Criminal Crumbs (6 page)

I pulled one of the overstuffed chairs closer to the fire and found a place where I could watch both the flames and everyone else while I was at it. I knew that most children looked like little angels when they slept, but I wasn’t sure I could say that about this crew. That might have been more from the weird flickering shadows the firelight threw out or the ages of my group, but none of them looked particularly innocent at the moment, even Grace. They weren’t even all that peaceful, either, if their expressions were any indication. Most of them appeared to be battling their own personal demons, and I was glad that I couldn’t see into any of their dreams.

No matter how I considered it, I knew that I was in for a long night.

Chapter 11

W
hen the sun finally came
up, it seemed brighter than it should have been to me. Had my eyes been that sensitized to the lack of light? Puzzled, I stood, stretched, and then I moved over to one of the windows. Peering outside, I suddenly realized why we were being bathed in so much light.

Sometime when the rest of the world had been sleeping, we’d been visited by a silent snowstorm.

From the look of things outside, we had a new problem to contend with, as if having a killer among us wasn’t enough.

“Is that really snow?” Celia asked me over my shoulder. “Seriously?”

“It looks serious enough to me,” I said softly. “We need to keep it down. The rest of them are all sleeping.” I glanced over at Grace and saw that she was awake, but she clearly didn’t want Nicole’s sister to know that.

“I’m hungry,” she said plaintively.

“Then why don’t we go in the kitchen and see about getting us all something to eat?” It was the perfect opportunity to get her alone. I still had a hard time believing that Celia would try to kill her sister, but what did I know?

“Fine by me,” she said.

I headed off for the connecting door between the dining room and the kitchen, with Celia just behind me. Grace frowned at me, looked at Celia, and then at Nicole. I shrugged, because what else could I do? My plan the night before for all of us to stay together was not going to be tenable today. Bathroom breaks alone would be a nightmare, but I stood by my buddy-system idea. If the whole crew knew which teams were coupled, then if Nicole ended up dead, we’d be able to pinpoint the killer, barring the off chance that two of them were trying to get rid of her and were conspiring to commit the murder together. Frankly, I didn’t think that was possible, given the level of disharmony they were all showing. In my mind, there was no way that any of them was that good at acting.

Celia and I went from the dining room into the kitchen, and the first thing I did was check the stovetop. If it was electric, we were going to be eating cold food until someone was able to dig us out of there. I was relieved to find that the stovetop was hooked up to propane, though, because I got an instant blue flame when I turned it on. Finally, at least something was going our way.

“What are we having?” Celia asked me.

“If you can wait, how about some donuts?”

“Do you know how to make them?” she asked me.

“I guess you haven’t heard. That’s what I do for a living.”

“Seriously?” she asked me, and for the first time since we’d met, I saw a little spark of light in her eyes. “That is really cool.”

“I don’t know about that. The hours are dreadful, the pay works out to be less than minimum wage, but on the plus side, I’m my own boss, and I make people happy with what I provide them. All in all, it’s a pretty sweet deal.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Celia said. “Was it hard to learn how to do?”

“Maybe at first, but it’s like anything else. After a while, I managed to get the hang of it.” There was a great deal more to it than that, but it was all the explanation Celia needed.

“I think it sounds like a blast.” She hesitated a moment, and then she asked, “Suzanne, could you teach me how to do it?”

“Why not?” What could it hurt? If it helped to let her guard down, maybe she’d tell me something inadvertently.

“Excellent. What should we do first?” Celia asked me. The change in her was so dramatic I almost had a hard time believing that she wasn’t putting me on, but one glance at her face told me that she was genuinely interested.

“Let’s see what kind of ingredients we can find on hand,” I said as I went to the massive refrigerator. There was no danger of anything spoiling for quite some time, since the warmth from the fireplace two rooms away couldn’t reach where we were working. Still, it would be a good idea to get in and out. “As I hand you things, put them on the counter behind you.”

“I can do that,” she said.

I opened the door, and in quick succession, I grabbed a massive tub of sour cream, a few eggs, and some whole milk.

“That can’t be all that you need,” she said doubtfully.

“That’s all of the wet ingredients, except for the sugar.”

“Sugar isn’t wet, though, is it?” Celia asked.

“It combines so easily with moisture that it’s classified that way in most recipes.” Grabbing one of the large mixing bowls hanging from hooks above my head, I measured out two cups of milk and then followed it up with a cup of sour cream. After that, I put the containers back into the refrigerator.

“Now let’s raid the pantry,” I told her.

“What do we need besides sugar?”

I was using one of my most basic recipes, the one I’d first learned to make donuts myself, as a matter of fact, and I’d made it so many times that it had been committed to memory. When I’d had my recipe book stolen and burned once a long time ago, before I got a copy from Sharon Blake, it was my fallback donut I’d prepared while I’d searched for my way back. Before I walked into the pantry, I grabbed another mixing bowl, along with cup, tablespoon, and teaspoon measuring devices. Scanning the shelves, I collected sugar, bread flour, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt and put the containers on the center island in the pantry. It was a nice space, and I envied the chefs there, but not for long. I had donuts to make.

