Our hands became red from clapping, and our throats became hoarse from cheering.
In their police uniforms, Misty and Hooligan walked at the rear of the parade. The grandfather on the patio knew Misty and Hooligan from chatting with and teasing them in Deputy Donut. He called, “Nice costumes, guys!” Misty and Hooligan smiled and waved.
All of our customers except the grandfather moved back to their indoor tables. Tom, Nina, Jocelyn, and I decided that the afternoon was warm enough for Jocelyn and Nina to serve the trick-or-treaters outside.
We carried urns of coffee, hot chocolate, and mulled cider out to the patio and brought out trays of our small Halloween donuts, crullers, and fritters. We also took out paper napkins, plates, and cups. Tom returned to the kitchen. I stayed outside helping Jocelyn and Nina arrange everything.
The grandfather told us, “The grandchildren are coming here after they visit the fire department open house. When my granddaughter heard that she could sit in a firetruck, she insisted they had to go there right after the parade. Then I suppose they’ll trick-or-treat all the way here. But no problem.” He raised his mug of Colombian coffee high. “I’ll be happy waiting here.” He glanced down Wisconsin Street and called out, “What are you doing here on a Saturday afternoon?”
Wearing a hunter-green wool blazer and matching slacks, Cheryl walked toward us. “Same thing you’re doing,” she answered.
“Waiting for a granddaughter and grandson?” he demanded.
Smiling, she shook her head. “Coffee and donuts.” She entered the patio enclosure and patted Jocelyn’s arm. “It’s good to see you, honey.”
I opened the front door for Cheryl. She went toward the table she usually shared with Steve. I followed her and suggested that, instead of sitting back there, she might like to sit closer to the window where she could watch costumed kids come to the patio for their treats. She took a seat facing the window at the table where the Knitpickers usually met. I asked her what she’d like.
“Advice.” Tom had everything under control in the kitchen, and Nina and Jocelyn were chatting to customers on the patio. I sat down beside Cheryl where I could also watch the trick-or-treaters. Cheryl folded her hands on the table. “You’ve helped solve murders, and you were at Rich Royalson’s after he died. Do you know how the investigation is going?”
“The investigators don’t tell me more than they tell the public. I haven’t heard anything about them figuring out who did it.”
“Has your detective friend said anything about suspecting me?” Her knuckles were white.
“How could he suspect you? I don’t know who he suspects, but I doubt that it’s you.”
“That woman, then, Detective Garter Snake or whatever her name is, suspects me.”
I tried not to laugh too loudly. “Detective Gartborg. And how could she suspect you? For one thing, you wouldn’t hurt a flea, or a garter snake, and for another, you and Steve arrived at Rich’s party together.”
“That’s the thing. We didn’t. We came in separate cars. I left here early that day to get ready for the party, and I didn’t see Steve until he drove into Rich’s driveway. It was shortly after I did, and he immediately went to talk to you, so I can see why you thought we came together.”
I ran a finger along the smooth glass covering the donut painted on the table. “Lots of us saw you here earlier that morning and can honestly say that between about eleven when you left here and shortly after noon when you arrived at the party, you couldn’t have done anything except go home, change, and drive to Rich’s. You didn’t have time to attack anyone.” Especially considering that the murderer might have gone to Rich’s cottage that morning and picked up a skillet on the way to murder Rich. I could not imagine Cheryl lifting that skillet, let alone using any sort of force to hit someone with it. But I didn’t tell her that. As far as I knew, the police were being closemouthed about how Rich had died.
Cheryl gave me one of her sweet, grandmotherly smiles. “Thanks, Emily. You always make people feel better. And Steve’s staying up at Little Lake Lodge while he’s researching Wisconsin cheese. Someone in the staff up there should be able to corroborate that he left there with only enough time to drive straight to Rich’s.”
She ordered a pumpkin spice latte. I told her about the spider donuts that Jocelyn had created, and she wanted one of those, too. As I delivered them to her, Steve came in wearing a bright orange shirt. “Do you like my Halloween costume?” he asked us.
“Very creative,” I said.
Cheryl looked down at her pants suit. “It’s better than mine.”
