Deep Fried Homicide (The Donut Shop Mysteries) (19 page)

Chapter 18

Thankfully, the rest of the day was fairly quiet, and by eight PM, I caught myself yawning.  Despite my new schedule, my sleep patterns hadn’t adapted to my new bedtime yet.  At least Jake was tired, too. 

“You’re killing me with those yawns of yours,” he said with a smile after a particularly spectacular one on my part.  “I can’t seem to stop myself from yawning, too.”

“I’ll try to quit, but old habits die hard,” I said.

“Hey, we can call it a night right now if you’d like.  I’m sure that I’ll be able to get to sleep without trying too hard.”

“Let’s at least see if we can stay up until nine,” I answered.  “What do you think?”

“I’m game if you are,” he said.

As it turned out, neither one of us had any trouble staying awake an hour later, but it had nothing at all to do with our sleep patterns.

“Chief, what are you doing here?  Your shift doesn’t start for hours yet, and Terry, you should be back at your hotel room by now,” I said as I answered the door.  I was surprised to find the state police inspector there with the police chief, since George had been on duty for just a few hours.

“I hate to do this, but you both need to come with me right now,” the chief said grimly.

“Has something happened?” Jake asked as he grabbed his jacket.

“Is it Momma?  Has she been hurt?  Please tell me that she’s all right.”  I had a sudden fear that Rusk had gone after someone I loved so much, however irrational that might be.  I couldn’t stand the thought that someone might have hurt her because of Jake or me.

“Don’t worry.  Your mother is fine,” the chief said.

“Thank goodness for that,” I replied.

“If no one’s hurt, then what is it?” Jake asked Terry.

“I think that it’s going to be better if you see it for yourself,” Terry said.  “Bear with me, okay?”

Jake nodded, and I followed him out the door.  “Hey, George,” I said as I walked past the mayor.  “Are you coming with us, too?”

“No, I’m hanging back to keep an eye on the cottage,” he said.  “No worries here.”

“I appreciate that,” I answered, and then I turned to the men and asked, “Should I drive Jake to wherever we’re going?”

“No, I want you all to come with me in my squad car,” Chief Martin said.

“It might be nice to at least know where we’re going,” Jake said.

“Nathan’s Sport Shop,” the chief replied.

I’d been in Nathan’s a few times, though his wares weren’t really my general area of interest.  Nathan catered mostly to hunters and fishermen, selling all kinds of specialty equipment and other things that outdoorsmen preferred.  I happened to know that because the same group also made up a part of my own clientele at the donut shop.  After all, it wasn’t unusual during any hunting season to find them stopping into Donut Hearts for a little snack on their way in or out of town.

“What’s going on at Nathan’s?” I asked.

“He had a break-in,” Terry said.

“That poses more questions than it answers,” Jake replied.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Terry said, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.

Thankfully, we got there a few minutes later.  Everything looked perfectly normal to me from the outside.  “Where’s the broken glass, in back?” I asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

“No, he was slicker than that.  The alarm was bypassed and the lock was picked.  This guy was a real pro,” Terry explained.

“How do you know it was a guy?” Jake asked.

“Go on in and see for yourself,” Terry answered.

I followed the three men inside, looking around as I walked through the place.  There were still no signs of a robbery to my eyes, at least not the ones I would have expected.  I tended to think of burglars as leaving behind smashed glass and broken items, but this theft was on a whole different level.  The only thing amiss that I could see was a gun case standing open.

And then I saw the large white-board where sales were announced.  I used one myself at the donut shop, but mine had never been used for something like this.

In a fine, almost delicate hand, it said,

“You can hire an army to protect you, but it won’t do you any good.  I’m coming for you, Jake.  I could have taken Suzanne today, but I wanted you to feel fear deep in your gut before I moved in on you.  You’re going to have to watch me kill her, and then I’m going to take care of you.  Rusk.”

The message was creepy enough, but the attached photograph was even worse.  It showed me, in clear detail, walking on the road between the donut shop and my home.  The worst part about it was that I was wearing the same clothes in the photograph that I had on at the moment.

“This was taken today,” I said, feeling my blood chill a little as I said it.

“We figured as much when we saw it,” the chief said gravely.

“What all did he take?” I asked as I looked at the open gun safe with new fear.

“A good hunting knife, a handgun, and just two bullets,” Terry said.  “He wanted to be sure that we got his message.  He’s a cocky little murderer, isn’t he?”

With quiet determination in his voice, Jake said, “He’s going to pay for this.”

“Don’t you worry about that.  We’ll get him,” Terry said.  “Announcing what he’s going to do just makes me that much more intent on catching him, and soon.”  He tapped the photograph with the cap of a pen.  “I knew that was a bad idea when you did it.  It can’t happen again, Suzanne.”

“It won’t,” I said.  The photo hit me harder than the threats.  I’d been right after all.  Someone
had
been watching me from the park.  “What can we do about it?”

“There’s something else I need to tell you.  I called the chief,” Terry said, and then pointed to Chief Martin.  “I should say our boss.”

“I thought that we were going to handle this,” Jake said icily.

Terry looked uncomfortable with the statement.  “I didn’t have any choice, and you know it.”

Jake just shrugged.  “What did he say?”

“He feels as though what we’ve been doing up until now isn’t working too well, and he’s decided to send a team tomorrow to relieve your volunteer guards.”  The state police inspector turned to the local police chief and added, “No offense intended to any of you, but this is one bad man.”

