by Jessica Beck
“What are they dressed up as now?” I asked her. Emily loved to clothe her stuffed animals in all kinds of outfits, and folks in town loved seeing what she came up with.
“They’re between costumes at the moment, but I’ve got a few ideas I’m toying with. Have I done pirate outfits yet? I’ll have to check the photo album.” Turning back to her donut choice, she asked me, “Suzanne, is there any way that you could add some sprinkles and some extra marshmallow to mine?”
“For you, why not?” I asked as I embellished her donut to her specifications. Emily was known for her love of toppings, so it didn’t surprise me that she wanted something a little fancier.
“How about you?” I asked Max after I delivered Emily’s donut to her.
“Just coffee,” he said.
“No treats today?” I asked.
Max patted his stomach. “I have to stay at my ideal weight, just in case something comes up.”
“Got it,” I said. “How about you, Emily? Would you like something to drink?”
“Let me see. How about some chocolate milk?”
“Aren’t you afraid of going into some kind of chocolate shock?” Max asked her.
“Dear, sweet, Max, there’s no such thing as too much chocolate. Am I right, Suzanne?”
“I’m with you wholeheartedly on that one,” I said as I finished filling their orders. After Max paid, I gave him his change and said, “Thanks for coming by.”
“Thank you for the goodies,” Emily said as the two of them left the shop hand in hand.
After they were gone, I started thinking about what Max had said. I knew that he loved to exaggerate, but I also understood that he was a student of human nature, and if he said that Chester had been unhappy with Kevin Leeds, then I was just as sure that it was true. The only question in my mind was why? As far as I knew, the two men didn’t have any connection at all. So why did his name keep popping up in my murder investigation? It was definitely something that Grace and I were going to have to explore. Speaking of Grace, I needed to see if she could get off work early and help me do a little sleuthing. As a supervisor for a cosmetics company sales team, her schedule was pretty flexible most of the time. I just hoped this was one of those occasions.
During the next lull, I grabbed my cell phone and called her.
“Hey, Grace. What’s your afternoon look like?”
“Well, the clouds are starting to build up, so I’m thinking that it might rain.”
“That’s not what I meant. Could you help me do a little digging into Chester Martin’s murder this afternoon?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve already cleared my schedule,” she said. “Should I be there at eleven?”
“That may be when we close, but I have to run the register report, make out the deposit, and help Emma clean the shop.”
“So then, five after?” she asked with a laugh.
“If you want to pitch in and help, that would be fine.”
After a brief pause, she said, “Eleven thirty it is, then.”
I swore I could hear her laughing as she hung up on me.
Excellent.
Now I had a plan for my investigation, and a partner in crime to help me carry it out.
Honestly, what could possibly go wrong?
Chapter 8
“Which suspect should we speak with first?” Grace asked as we left the donut shop together toward the end of the morning just after closing. Emma had offered to take the deposit by the bank for me, and I’d readily agreed, so I was free to sleuth for the rest of the day.
“I think we should tackle the married couple,” she said firmly.
“Really? I was actually kind of hoping that we’d interview them last.”
“Why is that?” she asked as she looked at me quizzically.
“I don’t know. The whole subject matter is kind of delicate, and we certainly can’t bring it up while they’re together. Why do you want to speak with them first?”
“I suppose it’s the whole ‘two birds with one stone’ philosophy.”
“If they’re together, we’re going to have to find a way to split them up. If we can somehow manage that, would you like to take Nathan or Maggie?” I asked her as we got into my Jeep and I started driving toward the Hoff house.
“Suzanne, we both know that you’re better with the men,” she said.
“I can’t say that that’s entirely true.”
Grace grinned at me. “Okay then. Have it your way. You take Maggie.”
I thought about questioning the woman about her affair with Chester, something that wasn’t public knowledge as far as I knew, and how I could delicately ask her for an alibi for the time of the murder. I decided that maybe I’d be better off with Nathan after all. “No, you’re right. You take the cheating wife, and I’ll deal with the spurned husband.”
“When you put it that way, I’m not sure that I like that, either,” Grace said.
“Well, we need to decide fast, because we’re here.”
My best friend looked surprised to see that we were already at the Hoff house. “How did I miss that?”
“You were too busy trying to convince me to take Nathan on, and April Springs isn’t all that big a town,” I said with a smile. “So, first off, we need a strategy to divide and conquer these two.”
“I could always tell Maggie that she won a cosmetics kit from my company,” Grace said.
“Do you happen to have one in that big purse you always carry around with you?”
“You never know,” Grace said with a grin as she started rooting around in the voluminous bag. After thirty seconds, she came up with a lipstick sampler and a small zippered plastic bag containing several different sample sizes of blush. “It might not be much, but I’ll sell it as something much bigger before I give it to her.”
“That I’ve got to see,” I said.
