“Of course we’ll be there,” Angelica said. “We will sit in the front row and cry how beautiful you are. Boo-hoo!” She rubbed her eyes, pretending to cry.
Again, they laughed. “Much as I’d love to talk about this all day long,” Heather said, “I guess we’d better get to work.”
A female customer stood waiting rather impatiently at the front counter. Heather grabbed a hair net and stuffed her hair into it as she walked up front. “Good morning. May I help you?”
Despite the woman’s perfect makeup, she looked tired. “I need a dozen Southern Pecan Pie donuts and a dozen Ice Cream Sundae donuts,” she said abruptly.
“Yes, ma’am,” Heather said, grabbing a flat, white cardboard box from beneath the counter and assembling it by popping the sides up and locking the tabs in place.
“And don’t just smash them together,” the woman added. “I want them to look nice when I get where I’m going.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Heather said again, noticing that the artfully applied makeup was actually concealing bags under the woman’s eyes. Maybe she was cranky because she was so tired.
Heather finished with the first box of donuts and placed it on the counter in front of the customer. As she reached for a second box to assemble, she saw the woman try unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. “Long day?” Heather said politely.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no,” the woman said. “It’s the pageant circuit. Competing in beauty pageants is exhausting.”
Heather tried not to let her surprise show on her face. The woman looked to be in her early 40’s. As far as Heather knew, there weren’t a whole slew of beauty pageants for 40-year-old women.
“Fortunately,” her customer continued, “Emily wins every pageant she enters.”
Wait a minute, Heather thought. Her daughter’s name was Emily? Was this woman Lana Sturmer?
“Congratulations to Emily,” Heather said. “She must be beautiful.”
“She is,” the woman said. “It was too bad that stupid hairdresser messed up her hair right before the Miss Harper County pageant. Otherwise, she would have won that one, too.”
“She didn’t win?” Heather asked, beginning to place donuts in the second box.
“She was runner-up.”
“That’s great.”
“First runner-up is still first loser. That—that woman—deserved what she got.”
“You mean the hairdresser who was murdered recently?” Heather asked innocently.
“Yes. The one who was bludgeoned to death with her own flat iron.”
“Wow. I didn’t know those things were heavy enough to kill somebody with.”
“Apparently so. At least, that’s what the paper said.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s too bad.”
“If you say so,” the woman said with a sniff.
Yep, Heather thought. That has to be Lana Sturmer. Who else in town has both a daughter who wins beauty pageants and an attitude like that?
She finished preparing Lana’s order and rang it up at the register. When she announced the total, Lana pulled cash from her purse and thrust it at Heather. She snatched the change Heather handed her, stuffed it in her wallet, grabbed the boxes of donuts, and stalked toward the door.
“Whew,” Heather said as the door closed behind her.
“Who in the world was that?” Maricela asked.
“Lana Sturmer,” Heather said. “Excuse me a minute. I have to text Ryan and tell him I talked to her.”
She hurried into her office, retrieved her phone from her purse in the bottom desk drawer, and rattled off a quick text. I just met Lana Sturmer. I think. She came into the shop and ordered donuts. She brought up the murder. But I didn’t ask her any questions. Just thought you should know.
She laid the phone on her desk, leaned back in her chair, and swiveled it back and forth, waiting for his return text. It arrived a couple minutes later. Thanks, babe. Hey, did I tell you that you looked beautiful last night?
Heather smiled. You might have, she texted. But you can always tell me again.
You looked beautiful, he answered. Love you.
Love you too. She hit “send,” dropped her phone back into her purse, and returned to the kitchen, still smiling.
***
“Ooh, what do you think of this one?” Amy pointed to the picture on the right-hand page.
“Too low-cut,” Heather said. What was with wedding gowns these days, anyway?
“Girl, it doesn’t hurt to show a little cleavage,” Amy said.
“Cleavage? At a wedding?”
“Okay, maybe not,” Amy said, flipping the page in the bridal magazine. “How about this one?”
“Too frilly,” she said. “I don’t want to look like it’s my quinceañera. It’s my wedding. My second wedding, no less.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t look stylish.”
“And who gets to decide what’s stylish? Some of these are just plain ugly.”
“True,” Amy conceded. “So let’s find you one that’s stylish in a way that you like. And in a way that flatters your gorgeous figure.”
“What gorgeous figure?”
“Yours, girlfriend,” Amy said. “Give yourself some credit, huh?”
She flipped another page. “Oh, now here’s one. This one would look fantastic on you.”
