Powdered Peril (3 page)

I met him at the patrol car, shielding my eyes from the bright light. It was quite a change from my flashlight, with its dying beam barely able to light my way back to my vehicle. I’d have to remember to get new batteries for it. With only a few seconds of feeble light left, I shut it off and threw it onto the passenger seat of the Jeep.

“Where did you just go?” Officer Grant asked as he scanned the donut shop and the land around it with the monstrous flashlight-weapon combination in his hand. Honest to goodness, it was big enough to bring down a bear. He might have to do just that someday, since there had been a few bear sightings around the area over the past few months. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone, as far as I was concerned. It just made sense to me. After all, we were developing more and more of the woodland creatures’ natural habitat, so why was everyone so shocked when they started invading our turf?

“I followed the yellow brick road,” I admitted as I pointed to the tracks. “Well, it’s not a road exactly, it’s more like a path, but it’s yellow; there’s no denying it.”

Officer Grant fought back a grin, but I could still see it. This was serious police business; at least that was the way that he was treating it. I kept my other quips to myself as I asked, “May I go start on the donuts now while you search out here? I’m kind of tight on time because of the delay.” I’d cut the shop’s hours, working on donuts from three to six in the kitchen, selling them from six until eleven, and then cleaning up after everyone else went home. It made the day more reasonable, and I almost felt as though I could actually have a life of my own outside the donut shop, as much as I loved being there.

He considered it for a moment or two, and then nodded. “I can’t see why not. Go on in. Lock up when you get inside, and I’ll knock when I’m finished here.”

I smiled my thanks and moved inside after unlocking the front door and carefully avoiding the spilled paint as I walked, though I knew it was dry. I noticed that the door handle had a splatter of yellow paint on it as well, and I was glad that the vandal hadn’t had any red paint at his disposal. I wasn’t sure I’d be as flip as I was being now if it had looked as though the front of my shop had been covered in blood.

Once I was inside, I put on the coffeepot and turned on the fryer, checked the messages on the machine, and then got started on the batter for the cake donuts. Nan wasn’t due to report for another half hour, so I still had some time to myself.

I was so focused on making donuts that I barely heard Officer Grant as he pounded on the front door fifteen minutes later.

I opened the door and let him in, noting that he, too, had stepped over the dried paint. “Find anybody out there?” I asked as I relocked the door behind him.

“No, and the tracks died before I could trace them any farther into the park. They stopped before I even got to Trish’s Boxcar Grill, so unless we find a pair of yellow-stained shoes somewhere, we’re out of luck.”

“What about fingerprints on the bucket?” I asked. “Do you think you’ll be able to find any there?”

He shrugged. “I’ve already bagged it, but I wouldn’t count on us having much luck. Unless the vandal is in our system, it will be impossible to track him down.”

“Do you think it was a man, too?” I asked.

“Absolutely.” He smiled at me as he asked, “Why do you think so?”

“Well, the shoe size, for one thing,” I admitted. “Unless it was a really big woman I don’t want to mess with, it had to be a guy.”

He grinned at me. “Dead on, Suzanne. Keep that up, and you’ll earn your Junior Detective badge yet.” His smile faded quickly as he pointed outside. “I’m afraid it’s a real mess out there. I don’t have a clue how you’re going to be able to clean it all up.”

“Hey, as long as no one got hurt, I’m counting my blessings,” I said. “Would you like some coffee before you go?”

He stifled a yawn, and then nodded. “I probably should say no, but honestly, that would be great.”

I fixed him up with a cup to go, and then let him out the front door.

I’d be able to better assess things once it was daylight, but in the meantime, I had donuts to make. There was nothing I could do about what had happened, but I could do my job, and people around here depended on me. Letting them down wasn’t going to happen.

CHAPTER 3

“Good morning, Nan,” I said to my new assistant as she walked into the kitchen of my donut shop ten minutes later. To my surprise, she’d pounded on the back door that led to the alley to summon me, an entrance and exit I rarely used myself. Had she even seen the mess up front?

“We just use this door for deliveries. Remind me to get you a key for the front door,” I said as I let her in and bolted it behind her.

