by Jessica Beck
“After Chester, but before you,” the chief said.
“Did your brother share his concerns with you as well?” Momma asked.
The chief looked uncomfortable as he admitted, “No, it wasn’t anything like that. My wife found out what I’d done, so she made me do it. I took a bit of a hit on the investment, but at least it kept a bit of peace in a marriage that had precious little of it at that point.”
“So then, Vince didn’t have any reason to be mad at you, but he certainly had cause to be angry with me,” Momma said.
“That’s not entirely true,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t know that you advised Chester to pull out, did he?”
“I highly doubt it. Chester wasn’t one to ask anyone for help or advice, so I doubt that he shared with Vince the fact that he had felt compelled to share his concerns with me.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell Vince about that part of it,” Chief Martin said gravely.
“Honestly, you can’t seriously think that I’m in danger now because of something that happened ten years ago, can you?” my mother asked her husband incredulously.
“Dot, until we know exactly who killed Chester, and why, I’m going to take everything seriously,” he told her. “And I suggest that you both do the same.”
“I for one always do,” I said as I tried to stifle a yawn.
“Suzanne, you look tired. Isn’t it past your bedtime, or have you decided to let Sharon and Emma make the donuts tomorrow?” Momma asked me.
“No, I’m doing it myself,” I said as I tried to stop another one. “You’re probably right. I’d better go back to the cottage and get some sleep,” I added.
“Be careful,” Momma said, a sentiment the chief echoed as they walked me to their door.
After I waved good-bye, I headed back to the cottage that Momma and I had shared once upon a time. It seemed like forever now, but it in the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t been that long ago at all. Jake was there, at least for now, though it was clear from the lack of vehicles in the driveway that he was still out investigating. A part of me was sad not to be able to kiss him good night, but another part was just as happy that I wouldn’t have to explain any of my partially formed theories quite yet. Besides, they weren’t all that clear in my own mind. Maybe a good night’s sleep would crystallize things for me, but the worst-case scenario was that I would at least get some rest, and that was never a bad thing.
Chapter 6
I’d been hoping that Jake would be there when I got back to the cottage, but a part of me knew that probably wasn’t going to happen. The man had an intensity and focus when he was working a case like I’d never seen, and I realized that I’d be lucky if I saw him at all over the course of the next few days and weeks. I checked in with Grace, grabbed a yogurt from the fridge, and then I curled up on the couch, though I probably should have just gone to bed. The problem with that was if I did go upstairs, I’d have zero chance of seeing Jake if and when he made it back to the cottage. If he found me asleep on the couch, there would at least be a chance that he’d wake me.
And that’s exactly what happened.
“Suzanne, it’s time to get up,” I heard him say as he gently shook my shoulder.
“Five more minutes, Momma,” I said, still not completely awake.
“I don’t know whether I should feel complimented or insulted by that,” he said as I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Right on time for you, but too late for me, or too early, whichever way you choose to look at it. Here, have some coffee,” he added as he handed me a mug.
“You made this?” I asked as I took a healthy drink and almost choked. It was stout, much stronger than I preferred, but I wasn’t about to be a choosy beggar.
“Hey, you’ve done it enough for me in the past,” he said as he took a sip from his mug and smiled. “Just the way I like it, strong enough to take the paint off the side of a barn.”
“It’s got some punch to it; I’ll say that much,” I said as I took another, more cautious sip.
“You get used to it after a while,” he said, and then he let out a loud breath as he eased down into one of the living room chairs nearby. “What a night.”
“Did you catch the bad guy yet?” I asked him with a grin.
“Not even close,” he admitted. “How about you?”
“Like I said before, we have some suspects and a few motives, but that’s about it.”
Jake shook his head. “Truth be told, that’s better than I’ve done. All I’ve been doing is listening to rumors, gossip, and hearsay.”
“Are you kidding? That’s where you find all of the good stuff,” I said. “What have you got so far?”
He almost answered, but then he stopped himself short and just smiled at me. “No way. You go first.”
“And then you’ll chime in?” I asked him, glancing at the clock. I was running on borrowed time, but if it meant getting closer to Chester Martin’s killer, I was willing to go in late for a month.
“We’ll see,” he said with that cryptic grin of his.
“Okay, here’s what Grace and I have managed to gather so far. As of right now, our main list of suspects includes Vince Dade; Maggie Hoff and her husband, Nathan; and Shelly Graham.”
“Are you sure that you’re not forgetting anybody?” he asked me as he watched me carefully.
“Well, George seems to think that Kevin Leeds had some kind of problem with Chester, but I haven’t found anything out about that yet.”
Jake shook his head. “I’m not talking about this Leeds character; I’m talking about the mayor himself.”
So, he’d heard about the argument between the mayor and librarian himself. “George explained all that away.”
