Donuts & Danger: A 2nd Chance Diner Cozy Mystery

by Beth Byers

  Table of Contents

  Donuts & Danger

  Dedication

  Chapter ONE

  Chapter TWO

  Chapter THREE

  Chapter FOUR

  Chapter FIVE

  Chapter SIX

  Chapter SEVEN

  Chapter EIGHT

  Chapter NINE

  Chapter TEN

  Chapter ELEVEN

  Also By Beth Byers

  Also By Amanda A. Allen

  Sneak Peek of Bedtimes & Broomsticks

  Copyright

  Donuts & Danger

  The 2nd Chance Diner Mysteries

  Book 9

  By Beth Byers

  For Pamela Welsh.

  My life is so much easier with you in it.

  Chapter One

  “What is this?”

  A large van backed up to the shelter with an ear-splitting reverse warning. The Silver Falls Dog Shelter had become my refuge as I recovered from being left to die in a fire. For a while there, I had been forced to accept that I just wasn’t physically up to working in the diner. Lately, my lungs were doing better, and I was back to work. Playing with dogs simply out-appealed serving food and washing dishes. Besides, the shelter was run by an idiot, and the dogs needed all the help they could get.

  The little poodle mix that I was throwing a ball for stopped chasing the ball to cock her fluffy little head at the van. It was one of those white faceless vans used by electricians, plumbers, and exterminators. A young guy jumped out, f and the poodle yipped twice before racing along the edge of the cyclone fence barking furiously.

  The wind whipped down the road. It was in the mid-80s with blue skies and a small bite wet in the air from the ocean. It was the middle of August and Silver Falls was crowded with tourists. It was the perfect beach day, warm without being too hot. Of course, it was rarely too hot on the Oregon coast.

  The guy unloading something in front of the shelter was barely more than a kid. He was covered in acne scars, narrowly thin, and his shoulders struggled to lift whatever he was pulling out of the van. He waved to Jenny, the shelter clerk, who’d come out at the sound of the reverse beeping. It was then that I heard the sound of dogs barking. A lot of dogs. My heart skipped a beat.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. We were nearly full at the shelter. No, no. This wasn’t good. But…this wasn’t a typical person surrendering their pet. People didn’t just show up with a van load of dogs.

  The kid pulled out another dog crate and then another. I leaned forward, letting the cyclone fencing dig into my stomach as I tried to see. There had to be as many dogs in the back of the van as the shelter currently housed. There was simply no way for us to handle this many. I left the poodle in the back and raced through the shelter to the front drive.

  “What is this?” I gasped of the kid since Jenny wasn’t doing a thing. I tried to block him from setting another crate down. I failed.

  His gaze darted over me, he shrugged. “Ask Gary. Where is he?”

  “You can’t leave all these dogs here,” I said, shaking my head frantically. “We can’t possibly house them!”

  “You really can’t,” Jenny said, backing me up finally. “Where is Gary? This shouldn’t be happening!”

  The kid shrugged again and snarled, “Gary should answer his phone. He had it all worked out and yet here I am. And where is Gary? Nowhere to be found.”

  The kid sounded furious. If he only knew. Dealing with Gary was like dealing with a toddler that someone had placed into a management position. The more I worked at the shelter and helped with the dogs, the more I realized that someone should be smacked about the head for hiring such a fool.

  Gary was probably in his mid-30s, so a little younger than me. But, he had this attitude that he knew everything. His condescending way of speaking to people had sent more than one willing adopter out of the shelter. It wasn’t like the shelter was the only way to get a dog. He didn’t have any room to be a jerk to people. We needed them to come to us and save our dogs, so we could help more.

  Gary was one of those men who carried extra weight. Something I’d never judge anyone for. But I couldn’t help but note that his shirts tended to be dirty with spots of food or coffee over his bulging stomach. More often than not, the scent of him made me want to take him to the side and suggest a new deodorant and a daily shower. If I were his manager, I’d have had that conversation by now. Even though it would have been terribly uncomfortable, I’d have had it. But I wasn’t a manager, I was an unpaid volunteer who was going quickly insane dealing with the fool.

