Beyond a Reasonable Donut

by Ginger Bolton

  I knew as soon as it was out of my mouth that it was wrong, and Brent said it for me. “Nina was expecting you, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but since she was expecting me, she wouldn’t have attacked an intruder. She probably would have run downstairs to her landlords’ shop and called the police, and then she would have waited for them and for me.”

  “If the attacker was someone besides Nina, and he believed he was attacking Nina, he might not have expected anyone and would not have dragged his victim out of sight, either. But someone did, and we believe it was Nina. People in that situation don’t always think things out perfectly. Nina must have panicked.”

  I shook my head. “Nina said her screen door was wonky and had to be jiggled for it to slide open. She knew how to do that. Whoever ran out of her apartment must have had trouble with it, and in his hurry, he punched his way out.”

  “Maybe Nina was in too much of a hurry to jiggle it. Or she knew she needed to make it appear that the person who attacked Melwyn didn’t know how to open the screen door.”

  I leaned back and folded my arms. “If I came up with a theory like that, you’d say it was a stretch.”

  The slightest twitch of a grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Probably. But Nina kept her fire escape ladder stored underneath an Adirondack chair, out of sight. Someone apparently hooked it over the railing and climbed down. Quickly. Who else would have known about that ladder, and how to get off the ledge below her balcony to the slanted roof below the ledge? She told us she is probably the only one who knew about the fire ladder.”

  “Wouldn’t a desperate person look everywhere for a way to escape? They’d find the ladder and use it, and they’d figure out getting off the ledge and the slanted roof, too.”

  “We considered that. But there are other sides to Nina that you don’t know. Dark sides. Kim Gartborg noticed it last October when she was here.”

  “Detective Gartborg took a dislike to Nina.” She’d taken a dislike to me, too, but I didn’t mention that. I slid my hands, palms against the velvet upholstery, underneath my thighs.

  Brent looked up from his notebook. “Did you know that Nina officially changed her last name about five years ago?”

  “To Lapeer?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I inched forward on the couch. “Why did she change it?”

  “She said she just wanted to, which doesn’t seem likely. Why go to the bother for a whim?”

  “I don’t know why she did that, but I suspect it’s a total coincidence that her new name is the same as the name of the city where the mime was from.”

  Brent didn’t say anything.

  I pointed out, “The woman was attacked five years after Nina changed her name. What was Nina’s last name before?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. She won’t tell us without a lawyer present.”

  “I’m glad she’s willing to accept one. Tom’s going to arrange it.”

  “He did. The lawyer will be there tomorrow.”

  I guessed, “Maybe, for the past five years, Nina’s been hiding from someone who’s a danger to her. And that person has tracked her down. I’m glad you have her in custody, and I hope she’ll be safe there until you find the right person.”

  “I’m sorry, Em, but I’m afraid we have the right person. We discovered evidence besides Nina having the motive, the opportunity, and the means. Zippy Melwyn had a diary in her car. In it, she wrote that her distant cousin, Nina, was trying to harm her and might even kill her.”

  I pulled my hands out from underneath my thighs and waved them dismissively. “That’s impossible. It can’t be the same Nina.”

  “There’s more in Zippy’s diary. Zippy was an artist.”

  “Not another one!”

  He leaned forward slightly. “What?”

  “Go on. I’ll tell you later.”

  He eased back underneath the light from the lamp. “Zippy had approached the Arthur C. Arthurs Gallery and had gotten some nibbles about displaying her art there. She claimed in her diary that Nina sabotaged her and was offered the art show that Zippy thought she should have been offered.”

  “That’s not true. Do you remember Rich Royalson?”

  “Yes.” Of course he did. He and Detective Gartborg had investigated the man’s death.

  “Royalson came into Deputy Donut and admired one of Nina’s paintings. At my suggestion, he went to The Craft Croft to see her other work. He told Mr. Arthurs about Nina. Mr. Arthurs came to Fallingbrook and assessed Nina’s paintings before he ever spoke to Nina.”

