Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries)

by Jessica Beck

  “No thank you. You should read it, but not aloud, unless the passage has something to do with our investigation. The first thing you need to do is to scan the book for names and possible motives. After all, Jean admitted that they’d be there in her last post. I’ll take notes on what you read aloud, and the rest of it I’ll thank you to keep to yourself. You can filter anything that I might not want to know. How does that sound?”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Should we get started right now?”

  “Absolutely,” Momma said as she reached into her oversized purse and pulled out a small notebook and pen.

  “Hey, I’ve seen that kind of notebook before,” I said. “Since when did you start carrying one of those around? The chief uses them, too, doesn’t he?”

  She nodded. “He’s gotten me into the habit of carrying them around myself.”

  “How’s that going?” I asked her.

  “I wasn’t sure at first, but I like having something to write on with me at all times now.”

  “I was talking about the marriage,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s lovely.”

  “Aren’t you finding it difficult getting used to living with someone again?” I asked her, wondering how she felt about being with the police chief after my father.

  “I might have at one time, but living with you again got me used to the idea of sharing my life with someone else. I know that you turned to me at a time of need, but I honestly believe that you coming to live with me did me much more good than it ever did you.”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” I said. “I was a real basket-case after my divorce.”

  “And I’d grown far too accustomed to being isolated and on my own. I know that I could have gone on and lived a perfectly fine life alone, but I find it so much better to have someone to share things with. Don’t you agree?”

  I didn’t even have to think about how I felt about that. “It was nice having Jake stay at the cottage while he was recuperating, and I do miss him now that he’s gone, but I’m doing okay on my own now.”

  “Did you two discuss the possibility of him staying in April Springs on a more permanent basis?” Momma asked softly. It was a rare direct question from her about my love life, and for a second, it caught me off-guard.

  “We started to talk about it a few times, but we never seemed to get past the fact that he travels so much for his work. I love him, there’s no doubt about that, but with him on the road all of the time, it makes things difficult. Although…” I let the thought trail off, knowing that I probably shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place.

  “Although what?” Momma asked.

  I knew that I might as well just tell her, since I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have any peace until I did. “After Jake was wounded, he talked about the possibility of retiring and leaving the state police. It was only natural, given what had happened, but I wondered for a while there if he really meant it.”

  “Would he really retire? He’s not old enough for that, is he?”

  “No, he’d definitely have to find something else to do. I think he was just wondering aloud what things might be like if he left the force.” I shrugged, and then I added, “I don’t know. It was mostly him musing out loud, some of those late-night conversations you have sometimes about possibilities instead of realities.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m certain that it will all work itself out in the end,” Momma said with a soft smile. “In the meantime, shall we tackle that journal?”

  I stifled a yawn, and then I said, “Let’s do it.”

  Momma frowned before she spoke again. “Suzanne, your bedtime is quickly approaching, isn’t it? It’s all right with me if you want to get some sleep. We can always start back up in the morning.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Momma, we don’t have any time to waste. Besides, if I go to bed now, I’ll be up at one, and then what am I going to do? Truthfully, I’ll probably be up then anyway. Old habits die the hardest, don’t they? Let’s press on. I’ll be fine.”

  “If you insist,” Momma said.

  “I do,” I answered with a smile.

  And then I started to read my aunt’s journal entries in reverse order.

  It was easier than I thought it would be, and it didn’t hurt that Aunt Jean had a habit of underlining any names of folks she was wondering about, so I could scan the pages easily, working my way back through the book searching for the suspects she’d already amassed for us.

  “Here’s the first one,” I said as I came across Greta Miles’s name.

  “Why would her housekeeper want to kill Jean?” Momma asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s see what it says.”

  “Greta has been acting oddly lately. I’ve caught her on more than one occasion staring at me when she didn’t know that I was looking. Is that guilt that I see in her eyes? Things, small ones at first, and then larger, more expensive items, have been moved around or gone missing altogether for the past few months, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’s trying to make me think that I’m losing my mind. I’d fire her on the spot, but if I did that, I’d never get to the bottom of her behavior. One thing is certain; Greta needs to be watched. Maybe I’ll get one of those hidden cameras so I can see what she’s up to when I’m not around.

  “It’s a shame she didn’t follow up on that,” I said as I finished reading the entry.

  “How do we know that she didn’t?” Momma asked.

  I looked around the living room, but if there was a camera there, I couldn’t see it. That was kind of the whole point, though, wasn’t it? “Let’s add that to our list of things we need to find out about,” I said.

  “What do I put down as a possible motive for murder in my notebook?” Momma asked me.

  It was a fair enough question. The more I thought about it, though, there was only one answer I could come up with. “It sounds as though it has to be theft, or more correctly, the fear of being exposed as a thief.”

  “What exactly was she stealing, though? Even Jean couldn’t put her finger on any one thing that Greta might have stolen.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, “but it’s the only motive that we have for.” I started flipping through more pages as I said, “Let’s see who the next person is to make it onto our list.”

