Pumpkin Pleas (The Donut Mysteries Book 26)

by Beck,Jessica

“Hey, that’s no way to talk about her. She’s never let me down.”

  “Yet,” I answered. “How about letting me drive anyway, just for fun?”

  “Okay. Fine,” he said.

  That was when we got into my Jeep, and I started driving toward Laurel Falls.

  After parking in the lot near the bottom of the falls, we headed up the hiking trail beside it that ascended to where the waterfall began.

  “This is kind of an odd place for a meeting, isn’t it?” Jake asked me as we climbed. The path was narrow and overgrown, and at times it came close to skirting the falling water. At other times it meandered through a copse of trees, and all in all, I knew that it would take a little over ten minutes to climb to the top of the falls.

  “What makes you think it was a meeting?” I asked him as I dodged a wild thorny vine. There were people who would be able to identify it by sight, know its name in Latin and its common name as well, but I wasn’t one of them. All I knew was if a thorn caught my skin, I’d start bleeding, and that was all I needed or cared to know about it.

  “Well, if Ray was up here with Tom, what else could it have been? Unless he followed him up just so he could push him over the edge.”

  “Maybe they wanted some privacy,” I said as we broke out into the clearing. There was a calm expanse of water before the fall, with pooled water and several rocks and boulders scattered throughout the stream. I couldn’t see where the water disappeared over the edge from where we stood, but I could hear the results of the plummeting stream as it hit the rocks below. “They wouldn’t have gotten that down at the base of the falls. It’s one of the most popular make-out spots in town. Besides, we can’t assume that if Tom was pushed, it had to be Ray. There are a handful of other suspects I have in mind besides the newspaperman.”

  “I get that,” Jake said. “At the moment, though, all I care about is whether it was Ray or not. I’ll leave the rest of the investigation to you and the police chief.”

  “My, you’ve seemed to adapt pretty quickly to your new position,” I said with a smile.

  “I prefer to think of it as narrowing my focus.”

  There wasn’t crime scene tape or anything to mark the fact that someone had fallen to his death from here the night before. All I saw was one weathered wooden sign citing danger and reminding folks to stay away from the edge. If the police had done much of an investigation where we were, there were no real signs of it.

  “Where do you suppose it happened?” I asked as I looked at the nearby rocks with a shiver.

  “Judging on where they found the body, I’d say it was right about there,” my husband said as he started toward the rocks. Water constantly churned around them, and I saw several splashes even as I watched. It looked precarious to me, but I could see the appeal of it for some. Standing on the rock would give the viewer a nice look at the falls and the pool below.

  “Should we really be walking out there?” I asked Jake.

  It was too late, of course, since by the time I asked, he was nearly there. “I need to see it for myself. If it makes you nervous, stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “No, thanks. I’m coming with you,” I said despite the growing dread in the pit of my stomach from what I was doing.

  We got to the widest and flattest rock he’d pointed to, and we looked down at the water below together. “Why does the drop look so much farther from up here than it did at the bottom?” I asked him, having to raise my voice quite a bit to be heard over the cascading water.

  “What?” Jake asked as he turned to me. Raising his voice, he asked, “Did you say something, Suzanne?”

  “It looks higher from up here,” I said, nearly shouting this time. The noise was loud enough to block out normal conversation, and I wondered if it was from the falling water alone or if there was some other kind of acoustic trick at work. Jake knelt down, studied the rock, and then stood up and turned to me.

  “Let’s head over there where we can talk a little easier,” he shouted as he pointed back to the path where we’d just come.

  It was a suggestion I gladly embraced. “I’m right behind you,” I yelled.

  Even then, I wasn’t entirely sure that he heard me. It amazed me that fifteen feet from the edge of the falls, we could almost hold a normal conversation again without screaming at each other. “That explains that,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If Tom had been standing on the edge waiting for someone to show up, they could have easily snuck up behind him and pushed him over. He wouldn’t have heard them if they’d been singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

  “That’s a point,” Jake said. There was a bit of mud and plant life beneath our feet, and Jake knelt down to examine it.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked him.

  “This,” he said as he took out a small plastic vial and collected some mud, as well as a bit of the weeds growing there.

  “Is it significant?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know yet, but it could be. I found something on Ray’s pants when I checked out his clothes at the hospital, and it looked an awful lot like this,” Jake said.

  “It could have come from anywhere though, couldn’t it? There’s a lot of mud in these parts, and plant life is everywhere.”

  “Maybe, but the leaf I found matches this. I took a photo of it with my cell phone and sent it to a friend who’s an expert at this kind of thing. Turns out it was from a plant that grows only near the water.” Jake took another picture with his phone and then hit a few buttons. He looked frustrated as he said, “I can’t get a signal up here, so I’ll have to send it later. Not that it matters all that much. I’m fairly positive it’s the same specimen, but I’ll get it checked out just to be sure.”

