Survival of the Fritters

by Ginger Bolton

  I wasn’t going to be able to get us all out of Deputy Donut before the alarm went into full earsplitting mode.

  Beep . . . beep . . . beep.

  If that alarm blasted, I’d be petrified and unable to think or plan. Muttering, “Oops, guess I should disarm it,” I turned on the office lights and typed in the all clear. I could have typed in a panic code that would have stopped the beeping but alerted our security monitoring company that something like a home intrusion was in process, but then both the landline and my cell phone would ring. If Oliver was still here, and it looked like he planned to be, he would figure out what was going on and I might not live long enough to tell any would-be rescuers about my suspicions.

  Dep trotted down her stairway until she was at eye level with Oliver. She growled in a querulous but almost-musical way that would have made me laugh if I hadn’t been mentally plotting our escape.

  Oliver asked me, “Is it always this bad tempered?”

  I’d never before seen her in such a snit. Dep had been present when Lois was attacked. “I’ve gotten used to her moods.” That wasn’t fair. Dep was normally a sweet and easygoing cat. “How about if you go out first, and when she calms down, I’ll bring her outside.”

  Dep growled even louder.

  “It looks like you could use my help with the cat.” Apparently, Oliver didn’t intend to go anywhere quite yet.

  If he wasn’t going to leave Deputy Donut, I had to get to the cash drawer and the switch that sent a silent message to 911.

  What if he did leave, though, and managed to get away before I could set the police on his trail? He might end up murdering people in other towns, other states. The cash drawer was near the display case where we still had some of the day’s donuts.... I offered, “Would you like coffee and donuts?”

  “Sure.”

  Although I was certain that Tom was nowhere near, I opened the door into the dining area and called out, “I’m back, Tom!” Maybe Oliver would leave, and I could phone the police.

  No such luck. Oliver glanced toward the parking lot. “There are no other cars out there besides the Fordor.”

  “Tom doesn’t always drive.”

  That wasn’t enough to send Oliver packing, either.

  Dep was back on the floor again, crowding against me and butting her head against the edge of the door. I accidentally-on-purpose allowed her to escape into the dining room. In the gloom, it was spooky, with chairs upside-down on tables. Unfortunately, the Jolly Cops Cleaning Crew weren’t due at Deputy Donut for about four hours.

  Dep scooted underneath the nearest table.

  Pretending dismay, I took Oliver up on his earlier offer to help. “Would you herd the cat back to the office while I start the coffee?”

  “ ‘Herd a cat’—that’s a good one. I don’t think it likes me.”

  Neither do I. But all I said was, “Maybe she’ll run back to the office, and you can shut her in.”

  I told myself that if Oliver had wanted to harm me, he would have driven me to Fallingbrook Falls or headed down a lonely side road into the wilderness surrounding Fallingbrook. He would not have brought me back to Deputy Donut. For one thing, about a dozen police officers had noticed the car he’d been driving, and it wasn’t one they would easily forget.

  Oliver was still chasing Dep from table to table. Cats could see better in dim lighting than we could. To continue giving Dep the advantage, I left the lights in the dining room off.

  Could I slip outside from the storage room without Oliver noticing? Probably not, and I would face the same problem I’d have encountered by running outside from the office. Oliver was taller than I was, and would catch up easily. Besides, I couldn’t possibly leave my cat alone with him.

  I switched on the lights in the kitchen. Shadows shifted in the dining room. Oliver barged into an overturned chair and yelped.

  One of our surveillance cameras was aimed at the serving counter near the cash drawer, which Tom always left empty and open at night. I reached into the back of the drawer and pressed the button that sent an automatic call to 911. Dispatch would conclude we were being burgled and would send police.

  Having sent that signal, I didn’t need to make a call on my phone.

  I had a potentially better use for it.

  I started it recording a video, and then leaned it against the side of an espresso machine where Oliver would be unlikely to see it. The phone would capture anything that went on in the rear of the kitchen, which was beyond the range of the camera trained on the cash drawer.

