Drop Dead Chocolate (19 page)

“More than ever,” I said.

The world was suddenly brighter, and I had renewed faith that the killer would be unmasked soon.

I just hoped that it was true.

*   *   *

As I drove through town the next morning in the dark, I found my spirits lifting a little, knowing that Emma would be back at work today. Every time she was gone, I found myself missing her presence working beside me.

I was still smiling as I walked up to the door of my shop, but the smile faded in an instant.

My store’s front window, so carefully painted with the Donut Hearts logo, was shattered and lay in a thousand pieces on the floor inside. As I glanced in, I could see from the light of a nearby streetlight that there was a brick resting on one of my couches with a note wrapped around it. I knew I should wait for the police before I looked at it, but there was a part of me that wanted to see what I’d done to stimulate that kind of atrocious action. I had to know.

I had decided that the cops could bark at the moon and started to put my key into the front-door lock when a patrol car came driving up, its lights flashing, though the siren was silent.

Officer Grant, a customer and a man who was slowly becoming my friend, got out holding a long, heavy flashlight on me. “What’s going on here, Suzanne?”

I pointed to the broken window. “Somebody’s clearly not happy with me. How did you know this happened? I just found it myself.”

“We got a tip,” he said. “Is the door locked?”

I tried it and found that it was.

“Unlock it, and then stay here,” he said.

I did as I was told, and as he walked inside, Officer Grant drew his weapon, along with the flashlight he was carrying.

I must have held my breath as he investigated, but to my relief, he finally came back out front, flipping lights on as he approached.

“Nobody’s here,” he said. “You can come on in.”

As I did, I went to the brick, but he stopped me. “The chief is going to want to see that first.”

“Too bad. I’ll show it to him when he gets here,” I said as I reached for it.

Grant asked softly, “Please? It will make my life easier if you don’t touch it first.”

I couldn’t do it, not with that plea. “How long will it take him to get here?”

Officer Grant looked outside, and then nodded. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s him on his way right now.”

The chief joined us, dressed in slacks and a polo shirt instead of his usual uniform. He barely glanced at me, then carefully picked up the brick with gloved hands.

“You can’t seriously get prints from that, can you?” I asked.

“The gloves are for the note,” he explained. “We might be able to trace the brick a different way.”

Instead of untying the knot, Chief Martin cut the hemp rope with a pocketknife and then slid the coil into a paper bag. “Might be important,” he said. He carefully removed the note, then held the brick out to Officer Grant, who was waiting with a bag of his own for it.

Finally, after taking forever, the chief opened the note, looked at it, and then started to put it into a clear bag of its own.

“No way you’re not showing that to me,” I said with enough force to let him know I meant it.

He appeared to think about it, then shrugged and opened it toward me.

BUTT OUT.

That was all it said, but it was enough, backed up with the violence of the shattered window. “Any chance you’ll take this advice?” the chief asked me.

“What do you think?”

Officer Grant snorted once to cover up his smile. After a second, he excused himself and went out to his patrol car.

When he was gone, the chief asked, “You need someone to fix this for you?”

For a split second I thought about calling my favorite handyman, Tim, but he wasn’t around anymore, a victim of murder himself not that long ago. “Don’t worry. I’ll find someone to do it.”

The chief surprised me by saying, “I’ve got time. I’d be glad to take care of this myself.”

“Aren’t you on duty?” I asked. Was he feeling genuinely nice toward me, or was this just a ploy to get closer to my mother? Not that he needed my help.

“No, I’m strictly a day-shift kind of guy. I’ve got some plywood in my basement, and while it might not be much, it’ll hold until someone can get here and replace the glass.”

“Thanks, that would be wonderful,” I said, honestly meaning it. Even if the gesture was more for my mother’s sake than mine, the chief had been making a real effort to get along with me lately, and I wasn’t about to rebuff him. Besides, I didn’t have all that many options without a handyman I could count on.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up, and was almost finished when Officer Grant came back in. At least it wasn’t summertime. Since it was February, I hoped that the bugs that got into the shop would be minimal.

