Jessica Beck - Donut Shop 17 - Old Fashioned Crooks (16 page)

“Don’t discount
the power of the press,” Emma said, letting her pride in her father shine through.
 
“Dad is a master at that kind of thing.”

“So then, what
are
you going to tell your folks?”

“My first
reaction is to keep it from them, but then again, if Kyle is a possible danger,
they need to know that, too.
 
Why do
things have to be so complicated?”

“I don’t know,
but sometimes they just are.
 
Remember, call me right back as soon as you speak with Emily.”

“Will do.”

I hung up and
turned to see Jake standing there watching me.
 
“What was that all about?” he asked
me.
 
“Did I hear you offer sanctuary
to someone at the cottage?”

I grinned at him.
 
“You don’t have any problem with that,
do you?”

“No, ma’am.
 
I do want to say that I’ll stay on the
couch, and your refugee can have the upstairs bedroom.”

“That’s awfully
noble of you,” I said, and then I kissed the tip of his nose.
 
“You didn’t even ask me who it was.”

“I didn’t need
to,” he said with a grin.
 
“If you
care about them, then so do I.”

“I knew there was
a reason that I wanted to marry you,” I said, kissing him a great deal more
thoroughly this time.

The only thing
that broke it up was my cellphone ringing, and I was tempted to let it go to
voicemail.
 
Only the thought that it
might be Emma made me take it.

“Hey,” I said.

“Have you been
running?” Emma asked.

“No, why do you
ask?”

“You sound out of
breath,” she replied.

“I was kissing
Jake,” I admitted, and then I grinned openly at him.

He just laughed
in response.

“I hope I didn’t
break anything up.
 
Get back to it,
and we’ll talk later.”

She was about to
hang up!
 
“Emma, what did Emily
say?”

“She thought it
sounded like a hoot.
 
In fact, we’re
going to make some costumes for the three guys while I’m there.
 
It sounds like great fun to me.”
 
Emily loved dressing the three beloved stuffed
animals from her childhood, all still her closest friends, in outlandish
costumes.

“What are you
going to make?” I asked, sincerely interested in what Cow, Spots, and Moose
would show up dressed as next.
 
It
wasn’t all just in fun, though.
 
I
knew for a fact that those three stuffed animals, and speculation about what
they might be wearing next, kept Emily’s customers steadily visiting her
newsstand.
 
My ex-husband, her
current beau, Max, had even gotten involved, something that I’d never thought
I’d ever live to see.
 
That was how
I knew that he truly loved her, and I’d given them my blessing the moment I’d
heard that he’d embraced the myth that they were all alive.

“We’ve got some
ideas, but we’re still working on them.”

“Let me know when
you figure them out.
 
Do you have
Jake’s cellphone number?” I asked her.

“No, but I’ve got
yours.
 
Why do I need his?”

“Put it in your
phone just in case,” I said, and then I rattled off his number.
 
I looked at Jake as innocently as I
could, but he just smiled.
 
I was
glad that he approved, but it wasn’t a requirement.
 
If I could keep Emma safer just by
revealing his number, I’d rent out a billboard on the edge of town and plaster
it there if I had to.

“Got it.
 
Thanks for worrying about me,” she said.

“It’s my absolute
pleasure,” I replied.

“That’s all
settled,” I told Jake after I disconnected the call.
 
“Emma’s going to be staying with Emily
Hargraves for the next few days.”

“Why is she doing
that?
 
What did I miss?” Jake asked.

“That’s right,
you didn’t hear what happened earlier.
 
Apparently Kyle followed Emma into the diner, and when she left, he
stole her napkins and her used straw.
 
Trish was really creeped out by it.”

“She has reason enough
to feel that way,” Jake said.

“How did you know
about what happened to her?” I asked him, genuinely surprised by his statement.

“Suzanne, I don’t
have a clue what you’re talking about,” Jake replied.
 
“But that happens enough that I’m
getting used to it.
 
I’m just saying
it had to be eerie to watch him collect Emma’s garbage.
 
Hey, where’s Grace?” he asked as he
looked around.

“She already
ordered our treats, and Trish is going to join us, too.
 
