Beyond a Reasonable Donut

by Ginger Bolton

  I heaved a dramatic sigh. “And Nina and I ended up with the bad luck.”

  He became serious again. “How much do you think he got away with?”

  “I saw a few fives in his hand, maybe five or six. Our good luck was that Nina stopped him before he could grab more. The fives were new ones from the bank.”

  “I suspect that he and his accomplice are far away by now. Let’s go talk to the person at the gate.”

  I walked down the hill with him. At the entryway, Marsha Fitchelder demanded our tickets.

  Maybe I should have kept my hat on. I told her, “I’m an exhibitor, from Deputy Donut.”

  She snapped, “You should have had your hand stamped.”

  Brent showed her his ticket stub and his badge from the Fallingbrook Police Department. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  She made a show of inspecting him from head to toe. “Are you finally here to tow that pink car away? It’s about time, but you’re too late. That mime dashed out of the grounds an hour or more ago. She even had the nerve to jump a fence over there near where her car was parked. Then she threw herself into her car and drove off like some kind of race-car driver.” I edged toward the walkway leading to our tent. “Don’t you go anywhere,” Marsha ordered, “until I check your credentials.” Instead of getting out her clipboard of exhibitors’ applications, she returned her attention to Brent. “What questions?”

  “Was the mime male or female?”

  “Female, I think, but it’s hard to tell. She was thin. Like a skeleton. And she never said a word.”

  “Was anyone with her when she left?”

  Marsha planted her fists on her hips. “Who leaps over snow fencing?”

  Brent seemed to take that as a no. “Did anyone else leave about the same time?”

  “Lots of people. We don’t check their tickets on the way out, and it’s not like everyone has to stay here until we close tonight at nine. They might have other things to do, you know.”

  Marsha was exasperating, but Brent continued his quiet questions. “Do you know of anyone else who left the carnival without coming through here?”

  “How would I know that? I only know about that mime because I saw her do it, right in front of my very own eyes.”

  Brent studied his notebook. I thought his mouth twitched in an attempt to hide amusement, but he asked in serious tones, “Can you describe the person who drove the pink car?”

  “You know, clown face and a silly outfit. A hat she passed around.”

  Brent wrote down her nonspecific description and politely asked, “Did you see a magician?”

  “There are probably at least six of them here today. You mean the one on stilts?”

  Brent looked at me.

  I answered, “I didn’t see stilts. The one I saw had a top hat and tails.”

  Marsha scoffed, “That probably describes the other five.”

  I added, “He was carrying a briefcase.”

  Marsha snapped, “Magicians don’t carry briefcases.”

  I didn’t bother to argue.

  Brent asked her if she saw who was driving a black van with no windows except in front.

  Marsha scowled up toward the hill behind Brent and me. “I hope you don’t expect me to remember every single vehicle that parks up there.”

  I offered, “It was in the dignitaries’ lot, on this side of our car with the donut on top for a while when the pink car was on the other side.”

  “I thought your assistant drove that van. You know, the beanpole with the eyelashes. As far as I can tell, you two have been causing a lot of trouble.” She glowered toward Brent. “Bringing police here and all.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. As far as I knew, Marsha was the one who had called the police to tow the pink car away. And I hadn’t exactly brought Brent to the carnival. Finally, I managed, “So, you do remember that I’m one of the exhibitors from Deputy Donut.”

  She pointed her clipboard at me. “Go back to selling donuts.”

  After the mime had looked at Marsha’s clipboard and pretended to read a clipboard of her own, she’d looked straight at Nina and me. At the time, I’d wondered if our Deputy Donut vendor’s application was the top sheet on Marsha’s clipboard.

  Now I could see that it was. With our photos.

  Chapter 4

  Maybe I was being stubborn, but I wasn’t about to obey Marsha and go back to selling donuts—and fritters—until I was certain that Brent had no more questions for me.

  He didn’t tell me to stay, but he also didn’t say I could go.

  I was curious. I stayed.

  Brent asked Marsha, “May I see your list of exhibitors?”

