Sweet Suspects (The Donut Mysteries)

by Beck, Jessica

  “I doubt it. Having money doesn’t mean that you suddenly acquire good taste.”

  “True,” I said as I looked around the room. “Is there anything we’ve missed?”

  “How can I possibly know that?” Grace asked as she looked around, too.

  I was about to answer her when I heard a keycard being swiped in the lock outside.

  “Hide!” I said frantically.

  “Where?”

  “In the bathroom,” I said as I shoved Grace in ahead of me. As we closed the bathroom door, I could hear the main door to the room open.

  Someone was in Janet’s room.

  The real question was, though, was it Janet, or had someone else gotten the same idea that we had?

  I put my ear to the door to try to hear who was out there, but I didn’t pick up any voices, so chances were that whoever it might have been was probably alone.

  “Who is it?” Grace whispered in my ear.

  “I don’t know,” I said softly.

  “Should we hide in the shower?”

  I thought about being discovered in the bathroom with Grace, and wondered if being found in the shower could possibly make things any worse.

  Probably not.

  “Sure, why not?” I asked.

  We stepped into the tub, and then Grace quietly pulled the shower curtain shut.

  “What do we do now?” she whispered.

  “What can we do? We wait.”

  It felt like forever, but it couldn’t have been more than three minutes. I was about to tell Grace we should see if the stranger had gone yet when we both heard someone start to open the bathroom door.

  It appeared that we were about to get caught, and I didn’t have the slightest hint of an idea about what excuse we could possibly use to explain what we were doing there.

  I could see the door begin to open around the edge of the curtain, and I grabbed Grace’s hand for moral support. At least I wasn’t in there alone.

  As the door started to open, I heard a woman’s distant voice say, “Jenn, give me a hand next door, would you?”

  “I still have to replace the towels,” a woman’s voice said much closer than I would have liked.

  “It will just take a second,” the distant voice answered.

  “Fine,” Jenn said, clearly a little put off by the request.

  I couldn’t have been happier about it myself.

  Once both doors closed, I pulled the shower curtain back. “Let’s go.”

  Grace held up, though. “How are we going to get out of here? Jenn still has to be close by.”

  “Unless she’s watching the door, we should be fine,” I said. I hurried out of the tub and into the room, with Grace right behind me.

  We were just outside of the room and back in the hallway when I noticed movement next door. Instead of running away, which was my first instinct, I turned back to the door Grace and I had just escaped through and knocked loudly. “Hello?” I asked as I turned to Grace and winked, since no one else could see me from there.

  “I’m sorry, but I believe she’s out,” the maid who had to be Jenn explained as she popped her head out of the other room.

  “Thanks. We’ll catch up with her later. Have a nice day.”

  “You, too,” she said, and then Jenn proceeded to use her universal keycard and unlocked the door we’d so recently sneaked through.

  As Grace and I walked down the hall, she said, “That was a close one. Nice touch with that knock, by the way.”

  “What can I say? I was inspired.”

  “The question is, now what do we do?” Grace asked me.

  “We really don’t have any choice, do we? We have to go over to Napoli’s and see what Janet is up to.”

  “Angelica isn’t going to like us making a scene,” Grace said gravely.

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that,” I said. “As a matter of fact, we’ll both be on our best behavior, won’t we?” When Grace didn’t answer right away, I repeated, “Right?”

  “Of course,” she said. “I was just thinking about something.”

  “That’s gotten us into trouble more times in the past than I want to even consider,” I said with a grin.

  “Rightly so,” Grace answered, “but I can’t help wondering if Janet isn’t the person who killed Zane. That insurance company call is awfully suspicious, especially since he just died.”

  “Grace, just because she’s greedy doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s a killer,” I said.

  “I know, but it doesn’t make her ‘Wife of the Year,’ either.”

  “I’ll give you that,” I said. “Maybe if we catch her off-guard, we can learn the truth about what really happened.”

  “I hope you’re right. It would be nice to wrap this case up in a nice little bow before I have to admit to the world that I’m nothing but a common thief.”

  As we neared my Jeep, I said, “Grace, just because you did one stupid thing when you were young doesn’t mean that’s who you are.”

  “Do you honestly believe that, or are you just trying to make me feel better?” she asked me, the hope strong in her voice.

  “I believe it with all of my heart,” I said.

  “Thanks, Suzanne. How do you always know exactly what to say to make me feel better?”