  “What about the mud?”

  “I’ve got samples of each as well, and another contact who will take a look at them as soon as she gets a little time.”

  “She?” I asked him, raising one eyebrow.

  “Yes, she,” he said, not even noticing my jibe. I knew Jake had plenty of friends of both sexes, mostly in law enforcement. If it had been Max, I would have immediately suspected something was going on, but not with Jake. He’d never done anything to indicate that he wasn’t worthy of my full and complete trust, and I wasn’t about to look at him the same way I had my first husband.

  “How soon will you know for sure?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. She’s on her honeymoon right now, but she’ll be back sometime in the next few days. It’s going to have to wait until then.”

  Okay, I felt better knowing that the woman in question had just gotten married. Did that necessarily make me a bad person or even a suspicious wife? I decided not to analyze it either way. “Where does that leave you in the meantime?”

  “I keep digging,” Jake said, “and so should you. It won’t hurt either one of us being able to visualize this later,” he said as he snapped several pictures of the water, the rocks, and the land around us with his phone. I followed suit since it was a solid idea, when Jake had a sudden thought. “Suzanne, do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “Head back down the path.”

  “Sure. Let’s go,” I said.

  “I mean by yourself,” he replied.

  “Why? Did I say something that offended you?” I asked him.

  “What? Of course not. I just want to check something out.”

  A sudden and irrational thought crossed my mind. “You’re not going to jump, are you?”

  He looked at me oddly for a second before he replied. “Not a chance. I want to see how close I can get to the edge before you can see me at the bottom of the falls.”

  “Jake, I’m not sure I like this experiment,” I said reluctantly. “What if you fall?”

>   “I’m not going to fall, Suzanne. Would you prefer it if I went down and you stood on the edge alone?”

  I wasn’t all that crazy about either one of us doing it, but if one of us was going to fall, I couldn’t bear the thought of standing at the bottom and watching my husband plummet to his death. “Okay. I’ll wait up here until you get to the bottom.”

  Jake shook his head and frowned. “Sorry. The offer wasn’t sincere. It was my idea, so I’m going to be the one who does it.”

  “Fine, just don’t step too close to the edge,” I said, knowing that it was pointless trying to convince him not to do it. “I’ll call you when I can see you.”

  He held his cell phone up in the air. “I don’t have a signal here, remember? We’ll have to do it with hand gestures.”

  “This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? I’ll see you soon,” I said as I took off back down the path. The lack of cell phone service had surprised me. Was it significant to Tom’s demise or just something to be filed away in the Useless Information folder? The problem was that I never knew until it failed to matter one way or the other anymore, but I would still keep it in mind. The hike down seemed much longer than it had taken coming up. With just about every step, I had to stop myself from visualizing how many ways this could go wrong. Jake was a grown man, a seasoned cop, and I knew that his question was a fair one. That didn’t mean that I had to like it, though.

  As I rounded one corner of the steep path, my foot slipped a little, and I felt my legs go out from under me. I found myself being carried off the path away from the waterfall and into the woods. When I put my hand down to stop myself from sliding any farther, I saw something catching the light in the dappled shade.

  It was a bit of cloth with a button attached to it that looked as though it might have come off of a man’s shirt. Fairly fresh dirt was caked into the buttonholes, and I wondered how recently someone had lost it on this path. I pulled out my bandana and carefully placed it inside before I folded it back up and stuck it in my pocket. I’d have to share it with Jake once he was back down at the bottom with me.

  If he didn’t go over the edge himself.

  Chapter 14

  “I can see you now,” I shouted at Jake ten minutes later from the pool of water below. I was waving my hands over my head, and he glanced down and smiled before backing away from the lip of the falls.

  Nine minutes later, he rejoined me at the base of the falls. “Wow, that was a little hairy, if I say so myself.”

  “What did you have to do?” I asked him.

  “Relax. I was okay,” he said as he stared up at the falls, “but I had to go to the very edge before I could see you below. If anyone saw Tom up there, it had to be just before he fell.”

  “Is that significant?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet. It could be, but we’ll have to wait and see. One thing is certain; if someone did push Tom over the edge, nobody would have been able to see it from where you were standing. Are you ready to go?”

  “Not just yet. I found something myself on the way down the path,” I said as I pulled out my discovery.

  He noticed my dirty jeans. “What happened?”

  “I slipped on the path. It’s not important. This is,” I said as I held it out toward him.

  Jake didn’t touch it, but he took the entire bandana from me and studied the button and cloth. “Where did you find this?”

  “Like I said, I slipped on the way down and ended up right beside it,” I admitted, not happy about revealing my clumsiness. “Is it Ray’s?”

  “No, I checked his clothing out carefully. All of it was intact,” he said as he handed it back to me.