That means no shoptalk, so tell me one
thing before we go in.
 
What was
that telephone call about?”

“It’s
complicated,” he said.
 
“Can it wait
until after I have my treat?”

The expression on
his face told me that this was one battle that I had no interest in
winning.
 
“Sure.
 
Just tell me this.
 
Has it got something to do with the case
we’re working on?”

“It does
indeed.
 
We might need to strike
Denny West’s name off our list as well.
 
As much as I’d love to pin the murder on him, things might not work out
that way.”

“Why not?”
 
I couldn’t imagine the circumstances
that would exonerate that hood from murder.
 
Whatever it was, I wanted to hear about
it.

“That’s what I
can’t say yet.
 
I just got what
might be a hot tip, but then again, it might pan out to be nothing, so I’d
rather not say anything until I know more.
 
Is that okay with you?”

“No, but I’ll find
a way to learn to live with it,” I said.
 
I’d already done a great deal to help Jake transition into his new life
on my side of criminal investigation, and frankly, I was afraid to push him too
much further.
 
When he found out
whatever he was waiting to hear, I knew that he’d tell me all about it.
 

In the meantime,
I was going to respect his privacy, and his source, but until I heard something
solid and indisputable, Denny West was going to stay right where he belonged,
near the top of my suspect list.

“Trish, that was
excellent,” Jake said as he pushed his plate away.

“I like a man who
can appreciate a good slice of cake,” Trish said as she gathered the dirty
dishes together.
 
“How about another
piece, maybe something different?”

“What have you
got?” Jake asked, clearly tempted by her offer.

I laughed as I
shook my head.
 
“Thanks for the
offer, Trish, but I’m afraid that we’re all going to have to pass on
seconds.
 
After all, we’re eating dinner
in less than an hour.
 
Hadn’t we all
better skip another piece of cake right now?”

“I suppose you’re
right,” Jake said with a hangdog expression on his face.

“Suzanne, how can
you deny him more when he looks at you like that?” Grace asked me playfully.

Trish piled
on.
 
“Come on.
 
One more piece won’t hurt anything.”

I looked around
at my friends, and finally decided that it wasn’t a battle worth fighting.
 
“Go ahead, then.
 
I seem to be outnumbered.”

“No, that’s
okay,” Jake said as he pulled a twenty from his wallet.
 
“You’re right.”

Trish looked at
him oddly.
 
“Excuse me, but what did
you just say?”

“I think he
admitted that he was wrong, but that’s impossible,” Grace added.

“Actually, I
never said that I was wrong,” Jake clarified.
 
“I just stated that Suzanne was right.”

“How are those
two things different?” I asked him with a smile.

“I don’t
know.
 
They just are.”
 
He pushed the bill toward Trish.
 
“Keep the change, if there is any left.”

“As a matter of
fact there’s a lot, because I won’t have you buying me something in my own
diner,” Trish said.
 
“Hang on one
second and I’ll bring you your change.”

“Tell you what,”
Jake said, getting into the spirit of things.
 
“Just start a dessert tab for me.
 
When that’s gone, let me know and I’ll replenish
it.”

“I can do that,”
Trish said with a grin.
 
“Suzanne,
do you have a minute before you go?”

“Sure.
 
What’s up?”

“Grab a few of
those plates and walk up front with me.”

I did as she
requested, but I knew that she hadn’t really been asking for my help.
 
I’d seen her carry a great deal more
than we were now transporting in one hand before.

“What’s going on?”
I asked.

“Did you happen
to speak with Emma?”

“She’s safe and
sound.
 
As a matter of fact, she’s
staying with—”

“Don’t say it.”
Trish stopped me before I could finish.

“Okay.
 
Sorry.”

Trish looked at
me for a moment, and then a soft expression crossed her face.
 
“I’m the one who should be
apologizing.
 
I’m probably just
overreacting based on personal experience.”

“You don’t have
anything to apologize for,” I said, and then I hugged her.
 
“I’m glad that you’re okay now.”

“I’m as fine as
silk now,” she said after pulling away.

“What was that
all about?” Jake asked me softly once we were outside.

