Survival of the Fritters

by Ginger Bolton

  “If she was telling the truth.”

  “Right. Besides, there are oodles of cars like that. See?” She pointed at cars coming toward us. “There are three in a row, and at least one behind us.”

  Lois had a surprisingly heavy foot. She turned onto Packers Road. It broadened into four lanes bordered by car dealers, furniture stores, and chain restaurants. After several stoplights, my phone directed us into the parking lot of an L-shaped mall housing a podiatrist, a drugstore, a real estate agent, the post office, a pizza place, a dry cleaner, and a health food store. And a dentist, Dr. Jierson, whose name was printed across a giant three-dimensional molar hanging over his office’s front door.

  Lois grimaced. “I hope that thing’s fastened securely.”

  A big, shiny black car with the license plate TOOTHY was parked in front of the post office. Although we saw seven grayish and silverish sedans in the parking lot, none were near the post office or next to TOOTHY. I jotted down the license numbers of all of them.

  “Now what?” Lois asked.

  “It’s almost five. Guessing that the post office closes before the dentist does, I think I need stamps before I need dental work.”

  She stared at me for a second. “Oh, I get it. You’re joking. If things get dull, I might need stamps, too. But no thanks to dental work. Or to walking underneath that sign.”

  She parked in front of the health food store, at the far end of the mall from the dental office and out of sight of the post office, and then we walked. The video camera high above the post office door was so obvious that I couldn’t help wondering if it was real. Maybe the non-sugar-eating Dr. Jierson was fooling himself about the security of his parking space.

  Inside, the post office appeared to be newly renovated in neutral, easy-to-clean surfaces. Luckily, the ceiling was acoustical tiles, or our footsteps on the speckled brown tile floor would have been deafening. We were the only customers, and no one was behind the one and only sales window. I followed Lois to the window and stood behind her right shoulder.

  Nobody came. Lois pushed a button on a bell attached to the desk. I didn’t know if anyone else heard it, but we certainly did. Lois jumped.

  A woman in a back room hollered, “Coming!”

  Wiping a hand across her mouth, Honey Bellaire, aka Bridezilla, aka the woman who had complained to me about Georgia Treetor, came to the sales window.

  Chapter 18

  Honey’s eyelids drooped as if she had no interest in post office customers. Her gunmetal blue skirt was rumpled and her white blouse was several sizes too big. She had a spot of mustard on one cheek. Wincing, she shifted from foot to foot. “I’ve been standing all day, and these are not the most comfortable shoes. I was just sitting down, taking a load off and having an early dinner. I work Thursday nights at the movie theater, with no time to eat between.” Her wiry blond hair stuck out in odd ways.

  “Sorry—” I began.

  She waved a hand past her face. “I’m so used to it that I’ve gotten to expect it. What can I do for you? I’m about to close.”

  “Stamps, please,” I said. “Five for first-class letters.”

  She reached toward something beneath the counter, and then stopped moving, her hand in midair. “Hey!” she said. “You’re the woman from the donut shop, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You like working there?”

  “Love it.”

  “Get lots of free donuts?”

  I handed her a ten. “My partner and I try not to eat all of our profits.”

  “You and your partner work for yourselves? Lucky you.” She counted my change and handed me the stamps. “I bet you don’t have to put in long hours, like I do.”

  “Ouch, you poor thing. How long?”

  “I’m often here by six thirty, sorting mail. Some days, like when I went to your donut shop, I’m done at noon, and some days, like today, I work until five.” She turned and looked at the clock on the beige wall behind her. “Eight more minutes.”

  Trying to look innocent, I suggested, “At least starting that early, you don’t have to worry about a parking spot.”

