Killer Crullers

by Jessica Beck

  Yield: Depends on sizes and shapes of your crullers: 4–6 rectangles, 6–10 miscellaneous shapes

  CHAPTER 8

  It was time for me to come clean. “Do you remember when I told you about the cruller assault?”

  “Of course I do. Flying pastries are a little hard to forget,” he said.

  “The man who threw them at Gabby was shot and killed last night between her shop and mine.” I told him the rest of it, and then finished with, “Gabby is their number one suspect, and she’s asked me to help her find the real killer.”

  “There’s no chance in the world you said no to her, is there?” Jake asked.

  “What do you think? When a friend asks me for help, I give it.”

  He paused, and then asked, “Are you two really friends?”

  “Not like Grace and I are,” I admitted, “but yeah, we’ve formed a bond over the years. I know she can be gruff and nosy and hard to get along with, but I still can’t stand by and see her falsely accused of murder.”

  Jake took a deep breath, and then said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure it’s not true? That missing money and diamond brooch could give her plenty of reasons to kill him, especially if he was making such a stink about it.”

  “I won’t entertain the notion that she’s guilty unless evidence that confirms it presents itself,” I said. “For now, I’m working on the assumption that she’s innocent.”

  “As long as Phillip Martin isn’t looking at you as a suspect, we’re fine,” Jake said. “You have an alibi, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I admitted. “After you turned me down, I tried Grace, but she was on a date, and so was Momma. The only person who saw me was the pizza delivery guy, and he was at the house hours before Desmond was murdered.”

  “Suzanne, I’m so sorry. I should have come back to April Springs last night, or let you come here. I could have been your alibi.”

  “It’s not your fault, Jake. Who knew what was going to happen, or that I’d need someone to swear that I didn’t do it?”

  “Still, it bothers me. Tell you what. I’ll end my lecture series right now and come back to April Springs and help you look into the murder.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but no, thanks.”

  There was a touch of hurt in his voice as he asked, “Why not? We make a good team, don’t we?”

  “You know we do, and not just when we’re investigating. Jake, I won’t let you use this as an excuse to get out of something you committed to doing. Don’t worry, Grace is helping me, and George, too. We’ll manage.”

  “Well, I’m close by if you need me.”

  The microwave timer beeped, and Jake must have heard it. “Are you heating up leftovers for dinner again?”

  “Momma’s on another date,” I admitted, “but trust me, her castoffs are better than most folks’ first offerings.”

  “You don’t have to convince me of that,” Jake said. “What’s on the menu tonight?”

  When I told him, he asked, “Is there enough for two?”

  I had to laugh. “You’re staying in Asheville, sir, and that’s the last time I’ll discuss it with you. How’s the food there?”

  “Better than I usually eat,” he admitted, “but nowhere near as good as your mother’s cooking. She’s been seeing a lot of the chief lately, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but it makes her happy, so I’m staying out of the way.”

  He chuckled. “That’s got to be killing you. I know Martin’s not your idea of the ideal boyfriend for your mother.”

  “She had to get back on the horse sometime, and he’s at least got training wheels.”

  “I think you’re mixing your metaphors there,” Jake said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a horse with training wheels.”

  “You know what I mean. In a way, Chief Martin is a rebound fling after my dad died.”

  “He’s been gone a long time, Suzanne,” Jake said.

  I didn’t need to be reminded of that. “True, but this is the first man she’s dated since, so I still think it counts. After she gets used to the idea of dating again, I’m sure she’ll start playing the field.” At least I hoped so.

  “What makes you think this isn’t serious?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know. I just never entertained the prospect that it was,” I admitted.

  Jake must have heard something in my voice, because he was quick to drop the subject. “Hey, don’t let your dinner get cold on my account. Go on and eat. I know how early you have to get up tomorrow.”

  “Not as early as today,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I’d forgotten to tell him, as well. When I brought Jake up to date on my changes, I could almost hear his smile over the phone. “Good for you. Now, if I can just get you to take a vacation every now and then, I’ll be a happy man.”

  “Hey, I’m proud of myself taking baby steps,” I said.

  “So am I. I’ll check in tomorrow, and Suzanne?”

  “Yes?” I asked, hoping he’d tell me he loved me.

  “Don’t take any chances.”

  After we hung up, I realized that, in his own way, that was exactly what he’d said.

  At least I was going to do my best to believe that.

  * * *

  I was just heading off to bed when I heard a car drive up. I peeked out the window and saw Momma being helped out of the chief’s personal car. Chief Martin had purchased an older sedan specifically so he could take her out on dates without using the squad car or renting a vehicle every time they went out. I moved away from the window and into the hallway by the stairs, because the last thing I wanted to see was the two of them saying good night. I had no idea how long they’d linger on the porch, no matter how much the temperatures had been dipping at night lately.

