Strawberry Sprinkled Swirl Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 49

by Gillard, Susan

  “When no person could have committed the crime, what else is there?” He asked.

  Heather refused to believe that. A human had committed this murder, and she would figure out how.

  Chapter 14

  Heather polished the donut counter with more force that was necessary.

  “Hey, boss, what did that counter ever do to you?” Her assistant Jung joked.

  “Sorry,” Heather said. “I was distracted. I’m trying to figure out how an employee could steal their boss’s key from their pocket without them noticing.”

  “I hope you’re not talking about us,” Maricela said with mock attitude. Her other assistant put her hand on her hip and wagged a finger.

  “That’s true,” Jung seconded. “We are good, honest employees who would never ever commit a crime.”

  “Plus, we know you’d catch us in like a millisecond if we did anything,” Maricela joked.

  “We do work for a super sleuth,” Jung said. “It keeps us on our toes.”

  “I don’t feel like a super sleuth right now,” Heather said. “I don’t know how the killer got access into a locked room. And until I know it was done, I don’t know who could have done it.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Maricela assured her. “You always do.”

  “Do you think a donut would help?” Jung asked.

  “I think it might,” Heather said, relenting. She would just have to push her bad mood away. She could focus on her donuts and store until the pieces clicked into place for solving the case.

  It was as if Amy knew that it was snack time because she joined them at the perfect moment. Heather and Amy both picked up a Strawberry Sprinkled Swirl donut and bit in. It was hard to stay in a defeated mood while eating something so tasty. It was also a pick-me-up for Heather to know that she had created this confection.

  Maricela cared for the few customers in the shop at this off hour, and Jung took the rag from Heather and scrubbed the counter with a gentler touch.

  “Have you had any epiphanies?” Amy asked.

  “None. Except that I love strawberries in donuts,” Heather replied.

  “That’s not an epiphany. That’s common sense.”

  “True,” Heather smiled. “Have you had any thoughts on the case?”

  “Only that we could try stealing the keys from Caroline and see if we are successful.”

  “I considered that too,” Heather said, finding it funny that they had both considered attempting theft in order to investigate the murder. “But I’m sure Caroline is on even higher guard than she was before Norton Worthers was murdered.”

  “So if she did catch us, it might not prove anything?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, who had access to her so they could steal the keys?”

  “I think any employee would be able to get close to her. All they’d have to do is pretend that they don’t want a guest to overhear what they are saying for an excuse to move into her personal space for a moment.”

  “Could a guest have done that?” Amy wondered.

  “It’s possible. But they’d have to know that she had the only other set of keys before they made a move.”

  “I think it’s easiest just to assume that Caroline did him in,” Amy grumbled.

  “That would be the simplest solution. But again, a dumb plan on her part.”

  “Not all criminals are masterminds,” Amy reminded her.

  Heather sighed. “That’s true. But if she is guilty, she’s one of the best actresses we’ve come across. She seems genuinely upset at the murder and that it occurred at her hotel.”

  “Then we’re back to square one?”

  Heather nodded. “What are we missing?”

  She didn’t have much time to dwell on that thought because her phone started ringing. She answered it with “Shepherd.”

  Amy was anxious to hear what the call had been about, and Heather had barely hung up before she explained.

  “We have to get back over to Hillside Humly Hotel. Caroline said she found something that will help with the keys.”

  Amy replied, “That could be the key to the case!”

  Chapter 15

  “I didn’t think about this at the time because I didn’t see how it would help, but now I see that it can,” Caroline said.

  This time Heather and Amy were joining her in a room that she saved for herself to sleep in when work was busy, which was often. She explained how she had slept over the night of the murder in anticipation for the Business Breakfast.

  The room was a mix of personal bedroom and impersonal hotel room. Caroline had obviously been bringing over more and more of her personal items and clothing as she spent more time at her business. Heather had to admit that if you had to sleepover at a job, a hotel was definitely the best place for it.

  However, what caught their eye when they entered was not Caroline’s items, but the security system there.

  “You had a camera system in place the whole time?” Heather said. “Why didn’t you tell the police? This could have helped with the investigation.”

  “I didn’t see how it could at the time. And I was embarrassed.”

  “Why?” Amy asked. “Were you spying on guests?”

  “No,” Caroline said. “I hadn’t set it up yet. There were no cameras in the hallways when the crime happened. That’s why I was embarrassed. They were only in my room.”

  “Why are they here?” Heather asked.

