Jealousy Filled Donuts

by Ginger Bolton

  “Only if he’s a fire chief,” she answered, “and can drive those big shiny red trucks.”

  “Misty let me drive a cruiser once,” Hooligan said.

  I remembered the time. “She wasn’t in uniform or on duty, and you were.”

  Samantha’s smile was a very happy one. That evening was when she and Hooligan had met each other for the first time. The attraction had been obvious. I smiled, too, just thinking about it.

  Leaving Scott, Samantha, and the two uniformed officers behind to watch Landsdowner, the rest of us started down the trail. I really didn’t want to wear that cold, wet backpack, but I wanted to keep my hands free to catch myself against trees or rocks if I tripped, so I put the backpack on. We traveled slowly, since Hooligan was the only one with a working flashlight and he made certain that Misty, Jocelyn, and I saw the obstacles. Dampness seeped from my backpack into my sweater and shirt. I tried not to shiver.

  We hadn’t gone very far when Brent and Rex, each with his own powerful light, met us.

  Chapter 38

  Brent’s eyes sought mine. “How are you doing?”

  “We’re fine,” I said. “Right, Jocelyn?”

  “Yes. Thank you for believing me about that man stalking me.”

  “I have no difficulty believing that,” Rex said. “He has a lot of explaining to do.”

  Hooligan and Misty asked Brent if he minded if they returned to the group waiting for the swift-water rescue team.

  Brent thanked them for what they’d done that evening. “Take the rest of your off-duty night off,” he teased.

  The smile on my face was huge. Hooligan and Misty probably wanted to be near the action when Landsdowner was rescued and taken away, but they probably also wanted to return to their dates that evening—Hooligan with Samantha and Misty with Scott.

  Misty gave Brent his zip ties. Hooligan shined his light on the trail upriver, and he and Misty followed its beam away from us.

  Brent and his flashlight led Rex, Jocelyn, and me down Noisy Cawing Crow Trail. While we were still far enough from the roaring falls to hear each other, I told the two detectives about the things they should see near the falls that would help them understand what we were going to tell them when we gave our statements. Near the top of the falls, Rex and Brent took flash pictures when I pointed at the donut arrow, the railing I’d flipped over, and the ledge partway down the cliff.

  We started down again and had to step aside to let EMTs wearing large backpacks hurry uphill past us. Farther down, we stepped aside again for the swift-water rescue team. Shining flashlights, wearing and lugging a huge amount of equipment, they were obviously taking their time and moving cautiously.

  At the bottom of the hill, the boxy bright red search and rescue vehicle dominated the parking lot. Next to it was an ambulance. I also saw a couple of other fire department trucks, one marked police cruiser, two unmarked cruisers, and Scott’s and Hooligan’s SUVs.

  No one was in any of the police cars at the moment.

  I asked Brent, “Where’s Kelsey?”

  “A pair of officers are driving her to headquarters.”

  The two unmarked cruisers were facing in opposite directions so the drivers could open their windows and talk to each other. They could also, if they needed to, watch each other’s backs.

  Rex escorted me to the passenger seat of one of the unmarked cruisers.

  I hesitated. “My backpack was in the river. It’s kind of drippy.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Put it on the floor.”

  I sat in the passenger seat and set my backpack beside my feet.

  Brent put Jocelyn in the front seat of the other cruiser. Both cruisers’ windows were closed.

  Rex slid into the driver’s seat of his cruiser, turned the interior lights on, and asked if I was okay.

  I said I was.

  “You’re wet.” He started the engine and cranked up the heater. “Tell me if that’s too much hot air.” Did I see a twinkle in his eyes? Not sure I trusted his apparent kindness, I was glad that Jocelyn was with Brent. I knew for certain that my longtime friend would treat my young assistant compassionately and sensitively.

  I asked Rex, “Are we going to police headquarters?”

  “I’ll take your statement here, unless you’d prefer the comfort of our interview room.”

  “My car’s over in the campground, so this works better for me. But if you want to go interview Kelsey, I can talk to you another time.”