  And just where was he? He’d left the shelter at 8:00am to get coffee for the volunteers. Instead, he’d disappeared, the time for the meeting had come and gone, and Gary had yet to return.

  No surprise that he wasn’t here when someone was dumping a load of dogs on us that he agreed to take and we couldn’t possibly safely house. The kid deposited another crate.

  “No,” I said, almost desperately. I might have been begging. Ok, I was definitely begging. If I thought it would help, I’d have dropped to my knees, grabbed the kid’s legs, and asked him to find someone else to help these dogs.

  The kid didn’t even look at me or acknowledge my whining.

  I leaned over to gaze into a dog crate that had two young German shepherds. I almost growled as I saw them crammed against each other and then said, “Where did these dogs come from?”

  “Look lady,” the kid put another dog crate down, and then closed the back of the van. There were seven dog crates on the drive of the shelter but too many of them had more than one dog. “I’m just the delivery guy. Gary has this all worked out.”

  “He did say something about dogs from another shelter in the Bay Area,” Jenny said carefully. Her gaze darted over the dog crates, wide and worried, and she was shaking her head almost as frantically as I was. “I can’t believe this.”

  I was going to be sick. Jenny seemed almost as stressed as I was. I had to admit, I was shocked by her. She wasn’t one to get all that invested in the emotion behind caring for these dogs.

  “Call Gary,” I told her.

  Jenny paused, still staring at the van, and then she ran inside. The kid didn’t wait. He jumped into his vehicle, and then the van peeled out of the shelter’s lot. It squealed down the road, leaving a trail of rubber on the road. I hoped the kid would get a big ticket for the way he was driving.

  I opened one of the dog crates, and a Golden Retriever with warm brown eyes crawled out. The crate had been intended for a small dog. The poor dog whimpered as he stretched out. I rubbed my hands over him, digging my fingers into his muscles. He groaned as I worked a knot out of his shoulders. That kid was lucky he was gone. If he were here, I’d be stuffing him into one of these crates, so he could get an idea of what it felt like to be in a too small box.

  I led the golden retriever inside and put him in one of our three empty stalls for dogs. The spaces were essentially little gated closets built into the wall of the trailer. The floor had been changed to linoleum, so it could be mopped up. Each stall held a dog bed, a water bowl, and after my intervention, a couple of toys. The next crate I opened held three puppies. I put down puppy pads and put all three of them into the same stall. The pups included one spaniel and two lab mixes. I frowned as I looked down at the little guys. They were weird dogs to show up at a shelter. Even weirder for them to be transferred from one shelter to another.

  We never had any trouble adopting out puppies unless they were some of the more aggressive breeds. Even then…puppies were easy. Were things so bad in the Bay Area? The idea of it made me sad.

  The only d
ogs we had a lot of trouble adopting out were the full grown pit bulls or senior dogs. I frowned as I put all the puppies in the same stall. I used the final stall for the two young German shepherds. I looked back at the crates. There was still four to empty. I put two of our small dogs together. They’d been taken out together often enough that I thought they’d be ok in the same stall without fighting.

  There were eleven dogs in the dog crates that had been left in our driveway. We had room for three dogs. Double stacking dogs was a terrible long term solution when we couldn’t attend them at night. If they fought, no one would be there to stop it. I felt a rush of panic that was only allayed by the kind of dogs we had. A lot of these would be easy to place.

  “I can do this,” I told myself.

  “Hmmm?” Jenny asked. She didn’t even seem to be that bothered that there were still dogs in crates. I wanted to smack her a little bit, but this was her minimum wage job. It was easily replaceable for her, and Gary was terrible to work with. I needed her to not quit until after I got these dogs taken care of and the fund raising event scheduled.

  “Grab the applications and waitlists from the last set of puppies,” I told Jenny.

