the look of them, they’d been out all morning searching for Ray, and now that he’d been found, they were in need of my special treats. “It’s picking up even as we speak,” I said. “Let me know how it goes.”
“I will,” he said, and then he hung up.
The search party seemed to be in a pretty jovial mood, and I wondered if they’d heard about Tom’s body being discovered yet. If they hadn’t, I wasn’t about to be the one to tell them.
Let them enjoy their high spirits a little longer while they still could.
In the end, it turned out to be one of my busiest days ever, and I ran out of donuts by ten. Since there wasn’t time to make more, I was resigned to shutting down early when Grace showed up. She frowned at the barren display cases the moment she walked inside. “You’re out of donuts already?”
“What can I say? I had a good run. Sorry about that.”
“No worries on my part. How long would it take you to whip up more?” she asked.
“The yeast donuts take too long, but I could make more cake donuts and have them ready in twelve minutes,” I said. They wouldn’t be fancy, but they’d be fresh, hot, and iced in that time.
“Go do it,” Grace said.
“I can’t. I’ve still got customers coming in for coffee and hot chocolate, and I need to top off their coffee cups. I can’t just disappear on them like that.”
“You won’t,” she said as she grabbed Emma’s apron. “I’ll handle the front myself. Now scoot.”
Grace had her own job, working as a supervisor for a big cosmetics company, but her hours were flexible, to say the least, and it was a truly kind gesture for her to offer to pitch in like that.
I might have tackled it if Emma were there, but it wasn’t fair to make Grace do it. “I can’t do that to you.”
“Hey, I volunteered, remember?” She turned to my patrons, where all of the tables and chairs were full of customers nursing their beverages of choice. “If Suzanne made more cake donuts and iced them, would you all buy them?”
There was a cheer from the crowd, and as it died, Mitchell Bloom said, “I will if you make mine orange cake.”
“There’s no time for special orders, Mitchell,” Grace said, and then she turned to me. “Right?”
“Not unless you buy six dozen,” I said with a grin. I’d gone to a school dance with Mitchell when I’d been sixteen, but that had been our one and only date. He was nice enough; we just hadn’t clicked. It worked that way sometimes.
Mitchell smiled, walked up, and slapped a fifty-dollar bill on the counter. “It’s settled, then. I’ll take six dozen.”
There was a groan from the crowd, and another customer said, “I’m not all that fond of orange, to be honest with you.”
“How about if it were free?” Mitchell asked him with a grin. “I’m buying until they run out.”
“What happened, Mitchell, did you win the lottery?” someone asked him.
“No, but if I can’t buy donuts for my friends, what good am I?” He turned to me and grinned. “What do you say, Suzanne?”
“I’m on it,” I said. I mouthed a quick “thank you” to Grace, and then I got busy. After mixing the batter for the first six dozen orange cake donuts, I started dropping rings into the hot oil. It was still warm from earlier, so fortunately I didn’t have to wait long for it to come back up to temperature, as opposed to if I’d tried to do it first thing that morning. I delivered the trays as they were iced and ready to go, and as soon as those were finished, I made six dozen more of the plain cake donuts. They wouldn’t be on someone else’s tab, but it would be nice to offer my customers an alternative.
After the orange treats were gone and the regular cake donuts were ready, both iced and plain, I relieved Grace with a smile. “Thanks. You, my friend, are a rock star.”
“Happy to help. Should we settle up now about my pay?”
I hadn’t expected her to ask to be paid, but it was a perfectly reasonable request. “Sure thing,” I said as I hit the NO SALE button on the register and pulled out a twenty. “Would that work for you?”
She laughed. “I don’t want your money, Suzanne. I was thinking of taking a dozen of those donuts to go. Stephen’s got to be starving. Oh, and I’ll take four coffees too, if you think I earned them as well.”
“That and more,” I said as I got her order together. “Do you need any help with these?” I asked her.
“No, I’m sure Mitchell will be glad to lend me a hand,” she said as she smiled at the recent donut benefactor. “Right, Mitchell?” she asked him.
