Strawberry Cream Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 1

by Susan Gillard

  What were you thinking, Christa? she wondered.

  Maybe it was a case of good-girl-gone-bad. Or maybe Christa had dated him before he got involved with drugs. But even if that were the case, she shouldn’t have hired him as her assistant. Had she wanted to give him a second chance to turn his life around? Had she hoped maybe they could somehow find a way to get back together?

  Heather blew out a breath through pursed lips. This was getting too complicated. Maybe she should let the police handle it. Even if Shepherd was annoying, he was probably right that she should leave it to the professionals.

  Then again, what if he wasn’t? Besides, it wasn’t in her nature to let go of a bone once she’d seized it between her teeth. No, she would see this through until Christa’s murdered was caught. But in the meantime, there was one more thing she had to do.

  Heather looked up the phone number for Christa’s parents’ house. She had debated with herself over whether or not she should call; after all, she’d fired their daughter a couple months ago. But it wasn’t like she was the one who’d done anything wrong, Heather reasoned. So she would express her condolences, and if she got hung up on or cursed out, then so be it. She’d been through worse.

  The phone rang only twice before a female voice answered, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Fordyce?” she asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “Mrs. Fordyce, this is Heather Janke. Your daughter Christa worked for me. I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this, but I just wanted to call and express my condolences. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  For a moment, there was silence, and she wondered if the line had gone dead. “Thank you,” Mrs. Fordyce said in a voice thick with tears. “Thank you for calling. It…”

  Heather waited through a long silence. “Mrs. Fordyce—”

  “I know it wasn’t right, what Christa did,” Mrs. Fordyce continued. “I’m thankful that you—aren’t bitter.”

  If you only knew, she thought. “I know this must be a terribly difficult time,” she said, in lieu of anything else to say.

  “It was just so sudden,” Mrs. Fordyce said. “You never expect your children to outlive you. And then the police, with all their questions, like, ‘Did Christa have any allergies?’ I guess they think she was allergic to something in the donut they found next to her b—next to her,” she finished. “They’re having it tested. But Christa didn’t have any allergies. And besides, she worked for you, and she was going to open her own shop. She just couldn’t have been allergic to anything that would be in a donut.”

  “I can’t imagine that she would be,” Heather murmured, but her mind was suddenly whirling. If the police were having the donut tested, they weren’t testing for something Christa might have been allergic to—unless you counted poison. Deliberate, calculated poison.

  “Mrs. Fordyce, I don’t want to keep you,” she said. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Fordyce said again, sniffling.

  “Good-bye,” she said gently.

  “Good-bye.”

  She hung up the phone and sat drumming her fingers on the top of her desk. So the police suspected poison. Well, that would make sense. It would explain the absence of any signs of violence. Maybe the police would find something in the donut.

  For about two seconds, she considered calling Shepherd back, then decided that tomorrow would be soon enough. After all, he didn’t have any results today anyway.

  A scratching on the back door interrupted her thoughts. She got up to let Dave in and rewarded him for doing his business with another scratch of his ears. Just as she was straightening up, “Here Comes the Sun” began to play. She ran back into the computer room and snatched up her phone. Her best friend Amy’s number appeared on the screen. Heather accepted the call. “Hey, Amy.”

  “Hey,” Amy responded. “Listen, I’ve got an opportunity you can’t refuse.”

  “A date with a tall, handsome, eligible bachelor who likes redheads and dogs?”

  “Not quite that good,” Amy said. “Sorry. No, I have a friend who had tickets to the Symphony Series at the Performing Arts Center. Each week, they do a different kind of music. Anyway, tonight’s big band jazz, and I have two tickets, because Phyllis got sick and can’t go. Want to come?”

  “You bet!” Heather answered. “What time?”

  “The performance starts at 7:00. How about I swing by your place and pick you up around 6:30?”

  “Let’s do dinner first,” she said.

  “Dinner first, drinks after?” Amy suggested.

  “Perfect. Pick me up at 5:00?”

  “You got it,” Amy said. “Okay, I gotta go. I’m in the midst of a new landscape, and I want to try to get the last bit of the lake done before tonight.”

  “Okay. See you at 5.”

  Well, that would be a nice ending to the day. BFF time, good food, and good music. Much better than thinking about poison.

  She slipped the phone into her pocket and walked into the second bedroom, the one that was hers. Situated at the back of the house, it looked out on the greenness of her backyard. Decorated in burgundy and teal green, with the occasional bronze accent, she finally had a bedroom that reflected her tastes, instead of Don’s.