  She clasped her clipboard close to her black vest, hiding our Deputy Donut application. “You got a search warrant?”

  “I can get one. A man dressed as a magician was seen taking money from a vendor. Wouldn’t you like to help us learn who’s been robbing your clients?” He said it encouragingly.

  Marsha pointed at me. “Her, probably. She’s been nothing but trouble all day.” She held her other hand toward a family arriving behind us. “Tickets!” She added, “Please.” It didn’t sound gracious.

  I went through the turnstiles. Brent followed and clasped my shoulder in a big, warm hand. “I’d better go apply for that warrant. See you Wednesday at Samantha and Hooligan’s wedding.”

  I grinned up into his kind and caring face. “Yes, and since you’re a detective, I expect you to listen very carefully. The minister is sure to say Hooligan’s real first name.” Despite our teasing, Hooligan had never told us what it was. Even the wedding invitation had been worded “Samantha Andersen and Hooligan Houlihan.”

  Smile wrinkles appeared at the corners of Brent’s eyes. “Okay, but you’ll be in front with the wedding party and I’ll be in the congregation. You’ll have a better chance at hearing it.”

  I whispered, “Did you notice the top page of her clipboard?”

  Of course he had. Tilting his head, he asked, “Why was your application on top?”

  “It can’t be in the beginning of the alphabet. Didn’t we pass Candy’s Apples?”

  “And Bill’s Bear Claws.”

  “Maybe we were the first to apply.”

  He leaned down and spoke almost into my forehead. “Or she put them in order, with the worst troublemakers first.”

  I batted at his arm. “That must be it.”

  He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze and went out past Marsha.

  I hurried to the Deputy Donut tent. Nina was her friendly self again, talking and laughing with customers.

  We were busiest around the supper hour. A rangy man with a ruggedly handsome and tanned face asked for two dozen turbo-charged spicy corny fritters, not rolled in any kind of sugar. He was wearing black jeans, a pale gray and white checked cowboy shirt, a fringed suede vest, a white cowboy hat, and black cowboy boots decorated with glass “rubies” the approximate size of his thumbnails. He took a good look at Nina. “Whoa, were you ever angry when you went tearin’ through the carnival grounds!” His drawl sounded real.

  Blushing, Nina dipped her head. “We’d been robbed. I was trying to catch the thieves.”

  The man asked, “Did you succeed?”

  “No.”

  He patted the back of his jeans and leaned toward her. “If I’d had my lasso with me, I’d have caught them and hogtied them for you.”

  Nina was seldom at a loss for words, but visions of hogtied magicians and mimes must have flustered her. “Um,” she began, “um, thank you.”

  He said admiringly, “You’re a fast runner.”

  She grinned back at him. “I try.”

  “I’m Rodeo Rod. I’m performing at the rodeo here at the fairground next weekend. Not tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday, but the weekend after this.” He stared straight at Nina. “I hope you’ll come.”

  “I . . .” She handed him a bag containing twenty-six fritters. “I might have to work. When I�
�m not working at Deputy Donut, I have paintings to finish.”

  “She’s an artist,” I contributed. “A very good one.”

  The praise seemed to embarrass Nina. She looked down at the counter. “Not really.”

  Rodeo Rod drawled, “Well, don’t you be frightened of that mime. I don’t think she’ll come back here after you yelled at her.” Carrying his fritters, he left.

  Amused by imagining the usually easygoing Nina racing through the carnival and yelling, I asked her, “What did you tell the mime?”

  Nina looked down at the open cash drawer. “Something like Stay away from our tent! But I was really angry and really loud.” She eased the cash drawer shut. “I wish I’d slammed this on that fake magician’s entire hand and kept him from going anywhere.” She let out a brittle laugh. “Don’t worry. I’m not usually so angry.”

  “I know.” I’d been angry, too, but I hadn’t worked up enough courage to chase the thieves and yell at them. However, unlike most people, I had a detective on speed dial. He’d been nearby, besides. I teased, “You have a new admirer.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Who else offers to hogtie people for you?”

