Powdered Peril (2 page)

I wasn’t about to let Grace beat herself up for doing something to stand up for herself. “Are you kidding? I think that was brilliant. I’m not at all sure that I would have been smart enough to do that, not under those circumstances. What did you find in his records?”

Her voice died a little as she said, “Leah wasn’t the only woman’s name there, not by a long shot, though she was listed a dozen times. When I think about it now, I don’t know how he had time to date me at all.”

“What did you do when you saw that list of women?” I asked, dying to hear what had happened next. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; I knew the end result. What I didn’t know was how it had come about from that initial discovery to her sitting on my couch with me.

“I confronted him about it,” Grace said, “and you won’t believe this, but the jerk actually admitted it. I guess he just couldn’t be bothered coming up with an explanation that I might swallow. Peter told me that he’d made a few mistakes in the past, but that I was important to him. He even promised me that he’d drop every one of the other women he was seeing in a heartbeat if I’d forgive him and try to work things out between us.”

“But you couldn’t do that, could you?”

Grace shook her head. “He’s lied to me so much, how could I ever believe him again? I was about to break up with him right then and there when his phone rang again.”

“Was it Leah calling back?” I asked. “She doesn’t give up, does she?”

“No, but it was another woman.”

“What did you do then?” I knew my best friend had a big and generous heart, but I also knew that if someone crossed her one too many times, she could be as hard as stone, and cold as ice.

Grace shook her head gently, as though she were trying to delicately dislodge a bad memory. “I opened the front door, threw his phone out into the front yard, and then I told him that we were through. I’m done with him, and he knows it.”

“I still can’t believe that Leah would do something like that to you,” I said. “She’s no one I’d ever be friends with, but there are rules about this sort of thing, you know? She had to know that the two of you were dating. It’s not like it was a big secret or anything.” I suppose the young woman was pretty, in a brassy kind of way, and some men seemed to enjoy her attention, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Grace, inside or out. What would cause a man who had Grace’s heart to go after a woman like Leah? He’d traded gold for lead, and my friend’s heart was broken because of it.

“I’m not happy with her either, that’s for sure, and I won’t make a single excuse for her, but I can’t help thinking that Peter’s the real snake here.” Grace hesitated, and then added, “You know what? If she wants him, she can have him. I’ll be just fine without him. I don’t have to have a man in my life.” She broke down again, and as I hugged her, I knew that she had loved this man, and he’d betrayed her. I couldn’t imagine how I’d react if I’d caught Jake doing anything like that, but then again, I couldn’t even fathom the circumstances where he would think about it for one split second. Jake was many things, sometimes frustrating me beyond explanation, but he was loyal and trustworthy; I knew that in my heart.

It was close to eight when Grace finally stood. Had we really been talking for over an hour? “I’ve kept you up long enough, Suzanne,” she said. “You need your sleep.”

“I’m okay, honest,” I said as I stood. Unfortunately, a yawn slipped out just then, though I tried my best to kill it.

She smiled at me. “Suzanne Hart, you’re the best friend I could ever ask for, but you’re a terrible liar. It’s time I leave you to your sleep. I’m feeling a lot better now.”

“Is that really true?” I asked, looking deeply into her eyes.

She considered it for a moment before she answered. “Well, maybe not yet, but I will be. I’m going to go home, eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, and then I’m going to watch sad movies until I fall asleep. Maybe I’ll have myself a Nicholas Sparks marathon and cry out all of my tears. You can count on him for one thing for sure; somebody’s not going to make it until the end.”

We’d laughed in the past about how someone always seemed to die in one of the movies based on his books, but we were proud that he was from North Carolina, too, and we never missed reading his latest novel together in a kind of small, two-woman book club, nothing like the ladies I hosted at my donut shop. While that group thrived on serious discussion, Grace and I weren’t above mocking anything we found scornworthy in any book we read. “That sounds great,” I said. “I’d be more than happy to join you.”

“You’d fall asleep before the opening credits of the first movie, and we both know it.” Grace hugged me, and then said, “Get some sleep, Suzanne.”

