Lemon Larceny (The Donut Mysteries) (2 page)

“Thanks.
 
I appreciate that.
 
Listen, I need a favor.”
 

I started to
explain the situation to her, but she nodded vigorously before I could even
finish.
 
“Of course.
 
Mom and I would love to do it.”

“Don’t you need
to call her first and ask her if it would be okay with her?”

Emma shook her
head.
 
“She’s already instructed me
that if you ever need us, we’ll be there for you.
 
How soon do you need to leave?”

“I’m afraid that
it has to be immediately,” I said.

“Then I’ll do the
deposit after I finish cleaning up here,” Emma said as she pulled away and wiped
her hands on a towel.
 
“Go on, and
don’t worry about a thing here.
 
We’ve got it covered.”

“Why don’t you
start tomorrow?
 
I can do all of
that today before I leave.
 
After
all, we’re only talking about ten minutes of work.”
 
There was more to it than that, though.
 
I wanted a last taste of my usual routine
before I left it all behind.
 
Besides,
doing my daily tasks might help me grasp the enormity of my aunt’s sudden demise.
 
“Thanks, Emma, and thank your mother for
me, as well.”

“It’s absolutely
our pleasure.
 
We’re both just glad
we can help,” she said.

I walked back out
front to find Momma peeking inside the box of donuts I’d abandoned.
 
“You’re welcome to have one, if you’d
like.”

“Thank you, but I
was just curious.
 
You don’t happen
to have any pumpkin spice donuts left, do you?
 
I suddenly find myself craving the taste
of one.”

I frowned.
 
“Sorry, but we’re all out.”
 
Pumpkin spice had been a seasonal
favorite at first, but it had become such a favorite choice for my customers
that I’d recently started making them year-round.
 
“I could whip up a batch, if you’d
like.”

“No, don’t be
silly.
 
There’s no time for that,”
she said a little wistfully.
 
“So,
are you all set?”

“I will be in
about ten minutes,” I explained to her.
 
“Is the chief coming with us, too?” I asked her, almost as an
afterthought.
 
Sometimes it was hard
to remember that just about wherever Momma went these days, her husband wasn’t
far behind.

“No, he’s got to
work, so it’s going to be just us girls,” Momma said.
 
“Besides, I didn’t invite him.
 
This is something that the two of us
need to do together.”

“Thanks for that,”
I said with the hint of a smile.
 
While I was fine with the chief most days, it would be welcome to have
just Momma and me doing this together.
 
“When do we leave?”

“I’m already packed,
and my bags are in the car,” she said, “so that’s entirely up to you.”

“I need ten
minutes to finish things up here, and then I can stop by the bank to drop off
the deposit, go back to the cottage to grab a quick shower, and then I’ll throw
a few things into a bag.
 
Should I
pick you up at your place in half an hour?”

Momma smiled at
me.
 
“What gave you the impression
that you were going to be the one driving us?”

“I just assumed I
was,” I said.
 
“Why, what’s wrong
with my Jeep?”

“Nothing, nothing
at all, but if you don’t mind, let’s take my new Subaru, shall we?
 
That mountain road is steep, so we want
to be able to be sure that we make it.”

“Don’t
worry.
 
My Jeep can handle it,” I protested.
 
My vehicle might be getting up there in
years, but I was still fiercely loyal to it.

“Absolutely, but a
dependable working air conditioner would be nice to have, even if we are going
to the mountains, don’t you agree?”

“Okay, you can
drive,” I relented.
 
“So then,
you’ll pick me up?”

“I’ll see you at
the cottage soon,” Momma said, and then she hugged me again before she headed
for the door.
 
It hadn’t been all
that long ago that we’d lived there together, ever since my divorce from my ex,
Max as a matter of fact, but Momma had moved across the town to start her new
life with the chief, so I’d taken over the cottage completely on my own.
 
It had been the first time in my life
that I’d ever lived alone, and while it could be lonely at times, I mostly
found myself enjoying the solitude after dealing with the public at Donut
Hearts most days.
 
“Thank you for
doing this,” my mother said before she slipped out.
 
“I know that it’s not the most
convenient thing in the world for you to do to drop everything and come with
me, but to be honest with you, I wasn’t looking forward to handling things by
myself.”

“You can count on
me.
 
As long as I’m around, you
won’t ever have to,” I said as I lightly kissed the top of her head.
 
Though I towered over my mother, she was
still the strongest person I’d ever known.
 
If she needed me, I’d be there for her, no questions asked.

After all, that
was what it meant to be family.

And I was
determined to fiercely hang onto what was left of mine with both hands.
 

Chapter 3

“I still can’t
believe that she’s gone,” I said from the passenger seat of Momma’s new car as
we headed up the mountain toward my aunt’s home.
 
“How terrible is it that a fall ended up
killing her instead of the cancer she had last year?”

“If that’s really
what happened, don’t think for one moment that the irony would have been wasted
on Jean,” Momma said with the whisper of a smile.
 
“She always appreciated the twists life
threw her way.”

“I’m not so sure
that she would have enjoyed this one all that much,” I said.
 
“I guess I’m really all that’s left,
aren’t I?”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well, your folks
have been gone a long time, and my dad and his people, too.
 
I know that there are some distant
family members spread out all over the place, but basically, that just leaves
the two of us now that Jean has passed away,” I said.

“Don’t forget, Suzanne.
 
I still have Phillip,” she said.

“I know that,” I
answered quickly.
 
I wasn’t
discounting him.”

“Good.
 
It’s important that you don’t.”

“Honestly, I
wouldn’t dream of it,” I said sincerely as Momma drove on.
 
