Tragic Toppings (14 page)

I leaned over and hugged my mother. “I’m sure he’ll be happy you’re rescheduling, with or without the pie.” I glanced at the clock and saw that it was past my bedtime, though I knew many folks were just finishing up their evening meals around town.

I stood, stretched, and then said, “If you don’t mind, I’m calling it a night. Sleep tight, Momma.”

“And the sweetest of dreams to you,” she said.

As I walked up the stairs, I glanced back down at her. There was the whisper of a smile on her lips, and I had to wonder if the prospect of her second date with Chief Martin was on her mind. Whatever its source, the smile was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, and she picked her book back up and started reading again.

It appeared that the Hart women were both thinking happy thoughts about the men in their lives, and that wasn’t a bad thing at all.

*   *   *

The next morning, Emma came into the donut shop with a package wrapped in brightly colored newspaper flyers.

“Did someone give you a present?” I asked as I worked on the batter for my apple spice cake donuts.

“It’s for you,” she said.

I finished the batter, and then washed my hands. “Why on earth would you get me a present, Emma?”

“It’s not from me,” she said as she handed the package to me. “It’s from Dad.”

“That’s even odder,” I said as I took it. “Why would your father do that?”

“Come on, Suzanne, you must realize that he feels bad about the ad.”

“I shouldn’t take this,” I said as I tried to push it back at her. “We ended up making money from the deal, so as mistakes go, it wasn’t bad at all.”

Emma smiled slightly. “Do me a favor and don’t tell him that, okay?”

I didn’t understand her grin. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because the more he thought about it, the more Dad felt as though it was as much his fault as it was mine that the ad was wrong. This is his way of saying that he’s sorry, and it’s important to me that you take it. After all, I haven’t had the upper hand with him many times in my life, and I’m not about to throw it away this time.”

“Let’s see what it is before I make a decision,” I said as I unwrapped it.

Inside the box, I found an envelope buried in a mound of shredded paper. “Your dad’s a fan of recycling, isn’t he?”

“It’s not that as much as he’s too cheap to buy anything he can cobble together himself. Go on, open the envelope. I’ve been dying to see what he gave you.”

I did as she asked, and grinned when I saw it.

Emma said impatiently, “Don’t hold out on me. What is it? A coupon for a free massage? A weekend getaway to the mountains? What?”

I held the printed letter up for her to see. “It’s a coupon for a free quarter-page ad. How thoughtful.”

“A weekend away would have been better,” she replied.

“I think this is perfect. Should we run another ad next week?”

Emma smiled. “You were really serious when you said we could try Take-a-Chance-Tuesday again?”

“Of course I was. But remember, I get to see the ad before you turn it in this time.”

“I’m not about to forget.”

I put the coupon away, and then said, “Why don’t you grab your apron and we can get to work. I’ve got an idea for lemonade donuts with real iced tea in the batter.”

She looked at me as though I’d temporarily lost my mind. “What made you think of trying that?”

“Haven’t you ever had an Arnold Palmer?” I asked. “The golfer invented them, and they’re really delicious. I thought, why not try it in a donut and see how it works out.”

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Emma said.

Later, when the first donut came out of the fryer, not even the glaze could help the new creation I’d come up with. Emma took a taste herself, and she couldn’t hide her unpleasant reaction to it.

“That’s just awful,” she said as she drank a quick swallow of coffee to get the taste out of her mouth.

“I agree,” I said as I threw out the rest of the test batch. “Hey, it was worth a shot.”

“You never know until you try,” Emma said.

I looked around for my recipe notebook so I could add this failure to it so I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake, but it wasn’t in its usual place in the kitchen. I hadn’t used it that morning, since I could make my cake and yeast donuts practically by heart, but that didn’t mean I could function without it. It held the sum total of my experience as a donut maker, successful recipes and failures alike.

I looked everywhere in back, but I couldn’t find it.

Emma looked alarmed. “Suzanne? What’s wrong?”

