Chocolate Chocolate Murder: A Donut Hole Cozy Mystery - Book 56

by Susan Gillard

  “You need more energy because of how hard you’ve been working on this case?” Amy asked.

  “I did track down that report,” Hoskins said with slight indignation. “But that’s not why I’m tired. I wasn’t at the crime scene last night because I was meeting with the mayor. He wanted to shake my hand.”

  Heather and Amy exchanged a look. They were thinking the same thing and both hoping that Hoskins had washed any sticky candy residue off of it first.

  “That must have been very exciting for you,” Ryan said.

  “Yes and no,” said Hoskins. “I happy that someone important wanted to talk to me and recognize how good I am at what I do.”

  “What you do?” Amy asked. Heather nudged her in the ribs. They shouldn’t outright insult Ryan’s partner. He was trying to be nicer to them too. He at least thanked her for the donuts today.

  “But it was tiring too. I thought he was just going to shake my hand and then we’d eat dinner.”

  “You ate dinner with the mayor?” Heather asked.

  “Yeah. The mayor and his wife, and me and my wife, and the woman I helped on our last case Crystal Rahway. We had this great meal. And I really wanted to focus on the food. But he kept bringing the topic of conversation back to the police force. He wanted to know where we needed upgrades and help and stuff.”

  “The mayor wants to provide us more support?” Ryan asked. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Yeah,” Hoskins said. “He kept asking for specific things to help with.”

  “Did you tell him about how some of the police car radios aren’t clear? Or how the computers in the bullpen could be updated? Or did you ask for some exciting riot gear equipment, just in case?” Ryan asked with a smile.

  “Oh,” Hoskins said. “I told him that the break room could use a cappuccino machine and maybe one of those fancy vending machines that have sandwiches.”

  The smile was gone from Ryan’s face. “I see,” he said. “I think we should probably focus on this case now.”

  “Sure,” Hoskins said. “Do you think one of those ladies from the report is the killer?”

  “They certainly could be,” Heather said. “If they were angry enough about a wedding dress to fight in the store, they might have been angry enough to come back and kill the victim.”

  “And the something blue threat that was written on the wall was about their wedding,” Amy said. “She felt blue because of the dress?”

  “Speaking of blue,” Heather said. “Could we see the fabric that was found at the crime scene?”

  “Sure,” Ryan said. “And Abigail might have identified some of it by now.”

  Heather was not surprised to see that Hoskins decided to wait by the donut box and “work on his own lead” while they went to look at the fabric remains.

  The pieces of fabric had all been bagged and labeled but were spread out on a table. An officer smiled at Ryan and handed him Abigail’s statement about the fabric. Then he left them to make their own examination.

  “It looks as if Abigail Browning believes that all the scraps that were found at the crime scene came from dresses that were still in their store. She wasn’t one hundred percent on all of them. But she gave the names of some of them. She’s fairly certain they were all currently on sale in the shop,” Ryan said.

  “I believe it,” Amy said. “Those orange pieces look like the first bridesmaid dress that Heather tried on.”

  Ryan couldn’t resist a chuckle. “This is what Mona considered to have you in at her wedding?”

  “Believe me, it didn’t look much better before it was torn up,” said Amy.

  “She’s not joking,” Heather agreed.

  “Some of these other pieces of material look familiar too,” Amy said. “We might have seen them in the shop.”

  Heather looked at the pieces. They were all about a foot wide in their tears, and it looked as if at least a dozen dresses were destroyed.

  “The killer must have been furious to inflict all this damage on the dresses and then on the victim,” Heather said.

  “Do you think it was a Bridezilla that went on the attack?” Amy asked.

  “It very well could be,” said Heather. “But what about the murder weapon?”

  “That piece of fabric Abigail Browning wasn’t able to identify,” Ryan said.

  “Is that because it was part of a dress that had already been out of the shop for a while? Something that she hadn’t sold?” Heather asked.

  “Or was it just too small a sample to identify?” Amy asked.

  Ryan showed them the evidence bag that held the cloth that had served as the murder weapon to strangle Sheila Lordlittle. It was a thick blue fabric that was about three feet long.

  “It looks like this was part of a dress too,” Heather said.

  “I think so too,” said Amy. “The fold there makes it looks like it’s part of the skirt.”

  “So, the question is,” Heather said. “Was this dress used to kill the victim because it was easily accessible? Or because it was the reason the killer wanted to kill?”

  Chapter 8

  “Should we be scared about approaching her?” Amy asked. “What if Bridezilla morphs into Wifezilla? What if she attacks us?”

  “She won’t attack us with Ryan here with us,” Heather assured her.

