Survival of the Fritters

by Ginger Bolton

  He parked the car in spot 406 again at ten on Monday night, and went toward the middle of the right of the picture. A white plastic grocery bag dangled from his right hand. I couldn’t read the words on it, but I guessed they were “Taste of Fallingbrook.”

  So. This was what Brent had wanted me to see. Randy had driven somewhere around the time that Georgia was murdered, and had again gone off in his car around the time that Lois was attacked. That was all circumstantial, but there he was, carrying the bag that might have contained the chisel, the photos, the bloodied rock, and maybe the doll dress, also.

  The video continued. At one on Tuesday morning, Randy again came into the picture at the top right of the screen. Neither of his sleeves was rolled up. Again, that bulging white plastic grocery bag dangled from his right hand. He unlocked the trunk, opened it, leaned forward, flung the bag in, shut the trunk, and locked it with a key. Tugging at his left sleeve, he went back the way he came.

  The video stopped, and a new one started. This camera appeared to be mounted in the lobby of an apartment building. The timer started at five on Monday morning, and sped through the minutes until eighteen after five. No one appeared in the lobby. Then the timer changed to six forty. Again, the action was sped up. People left the apartment lobby by the front door, but no one came in, and the timer stopped at seven.

  About twelve hours later, at five to seven in the evening, Randy, dressed as he had been in the morning, except that both sleeves were rolled down, entered the lobby from where the elevators probably were. He went out the front door. He came back inside shortly after ten that night. He was carrying the bulging white bag. Knowing that the words on it were “Taste of Fallingbrook,” I could read them.

  And then the video, still black and white, changed to a location I recognized—the parking lot in front of the post office where Honey Bellaire worked. At the beginning, the time stamp said it was six twenty Monday morning. A small silver or gray sedan pulled into a spot in front of the post office. This time, I thought I could read the license plate. His Packers cap pulled down low, Randy got out of the car and walked off to the right of the screen.

  Moments later, Dr. Jierson, TOOTHY license plate and all, pulled into the spot next to Randy’s car. The dentist got out, slammed his door, and strode toward his office. TOOTHY’s lights flashed twice as if Dr. Jierson had locked his car remotely. The young-looking receptionist opened the office door, and Dr. Jierson went inside. The giant molar over the door was shining so brightly that it was hard to be sure, but it appeared that Dr. Jierson embraced his receptionist. Through the glass door, I saw her pale arms on the back of his dark jacket, and then they both moved farther inside, away from the windows and door.

  Randy came from the right and pounded on the post office door. Because of the height of the camera, I couldn’t see any of his face except for his unshaven chin. Beneath the Packers cap, his hair was messy. His right sleeve was rolled up past his elbow, but the cuff of his left sleeve almost covered his wrist. Before he tugged it down, I saw the D and the period after it.

  I didn’t realize that I’d said, “No,” aloud until Dep let out a questioning chirp.

  Just as Honey had described to Lois and me, she opened the door from inside, only slightly. I could see the edge of the door and the top of her head. She stood talking to Randy through the crack for about two minutes. Then she retreated into the post office, and the edge of the door disappeared. Randy returned to his car, folded himself into the driver’s seat, lifted a bulging white bag from the passenger seat, bent over, and tucked it underneath the passenger seat. He straightened and turned the key in the ignition. He grabbed a watch off the dashboard, slipped it onto his left wrist, looked down toward his wrist, tapped the face of the watch once with his index finger, moved the watchband slightly as if centering the watch on the back of his wrist, shook his hand as if to settle the watch more comfortably, put the car in reverse, and backed out of the parking spot. He turned north on Packers Road. It was six twenty-nine on Monday morning. Georgia was probably already dead.

  The video corroborated Honey Bellaire’s story, and although Dr. Jierson might have lied about his reason for going into work early that morning, perhaps he and his wife had not made up the story about the small sedan in Georgia’s driveway.

  The videos, combined with Honey’s description and the Jiersons’ report of a silver or gray sedan that didn’t belong in Georgia’s driveway, firmly implicated Randy.