  “I was testing a few brands to see what was the best value,” Caroline explained. “I recorded my room and then was planning on seeing which had the best video quality. To make sure I was getting the right one when I had to install multiple units in the halls.”

  Heather and Amy saw that she did have multiple brands and models on her dresser.

  “I felt bad because if I had installed it sooner, it might have prevented Norton Worthers’s death. But I didn’t think it was necessary at the time. Just a necessary precaution to put up eventually. I never expected a murder to happen at the hotel. Maybe just some bathrobes stolen.”

  “So how does this help us now?” Heather asked.

  Caroline set up the system to play the video. It didn’t show the entire room. It only focused on the door, the desk and a chair.

  “I didn’t want to record myself sleeping,” Caroline explained. She had chosen the angle so she would not be on camera often. She thought that the movement of the door and seeing the light change and darken through the night would give an indication of how good a camera it was.

  She started playing a tape, and they watched the static video of the chair and desk by the door. Looking at the date, it was the evening of the murder.

  “Does something happen?” Amy asked.

  “Well, no,” Caroline said. “But that’s the point.”

  “I can see why you didn’t want to show these tapes at first,” Amy said. “I don’t understand how they are helping.”

  “Let me fast forward a little,” Caroline said. She zipped forward until it was after eleven p.m.

  “It should be any minute now,” she said.

  They watched the darkened room on the screen with the desk and chair, waiting for something to happen.

  “This is a decent camera,” Amy noted. “It’s dark inside, but you can still make out the shapes.”

  “I think it’s pretty good too,” Caroline said. “I’m leaning towards getting this model. It’s a little more expensive than some other choices, but it might be a better choice in the long run.”

  They were cut off from more camera talk by movement on the screen. Caroline was returning to her room on the TV screen. They saw her enter through the door and kick off her shoes. She took the keys out of her pocket, looked through all of them. Satisfied, she returned them to her pocket. Then she took off her jacket and left it on the chair where it remained on the frame. TV Caroline left the frame and started shuffling about. She would walk in and out of frame in her PJs before turning off the lights. The con
tinued to look at the darkened chair on the screen.

  Caroline looked smug. “You see?”

  “You really like the chair?” Amy asked.

  “The keys,” Heather said. “You checked them before you went to bed, which was well before the murder. They were all accounted for?”

  “Every single one,” Caroline said firmly.

  “And they stayed in the pocket of that jacket on camera,” Heather said. “You can see the bulge where they are held.”

  “Did you watch the whole tape for the night?” Amy asked.

  “It was really boring, but yes,” Caroline said. “Nobody broke into my room. The keys were there all night long.”

  “So if all the keys are accounted for, and Mr. Worthers didn’t let anyone into the room,” Heather thought aloud. “How did the murderer get in?”

  Chapter 16

  “I thought we looked around here pretty thoroughly,” Amy said. They were back in the victim’s room but were no closer to solving how the killer had gotten in than they were before.

  “I know I’m missing something, but I don’t know what,” Heather groaned. She was very frustrated. She felt like she was close to solving the case, but was missing one vital clue and that made her feel that she was very far from solving it.

  “I don’t know what we could be missing,” Amy said. “It’s a hotel room. There is not much here.”

  “Okay. Time for crazy theories,” Heather said. “Maybe discussing our wild ideas out loud will shake something loose.”

  “Okay. Brainstorming wild ideas to get into a locked room,” Amy said, thinking. “What if they removed the glass from the window and then replaced it.”

  Heather considered it. “If Norton Worthers were in his prescription deep sleep, he might not have heard it. But it would be hard to replace it perfectly. And it is a tight fit through the window.”

  “Okay. Your turn.”

  Heather looked at all the furniture pieces. There was a dresser, a TV stand, a bed, and one chair.

  “Could the killer have been hiding in the room?”

  “Like he took the key from the desk out earlier and got into the room and hid out while Worthers was gone?” Amy asked.

  Heather nodded. They examined the furniture.

  “He couldn’t fit in the dresser,” Amy said. “The drawers have bottoms and can’t come out all the way.”

  “Maybe under the bed?”

  “That would be so creepy,” Amy said. “A real monster under the bed if someone is waiting under there to kill you.”

  “You can quell that nightmare,” Heather said. “The bed frame is too big underneath for a person to fit there.”

  There was no door to the closet, and it wasn’t possible to hide behind the chair without being seen.

  “Maybe he hid in the shower?” Amy asked.

  They looked and saw that the shower curtain was a pale yellow. If a person were behind the curtain with the lights on, they would cast a shower.

  “That would only work if Mr. Worthers never went into the bathroom,” Heather said.