“That would be lovely,” Nan said as she put her apron on. I’m a morning person by nature myself, but this woman was just a little too perky for me. Emma was unbearable until she had her first cup of coffee, but it appeared that Nan woke up every day with a smile.

It was funny; Emma had only been gone a short while, but I already missed her more than I ever could have imagined. She’d been my right hand since I’d opened Donut Hearts, and having her gone felt exactly the same as missing my two front teeth. No matter how hard I tried not to think about her absence, I continually saw her shadow everywhere I looked. Emma was off to college, though, something she’d dreamed about since she’d first come to Donut Hearts, and now I had bright and cheerful Nan.

I didn’t really want to bring up what had happened in front of the donut shop, but Nan was an employee now, and she deserved to know about it.

“Did you see the mess up front?” I asked.

“No, what happened?”

“Somebody threw a bucket of paint on the donut shop.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, clearly upset by the thought. Well, she wasn’t the only one. “May I see it?”

“Why not?” We walked up front, and I flipped on the outside lights. “Do you need to go outside?”

She took in the smeared window and could see the paint on the ground through the glass front door. “No, there’s no need. Suzanne, who would do such a thing?”

“It’s hard to say.”

That wasn’t the answer she wanted, clearly. “Do you have that many enemies?”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just a random act of vandalism.”

“Oh, well, that’s better then, isn’t it?” she asked as we walked back into the kitchen together.

“How do you figure that?” She was an odd bird, there was no doubt about that.

“Well, if you were being targeted somehow, this would just be the beginning, wouldn’t it?”

What an unpleasant way to think about it. “Anyway, I just thought you should know. Now, are you ready to make some donuts?”

“I am,” she said, and I decided to do my best to forget about what had happened.

Back in the kitchen, Nan looked at the counter at the bowls of batter I’d prepared and rubbed her hands together. “How lovely. Shall we begin?” She was a middle-aged woman with a distinctive mole on her left cheek and a nest of gray hair arranged haphazardly atop her head. From her ample and abundant figure, Nan was clearly a woman who had befriended more than her share of donuts over the years.

“I’m ready if you are,” I said with the brightest smile I could manage.

“Let’s do it then,” she answered.

I looked around to see where she should begin her tasks at Donut Hearts. “If you don’t mind, could you get started on the first round of dishes?”

“That sounds perfect to me,” she said as she started to put hot water into the sink. I had to give her credit. The woman was a dynamo.

She just wasn’t Emma, but I couldn’t hold that against her.

*   *   *

“I’m dropping donuts now, so you need to go in the dining room for a few minutes,” I said a bit later. Nan smiled, dried her hands, and dutifully moved to the front.

Forcing the batter down into the dropper required me to swing the entire contraption like a pendulum, and it had slipped out of my hands once, hitting the plaster wall hard enough to leave a mark. I hated to think what might have happened if someone had been standing in its path, so that was one of my rules. Everyone but me had to evacuate the kitchen area when it was time to drop donuts.

After making my usual run of cake donuts, I fried up a batch of a new apple and orange cake donut recipe I’d been trying to perfect, and quickly doused them with icing the moment I pulled them out of the fryer. After taking a bite, I shook my head in disappointment. The donut was still too sweet, and not enough of the fruit flavor came through. It was back to the drawing board for this recipe.

“You can come back in now,” I called out, and Nan reentered the kitchen.

I was about to throw out my latest failure when Nan surprised me. “You’re not going to just chuck those, are you?”

“I don’t have much choice. They aren’t very good,” I admitted. “Not every new recipe I try can be a winner.” I’d have to make a note in my copy of my recipe book, and tweak the ingredients and proportions yet again. I’d lost the original recipe book once to dire circumstances, and now I kept a backup on computer and an extra hard copy at the house, too. At least I had kept my computer files current when Emma had been with me. Blast it all, I was going to have to find someone else to do that for me now that she was gone.

“Can I have a taste of one before you throw them away?” Nan asked timidly.

I shrugged. “Be my guest. I doubt you’ll like them, though.”

She picked a warm donut up, took a bite, and then nodded and smiled. “Wow, that is fantastic.”