“Maybe to your satisfaction,” Jake said, “but I still need to speak with him.”
“I don’t have a problem with it, but the mayor might. You haven’t known George Morris for very long, so let me bring you up to speed on His Honor. The man’s got a temper like nobody’s business, and it comes out from time to time, especially when someone questions him about something. He’s not very politic sometimes.”
“That’s an interesting trait for a mayor to have, but I’ll take my chances. My eyewitness told me that George and Chester had a rather heated disagreement this afternoon. She sounded positive that it nearly came to blows.”
“Jake, you can’t take everything that Zelda Marks says at face value. The woman has been jumping at shadows for years.”
The interim chief of police studied me for a moment before he said softly, “I never said that Zelda was my witness, Suzanne.”
“My mistake,” I said. “She was, though, wasn’t she?”
“No comment,” Jake answered, but from the twinkle in his eye, I knew that I was dead on.
“Fair enough,” I replied, satisfied that I was right. After all, who else could have witnessed the argument but the librarian’s second in command?
“So, that’s it? No one else had even the ghost of a reason to want to see Chester dead?” Jake asked me.
“Not that I’ve been able to find out so far,” I said as I took a longer sip of his coffee. Either I was building up some immunity to the stuff, or it was starting to grow on me. I wasn’t sure which scenario I was hoping for.
“You said something about motives earlier,” Jake said, and then he glanced at the clock. “That’s going to have to wait, isn’t it? You’ve got to get to work, don’t you?”
“No worries. I can push it back a little bit,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’ve been making donuts so long now that I could just about do it in my sleep, not that I’ve ever tried. Okay, here’s what we’ve got so far. Vince is supposed to have lost a great deal of money on a land deal with Chester ten years ago. Next up, we have some folks saying that our former head librarian was fooling around with loca
l gal Maggie Hoff. He ended the affair pretty recently, so she could have a motive, but then again, so could her husband, Nathan. If Shelly found out what was going on, she could have done it herself.”
Jake took all of that in. “Ten years is a long time to wait to get revenge,” he said after a few moments of silence.
“Evidently something stirred up the old memories recently.”
“Was it just the two of them involved in the land deal?” Jake asked.
“Well, Momma and Chief Martin were a part of it, too, but evidently Vince didn’t hold anything against the two of them for dropping out.”
“That’s interesting,” Jake said, and then he remained silent for a time.
“You don’t think my mother or her new husband had anything to do with what happened to Chester, do you?” I asked him.
“Not until I hear something more direct than that. Now, if Vince had been the victim, I might have had to look at them, but as things stand, as far as I’m concerned they’re in the clear.”
“Do you honestly think that Momma or the chief could have done something to the man’s own brother?”
“I’ve seen it too many times before to discount it out of hand,” Jake said, and as he did, I saw how the burdens he’d carried over the years had truly begun to wear him down. “Some of the things that I’ve seen can’t ever be forgotten.”
“Your job has been tough on you, hasn’t it?” I asked with a softened voice.
“More than I care to admit, and most likely more than I’ll ever know,” he said with true sadness in his voice. After a few moments, Jake shook his head, as though he were clearing the cobwebs from his mind. “Now, you need to get to work, young lady.”
“Okay,” I said as I looked at the clock and realized that I couldn’t push it any further and still make my donuts on time. “You’re right. Will I see you later today?”
“I’ll try to drop by the shop before you close at eleven, but I can’t make any promises,” he said.
“I understand.”
“Suzanne, you’ll call me if you hear anything else, won’t you?” he asked me as I put the mug on the coffee table, stood, and then stretched.
“I promise,” I said. “How about you?”
He just shook his head and laughed. “You need to change.”
“Does that mean that you don’t love me the way I am?” I asked him, intentionally misunderstanding him.
“Of course I do,” he said as he stood and wrapped me up in his arms. It felt good, safe somehow, standing there, and I never wanted the moment to end, but after ten seconds, he broke free. “If you’re going, you need to go right now.”
“I could always call in sick,” I said with a smile.
“I know you better than that. You wouldn’t do that to Emma,” he answered knowingly.
“You’re right. Sometimes I hate that about you.”
“It’s just going to be a burden that I’ll have to carry,” he said with a smile.
“Can you stay up long enough for me to grab a quick shower and change my clothes?” I asked him.
“Take your time. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep at all tonight,” he said.
Four minutes later, I was back downstairs, but he’d taken my place on the couch, curled up with my blanket and snoring softly.
I left him with a kiss on the forehead, but he didn’t even stir.
The poor man was exhausted, so I decided to let him get every second of sleep that he could manage before he had to hit the streets of April Springs in the morning searching for Chester Martin’s killer.