“Anything for you and Suzanne,” he said. “You two always were my favorites.”
“I don’t suppose it hurts you to dre
am,” she replied with a friendly smile.
“I’m glad, because it’s all that keeps me going some days,” Mitchell said as he pitched in to help.
As she started to walk out the door, Grace said, “Suzanne, I’ve got scads of paperwork to do, but maybe we could get together later around four. Do you have any plans?”
“Not that I know of, but you know me. There’s always a chance that I’ll be up to something by then, especially if I’m going to be left unsupervised.”
“You wouldn’t be my best friend if that weren’t true. I’ll give you a call later.”
“Bye. And thanks again.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Not long before closing, the mayor came back to the donut shop. Two visits in one day was some kind of record for him, but I knew the moment I saw his face not to tease him about it. “You heard the news about Tom, didn’t you?” I asked him.
“Yes. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m sorry you lost your friend, George. An accident is a terrible way to lose someone you care about.”
“I’m not so sure that it was an accident,” the mayor said after he looked around the nearly empty shop.
“Is that your cop’s instincts talking? Jake said the same thing to me earlier.”
“I just wish I could get Stephen Grant on board,” he said. “He thinks Tom slipped and fell over the edge of the falls, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”
“You’re his boss. Can’t you make him take your theory seriously?”
“That’s the thing,” George said. “I can’t tell him what to do any more than I could lead Jake around by the nose when he was running things. It’s time for some unusual measures.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, suspecting that I knew exactly what he was about to propose.
He didn’t disappoint me when he suggested, “I want you and Grace and Jake to look into what happened to Tom, unofficially, of course. You know this town better than anyone else, and what’s more, people talk freely to you, Suzanne. They’ll tell you things that they’d never tell anyone during the course of an official police investigation. There’s just one catch, though.”
“What’s that?”
“I have to be involved,” he said firmly.
“I thought we’d covered that in the past. The mayor shouldn’t get involved in this kind of inquiry, and you know it.”
George’s face grew red for a moment before he said loudly, “This was my friend, Suzanne. Frankly, I don’t care how it’s going to look to the voters. I’m helping.”
“Okay, but won’t it make Stephen look weak to the rest of April Springs if you do something that contradicts his working theory of what happened?” I knew that George genuinely liked our new police chief, and he wouldn’t do anything intentionally to undermine him.
“I’m not saying that I’m taking the lead,” George explained reluctantly after catching his breath for a moment. “All I’m saying is that I want to play my part. Do you think Jake and Grace will go for it?”
“I can’t imagine either one of them turning us down,” I said. “You do realize that you might not be happy with what we find, don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
Did he really not see where I was going with this? “Come on, George. You were a cop for a lot longer than you’ve been the mayor. When we start turning over stones, there’s no telling what we might find.”
“If that happens, then so be it. I just don’t want the questions to go unasked.”
I didn’t even have to think about it. My friend was hurting, he was asking me for help, and I knew that I might be able to give him a little peace of mind, no matter what we found. “Okay, we’ll do it.”
“Is it really as simple as that?” he asked me. “I thought I might have to twist your arm, given the fact that you are friends with the chief, and Grace is dating him. It might make things awkward between you all.”
“If it does, we’ll worry about that when and if it happens,” I said. “If you really mean to help, I’ve got an idea where you can start.”
“Anything. All you have to do is ask.”
“Where was Tom living? And more importantly, can you get me inside?”
“That I can manage,” he said with a grim face. “I was putting him up in a little cottage I own outside of town until he could get things settled and find a place of his own.” The mayor frowned for a moment, and then he added, “I know how it might look to some folks that I was harboring an ex-con, but like I said, I don’t care. He did his time, Suzanne. That means a clean slate as far as I’m concerned.”
“Do you think there’ll be any problem with me checking it out as soon as I close?”
“No, Stephen’s already done a quick sweep of the place, and he brought my key back to me. Since he’s convinced that it was an accident, he didn’t seem too worried about it.”