  Ryan made the motion of tipping his hat to reassure them, and they smiled. The three of them walked up to the door of the suspect’s house.

  “And besides,” Heather said as she knocked on the door. “We’ve faced worse before.”

  “Not reassuring,” said Amy.

  The door opened, and a woman with blond hair opened the door.

  “Tabitha Greenwald?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s a new last name, so it still sounds a little funny to my ears, but that’s me. Who are you?”

  “I’m Detective Ryan Shepherd with the Hillside Police,” he said, showing his badge. “This is Heather Shepherd and Amy Givens, who are licensed investigators who assist on certain cases.”

  “What’s going on? Did something happen to Harold?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Ryan said. “We’re here about Sheila Lordlittle.”

  Tabitha Greenwald groaned. “I’m never going to live that down. I did lose my cool. But she deserved a good yelling at. I wanted to hit her, but Holly held me back.”

  “Holly was the maid of honor who was at the store with you?” Heather doubled checked.

  “Yes,” said Tabitha. “Now what is this about? Is she trying to press charges? Some sort of verbal assault thing? Fine. I was going to contact a lawyer anyway to sue that trickster.”

  “Did Ms. Lordlittle know about this lawsuit?” Ryan asked.

  “Not yet,” said Tabitha. “But she will. Especially if she has cops coming to my house to get me in trouble for yelling.”

  “We’re not here about that incident at the shop,” said Ryan. “We’re investigating her murder.”

  “Her murder?” Tabitha asked.

  “Yes,” Ryan said. “And you admitted that you had an issue with the victim?”

  “I did,” Tabitha said. “But I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know she was dead. It would have been pretty stupid of me to admit all that to the police if I killed her.”

  “Yeah, it would,” said Amy. They all looked at her. “Well, it would.”

  “Please, come inside,” Tabitha said, showing the way.

  Tabitha led them into the living room where there enough seats for them all to sit. The home was still filled with boxes of wedding gifts. Some were unwrapped and others were not. The coffee table in the living room had a coffee table book that had never been opened. There were some pictures on the wall from her wedding, but they were all cropped to only show the faces. Every picture was from the neck up.

  “We saw the police report, but why don’t you tell us about when you visited her shop yourself?” Heather said.

  “To understand what I said in the shop, yo
u have to understand what she did to me. She ruined my wedding,” Tabitha said.

  “She really ruined your wedding?” Amy asked. “You’re not being dramatic?”

  “I tried on her dress in her shop and it looked lovely, though a little sheer. I told her my wedding was going to be an outdoor wedding, and she said it would be fine. Still, I asked her to adjust the sheerness a bit. She finished at the last minute so I could only make sure it still fit the night before my wedding. Well, the day of the wedding, outside in the bright sun, I discovered that she made the dress even sheerer. You could practically see through it! It was like I was naked in front of my whole family and my groom’s family.”

  “That’s like the nightmare of being naked in front of your classroom,” Amy said.

  “Real life is much worse,” Tabitha assured her.

  “And you blamed Sheila Lordlittle for this?” Heather asked.

  “Of course,” Tabitha said. “She changed the dress and turned it into something scandalous. Then when I confronted her in the shop after I came back from my honeymoon, she showed no remorse. She said it was part of the design, and she couldn’t help it if I didn’t have the body to pull it off.”

  “Rude,” Amy said. “And not accurate. I bet you were a beautiful bride. Even if everyone saw a little too much of you.”

  “Thank you,” Tabitha said. “Holly really was my saving grace. As soon as the ceremony was over and she realized the problem, she went into action. She found a nice coat for me to throw over my dress. It looked like it was an intentional style. Maybe some people were able to believe that what they saw was a trick of the light. I destroyed most of the photos.”

  “And confronting Ms. Lordlittle did nothing to ease this pain?” Heather asked.

  “No,” Tabitha said. “She was completely unimpressed by my valid complaints. It made me so mad.”

  “And did you visit her again?” Heather asked.

  “No,” Tabitha said. “Holly convinced me that talking to her wouldn’t get my money back. I’d have to seek alternate routes if I wanted justice.”

  “What sort of alternate route?” asked Heather.

  “Not murder,” Tabitha said. “Legal action to get a refund. Or bad press to hurt her business. I’m sure I’m not the only one who had issues with her.”

  “No, but you were the only one that the police had to be called on,” said Heather. “Which is why we needed to speak with you.”

  “Where were you last evening between five thirty and seven p.m.?” Ryan asked.

  “Well,” Tabitha said. “My husband and I were returning some wedding gifts last evening. We must have still been in the store at that time. We ended up getting three toaster ovens.”

  “We’ll look into that,” Ryan said.

