Custard Crime: Donut Mystery #14 (The Donut Mysteries) (22 page)

“That’s it,” Grace said.
 
“We can go now.
 
Sorry my idea was a bust.”

“Hey, I still think it was worth a shot.
 
Shall we go look for Beatrice now?”

“We might as well,” Grace said, and then she grabbed
my hand before I could start the Jeep back up.
 
“Hang on a second.
 
Look over there.”

I did as she suggested, but nothing was going on near
Violet’s front door.
 
The movement
was coming from behind her house.
 
Slinking around the corner trying his best to look inconspicuous was
none other than Conrad Swoop himself.

“Who exactly is he hiding from?” Grace whispered,
even though there was no way that he could hear us from where he was at the
moment.

“I don’t know, but he looks pretty guilty, doesn’t
he?
 
The real information I want to
know is where exactly is he going now?”

We watched as Conrad went to his car, slid inside
quickly, and then drove off.
 

“Don’t follow him too closely,” Grace said as I
started the Jeep’s engine.

I grinned at her.
 
“Don’t worry about me.
 
After all, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

We followed Conrad from a distance, but in the end,
it turned out to be another disappointment.
 
After stopping at a fast-food restaurant
window for takeout, he headed straight home, and from the look of things, that
was where he was going to stay.

“I guess we should go see Beatrice now,” I said as we
watched him duck inside.

“Why not?
 
I can’t believe that this idea didn’t pay off.”

“You know how this goes, Grace.
 
We run into a lot of dead ends when we
investigate, and besides, we learned something valuable.”

“What, that Conrad was still with Violet?”

“That, and the fact that he doesn’t want anyone to
know about it.
 
Why else would he
have slipped out the back door like that?”

“Maybe he was afraid that we were still watching
him,” she answered.

“A fear that turned out to be well founded,” I said.

We found Beatrice working out in her garden when we
neared her house.
 
“At least we know
that she’s home,” Grace said.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that she’ll be willing to
talk to us any more than Violet was.”

“Maybe not, but she can’t exactly run away, can she?”

At that moment, I spotted something odd, so I kept
driving past Beatrice’s house without slowing down.

“Where are you going, Suzanne?”

“Did you see what she was doing just then?” I asked.

“All I noticed was that it was kind of odd the way
she was looking around so furtively, but what does that prove?”

“Grace, I was watching her hands.
 
She was burying something in her garden
in plain sight.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“I watched her drop something in a hole and quickly
cover it back up.
 
What on earth
could that mean?”

“Are you sure she wasn’t just planting something?”

I shrugged.
 
“In the walkway and not in the bed?” I asked.
 
“Why would she plant anything there?”

“What should we do about it?”

“I say we go somewhere and kill a little time,” I
said.
 
“After that, we can come back
here and dig up whatever she was just burying.”

“Suzanne, how sure are you about what you just saw?”

“I’m fairly certain of it,” I said.

“My question is, are you sure enough to try to
explain it all away if we get caught disinterring something that’s none of our
business?”

“Hey, we’ve talked ourselves out of worse situations
than that before,” I said.

“That’s true enough, but there might be a time when
our charm doesn’t work.
 
I know,
it’s hard for me to believe even as I’m saying it, but still, it could happen.”

“You’re right.
 
If we come back later, Beatrice might catch us, or worse yet, someone else
might see what we’re up to.
 
Grace,
we have to find out what she buried, and I mean right now.”

“How do you propose we do that?” she asked me.

“One of us needs to distract her while the other one
recovers the buried treasure.”

“Which one do you want to do?”

I grinned at her.
 
“Hey, it was my idea.
 
I’ll let you pick.”

“I’ll always take action over talk.
 
You find a way to keep her occupied, and
I’ll do the digging.”

“I was afraid that you’d choose that option,” I
said.
 
I circled the block, but when
we got back to Beatrice’s place, she was no longer in her garden at all.
 
“Has she gone already?”

“Let’s go knock on the front door first,” Grace
said.
 

“Tell you what.
 
I’ll go to the door by myself.
 
If she’s there, we don’t want her to know that you’re with me.
 
It should make sneaking into her garden
and digging up whatever she’s hiding a little easier.”

“Good plan.
 
I’ll duck down as you walk to the door, and then I’ll slip out once we
know where she is.
 
How does that
sound to you?”

“It’s as good a strategy as any,” I said.
 
“Wish me luck.”

“Right back at you.”

I walked to the front door, and as I waited for her
to answer her doorbell, I tried to come up with something that might keep
Beatrice from noticing Grace sneaking into her garden.
 
I still wasn’t quite sure about how to
do that when she finally came to the door.
 

 
“Suzanne,
what are you doing here?” Beatrice asked me as she answered her door.

It was a fair question.
 
I just wished I had an answer for it.
 
After a brief hesitation, I blurted out
the first thing that I could think of.
 
“I’m here about your building.”

“My home?” she asked, clearly puzzled by my
statement.

“No, the one in April Springs.
 
Since you said that your plans to open a
candle shop weren’t going to work out, I thought you might be interested in
selling the place.”
 
As I spoke, I
hoped that Grace was in action, but it took all of my willpower not to look
over in the direction of Beatrice’s garden.
 
Hopefully Grace was skulking her way
toward it, but I wasn’t about to draw Beatrice’s attention to her if she was.

“Why on earth would you want to buy it?”

It was another fair question.
 
Stalling, I said, “I’ve been thinking about
opening a shop there myself.”