Grant handed me his clipboard and said, “Just sign this and you can give it to your insurance company to get reimbursed for your window.”

“I’ll probably just pay for the glass myself, since my premiums will probably go up if I report this.”

“Either way, you’re covered,” he said.

I signed the form, and then got a copy so far back that it was barely legible.

“Want me to stick around until you get this fixed?” he asked. “I don’t mind lingering a little if it would make you feel any safer.”

I doubted the chief would have wanted him there, and besides, I was in my own shop, and no one was going to scare me enough so that I felt I needed protection there. It was my safe haven from the evils of the world, and I wasn’t about to let one brick-throwing fool spoil it for me.

“I’m okay, but thanks for offering,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” Officer Grant said as he headed for his patrol car.

The chief was as good as his word, and he was back quickly with everything he needed to temporarily patch my window. He had just mounted the plywood over my empty window frame when Emma came in.

“What happened here?” she asked as she shivered a little.

“I’ll tell you in a minute after I turn the heat up. Flip the fryer on, will you? And you might want to get out some of the ingredients for our cake donuts.”

“Will do,” she said, and quickly disappeared into the back. With any luck, our donuts would be ready, right on time. The donuts must go on, or the show, or whatever. I wasn’t about to disappoint my customers, and in the process, let the person trying to scare me out of my shop feel like they managed it.

“Can I pay you for the plywood?” I asked the chief as the last screw went into the frame and he stood back looking at it, satisfied with his work.

“No, it was just taking up space, anyway. This should hold for now.”

“Thanks, Chief,” I said, and to both our surprise I leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

He made an excuse and was gone in a heartbeat before either one of us could say another word.

As I walked into the kitchen, Emma asked incredulously, “Did I just see you kiss the chief of police on the cheek?”

“Why weren’t you working instead of snooping?” I asked with a laugh.

“Are you kidding me? I didn’t want to miss the show.”

As I started my prep for the cake donuts, I said, “Someone tried to warn me off from my investigation with a brick through our front window, and the chief was nice enough to lend a hand to patch it until I can get the glass replaced.”

Emma looked at me carefully and asked, “You’re not backing off, though, are you?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “No way. This just means I’m getting closer to catching the killer if he has to resort to this kind of stunt.”

Emma nodded. “But you don’t have any idea who it might be yet, do you?”

I grinned at her. “Honestly? Not really. I seem to have plenty of suspects, but there aren’t really any front-runners so far.”

Emma bit her lower lip, then said, “Maybe something Dad learned could help. Did you know that William Benson had more reason to want to see Cam out of the picture than what happened with his permit?”

“No,” I replied as I finished mixing the batter for my basic cake donut. “Why else would he want to see the mayor dead?”

Emma nearly crowed as she reported, “It turns out that William was interested in Kelly himself.”

“Romantically?” I found it hard to believe that sweet old Uncle William could be interested in a younger woman like Kelly. I knew some men were attracted to flashy, trashy women, but I didn’t think William would be one of them.

“Oh, yes. He had a major crush on her, from what Dad heard. William wanted to get rid of his competition, and Cam knew it. That was the real reason why he denied William a permit to expand. It was a way to show him that Cam had all of the power, and from what Dad learned, it just about drove William crazy.”

“It’s another good motive for one of my suspects,” I said. “I don’t mean to be greedy, but was there anything else?”

I started feeding the batter into my dropper, but I wasn’t ready to put any in the oil yet. It required swinging the dropper back and forth in order to drive the batter to the bottom, and it wasn’t safe for anyone else to be around when I did. As long as Emma could feed me more information, I would just have to hold off on donut making.

“I’ve got something else, and it’s a real whopper. It turns out that Evelyn was near Hannah’s just before Cam’s body was discovered.”

I almost dropped the tool in my hand. It would have been a major mess to clean up with the raw batter, but at that moment I didn’t care. “What? How could he possibly know that?”