I held my apron out to the sides. “Mine, too. Call me Deputy Donut. What can I get you, Steve?”
“Anything, as long as it’s not black licorice.”
“Try the spider donut,” Cheryl suggested. “That cute girl out on the patio designed them. You get a donut and a donut bite, nice old-fashioned cake donuts, with chocolate frosting decorations.”
“Sold,” Steve said.
Cheryl touched her mug. “And I’m having a pumpkin spice latte.”
“Dumping spices into perfectly good coffee must be some of your middle-child syndrome.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking. I didn’t defend our pumpkin spice latte.
“We didn’t drink coffee when we were children.” She said it with a straight face, but her eyes glinted with their usual humor.
Steve turned to me. “Do you have coffee that’s just coffee without added flavor?”
“Sure. Our regular Colombian. It’s a medium-dark roast, with lots of flavor and no acidic taste.”
“I’ll have one of those.”
I patted the back of the chair where I’d sat before I went to get Cheryl’s donut and latte. “Sit here where you can see the patio and the kids in their costumes.”
Steve hesitated for a second as if watching trick-or-treaters wasn’t his first priority, but he sat in the chair I’d suggested.
A superhero with enormous padded biceps raced into the patio enclosure. A ghost was right behind him. Neither of them quite tripped over the cornstalks tied to the railing enclosing the patio.
Steve must have touched up his hair. Usually, his temples were gray flecked, but today the one I could see, the one on the left, was dark brown like the rest of his hair. Maybe his Halloween costume consisted of more than an orange shirt. Was he pretending to be a character from a movie or TV? I couldn’t think of a brown-haired character who wore orange shirts.
“Aren’t the kids adorable?” Cheryl asked him. “Look at that tiny pink elephant!”
Heading to the kitchen for Steve’s coffee and spider donut, I heard him say, “Middle child.”
When I returned to Cheryl and Steve’s table, Misty and Hooligan were arriving on the patio. Smiling broadly, they each gave Jocelyn a quick hug and stayed to chat while Nina helped an ungainly turtle balance a tiny cup of apple cider and a small fritter critter.
“What’s with the hugging police officers?” Steve asked. “Or are those just regular people impersonating police officers?”
“They’re actual police officers,” Cheryl told him. “You’ve probably seen them in here before.”
“I think I have. But not hugging people. Who’s the spider-donut-creating girl they were hugging?”
Cheryl beamed. “She works here summers, so we all know her. Is Jocelyn back for the weekend, Emily? She’s still going to college, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she’s here for only the weekend. We figured today would be extra busy, so we forced her to give up her studies for the day and help us.”
“She’ll get straight As, anyway,” Cheryl predicted.
I agreed.
A few minutes later, Misty and Hooligan were gone. They must have turned down mini-donuts and coffee. The patio was becoming crowded. I went outside to help Jocelyn and Nina hand out treats. Jocelyn told me, “Misty and Hooligan said to say hello. They’re off work now and on their way home to give out treats, but they said they’d see you tonight
at your party.”
“You and your boyfriend are welcome, too. Nina’s coming.”
“That would be fun,” Jocelyn said. “I’ll ask him.”
A goblin with a green-painted face stuffed part of a jack-o’-lantern donut into his mouth. “My favorite!”
Between handing out donuts to a skeleton and a lavender octopus, Nina asked me, “Did you notice how Misty couldn’t stop smiling? She’s crazy about Scott, and no wonder. You know all those restored vintage cars that kids were pedaling in the parade?”
I nodded.
Nina told me, “Scott finds those at garage sales and antique shops and makes them like new again. He gives them to needy kids.”
“I didn’t know he did that.”
Jocelyn chimed in, “Misty just now found out. She thinks it’s wonderful.”
I handed a cup of hot chocolate to a kid wearing a cardboard sandwich painted to look like a phone. “I do, too.”
Nina explained, “Other firefighters help him. Repainting the antiques can devalue them, but Scott and his guys don’t care. They want kids to have fun playing with them. They sell the more valuable ones to museums and collectors and use the money to buy more toys and the materials for fixing them up.”
