Double Shots, Donuts, and Dead Dudes

by Harper Lin

  Matt’s suggestion that I tell Mike what I knew would make sense, except that I knew Mike didn’t think Pablo was murdered. So if he did anything with my information, it would probably just be related to putting the gambling ring out of business, not arresting the bookie and his Boston goon for murder. I had to have more evidence before I told him anything. But how to get more evidence, I didn’t know. It wasn’t like I could just waltz up to Caleb or Boston Goon and ask them point-blank about Pablo. I didn’t even know how to get to them without repeating my antics of the night before, and I wasn’t sure I was up to that. And Dave’s reaction when I asked him about betting didn’t give me a lot of confidence that I could approach Don and get the password without sneaking around. I was going to have to think of another way.

  Despite not knowing what I would do next, I felt good about all of it. I would figure it out, just like I’d figured out the gambling ring. I just let my mind wander wherever it wanted as I took Latte on his morning walk. I let him wander wherever he wanted too. He went straight for the beach, which wasn’t a place my mind had gone, but it was fine with me. The beach was always nice this time of year, when the weather was just starting to warm up and we weren’t inundated with tourists yet.

  We played fetch until Latte got tired, hung out on the beach for a while, then took the long way back, wandering down the beach for a while before turning up to walk through town. Just across the dunes, on the other side of our short boardwalk, we passed Sandy’s Seafood Shack, and I got a sudden craving for a burger. Seafood was obviously their specialty—it was in their name, after all—but they had really good burgers too. It was a little early for lunch—I could see the staff inside just getting the open kitchen up and ready for business—so I decided that would have to wait. Besides, despite the craving, I’d just had breakfast, and if I ate again now, I’d be snacking on cookies and cupcakes and donuts before I closed the café for the night.

  So, I headed back home, dropped Latte off, changed into my work clothes, and headed over to the café.

  Sammy cornered me as soon as I walked in. This time, though, I knew it was good as soon as she said, “We need to talk.”

  “The donuts are such a huge hit! Everybody loves them! And they sold out so fast. People were lined up outside, Fran. It was unbelievable!”

  “Are you serious?” I had trouble picturing people lining up outside our little café for much of anything, especially something that I made (with Sammy’s help, of course).

  Sammy nodded, her blue eyes even wider than usual and her blond ponytail bobbing.

  Apparently, being the only place in town that sold something was an effective way to get people to buy it. I beamed. “That’s amazing!”

  “Your donuts are amazing!”

  I waved at her to stop. “Thank you. Did we get any preorders for tomorrow?”

  She nodded, setting her ponytail to bouncing again. “I only took five though. I didn’t want to take too many and have you stuck making donuts all day. Unless you want to, of course. I can take as many orders as you want.”

  I did enjoy working with the fluffy, stretchy donut dough, but unless I was going to convert the café exclusively into a donut shop—and I had no intention of doing that—I agreed that it would be a good idea to limit the number of donuts we made each day. There was a lot of other stuff that needed to be made each day too. “Five sounds good. Well, I guess it depends on how big the orders are. I’ll figure it out and write something up.” My mind almost immediately started to do the calculations of how long it took to make the donuts and how much time I still needed to devote to the rest of the baking, all the while doing the day-to-day work of running the café and taking care of our customers. I really was going to have to hire some additional help sooner or later.

  Sammy and I finished up our chat, and I went in the back room to run some numbers while she stayed out in the café to take care of customers.

  I started out calculating how best to balance the baking load so that I could have enough donuts to sell in the morning without hurting our other inventory, but it wasn’t long before my mind drifted back to Pablo’s death.

  My thinking now was that he’d been poisoned or drugged with something that would cause a stroke and wouldn’t be immediately obvious. Even though I really needed to figure out the math on those donuts, I leaned over and flicked the office computer on. When it was finally ready to go—it was probably time to start thinking about replacing it—I opened up the browser and typed in my search terms: “drugs that can cause stroke.”

  The search results weren’t hugely helpful. There were way more results about drugs used to treat strokes than anything else. So I changed my search and tried again. And again. In the end, all I gained was frustration and the knowledge that you treated one kind of stroke with blood thinners and the other kind with blood pressure medication and surgery. At one point, I almost searched for “how to poison someone and make it look like a stroke,” but I decided that was too murder-y and probably not something I wanted in my search history. So until I could find out a way to get more information from Caleb the Bookie or Boston Goon about the gambling ring, I was back at square one.

  With Sammy’s shift almost over, I went back out into the café. We went over the donut preorders for the next day, and I told her to play it safe and only take five preorders per day until I told her otherwise but to use her discretion. I didn’t want five preorders of ten dozen each or anything insane like that.

  After she left, I busied myself working around the café, cleaning up, serving customers, starting the donut dough, and mixing up some cupcake batter. It wasn’t very busy, so my mind had plenty of time to wander, which it did, although I tried to keep it from spending too much time thinking about Pablo. It wasn’t going to do any good to dwell on it anyway, not at this point, when I was at a dead end, with no idea where to go next if I wasn’t going to confront the leaders of the gambling ring, which I didn’t really want to do. So I kneaded dough and poured batter and rotated pans in and out of the oven until the bell over the café door jingled and brought me someone who might actually be able to help.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I didn’t recognize him at first.