“Wow,” Heather breathed. “That’s gorgeous.” The sheath dress had an asymmetrical neckline with a wide band at the waist. Sheer fabric rose from the top of the band to gather over one shoulder and flow down the model’s back to the floor, even longer than the dress’s short train.
“Think this might be the one?” Amy asked.
“Maybe so,” Heather said in awe.
Amy folded down the upper corner of the page. “We’ll come back to this one,” she said. “So are you going to get your dress heirloomed?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Probably so.”
“You have to think about stuff like that. Do you know yet how much time you have to think about it?”
“We haven’t set a date yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Heather said.
“But we’re thinking sometime around New Year’s.”
“That’s only two and a half months away,” Amy said, fixing her with a stern glance. “You do realize that, right?”
“Why wait?” Heather protested. “It’s not like this is a first wedding for either of us. It won’t be as big and fancy as the first time around. Simple, yet elegant. That’s what I’m going for.”
“What about Ryan? What does he want?”
“Ryan just wants to get married,” she said. “He’d just run down to the Justice of the Peace if I would go for that.”
“But you won’t,” Amy said firmly. “That’s totally not romantic. And second wedding or not, you want a wedding to remember.”
“I’d remember the Justice of the Peace,” Heather teased.
“Yeah, but not in a good way.”
“True.”
“So if this really is the dress, you’ve gotten the second most important part out of the way,” Amy said.
“The first most important part being finding a groom?” Heather asked.
“You got it,” Amy said.
***
Long after Amy had left, leaving the stack of bridal magazines piled on Heather’s coffee table, Heather sat on the couch flipping through their glossy pages. Every now and then, she folded down a page corner to mark a dress she wanted to come back to and look at a second time.
But her thoughts weren’t entirely on what she was seeing. Finally, she gave up, laid the open magazine down on the coffee table, and turned her attention to trying to figure out what was bothering her.
Something kept stirring at the back of her mind, some thought or idea that wouldn’t quite come into focus. What was it?
Starting with getting up that morning, Heather mentally reviewed the events of her day. As she worked forward toward arr
iving at Donut Delights, the nagging feeling got stronger. When she got to her encounter with Lana Sturmer, alarm bells began going off. Why?
Lana had looked pretty tired that morning. Her unpleasant attitude might have had no more significance than that. But wait…
Heather sat up straight as the idea began to come into focus. Lana had said she was tired because the pageant circuit was exhausting. But hadn’t the Miss Harper County pageant been over for several days? Shouldn’t she have had time to relax by now?
On the other hand, maybe Emily was preparing for an upcoming pageant. Maybe that’s what Lana had meant.
But that possibility didn’t feel right. Heather thought about googling pageants in the area but realized that would probably come too close to Ryan’s definition of getting involved in the investigation. Instead, she texted him, “Hi, handsome. Please call me when you get a chance. I have an idea you might want to check out if you haven’t already.”
But even though she waited several minutes, no ping announced a response from Ryan.
She’d been sitting long enough, first looking at magazines with Amy, then continuing to peruse them on her own. She didn’t feel like sitting around waiting for Ryan to call. He’d call as soon as he could. She might as well find something to do in the meantime.
“Hey, Dave,” she called to her dog, who was sleeping on his doggie bed in the corner. Dave lifted his head and blinked at her. “You want to go for a walk?”
At the word ‘walk,’ Dave lumbered to his feet, shook himself all over, and trotted eagerly to the back door. “Sure, you know what that means,” Heather said, lifting his leash off the hook by the door and clipping it to his collar. She stuck her cell phone in her pocket and grabbed her keys from her purse on the counter. “Okay, let’s go.”
As Dave led her enthusiastically down the steps, she felt a twinge of guilt for not taking him on walks more often. It was just so much easier to let him out in the back yard to do his business. It was a big yard, and if he wanted to run around and play while he was out there, he had plenty of room.
“Maybe we’ll start going on more walks anyway,” Heather told him, as if he’d been privy to her thoughts. “Although winter’s coming, so who knows?”
They followed the driveway to the sidewalk, then turned right and walked to the corner. Turning right again, they passed the front of Heather’s house and continued down the block.
It was dusk, and Heather knew they didn’t have much time before the sun would go down completely. Well, maybe just a short walk this time. Next time, they could go longer.
Her cell phone vibrated, then began to play the Wedding March. Heather wondered if she would ever get tired of hearing that song. “Hang on just a second, Dave,” she said, stopping to fish the phone out of her pocket.