I couldn’t deny that I was beat. “If you’re sure,” I said.

“Go on. You’ve been wonderful. It’s great having you as my best friend.”

“I think so, too,” I said, and then realized how it might have sounded. “Reverse that. What I should have said was ‘right back at you.’ You know what I meant.”

Grace smiled again, briefly, but it was there. Maybe I really had helped.

“Remember, call me if you need to talk,” I said as I walked her out onto the cottage’s front porch. “I don’t care what time it is.”

“I promise,” she said, and then Grace walked up the road toward her house.

*   *   *

If I had it to do over again, I would have gone with her, and neither one of us would have gotten into the mess we ultimately did. But, hindsight is always twenty-twenty, so instead I watched her until she was gone, and then I went upstairs to bed. Jake was tied up on a case, so I knew he probably wouldn’t have a chance to call. As much as I would have loved hearing his voice as a reassurance of what we shared after hearing of Peter’s betrayals, I didn’t need it. I trusted him with my heart, and with my life.

It was the only way I knew how to love, and I fully understood that Grace felt the same way, no matter what the consequences were. We both went all out when we were in a relationship, and while that meant we got hurt sometimes, like she had been tonight, finding real love was always worth the risk. This time, she’d gambled and lost, but I knew that she’d find it in herself to try again someday.

*   *   *

Grace must have found a way to make it through the night, because I didn’t hear from her after she left my place. When I woke up the next morning, too early as usual, I quickly got dressed and headed to Donut Hearts to start working on that day’s donuts with a little lighter touch to my step. After all, it was a big day for me. Emma’s replacement, Nan Winters, was starting her first day of work. Sure, she’d trained with us for a few days before Emma left, but then she’d had to go visit an old friend while she had the chance before she started helping me make donuts six days out of every seven. With only one day off a week, she knew she wouldn’t be getting any more time off for a while, so she’d taken advantage of it. I just hoped Nan remembered what Emma and I had taught her, but I had my doubts. Then again, maybe a fresh start would be better for all of us. I had resisted the impulse to pick up the phone and call Emma a hundred times since she’d been gone. In a way, I felt as though my own daughter were going off to school, and not just an employee. Honestly, she was much more to me than that, and everyone knew it. But I’d promised to give her a month of finding her way at her new school letting her get settled in and used to her new life before I started pestering her, and I was going to respect that. Emma had signed up for spring classes with the college’s unusual schedule, and while I hated losing her too early, she had every right to go out into the world and find her own way.

I drove to Donut Hearts in the darkness, and as I went past the front of my shop, my headlights picked up something odd about the front of the building. My business was housed in an old railroad depot, and once upon a time the tracks had been right beside it. One of the reasons I’d bought the business was for the old weathered bricks up front. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I could have sworn the bricks looked different somehow in the light from my high beams. I stopped and backed my Jeep up onto the grass of the nearby park, not really worrying about getting in anyone’s way on Springs Drive, since most folks with any sense at all were home in bed instead of out on the road in the middle of the night.

When my headlights hit the building again, I saw that it hadn’t been my imagination.

Someone had splattered bright yellow paint on the front of my building, obscuring not only the brick, but the new front window I’d just had repainted with our logo. My heart sank as I saw the mess. I was pretty sure the paint would come right off the window without too much of a fuss, but the bricks might be another thing entirely. I moved my Jeep into one of the parking spaces on Springs Drive, grabbed my flashlight, and then walked back toward Donut Hearts to see if things were as bad as I feared.

When I saw the paint-spattered bucket lying empty beside the front door, I figured it might be time to call the police. If the vandals could be identified by their fingerprints, I wanted to make sure they were caught and got what they deserved. If they were arrested and convicted, and the judge felt like giving them community service, I would want to see if I could get the perpetrator assigned to me. By the time I got done with them, they’d think twice about vandalizing another business.

To my surprise, I got one of my friends on the line as I dialed the police night desk. I figured there was no reason to tie up 911, since this was clearly not an emergency. Whoever had defaced my building was long gone.