  Honey pointed to her left. “When they built that new leg of the mall, they didn’t add more parking. I know for a fact that there used to be parking where they built that section. Before that, we had plenty for our customers.” She gestured toward the back wall. “We’ve got our own spots behind, near the loading dock, or I might have to quit working here.” She seemed to examine our faces for sympathy, so I tried to show some. It must have been enough. She added, “The businesses in that new section don’t have parking behind. It’s a crying shame. Most of the people who work in those shops and offices are okay with it, but that dentist, the guy that owns that big black car out there, he gets bent out of shape if he can’t have the spot he’s parked in right now, which isn’t that close to his office, anyway. Can you imagine?”

  I nodded in what I hoped was an appearance of solidarity. “Does that happen often?”

  Lois turned around and gave me a startled look, possibly because my voice warbled between deep throatiness and a squeak.

  “Not usually, but he stormed in here Monday morning as soon as I unlocked the front door at nine. He claimed he had come to work early, like six if you can believe it, and he couldn’t park in his favorite spot because a car was already in it! What does he expect at six in the morning? People from those new apartment buildings around the corner sometimes park in our lot all night, and the police can’t seem to do a thing about it. But by the time that dentist was asking me, the car he was complaining about was long gone, so I have no idea what the big fuss was about. He wanted to know if I knew the other car’s driver.” Her voice became shrill, which made me miss her raspier tones. “Why does he have to have a favorite spot, let alone a spot in front of us instead of in front of his own office? The lot wasn’t anywhere near full. Then he wanted the car’s license number. How would I know that? That dentist didn’t bother memorizing it. Why should I?” She stared off into the distance for a second and then leaned forward and confided, “But I think I did talk to the driver. Don’t tell that dentist.”

  Lois and I shook our heads, which could mean nearly anything. I asked, “Did the driver explain why he parked in the dentist’s spot?”

  Honey scowled. “I’m not sure he did park there, but there weren’t many other people around at that hour, so maybe he did. Anyway, he didn’t need to explain. It’s not like the spots are reserved. But you ask me, that guy was almost as out there as that dentist.” She twirled a finger near her ear. “He pounded on the door just after I got here. It wasn’t even six thirty yet. I finally went and opened the door just a crack, and told him we were still closed. He said he just had a simple question. But you ask me, the question was just plain weird. He wanted to know if I knew anyone who would lend him a minivan.”

  Lois went still.

  I stopped breathing.

  Lois recovered first. “That is a strange question.” She sounded like someone was strangling her.

  “Thing is, I knew the answer, sort of. You know that doll doctor who died, the mother of that grocer?” She stared hard at me. “I was talking about her when I was in your donut shop.” She’d had nothing good to say about Georgia then. I wanted to get out my phone and record her, but that would have been a super-efficient way to make her stop talking.

  I nodded.

  Honey leaned forward and put her elbows on the counter. “A few years ago, that doll doctor had a friend with a van, and sometimes they traded when the doll doctor needed lots of cargo space, like she often picked up big boxes of supplies here, and she mailed oversized packages. I never understood why she didn’t buy her own van. Figures that a selfish person like her would take advantage of her friends.” Lois stiffened visibly, at least from the back, but she didn’t say anything, and Honey went on. “She and her son took enough advantage of the rest of us. Surprising that she even had a friend.” Honey straightened, fished key
s from her pocket, and turned them in drawers and cabinet doors that were out of our sight underneath the counter. “Now, what was that friend’s name? Something like ‘Glow.’ Gloria? Whatever, the friend moved away a few years ago, to Madison, I think, or was it Milwaukee? Anyway, that doll doctor was very excited because this woman was moving back to Fallingbrook. Chloris? Chloe? No, that wasn’t it. Funny, I remembered her first name—I never knew her last name—early Monday morning when that man came to the door, but now the first name has slipped my mind. I told him I thought she might have moved back to town, but I didn’t know if she’d go around lending her minivan to complete strangers.” She pointed at her head and looped her finger in circles again. “I mean, really!”

  I asked, “Did you know the man?”