  Oliver was on his hands and knees, partly underneath a table. “Here, kitty!”

  Dep crawled farther away and swatted at him. I wouldn’t have come, either, if someone had called me in that tone of voice.

  I could do more to keep Oliver from getting too close to me while the police marshaled their forces.

  First, I dipped a slotted spoon into one of the fryers—the oil hadn’t cooled completely—and sprinkled a few drops of oil on our tile floor.

  Second, I turned on the fryer and ratcheted it up to its highest heat.

  Third, I filled a coffee carafe with water that we kept close to the boiling point. Even though the heat had been off for more than three hours, the water was still very hot.

  I peered over the half wall. Underneath a table near the middle of the dining room, Dep spat and lashed out with a front paw. Oliver stood and put his hands up in surrender. “I give up. It won’t let me catch it.”

  “Have a seat at the counter while I get out donuts and brew coffee.”

  Oliver perched on a stool almost directly underneath the surveillance camera. “Why did you wave at that police investigator?”

  Technically, I hadn’t. But I wasn’t going to tell Oliver what I’d actually done—tried to signal Brent that I could be in trouble. I set the carafe down and fiddled with the glass door at the back of the donut display case. “He was Alec’s partner. I’m not sure he recognized me.”

  “People aren’t as clever as they think. They don’t always recognize who they think they’re recognizing.” Was he bragging about the way he’d impersonated Randy?

  I put apple cider donuts on plates. Maybe, while he was underneath the surveillance camera, he would incriminate himself. “Like Randy.” I tried to sound like I was merely making casual conversation. “The evening that Matthias disappeared, a woman took pictures of Randy’s car leaving the valley where Matthias’s remains were later found, but how can the police be sure, just from the car, that the driver was Randy? It’s possible that someone else was driving his car.”

  “But not likely.”

  “He took his car to your father’s dealership for servicing before his trip to Wyoming, right?”

  “We serviced nearly everyone’s cars back then.” Oliver’s lips twitched. “But we wouldn’t have kept the records for a car that we never expected to service again.” Especially if the service manager made certain those records were destroyed ...

  “Do you know if any of your mechanics had a grudge against Matthias? Maybe he was test-driving Randy’s car and used it to kidnap Matthias.”

  “They said Matthias ran out of gas and thumbed a ride.”

  Matthias’s car had run out of gas, but his gas can had been ditched beside the road. Finding that gas can, with her son’s name written on it in black marker, was what had panicked Georgia. She reasoned that if her son had accepted a ride to a gas station, he would have taken the gas can with him.

  Oliver bit into the donut. “Randy’s in custody, and he’s going to stay there for the rest of his life. Finally, five years later, he’s in jail. Justice is done. There’s no need for you or anyone else to make a different case out of it. Facts are facts. Randy killed both of those people. There were no violent crimes in or around Fallingbrook the entire five years he was in Wyoming.” Oliver’s dark brown eyes were almost black. “Randy was smarter than we would have thought, though. That woman you mentioned who took the pictures? He memorized her licens
e plate and found her after he came back from out west. She’d parked her car here, outside Deputy Donut. He followed her home, made a note of where she lived, and went back to her home while it was still dark Monday morning, and attacked her.”

  A chill rippled down my back. Now I was sure that Oliver was bragging about locating Georgia and killing her. I realized that ever since he’d first come into Deputy Donut on Tuesday afternoon, he’d seemed to like boasting about himself. With luck, I could keep him talking—and not attacking me—until the police arrived. “But I heard that Georgia was not the woman who took his pictures when he was leaving the scene of the crime.”

