Fatally Frosted

by Jessica Beck

  “No, it’s fine,” I said as I rubbed my eyes. “I can talk. What’s up?”

  “I wanted to ask a favor from you, but I surely didn’t start off on the right foot by calling this late, did I?”

  “What is it? I’ll do anything I can. You know all you have to do is ask.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I’ve been going through Aunt Peg’s things, and there’s a lot I’m not sure what to do with. Do you know anyone who could help me sort through her clothes and things and tell me what’s worth keeping? I’m afraid I have no talent for it at all, and I don’t want to get rid of something valuable by mistake.”

  “I understand,” I said, as I thought about who could help.

  She must have misunderstood my delay, because she added quickly, “I can’t bear to be here any longer than I have to, you were right about that. The memorial’s planned, and the sooner I can put this all behind me and get back to school, the better. I just can’t stand being surrounded by all of this sadness.”

  “Why don’t I help you myself?” I asked as inspiration struck. The best way to learn more about Peg might be going through her things.

  “I thought you had a shop to run.”

  Making it up as I went along, I said, “I can get my assistant to fill in, as long as I make the donuts myself. Tell you what. I have an even better idea. If you wait until noon, I can come over after work and she won’t be alone at all.”

  “That’s too much to ask of you,” Heather said. Her voice caught as she added, “I can’t pay you much.”

  “Don’t worry about that all. I’m perfectly willing to do this as a favor to you.”

  “Thanks, Suzanne. I don’t know how I’d get through this without you.”

  “You’d be fine, I’m sure.”

  After we hung up, I tried to get back to sleep, but it was no use. I suddenly realized I’d forgotten to talk to Peg’s neighbors, but it really didn’t matter any more. After all, tomorrow I’d be inside the woman’s house, and if there was anything to learn from it, I planned to take full advantage of the opportunity.

  I knew that if I picked up my book and started reading again that I’d never manage to fall back to sleep, so instead, I lay there in bed in the dark, trying to drive the thoughts of what had happened that day from my mind.

  I was only partially successful, but I still managed to drift off to sleep before it was time to get up again and start another day from scratch.

  I woke up the next morning a little before one AM. My alarm clock was due to go off in ten minutes, but it was the sound of thunder that had brought me awake. I looked out the window, and through the gloom, I saw rain pounding down in the night.

  It was going to be one of those dismal days we sometimes got in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I hoped it didn’t keep customers away from Donut Hearts. I figured with the poisoning, I was going to lose some regulars anyway, and I didn’t need a downpour to keep other customers from coming in. It might just be Emma and me today when we opened up, but I couldn’t worry about that. I had donuts to make, and if folks bought them or not, I still had to be ready.

  I dressed quietly, grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, and left the house, hoping the rain would have let up by the time I was ready to go. No luck. It was coming down in sheets, and the small umbrella I’d chosen was no match for it.

  In twenty paces, I was soaking wet.

  I crept along in the Jeep toward the shop, and finally made it without having an accident. At least there hadn’t been any other traffic on the road.

  To my surprise, Emma was waiting for me inside the shop when I pulled up.

  She ran outside with a huge golf umbrella one of our customers had left, and escorted me into the building, though I was already soaked to the bone.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” she said with too much enthusiasm for that time of night as we walked inside. “I just love thunderstorms, don’t you? There’s something so romantic about them.”

  I dabbed at my wet hair with one of our towels. “Yes, it’s absolutely magical,” I said with a deadpan voice.

  “Come on, you’ll feel better once you’ve had your coffee,” she said. “I’ve already made a pot.”

  I took a mug from her and sipped it gratefully. “How long have you been here, anyway?”

  She grinned. “Honestly? I never went to bed. I had a date with Paul Simms, and he dropped me off here an hour ago. He wanted to keep me company until you showed up, but I told him that wasn’t going to happen.”

  “He’s new in your life, isn’t he?” I asked her.

  “Tonight was our first date. I just love the start of a relationship, don’t you?” Emma paused a moment, then added hastily, “Not that what you have with Jake isn’t still special, too.”

  I looked at her a second, then said, “Listen, I’m happy for you, honestly, I am. But my love life is not a topic of conversation we’re going to be covering. Agreed?”

  “That’s fine,” she said. I hated to step on her grand mood, but I didn’t particularly want to be around her when she was in her giddy stage of the first blush of romance.

  “What are we making special today?” Emma asked.

  “It’s business as usual. After we get the cake donuts made, we’ll go to work on the yeast ones.”

  We worked through the variations of our cake donuts first—turning out plain, old-fashioned, pumpkin, orange spice, apple cinnamon, and lemon—and after they were finished and dripping in glaze, I turned the fryer up to 365 degrees, an easy temperature to remember. As I added twenty pounds of flour to the mixture of yeast and water already in the stand mixer, I turned it on to blend the mix and set the timer to five minutes.