  “Of course not, or I’d have said, wouldn’t I?” She glanced toward the front windows, and then returned her attention to us. “A handsome guy. No wedding ring. Dark hair and eyes. His Packers cap was pulled down low over his forehead, probably to hide his hair, but I could tell it was messy, like he’d just gotten out of bed, and he hadn’t shaved for at least a day, either.” She fanned herself. “A really hot guy, you know what I mean?”

  Lois didn’t answer.

  I said, “Yes.”

  Honey stroked her left wrist. “He had a tattoo on his arm. It looked like someone had scratched it into his skin with a rusty nail or something.”

  Lois could have become a statue.

  I asked, “What was it?”

  Honey stared at her wrist. “I couldn’t see much of it, but it looked like letters, maybe a word or a sentence, but homemade and not very neat. He kept pulling his sleeve down like he thought he could cover it, but that just made it more noticeable, especially since his other sleeve was rolled up almost to his elbow.”

  I asked, “What kind of shirt was it?”

  Her eyes wide, Honey stared at me like she couldn’t figure out what cave I’d crawled out of. “Long-sleeved. I just said.”

  “What color?”

  “White, you know, like a man would wear with a suit, but he didn’t have on a jacket, and he was in jeans. He looked real nice.” She gazed past me again, as if searching for the man or his car in the parking lot.

  From where she was standing, she shouldn’t be able to see Lois’s minivan near the health food store. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for Honey to connect Lois to the minivan. Then again, maybe she already knew who Lois was because she had followed Lois into her backyard on Monday night and had clobbered her. . . .

  I looked up at the very obvious video camera behind Honey. Imagining Detective Yvonne Passenmath studying me in a videotape, I quickly looked away. “Did the man come inside?”

  “No, I told you, we weren’t open. I answered his question and he went away. Too bad I couldn’t think of something to say to keep him here, cute guy like that.” She dusted her hands together. They were pudgy, with short fingers and no rings. “That’s life, isn’t it? A great guy comes along, and you get all tongue-tied until he leaves, and then you think of all the clever things you shoulda said.”

  “You didn’t think he was too ‘out there’?” Lois’s voice sounded strained.

  “Sometimes you just have to take the bad with the good. And the good was very, very good. Yum.”

  Honey’s cologne was not as strong as it had been the day before in Deputy Donut. I asked her, “Did he smell good, too?”

  “Yum, yes. Masculine, but subtle.”

  Subtle? Maybe it was all relative. I needed to know one more thing. “Did he get into the car that was parked in the dentist’s spot?”

  “No idea. I had to get back to work. Before I turned around, he headed off in that direction, and there weren’t many cars out there at that hour, just the dentist’s barge of a car and that small gray one. Y’know, if I could remember the name I told him, maybe I could find that woman who used to lend the doll doctor a minivan, and if he contacts her, she might help me hook up with him. Wait—I’ve nearly got it.” She tapped her lips with an index finger. “No, I’m sure the doll doctor didn’t say ‘Grandma Moses,’ but it was something like that. An artist, you know. I wonder if the doll doctor was already dead when that man showed up here, and he was an undercover cop. Yeah, that’s probably it.” She bobbed her head up and down. “He pounded hard on the door, like a cop would. And that would explain the weird questions, too.”

  Her guess had to be wrong. The police didn’t know about Georgia’s death until early Monday evening after Lois and I and the other Knitpickers found her. But I still suspected that Honey might have killed Georgia, and I wasn’t going to blurt information that might help the crabby woman wriggle away from charges that the police might make against her. “You’re sure you told the man the name of the artist who had a minivan?” I hoped she didn’t notice that I was focusing on what might seem, to her, an odd detail.

  “Just her first name, if I remembered her name right, and now I’m thinking that I probably didn’t. I wonder if he’ll ever come back. He was dreamy, and I love cops, don’t you? Hunky and fit. And those uniforms! Mmmmmm.”

  Lois and I made unintelligible mumbles.

  As if we’d agreed with her, Honey nodded. “I told him I thought the van was dark blue, but if it’s still around, it would be kind of old, you know? I said the woman had probably traded it in on a newer one, but if she was still painting giant-sized pictures, she probably still had a van of one sort or another.”