  To my surprise, he didn’t even get a chance to walk her up to the front door. It burst open, and Momma hurried inside, as though she were being chased by a particularly aggressive bear. There was a look on her face I hadn’t seen before: a mix of puzzlement, shock, fear, and unless I was mistaken, a little bit of joy.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I rushed down the stairs to her. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Of course I am. What are you still doing up?” Momma asked as she started to regain some of her composure.

  “I’m sleeping in tomorrow,” I said. “What happened? Did he get fresh with you?” I knew it was a ridiculous question for a daughter to ask her mother, but I was at a loss for what might have just happened.

  “Of course not. Phillip has always been a perfect gentleman with me.”

  “Well, something surely spooked you,” I said.

  “It’s nothing,” Momma said as she took off her jacket and hung it up.

  “Listen, I’ve seen nothing, and that’s nowhere close to being it. Come clean. You can talk to me.”

  Momma sat on the couch, still looking a bit shell-shocked. Whatever it was, it had been big enough to throw her off her game, something I never would have believed if I weren’t seeing it for myself.

  “I suppose I must,” Momma said, and then she started to stand. “We need coffee first. I’ll make some.”

  I touched her arm. “Stop stalling.”

  She looked down at me, shrugged, and then said, “I suppose we have to talk about it sooner or later. Phillip just asked me to marry him.”

  “What!” I screamed. “You’re kidding.”

  She looked at me with surprise. “Do you think it’s foolish to believe that anyone would want to marry your mother?”

  “I understand that completely, but I think he’s nuts to ask you. You turned him down, didn’t you?”

  I looked long and hard at her, waiting, praying, hoping for an answer.

  When she didn’t volunteer one, I asked dully, “You didn’t say yes, did you?”

  “I told him I’d have to think about it,” Momma admitted.

  “You can’t marry him!” I said as
I jumped off the couch. “You haven’t been dating all that long, and his divorce isn’t even a year old. It’s insane to act so rashly and even consider jumping into a marriage with someone you barely know.”

  “Are you going to tell me that we’re too young, as well?” Momma asked.

  “I know how old you are,” I said, “I just wish you’d act your age.”

  She ignored my protests and calmly took my hands in hers. “Suzanne, I know you’re speaking out of your concern for me, that you’re worried that I might get hurt by doing something rash, but think about it. Have I ever in my life jumped into anything without thinking it through thoroughly first?”

  I considered what she was saying and realized that it was true. My mother could drive me crazy sometimes with her endless analysis of a situation, but for once, I was glad about her caution. “I’m sorry,” I said, calming down a little. “You just caught me off guard.”

  “If you think you were surprised, you should have seen my reaction. I bolted away so fast it was as though I were on fire. I must call and apologize for that.”

  I put my hand on hers before she could dial the police chief’s number. “That can wait. The two of us need to talk about this first.”

  “Thus the coffee,” she said as she pulled away. “I’m afraid neither one of us will be getting to bed early tonight.”

  “I’m fine with missing some sleep for an important cause, and I can’t imagine anything more important than this.”

  While Momma went into the kitchen to make coffee—and to call Chief Martin, as well, I was sure—I slumped back down on the couch. I could easily believe the chief had asked her to marry him, and in a way, I was surprised that he hadn’t proposed sooner. He was too eager when it came to my mother, always trying to pull the trigger too quickly. What really surprised me was that my mother was actually considering it. What would that do to us, and our dynamic? I knew one thing. If they got married and the chief moved in—and why would Momma leave our home?—I would have to move out. It wasn’t that I hated him, we’d grown to at least tolerate each other lately, but I wouldn’t intrude on a newlywed couple’s space. The dynamic Momma and I had shared since my divorce would be over, and I feared we’d lose the closeness we’d fought so hard to achieve. It was the nature of the beast, after all. I could see our time together crumbling into a meal every now and then, maybe a movie, but not much else. It shocked me to realize just how much I clung to the fact that Momma and I had become a team, a pair of roommates who shared more than most grown daughters and their mothers.

  Her joy would be a time of sadness for me, and I hated myself for thinking of it that way.

  Momma came out with two coffee mugs, but I declined mine. “I’ve got to get up early,” I said. “And we both know that I don’t need any more stimulation tonight.”

  “Suzanne, nothing has changed, at least not at the moment.”

  I just shook my head. “I don’t believe that for a second, and neither should you.”

  “You’ve made it clear how you feel,” Momma said as she took a sip of coffee. How could she be so calm about all of this?

  I took a deep breath and decided it was time to grow up a little. “I’m the first to admit that I’ve handled this all wrong tonight. Let me start over. I want you to be happy. That’s all that matters to me,” I said.

  “Even if it means I marry Phillip?” she asked.

  “Even then,” I agreed.

  “So, you’re not going to try to talk me out of this anymore?”

  I looked deep into her eyes and did my best to mean what I was about to say. “It’s your decision, and I respect what you come up with either way. For what it’s worth, if you decide to marry him, you have my blessing.”

  She looked surprised by my declaration, but I knew in my heart that she realized I was being honest with her.

  Momma hugged me, and then said, “I’m so glad you feel that way, but honestly, I don’t know what to do.”

