Donuts & Danger: A 2nd Chance Diner Cozy Mystery

by Beth Byers

  “Tom,” I said, “Are you all right?” The panic in my voice must have been conveyed to everyone else because both Simon and Zee rose and hovered close.

  I put the phone on speaker and heard Tom say, “…od…oh my…it’s so bad.”

  There was the sound of gagging and I could hear the sound of vomiting.

  “What is bad? Tom, are you ok? What’s going on?”

  “I found him. I found Philip.”

  “Is he ok?”

  “Oh he’s fine, but the guy…” The gagging continued, cutting off Tom’s voice and I met Simon’s gaze.

  “Something happened to Gary,” I guessed.

  Tom moaned a yes, and I gave my phone to Simon.

  “Is anyone even surprised?” Zee asked, stretching her neck slowly.

  Tom hadn’t said what had happened, but I think we all guessed that Greg was dead. That kind of puking came from a body. I had seen more bodies than I ever wanted, and I had felt the horror of murder, far, far more than I ever should have.

  Simon took the phone off of speaker and crossed to the counter to take notes.

  “Well…” Carver said. “You two stay here.”

  “Carver,” I said gently. “Gary had three dogs. Not just Philip.”

  Carver didn’t have nearly the indulgence of Simon. The look he gave me was a little bit mocking without being mean. “One of the officers will bring the dogs to the shelter.”

  They left moments later, barely giving me back my phone before they did.

  “Who do you think did it?” Zee asked me, dropping back onto the booth bench.

  “We aren’t getting involved in this one,” I said, leaning back.

  Her gaze met mine and her scoffing glance told me what she thought of my resolution.

  “Now, Rosie luv,” Az said as he joined us at the booth, “She’s just asking what you think.”

  “I think it could have been any of his crime ring. Anyone who realized what he’d done. Maybe someone who heard the rumors about the dog thefts. Maybe someone who got their dog back, but they were angry. Maybe someone who ransomed their dog and knew Gary. It could be anyone.”

  Az grunted and then asked with his lovely dark honey voice, “Really? You aren’t going to try to find this one out?”

  I played with the salt and pepper shakers and admitted, “I’m a bit spooked after the fire. And…I have enough on my plate. I still have to find homes for too many dogs.”

  Az simply nodded. He’d taken a few dogs that had gone home, but he’d helped out again, taking the dogs that had to be moved after our short-term help reached their limits.

  “How many dogs do you think we’ll have left?”

  I shook my head. He currently had a couple of mini-pinschers that were clearly bonded to each other. Eventually we’d have to reach the point where we simply couldn’t keep searching for homes. Perhaps if we could figure out how the dogs were selected, we’d be able to find out where the dogs belonged?

  I helped Az and Zee finish up closing the diner and then helped with the cakes for the next day. My mind was racing so much, I decided to make cookies and rolls for the next day’s meals.

  “You’re avoiding going home,” Zee said as she watched me slice the pinwheel cookies.

  “Mmm,” I said. I couldn’t help but think of Tom and his daughter. He’d found Gary which was something that even Zee hadn’t been able to do. He’d been angry, furious about his daughter and their dog, and I understood. Oh I did.

  “You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?” Zee sounded so convinced and I kind of wanted to smack the back of her head since she was right.

  “I can’t,” I said, scowling at her and then said, “Shut up.”

  She cackled at me and then asked, “What do you think?”

  I leaned back against the counter, abandoning the black and white dough and said, “Really…I think that anyone could have killed Gary, but my bet is on his partners. Or on Tom.”

  I hated saying that last bit. But he’d been aggressive since I’d first interacted with him. But then again, Tom could just be a normal guy who’d had his dog stolen. I’d have been furious too. I’d threatened Gary’s life several times. Except that I hadn’t been serious. And Tom had made the trip. We’d gotten call after call from people who were hoping we had their dogs. Anxious and worried pet owners hoping we’d come up with their precious dog. But only one had shown up in Silver Falls. And just how had Tom found Gary?