Jocelyn beamed at two more trick-or-treaters. “Here’s a fox and a lion.”
Nina crowed, “And we have a new employee!”
A miniature chef smiled up at her, waved a wooden spoon, and piped in a high voice, “I make the best donuts in the universe!”
The numbers of trick-or-treaters thinned out as if it were time for the kids to rush home, eat supper, maybe, and plunder the neighborhoods where they lived.
Nina and Jocelyn were happy to stay out on the patio and wait for others. I went inside to start tidying the kitchen.
My phone rang. Brent. I answered.
Steve and Cheryl came to the counter to pay for their donuts and coffee.
“Just a sec,” I said to Brent. I went to stand across the counter from Steve and Cheryl. She argued, “It’s my turn, Steve.”
Playfully, Steve elbowed her aside. He pulled a charge card out of his wallet, but had trouble inserting it in the card reader. I took it out, worked it in for him, and gave him the card reader. Steve seemed to have trouble typing in his PIN. After a couple of tries, the payment was accepted. Frowning, he pulled out his card and shoved it into a pocket. “Ready to go?” he asked Cheryl.
The charge card he had always used on his other visits to Deputy Donut gave his name as Steven Quail, which matched how he’d introduced himself to Rich and me on Monday afternoon. He’d said, “Steve Quail,” but that was close enough. Although I hadn’t paid a lot of attention when I jiggled this card, took it out, and repositioned it, I was certain that there had been two initials and a last name that started with M on it. The initials had been S and Q, and the last name had been something like “Meadow.” No wonder he’d taken extra time to enter his PIN. He’d probably entered the wrong one first. Writers, I reminded myself, often had pen names. Steve guided Cheryl toward the front of the shop.
In my ear, Brent’s voice asked, “Em? Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
Maybe it was a trick of the light, but although I’d noticed earlier that the hair at Steve’s left temple was dark brown, matching the rest of his hair, it seemed to me that his right temple was graying, the way it had always looked before.
“Em?”
“Right. Sorry. I wanted to tell you about Terri Estable and Rich’s neighbor, Hank, and their differing stories about the morning Rich died.”
Opening the door for Cheryl, Steve stared back toward me. He was probably disappointed that I hadn’t asked him about his pen name. The names on his charge cards weren’t familiar, but for all I knew, in addition to writing about food for trade journals, he could have been a famous author of children’s books or maybe he owned a company that was a household name, and I hadn’t recognized it. I wanted to apologize, but he was gone.
Brent asked, “What did Terri and Hank tell you?”
As Steve and Cheryl left the patio, the mystery man who had come to Deputy Donut a few hours after Rich’s murder entered the patio enclosure.
Again neatly dressed in a tailored suit, he headed straight for Jocelyn and Nina.
Chapter 28
“Brent!” I hadn’t meant my whisper into the phone to come out more like a screech. “Remember the mystery man I told you about, the man in a suit who came into Deputy Donut shortly after Rich was killed? He’s out on the patio talking to Nina and Jocelyn.”
“Keep an eye on him.”
Tom was at the big mixer, watching as it kneaded a batch of the next day’s dough. I caught his attention and pointed toward the patio. He stared toward our front windows. I knew he would shut off the mixer and run out to the patio if he had to.
Watching Nina, Jocelyn, and the mystery man, I told Brent about Terri stating that she’d been at Hank’s during part of the time she’d originally claimed to be canoeing.
Brent already knew that Rich had made certain that he would be the one to buy the underpriced cottage, but Terri hadn’t told him about delaying her canoeing on Tuesday morning to apologize to Hank for her role in the scheme. I told Brent that Hank had come into Deputy a short time after Terri left. “His story was similar, except he said that he and Terri had been together the entire time that Terri had originally claimed she’d been canoeing. So, Hank is giving himself and Terri alibis for the entire time, but Terri is leaving it open that Hank could have gone next door and killed Rich while she was supposedly canoeing, which destroys the alibis that Hank provided for himself and Terri. Maybe they’ll get together and coordinate their stories before they talk to you again.”
“Thanks. What you’ve told me might be helpful. We’ll interview them again and get their latest versions.”