“My recipe book. I can’t find it,” I told her as I kept hunting through the bags of ingredients and the invoices stacked up on my desk.

“I’m sure it’s got to be here somewhere,” she said. “Calm down and take a deep breath. Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”

Half an hour later, we had to acknowledge that the recipe book was gone. That book was so much more than directions to the concoctions I made. It was the operating manual for my donut shop, and I wasn’t sure that I could run Donut Hearts without it. That didn’t even cover the history it represented, the trial-and-error approach I used in making donuts, and my thoughts and dreams since I’d first opened Donut Hearts. It was, simply put, a part of me.

Had I just carelessly misplaced it? I couldn’t see how. Emma and I had practically torn the place apart looking for it, and I was confident that it wasn’t anywhere in the shop. Then I remembered bringing it to the front with me so I could play with recipes.

We searched the entire front area even more thoroughly, but finally, I had to admit that it was gone.

That just left one other option.

During the frantic rush yesterday when three-quarters of the town had been in my shop, someone must have seized the moment and deliberately taken it.

CHAPTER 9

“What are we going to do?” Emma asked as we stood there staring at each other. It was a disaster of epic proportions, and we both knew it.

“I should have made copies,” I said, my heart sinking as I spoke the words. “You kept telling me to, and I ignored you. I just don’t get it, though. Who would take it?”

Emma looked surprised by the idea. “Do you really think it’s been stolen? We could have just as easily thrown it away by accident. That’s what I was thinking, anyway.”

“Do you honestly believe that there’s the slightest chance that happened? One of us would have noticed something as big as that recipe book in the trash.”

“Maybe so, but I like that idea better than the thought that someone took it on purpose from the donut shop,” Emma said. “Has the trash run yet?”

“I don’t think so.” We both headed for the back door where we kept our trash cans. It was pickup day, but I knew the truck didn’t come by until seven, so if the recipe book was there, we’d be able to find it before they came.

I opened the back door as I flipped on the outside light. Emma was right behind me, wearing a pair of gloves, and holding another set. “Here, put these on.”

I did as she asked, and then I lifted the first lid. “This is going to be messy.”

It wasn’t, though.

Our trash cans, every last one of them, had already been emptied.

*   *   *

“How is that possible?” I asked, getting more distraught by the second. “I would have heard Sam coming down the alley if he’d been by.” Sam Winston was our chief refuse and recycling engineer, a title he’d given himself when he’d first taken the job of working on the town’s garbage truck.

Emma looked as though she wanted to cry, and I felt the same way myself.

I walked over to Gabby’s back door, and on a whim, I lifted her lid.

It was still full.

“This is odd,” I told Emma.

“What did you find?” she asked as she joined me.

We both stared down into the full trash can, and Emma said, “That just doesn’t make sense. Why would Sam take ours and leave Gabby’s?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if it was Sam at all.” Was I making any sense, or just being paranoid?

“Come on, Suzanne, nobody’s stealing our trash.”

“How else do you explain it? Maybe they didn’t want to be seen walking out with my book, so they stashed it in the trash so they could come back when we were gone and retrieve it.”

“There aren’t any military secrets in it,” Emma said. “Why would someone go to that much trouble?”

“I don’t know, but if they did it to get my attention, it worked. We might be able to limp along without it, but it’s not going to be easy.” I dreaded the thought of re-creating the recipes in that book. It would be a real nightmare, and in the end, I still wouldn’t have my book back. In baking, the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon could mean success, or complete and utter failure.

“You can do it,” Emma said. “I’ll help you.”

“How do we even know where to begin?” I tried to hide the hopeless feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it was no use. I was beaten, and I knew it better than anyone else.

“You start on the basic batter mix we use for cake donuts, and I’ll sit down and try to write down as much as we can remember.”

“Do you honestly think that’s going to work?”

She shrugged. “At this point, I’m not sure what else we can do.”

Emma had a point. If someone was trying to distract me from Tim’s murder by stealing my recipe book, they couldn’t have found a better way to do it short of burning Donut Hearts to the ground.