“I’ll tell you
later,” I said in just as hushed a tone of voice.

“That’s not meant
to be payback for me not telling you about my call earlier, is it?” he asked.

“Of course not,”
I answered.

Jake stopped and
stared at me.

“Okay, I can
understand why you would think that it might be a possibility, but you’re going
to have to take my word for it that it’s not the case this time,” I amended.

“Good,” he said,
and then he turned to my best friend.
 
“Grace, when does your police chief boyfriend get off work?”

“It’s hard to say
these days, but judging by the time, I’m guessing that he’s picking the pizza
up even as we speak.
 
In fact, we’d
better hurry, or we’re going to make him wait.”

“Well, we can’t
have that,” Jake said with a grin.

“How can you be
hungry after just having a slice of cake?” I asked him playfully.

“The answer to
that is in your question,” Jake said.
 
“I only had one slice.
 
Of cake,
that is.
 
The pizza is going to be
an entirely different story.”

“You’re one of a
kind.
 
You know that, don’t you?”

“I should hope
so,” Jake said, smiling.
 
“One is
probably all the world could take.”

Chapter 20

“How long have
you been here?” Grace asked Officer Grant when we walked up to her front porch.
 
He was there balancing two pizzas in one
hand, and he also had a box at his feet.
 
She sidestepped the box and kissed him lightly.
 
I was surprised to see the police
officer blush from the attention.

“I just got
here,” he said as he recovered from the kiss, “but I can’t stay more than half
an hour.
 
Things are kind of crazy
for me right now.”

“We’re just glad
you could make it at all,” Jake said.
 
“Thanks for taking the time.”

“I’m happy to do
it,” he said.
 
“Is anybody hungry?”

“I could eat,”
Jake said with a grin as he took the pizzas from the acting chief.
 

I leaned down and
retrieved the box.
 
“Are these the
photos and tapes you were talking about before?”

“It’s everything
that I’ve managed to collect so far,” he acknowledged.
 
“I’m not sure if we’re going to be
getting anything else.”

“This is
perfect,” I said.
 
“We can look at these
while we eat.”
 
The box wasn’t as
heavy as I’d hoped it would be.
 
“Were
you able to make copies for us?” I asked him as Grace unlocked the front door
and we all walked inside together.

“Sorry, but I couldn’t
see any way to do that without arousing suspicion.
 
I’m afraid that I’ll have to take these
back with me when I leave.”

“Then we’d better
get started,” Jake said.
 
“Are all
of the photos printed out, or are some of them still digital?”

“Everything has
been printed out, but I also managed to snag three videos of Spirit Night.
 
I downloaded them onto my zip drive, so
you can at least make a copy of those.
 
Should we watch them first while we’re eating, or start digging through
the pictures?”

“I think we
should watch the movies first,” Grace said.
 
“I’ll go get my computer.”

“I’ll get the
plates and napkins,” I volunteered.

“And I’ll get the
sodas,” Officer Grant said as he headed off into the kitchen.

“What can I do?”
Jake asked.

“You could clean
off the coffee table so we can eat there,” Grace said.

“I’m on it,” Jake
answered.

It wasn’t long
before we each had a slice of pizza and a soda in front of us.
 
Grace had brought out her largest
computer and had set it up in front of her television.
 
It was nearly as good as having the
images projected on the big screen itself.

“Here’s the first
one,” she said as she tapped a few keys on her computer.
 
A bouncing image appeared onto her
screen, and it took me a moment to realize that it was the back of a child’s
head.
 
The operator zoomed out after
a moment and the park became visible in the foreground.
 
As the videographer carried on a
show-and-tell with her child, narrating everything that we were seeing on the
screen, I kept looking into the background, hoping to spot something that might
be a clue.
 
There were lots of
painted faces and more than a couple of ghosts in the crowds, but mostly it was
a night for families as they took in the sights of Spirit Night.
 

“Hey, Suzanne, there
we are!” Grace cried out as she froze the image on the screen.
 
Sure enough, I could see us both handing
out donuts in the background to a couple of ghosts.
 
“Remember how they had to lift their
sheets up to eat because they forgot to put in mouth holes?”