  “Kelsey isn’t going anywhere tonight, and we’d like Jocelyn’s and your descriptions of the evening’s events while they’re fresh in your mind.” He paused for a second and then added emphatically, “And before we interrogate Kelsey.”

  As I’d thought before, my story sounded, at least to me, too bizarre to be true. Almost entirely expressionless, Rex wrote it down. I reminded myself that he had taken whatever he’d heard from Brent seriously enough to come all the way out here. He asked lots of questions and had me go over the story several times.

  With no lighting source other than the insides of the two unmarked cruisers and the three-quarter moon high in the sky, the parking lot was almost totally dark. The car’s windows were closed and its engine was running, but I could hear the falls.

  Flashlights shining ahead of them, the two uniformed police officers we’d left up near Stalker’s Rock came off the trail and into the parking lot with Philip Landsdowner between them. Landsdowner was still wearing the strap around his neck holding the long-lensed camera, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. Below his knees, his jeans looked darker, as if they were wet.

  One of the officers carried a paper evidence bag, sealed, with something bulging at the bottom. Water dripped from the bag. Misty and Hooligan must have directed him to Kelsey’s hoodie.

  Rex turned on his cruiser’s spotlight, aimed it at Landsdowner, excused himself, and slipped out of the cruiser. Brent got out of his cruiser a split second after Rex closed his door.

  Jocelyn looked at me, tilted her head, and raised an eyebrow.

  Rex hadn’t told me to stay in the cruiser.

  I pointed at the officers and Landsdowner, made a let’s go gesture, opened the door of Rex’s cruiser, and eased out.

  Not wanting to call attention to ourselves, neither of us closed the doors of our cruisers, and Jocelyn avoided walking between the spotlight and the men in the parking lot by going around the back of the cruiser I’d been in. The interior lights in the cruisers had been on when we left the cars. They stayed on. Together, Jocelyn and I tiptoed closer and halted in the darkness several feet behind Brent and Rex. I made certain that we weren’t between Rex’s cruiser’s dash cam and Landsdowner.

  If any of the officers heard us above the rush of falling water, they chose to ignore us. If they looked toward us, they would have seen little besides the glare of Rex’s spotlight.

  That spotlight was probably blinding Landsdowner when he turned his head toward the two detectives between him and us. He whined, “I had nothing to do with that murder. I did not light the firework.”

  “Who did?” Brent asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Rex folded his arms across his chest. “Earlier, you told us you did know. You said it was the woman from Deputy Donut. You provided us with a picture of her near the deceased. She was carrying a stack of donuts with a fuse sticking out the top of it.”

  Landsdowner shuffled his feet. “It looked like her. The woman was wearing a red hoodie. She bent over this stack of donuts on the ground, which was weird, but I didn’t take her picture at that moment, and I didn’t actually see anyone light anything. Later I saw Jocelyn’s boss in a red thing, and she’d been splattered with jelly-filled donuts. She had to have been near when the firework exploded. It was easy to figure out that she blew up her own donuts and killed that woman.”

  “That photo was faked, wasn’t it.” Brent did not make it into a question.

  Landsdowner muttered, “I . . . um—” />
  Rex interrupted him. “It’s a simple question. Was that photo faked? Yes or no. Just answer the question. You’re chin deep in trouble already. Lying will only make it worse for you.”

  Landsdowner said, “I sort of put two photos together.”

  Brent asked him, “Were you trying to hide the fact that you actually planted and lit that firework?”

  Landsdowner was obviously becoming unnerved. Raising his voice, he claimed, “I had nothing to do with it!” The two uniformed officers holding him by the arms didn’t move. They just stood there gripping his arms and staring straight ahead. Like Landsdowner, they probably didn’t want to look toward Rex’s spotlight.

  Rex demanded, “Were you trying to protect someone, Landsdowner?”

  Landsdowner probably didn’t know that Kelsey had been arrested. From his boulder, he could not have seen the riverbank where Brent had handcuffed her with plastic ties and he could not have seen Brent and Hooligan taking her away. Scott, Misty, Hooligan, and Samantha would have stayed quiet about the arrest. If Landsdowner’s rescuers and the two uniformed police officers knew about it, they must have been discreet, too.

