Troubled Treats (8 page)

“Thanks, I will,” I said as I slipped it into my front jeans pocket.

“Is it time to eat yet, Dot?” Phillip asked as the two men came out of the dining room together.

“We were just waiting for you two to finish setting the table,” Momma said.

No more was said about the murder the rest of the evening, and despite the hour, I had a lovely time.  Dinner was magnificent, which was no real surprise, and the company was delightful.  Phillip entertained us with a story from one of the old newspapers he’d stumbled across about a family of chipmunks that had nestled in an old man’s beard when it got cold, and his retelling of the tale had us all laughing by the time he finished.  I hated to break things up, but after the third time I tried to hide a yawn, Momma said, “Suzanne, you have an early day tomorrow.  Don’t mind these dishes.  Phillip and I will take care of them.”

“Are you sure?” I protested, but it had to be clear to everyone there that it wasn’t all that sincere.

“Positive,” she said.

Jake looked inquiringly at me, and I nodded slightly.  He shook Phillip’s hand, and then hugged my mother.  “Dot, it was all wonderful.  Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” she said.

Before we got to the truck, Jake said, “We forgot to get the key.”

I patted my pocket.  “I took care of it.  We got a great deal more than that, didn’t we?  I’m stuffed.  I can’t believe how much I ate.”

“Will you still be able to get to sleep when we get home?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?  You might have to carry me inside after I pass out on the ride home.”

“I can do that,” he said.  “They’re good together, aren’t they?”

“I have to admit that they’re growing on me,” I answered sleepily.

I managed to stumble into the cottage on my own power, but just barely, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.  It had been a big day, and tomorrow would be even crazier, but for the moment, all I cared about was sleeping during the little time I had left before I had to get up and go to work.

Chapter 9

Jake was still asleep when I left the cottage the next morning, which was a very good thing as far as I was concerned.  He’d tried once to keep my hours, but we’d both known that it had been a mistake, and he’d never done it again.  As I drove the short distance to the donut shop in the dark, I kept thinking about the wagon factory.  Was there still a guard posted there, or had the police chief opened it back up?  I had the key with me, so I could look around myself if I wanted to before work.  Jake had forgotten to ask me for it, and I knew that he’d be retrieving it the moment he realized that I still had it in my possession.  Why not get a little sleuthing in before I started my day at the donut shop, if that was the case? 

I decided to keep going past Donut Hearts and drove to the wagon factory.

No one was posted out front, and there was no sign of a squad car there, either.

I parked my Jeep and got out, but halfway up the steps, I glanced up toward the second floor windows and saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

A small light was bobbing up and down up there, flickering as it passed the windows closest to the street.

I knew that the place wasn’t haunted, no matter how many stories folks around April Springs told about the ghostly caretaker that supposedly roamed the building after midnight.

Someone was up there, and I was determined to find out who it was.

I wasn’t going in unarmed, though.  I didn’t have my trusty softball bat with me, but I had the next best thing, a jack handle that would serve to defend me just fine.  My Jeep had gone through some serious trauma at the hands of a snowy road before, and I could have used a little protection back then, but I’d failed to collect it before I’d fled into the woods. 

That wasn’t going to happen again.

Grabbing the handle, I started toward the door, ready for whatever I might find upstairs.  There was still police tape across the front façade, but someone had carefully slit it open in order to pass through.  I tried the door, and to my surprise, I found it unlocked!  I knew the police would have secured it before leaving, so whoever was up there had used a key, making the one in my pocket unnecessary.  How had they gotten it?  Did any of the workers have access to the building during off-hours, thus needing a key, or was this someone else entirely?  Pushing the door open, I prepared myself for anything.

I had walked just three steps inside when I heard someone directly above me, moving or dragging something across the floor over my head.

What was I doing?  Had I completely lost my mind?  I always shouted at the heroines in horror movies who did the exact same thing that I was doing right now.  I wasn’t sure where the false bravado had come from, but I’d never forgive myself if I wound up dead because of my own stupidity.

This was something I shouldn’t be doing without any backup.