  “Hello. Welcome to Antonia’s! What can I get for you today?”

  He drummed his fingers on the counter as he gazed up at the menu board. He grinned. “I see you added donuts to your menu after all.”

  It still took me a second before I realized why he would be commenting on that. Then I remembered that it was Pablo’s friend Fitz who had brought up the donut.

  I beamed. “We did! They’re very popular too. And, actually, we’re sold out for the day.” I glanced behind me at the circles of dough on the tray next to the fryer. “But I have some ready to cook if you can wait about five minutes.”

  He nodded. “Sure, if it’s not any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.” I stepped over and flicked the fryer on. “And a double shot of espresso?”

  “Sure thing. How much do I owe you?”

  I waved him off. “It’s on the house. Your idea has been doing well for me, so it’s my way of saying thank you.”

  He smiled. “Well, thank you.”

  “If you want to take a seat, I’ll bring your coffee and donut over in just a minute.”

  He thanked me again and sat down as I dropped his donut in the fryer, along with an extra one for good measure. As they began to sizzle in the hot oil, I made Fitz’s drink. It didn’t take long for the underside of the donuts to turn golden brown, and I flipped them over to cook the second side. When they were finished, each side golden brown with a pale ring around the edge, I pulled them out and drizzled the glaze over them. While that dried, I finished off his coffee and made one for myself as well. When everything was ready, I carried it all over to his table and set it down.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” Something had occurred to me while I was preparing the donuts and coffee, and now seemed like as good a ti
me as any to pursue it.

  “Not at all.” He gestured at the chair across from him, and I sat down.

  We small talked for a few minutes until I felt like it was safe to move the conversation toward what I really wanted to know. “You said you work in pharmaceutical sales, right?”

  “Sure do. Cardiac medications, mostly. Blood thinners and that kind of thing. You’d think there’s no new work to be done with them since they’ve been around for so long, but there is. But the old ones are good too. A little riskier for some patients but still good. I sell them both. It just depends on what the practitioner is looking for and what the patient’s risk profile is. You have to manage the side effects, you know.”

  I nodded, acting like everything he said was old hat to me. One thing he said tickled something in my brain though. “What kind of side effects?”

  Some bit of an expression flitted across his face. I rushed to offer a plausible explanation.

  “My mother died of a heart condition. A heart attack. I’m just wondering…”

  It seemed to be enough for him. “Sure, sure. Well, with blood thinners, the obvious one is excess bleeding. And difficulty stopping bleeding.” He waved his hand. “Layman’s terms, obviously.”

  I nodded. Layman’s terms. Obviously.

  “Now, depending on the preexisting conditions—do you know what kind of heart attack your mom had?”

  I didn’t, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t have told him. This wasn’t about her. I shook my head.

  “Sure. So, it’s hard to say how the drugs she was taking could have affected that. Do you know what underlying conditions she had?”

  I shook my head again. None, as far as I knew, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. It was none of his business, and it didn’t serve my purposes anyway.

  “Okay. Sure. So, if you have a bleeding disorder, obviously blood thinners would be contraindicated. Pregnancy and allergy, obviously. Those are the big ones. Other than that, I mean, they’re pretty safe. They’ve been around awhile. They save lives. It’s not great if you’re in a car accident while you’re on them or if you stroke out from high blood pressure, but your doctor doesn’t prescribe them if the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.”

  I nodded along like it was a totally normal conversation to be having in the middle of the café. “So, in the situations you mentioned, the danger would be bleeding to death?”

  He looked at me like I was finally catching on. “You got it.”

  “That’s so interesting. How do you keep it all straight in your head?”

  “Lots of practice. And a chemistry degree.” He chuckled and finished off his coffee. A thoughtful look came across his face. “You were there the night Pablo died, weren’t you? At the restaurant.”

  I was surprised that he knew that. Had someone told him, or had he been there too? I nodded. “My boyfriend and I were there.”

  “You tried to save him.” He twisted his small cup in his hands, staring down at it.

  “We did. We tried. We did our best, but—” I stared at the wood grain on the table.

  “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “I don’t know. We couldn’t have gotten there any quicker. We were right there. Maybe we shouldn’t have done CPR. Maybe, with the kind of stroke he had, trying to get his heart pumping made it worse. I don’t know. I just—”

  “There was nothing you could have done,” he repeated.

  “You don’t know that,” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Yes I do. I was there. I saw what happened. There was nothing you could have done.”

  I looked up at him. “You were at the restaurant that night?”

  He nodded, his eyes full of pain and regret. “I was in the back corner. Too far away to be able to do anything. All I could do was sit there and watch.” His voice trembled.