  Brent smiled. “I was on the phone with you when Arthurs made the offer. You were very excited.”

  “Zippy wasn’t telling the truth in her diary. Nina did nothing underhanded to be offered that art show.”

  “But it sounds like it has to be the same Nina. Zippy said that although she, Zippy, that is, did not attend art school and Nina did, Zippy was a better artist, and Zippy deserved the art show.”

  “None of that makes Nina a murderer. But it does make Zippy look like the nasty and jealous kind of person who would break into someone’s apartment and vandalize a painting in an attempt to destroy that other person’s artwork.”

  He agreed. “It also makes Zippy look like a person that a distant cousin might want to remove from her life.”

  “I think that the printing on that tiny piece of paper in the locket was an abbreviation of Nina’s address.” I reminded him that Zippy had taken a good look at Marsha Fitchelder’s clipboard and could have seen Nina’s address.

  “I’ll double-check, but I suspect you’re right about the abbreviation.” He wrote in his notebook and then looked up at me again. “I also believe that the locket was originally Nina’s, and that Zippy stole it, but she stole it a long time ago, not last night.”

  “What? How?”

  Brent searched through his notebook, read silently, marked his place with a finger, and told me, “We looked into Zippy’s connections and her past. Going way back, we discovered that Zippy was at a Melwyn family reunion in Pennsylvania the summer she was thirteen. A distant cousin named Nina, who was eight at the time, was also there. When Nina was packing to leave, she couldn’t find her locket. The same man owns the resort today. He remembers this determined eight-year-old marching into his office and describing the locket she’d lost. She drew pictures of it, too, and of the man and woman whose photos were in the locket. The resort owner kept those pictures. He’s been sorry ever since that the locket didn’t turn up. Even afterward, he held on to the pictures in case someone found the locket and because they were cute and he thought the spunky eight-year-old had a surprising amount of artistic talent.” Brent’s words put me somewhere between denial and disbelief. Ignoring my head shaking, he went on. “The resort owner scanned the drawings and sent them to us. He was right about the eight-year-old Nina. She was quite an artist, and observant, too. She caught the old gentleman’s stern expression and replicated the design on the outside of the locket. It has to be the same one.”

  “The resort owner must have known Nina’s last name. Was it Melwyn?”

  “He didn’t think so, but he apologized for not remembering it. Many of the people at the reunion had last names that weren’t Melwyn. He said he’s afraid he’s forgetting a lot of things lately, and he’s glad his grown children have taken over the running of the resort.” Brent stroked Dep with his free hand. “He lost track of Nina’s name and address. He’ll contact us if the name comes to him. We don’t like to put ideas into people’s heads, but we did give him a list of possible names, most of them towns and cities in Michigan, and Lapeer was one of them. He didn’t recognize any of the names we suggested.” Brent tilted his head and gazed at me. “And maybe this is a coincidence, and I don’t see it as conclusive evidence of anything, but Nina and Zippy resembled each other. It’s easy to believe they could have been related.”
/>   Chapter 13

  I took a deep breath. “You’re right about the resemblance. I already guessed that Zippy tried to look like Nina when she broke into Nina’s apartment, probably because she didn’t want anyone to question her. And your description of the eight-year-old girl does sound a lot like the Nina we know. Nina didn’t say when Zippy stole the locket, but she didn’t dispute it when I implied that Zippy had stolen it yesterday.”

  Brent reminded me gently, “It doesn’t matter when it was stolen. Nina could have seen it in Zippy’s possession after Nina knocked the ladder down. That could have been enough to make Nina want to do more harm than she’d already done to Zippy. Could Nina have recognized Zippy from having met her before, even a long time ago?”

  “I’m not sure about when Zippy was made up as a mime. When Nina came in and saw me trying to revive Zippy, Nina seemed to go into shock, which was understandable considering that a nearly lifeless person was in her apartment. But maybe it was because she’d recognized her distant cousin after her makeup had been replaced by powdered sugar.”