  “Early Monday morning, that Treetor woman tried to save herself by telling Randy that she’d borrowed a friend’s minivan that day. Whether that was true or not, she knew too much about Randy, and he had to kill her. But then he had to find out if the other old lady, the one who took the pictures and owned the minivan, existed. Again, he was surprisingly clever, except that he kept going in front of video cameras. Asking around, he discovered that she did exist, and that she was an artist named Lois who had recently moved back to Fallingbrook from Madison. He went to one of my car dealerships, of all places, searched our files, and found a customer named Lois who had recently started bringing her minivan for servicing again after a five-year absence. He went to her address and stole the incriminating photos she’d taken of him.”

  Did Oliver think I would believe that the police had let him in on secrets that only they, and a few witnesses, like Lois and me, knew?

  I asked, “Did Randy tell you all this?”

  “We were supposed to have a golf game this afternoon. Instead, I went to the police station and talked to him. He needs all the friends he can get right now.”

  Oliver didn’t seem to have figured out that Lois was related to Randy, and I wasn’t about to tell him. Instead, I shook my head. “It’s barely believable. He seems completely reformed since his high school days.”

  “You’re obviously wrong about that.”

  The person I’d been wrong about was Oliver. I picked up the carafe of hot water. “Randy can’t have been as terrible as he seemed, even back then. Nicole seemed to like him.”

  “She married me for my money and divorced me for a settlement.”

  “Ouch. That must hurt, especially if she’s dating someone else.”

  “I don’t care. She chose a loser.”

  I tried to sound amazed. “Is Nicole dating Randy?”

  The quaking of my voice must have given me away.

  Chapter 36

  Oliver came around the counter into the kitchen and picked up Tom’s favorite extra-large marble rolling pin. “Not now, Nicole isn’t dating Randy. He’s not in a position to date anyone.” If I hadn’t mentally built up a case against Oliver, his smug smile would have clued me in. He’d gone to extremes to put his rival out of commission, and he was proud of it.

  Trying not to show my horror and keeping in mind where I’d dribbled oil on the floor, I took a step backward.

  He kept coming. “How did you figure it out?”

  I looked as bewildered as I could. “That Nicole might be dating Randy?”

  “Stop playing innocent. You know what I mean. You blushed after you saw the inside of my Ford’s trunk, and you’ve been acting strange ever since.”

  Edging away from him, I tried a smile. The full carafe was heavy. I rested it on one arm. My thin cotton shirt sleeve was not the greatest insulation against heat. “I’ve been strange all my life.”

  “You saw a water slide label through the bag, didn’t you?” He probably couldn’t help letting a tiny flicker of pride cross his features.

  Maybe it was as close to a confession as I was going to get. Now that he was beyond the range of the video from the surveillance camera, I hoped that my phone was picking up both the video and audio, and that the playbacks would be clear.

  The oily spot on the floor was a couple of feet behind me. I shuffled backward. “I also saw a temporary tattoo matching Randy’s B.A.D. tattoo in your glove compartment. It’s all pretty incriminating.”

  “It’s all pretty circumstantial. Maybe Randy and I had a plan for Halloween that involved impersonating each other.” He looked down at the rolling pin in his hand as if wondering how to pretend he wasn’t thinking of using it on me. “You know, whatever you might make up about me and report to the police, it will be your word against mine, and I’m very respected in this community, while you couldn’t hold down one job and had to inveigle your late husband’s father to open a business and hire you.”

  I didn’t bother explaining that Tom and I were equal partners in Deputy Donut. “I’m not making up your acting ability. I’m sure you could imitate Randy. If you wanted to get Randy out of Nicole’s life, you could move like he does, do your hair like his, and not shave until it suits you. And you could make certain that his car was where surveillance cameras could pick up his license number while you were masquerading as him.”

  “Could. Didn’t.”

  The police would be coming any minute. I took a chance that angering Oliver wouldn’t cause him to attack me, but would make him say something he might later regret. “Randy and Nicole must have been seeing each other before he left for Wyoming.”

  “She was my wife then. She wasn’t seeing anyone.”

  Having succeeded in needling him, I continued. “Or you suspected she was seeing him. She always loved him. He came back to be with her now that she’s single again.”