  “That would never work,” Amy said. “Everybody has to go sometimes. And Worthers checked into his room around 6:30. The killer couldn’t assume that the man wouldn’t enter the bathroom between 6:30 and the middle of the night. Even millionaires brush their teeth.”

  “So there is no place that someone could have hidden in this room,” Heather said. “I guess it didn’t make sense anyway. If someone opened the door before Mr. Worthers came in, they would still have to make sure that the key was returned to the box so it could be handed out when Mr. Worthers checked in. He couldn’t do that if he were hiding in the room.”

  “Maybe it was a ghost,” Amy said. “Or a poltergeist. A wrathful spirit. Was this hotel built on an ancient Indian burial ground? That might be why it keeps failing.”

  “I don’t think there were any murders here before this one,” Heather said.

  “Maybe there were some accidental deaths that were caused by angry ghosts? This one just got carried away.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was a person,” Heather said. “So which one of our living suspects could have done it?”

  “Well, Caroline Humly had the keys,” Amy said. “But if the date and time are right on her security camera, then she might be the only suspect who can prove she didn’t leave her room that night.”

  “Her motive is shaky too,” Heather agreed.

  “George Copper didn’t seem to love Norton Worthers,” Amy said. “But like the rest of the staff, he didn’t have a key.”

  “Right,” Heather agreed. “And Dylan and Lisette claim not to have known Worthers at all.”

  “They are younger than the rest of the staff. They wouldn’t have known Mr. Worthers when he was in Hillside.”

  “It’s hard to have a motive to kill somebody when you’ve never met them.”

  “But only George Copper and Caroline Humly had met him before,” Amy said. “Even our guests didn’t have a chance to meet him.”

  “Right. Rachel Wright and Mike Delon had other things on their mind than the speaker.”

  “And Gary Gray wanted to talk to Norton Worthers but was denied. Dylan said that Worthers ignored everyone in the lobby, but Gary was the one who was upset.”

  “He did seem upset when he talked to us,” Heather said. “He was a big fan. He was practically crying when we spoke to him.”

  “I won’t be forgetting how sad a face that was,” Amy said. “When I die, in a hundred years or so, I hope someone will look as sad as that.”

  “I definitely would,” Heather said. “Though if we go at the age of 140 or so like you’re suggesting, I think we’d have lived a long and full life.”

  “Gary Gray was so sad. I remember when the door squeaked open and then he was standing there with his box of tissues.”

  A thought occurred to Heather. “What did you just say?”

  “About the box of tissues?”

  “No, the door.”

  “It squeaked open, and he was sad?”

  “The squeaky door!” Heather said. She rushed over to the door frame to confirm her suspicions.

  “I know how the killer got inside,” Heather said. “And that means I know who the killer is.”

  “Should we call Ryan?” Amy asked.

  “We better right away. We need forensics to check this door frame. And if they don’t find anything, we might need to set a trap.”

  Chapter 17

  It was Heather’s turn to look through the peephole. She kept an eye on the hallway, waiting to see if their trap would work.

  “I can’t believe forensics didn’t find anything useful,” Amy said, quietly. “Do we have to do everything around here?”

  Heather shrugged. “I guess it’s a clean hotel. And we didn’t think that anything outside of the room could help us until a few days later.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Ryan asked.

  “We’re just hoping out plan will go well,” Heather said.

  She and Amy had gone to the hotel that afternoon, handing out donuts. They made a show of giving them out to everyone so the killer would not be suspicious. Their cover story had been that they wanted to make sure their donuts would still be considered for the rain-dated Business Breakfast that would be coming up. They said they didn’t want anyone to have negative connotations between their sweet snacks and murder. They also “let it slip” that they were sure the killer would be caught soon. They “just happened to mention” that a specialist was going to be called in to check for atomic level evidence on the bed the next morning. There was no way a killer could escape the evidence from a specialist like that, and luckily the police now had both keys to the room.

  Now they waited to see if the killer had taken the bait. It was almost 2 a.m., and so far all they had seen was an empty hall.

  “Maybe he’s too smart to fall for the atomic level specialist trick,” Amy said.

  “He had been pretty smar
t up to this point,” Heather conceded. “He had us running around in circles and thinking it was impossible to get into the room.”

  “He wasn’t too smart for you two, though,” Ryan said.

  “We’ll see about that,” Heather said. “If he doesn’t fall for our trick, I don’t think we can prove that he was able to get into the room. All our evidence is circumstantial. It all comes down to getting into the room.”