"You're kidding, right? A lot of folks would have pretended they didn't see a thing and let someone else go through all of this."
"I can't imagine anyone in April Springs doing that."
He smiled, but there wasn't an ounce of humor in it. "Yeah, well, you don't exactly hang out with the wrong crowd, now do you? Thanks for the coffee."
"You're welcome," I said as I started to shut the door behind him. "Are you sure you don't want any donuts?"
If there was one thing I'd learned early on running Donut Hearts, it was that most police officers hated the association of their line of work with donut shops.
I don't know what I would have done if he'd said yes, since I hadn't even started on the dough yet, but he just shook his head as he walked back to his patrol car. I don't keep old donuts around the place overnight.
If I have many extras at closing time, I box them up. What happens next depends on my mood. If I feel sociable, I take them around to businesses and offer them free of charge, in the hopes of drumming up more business down the line. If I'm dog tired and dead on my feet, which is more often than I care to admit, I give them to Father Pete at St. Theresa's, and he sees to it that they go to folks who don't have enough to eat.
I watched in silence as everyone finally drove away, and found myself once again alone in the darkness. It had been a traumatic way to start my day, but I had work to do, and I couldn't let what had happened stop me from making donuts. In a way, it was a good thing I had something to do that kept me busy. The last thing I needed was to keep replaying that scene in my head again and again, and feel that feathery touch of dead skin on my fingertips once more.
If I'm being honest about it, my favorite time of day in my routine is when no one is at the shop but me. As much as I love Emma--and need her help producing thirty-five or forty dozen donuts each morning--I relish the one day a week when I do it all by myself. Making dough and batter, working on glazes, and coming up with new creations is great fun, despite the appearance of drudgery to the outside world of doing the same thing day in and day out. I'd been working on a new pumpkin donut recipe for the past few weeks, and I believed that I had finally achieved nirvana with the perfect blend of pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in the recipe.
But there was only one way to find out. I dropped
a few of the donut-batter circles into the piping hot oil, flipped them with my beefy wooden sticks that resemble chopsticks on steroids more than anything else, and then pulled them from their hot bath when they were done. I tumbled the rounds onto the glazing grid, drizzled the donuts with a sugar glaze I'd made fresh that morning, and took my first bite. The sensation of the warm cake donut spiced just right burst in my mouth. Almost without awareness, I ate both samples and knew that this recipe was the one I'd been searching for. I caught a glimpse of myself as I opened my stainless steel fridge for some milk, and realized that I'd been sampling too many of my own wares lately. I was either going to have to learn to control myself, or start going to the gym again.
As I finished making the rest of the batch of pumpkin donuts and started on the plain cakes, I knew I'd have to start working out and cut back on my daily donut consumption. I have some willpower, but not that much. After the cake donuts were done--a selection of plain, blueberry, cherry, and more pumpkin today--I raised the heat of the oil from 350 degrees to 365 so I could make the yeast donuts sitting in the proofer waiting their turn in the hot oil fryer. "Proofer" is a fancy name for an insulated box with a lightbulb and a humidifier, and although the proofer is ancient, it works just fine. Besides, I don't have the money to replace it just because it's ugly.
The donuts need around half an hour to rest in the proofer once they are cut, but I'm never bored while I'm waiting. There's not a lot of downtime in
the world of donut making, especially when I'm working by myself.
I managed to hold my snacking down to one more donut by the time I opened the shop at five-thirty, when the early morning was still shrouded in March's darkness. It hadn't been easy, but I was able to deal with what I'd witnessed.
At least I hoped so.
One of my regulars was waiting outside when I unlocked the front door.
George Morris, a balding man in his sixties who had retired from the police force a dozen years ago, said, "I heard what happened, Suzanne. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, George. It didn't take long for the word to get out, did it?"
He shrugged. "I always sleep with my police scanner on. When I heard this location mentioned, I woke right up."
After he took his regular seat at the long counter in front, I asked, "Do you want your usual this morning?"
George nodded, and I grabbed two pumpkin donuts and a large glass of whole milk for him. I wasn't going to tell him about my new recipe. If he couldn't tell it was different, I had more work to do on it.
As I delivered his food, George said, "Come on, there's nobody else around right now. Tell me what really happened."
I frowned at the question, not wanting to relive what I'd witnessed, but also realizing that I wouldn't
be able to get him off the subject until I did. "I was here at two, just like always, and I was getting ready to turn on the lights when I heard a car race by and a body hit the pavement." I shuddered involuntarily as I remembered the dull thud of the impact. I wondered if I'd ever be able to wipe it out of my mind.
George surprised me with an instant of tenderness as he lightly touched my hand. "It's okay; the memory will fade. Just give it some time."
"Thanks," I said. "I hope so."
He looked around the shop. "Where's Emma?"
"It's her day off," I said.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that alone."
I managed a smile for him. He was a sweetheart, and for some odd reason, I felt guilty about causing him sadness, which I know is ridiculous, but I can't help how I feel. If I could, I would have been able to save myself a bucketload of pain over the years, most especially from my ex-husband. Then again, if there hadn't been a Max once upon a time in my life, I wouldn't be running my own donut shop now, so maybe it was good I didn't have as much control over things as I would have liked.
I looked at George. "Did you hear who the victim was? It was Patrick Blaine."
He shook his head. "They didn't say over the scanner. That must make it twice as hard for you. You were fond of him, weren't you?"
"I was," I admitted. "I wonder if they know anything else about what happened."
George glanced at his watch. "Let's listen to the radio. Maybe Lester knows something about it."
I reached up to a shelf behind the register and
turned the radio on. It was permanently tuned to WAPS, and if there was any news about the murder, Lester Moorefield would have it in his morning report.
