Beyond a Reasonable Donut

by Ginger Bolton

  Purr, purr.

  “That means no, right, Dep?”

  Purr.

  “What if Nina is jailed for murder, and Brent joins the DCI and moves away? You’d be losing two of your favorite people—Nina and Brent.”

  Dep stopped purring.

  Finally, I went to bed. I’d been up late the night before, also.

  Falling asleep quickly was hardly likely though, considering that I couldn’t help listening for Nina to run up onto the porch and ring the doorbell, either completely free or free on bail.

  “And maybe,” I muttered to Dep, “it would be a good thing for you-know-who to join the DCI and move away. Then you might learn to stop sitting by the front door waiting for him to show up.” When Brent wasn’t around, I didn’t dare say his name aloud in Dep’s presence. She would go downstairs and sit by the front door. I needed the comfort of her warm little body.

  I did sleep, eventually, and woke up forlorn because that morning, Nina was not going to join Dep and me for breakfast. “Nina will be out soon,” I said. Dep grabbed the end of her tail and smoothed the fur on it.

  It was Sunday, the day that Deputy Donut opened late. Dep walked nicely on her leash to work. No one tried to run us down. No one went speeding past along our route. Dep didn’t attempt to fly to the top of anyone’s hedge.

  Jocelyn arrived shortly after I settled Dep into our office. Tom and I told Jocelyn about Nina’s arrest. Red flooded Jocelyn’s face, and then she went pale and tears filled her eyes. “That’s all wrong. No one could think that Nina would hurt anything.”

  Tom and I agreed.

  Jocelyn promised, “I’ll work extra hours and extra hard until she comes back.”

  Tom reminded her, “You already work just about all day every day.” It was true. Thanks to Jocelyn and Nina, Tom and I each took two much-needed days off most weeks. A teasing glint lit Tom’s dark eyes. “You mean you haven’t been working at top capacity already?”

  I caught a glimpse of the dimple beside one corner of Jocelyn’s mouth. “Almost.”

  Again, the first customers of the day were reporters. A cameraman waited on the patio while a woman in a heathery gray sleeveless dress came in.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Tom said. Their discussion was brief, and then the woman joined the cameraman. They both stood on our patio while Tom returned to the kitchen.

  I asked him, “Did they know that Nina works here?”

  He shook his head. “If they did, they didn’t admit it. They wanted to chat—just off the record, they said—but I was not exactly welcoming.” Outside, the reporter and her cameraman had made it as far as the sidewalk. Pedestrians waved them away or shook their heads and kept walking. Tom folded his arms. “No one seems to want their fifteen minutes of fame.” He grinned. “Aha. Maybe I know why.”

  In their patrol cop uniforms, Misty and Hooligan came up the walkway between our twin patios and headed for our front door. The reporter and her cameraman got into a car parked beside the patio.

  “Misty and Hooligan are the ones who came to my place last night and arrested Nina,” I told Tom and Jocelyn. “I’ll serve them, okay, Tom?”

  “Sure, but leave the paparazzi to me if you can.”

  I watched the latest pair of reporters drive away. “Gladly.”

  Jocelyn asked me, “Are you going to scold Misty and Hooligan for arresting Nina, Emily?”

  “What? And get arrested, too?” Teasing was one way to keep myself from collapsing on the floor and refusing to move until the world started turning in the correct direction again.

  I’d barely gotten to Misty and Hooligan’s table when Misty stood, gave me a quick hug, and said, “I’m sorry for what we had to do last night.”

  Hooligan apologized, too.

  I admitted, “It was your duty. But I’m certain you have the wrong person. How’s Nina doing?”

  Misty raised her clear blue eyes to mine. “She didn’t have a good night. Her lawyer was there first thing this morning. Nina’s adamant that she’s innocent.”

  I resisted stomping a foot on our gorgeous maple floor. “Won’t they let her out on bail at least?”

  Misty straightened her spoon. “The earliest time for a bail hearing is tomorrow. And she might not get bail. The crime is serious, and besides . . .”