  “It’s fairly recent though, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d guess so. The tears of the material are still fresh, and the mud caked onto the button hasn’t entirely hardened yet. It was in the shade, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “How did you know that?”

  “If it had been in the sun, the mud on it would have hardened in an hour,” Jake answered.

  That thought hadn’t occurred to me. “Sometimes I forget just how good you are at this,” I said.

  “Used to be, at any rate,” he said.

  “Still are,” I answered. “What should I do with it?”

  He pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his pants pocket. “Let’s put it in this until we know if it’s significant or not.”

  I wasn’t at all surprised that he’d brought evidence bags with him. I slid the cloth and button from my bandana into the bag, and Jake sealed it before handing it back to me. “There you go.”

  “You don’t want to keep it yourself?” I asked him.

  “No need to. It’s not part of my case.”

  “Should I turn it over to the police?” I asked him.

  “If it were me, I would, but it’s your find, so it’s up to you.” The implication was clear in his voice, though.

  “I’ll give it to Stephen,” I said reluctantly, “but not before I take a few pictures of it.”

  Jake smiled at me. “That’s a good idea. I’ll take a few myself, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “You never know. Do you want to know something? It’s fun working a case with you, Suzanne.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I just wish you hadn’t agreed to work for Ray first.”

  “No worries on that count. I’ve got a hunch we’ll do this again someday.”

  “I’d like that. What should we do now?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I have a few other leads I need to follow up on,” he said as I drove us back home.

  “That’s the nicest way anyone has ever told me to mind my own business before,” I said with a grin.

  “Sorry. It’s just habit,” he admitted.

  “I’m just teasing you. I’ve got to take this to the police, and then I need to bring Grace up to speed on what I’ve been up to. Dinner tonight?”

  “You bet,” he said as we got out of the Jeep, since we were back home. I went inside, quickly changed my jeans, and then I rejoined him out front. Before I could drive away, he said, “I know you’ll be tempted to stop by Grace’s on your way out, but skip her place and go to the police station first, okay?”

  “I’ll give that some thought,” I answered with a grin.

  “Wow, I see what you mean.”

  “About what?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.

  “What it’s like being blown off by your spouse,” he answered with a chuckle as he got into his truck and took off before I could.

  Once Jake was gone, I drove straight to Grace’s before going to the police station. My husband had been well within his rights to advise me on what to do, but I was a grown woman with a mind of my own, and we both knew that in the end, I was going to do exactly what I wanted to. At the moment, that meant touching base with Grace and showing her what I’d found before turning it over to her boyfriend, the police chief of April Springs.

  “How’s the paperwork going?” I asked Grace as she answered the door.

  “I’ve done all I can stomach for now,” she said with a grin. “Care for something cold to drink?”

  “It’s a little early for alcohol, isn’t it?”

  “It’s funny that your mind went straight to booze,” Grace said with a grin. “I made some fresh lemonade earlier.”

  “Lemonade in October? Isn’t it a bit out of season for that?”

  “Is there really a proper season for lemonade?” she asked me. “I wanted some, so I made it. That’s one of the perks of being an adult, isn’t it?”

  “Lemonade it is,” I said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

  “Fire away. Whatever it is, the answer is yes,” she said
as I followed her into the kitchen. Grace had grown up in this house, left to her when her parents had passed away, and what I loved about it most was the fact that it was so close to the cottage where Jake and I now lived. We’d played in the park together as kids, and I was happy that our friendship had survived a bad marriage, untold drama with various men, and even different careers. It was so nice having such a rich history with someone I cared about so much.

  “Don’t you even want to hear what it is first?”

  “I don’t need to. I trust that you’ll lead me into plenty of mischief, whatever it is you have in mind.”

  “George has asked us to look into what happened to Tom Thorndike,” I said.

  “So he doesn’t believe it was an accident either, does he?” she asked me as she poured two large glasses of the icy beverage. “Stephen’s made up his mind that it was, for some odd reason. I asked him about it at lunch, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you two have lunch together?”

  “We often do when we have the time, and I’m in town. Today we had sandwiches on the back porch. I asked him about his day so far, but he didn’t want to talk about it. When I pushed him about Tom, he told me that as far as he was concerned, the case was closed. He’s got it in his mind that Tom wasn’t averse to taking foolish risks and that he fell of his own accord.”

  “Why would he think that?” I asked, sincerely curious about it.

  “Evidently Tom’s phone had all kinds of photos of him doing crazy things like climbing steep cliffs without wearing a harness, whitewater rafting in questionable kayaks, things like that. The last shot on the phone was of Tom standing with his back to the edge of the waterfall and grinning like a maniac. In Stephen’s mind, it means that Tom took one step too many, and he paid for it with his life.”

  “Do you think that’s what really happened?”

  “I don’t know, Suzanne. Have you spoken with Jake about it?”