  “I believe it comes from being your best friend since before we could talk,” I said with a smile.

  “Maybe there’s something to that,” Grace said.

  At least we were already in Union Square, so the drive to Napoli’s wasn’t all that bad. As I pulled into a parking space, I remembered the first time I’d eaten there with Jake. Someone had done a number on his car that night, but even that hadn’t ruined our special night together. We’d been through a great deal since then, but it had all just managed to bring us closer together. I missed him when he was gone working on a case, but no matter where he was, a part of him was still always with me.

  “Hey, who’s that over there?” Grace asked as she pointed to two people arguing in the parking lot.

  “One of them is Janet, but I can’t tell who she’s fighting with,” I said as I got closer.

  And then the man turned, and I saw who it was. I’d been expecting to find Billy Briscoe there with her, but I was shocked to see that it was Tom Hancock instead.

  “It’s Tom,” Grace said.

  “I know. Should I pull right next to them, or should we try to be stealthy and eavesdrop?”

  “I don’t think they’ve seen you yet, so I choose stealthy. Pull into that spot.”

  I did as she asked and then I quietly opened the door so that I could hear better. I didn’t have much luck making out their argument. “What are they fighting about?” I asked Grace.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” she said as she opened her own door. Instead of sitting there listening to them, though, she actually got out.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Suzanne, I need to hear this,” she said.

  I had no choice but to follow her lead.

  When we got within two rows of them, Grace moved behind a panel van that completely hid her from view. I joined her, and we began to listen in.

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Tom said loudly. “I met you here as a courtesy, Janet, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  “I know what my husband told me,” she said angrily.

  “Your husband probably said a lot of things,” Tom replied coldly. “How much of it was the truth was another thing altogether.”

  “Are you calling him a liar?” she asked in a tone that clearly should have warned Tom off.

  It didn’t. “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “And until you can produce an IOU with my signature on it or something just as concrete, I’m done having this conversation with you.”

  That’s when Janet lashed out at him, slapping his face so hard we could hear the impact from where we stood. When she started to slap him again, Tom blocked the strike an
d grabbed her arm instead.

  “Let go of me,” she protested.

  “Not until you settle down,” Tom said. He was clearly angry, but being slapped would do that to just about anyone.

  I noticed movement beside me as I saw Grace stand and start toward them.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her softly but urgently.

  “I’ve got to stop this right now before it escalates out of control,” Grace said.

  I had no choice at that point.

  I followed her.

  “What are you two doing here?” Tom asked angrily as he spotted us approaching. “Have you been following me around?” It was significant in my mind that he still had a firm grip of Janet’s arm.

  “We eat, too,” I said before Grace could answer. “What are you two doing here?”

  “She invited me here to eat so that she could ambush me,” Tom said.

  “Let go of me,” Janet cried out, acting a little for our benefit, no doubt.

  Tom seemed almost surprised that he still held Janet’s arm. He loosened his grip, and she jerked her arm away from him.

  As she rubbed her bicep, she asked, “Is that the way you treat every woman you meet?”

  “Just the ones who slap me,” Tom said. There was an angry white splotch on his face from where she’d connected, and I wondered how long it would take before it turned red. “Deny it. I dare you.”

  “I won’t,” she said angrily, “and I’d do it again. You tried to malign my late husband’s character, and I won’t stand for it.”

  “What’s going on out here?” I heard a familiar voice ask as I struggled for some way to end this argument. It appeared that someone else was about to do it for me. Angelica DeAngelis, a dear friend of mine, the mother of four beautiful daughters and the owner of Napoli’s, approached us all, wielding a French rolling pin as though it were a weapon, which in her hands, it clearly was.

  “It’s nothing,” I said quickly.

  “That’s exactly what it’s not,” Angelica said angrily. “Two customers just complained about an argument in my parking lot.” She turned to Janet and Tom. “When I asked you to leave my restaurant before because of your argument, I expected you both to leave the premises. I’ve already banned you from coming back to Napoli’s. Do I need to call the police as well?” She turned to Grace and me then. “I’m surprised to find you both here. Are you two a part of this?”

  “We just got here,” I said quickly.

  “We were trying to make the peace,” Grace added.

  Angelica looked a little mollified by the news. “And have you had any success?”

  “Not so far,” I said with a shrug. I couldn’t afford to get banished from the restaurant. Not being able to eat at Napoli’s whenever the mood struck me would be devastating.