  She shook her head, scrunching her nose.

  “Really,” I insisted.

  “Maybe we should wait,” she said tenuously. “Until Gary comes back.”

  I frowned at her. I wasn’t going to have dogs waiting in dog crates in the repurposed living room. What would Gary do? Fire me? Please I had been donating financially since I started volunteering. I was also the most frequent volunteer. He, literally, could not afford to lose me. And, we couldn’t wait. There was too much to do.

  “Really…” Jenny said. She took a seat in the risky chair, grabbed the desk until she was sure the chair wouldn’t topple, and then sighed.

  I grinned evilly as I explained, “He can’t do anything to me. Get me the paperwork, I’ll do everything.”

  Jenny tried twice more to talk me out of placing the dogs right away. I didn’t bother listening. I’d been hit by an awesome idea. I called my friend, Carver. He was dating my best friend and was my fiancé’s boss as well as being sheriff of Silver Falls.

  More importantly for my purposes, he was a home-owning bachelor who didn’t have a roommate. I knew he was a dog lover, and I knew he’d be perfect for those young German shepherds. He had a yard. He could afford them. It was perfect.

  With Jenny trying to counter me, I got him to come meet the dogs. That was all it would take. I had him right where I wanted him. I cackled and rubbed my hands together. I started with eleven, but he had room for three. I just placed two. So, I had seven to go. I could do this. I grabbed the paperwork while Jenny continued to file her nails and avoid working. Why did she work at the shelter?

  I sent Jenny to take out the dogs while I started calling the people who had tried and missed out on the last round of puppies. These were my easiest marks, I thought. And within in three calls, placed both labs.

  “Rose…” Jenny said carefully as I squeed after placing the spaniel puppy over the phone. The families agreed to come right away. Four dogs to go.

  “Rose, really…”

  I took Jenny’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ll take responsibility,” I promised.

  I found the file on the Donuts for Dogs. Every single thing in the file was from the previous year. Could Gary have done nothing? No volunteers had shown up for the day’s meeting.

  I pressed my fingers against the pulsing pain right behind my eyebrow. I realized that somehow volunteering at the shelter had become far more challenging than running my own business. I wanted to…well…I wanted to fire Gary. I wanted to reorganize the office. I wanted to upgrade the shelter in general. It was nasty and half the chairs were lawsuits waiting to happen.

  I took the adoption fee for the lab puppy and sent Carver home with the German shepherds while I called about the tent for the Labor Day event. The only reason I knew what to do was because I’d already reserved a tent space for my diner.

  “Rose,” the organizer of the event said, “the spots are all taken.” She was gentle while she delivered the information, but I whimpered.

  “Is there anything you can do?” My voice cracked. I could feel pressure building in my lungs and was hoping it didn’t mean I was going to have another breathing episode. Why did lungs take so long to heal?

  “Rose…”

  “The shelter needs this money, Kandace,” I said deliberately begging and laying on the guilt. “The dogs need it.”

  She sighed.

  “Please. Really. A lot of the budget comes from this.”

  “You should have reserved a tent. I sent a reminder and called Gary about it. All he had to do was reply to me. The city makes it free to the shelter. All he had to do was tell me.”

  I took a slow breath in and then said, “What do I have to do?”

  Kandace hemmed and hawed and then said, “I’ll figure it out. This is for the dogs. Make it clear to Gary. If he screws up again, I won’t help him next time.”

  “I’m going to figure something out about him,” I said as he walked through the door. His face was furious with flushed cheeks and brilliantly red ears. I met his gaze unflinchingly, hoping he’d heard me.

  “What have you done?” he snarled, leaning into my personal space.

  “Back off,” I snapped at him, pushing at him lightly.

  “You can’t just willy nilly adopt out dogs,” he said, slamming his hand down on the desk. “I needed to take care of some things for those dogs. They need to come back in.”