  Hooligan spread his hands wide on the glass tabletop. “There’s something she’s not telling us. I mean there’s something she’s not telling the detectives.”

  I chewed on a lip. “I suggested to Nina that whoever killed Zippy might have actually been after Nina. Maybe she’s realized that being in a cell in the basement of the police department is safer than living with me and working here.”

  Wearing the casual navy blue pants and shirt that he wore when on duty at the fire station, Scott came in with Samantha. She was in her EMT uniform.

  I tried not to think about the fact that get-togethers with these four good friends often included Brent. “You all came to cheer me up, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Scott laughed. “Don’t most of us come here most days?”

  I couldn’t help grinning back at him. “All of you except Samantha. Besides, you cheer me even when I don’t need cheering.”

  Hooligan and Samantha gazed into each other’s eyes.

  I asked, “What can I get you? Our featured coffee today is from Kenya. Although it’s a light roast, it has a good, strong flavor. We also have fresh blueberry fritters. They’re coated in granulated sugar, not confectioners’ sugar.”

  Misty shuddered. “I don’t ever want to see powdered sugar again.”

  “Did you have to remind us?” I smiled to show I was joking.

  “Yes, I had to. I need comfort food. Just bring me an unraised chocolate donut with fudge frosting. And a mug of the Kenyan coffee.”

  Hooligan opted for a blueberry fritter and Colombian coffee.

  Samantha asked for green tea, but no donuts, fritters, or anything else delicious and high in calories.

  Scott never seemed to fill out his tall frame. He wanted the Kenyan coffee plus a cinnamon twist and a long John.

  I brought them their beverages and then returned to the kitchen to plate everyone’s donuts and fritters. The shop wasn’t busy, so I sat at the table with my friends for awhile. All of us except Samantha teased Hooligan that at his wedding, we would find out his real first name.

  Scott asked him, “Have you told Samantha what it is?”

  With his auburn hair and freckles, Hooligan’s lopsided grin made him look even more boyish. “Nope. I didn’t want to take a chance that she wouldn’t marry me.”

  Samantha slapped at his arm. “As if. And although he didn’t tell me what it was, I saw it when I signed the marriage license.” She giggled. “It’s not that bad, but I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  The rest of us groaned, but Hooligan gave Samantha a tender smile. “It’s not bad, just embarrassing.”

  Samantha leaned forward. “Misty and Scott will see it when they sign our marriage certificate as witnesses. They’ll be sworn to secrecy on pain of—”

  I squawked, “I’m a bridesmaid, too! Won’t I get to see and sign the marriage certificate?”

  Hooligan gave Misty a teasing look. “We chose Misty because she and I might be in life-or-death situations together. She has to be able to trust me, and who knows what I would do if she divulged my deepest secret?”

  I sat back and made a pretend sulky face.

  Hooligan told me, “You can continue calling me Hooligan. Or simply call me the luckiest man in the world.”

  Samantha rolled her eyes. “You hope.”

  Misty stared at Samantha. “Your hair is its natural color.” Samantha often streaked her dark brown hair with bright colors to give her patients something to smile about. When she and Hooligan first got engaged, she said she might have a winter wedding and powder her hair to look like snow, but she was getting married in August.

  “What color is your hair going to be when you walk up the a
isle?” I demanded.

  “You mean down the grassy slope toward the beach? You’ll see.”

  Misty and I looked at Hooligan.

  He continued gazing at Samantha. “Don’t ask me. I don’t know. She’ll be beautiful no matter what.”

  After my friends left, I helped make donuts until we had more than enough for the rest of the day, and then I went outside and parked the donut car next to the loading dock so I could vacuum and tidy it before we needed to make deliveries.

  I cleaned the trunk first, and then the passenger compartment. Pushing the vacuum brush underneath the seat behind the passenger seat, I heard a strange, fluttery-paper noise. I yanked the brush toward me.

  The vacuum cleaner was trying to suck up a manila envelope.

  Chapter 14

  Shutting off the vacuum, I muttered, “How long has that been there?” I’d swept the donut car shortly before Friday’s Faker’s Dozen Carnival. If the envelope had been underneath the seat then, I had missed it.