Dave didn’t mind. He found an interesting tree nearby and marked his territory while she answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Beautiful, it’s me. I got your text. What did you want me to check out?”
“Well, you know how I was talking to Lana Sturmer this morning?”
“Yeah.”
Dave finished his business and tugged on the leash as he started forward. Heather followed him.
“Well, I was just thinking. She said she was tired because the pageant circuit was so exhausting. But the last pageant Emily competed in was several days ago. She should have had time to rest by now, if that was the problem.”
“Maybe Emily’s preparing for an upcoming pageant,” Ryan said.
“That’s what I was thinking. So I was wondering if you knew if there were any pageants coming up in this area anytime soon.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I can look.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem. So what did you think of Ms. Sturmer?”
“Lisa was right. Lana has an attitude. Imperious. I think that would be the word for it. And she’s cold, too. She made some comment about how Kelly got what she deserved for messing up Emily’s hair.”
“What exactly did she say?” Ryan asked.
“Something like, ‘That woman deserved what she got.’ And I said something like, ‘You mean the one who was murdered?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, the one who got bludgeoned to death with her own flat iron. And then—”
“What did she say?” Ryan’s voice was suddenly tense. Excited.
“That Kelly deserved what she got?” Heather asked.
“No! The part after that.”
“About how Kelly was bludgeoned with her own flat iron?”
“Heather, where are you?” Ryan demanded, his words spilling over each other. “Are you at home?”
“No, I’m out walking Dave,” she said. “Ryan, what’s going on? What’s the big deal?”
“Lana Sturmer shouldn’t have known that the murder weapon was a flat iron,” Ryan said.
“Apparently she reads the paper. She said the paper said it was a flat iron.”
“The paper never said that,” Ryan said, his voice intense. “Heather, how far are you from home?”
“Couple blocks. But Ryan, she said it was in the paper. She must have read it.”
“I’m telling you it wasn’t in the paper,” Ryan insisted. “The murder weapon was the one detail we were keeping back from the media. I checked every inch of that paper every day to make sure it hadn’t leaked.”
Heather felt a cold chill creeping over her. “What are you saying?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
In the distance, a dark-colored car rounded the corner and drove slowly up the block in her direction
.
“I’m saying there’s no way she could have known about the murder weapon unless she was the one who killed Kelly. And if she ever finds out that the flat iron wasn’t actually mentioned in the paper, she could come after you.”
“What do I do?” Heather asked.
But his answer was drowned out in a squeal of tires. Whirling toward the sound, she could see nothing but the headlights blinding her as the dark car jumped the curb and sped straight toward her.
Heather screamed and threw herself to the side.
Chapter 8
She landed hard; the breath knocked out of her, she scrambled to her hands and knees, terror flooding every inch of her body. But the car had already swerved back into the street, tires spinning out smoke as it gained traction and fled. Heather dropped her head, staring at the grass as she fought to get her breath back.
Dave. Where was Dave?
She spotted him ten feet away, his furry white body lying in a crumpled heap. Dave!
Sobbing, she crawled toward him. With one hand, she stroked the fur of his lifeless body; with the other, she caressed his head.
And felt him lick her hand.
“Dave?” she managed through her tears. “Dave, are you okay?”
But he wasn’t. He whined pitifully, just once, his limpid brown eyes looking up at her.
As gently as she could, Heather slid her hands beneath him. Again he whined, longer this time, and she knew she was hurting him. “I’m sorry, Dave,” she said, trying to soothe him with her voice, as the sound of sirens in the distance grew louder and closer.
An ambulance? They were sending an ambulance for Dave?
No, of course not, she realized, cradling Dave’s broken body in her arms as best she could and turning toward home. Nobody sent an ambulance for a dog, even one as beloved as hers. If there was an ambulance, it must be for her.
But more than likely, most of the sirens belonged to police vehicles. Gradually, her fear and grief was being replaced by another emotion. Lana Sturmer had tried to run her over. Tried to kill her! Fortunately, she was okay, except for a few bruises and scrapes that were beginning to make their presence felt. But Lana had almost killed Dave. And that made Heather very angry.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” The voice came from a man standing next to her. “Is your dog okay? Is this your cell phone?”
Heather had no idea
who the man was, but it didn’t matter. “I’m fine,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded almost normal. “But my dog is hurt. I think he’s hurt pretty badly.”
“Do you want to take him to the emergency vet clinic on Highway 10?” the man asked.
“Yes. We were just out on a walk. I’m headed home to get my car.”
Mint Chip Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 6 Page 6