  I scanned the journal for a minute until I came to the next name. “Adam Jefferson clearly wants my land; not the house, that’s the Badger’s goal, but the land I bought on a whim a few years ago,” I read. “He was polite at first, but lately he’s been more insistent. I never should have bought that acreage in the first place, and if he’d been a little nicer about everything, I might even have sold it to him the first time that he asked. That’s off the table now. If Adam wants it, he’s going to have to buy it off my heirs, because I’m never selling it to him, and I told him as much today. He got quite angry when I told him, and I was glad that there were witnesses nearby, or I’m not sure what he would have done. I’ve got to keep my eye on that man.”

  “I didn’t know that Jean owned any land other than what this house is sitting on,” Momma said.

  “You may need to start a separate page,” I told her. “Head it with the words, Things We Need to Investigate.”

  She did as I suggested, and then Momma asked, “What do I list there?”

  “Start with whether or not Greta really was stealing from Aunt Jean, and then follow that up with the true story about the land Adam wanted. You might want to add that we need to look for a hidden camera around here as we get the time.”

  “Who’s next?” Momma asked after she finished writing.

  I leafed through a few pages before I came to the next name. I nearly dropped the book as I said, “I don’t believe this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aunt Jean listed Chief Kessler as a possible suspect,” I said.

  “The police chief? Why would he want to hurt Jean?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see.”

  “Th
e chief offered to work on my car today on his day off. He told me that at heart he’s a shade-tree mechanic, whatever that is, but I declined his offer. My choice of transportation might not be much, but it gets me where I want to go. Was it just a coincidence that two days later my brakes failed and I almost died? I wonder. The chief has been up to something lately, what exactly it is I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out. He thinks he can hide in plain sight, but I’m on to him. All I need is a little proof, and then, if he’s doing something wrong, then I’m going to make sure that he’s going down. He might put on an ‘aw shucks ma’am’ demeanor with everyone around town, but there’s more there than he lets on.”

  “So, it appears that my little sister was playing Nancy Drew.”

  “Much like her niece does even to this day,” I said.

  “Suzanne, I didn’t mean anything disparaging by that,” Momma said.

  “I didn’t take it that way. I just find it interesting that Aunt Jean and I had more in common than just our DNA.”

  “There was never any doubt about that in mind,” Momma said with a smile.

  “I wonder what she suspected the police chief was up to?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s something else that we need to look into. This is getting complicated, isn’t it?”

  “Murder usually is,” I said.

  “Who’s next on the list?”

  It didn’t take me long to find out. “Hank Caldwell is mentioned here,” I said, marveling that my aunt had so many suspicions about the folks in her small town.

  “What could Hank possibly have wanted from her?”

  Instead of answering her directly, I started reading the passage aloud. “Hank won’t get the message. What we had was fun, but when things started getting too serious, I tried to cool him off. He wouldn’t listen to me, though. Honestly, the man’s a bit obsessed. Last night, he hid in the bushes in front of my house, and when I came outside, he jumped out and nearly scared me to death. I’m afraid that I was a bit short with him, and I didn’t try to hide it. He got furious, and before he stormed off, he said, “If I can’t have you, then nobody can!” It was honestly quite chilling, and I’m beginning to regret ever going out with him in the first place.”

  “It doesn’t sound like an idle threat, does it?” I asked Momma. “Did you know that Aunt Jean was seeing the handyman?”

  “My sister always kept her personal life to herself, even when we were girls. To be honest with you, I’m having a hard time reconciling what she’s written about these people with the folks we’ve met. Is there a chance that she was just being paranoid in the end?”

  “I know what you’re saying, and I suppose that it’s possible, but we have to go with Aunt Jean’s instincts on this. Everyone has got to be a suspect until proven otherwise.”

  “Agreed,” Momma said. “I hope that’s all,” she added as she pointed to the journal.

  “It seems to be,” I said as I scanned the pages further, but then an underlined name caught my eye. “Well, at least this one is no surprise. Anna Albright made the list. I was wondering if she was going to show up.”

  As Momma wrote the neighbor’s name down, I read aloud for the last time, “The Badger is driving me crazy. She is constantly after me to sell this rambling old place to her, even after I told her it was part of our family history. Why does she want it so badly? She acts as though there’s buried treasure under the floorboards. Given the history of our family, I very much doubt that’s possible. We clearly come from a long line of hoarders, one look in our attic is enough to prove that, but why would anyone want any of this junk? It’s beyond me. I told her today that I was never going to sell the place to her so she might as well stop asking, and she seemed to accept that. Maybe now she’ll leave me alone. Then again, maybe she’s just given up on me and plans to get rid of me so she can try to persuade Suzanne that it’s a good idea when I’m gone. Who knows what’s on the Badger’s mind?”

  “We really have to find the killer now,” I said. “Whoever did this robbed of us both of who knows how many years with Aunt Jean. That’s something that I’ll never be able to forgive.”

  “Then let’s find the killer, and make them accountable for what they’ve done,” Momma said solemnly.