  “That’s a definite point in his favor.”

  “And he must have been over six feet tall, even if he took off his cowboy boots.”

  “That’s another point in his favor.” She looked off into space beyond the deep-fried chocolate bar stand across from us. “I don’t usually paint portraits, but he had an interesting face.”

  “He was handsome!”

  “Was he? I didn’t notice.” She turned her attention to customers.

  I couldn’t help smiling. Maybe I hadn’t actually done any matchmaking, but it was fun to witness someone fall for Nina because he’d watched her tear through the carnival shouting at the woman she was chasing.

  It was almost dark at nine when the carnival ended. Nina and I didn’t have to carry anything besides our personal belongings and the money from the cash drawer, which I stuffed into the bottom of my backpack. We left the unused ingredients in the tent. Tom and his retired police friends were planning to pick up everything that belonged to Deputy Donut and help the rental company load the fryers, counters, cabinets, and fridge into their trucks. The tent rental company would take care of the tent. It would be a long day for Tom, but between closing Deputy Donut at four thirty and returning to the carnival around ten, he would have had a few hours to relax with my mother-in-law, Cindy, at home. Jocelyn, Nina, and I had told him we could open the shop without him in the morning. He’d merely given us a look. He took responsibility seriously. We all did, but he would never get over his police officer sense of duty. He always figured he was there to help others, and that was that.

  Marsha and her turnstiles were gone. Nina and I climbed the hill to the donut car. I offered, “Would you like to drive?”

  “I was up late last night on my new ladder, putting the finishing touches near the top of my painting, so you might prefer to drive rather than watch me nod off.” We tossed our bags, aprons, and hats into the rear seat and clambered into the front. Nina yawned and apologized. “Instead of taking me all the way home, can you let me out at the grocery store? I need milk.”

  “Sure.” When I pulled up outside the store, I asked her, “Would you like me to wait and drive you home?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  I argued, “But you’re tired.”

  “So are you, and I need the walk. It’s not far.” She slid out of the car, closed the door, and waved at me. She didn’t own a car or a bike. She walked nearly everywhere and probably would have said that ten miles wasn’t far. Luckily, she lived less than a mile from the store.

  I drove to Deputy Donut. Backing the car into its garage in the lot behind the shop, I noticed that Nina hadn’t retrieved her hat and apron, which wasn’t surprising, but she also hadn’t taken her tote bag with her. All of them were in the seat behind mine. She often carried her phone in one of the front pockets of her shorts. I called her. She didn’t answer. We usually kept our ringtones turned off while we were at work, and we didn’t always remember to turn them on again the minute we stopped working. I left a message that I was returning to the grocery store, and then I pulled the donut car out of the garage and headed south.

  I walked up and down every aisle in the store. Nina wasn’t there.

  I asked the cashier if anyone had been about to buy milk during the past half hour but had noticed that she didn’t have her wallet. No one had.

  Nina must have realized before she got to the store that she didn’t have her tote bag. She usually carried her apartment keys in a pocket, so maybe she’d decided to do without milk and to fetch her tote bag at Deputy Donut the next day. Driving toward her neighborhood, I didn’t see her.

  Around the corner from her apartment, I caught a glimpse of the rear of a small pink car tucked almost out of sight in an alley lit only by the nearest streetlight. I drove a little farther on and parked. With fresh memories of sugar going missing from our donut car and the magician helping himself to some of our cash, I wasn’t about to leave my backpack containing the remainder of the day’s earnings behind. I slipped its straps over my shoulders and walked to the pink car.

  It was definitely the mime’s, with MIME MOBILE on the doors. No one was in its two seats.

  The heap of things behind those seats looked smaller than it had the previous time I’d snooped around the car, as if the mime had removed something.

  In the gloom I saw a pinch of puffy orange wig sticking out from underneath a blanket.

  Could the mime be underneath that blanket? She was tall. Could she have crammed herself into that small space behind the seats?