  Nothing was written on either side of the envelope, and it felt almost empty. I untucked the flap and pulled out part of a letter written in choppy blue script with a pen that must have gone past its best-before date. Both the top and the bottom of the pale gray stationery had been torn off, and the letter was missing a salutation and a signature. Only a few lines remained.

  was going to catch up on the rent I owed, and it wasn’t that much, so you had no right to change the locks on our apartment. Give me a key or let me in so I can have my belongings and paintings. OR ELSE.

  Who had written the letter? I peeked inside the envelope and almost missed the tiny piece of thick paper stuck in the bottom fold. I turned the envelope upside down and tapped it.

  A photograph fell out, faceup, on the seat.

  I couldn’t help a gasp of recognition. The photo had been cut in the shape of Nina’s locket. The woman in the picture appeared to be a perfect match for the man that Nina had said was an ancestor. The woman wore a black dress with puffs at the tops of the sleeves and a high collar. Her hair was pinned in horizontal rolls. Stiff black feathers stuck up from one side of her black hat. She’d been better at holding still than the man had been. Her face wasn’t as blurred, but her expression was every bit as severe. They both might have been Nina’s ancestors, but tall Nina with her big, waiflike eyes didn’t resemble either one of them. Maybe she would if she ate lots more donuts, which wasn’t likely to happen if she stayed in jail.

  I left the car and the vacuum cleaner, hurried into the office, phoned Brent, and told him, “I’m at Deputy Donut. I found something in our delivery car that might have a bearing on the Zippy Melwyn case.”

  He said he’d be right over.

  “I’ll be in the office. Coffee and a donut?”

  “Just coffee, thanks.”

  When Brent arrived, looking groomed and calm but also a little distracted, in his light gray suit and deep blue tie, I’d already photographed the torn letter and the locket-shaped photo so that I’d have copies. I placed a mug of fresh, hot coffee on our office coffee table for him.

  Dep pelted down her stairways and ramps and meowed at Brent until he picked her up. We sat on our office couch. Dep curled between us, but she snuggled up to Brent’s leg, not mine. I handed him the envelope. He pulled out the partial letter, studied it, set it on the table, and looked at me questioningly.

  “There’s more,” I told him, “inside the envelope.”

  A grin twitched at the corner of his mouth. “You mean I failed to detect something?”

  “I’d never say that.”

  Dep flopped over to her side with her back against Brent’s leg and stretched her own legs toward me. “Mew.”

  Brent removed the tiny photo and held it by the edges between his thumb and forefinger. “I . . . see,” he said. “This looks a lot like the eight-year-old Nina’s drawing. It must have come from Nina’s locket. Could Nina have left this envelope in your donut car?”

  “Possibly. She could have dropped it, or it could have fallen out when she tossed her tote bag into the rear seat. But if it’s true that Zippy stole Nina’s locket a long time ago, Zippy was the one who had the photo from the locket, and Zippy must have left that envelope in the donut car. It was close to where we’d put the sugar. Maybe Zippy accidentally dropped the envelope when she stole the sugar. Maybe she intended to keep that written threat with the diary you told me about.”

  Brent conceded, “They do seem to belong together.”

  I pointed at the envelope. “I don’t have a clue why the eighteen-nineties woman’s portrait was also in the envelope, unless it was a convenient place to keep the portrait when Zippy hid Nina’s coded address.” I reminded Brent that Zippy had gotten a good look at the top page on Marsha Fitchelder’s clipboard and had apparently connected Nina and me to Deputy Donut. “I thought it was probably because of our hats, but if Zippy was in Fallingbrook looking for Nina, which if you’re right about their relationship seems likely, Zippy might have recognized Nina, either by remembering Nina’s appearance when she was eight, or by noticing the family resemblance.”

  “It’s possible that Nina gave Zippy her address. They could have stayed in touch over the years. We have no reason to believe that they didn’t, and this letter makes me think that they might have.”