“None taken,” Chief Martin said.  “I don’t have any problem knowing when I’m in over my head.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” I asked Terry.  “Just sit around and wait for the troops to show up?”

“I brought up that exact same point, but since our boss is out of town, he can’t make this happen any sooner.  We just have to redouble our vigilance until then.  I strongly suggest that you vacate the cottage in the meantime.  It’s clear that Rusk knows that you’re there.”

I was about to agree to relocating when Jake surprised me.  “Terry, we’re not going anywhere.  I stand by what I said before.  If we run and hide now, we’ll lose all hope of catching this guy forever.  If anything, we need to do something to flush him out before our reinforcements arrive.”

Terry grinned.  “I was hoping that you felt that way.  That’s my thought exactly.”

“Are you two seriously going to use us as bait to catch this lunatic?” I asked him.  I couldn’t stand to look at my picture, or the taunting message Rusk had left us.

“Not you, Suzanne; me,” Jake said firmly.

I laughed, but there was no joy in it.  “Jake, I’m not leaving you alone, and that’s final.  No matter what happens, I’m staying in the cottage if you are.”

“It’s not going to happen, Suzanne,” he barked.

I decided not to snap back at him, since I knew that he was under a tremendous amount of stress.  To my surprise, Terry spoke up.  “I think she’s right, Jake.”

“Have you lost your mind?” my boyfriend asked his fellow inspector.

“Think about it.  If Suzanne is gone, Rusk might just vanish and try again later when everyone isn’t watching out for him.  We’ve discussed this before, but you need to make a hard and fast decision right now.  Do you really want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?”

“You know that I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to sacrifice Suzanne, either.”

“Nobody’s being sacrificed,” I said.  “I trust you all.  I’ll be safe.”

“You’d better be,” Chief Martin said.  “If something happens to you, your mother will take care of me herself, and nobody will ever find the body.”

The fact that nobody tried to contradict him didn’t do much to ease the frown on Chief Martin’s face.

“If we’re going to do this,” Jake finally said, “then we’d better have the perfect plan in place, and we have to do it tonight.”

“We both know there’s no such thing as a perfect plan,” Terry said.  “All we can do is try to cover all of our bases and hope that we’re smarter than he is.”

Jake just shrugged, but I wasn’t quite so nonchalant about it all.  “But we’re still going to try to come up with something that keeps us safe and traps him, right?”

Jake must have sensed the worry in my voice.  “Suzanne, we won’t do a thing unless all of us are confident that it’s going to work.  Otherwise, we’ll go underground until the good guys show up tomorrow.  How does that sound to you?”

“Better,” I admitted.  “So, who’s got the first idea?”

Terry looked around the shop at the local cops milling about.  Had they been listening in to everything that we’d been discussing?  And worst of all, could Rusk find a way to torture one of them to get that information out of them?  “Is there anyplace we can go where we won’t be disturbed?”

“I can clear everyone out here,” Chief Martin said as he looked around the room.

“I’ve got an even better idea,” I replied.  “Let’s go over to Donut Hearts.  I can make us all some fresh coffee, and if we stay in the kitchen, no one’s going to bother us.  At least it’s away from the cottage, and any other prying eyes that might be eavesdropping on us.”

“Speaking of reinforcements,” the police chief said, “I’m calling Officer Grant in to team up with the mayor right now.  No one pulls a shift alone until this thing is resolved, and I’m not about to leave one of my people hanging in the wind.”

“That’s a good idea,” Terry said.  “You should absolutely do that.  It will show Rusk that we’re taking him seriously, and it might even help us spring our trap.”

“Then let’s all go to the donut shop,” I added.

The chief made arrangements with Officer Grant to join George immediately on the way to the donut shop.  I let everyone in before locking up behind us, and as soon as I got into the kitchen, I flipped on a few lights and hit the coffee pot switch as well.  It was too bad there were no donuts there.  And then I saw three boxes sitting on the counter.  It was my policy to get rid of extra donuts at the end of every working day, but evidently Emma and her mother had other ideas for these.  I flipped the lids and found a nice assortment, so I laid them out and grabbed four cups as well.  For once, I was glad that Emma had gone against my regular protocol.  Those donuts would come in handy as we planned how we were going to lure Rusk into a trap without risking our own lives in the process.

An hour later, we finally managed to come up with a working plan, something that we all thought just might succeed in trapping the killer.  There was some risk involved, no one denied that, but it was the best that we could do given the circumstances, so we decided to move forward.

Now all we needed was some cooperation from a killer, and a small crack in his armor that we could exploit.  Otherwise, Jake and I would be on edge for the rest of our lives, and I for one wasn’t willing to live that way, especially if we could end it all within the next few hours.

Chapter 19

The hardware store had been ridiculously easy to break into.  I could have taken a ton of weapons with me as I left, but in the end, I decided that simple was best.  One handgun and one knife would be plenty to finish them.  I didn’t even take a handful of bullets with me, either.  I chose two randomly and loaded them into the gun.  After all, two was all I planned to use.

Let them make of that what they would.

This should scare them.

And if they were jumpy, they’d soon make a mistake, and that’s when I would hit them with everything that I had.

Now I just had to wait for the right time to strike.

One thing I knew for sure was that it would be soon.

Very soon.

Chapter 20

“Are we all set on your end?” Jake asked the local policeman a little later when Chief Martin finally returned to the donut shop.  It felt as though Jake and I had been there forever, though Terry and the chief had been in and out a few times once we’d finalized our plans.