by Jessica Beck
“Pull over,” I ordered, having a hard time making myself heard over the sound of the icy attack.
“I’m going to, as soon as I can find a spot!” she answered frantically.
I searched the side of the road as well for some kind of refuge, but the two-lane road was hemmed in by trees on both sides of that stretch. We’d passed the one place where we could have stopped safely two hundred yards back. As Grace slowed her pace, she put her emergency blinkers on, signaling anyone who might be coming that we were on the road as well.
“Up there,” I said, pointing through the pounding rain and hail. “There’s a spot just ahead.”
“I see it,” Grace said. “We’re going to make it.”
And as she slowed and got ready to pull her company car over to the side of the road, I felt the first slam from the back of her car.
Someone had just plowed into us from behind.
The car was still rolling from the impact as I turned around to see who was behind us, but I couldn’t make out any details of the driver in the storm. All I could see was a white pickup truck, but it was impossible to make out who was behind the tinted windows with the low level of visibility I had. For some odd reason, it was easier seeing in front of us than it was behind.
“Are you okay?” Grace asked me.
“I’m fine. How about you?”
“Just dandy,” she said.
Just about then, the car hit us again, this time much harder, driving us into a stand of trees just shy of where we’d hoped to turn off. The front of Grace’s windshield shattered on impacting a low-lying branch, and I felt the airbag explode in my face as we finally came to a full stop.
“Are you all right?” someone said a minute later as he tapped on the passenger side window of the car.
“I think so,” I said, turning to look at an older man wearing a bright yellow rain jacket and a matching hat, even though the rain had suddenly, inexplicably, stopped. The storm had passed, leaving behind an eerie green glow in the sky that looked as though a tornado might be nearby.
I took a quick inventory of myself, realized that the airbag had deflated just as suddenly as it had appeared, and found that my ears were ringing and my nose was a little sore; besides that, I was fine.
I looked over at Grace. “How are you doing?”
“I’m not sure,” my best friend said, and her voice sounded a little hazy to me through the pounding in my ears. “All I know is that suddenly I’ve got a splitting headache.”
And that’s when I saw the blood on her forehead.
PROBABLY NOT THE WORST DONUT IN THE WORLD YOU’LL EVER EAT
I know, high praise, right? The thing about this donut is that it has its fans, enough for me to go to the trouble to make it, but I’m not among them. If I were doing these just for me, I’d double the chocolate, add some butter, and change the buttermilk to chocolate milk instead, but I make these for someone else in my family, so I don’t touch the mix.
INGREDIENTS
MIXED
1 egg, beaten
½ cup sugar, white granulated
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
SIFTED
2 cups flour, unbleached all-purpose
1⁄3 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon baking soda
A dash of salt
INSTRUCTIONS
In one bowl, beat the egg thoroughly, then add the sugar, buttermilk, canola oil, and vanilla extract. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing well until you have a smooth consistent dough. Knead on a lightly floured board 4–8 minutes, until the dough bounces back at the touch.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface ¼- to ½- inch thick, then cut out donuts and holes with handheld cutter.
Fry the dough in hot canola or peanut oil (370 degrees F) for two to three minutes on each side.
Drain, then top with powdered sugar immediately or eat as they are.
Yield: 8–12 small donuts.
CHAPTER 14
“You’re bleeding,” I said, searching her head for the wound. A bit of branch covered in leaves was still inside the car right between us, and I had to push it aside to see just how badly Grace was hurt.
She touched her forehead lightly. “It’s just a scrape, Suzanne. Another quarter inch and it would have missed me completely.”
“Don’t either one of you move,” the man said through my open window. “I hear sirens coming.” He handed me a clean white hand towel and said, “Press that on her wound.”
“Let me have it. I can do it myself,” Grace said, snatching it from me. She pushed it delicately against her wound, and then said, “Stop fussing over me. There’s nothing I’ve got that a Band-Aid and an aspirin won’t cure.” She pushed at her door to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I glanced over and saw that she was wedged up against a tree, a sapling, really. A foot either way and we would have had to deal with hitting a pair of large hickory trees, some of the toughest wood around. As it was, we’d gotten lucky.
I started to open my door when the kind stranger said, “Stay right here.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. That storm was pretty bad, and the road conditions were horrible. It wasn’t your fault,” I said.
“Did you hit your head?” he asked me as he looked me over. “I don’t see anything, but you can’t be too careful.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just don’t want you to feel as though you’re responsible.”
He shook his head. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was driving in the other direction when I saw you go off the road. I wasn’t the one who clipped you.”
“You weren’t driving the white pickup?” I asked, thoroughly confused now.
“I drive an old blue station wagon,” he admitted. “But I saw the pickup. After he hit you, he just kept on driving. If it’s any consolation, he nearly ran me off the road, too.”
“Did you happen to get a look at the driver?” I asked.
“No, it all happened too fast, and his windshield had a pretty dark tint on it. I didn’t think they allowed those things in North Carolina.”