  When the timer went off, I turned off the mixer, removed the beater, and put a cloth over the top of the mixing bowl while it was still in the stand. I reset the timer to forty minutes, and it was finally time to stop for a while. Emma and I enjoyed our breaks outside, where the world was still dark and quiet and we felt as though we had it all to ourselves. Not even the rain, still pouring down in prodigious amounts, could keep us inside, since the awning over the front of the shop was enough to protect us from anything short of a hurricane force wind. There were a pair of modest tables with accompanying chairs outside for those who liked to eat their donuts alfresco, but the seats were wet, so we stood under the awning together and watched it rain.

  “Are you really going to eat that?” she said as she pointed to my modest treat. Emma always had a power bar with her coffee, while my snacks were varied, depending on the current state of my diet. Today I was having a rice cake, after getting on the scale a few days before and being alarmed by what my donuts were doing to my waistline.

  I nodded. “Sadly, until I can stop sampling our wares, I’m going to have to. Walking doesn’t seem to help as much these days as it used to.”

  Emma took another bite of her power bar, then said, “I read that as women get older, our metabolisms start slowing down, so it’s harder and harder to lose weight.”

  “Fascinating. Did the article also mention that rain is wet, and fire burns?”

  She said softly, “I didn’t mean anything by it, Suzanne. I just thought it was interesting.”

  I laughed gently. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just concerned about how the town’s going to perceive me as some kind of killer, and I don’t even want to talk about what Jake is thinking.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll come around,” Emma said.

  “We’ll see, won’t we,” I said. I glanced at my watch and saw that we still had a few minutes left, but the tone of the conversation and the pelting rain were depressing me. “I’m going on in, but feel free to stay out here a few more minutes.”

  She said, “No, I’m ready to go back in, too.”

  Three minutes after we were back inside, the mixer timer went off again, and it was time to get back to work. I moved the dough to my counter, punched it down, and waited another ten minutes before touching it again.
After the timer went off yet again, I divided it into sections, and got to work. Rolling a section at a time out on my floured board, once I had it about a quarter-inch thick I was ready to make donuts. Now was the fun part. I don’t know who the genius was who thought of the cutting wheel, but I’d buy him a cup of coffee if I could. An aluminum contraption that looked like a children’s game, it featured a continuous circuit of donut and hole cutters on a hand-held wheel. The process of cutting out donuts was simplicity itself. Starting on the edge closest to me, I rolled the cutter across the dough, leaving perfectly formed donut rounds behind, with the holes separated as well. Any dough that was left was kneaded a little, then added to a big bowl to be used again later. I loaded the donut rounds onto trays, then handed them to Emma, who slid them into the proofer. There are much fancier rigs on the market, but ours worked just fine, though it wasn’t much more than a glorified box with a light bulb in the bottom and a humidifier. Twenty-five donuts fit on each tray, and we liked to put a hundred holes on one. After the first round was in the proofer, I set the timer to twenty-eight minutes and got to work on the scraps of dough I’d collected. I rolled these out again, made more donut cutouts, then went through the process again. This time though, I used the bismark cutter, a long-john-shaped rectangular grid that cut out perfect forms. With this cutter, we made long johns, honey buns, twists, pinecones, and whatever else I was in the mood to create. Finally, there was just a little dough left, now too tough for anything but fried pies and fritters. Fortunately, I had customers who liked both, so by the time we were finished, there wasn’t a scrap of dough left.

  After the proofing, it was time to add the donut rounds—eighteen at a time—to the fryer. Forty-five seconds per side, and they were ready to drain and glaze. The donut holes went in for their hot bath next, and while they were frying, Emma took a bread pan and scooped out enough glaze to drench the yeast donuts. The excess ran down the slope back into the pool, and she moved the finished donuts to display trays and put them in the holding rack, just as I dumped out donut holes on the cooling rack so she could repeat the process with them. The specialty items went into the hot oil next, a continuous process of frying, glazing, and traying up. There wasn’t a lot of time to chat when we were working at this stage, but as soon as we had the front display cases stocked, we could take a breath, clean up a little before it was time to open, and take a well-deserved break. A lot went into making donuts, and not many folks knew just how much effort we put into producing each one. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to me was that they enjoyed eating them, and I knew from the satisfied smiles that they did.

  We were cleaning up some of the racks in back when Emma glanced at the clock. “It’s just about time to open.”

  I shrugged. “Do you honestly think we’ll have any customers?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I have faith in our friends.”

  “That makes one of us,” I said as I finally got up the nerve to peek outside. To my surprise, there was a line of people standing in the rain, all sporting umbrellas and waiting to get in.

  I told Emma, “You’re not going to believe this. Come look.”

  My assistant looked as though she wanted to cry. “Okay, I’m sorry. I was putting a brave front on for you. Don’t worry, Suzanne. Business will pick up.”

  “I hope not,” I said. “If it does, I’m going to have to hire somebody else.”

  Emma looked thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come look.”

  She walked through the door with me, and saw the masses waiting to get in.

  Emma stared at me and said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, you’d better. I’m going to unlock the door, so you should get ready for a hard morning.”

  “There’s nothing I’d like better,” she said as she took a place behind the counter.

  When I opened the door to let my customers inside, each one had a kind word for me as they entered.

  George was just about the last one in.

  As he stepped in and put his hat into his pocket, I asked, “Did you have something to do with this?”