  The closet was small, much smaller than she would have liked, but the old house’s charm more than made up for any inconveniences. It took her only seconds to locate the long, ruffled skirt and gauzy blouse with flowing sleeves that she intended to wear to the concert tonight. Now, to decide on accessories.

  Her jewelry box sat on her vintage wooden dresser, a heavy piece that stopped just short of being ponderous. It held her earrings and bracelets; a jewelry organizer sat next to it and displayed her necklaces. Heather opened the bottom drawer of the jewelry box and hesitated. Some fragment of a thought or idea tickled at the back of her mind.

  Slowly, she glanced around her bedroom. There was her dresser, with her jewelry, jewelry organizer, and family photos in calculatedly mismatched frames; her iron bed, with the comforter still thrown back from when she’d gotten up this morning; her nightstand, with a picture of her and Amy at the beach, and a sea-green upholstered chair squeezed into the corner. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Wait. The dresser. The nightstand.

  She glanced at the photos there as the unformed thought that had been bothering her in Christa’s office registered itself in her consciousness. Christa’s office had held nothing personal. That was what was wrong.

  Yes, Christa had been overly hung up on neatness, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a real person with real relationships. Surely there must be someone she would want to have a picture of. Or if not that, some memento of a trip she’d taken, or some knickknack.

  Maybe she just hadn’t gotten her office entirely set up yet, Heather argued with herself. After all, she wasn’t even open yet.

  But the suspicion that the lack of personal items meant something wouldn’t go away. It niggled at the back of her mind as she took care of a few housekeeping chores and then dressed to go out. It was still there as Amy’s champagne-colored Toyota pulled up in front of the house. Heather locked the door behind herself and got into Amy’s passenger seat.

  “Amy, let me run something by you, and you tell me if I’m crazy,” she said.

  Chapter 5

  “Okay. So—” Amy closed her mouth, chewed the rest of her bite of enchilada, and swallowed. “So—“ she said again, reaching for her water glass and taking a sip, “You have two suspects.” She held up one hand and raised a finger for each person on her list. “Joey Ray Gorham. Billy Fordyce. Anybody else?”

  “I don’t know,” Heather mused. “After the blood tests come back, we’ll know more.”

  “And maybe we’ll know we should suspect someone else. But right now, Joey Ray and Billy are looking pretty good for the murder.”

  “Anything else, ladies?” Their waiter stopped next to their table and smiled.

  “No,
thank you,” Amy answered for them. “We’re good.”

  “Okay. Just let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.” With another smile, the waiter turned and headed for the kitchen.

  Amy leaned across the table toward Heather. “He’s hot,” she whispered.

  Heather rolled her eyes, a grin crooking the corner of her mouth upward. “You think every guy is hot,” she said.

  “Please, girl. Give me some credit. I have taste.” Amy sat back and fixed her with a faux-snooty glare for about two seconds. Then her expression relaxed. “Okay. Now where were we?”

  “Suspecting Joey Ray and Billy.”

  “Oh yes. That. Them. Whatever.” Amy frowned. “So if they did it, or if one of them did it, why? Their connection is drugs, but what would drugs have to do with Christa?”

  “Maybe their motive has something to do with whatever Billy meant when he said Christa had a habit of screwing people over.”

  “Yeah, I wonder what he meant by that.”

  “I do too,” Heather said. For a moment, each of them thought in silence.

  “You know what we need to do?” Amy said suddenly. “We really need to find out why Billy thinks Christa screwed him over.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Heather asked.

  “We’re going to search Christa’s computer.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to search Christa’s computer,” Amy repeated. “Only we can’t do it tonight, because if somebody walks by and sees lights on in her shop, that might look suspicious.”

  “I have no idea how to get onto her computer. I don’t have any idea what her password would be.”

  “Leave that to me,” Amy said.

  “You think she would have her office computer connected to her home computer?”

  “Who knows?”

  “What time tomorrow?” Heather asked.

  “You tell me. You’re the one with a regular job.”

  “8:00.”

  “Are you kidding? You know I don’t get up until at least 10:00,” Amy protested.

  “Call me when you’re awake, then.”

  “Will do. Let’s see if we can get Todd to bring us our check.”

  “Todd, huh?”

  “That’s his name. Didn’t you notice?”

  ***

  As Pink begged through the speakers for her boyfriend to just give her a reason, and Amy sang along, slightly off key, Heather stared out the passenger’s side window at the headlights reflected in the side mirror. Had the car they belonged to really been following them, or was she imagining things?

  “Turn left right there,” Heather said, pointing.