  I stared at him. I couldn’t comprehend seeing my friend lying unconscious on the ground and just staying where I was and watching while other people tried to save his life. Even if there was nothing he could have done to help, surely it would have been a comfort to Pablo in his final moments to have his friend beside him instead of Matt and me who, while we were friendly, were really just customers. But people do strange things, especially in times of crisis. Maybe Fitz was just the kind of guy who didn’t handle crisis well.

  He seemed to regain some control over his emotions, at least for a moment. “You’re a good person for trying to save him. A good person.” His voice broke again.

  “Thank you.” I examined my coffee cup and half-eaten donut while I waited for him to calm down again. I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Sorry,” he said after a minute. “It’s just still hard.”

  I nodded in sympathy.

  Fitz glanced down at his watch. “I better get going.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, shuffled through it, and pulled something out. “My card,” he said, holding it out toward me. “If you ever have any more questions about blood thinners or other cardiac medications. If I don’t know the answers, I’ll know someone who does.”

  I took the card and looked it over before sliding it into my pocket. “Thank you.” I didn’t think I’d ever need it, but it didn’t hurt to have.

  He picked up his empty coffee cup and looked inside. “Any chance I could get a refill on this before I head out? I’ll be happy to pay this time.”

  “Of course you can.” I stood up and took the coffee cup from him. “But it’s on the house. It’s the least I can do after the help you gave me.”

  He looked at me slightly cockeyed but apparently decided quickly enough that I meant the donuts idea. Which I did, but I meant more than that too.

  As soon as Fitz left, I pulled out my phone and started searching again, now armed with the information I’d gotten from him. What I’d read earlier along with what he’d said had suddenly given me an idea about how Pablo had been killed, and now I just had to find out if it was really possible. Several minutes of searching said that it was. Unlikely, but possible. And possible was all I needed. Fitz had no idea that he’d given me the key I needed to prove that his friend’s death wasn’t due to natural causes after all—it was murder.

  Blood thinners. A high enough dose could be dangerous on its own, but Isabel had said that Pablo had problems with his blood pressure getting too high. And from what I found, uncontrolled high blood pressure combined with blood thinners that no one—not Pablo, not his doctor—knew about could spell disaster, especially if he took a high enough dose. It was a perfect storm of circumstances that I was sure could only happen if someone wanted Pablo dead. And who would want Pablo dead except the bookie who he owed money to?

  Now that I had it figured out, I just had to prove it.

  While I worked on sorting it out, I went back to my donuts. I finished stretching and shaping the dough then cut neat circles out of it for the donuts. I set aside the circles cut from the middle of the donuts so we could use them to make donut holes. Well, most of them. A few of them I dropped into the fryer so I could make sure the dough was coming out properly. At least that’s the excuse I gave myself.

  By the time I had everything ready to go for Sammy in the morning, it was past time to close the café. I got everything cleaned up and locked up and headed out. I was still craving a burger, and it was prime time for me to drop by Sandy’s. It was the opposite way from home, but I didn’t mind. I had enough on my mind that I needed a good long walk to sort through it all.

  I was stuck on the fact that I needed to talk to Caleb the Bookie or his Boston goon. It was the only way I could think of to prove that they’d dosed Pablo with blood thinners to cause the stroke that killed him. I didn’t know how I would manage it, but I had to figure it out some way or another.

  I was so lost in thought, I was surprised when I found myself standing outside Sandy’s.

  Sandy’s Seafood Shack, named after the owners’ dog Josie, who liked to roll around in the sand all the time and so ea
rned the nickname Sandy on top of her official name, was—hands down—the best place in Cape Bay to get any kind of seafood. And it was obvious that the people of Cape Bay knew that, too, because Sandy’s was the only seafood place in town that managed to do enough business to stay open year-round.

  It was a step up from a lot of the lobster shacks that dotted the New England coastline, partly just because of how long it had been around. Over the years, their steady business had allowed them to put money first into tables, then an awning, then something that actually resembled walls, until now it was basically a full-fledged restaurant, even if the windows were pieces of plastic that were rolled up in the summertime. And they had the best seafood and burgers in town.

  As usual, there was a line, and I took my place at the end of it. A moment later, someone joined the line behind me. At first I thought he had a companion, but I gradually realized, based on the half conversation I was hearing, that he was on the phone. Something about his voice was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I ran my regular customers through my head, trying to figure out if it was one of them. Maybe the low gruffness of it made me think it was familiar when it was actually just playing to some Hollywood stereotype—some generic De Niro or Pacino character that could be in any given movie. I tried to get a glimpse of him by casually glancing over my shoulder, but he was standing behind me at an angle I couldn’t quite see, no matter how I twisted. Casually, of course. I could have just turned around and looked, but there would have been nothing subtle about that.

  The line was fast-moving, and I was at the front of it before I could figure out who it was. I placed my order for two burgers and two sides of fries—one for Matt, of course. As soon as I paid, I stepped aside and looked back where I’d just been so I could see the man who’d been behind me. But despite the fact that he was at the window to order, his cell phone was still glued to his ear, his arm holding it at an angle that blocked his face from my view.