  “Agreed,” I replied, determined more than ever to track down my beloved aunt’s murderer.

  “I think we’ve done all that we can tonight. What do you say? Shall we get some sleep and revisit this list in the morning?” Momma asked as she closed her notebook.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said as I gave into a yawn. I really was tired, and it wasn’t all physical exhaustion. Losing Aunt Jean had taken a toll on me, and I was just beginning to feel it.

  We went off to bed, hoping that after a night’s rest, we might be better suited to finding my aunt’s killer.

  Chapter 9

  The fact that I was restless that night might have ended up saving our lives.

  Chapter 10

  I bolted wide-awake at one AM, and it only had a little to do with the fact that I was sleeping in a strange bed. Momma and I had said our goodnights around eight the previous evening, and I’d drifted off a few times, only to jolt awake again a little later. This was ridiculous. I finally decided to put on my robe and headed downstairs. It would give me a chance to read Aunt Jean’s journal a little more thoroughly and see if I’d missed any other major clues while I’d been scanning it before. I could easily understand my mother’s reticence in reading her sister’s journal, but I had no such compunctions. The parts that I’d sampled so far had been pure Aunt Jean; funny, insightful, irreverent, and just a little skewed.

  Once I got downstairs, though, I forgot all about the journal.

  As I was passing by the basement door, I heard an obvious noise coming from below me, and I was certain that this time it was no tree limb.

  Grabbing the closest flashlight, I opened the door and shined it down the steps. In as loud and commanding a voice that I could muster, I shouted, “Whoever you are, you need to get out of here right now. I’ve already called the police, but I’m not going to wait around for them to get here. I’ve got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  Silence.

  “I mean it,” I said, knocking the flashlight against the handrail. “You have two seconds to leave. One. Two. That’s it. I’m coming down.”

  As my foot hit the second step, I heard a loud banging sound coming from below. I was about to go back up the steps when I heard a voice behind me that nearly dropped me in my tracks.

  “Suzanne, what on earth are you yelling about this time of night?”

  “We just had an unwelcome visitor in the basement,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as she tried to look around me down the steps.

  “I’m pretty sure. Should we investigate this ourselves, or should we call the police chief?”

  Momma frowned. “Ordinarily I’d say call the police, but after what you read in Jean’s journal, I’m not sure we should be asking that man for help. Let’s go check it out ourselves.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive,” she said.

  I nodded, and then we slowly started walking down the steps, one by one, each step creaking the entire way down. Momma was right on my heels, and by the time we both got to the bottom landing, it appeared that no one was there.

  “Are you positive that it just wasn’t mice or something?” Momma asked as she shined her beam around the dark space looking for a switch. When she found a string pull-cord, she tugged on it and we suddenly had light, if you could call it that. The bulb was old, and it flickered as it burned, but it was still loads better than the flashlights we’d been using.

  “No mouse could make the noises I just heard,” I said.

  As I started toward the overloaded shelves filled with canned fruits, camping gear, and odds and ends beyond imagination, I said loudly, “If you’re still here, we’re coming for you.”

  Momma just r
olled her eyes a little, but I noticed that she still stayed behind me.

  After searching aisle after aisle, I was beginning to wonder if my mother might have been right. Had I heard a mouse knock something over? Or had it been more ominous, as I’d imagined? I was about to give up when I noticed something out of place.

  On the steps leading down from bulkhead entrance were footprints, still wet from tracking in through the damp grass.

  “Check that out,” I said as I pointed to the steps, and then to the hasp I discovered that had been snapped off near the top tread. “I told you that someone was down here.”

  Momma’s face paled a little as her mouth became set in a firm line. “This is completely unacceptable.”

  “I’d say that’s about the nicest way that you could put it,” I said. “The real question is what are we going to do about it?”

  She thought about it, and then she nodded firmly. “In the morning, we’re going to call Hank Caldwell to replace the entire lock assembly.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that we’re letting one of our suspects back into the house?” I asked.

  “What real choice do we have,” Momma asked.

  I looked around and spied an old broom leaning up against the wall. It had been snapped off at one time, and why my aunt hadn’t thrown it away I couldn’t even begin to guess. “Let me try something that might hold in the meantime,” I said as I took the broom segment and shoved it between the two handles that opened the bulkhead door. It made for a nice brace that managed to keep the door shut just fine. When I pushed on the doors, they moved a little, but there was no way that they could be opened completely now. “There, that should hold it for now.”

  Momma frowned at my makeshift work. “It’s hardly permanent.”

  “It’s not meant to be,” I said. “I just wanted something there while I was looking for another solution.” I spied a cordless drill with a screwdriver bit chucked in it, found a few loose screws on the workbench, and then I grabbed a section of two-by-four lumber that looked as though it would work just fine. I held the wood in place with one hand over the bulkhead entrance and screwed it home under the broomstick, adding a few smaller screws in the end to mate the broom with the wood. Now there was no movement in the door at all.