“What kind of shop?”

“Soap,” I said, blurting out the first thing that had
come to my mind.

She looked surprised.
 
“But I thought you were a donutmaker?”

“I am, but it wouldn’t hurt to diversify.
 
Donut Hearts is doing really well, and I
thought it would be good to branch out into something else.”

“I had no idea that a donut shop could do that well,”
she said.

Neither did I, but since I was bluffing, I might as
well go all the way.
 
“You’d be
amazed by the profits I generate on a daily basis.”
 
That was probably true.
 
She’d be amazed by just how little I
actually made, but I wasn’t about to clarify.
 
“My mother has long dabbled in many
different directions, so I figured it was high time I started growing my
portfolio myself.”
 
Wow, I was just
glad that I didn’t have Pinocchio’s nose at the moment.
 
It would have been growing beyond reach
with every word.

“It’s a sound idea, but I’m afraid that I can’t help
you.”

“I thought the business was yours to sell now,” I
said.

“It may be someday, but it will be tied up in
Evelyn’s estate for several months, if not years, before I get free title to
it, and that depends on when they find and convict her killer.
 
There’s no way that the property is
going to be released before then.”

“I see,” I said, trying to hide my faux
disappointment.
 
I finally risked a
glance in the direction of the garden and saw Grace slipping back into my
Jeep.
 
“Well, I understand, but keep
me in mind, okay?”

“I will,” she said.
 
“And thanks for stopping by.”

“You’re most welcome,” I said.

I was three steps away from her front door, and that
much closer to the Jeep, when Beatrice said in an icy voice, “Hold on.
 
Stop right where you are.”

What had just happened?
 
Had she seen Grace digging up her
treasure?
 

It appeared that we were busted.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I turned back to her.
 
I kept my most innocent expression
plastered on my face as I faced her.

“Something’s not right,” she said sternly as she
looked steadily over at her garden.

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering immediately, she passed me and
started for the Jeep.
 
I thought
Grace had made a clean getaway, but when I looked at the ground, I saw that
she’d tracked a bit of mud on one shoe.
 
The trail clearly led from the garden straight to my Jeep.

I followed along, but there was nothing else that I
could do to stop her, though I tried, though it was to no avail.
 
“What’s going on?”

As Beatrice pulled open the Jeep’s passenger door,
she said, “That’s what I’d like to know.”
 
Then she spotted the small package in Grace’s hands and her face drained
of all color.
 
“I can’t believe that
you just did that.
 
What’s wrong
with you?
 
You two need to come
inside right now.”

“What is this?” Grace asked as she refused to move
and held the packet up.
 
“Why
shouldn’t we ignore you and take this straight to the police?”

“You’re welcome to do just that, but if you want to
know the truth, then you’ll have to come with me.”

I looked at Grace and asked her, “What do you think?”

“No way I’m going anywhere with her.
 
I think we should drive as fast as we
can to the police station.
 
How
about you?”

I couldn’t imagine being stupid enough to go inside
with a woman who might be a killer.
 
Then again, if she hadn’t done it, didn’t she have the right to explain
herself before we did something too rash?
 
That’s when I made up my mind.
 
“Beatrice, neither one of us is crazy enough to go inside with you, but
if you’d like to explain what’s going on out here, we’ll give you the opportunity.
 
I’m sorry, but that’s the best that
we’re going to be able to do.”
 
I was
willing to bet that Beatrice didn’t have a weapon on her, and if we stayed outside
in the open in front of anyone who might be looking in our direction, Grace and
I would likely still be safe.

At least I hoped that was the case, but I knew as
well as anyone that sometimes, desperate times called for desperate measures,
and if we’d just stumbled onto something that might implicate Beatrice in
Evelyn’s murder, the woman before us might be more dangerous now that she’d
been cornered than Grace or I could ever know.

“What do you say?” I asked her.
 

Beatrice seemed to think it over, and finally, she
shrugged, looking as though she was on the brink of hysterical tears.
 
“Why not?
 
I don’t see what I have to lose at this
point.”
 
She looked around at her
neighbors’ homes and added, “Could we at least go over to my garden bench?
 
It will be better if I don’t have to
look at either one of you when I tell you this.”

“What do you think, Grace?”

“I don’t see what it could hurt,” she said, and then
she turned to Beatrice.
 
“Don’t try
anything, though.
 
We’ll both be
watching you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.
 
I’m not going to do a thing,” she said.

But could we trust a possible killer, maybe even with
our lives?

In the end, there was only one way to find out.

Chapter 20

“So, what’s in this packet?” Grace asked Beatrice as
we walked over to her garden bench.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather start at the
beginning and tell this in my own way,” she said.

“Why not?
 
Go on.
 
It’s your story,” I
said.

She took a deep breath, and then she began to
talk.
 
“Last year I met a man in
Asheville, a tall, handsome, charming man who was too good to be true.
 
To make a long story short, it turned
out that’s exactly what he was.
 
I
didn’t find out until nine months after we’d begun to see each other that he
was married, and by then I was too addicted to him to break it off, even though
I knew that I should do exactly that.”

“What’s that got to do with Evelyn?” Grace asked.

“Be patient.
 
I’m getting to that.
 
As I
said, I kept seeing him, breaking it off, and then starting up again.
 
He’s been like some kind of drug to
me.”
 
She took in a deep breath, and
then she let it out slowly before she continued.
 
“In a moment of weakness, I confessed
everything to Evelyn the day that she died.”