  Landsdowner shifted his shoulders and neck like anyone might after a heavy camera had been on a strap around his neck for hours while he was too busy clinging to a rock to adjust the strap or redistribute the camera’s weight. “I told you, I don’t know who lit that thing. I didn’t see it happen. Just this woman in a red hoodie who was near it before it exploded.”

  “If you didn’t know who lit it, why did you tell us it was the woman from Deputy Donut?” I’d never before heard Brent sound so exasperated.

  “I told you. I thought it was her.”

  “Thought,” Brent repeated. “You thought it was the woman from Deputy Donut, so you composed a picture to make it look like it was her.”

  “I was only trying to help,” Landsdowner said.

  Rex made a rude noise.

  “Okay.” Landsdowner sounded hoarse. “I needed to discredit her.”

  Barely restraining myself from erupting with questions or noises even ruder than Rex’s, I stayed in the background and let the detectives do the interrogating. Jocelyn moved closer to me.

  “Why would you need or even want to discredit the woman from Deputy Donut?” Rex asked Landsdowner.

  “Because she’s Jocelyn’s boss and I’ve loved Jocelyn ever since she first started winning competitions and being on the news.” Landsdowner’s tone made it clear that he thought his reasoning was not only obvious but also completely sensible.

  I glanced at Jocelyn in sympathy.

  She was coping in her own fashion. Grasping her throat in both hands and sticking out her tongue, she pretended to be choking. She was silent, though, and none of the five men seemed to notice her clowning.

  Rex made a show of scratching his head. “I don’t understand what that has to do with discrediting Jocelyn’s boss. Perhaps you can explain it to me.”

  “Jocelyn used to work at Freeze. A clerk there, Kelsey, thought that she had a chance with me. To get my attention, she told me everything she knew about Jocelyn.”

  Rex prodded, “Like what?”

  “Where her gymnastic competitions were, so I could take pictures, that sort of thing. I wanted Jocelyn to notice me and fall for me like I fell for her.”

  Beside me, Jocelyn shuddered.

  Brent asked Landsdowner, “Did Kelsey also tell you where Jocelyn lived and where her parents had their trailer?”

  “She might have. I don’t remember.” Landsdowner was so oily that it was a wonder he didn’t ooze out of the hands of the two officers holding him and melt into a puddle in the gravel parking lot.

  Rex asked, “And did she tell you where Jocelyn’s new job was?”

  “I suppose.”

  Rex reminded him, “Remember what I told you about lying.”

  “Okay, yeah, Kelsey must have told me all that stuff.”

  Rex asked, “Did you say you saw the woman from Deputy Donut toss a paper bag into a trash can near the 1950 Ford with the donut on top?”

  “I thought it was her. I caught a glimpse of this short woman in jeans and a red top. She was wearing a backpack, and I was sure it was Jocelyn’s boss, and that I’d also seen her bending over the firework before it was lit.”

  “You just told us you weren’t nearby,” Brent stated.

  “Not when it was lit,” Landsdowner answered. “Before.”

  Rex scratched his head again. “And I’m still confused about why you kept photographing the woman from Deputy Donut on the Fourth of July, beginning early in the morning in her shop, long before the fireworks display, and why you published pictures of her that made her look bad.”

  “That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Landsdowner demanded. “First, I just took pictures of Jocelyn’s boss looking disagreeable. Then someone was killed that night when Jocelyn’s boss was nearby and I saw how I could completely discredit her. If Jocelyn’s boss went to jail for murder, her donut shop would have to close.” He raised his chin. “And now I have photographic evidence that Jocelyn’s boss attempted murder.” He lowered his head. “Take my camera and look at the pictures I took earlier this evening of three women in the river. Jocelyn’s boss tried to drown both Jocelyn and Kelsey.” Actually, Kelsey had been trying to drown Jocelyn and had told me I was next, but even though the camera was fitted with a long lens, I wasn’t sure that any pictures Landsdowner had taken would show exactly what had happened.