  “I told you I didn’t kill her,” Tabitha Greenwald said.

  “One more question,” Heather said. “What color were your bridesmaid dresses?”

  “They were maroon,” Tabitha said, bitterly. “And not see through.”

  Chapter 9

  Ryan had to go and talk to the medical examiner to see if there were any new findings, and then check in with his partner, so Amy and Heather were left alone together.

  “What do you make of her?” Heather asked.

  “If she’s telling the truth about her alibi, then she couldn’t have strangled her even if she wanted to,” Amy said.

  “That’s true,” said Heather. “She does have a motive, but I’m not sure she did it.”

  “She had maroon bridesmaid dresses too,” said Amy. “The murder weapon couldn’t have come from her.”

  “It still might have been something that was found in the shop,” said Heather. “And Abigail just didn’t remember it.”

  “Do you think either of the assistants did it?” Amy asked.

  “Their motives don’t seem as strong as having your wedding ruined, but neither of the assistants have strong alibis,” said Heather. “However, this case is definitely making me appreciate my assistants at Donut Delights.”

  “They’d cry worse than Ollie if you left them,” Amy said. “They’d be devastated. Whether you were murdered. Or, you know, you chose to pack up and leave them.”

  “I never said I was moving,” Heather said.

  “You never said you weren’t moving,” Amy pointed out.

  Heather didn’t know what to say to that, so she just said, “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “We have another suspect to interview,” Heather said. “I think we should meet Holly.”

  “The Maid of Honor?”

  “Tabitha Greenwald made it sound as if her maid of honor would do anything for her.”

  “Does that include murder?” Amy asked.

  “I think we should find out,” said Heather.

  ***

  “I don’t understand why you’re talking to me,” Holly Lag said. “I was the reasonable one in all this.”

  Heather had already introduced herself and Amy as private investigators and Holly was debating whether to let them inside her house or not.

  “Miss Lag,” Heather said. “We’re just trying to uncover the truth about a murder. If you and Tabitha Greenwald had nothing to do with it, then we should be out of your way shortly. The sooner we dismiss you as suspects, the sooner we can move on.”

  Holly opened the door and allowed them inside.

  “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” Holly said. “But Lordlittle was in the wrong about the dress. She shouldn’t have done what she did to Tabitha’s dress. And she should have offered her a refund when we went to talk to her.”

  “Tabitha said that when the talk didn’t go well with Ms. Lordlittle, you said that you would have to seek alternate means to find justice,” Heather started.

  “I meant finding a lawyer,” said Holly. “She turned a beautiful wedding dress into something sleazy. She embarrassed my best friend on what should have been the happiest day of her life. I thought we should sue her.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t want a more permanent form of justice?” asked Heather.

  “I didn’t kill her,” said Holly.

  “Just because she was looking out for her friend’s interests, doesn’t mean she’s a murderer,” Amy said.

  “Thank you,” Holly said.

  “That’s what Maids of Honor do,” said Amy.

  “Exactly,” Holly said.

  “They help their friends when they have a dress malfunction,” Amy said.

  “Yes.”

  “They don’t move away from them while they’re still planning their wedding and still have a million things to do to get ready for it,” Amy continued. Holly wasn’t sure if she should agree to that though.

  “Miss Lag, where were you last evening?” Heather asked, deciding to focus on the case instead of personal squabbles.

  “I was home alone,” Holly sighed. “I’m not married yet. But I did catch the bouquet.”

  “The bouquet? That’s wonderful,” said Amy. “Picking out a bouquet is an important part of wedding planning. Maids of honor help with those decisions too.”

  “I did,” said Holly.

  “And then you were rewarded with catching it,” said Amy. “That’s great. I’m glad you were such a dedicated bridesmaid. It’s an honor to be chosen as one, and sometimes people forget that.”

  “I never forgot that,” said Holly. “I did everything I could to help Tabitha’s day go smoothly. But the dress did get in the way of a perfect day.”

  “Miss Lag, does the phrase “How’s this for your something blue?” mean anything to you?” Heather asked.

  “Does it refer to the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” poem for weddings?” Holly asked. “That’s all I can think of. We got Tabitha this cute little blue garter for her something blue. Unfortunately, more people saw it than we wanted.”

  “But remembering to fulfill that rhyme is important Maid of Honor work,” said Amy. “An
d you were on top of everything.”

  “I really tried to be,” said Holly.

  “You weren’t about to abandon the bride in her time of need,” Amy continued.

  “No, of course not,” said Holly. “If we had gotten the dress any earlier than I could have fixed that too.”

  “But Ms. Lordlittle made everything difficult and ruined things for you,” said Amy.