Donuts & Danger: A 2nd Chance Diner Cozy Mystery

by Beth Byers

  “I was surprised that things got so weird at the shelter,” the tech said brightly, clearly not all that bothered. It wasn’t her fault. She was young and it wasn’t her problem. “I never understood why Jenny left here to work there. Dr. Thomas is so great, and you can love on dogs here just as easily as here. Why would you work for Gary instead? We used to talk about what a creepy slime ball he was.”

  Wait…what? Suspicions were growing in my mind, and I didn’t like them a bit.

  Chapter NINE

  Zee’s gaze met mine and we both thought over the last few days. Jenny didn’t quite add up when you stopped to think about her really. Why had she worked for a creeper? She was adorable.

  My goodness…she’d tried to stop me from adopting out the dogs when they’d been left at the shelter. She hadn’t helped me at all. I frowned. Her story about leaving the shelter during the break-in was flimsy.

  Why would a cute young kid like Jenny choose to work alone with a creeper when she could work at the vet’s office with a friend? I knew for a fact that the shelter didn’t pay better.

  “Is Jenny’s family pretty well off?” I asked the tech trying to hide my suspicions.

  My concerns had leapt ahead. There had been some things about Jenny that hadn’t added up for a while now. I just hadn’t cared enough to ask further.

  “No,” the tech said. “Her mom is a single mom who works at the dollar store over in Lincoln City. They have a little place out in the country. It makes the shelter’s trailer look nice.”

  Oh no, I thought. But…surely it was a big leap to murder from thinking that Jenny had too much cash. Her Jeep was brand new. It was shiny. She had the latest iPhone. She…she had too much money for a crappy job at a shelter and living with her mom. That didn’t mean, however, that she’d killed Gary.

  She was a little thing. And Gary was a big man. How had he died? I wanted to ask Simon, but he wouldn’t tell me. I messaged Zee while we were talking to the tech asking her to find out from Carver.

  It was 50/50 if Carver would answer. We’d interfered in too many crimes. But then again…Zee knew everyone. She smirked a minute later, but she didn’t message me. My thoughts were tripped up while I had to beg the vet’s office to take the dogs from the shelter and swear I’d move them as soon as humanly possible.

  Normally, I’d have sworn that Jenny would come over and help with them, but she wasn’t trustworthy anymore. Except…she did take good care of our dogs. It was why Gary was on my chopping list for the shelter and she wasn’t. Could she really be part of stealing dogs? How did she pay for her Jeep if she wasn’t?

  Minimum wage jobs didn’t actually support people’s lives. I had seen Jenny lay a tiny dog on her lap and spend half a day rubbing the dog’s belly. Of course…there had been actual work to do. Dang it, I wasn’t sure it added up, but I didn’t think she was innocent. Not the more than I thought about it.

  “We need to talk to Jenny,” I muttered to Zee as I left.

  “She just checked into that Chinese place with her boyfriend,” the vet tech said. She grinned when I thanked her, and I considered stealing her from the vet’s office. I was going to need someone who didn’t suck after Jenny got fired. I grinned at the vet tech as we left.

  Zee revved the engine of her car, and I grabbed her hand and said, “If you crash this car with my dog in it, I’ll murder you slowly.”

  “Oh yeah?” Zee scoffed at me, her gaze flicking doubtfully over me and then she added, “So you think you’ve learned enough to hide our crimes?”

  “I think there would be so many suspects in who would kill you that they’d never successfully process your case.”

  Zee started to shoot back a mean reply, but she couldn’t. She was cackling as she admitted, “You’re probably right. The suspect list would be acres long.”

  “Miles,” I countered with a straight face and she snorted.

  The Chinese food restaurant was a block from the ocean and packed. Zee, of course, knew the hostess and was able to slide past her. I paused as I saw the back of Jenny’s head. Her boyfriend was none other than the driver of the van who’d dumped the dogs. That little…I messaged Simon and shot him a picture of the two before either of them noticed me taking the pictures. I followed up with my location and then I grabbed a chair, set it next to Jenny, and blocked her into her table.