  “Or before that, when Nina saw her without the makeup. And near the top of Nina’s ladder.”

  I shook my head. “Stealing a locket, writing what I suspect were lies about a cousin, working with a thief at a carnival, breaking into and vandalizing someone’s apartment—Zippy was not a nice person. She must have had other enemies. Like that magician. Even if Zippy wasn’t working with him to rob people, she probably saw what he was doing. Maybe he thought she knew too much about him and might report him to the police.” I thought for a second and asked, “Whose fingerprints were on the screwdriver and the bucket of sugar? Mine would be on the bucket from when I removed it from Zippy’s head, plus the fingerprints from any of us at Deputy Donut could be on it. Yesterday morning, Nina carried the bucket from the shop to the car, and then someone stole it from the car—Zippy, I guess, from what you said about someone seeing her carry it last night.”

  Still sitting underneath the only lit lamp in the dark room, Brent nodded. “The prints on the screwdriver were Zippy’s, underneath prints from someone wearing gloves, so the screwdriver might have belonged to Zippy. The prints on the bucket were yours, consistent with your pulling it off Zippy’s head. The bucket had been wiped clean before you touched it.”

  “Nina didn’t need to wipe prints from that bucket, since everyone would expect her prints to be on it. Could you tell what kind of gloves the person who handled the screwdriver was wearing?”

  Apparently, he decided that the information didn’t need to be kept secret. “Woven, with traces of white cotton fibers. I expect we’ll discover that they were Zippy’s gloves, and she touched it both before and after she put on the gloves.”

  “Did you see any evidence that someone in that apartment was wearing leather gloves, like black ones?”

  He gave his head a definitive shake. “No leather gloves at all.”

  “That doesn’t rule out the magician handling things and wiping off his glove prints.”

  “It doesn’t.” Did he have to be so agreeable about everything except freeing Nina?

  Although I wasn’t sure how it would help her, I tried another question. “I’m sure that most if not all of the white powder in that bucket was sugar, but has it been tested for additions like poisons or drugs that might have been added after the brand-new pail was opened?”

  “Nothing has been found so far besides sugar, but the investigation continues. Nina’s hair and clothing were spattered by white powder when I arrived.” Dep stretched and curled up again on his lap.

  “So were mine. And when Nina first got there, she didn’t have a speck of sugar on her. I would have noticed. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been thinking about white powder.”

  “You could have been distracted.”

  “That’s an understatement, but I’m sure I would have seen at least some white powder on Nina if it had been there.”

  He looked down and wrote in his notebook. “I believe you, Em, I always believe you, but—”

  I finished for him. “Detective Gartborg is sticking to her own theories.”

  He looked up at me then, and I thought I saw pain in his eyes.

  I conceded, “They’re good theories, but they don’t fit with what I experienced and what I know about Nina. Someone else had sugar on himself or herself that night. It’s a pity we didn’t find them then.”

  “It is.”

  “They’ll have removed it by now.”

  “They will.” Hugging Dep close, he stood, turned on the lamp nearest me, and sat down. Dep looked boneless and completely contented and relaxed on his lap. He flipped to a new page in his notebook. “You told us that you did an abdominal thrust to help clear Zippy’s airways, and then Nina took over holding Zippy upright to help her breathe. Did you ask Nina to take over, or did she offer?”

  “I asked her if she would prefer holding Zippy up or splinting her wrists and ankle. She chose holding Zippy up, so I put the splints on.” I winced. Could Nina’s choice put her in prison for life? And destroy her dream at the moment when the dream was about to come true?

  “When Nina took over, was Zippy breathing?”

  “Yes, with difficulty.”

  “Samantha said that Zippy was barely breathing when she got there. They put her on a respirator, but the powdered sugar had done its work.”

  “Nina was trying to help Zippy. I’m sure of it. And there are other people you should probably investigate besides that magician. Marsha Fitchelder, the carnival organizer, quarreled with Zippy yesterday morning. Marsha was angry and shouting, while Zippy only mimed her side of the argument, which seemed to infuriate Marsha. I understand that, a little later, Marsha called the police to tow Zippy’s car, but the police refused because the car was on public property.”