When Officer Stephen Grant answered the phone, I idly put a finger on the brick, testing to see if it might still be damp.

No such luck. It was pretty clear that it wasn’t going to come off without a great deal of work.

“Officer Grant, I’ve got a problem,” I said when he picked up and identified himself.

“Suzanne, is that you?” he asked. He should know my voice by now. The man had been in my donut shop, on official business as well as during his free time, often over the years. Even though he was a slim young man, he had a surprising appetite for donuts, and we were slowly building a friendship during his frequent visits to my shop. “You didn’t lock yourself out of the donut shop, did you?” he asked hopefully. “Please tell me that I’ve got an excuse to leave the duty desk and come out there.”

“As a matter of fact, you do, but it’s nothing as trivial as that.” That’s when I realized that he shouldn’t be working the night shift at all. There was only one explanation for that. “What did you do to get on the chief’s bad side?”

After a brief hesitation, he said, “I made a crack about his disappearing waistline he didn’t care for,” Officer Grant admitted. Ever since Chief Martin had been dating my mother, he’d been on a constant diet, and so far, he’d lost two pants sizes, with no end in sight.

“And he punished you for that? I figure he’d be pleased that you noticed.”

“Not so much. At least not the way he overheard me talking to another cop. Don’t sweat it. It’ll all blow over soon enough, but until it does, I’m riding a desk. Now, you didn’t call here to listen to my problems. What can I do for you, if it’s worse than a set of lost keys?”

“Somebody decided to redecorate Donut Hearts for me without even asking.” Just talking to him on the telephone made me feel better somehow. I would have called Jake first if he’d been in town, but he was in Spruce Pine, and I knew that the cell phone reception in the mountain town was spotty at best.

“They didn’t break your front window again, did they?”

“No,” I said as I looked at the intact glass. At least there was that. “They did chuck a half-full bucket of paint on it, though, and the brick exterior, too.”

That got his attention. “Is the bucket still there? We might be able to get some fingerprints off of it.”

I looked toward the bucket again, and that’s when I noticed something else. “I can do better than that,” I said. “There’s a set of footprints in the paint where whoever did it ran off. I just found them.”

“Don’t do anything crazy, Suzanne. I’ll be right there.”

“Can I at least go inside the shop and wait for you there?” I asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “Why don’t you go sit in your Jeep until I get there so I can have a look around?”

I laughed. “We both know those flimsy windows I’ve got wouldn’t stop a determined chipmunk, let alone a killer. I’ll be all right where I am until you get here.”

“Just stay out of sight, okay? It would be crazy to take any chances. I’m on my way.”

“I’ve got nowhere else I need to be right now except inside making donuts,” I said, and then realized that I had dead air on the other end of the line.

The police station was just down the road, so I figured that it wouldn’t take Officer Grant long to get there. I decided to compromise somewhat, and moved away from the shop a few yards. Okay, I admit that my path of retreat led me beside the footprints I’d first seen in the spilled paint, and my flashlight tended to follow them with eerie precision, but I was careful not to step in the paint, so I didn’t think he’d have anything to complain about if he found me doing a little snooping on my own. It was a warm early morning, and though it had cooled somewhat after hitting near eighty in the heat of the day, I still preferred autumn, winter, and spring. Folks still ate donuts yearround, but certainly not as many as they did when the weather turned cooler. Besides, I liked a nip in the air, which was one of the many reasons I’d refused to move to L.A. with my ex-husband, Max, the Great Impersonator, when we’d been together. Give me the changing of the seasons, and I was a happy gal.

I surely wasn’t a fan of this warm early morning air.

As I searched to see where the footsteps led, the impromptu path got harder and harder to see in the tall grass, and unfortunately, soon enough the paint trail ended half a dozen steps toward the park. By the time Officer Grant showed up, I’d lost them completely.

He had his squad car lights all blazing, but at least he hadn’t used his siren on his way here. I’d had more than enough of that kind of attention in the past, and I didn’t need any more of it ever again.