  “Rose…” Jenny’s voice was a horrified breath.

  “Jen,” I said flatly. My gaze flicked over the boyfriend who was turning sickly.

  He gulped and I asked, “So did you two kill Gary?”

  They both frantically shook their heads.

  “Did you break into the shelter?”

  Jenny shook her head again, but her expression had changed enough to tell me she had.

  “What were you looking for?”

  Jenny gulped but didn’t reply. The delivery kid started to rise. He was going to run, but Zee’s hand darted out, and she grabbed him by his ear, twisting it.

  “The police are already on their way,” I told him. He tried to shove away, but Zee had the grip of a woman who had raised children and grandchildren. He wasn’t going to get away from her. At least not without losing an ear.

  “Checking in was stupid,” Zee told them as though she were training them.

  “You checked in?” The driver yelped. He shot daggers at Jenny with his gaze.

  “I’m not friends with her anywhere,” she protested. Her eyes were filling with tears and I suspected that this relationship was over. Of course it was though. They were going to jail.

  “Maybe,” I said suggestively, “if you tell what happened the police will go easy on you.”

  The two of them were considering it. Clearly, critical thinking skills were not things that either of them had. Zee and I worked in a homestyle diner. We didn’t have the right to bargain with them, but I thought that Jenny might actually explain.

  “Don’t say anything,” the delivery kid said.

  “What’s your name?” Zee hissed, twisting his ear.

  “I’m not telling you,” he said, crossing his arms.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He was just so dumb.

  “I’m going to lose my job,” he muttered.

  “What do you do?”

  He scowled and Zee twisted his ear even harder.

  “Ow! Geez, lady! I’m a courier.” His voice was pure yelp as he begged, “Could you lighten up on my ear?”

  Oh…oh! Of course! A courier made so much sense. The dogs were from all over. He took them. Zee’s gaze met mine, and we nodded. She thought what I thought.

  “Why’d you kill Gary?” I asked casually.

  “We didn’t!” Jenny yelped. “How can you say that?”

  “Um, you stole and ransomed dogs,” I told her flatly. “You’re not exactly trustworthy.”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Don’t lie,” I snapped at her.

  “I didn’t!” Jenny insisted. Her eyes welled with tears, and I had to wonder how many times crying had got her out of trouble. I wasn’t some pushover history teacher, and I didn’t feel sorry for her in the least. “How can you say that? I thought we were friends!”

  “I’m not friends with dog thieves,” I said. I let her see my expression, and she started crying. Before had been an act. Both a moment ago and at the shelter. It was evident by the way her skin turned blotchy and her neck flushed. She’d been playing me, the little punk. Crying over the shelter being “broken-into.” It had to have been her the whole time.

  “But…I really didn’t steal the dogs,” Jenny whined. Her gaze darted to mine, and she grabbed a napkin to mop up her tears.

  “Then why did they pay you?” My voice expressed every single ounce of my disbelief.

  Her gaze darted to mine before it fell back to the table. I think she wanted to gain my trust again. Or my friendship, because she reached out and took my hand. Her gaze turned pleading as she said, “I…
I found out about it all through Mark.”

  “Don’t tell them my name,” Mark hissed. His face was flushed, making his acne even more pronounced.

  Zee laughed at him, twisted his ear again, and told him, “Shut it!”

  “Why?” Jenny scoffed, mocking Mark. “Because you can hide? An old woman is holding you by your ear. You wimp. They can figure out who you are in seconds. They found us didn’t they?”

  “You checked in!” He accused her. “They wouldn’t have found us if you hadn’t.”

  “They were onto us. It’s why they came here, you idiot. It’s not like Rose tracks me down whenever I have dinner. They’d just have gone to my place.”

  He shoved the table at her, knocking over her water and flooding her lap. “But I wouldn’t have been there.”

  Her gaze narrowed on him, and she threw her napkin at him as she hissed back. “We’re together. They would have figured you out. You ruined everything the moment you showed up with the dogs! Rose was always going to figure it out. You fool! She’s solved like every crime in Silver Falls since she moved here. I told you that.”