  “Tom? Really?”

  “Zee, would you think that anyone else in all of Silver Falls or even the surrounding area knows as many people as you?”

  She glanced at me and then took a pinch of cookie dough, answering, “I have lived here a very long time. So no.”

  “That was my thought as well,” I said. I tossed the cookies into the fridge, leaving them unbaked and said, “We haven’t been able to figure out where Gary was or who he was working with. Yet, Tom…someone who isn’t even from close by discovered Gary’s body. Really?”

  “When you put it like that…”

  I fought my conscience for a minute and then I said, “To start with, we need to figure out just who Gary spent his time with.”

  Zee’s grin was slow, delighted and unabashedly wicked.

  Chapter EIGHT

  “What do you know about Gary?” I asked as Zee revved the engine of her car.

  As she did, my phone rang. I frowned down at it and then said, “I forgot. Oh goodness, Jenny called so many times, and I forgot.”

  I answered the call as Zee stopped messing with the engine of her car to let me hear.

  “Rose, someone broke into the shelter. I got a call from my neighbor, so I ran home. I locked the shelter I swear I did. But while I was gone, someone broke in!”

  She was wailing and sounded panicked as though she were facing off with the criminals rather than just walking into a mess. I tried soothing her, but it wasn’t working, so I paused long enough to tell Zee, “We need to go to the shelter.”

  Then I told Jenny, “We’re coming.”

  Zee frowned at me, but she headed towards the shelter. The windows were rolled down on her car, and the end of the summer made everything seem ideal from the outside.

  I didn’t like that Tom had found Gary. I didn’t believe Tom had just stumbled across him. The sheer idea of it was ridiculous. But who broke into the shelter? Surely the murderer and whoever was trying to get into the shelter were one and the same?

  But why would Tom break into the shelter? Unless he wasn’t really trying to get his dog back but was somehow involved with the whole crime setup. Maybe…his daughter story was just that? A story? He’d used looking for the dog as a way to keep a handle on what was happening with the case. He’d known that we were no closer to finding Gary each time Tom contacted us. Maybe I had been too open with Tom about what was happening? Perhaps it was something I said about the case that triggered him coming down here? But for the love of goodness, what could it have been?

  Zee pulled into the shelter, and I gasped as I saw the broken windows. Oh no. Just no. We already had far too many dogs on our hands and now this? I scowled at the building, feeling the pressure mounting behind my eyes as I stared at it.

  “Life is stressful,” I whined to Zee. We needed a window guy right away. But, I didn’t want to throw money at this place. What a mess!

  Zee’s glance was mean and she snorted as meanly. “Just figuring that out now?”

  “Don’t be nasty to me,” I said. “I can still fire you. Just because we talked about you becoming the diner manager doesn’t mean that you can’t be the flunky instead.”

  “I’ve always been in charge,” Zee told me, smirking as she pulled up her emergency brake and staring at me until I opened the door. I walked slowly inside. Whatever this ended up being, it was one more thing for me to deal with.

  “Who do you know who would take over Donuts For Dogs for me?”

  Zee considered, but the fact that she was thinking about it
already lightened my load of stress. I needed something to go right. Just for a little while. I needed, in fact, more helpers. A maid. A personal assistant. An entourage to take care of all the stuff that life kept throwing at me. Someone to plan the event, so I could focus on handling these dogs.

  I finally opened the door of the shelter and pause. I’d expected a spray of glass. But it was so much worse. There were even holes in the walls. The front desk and filing cabinet behind it was tipped over. I could hear the dogs barking and nearly useless Jenny was standing next to the overturned desk, crying.

  I stared at the mess. Paper had been thrown about and it scattered across the floor like snow with shards of glass over the top. Whatever they’d been looking for in the walls wasn’t there. But the walls themselves were destroyed.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked her carefully.

  “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left, but I thought…”

  “You’re not a captive,” I told her calmly. My mind was racing, but tripping inside. I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t sure this place could be salvaged but that meant that even more dogs needed places to go while we figured this out. “Go calm the dogs down and make sure they’re all ok.”