  Bowing my head, I let sorrow overwhelm me. What had Georgia possibly done that had made Randy kill her? Had she threatened to report him for murdering her son? Or had he learned that Lois was Georgia’s sole heir? I felt sad for Lois and horrified that I’d believed Randy had reformed since high school.

  I wanted to figure out what had caused Randy to kill two people whom he supposedly thought of as family.

  Most of all, I missed Georgia.

  Tapping on my front door sent Dep flying downstairs, with me following at a mere trot.

  I peeked through the peephole. Brent. I let him in and shut the door. Dep purred and twined herself around his ankles.

  I asked, “Did she give you the photo album?”

  “With no problem, other than a few tears. It’s now safely locked in my car. With Randy in custody, there’s no rush to take it to headquarters.” He studied my face.

  “I found a video on my computer,” I told him. “I watched it.”

  “Shame,” he said, poker-faced. “Now will you be more cautious and less trusting, especially around Lois?”

  I raised my chin and looked up into his eyes. “I’m sure she had nothing to do with the murders of her best friend and her best friend’s son.”

  “Me, too, but what if Randy gets out, either legally or illegally? Being around Lois could be dangerous.”

  “I’ll take that chance. Meanwhile, you probably want your thumb drive. It’s upstairs. Come on up. I have some questions.”

  At my computer, I started the video again. I pointed at Randy when he appeared on the upper right corner of the picture. “When he comes and goes from this direction, there’s no sign of him in the apartment building lobby.” I edged my finger down the screen. “But when he comes and goes from about here, he seems to have come from the apartment building lobby.”

  “The building’s front door is closer to where he parks his car. When he’s coming from farther away, he’s coming from the direction of the back door. Vandals broke the surveillance camera back there last June, and the building’s owner hasn’t replaced it.”

  “And Randy probably knows that. It’s curious, though, that some of the time, including when he takes that plastic bag inside around ten on Monday night, which would be when he returned home after attacking Lois, he uses the door where the surveillance camera is working.”

  “He could have been distracted.” Brent shut down the video and disengaged his thumb drive. “Did you make a copy?”

  “No. I wouldn’t want either of us to get into trouble.”

  He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze.

  I hurried downstairs. At the front door, Brent asked, “Are you okay?”

  I picked Dep up so she wouldn’t try to run off with Brent. “Yes. I’ll probably never get over Georgia’s death. I didn’t know her son well, but it’s sad, and I feel sorry for Lois. And Randy wasn’t that bad in high school, plus I thought he had grown up. I liked him.” I snuggled my face into Dep’s warm fur.

  “Were you dating Randy?”

  My head shot up. “No! Why would you think that?”

  “Your defense of him. Plus, Lois told us she thought he came back to Fallingbrook because of a woman. He denied it, but I thought maybe you were that woman.”

  “Impossible. Alec was still alive when Randy left for Wyoming.” I didn’t mean it to come out sounding quite that angry.

  I thought I read apology in Brent’s eyes. “I assumed that if it was you, you and he had begun corresponding in the past year or so.”

&
nbsp; “I doubt that I gave him more than a few seconds’ thought after he graduated from high school until he showed up again. He’s been in Deputy Donut a few times, and he seems nice, but I’m not interested in him other than as a customer. An ex-customer now, I guess.”

  “Sorry for suggesting it, Em. I know how you feel about Alec. I miss him, too.”

  I looked down at Dep again and said softly, “I know.”

  “If Randy has a girlfriend, I’d really like to talk to her. Last night when we were questioning him, I thought he was going to tell us about someone he might have been with some of those times his car left his apartment building’s parking lot, but he said there was no one.”

  “Maybe he has a thing going with Mrs. Jierson. That would serve her husband right.”

  Brent grinned. “And undoubtedly complicate our investigation.”

  “Is there any chance that the man going to and from Randy’s car from the back of Randy’s building could be Frederick Aggleton?”