  “Let me get this straight,” Brent said. “You’re voluntarily lending us your camera and any memory cards in it so we can look at the pictures you took?”

  There was a slight pause, and then Landsdowner answered with a little less confidence, “Yes. The pictures will prove that Jocelyn’s boss attempted to drown Jocelyn and Kelsey. If these two dudes hadn’t handcuffed me, I could give it to you. Take it. Or take these handcuffs off.”

  Brent gently lifted the strap and guided it over Landsdowner’s bowed head. Pictures in that camera might not show Kelsey forcing Jocelyn’s head underneath the water and probably would show me clobbering Kelsey with my backpack. I might end up in a little trouble for that, but I was fairly sure that my self-defense argument would hold up in court, if it came to that.

  I really hoped that camera held evidence of Landsdowner stalking Jocelyn. Photos of her house, for instance, and had he taken pictures of her in the campground and as he followed her up Skinned Knee Trail?

  Holding the camera carefully, Brent asked, “Why do you want the donut shop where Jocelyn works to close?”

  Landsdowner raised his head and stated clearly, as if the two detectives questioning him were inattentive toddlers, “Jocelyn would be out of a job. I could support her. She would turn to me.”

  That was apparently too much for Jocelyn. “Never!” she shouted. Several backflips took her to the opposite side of the moonlit parking lot.

  Chapter 39

  Probably worried that Jocelyn might hurt herself in the dark or that Landsdowner might escape his captors and run after her, Brent took off toward the woods across the parking lot. He was sprinting, not doing backflips like Jocelyn had. “Jocelyn! Come back!”

  “Okay!” Hearing the release of pent-up anxiety in the exultant way she sang that one word, I couldn’t help smiling.

  Rex told the two uniformed officers, “Take him in. I’ll be in later to question him further.”

  As one of the uniformed officers guided Landsdowner to sit in the back of the marked cruiser, Landsdowner shouted, “I didn’t kill that woman!”

  Without responding, the officer closed the cruiser door. The other officer shut the dripping evidence bag into the trunk, and then both policemen tucked themselves into the front seat. The cruiser pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward town.

  Brent accompanied Jocelyn to Rex and me. Brent and Jocelyn were both smiling. Jocelyn asked, “He’s not going to bother me anymore, is he?”

  Rex answered, “Not
if we have anything to say about it.” He winked at me. “That guy should be happy we didn’t leave him on his rock all night and then question him there in the morning before we rescued him.” I grinned at this latest example of cop humor.

  Brent told Rex, “I’m taking Jocelyn to her parents’ trailer.” He turned to me. “When you left messages for me earlier, you said your car was in the campground. Is it still there?”

  “It should be.”

  “I’ll take you to it.”

  “Okay.” I could have walked along one of the trails through the woods to my car, but I’d explored those woods enough for one night. Thanks to the heater in Rex’s cruiser, I was nearly dry. I grabbed my backpack from his cruiser. It wasn’t anywhere near dry.

  Rex told Brent, “Meet me at your office after you get these two women safely to their destinations. We’ll discuss how we’re going to approach our suspected murderer and our adventurous stalker.”

  Saying that he planned to drop Jocelyn off first, Brent let her sit in the front passenger seat of his cruiser. The back was cramped. I was glad that I wasn’t taller and we didn’t have far to go.

  As Brent drove us through the parking lot on our way out, I saw lights coming down Noisy Cawing Crow Trail. The swift-water rescue team and the EMTs must have taken plenty of time to gather all of their equipment in darkness lit mainly by lights they’d carried up there, and then they’d have needed to negotiate the trail carefully in the dark. My two best friends and their dates would have stayed behind to help, and now they were probably letting the rescue team and EMTs go first. Misty and Samantha might take time to show Scott and Hooligan where we had played and explored during our preteen and early-teen summers.

  Jocelyn directed Brent to her parents’ trailer, which was shiny, obviously new, and about the size of a school bus. Brent asked me, “Mind staying in the back a few minutes longer, Em? Then I’ll let you out so you can ride in front.”

  “I’m fine.” I knew not to try to unlock the back door of a cruiser, even an unmarked one, from inside.