“Now we measure out and mix the dry ingredients,” I said.

“I really would like to help,” she said.

“Have you ever baked before?”

“A little,” she admitted, which probably meant not much, if any, at all.

“Why don’t you help me when it’s time to cut the donut rounds out of the dough? How does that sound?”

“Can I be the one who bakes them?”

“These will be fried, not baked, and there’s an art to putting them in without burning yourself in the process.”

She clearly hadn’t realized there was any danger involved in the process. “Fine. I’ll watch.”

“Good,” I said as I started measuring out ingredients and adding them to the new bowl, calling out the names and quantities as I worked. “In the bowl, I’m adding eight cups of bread flour, two cups of granulated sugar, two teaspoons of baking soda, two teaspoons of cinnamon, two teaspoons of nutmeg, and finally, four or five dashes of salt.”

“How much is a dash?” she asked me.

“Pretend you have a salt shaker in your hand. Shake it quickly over the bowl, and that’s going to be about one dash.”

“I thought the sugar was a wet ingredient,” she said plaintively.

“It is, but for this recipe, it goes in with the dry ingredients.” I grabbed the cup measurement and took another quantity out of the flour bin. “That’s it. Let’s go back out into the kitchen.”

“What’s that for?”

“You’ll see,” I said. Last, I spotted some peanut oil in a big container with a spout for easy pouring. “Grab another bowl for me, would you?”

She looked pleased to be helping and came back a minute later. I handed her the bowl I’d mixed the dry ingredients in. “Take this back out front, and be careful not to spill any of it.”

“Should I go ahead and add in the wet stuff to it?”

“Don’t do anything until I get there,” I said.

“Fine. I was just asking.”

I tried to soften my voice. “Celia, believe it or not, there’s a real art to it, which I’ll teach you after I get the oil.”

“What do we need oil for?”

“It’s what we’re going to fry the donuts in,” I said.

That seemed to satisfy her, and after I drew a sufficient amount of oil, I rejoined her in the kitchen, hoping that she hadn’t disobeyed me and started without me.

She hadn’t, to my relief.

I took out a nice pot from storage, added the peanut oil, and then put it on the stovetop, turning it to high. While the oil was heating, I took a smaller bowl, broke open and beat the eggs, then I added it to the dry mix that I’d made up in the pantry, holding that last cup of flour out of the mix. Once I had the consistency I liked, I added the milk and sour cream, folding it all in lightly with a whisk. It still needed a little flour, so I tipped a touch in, and Celia nodded knowingly. After kneading it gently for a minute, I touched the dough with two fingers, and nothing stuck to them. The consistency felt right to me, so I floured the countertop and then put the ball of dough in the center. Taking a French rolling pin, I rolled it out until it was around a quarter inch thick.

“Now, we need a donut cutter. Would you look through the drawers and see if you can find one?”

“What’s it look like?” she asked me.

“I don’t mean to be flippant, but it resembles something that would cut a donut from dough.”

“What if they don’t have one?” she said a minute after searching.

“We improvise,” I said. Grabbing two different-sized glasses, I powdered their edges with flour and pressed down with the larger of the two.

“I thought I was going to get to help,” she said.

“Sorry. I forgot. You can cut out the holes, but I’ll lift them, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. As I worked, Celia followed behind me with the smaller glass, cutting out holes from the circles I’d created. Using the point of a knife, I flicked the holes out and then pulled out enough rounds to start the first batch. The temperature of the oil was up to 375 degrees F, so we were ready to get started.

“Celia, did you happen to see a slotted spoon while you were looking in the drawers?”

She retrieved it quickly, a proud look on her face. After I took it from her, I said, “Now, take one of those wire cooling racks and put it on the counter, but first put down some paper towels to catch the extra oil.”

I slid the first four rounds into the oil, being careful not to splash, and started to wait.

“How long do they take?”

“Two minutes on each side,” I said.

“Nicole never let me help her in the kitchen. Thanks for including me.”

“You two aren’t that close, are you?”

Celia shrugged. “The truth is that we’ve never really gotten along. She was bossy growing up, and none of that has changed now that we’re adults.”

“Do you resent her being in control of your money?”

Celia frowned at me. “How did you know about that?”

I shrugged. Had I just made a tactical error tipping my hand? “I didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a secret. Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I honestly don’t care who knows. I just can’t wait until next week.”

“What happens then?” I asked her, stopping long enough to flip the donuts. They were nicely browned, and I was happy with the results.

“I get my money. All of it,” she said. “Nicole has control of it now, but that all ends on my birthday.”

So maybe the motive we’d assigned Celia hadn’t been valid after all. If she just had to wait a week to get control of her inheritance, there was no reason for her to try to kill her sister.

“Well, let me say it early: happy birthday,” I said.

“Thanks.” She looked into the pot. “Are we eating those plain?”

“We could make icing or just use powdered sugar dusted on top,” I said. “Which way do you prefer?”

“Let’s do icing. It looks so cool, don’t you think?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I said. “Would you mind grabbing the powdered sugar for me in the pantry?”