Sometimes my mother’s spouse was a
sensitive subject between us, but I wasn’t about to let it be an issue between us
today.
 
“I took Aunt Jean some
donuts a few months ago.
 
When was
the last time you saw her?”

“It was just this
past weekend, as a matter of fact,” Momma said gravely as she kept her vision
focused on the tricky winding road upward.

“What?
 
Why didn’t you tell me you were
going?
 
Momma, I would have been
happy to go with you.”

“I know that you
would have,” my mother said as she reached over and patted my arm.
 
“But to be honest with you, Jean wanted
to talk to me about something that she didn’t want anyone else to overhear.”

“Not even me?” I
asked, feeling a little hurt that I’d been excluded from the confidential
conversation.

“Especially not
you, because mostly it was directly
about
you.
 
Jean had a question she wanted
me to ask you after I answered a few of her queries about your past, but I
never got the chance to do it while she was still alive.
 
I thought that she was just being silly,
so I delayed telling you anything about it.
 
In hindsight, I’m not at all sure that I
did the right thing.”

Her confession
certainly got my attention.
 
“What
kind of questions did she ask about my past?”
 
It was a curious thing to hear, since
I’d never kept anything from my aunt intentionally.

“As a matter of
fact, she wanted to know about your past investigations into murder,” Momma
said.

“Why would she
want to know about that?
 
Did
someone she knows get killed?” I asked.

“I suppose you
could say that.
 
Suzanne, my sister
wanted your help for herself.”

“With what?” I
asked, still not understanding where this conversation I was having with Momma
was going.

“The truth is, she
wanted you to figure out who was trying to kill her,” Momma said, “only I never
gave you the chance.”

Chapter 5

“What?” I asked
loudly, startling my mother so much that her tight grip on the steering wheel nearly
jerked us off the road.

“Suzanne, don’t
ever yell at me like that while I’m driving,” Momma chastised me as she quickly
regained control.

“Come on, even
you have to admit that that’s a pretty startling thing for you to say.
 
What made her think that someone wanted
her dead?”

“I asked her the
same exact thing, and Jean explained to me that she had her reasons.
 
I wasn’t so sure when she told me about
them, but now there’s a possibility that I was wrong.
 
If that turns out to be the case,” she
added softly, “I’m not at all certain that I’ll ever be able to forgive myself
for not coming to you.”

“Momma, you can’t
beat yourself up about it.
 
If
there’s one thing that I’ve learned investigating murder over the years, it’s
that you can’t hold yourself responsible for what a killer does.
 
Now I need you to think carefully about
what I’m about to ask you.
 
What
exactly
did Aunt Jean tell you?” I
asked.

Momma shrugged
briefly, and then she started to explain, “Apparently, there have been a series
of events lately that have left her unsettled.
 
I tried telling her that her overactive
imagination was just getting the better of her, but I’m afraid now that I
should have taken her more seriously than I did.”
 
Momma teared up a little as she added, “Suzanne,
I know that you believe what you just said, that what happened to my sister wasn’t
my fault, but I’m not at all sure I can live with that.
 
What if I’d told you sooner?
 
You might have been able to prevent what
happened to her.
 
Is it my fault
that she’s dead?”

“Of course it’s not,”
I said as I patted her arm gently, careful not to startle her again.
 
“How could you possibly know that there
may have been a rationale for the way she felt?
 
Momma, even if you’d told me everything
that she’d shared with you the moment you heard it all, I’m not at all sure
what I could have done about it with so little time to investigate.”
 
I took a deep breath, and then I let it
out slowly before I spoke again.
 
“Honestly,
we’re not even sure that this wasn’t an accident.
 
Her fall down the stairs might have been
just a perfectly innocent accident.”

“Or not,” Momma
answered gravely.

“Then let’s find
out, shall we?
 
Now, tell me
everything that she told you.”

Momma dried her
tears, and as she drove on into the mountains, she said, “Jean told me that it
started innocently enough.
 
That old
car of hers lost its brakes coming down her driveway.
 
She jammed it into reverse and steered
it into a small tree, which was enough to stop her.
 
When she called her mechanic, he told
her that the brake line had loosened itself and had come off.
 
It was unsettling, but she didn’t think
it was all that malevolent.”

“Could it have just
been an accident?”

“She didn’t think
anything otherwise at the time,” Momma said.
 
“Then, two days later, someone shot out
one of her windows in the kitchen while she was cooking breakfast.
 
Her neighbor likes to have target
practice sometimes, so Jean stormed over there to complain, but he wasn’t
home.
 
When she called him, he was
at the coast fishing.”

“That sounds
bad,” I said.

“Well,
unfortunately, it’s not all that uncommon around there either, whether it’s
hunting season or not.
 
Some of her
neighbors live in the mountains so they can shoot off their guns whenever they
feel like it, ride dirt bikes and four-wheelers, play loud music, and generally
disrupt the peace and quiet.”

“Why did she live
there, then?” I asked.
 
It sounded
pretty dreadful to me.

“You know as well
as I do how much she loved that old house,” Momma explained.
 
“It would take more than noisy neighbors
to get her out of there.”

I thought the
description was mild given the behavior, but I wasn’t about to comment on
that.
 
“What else happened to her
after that?” I asked.
 
“There must
be more to it than that.”

“The third thing
was the one that convinced her that someone might actually have her in their
sights.
 
She was shopping in town
one evening when an old pickup truck jumped the curb and nearly crushed
her.
 
If it hadn’t been for her best
friend, Sylvia, pulling her out of the way at the last second, she said that
she would have been a goner.”