  “I’ve read that report.”

  “Zippy was proud of herself.” I described Zippy’s chalk-one-up-to-me miming reaction when one of our customers told us about the police refusing to tow the Mime Mobile. I admitted, “Maybe it’s a stretch that Marsha was mad enough to attack Zippy, but I never like to leave a theory un-theorized.”

  “I’ve noticed. If you had joined the police force immediately after college like Misty did, you could be a detective by now.”

  “Not ahead of Misty.”

  “She doesn’t want to be a detective.”

  “Fallingbrook doesn’t need another detective. You’d have to join the DCI.”

  “You’re not the first one to say that today. Kim also mentioned it.”

  Detective Gartborg. She would. Hiding my own feelings about the possibility of a friend moving away, I tried to think of what might be best for him. “Would you like working for the DCI? You’d be in charge of serious cases.”

  His face gave nothing away, and he answered the question with a question of his own. “Who doesn’t like being in charge?”

  “Probably someone. Nina is not a killer. I can’t tell you how I know that. I just do.”

  He stroked Dep. “I’ll keep an open mind, Em. Earlier this evening, you started to say something about another artist. What was it?”

  “One came into the shop today, supposedly looking for a job, but I think she was actually looking for a place to display and sell her art. The name she wrote on her job application was Kassandra Pyerson.” I spelled it for him. “The photos she showed me of her paintings were good, so I suggested she should join The Craft Croft. I don’t really think she killed someone she thought was Nina in order to open a job vacancy, but there’s something off about her. The first time I saw her was yesterday morning at the carnival. I was climbing the hill to look for the confectioners’ sugar, and she was peering into our donut car. I called out and asked if she wanted to see inside the car. I was sure she heard me, but she turned away and started toward a gray car. I know there are zillions of gray cars, so I’m not saying that she tried to run Nina down on our way here from work this afternoon, but I can’t help wondering if th
ere’s a connection between the bucket of sugar, Zippy, Kassandra Pyerson, and the gray car. Oh, and as I told you, that black windowless van was parked nearby when Kassandra was hanging around the donut car, also.”

  Brent finished writing what I told him, stood, and handed Dep to me. She jumped off my lap, landed silently on the wide planks of the pine floor, and rubbed against Brent’s ankles, the little traitor. Brent scooped her into his arms. “Thank you for your help, Emily. I’ll go over all of it with Kim. As I said, she thinks we’ve got the right person.”

  I stood and put my fists on my hips. “Do you think Nina could have killed someone? Her cousin?”

  It took him a second to answer. “I don’t know her as well as you do, but the evidence against her is strong. Remember, she let you believe that the locket had been stolen yesterday, when it appears to have been stolen a long time before that. Nina keeps secrets, even from you. I’m sorry to have to disillusion you, Em. Good night, you two.” He gave Dep a knuckle rub, handed her to me, and left.

  Knowing he’d stay on my porch until he heard me lock the door, I set Dep down and pushed the dead bolt into place with as much force and as loudly as I could.

  I picked Dep up, turned out both lamps, sank into the couch cushions, and let bleakness descend with the darkness. I hadn’t told Brent about the way that Zippy had leaned away from Nina. I’d thought that Zippy was too weak to stay upright, even with help, but had she actually been afraid of Nina? She must have been certain that Nina was the same Nina as her distant cousin, and jealousy and long-held grudges must have made her break into Nina’s apartment. She could have been dodging Nina because she was afraid of what Nina might do to her, not because she believed that Nina had already attacked her. Zippy could have seen her attacker. If Nina and I had managed to keep Zippy alive, Zippy could have told the police that Nina had not attacked her. What had Zippy tried to tell me? A die. A seized her.

  I muttered to Dep, “I can’t possibly be wrong about Nina, can I?” Dep only purred. I asked her, “Should I have told Brent about Zippy maybe cringing away when Nina approached her?”