  “Who did it look like to you?”

  I hung my head. “Randy. Aggleton’s thinner, and so is his hair, but he could have been wearing a wig and some padding.”

  “And Randy’s left arm. And driving Randy’s car.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I conceded. “Poor Lois.”

  “Do you think that, without telling her about the videos, you can help her get a grip on reality?”

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure I want to try. She believes in Randy. He’s losing everything. Maybe he shouldn’t lose the affection that he and his aunt share. And neither should she.”

  Brent opened my front door. “You might have to accept that Randy’s guilty, Em.”

  I looked past him, toward the glow underneath the streetlight in the otherwise dark night. “I’m trying to.”

  “Take care, then.” He let himself out.

  “At least he didn’t hug me again,” I informed Dep, although she’d been there to see the non-hug. “And I won’t blame him for doing his job and not stopping Detective Passenmath from arresting Randy. Those videos are incriminating.”

  Chapter 31

  I woke up in the morning with a sense of failure. I had promised to help Lois exonerate Randy. I’d known all along that we might not succeed, but after I became reacquainted with Randy, I’d believed that Lois was right, and that her great-nephew could not be a killer.

  Still, he was innocent until proven guilty, and there would be a trial. Unfortunately, the evidence that I knew about was persuasive, and Detective Passenmath and her colleagues, including Brent, were sure to find more. If the DNA tests on the blood on both the rock and the crocheted dress were conclusive, Randy could spend the rest of his life in jail.

  As usual on nice days, Dep and I walked to work. I established her in her windowed playground, and then opened the door to the dining room. Tom must have been at work for a while. Smelling the yeast in the rising dough and the crisp sugary aroma of donuts coming out of the fryer made me almost forget that I’d polished off a spinach and cheddar omelet only about a half hour before.

  I went into the kitchen and put on a clean apron. “Expecting lots of business today?” I asked Tom.

  “It’s Labor Day. We could get extra tourists enjoying the last day of their vacation. Besides, you know how it is. When there’s news, the place fills up. You heard, I suppose. They made an arrest.” He didn’t have to name the case. Georgia’s murder was Fallingbrook’s only recent major crime.

  I folded the tuck in my apron over the bow in my apron strings. “Randy Unterlaw, one of our customers.”

  “Are you surprised they charged him?”

  “Yes. It seemed to me that he’d grown out of acting on his anger.”

  Tom spooned another donut out of the hot oil. “We always hope that people can change for the better. The truth is, they seldom do.”

  “But children mature into adults.”

  “Most of us don’t change a lot from the kids we were.” He shook the spoon at me. “And don’t say that I was a grade school bully. I was a child prodigy, developing my law enforcement skills.”

  “Right.” I didn’t believe for one second that Tom Westhill had ever been a bully.

  “I liked Randy’s vintage car idea,” he said.

  “So did I.”

  “We can still do it, though I guess we won’t be hiring Randy to drive it.”

  I acted affronted. “I was going to drive it.”

  His pretend attempt at a stern police chief expression didn’t fool me. “You and I were going to take turns. We could have taught Randy to work in the kitchen and wait tables.”

  In addition to tourists that morning, locals crowded into Deputy Donut, and most of them wanted to discuss Randy’s arrest. One woman told me, “We can all sleep now that a dangerous criminal is behind bars.”

  Her husband corrected her. “Most murderers kill people they know, like in this case.” He puffed out his chest. “This Randy Unterlaw was no danger to you ladies.”

  Five of the Knitpickers arrived around nine. “Lois isn’t coming,” one of them said. “She’s too upset about her great-nephew.”

  “And no wonder!” another exclaimed.

  The first one added, “She says she doesn’t like living up here anymore. She’s thinking of moving back to Madison.”

  I hoped that when things calmed down and she got used to Randy’s being in jail, she’d reconsider and stay. Despite Brent’s warnings, I liked her, as a friend and as a neighbor.