“Let me have the key,” I said, reaching out my hand.
“Not so fast. I’m going with you,” George said firmly.
“Isn’t it going to get a little crowded in there with the two of us, Grace, and Jake as well?”
George considered that for a moment. “Tell you what. Let’s go check it out together first by ourselves. After we finish up, we can let them know what we find.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel strange leaving them out.”
“Tell Jake if you’d like, but if Grace finds out what we’re up to before we look around, chances are good that she’s going to tell Stephen. He might not feel so charitable toward either one of us, even if he doesn’t believe Tom was murdered.”
“The truth of the matter is that I don’t like keeping secrets from her, either,” I said firmly. “We need to face facts. The police chief is going to find out sooner or later.”
“That’s fine by me. Let’s just make it later rather than sooner.”
I didn’t want to get into an argument with George about it. “Okay. Just this once, we’ll do it your way.”
“Why do I have the impression that this is going to be your lone concession?”
“I’d say it’s because you’re a pretty perceptive fellow,” I said. “If I’m going to be looking into what happened to Tom, then I’m going to have to do it my way. I know you were a cop, and so was Jake, but as you said yourself, I have a knack for this type of investigation, and so does Grace. You two bring your own skills to the table, but this might not be so cut and dried. I need to make my own impressions and follow the leads that I think might be important. If you and Jake want to lead a retired-cop investigation by yourselves, there’s no reason we can’t work parallel on this.”
“This isn’t some kind of game where we’re dividing up teams,” George said, adding a little heat to his voice. “A man was murdered, Suzanne.”
“Or he had an accident,” I reminded him gently. “That’s what we’re going to try to find out, isn’t it?” I asked him pointedly. With the mayor, I’d learned over time that I had to stand my ground, or I was in danger of being trampled.
George pursed his lips a moment before speaking, but when he did, much of the tension had already left his face. “What I want to know is when did you get so tough and bossy?”
“I think it was always there,” I said, matching his smile with one of my own. “What can I say? Experience has been a great teacher. There are times when I wish I’d never gotten involved in that first murder investigation, but it’s too late for regrets now. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I have to follow my instincts, no matter how illogical they might seem to others. Can you live with that?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?” he asked lightly. “Should I pick you up at eleven and we can get started?”
“Sorry, but that’s just
when I close. I’ve got stacks of dirty dishes in back. You’d better make it noon, and you might have to hang around even at that. There’s just one thing that I ask.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go over there first without me,” I said solemnly.
“Not even for a quick peek?” George asked me.
So, I’d guessed right. “No, not even that. I mean it, Mr. Mayor.”
“Okay. I won’t go until you’re with me. See you then. And Suzanne?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. You’re a good friend.”
The sentiment, rarely expressed, was sweet to hear. “You, too. See you at noon.”
After he was gone, I considered calling Jake and Grace, but I knew that I’d been right before. If the cottage was as small as George had said, we’d be stumbling all over each other, even with just the two of us. Besides, Jake was at the hospital talking to Ray, while Grace was home doing stacks of paperwork.
It wouldn’t hurt leaving them out of the investigation for now.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself, hoping that somehow I’d find a way to manage to believe it.
Chapter 6
By the time I closed the shop for the day at eleven, I had just one donut left from the second batch I’d made of cake donuts. It was still so fresh that there was no way that I was going to just pitch it out. I glanced around, couldn’t see anyone watching me from the outside, so I took a bite for myself. Wow, it was really good. Sometimes I forgot just how tasty a plain old-fashioned cake donut could be. No wonder so many of my customers liked them. Pouring myself a little hot chocolate to go with my own special treat, I plated the remaining donut and took it and my beverage to a table, giving it a quick wipe down first, and then I sat down to enjoy myself for a minute or two before it was time to tackle that mound of dishes. I was going to be at the shop for a while, so why not take a break before I had to tackle the mound of dirty dishes in the kitchen? I’d have to rush so I could be ready when George came by in an hour to collect me, but I was going to steal a moment for myself first.