  “I had a job!” He yelled back. “I needed the space in my van, and Gary wasn’t answering.”

  “So you left them at the shelter? You idiot! All you had to do was take them to Gary’s place.”

  “I was late. I’ve been late too often because of getting those dogs. If I didn’t get rid of them, I was going to lose my job!”

  “Better your job than jail, you fool!” Jenny shouted back, drawing the attention of every table around them.

  The rumor mill in Silver Falls was prolific, so the locals who were eating in the restaurant and the staff were figuring out what Zee and I had already realized. Jenny and Mark were part of the dog theft ring. The dirty looks they were getting hadn’t registered with them yet. They were too busy blaming each other to realize they were going down.

  “We’re done,” he told Jenny, but she didn’t even acknowledge him.

  She looked at me as if to ask if I could believe what she was dealing with. What I couldn’t believe was what I was dealing with. These two…it was a miracle that the theft ring hadn’t been destroyed before now.

  “Why did Gary pay you?” I asked gently. As if I sympathized.

  “I made Gary pay me too. He didn’t want to, but I needed the money, and he didn't want me to turn him in.”

  This little…I wanted to slap her spoiled rotten face.

  “You know that makes you an accessory to their crime, right?”

  “Better an accessory,” she said, “than a killer. I’m cooperating. Right? The cops will help me out because I helped. That’s how it works, right?”

  I almost felt sorry for her, but then I remembered the woman who had cried over her little dog. I remembered the look on Carver’s face as he said goodbye to the German shepherds. I remembered how close those pit bulls had come to getting shot. Never mind.

  “So why did they pay you? You were blackmailing the criminals?”

  “Well…I helped take care of the dogs at Gary’s too. Otherwise…well…they probably wouldn’t have made it too long.”

  I closed my eyes and breathed slowly in before I let the breath out. I couldn’t commit murder in a restaurant, I told myself. I had to at least wait until there were no witnesses. That’s all. No witnesses.

  Chapter TEN

  There were, in fact, rather a lot of witnesses who saw Simon arrest Jenny and Mark. I think Jenny was shocked she got arrested. She looked at me as if expecting me to save her. Zee laughed, but I might have felt a tiny flash of guilt. The guilt didn’t survive the memory of the dogs at Greg’s house or the devastation of those who had recovered their dogs. That little brat. She’d watched the victims of her own crime and hadn’t done a thing. How many of the dogs could she place? How many dogs did she know exactly who they belonged to?

  Simon didn’t even stay after arresting Jenny. Or take the time to talk to us. He kissed my cheek and took off. Zee and I watched him go and then we took Goliath for a short walk. When we got back, Zee said, “Those fools didn’t kill Gary.”

  I agreed. As much as I wished it was over, I agreed entirely. The murderer was still out there, and I was still too involved in this case to feel safe.

  Besides, I had forgotten the prank calls until I’d seen Jenny drive away in the back of the police car and thought, there’s just no way. Mark had one of those high-pitched girlie voices, so it wasn’t him who’d been calling for Gary. The flash of memory of that deep voice cursing and asking for Gary. Someone else was involved in this situation.

  But why would Jenny tell me about those calls? She was stupid. Or maybe she didn’t know who the other members of the crime ‘team’ were. Gary was an idiot, too. He wasn’t organized enough to truly keep ransoms coming and going. I couldn’t imagine him as being the brains behind this. If anything, he was the patsy. How did they find the dogs? There had to be someone else.

  Who was Gary’s mysterious real partner? Because, the fools, Mark and Jenny, had to have been brought in by Gary. But the plan…the plan couldn’t be Gary’s could it? No…no way. Only…Jenny had been searching for something at the shelter. Evidence against her? The name of the real boss?

  I considered all that we knew and then I said, “Let’s go back to Gary’s place.”

  I wanted to know if it had been searched too. Zee grinned evilly at my suggestion. The punk was happy I was interfering with the case. She drove, we bypassed the neighbor’s house and took the side drive up to Gary’s. The door was hanging open.