  I argued, “Then Zippy would have known Nina’s address and wouldn’t have needed a coded version of it.”

  “Maybe she wrote it as a memory crutch.”

  “It’s also possible that they didn’t stay in touch and Nina changed her name because she was afraid of Zippy, but Zippy tracked her down.”

  “Choosing someone else’s city as a last name isn’t the greatest idea if one is hiding from that particular person. I know you’d like to help Nina, but none of this does.”

  “Not if Nina wrote the threat. But I don’t think she did.” Seeing the look of pity on his face, I asked, “What?”

  “It’s the wording. Two different witnesses heard Nina yell at Zippy to stay away from the Deputy Donut tent ‘or else.’”

  I remembered Nina confessing that she’d yelled at Zippy to stay away from the Deputy Donut tent. I didn’t remember her saying anything about a nonspecific threat. “Lots of people say ‘or else’ when they can’t come up with better wording on the spur of the moment. Or maybe the witnesses merely imagined it because people often add those words. Zippy probably tore off the signature because it was hers, and it would have contradicted her diary entries about Nina threatening her, and she tore off the salutation because she wrote the letter to someone else, not Nina. Or maybe there never was a salutation or a signature. Zippy could have torn off the top and bottom of the sheet of stationery. She could have written those threats herself in the hope that anyone who read them would mistakenly believe that Nina wrote the threatening letter to Zippy. It wouldn’t be easy to tear a letter the way this one’s torn. Wouldn’t we usually lose part of the writing above and below this snippet? This looks staged to me.”

  “It would to me, too, except that the lines in the snippet are widely spaced, so the rest of the letter could have been also.” Brent pointed at the fragment of paper. “Do you know if Nina has ever had a roommate?”

  “I don’t know about ever. Maybe in art school? I think she’s lived alone in that loft above Klassy Kitchens ever since she started renting it. She’d been there a couple of years already when we hired her. It’s possible that she had a roommate before I met her.” I picked up a shopping list from our desk. “Nina printed this. I don’t have a sample of her handwriting, but it’s hard to imagine Nina, who prints shopping lists with such elegant printing, writing in such a choppy way.” I gave him the list.

  He studied it and set it down.

  I handed him Kassandra’s job application. “Here’s yesterday’s job applicant’s printing. It’s more like the writing on that piece of a letter.”

  “I’m not sure we need to add Kassandra Pyerson to this mix.”

  I re
minded him that she’d been hanging around the donut car on Friday morning. “She could have put the envelope in the car and locked it before I saw her. And she came here looking for a job, she said, but she also claimed she is an artist and asked to display her paintings here, so I’m not sure she’s quite what she pretends to be. It’s possible that she followed Zippy into Nina’s apartment and attacked her there.”

  “I can take the envelope and its contents. They might point to clues that would help us solve the case, but it’s like with the locket. You, and not the police, found them, so we don’t have a proper chain of custody, and they wouldn’t help much in court. Which might be a good thing if Nina wrote the letter.”

  “I don’t think she did.” I changed the subject. “Did you find Zippy Melwyn’s name on Marsha Fitchelder’s list of exhibitors?”

  “More or less. Zippy registered under the name of Zippy the Mime and was honest about her car’s license number.”

  “What about the magician?”

  “There were several magicians. None of them gave the license number you found on that black van, but one of them, who called himself Marv the Marvelous, applied with a Wisconsin license number that does not exist. He claimed it belonged to a dark brown van.”

  “Was it the license number the pickpocketing magician used when he applied to other carnivals and fairs?”

  “No. One of the reasons we’re having trouble catching him is he never gives the same name, vehicle, and license number when he applies to perform at events. And some of the other magicians at the Faker’s Dozen Carnival worked at other fairs where your thieving magician was picking pockets.”

  “Don’t call him mine! Is Marv the Marvelous your prime suspect in the pickpocketing case? Because of the faked license number?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he might not have anything to do with the windowless black van?”

  “I’m not ruling that out. Thank you again for getting those photos of it. Before I go, would you like me to search your donut car in case there’s anything else?”