  Shoulders back, head up, Lois headed toward the door.

  Honey turned around and looked at the post office clock. It was about a minute until five.

  “Thanks for the stamps,” I said. Hurrying toward the door, I spotted another surveillance camera, aimed, it seemed, right at me. I quickly looked down at my feet, and when I left, pushing the door open with my rear end, I checked out the interior of the post office. At least three cameras had been pointed toward us when we were at Honey’s window—the one above and behind Honey that I’d already noticed, and one on each side wall.

  According to Honey, the tattooed man questioning her on Monday morning hadn’t gone into the post office. However, if the inside cameras worked, they might have captured a recognizable image of him. And there was definitely a camera on the outside, above where the man had, if I understood correctly, stood while he was talking to Honey. It should have recorded him walking toward the door, and, a few minutes later, away from it. If it was true that the dentist tried to park his car in view of the camera, and if the camera was aimed the way the dentist believed it was, the camera should have recorded the arrival and departure of the small grayish car, too, and its driver. Now I really needed Brent to return my call.

  I caught up with Lois.

  She muttered between thinned lips, “I know what you’re thinking. But that man could not have been Randy.”

  Chapter 19

  I patted Lois’s arm. “Let’s get away from the mall and its video cameras before we discuss who Honey was describing. Want to check out the dental office?”

  “That TOOTHY car is gone.”

  “In case someone’s there?”

  “I suppose, but I don’t want to walk underneath that sign.”

  The chains holding it creaked. Very reassuring. We edged around it.

  The door to the dentist’s office was locked, but a woman at the reception desk inside looked up, waved, opened the door, and smiled. Her teeth were, not surprisingly, perfect, and so was her straight, raven black hair. She looked too young to have a full-time job. “Dr. Jierson is gone for the day, but if you need an appointment, I’ll be glad to make you one. If you’re in pain, I can call Doc and he’ll be back in, say, ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.”

  “It’s not an emergency,” I said. “I’m thinking of switching dentists. I had a toothache one weekend, and my dentist told me to go to Emergency. I waited for hours.” I pressed a hand against my jaw. “It hurt.”

  Swishing her long hair back and forth, the woman shook h
er head. “Dr. Jierson would never do that to a patient. He comes in early, misses lunch, or stays late. And he’ll come in on weekends, too.”

  Lois said with great sympathy, “I suppose you have to work extra hours when he does.”

  The woman lifted one shoulder. A tiny flush crept across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “I’m only the receptionist. I can’t help with the difficult cases. I make certain everyone’s comfortable, hand toys to kids, and things like that. People, especially kids, can get pretty worked up about visiting the dentist. Dr. Jierson wants everyone to see it as a pleasant experience. And most visits to the dentist are painless.” She was very earnest. It was still hard to believe she was over sixteen.

  “He sounds great.” And I sounded phony. “Does he have a card?”

  “Absolutely.” She went to her desk and returned with two molar-shaped business cards. She displayed her perfect teeth in an apparently sincere smile. “Here you go.” She handed each of us a card.

  We thanked her and left. As we hurried past the post office, I kept my face averted from those cameras. I noticed that Lois did, too.

  A sidewalk led away from the parking lot, toward the back of the row of stores. Lois and I looked at each other and then detoured down that sidewalk.

  It ended near a pharmacy at a smaller parking lot behind the stores. Like a couple of spies, we peeked around the pharmacy’s corner.

  A small gray sedan pulled out of a parking spot next to the post office loading dock. The driver had wiry blond hair. Honey. We jerked our heads back.

  “Did she see us?” Lois asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Is she coming this way?”

  “I hope not.”

  We speed-walked to the main lot, but Honey’s car didn’t appear, and we guessed she’d gone the other way, behind the new section where Dr. Jierson’s office was. After we shut ourselves inside Lois’s van, she snickered. “I think I know why Dr. Jierson works those long hours.”