  “I did run an eye over them,” she stuttered, tripping towards the dogs without leaving.

  I bit back my desire to snap at her and said, “They need to be calmed down. They’re the priority.”

  She sniffed tearfully and whined, “I’m so sorry.”

  So, I found myself comforting her instead of dealing with this. “Things will be fine. The dogs are the important thing.”

  “She’s stupider than I thought,” Zee said to me as she kicked aside some of the mess. “Who would come into a place like this that had been broken into? She should have called the police right off.

  Speaking of…I called Simon directly while Zee started pushing the filing cabinet back up. I crossed to help her, holding the phone to my face with my shoulder as I pulled on the filing cabinet. Since it was mostly empty, it wasn’t too hard to pull it up.

  “Rose honey,” he said apologetically, probably preparing to tell me he didn’t have time to talk to me.

  “Someone broke into the shelter. They lured Jenny away and then destroyed it in here.”

  Simon cursed.

  “I imagine it has something to do with what happened to Gary.”

  My voice cracked a little as I looked at the mess. I just…there were so many dogs. And I still had the diner on my mind even though Zee and Az were more than capable of taking care of every aspect of what was happening there. And now this mess. Plus the fund raising event. We needed a new place for the dogs to go, and I didn’t have it. A huge part of me just wanted to go home, curl up with my dogs, and nap.

  I sat down on the terrible chair and it collapsed.

  “Ow!” I yelped as my head banged into the floor and my tail bone hit particularly hard.

  “What happened?” Simon’s concern came through the phone clearly, and his love made the tears fall.

  I sniffed as I admitted, “I fell out of the evil chair.”

  Simon’s protesting chuckle seemed to be surround sound, and it took me a second to realize he was laughing in one ear while Zee was cackling in the other.

  “Shut up,” I whined, pushing myself to my feet and rubbing my butt. I was tempted to hang up on him. I might have if I hadn’t been calling him about a crime.

  “Are you crying?” he asked gently. “I’m on my way. It’s going to be okay.”

  “A little bit,” I admitted, wiping away another tear. “And you haven’t seen this place.”

  “Because you’re hurt or because you’re overloaded?”

  I shoved the paperwork that had been spread all over the floor to the side and snarled, “Guess!”

  I rubbed my hand over my face and felt a scratch. It took me a second to realize I’d fallen into glass and cut my palms.

  “Don’t take it out on him,” Zee said. “It’s not his fault you got sucked into the shelter.”

  “It’s yours,” I snapped back to Zee, “If you’d just let me work at the diner while I was hacking up my lungs, I’d never have realized what a stupid, idiotic, useless, evil fool Gary was. This would have been someone else’s problem.”

  Zee laughed because she was evil and mean. But she picked up the paperwork and started shoving it into the drawers because she was also my best friend. Being friends with her was like being friends with a cactus. But a helpful cactus.

  “I’m coming,” Simon said. “Try not to mess with too much of it.”

  I shoved the paperwork out of her hand and said, “He told us to leave it alone.” Even as I said it, I kicked the wall to see if it would make me feel better. It didn’t.

  “Why would anyone break into the shelter?” Zee asked as she peeked into the office. It made the front room look almost clean. The only difference was the lack of glass everywhere.

  “It doesn’t make sense. We don’t have anything here. To be honest, I sort of wish some dog loving criminal would break in here and take a few of the dogs.” I was whining and hated myself for it. It was almost as irritating as Jenny. But at least, I had been working long hours to take care of the dogs and not sleeping. That justified me being a weakling, right? I sniffed and then tried to shake off my mood. I had no time to be a weeping willow. There was far, far too much to do.

  “Who broke in?” Zee asked as she followed me through the shelter, checking things out. Most of the walls were destroyed, ever item that held something was emptied out. Whoever had been here had clearly been searching for something.

