Tragic Toppings (20 page)

“Donut Hearts,” I answered automatically as I picked up the telephone.

“It’s Chief Martin,” I heard on the other end. “Got a second, Suzanne?”

That was odd. “Sure. Is there something wrong?”

“No. Yes. I’m not sure,” he said.

“Well, as long as you’re clear about it.”

He hesitated, and then said, “Forget it. I shouldn’t have called.”

“Hang on,” I said. “It’s clearly something, or you wouldn’t have bothered calling. Go on, I’ve got time.”

There was a real heaviness in his voice as he finally said, “It’s about your mother. I need some advice.”

I nearly dropped the telephone. Seriously? He was asking me for help in wooing my mom? I wasn’t at all certain I wanted to give dating tips to the chief of police. “Anything specific you wanted to know? She loves yellow roses.”

“No, it’s about this whole dating business. I don’t know why, but it’s just not working. I’m trying everything in my power to make an impression on her, but it fails miserably every time I do something special.”

“That’s your problem, then,” I said, without even taking a moment to filter what I was saying. Normally I’d never speak to the chief like that.

“Go on. You’ve got my attention. I’m listening.”

I took a deep breath, and then said, “Stop trying so hard. Be yourself the next time the two of you go out. If she doesn’t like you the way you are, it’s not going to work anyway, and taking fancy carriage rides and eating at hoity-toity places aren’t going to matter one way or the other.”

“So you’re saying that I should be myself,” he replied softly. “The sad thing is, that never even occurred to me. I guess it’s worth a shot. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Emma must have let herself in while I was on the telephone, because she was standing in the doorway when I hung up.

“Who was that?”

I had no real desire to go into it with her. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I looked at her and added, “I thought you were sleeping in today, and instead, you’re here early.”

“What can I say? I’m crazy about making donuts.”

I loved Emma’s enthusiasm, and her clear desire to help me save the shop. “Then let’s get started, shall we?” I told her about the recipe book, and she was just as upset as I was. There was nothing we could do about it, though, so we did our best to forget the bad news.

By the time we were ready to open, I’d come up with a game plan. It wasn’t for Chief Martin’s goal to romance my mother, or even a way to save the donut shop, but it was an idea about how we could tackle Tim’s murder case. Jake and George were still working on Orson and Stu, so that left Gina and Betsy for Grace and me. My best friend had made it clear that she’d help, something I counted on. I was so glad she hadn’t taken the job in San Francisco. Having her close by meant more to me than piles of gold in my bank account would. It was a shame we couldn’t get started until after noon, but Donut Hearts had to come first. Besides, it would give Grace a chance to at least take a stab at doing her job. I knew her hours were flexible, and even more so since she’d become a supervisor, but I didn’t want her to ever get in trouble because of me.

As I opened the front door and flipped the sign over, I found an older woman dressed in an elegant suit waiting impatiently for me. Her purse alone was probably worth more than a week of my receipts at the shop.

“Good morning,” I said.

“You’ve got to help me,” she said as she came in, clearly frazzled by something.

“Should I call the police?” I asked as I reached for my cell phone.

“What? No, it’s not that kind of crisis. I need donuts.”

I smiled at her. “Then you’ve come to the right place. We happen to have a few on hand.”

“How much do you want?” she asked.

I quoted her a price for a single donut, but she just shook her head when I told her the amount. She shook her head as she reached for her checkbook. “No, you don’t understand,” she said as she waved her hand around the cases. “I want them all.”

“
All
of them?” I’d never had a request like that in my life.

“That’s right. I have an important meeting this morning, and my caterer quit without warning. This is the best I can do at the spur of the moment.”

I thought about chastising her for her commentary on my donuts, but I couldn’t really afford to run her off. Besides, my donuts were perfectly capable of defending themselves.

“You can have half of them,” I said.

“Why not everything?” she asked petulantly. This was a woman who was clearly used to getting what she wanted. “Let me assure you, cost is not an issue.”

“It may not be, but my regular customers are important to me. I’m not about to disappoint all of them just because you’re in a bind.”