Lester's voice came on just as Toby Keith finished his latest song about cheating and retribution. It seemed to be a popular theme on the country music charts these days, one for which I had a great deal of sympathy myself. Lester said, "In local news, there was a homicide reported on Springs Drive in front of Donut Hearts this morning. The body has been identified as Patrick Blaine, a local banker and a resident of nearby Maple Hollow. The cause of death has yet to be released, but this reporter has learned that it was not a hit-and-run, as was first described, but a shooting."
I turned off the radio. "Nobody said it was a hit-and-run. What was Lester talking about?"
George shook his head. "The man loves to embellish the news, and one of these days it's going to bite him where the sun doesn't shine." The retired cop pushed his plate away as he stood. "Hate to eat and run, but I've got a few things I need to take care of before work. I'm filling in at the courthouse this morning."
George supplemented his retirement income by working as a substitute bailiff at the courthouse, which kept him in touch with his old pals, as well as new ones. He saluted me with two fingers to his forehead, then he said, "I'll touch base with you later."
I said, "You're not going to say anything to Lester, are you?"
George shook his head. "Why bother? It wouldn't do any good, would it?" He looked around the empty donut shop. "Are you going to be okay here by yourself?"
I nodded. "I'll be fine. Go on."
I'd miss him, but I wasn't about to admit it to him. Oftentimes George kept the place from feeling too lonely during some of the morning lulls I faced every day. If I'd looked into the razor-thin profit margin in the world of selling donuts before I bought the place, I never would have gone through with it. I was still glad I'd purchased the business, though. There were more profits to be made than those that could be shown on a spreadsheet, and I'd gained in immeasurable riches when it came to new friends. I had a nice sociable place where people could come to relax, enjoy a donut and a cup of coffee, and grab a few moments of sanctuary from a troubling world.
The first thing I'd done when I bought the shop was remodel the former train depot. The stiff booths and wobbly tables of the old donut shop went first, replaced by couches and comfortable chairs. As dingy beige paint on the walls was replaced with a plum faux finish--and the harsh concrete floor painted to match--the place transitioned from a utilitarian space to one where people liked to congregate. At least that had been my plan when I'd spent the last dime, literally, of my divorce settlement making Donut Hearts into the kind of place where I would like to hang out myself.
George said, "I'm going to nose around the precinct before I'm due to report and see if I can find out
anything else about Patrick Blaine. There's got to be some reason he ended up dead in front of your shop."
"Is Chief Martin going to let you walk right in there and start investigating the case? You're retired, remember?"
"He cuts me a little slack most days," George said. "As long as I stay out of his way, it works out fine. Don't tell me you two are still having problems."
I shrugged as I wiped his section of counter down with a clean cloth. "I don't think he's ever forgiven me for being my father's daughter." The police chief had dated my mother back in high school before my dad had come onto the scene, and there were rumors that Chief Martin had never been able to let her go. He was clearly unhappy in his current marriage, and seeing my mother around town didn't make life any easier for him, I was sure. Dad had been dead and buried for six years, but he might as well have still been alive. My mother had mated for life, and she wasn't interested in anyone else, something she made sure the chief knew whenever the opportunity to tell him arose. I fully realized why he was so unhappy, but did he have to take it out on me?
George was nearly out the door when I called out, "Let me know what you find out, okay?"
He shot me with his finger, then grinned. "You betcha." He stopped out front and talked to a man in uniform, not Officer Moore or the chief, but another young cop named Stephen Grant who came in occasionally to get donuts on his days off. Officer Grant was slim, despite his love for donuts, and was barely over five feet eight, the height minimum for the force, he'd once told me.
"Good morning," I said, as he walked in. "Are you here for professional reasons, or personal?"
"Would you believe a little of both?" he asked. "If I could get a bear claw and a coffee to go, that would be great."
As I poured him a cup and grabbed one of the fried cinnamon treats I'd just finished making, I asked, "What part of your visit is professional?"
"I just wanted to ask you about what happened this morning. The chief's got everybody keeping their eyes open, so I thought I'd see if you might have remembered something else."
I frowned. "Nothing I didn't tell Officer Moore."
He slid money across the counter and grabbed his breakfast. "Then I guess this stop wasn't a total loss, was it? See you later."
"Come back any time," I said.
My mother came bursting in through the front door of the donut shop ten minutes later. "I'm going to horsewhip Lester Moorefield and then hang him up on the Patriot's Tree for everyone to see."
She had always been overprotective of me, and that had only intensified since the divorce. Though my mother was six inches shorter than me--barely five feet tall--she was a force to be reckoned with. I couldn't have her flying off the handle, though.
"Calm down, Momma. It's all right."
"The blasted fool might as well have said you witnessed the whole thing," she said. "He even mentioned your shop's name in his broadcast. Did you hear him?"
This wasn't going well, and I didn't even want to think about what she might say next. It would be best if I could make light of it. "Who knows, maybe the
publicity will do me some good. We could always use the business."
She frowned at me, which was not an entirely unexpected reaction from her. "Suzanne Marie Hart, this is serious. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Momma. I didn't see a thing. There's nothing to worry about."
My mother had a strength of will that few in town could match. "You'd better be, or Lester is going to meet the back of my horsewhip."
After she had a cup of coffee and one of the wheat donuts she preferred, Momma left to take care of some pressing business. I had no idea what that might be, but I wasn't about to ask. It had been a tough transition moving back in with her, and even now--a full year after my divorce--we were both still trying to figure out how to live together without killing each other. Maybe that was a little harsh. Most of the time we got along just fine, but she had a way of pushing my buttons sometimes that even Max hadn't managed in our years together. I suppose it made sense. After all, she was the one who had installed them in the first place.