  “Then I will take care of it myself,” Angelica said as she pulled out her cellphone.

  Tom was the first to back down. “You don’t have to call the police on my account. I was leaving anyway.” He gave Janet one last cold glare, and then he said to her, “Go ahead and sue me. I will welcome the opportunity to let everyone know what really happened between your husband and me. Just be prepared to learn some pretty unsettling things about the man you were married to for all those years.”

  “Don’t push me,” Janet said, “or I will come after you with all that I’ve got.”

  Tom didn’t even look in our direction as he stormed off to his car, and Angelica headed back inside, but not before nodding in my direction. At least we were still okay.

  For the moment.

  “Thanks for trying to protect me from him,” Janet said to Grace and me after Angelica was gone.

  “I’m sorry; is that what you thought just happened here?” Grace asked.

  Janet looked confused by her question. “Do you mean that it wasn’t?”

  “Make no mistake about it. We want to find out who murdered your husband,” I said. “That’s all that we’re interested in at this moment in time.”

  “Then you should go after Tom Hancock,” she said angrily. “Now that Zane’s dead, he won’t have to pay back any of the money he stole from us.”

  “Can you prove any of that?” I asked her.

  “Not yet, but believe me, I will, even if it takes my last breath to do it, and every last dime I have to my name,” Janet vowed.

  “That’s going to be considerably more when you cash in your husband’s life insurance policy, won’t it?” Grace asked her.

  “What makes you think that he even had life insurance?” Janet asked.

  “Come on, don’t try to act dumb,” Grace said. “You have half a million dollars coming your way.”

  “How did you find out about that? That’s supposed to be confidential information,” Janet snapped.

  “Funny how that works sometimes,” I said. “We know more than you could ever believe.”

  Was it my imagination, or did Janet’s pupils dilate when she heard me say that? “I’m just getting what I’m entitled to. After all, Zane paid those premiums for years to look out for me after he was gone. Why shouldn’t I get what’s coming to me?”

  “I hope that’s exactly what happens, that you get everything that you deserve,” Grace said. It was obvious that she hadn’t meant it in a good way at all.

  “Janet, don’t you think calling your agent the day your husband’s body was discovered might be considered a bit premature in some people’s point of view?” I asked.

  “I can’t survive without it,” Janet said. “Zane and I had obligations that won’t stop just because he’s gone.”

  “Like what, for example?” Grace asked her.

  “Car payments, house payments, premiums, things like that,” she said. Janet looked around the parking lot and then she added, “I don’t need to stand here answering your questions. I’m going back to my hotel.”

  “Would you like us to go with you?” Grace asked.

  Janet looked surprised by the suggestion. “Why would I want that?”

  “We could offer you comfort,” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Janet said, and then she was gone.

  “That went well, didn’t it?” Grace asked me once she was gone.

  “It could have gone a great deal worse,” I said as I started toward the back door of the restaurant.

  “Are we going to eat at a time like this?” Grace asked as she followed me.

  “First of all, I’d eat Angelica’s food anytime I have the chance, but that’s not why I’m going to the restaurant.”

  “If you’re not going in to eat, then why are you going?”

  “I want to hear more about the fight that got Janet and Tom banned from Napoli’s,” I said. “Can you imagine anything worse happening?”

  “Well, being murdered is pretty bad, and there a few things that are near that, but overall, no, it’s nothing that I ever want to have happen to me.”

  “Then let’s go see if Angelica or one of her daughters has anything to add to our investigation,” I said as I knocked on the restaurant’s back door.

  Chapter 10

  “Come in,” Angelica said after we knocked on the kitchen door. She looked toward the parking lot and asked, “Are your friends gone?”

  “They both took off, but they aren’t really our friends,” I said. “What happened in the restaurant?”

  “All I know is that Maria came to get me when they were making a fuss at the table. You should talk to her to get the full story.”

  I looked around the kitchen, but none of Angelica’s daughters were there. That was odd, since I knew that they shared in the duties of Napoli’s, including the cooking. “Where is she?”

  “She’s taking care of some customers, but she’ll be in shortly. Sophia’s helping her, not that she needs it, but my youngest daughter needed a break from her mother, so I approved it.”

  “And Antonia?” I asked.

  “She’s visiting Tianna,” Angelica said. There had been a rift
between Angelica’s oldest daughter and the rest of the clan, so this was good news.