She frowned at me, and then nodded. “I can respect that. My late husband was a businessman. He had a soft heart for his clients, too.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

“I’m not,” she said with a scowl. “It took years for me to stiffen his backbone enough so that we could live comfortably.” She bit her lower lip, and then nodded. “Very well. How much for half of your inventory?”

Her attitude was really starting to bother me. Normally I would give a nice discount on the volume she was buying, but the imp inside me quoted the price as though she’d bought them one at a time, and then I added a hefty inconvenience surcharge to the order as well for the aggravation and implication that my donuts were anyone’s second choice.

She didn’t even flinch as she wrote the check. As she pressed it into my hand, she said, “That includes delivery, of course.”

I was tempted to say yes, especially having that check in my hand, but I had to tweak her one last time. Evidently her comment about my donuts having to “do” was bothering me more than I’d realized. “I have to hire someone myself for that. For another fifty, I’ll have them delivered anywhere within a thirty-mile radius in under an hour.”

She nodded, and then pulled a fifty out of her purse. “I need them in thirty minutes at the Oakmont Country Club.”

“Done,” I said.

After she was gone, I locked the door behind her, and went into the kitchen to tell Emma the news. “Can you borrow your dad’s truck?” I asked.

“Sure, I guess so, as long as I fill the gas tank back up. When do you need it?”

I glanced at the clock. “Right now.”

“Where are you going?”

“One of us is making a donut run,” I said. When I brought her up to date on what had happened, she said, “Good for you for not selling them all.”

“Don’t think too highly of me. I charged her enough to give the rest of them away free if I wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to, do you?” she asked with a smile.

“Not on your life, but unless I miss my guess, we’ll be closed before ten.”

“And that’s a bad thing how, exactly?”

I grinned at her. “I’m not complaining. Now go get your dad’s truck and I’ll start boxing up donuts. As soon as you’re back, we’ll start loading.”

Emma smiled. “Are you coming with me? It could be fun.”

“No, somebody’s got to stay and run the shop. You can always stay here and work the front, if you’d like.”

“And miss getting paid to drive donuts around? You’re kidding, right?”

I just made it as Emma came back with the truck, and we got her loaded in no time.

Once Emma was on the road, I looked at our sparse display cases and thought about making another batch of cake donuts, but there really wasn’t time, with customers coming in. Today, this was just going to have to do.

Emma came back an hour later, and our offerings were already running low. At the rate we were going, Donut Hearts would shut down by nine. I’d probably disappoint a few folks, but I’d made the best compromise I could, given the circumstances. For today, the early bird got the donut, and the others would have to wait for another day.

Emma waved a twenty in the air. “She tipped me, can you believe it?”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

As she started to put the money in our tip jar, I said, “You earned it. Keep it.”

“So I can go to the movies this afternoon?” she asked with a grin.

I smiled. “You can go wherever you want to.” I took the fifty I’d charged for delivery and handed it to her as well. “You can have whatever’s left from this, too, after you fill your dad’s gas tank.”

As she took it, she said, “Won’t he be surprised? I just hope he doesn’t think I’m going to make a habit of it.”

*   *   *

As the donuts dwindled to nothing, Emma kept up with the dishes, and true to my prediction, we were out of things to sell just before nine. I made a sign and put it on the door.

“Sorry, folks. We ran out of donuts today, but come back again tomorrow. Donut Hearts.”

“I hate to do this,” I said as Emma and I left the shop. “I feel as though I’m playing hooky skipping out like this.”

“You deserve some time off,” she said. “Want to go to the movies with me later?”

I laughed. “Sorry, but I’ve got plans.”

“More crime-busting, I’m sure,” she said, absolutely giddy from the combination of freedom and money in her pocket.

“Did you happen to ask your mom about the donut recipes?” I asked as we stood on the sidewalk in front of Donut Hearts.

“I never got a chance to,” Emma said. “She’s left to visit her sister for a few days in Virginia. I can call her right now if you want me to.”

We’d limped along okay without any outside help so far, though I sorely missed having my recipes at hand. “No, it can wait until she gets back.”