“Then watch the master and learn,” Grace said with a smile as we approached the front door. “Have you decided what you are going to tell Nathan?”
I thought about it for a second, and then I came up with something that I thought was fairly good. “Well, he came by the shop last month to buy some donuts for his office. I’ll tell him that we drew his business card out of the fishbowl today, and that he’s won a free dozen donuts.”
Grace frowned as her finger hovered over the doorbell. “You don’t normally do giveaways, and I’ve never seen you collect business cards, in fishbowls or any other bowls, for that matter.”
“You know that, and so do I, but what are the chances Nathan’s going to remember what he did a month ago? Do you think he’s going to challenge me and refuse the donuts? If he does, he’ll be one of the first men I’ve ever known to be able to do it.”
“Good point,” she said. “So, if he won donuts, where are they? You don’t even carry a purse, and if you did, you certainly couldn’t jam a dozen donuts into it.”
“I was never going to claim that I had them on me,” I said with a smile. “Now, ring the doorbell and let’s see what we get.”
I was ready for one or the other of them, but when they answered the door together, I was a little flustered. Nathan was a former high school football player who had grown lazy over the intervening years, and he had the paunch to prove it. He must have been thirty pounds over his playing weight, and he didn’t wear it very well. Maggie, on the other hand, had kept herself in great shape since high school. Though she was a good twenty years my senior, I would have killed to have that body. Her hair was flaming red, and it looked natural to me, though I was no expert in hair coloring. I wondered if she cultivated a temper to go along with her hair color, and I had a suspicion that I was about to find out.
“Hello,” she said as she looked at us quizzically. “May we help you?”
I was at a loss how to respond when Grace spoke up. “As a matter of fact, we’re here to help you. Today’s your lucky day.”
“Me?” she asked suspiciously.
“Yes, you.”<
br />
“Both of you, actually,” I interjected. “We’ve been doing a giveaway at the donut shop, and Nathan, you won a dozen donuts of your choice. Do you remember putting your card in the drawing last month?”
Maggie frowned at her husband. “You swore to me that you’d stopped sneaking treats. Is this how you keep your word to me?”
“Honestly, it was so long ago that I don’t even remember entering.” He turned to me and said, “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.”
“You came into Donut Hearts last month,” I said, sticking with my story, even though it was clearly getting him in trouble with his wife. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you.” Then I turned to Maggie as I added, “As my way of apologizing, my friend here is giving you a mini makeup kit as well. That way you both win today.”
That got Maggie’s attention. “Where’s my prize? I don’t care about the donuts, but I’ll take whatever else you’re giving away. We’re both off work this week, but this genius I’m married to forgot to make our hotel reservations, so we’re having a staycation. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in your life?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “Under the right circumstances, I think that it could be nice.”
“See? That’s what I said,” Nathan responded.
“You say a lot, don’t you?” Maggie asked acidly, and then she spotted the pouch in Grace’s hand. “Is that all I get?”
Before Grace could answer, Maggie snatched the case out of her hand and opened it. After peering inside, she frowned at my friend. “It’s not much, is it?”
“Don’t underestimate the value of my gift. Those samples are highly prized,” Grace said.
“Okay, if you say so,” Maggie said, and then she started to close the door.
“Hey, what about my donuts?” Nathan asked as he looked at me.
“Forget about them. You don’t need them,” his wife replied harshly, and then she slammed the door the rest of the way shut.
“What just happened here?” Grace asked me as we stood on the stoop alone. Both of us were clearly stunned by the recent turn of events.
“I believe that we just got dismissed,” I said, “and neither one of us even got to ask a single question.”
“Wow, that Maggie’s a force of nature, isn’t she?”
“You say that almost as though you admire it,” I replied as we headed back to my Jeep.
“No, ma’am, not in the least. That was a real bust, wasn’t it? Should we just give up and go home with our tails tucked between our legs?”
“No, we can’t let one disaster stop us, even if it was with two of our suspects at the same time,” I answered. “We need to press on now more than ever.”
As we got into the Jeep and I started driving, Grace said, “Well, we should look on the bright side of things.”
“I’d love to hear what your idea of a bright side is.”
“It can’t get any worse than this,” she answered.
This time, though, it just so happened that she was wrong.
Chapter 9
“So, should we speak with Vince Dade next or Kevin Leeds?” I asked.
“I picked the first two, and we both know what a disaster that session turned out to be,” Grace said, “so I’m willing to let you choose this time.”
“Fair enough,” I said with a smile.
“You’re not even going to try to make me feel better about what just happened, are you?” Grace asked me with a smile.
“No, ma’am, not on your life,” I answered happily.
For some reason, that made her laugh, and all of the earlier tensions about our most recent failures left us. After a moment, I said, “Let’s tackle Kevin Leeds. He comes into the donut shop every now and then, so at least we’ve got that much going for us.”