  Amy wrenched the steering wheel to the left. The tires squealed as she zipped past oncoming traffic onto a side street. Another car honked at them as it barely missed their rear bumper. “Am I allowed to ask why?”

  Heather watched the car behind them come to a stop in the turning lane, wait for an opening, then turn in the direction they’d turned. “There’s a car following us,” she said.

  “Really?” Amy slowed down, turned the CD off, and glanced in the rearview mirror.

  “Yes, really,” Heather said. “Turn right up here.”

  Amy obeyed while Heather kept a watch on the mirror. No car turned behind them. Amy pulled her car to the curb and waited, but still no one followed. “Looks like we lost him,” she said. “Are you sure somebody was really following us?”

  Was she? Heather didn’t want to be paranoid, but some instinct told her she wasn’t mistaken. “I’m sure,” she said.

  “Okay, that’s creepy,” Amy said. “Why would anybody be following us?”

  Heather shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Amy stopped at a light. “Well, I don’t see anybody behind us now. You still want to go for drinks?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Okay, then.” Amy cranked the volume on the CD back up and turned back onto the main street that would take them to O’Henry’s.

  ***

  “See you tomorrow morning,” Heather said as she got out of Amy’s car at her own back door.

  “Ten or so. Maybe eleven.” Amy sighed. “Okay, for you, I’ll be up by ten.”

  “Thank you for your sacrifice,” Heather said with a straight face.

  “What are friends for?”

  Heather closed the car door and reached into her purse for her keys. When she had them in the lock, and her kitchen door open slightly, she turned and waved at Amy. Amy waved back and put the car in reverse as Heather pushed the door open, slipped inside, and locked it behind her.

  It wasn’t until she turned on a light that she saw Billy Fordyce sitting at her kitchen table.

  She screamed and dropped her purse on the floor. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Billy said, half rising from his chair as Dave rushed into the kitchen, barking like mad.

  “What in the bloody—what—what are you doing in my house?” she demanded, one hand at her chest, trying to still her pounding heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Billy said, stretching a hand toward her, then withdrawing it as if he realized that wasn’t a good idea. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You already said that,” she said, still breathing hard. “How did you get in? The door was locked.”

  Billy shrugged. “You learn stuff,” he said.

  “Was that you who was following us earlier tonight?” she asked.

  Billy didn’t answer her question. “Look, I wanted to tell you something,” he said.

  “Something you couldn’t tell me in the daytime? Something you couldn’t just call me about? Or text me? You know, most people text nowadays instead of breaking into other people’s houses.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Billy said.

  “You didn’t do what, exactly?”

  “I didn’t kill Christa.”

  Heather slid a chair back from the table at the opposite end from Billy and sat down. “Nobody said you did. Nobody said anybody killed her.”

  “But people are thinking it. I know they are. Like that detective that came to the house.”

  “Shepherd?”

  “Yeah. Him.”

  “You think he suspects you?” She wasn’t about to tell him that she and Amy had him on their suspect list, too.

  “I know he does. He was asking all kinds of questions. Where was I last night when Christa was—when she died.”

  When Christa was murdered? Had Shepherd actually used that word? If so, what did he know that she didn’t? Had the blood work or autopsy results come back early?

  But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. Because at this moment, a suspect was sitting right in front of her.

  “Did you kill her?” Heather asked.

  “No! I would never kill Christa.”

  “Not even if she ‘screwed you over’?”

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Billy said, pushing his chair back.

  “How did she screw you over?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t have anything to do with her death.” Billy stood up and began circling the table in her direction, edging toward the door.

  She stood, too, and moved around the table the opposite way, keeping it between her and Billy.

  “Do you know Joey Gorham?” she asked.

  For a brief instant, Billy stood as if frozen. Then he turned, fumbled at the lock, yanked the door open, and disappeared through her back yard.

  She rushed out onto her small back porch and stood staring after him. But all she saw was his shadowy figure slipping through the gate at the back of her property. Gravel crunched lightly as the sound of his footsteps faded down the alley.

  Snatching up her purse from where she’d dropped it on the floor, she dug through it for her phone and punched in Amy’s number. “Miss me already?” Amy said when she picked up.

  Heather didn’t bother with a greeting. “We have to go look at Christa’s computer tonight,” she sa
id.

  Chapter 6

  The curtains on Christa’s office window didn’t do much for keeping out the light, but Heather made sure they were closed anyway.

  “Do you want to just use your flashlight app?” Amy asked from her seat at Christa’s computer.

  “No. I think that would be just as suspicious if somebody saw it. Maybe even more so.” Heather pulled the visitor’s chair around to where she could sit in it and look over Amy’s shoulder.