“She’s coming home tomorrow night. I’ll ask her then, I promise.”

“What are you going to do until your movie starts?” I asked as we split up.

“Are you kidding? I’m going back to bed for a few hours. Where are you off to?”

“I’m going to Grace’s,” I answered. “I just hope she’s free. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” Emma said as she got into her dad’s truck and drove away.

I got into my Jeep, and then drove to Grace’s place. With any luck, she’d already be up, but I wasn’t counting on it. There wasn’t much my friend liked more than sleeping in, and I knew if she had the chance, she wasn’t going to pass it up.

I was surprised to find her awake when I knocked gently on the door. She was dressed casually, but that didn’t mean she matched my blue jeans and T-shirt. Casual for Grace usually meant nice pants, a stylish top, and shoes that didn’t have rubber soles like mine.

“What are you doing here?” she asked curiously as she opened the door.

“The donut shop closed early,” I said as she led me inside.

“What happened, Suzanne? Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said as we moved into her living room. “I had a customer waiting at the door when I opened this morning, and she bought out half my donuts on the spot.”

“Wow; that is one big sweet tooth.”

I explained what had happened, and Grace grinned when I got to the point where I charged the woman an irritation fee. “I don’t blame you a bit,” she said. “I would have charged her double, myself.”

“I pushed it hard enough. Do you have time to do a little sleuthing?”

“I’m free until one,” she said. “My supervisor canceled our meeting before, so she wants to get together in Charlotte this afternoon.”

“That can’t be good,” I said, remembering the time they’d wanted to move her to San Francisco. Grace had also recently told me about possible layoffs, so I wasn’t sure why she sounded so cavalier about it.

“Don’t worry, Suzanne,” she said with a laugh. “It’s nothing that dire.”

“I thought you were worried about layoffs.”

“That? It turns out our regional manager was the one getting downsized. Everything’s good on my level, and the one right above me. My boss had promised a visit to her family, so if we have a brief meeting today, she can write off her trip as a business expense. I imagine we’ll go to lunch at Ruth’s Chris and then do a little shopping. It’s not what I’d call a high-pressure situation, anymore.”

Eating for free like that sounded wonderful to me, but my job had its own set of perks. “Are you sure you can spare a few hours for me?”

“Absolutely. Who are we going to tackle today?”

“I thought we’d visit the other women on Tim’s dating roster,” I said.

Grace frowned. “Let’s just get this clear from the start. Do you mean the women besides Angelica?”

“She has an alibi,” I said firmly, “so as far as I’m concerned, she’s off our list until someone proves to me that her story doesn’t hold up.”

“Easy there,” Grace said. “I don’t think there’s one chance in a million that Angelica did it, either.”

“Good,” I said with a smile. “So, what do you say? Should we go do a little inappropriate questioning ourselves?”

Grace grinned at me. “You know me; I’m always game. Can I be a contessa this time? I’ve always wanted to be a contessa. Maybe I could be his long-lost cousin. I could wear a disguise and everything.”

I laughed. “If you can come up with a legitimate reason why a contessa would be looking into Tim’s murder, sure, why not? I’ll play along.”

Grace appeared to think about it, and then frowned. “No, as much as I thought of him, I can’t see Tim as royalty. I suppose we could be reporters again. It’s worked before.”

Grace and I had posed as different reporters in the past, and why not? It gave us a perfect cover snoop without appearing just plain nosy. “You know what? I think you had the right idea before.”

She brightened considerably. “I get to be royalty after all?”

“No, but we can both be Tim’s nieces. In a way, it’s kind of true. I always thought of him as a kind old uncle,” I said.

“So did I. Who knew that he’d ever turn out to be such a ladies’ man.”

“Since he confined his dating to women outside of April Springs, it’s not that hard to imagine that we didn’t know about it. Grace, who would you like to talk to first?”

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then said, “We should go to Jackson Ridge to see Betsy Hanks, and then hit Iron Forge so we can talk to Gina Parsons.”

“Good. We know that Betsy works at Harper’s, so at least we have easy access to her, since she’ll have to be available to wait on customers.”