  Anyone could have broke in. But maybe not Tom. He should have been waiting with the body until the police arrived. But…when had Gary died? I supposed it was possible that Tom killed Gary, lured Jenny away, destroyed the shelter, and then called afterwards.

  Was it possible that he could have done both? And if not…where were Gary’s mysterious partners? Who would want to break into the shelter? For what? Adoption paperwork for the people who hadn’t gotten the dog they wanted? Or for the people who’d adopted before? There wasn’t anything to steal in the shelter. It was full of terrible donations like the evil chair.

  “Nothing makes any sense,” I said, looking for Jenny.

  I made my way back to the dog area to check on the dogs since they were still barking, and Jenny wasn’t there. I wanted to shake her. I’d given her one job. One single job that I would have done if I knew she wasn’t going to. I glanced them over and they all seemed to be ok. The stalls hadn’t been opened, but there was nothing to empty. You could see the entirety of the stall without entering it. I tossed each of the dogs a treat.

  “Jenny?” I called and she came out of the bathroom. She was wiping her eyes as she closed the door. I sighed. It wasn’t like I had yelled at her. Though, the mess was enough to cry over.

  “Was it a mess in there too?” I asked, fighting for an even tone. Zee didn’t succeed. She scoffed just enough that Jenny started crying again. I shot Zee a nasty look, but she was unaffected.

  Jenny nodded, wiping her eyes again and glancing back at the bathroom. Her makeup was smeared, but her eyes were still bright, so I hoped that meant that she wasn’t beating herself up too much. I peeked into the bathroom and saw that everything under the cupboard was pulled out. It was only toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and paper towels, but they were spewed across the floor. The tissue box was empty, and even the garbage can full of paper towels and tissues was kicked over.

  “Just go home, Jenny,” I sighed. “We can’t do anything now. The dogs are fine. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She hesitated, but I just shook my head at her. “We can’t do anything until the police leave and then the day will be over.”

  We watched Jenny leave. She almost shuffled away, looking back over her shoulder. I frowned as she left, but Simon arrived as she did. He paused and talked to her for several minutes, and she seemed to be crying aga
in as she left. She started her shiny little Jeep and drove away.

  Simon had Zee and I come outside while he walked through the shelter. His phone was out to take pictures.

  “What do you think they were looking for?” Zee asked.

  I had no idea. Zee raised her brow at me. I kicked a bit of the gravel of the parking lot aside and then went to sit on a stump on the edge of the lot. The grass outside of a dog shelter was not a safe place to sit.

  “I think that Gary either had evidence or money and they’re trying to find it.”

  I wondered what Gary’s house looked like. Had the police searched it well enough when they were trying to find Gary? Had it occurred to them to go back and see if it had been searched like the shelter? I’m sure it had, but surely they hadn’t had time. They had to be still processing the crime scene where Gary had been found.

  Finally, Simon made Zee and I leave, so we went back to the diner and grabbed the Great Dane and took him over to the vet. They had time to start checking over the healthier dogs we’d recovered, and I needed to ask them to take the rest of the shelter dogs while we figured out what to do with the destroyed shelter.

  My sweet Great Dane seemed to know exactly where we were the second that we arrived, and I had to cajole him into the vet. He was such a delightful dog he went protesting despite the fact that he was much, much larger than I.

  “What a sweet boy he is,” the vet tech said as I brought him in. “Does he have a home if you can’t find his?”

  “Yes,” I said and Zee snickered.

  “Shut up,” I said. If I didn’t find his home soon, I was going to be shadowed by the massive Great Dane along with my sweet Daisy and Mama Dog. I’d be taking the dog as an accessory to a whole new level. Goliath needed to stay with me since I’d found him. He was clingy to a level that reflected how traumatized he’d been by being stolen and kept by stupid Gary. Oh goodness, I thought, I’ve given him a name in my head.

  The doctor was busy, so we sat down with the vet tech as we waited. She seemed almost delighted we were there, but I knew her for a gossipy thing. I looked forward to what she had to say, the doctor was so much more professional, it was hard to get anything good out of her.