  Our gazes met. I wasn’t surprised to see that, but what if the person was still there?

  Oh man, I hoped Mark had searched Gary’s place while Jenny searched the shelter. Otherwise…the killer could be in that house. If he wasn’t, but the killer had been the one who searched it—we couldn’t compromise the evidence.

  Those involved with this must be looking for something Gary had hidden. Something to tie them to the crimes. I stared at the house and then I looked at Zee and said, “If it wasn’t Mark who searched this place, it had to have been the killer.”

  Her hand had been on the handle of her car door, and she dropped it. She cocked her head at me and considered. As she did, I saw her swallow slowly. There were two entrances to Gary’s. Someone could be parked on the other side. Someone could be inside the house, and we might not know until we got a knife in the back.

  “We would be stupid to go in,” Zee told me. “Gary was stabbed. Jenny didn’t do that. I overpowered Mark. Those two…they didn’t kill Gary.”

  The memory of Zee twisting Mark’s ear was evidence enough for me that he wasn’t the killer. Jenny hadn’t had a drop of blood on her, and Gary had been stabbed. She’d been wearing the same clothes when I’d seen her in the shelter as she had been early that morning. She wasn’t the killer. Not unless she changed, and I didn’t buy that.

  “I like my life,” I told Zee.

  “I’ll call Carver,” she told me, checking the locks on the car doors.

  I nodded. I wanted Simon, but he was dealing with Jenny and Mark. I took a slow breath in and let it out. I didn’t want to be a cop or a P.I. How did I get keep getting sucked into these things? I felt almost as if the financial blessing I had received from my grandparents had karmically set me up for a slew of bad luck in other areas of my life. Maybe? Maybe I was paranoid?

  “Hey honey!” Zee’s voice had a brightness that immediately declared she was up to no good. I pressed my lips together to hold back my laugh.

  “Hey…” You could hear the concern in Carver’s voice as it came through the car’s sound system. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing yet, babe.”

  “But…” His voice trailed off, waiting for the confession. The promise that she hadn’t yet crossed the line didn’t seem to be enough for him.

  Zee didn’t reply. She winked at me and waited.

  “I heard about you two trapping Jenny and her boyfriend.” Carver said
in a way that was an invitation to finish the story. To fill in the blank of where we were and what we were up to now. Zee waited. It was like a Mexican standoff, but I was bored.

  “So…” I said and Zee groaned.

  “You lost,” Zee said.

  “Rose?” Carver asked. He sounded almost relieved, but I was—after all—more sensible than Zee.

  “Of course, it’s me,” I admitted. “So, I realized that it had to have been Jenny who broke into the shelter or faked that.”

  “Why?” Carver demanded, forcing me to pause and think.

  “Because…” He waited. He wanted reasoning, and apparently my instincts weren’t good enough.

  I thought back to the scene. What was it that bothered me? I pictured the mess in my mind. The tipped over filing cabinets. The way that everything had been emptied. The way the glass had shattered, leaving a dusting of glass over everything.

  Oh. Oh heavens.

  “The glass,” I almost shouted. “The glass was on the top of the mess. The windows were broken after the shelter had been searched.”

  Zee groaned, shaking her head. Carver grunted.

  “You’re right,” she said. “How do you see these things?”

  I shrugged and then added, “Only Jenny and I have keys to the shelter which means whoever got in was either let in or had a key.”

  “Ok,” Carver said, “I’m on my way. Do not go into that house.”

  I nodded. Zee said nothing.

  “I mean it,” he ordered even more firmly. “I will arrest you both if you do. This interfering in our cases and putting yourselves in danger has got to stop.”

  “He’s saying that because he loves you,” I told Zee brightly.

  Carver groaned.

  “That’s how you know,” I told Zee pedantically, ignoring Carver. “He loves you, so he tries to order you around. He’s going to end up keeping those pit bulls, and then you guys are going to have to figure out a way to be together with your herd of dogs and cats.”