*   *   *

By the time we were ready to open, we were both exhausted, and I’d written down as many recipes as I could remember. Emma and I had worked frantically trying to put out our donuts, but about a third of them didn’t pass our taste test after they were finished. Under the stress of not having the recipe book as a safety net, I’d somehow managed to mess up several of the recipes that I made all the time. We had plenty of plain cake, frosted, and glazed donuts for sale, but our specialty section was kind of sparse.

This was clearly not going to do, but I wasn’t sure what other options I had until we could figure something out.

Just before opening, I tacked a hand-lettered sign to the cash register for all the world to see.

Emma whistled, and then read it aloud.

“Lost, one recipe book, handwritten in a plain black and white notebook. $500 reward for its safe return. No questions asked. See the management for more details.”

“Five hundred dollars?” Emma asked. “Isn’t that a lot of money for a book?”

“How much is the shop worth?” I asked her. “I want those recipes back by midnight, and I’m willing to do just about anything I have to do to get it.”

“I guess so. Don’t worry, Suzanne. It will turn up.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, though I wasn’t at all sure the offered reward would work. If someone took it out of spite, maybe we’d get a taker, but if the purpose of the theft was to distract me, I doubted I’d ever see the book again.

For the first time in months, I wasn’t excited when I opened my doors to the public.

It was going to be a long day, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. If only I’d made a copy one of the dozens of times I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

Emma had made a mistake yesterday with her ad, but mine had made it look insignificant by comparison.

I just hoped it turned up before I had to shutter my windows and lock my doors forever.

*   *   *

“Morning,” Jake said a few hours later as he came in. “George is finding a place to park, so he’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Hello,” I answered, trying my best to put a bright smile on for him. I didn’t get to see him all that often, and I wasn’t about to let the loss of my recipe book ruin it for either one of us.

I didn’t have to say another word, though.

Jake read the sign with the reward notice, then looked sadly at me. “What happened, Suzanne?”

“That says it all, doesn’t it? My recipe book is gone,” I said.

“Do you think someone actually took it?” Jake asked.

“There’s a possibility that we could have lost it,” I answered, “but I don’t think so. I think someone stole it to keep me from looking into Tim’s murder.” Saying it out loud sounded a little ridiculous. I wasn’t sure what use that book would be, even if they made donuts for a living. Emma had said it a hundred times when I’d had her look up a recipe. My handwriting was tough enough to read when I knew what it said. For an untrained eye, it would be impossible to get more than general ideas about how to make the donuts I offered.

“You don’t think it was lost by accident, do you?” Jake asked. He tapped the sign. “You never take it out of the shop, right?”

“No,” I admitted.

“And it’s a little big not to notice if you accidently throw it away. I’m assuming you’ve already checked your trash.”

“It was empty before we got to it,” I said. “There’s something curious about that, though. Gabby’s trash cans were still full when we checked them, but there wasn’t anything in ours. I can’t imagine Sam taking ours but leaving hers.”

“Has anyone shown any interest in what you’ve been doing here lately?”

“Just idle talk,” I said. “I get an offer for the place at least once a month, but nobody is ever serious about it. I know it might sound crazy, but I honestly think it was stolen to keep me from digging into Tim’s murder.”

“You said that before, but I’m not sure how it connects,” Jake said as I poured him a cup of coffee.

“What better way to distract me than to steal my book,” I said as George walked in.

“What book? Who stole it, and why?” George asked us.

“My recipes are missing,” I said softly. Jake and I were keeping our voices low. I wasn’t sure George had that volume level in his repertoire. He was the type who announced a great deal of what he said.

“That’s serious business,” he said as I handed him a cup of coffee.

“What kind of donuts do you two want?”

“I’ll take a plain cake donut and a powdered one,” Jake said.

I grinned at him. “You don’t have to impress me with your appetite. I know you’re fond of my offerings.”

“I’m not trying to impress you. I’m holding back. Suzanne, your donuts are great.”