  George said, “Hey, you’ve got more than me as a friend.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not, but I said, “Thanks for coming, and for believing in me.”

  As he slipped into the last open booth, I hurried back to help Emma. The display of affection I was receiving was more valuable to me than all of the money in the world. The only real currency I counted was friendship, and from what I was seeing at that moment, I was one of the richest women in all of North Carolina.

  DESSERT PUFFS

  These are a nice change of pace from regular donuts. They have a different, almost cake-like texture, and if you use your ravioli cutter to make whole rounds, they puff up nicely for any fillings you might like.

  INGREDIENTS

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour

  • 2 teaspoons baking powder

  • 2 teaspoons nutmeg or cinnamon

  • ½ teaspoon salt

  • 2 tablespoons canola oil

  • ½ cup water

  DIRECTIONS

  Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together, then add the oil and water to the bowl, mixing it all together well. Take the dough out and knead it lightly, then place the dough in a buttered bowl, cover, and set aside in a warm place for about an hour. Roll the dough out to 1/8 to ¼ inch and cut into any shape you’d like. We like round shapes, but diamonds and squares around 2 inches each side work just as well.

  Fry these until golden brown, turning them halfway to cook both sides.

  Drain and dust your treats with powdered sugar, and they’re ready to eat.

  Yield: 8–14 depending on size

  CHAPTER 6

  By eleven, we were completely sold out, something that had never happened in all the time I’d owned Donut Hearts. I’d sent Emma home for a well-deserved rest ten minutes before we were due to close. She’d earned the time off. George had left with a promise to return later, but I wasn’t going to wait around for him. I had a suspect to interview, and I’d been thinking about what I was going to say to Burt Gentry all morning. I just hoped the hardware store owner had some answers for me. I had about an hour before I had to catch up with Heather to start working on Peg’s place, and I planned to take advantage of it while I could. It was hard to tell how long I’d be there that evening.

  I was just showing the last customer out the door when a man barged through the open door.

  “Sorry, we’re closed,” I told him.

  “This will just take a second,” he said as he brushed past me.

  I was getting ready to tell him that we were out of donuts when he tapped on the window, which had our hours posted. “I’ve got an hour left, anyway. Does the owner know you’re closing up early?”

  “She’s got a pretty good idea about what’s going on,” I said.

  He smiled at me. “I doubt she knows what time you’re locking up. Don’t worry, I won’t tell her you’re bugging out early. I need three donuts, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  He looked at the empty display cases behind the register for the first time. “You’ve got to have something in back.”

  “No, like I said, we’re closed. We just sold out of everything.”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t see how this place stays in business if there isn’t enough stuff to sell to customers.”

  I leaned over and said, “The woman who owns this shop is an eccentric old bird. She likes fresh donuts every morning with her coffee, and anything else we sell is just icing on the cake as far as she’s concerned.”

  He shook his head as he started for the door. “If I live to be a thousand, I’ll never understand life in a small town.”

  “I’m willing to bet you didn’t grow up in one, did you?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m from Chicago.”

  “Te
ll you what, Chicago. Come back tomorrow, and your first donut’s on the house. How’s that for small-town charm?”

  “Aren’t you afraid your boss will fire you for giving out free stuff?”

  I smiled at him. “No, she can’t live without me. See you tomorrow.”

  “If I’m still in town, I’ll take you up on it,” he said with a smile as he left.

  I hastily scrawled a note on the front door that told any more customers that we’d closed early, then started off for the hardware store. It was time to speak with Burt and find out what he had to say about his clandestine relationship with Peg Masterson.

  “Is Burt around?” I asked a clerk as I walked into Gentry Mercantile & Hardware. The building was ancient, sporting weathered bricks outside and scarred wooden floors within, everything testifying to over a hundred years of service. Besides a typical hardware store’s usual fare of items for sale like bins of nuts and bolts, metal baskets brimming with nails, and garden tools hung like stockings at Christmas, Burt also catered to a clientele that liked model trains, dollhouses, and hobby kits for just about every kind of enthusiast that existed. It was the most eclectic place I’d ever been in my life, and I usually reveled in the chance to visit it, but today was lacking any real joy.

  “He’s back in his office, Suzanne,” the young man said. It took me a second to recognize him.

  “Pete? I thought you were still in school.” Pete Evans was a tall, gangly blond, though he was finally starting to fill out.

  “No, ma’am. I graduated in June, and started work here full-time a week later.”

  “How are your folks?”

  “They’re fine. I’ll tell them you asked about them.”

  “Please do,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

  As I walked back to Burt’s office, I marveled at how time seemed to fly by. With every year I got older, the speed seemed to increase, and I wondered how it would feel in twenty or thirty years. I could remember Pete playing one of the shepherds in the town’s Nativity Scene the year they’d decided to use real animals. The donkey had taken off in the middle of the play, and the sheep, being true to their nature, had followed suit. There was a mad rush to corral them all, but by the time they were gathered together again, the players rushed through an abbreviated version of the approved script, and everyone met in the basement of City Hall for hot chocolate and Christmas cookies.