I had to get out of there until I could get someone on the scene to make sure that I survived this.

I never even considered calling the police.  It was a simple matter of calling Jake and waiting for him to answer.  When he finally picked up, it was clear that I’d woken him from a deep sleep.  “Jake, I’m at the wagon factory.”

“What are you doing there?” he asked me groggily.

“I thought I’d drive by before work.  The thing is that someone beat me to it.”

That got his attention.  “Are they still there?”

“As far as I can tell.  As I drove up, I saw a light coming from the second story, and when I snuck in, I heard someone moving boxes or something upstairs.”

“You’re still in the building?  Get out!”

“Relax. I’m standing out on the front stoop,” I said.  “But you’d better hurry.  I don’t want whoever is up there to get away.”

“Don’t move.  I’ll be there in three minutes.”

I started to tell him that he could barely drive that far in that amount of time, even if he were fully dressed, but my phone was dead at that point.  He’d hung up on me.

Now what should I do?  I was tempted to slink back to my Jeep and wait there, ready to escape if whoever was inside decided to come out.  Then again, I needed to be sure that I could identify them.  I finally decided to compromise by moving over to the bushes by the front entrance.  I was out of the line of sight of the door, but I could still run if I was spotted.

Two minutes later, Jake drove toward the building, shutting off his headlights as he coasted the last twenty feet.  That was smart of him, something that I’d failed to do.  He came up to me quickly in the darkness, and I had to wonder how he’d known that I was there.

“How did you spot me?” I asked in a whisper, though there was no way that anyone would be able to hear me.  “I thought I was hidden pretty well.”

“The tire iron in your hand caught my headlights before I shut them off,” he said.  “Has there been any movement up there since you called me?”

At least he wasn’t scolding me.  I considered that a victory in my book.  “Not that I’ve been able to see.  Listen, I didn’t mean to push my luck walking into the building by myself.  As soon as I came to my senses, I got out and called you.”

“That’s all that matters,” my husband said as he pulled out his handgun.  “I don’t suppose there’s a chance in the world you’d be willing to stay out here while I go in alone, is there?”

“What do you think?”

“Just stay behind me, then,” he ordered, a command that I had no problems complying with.

Together, we walked into the building single file, and then we headed slowly up the stairs.

We were halfway there when we both heard the back door slam on the first floor behind us.  Blast it all, whoever had been there had moved downstairs from the second floor while I’d been outside waiting on Jake, and now they’d gotten away.  We were still racing for the back door when we heard someone screech their tires as they drove quickly away.  “I can’t believe that we missed them again,” I said in disgust.  “I should have followed my first instincts and gone after whoever it was by myself.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Jake said.  “You were right to call me.”

“But now whoever was here is gone.”

“Maybe so, but if we got lucky, we might still find something.  They must have heard you earlier, so they could have left before they were able to find what they were looking for.”  We walked back up the stairs together, and Jake stopped me at the top as he knelt down and studied the floor with his flashlight.

“What do you see?” I asked him, straining to catch a glimpse of whatever he was looking at.

“Footprints,” he said as he pointed to a dusty edge.

“Does that mean that we can’t investigate?” I asked him.

“No.  Just be careful where you put your feet, and try to match my footsteps as closely as you can.”  He moved to the edge of the floor along the outside wall and started toward the main area.  “Suzanne, where exactly did you hear that noise before?”

“It had to be somewhere over there,” I said, pointing to a small room that must have been an office once upon a time when the factory had still been a going concern.  “It’s right above where I was standing.”

“Come on.  Let’s check it out,” Jake said, carefully walking toward it.  As he drew the door open, I held my breath.  What would we find there?  Was it another body?  I hoped with all of my heart that it wasn’t, but given my history, I knew that I couldn’t bank on it.

I let out a deep sigh of relief when I realized that the room was empty, at least of people, dead or otherwise. 

Instead, there were half a dozen wooden crates of varying sizes stacked in there, clearly recently disturbed.  “Do you think there’s something inside of one of these?” I asked Jake, still whispering for some odd reason.