The first ambulance arrived on the scene two seconds later, and the old man was brushed aside as the emergency workers saw to us. After confirming that we were all right and not too much worse for wear, they let us both out through my side of her car. I was a little wobbly at first, but I managed to hold myself up with the side of the vehicle.
Grace came out next, and they checked her eyes with a penlight, and then did a thorough inspection of each of us. After pulling the towel away and looking at Grace’s wound, the woman dressed in a blue jumpsuit said, “You got lucky. It’s just a scratch.”
“Thank you. That’s what I’ve been telling everyone, but nobody seems to want to believe me,” Grace said.
“Don’t get too excited. We’re still taking you ladies to the hospital,” the tech said. “You both need a real checkup.”
“It’s really not necessary,” Grace said.
“Whether it is or not, we’re going, so you might as well stop fighting it.”
“Grab my purse, Suzanne,” Grace said, resigned to the fact that we were going to take a ride in the ambulance.
“I’ll get it.” The older man heard her and retrieved it just as a police car from April Springs drove onto the scene. I found myself hoping that it was anybody but our chief of police, but this wasn’t my lucky day in too many ways.
As Chief Martin got out of his car, he asked the EMT, “Are they okay?”
“We think so, but we’re transporting them to the hospital so they can get full exams.”
He nodded, clearly relieved that we were all right, and then he asked in that pointed voice of his, “What have you two gotten yourselves into
this time?”
I was spared the need to answer when the EMT spoke up for me. “You can interview them at the hospital after they’re finished with their examinations.”
The chief of police just nodded. “Believe me, I will. I won’t be far behind you.”
We started to get in the back of the ambulance when Grace looked back at her car. “How in the world am I going to explain that to my boss?”
That’s when I finally got the feeling that she was going to be all right. As we made our way to County Hospital, I wondered if what had happened to us had been an accident with a hit-and-run driver, or if the intent had been more malicious than that.
* * *
“Okay, what have we got?” a familiar voice said as the back doors of the ambulance opened up. We were in the hospital bay of the emergency room, and I was glad to see that my friend Penny Parsons was on duty.
“What’s happened?” she snapped again as she immediately sprang into action.
As the EMT started to tell her, I knew that we were in good hands.
* * *
An hour and a half later, Grace and I were both being released from the hospital when Chief Martin showed up, with my mother beside him.
She hugged me fiercely, and though the woman was barely five feet tall, I could swear I felt a few of my ribs crack under the pressure. “Hey, take it easy on me,” I said. “I was just in an accident, remember?”
“Are you hurt?” she asked, the concern heavy on her face.
“Not from the wreck, but I think your bear hug just broke two ribs.”
She eased her grip, and then my mother smiled at me. As she brushed a strand of hair out of my face, Momma said, “I’m so glad you’re not injured.”
She turned to Grace and added, “Oh, dear. That looks dreadful.”
Grace touched the bandage on her forehead lightly. “I’m sure it looks worse than it is. It wasn’t that big a scratch. I’m guessing they ran out of Band-Aids, so they had to pull out the big bandages.”
“Young lady, you are coming home with us,” Momma said, using a tone of voice that nobody would dispute. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it. Do you understand?”
Grace nodded solemnly. “Yes, ma’am, I do. Thank you.”
She turned to me and said, “And as for you, Suzanne, your shop will be closed tomorrow.”
“Momma, I have to earn a living. And besides, I wasn’t hurt at all.”
“Trust me, you’ll be sore tomorrow; you both will,” the chief said. “You need to take it easy. One day off won’t kill your bottom line, Suzanne.”
It was a testament to how shaken I must have still been from the accident that I didn’t even fight them on it. “Fine. Somebody needs to call Nan, and then put a sign up in the window.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Chief Martin said. “Now, let’s get you two home.”
“I thought you needed to interrogate us,” I said.
He shook his head. “Interview, not interrogate, and thankfully, Luke Davenport gave me just about all I needed to hear. I’ve got an APB out on white pickups with damaged grills, but that’s most of them on the road in these parts, if you ask me. I’ve got a feeling we won’t be able to find who hit you from behind. I still can’t believe he left the scene of an accident like that.”
As we got into the squad car, I said, “I’m not all that sure it was an accident. What do you think, Grace?”
“The road conditions were pretty rough,” she admitted, “But I’m not saying it couldn’t have been on purpose. Do you think that truck was trying to hit us?”
I suddenly realized that there had been no doubt in my mind. “Why would they run away, then?”
The police chief said, “I can think of a handful of reasons that don’t have anything to do with malicious intent. The driver could have been drinking, he could have had an expired tag, or maybe even no driver’s license or insurance at all. I can’t just assume that it was on purpose.”
“But he hit us twice,” I said a little louder than I’d meant to.
“Suzanne, the road had hail on it, along with standing water, and the rain was still pounding down, from what the witness told me at the scene. It’s a miracle that truck didn’t hit you three or four times. If it had, I doubt you both would have walked away from that car.”
“How bad is it?” Grace asked.