  I smiled tightly at him and then stood, pushing back from the desk and crossing my arms over my chest, “Then I guess you should have been here.”

  He leaned into my space again as though he were somehow capable of disturbing me. Hardly. He was barely a man. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he lived in his mom’s basement. In fact, the only part of him that I found surprising was the fact that he had this job at all. “Don’t think I won’t fire you.”

  “Try me,” I threatened.

  Gary stepped back and then said, “This isn’t over.”

  My mocking laugh told him what I thought of his threat.

  Chapter TWO

  I slammed my clipboard down onto the booth in front of Simon, sliding in next to him, kissing his cheek, and then called, “Az—my love, my heart, my one, I need waffles.”

  Az’s deep honeyed chocolate laugh came rolling out of the kitchen and he said, “I got you, Rosie luv.” His deep brown skin glinted under the lights of the kitchen as he went into the smooth motion creating me something amazing while he kept the rest of The 2nd Chance Diner’s orders running smoothly.

  The staff at 2nd Chance were a tight group of friends. We couldn’t help it. We’d been through a lot of the same things. Unique things. There was Az who was a Jamaican immigrant, Zee who was a near-retirement age snarly woman with too many cats, Lyle who had owned a food truck with his mom, Carmen, the two of them moved to Silver Falls together, and Roxy, former blackmail victim.

  Then there was me, former call center slave who’d used an unexpected inheritance to flee corporate life and buy the diner. All of us had been murder suspects and preferred waiting tables or cooking to whatever could be found outside of our beach town.

  “Do you and Az have something you need to tell me?” Simon asked.

  I smirked and leaned over to kiss his cheek once again. Maybe if I took a deep enough breath of him in, I’d lose the rage that was riding me like a pony. The glint of humor in Simon’s eye told me that he wasn’t concerned about my love for Az’s waffles. I played with the ring on my finger, grinned at Simon, and shrugged before I remembered why I was so mad and flopped against the booth.

  “Who me?” I wound my fingers through his and said, “No. Az is my backup plan. You’re still my true love, Simon. Right behind waffles, you’re it for me,” I told him and enjoyed the way his grin spread slowly across his face.

  “That�
��s ok, Rose,” Simon said, “I love you almost as much as this chicken fried steak, but I do love you more than the scrambled eggs.”

  I laughed, but my grin quickly faded as all of the things I now needed to do started to dart through my mind. I needed a list. And helpers. And the strength of will to avoid maiming, murder, and bringing another dog home.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Zee, my waitress and best friend asked as she set a cup of coffee in front of me.

  “It’s Gary. Garrrryyyyyy the disappearer. How did I get involved with Donuts for Dogs? Why am I helping Gary at all? Why did I do this to myself? I’m planning a wedding, decorating a house, and running a business.”

  Zee raised her brows. “Perhaps it’s that pack of dogs you and Simon have?”

  “Dogs,” I said, “bring endless joy to my life. To lives. To mankind.”

  “Sounds like cats to me,” Zee said with a mean snort as she poured herself a coffee and took the other side of the booth. “But that sentiment is why you’re involved with this fundraiser and that shelter.”

  “Cats,” I countered, “will eat the flesh from your bones while you try to sleep.”

  Zee grinned and I smirked back. Then she said, “I saw you playing with that kitten.”

  “No,” Simon said immediately. “No more pets.” His tone and expression were near-begging and I had to grin at the look on his face.

  “Now she has to,” Zee told Simon. “You can’t lay the law down on a woman and expect her to not do the opposite. It’s science.”

  I nodded as he winced and then winked at him as I said, “But before we torture Simon, we’re going to need to murder Gary. He’s awful. He’s worthless. Why? Why! Why does he run that shelter? If he didn’t have dedicated volunteers, those dogs would be starving. The dogs didn’t even have toys before I started working there.”

  Zee rose and grabbed the plates Az put up in the window and delivered them. When she came back, she had a waffle loaded with cinnamon whipped cream, bananas, and chocolate curls.