“Sure, but what
does this have to do with our investigation?” Jake asked.

“I just thought
it was cool,” Grace said, and then she restarted the video and the two of us
quickly vanished.

“This isn’t much
help, is it?” I asked.

“Hang on a second,”
Stephen said.
 
“Here’s what I want
you to see on this one.
 
Grace, can
you make this move in slow motion?”

“You bet I can,”
she said, and after tapping a few more keys, that’s exactly what happened.

“What are we
looking for?” Jake asked as we all studied the screen.
 

“Wait for
it.
 
You’ll know it when you see it.
 
There.
 
Pause it.”

When the image
froze, I saw the wood piled up for the bonfire.
 
It was still unlit, and from that angle,
I didn’t see any sign of Rick Hastings’ body.
 
“He’s not there yet,” I said.

“Notice the time
in the corner,” Stephen said.

“6:46,” Jake
said.

Stephen nodded.
 
“So, we know that at a quarter to seven,
Rick Hastings was still alive.”

“If the clock is
accurate,” Jake replied.

“It is.
 
We checked the camera this afternoon.”

“Emma saw the
body at 7:05, so that gives us a twenty-minute window,” I said.

“How can you be so
sure of the exact time?” Stephen asked me.

“I was looking at
my watch when I heard her first scream,” I admitted.

“Okay, then.
 
That’s progress,” Stephen said, and then
he turned to Grace.
 
“As far as
we’ve been able to tell, there’s nothing else on this video.
 
Can you play the next one?”

She did as he
asked, and we all watched the tape, this time taken by a high school boy
filming a girl who had to be his date for the evening.
 

“Wow, he’s really
obsessed with her, isn’t he?” Grace asked after ten minutes of solid filming
that showed little more than the cute brunette.

“Puppy love can
be like that sometimes,” I said.
 
“Stephen, why are you showing this one?”

“Fast forward
until you see the dunking booth,” he said.
 
When it came onto the screen, he said, “Now slow it back down again.”

Grace did as
directed, and we caught a glimpse of the bonfire again.
 
“Freeze it right there,” Stephen said,
and then he put his plate down and approached the monitor.
 
“Here’s a better shot of the bonfire.”

“I still don’t
see anything,” Grace said.
 
“Anything
out of the ordinary, anyway.”

“Go forward two
frames more,” he instructed.

When she paused
it again, I could see that there was a man standing alone near the stacked wood
of the coming bonfire.
 
He was
wearing a sheet just as many of the others were, but at that moment, it was lifted
up and we could see him taking a sip of soda from a paper cup.

There was no
doubt in my mind that it was Rick, being shown in an image that had been captured
sometime in the last few minutes of his life.

“That is almost
spooky,” I said as I glanced at the corner of the screen.
 
6:51 was displayed prominently there.
 
“So, now we’re down to fourteen
minutes.
 
That’s a pretty tight
window of opportunity.
 
Does the
third video show us anything that narrows the time of the murder even further?”

“No, the last one
is just general background.
 
I
thought it might be good to have it for reference, but we weren’t able to find
anything significant on it.”

“We can look at
it later if there’s time.
 
What
about the high school photographer?” I asked.

“Jake told me about
your idea.
 
It was a good one.
 
There was just one problem, though.”

“What was that?”

“The guy forgot to
put his memory card into his video camera before he got started,” Officer Grant
said with a shrug.

“So that’s a
wash,” I said.

“Not completely.
 
He took quite a few still shots with
another camera, too, and fortunately, most of them came out great.”

“Do you have them
with you?” I asked.

“They’re still in
the box,” Officer Grant said as he gestured to the collection.

I pushed my plate
aside.
 
“I don’t know about the rest
of you, but I’m going to finish eating later.
 
We don’t have much time, and I want to
see what else is in there.”

Grace and Jake
each set their plates aside as well, and we dug into the photographs together.

Officer Grant
sheepishly took another bite of pizza, and then he said, “Sorry, but this is
the only dinner break that I’m going to get.”

“Eat up,” I said.
 
“You have our blessing.”

“What exactly are
we looking for?” Grace asked.

He smiled at
her.
 