  I smiled at her. “That’s easy. Take your time, weigh the pros and cons, and then make your decision. This should be like every other important judgment you’ve ever made in your life.” I stifled a yawn, and then added, “If you’d like to discuss it more with me, I promise to be unbiased.”

  “Go on to bed, Suzanne. As you said, there’s no need to make any decisions tonight.” She hugged me, and then added softly in my ear, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said.

  As I lay in bed, I wondered what would happen. Things were changing all around me, and I seemed to be standing still. Grace could possibly be on her way to finding true love, and my mother just might be starting in an entirely different direction with her life. All the while, I made donuts, and spent far too much of my time missing Jake.

  One thing was certain.

  No matter what happened, my life was most likely about to change, one way or another.

  * * *

  The next morning at the donut shop, Emma said, “You’re being awfully quiet, Suzanne. Is something wrong?” She’d taken advantage of her sleeping-in time, but I was glad she was there with me now.

  “No, not that I can think of,” I said as I rolled out the last bit of dough for the glazed donuts we were making. I’d held out a small amount and had added bits of apple and dusted the dough with cinnamon and nutmeg before I cut the shapes out, hoping to improve on my apple-pie donut. It was a big hit when the weather got cooler, but I loved trying to tweak my recipes further now that I had my donut recipe book back, or a copy of it, at least. “Why do you ask?”

  “If that dough gets rolled out any thinner, you’ll be making pie crust instead of donuts.”

  I looked down and saw that she was right. I must have taken my anxieties about my mother’s big announcement the night before out on my donuts. “Sorry.”

  I put my French rolling pin down and took the solid donut cutter, rolling it across the dough to make cutouts for my filled donuts. Normally I wouldn’t dream of adding anything extra to the dough itself, relying on fillings and toppings to make them special in their own way, but I wanted to experiment and see what would happen. They probably wouldn’t proof right, or if they did, something would most likely kill them before a customer ever tasted one, but that was okay. For all I knew, they could turn out to be wonderful.

  I cut the solid shapes out with the small hand roller, moving the circular cutter across the dough in one steady and fluid motion. I’d been so impressed the first time I’d seen the Bismarck, Solid, and Holed donut rollers, but using them now was just a matter of course for me. Plucking the cut shapes from the dough, I transferred them to a sheet and put them in the proofer along with the rest of the day’s glazed donuts. Once they were all in, I helped Emma clean the work surface, and it was time for one of our truncated breaks. Along with our limited hours, I’d decided that we’d have to work more and rest less while we were there. As long as it allowed Emma to sleep in a little, she was all for it.

  “We’ve got ten minutes,” I said. “Care to go outside?” It was our usual practice to go out in front of the shop on our breaks, no matter what the weather or temperature. In the summer, being out there was usually quite pleasant, but in bad weather, or frosty temperatures, we had to bundle up.

  “I vote for outside,” she said. “Always.”

  We got our coats on and stepped out into a perfect morning, still pitch-black, with more than a touch of frost in the air. It made me glad that Momma and I had a fireplace at the cottage, and we weren’t afraid to use it. I knew a man who loved my donuts, and in exchange for a credit of coffee and treats throughout the year, he kept us supplied with seasoned oak firewood. I loved the barter system; and our woodpile never got low, and he never ran short on donuts.

  “Brrr,” Emma said as she pulled her jacket tighter. “Smell that,” she commanded as she took a deep breath.

  “Wood smoke,” I said. “It smells like home, doesn’t it?”

  “I wish. Dad hates fires, and won’t ha
ve one in the house. He says that owning a newspaper has made him jumpy about open flames for years.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. “You could always come over and join us some evening.” As long as I was still a resident in the cottage, I could make that offer. If Momma and the chief got married, I knew without being told what that meant to me. I’d be moved out before they got back from their honeymoon, and it didn’t matter how hard they asked me to stay. Two was company, but I wasn’t about to be a third wheel in my own place.

  “I might just take you up on it.” She inhaled again, and then asked, “Is there something else in the air, maybe? Could we get an early snow this year?” The last was not said with much anticipation, because besides a fun one-time ride on the back of a snowmobile, Emma was not a big fan of snow.

  I, on the other hand, loved it.

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said, but when I saw her face fall, I quickly added, “But I don’t think there’s a chance we’ll get any snow before Christmas, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Emma answered.

  The timer I’d brought with us went off, and as I killed it, I said, “We need to go back in. We don’t have as much time as we used to, do we?”

  She smiled at me as I let her in the door. “I can live with it, trust me. I love this new schedule, and I hope we won’t be getting any complaints.”

  I had to laugh about that. “Emma, folks who would never dream about coming in before six or after eleven are going to howl like we cut off their air supply, you can count on it.”

  “And you’re willing to put up with that?”

  “Hey, I need the extra sleep just as much as you do, more probably. I’m looking forward to getting out of here at eleven every day, too.”

  “I don’t know. I do all right on how much sleep I get now.”

  “Come back and tell me that when you’re my age,” I said with a smile.