“Well, I didn’t hear the doctor’s report, but I’m assuming you’re both okay if they let you walk out together.”
“Not us,” she said. “My car.”
Chief Martin whistled softly before answering. “That I’m not so sure about. If it’s ever on the road again, it’s going to take a lot of work. But my guess is that it’s totaled.”
Grace just shrugged. “So, they’ll probably just issue me another one.”
“Just like that?” I asked, jealous of my friend’s company, and the support she got from them.
“Well, I’m a supervisor, so I’m allowed to take my car out when I’m on vacation or after business hours. It’s all covered under their plan.”
“Does that mean that you weren’t covered before?” I asked, remembering how many miles we’d put on it in the past in search of clues and not doing business for the cosmetics company.
“Let’s just say that it was a gray area then, but it’s all covered completely now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be driving something soon enough.”
“Not too soon, though,” Momma said. “You need to recover from this first.”
“It’s not nearly as bad as it looks. It’s just a scrape,” she repeated.
“But it could have been worse,” Momma said. Her mothering instincts were out in full force, and Grace was caught in the same web that I was. “I’m surprised that the two of you were out on the road when the conditions were so bad.”
I was about to explain when Grace said, “We didn’t have much choice. We were just trying to get home.”
Momma hesitated, and then said, “Well, I can’t fault you for that. The important thing is that you’re both going to be all right.”
Once the police chief got us home, he left to call Nan and put a sign in the window at Donut Hearts. Grace and I settled on the couch while Momma made us some of her famous chicken noodle soup, a meal that she swore could bring dead men back to life.
As we sat together, I asked, “Do you really think it was just an accident?”
“I don’t know,” Grace admitted. “I’m not sure I want to consider the possibility that someone did it on purpose.”
I knew what she meant. It wasn’t a good feeling knowing that there was someone out there who wouldn’t mind seeing both of us dead.
“But who could we have made mad enough or desperate enough to try to kill us?” I asked.
“I’d think we’d have to assign numbers, the way we’ve been nosing around the past few days.”
“Grace, we need to be on our toes,” I said firmly. “Just in case this wasn’t an accident like everyone else so clearly wants to believe.”
“Hey, you’ve just about convinced me,” she said, and her hand went back to her head.
I was about to say something more when someone knocked on the front door, and when Momma answered it, I saw that it was Jake.
Then I lost my breath as I made it to my feet just in time to be wrapped in his embrace.
This time I didn’t mind the pressure on my chest nearly so much.
If he wanted to break a rib or two of mine, he was welcome to it.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said as he finally pulled away. “What happened to you two?”
“We were run off the road,” I said.
He looked surprised by my answer. “That’s odd. I heard it was an accident. You were out driving in a rainstorm and your car went off the road.”
Grace shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure exactly what happened.”
He looked at her bandage. “Did you get hit very hard?”
She shook her hea
d. “No, it’s just a scratch. I didn’t forget anything. Like I said, though, I’m just not sure what happened.”
Jake grabbed a nearby chair and I rejoined Grace on the couch. “Go on. Tell me exactly what happened, and don’t leave anything out, no matter how trivial it might seem to you.”
After we brought him up to date, Jake asked, “Is Martin out looking for the truck? If nothing else, the driver left the scene of an accident.” My boyfriend looked angry, and I saw the cop’s expression on his face, one that was cold and hard, built of steel. I’d seen that look before, and knew that Jake was in his full state police inspector’s mode; I pitied the man who’d tried to kill us if Jake ever caught up with him.
“He’s got an APB out on it,” I explained, “but like he told us, how many trucks around here are white and have some damage on them? It’s not exactly ‘needle in a haystack’ material.”
Jake sat back. “That’s true. He hit you twice, you say?”
“The second shot was harder than the first one,” I admitted.
Jake turned to Grace. “And you’re really not sure that it was deliberate?”
“I’m not calling Suzanne a liar,” she said defensively.
Jake took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, his voice softened. “Of course not. The reason I’m asking is that the driver would have a better idea than her passenger if it was all done maliciously.” As he said it, he leaned forward and squeezed my hand.
“Hey, I’m not upset by the question,” I said. “Maybe I’m just hoping it was meant to scare us off. At least that might mean that we were getting somewhere digging into Peter’s murder.”
My boyfriend smiled at me wryly. “Suzanne, only you would take it as a good sign when someone tries to kill you.”
“I don’t know that they wanted us dead,” I amended. “It didn’t feel that way. After all, we were both pretty vulnerable after the wreck, and if the pickup driver wanted to kill us, one more hit could have done it. This was just a warning.”
“Or an accident in bad weather,” Grace added.
Jake nodded. “Well, I’ve driven a pickup in the rain before, and if there’s no weight in back, or if the tire treads are worn down just a little, or if one of a thousand other things happened, it could have been an accident.” I started to say something when he added, “Then again, it could have been a warning for the two of you to back off.” He hesitated, and then looked at me wryly. “Any chance you two will do what they want, if that’s the case?”