“Really?” I asked.

“It’s the best donut I’ve ever had in my life. Suzanne, you’re really good at this.”

I couldn’t believe that we were talking about the same donut. I reached over, pinched a piece off another one, and popped it in my mouth.

No, it was still too sweet for my taste.

“You really like it?” I asked. “Nan, you don’t have to be nice to me. I’m not going to fire you for being honest about my donuts. In fact, I’m counting on it.” Honestly, it would take more than I was willing to admit for me to get rid of her. Where else was I going to find someone who was willing to put up with the kind of crazy hours I worked?

“I love them. You should sell these. I’m guessing that they’ll get even better with age.”

I personally didn’t think that I had that long. So much for using Nan as my taste tester. If she truly liked these donuts, I wasn’t sure I could trust her judgment on anything. Not that I could tell her that directly. I had no intention of killing her spirit on her first day of work.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t we cut these up and offer them as free samples today? If enough folks like them, we’ll put them in the rotation. How does that sound?”

“Like a winner,” Nan said. She finished the donut she’d sampled, and then smiled again. “Suzanne, I truly do think that you’ve got a hit on your hands.”

I personally thought that she was crazy, but I was going to keep that opinion to myself.

We had more donuts to make, more dishes to wash, and more tasks to perform before we were ready to open for business, and I had no desire to do any of it by myself again if I could help it.

*   *   *

My first customer of the day was not someone I particularly wanted to see, despite the gradual thawing of our past chilly relationship. Chief Martin looked grim as he walked into the donut shop, and I didn’t even have to ask if he was there for some of our treats. Ever since the chief had left his wife in the hopes of pursuing and winning my mother’s heart, he’d been on a diet, and the results were remarkable, there was no denying it.

I had a hunch why he was there. “Before you ask, I need to tell you that I have no idea who did it. I was hoping that you’d be able to find out yourself.”

He looked as surprised as if I’d just handed him a hundred-dollar bill for no rhyme or reason. “How did you know?” Chief Martin asked in a subdued voice. He was keeping the volume down, but there was no one in the dining room but me, since Nan was in back happily doing dishes.

What was going on here? “I reported it, remember? Officer Grant came by and made a report, didn’t he?”

The light finally dawned. “I get it. You’re talking about the paint out front.”

“Of course I am,” I admitted. “What else could it be?”

He shrugged, and a frown crept over his face. “Suzanne, I’m afraid that you need to come with me.”

I couldn’t believe it. It clearly wasn’t a request. Chief Martin was actually ordering me around, something I didn’t take lightly in my donut shop. Had he learned nothing in the years since he’d known me? “I can’t do that, and you know it. It’s Nan’s first day, and I’m not about to abandon her here alone. If you think I’m going to shut the place down altogether to help find out who vandalized my shop, as much as I’d like to, I can’t afford to just leave. If there’s anything you need to ask me, or tell me, for that matter, we can do it right here just as easily as somewhere else.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked.

“As much as I can be,” I answered.

“Okay then, we’ll do it your way. We found your vandal thirty minutes ago.”

I was delighted with the news, and curious why he wasn’t more excited about solving a case, no matter how small it seemed. “That’s great news, Chief. I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time, but that paint really wrecked my day. Give me an hour in the cell with whoever did it, and I’ll make sure they’ve splashed their last bucket of paint.”

“I wish I could, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”

“Are you sure you can’t let me have a crack at him first?” I asked.

“Trust me, I would if I could, but someone else beat you to it. He’s dead, Suzanne. Someone murdered him.”

*   *   *

I took a deep breath and studied his expression before I allowed myself to react. “He’s really dead? You don’t think I did it, did you? I don’t even know who it was.”

“Take it easy,” he said. “I’m not accusing you of anything right now. The thing is, you’re involved in this, whether you want to be or not.”

I felt my chest tighten. “It’s not someone I know, is it?” My mind raced through a list of my male friends, but I couldn’t think of a single one who would want to deface my storied old building. Worse yet, I hated to think that someone I knew had been murdered. It never failed to make me sick to my stomach when I realized just how capable some people were of ending their disputes with homicide.