  A mother came in with a pair of twins, a boy and a girl who were about seven years old and had adorable matching gap-toothed smiles. The girl wanted a donut with pink sprinkles while the boy ordered chocolate sprinkles, and they both asked for chocolate milk. Smiling, their mother said, “I heard you have a different specialty coffee every day, and I knew I had to come in.”

  “Donuts, too!” her kids chimed.

  “I’ll stick to coffee,” their mother said, “whatever you’re featuring today.”

  “It’s from Ethiopia, a light but very flavorful roast.”

  “I can’t wait to try it.”

  When I brought them their goodies, the girl pulled up the sleeve of her ruffled pink T-shirt. “Look! I have a tattoo!” It was a pink and purple butterfly that appeared to have been drawn by a child.

  Both kids were wearing shorts. The girl obviously loved pink. The boy, dressed in khaki and olive drab, turned sideways on his seat and showed me the tattoo on his knee, a red rectangle balanced on two black circles. “It’s a race car,” he told me.

  “We made the tattoos ourselves!” the girl crowed.

  I felt my eyes open wide. My mouth almost did, too. “How?” I managed.

  “You draw a picture on the computer and print it on water slide paper.”

  I was lost. I swooped my hand down like a kid on a slide. “Water slide paper?”

  The mother laughed. “That’s what I thought, too, when we first heard about it on a crafty TV show. You draw a picture on your computer or on regular paper, and then you print or photocopy the picture on this special paper called ‘water slide paper.’ When you want a tattoo, you put the water slide paper ink-side-down on your skin. You hold a damp cloth over it, and the water causes the design to slide off the paper onto your skin.”

  The boy told me seriously, “You have to hold the tattoo very still for a half minute, or it gets all smeary.”

  “It’s really fun,” the girl said. “And it stays a long time! If you don’t wash it off.”

  The boy’s eyes went all dreamy. “I’m never washing mine off.”

  Their mother winked at me. “They’re having loads of fun with it, but I told them they could each wear only one temporary tattoo at a time.”

  Temporary tattoos? That might explain how Frederick Aggleton could have worn a tattoo like Randy’s early Monday morning. I didn’t know if water slide paper had been available five years ago. If not, Fred could have written B.A.D. on his wrist with a marker. The man’s
face had been hidden in the five-year-old photo, and I’d seen only an unshaven chin in the videos from the previous Monday. I asked, “Where do you buy water slide paper?”

  The mother answered, “Online or in craft stores. We found it right here in Fallingbrook, though, at that specialty grocery that used to be so nice but now has hardly any fresh food, Taste of Fallingbrook.”

  I could hardly wait to call Brent.

  Customers kept me busy through lunchtime, and when I did catch Brent, he said he was in a meeting.

  I rattled out, “Frederick Aggleton sells a type of paper in his store that can be used to make temporary tattoos.”

  “Thank you,” Brent said formally. “I’ll take that under advisement.” He disconnected the call.

  Take that under advisement. While Alec was still alive, a rookie cop had said it whenever one of his superiors corrected him, and Brent and Alex had begun teasing each other with what they called memo-speak.

  Alec would ask Brent, “Would you like a coffee?”

  Brent would say, “Yes.”

  Alec would answer, “I’ll take that under advisement.” Then they’d both laugh. They laughed hardest when Alec did not actually bring coffee or whatever he’d offered.

  I wanted to interpret Brent’s repeating the expression as code for, “Sorry I have to pretend I’m speaking to someone I barely know. I’m in a meeting with Yvonne Passenmath.” But maybe my connection to Lois and her great-nephew was forcing Brent to distance himself from me. I should be okay with losing a friendship I’d almost single-handedly destroyed once before.

  After all, it wasn’t like I didn’t have friends. Misty and Samantha stopped in together and sat at the stools at the counter. Samantha asked, “Are you okay?”

  I poured her coffee. “Yes, but I’m surprised and disappointed that Randy changed for the worse instead of for the better.”

  Misty frowned. “Killers sometimes progress from smaller crimes.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Tom joined the conversation, “And they sometimes seem charming.”