“Good morning,” I told Emma when she came into the shop an hour after I’d arrived. That was our schedule, and I was kind of partial to it. It gave me time to get the coffee started and work on the cake donuts by myself, but as the work picked up, as well as the dishes, it was nice having Emma there, too. She’d started out as just a dishwasher, but over the years she’d become a vital cog in my donutmaking machine.
“Hey, Suzanne. Can you believe what happened last night?”
“Are you talking about Chester Martin?”
“What else happened that could top that?” she asked me as she put on her apron.
“I can’t imagine being murdered on the very day I was set to retire,” I said.
“I don’t want it to ever happen to me, but I know what you’re saying. How’s Jake managing?”
“You know him. He dove right into the thick of things,” I said, purposely keeping my answers short and to the point. Emma and I had butted heads a few times in the past because of her father and her desire to please him. Sometimes that meant that Emma leaked information to him that I had, and it never worked out well for either one of us.
“Has he come up with anything yet?” she asked softly.
“No,” I said. “I’m getting ready to drop donuts, so maybe we should drop this line of questioning, too, while we’re at it.”
“I’ll be in the dining room,” she said, quickly getting the hint. I wasn’t really ready to start dropping batter into the oil just yet, but I didn’t want to talk about Chester Martin’s murder, especially not with Emma. After a few minutes, I had the first batter ready and loaded it into the heavy dropper. Swinging it back and forth to drive the batter to the exit point, I released the trigger and started dropping rounds of dough into the oil. I loved watching them cook, and after a few minutes, I flipped them expertly with the long wooden skewers I kept for just that purpose. Once they were ready, I pulled them from the fryer, placed them on the rack to drain for a minute, and then I iced them. Moving on to the next batch, I worked another twenty minutes before I was finished. Whether I was ready for it or not, it was time to bring Emma back into the kitchen.
When I opened the door to get her, she was waiting for me, tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Suzanne. I shouldn’t have asked you about the case. I don’t know what I was thinking.” The words tumbled out of her, and I could see that she was clearly upset by my earlier reaction to her probing questions. How could I stay mad at this young woman who meant so much to me?
I hugged her and patted her back gently for a moment. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”
“But it’s not,” Emma said when she pulled away. “Dad asked me to pump you for information. I should have said no, but sometimes it’s hard.”
“I’m sure that it is. Your father can be a very persuasive man at times.”
Emma finally smiled a little. “It doesn’t seem to work on your boyfriend, though, does it?”
I returned her smile with one of my own. “Jake has an infinite capacity to answer ‘no comment’ to just about any question a reporter asks him.”
“Wow, you’d think it would be hard to do that.”
“He doesn’t seem to have any problem with it,” I said. “Now, are you ready to hit those dishes?”
“You know me. I’m raring to go,” she said.
“Liar,” I replied, sticking my tongue out at her.
“No, I mean it. It’s kind of therapeutic burying my arms up to my elbows in warm, sudsy water.”
“Then by all means, let the healing begin,” I said as I led her back into the kitchen.
Emma surveyed my cake donuts, all iced and ready to be placed on trays for our display, when she noticed something different. “Hey, that’s new,” she said as she pointed to my latest creation. “What is it?”
“I thought I’d try something different,” I said. “Do you want to try a bite?”
“Sure,” she said eagerly. “What exactly am I tasting?”
“You tell me,” I said with a smile.
“Okay, I can do that,” she said. Emma grabbed a knife and cut a small section from one of the donuts in question to taste. We’d both learned that there were only so many donuts we could eat in the course of a day before we got sick of them, and the additional pounds they brought with them, though I was a little miffed that my assistant’s metabolism didn’t seem to even notice the additional calories, wher
eas mine reveled in every ounce of the new poundage.
I watched her face as she took a bite, and to my relief, a smile blossomed. “Hey, that’s really good. How did you do that?”
“I combined my hot chocolate recipe with the donut mix,” I said. “Do you think the semisweet chocolate chips are too much? How about the chocolate glaze I made for them?”
Emma cut another bite and popped it into her mouth. “They’re perfect just the way they are. If it were my decision, I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said.
“So, they’re good enough to go on the menu?”
“You bet,” Emma said. “What are you going to call them?”
“Triple Chocolate Treat sounds good to me. What do you think?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of just calling them what they are, Hot Chocolate Donuts, since that’s the predominant flavor, but your name is probably better.”
“Hang on, let me think about your suggestion,” I said. “If we use your name, we can top them with a bit of marshmallow, too. The white dollop on top will really stand out, and it gives us a fun addition for cold weather. Yes, I like that a lot.”
“How about Hot Chocolate Delights?” she asked. “That sounds perfect.”
“Then make us a new sign, and we’ll see how folks respond.”
“You’d better be ready to add this one to the permanent winter lineup, because you’ve got a winner here.”
“I hope you’re right. You know how I love keeping my offerings fresh and fun.”