“That’s okay by me,” Grace said as she glanced at her watch. “If we’re lucky, he should be on his lunch hour right about now.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I asked her as I slowed the Jeep.
“Keep driving. I called the bank and asked about him.”
“And they just told you his work schedule over the phone without any kind of explanation?” I asked her.
“Hey, it’s not as though it’s a state secret or something. Head back to the park near the donut shop. Apparently he likes to brown bag his lunch on a bench near Donut Hearts. From what I’ve heard, he’s the cheapest man on the planet. If it’s free, he’ll take it, no matter what it is.”
“That’s been my experience with him in the past, but I’m not sure how it helps us. Well, at least I know the way there,” I said as I turned the Jeep around and headed back to where we’d been half an hour ago. “Just out of curiosity, why didn’t we speak with Kevin first?”
“That’s easy enough to answer. He wasn’t on his lunch break then,” she said.
“Fair enough. Is there anything else I should know about before we speak with him?”
“After we chat, I’m going to want to go to the Boxcar and grab a bite to eat. I’m getting kind of hungry myself.”
“That sounds great,” I said, happy for at least something to look forward to. Questioning suspects wasn’t my favorite thing to do in the world, so a reward for doing it was always welcome. I knew that it was critical to our investigation to get as much information as possible from the folks we suspected, but they didn’t have to tell us anything, a fact that I was only too aware of most of the time. That meant that sometimes Grace and I had to push harder than we would have liked just to spur reactions from our suspects, and that had left some bad feelings in the past from folks who had turned out to be innocent after all. I’m sure that it was just an occupational hazard of being a detective of any sort, but that didn’t make it any easier when people started avoiding both me and my donut shop. If murders kept happening around me, sooner or later I might have to go all the way outside of April Springs in order to keep my customer base up.
“Sorry, but I don’t have enough food to share with both of you.” Those were the first words out of Kevin Leeds’s mouth the moment he saw us approaching him. I already knew that the man was cheap, always hoping to buy day-old donuts from me instead of the fresh ones. He couldn’t believe it when I’d first told him that we gave them away to the church for the less fortunate, but I had finally managed to convince him that I was telling the truth.
“That’s okay. We’re on our way to the Boxcar to have lunch,” I said. “Mind if we join you on your bench for a few minutes before we go in?”
“That’s fine with me. It’s still a free country. At least it ought to be,” he said. “I can’t believe you two can afford to eat over there.”
“Trish’s prices aren’t all that high,” Grace told him.
“Maybe not for you, but they’re high enough for me,” he replied. From one look at his sandwich, it appeared to be mostly mustard between two slices of bread. The bologna was sliced so thin that I wasn’t sure that he would even be able to taste it. “There’s nothing wrong with saving a little money when you can.”
“We couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, and I caught a glimpse of Grace as she looked skeptically at me. It was a funny face, and I wanted to laugh, but it would be too difficult to explain to Kevin. “It was terrible what happened to Chester Martin, wasn’t it?”
“A real shame,” Kevin said as he took a small, careful bite of his sandwich. I noticed that there was a baggie with some questionable-looking celery beside him, as well as an old soda bottle, filled now with water.
“Did you two know each other very well?” Grace asked him.
“No, not really,” he replied. “We used to, but we hadn’t hung out together for a long time.”
“Funny, that’s not what we heard,” Grace answered.
Kevin stopped taking a drink mid-sip and stared at her. “I’m sure that I don’t know what you’re talking about. What exactly did you hear?”
“That you two were fighting just before he d
ied,” she said.
“Somebody’s been lying to you. I haven’t been in a fight since the third grade,” Kevin answered, and then he resumed drinking from his bottle.
“Not a fight, then, but more like an argument,” I corrected.
“That’s true enough, I suppose. Chester owed me ten dollars for the longest time, but he would never pay up. I heard a rumor that he was selling everything he owned and planned to move away from April Springs to start a new life, so I realized that my chances to collect my money were slipping away. When I went to the library looking for him, he wasn’t there, so I went back home before my shift at the bank started. The next thing I knew the man was banging on my door demanding to see me.”
“What was the ten-dollar loan for?” I asked, not sure that it was relevant to our investigation but curious about it nonetheless.
“That’s hardly important now, is it?” Kevin said. “Now that he’s gone, I’d just as soon not talk about it.”
A man was dead, and all Kevin could think about was ten dollars the victim owed him? “If you don’t mind, I’d still like to know.”
“I repeat, why do you care so much about it?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t you tell us if it weren’t important?” Grace asked from the other side. Kevin had to keep glancing from one side to the other as we spoke, something that was clearly making him uncomfortable.
“He borrowed it from me a few years ago. That’s all that matters,” Kevin said.
“And you were still fighting about it yesterday?” Grace asked. Neither one of us could believe that Kevin Leeds would let something like that go for a day, let alone a few years.