“It’s a little harder to prove,” Emma admitted. “Actually, Dad got the tip from one of his readers.”

“Really?” I asked. How many crackpots read the
Sentinel
? Probably most of them, I figured.

“Hey, it might be true,” Emma said.

“Then again, it might not be,” I countered.

“Don’t worry. Dad won’t print it unless he’s got a confirmation he can count on. Still, it’s good information to have, don’t you think?”

I’d been meaning to tell Emma that I’d passed everything I’d learned from her on to Jake, and now was as good a time as any to do it. “You know I’m telling Jake everything we talk about, right?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said as she edged away to the door. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Go ahead and make those donuts, and then we can talk more.”

She ducked out, and I dropped perfect little donut rounds into the hot oil. After giving them two and a half minutes, I flipped them with my long wooden skewers, waited until they were finished on the other side, and then drained them. One last drop got the last of the dough into the oil, and I called out to Emma, “You can come back in now. It’s safe.”

Emma came in and took the dropper from me, rinsing it in the sink for my next batch. While she did that, I watched the donuts, pulling them out when they were finished. It was more of an art to doing it properly. Timers and gauges could malfunction, but I could tell by the aroma and the shading of the donuts when they were ready.

Emma drenched all but four in icing, and as she did, I prepped a new batch. We were a nearly perfectly functioning machine in the kitchen, something that was quite clear after spending the day before there on my own.

“Was there anything else he was able to uncover?” I asked.

Emma looked really uncomfortable as she said, “That’s all for now, but there is something else I need to talk to you about.”

I didn’t like her tone of voice. It sounded much more serious than I was ready for. “What’s going on, Emma? No one’s dying, are they?”

“It can wait until after our cake donuts are finished and we start on the yeast ones,” she said, carefully avoiding my question.

I laughed. “Emma, there is no way I can wait an hour to hear what you’ve got to say. I’ll start imagining all kinds of scenarios, and they’ll get worse by the minute. Tell me now so we can both breathe a little easier.”

She nodded, then took a deep breath before she said, “I don’t know quite how to say this, but I’m leaving Donut Hearts at the end of the month.”

That time I did drop the tool filled with batter, splattering the mixture all over the floor.

CHAPTER 13

As Emma and I cleaned the mess up together, I asked, “Is it something I said? I didn’t do anything, did I? Do you want a raise? I can’t afford to bump you up much, but I’ll give you what I can.” I knew that I was blabbering, but I couldn’t help myself.

“It’s not that, Suzanne,” she said. “I finally saved enough for two years of college away from home, and I’ve got to go while I still can. I’ve done all I can at the community college. It’s just time, that’s all.”

“Speaking of time, what school starts new classes this time of year?”

“I’m going to State Tech, and they’re offering a brand-new independent quarterly program for new students that I’m opting into so I don’t have to wait to transfer. I’ll switch over to the standard calendar in the fall, but this is a way for me to get started right now.”

“Do you know what you want to study?”

“Well,” she said with a grin. “I’ve had so much fun working for you that I’m going to get my degree in Restaurant Management.”

“I’m happy you’re finally going to get to live your dream,” I said as I hugged her. I knew she’d wanted to go away since she’d first come to work for me, and I’d been dreading the day when she’d be able to. I just hadn’t realized that she’d been that close. “That’s wonderful,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as flat as I felt. “You’ve worked really hard for this.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning
you
,” Emma said. “We’ll always be friends. At least, I hope so. I’ll come back home every summer, and if there’s room for me here, I’ll work for you then.”

“Of course there will be a spot for you,” I said, not even having to think about it. I couldn’t imagine running Donut Hearts without Emma, and if she wanted to come back, I would never stop her, no matter what its impact on the bottom line.

“Don’t make any promises too quickly,” she said. “I know you have to replace me. This place is tough enough to run by yourself one day a week. It’s not possible to do it all seven.”