  “You’re making wild guesses.”

  About Nicole always loving Randy—maybe. But the rest of my theories were totally believable. I tried to throw him off balance with flattery. “The temporary tattoos were a stroke of genius. I didn’t know that water slide paper existed five years ago.”

  “Anyone can draw a tattoo on their wrist.” Slowly, with that rolling pin in his right hand, he backed me toward the corner. “You’ve wrecked everything for yourself. I was going to continue dating you.”

  Be still, my heart. I didn’t say it, except, maybe, with the scorn I was trying not to show.

  He slapped the rolling pin against his left palm, probably harder than he intended. It must have hurt. “But now I’m afraid you won’t live long enough to spin your tales about me impersonating Randy two different times, and managing to plant evidence in his car.”

  He was still bragging about what he, not Randy, had done. Oliver did not expect me to live much longer. Tom might not have noticed the signals that our surveillance cameras had sent his phone during the past five minutes, but where were the police officers our emergency switch should have summoned?

  Oliver spoke with the suavity of a practiced salesman. “Even if I had ordered a spare key for Randy’s car, it would be in the river where no one will ever find it.”

  That explained how he drove Randy’s car and planted the plastic grocery bags in it, one containing the doll dress and the other containing the rock, the pictures, and the chisel. No one would ever say that Oliver Rossimer wasn’t ingenious.

  Becoming more desperate as seconds ticked by and the police didn’t show, I needed to exercise a little ingenuity myself. “You can’t get away with harming me. Alec’s ex-partner saw us together this evening in a very memorable car.”

  “You admitted that you aren’t sure he recognized you.”

  “I told Tom I was going out with you tonight.”

  “You’re lying.”

  He was right. Oliver had asked me not to tell Tom. I shouldn’t have obeyed him, but at the time, I’d had no inkling that Oliver was a murderer. Also, if it turned out that I liked the car, I wanted to surprise Tom. “No.” I tried to sound convincing.

  “None of that matters. You made a crucial mistake. You underestimated me. My plans never fail. You’re going to have an accident. Just like that doll doctor and her son, you got yourself into the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ll be the distraught date who tried to save you, and who eventually has to call 91
1. But it will be too late.”

  A strange thumping sound came from the front door.

  The police?

  No.

  Rising onto my toes, I peeked over the half wall. I could just barely see the top of Dep, standing on her hind legs and pounding at the glass door with her front paws. An elderly couple on the other side of the door were smiling down at Dep. The woman squatted and touched the glass nearest Dep’s swiftly moving paws.

  I stared at the couple, willing them to see through the dim dining room into the brightly lit kitchen. I hoped they’d conclude that I could be in danger and, at the very least, they would distract Oliver.

  The man helped the woman stand. Arm in arm, they walked away.

  I transferred my attention to Oliver. He’d edged toward me and was almost close enough to swing that rolling pin at my head. Sliding my sneakers through the slippery oil, I backed up.

  The filled carafe seemed to be getting heavier by the second. My hand shook.

  I’d backed so far from Oliver that he’d cornered me between the building’s rear wall and the office wall.

  He raised the rolling pin.

  I removed the lid from the carafe, gripped the handle more tightly, and tossed hot water at his face.

  He hurled the rolling pin.

  I ducked, but not quickly enough. The rolling pin slammed into the side of my head. Pain shot through my skull. My legs collapsed, and I fell back onto the floor. The back of my head bounced against the office wall.

  Oliver was about to commit his third murder, and in my boneless, dazed state, there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  Chapter 37

  Crumpled like a rag doll in the corner, I couldn’t breathe.

  Oliver clawed at his face, red with rage, hot water, or both, and charged toward me. I willed my hand to find that rolling pin before Oliver could pick it up.

  My hand refused to move.

  Oliver slipped in the oil I’d sprinkled on the floor, went down heavily, and stared silently at the ceiling. For one horrifying second, I thought he was dead.

  His chest rose and fell.