“Before you go, I need to tell you one more thing. Remember the pickup truck I saw at Rich’s cottage late Thursday night?”
“Yes.”
Out on the patio, Jocelyn was cleaning tables. The mystery man was still talking to Nina. He handed her something like a business card. I looked over my shoulder. Tom was still gazing at them.
I told Brent, “Terri thought she heard Derek’s truck rattle past Rich’s house that night, and Hank said that when he was checking around Rich’s cottage, looking for Terri, a rattletrap was approaching on the road. Hank got into his canoe and paddled away. When he arrived at his own dock, Terri was there, scared because of hearing Derek’s truck. Hank said she didn’t stay long, and after she went back to Rich’s, Hank heard the rattling truck leave.”
The mystery man left the patio and walked south on Wisconsin Street. I told Brent which direction the man was heading and went on with my story. “I don’t know what Derek was doing around Rich’s cottage after Rich was murdered, but I wonder if he, like Hank, was searching for Terri. And if she’s still in danger from him.”
“We haven’t finished talking to him, either.”
Smiling, Nina marched to the counter. Jocelyn was right behind her. Nina slapped a business card down where I could read it. I quickly said, “Don’t go, Brent.” I looked up into Nina’s brightly smiling face. “The mystery man works at an art gallery?”
“Mr. Arthurs owns it,” she said proudly. “It’s a famous one.”
Tom appeared beside me and read the card aloud. “The Arthur C. Arthurs Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin.”
Flushed, Nina brushed at hair straying out from underneath her Deputy Donut hat. “Mr. Arthurs is coming to my studio on Monday to see my other work. He said if it’s anything like what’s here and at The Craft Croft, he’ll offer me a one-woman show, maybe as soon as next August or September!” She cradled her face in her hands and made a face like the ones she’d been carving into Boston scream donuts. “Eeek!” She lowered her hands and went back to smiling broadly. “Rich Royalson called him about my work on Monday. Mr. Arthurs drove up here on Tuesday after a meeting that e
nded at ten in Madison.” She held up an index finger. “Notice how deftly I discovered his alibi for the time of Rich’s murder.”
Jocelyn smiled at her. “Good detective work. Madison is four hours away. Four long hours every time I go.”
I teased her, “You should have gone to a college that’s closer.”
Jocelyn shook her head. “Nuh-uh.” I grinned. Her boyfriend also went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Tom asked Nina, “Where was this Arthur C. Arthurs between Tuesday afternoon when he was here and just now?”
“He had to go home right after he visited The Craft Croft. Today was his first chance to come back. He brought his wife and they’re making a weekend of it.”
I congratulated Nina and then asked into the phone, “Did you hear any of that, Brent? The mystery man who worried me is an art gallery owner, Arthur C. Arthurs. Rich Royalson told him about Nina, so Arthurs knew Rich, but I don’t think he came to Fallingbrook to murder Rich. He claims he was at a meeting in Madison until ten on Tuesday. He couldn’t have been here when Rich was murdered.”
“Thanks, Em. We’ll follow up on that. Plus, you’ve given us those other leads. See you tonight.”
We disconnected. I thought, I hope you don’t have to work, Brent.
Tom, Jocelyn, and I congratulated Nina again.
“The Arthur C. Arthurs Gallery,” she said reverently, but there was a telltale gleam in her eye that warned me she was about to make a joke or tease someone. “I wonder if he ever shortens his name to Art? Or shortens both his first and last name to Art? The Art Art Gallery! Or, you know, with the middle initial of C, he could have been Art C. Arthurs, and his friends called him Artsy”—she made air quotes—“Arthurs. So, he had to own an art gallery when he grew up.”
Jocelyn and I laughed, but Tom stayed serious. “Are you sure he is who he says he is? He did show up here only a few hours after Rich Royalson was murdered.”
“Nina knew who Cindy is,” I reminded Tom. “She’s familiar with the art world.”
Nina stared off toward the back wall of the kitchen as if she could see through it. “I can’t speak for him personally, but I know that the gallery is real.” She flashed us a quick and happy grin. “And prestigious.”
Boston Scream Murder Page 21