  If she had, or worse, if someone had crammed her there, was she all right?

  I shook off my anxiety and tried both doors and the hatch. They were locked. I knocked on the back window.

  The blanket didn’t move.

  I scolded myself. If I’d been trying to sleep underneath a blanket in my car and someone tried the doors and knocked on a window, I wouldn’t have moved, either.

  Besides, if I awakened her, she might look out, recognize me, and flee Fallingbrook before anyone could question her about her connection to the thieving magician.

  Maybe I was the one who needed to flee.

  I hurried back to the sidewalk and around the corner of a building. I didn’t hear anyone chasing me. Maybe she had left her wig behind and wasn’t in the Mime Mobile. Where was she, and why had she blocked an alley with her car?

  Many of the nearby shops had apartments above them. The mime could have carried luggage to any one of them and could be staying there for the night.

  I ran the rest of the way to the donut car, locked myself in, phoned Brent, and told him what I’d seen, including the wig that might or might not have been on the mime’s head. I gave him the addresses of the stores closest to the alley.

  “I’ll have a look,” he promised.

  “Do you want me to wait for you?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks. Nina left the tote bag she uses as a purse in my car. I need to take it back to her.”

  “See you Wednesday.” We disconnected.

  Nina’s loft was above Klassy Kitchens, a kitchen renovation store on Wisconsin Street about ten blocks south of downtown Fallingbrook. I didn’t want to leave the recognizable donut car close to the Mime Mobile. I drove around a different block, found a parking space up the street from Klassy Kitchens, and walked the rest of the way.

  Nina had her own door at the street. The door was extra-tall and extra-wide to accommodate whatever anyone might need to store in a loft. I pushed the doorbell button. Far above me, a bell rang. Klassy Kitchens had high ceilings, and Nina’s second-floor apartment was about one-and-a-half stories up.

  No one came to the door. I knocked.

  The door wasn’t locked.

  It wasn’t even latched.

  With an eerie squ
eak, it swung open.

  It seemed strange that Nina had neither locked nor latched her street door, but maybe she’d received my message and had left the door open for me to bring her bag up to her loft.

  Expecting someone to climb the stairs to her apartment instead of running down them herself didn’t seem like something Nina would do.

  I pushed the door open farther. The stairwell was dark.

  I called, “Nina?” I heard a couple of thumps from, I thought, her loft. Resting my hand on the jamb, I leaned in and shouted, “Nina!” She still didn’t answer.

  I let go of the jamb. My fingers brushed the metal latch plate. It felt cracked and uneven as if someone had tampered with it. Had Nina broken into her own apartment? I took off my backpack, pulled out my phone, and turned on its flashlight. The latch plate was dented.

  I straightened and hollered up the stairway, “Nina! I’m coming up!”

  I felt for a light switch but didn’t find one. Light shined dimly from above, though, and I had my phone’s flashlight. I slung the straps of Nina’s bag and my backpack over my shoulder. Gripping the handrail with one hand and my phone with the other, I climbed quickly, not quite running, up the wide stairway. On the large landing outside Nina’s loft, I tripped over the screwdriver she must have used to pry at the lock downstairs. I kicked the screwdriver aside.

  Nina’s loft door, another industrial-sized one, was also unlatched. A strip of light crossed from the crack between the jamb and the door to a corner of the otherwise dark landing. The latch plate was scratched and bent. Nina must have used the screwdriver on this lock, too.

  “Nina?”

  Something scuffled like a dog or a cat playing on the floor. Nina didn’t have pets. Chills galloped up and down my spine. I pushed the door open.

  Unlike the walls of some lofts where brickwork was exposed, Nina’s walls were stark white. Spotlights above the far wall were focused on the masterpiece that Nina was preparing, the final painting for the show in Madison. The painting was the largest one that would probably fit through her doors and stairway, about ten feet tall and even wider than it was tall. It rested on the hardwood floor and came close to the high white ceiling. The painting was gorgeous blues and greens that made me feel like I was diving into a lake surrounded by forested mountains.