He was about to answer when another flashlight beam illuminated the area where we stood.

“Drop your weapon,” a voice commanded from the darkness, and I had to wonder if whoever had been there before had circled back to get the drop on us.

Chapter 10

Jake didn’t immediately comply with the command, and I wondered if he was going to take a stand and have a shootout right then and there.  Instead, he held his hands up in the air as he said, “Everything’s okay.  It’s just us, Chief.”

“Jake, what are you two doing here?” the acting police chief asked as he reached over and turned on an overhead light.

“Suzanne saw someone wandering around up here as she was driving past, so she called me,” he explained.

“Is there any reason that you didn’t think of calling me first?” he asked me as he frowned.  “And this place is nowhere near your donut shop.”

“Are you honestly all that surprised that I called my husband first?” I asked him.  “If it’s any consolation, you were next on my list.  As to why I was here, I was curious to see if you still had a guard posted outside.  I wasn’t ignoring you, I promise.”

“I wish I could say that it helped, but it doesn’t.”  As he looked around, he asked, “Did you happen to see who it was?”

“Sorry.  Whoever it was beat it out of here after they realized that Suzanne must have called for reinforcements.”

“So, there’s nothing new that you can add to the investigation?” the chief asked, the weariness heavy in his voice.

“I wouldn’t say that.  There are some pretty good prints in the dust over there,” Jake said as he pointed to the stairwell. “But I can’t say for sure when they were made.”

“We’ll get some shots of them anyway,” Chief Grant said as he reached for his radio and called in his team.  After he’d summoned his staff, I asked, “How did you even know that we were here?  Is there some kind of alarm system in the building we don’t know about?”

“You’d have to ask your mother that,” Chief Grant said.  “Someone reported seeing lights coming from the upstairs of the building, so I thought I’d check it out.”

“You’re working awfully late, aren’t you?” I asked him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.  “Murder has a way of doing that to me.  Suzanne, tell me everything that happened since you first showed up, and don’t leave anything out.”

I brought him up to date, including being sure to mention that I hadn’t been the one who’d cut the crime scene tape.  When I was finished, he asked, “I wonder what they were after?”

“I have no idea, but I’d love to get a look inside those crates,” I admitted.

“Is that what the tire iron is for?” he asked me.

“This?  No, it was more for self-defense, but I don’t see why we can’t use it to open these, too.”

The interim chief laughed.  “We’ll do this by the book, if you don’t mind.  Shouldn’t you be at the donut shop getting ready for your day?”

I glanced at my watch.  “I can push it a few more minutes if I need to.”

“Why don’t you go on?  I’ll take over from here,” the chief said.

“Don’t worry, Suzanne.  I’ll stop by when we’re through here,” Jake told me.

The chief looked at him oddly.  “Jake, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave, too.  You don’t have any official standing here, remember?  I hate to be by the book about this, but this is still a crime scene, so no civilians are allowed.”  He looked at Jake as though he were seeking his approval, and my husband quickly nodded.

“Of course.  You’re right, Chief.  Suzanne, let’s get out of here and let the man do his job.”

“Thanks for understanding,” Chief Grant said.

“You bet,” Jake replied.

My husband guided me away from the footprints he’d found earlier, and we were back outside soon enough.  “Ouch.  That was kind of harsh,” I said.

“You can’t blame him.  He’s just doing his job.  If our roles were reversed, I would have done the exact same thing.  Do you need a hand at the donut shop this morning?”

“Thanks for offering, but I’ve got it covered,” I told him, surprised by his offer.

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I’m going back to bed,” my husband said, and then he kissed me.  “Thanks for calling me.”

“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” I said.

“No worries, Suzanne,” he replied.  I watched him walk back to his truck in the dim light coming from a nearby streetlight.  Was he hanging his head down, or was it my imagination?  It couldn’t have been easy being thrown out of an investigation like that.  I made up my mind to make it up to him.  Jake had been put in an awkward position because of me, and I didn’t like it the least little bit.