“Thanks.
 
I’ve been through all of the photos and
I didn’t see anything particularly incriminating, but in my defense, I had to
do it quickly.
 
I was kind of hoping
that you three might see something that I missed.”

As I roughly
sorted the photos and handed them out to Grace and Jake—keeping a pile for
myself—I said, “We should all look for any shot that includes Rick first, and
any of our suspects second.
 
If
Kyle, Denny, or Amanda are captured anywhere on film, we might have some
leverage to pry something else out of them.”

I rushed through
my stack without success, and then I looked a little closer the next time
through.
 
I was about to discard one
particular photo when something in one corner caught my eye.
 
“I found Kyle!” I exclaimed, and then,
just as quickly, I saw someone else.
 
“He’s talking to someone.
 
Is
that Rick?”

Officer Grant
took the photo from me, and Jake and Grace looked at it as well.
 

“I’m not sure,” Stephen
said.
 
“It could be him, but I can’t
say for sure.”

 
“What time was it taken?” Grace asked.

“I have no idea,”
Officer Grant said.
 
“There’s no
time stamp on it.
 
What do you
think, Jake?”

“It’s hard to
say,” my fiancé said calmly.
 
“Let’s
keep looking.”

Grace was the
next one to get a jackpot.
 
“Here’s
Amanda,” she said as she waved a photo in the air.
 
“It is her, isn’t it?”

We each studied
the photo, but the woman in question’s face was partially obscured by a child’s
helium balloon.
 
She had a bit of
smeared blue and gold paint on her face, but I doubted that it had anything to
do with Spirit Night.
 
Was she
trying to blend in?

“Here’s another
one of Kyle,” Jake said, holding up a photo triumphantly.
 
“He’s wearing makeup this time.”

I looked at the
photo and saw that the paint on his face was smudged as well.
 
Whoever was doing the face-painting
hadn’t used anything all that permanent.
 
They weren’t the only folks with smudged paint in the photos that I’d
seen.

I had a sudden
hunch.
 
“Stephen, you told Jake earlier
that you found some sheets near where the body was found.
 
Is that right?”

“Among other
things,” Officer Grant said.
 
“You
know how it is when there’s a fair or anything else going on in the park.
 
Some people don’t think twice about
littering when they’d never dream of doing it on a normal day.”

“I agree that
it’s unacceptable behavior.
 
My
question is, did you look very closely at those sheets?”

“As a matter of
fact, I never even saw them myself.
 
Suzanne, there hasn’t been time to do everything I need to do.”

“Do me a
favor.
 
Call the officer on duty
right now that you trust the most, and have him study those sheets carefully.”

Officer Grant
pulled out his radio without argument, which was a good sign.
 
“What’s he supposed to be looking for?”

“Unless I miss my
guess, he’ll know it when he finds it,” I said.

Grace and Jake
stayed quiet as Officer Grant made the request, and three minutes later, he had
his answer.
 
“How did you know?” he
asked as he looked at me.

“Know what?”
Grace asked.

“One of the
sheets had a slit in it,” he said.

“A slit?” I
asked.

“Exactly where a
knife would go through.
 
There was
some blood on the inside of the sheet as well.
 
It had to have been left there when the
blade was pulled out of Rick Hastings’ chest.”

“How about the
other sheet?” I asked.
 
“Is there
anything on it?”

“Hang on.
 
Let me ask.”
 
He looked at me oddly, but he’d just
seen enough to know not to question me.

“What are you
hoping they find?” Grace asked me.

“Something out of
the ordinary,” I replied.

“Like what?”
Grace asked.

“Unless I miss my
guess, there are traces of blue and gold paint on the inside of the other sheet,”
I said softly.

“You’re right on
the money again,” the police officer confirmed after he got off the radio.
 
“How did you know that we’d find paint
smears?”

“It just seemed
logical to me.
 
At least one of the people
on our list probably wore the makeup originally in order to blend in, and then they
donned a sheet—probably already discarded by someone else—killed Rick, and then
pulled the sheet off Rick first and then their own sheet and tried to blend back
in with the festivities, hoping to get away before anyone noticed the dead body.”